Assuming you're new to the story, welcome to THE CONVERGENCE! This story is a collaborative project run by myself, SuperFire131, Asanetargoss and several other authors. Inspired by the sadly failed RIFT project, we started THE CONVERGENCE up back in 2015 in the hopes of bringing the characters of our various stories together in a unique, new context which reveals new aspects of their character. We see a Fire from long before the events of "Slaves of the Desert Mine", a Fristad lost somewhere in the middle of "The Book of Dreams", a Tyron from long after the events of "Cubic Fire" and many other beloved Minefic characters. I recommend checking out Book 1 and Book 2 if you want to understand all the nuances of what's going on, but don't worry, we've provided a handy-dandy character sheet below, and have written the opening chapters with a new reader in mind.
Anyway, I'm rambling. We've had an absolute blast bouncing all these different characters off each other and we hope you have just as much fun reading their triumphs and tragedies. Now, we hope you enjoy:
THE CONVERGENCE
Book 3:Twisted Paths
The Story So Far
For millennia, beyond the Overworld, beyond the End, beyond even the Nether, The Entity has jealously eyed the infinite possibility of creation, building its own reality from the growth and decay of worlds. From this, Nexus, the patchwork world was born. For a time it was satisfied to rule over this dumping ground of the multiverse, but now it expands its influence at an alarming rate. It has built itself an army, an army it calls the Tower, and it intends to conquer. Now, as its plan reaches its apex, only one problem remains.
A group of heroes has emerged to finally contest the Entity and its captains. Initially a disparate group of stragglers who found themselves in Nexus through little agency of their own, they have defied the Entity twice now. First, they staged a prison break at the heart of the Tower itself. Now, they have escaped its attempt to recapture them. Injured and exhausted, they have escaped the ashes of the village they were hiding in, and they now seek shelter elsewhere.
Thankfully, they have a place to flee to. Fire the Mencur-Besh, a 5,000-year-old altered human, broke off from the party shortly before the attack. At the behest of a mysterious prophet, he has built a shelter for all those who would oppose the Entity’s forces.
Little do they know, they have made the Entity feel fear for the first time in millenia, and in the process have prompted it to accelerate its plans. It is now more dangerous than ever, and the fate of all worlds now hangs in the balance.
Characters
The Heroes:
Fire: Calm, collected, scaled, three-meter-tall, millenia old, all of these apply to Fire the Mencur-Besh. In reality Fire is a human named Peter accessing a world based on our favorite block game, created using revolutionary technology. In this world he went on various adventures and acquired all manner of skills. One day a strange potion he experimented with took him out of his own world into another one, Nexus.
Despite being the group’s most experienced leader and perhaps its most powerful individual combatant, Fire is a fish out of water. No longer able to rely on what he built in his own world, Fire is now forced to find his way in Nexus. With everything being unknown, trusting anyone is difficult. Fire also has Claw to think about, a remnant of his past manifesting as a feral split personality. And the stakes couldn’t be higher - from what he knows respawning is off the table.
Since arriving in Nexus, Fire has been the most proactive in seeking out answers as to just what Nexus and the Entity are. Eventually, this led him to establish the Shelter, a safehouse for all those who would challenge the might of the Entity. Believed by the Prophet to be the champion he has prophesied, Fire is the group’s de facto leader. However due to his sudden disappearances before the escape from the Tower and the battle of the village, as well as his detached outlook, some of the others find his style of leadership a little more than off-putting.
Shadow: Shadow was brought to Nexus by her brother Fire to aid him in his quest to shed light on the happenings. She is an immensely powerful mage, possessing mastery over many kinds of magic, as well as some abilities that most would consider aberrant. Shadow is not quite human, which shows in ways ranging from innocuous blunders in personal interaction, to her complete lack of physical needs, to her unsettling Void magic.
So far Shadow has presented herself both as fiercely loyal to her brother Fire but also neutral in most other regards, helping where possible without taking sides. She aided in revealing the Book’s nightmarish meddling and is now keeping an eye on it. She also started building an odd bond with Astro, not just over magic but also over more philosophical things.
Kay: General Kay Mandy would like you to believe he is a suave, upper-crust intellectual and a natural leader - a real up-and-coming young man - it’s not entirely untrue. Despite his renown as “Herobrine’s Lap Dog”, his retirement from the military has left him directionless and erratic. He has done a great many things to be ashamed of, and fears fading into impotence and irrelevancy in peacetime. As such, when he found himself trapped in Nexus, he was simultaneously frustrated and relieved to have another adventure to distract himself with. However, having realised the scale of the threat posed by the Entity and his weakness in comparison with the rest of the group, he has formed an uneasy alliance with the Book. He has gained access to its power in return for a promise to help it accrue power when he returns to his world. However, can he keep the Book in check?
Kay’s mixture of ruthless pragmatism and near-inspirational arrogance has resulted in a mixed relationship with the rest of the group. He has formed close friendships with Warnado and Tyron in addition to his pre-existing friendship with Astro, but managed to get off on a spectacularly wrong foot with Steve and Jennifer and has an extremely strained relationship with Fire. Knowing of the Mencur-Besh’s true identity, Kay considers him a fraud, and last time they interacted they had a serious falling out.
After an ill-fated encounter with the Entity, Kay is recovering from his wounds in a bed at the Shelter, not having been lucid in over a week.
Warnado: The joker of the group, this quarter-demon wizard’s top priority in any given situation is to squeeze some enjoyment out of it. Stealing a key? Use magic to replace it with an upsetting quantity of jam. Need to knock someone out? A hilariously oversized baseball bat seems appropriate. Your enemy wants a dramatic confrontation? He’ll call them a dork and crack a bunch of dumb jokes even he doesn’t necessarily understand.
However, beneath this jovial, pleasure-seeking demeanour lies a genuinely sad past. Warnado is one of the five Children of Prophecy, who are destined to save their world from Herobrine. Sadly, he hasn’t met any of the others yet and he is only thirteen years old.
Warnado has spent a lot of his time with Kay, almost up to the point of idolization, participating in whacky undertakings if there isn’t a battle to fight. Warnado also deeply cares for Amanda, an old flame he believed dead before arriving in Nexus. He fiercely defended her from a Book-controlled Fristad, and now worries about the Book’s apparent acceptance into the group. He has also entered a magical apprenticeship under Shadow and is showing great promise, though he is not entirely sure whether he should make use of his demonic heritage.
Amanda: Once upon a time, Amanda was a normal enough young girl, living in a village under the protection of a demon-boy named Helix. Of course, she doesn’t remember that. She was captured by a pack of bandits and found herself in Nexus with no inkling that she’d ever had any life outside that patchwork world. She eked out a living moving from village to village, selling her wares to their confused, lost inhabitants. Her life continued in this vein until she ran into Helix again - who now goes by Warnado - who made her aware of her past.
Due to the hardships she’s endured as a travelling merchant, Amanda has a prematurely cynical and world-weary outlook. That said, she likes the carefree, energetic goofiness Warnado brings into her life. Even if she doesn’t remember their time together, after he helped rescue her from the Dreamweaver’s tortures, an affectionate relationship has begun to bud between them.
Having picked up some skills with a crossbow over the years, Amanda intends to make herself useful in the fight against the Entity. Following Warnado’s lead, she hopes to grow in ability under the tutelage of the glamorous assassin, Rose.
Destiny: Destiny was once part of a team. Together with her boyfriend David, she helped to defeat Herobrine’s apprentice and save Minera from the Sovereign’s tyranny. Not a day after their victory, they were approached by the echoes of their past selves, Carter and Anya, and told to travel to Nexus to stop another great evil. Now, David is dead and Destiny hasn’t coped with it as well as she’d like.
She is still very much grieving. She and David were reincarnated across lifetimes to be together, and now she’s worried they might be “out of step”. When Fire enlisted her to help build the Shelter, she leapt at the opportunity to distract herself, but it has only been a partial success. She’s not sure if she trusts Fire, worrying he just sees her as a problem to solve. Having finally found a way to contact Anya again, she at the very least has someone she feels comfortable talking to about her grief, but she has a long way to go before she’s fully healed. In the absence of an enemy directly responsible for David’s death, she yearns for revenge against those who imprisoned them in the Tower - the Ender, Freak and Glibby the Ape - and she will take any opportunity to enact it, regardless of her own safety.
Tyron: Tyron Dragoknight was finally enjoying some peace. He had beaten Herobrine, beaten the endermen, freed the dragons and restored balance to the world.
However, his heroic status has made him a target, and he found himself at the mercy of the phantom known as Freak. The phantom feeds on fear, during his captivity Tyron found himself regularly overpowered by visions of despair and destruction. He’s a naturally laid-back, optimistic sort, and since his liberty he feels more himself, but the scars of his imprisonment linger. His sentient bluestone sword, Kir, does their best to lift his spirits, but everyone has their limit.
None of this changes the fact that Tyron is a powerful warrior with access to some fairly powerful magic. He can summon icy blades around his hands, bend the earth to his will, and even fly on wings made of stone. Moreover, when he holds Kir he becomes one of the finest swordsmen Minecraftia has ever known. He is one of the team’s most capable all-rounders, and despite his reluctant return to heroism, he will do all in his power to defend his new friends.
Fristad: Fristad of Veridale is just a shepherd. Normally, he just worries about how much wool he’ll be able to produce, about keeping his flock safe, and otherwise just tries to enjoy his life. He has led a life characterised by honesty, boyish camaraderie and a love of nature. However, several months ago, he came into possession of the Book.
As soon as it mysteriously entered into his possession, the Book began eroding Fristad’s free will through coercive nightmares, psychological manipulation and the promise of sharing its power. This only worsened once he arrived in Nexus, when the Book saw a true opportunity to extend its influence. First it transformed Fristad temporarily into an Enderman, then made him become the Dreamweaver in an attempt to enthrall Amanda. However, this was when the Book finally lost control of Fristad, not from his own will but from a coordinated intervention from his friends.
Now, Fristad must wear a magic-suppressing harness to prevent the Book from ever attempting to regain its influence. With this dominating presence gone, Fristad is at a loss for direction in his life. All he knows is that he feels guilty, particularly for his actions as the Dreamweaver, and hopes to find some purpose and redemption in the Shelter.
Steve and Jennifer: Steve Brine and his girlfriend Jennifer are an accomplished power duo. They have faced off undead armies, the Ender Dragon and Herobrine himself. As the owners of a set of gems the Entity desires, they entered Nexus hunted and confused, though confident in their ability to pull through. It was in this period of pursuit that they came across Fristad, with whom they formed a close bond. They were the first people he told about the Book, and the first ones other than Destiny to figure out he was the Dreamweaver.
Steve is a friendly goofball, and Jennifer balances a genuinely supportive and nurturing personality with being a ruthlessly accurate sniper. Both are capable of carrying huge amounts of materials in their seemingly bottomless pockets, and are capable of digging and building at rapid speeds. Steve is the group’s tank, Jennifer its sniper, and together they are the ultimate crowd-control.
At the Shelter, they feel a little directionless, having had to follow the lead of others since their arrival. Honestly, constantly dragged around is getting a little draining. That said, they have a great deal of respect for Fire and are more than happy to follow his lead.
Astro: Astro has lost a lot, and much of it was his own fault. He trusted the wrong people, and now he mourns the death of many of his dearest friends: among the dead was his good friend, Kay, King of Gaia. He was, before arriving in Nexus, tasked by Jeb with combing the snowy Fields of Acrisius for the corpses left behind by the latest conflict. However, he now finds himself in the midst of a new adventure.
An able warrior and a better wizard, he can shatter bones with a thought, summon shields and even fly. However, his magic is slowly killing him and until recently he could only use so much of it without quickly wearing himself out. He is the definition of a glass cannon.
Moreover, a mishap with portals means he has come into contact with a younger Kay from far in his past, and this is more than a little troubling to him. In addition to worrying about the threat the Entity poses and the threat to the timeline, he has to grapple with the monster he knows Kay will become, and might always have been. Worse still, after Shadow tore open a hole in reality as a demonstration of her power, Astro struggles with strange headaches and dreams, unable to stop thinking about this mysterious un-space.
Lucy: Originally a maid in the employ of a wealthy couple in a village close to the Tower, Lucy was unexpectedly and suddenly recruited by Fire for reasons unknown to her. She quickly found out what Fire saw in her: her talent for logistics and working with people, which became invaluable for ensuring the smooth operation of the Shelter.
The Prophet: An enigmatic figure preaching from the top of a hill to his congregation. Many say he is completely insane and they may even be right. Even still, his prophecies turn out to be true, if sometimes only metaphorically, too often to be explained with luck. He acts as a beacon of hope for the less-well-off citizens of Nexus, but has been missing since the Entity’s forces occupied a village near the area where he would normally address his followers.
Also Steve (no relation): The Prophet’s guardian, who has the ability to teleport, a rude, confrontational attitude and an intense hatred of the Entity. He claims the Entity destroyed his world, though he does not know by what means. He appears to have been trying to recruit a team of heroes to liberate Nexus for some time, though until encountering Fire had little success. Like the Prophet, he has been missing since the Tower raided the village.
From "A Tale Known by Only One" by Bruvvy.
Rose: A cold and classy assassin hailing from a world quite different than the usual, Rose was chosen by Fire for his expedition for her prowess at killing.
Voidblade: A green-eyed enderman chosen for his powers of teleportation. In Voidblade’s world the End was fighting a losing war with humanity, making interactions with humans understandably difficult for him.
Urist: Urist is as dwarven as a dwarf can be, but keeps his past to himself. He was chosen for his natural talent for excavation and engineering.
The Lady of Dreams: A benevolent phantom who occasionally visits Peter/Fire in his dreams with the goal of helping him come to terms with his traumatic past. However, since she followed him into Nexus she has seemed increasingly distressed.
The Tower:
The Entity: Little is known of this being. It created the Nexus and the Tower, indicating it possesses immense power. On account of a tightly-fitted suit of bronze armour, it has few obvious weak points aside from a pair of white, fabric gloves it wears instead of gauntlets. Without its armour, it appears to be composed of grey TV static in a deeply unstable but vaguely humanoid form. Additionally, when it wears no armour it will possess or absorb anyone it touches, allowing it to appear multiple times on the one battlefield. All that is clear is that it will kill and murder and steal anything that gets in the way of its esoteric motivations. Normally, it spends its time in The Tower, overseeing the business of dimensional transactions and the coordination of troops, occasionally sending its manifestations into battle.
However, during the raid on the village it made a rare appearance in person. Apparently responding to a tear in reality created by Shadow, it appeared intent on sealing it with immediate effect. Since then, it has ensured the village is fortified and personally guards the site of the tear. The reasons for its concern are currently unknown.
The Ender: An enderwoman who is the main commander of the Entity's forces. She wears obsidian armour and carries a purple sword that crackles with energy. Acutely observant, she maintains an alliance of convenience with The Entity, in the hope of advancing her people's ambitions. The heroes showing up have made her job rather difficult, she has so far been unable to apprehend any of the ones who staged the prison break. Her loss to Kay only added injury to insult, making her the target of Glibby’s heckling and growing skepticism in her homeworld. All this has filled her with a strong determination to not only get back at the Ape but redeem herself in the eyes of the Entity.
Freak: The phantom who kidnapped Tyron. He appears almost human, aside from talon-like fingers, his blurry, smoke-like aura and the fact that light passes through him. He also has the strange ability both to create hallucinations and to only appear visible or tangible to people of his choice. He has a love of mind games and is perhaps the cruellest of The Entity's officers. The Entity accordingly allows him the most freedom to roam as he wishes. He has no known troops under him and could be just about anywhere he wishes, always looking for fear, which he consumes for sustenance. He has also become fascinated with the Entity’s fear after seeing its reaction after the raid, the extent of this fascination is as of yet unknown.
Glibby The Ape: A relatively recent addition at The Tower. In his world, he is known as a serial killer and enforcer and who looks like a gorilla, but in Nexus he is one of the Entity's more powerful captains. Covering his huge hands with metal gauntlets, he is formidable in close combat and even the sturdies members of the heroes would have trouble walking off a blow from him. He also leads a group of endermen who have defected from the Ender’s forces known as the Grey Ones. He has been sent to Nexus by the crime-lord known as The Silhouette to defend his interests, under strict instructions to maintain a good relationship with The Entity.
Dr. Veronica Mercury: As the Tower’s head scientist Dr. Mercury is in charge of managing resources and making sure everything runs smoothly. Her main task is the construction of an ominous machine that plays a central role in the Entity’s plan. In her off-time (which is regrettably little) she works on her own projects in the field of necro-technology, as well as tinkering with her powered exo-suit. While investigating some strange energy signatures in the village near the Tower, she was confronted with a tear in reality created by Shadow, leaving her unconscious but recovering.
Marinus Bul, attorney at law: The Entity's spokesperson and self-professed “attorney”. A smooth if highly-strung negotiator with a stressed streak a mile wide. He has compiled files on each of the heroes and knows most of their emotional weak-points. It is unclear how he came into The Entity's employ or why. He really hates Freak. Just so much. He makes things so difficult.
Silver: The leader of the Grey Ones. When Kay interfered with one of the Entity’s business deals, Silver and two of his colleagues found themselves trapped in his world for eleven years. During this time they came into the employ of Glibby and the Silhouette, and their scales grew grey with age. They only returned to Nexus after being sent to kidnap Astro. Silver is deeply grateful to Glibby for the protection he offered, and resents the Ender for abandoning him for a decade. He also hates Kay and attempted to kill him by trapping him and Steve in an arena full of mobs.
The Dog: A minor officer in the Entity’s ranks who conveyed Fire, Warnado and Kay to the Tower when they briefly attempted to negotiate with the Entity. He didn’t do much, but Kay feels they really struck it off in the brief time they spent together, and laments the fact that they are on opposite sides. No one other than Kay feels this way.
Little pillars of smoke pierced the canopy at various points, telling of camps beneath. From his branch, Voidblade couldn’t see the refugees themselves, but he could hear their voices. Anger and optimism were widespread among the camps’ denizens. They had come far, fleeing the forces of the Tower and the ruins of the village. It was unfair - the Tower had ripped them from their worlds and they had congregated together at the foot of the Prophet’s hill. Now, the machinations of the Entity and its captains had scattered them again. Voidblade had been among their number, and even though they were humans, he felt a certain sympathy for them.
“The enemy of my enemy…” he lamented. “I hope we can just get this over with soon so I can get back to warring with the humans instead of protecting them.”
However, he stopped this line of thinking and calmed himself down. Getting frustrated wouldn’t change their situation. Soon, they would reach the shelter Fire had established, and they would be welcomed. For now, they would have to sit there, eating their meagre rations and cursing the pursuers who were no doubt hot on their heels. This insistence that they were in danger confused and infuriated Voidblade. It seemed to be a rule that humans, no matter what world they came from, always assumed they were being targeted. It also seemed to be a rule across worlds that this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
In truth, they probably had little to fear. The Entity had sent its forces to attack their village and their congregation for its own specific reasons. The Prophet was a dissident of some sort, preaching against the Entity and prophesying the downfall of its Tower, or something of the sort. Now that his congregation was considered scattered they were unlikely to consider them worth pursuing. Besides, they had been there pursuing Fire’s colleagues, who had arrived a few days prior, weak and injured. However, something had happened in the village, and its priorities had changed. It wasn’t sending anyone out to pursue the congregation or its original targets. Instead it was fortifying the village.
Voidblade had teleported far and wide, even going as far as the village outskirts, and he had seen the Entity striding about in its bronze armour. If he didn’t know better, he might have thought it was pacing in agitation and worry.
But for the moment, they had no idea what it was up to. For now, he had to report to Fire, and explain that soon they would have wounded to tend to, and soldiers to arm.
He stood up, teleported and found himself at the mouth of the shelter. Rolling his shoulders, Voidblade readied to walk amongst the humans. It had been fine when it was just the three women (and Fire, and the dwarf). Now they were everywhere and it was getting… awkward. He didn’t hate all humans, exactly, but humans had massacred his kind to the point of capitulation in his world, so he was aware of human cruelty. The enderborn had started that war, but the human retaliation had been terrifying. Maybe these humans were different. Voidblade wasn’t holding out for that, however. He had been let down enough times.
He pressed the button and the immense piston doors started to slide apart. He stepped right through and began to walk at a brisk pace. On his left was a small library where Destiny sat, staring at a page with a scowl on her face and fingers running through her brown ponytail. Until recently she had been out hunting constantly. Then, the others arrived and people kept joining her hunts and she had been polite, but obviously wanted to be alone. As Voidblade understood from the well-meaning whispers about the shelter, she had lost a loved one recently. He hoped she recovered quickly. War did not wait for grief. But she seemed to know that well - she had killed Herobrine’s protégé.
“Then again,” Voidblade mused. “A lot of people here claim to have killed Herobrine, or to have served him, or to come from a world where he doesn’t exist at all. It would be nice to come from a world where that killer never existed.”
Passing by on his right were the red-haired woman they called Jennifer and Fristad, the shepherd. They had bows and were obviously about to go hunting. The latter wore a strange chest-place which glowed purple in places. He had seen the crystals used to suppress magic. There was a story in this to be sure, but no one seemed comfortable talking about it and Voidblade was more than happy to remain ignorant for the time being. Nonetheless, he had resolved to snap Fristad’s neck if he ever attempted to remove the suppression device.
“Voidblade!” called Fristad suddenly, beaming in that obnoxious human fashion. Voidblade didn’t believe these ostentatious, grandiose emotions could possibly be sincere and yet it was all humans seemed capable of displaying. “My man, how did the scouting go?”
Voidblade turned to look down at him, incensed and stooping a little. “I am not your manservant.”
Fristad’s eyes widened and his face flattened with surprise.
“I… I didn’t say that,” responded Fristad with a tone so meek it became a question.
Voidblade looked him up and down, trying to decipher whether he was being mocked.
“Sorry,” said Voidblade. “There appears to have been a breakdown in communication. Have a nice day, my… man.”
He then quickly strutted off, not looking back. However, if he had he would have seen Fristad turn to Jennifer and start asking if he’d done something wrong, and the red-headed warrior pat him on the shoulder and start to smooth the feathers of his worry.
He reached a bend in the corridor. Urist the dwarf and Steve Brine, Jennifer’s boyfriend, were talking to Lucy, a blonde-haired woman who apparently had been a housemaid before being recruited by Fire. The former was characteristically short and dumpy and covered in soot. They had been mining. Steve, however, showed absolutely no sign of this endeavour. His armour and skin were clean. This was an odd, slightly unnerving characteristic of Steve and Jennifer - they never got dirty, as though they only interacted with the physical world part-way. Steve didn’t even seem used to the concept of blood, always flinching when he saw bleeding.
Regardless, the two had been mining and now they were reaching into their seemingly cavernous pockets and producing quantities of stone and riches that Voidblade couldn’t fathom. And Lucy responded with equally unfathomable comprehension, noting down and categorising every article of their delivery in her notebook.
“So, where do you want us to put the coal?” asked Steve, balancing a perfectly square block of coal ore the size of a child on his fingertips. That was another thing - no matter what he pulled out of the earth with his pickaxe, it always took on the shape of a perfectly euclidian cube.
“I designated one of the areas for ore storage just earlier, can’t miss it, just one entrance further down the tunnel than what we used so far. It also has sub-sections for the different types as opposed to the old pile.”
“Cool,” Steve nodded, before pocketing the coal and setting off down the hall.
Voidblade kept his eyes on the floor and marched past Lucy, mumbling his report out in rapid-fire: “Scouting mission completed. No Tower sightings. Refugees approaching.”
Lucy looked up from her notebook and smiled. “That’s great to hear, thank you for giving us eyes out there, Voidblade.”
Voidblade stopped and made rigid eye contact. He nodded once.
“You’re welcome,” he proclaimed, before resuming his measured, inconspicuous charge down the hallway. He congratulated himself for the level of courtesy he had afforded the human. If he kept that up he might just survive in this shelter after all.
He paused a moment when an energy arrow shot out from the training room, a large cavern they had converted into a bit of a dojo. It had pierced a fully-cooked chicken drumstick and was now pinning it to the wall. The arrow rapidly disintegrated and Voidblade caught the food as it fell. It occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten so he looked in through the door to make sure it wouldn’t be missed.
“You’re improving,” said Rose diplomatically. “Accuracy-wise, you’re doing great. You just need to work on timing, and not shooting the last one out the door. Come on, that’s like the fourth time today - you’re just letting that become a habit.”
A quick inspection of the room revealed the black-haired assassin sitting in an armchair, materialising knives to throw at a bullseye across from her. However, that was the least interesting aspect of the room. There were half a dozen other targets around the room, each of which had a small pile of pierced drumsticks on the floor in front of them. At the centre of the room was Warnado, the small hooded child, holding a bow of glowing light. Of his face, only the mouth and two glowing red eyes were visible. He wore a large brass-coloured gauntlet that covered most of his forearm on one arm but not the other.
“Really? My timing’s off?” he snapped. “Here I thought it was just chance that the last one keeps going out the door! Surprisingly, lady, it’s a little difficult to get the timing right on summoning six separate chicken drumsticks in mid-air, then shooting them just as they pass by weirdly-placed targets with arrows I have to will into existence!”
“Stop getting frustrated. Take five. Next round I want all the chicken on the bullseyes.”
She threw three knives at her target in quick succession. Warnado went over to a basin of water and started splashing his face.
These knives were then gathered up by Amanda and sorted into labelled buckets depending on make. Voidblade observed the process repeat several times. At seemingly random intervals Rose started throwing, and then the second she stopped Amanda would snap to attention and snatch up the knives before Rose started throwing again. No warning was given and in the three or four times Voidblade saw this process repeat, nearly all of them were near-misses. It appeared to be some sort of reaction-time exercise.
“Hm, that’s enough cleavers,” Amanda suggested. “Lucy said we really need some more stilettos.”
Amanda was about as young as Warnado, barely a teenager. And yet she had a world-weariness about her. Lack of sleep had engraved rings beneath her blue eyes, and her skin was so pale her dark brown hair seemed jarring. Her manner was where it was clearest though. Despite the tendency of even mature humans to waste words, she said only what she needed to say when it needed to be said - she would have fit in well among Voidblade’s people.
“Honey, Lucy can need as many stilettos as she likes. You aren’t ready for me to start throwing stilettos.” She threw another cleaver to punctuate her point.
Amanda shook her head and returned to her catcher’s position.
“Hey V!” Warnado called, leaning against a stone pillar and waving. Voidblade realised “V” was referring to him. The red glows were slightly narrowed, indicating a frown. “What do ya need?”
Voidblade realised he had given the humans quite enough words for that day. That was perhaps the thing he hated most about being in a primarily human environment - humans never stopped asking questions. How are you? Did you have a good day? What do you want? Why are you staring at me like that? And so on. Enderborn always seemed to be on the same page and he vowed to never take that for granted ever again when he got back to his world. He pointed a finger at the drumstick, then at his mouth. Warnado deliberated a few milliseconds upon this laconic but intriguing polemic in favour of the enderman getting the tasty chicken leg before offering a thumb’s up of resounding approval. Voidblade, meanwhile, held true to his withdrawal from human contact and had ducked back out of the room before the thumb was even fully raised.
Biting voraciously, he rounded a corner and took a moment to appreciate just how bright the shelter was. A large lamp pierced the ceiling every few minutes. Miniature swords of light needle his vision and he fought the urge to rub them. Voidblade supposed he should be glad he didn’t have to stoop to avoid them, as he had in the village’s buildings. That had motivated in part his decision to sleep in a tree at the foot of the Prophet’s hill - he was tired of knocking his head off the ceiling.
The command room was just at the end of the hall, but Voidblade stopped himself one last time to steal a sidelong glance into the infirmary. The wizard, Astro, stood over a bed. However, the wizard, with his black hair and his face line with age and worry, was of little interest to Voidblade. Everything about him, from his slight stoop to his aura of sadness, disgusted the enderman a little. He could never take real interest in such a frail specimen. Voidblade was interested in the man in the bed.
The divider was drawn back and Voidblade could make out the outline of his body, covered in layers of duvets and blankets. Beneath all that, his body looked soft and smooth as a snow drift. Voidblade could hardly reconcile this with the image of mortality they had recovered a few days before. His obsidian-plated cuirass had been shattered, and the ribs beneath fared little better. His pale skin and auburn hair had become a frail canvas for blood and bruising flesh. His opponent had slammed him against the line between life and death until his back broke. If not for the potions from Fire’s world, he would be dead. With their help, he was due to recover within a few days.
Now, a half-dead human was hardly an interest to Voidblade, but this was an exception. He heard many strange things about him. That he was a General. That, contrary to the others, he had served Herobrine. That the book that sat on the table beside him, seemingly unassuming, was a source of power to him. However, above all, Voidblade had heard he had taken on the Entity alone. He lost, and evidently quite severely, but there was something to learn there.
Voidblade couldn’t stop himself from speculating in the face of that. He wondered if the fight had been close, or if it had been a massacre. The stories spread about the congregation did not inspire hope in Voidblade. Entire armies fell before the Entity. The Entity itself could be considered an army, literally or figuratively depending on who recounted. That he had survived at all seemed something of a miracle and this one miracle might promise another. Sadly, for the moment, the auburn-haired General remained asleep and the miracle remained solitary.
Voidblade continued on before Astro could notice him and force an interaction, finally reaching the doorway. He stopped to tear the remaining chicken into his mouth and swallowed it down before throwing the chicken bone into a small gutter. Voidblade almost walked on, but reminded himself of something Lucy had called him up on. He pressed his palm into a large stone button and watched as the bottom of the gutter opened up and the bone was consumed by lava.
Inside the command room were three individuals. Tyron, who called himself Dragoknight, was tending a furnace. The fire reflected in his clear blue eyes, and sweat matted his green fur. He was half-listening to the conversation of the other two. He reached into the glowing blue portal on his back from which he materialised a bucket of water. He blew on its surface and it immediately began to frost over. Tentatively, he cracked the surface of the ice and trickled a thread of diamond-shaped droplets onto the flames. He drew back as the steam emerged, placing the bucket back into the portal and proceeding to rearrange his damp facial fur. He then began to stare at his sword, which he called Kir, and cocked an eyebrow.
Fire and Shadow stood over a map showing the topography of Nexus, the patch-work world the Entity had trapped them all in. Fire was a huge scaled creature not unlike an enderman, though he had short, white hair, glowing red eyes and wore fabrics like the humans. He called himself a “Mencur-Besh”, though Voidblade did not know what this meant. He had a series of small flags in hand that he placed with pin-point precision upon the map.
Shadow sat on the edge of the table, just under five feet tall and kicking her legs back and forth. Like her brother, she had red eyes and hair of a shocking white, though it was long. A wave of it flowed down until it broke upon her shoulders and mingled into her robes somewhere past the armpit. It stood in dichotomy with her skin, which was the colour of night. There was not a trace of her namesake on the wall or floor. Wodahs the living shadow has evidently left its master for a stroll.
The two siblings were deep in conversation and Voidblade waited for a moment to intervene.
“We know from Destiny’s scouting missions that the Tower’s immediate area of influence is surprisingly small. The Entity or the Ender, whoever is in charge of the troops directly, may send out patrols but it seems that very little attention is given to what goes on in Nexus. Most of their focus seems to be on the outer worlds.”
Shadow replied: “I think I understand the logic. From what I could gather from the Prophet’s sermons, the Entity gains power the bigger Nexus becomes, so from its point of view everything that’s here is already conquered and secured. It seems to find ‘internal’ threats unlikely, maybe even impossible.”
“We should be careful trying to read too much into the Entity, it doesn’t exactly think along the same lines as we do. However the effect is the same, we should be able to operate relatively unhindered.” Fire said. And so they continued. And continued. And continued without missing one beat.
As Voidblade waited seemingly ceaselessly for a gap to appear in the wall of conversation a small voice chirped in his head. “Hello friend! Reason for coming? Will tell Tyron. Make things faster.”
Voidblade’s first thoughts were immediately along the lines of “Who are you?” And his first reaction was to look around as though stung by a wasp.
“Kir.”
Voidblade’s blood stopped pounding so much. They had mentioned that the sword could talk. This was just the first time it had found reason to talk to him. Yet it already called him “friend”. It was worse than the humans.
His mind naturally floated toward why he had come and without having meant to, he answered Kir’s request.
“Got it.”
Tyron turned and smiled at Voidblade with his glassy eyes and said, “We have news from the scouts. Come in Voidblade.”
Fire stopped talking, Shadow stopped preparing her response and the siblings stood to attention.
Voidblade seized the moment and explained, “The Prophet’s congregation will arrive within a day or two. In numbers. No pursuers apparent.”
The three looked at each other and Voidblade awaited instructions.
Fire didn’t answer immediately, his gaze suggested he was thinking something over.
“I will have to check out capacity with Lucy. We should have enough for at least nine hundred comfortably, about double that as an absolute maximum. I think I’ll have Urist and his team construct an additional sleeping area, that should push our capacity well above a thousand. For now our mushroom farms should more than cover our food needs and in a pinch we’ll resort to the spiders… I had hoped for a smoother transition.”
“That is all well and good,” added Tyron. “But we are making them into an army, are we not?”
“Once they have had a few days to adjust we can start dividing them up based on existing combat skills, the ones proficient in fighting can act as instructors along with people from our group, who will act as coordinators.”
“And that’s all great,” Tyron conceded. “I was more getting at who’s going to lead them, and command structure beyond that. I get the impression you’re keen on leading, and I’m not opposed to that, but we should have a conversation about it. If we can present a united front, the congregation will join us more readily. You may be the ‘Champion of Life and Death’ they’re so keen on, but people only put as much faith in prophecy as others put in.”
Voidblade blinked. He had not thought about who might lead them other than Fire. Since they arrived, Fire had been the undisputed leader, and none of the others had questioned this when he took them in. In fact, his position had just been consolidated further, with Shadow, Tyron and Astro forming a Council of advisors. In Voidblade’s view, everyone else was either too young (like Warnado and Amanda), too solitary (like Destiny or himself) or as happy to receive commands as to give them. Then again, humans were inexplicable and irrational. Voidblade just hoped one of their number didn’t end up leading.
Shadow said: “The exact wording was ‘Mortal gods have taken two kinds and forged them into a higher one! Their champion will come to command the forces of life and death!’ but that’s besides the point.”
Fire chuckled, then turned to Tyron again. “It’s a good thing you brought that up. So far I have been leading because it was a natural transition from building the shelter and nobody objected to it. But yes, I do not plan on taking the leadership without asking anyone about it. The best way of going about it would probably be a ballot of some kind.”
“That was about what I was going to suggest. Secret, written ballot. Nice starting point of democracy,” Tyron clapped his hands together and pointed them at Voidblade, “Here, can you do me a favour and go around gathering the others?”
Despite his annoyance at having to talk again, Voidblade nodded and asked if there was anything else.
“If you could grab Astro first, that would be great. I’ll need his help organising the count.”
Voidblade teleported into the infirmary. He could have walked it, but that would have given them more opportunities for instructions. The enderborn liked to think they had the best work ethic of any species, but Voidblade was the first to admit it had its limits.
Astro was still standing over his friend, so Voidblade came over and tapped him on the shoulder. The wizard, who had been deep in thought, didn’t jump when the talons brushed him. Instead, he slowly shambled around and his stupor continued until he was looking Voidblade in the eyes. He only seemed to show the slightest bit of surprise when the enderman began to speak, as though it made the whole situation oppressively more real.
“Liability,” thought Voidblade.
“Tyron requires your help,” rasped the enderman. “They are going to vote on who shall lead the congregation to war.”
Astro nodded in a slow, creaking way that said “I hope beyond hope it isn’t me.” He moved toward the door, looking so thin and frail a light breeze might have been carrying him along against his will. With that, Voidblade warped off and began to rally the others.
Chapter2:A day for saying what we wish were true (Kay)
You hear that?
It roused me a little. I was nowhere near awake, but I had risen above dreaming. That was preferable. I had been dreaming of the worst pits of warfare, though I was no longer sure which one. It might not even have been a real war. Mud and gunsmoke clothing me. Boiling blood and hurrahs carrying me. Thud of arrow. Squelch of boot. Snap of bone. Metal screams at metal. Like a leaf, I am buffeted and surrounded by sound.
As I said, it may not have been a real one, but it felt like a war. It felt right.
They are talking about leadership. It shall be a vote. You must awaken, quickly. It is our chance.
Our pact came back to me. I had agreed to pursue power with this Book, in return for access to its magic. And with them I had been powerful and bested the Ender. It was time to start fulfilling my end of the bargain.
Well?
I forgot that it couldn’t hear the roar of the river of my consciousness. Defending that had become so natural since Herobrine. In my rare moments of lucidity I had experienced sudden surges of panic about whether my defences would hold and I would end up a pawn like Fristad. Evidently, my earlier confidence was well-founded.
“Sorry,” I thought in response, inflecting it with the resonance of a half-chuckle. It was artificial, but it conveyed my meaning. “I forgot how good I am at this.”
You’re cocky.
“You’ll learn to love it, really.”
…Leadership election. I can wake you up early and keep you up. Time is of the essence.
“One moment, I’m constructing a plan of attack.”
I was actually telling the truth. Fire was my obvious rival and I set about drawing up a list of likely allies. Astro was a given. Thanks to Glibby blowing up that portal, Astro had spent a full decade more time bonding with me than I had with him. Of course he’d back me. Tyron and Kir would perhaps too after our wee heart-to-hearts. Warnado would naturally want to support me. We’d been inseparable since arriving in Nexus...
Steve and Jen would probably back Fire because he’d always been nice to them, whereas I started out by punching Steve in the head. That wasn’t a totally lost cause, though. Steve and I had shot the breeze a lot in the village. Destiny probably wasn’t too impressed by my emotional display back in the village. Shadow was Fire’s sister. Fristad was an unknown, so was Amanda, and then there were the four people who had accompanied Fire and anyone else who might have arrived in the meantime.
I took a moment to reconstruct my “leadership accent” and I had reached campaigning mode.
“Ready, wake me up.”
My eyes shot open and I immediately started looking around. I lay in an infirmary bed, in a night-gown. Everything was well-lit by redstone lamps and annoyingly clean. Astro had a hand on the doorframe and a foot in the hallway and an enderman had just teleported away. I could see the particles in the air. I realised my heart was pounding. Every inch of me was tingling. I almost felt like I was waiting for the world to catch up with me. I immediately started throwing aside my covers and scrambling to my feet.
“Why am I so hyper?” I asked the Book.
Adrenaline boost. Trust me, you won’t like it if I stop it. If you had’ve listened to me and not fought the Entity it wouldn’t be necessary.
I felt my heart quicken yet further when I remembered the moment where the Entity’s second manifestation had grabbed my wrist and hurled me into a sword. I felt my lungs tighten and my view of the present was suddenly supplanted by my inner view of memories. Now was not the time for a panic attack.
“Fine, you’re right,” I permitted for efficiency’s sake, powering on through. “Rift to hallway, now.”
I raised a clenched fist and a gash of grey flame tore itself open before me. I practically leapt through.
I arrived in the hallway just before Astro. His prematurely old eyes widened.
“Hey Astro!” I shouted jovially, throwing my arms wide before hugging him. “I hear it’s election season, can I count on your vote?”
You certainly are… direct? I consoled the Book not to worry. This and sneaking were my elements.
He immediately broke down laughing, “Mods, you always did strike while the iron is hot!”
“Can I take that as a yes?”
Astro rolled his eyes. “Sure,” he allowed, looking around a little.
“Knew I could count on you, buddy!” I clapped him hard on the back and he laughed again in surprise. “Now, where’s Warnado at?”
“In the training room, just around the corner-”
I grabbed him by the arm and willed the Book to open another rift. Another doorway was visible just on our right and I marched right toward it.
“So,” I craned my head around. “What have I missed. How are things around the… what are we calling it? Does it have a name?”
“Just the shelter.”
“Shelter. Catchy. I like it,” I grinned as Astro shook his head and exhaled happily through his nostrils, “But yeah, anything I should know-”
Just as I passed into view of the doorframe I saw a glint of energy in the shape of a knife hurtling at me at several-dozen miles per hour.
“OH THAT’S SUCH BULL!” shrieked Warnado.
“Defensive portal!” I shrieked aloud in my native brogue, assuming a one-legged pose of panic. War only prepares you for so much, and I was expecting a totally friendly environment. Don’t mock me. I spared a glance at Astro, who was covering his mouth with a weathered hand adorned with magical rings. He had the aspect of a man with front row seats to a great and impressive cultural moment that he would mock for the next decade. If possible, he might communicate it to his young self, so they might work two decades out of it.
The Book obliged, hastily opening a rift in front of and behind me. The energy knife flew through the circuit and planted itself in the wall just to my left.
“Thanks,” I muttered internally to the Book. That’s two I owe you.”
Only two? I suppose an election is a day for saying what we wish were true rather than what is.
The jest, while probably ominous, amused me. It helped me as I stepped into the room, desperately trying to reconstruct my mystique.
“Warnado!” I boomed merrily, the accent reassumed. “How have you been?”
“Kay, you’re awake!” he called enthusiastically before running up to me.
I ruffled the tip of his hood, feeling hard lumps between what I assumed was hair. A quick glance revealed Amanda, who was sorting knives into buckets by a bullseye on my left. She smiled sardonically and waved. I nodded with philosophy in response.
From out of my field of view came the voice of a woman: “And who might you be, man who almost got yourself skewered?”
“I’m glad you asked!” I turned to her with my eyes closed importantly. “As commandant of the 10th Legion of the Herobrinian Army, I, Kay Mandy, entreat you to vote for me in this upcoming leadership election!”
I opened my eyes and saw a rather dangerous-looking woman with black hair and brown eyes. I looked at her clothes and found she was darkly dressed and had a habit of hiding weapons on her. She also had a knife in her hand that she aimed at a bullseye. The very image of an assassin. Her mouth formed a half-smile that betrayed a faint but fleeting amusement.
“And why would I do that?”
“A myriad of reasons,” I began to saunter over to her, projecting my voice to the room and looking around. Amanda had sat back and stopped sorting. Astro and Warnado were watching me from the doorway, one with a begrudging awe and the other with childish enthusiasm. I’ll let you decide which was which.
“I am a General, philosopher, aviator, adventurer, mercenary and man of faith! Herobrine blessed me with the gift of prophecy and I foretold his return. I then fought alongside him. I won him Arcadia! I won him Zine and then protected it from both Notch himself and Israphel!” I raised an arm emphatically.
“I was there as he ascended and Israphel cracked open the heart of the world! I have seen the depths of the Void, the fires of the Nether ,the light of the Aether and many of the sights worth seeing in the Sane Realm of mortals! I have defied corrupt administrators, twisted game-masters and the Entity itself! And all this I did with sword and with fist! Now, having tamed that Book which sought to warp the minds of men-”
Tamed, am I?
“Hush,” I calmed it. “We’ll work on accommodating your dignity later. For now, results.”
Reasoned well. Do carry on.
“-I have obtained powers beyond my own wildest imaginings,” at that I asked the Book to summon voidflame which turned from silver to purple in one hand and sparks of stark blue lightning in the other. “I am Kay Mandy, of Void and of Tempest. First time using this power I bested the Ender. Had the Entity not intervened, she would be here now, captain of a mostly dead and dispersed guard that would crumble in her absence, telling us the Entity’s full plan. To conclude: I am a fighter of great experience and power, a strategist of great wisdom, and as this speech has hopefully proved, an orator of great ability. I hope I can count on your votes.”
I bowed.
Astro offered a polite applause. Amanda smiled. Warnado whooped and called out “Kay 2020”, a phrase which meant nothing to me and of which I doubt even he truly understood the significance.
Rose’s reaction consisted of a single raised eyebrow, she said: “And I am Rose, became a cult enforcer for the money, ritual-stabbed a guy, ended up here and have no idea what most of the names you just said mean.”
I’ll be honest, I expected her to be more impressed. I tried to hide my disappointment.
“Well, Rose, it is a pleasure to be formally introduced. I get where you’re coming from. I was a mercenary for a long while, and in my time serving Herobrine I was something of a cultist myself. Don’t you want someone to represent your interests in the leader’s seat?”
It was hard to read but I could have sworn her mouth curled into something resembling a smile for a split-second. Whether that was a sincere smile or a sign of mocking amusement was a whole other question.
“We’ll see,” she warned, eyes wry and discerning.
“We shall see indeed. Anyway,” I swung around to Astro, “Where’s Tyron?”
“Probably the command room with Fire and-”
“Okay, where’s everyone else?”
“The atrium,” responded Astro, cock-eyed, “I guess.”
“Yeah,” Warnado agreed. “Fristad and Jennifer were heading out hunting so they’ll pass back through there. And of course Lucy will be around there. Destiny, too. It’s just at the end of the hall.”
“That’s excellent, do you mind helping out with canvassing, pal? D’you have time or are you training?”
“Sure,” he said easily, then with more tension added, “I’ve kind of hit a snag in the training for today. I’d better take a break and look at it with fresher eyes.”
“Then to the atrium we go!”
I grabbed them by the scruffs of their necks and the Book summoned another rift. A split-second later I was looking at a desk covered in papers with Lucy working away at it. I nodded politely to her. A look in the other direction revealed a small cluster of people containing Fristad, Jennifer and an enderman, presumably the one who had visited Astro in the infirmary, entering the shelter through a large piston door. Down a hallway to the side Steve and a dwarfish man left a room, chatting away about mining and such.
“Who are the Endling and the short fellow?” I muttered to Astro.
“That’s Voidblade,” he pointed toward the piston door-end of the atrium. “He doesn’t talk much. The short guy is Urist. He’s an actual, honest-to-Mods, dwarf. Not the word we use to make fun of Stoneholmers.”
“Really?” I was genuinely surprised. Folks called Aaron a dwarf back home and he was taller than me. Just because he lived in Stoneholm a wee while. Dimension-hopping really put inconsistencies like that in relief.
And with that I recomposed myself, noticed that everyone was starting to notice that I was awake and prepared to speak.
“Listen up!” Warnado called, beating me to the punch. “General Mandy has something to say!”
Pleasantly surprised, I watched people stand to attention and cleared my throat. Destiny, book in hand, stepped out of the library. I became very conscious I was wearing the white nightgown of a mental patient, but I hoped it just added to the quirkiness of it all and worked in my favour.
“Well, guess I’m not dead,” I chuckled and stepped back to look at reactions. Jennifer and Steve both smiled predictably. Fristad seemed wary, understandably. (I made sure not to let the Book hear the last word, though telegraphed the rest of it to show it my powers of observation). Endling: impassive. Urist: grinning. Lucy: kind eyes, beaming and nodding. I couldn’t read Destiny - I’d obviously shattered the morose scowl she had been wearing, but I wasn’t sure what the remaining emotion was. Disgust, confusion, distrust and cerebral contusion all seemed just as likely. Regardless, everyone seemed just as disarmed, and this was as perfect a stage to seize as any. “Sorry about the dressing gown - not my choice.”
I cleared my throat, but just as I began my speech, Tyron came in. Scratching his head with one hand and holding Kir up like a looking glass, he approached the desk. This was perfect. I still needed a few seconds to construct a speech. I’d kind of hoped to have a few lower-key schmoozings before Warnado took charge.
“Lucy,” he asked, “do you have any ballot paper? I-” He looked up and saw me in the centre of the room. “Oh, Kay, you’re up! Great to see you.”
“Tyron, my friend,” I greeted in my most grandiose, booming voice, positively overcome with joy at the sight of the big, green furball. Naturally, I was happy to see him, but I was putting it on a bit. “How are you?”
I ran up and bear-hugged him to the best of my ability.
“I love this man!” I called out performatively. “He has been there for me in some low moments since I arrived in Nexus, an excellent confidant. He and little Kir!” I pecked the sword on its flat. “I wouldn’t be here without them. And of course not without Warnado, who introduced me with such enthusiasm. Another great friend, with whom I launched the escape from the Tower. Who helped me tame the Book - his was the plan that stopped its dream-weaving. And I wouldn’t be here without Steve and Jennifer, who, with help from Shadow, conducted essential research that figured out a way to nullify the Book’s powers - research which now allows Fristad his freedom! Not without Destiny and…” I swallowed defensively, on the verge of an immense blunder.
Yes, condescended the Book. Do not talk about the escape or the grief that came of it. Probably shouldn’t have claimed credit for the escape attempt.
“... without Destiny, who alerted us all to the threat Fristad posed in his possessed state and didn’t allow herself to be gaslit or manipulated into silence. Without even the now-tamed Book, which teleported me away when the Entity bested me and enabled my capture of the Ender, and the massacre of her forces.
“Most of all, I wouldn’t be alive without Astro, our wizened wizard. A friend of mine these last four-to-ten years who advised me through some deal of war and strife, funded my dreams and somehow put up with me through all of it. As loyal a companion as I could ever ask for!
“And not without so many of you here would we have escaped the village!
“Even those who weren’t there with us through any of the things I have recounted, who only joined when Fire sent out the call for the construction of this kindly shelter, have been essential to mine and our survival. Urist, Voidblade, Lucy, you gave us a place to flee to.
“In fact, if I recall correctly, for I was mostly catching up on some much-required beauty sleep at the time, the shelter crew ensured that we actually successfully reached this place. Had we proceeded on foot, I certainly would not have lasted long enough to be healed fully. Shadow had done her best, but I was still losing life. I felt myself slipping away day by day, growing ever weaker in spirit even if my bodily decline had been stymied. For these things and many other services and sacrifices of which I am probably as yet unaware, I thank you. We will ensure your efforts are not in vain.
“Moreover, I thank everyone in this bunker for what they have given to fight the Entity and assure our mutual survival. We now face a choice, and I would be honoured to be the one who leads you. I have seen the threat we face, and I have not missed the toll it has taken upon you and so many others. Mitigating current suffering and preventing future difficulty will be at the heart of any army headed by me. I entreat your support.”
And with that, I turned toward the command room, and took the lead in marching on, buffeted onwards by the winds of polite applause and satisfied hmmmms.
Chapter3:The Ballot (Fire)
“Kay finished his speech. They’ll be here in less than a minute.” Shadow said, a rune dimming on her arm.
Fire took a deep breath. “Let’s hope this goes by without creating any bigger issues.”
Fire used the few seconds he had to mentally prepare himself for what was going to happen. Everyone would enter the room, they’d close the door and hold their ballot. Maybe Kay wouldn’t be too confrontational due to his recent injuries but Fire wasn’t too hopeful. Ideally the entire thing wouldn’t take more than ten minutes and once it was over they’d have an officially elected leader.
Shadow asked, as if reading Fire’s thoughts: “What if it isn’t you?”
Fire replied: “I’ll make do, I don’t have to be at the top to see this through, it’ll be just like back home. It’s not ideal but it’s workable.”
Before they could exchange any more words the rest of the group was upon them. Somewhat surprisingly Destiny was the first one to enter the room, quickly followed by Steve and Jennifer as well as Lucy, who gave them a quick greeting by waving a handful of ballot paper at them. Almost immediately after them came Urist and Fristad, who were loudly chatting about something. Then came Warnado, Amanda and Kay.
Oh no.
The moment Kay entered the room his eyes were fixed on Fire burning with competitiveness and other things that Fire deliberately ignored. Kay was still wearing his infirmary garb, that combined with the fact that his movements were even more exaggeratedly grandiose than usual did not bode well at all.
“I’m back!” Kay exclaimed as he struck a pose. “Hope you didn’t miss me too much. I’m feeling just in the mood for an electoral debate. Would be a good change of pace after defeating the mods-damned Ender in single combat!”
Shadow cut in. “Kay, there isn’t even everyone here yet. You’re welcome for the healing by the way.”
Kay blinked in indignance, Fire looked back at the entrance. Tyron and Astro were the next ones to enter, Astro pulling Tyron aside almost immediately. A few seconds later Voidblade and Rose entered and shut the door behind them. Voidblade immediately tried to gain as much distance as he could from the humans in the room, a tendency of his that would hopefully lessen as he got more used to living with them.
Shadow spoke again. “Alright, now that everyone is here it’s time to explain exactly why we are here in case anyone hasn’t heard it yet.”
Fire was glad that his sister was taking the speaking role, since he was one of the candidates it would have been quite odd if he had announced the ballot himself. Shadow was a good speaker if she wanted to be, there was something about her that made people listen.
Shadow continued: “Fire built the foundations of this shelter but immediately taking the lead would be a bit undemocratic, so we decided to hold a ballot for who is going to take the position of leader. Currently the two obvious candidates are Fire and Kay, however if anyone else wants to step forward they can.”
There was no response for a few seconds. “We have our candidates then.”
Lucy spoke up: “I have the papers but no urn. How are we going about this?”
Urist started shifting on the spot and a few seconds later he was holding some kind of vessel. “Almost forgot I had this thing, memento ‘o my last colony.”
He hurried forward and placed the vessel on the central table. Fire took a closer look at it, it was odd to say the least. Its basic shape was that of an urn made from what looked to be silver, decorated with spikes of various other metals. On the urn were engravings that Fire couldn’t read. Urist had started to teach him the runes and iconography that dwarves used but his grasp on them was still rudimentary. The only runes Fire could decipher meant “elephant” and “lever”.
As much as Fire would have liked to contemplate the urn, there was an election at hand and his opposition seemed quite eager to get some words out.
“Most of you have heard my routine already,” Kay oozed confidently, sitting on the table, arms folded loosely and eyes half-closed. “So, I’ll be brief and hopefully a little less formal. Pretty sure I used the word mitigating last time - ha! - breaking out the big-boy words and such. What on earth was I at?” He paused for a few isolated chuckles.
“Suffice to say, I’m a military man. I’ve withstood sieges, led ambushes, taken death-blows for superiors and underlings alike. I am fiercely loyal to those I consider friends and exceedingly liberal with the definition of friend. I am a skilled swordsman, hand-to-hand fighter and now magical man. I will whip that congregation into shape. I have fought men and Divines and Endlings, and if you give me an army I will teach them how to massacre all three. I am, to the best of my knowledge, the only one who has bested a captain of the Tower or faced the Entity and I will seek to convey what I have learned.
“And it doesn’t stop on the training field. I am a man of exceeding mental fortitude and strategic instinct. Out in that battlefield I was telling the book how to use its own powers to maximum effect. In warfare I was renowned for low-casualty, unconventional raids that wreaked havoc on our enemies before we engaged them in open combat. Herobrine’s 10th wasn’t actually that large. Maybe eight thousand at its peak, and yet we held the Arcadian peninsula for a year.
“Moreover, I’d like to think I understand people. I know how to keep morale up. As I’ve hopefully proved, I can be quite persuasive,” he chuckled and a few more people joined him than the last time. “And I tend to lead from the front. While I am glad that this shelter was built and ready for our arrival, I would like to point out that Fire just kind of left without telling anyone he was going aside from Shadow. And he also only told Shadow he had sighted the Ender at the Prophet’s hill, which might have been useful to know before she turned up hunting for us a day or two later.”
He was mad now. Obviously mad. Fire wanted to stop him but he picked back up.
“And he wasn’t there at the Tower, either. This is not to cast aspersions about Fire’s motives or character, but his leadership style does feel a tad detached for my tastes. There’s leading from the front and then there’s leading from a front, somewhere. Moreover, it does seem premature to me that someone who has barely even faced the Entity or his little squad of goons thinks he can adequately lead people against them, on account of his success in simulated warfare,” Kay concluded with a harsh and bitter brogue. “I appreciate your support.”
With that, he stood up and rejoined Warnado, furrowing his eyebrows and tightening his folded arms. A polite but somewhat uneasy round of applause went up. Tyron patted Kay on the shoulder, but his face was such a mess of consternation that he might have been congratulating or consoling him.
Fire took a few moments to consider. Just like when Kay had lost his temper in the village, the temptation to deliver a crushing, deconstructive response was there but yet again Fire decided against it, if anything it would escalate the tension further.
He said: “I suppose I’ll start with some backstory as well to stay in theme and then respond to the more glaring accusations. I was born to pretty much the worst parents you could imagine, not only were they war profiteers and generally horrible people, they were also dead for as long as I can remember. I only found out about this when I was older but for brevity I’ll spare you most of the events after. The important point is that I had a sister who was pathologically afraid of anyone but me and I spent most of my life looking for a way to remedy this.
“I finally found a group of people who managed to create a world parallel to mine, a world in which my sister could be free. That is the world where I truly spent the majority of my life, time wise at least. It’s been a good five millenia now, in which I have gathered all kinds of experience in war and other matters, and contrary to what some might say, this experience was quite real.
“Eventually I made a slight mistake when experimenting with a new potion mixture and ended up in Nexus, where I ran into the very man who is now my opposition. I admit, I have had a history of disappearing in moments that were in hindsight quite inconvenient. The first time I managed to negotiate my ‘release’ with the Ender and gained valuable information in turn, which not only included the knowledge of safety of the location we are in but it also allowed me to return home and bring Shadow here. I could have just stayed in my world and hoped for the best but something tells me that it wouldn’t have ended well. As for the second time, as Kay put it, the shelter is essential to our current well-being.
“I know most of you have already made up your mind for who you want to elect, in fact, I think that for some that decision only has one viable choice, whichever that might be. Do what you think is best for our survival, because that’s what it comes down to in the end.”
Once Fire had stopped speaking Lucy started going around the room, handing out ballot paper and writing implements to everyone.
Once she arrived at Shadow she was met with a raised palm. Shadow said: “My vote was decided before I even arrived. I’m abstaining to have a result that better represents the opinion of those who don’t have my reasons.”
Astro, after conferring with Kay a second, cleared his throat: “Naturally, Kay has my support, but I respect that I’m a free vote on account of my past affiliations. For pretty much the exact same reasons, I abstain. Wizards think alike, I suppose.” He lightly tossed his ballot in.
Everyone got a few minutes to consider and cast their vote, some took longer than others. Fristad and Voidblade were the very first ones to put their paper into the urn, causing some slight awkwardness when it came to who went first.
Warnado was next, folding his ballot in the shape of a boat with a spell and flicking it off his wrist. Amanda rolled her eyes and handed in a less spectacular but certainly more anonymous entry to the anonymous ballot.
Lucy and Urist were the next ones to vote, followed automatically by Destiny, who seemed to have waited until the initial wave subsided. Rose followed a short while after, adding a second, identical boat to the urn, giving Warnado a sly smile. Fire smiled in turn, it seemed that Warnado had yet again managed to bring out a soft spot in someone.
When Shadow gave the warning that only a minute of time was left Steve and Jennifer stepped up as well, albeit slowly. Only Tyron remained not having voted, still looking deeply conflicted. As the last seconds ticked down he quickly scribbled down a name, folded the paper and threw it into the urn. He looked like he’d handed over a baby, or dropped it on the floor.
Shadow announced: “So, we have all the votes. I think it would be best if Astro and I do the counting together. Astro?”
Astro nodded and they spent a minute unfolding papers, separating them into piles and counting them. They spoke to each other the whole time, Shadow casting a ward to prevent people listening in on them. Then, finally they spoke.
“The count reads,” announced Astro, “Eight for Fire, three for Kay, with two abstentions.”
Fire felt relief flood through him, but shot a look at Kay to figure out what was going to happen. He looked like he’d just tasted sour milk and was appropriately silent. He walked up and offered a hand to Fire, forcing a smile that was as iron-clad as his gaze.
“Congratulations,” he said, offering a thorny, reluctant olive branch. “I did give you a fight.”
Fire replied: “That you did. Even if I had lost you would have had my support. It’s the ends of survival we’re fighting for here, how we get there is less important.”
“Naturally, survival is paramount and unity is key to that,” Kay conceded as though making a point to someone else. It wouldn’t have surprised Fire if that had been the Book speaking for Kay. “How do you intend to proceed, commander?”
Fire collected his thoughts, an outline for a plan was in his mind already, the details gradually filling in.
“The congregation will be here in less than two days, until then we need a clear command structure that allows us to smoothly integrate everyone into the shelter. The core group and some of the skilled early arrivals will act as group leaders in their respective areas, once more arrive they’ll have to delegate another layer of command. That way we keep the chain of command short but ideally without sacrificing professionalism. We don’t have the time to build up elaborate structures.”
“How are we defining ‘areas’?” asked Kay with a pragmatic sigh.
“Rough division between combat and non-combat, with each being split into smaller categories. Not everyone will be a soldier, we need logistics too, aspects of that’ll be most of the non-combat areas. The combat area is split into things like conventional weapons, siege operations, guerrilla tactics, magic, and a few others. The middle elements in the chain control the areas they are proficient in.”
“What’s the general strategy?” interjected Astro wearily, as though just to remind Kay others had similar questions. “How soon do we want them combat-ready?”
That was a good question, one that was very difficult to answer since a lot of the variables were unknown.
“I could say ‘as soon as possible’ but that satisfies no-one. I don’t know how close whatever the Entity is planning is to completion so we need to assume earlier rather than later. A rough estimate would be two weeks for the bare minimum of being able to put up a fight. Victory is not very likely through direct combat, the Entity remains something that we can’t ‘just’ kill.”
“What will you have me oversee?” Kay asked flatly.
Fire said: “Actually, I thought about making you my second-in-command when it comes to warfare. You are experienced and I could use an additional opinion when forming plans. Shadow would be filling the equivalent role on the magical side of things. Do you accept?”
“Absolutely,” said Kay, obviously surprised but not hesitating for a second. Collecting himself, he added: “I would be honoured. Dealing with the Endlings will be crucial and hopefully I’ll be able to give some insight on how that might be achieved. I’ve some formations from the Onslaught that might prove helpful.”
So far so good, now there was one final matter Fire had to address. “One last thing I’d like to say while we’re all in a room together. It’s regarding that prophecy that started off the shelter. I don’t know how much of it should be trusted, all I know is that people see me as its champion and I intend to use it to smooth things over until they can trust us because of how we lead not because of a prophecy.”
There was a silence in the room, they were obviously waiting for Fire to continue. “That’s all, get some rest, clear your head. In the evening we’ll meet here again to figure out the chain of command.”
Chapter4:Behind Closed Doors (Freak/Fristad)
Another meeting, great. Those had only increased in frequency in the recent time and I didn’t like it. Any other part of the Tower had a lot more fun things I could do, even if it was just invisibly stalking some technician. Here in the meeting room I had to stay visible and at least somewhat responsive and since I was part of the Entity’s “inner circle”, as they called it, I was expected to show up consistently.
Currently I was sitting in a chair between two other inner circle members, to my right was the Ender and to my left was Glibby, Glibby the Ape as his full name or title went. Well, he tried to bear it as a title, but it had the stink of a nickname that he couldn’t quite mask beneath his regal poise and gallons of perfume. The Ender was still badly beaten from her fight against the general, prominent lightning-shaped scars now visible across her face.
I couldn’t help but feel slightly bad for her, I was only mostly a heartless *******... on top of being a phantom that feeds on fear. Mortal emotions did have a tendency to worm their way into the minds of my kind as we aged. However I didn’t need to listen to that tiny voice in my head to know that the Ender was in a precarious position. Her role as primary military leader placed a lot of responsibility on her and with that came the ire of everyone else once she inevitably made a mistake. Glibby was especially happy about her failure, which he showed through remarks that were polite on the surface but brutally condescending beneath that.
In the following days Glibby’s Grey Ones, a squadron of old Endlings he had practically stolen from the Ender, would probably lord it over the Ender’s own troops. I chuckled. They were as much a drinking club as they were a unit. They didn’t even properly do their job as wardens, which had cost me quite a sizable amount of “beloved” subjects.
No, in truth the inner circle only included Glibby because he was sent by the Silhouette as an ambassador, hostage, gift or something of the sort, I didn’t concern myself with the details. The true third member of the inner circle was Marinus Bul, the terribly boring and pedantic but admittedly vital mouthpiece and “lawyer” of the Entity. He sat to Glibby’s right and was currently looking through some sort of notebook.
The important players were all here with Marcus from Command and Control already waving a pointing device around wildly and occasionally handing off to Issa from Dimensions and that dimensional cartographer Clark Belmont.
Other than that, the table was almost fully seated with the notable exception being the throne that the Entity usually occupied. Another important absence was the scientist who had accompanied the Ender during her mission, Dr.… Mercury, yeah, right. That was her name. Apparently her magical counterpart Archmage Wisp would answer in her stead, however everyone knew where the actual competence was in that duo.
As to where she was, I had some insider knowledge, and by that I mean I stalked her a bunch. She got quite obsessed with the thing we found in the village and apparently she was instructed to look into it by the Entity directly, with priority above the machine no less. Which brings me back to my new favorite subject: The Entity’s fear.
I could get a morsel of everyone in that room’s fear just by throwing my head back and breathing in. I knew them all well enough to know the taste by rote. The Ender had the coppery taste of high expectations - of what would happen if she returned home defeated. Glibby the unique savour of a specific person from his past. Bul the succulent tang of fearing death beneath a million more banal anxieties. Marcus: the Void. Issa: burning. Wisp: his mother or poverty (depending on the day). All of these were well familiar to me - as they should be, feeding on and knowing fear was my function in this world.
The Entity was not.
Ever since I entered its service, the Entity had betrayed not even the slightest concern. Reality was a mere bump in the road on the way to its objective. It wasn’t even like the taste of water, that at least had a texture. It wasn’t like breathing air. It was as though the air had been knocked out of the lungs of the world where it stood. The Entity was an absence. A suffocation. And while others of my kind had ignored it, feared it on these grounds, that was mere short-sightedness. I saw the terror it could engender in peoples, nations, worlds. It was like an empty god. And I told myself I would be there to ride the wave it would create and I would feast.
Then, something happened that I hadn’t believed possible. Something in that village - that insignificant collection of houses and shops - had made the Entity afraid. It had hurt it in some small way it hadn’t considered. Now, it hardly left its chambers, and had its manifestations patrolling the site of the problem.
As it gazed upon the little wound made upon the world, I tasted a strange sort of fear coming off my employer. It wasn’t as nourishing as mortal fear to be sure, but there was something sophisticated about it. The same way mortals desired to taste expensive spirits just to feel wealthy, I yearned for another taste of that elixir.
The Ender and the scientist were the only ones that had seen its cause and they were tight-lipped, but somehow the escapees had done it. I wasn’t sure which one - the wizard, the witch, the warriors, maybe even old Tyron - but I would have to conduct some research once we found them again. One of them, a shepherd called Fristad who hadn’t been in Bul’s omniscient notebook, was weak. Something had held him under its thumb before, and he would be pliable again. I looked forward to squeezing what I could out of him almost as much as I anticipated the fear of my master.
But there was something beyond mere yearning.
I had caught a glimpse of something more within the fear. Of another such wound, that the Entity desperately wanted to hide. Pretending to be healed, the wound festered somewhere in its chambers. Somewhere, in a room plated with obsidian and bronze, a tiny distortion trembled atop a throne. And there I might find the source of its fears. And in that source, perhaps an opportunity awaited. For if empty gods could still feel fear, how high could fear itself ascend?
###
I know I want to talk to Kay the second the vote is read. I see a look of anger in his eyes that cannot be his own. Not that I know him too well, but it’s a look of anger I’m familiar with. It’s how I always imagined the Book’s facial expressions. It wanted the leadership. That was obvious already - it’s why I didn’t vote for Kay - but seeing its anger on his face makes me aware of the more human consequences of its lust for power.
With me it just had a vessel which it had to make powerful. With Kay it saw an opportunity to grasp at power. He got less than half the votes Fire did, and he really seemed to be trying with those speeches. It will be angry.
Apparently he’s trained to resist mental manipulation, but I know the nightmares it is capable of conjuring. He at least needs some solidarity. I shoot Fire a pleading look that I’m not sure if he notices.
Please, I entreat, Let him leave this with something to show for it.
Relief washes over me when Fire grants him second-in-command, but I know that will only placate it so much.
So, as everyone leaves the room, I follow Kay and ask him for a moment to talk alone. He and Warnado exchange a look. The kid looks worried and I fail to make eye contact with Amanda as she turns to face me. I remember the terror the Book persuaded me to inflict in her. To break her. To make her our… its slave. The colour of youthful enthusiasm has started to return to her cheeks but she still has a certain paleness.
The metal vest with all its crystals feels loose upon me, and I wonder what I might be thinking if it were gone. My lungs feel paradoxically tight and my breathing constricted. I want to hug the vest against me and never let it get away. Never leave my mind vulnerable again.
After an agonizing few seconds, Kay folds the corners of his mouth downward in acceptance and leads me down a hallway and into a storage room. He starts going through a chest of armour, picking out lightweight diamond pieces.
“So, what is it you wanted to talk about, Fristad?” He asks distantly, his head still in a chest and his hands still rummaging.
The scrape and clatter of metal being moved is nearly deafening, so I wait for a pause in his movements before I talk. After a few false starts I manage:
“You know, I just wanted to check in. You looked pretty pissed about losing the election if you don’t mind my noticing.”
“Eh,” he grunts laxly. “You win some, you lose some.”
More clattering. Silence otherwise. I’m going to need a better approach. Normally I’d take this as a cue to leave a douche alone, but I try to tap into the optimism and empathy I’ve been making an effort to exercise since getting rid of the book.
“Listen,” I try again. “We are alone, alone, right? You can tell me.”
He turns around, looks me dead in the eye and chuckles.
“Don’t worry,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder with surprising warmth and sincerity. “The book and I have an arrangement.”
He returns to rummaging and I struggle not to feel reassured.
“An arrangement?” I cock an eyebrow.
“Yes,” he says, comparing two boots. “I want to get strong enough to beat the Entity and defend my friends once I get home. The book wants to accumulate power and strength. Our goals are fairly well-aligned. Worst comes to the worst, I decide I want to retire once I get back home and help the book find a better host. All works out.”
I’m surprised by how genuinely unconcerned he is, and it stokes the flames of worry in my chest.
“Okay,” I begin, snarking. “I won’t worry about the crazy possessed artifact that was inside my head controlling my every act for the last age.” I clap my hands against my thighs. “It’s just that easy, I guess.”
He turns around and sits on the lip of the box.
“Fristad,” he says. “Believe me, this isn’t a slight against you. You’re a civilian, not used to this sort of thing. Me? This is nothing new. Endlings worked on me for weeks. I didn’t crack, because I had the proper training. I’m glad you’re free of its influence, and don’t mistake this for me defending it. It’s done some reprehensible things, I’m sure, but this is a difficult time. Like our new commander said, it’s survival we’re fighting for here. The book gets that too. Besides, if there’s the slightest problem I’ll just borrow your vest and get Shadow to bully it until it starts toeing the line again.”
He winks, excuses himself and carries his new-found armour set off. I linger in the room a little while. I sigh. I wander back to the atrium. Jennifer’s gone out hunting by now for sure. It’s a pity. There’s a dark cloud hanging over my thoughts that going out hunting with her might lift. Steve and Jennifer have been such a help through this whole thing and I love them for it. At the same time, I can’t lean on them too much. With the book gone, I had no excuse, it is time to figure out my own flaws and fears without either imposing them on others or attributing them to external forces.
I go into the library and immediately see Destiny.
“Well,” I surrender. “A little shared grousing is good for us all.”
Things have been weird between Destiny and me, not that they were ever normal. I met her maybe an hour before David mortally wounded himself fighting off the Ender, and she’d been grieving ever since. Then, while the book was trying to break Amanda, Destiny walked in on me and she was the first to figure out my involvement. In fact, she came rather close to burning me alive in front of the whole group when I tried to gaslight her out of what she saw. Shortly after I was liberated from the book’s influence and she vanished off with Fire to build this shelter. And since I’ve arrived she’s been avoiding everyone, first by hunting, then by recoiling in here. All that’s to say there has never been time for the much-deserved apology. Now, here she is, alone and pretending to read a book.
Please don’t judge me too harshly for missing the opportunity to make a fool of myself by unloading a long and rambling apology with no warning. I just really need to vent.
“Do you ever get closure on something only to realise that closure has opened up a whole load of other questions?”
Destiny looks up with the enthusiasm of a subsiding house, flicking a strand of brown hair away from her eyes. I don’t expect her to respond - like I said she’s been avoiding everyone, even blanking non-essential conversation - but she does. Maybe the election has reignited something in her.
“What sort of questions?”
After the shock wears off I immediately launch back into talking, pulling up a chair.
“What do I do now? Who am I now without this big thing that’s been dominating my headspace for the last age? I’ve just wanted to get back to normal for so long I’m not even sure I know or like what ‘normal’ is anymore. Those sorts of questions, y’know?”
Destiny lays her book down and almost laughs - she makes one of those amused exhalations of the nostrils you make when there’s nobody else around - and begins to nod.
“Yeah,” she smiles. “I know that mood.”
She says nothing else so I decide to seize the day and get a few more specific things out there.
“It’s not that I was under that book’s thumb for years or anything. It’s probably not been more than a few weeks… months, maybe? It was all a bit of a blur, it’s not important. It’s just that, before all this I was a shepherd. I didn’t have to be worried about anything other than just keeping my flock in order and making a living. Then, that nightmare with the book happened and… I’ve learned so much. It was awful, but I don’t know if I can just return to the grindstone. If I want things to be exactly the way they were.”
“Yeah,” she agrees. “You feel like something needs to have changed. To make it worthwhile.”
“Exactly!” I said, pointing a finger. “That’s it. I think…”
“It must be even weirder with that thing still about.” I’m struggling to figure out if she blames me for this before she picks up again. “I mean, you don’t even get the closure of knowing it’s gone for good. I imagine you were probably expecting something just a little more final than ‘I guess that’s not my problem anymore!’”
“How do you feel about the book?” I ask, trying to find out if there’s a hope in the Nether of avoiding an apology.
“I don’t trust it, honestly I really hate it, but I’m glad Kay’s found a use for it,” she shrugs. “If it can screw up the Ender or Glibby it can stick around. Anyway, I do get where you’re coming from,” a chuckle sends ripples through her speech, “David and I were reincarnated to stop Martin and the Sovereign and now that’s done. It’s crazy. There was this function and now it’s filled so what am I supposed to do, y’know? It’s so weird… but it’s okay now.”
I find this interesting. What’s changed?
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Yeah, I was able to find someone to talk to - from my world - and suddenly it’s not so bad.”
She smiles and I smile back. I wonder who she found. I try to cross-reference her characteristics with anyone else in the group.
“Lucky you,” I chuckle, “I’ve only got the book.”
Destiny laughs hesitantly and weighs her words before she leans in and whispers to me. “I mean if it works it works. Technically, I’m just talking to myself out there.” She laughs a little too enthusiastically for my liking and I’m almost creeped out.
“Yeah…” I say, trying to think of an excuse to get out of there.
“Oh by Notch I sound so crazy!” she falls back laughing and it’s slightly less scary. She beckons me back in and says, “I found a chunk from Minera, my world. The portal there’s broken but there’s still some sort of connection. I can commune with my past self, Anya, when I’m there. Haven’t been able to do that since I got to Nexus, usually I can’t shut her up. Don’t tell anyone though, I want to keep this private.”
I’m still not sure if she’s delusional or joking or whether this is just a thing where she comes from but I nod and assure her she can count on me. She smiles in confusion as she stands up.
“Thanks for the talk, Fristad. I think Jennifer should be far enough out for me to get there unnoticed now. Talk to you later.”
Taking me totally by surprise, she hugs me. It’s weird, tentative and ends quickly - I don’t even get a chance to hug back - but I think I need it too. Neither of us seem to know how to touch another human after all we’ve been through. We both stare at each other for a few seconds, then she gives me a thumbs up and leaves.
I sit there for a while. Urist steps in.
“How’re ye, Fristad? Ye well?”
I look at him and smile with something resembling wisdom.
“Oh I’m fine, it’s just… Interdimensional travel is weird, Urist,” I say, “Really. Freakin’. Weird.”
Arc 2Preparations (Chapters 5-16)
Chapter5:Warnado’s Gauntlet (Shadow)
It was just after sunrise when Shadow entered the cavern they had converted into a training ground. The floor had been smoothed out and was now completely level, Urist had taken the liberty of engraving some scenes of battle into it. Shadow liked the engravings since they reminded her of the base they had back home on the server, it hardly had any plain surfaces left.
Shadow had arrived a few minutes earlier than she had agreed with Astro and Warnado, if this room was to be used as a site for magical training it couldn’t be left as-is. One stray spell could completely collapse this cavern, with a risk of the cave-in spreading to the rest of the base. Shadow sat down in the middle of the room and tapped into her magic, visualizing the shape of the room. The warding spell she cast was one she had used many times in different forms, it was in essence the same one she had used to block out sound on many occasions, only now it would block magic and physical force.
Under normal conditions the spell would have taken hours to cast but due to the uniquely high ambient energy in Nexus Shadow could manage it in less. As the spell began to draw from her life force, various runes all over Shadow’s skin lit up. The pull was quite substantial but Shadow redirected it to the various pieces of energy-storing jewelry she was wearing.
About half-way through the casting process Shadow had a thought, a theory she could test while nobody was nearby. She opened that new sense she had gained when she came to Nexus, as she did her skin took on hints of the even-less-than-nothing of her unbound form. Her perception had changed, she looked outwards from the physical world into what was beyond.
“This explains a few things.” Shadow muttered.
From what she could see Nexus wasn’t just one three-dimensional world, there were multiple additional layers. None of them contained any physical matter but they were filled to the brim with energy, bloated almost. Shadow’s vision didn’t extend far enough to see where all this energy was coming from but knowing that it was there was enough to confirm her theory.
Bolts of pure nothingness began arcing outwards as Shadow forcefully pulled energy from those parallel planes. This would have been quite dangerous if anyone else had been around, something Astro would probably agree with. Shadow felt a sting of guilt when thinking about Astro and the predicament she had put him in. She pushed the guilt away, Fire always said that there was little use in worrying about things you couldn’t change.
Before long the protective ward was finished, with time to spare still. Both Astro and Warnado were still eating breakfast in the mess hall. Shadow chuckled to herself. Her acute awareness of everything around her would probably disturb a lot of people if they knew the extent of it. She had consciously not listened in on any of the conversations before or during the election but she was almost sure that whatever Astro had told Tyron had swayed his vote in some manner. Tyron had looked positively tortured when he cast his vote. Shadow definitely had to question Astro on this later.
While waiting for her training partner and her apprentice, Shadow thought back to the meeting they had held the previous evening. Kay had seemingly calmed down but she wasn’t entirely sure how deeply that calm reached. As Fire had promised, they had assigned everyone a position as a division leader. Shadow herself would be in charge of the magical training along with Astro, Destiny and Tyron, the latter two were assigned a hybrid role of overseeing martial training as well and ideally to help with integration of magical and martial forces.
Rose and Voidblade were chosen for weapons training and guerrilla warfare respectively. Urist had immediately volunteered for siege operation, citing his intricate knowledge of dwarven engineering. Steve, Jennifer and Fristad decided to oversee resource gathering and similar supportive tasks. Lucy didn’t get an overseer role as such, however since she was head of logistics she’d have indirect command over a whole variety of people. Despite Warnado’s protests, he and Amanda were not assigned roles since despite their contributions so far, they were still kids at the end of the day. He got over it pretty quickly.
Speak of the quarter-demon: just as Shadow concluded her thoughts Warnado threw the door to the training hall open enthusiastically, maybe a little too enthusiastically, shortly behind him was Astro. With satisfaction Shadow noticed that Warnado’s facial obfuscation spell was a lot more potent than it had been in the past, however still not enough to keep her out. Warnado’s face had a slightly nervous expression on it, with good reason. Today they would attempt to explore his demonic side.
“So!” Warnado called. “Demon magic and flying today. What’s first?” He was trying to sound enthusiastic but his preference was obvious.
“Let’s start with flying,” said Astro, clapping him on the shoulder and unfurling a rug he’d brought with him. “Honestly, it’s not that tough. Ghostly taught me fairly early on.”
The flight idea was new but it would be a good opportunity for Warnado to warm up first.
Shadow asked: “What type of flight do you have in mind? Wings? Levitation? Recoil propulsion?”
“Let’s try levitation,” Astro said flatly. “Simplest and once you get the knack for it it’s the most sustainable. Recoil propulsion can get ugly if you launch yourself too hard and wings are fine but kind of exhausting.”
He and Warnado sat down at opposite ends of the rug and Shadow stood by to watch.
“So,” Astro began. “You know the whole, light the fire in the middle of a leaf and stop it spreading thing?”
Warnado rolled his eyes and nodded.
“Yeah. Ever heard of oxygen?”
“I have, and thanks for clarifying that you have. It’ll come in handy later so you shouldn’t be wasting it.”
Astro produced a leaf from his pocket and floated it over to Warnado.
“Don’t catch it with your hand, just keep it where it is,” he said. “Don’t let it dip or rise. Like I said, it’s like lighting the fire in the middle of the leaf and not letting it spread. It’s not about pushing it, it’s all focusing on where it is at the moment.”
It was now floating over the center of Warnado’s un-gauntleted palm. Shadow could see the look of concentration on his face.
“I’m going to stop keeping it there,” Astro explained. “Up to you to keep it there. Three. Two. One.”
It dipped a little, but it then held in place. Shadow noted the progress of Warnado’s abilities. A few weeks prior it probably would have shot off or fallen because he panicked or got overexcited. His confidence was growing.
“Alright,” Astro clapped. “Well done. Now, focusing on where it currently is, try and imagine it moving up.”
“Imagine?” Warnado snapped, and the leaf wobbled. Through gritted teeth he added, “Next you’ll just tell me to believe in myself.”
“Honestly, the easiest way to do it is to just assume it’ll work. Just think of it as no big deal, as though it’s perfectly natural that the leaf would rise,” said Astro with a shrug and a laugh.
Warnado nodded, seeming to understand a little more. And then the leaf quivered upwards for a few inches, growing slightly more steady as it went.
“And stop,” said Astro. “Now I’m going to ask you to do something that’s going to sound really dumb, but trust me, it works.”
Warnado smirked beneath his hood. “If you tell me the real leaf was all the friends we made along the way I’m going to punch you.”
“Okay, not that dumb,” Astro laughed. “So I don’t break your concentration I’m going to explain the concept first. Where I come from, we wizards like to pretend our brand of magic is a science like thaumaturgy, or a power with a quantifiable source like admin magic, but in reality it’s just a natural thing we can do. Some people can sing, some folks are strong, we can change reality a bit. Once you realise that, it’s all about how you look at things.
“Some of it has a basis. Like, once you appreciate that water is hydrogen and oxygen, it’s not that hard to envision those two things splitting apart. And from there, because you know gas gets set on fire it’s not too hard to see the hydrogen catching fire and exploding because that’s what hydrogen does.
“Other times you just have to trick your brain into accepting something that doesn’t have a good explanation. Part of the reason I floated it over to you is so that you could clearly understand that the leaf can float if you want it to. You’ve already seen it do so, so you’re not going to doubt it so easily. You get it?”
“I think so,” Warnado responds. “Consensus reality and all that.”
Warnado’s vocabulary always surprised Shadow. Occasionally he would mention words or concepts he logically had no way of knowing, like how he had mentioned Clue when they were investigating the Dreamweaver. She really wondered where he got them from.
“Consensus reality is a dumb term made up by smart idiots who don’t appreciate that the entire point is not to overthink it,” Astro ranted. “But yes, it’s pretty much that. So, now I’m about to say the dumb thing.”
He didn’t say it.
“Keep me in suspense, why don’t you?” Warnado pressed.
“Imagine you are the leaf,” he paused to Warnado’s stifled laughter, and chuckled a bit himself. “Ha… ha, just, ha, just presume that when the leaf moves... you move.”
“Oh boy,” Warnado shook his head. “Give me a second.”
Warnado stifled his laughter. Shadow noticed that the leaf was still where it was supposed to be. It trembled a lot, but it was there. Despite all the snarking and laughing, Warnado was paying attention. His multitasking truly was impressive.
After a few seconds pause, the quarter-demon re-centered his attention fully on the leaf, muttered “I am the leaf” and then started squinting. Sure enough, the leaf started floating upwards, and so did he. His face lit up beneath the obfuscation charm, he immediately called out.
“I’m doing it!”
“Yeah, you certainly are,” Astro smiled politely. “Now, try moving a little to the left.”
Warnado, now adopting a smug expression, his glowing red eyes squashing and stretching to indicate a cocked eyebrow.
“Easy.”
He immediately shot off to the left way too quickly and slammed into the wall, spread out like a snowball. The leaf fluttered away harmlessly.
“You tried to apply force to it, didn’t you?” Astro groaned, eyes closed.
“I did indeed,” he grunted. “Forgot you’re just supposed to assume you’re only naturally going to be wherever you’re supposed to be or whatever. I can do it better.” He floated the leaf back up off the ground.
“Oh you absolutely can. That said, I think that’s enough of that,” Astro said with a wave of the hand. He rubbed his temple. “Don’t worry, it’s literally just that principle. You can practice in your own time. Eventually you won’t need something like a leaf to focus on. The big thing today: demon gauntlet!”
“Yeah,” Warnado said, gulping back saliva and looking at his feet. Shaking life into his limbs and hopping from foot to foot, he made eye contact with Astro and Shadow consecutively and pronounced a more confident “Sure thing!”
“Good,” Astro took the gauntleted arm like a doctor and looked it up and down. “Okay, so it’s a demon gauntlet. What does that mean?”
“It does… demonic things.”
“Right,” nodded Astro, feeling dumb. “Shadow, can you get any readings on it? I’ve not seen too much like it back home. There’s demons and stuff to be sure but we’ve mostly got them locked away. Could use a rundown.”
Shadow took a closer look at the gauntlet and, a few spells later, said: “It seems like this is not a gauntlet in the traditional sense but formerly part of an actual demon, at least part of it was. Like someone took the hand of a demon and made it into a gauntlet. It’s partly organic, as far as demons are organic at least, their definitions of what a body can be made of is quite wide. I suppose ‘demonic’ is the correct term after all but it’s also not very descriptive if you don’t know what exactly is meant.”
“Ohhh…” Astro said with a smile of discovery on his face. “So he’s drawing on another creature’s power. That makes sense. Just give me a second.” Astro closed his eyes and started pointing wildly in the air at an invisible diagram. “Right, I’ve got it.”
Astro walked back over to the gauntlet again and held it up for Warnado to see.
“You’re not a full demon, so you’re all potential but little practice. If I’m right, you need part of a being that is already in touch with its powers in order to access your own. You’re attuned but not active. It’s like Shadow and I’s rings.” He clenched a fist and clanked it onto Warnado’s wrist, which was now an acting display case and table.
“These rings draw in the background energy of Nexus or the Sane Realm or whatever world we’re in, and then we can use it. Otherwise it’s worthless. You’re the same way…” he paused. “That came out wrong. My point is that the gauntlet is able to take the latent demon juice running in your blood and make it tangible. I wish I could tell you more specifically how - I imagine there was some sort of pact made. Maybe the demon in question benefits from the arrangement. The big thing is that you realise you’re not drawing power from the gauntlet, it’s feeding on you. Oh, actually! Good analogy: it’s like a bank. You’ve put your power in an account and now you want to withdraw. Don’t let it convince you otherwise or you’ll start running into problems.”
“Convince me?” Warnado asked, a little tremor in his voice. “You’re telling me it’s alive?”
“Well,” the wizard grimaced. “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but your dad didn’t go mad for no reason.” He powered on through Warnado’s horrified expression. “I don’t think it’s sentient like the Book, but it’ll have some sort of intelligence. Worst case scenario, it’s a conduit for the thing it’s been severed from and it’ll talk to you. Best case scenario, it’s got a few stock responses to try and catch stupid people out. Little word-games to try and get out of or alter its contract. Just be really specific when you tell it what you want, okay?”
Warnado nodded unhappily. “Just be specific. Loving the irony.”
“Excellent,” Astro stated, clapping Warnado on the shoulder. They both tensed. He continued, in the low bass of attempted reassurance: “You’re doing great. Sorry if I’m a little vague. This is new territory.”
Shadow said: “It’s good that you know a bit about demons Astro, I’ve realized that my world’s safeguards have kept the worst demons out. All the ones I know are at the very least indifferent, some are even actively cooperative and interested. On the other hand, even if the bad ones came through, we do have a way of safely making contracts. In my world there is a special potion that allows you to speak and think like a demon, in that language each and every concept in existence is its own word, that way demons can’t get away with their usual word twisting. Aside from demons, the Mencur-Besh also speak it naturally, and Wodahs does too for some reason.”
A thought occurred to Shadow at that moment and she looked around at her shadowy companion. “Care to demonstrate, Wodahs?”
Wodahs detached from Shadow’s feet and walked over to Warnado, gleefully ignoring the laws of perspective projection. When she started speaking it sounded like words but not quite, Shadow knew better than to try to understand, all that would do was cause headaches, even for her. Astro flinched, indicating that he had also discovered this peculiar effect.
Warnado stopped her mid-sentence. “Okay, okay, I understand. You don’t need to be so harsh about us three-dimensional types.”
Shadow and Wodahs looked at each other in genuine surprise. Over the years, Shadow had learned how to read her companion’s body language in lieu of a face. Turns out that shades are more expressive than most people would expect, with this one raising its hands in open-palmed surrender to this confusing development.
Shadow mused: “Natural understanding of demonic, huh? Demonic from another world, no less. Makes me wonder just how much or how little of a demonic mind is needed to comprehend the language.”
Warnado’s face lit up: “She was speaking demon? And I think you’ll find my demonic brain is very large. And smart. About demon stuff.” He conjured a celebratory taco and held it up like a cigar. However, before he could chomp down, it floated out of his grasp and tipped a cocktail of meat juices and salsa down in front of him.
Astro smirked. “Sorry, after the lesson if you please.”
“You’ve made a powerful enemy today, Astro,” growled the quarter-demon child, clenching his fists. “Watch out in the lunchroom.”
“If you get me with the same trick,” he responded. “I will consider it a mark of my success as a teacher.”
The three chuckled.
“But yeah,” Astro swallowed. “Let’s test something out. What do you know demon powers to be able to do?”
“My dad was really fond of setting his arm on fire,” Warnado began with nostalgic enthusiasm, before finishing with a slightly more haunted tone, “That orphanage did not stand a chance.”
Astro gritted his teeth, blinked, patted the child uncomfortably on the shoulder.
“So,” Shadow said. “if you want to try to activate the gauntlet, I can do my best to keep you safe while you do it.”
Warnado, face furrowed into lines that seemed to physically divide his face between enthusiastic determination and terror, forced out an ironically conflicted “Absolutely!”
“I’m going to need you to sit down in your best meditation position, or whatever else helps you focus. Even with my safeguards in place, it’s best if you don’t have to make use of them.”
He leapt, folded his feet under him and then stopped in mid-air. He looked between the two of them, eyes wide open and ready to be filled with approval.
Astro laughed. “Well done, now get on the ground, please. You need to concentrate.”
Warnado closed his eyes. He haltingingly floated down, with a few jitters and split-second pauses. He took a few minutes to breathe, and looked at Shadow expectantly. She walked up behind him and placed her palms on Warnado’s shoulders. Shielding another mind was not something Shadow did often, it involved forming a very superficial link to the mind in question so that any assault would be redirected to her and drowned in her mind.
“Ready.” She said.
Warnado nodded, and it began. She caught glimpses of what Warnado was seeing as he reached out to the gauntlet. A throne of tin, bent and beaten, in a room dimly lit by fire. The gauntlet was worn by something in flux. It almost had a body but it was as though she were looking at it through condensation on a window. Whatever it was, it seemed shriveled, but occasionally flared with strength. Its legs appeared the worst affected, unable to even reach the floor.
Warnado trembled towards it, hands loosely held in a fighting stance. Shadow couldn’t understand the demonic words it pronounced but was able to gather an approximate equivalent from the human parts of Warnado’s consciousness.
It spoke, to which Warnado responded: “What are you?”
It appeared to say the same thing again, because, aloud, Warnado said: “I think it’s just a bunch of stock responses, like you said Astro. It keeps saying the same thing. This is going to be easy.”
Shadow opened her eyes to see his response. Astro gave him the thumbs up, realised the child’s eyes were closed and awkwardly called out: “You’ve got this kid. We’re with you 100% of the way!”
Shadow closed her eyes again and saw the demon speak.
“Don’t worry,” said Warnado to the vague being. “I am here for a request. Just calm down. I’d like to make a withdrawal. Let me set my arm on fire… without it hurting me or damaging my clothes.” After a pause: “As is my birthright!”
Shadow noted to herself that Warnado had really paid attention to what they’d said. It was good enough that he was trying to be specific, but she was almost certain he would forget to remind the creature whose power they were using. It would have been so easy to keep that implicit.
The being spoke again and Shadow made the mistake of trying to listen, a stupid mistake stemming from the unfamiliarity of the situation. Rebounding with a headache she quickly checked her defences. It was making no indication of a mental attack. She saw it kneel, reach out its arm and chant.
In the real world, the gem of Warnado’s gauntlet began to glow. Veins of embers began to criss and cross over the entire limb, from the tips of his fingers and stopping just before the shoulder. Then, when the whole thing started to look like a molten quilt, it sparked and the arm was ablaze in deep purple. The eager tongues of fire formed an aura at least four inches thick around the gauntlet-clad limb. The light was strong enough to weaken the darkness beneath Warnado’s hood and consequently light up his face with something other than enthusiasm.
And enthusiasm he had in spades. Warnado was looking at the arm like it was a family photo. He turned it over, stroked it (and found no burns), posed it. This elaborate dance of fingers and joints culminated in the child laughing and saying: “This is so cool.”
“Do you want to test it out?” Astro asked in a spirit of genuine scientific curiosity. “Can it spit flames or is it just for close combat?”
“Let’s find out!” Warnado cackled, standing up abruptly. Shadow readjusted her shielding, opening her eyes reluctantly. She didn’t say anything though, as the demon was still making no efforts to interfere with Warnado’s mind. It seemed territorial, refusing to leave its dented throne or its ashpit of a throne room.
Warnado arced the burning arm over his head and aimed for a training dummy, which was promptly consumed by a ball of purple flame and reduced to ash in a matter of seconds.
Its destroyer jumped with joy.
“This is so good!” He cackled yet wilder and returned to look at them. “You know, it kind of looks like a demon arm like this. Like if it remained burning, but the aura became solid a couple of inches deep. It would be all muscular and fiery and start punching everything. That would be so cool.”
That, as it turned out was a mistake. The arm straightened out and went bolt rigid. Warnado screamed as the flames gave way to metal-like flesh. Shadow searched her shield but there was no sign of an incursion. Then, all of a sudden she felt the gauntlet’s field of influence expand all the way up the arm. This was a physical attack, a land grab.
Warnado shrieked and the arm grew to twice its size and started punching wildly, beating the ground and sending cascades of light outwards from the impacts as the protective barrier absorbed the hits.
“What do you mean this is what I asked for?” Warnado cried out aloud and in his mind. The creature visibly shrugged. The moments where it looked shrivelled were increasingly rare.
Shadow was tempted to cut him off there but Astro said.
“Give us a second. This could be a learning experience.”
“Warnado,” Astro called out. “It’s your power. Just tell it to give over control.”
At this point the arm whipped off in Astro’s directing, propelling itself with a mighty blow to the ground. Astro only barely deflected its attack with a shield but seemed unfazed.
“Please!” Warnado wailed out on both planes of existence. “You don’t have to hurt him! There’s no enemies here. Please, you have to stop.”
The shapeless shape in the chair was growing more defined. Its legs were now whole enough to stand. It arose and gestured for Warnado to kneel, speaking in what was either a chant or proclamation.
“He won’t respond to that,” Astro scolded. “Tell him, firmly.”
“He’s too strong!” Warnado pleaded.
Shadow had enough of this. So far the creature on the other end seemed to not have noticed that she was listening in but that was about to change. She sent a blast of void magic down the connection, more a warning shot than anything else, however the message was clear enough, there was plenty more where that came from. The demon froze up.
“You are going to revert your influence on Warnado or I’ll drag you over to my side and make you face me.” Demon language or not, Shadow knew the demon had to take her seriously, caught off-guard as it was.
It sat down and became shrivelled and ambiguous again. Warnado’s arm faded back to normal and he collapsed. Shadow made sure that no trace of the connection was left, then severed her own link to Warnado’s mind, there was bound to be a large amount of emotional turmoil and she had no intention to share in it directly.
Astro ran up and lifted him, chuckling noiselessly and nervously.
“Well,” he began. “Memorable first day.”
“Memorable?” The child spat. “I almost killed you.”
“Almost is a relative term,” he jested, before continuing more calmly, “We know what went wrong. You said you wanted an arm that just punched everything and it gave you that. You just needed to give a counter-order. Don’t bother haggling, just make a correction. You’ll get it next time.”
“Next time?!” Warnado screeched and staggered backwards. “You’re crazy! You’re both crazy! This thing is going to kill us all! This was so stupid.”
He tore off the gauntlet and threw it on the ground.
“Warnado, it’s just a hiccup. Magic is kind of terrifying. This is just another part of that.”
Suddenly Wodahs spoke up again in the demonic language. Shadow suspected that whatever Wodahs said was only very tangentially related to the recent events. Nonetheless it made Warnado turn beet red with embarrassment under his obfuscation spell.
“This isn’t about that!” He screamed. Shadow could see his eyes watering. “This is done. The gauntlet is just a problem. I’m not strong enough!”
“Come on,” Astro tried. “Think of the things you could achieve-”
“Screw that. And screw you if you think that’s worth risking everyone’s safety over. Screw you if you think it’s worth risking my safety over! The overall vibe you should be getting is leave me alone!”
He turned heel and ran off, kicking the gauntlet as he did so.
Kay materialised in the door only to be shunted aside. At the heart of his beard his mouth became a hard line, before he forced his expression into one of generic, scholarly interest.
“What happened? I was drawing up formations and heard violent, then emotional noises. Is he okay?”
“A training mishap,” Astro said after a pause. He was staring at Kay. “He tried to use the gauntlet and lost control. Easily… Easily fixed.”
Kay gave him a thumbs up and warped over to the gauntlet. “I’ll talk to him.” He lifted it and warped away.
And so they were left there, the ground still smoking, and the ash of the dummy beckoning them.
Chapter6:Confessions (Astro)
I consider just vanishing the dust into another dimension, but that seems impolite so I do actually go and get the brush and pan. Mostly I just do it to take my mind off the lesson. I got greedy. I spend so much of my time in a permanent state of indecision and it felt nice to be obstinately sure of something. But I scared little Warnado. I forgot that he is just a child.
“Well, technically the demon probably scared him a little more,” my brain chips in, negotiating with morality. “Honestly, I thought I did my best to reassure him.”
I did try, but sadly I tried the sort of reassurance that just pretends there isn’t a problem. That demon arm did almost kill me despite what I said. If not for the rings Shadow gave me I would probably be in a heap on the floor right now.
I pick up the brush and start shuffling back towards the remains of the dummy.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t have blocked the attack. The effort of summoning a spell like that would just have crippled me for hours. I remember how I looked in the mirror this morning. I’m pretty sure I saw grey hair in there, but it was gone after I brushed it. I’m not even forty years old yet, and I look like I’m well into my fifties. Wrinkles like cracks in pottery are forming about my eyes and mouth and all over my forehead. Grey hair seems perfectly plausible.
I kneel down. Shadow has a rune glowing and her eyes closed. I think she’s listening out for Warnado. I start brushing and the dust is thick. It crumbles into the pan.
Magic is responsible for my premature age. It happens to all wizards. All proper ones. Thaumaturges get off scot-free. Admins get a few centuries out of it. However, even by wizard standards I’m unlucky. I never completed my training with Ghostly because the Onslaught came about. With Herobrine on the march and Kay just having been arrested, we all decided to leave to avoid conscription. So, I broke things off with Ghostly.
It was an amiable parting. He was all wise and father figure-y about the whole thing. He even organised an illusory combat challenge to help prepare us for the crazy world we were about to flee into. Sadly, his co-administrators caught wind of our plan and conscripted us anyway. There wasn’t much Ghostly could do. He needed the men and letting anyone go would cause a domino effect. I don’t blame him, despite it all. I just wish we’d had more time.
I stand up and walk to the bin. I hear Shadow’s footsteps pad up to me.
“Warnado’s fine,” Shadow says. “Kay’s caught up to him.”
When he arrived at the door just there, Kay looked so much like he did in the good days. When he just wanted to keep us all safe in a confusing world that seemed intent on murdering us. A slightly shaky and rash pillar of stability in the world who would gladly fall on top of and crush any opponent. Except now he can teleport behind and engulf that opponent in voidfire.
“Good,” I say with a pang of guilt. “Kay’s always been good with kids. With getting people back on their feet generally.”
After a short pause Shadow says: “Speaking of Kay, I wasn’t listening in back then but I’m still under the impression that you said something to Tyron before the election that made him look quite conflicted.”
So this question has finally come about. For a second I thought I’d actually gotten away with it, but this is unsurprising. Unfortunately for Shadow, I am not in the mood to be interrogated right now, so I snap back:
“I’m surprised you weren’t listening. You listen to everything else around here.”
“I do still have respect for people wanting their vote to be anonymous. Other than that, guilty as charged.”
“Well at least you’re upfront about it. What exactly do you think I said that made Tyron so ‘conflicted’? Please, pray-tell, what insidious rumour or grand revelation was I spreading to influence the result of the election?”
My face and voice are flat as plains. I’m not looking at her, but I see my reflection in the metal of the bin and my eyes are burning. I wouldn’t turn those eyes on my worst enemy. I try to calm myself down. She doesn’t know what I said, and she doesn’t know why I don’t want to talk about it.
“Which is exactly why she should mind her own damned business!” Brain-me offers helpfully. I remind him that she technically hasn’t accused me of anything. I’ve already been adding things on. If she wasn’t suspicious before, she is now.
Shadow obliges my obviously rhetorical questions: “The results are in and a swing of one vote in any direction would have made no difference. Still, you know Kay better than anyone else, I’m curious about your reasons since I’m starting to suspect that you advocated against him.”
I glare at the door. No one. I cast a sound-proofing charm at a five meter radius. Plenty of room for me to furiously pace and angrily gesticulate.
“What sort of two-faced backbiter do you think I am?” I muster disgust from guilt. “Kay Mandy would have led that army well. He’s hot off his service to Herobrine. That book has so far only increased his ability to lead from the front. He’s in his damned prime and then some! Even if I weren’t his friend he’s an ideal candidate. How very dare you!”
It ends limper than I intended. I’m trying too hard.
Shadow nods. “I think you are exactly not that kind of person, which opens up more questions than it answers. Kay might be slightly… eccentric and not on the best terms with my brother but so far I have seen nothing that disputes your claims. Tyron seemed in favor of Kay so saying nothing would have been sufficient if you wanted him to vote for Kay. Which brings me back to the original question.”
“I didn’t say anything to him!” I roar this out and my temper breaks like a fever. I feebly continue: “Can’t a man talk to his friend ahead of a tense situation?”
“You saw his face at the urn too, we were both standing there because of our abstention. That was not the face of a comforted man.”
There’s a truth gnawing at me and it hurts. A truth I’ve tried to ignore since this ghost of a man came back into my life. I hate her for rousing it. I give in.
“I didn’t tell him much,” I say, looking at her pleadingly. “You really want to know what I said to him? Fine. I said to our dear furball, ‘Tyron, I know what happens next. I’ve seen how this goes. It does not end well. Don’t vote for Kay.’ Are you happy now?”
I feel a tear run down my cheek and I rub it away angrily.
Shadow looks downwards and closes her eyes. “I had my question answered but I am not happy. Something is bothering you about this more than it reasonably should. If you know what happens next, from where? I don’t mean to pry beyond what I already made you say but you can say more if you want to. I may be aware of what everyone in the shelter is doing at all times but I do not disclose private information. Whatever your secret is, it will be safe with me.”
I yell again: “Well, secret stage one: I’m from Kay’s future. Eleven years ago he travelled through a portal to Nexus that explodes. He gets back somehow, but this traps some Endlings in my world all that time. At some point a crime lord called the Silhouette decided I was valuable to the Entity and sent those Endlings to capture me. And that’s how I ended up stuck in the middle of all this trash! You understand so far?”
I don’t even wait for Shadow to respond. I just yell louder. Liberty has made my anger bold.
“Secret stage two...” I pause. My mouth feels dry and I swallow without success.
I feel the fury swell as the truth approaches, but it doesn’t need bombast or screaming anymore. This rage is cold and honest and it is no less terrible for it.
“He dies, Shadow. Kay dies. He becomes a king for a bit, and then he dies. And I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, he wasn’t a great person by the end of it. Honestly, I have to wonder how good he ever was, or whether that was all inevitable.”
I let it settle. Shadow seems genuinely taken aback. I feel the urge to keep talking but I need something to push me onward. I hate her for now saying anything.
“I knew Nexus was an anomaly pulling people from different worlds… but also the same world and different times? I am not lying when I say that I can’t imagine being in your situation, like if for instance I met a version of my brother and I where our parents hadn’t died, had raised us into whatever monstrosities they were probably planning to. If that happened I would honestly not know what to do.”
“Well that’s a fine how-do-you-do, isn’t it? I don’t either, Shadow. Sometimes I wonder if the Endlings didn’t just stab me out in that field and this isn’t just a dying dream. Sometimes I kind of wonder if that wouldn’t make things easier. Do you know what I was doing out there, Shadow? I was out there searching through the ice and snow for the corpses of my friends. And many others besides. All of them dead, directly or indirectly, because of Kay’s selfishness.
“That’s not to say he was on the wrong side. Dominus, the Silhouette, the Family, even the Brotherhood all were monsters that needed slaying. And that’s without mentioning Hamish... ****ing Hamish - I choked the life out of that monster until there was nothing left in him, and I would gladly do it again!”
I discover I’m screaming again and I restrain myself. I stand as though I were stabilising myself on a table and bend back up. My voice becomes like a dead man’s, droning and soft. It’s no different from the leftover breath wheezing out of the body. It has as much agency.
“Kay had reason to be driven over the edge, but when the time came, he prioritised his own personal grudges above his duty, above his friends and above basic morality. He plotted against allies he needed. He ordered the deaths of friends. He abandoned his troops when they needed him most. He murdered innocent people more than once... Eventually, he went too far, pissed off the Silhouette. The Silhouette decided enough was enough. Kay agreed, and now he’s dead.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Kay let himself be killed. As retribution for his interference, the Silhouette himself turned up to ambush him. He made an ultimatum and by all accounts Kay didn’t even blink before surrendering. Bet he thought he was being right noble. Accepting he had no right to kill anyone more, or ask anyone else to die for him. Hoping the altruism would outweigh his shame. They burned him on a pyre and he didn’t move. Aaron arrived just in time to see him go up. It was cowardly, it was cruel and he should have tried to make things right!”
I’m on my knees. My hands shake before me. My eyes blur from welling tears and pain. Black bars close in and out of the edges of my vision. This is tearing the soul out of me but I have to say it.
Shadow is kneeling in front of me, observing like a naturalist who has discovered a new species.
“I just wish I could figure out when we stopped being the good guys,” I whisper. “That would be enough.”
I give in to the tears, weepingly openly. I throw my face in my hands. Shadow places a hand on my shoulder. It feels like nothing, but I’m not alone. There’s something.
I thank Notch I’m not alone. I’m not alone. I am not alone.
It rings hollower each time. Something is not enough to stave off nothing.
Footsteps pounded off the floor, bounced off the walls and finally reached high enough to ***** Tyron’s ears. When he had no duties and felt tired, he would often go down one of the more secluded hallways, summon his great stone wings and ascend into a tight, two block by two block hollow he’d dug out above a pair of redstone lanterns. He had a bed set up over the lights themselves so brightness was no bother, and the crackling redstone circuitry beneath him even warmed the mattress a little. He had made himself a warm, snug little shelter, even setting up a chair on which Kir could rest.
The sword liked to be propped up in this way. “Near enough to lift if there’s danger,” it would chirp in its high-pitched, genderless enthusiasm, though Tyron doubted this was the whole story. His swordly friend seemed to enjoy lying there and talking to him as though it had a full body. Or maybe it was something different. Maybe it liked the nurturing feeling of watching over a loved one while they sleep. Tyron didn’t mind. The dorms Fire had constructed were too open for him. He wanted somewhere close and warm and private. And he didn’t want anyone to see him when the nightmares came. He didn’t want them to see what Freak had done to him.
For this reason he’d always found an excuse to stay up during the night while they’d been fleeing the Entity, only getting a real night’s sleep after they found the inn and he could find a separate room. That’s not to say he distrusted anyone in particular or thought they’d use it against him, but he just wasn’t that close with these people. It wasn’t their business.
As such, when Warnado’s wild footsteps skittered down the hallway below and stirred the Dragoknight from an uncharacteristically pleasant dream, a warm pool of positive emotions rapidly drained from his heart, leaving only an unappealing mix of confusion, yearning and irritation.
He sat straight up and anxiously tried to capture the dream before it escaped him entirely, but sadly only dim impressions had stuck around. A sunny paddock. A tree. A bench beneath it and a woman in white. Tyron couldn’t even remember if they’d spoken, but he wanted to see her again. But dreams are random things, so this was easier said than done.
Tyron groaned silently, picked up Kir and asked them to reach out and figure out who was below. Discretely.
“Wizard-kid with the spooky glove.”
Kir had taken against Warnado’s gauntlet for some reason. It wasn’t a living being like the Book, but the sword seemed to sense a malignant near-intelligence about it. According to Kir, they had tried to reach out and hadn’t found a single coherent thought, but a great many negative and cruel urgings. Perhaps Kir was just mad about being given the silent treatment.
Tyron, yawning, curled around so he could peak through the slats of the trapdoor and see for himself what had brought this on. Maybe Warnado needed to tell him something and had found out about the hiding spot.
However, before Tyron actually saw him, he heard the fusilade of footfalls underscored by panting heaves. The child was crying. He had no gauntlet on. He tripped and slid on the floor a few metres, ending up in view of the trapdoor. Tyron wondered if he should intervene and immediately got an answer. What the child did next was sit up, huddle against the wall and start to sob to himself. The words “useless” and “stupid glove” occasionally permeated the deluge. Each new wave of tears drew Tyron’s claws closer to the trapdoor.
“No, will ruin hiding place!” Kir objects.
“Come on,” the Dragoknight scolded. “He needs someone to talk to. The least I can do is see if he’s comfortable talking to me.”
A sound of crackling bounced up to the hollow and the claws retreated.
“Warnado? There you are!”
Kay now hurried into view, wearing his new, lightweight armour over a cotton shirt and black trousers. That weird, red, hooded scarf adorned his neck as usual and he had taken to wearing his aviator’s goggles over his fringe again. He looked concerned.
Tyron felt a lurch in his stomach as he recalled the vote he had cast against his friend. However, he was also wracked by a guilty wave of relief as he realised there was someone more qualified on the case and he could keep his nap-room a secret.
“Me too,” agreed Kir. “Thank Notch!”
“So, I suppose training didn’t go great?” Kay asked.
He had already sat down and drawn the child in with one arm. Tyron noticed the gauntlet laid down beside him.
Warnado remained silent.
“Alright, so much for feigned ignorance. Astro told me you had a problem with the gauntlet,” he said solemnly, holding up said metal glove.
Warnado pulled back and stood up, Kay’s arm dancing gently away.
“Get that thing away from me.”
“Warnado-”
“Get it away,” he warned.
The robed demon-child settled into a stance that was just as ready to fight as it was to flee the scene. He held his fists up but had his legs positioned so he could turn tail and run in a single pivot. Tyron couldn’t see his eyes, but he imagined fear had prised those red glows wide open.
Kay looked at him for a second, blinked. Turned his eyes on the gauntlet. Blinked. He threw it aside. It clattered down the corridor and made Tyron’s ears twitch in pain.
“Okay,” he said.
Warnado lowered his fists. He flopped an arm forward in silent apology before sitting. His legs were crossed and he was facing Kay head on.
“So,” the General smiled. “I get that you’re a little spooked by all this. Want to talk about it a little?”
Tyron took this as an excuse to roll back away from the trapdoor and back into bed. They needed some sort of privacy. He couldn’t tune them out, though, not even when he started up a conversation with Kir to distract himself. And so he heard pretty much the whole thing.
Warnado told Kay and his unseen listeners the story of his father. His growing madness. All those deaths. All those mysterious walks where he’d disappear muttering into the night. How, one day, he hadn’t come home. Warnado had gone out to look for him and found him dead at the foot of a tree. The gem was torn out of the gauntlet, hanging around his father’s neck. Warnado was only five years old.
And all that fed into what went on in the training room.
“Astro should have quit while ahead,” Kir concluded. “Just kid.”
“Yep,” Tyron agreed. “Kind of a douche-y move. I have no clue what’s going on with that guy since Kay woke up.”
“Since Kay showed up, you mean.”
Tyron nodded in surrender.
“I can’t touch that thing again. Whatever’s in there is too strong, and I can’t trust Astro and Shadow to stop it before it overpowers me. But I’m not going to be strong enough without it. I don’t know what to do.”
Kay laughed a little.
“Warnado, you are the strongest kid I have ever met,” he began. “You have genuinely been through so much I wouldn’t have been able to deal with. You are thirteen years old and you were going toe-to-toe with heavily-armed Endlings. Thirteen-year-old you could easily kick thirteen-year-old me’s **** something fierce.”
Tyron heard a childish sniff, followed by “You really think so?”
“You would have wedgied me so hard, little guy. I was such a little nerd back then. Heck, you could probably still bully me now if you set your mind to it.”
The two laughed. Tyron smiled and reshuffled himself so he could look out again. Kay was on one knee before him, ruffling Warnado’s hood.
“You are more than a match for the little squatter in your glove,” he continued. “Tell you what. It sounds like Astro really messed this up. I’m sorry about that, he spends so much time agonising over decisions he overcompensates when he’s trying to be decisive. I’ll give him a bit of a bollocking, and you’ll try the gauntlet again at your own pace, when you’re ready.”
“I don’t know…” Warnado began, leaning back.
“Warnado,” he comforted, placing a hand on his shoulder and drawing him back in to make eye contact. “You would be surprised how often your greatest weakness can become your greatest strength. Being half-Thaum was my greatest weakness until suddenly I was perfect officer material in Herobrine’s army - who I again remind you is nothing like in your world. He’s just a bit of a disappointment since he gained power, but what are politicians for? The point is, being part-demon doesn’t have to be your weakness. It shouldn’t. It won’t.”
Warnado was nodding away.
“I just need to figure out a way to keep it in line,” Warnado agreed. “Astro just kept telling me to remind it whose power it was using, but what does that even mean?”
“My advice,” Kay squeezed the shoulder. “Don’t be afraid to be rude. Yell at it and call it names until you feel more comfortable giving orders. Just act like you’re a rude customer at a restaurant.”
“Is this good life advice?” Kir pondered rhetorically.
“Probably not,” answered Tyron.
Warnado chuckled but didn’t say anything more. His head drooped a little.
“And,” Kay pressed further. “These might help.”
He reached up and pulled the goggles off his head, dangling them before Warnado by the strap.
“The Professor gave me these back in the day. He used to say, ‘Little Kay, life’s always throwing something at your eyes. Rain, dust, emotional trauma etc.. It doesn’t matter what it is, you always need something to keep your eyes clear, and let you focus on what’s really important.’”
Warnado took them and held them in his hand. Tyron couldn’t see his face, but Kay seemed encouraged. He warped the gauntlet into his hand and he asked:
“So, you ready to give this another try?”
And the child took up their gauntlet and fixed it back on. The gem glowed for a moment and then settled. At that, they stood up and wandered down the hallway, with Kay rambling about Urist interrupting him while he was drawing up troop formations all morning.
Tyron lay back and wondered to himself how he’d let himself to be persuaded to vote against him. It wouldn’t have made a difference, but how could that man lead badly?
But it wasn’t about him being a bad leader. That hadn’t been what Astro’s face had said. His words were ambiguous, but the creases in his forehead, the quiver of his eyes had been crystal clear.
“What happens next?” Tyron asked himself. “What happens next that makes him such a horror?”
Chapter8:Crowd Control (Steve/Lucy)
Steve regretted that when they were dividing duties for the day all the refugees were due to arrive, he and Jennifer had offered to do crowd control. It really hadn’t occurred to him just how confused and hungry these people would be. All of them, the second they saw the stage they had erected in front of the shelter, had flocked towards it.
The two of them had spent the last half-hour picking people off of it. Eventually it had seemed smartest to just build a fence. As foreseen, no one, no matter how tall, could get their leg over the top of their meter-high fortification. So, now he and Jennifer were just marching through the crowd trying to calm people down and prevent any panic.
Thankfully, people were more confused than anything. Destiny and Voidblade were on guard duty, and fully armoured the two looked pretty powerful without looking too threatening. They had ushered everyone toward the stage through a path which avoided any major choke points or bottlenecks. Thankfully, the crowd wasn’t large enough for a stampede to be too dangerous, but there were still a good two thousand people there and it was better to prevent that sort of thing.
“Don’t worry ma’am,” said Steve to an elderly woman. “Once everyone’s finished filtering in, our commander will come out on stage and explain what’s going on. The Prophet reckons he’s the hero, Champion guy you’re looking for.”
The old lady smiled and fell back into the crowd. He saw her resurface in the sea of heads talking to a nervous young man holding a baby. She spoke into his ear and the release of tension must have reduced his height by a foot because Steve lost sight of his contented face pretty quickly.
After answering or deferring a few more questions, that part of the crowd seemed happy enough. They weren’t moving around as much and were now just patiently looking at the stage without being jostled. Steve looked about for Jennifer. She had achieved a similar lull.
“At times like this, I really miss the Alliance,” Steve called out.
“Yes!” Jennifer agreed emphatically. “We could’ve just asked Mark to set up some sort of seating machine. Or gotten Wolfric to cast a spell to calm everyone down. Even Ozen would’ve been useful. He could hand out his terrible sandwiches. Someone might even have had the bright idea to put up a sign or two explaining things.”
Steve smiled and they got close enough to talk at a near-normal volume.
“These people are starving,” he said. “And I’m not even sure they’d eat his sandwiches once they found out there was redstone in them. But that wasn’t what I was thinking about.”
“What were you thinking?”
“Mostly that, if the Alliance were here, all this was over, there’d be a group of people ready for a game of Dungeons and Enderdragons just at hand.”
“Who said there wasn’t?” said Jennifer, smirking.
Steve looked at her cock-eyed.
“You’re not saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I certainly am. I had a kit in my inventory before we got trapped here.”
“And you’re only mentioning this now?!” laughed Steve. “Jennifer, you lifesaver!”
Someone beckoned to Jennifer for help and she began walking over to him.
“It’s pretty much become my job. Wherever would you be without me?” she shouted back at Steve.
Steve’s mind raced with possibilities. It might take a night or two to get a group together, but by Notch it would be worth it!
That was when Kir spoke in his mind: “Commander Fire coming in thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…”
They were using Kir as a crude intercom between the various teams. Steve and Jennifer took their cue and began to gesture and hiss for silence. Pretty soon half the crowd were shushing their neighbours in solidarity with Steve and his girlfriend. He was grateful, he’d thought that would take ages.
With all that accomplished, they went back over the fence and looked at the stage just as Fire came out.
Fire began: “Welcome to the shelter, I am Commander Fire. Not all of you may have seen me at the Prophet’s hill but that is not really important now. What is important is that you made it here. Back when I first spoke to the congregation I promised a roof over your head and food in your stomach, both of which are available here.”
There was a pause, the quiet was quickly filled with cautious cheers from the crowd.
Fire continued: “However there are also other reasons for why I built this shelter. Namely to have a base of operations for what could very well be a civil war. I will not sugarcoat this, the Entity is most likely not going away on its own. Both from the Prophet’s predictions and independent investigation we have found that there is something big on the horizon and if nobody is there to stop it, we might be looking towards a dark future.”
Another pause, this time without cheers but with worried contemplation.
“I have gathered a group of skilled people to help me in what is ahead of us, they will train and instruct anyone willing and able to join us. If you are no fighter, there are still plenty of things you can do to help out. If you are unable to do either, the shelter will still welcome you, there is enough space for everyone. The important thing is that we realize we are stranded in this world together, and that is also how we will turn our fates around!”
The cheers returned with a vengeance. Steve couldn’t believe how ecstatic some of them were. Then, he remembered how dinged up the team had been upon their return. These people had been travelling for even longer, in much greater numbers. It must have been terrible.
Fire spoke up again: “If you want to enlist as a fighter, report to Rose at the left of the valley. If you want to help in any other capacity, report to Fristad on the right side of the valley. Anyone else, go down the middle to the entrance of the shelter, Lucy will show you where you can sleep, eat or get medical treatment.”
Steve barely had time to let the speech settle and savour it before he and Jennifer had to dash off to shepherd people during the door. It didn’t help that a hundred or so new arrivals had already sprinted off ahead of them.
###
Lucy watched the speech from the entrance of the shelter, she couldn’t hear much of it but she knew the content. Fire had asked a few people for opinions on the speech so she heard it before. Now that the speech was over people rapidly started coming towards the entrance. Lucy took a deep breath.
“Okay, you can do this.” She quietly said to herself.
As the first arrived near her she spoke loudly: “Everybody please wait up, once everyone is here we can go inside!”
The new arrivals were exhausted from the journey and hungry, more than a few were injured. They looked even worse than what Lucy had seen when she had been at the hill. These were not only people from the congregation, these were friends and family of them, who normally wouldn’t make the trip to the hill but still undertook the march to the shelter. A thought flashed in Lucy’s mind. Some might not have made the entire way. She pushed it away, now was not the time.
Steve and Jennifer had also made their way over to the entrance and were now in the process of calming the crowd, just a few more minutes until everyone would be here. Lucy took looks to the left and right to compare the size of the crowds over at Rose and Fristad. Rose had accumulated a respectable amount, a few hundred if Lucy were to guess. Fristad had fewer people, maybe half of what Rose had. The majority of people were still crowding to the shelter entrance, perhaps some of them would later join one of the two other groups once they were fed and healthy.
Once it looked like any stragglers had joined one of the three groups Lucy spoke again: “Hello! My name is Lucy and I will show you around the essential parts of the shelter.”
She turned around and pulled a lever that was embedded into the stone. The entrance to the shelter had once been a relatively small cave entrance, in the meantime it had been widened out and fitted with a large wooden door that was now in the process of swinging open, driven by whatever gears, shafts and pulleys Urist had crammed into the floor beneath the entrance.
Lucy proceeded through the entrance, giving Steve and Jennifer quick looks, they’d have to make sure that nobody stayed too far behind. A few hundred meters into the mountain was the first big chamber.
As Lucy explained her voice echoed from the walls. “This is the central hub, you can reach every section of the shelter from here, there are signs in as many written languages as we could find that indicate what tunnel leads to where.”
She pointed at one of them. “That one leads to the infirmary. If anyone is in urgent need of medical treatment, please go there now. Once you feel better, you can ask any instructor to show you around, you can identify them by their armbands.”
A good portion of the group split off, Steve guided them into the tunnel. Lucy continued. “Follow me please, next we’ll go to the canteen.”
Lucy went straight ahead through the cavern into a tunnel. This one was significantly shorter than the entrance tunnel. The canteen was another huge cavern which had a large number of tables and benches set up, on the left wall was a hollowed out section of the wall where the food would be served.
Lucy explained: “As said, this is the canteen. We try to offer meals at any time of the day but our main meal times are in the morning, at noon, in the evening and at midnight to accommodate for shift work. Now please follow me out again, we’ll reach our final destination at the barracks.”
The barracks were built into the largest of the natural caverns they had found, and even so it had been expanded by a good bit to make more room. The cavern was filled from bottom to top by a wooden frame, the different tiers were connected by ladders and stairs. Wooden walls had been built between some of the logs of the frame, forming rooms that offered sleeping space for eight people each.
Lucy said: “This is the barracks, you are free to pick your room but ideally fill up from the bottom upwards, it makes the maintenance crew’s job easier as well helping me keep count of how much space is left. Are there any questions?”
A man at the front of the group asked: “If we want to stop sitting around being a load, who do we ask?”
Lucy replied: “As said, anyone with an armband will do but if you have specific roles in mind, the support and logistics roles have green armbands, the combat roles have red ones, leadership is grey. There are signs in regular intervals that illustrate the finer details indicated by the symbols on the arm bands.”
With that Lucy made a gesture towards the interior of the barracks, the crowd slowly thinned as people went and got some well-deserved sleep. Once only a few people were left Lucy turned around and walked down the tunnel. Jennifer joined her a few steps in.
Lucy took a deep breath. “Phew, that went better than expected.”
“Don’t undersell it; you nailed it!” said Jennifer with a clap on Lucy’s shoulder.
Now that Lucy thought about it, she did nail it. Everyone got the info they needed and the sick and wounded were probably already receiving treatment. In general, the people who had arrived a few days after them were an interesting group, a lot of personality to be sure. None of them seemed bad to Lucy, a bit weird sure but not bad. As glad as Lucy was for Fire bringing her here and as good of a leader he was, his confidence in her was at times a little intimidating, sometimes it seemed like he knew her better than she knew herself. People like Jennifer were a good contrast, more grounded in a way. Jennifer in general was good to be around, her outlook on life went along well with Lucy’s own. She always seemed to be looking for a way to make the situation that little bit easier. There was always a well-timed compliment, discovery of some extra food or even a pleasant smile in her back pocket, waiting for the right moment to be produced.
Just before they arrived at the central hub, Jennifer stopped and asked: “Hey, Lucy. Are you up for a game of Dungeons and Enderdragons this evening? I even managed to get permission to use the command room for the duration!”
Lucy replied: “Not sure if your game has the same rules as a similar game in my world did but sure, I’d love to.”
Chapter9:Work and Plans (Fristad/Fire)
I swing the axe and ask myself how many times I’ve swung today, but I know I’ve lost count. I’m trying to keep score, so to speak, of the different parts of my job. Every day so far I haven’t managed to keep track of the trees though. I always get too tired, so my goal is to get fit enough that I can keep count unbothered. My muscles ache every evening and every morning, but I power through and I’m feeling stronger all the time. These trees are like grindstones. The more I strike them the sharper I get.
The main score I’ve been able to keep, so far, has been how many trees I’ve cut down. Yesterday was fifty. The day before that was fifty-five - my record. Today, I plan to beat it, of course. It’s only midday and I’ve cut down thirty. My shirt’s leaning on the small of my back, scratchy and sodden. I’m on a roll. I’m feeling myself, beaming away and chuckling.
The only thing getting in my way is the fact that I’m leading a group. Several of them. In a few hours I have to go and check on the foragers and hunters, but for now overseeing the deforestation is top priority. There’s about fifty sweaty workers cutting through the forested ridge around me. Brought together from across the worlds to work under some shepherd. There are worse fates. Morale is high and a few of them are singing and gradually the rest of us are picking up on the words. Something about creepers and wrecking.
“Timber!” I call. It crashes to the ground and two large-nosed, rectangular-headed villagers run in to separate it and collect the logs. Whenever they do so it breaks down into nicely-compacted cubes. Sadly, if they start from the bottom the tree falls over as you’d expect.
“Thirty-one,” I mutter.
I swing the axe down to use as a cane. I look around and I see Steve, out of armour for a change, wandering through the woods with a bowl of stew in either hand. He talks to a green-eyed enderman, who offers a finger pointed in my direction.
Then, he’s standing before me, and I have a bowl.
“Take an hour, lads.” I call over the singing. “If I eat, you eat. Get to the canteen.”
My tone is stoic and measured. I’m channeling my old friend Ironbrawn’s tone when he used to tell people a mob had jumped the wall and he needed everyone to band together for a few minutes before we could all get back to our business. Mildly annoyed but with a hint of satisfaction and guilty amusement. It’s a good impression.
As they file off Steve asks me, “Having fun?”
“Absolutely,” I smile with conspiracy, “It’s like shepherding a flock that never runs off, it’s great!”
He laughs.
“It’s always relaxing,” Steve says, “You know what’s not relaxing?”
He gestures over to the edge of the ridge and I understand. Fire wants this area cleared of trees to prevent the enemy from taking cover there. Kay wants to save on time and just set a few traps, maybe dig a tunnel out there for a counterattack. Guerilla-style. Fire won out as usual but he won’t stop trying to get some variation of it approved.
“Oh, the discussions?” I ask, “Those are pretty stressful.”
“I didn’t even intend that,” Steve snorts. “No, the not-relaxing thing is on the other side of the ridge Kay has chosen to die on.”
We walk up to a rock and I see what he’s talking about.
In the plains below are several divisions training. There’s about five hundred who have signed on for combat duty out of roughly two-and-a-half thousand potentials. Understandably, people are hesitant. That prophecy only carries so much sway with people who just got burned out of their homes. They’re mad, sure. Furious, even. But they’re not dumb.
I see Tyron flying around a group of soldiers, correcting their posture as they hold poleaxes for the first time. Destiny and Rose are instructing a paltry group of magic-users on how to combine their powers with hand-to-hand. Most of them are healers by trade, but they need and want to fight on the front lines.
What Steve directs my eyes to is the figure of Kay jogging backwards at the head of about forty people. Warnado’s floating along beside him cross-legged. Ever since the kid figured out how to do it he won’t stop showing off. It’s adorable. As for the column: they’re all in practice armour and carrying wooden weaponry. I strain my ears to hear what he’s yelling.
“Who are you?!”
“Fire’s First Infantry!” the chorus groans back.
“What is your purpose?!”
“Topple the Tower!” They strain a little louder.
He stops jogging and holds up a hand. The procession jolts into place. One guy near the middle trips and scuffles back up.
“You’re learning Jenkins!” Kay calls out jovially. “Fastest you’re back on your feet yet!”
Laughter starts but before it can get going Kay roars “AD-VANCE! FOR-MATION!”
Warnado drops to his feet and his hands start to glow. A bunch of coloured scribbles form on the ground and the column jogs forward.
“They’re names,” Steve said incredulously. “Colours are unit types. Skirmishers at the front, swords in the middle. Poleaxe at back.”
The column breaks and bustles its way into place, with much criss-crossing of paths and last-minute changes. They settle.
“As you might have noticed,” Kay calls out. “I made some changes to the register. Swap a few place-names around. This is not a mistake. You need to be able to adapt, and you rose to the occasion! Well done! Especially you Raphoe, excellent footwork. Couldn’t be prouder. You’re like a damned gazelle out there! And you, Fritz. Even you Jenkins...” And so on.
He starts a round of applause, then teleports ahead of the group and orders another kilometer’s run. Memory of the source of his power throws me off axis… But then it passes and I’m just grateful to be free of that damned book. It’s finally met its match in Kay. They’re perfect for each other.
“He’s been at that with them for the last three hours,” Steve shakes his head incredulously and sits back on the rock. “It’s insane.”
I join him on the rock and take a spoonful of the soup. It’s weirdly spicy. I feel my hair lift.
“Redstone again?” I say flatly.
He’s done this to me and others intermittently over the last few days. Some recipe of his brother’s.
“Yep,” Steve grins, “I’m going to keep doing it until it catches on.”
“Dream on,” I laugh, “I don’t hate it, but this is not catching on. You’re also getting such a static-slap when I’m done.”
“I knew the cost going in. I can take it,” he growls in mock steeliness.
We joke back and forth in between spoonfuls until Steve points out that Kay has stopped jogging. His column, while still keeping their pace, has changed course. At the same time, Tyron’s great lattice of battle-stances is crumbling. Destiny and Rose’s two-dozen becomes at best a baker’s dozen and dwindles further. They’re all running off toward one hill, at the top of which is…
“No way,” I breathe.
A man in rags crowns the hill, pulsing violently in response to his own volume. I can’t make out what he’s saying but even at this distance I can hear the muffled roaring of opaque predictions. The Prophet, for whom this congregation first gathered, has returned.
I hear a warping sound followed by footsteps. Steve and I turn around, not sure what to expect. I grab my axe and spin it back up.
I see a man in a turquoise shirt and jeans almost identical to Steve’s. A stone sword at his side, stubble about his chin, and a brown leather cloak about his shoulder, the stranger approaches. His face is impatient and he keeps squeezing his thumbs until they crack.
“Right,” he concludes before he’s even started. “Pleasure to meet you both. Lovely weather and all that. Need to talk to Fire, or whoever ended up in charge. Where is he?”
I almost don’t respond due to the sheer rudeness, but the confusion is what really stops me. My friend seems just as stuck and after a shared glance we’re no closer to an answer. He huffs. He contorts his mouth into a grin. He heaves up his eyebrows. Holds out a hand in greeting.
“I’m Steve, by the way, what are your names?”
“Hi Steve,” we respond in a slightly ridiculous unison.
###
Fire watched as Steve drew the route the patrol would take onto the map. The entire leadership was gathered around the table, even Warnado and Amanda being allowed in.
“The Entity’s been having trouble with some lapis smugglers called the Jackals,” Steve muttered, so intent on the information he barely seemed to realise he was in the room. “They’ve been getting too close to its territory and using its portals without permission. Small-time group but they’ve killed enough mercenaries for it to start sending out heavier patrols. In particular, I’ve received word that one particularly large patrol is going out tomorrow. A patrol with several officers and, importantly, a captain.”
“Which one?” called Destiny from the corner. She was stoking the fire. Anger and anticipation flared in her eyes as she stabbed forth with the poker.
“Uncertain,” said Steve. “But it’s an opportunity for you to capture someone who might know something about the Entity’s plan. I’ve been following him for years and all I know is that he likes to collect oddities, conquer the odd civilisation, and he really likes those crystals Steve 2 has on him.”
“How did you know about those? Also, if anyone’s Steve 2, it’s you. I was here first,” said the other Steve, scowling.
“I have my ways,” the prophet’s bodyguard smiled acidly. “And you weren’t.”
Fire studied the route closely. If they were going to attack they had to be prepared to deal with around fifty troops, most of which would be well trained and experienced. There would be at least a couple of mages and endermen so they had to account for that too.
Fire pointed at a valley in a dense forest the patrol route went through. “I think this is our spot. The valley slims down into almost a canyon there. There isn’t much room in the canyon, they’ll have to be in loose formation. We cut into some of the trees and chop them down fully once they’re below. The falling logs should take out a good amount of them. Additionally we trigger a controlled rockslide at the entrance of the canyon, cutting off their escape path. After the surprise attack they’ll scramble to the other side, which is where we set up our ambush proper: Archers and mages hit them from the sides to take out a couple more, by then they’ll have lost most organization. We’ll set up a ditch with wooden stakes if they try to flee forwards. If they flee backwards we have them cornered and wear them down from range. Does this sound good to everyone?”
“Trench sounds risky,” Kay cut in flatly, not looking at Fire and fixing his eyes square on the map. “Someone could come across the engineers and scuttle the whole operation. They might simply not retreat where we want them to. Introduces too many unneeded variables, and the troops are too new to do that quietly.”
Fire nodded. “True. I was mostly thinking about using fast builders with pre-sharpened sticks to set up the trenches but I suppose we don’t have the required military infrastructure and discipline for a smooth operation yet. I trust your judgement on the state of our troops.”
“To be perfectly honest,” Kay raised his jade-green eyes and met Fire’s, seizing the opening. “I don’t think we should be sending any of them out into the field for this one.”
“What?” Steve laughed bitterly. “So, I give you a Tower patrol, a possible insight into the Entity’s plan and a shot at an actual, tangible victory against the Entity and you’re chickening out? I could just take the Prophet and go, you know?”
“I don’t think that’s exactly what he said.” Interjected Shadow who had been watching from the sidelines so far.
“Thank you Shadow, you are correct,” Kay nodded. “I actually do have a suggestion. We, the leadership, go in on our own.”
There was a shocked silence. Fristad went white. Warnado’s mouth dropped open and his glowing red eyes widened. Kay capitalised on it.
“We keep the plan mostly as is. The rockslide is good. Falling logs are good. The Book and I have even cooked up a way to get the archers involved without putting them art risk. I summon two openings - one in the enemy lines, the other in front of our archers miles away - the archers fire through and our enemy is substantially weakened. Could even use a portal to separate an officer from the rest of the pack. I’d have to get closer, though, for something that precise.
“The enemy would be totally disoriented. The big issue would be the Endlings and any mages they may have with them, but the grunts would be in chaos. I’d like to see how dangerous a giant is with a boulder on his knee and arrows pin-cushioning his chest.
“Additionally, we’d be showing our forces that their safety is paramount to us. That we’re going to fight this war as smart as we are going to fight it hard. Any casualties would be immediate martyrs. A propaganda victory no matter what. Any questions?”
Tyron tilted his head, his ears pricking up at Kir’s invisible voice.
“What’s the general composition of a patrol this size?” he asked, turning to Steve.
“Normally,” Steve began with reluctant modesty. “You could expect about fifty humans. However, ever since someone started a prison break on her watch and then tazed her, the Ender’s kind of freaking out. She really needs a victory to stop the Entity dissolving her organs, so she’s donating a lot of troops to efforts like this. I’d estimate about forty humans, ten of the Ender’s finest, two officers, some mages and a captain. Maybe a giant or two mixed in with the humans.”
“Those are not good odds,” Tyron muttered.
“You kidding?!” Warnado shouted. “Last time we faced more than five of the Ender’s dunk squad David-”
Amanda promptly elbowed him in the ribs, for which everyone was grateful. Fristad looked like he was going to throw up. Jennifer put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed back and forth. Silence drifted like fog through the room until Destiny spoke up.
“Do it,” she said with determination. “I want a rematch against those guys and like Kay said, something something propaganda victory.”
Astro cleared his throat before wearily intervening: “What she means to say is that we’ve learned a lot since then, and will be better able to fight them. Something something, propaganda victory.”
“The mages can be dealt with using our secret weapon, magic neutralizing splash potions. Ideally they’d die in the alpha strike but we can’t rely on that. If everyone carries one or two of those potions we should be able to suppress most of the threat coming from the mages. The endermen do still remain a problem.”
“I could focus the scattershot arrow-portal attack on them,” Kay offered. “Likely wouldn’t kill as many as if it were targeting the humans, but it’s a higher priority target. I can testify that they don’t react as quickly if they can’t see where the shot is coming from, and we’d at the very least injure a few. We’d also have the commander with us this time, and he is quite the beast in combat as I recall.”
He showed his palms in magnanimous deference to Fire. He got the impression from Kay’s little smirk that this was meant to be a slight, but it was a valid point.
Fire said: “Overall we have three general choices. One is not doing anything, which keeps us precisely where we are, looking for an edge. One is sending the troops, which we agree will most likely get them killed, if they do succeed they will do so with heavy losses and most likely they won’t get much out of it. If we go there ourselves we directly put our lives on the line but we also stand to gain a lot. I can imagine that we could take a captive if we play our cards right. We are the rebels here, which means we lose by default unless we do something. As usual, anyone not in agreement is free to stay at the shelter.”
“I’m in,” concluded Destiny without hesitation.
“Me too,” said Fristad, regaining some colour. “I’m not much of a fighter but I’ll damn well be there.”
Astro didn’t look up from the map, but he nodded with pursed lips and gave a stiff thumbs-up.
With a sigh, Tyron drew Kir from its sheath and raised it above his head, before chuckling out: “For the revolution!”
This sped up the process drastically, with the Brines, Warnado, Amanda and Shadow all drawing weapons and joining in the toast. Even Lucy called out “for the revolution in solidarity”. Soon the entire room bar the Prophet’s bodyguard was raising a weapon and chanting in the name of glorious revolution.
Steve stroked his stubble.
“You might just be what we’ve been looking for after all.” And then he was gone. It took exactly ten seconds for Kay to start ranting about what a **** he was. Fire didn’t disagree.
Chapter10:Omens (Shadow)
“Warnado.” Shadow said to her apprentice. “Today I will tell you about what people call precognition.”
Warnado replied: “You don’t seem to like that word.”
They were walking through the tunnels, going steadily towards the living quarters of the leadership. The Prophet had temporarily taken up residence in an unoccupied room, where he usually spent his time sleeping or staring off into the distance when he wasn’t preaching.
Shadow said: “You’d be correct. Where I am from predicting the future in great detail is futile, we’re lucky if the weather report is correct for the next five days. Both scientific and magical ‘precognition’ usually works by observing a system in detail and trying to predict a future state.”
“Like the weather?” Warnado asked.
“Like the weather.” Shadow confirmed. “I personally don’t think there is a thing such as fate, as in the big invisible hands holding the puppet strings with everyone being doomed to play their role. What there are, however, are… constraints or contracts of a sort. Spells but on a much greater level. How exactly they work is not well understood.”
Warnado tilted his head and appeared to shrink several inches. “Like contracts with demons?”
“Not exactly. Think of how your own magic works. You want currency and coins appear. You don’t think about the shape of the coin or its molecular structure. Think like that but bigger. If certain thoughts are made in the right circumstances, they create a magical spell that will try to influence the world to make the thought a reality. Imagine if someone, by chance, sat on a big node of magical energy and wasn’t happy with their current king. If they have affinity for magic that might just create a spell that tries its damndest to make sure the king dies, which may involve making that random baker’s son into a tyrant-slaying hero. Whether he wants to or not.”
Warnado looked at Shadow, his eyes lit up. “So, if it’s like my magic, where does the strawberry jam come in?”
Shadow laughed. “I suppose that’s anything the originator of the spell didn’t specify. They wanted the king dead but said nothing about the hero or what the hero does while on the way to the king. Perhaps the spell also causes the king to reform but still sends the hero, with all the problems that brings.”
They turned a corner. They were almost at the door to the Prophet’s lodgings.
Warnado asked: “So, how’s all this related to precognition?”
Shadow said: “If one were to look in the correct place with the correct tools, they could spot these magical contracts and with a bit more luck actually decipher them. If they are read correctly, you have a prophecy on your hands.” Shadow paused. “However, usually people either go mad precisely from reading the contracts or their ability to read the contracts comes from existing madness. Mad oracle is a stereotype for a reason.”
“So, have you ever read one?” Warnado asked.
Shadow shook her head. “No. If I’m being honest most of this is the result of millennia of collective magical research. We have pretty much proven the existence of those contracts, but we can’t actually create or read them due to some safeguards our world has.”
That was the reason they were going to see the Prophet. Shadow wanted to see where his visions came from. Warnado’s own magical senses had developed quite nicely so he would probably be able to share in her discovery. Nexus was so packed with energy that it was very possible that even people without magical affinity could create a contract, the Prophet was probably seeing all of them at once.
Shadow put a hand on the doorknob of the Prophet’s room. “However, the most important difference between these contracts and actual ‘fate’ is that nothing is absolute, anything can be avoided, changed or bent with enough strength or trickery.”
She opened the door. The room was bare-bones like the rest of the leadership lodgings: a bed, a drawer, a table and two chairs. However, it had the distinct advantage of offering privacy, something that was hard to come by in the barracks.
The tall and haggard form of the Prophet was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring off into the wall in front of him with his glowing white eyes. When Shadow entered the room, he simply continued his staring, however once Warnado was through the door the Prophet’s head jerked around and was fixed on the quarter-demon.
With his shrill voice the Prophet spoke: “A shard becomes a whole, a whole shatters and is a shard again, lonely in the collapse.”
Warnado looked at Shadow, slightly intimidated. “What does he mean?”
There had been little talk of shards in the Prophet’s past sermons, so this probably was one of his more literal prophecies. The collapse was a known concept, it occasionally showed up but never with anything that would tie it to the rest of the prophecies. Shadow shrugged.
“Now, what we came here for.” She said. “Open your sense for magic and look out for any connections he might have with any outside magic. If you’re lucky you might even spot a thread to a contract.”
Warnado took a deep breath. Shadow could feel how he mobilized his magic to follow his will. He was making good progress. It took measurably shorter for him to get ready compared to previous times. Suddenly he stopped.
“There’s nothing.” He said.
Shadow was skeptical but when she focused her own sense of magic there really was nothing she could find about the Prophet that would suggest a connection to the magical background field.
“Weird.” Shadow muttered.
She walked closer to the Prophet and checked again, nothing. All the while the Prophet’s eyes had been fixed on Warnado, even when Shadow had crossed his line of sight.
He spoke another sentence: “The love is distanced but finds a different kind.”
That one made even less sense than the last one, either these were new bits of the big prophecy or they were directed at Warnado himself. Shadow contemplated telling her apprentice about this realization but decided against it, he had enough to think about without cryptic prophecies that might not even come true.
Shadow lowered her head and brought her face directly in front of the Prophet’s. So far, he had completely ignored her, she wanted to try something to get his attention. “Hey, would you mind not staring at my apprentice?”
Suddenly the Prophet’s focus shifted. He narrowed his eyes, opened them again just to narrow them another time. He froze up.
“Another.” He whispered, his voice becoming abnormally clear. “Only one. Not two. Only one.”
The Prophet’s voice suddenly became loud and shrill again: “The leader! The death of the leader! The protector unravels and unravels and unravels and unravels and all unravels and unravels and unravels!”
After that, his voice became too frantic and incoherent to make out what he was saying.
Shadow looked at Warnado, he looked more than a bit disturbed: “I think it’s best if we left.”
After they closed the door behind them, they walked until they couldn’t hear the screaming anymore.
Warnado asked: “Any clue what he meant with that last one?”
Shadow shook her head. “Nope.”
Shadow honestly wished that were true.
Chapter11:Whole New World (Destiny)
Midday had settled in nicely. The sun sat right in the middle of the sky like a lightbulb dangled from the heavens. Okay, maybe not perfectly at the centre. Destiny struggled to look at it directly, her eyelids drooping instinctively to protect the eyes beneath when she tried. However, it was boiling the top of her scalp, so it might as well have been directly above. Destiny wiped the sweat from her brow and readjusted her satchel just as she entered the old Sovereign camp. She heard the clink of glass as she hitched the strap back up.
She had a mind to give the old corpses a burial one day, but for now she found them darkly nostalgic. It occurred to her that this feeling probably didn’t fall under the categories of “normal” or “healthy” and filed it in the “for discussion” folder.
Anya phased into view as Destiny approached the hill the portal crowned. Her blond mop of hair, grey hoodie and blue jeans were unchanged and did not move in the cool breeze. Destiny tightened her ponytail and marched up, dumping the satchel at the foot of the portal. She sat down, beaming.
“Well, don’t you look cheery,” commented her past self. “What’s happened.”
“A lot,” said Destiny. “I’m running some combat classes with the magic-users and they’re going well. Tryon and Rose handle most of the talking, I just have to hit, burn, freeze and impale stuff.”
“Nice,” said Anya with a downward curl of the mouth.
“I’m also actually spending time around the shelter like a normal human being, instead of huntress-ing it up all the time. I actually read a book for once.”
“Start to finish?” Anya cocked an eyebrow.
“Skipped the middle but I read the ending.”
“Nice,” she said with a further downward thrust.
“And, of course, that weird Steve guy I told you about - the other one - showed up. Y’know, the one who appeared outside my window that one time in the Tower. Yeah, I’ve told you about that. He’s shown up for the first time in ages with that fortuneteller guy. Now, he’s given us some info and... I’m getting a chance to get back at those douchebags from the Tower tomorrow.”
“Nice.”
Anya’s eyes lit up with ghostly bloodlust.
“I also,” Destiny paused and reached into the satchel, “Managed to convince Lucy to let me swipe these.”
She pulled out a unlabeled glass bottle full of light-brown liquid. There were ten or so others in the bag.
“Nice few beers. Our favourite.”
“Wow,” said Anya with the eyes of a proud parent. “It’s all coming up Destiny these last few days. Aren’t you luckier than a leprechaun?”
Destiny floated a hand just above Anya’s shoulder, pretending to hold it and being careful not to let it pass through.
“Luckier still, Anya dearest. I’m going to get a little drunk up here for the next few hours, then wander home with enough time for a good night’s sleep.”
“This is officially the only time I will call day-drinking the responsible option.”
The two giggled and then settled down. Destiny stretched her back out over the portal frame until it clicked.
“So,” she said. “I was just walking up the hill and was thinking about maybe burying some of those Sovereign corpses, but then I felt kind of nostalgic-”
“Okay, before we get into the therapy session and my unqualified ass tries to fix your brain, I actually have some things on my agenda. You mind?”
“Sure thing,” she conceded with two thumbs up. “Shoot away, Anya.”
“First of all, be careful out there tomorrow. Mess them up good, but don’t overextend yourself and make sure you survive. Unless the Ender is there. Kill that ***** something fierce. Or Glibby, I guess. Either’s good.”
“Gotcha. Save my energy for the big one.”
“Second, look me in the eyes,” said Anya with gravity, leaning in close. Her face was the embodiment of intensity, until it suddenly loosened, and she drew back into vague confusion. “The other week, when that green furball fell from the sky, did you talk to his sword? Is-is that who Kir is?”
This slew Destiny. Howls of laughter tore off across the land.
“Hey, it’s been bugging me ever since!” Anya huffed. “You only ever tell me about you, I’m trying to fill in the blanks.”
“I’m sorry!” Destiny cackled. “I’m sorry, the talking sword’s just the least weird part of my current experience. There are so many weirder elements.”
“I doubt it,” Anya challenged with a cock of the eyebrow.
“Well, one of our party members is a thirteen-year-old demon-wizard who won’t stop summoning fast food.”
“Not weirder than a talking sword.”
“Okay, my current boss is a big, millennia-old reptile-man, whose sister is some sort of terrifying magical anomaly. We had an election and I had to choose between that and a guy who works for, wait for it, Herobrine.”
“Oh my Notch!” Anya groaned.
“Not the one you beat, apparently Herobrine’s pretty cool on other worlds. I voted for his employee, Kay. He tries too hard, has no regard for his own safety and he draws power from a sentient book but apparently, he really tore things up back at the village. Would’ve done a good job but it’s not a big deal.”
Anya paused, laughed and then concluded: “I cannot believe you.”
“I can’t either,” laughed Destiny. “It’s a whole new world out there.”
She swigged her beer and raised a toast, “To the revolution!”
“To the revolution!” Anya agreed.
The sun blazed on, searing and angry.
Chapter12:Combat Roles (Tyron)
Tyron blew a glacial breath over the fire, dimming it just enough. He’d have to do the same thing again in about ten minutes, but if he turned it off altogether everyone else would complain about being cold. Being covered in fur really had its drawbacks sometimes. He was made for the End, which isn’t exactly the hottest place.
They were in the command room, discussing strategy. Fire was talking: “Once we survey the site, we’ll come up with the final skirmish groups, but we can think of some rough roles already. There is going to be one group that’s doing the heavy fighting, taking out as many as they can. Another group should focus on flanking and catching out any enemies who try to flee. Maybe a dedicated ranged support group too, that’s where your archers come in Kay.” Fire paused to think. ”We also need a small group to trigger the rockslide behind the patrol. They won’t see much combat but if need be, they’ll be somewhat of a secondary flanker group. Each group should have the resources to make a capture if possible.”
Tyron said: “I’m part of the heavy group then?”
Fire nodded. “So far the heavy group contains me, you, Shadow, the Brines and Rose.”
“Rose?” Kay asked. “Is she really heavy material? I thought of her more as a flanker or skirmisher.”
Fire extended his claws demonstratively. “You haven’t seen her in a real fight yet, but I have. She’s more than qualified.”
Astro interjected: “What about the children? Warnado won’t be dissuaded, and Amanda goes where he goes. All we can do is minimize the danger we put them in.”
Kay stroked his chin. “Rockslide perhaps. We’d need someone else there though. Let’s get to that once we have the other groups.”
Fire took the lead again: “As for the flankers, Voidblade is a must. He can run interference on their end troops. Destiny would fit as well. The flankers will have the highest chance of capturing someone and Destiny is hellbent on getting back at the Tower. Urist is also surprisingly quick and if he can get some good kneecaps that drastically increases our chances at a capture.”
The tall, scaled man then let his gaze sweep through the room. “Kay, Astro, any preferences?”
Astro, who had been notably quiet up until this point, said: “Ranged support probably, if we’re bringing archers, they need some form of protection from magical threats.”
Kay nodded. “I’ll probably start out with the archers to do the portal trick, but I’ll probably join the flankers.”
“That works, more teleportation for them to deal with.” Fire said. “That leaves Fristad.”
“Safe to use him?” asked Kir. “Still the dreamweaver.”
“Obviously,” responded Tryon. “He’s a changed man. Big concern is where to put him. He’s not exactly the world’s greatest fighter. Maybe the rockslide group?”
“Sure, put with girl he tormented. Great idea!”
“You’re being a real douche today, so I’m going to suggest it anyway.”
“You’re douche!”
With a little hint of irritation, Tyron walked back to the table and spoke aloud: “Maybe have him go with Warnado and Amanda in the rockslide group. That way they’re not on their own. He isn’t trained in combat so less direct confrontation is better.”
Fire thought for a moment, then agreed. “Yes, good thinking. We’ll think over the groups once we’re done with the survey but those sound good for now.”
“It does indeed,” said Kay. “One thing though, we could actually get the rockslide to double for capturing the officer. I open a portal, they fall through and then it’s three on one. Naturally if it’s anyone crazy powerful we won’t do that, but if it’s someone like the Dog it’ll be fine. He’s just a dog with thumbs… I wonder how that guy is? We haven’t seen him in a while.”
Tyron remembered Kay mentioning that he and the Dog actually got on really well. There was a look of longing about him, but also of hope that his canine acquaintance might be redeemed.
Astro, in a rare, unprompted statement, cut in.
“You sure about that?” he asked. “The Tower doesn’t exactly strike me as a place where the weak tend to thrive. They’re only kids.”
“And a shepherd,” Kay rebutted serenely, a little smile playing on his lips. “I am confident in Warnado’s combat abilities, Amanda’s too. Fristad’s the only one I’m concerned about and I’d still not like to get in his way when he’s swinging an axe about. They can handle it.”
Astro returned to his brooding nods.
“Aye,” said Kay. “But the question is still where we set up the rockslide.” He looked up at Fire expectantly. “Want to scout it out together?”
“We should do that, yes. It’s a two hour walk so we should be back before evening, doubles as scouting the access route too. Maybe while we’re there also mark some trees that would be useful for the ambush.”
“Two-hour walk is nothing,” Kay chuckled, opening a rift in demonstration. “Should only need the two of us. You two have the rest of the evening off. Don’t go too wild without us.”
He winked and beckoned for Fire to step through the warp, enlarging it to accommodate his height.
And so, it was just Tyron and Astro. Naturally, there was only one question left to ask. The Dragoknight took a deep breath.
“What happens to Kay?” Kir chirped nervously in both of their minds.
Astro responded with a hollow glare directed at the map. The crack of fingers pressed together filled the room and then faded.
“Tyron, Kir,” Astro rounded on him, adopting the tone of an enforcer. “You’ve been good friends to me since I got here. You’re dependable, selfless, heroic, all those good things. This, however, is a personal matter involving me and, when his turn comes to deal with it, Kay. It’s an issue that causes me a lot of pain, and I’ve already had to explain it to one person and I’m not happy about it. As such, friend, I ask you to believe me when I tell you this: the danger is averted, Kay is not a threat. If he becomes one, I will tell you. Understood?”
He let it settle. Tyron’s mouth was agape, but he nodded. The tension went out of Astro, and he seemed to shrink, like a paper bag someone let the air out of. His eyes were dead.
“Now, I hope that’s settled. I’m going to take a walk, but you get some rest. Tomorrow’s a big one.”
With an almost-friendly squeeze of Tyron’s shoulder, he left. Tyron, thoroughly not reassured, went off to the training room, battered a dummy for a while, then went to the leadership dorms. He didn’t sleep. He just waited with his eyes shut. He heard them all as they came back in. Astro, Fire, Kay, then a big surge as the Dungeons and Enderdragons crew returned. Then, finally, Fristad and Destiny, giggling and joking in loud whispers. That too stopped. Even after that, Tyron didn’t sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking.
The shadow of all those horrible things Freak had told him of hung over him. He still didn’t know if they were true. If all those deaths had meant anything, or whether it had all just been set back to normal. Back to Herobrine’s world.
“Who lives and who dies tomorrow?” He asked. “Will it matter?”
“It must,” Kir reassured. “It will.”
Chapter13:Dungeons and Enderdragons (Lucy)
It was just before nightfall when they gathered in the command room. Lucy had spent the previous hours looking through the inventory list to find things that could be used as snacks. It had been a few years, but she remembered from when she had played her version of the game with her family: snacks were a requirement. In the end the snacks mostly consisted of a variety of small fruits and nuts the gatherers had collected over the last days. However Lucy had also found some actual sweets, which turned out to have been part of what Fire and Shadow had brought to Nexus from their world.
Everyone who wanted to participate had arrived approximately on-time. Steve, as the owner of the rulebooks, took it upon himself to game master the session, he was currently speaking to Shadow who was very insistently asking if he was sure he wouldn’t need any projected ancient dragon miniatures. Warnado and Amanda were also here, currently chatting with Urist. Fristad played wallflower to the conversation, only contributing an occasional snoot of laughter. Jennifer had decided to take parts of the preparation into her own hands and was in the process of turning several pieces of paper into blank character sheets.
After the initial setup was complete, Steve gave everyone a rundown of the basic rules and the setting he was going to use. From what Lucy could tell, the game was mostly identical to what she was familiar with, though probably some of the mechanical details were different - couldn’t expect all numbers to be the same across universes. It also seemed that Shadow had come to similar conclusions, apparently having played the version of her world.
Steve announced: “Since we have the same amount of experienced and new players, each of us will help one of you with your character creation.”
Steve helped Urist, Jennifer helped Warnado, Shadow helped Amanda and Lucy would help Fristad.
After explaining the basics of what a character sheet was to Fristad they needed to talk about what he was going to play.
Lucy asked: “So, it’s best if you just think of a character without thinking about the game too much. Once you have it I’ll try to help you make it fit into the system.”
Fristad chewed his upper lip thoughtfully and leaned back. Then, he leaned forward again, a smile laughing its way into existence on his face.
“So, what’s the difference between enderborn and enderman?”
Lucy said: “Enderborn is sort of an umbrella term for anything that’s either an enderman or descended from one, but it’s mostly used for the hybrids. They don’t enjoy the best status due to some people finding them weird or even abhorrent but it’s not on a witch-hunt level.”
“Oh, so it’s like home. I have a friend like that: Jonas. Lovely guy,” said Fristad.
Lucy smiled. “Actually, the character I’ll be using is enderborn as well, I used her on the occasional games my family would run on our travels. Lots of memories connected to her.”
“Cool,” nodded Fristad. “I’m drawing on personal experience too. I’m pretty sure I’ll play an enderman, for old times’ sake.”
He promptly started giggling a little stupidly, then stopped himself and raised his hands.
“Just in case you didn’t hear, the Book turned me into an enderman one time. It was a whole thing. That’s the - hah- that’s the joke.”
Lucy had only heard about Fristad’s time when he still had the Book, so it took her a few seconds to realize what he meant, she nodded. “It’s a common thing to play out aspects of yourself.”
After writing down “enderman” in the corresponding field Lucy asked: “So, I suppose we’ll roll your stats next and from there you can decide your class.”
A few dice rolls later Fristad’s character had his stats, none of the rolls were too far outside of the ordinary. After giving Fristad a quick overview of his class options Lucy gave him a bit more time to think. He sat for about ten seconds, hunched over the sheet. He kept tapping his neck with the pen.
“Druid looks good. Nice support role and I’m really starting to love the forest, so it should suit me perfectly.”
He scribbled it in, went through the remaining details and handed the pencil over to Lucy.
“Thanks Lucy, nature be your healer,” he said with a chuckle.
“Great, just a few more things to finalize your character, among those being a backstory.”
###
After a bit, more time everyone was done with their characters. They sat down together at the map table.
Steve began: “Alright, since this is the first time playing for four of you, we’ll begin with the least complicated start: You all meet in a tavern. Introduce yourselves, in-character if possible.”
Lucy decided to start: “Hello, my name is Ella. I’m a travelling scholar seeking to expand my horizons. Nice to meet you!”
Shadow had supplied everyone with miniatures of their characters, Lucy placed hers at the table of the tavern.
Jennifer introduced herself in a husky voice, “Simeon Longshanks, paladin of the Order of the Stone. I’m young, looking to prove myself. So, I shall go out and heal those who have need of it and make war on those who would do them harm!”
Warnado was next, greatly exaggerating any hissing noises in his words. “Hhhhhello. I am Sssssspider Bard.”
Lucy first thought there was going to be more after that but no, Warnado had already placed his miniature on the table, which turned out to be a spider with maracas bound to its legs. This elicited laughs from the group and a sigh from Steve. He wore an expression that said, "Great, now I have to come up with plot hooks for a sentient spider… bard… thing."
Amanda followed suit with a wry smile. “Greetings, I am Wertma Wutko, disciple of the Way of the Falling Tree. My masters sent me into the world to prove my skill.”
Judging by her miniature, Amanda was playing a villager monk, she was evidently not terribly keen on combat effectiveness.
Urist was next, entering the fray with the most terrifying accent Lucy was pretty certain any of them had heard in some time:
“Allo, I em Ooriste ze elf. Deprived of my honeur yearz in ze past, I shearch a way to restore eet.”
Fristad allowed this to settle, scrunching his eyebrows in bemusement before placing down his enderman.
“I am Kaine,” he began with a clapping together of his hand. “I’m an enderman druid. I am chaotic good. Just here to have fun and help folks out. Don’t… Don’t look at the face, though.”
Shadow went last. “The name is Laurence, master of cards and magic. Would you like to see a trick?”
She flung her miniature with a flick of her hand, having it land precisely between Lucy’s own and Jennifer’s.
“Alright.” Said Steve. “Now that everyone has arrived, let us begin!”
###
After the introductions were over, Steve gave them their first encounter by having the tavern keeper ask them to rid him of his huge rat problem. What surprised the new players but was quite obvious to the seasoned ones was that it was actually a Huge Rat problem. Their first combat went down without much hassle, they had enough healing in the group that the few hits they took had no lasting consequences.
Once they had collected their reward they set off into the woods towards the nearest town. After a few days of travel, they came across a damaged wagon. Lucy immediately wanted to help but was cautious, Fristad had no such worries. It turned out that Lucy had been right since the wagon was bait for a bandit ambush. In this first real fight, it quickly became clear who would be keeping the party alive. Jennifer’s paladin proved incredibly useful in drawing attention from the more ill-suited party members. Despite his terrible accent, Urist was still an elf with a bow, which was not to be underestimated.
The fight ended with both Lucy and Amanda’s characters getting quite beat up by the end of it and Shadow’s character was near death. They abandoned their plans of going to the city and instead looked for shelter nearby, finding a cave to rest in.
The cave had turned out to be a lot bigger than they had expected, on Warnado’s suggestion they went to explore it after spending a day healing their wounded. Within the cave they soon found brick walls and a sealed door. What would otherwise have been a challenging puzzle was immediately nullified by Fristad teleporting to the other side and opening the door from there, Steve grumbled but accepted his oversight.
The stone structure inside the mountain was a maze-like dungeon. They slowly advanced, taking breaks when someone was struck by bolts shot from the walls triggered by pressure plates. Not having a rogue in this situation was starting to become increasingly dangerous when the traps turned from darts to boulders.
Eventually they reached an open hall, this was where the combat part of the dungeon would take place. That was when Lucy realized what kind of character Shadow was playing, she had gone all-out on relying on random effects. One combat she’d destroy skeleton after skeleton with lucky dice rolls and chaining spells, in others she almost blew up the party with a randomly targeted fireball.
At the end of the hall, they found the owner of the dungeon, a necromancer. Before he could launch into a monologue, Warnado had interrupted him with an attempt to challenge him to a solo battle, as in musical solo, not one-on-one combat. To everyone’s surprise his roll went through and the necromancer accepted. Unfortunately, however, it turned out that the necromancer’s second talent was playing the lute, Warnado consequently got himself thrashed by him and his skeletal backup dancers. Having emerged victorious, the necromancer made his exit before anyone could do much about it. Warnado swore bloody revenge, which sounded quite funny in his spider voice.
At that point Steve said: “Alright everyone. I think this wraps up our first session, it’s getting quite late, and I think this is a good stopping point.” He winked at Warnado. “If we continue this… If we continue this, I’m sure you’ll have plenty of motivation to keep this flowing.”
They spent half an hour cleaning up, then everyone went to their respective bedroom. The others would have a battle to fight tomorrow, Lucy wouldn’t be going with them, but she was still quite nervous, combat was always a risk. She was the last to leave, wondering who would come back as they filtered out of her sight.
Chapter14:Site of Confrontation (Fire)
Fire’s estimate of two hours had proven to be fairly accurate. While in theory they could have traversed the distance much more quickly, they had stopped along the way multiple times to check for possible sightlines to the patrol’s route. This was both to prevent them from being seen early and to be able to get an accurate idea of when the patrol would arrive by posting scouts in key locations.
The valley was densely forested and as the map had shown, gradually slimmed down into a canyon that nonetheless had a few trees growing in it. The air was nice and fresh, a good contrast to the shelter, despite Shadow’s air purification spell it could get quite stuffy at times.
Fire pointed ahead. “Enough to make marching in formation difficult.”
“Indeed, we’ll let them march in far enough and then funneling them should be easy. You heavies and the ranged can hit them from the sides. We in flanking will prevent anyone who tries to run from doing so.”
Further up the walls Fire could spot a few loose rocks but not enough to meaningfully collapse and block the way back. They’d have to get creative.
“What do you think? Explosives or just loosening up dirt further up? Explosives are quick and loud, but we don’t know if they’ll work. We have enough fast diggers that the dirt method seems preferable.”
“I think you’re right. Explosives are harder to conceal and less predictable. Maybe get Jennifer or Steve to dig around within the peaks until they collapse?”
Fire looked ahead into the canyon at the trees growing there. They were perfect for their purposes, not tall enough to span the entire width, but still old and heavy enough to crush someone.
He said: “Also thinking about having the trees all be in one area. If we have good timing, we can take out a whole lot of them. Spreading out the trees wouldn’t work anyways, not enough people.” Fire pointed at a range of trees. “Maybe from here to here. Maybe a bit further in.”
“Yeah, have a few trees on either side of the divide cut. Create a tightly packed zig-zag shape. The more inconvenient the better.”
The clouds passed and the sun was now glaring at them with its full force. Kay held up a hand.
“Want to change spots?” he grumbled, teeth gritted as he moved to pull down his goggles and found nothing there.
“The sun is quite intense here, yes.”
They moved under the treeline and Kay pulled out two sticks of chalk.
“Choose, say, three trees over here, three on the other side?” he asked, eyes still squinted as though there was a sun right in front of him. He mouthed something and bobbed his head dismissively along to words Fire couldn’t hear. He seemed to be talking to the Book.
Fire nodded. “Before it’s time we can hide in the shrubs around here, if we put wedges into the pre-cut trees all it takes is a strike from an axe to have them fall over.”
Kay agreed and they spread out to mark the trees. As Fire scraped chalk across the bark and set about establishing the wedge at the base, he heard Kay muttering more audibly. However, the discussion went, it ended with Kay catching his chalk on the bark and snapping it. He parted his lips to show a gritted lattice of teeth before he sighed “okay, you’re right.”
“Fire, do you have a second?” he asked in his most formal accent.
Everyone in the shelter was starting to get an idea of Kay’s selection. He wore accents like outfits. This one was generally reserved for issuing orders. Upper-crust, with every syllable clearly separated.
Fire turned and nodded.
“So, funny thing,” he laughed. “The Book’s gotten it into its pages that I’ve been a little hostile recently. Perhaps, unfairly so…” he shuffled his feet and then continued in his natural brogue, “I agree. When you went out to set up the shelter, I said some things that were uncalled for. And then, instead of trying to resolve it I just doubled down. I wasn’t mad at you, not at the heart of it, you were just there. I’m sorry.”
That came out of nowhere.
“I mean, I’m still annoyed about the thing about you noticing the Ender and not mentioning, but I was going through something else, and I let that push me well beyond fair criticism. I was busy pitying myself, so I appointed myself the authority on who was allowed to be sad or not. Truth is, I don’t know what you’ve been through, and I shouldn’t have used your servant, sorry, server thing as an excuse to invalidate your experiences. It was shitty.”
Fire said: “Thank you for coming forward with this. I tried to not engage in open conflict because it would have troubled the group but that also meant I couldn’t really resolve the situation. I may or may not have thought some choice things about you in those situations but overall you were vastly more cooperative than antagonistic.” He paused. “I’m not entirely blameless either. Back in that first little village where we talked about our past battles… how do I say this? Having lived as long as I have, it’s sometimes easy to forget that I was young at some point. I believe back there we had fundamentally different perceptions, not just because of the difference in age but also because of coming from different worlds.”
“Hah, it is easy to forget that sometimes,” Kay said. “Different values, different eras, different societies. I understand where you’re coming from about the youth thing though. Forgetting you were ever young.”
He sat down against a tree and folded his arms over his knees.
“I’m twenty-five. I’m still young, but I have felt old for at least a decade. Do you know what I spent most of my teen-years doing, Fire? I was a cut-rate mercenary. A thug. I beat people, I robbed them. Sometimes I collected dodgy debts for Cossack and that was about as honest as I got.
“I started age fifteen. One time, when robbing a house, some servant popped his head in the door. He was no older than me. He looked like he was about to scream, and I didn’t even hesitate. I hit him with a brick, Fire. I don’t know if he got up again,” he rubbed his hands over his face and sighed before looking up at Fire with pleading eyes.
“The Onslaught wasn’t pretty, but it was a just war and it brought out some justice in me, too. It’s the best I ever was as a person,” he shook his head, “Now, here I am, age twenty-five, wondering if I’ll live long enough to be that good again. I’m an old man already. I can only imagine how it feels with that amount of life lived.”
Fire sat down against the tree opposite to Kay. “You know, when I said it was difficult to remember when I was young, I definitely didn’t mean that I don’t remember my younger years, quite difficult to forget those, just the feeling of having ever been young. But actually, I had most of my misery compressed down into a few years, hours even at the worst point.
“You see, I spent the first section of my life mostly content. I was raised by my uncle because my parents were nowhere to be found and my uncle refused to say anything. In my world most people go through formal education until they are eighteen, I was no different. It really started kicking off in the last four, my class was cutthroat and competitive, but we were the best our school had ever seen. To celebrate the bright futures, we had ahead of us we all went on a week-long trip.”
Fire sighed. “That’s where the descent begins. On the return trip I was the first to leave our common vehicle, but not before confessing my love to one of the girls in my class. She didn’t know how to respond and there was no time, I accounted for that by slipping her a note. However, in the next fifteen minutes I went from uncertainly thinking of what her true feelings might be to watching her and everyone else I cared about from the school barrel off a bridge and down a hill. Nobody survived the crash. I could have been in there too had the circumstances been slightly different.”
Kay had his mouth slightly ajar, and his eyes lowered to Fire’s knees.
“That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”
“It was definitely the low point of my early life.”
“And you still think about it, five thousand years later?”
The rays of the sun intensified briefly as dusk became full sunset. Light rallying one last time before it gave was to moonlight.
A smile crept up on Fire’s face for the sheer cruelly comical unlikeliness of the events he was about to recount to Kay. “That wasn’t the only thing that happened that day. When I got home and talked to my uncle about it, he finally decided to tell me the truth about my parents. Turns out I was the son of pretty much the two worst people of their generation. Before I was born there was some kind of big war in my world and without going into details, my parents were the ones supplying ‘our’ side with weapons. Not just regular weapons either, everything in the book, poison, psychoactive agents, you know the deal.
“The big swinging factor however was something they called ‘fairy dust’, a combat agent that would make entire strips of land uninhabitable. If you were exposed to it things would happen to you, things that nobody could explain. Some died because their bones suddenly collapsed on themselves, those were the relatively normal ones, I read reports of one man who had hundreds of flowers sprouting everywhere inside of him.
“Needless to say, at the end of that day I didn’t know whether to feel sad, confused or angry. That was also the day after which Shadow’s problems got bad. Before, she was just reclusive and quiet, would talk to me and occasionally our uncle. After that day she was terrified of anyone that wasn’t me, wouldn’t stop crying if anyone came even remotely close to her. I had reached a point where my knowledge and skill offered no way out. It’s as if everything had conspired against us, like everything before that had just been the setup to some cruel punchline.”
“Yeah, at a certain point you just tell yourself it’s funny. That’s what I did. You stop associating it with you and you just kind of drift on and on until you have this awful moment where you catch a glimpse, like a reflection of a reflection, and you realise all this hurt is who you are.”
He let his hands fall to the sides and his breastplate clanked against the tree trunk. He raised a palm and lowered it as though that explained something.
Fire nodded. “I did something like that. Just pretended whatever I felt was happening to someone else while the ‘real’ me searched for a way to at least help my sister. That’s what my motivator was, to at least help her. I went headfirst into higher education, plowed right through it. Filled any free time with physical exercise to keep my mind off things. That went on for what… eight years? Ten? Didn’t have to worry about money since my war profiteering parents had left behind quite an inheritance. I eventually found the people who would eventually build the server, my world.
“That really was the point where everything got good again, the server was running, Shadow was happy, life was whole again. Just something was there that didn’t belong. That ‘someone’ I had projected my emotions onto? He’d become quite real in that other world. Whenever I felt things like strong anger or sadness, he’d just… appear in my mind and drive me out for a while. He calls himself Claw, he’s little more than a beast with how little mind-space he has to work with, but I still have to keep him caged. If you ever see my eyes turn black, that’s him. If that happens, I suggest running, everyone else is just prey to him and he unfortunately retains my subconscious combat skills and has no morals or scruples to speak of.”
“But he’s under control now, right?” Kay asked, straightening his back up against the tree.
“He broke his chains while I was returning home, massacred a group of hunters who wanted my scales, I’m rid of him for a while. He should remain caged at least until the end of this war.” Fire paused, contemplating. “If worst comes to worst, there is one weakness I have that you can exploit against Claw. If you manage to wound me with a silver weapon it’ll paralyze me, it’s lethal within an hour. Getting anything silver in contact with a wound has the same effect. If you manage to do it, I always carry a potion that cures the silver poisoning. I should be conscious enough to give it to you once Claw is gone.” Another pause. “Just… make sure to keep it to yourself, it’s a secret we Mencur-Besh keep well but I’m afraid I can not afford to in these circumstances.”
“Okay, silver weapon. I’ll remember that.” Kay visibly lost tension and chuckled a little. “Sorry, I should be being empathetic, I just needed to figure out what I’m dealing with. Thanks for feeling comfortable enough to tell me all this, it means a lot to you, and I can assure you, it… it means a lot to me.”
Fire got up from the tree again. “I’ve told a few bits of this to Destiny before to help bring her back. I think I’m over the trauma itself, the memories are just a bit stickier than I want them to be but the thing that really stayed were the mistakes I made. I had professional help available but didn’t take it, I suppose in hindsight you always look like a bit of an idiot.”
He offered a hand to Kay. “Anyways, we should get back to the shelter. Need to be well-rested tomorrow.”
The sun was just about to pass below the horizon, but the heat remained.
“Yes, we do,” Kay took the hand. “We’re going to win this tomorrow. You’re a good leader, and I’m proud to be serving under you.”
He squeezed the hand warmly as he shook it.
They spent the return journey swapping a few more stories about the unlikely things life had thrown at them. When they arrived at the shelter a good deal of the leadership was sleeping already, however there was still laughter coming from somewhere around the front door. Fire and Kay went to their respective doors, wishing the other a good sleep with a quick nod.
As Fire lay in bed, he spent a bit thinking about what he had heard, maybe his cautious optimism for this effort was more well-founded than he had thought.
Chapter15:Doubts (Kay)
After I got back in from scouting out the raid site I stopped by Lucy’s desk, grabbed some chalk and a washcloth and disappeared into a lesser-used storage cupboard. I followed the curve fervently with my eyes as I traced a few concentric circles in white and red. Then, I etched out the lines between the circles, creating new, smaller shapes and linking them intricate well of colour and pattern. I could see nothing, but my muscles knew the routes to our goal. The gold nuggets sent a pulse of cold through my body as I positioned them at four key intersections. Next was the moss, tumbling from between my fingers and into the centre. Finally: the jagged stone of the Nether.
I struck a match and light swept over half the stone, illuminating a little blood-red kite. The match lowered, caught the surface and then the whole upper surface was burning. Cupping this little beacon between my hands, I bent over the circle and chants came naturally to me. The words of old. The words of my people. The words of Herobrine, that he had told me to use in my hour of need.
But nothing came of it. Ten minutes slipped through my fingers as I used them to house the flame.
“He’s not coming,” I concluded.
“Are you sure there’s no interference? You are in another world after all.”
“No, he wasn’t answering back home either. Worth a try but I either can’t do it since Zine Craft or he’s not listening.”
I cleaned up the signs of the ritual. Despite the Book’s protests, I gave up hope of soliciting the Blind Watcher’s aid.
If I could have gotten in touch, we would have had the full force of the True Court. Literal millions of Noobians, hundreds of thousands of Divine soldiers, thousands of living Pigmen, an immense fleet of airships and the Greater Divines themselves were a considerable force in combat. That was without mentioning the hundreds of administrators who could be called upon to provide vassals. They might not be there in time for the raid tomorrow, but it would at least be a promise that the Entity would end up facing a force to rival its own.
But no. My master wouldn’t hear my plea. We were alone.
I scrunched my eyes shut and begin the walk of shame to the dormitories. Laughter from the Dungeons and Enderdragons group rippled through the air, reached me and made my stomach lurch. Warnado’s cackle rose above the rest, like a robin leaping from the back of an eagle and I quickened my pace, heart fighting to get out of my chest.
“If anything happens to that child…”
“You will endure,” The Book scolds. It has developed a certain condescension since I lost to Fire.
I reached my bed and collapsed in. I didn’t bother to take my clothes off and didn’t know if I would change them the next day. The enemy wasn’t going to care if I was spick and span. I compelled the Book to send me to sleep and wake me at the appropriate hour. One of the unexpected advantages of letting the Book in was peaceful sleep. My nightmares had vanished. Once a tormentor, the Dreamweaver now soothed me as I drifted off.
Part of my mind remains awake. We were in a study with walls whose colour I can’t make out. There was a fireplace, but its light didn’t carry quite right. I sat behind a desk. Blackboard behind me. An armchair across from me contained a human-like shape composed of swirling, fluttering pages: The Book’s preferred manifestation.
I paid a little more attention and the walls settled into a nice shade of green and the light took on a more orange and warmer aspect. It’s time for our scheduled meeting.
“Thank you for your help with that apology. You were right, it was better to clear the air,” I began.
“You’re welcome. Now, the captains?”
“The Ender, Glibby and Freak are the main possibilities. There are others, but these are the ones the Entity seems to prefer sending into the field.”
I swivel my chair around to the blackboard and I see images of the three captains in chalk, with annotations surrounding them scribbled in my own delicately chaotic hand.
“Freak is physically weakest but can choose who can see or interact with him,” I remark. “He’s the worst-case scenario, in my view.”
“Weakness can be exploited. If he comes near us, strike fast. I will see what I can do about making him tangible. It does not seem insurmountable.”
“If Freak’s nearby he won’t come near us, and he’ll just switch out if we use a portal. He might yell at us for taunting purposes, but he’ll not risk confrontation.”
“The Ender?”
“We zap her. It’s not one on one this time. She will stay down.”
“Glibby.”
“That slow moron? He’s strong and nothing more. An ambassador for a crime lord. Portalling around should be enough to bring him to heel.”
“Be cautious, that crime lord will not have sent him without protection.”
And so, we carried on, debating stances, circumstances to expect, spells and moves to employ. I wouldn’t go in charging as I had at the village, weaving between ranks and punching holes in them. At the beginning, I would go in to separate an officer from the group and disrupt the Endlings, but after that I would stay at the edges, picking them off while Fire and the others took the main body. None would escape. None of our party would die. I would not let them. Until I did.
Chapter16:Final Breather (Fristad)
I step outside into the cold. Everyone’s asleep. I don’t want to yet. Tomorrow, it’s going to be Warnado and Amanda and I’s job to start the avalanche and subdue whatever officer they send our way. My heart feels fragile at the very thought - it’s like the muscle suddenly turns to paper and I find myself waiting for it to burst - but I know I must do it. For everyone back home. For everyone in Nexus. For myself, because this is my choice.
I know this Entity, this thing is not going to stop until it takes everything. I’m going to be the person I wish to be, without the say of the Book and against my desire just to run back home at the first possibility. And by Notch that desire is strong. As my breath billows up past my view in a cloud, I briefly contemplate trying to disappear into it. It’s fleeting, however, and I feel bad.
I remind myself I’ve got a fairly easy dear. I’m not on the front lines like Steve and Jennifer. Heck, I’m not even a noticeable target like Astro and the archers. I say a little prayer for the first two. They’ve been there for me from the start. I’ve hardly met people this generous and supportive and brave. Maybe Jonas, maybe Airlass… I swear to myself I’ll see them again.
I go up to a tree and begin to chop it to give vent to some frustration. However, as I reach the last swing, I hear “Hey Fristad!” sound out from behind me.
Crack! The tree falls backwards toward me and I pirouette out of the way instinctively. I search for whoever called out to me. It’s Destiny, who’s blankly stares at the tree as it accelerates down toward her.
“Destiny! Look out!” I call.
Destiny stamps her foot, and a pillar of ice rises up and stops the tree mid-descent. She blinks her cheeks knot up as she stifles laughter.
“That tree almost crushed you!” I say, exasperated.
“Oops,” shrugs Destiny, before doubling over laughing.
A bottle falls out of her jacket. She’s drunk. Not astonishingly drunk, but tipsy enough for it to throw her off. I join in the laughter.
“How was your past self?” I ask as I move in to place a hand on her back and guide her back inside.
“Anya was good,” she says, calming herself. “We’re both looking forward to tomorrow.”
“Really?” I calmly inquire. “I’m terrified.”
“Ah, you’re new to all this. I’ve been through enough to accept that if I die, I die. I’m at peace with whatever comes next.”
I should be surprised by this level of honesty, but Destiny and I have been speaking like this since election day. It’s just nice to have someone I can be upfront with about my less cheery thoughts, especially now that the Book is gone. I always had to be careful, lest the slightest negative thought be twisted into a reason for submission, so I ended up bottling things up.
“Maybe you have the right idea,” I say, trying to get a taste for the idea, letting it roll around my mind a bit. “If we die, we die.”
Destiny stumbled.
“Damn! Sorry, stupid twig. No, no, don’t accept that.”
She looked up at me with rolling, imprecise eyes, having to try a few times to meet my eyes. A hand presses against my chest and she points at me. We’re just outside the door of the shelter.
“You have a life to get back to. Cling to it. Follow the thread, man,” she said. “Promise me you’ll go back there. That Airlass girl sounds nice! Go for it, buddy, you can do it.”
“Okay,” I chuckled. “Okay. You’re clearly drunk but I promise.”
“Awesome.” Her eyes fell, then she added: “What you want is still there. Try and get it.”
I agree silently, and it feels odd. I let it settle for a minute, then decide seriousness has had its day. A little bit of levity seems apt.
“So, what’s confused Anya the most, so far? This can’t be an easy setup to explain.”
She immediately lights up.
“Oh, it’s easily Kir, she just can’t get over him! Kay working for Herobrine also offends her so much. She genuinely won’t even acknowledge it when I mention him. Straight up blanks me and sets up a thousand-yard stare. It’s hilarious!”
And so, we laugh and joke and tease, allowing ourselves to forget what’s coming in the space between the front door and the dormitory. A nice little stretch of safety before the coming battle.
Destiny used a rock like a park bench as she waited for Voidblade to deploy her. Her headache was gone, though an echo of it carried on thanks to the low blaze of the late-afternoon sun. They were atop the cliffs. Warnado and Fristad knelt on the ground to lay out redstone wiring. The crimson trail descended into a hole Fire had dug that led to the heart of the cliff-face. An array of pistons was holding back previously loosened boulders and mud. A flick of a switch and they would drop several tons of rock behind the enemy, cutting off their escape.
Amanda inspected her crossbow in the shade of a tree. Kay and Fire crouched near the precipice, passing a telescope between them and murmuring. The sound of marching climbed up the cliff. It struck her how high up they were, and how many heavily armoured enemies there must be for the noise to carry this far.
She knew Astro was on the other side of the valley, marshalling some archers into place out of sight for a trick Kay planned to pull off. She wasn’t clear on what he was supposed to do after that, though.
Rose sat to her right, more glamorous than Destiny had ever seen her. Pristine hair. Armour neat and sleek as a ball-gown. She held a polished knife before her. She gazed into the reflection it created to apply a delicate coat of blood red lipstick. She pulled the lipstick away and her pupils narrowed hungrily at the sight of her own face. The far reaches of her mouth curled up a miniscule amount, betraying a cold enthusiasm. She sheathed the knife.
“You seem prepared,” said Destiny with what she hoped was a good-natured snort.
“Back in my own world most of my targets were high society, crossed so many people off guest lists that this eventually became some sort of ritual. The whole looks-that-kill deal, it helped me out more often than I thought.”
Destiny shrugged and didn’t know what to say next. Eventually, she mustered a dry:
“Eh, we all have our rituals. Not sure how much endermen care, though.”
“We’ll see,” said Rose. That narrow smile returned, and Destiny felt a desire to back up several kilometres and not continue the conversation.
Thankfully, Voidblade returned to teleport Rose away. Destiny had never been more grateful to an enderman. Almost immediately after, Kay and Fire returned from the cliff-edge, gesturing to everyone to gather ‘round.
“Right,” said Kay before Fire could say anything. “Glibby’s leading the patrol. The grey lads and the Dog are with him. Fire and I will go down immediately after the rockslide and trees fall to parlay with them, Destiny you’re with us.”
Destiny nodded. Kay then stepped back and gestured to Fire to pick up where he left off. She felt he still didn’t seem to be grasping the second part of the job, but he had the in-command part down to a T.
“If Glibby is reasonable, the show of force might encourage him to cut further losses, but from what you have told me about him that’s unlikely. Be ready to strike if it’s clear parlay is not an option.”
Destiny’s brain had an allergic reaction to the idea of letting Glibby go free, but she tried to hide the sudden, nauseous upsurge she felt from her stomach. Maybe the hangover hadn’t entirely faded after all...
“If it doesn’t work,” said Kay. “I’ll just shunt the Dog into a portal, and it’ll be down to team rockslide to beat him into submission. Shouldn’t have too much bother though, he’s a pushover. Very friendly. Might even try to defect-”
“You are not to accept the Dog’s defection,” Fire cut in, giving Kay a warning look. “You will incapacitate him. Amanda, how many blunt bolts do you have?”
“Thirty-five,” the teenager responded. “One or two to the head and he’s down.”
“Good. Be ready for Kay’s portal and there shouldn’t be problems. If he’s incapacitated but conscious, don’t interact, we’ll do proper interrogations after the fact. The fewer expectations we give the more leverage we have later.”
“Alright,” Fristad confirmed. “You can count on us three.”
He moved to clap Amanda and Warnado on the shoulders and then reconsidered. His arms fell like leaves in Fall. The history was still too recent and too weird there.
Destiny shot him an empathetic look. He smiled back as if to say “stay safe out there.” She nodded and beamed back at him.
She followed Kay and Fire up to the edge of the cliff. The procession was now below them. The diamond armour of the patrol mostly blurred together into an indistinct sea of armaments, broken only at the front and back of the column. At the back were ten or so Endlings in obsidian armour, similarly monolithic. At the front was a group of five. At the forefront of it was the unmistakable shape of Glibby the Ape.
In truth, Destiny couldn't make out many of the features that got him his name. She just saw a shape about twice the size of anyone else in the procession. She could also make out the two huge, iron gauntlets it wore clasped around the reigns of a horse. Grey stains on the scene.
A memory exploded into view before Destiny. Those gauntlets, glowing molten from the heat of the blast. Emerging from the smoke. Soaring toward David. Slamming into Tyron’s chest and dislocating his arm. Raking Kir across his gut.
Anya’s words echoed in her ears: Kill that ***** something fierce.
The column was now predominantly in the valley, with only the endermen and a few stragglers outside. Fire nudged Kay, who closed his eyes and clenched a fist in front of him. A small spark of voidfire glowed silver, then purple in front of him, then vanished. He opened his eyes. Destiny squinted, confused. At that moment, the screams finished their ascent up the cliff-face.
Destiny forced her head over the edge and saw a scene of growing chaos. Just between the endermen and the human mercenaries was a rift of the same silver fire. It spat arrows from every direction, striking their enemies down. One endling, caught off guard, was already dead from an arrow through the eye. Others were injured at the chinks in their armour. The human rear-guard were in anarchy, their scattering amounting to a stampede that injured as many as the arrows themselves.
Destiny looked at Kay and gave him a thumbs-up. He grinned and pointed back down. That was when the trees started falling. First, she caught a glimpse of Tyron shoulder-charging a trunk and sending it collapsing onto a few of those fleeing the arrow attack. Then, another toppled, revealing the diamond shell of Steve, who quickly retreated back into the treeline, apparently without anyone noticing. Then another fell, and another, and another. Soon, six trees created a zig-zagging path through the valley which the mercenaries desperately tried to navigate and clamber over. The endermen were warping around, surveying the scene and dragging soldiers to their feet.
The second the last tree fell, Fire stood up, no longer afraid of being seen. He gestured to Fristad, who shot Destiny an excited look before flicking the lever.
Click! It was shortly followed by the crunch of several pistons retracting, and then the rumble of falling rocks and mud. It piled into the pass, filling it entirely. Several soldiers and one injured enderman ended up crushed. All in all, the opening strike had been a huge success. Between a quarter and a third of the enemy force was already dead or injured to a greater or lesser degree.
Warnado floated upwards to survey the scene, whooping triumphantly before dropping down in a backflip. Kay rolled over and applauded the rockslide team. Fire, however, was all business:
“Portal us down there Kay. It’s time to see if they’ll see sense.”
Kay clenched a fist before him and summoned another fiery portal. They had all been through on to get there, but Destiny still found the idea slightly unnerving. Thankfully, passing through only provided a strange, numb feeling not unlike pins and needles. It passed and she took in the scene.
Kay was on Fire’s left. She was on his right. They were striding up to the party of the Tower’s officers. Glibby, The Dog and the three grey-scaled endermen who had captured her and David all those weeks ago. She picked out the one whose face she had half-melted. Apparently, his name was Silver, and he wouldn’t stop glaring at Kay. Destiny felt kind of left out of the contempt, especially considering the face-melting thing.
She turned her attention to Glibby, who seemed unfazed. He wore his usual trench-coat and moleskin suit, with only a light iron chestplate as armour. He was beaming at them with his mouth, but his eyes remained cold.
He handed his hat to one of his bodyguards to reveal an elongated cranium, bald except for a small circlet of hair reaching from temple to temple. He passed the reins of his horse to a human soldier who was attempting to drag his friend from beneath one of the boughs of the nearest fallen tree. A squashed nose dominated the centre of his face. Rubbery, skin-coloured lips protruded from his face. Destiny finally had enough time to appreciate the resemblance to an ape.
The commanding party stopped about fifteen paces from them. The diamond-clad troops were beginning to recapture something resembling a formation at the end of the tree-maze. A line of archers was forming atop one of the heavier tree-trunks and aiming at them.
“Jolly great show! You gave us a proper startle.” boomed the Ape. “A pity it has already worn off.”
Fire bellowed back: “All we demand is a single prisoner. Everyone else will be let go. It’s in your hand to preserve your soldier’s lives!”
He looked placidly at Fire before turning to look at Kay.
“Terribly sorry, Kay, do you mind introducing us?”
“Hello Glibby, I wasn’t aware we’d been introduced,” Kay called back in that obviously fake posh accent he kept using when he wanted to impress someone. “Hello again to you too, Silver, officer who is a talking dog… This is my commanding officer, Fire of the Mencur-Besh. I’d advise just handing over the prisoner. Otherwise, he will massacre your troops almost single handedly, we’ll capture you, and then Astro and I will deeply enjoy applying a hot poker to your tender parts until you tell us what we want to know.”
“By mods,” Glibby laughed. “You do prattle on.”
“I’m giving you one more chance, Glibby,” warned Fire. “Surrender one of your officers or your soldiers will die.”
“Well, so long as they’re the only ones at risk, I don’t see any issue with fighting on,” Glibby said. A couplet of mock punches punctuated the last two works.
“What about you, Dog?” asked Kay with a step forward and squinting off to the far side of the valley. “No chance of a last-minute defection?”
Fire sighed. Destiny could practically hear him mentally lament the momentum this conversation had lost them.
“Sorry, pal, but the ship sailed on that when you slammed my teeth into a set of iron bars,” growled the Dog, baring his chipped and silver-coated teeth.
Destiny noticed he wore a monocle that looked like it was about to shatter under the weight of his furrowed brow. That was neat.
The line of soldiers was thick now, and the archers were growing more and more numerous. She clasped her hands behind her back and crystallized several sharpened icicles to throw at them.
Kay was now shielding his eyes as he continued to look at the far-side of the valley, even though the sun was behind them.
“Bah!” Kay sighed and threw his hand aside in a motion almost like a salute. “You’ll come around eventually. My lads shall convince you.”
At that he warped forward and shunted the Dog into a portal. Glibby backed up into a fighting stance and the Grey Ones bore their claws. Kay ignored them all and immediately followed this up by hurling a ball of voidfire into the line of soldiers, roasting only one but scattering several.
Suddenly, Glibby saw something in the reflection of his gauntlets. Astro swooped down like a spear from the heavens, arcing his sword underhand only for it to clang against one of the metal fists. The wizard ricocheted off and tumbled into the sky. Fire bellowed an order, and the fighters began to emerge from the forest to spread death among the Tower’s ranks.
Destiny ran forward, hurling icicles at the Grey Ones, who promptly teleported themselves and their master away from harm. That done, she turned her attention to the archers, who were starting to loose arrows both in their direction and in the direction of the others. She saw a wall of rock send one of the archers flying, but they would clearly still need help.
She felt a paradoxical coldness in her forearms and hands as she summoned a pillar of fire that she blasted at the end of the log. Two archers fell off, burning, and fire began to spread across the trunk.
However, no sooner had she done this than the entire tree froze solid. Then, as the archers struggled to maintain their balance, a young woman clambered onto the log with them, a circle of spear-like shards of ice orbiting behind her.
Destiny almost didn’t recognise the pale-skinned, dark-haired figure before she remembered Shadow had disguised herself before the battle started. Something about what she’d done in the village meant she didn’t want the Tower realising she was part of the attack.
An orange-gold hunk of metal morphed into a scimitar, and the disguised Shadow charged forward alongside her shards. The shards would rend the armour of an archer and the sword would sever the flesh.
Destiny ducked a swipe from one of the endermen and scared them off with a blast of ice. She almost didn’t notice as Fire slammed into the line of soldiers, using his halberd as a shoving tool to throw them off balance. The ones that couldn’t recover their guard quickly enough were subjected to a series of attacks both from his weapon and his claws to exposed points, making their diamond armor matter painfully little.
She drew her bow and looked for a spot where she could be useful. Kay continued to portal around, hurling fireballs at the soldiers and shooting lightning at a small train of three endermen who were following him. Astro continued to soar around the battlefield, swinging his sword and shattering bones with his mind. Shadow stood on the frozen log, dodging projectiles and blasting ice both into the tree-maze and into the front lines.
A chance look over to Fire revealed one of the armoured ender materialising in his blind spot while he was still in the heat of battle. Sword raised, they hoped to strike him from behind. Destiny shot an arrow into the back of their knee and they crumpled. Before the arrow even made contact, Fire had broken with his opponent and started turning. Finding his enemy too wounded to think of teleporting he whipped his halberd and decapitated them. He nodded at Destiny before returning to his prior target.
She clambered up the log and melted herself a clear patch on which to stop. She saw Shadow beside her on a platform of ice.
“Loving the disguise,” Destiny called out. “It suits you.”
“It should,” smiled Shadow as she turned to freeze one of the soldiers crowding around Fire. “It’s how I look in my ‘real world’.”
Destiny decided not to question that, nodded and leapt over to the next log, which was free of ice. From here she had a clearer view of the battle’s full extent.
Voidblade was at the far end of the valley, cutting down anyone who attempted to retreat over the blocked pass. Kay was still flitting around the mass at the front, dodging the swipes of endermen with ease and yelling grandiose insults. Astro had settled on the ground and was now cutting his way through to Fire, snapping necks and crushing ribs between strokes of the sword.
Down in the trenches, chaos reigned. At the edge, just on the treeline, Tyron and Urist found themselves in the midst of a troop of soldiers and endermen. They would have been standing back-to-back if not for the size difference or Urist’s tactic of ducking through Tyron’s legs to slam a hammer into the legs or stomach of an enderman before they could get away. One such blow doubled an enderman over as Destiny ascended the log, and Tyron capitalised on it by raking Kir across their winded opponent’s neck.
“Five left!” cheered Kir for all nearby allies to hear. “Five endermen left!”
The sword’s enthusiasm died down as a diamond-coated giant climbed over a log and began to square up to Tyron, who did not seem pleased to find himself in this situation again.
Steve, Jennifer and Rose faced an even greater challenge just at Destiny’s feet. On the far side of the tree on which Destiny stood, the ground was thick with human corpses, and the soldiers kept swarming around them with ferocity, no matter how injured they were. Jennifer and Rose had escaped the worst of it by hopping between the bows of the fallen trees and launching projectiles into the crowd, but Steve found himself still in the very heart of it. Worse still, the Grey Ones had chosen this as their hunting grounds.
Destiny saw Steve cut down a soldier only to receive a blow on the helmet from one of the Grey Ones. He turned and saw the enderman disappear just in time to receive another blow on the helmet. Destiny tried to intervene, but every shot was too slow. The harrying of Steve continued for several bouts until, disoriented, he saw Silver in a fighting stance, beckoning. In one desperate motion, Steve attempted to impale the Grey Ones’ leader, only for him to teleport away. Excalibur ate into wood and stuck there.
Steve cursed as he realised his mistake and attempted to pull Excalibur free. However, before he could do so, Glibby materialised, flanked by two of his servants, and pounded Steve’s head.
The son of Herobrine rallied, pulled two lesser swords from his inventory and rushed at the Ape. He swung twice, once with each sword, but Glibby batted them away with one hand and punched Steve with the other. Steve’s boots shattered from the force of the impact and he tripped over one of the corpses.
Seeing Steve in distress, Jennifer fired an arrow right at the Ape’s exposed cranium, but one of the grey ones materialised and blocked it with their shoulder, roaring in pain. It materialised in front of its assailant and tackled her back into the sea of corpses.
Rose then charged in, swiping at Glibby with her knives and firing off duplicates. Sadly, her target proved improbably agile, and smiled as it dodged her blows.
“And here I thought my days in the ballroom were long behind me,” he drawled as precursor to a retaliatory swing.
Destiny also nocked an arrow but found herself pirouetting away when Silver swiped at her. His claws peeled away an iron pauldron and grazed the flesh underneath. She, in one fluid movement, dropped to one knee and loosed the arrow at Silver’s foot. He jumped back and before he had a moment to recover Destiny had loosed a pillar of fire at him which he teleported away from. Believing herself victorious, she rose, only for a new blow to knock her flat. Her bow snapped beneath her weight and she lay there, winded.
Silver hunched over her, fangs bared in a horrendous grin. He raised his claws and readied to plunge them down. Destiny formed a spike of ice in her hand, ready to bring him down with her. Just as the claws began their descent a gloved hand reached out and grabbed them: Kay had materialised.
He slammed the pommel of his sword into the enderman’s head and hurled him from the log. Destiny could’ve sworn she saw a tooth flying out, but it happened too fast to tell. He pulled her up and they both turned their attention to the duel between Glibby and Rose.
The Ape seemed to notice the increased attention and decided to break the flow of things by grabbing Rose and tossing her away. As she landed in a heap a good distance off, Glibby looked quite pleased with himself. Unfortunately for him, this is just what Astro, who had returned to the sky, had been waiting for.
A jet of fire descended from the sky that Glibby’s remaining bodyguard only just teleported him away from. They rematerialised at the bend in the maze, Glibby brushing down a small patch of flame on his shoulder. He cleared his throat to make some sort of snide quip, but before he spoke, the frozen tree shattered and Glibby had to raise his trench-coat to shield his face from the splintering wood.
Destiny looked at Kay and jumped down into the trench. The General followed, and the two cut off that escape route. Steve, finally getting a moment to unstick Excalibur, joined them. Jennifer, breaking free from the Grey One who had attacked her, blocked off the route to the forest. Rose got up from her heap, her hair slick with blood, and joined the growing blockade with a glare in her eyes that could melt stone. Finally, A giant fell, with Kir in between its ribs and Tyron yanking it free.
“Nice liver,” Kir cackled with uncharacteristic malice. Then, more sheepishly: “Sorry. Only him supposed to hear that.”
He looked up, saw Glibby and audibly growled.
“You again,” Tyron spat with a flourish of his sword. “Oh, I have been waiting to kill you for so long! You are so dead, asshole.”
Glibby, now rejoined by his three bodyguards, turned around with his hands on his hips. He hiked up his trousers.
“And here I thought this was going to be dull.”
Destiny smiled as she heard genuine nervousness pierce the condescension.
Kir noticed the dead enderman on the ground and chirped out a cheery: “Four left.”
Chapter18:Dogfight (Fristad)
I am standing in the shade of the tree. I don’t dare look Warnado or Amanda in the eye. I just made a huge mistake.
After the landslide, I’d suddenly realised how terrified I was of actually fighting this officer, so I’d decided to settle affairs.
“Listen, Amanda, in case anything goes wrong here, I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” I said, and I reckon I said it pretty sincerely.
She glared at me and I immediately questioned what on earth had possessed me to do this. It wasn’t the Book; this was just me having the worst sense of timing in the world. Naturally, Warnado yelled at me a whole bunch.
The first salvo or two mostly consisted of high-pitched curse words strung together like cursive, but finally it faded into something more concrete:
“...What is wrong with you?!” He spat these words out with such force that his hood jumped up and I could briefly see the base of his nose. “You think now is the right time to bring up the stuff you put her through? I’ve known Amanda a long time and she does not scare easily and you - you-”
“Warnado,” Amanda interrupted. “I can handle myself.”
She pushed her way past him and dragged me down to eye-level by the lapels. She was only thirteen so I could easily have brushed her off, but that felt inappropriate. I gazed into the hazel depths of her eyes.
“You hurt me in ways few others have managed. You tormented my sanity. The fact that Kay is getting on way too well with the Book only compounds how unnecessary it was. As it stands, you are not forgiven in any sense of the word,” she said.
A pause.
“Win this fight,” she decreed. “And we’ll see.”
So, I’ve been standing here for the last ten minutes while Warnado angrily crunches his way through a taco with his arm around Amanda’s shoulder. They’re standing near the promontory, watching for the signal.
Then, suddenly a familiar pillar of silver flame materialises near the switch and out plops an officer. He’s a big, tall man with the black and white head of a springer spaniel. He’s not wearing any armour, just a loose black jacket and trousers over a billowing white shirt, in addition to a monocle. Looped through his belt is a sabre. He lands on his back and as he rises, I can see dirt tumble off him. He stretches. We fan out and leave him backing onto the cliff.
“‘Sup Dog?” Warnado quips dryly, throwing his taco aside and moving forward.
“Bloody hells,” the Dog groans. “That’s honestly the best you can offer?”
He bears his teeth and I see them glint with silver. I raise my axe to try and cool him off a little but suddenly my shoulder-guard shifts a little and I shuffle awkwardly to correct it. I don’t get the impression he’s particularly intimidated.
“Yes. Anyway, you remember me from the tower. I am Lord Helix and it’s time you surrendered,” says Warnado. “Before we dunk on you so hard, they rename basketball after us. Naturally, we’ll need a cool team-name first, but we’ll appreciate the gesture.”
I have no idea what basketball is, and the Dog just looks angrier. I briefly start thinking about a cool team-name and then suddenly remember my contributions probably won’t be welcome.
I take one hand off my axe and show my palm to the Dog. Before I quite understand what I'm doing I’ve taken a step or two forward.
“Listen,” I say. “You should just surrender. We only want to know what the Entity is up to. I promise you’ll be fairly treated. You really seem to have impressed Kay. It would save us all a lot of… What are you doing?”
The Dog has pulled off its jacket and is now shaking it. It looks at the back, growls and throws it to the dirt.
“Taking this rubbish off. It’s hot. We’ll resume this conversation in a minute.”
“Oh.”
I look back around to Amanda and Warnado. She has a blunt bolt trained on the Dog’s head. Warnado has a luminous club summoned. They both look as confused as I do, and I enjoy this brief moment of camaraderie.
My head wheels back and the Dog has removed his shirt and is now stretching their back out. He is in impeccable shape, with washboard abs and huge biceps.
“Right,” the Dog begins. “I have thought long and hard on your offer.”
His fist strikes me in the face so hard my helmet flies off.
He turns away from me and looks at Warnado and Amanda, hands on his hips and a smirk on his face:
“I have elected to decline. Do what you will.”
Amanda shoots at him and he dodges aside. The sabre flies from its sheath and is swinging for Warnado’s torso. The demon-child floats upward and avoids the blow. I’m back on my feet and running to join the fight.
The Dog rounds on Amanda, who has finished reloading. She ducks a slash and pulls the trigger. I hear a thud, a crack of bone and a howl. She’s struck him right in the ribs!
Finally close enough, I swing with the blunt end of my axe, hoping to catch him in the head and end this, but he parries. I stagger, a glare of sun travels the length of the sabre and suddenly my axe is a stick six inches in length. The point of the sword is used as a pole against my breastplate to drive me back a few steps early.
I can see the Dog grinning as he returns to Amanda and interrupts her reloading with another attack. He catches her hard on the breastplate and she stumbles to her knees with a cry of pain.
Warnado, still floating, yells out “Hey!” He raises his hands above his head and a glowing mace materialises, spiked and ready to crush the Dog’s skull.
“We’re supposed to take him alive, you donko!” Amanda grunts.
Warnado falters, and as he constructs a new, less lethal weapon, the Dog moves to strike Amanda again. She narrowly dodges and lands on her front. The crossbow flies out of her reach. The Dog raises his sabre again.
For the first time in a long while, my course of action is obvious and my own. I rush forward, screaming. My heart is pounding with the exhilaration of freedom from all things: The Book, cowardice, self-preservation. I flip the stick in my hand and strike the Dog on its wounded flank.
It howls. For a brief moment I hope it will collapse from pain. Its eyes flicker, but then fly back open with renewed vigor. It shunts me back and swipes. I dodge, but without a weapon there’s not much I can do. I raise my fists like a boxer and pray I get in a good punch or two before I die.
That’s when a wooden bat the size of a claymore cracks into his face and he pirouettes uncontrollably.
“HOME RUN!” cheers Warnado. Then, as the Dog regains its stance, he adds, “Or, you know, second base, or whatever.”
I don’t get the joke, but I laugh in disbelief anyway as Warnado lands and flourishes his gargantuan bat like it weighed nothing.
Not willing to be rendered totally useless, I raise my fists and begin to wheel around to him.
The Dog can’t choose between us. It reaches down for my axe head and my heart sinks. The fight isn’t over. Now wielding one complete weapon and the remnants of another, he opens his mouth to the point where it seems almost unhinged and unveils a sea of razor-sharp fangs.
Warnado and I share a look and dig in our heels. We’re taking this guy down, whether we die or not.
Crack! The Dog judders. His eyelids collapse under their own weight. He drops forward. I see a wooden bolt on the ground beside him, and before I can look up to confirm what happens the crossbow clatters into my field of view. Amanda lands on top of the Dog and immediately clamps handcuffs onto his wrists.
“We’ve won!” Warnado screams. He hugs me and I cackle with joy, giving him a little squeeze in return. He and Amanda run at each other. They hug and she lifts him and spins him around. I can’t stop beaming.
She plants him down. They look deeply into each other’s eyes. She closes her eyes and juts her head forward, he reciprocates. Their lips press together. They draw away, both wide-eyed and seemingly lost as to where they are.
“Wow, that was… weird,” says Warnado, eyes seeming a different shade of red than usual but that was maybe me inferring from his tone.
“Oh,” she responds, eyes drooping like dying grass. “Sorry.”
“No! No! Like, good weird,” Warnado insists in a panic. “I - I would love - like! - I would like to do it again, sometime. If… you would like to.”
“Yeah,” nods Amanda, “Absolutely. That would be pretty cool.”
“Cool.”
And then they stand in silence for around ten seconds, smiling at each other with uncertain enthusiasm, as though they didn’t know how much was appropriate or what the next step in the process is. Warnado, after looking all around him, summons a rose into his hand and thrusts it at Amanda.
I finally give in and burst out laughing.
“Congrats lovebirds!” I roar, hugging them both in close.
They don’t even seem that mad.
Chapter19:In the Thick of It (Fire)
It had been a while since Fire had been part of a proper battle, if he recalled correctly, it was when he cleared out a camp of outspoken enemies of the Mencur-Besh. It couldn’t have been more than a few months back but no matter, the battle he was in presently required his full attention.
The others had surrounded Glibby and his personal guard, but this was far from a decisive winning position, there were too many other soldiers for them to keep Glibby pinned for any meaningful amount of time. Fire heard movement behind him, time slowed down as he turned on the spot. He was faced with three human soldiers who were performing a coordinated charge on him. Unfortunately for them, to Fire they moved comically slowly, giving him enough time for a low sweep with his halberd. He used the hook opposed to the axe blade to catch the soldiers by their feet and throw them off-balance.
Two stumbled, one fell. Fire leapt at the fallen soldier, delivering a kick to one of the other two in the process. A quick cut from Fire’s claws and blood started rapidly pooling under the fallen soldier. The other two had enough discipline to stand their ground but were wary of attacking.
With another arc of his halberd, Fire brought the back end down on one of the soldiers’ heads. With both weapon and armor being made of diamond, blunt force trauma was the best option. The soldier fell down, the force of the blow was enough to cause brain hemorrhage, if he wasn’t dead now, he would be in a few minutes.
The third soldier finally decided that it was in his best interest to flee the battlefield, only to be frozen on the spot by Shadow. Fire gave his sister a quick look of approval.
Meanwhile the fight in the trenches had heated up significantly. The entirety of the enderman force was fighting alongside Glibby against most of their own, sans Voidblade who was still making sure nobody could escape.
Kir’s voice called out in Fire’s head as Kay zapped an armoured enderman into submission: “Three left.”
Somehow, against all odds the Ape had avoided any meaningful wounds despite being only lightly armored, perhaps boldness-bordering-on-stupidity had some protective properties after all. Fire refocused, it looked like the situation was still under control, as long as he had the attention of the human soldiers there would be no nasty surprises.
Almost immediately after that thought Fire cursed himself for thinking it, he felt a strong magical impulse coming from somewhere behind the trees they had toppled. It looked like Shadow had noticed too, shooting a storm of icicles into the general direction.
The icicles didn’t reach their destination, a tidal wave of red rose from between the branches of the trees and stopped their momentum. As the wave splashed back down, Fire realized what had caused it. On top of the furthest tree trunk stood a figure clad in diamond armor, however as opposed to the other soldiers it had no helmet, instead it wore a cowl beneath which only two crimson eyes were visible.
Fire called out: “Blood mage! Must have survived the trees!”
As Fire looked to the ground, he saw all the blood that had been spilled in this battle gain a life of its own, gathering itself in pools, draining from still-full corpses, leaving them as husks. Seeing that one of their mages survived seemed to imbue the soldiers with new hope, they came storming towards Fire all at once.
Kir chirped: “Two left.”
Meanwhile Shadow was locked in a fierce duel of magic with the blood mage, still unwilling to discard her disguise, victory was important but remaining obscure took priority for now. The blood mage was in the process of manifesting rib-like spikes from the sea of blood at his feet. Shadow readied another volley of ice spears.
Fire could look how his sister did later, now he had to take care of his own problems. He breathed in. The fight with the enderman in the first village they found flashed back into his mind, then the start of his fight with the hunters before Claw had taken over. This was different, he was armored, armed and prepared. And perhaps more importantly, Fire was a three-meter tall superhuman creature with thousands of years of experience.
As Fire breathed out, he could feel his body temperature rise as his muscles went into overdrive. The air around him started heating up, a bright orange glow shimmered from between Fire’s scales. Time was almost slowed to a standstill. He was ready.
Even with their formation, the soldiers still were slightly staggered. The spear tip of Fire’s halberd stabbed the foremost one straight through the throat. Using this leverage, Fire flung the soldier two meters into the air, tearing his head off in the process. The other soldiers now had to either sidestep the corpse or be hindered by their beheaded comrade.
Without warning, a splayed open rib cage attached to an unnaturally long spine came swinging at Fire from the right, the individual ribs like sharpened spikes. Clearly the work of the blood mage. Fire held his halberd in his left hand and impaled another throat, his right hand caught the ribcage in the middle and yanked it out of the blood pool that spawned it. The ribs contorted, now more like the legs of an insect. With a quick motion Fire threw it into the oncoming soldiers.
A soldier had come close enough to attack Fire while he was preoccupied, the sword glanced off Fire’s dark armor. They wouldn’t find any gaps, Fire made sure of this when he created it. Only a blade like he was using, or a heavy impact would be meaningfully threatening. That or getting overwhelmed, and Fire was not about to let that happen.
Fire leaped backwards, regaining some space to use his halberd in. With an enormous effort Fire swung his halberd in an arc, putting enough force into it to behead a soldier with the impact alone and severely daze the next one in the halberd’s path.
A quick glance behind him revealed that the reason the blood mage wasn’t sending more support was that he was preoccupied with Shadow, who to him looked like a baseline human with ice magic. Of course, Shadow was nimbler than she let on, easily leaping out of the way of various sharp bones that would probably have impaled her otherwise. The blood mage also had to contend with a growing portion of his blood supply being frozen. Shadow more than had this under control. She was just following their usual strategy: Never show more power to the enemy than is needed to defeat them.
With his full attention back to his own fight, Fire took a headcount. Nine soldiers left, most of them looking more and more shaken, less and less willing to fight their seemingly invincible opponent, having had a bone centipede thrown at them had probably also contributed.
With another decisive attack Fire cut down another soldier, then another and another. As their numbers dwindled, Fire had to worry less about defense and could focus entirely on offense, his armor absorbing the odd blow that hit him. No movement was without purpose.
Once there were three soldiers left, Kir spoke in Fire’s head again: “Destiny hurt. Help needed.”
Instead of wasting more time attacking the last three soldiers, Fire shouted at them: “Drop your weapons, surrender and live!”
The soldiers seemed taken aback by this sudden change in dynamic but at this point looked too terrified to do anything else, discipline had its limits before the desire for survival overtook everything. They not only dropped their weapons but threw them to the side, far out of their reach, then fell to the ground cowering.
While bolting towards the fight in the trenches, Fire looked to the blood mage again. It seemed that Shadow had made a mistake at some point, somehow the blood mage had managed to catch her and was now holding her up by the neck. Just as he summoned up more bone-spikes, something golden slithered down Shadow’s left arm and manifested as a dagger in her hand. One slash was not enough to kill the blood mage, however the surprise was enough to get him to drop Shadow. A crimson red icicle rose up from the sea of blood and impaled the blood mage’s head. That was everyone but the endermen and Glibby dealt with.
The scene unfolding before Fire was a chaotic one. Kay was erratically teleporting around, occasionally landing a hit on the endermen. Destiny was slumped against a tree, evidently having taken several punches from Glibby, the fact that she lived was most likely owed to the ape’s sadism, wanting her alive to witness the outcome. Astro tended to her with glowing palms. Tyron, Rose and Urist stood in front of them, holding off the eponymous Ape. Steve was currently locked in battle with Silver, Jennifer with a different Grey One.
Glibby was still only superficially bloodied, maybe he really was as good as he claimed, maybe he was supremely lucky, maybe both. Fire was going to find out soon. Kay just teleported into the guard of one of the obsidian-clad endermen, an opportunity Fire exploited. With a leap, Fire closed the gap to the enderman and drove the spear tip of his halberd into its lower back. This allowed Kay to land a well-placed attack, leaving the enderman on the ground gradually bleeding out.
“One left.” Kir announced.
“About time you joined us!” Exclaimed Kay. “You had the perfect dramatic entrance and you squandered it!”
Fire had no time for friendly banter, there was an ape-shaped problem that had priority. Kay also didn't have time for it, as he only narrowly avoided a swipe from Silver’s claws. A glance to the side revealed Steve crawling towards the defensive line, hands clasped to his stomach and blood seeping between his fingers. Shadow had also reached them, her throat visibly collapsed by the blood mage’s grasp. She nodded at Fire, then proceeded to join the battle by hurling ice at any target she had sightlines on.
This was enough to get Glibby’s attention off the slumped, unconscious Destiny, now turning towards Fire.
“Oh, the lizard has finally shown up. Had fun with the cannon fodder?” Glibby taunted.
Fire indulged him, any time he spent talking was time the others had to fight the endermen. “Not a lizard, a genetic splicing of enderman, human and assorted additional genetic code as well as a little bit of elemental magic. I gave up correcting people a few thousand years ago.”
Glibby slowly came closer, gauntlets raised. “How about a good, old-fashioned one-on-one fight?”
Without waiting for a reply, Glibby already threw the first punch, Fire had anticipated him fighting dirty. Glibby’s strength and reach combined with his heavy gauntlets meant Fire actually had to be careful around his attacks, the human soldiers might as well have been attacking with wet noodles by comparison. The heavy, blunt impacts would render his armor mostly ineffective. This was a real threat.
Fire moved only minimally to avoid the punch, then instead of counterattacking leapt backwards: distance was his ally in this fight. Fire quickly thrust his halberd forwards to see Glibby’s reaction. As soon as the Ape went to defend against the attack Fire pulled back, halberd attacks were too telegraphed to be useful, Glibby’s reflexes were too good for that.
Another heavy punch from Glibby, another evasion from Fire. This time Fire looked inward, into his inventory and pulled out an anti-magic splash potion, which promptly materialized in his left hand. All mages on the battlefield were dealt with so he might as well get some use out of the potion. The potion impacted on Glibby’s raised gauntlet and shattered, some of the liquid splashing in the Ape’s face, unfortunately missing his eyes. It had been enough to surprise him though.
The others were attempting to get close, but the remaining armoured enderman and one of the Grey Ones had taken a page from Fire’s own book. They swept with halberds to keep them at a distance. Kay was too busy with Silver, each now attempting to break the other’s guard on top of the remains of the frozen tree.
Suddenly Kir spoke up in Fire’s mind: “Hey. Ape looks for weakness, then attacks like… ape. How he got Destiny.”
This was useful. Fire quickly formulated a plan. It was risky but the payoff was high, which already was the whole point of this ambush so he might as well stay in theme.
Just as Glibby was wiping the drops of potion from his face, Fire surged forward, once again swinging his halberd in a wide arc. Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t have done this, he knew full well that the arc was predictable, and a thrust might have even landed a hit here. Glibby realized as much, blocking Fire’s attack with his left hand and at the same time throwing a powerful right-handed punch.
The punch connected, hitting Fire square in the stomach. The force was dampened by Fire’s armor but once it proved too much, instead of breaking the armor deformed inwards, an intentional property. The blow carried through. For a few moments time stood even stiller than Fire was used to. He felt a numb pain from his stomach. The armor bent back to its original shape.
There go most of my internal organs. Fire thought, moments slowly ticking by as he watched himself be launched backwards. Then he felt it, the emergency response of his body. Throughout his limbs and torso glands started secreting a reagent that would keep his muscles running as long as they received signals from his brain, even if he bled out he’d still live for long enough to get healing. This was another part of what made him what he was. Mencur-Besh.
Time returned to a sensible speed again, Fire managed to land upright but made sure not to land too well, falling to a knee for a second. That was what Glibby had waited for. He came running at Fire like a freight train, arms wildly flailing. Fire dropped his halberd to the ground, instead pulling two daggers from his inventory, they were made from the same re-crystalized diamond as his halberd, sharp enough to cut steel, which was precisely what Fire intended to do.
Glibby’s first blow missed, Fire quickly slashed at the gauntleted hand that delivered it, the diamond carved a notch into the metal. Fire actively dodged the next strike and repeated his slash, Glibby seemed to pay no heed to his opponent’s renewed vitality.
Fire backed up further and further, adding more and more notches to the gauntlets. They were now no longer on soft forest ground but on the hard stone floor near the edges of the canyon. A few seconds into his frenzy Glibby finally took note of the fact that not a single one of his blows had landed. He hesitated. Now Fire was the one to exploit a gap in his opponent’s guard, bringing on two final slashes. Glibby recomposed, now winding up for a crushing blow with both hands.
Fire probably could have killed him then and there, nothing easier than a slash to the throat from his position, however as long as capture was an option lethal force was off the table. Killing someone only one step down from the Entity was a good way to become the target of a large retaliatory attack.
Instead of attacking, Fire launched himself backwards, landing on his back. Glibby’s fists impacted on the stone, at the same time his gauntlets shattered into dozens of small pieces. The shards cut into the Ape’s hands as he shook them off. Glibby stopped, then looked straight at Fire, this time with genuine rage in his eyes, letting out a primal scream before lunging forwards.
Fire’s daggers disappeared back into his inventory, just in time to duck under Glibby’s lunge and send the Ape flying using his own momentum. Losing the gauntlets had significantly lowered Glibby’s threat. Now any punch he landed would hurt him more than it would hurt Fire.
Glibby lunged again, this time windmilling his arms mid-air. Fire opted to completely dodge out of the way this time, not wanting to risk getting hit. Glibby attacked three more times before he finally got lucky, catching Fire in the chest. The blow was hard, it probably would have cracked some of Fire’s ribs if Glibby had still worn the gauntlets. Instead, it merely sent Fire flying again and left Glibby clutching his fist, seemingly broken out of his rage.
While Fire recovered from the blow, the so-far unaccounted for third Grey One appeared next to Glibby, whispering something into the Ape’s ear. After a short pause, the Ape turned to survey the scene.
The last of the armoured endermen had died, and only the other Grey one was managing to slow the advance of Fire’s allies. Silver was still locked in a melee with Kay. Glibby nodded and called out “We’re leaving! To me, my Grey Ones.”
The halberd-wielding enderman teleported up and put his hand on Glibby’s shoulder. Glibby looked to Silver, who looked back and forth between his master and Kay. Glibby glared at him yet more sternly and shouted at him.
“Silver, we are leaving!”
The enderman hissed: “Void upon your cowardly retreat! I will be satisfied!”
With that he tackled Kay from the frozen log and out of sight.
“You protect someone for a decade, and they treat you like that,” Glibby sighed. “You just can’t get good help nowadays. Anyway, let’s leave. Adieu, Fire, it’s been a pleasure.”
With that, Glibby sighed, patted his two guards on the back, and the three of them disappeared. Destiny’s javelin of ice landed the second after. Fire reckoned it would have gotten him right in the head.
“Of course. Just my luck,” mourned Destiny as Astro held her up.
The moment they were gone, they heard the sounds of Silver’s duel with Kay. Shadow and Fire rounded the corner to see an obviously irritated Kay teleporting around. Shadow lowered her head and started focusing, seemingly waiting for something. Suddenly the sounds of fighting stopped, and Silver found himself surrounded by a dense weave of energy, not unlike a cage. He visibly strained to muster up a teleportation but seemed unable to.
“Gotcha!” Shadow exclaimed, having substituted her crushed voice box with sound-generating magic.
Kay cheered: “Mission success! Well done everyone! We’ve two officers now!”
Fire felt… not good but certainly not bad either. Most of his internal organs had been damaged beyond function but that was why he had prepared healing potions at the shelter. He’d be able to hold out until then.
Astro had meanwhile gone around and mended any injuries he could. Steve looked paler than usual and winced as he walked, but everyone seemed to be in good enough shape to make it back to the shelter. Once there they could have healing potions and proper rest, they definitely earned it.
Suddenly Shadow’s eyes went wide. “Something’s wrong at the rockslide team.”
Chapter20:Inner Demons (Amanda/The Ender)
Amanda wanted to play it cool, but she was hyped. She actually kissed him, he wasn’t repulsed, and also there was the whole thing about capturing the Dog. Satisfying their mission made her happy too, she guessed.
Warnado, however, was over the moon about every aspect. He danced around the bound form of the Dog.
“Herobrine? Never heard of him!” he cackled. It was the first time Amanda had heard him mention his destiny with anything less than mournfulness.
Fristad leaned against a tree, smiling shyly but enthusiastically. He’d had his big moment of exuberance and now he was pulling back. He seemed afraid of overstaying his welcome and Amanda appreciated it. She was getting closer to forgiving him for becoming the Dreamweaver, but things like that don’t erase themselves in one go. That being said, taking on the Dog with nothing but a stick and his fists to save her life was pretty chill of him.
She deliberated and was on the verge of calling out something encouraging when it happened.
A grey-scaled enderman appeared behind Warnado and struck him in the head with a half-broken shield. He went flying and landed in a heap. The same enderman, blood pouring from its shoulder, teleported toward him and kicked him in the gut. The shimmering weapons Warnado tried to summon dissipated with every blow.
Amanda levelled her crossbow. It was a blunt shot, but it would have to do. She could reload once Warnado was free. Just as she was about to fire her shot a clawed hand yanked it up from behind. The bolt struck the branch of a tree and cracked it. It fell and hung limply. Then, another hand reached around her neck, pressing claws to her throat. She was forced to her knees, disarmed and under threat of death.
Fristad, with no weapon to hand, raised his fists and looked wild-eyed at the two endermen. His gaze came to rest on Amanda’s neck and the talons about it. He raised his hands and began to slowly advance.
“Look, just let the kids go. I’ll do anything you want.”
“Get the Dog out of here, Fristad!” Amanda yelled. “Get the others!”
She fumbled lightly around her waist for her shiv. She would fight with that if necessary.
“Amanda,” he warned. “I’m not doing that.” To the endermen: “No one else has to die. I would gladly offer myself as a prisoner in their place.”
That was when the immense shape of Glibby the Ape emerged from behind the tree. He grabbed Fristad and slammed him against the trunk. His gargantuan fist connected with the shepherd’s skull with a sickening crunch. When it came away, Fristad’s face was coated with blood, and his mouth hung half-open as though he were half asleep.
“How noble,” Glibby grunted. “You’ll do.”
He threw Fristad to the ground face-first, then flipped him over.
Amanda couldn’t lower her head enough to see Fristad’s face. He must have been dozing off, because Glibby spat: “No, no! Don’t you dare. You will stay awake for this, for every second of it, or the children die.”
He bared his teeth in disgust, then twisted Fristad’s arm until there was a crack. The shepherd shrieked and clasped the broken limb.
“Every second,” the Ape hissed.
“Yes,” Fristad groaned. His voice sprouted from him like a vine without support, collapsing as soon as it rose.
The Ape grinned and stooped down to straddle him, and Amanda took a moment to weigh her options. No one had appeared to take the Dog. This was all there was. Warnado was still getting beaten by the other enderman. She didn’t stand a chance against someone as huge as Glibby - getting Warnado back in the fight was their only option. Her fingers found the circular hand of the shiv. She just needed the doofus behind her to loosen his grip.
Glibby was in position, one smothering hand across Fristad’s mouth, the other free.
“I want you to know, Fristad,” he confided in a low, raspy whisper, “that your death means precisely nothing. None of this means anything to me. I’m doing a job and trying to have fun while doing it.”
He moved the second hand in to clasp his nose shut. He was going to smother him. Amanda waited for her moment. Warnado could get him off Fristad. He couldn’t be that hurt, right? She heard his groans and doubt crept in.
Fristad began to thrash, to try and rise up to the surface for air.
“I’ve had a bad day. A terrible day. You’re just a way of blowing off steam.”
The Ape pressed down, forcing Fristad’s head into the ground, and pressing harder and harder. Fristad’s fists flailed impotently against Glibby’s muscular arms.
She felt the creature’s claws loosen as it cackled in anticipation. She set aside doubt and took her opportunity. She plunged the shiv into her captor’s gut. Its arms fell away, and she immediately ran at Warnado’s tormentor. One well-placed thrust would buy him enough time to get a spell going.
The talons plunged into her hip, and she felt them sink deep. The breath ran out of her and she collapsed. The enderman she had shanked wiped its talons off in the grass, clasping its wound with the other.
Glibby barely even noticed.
“Make her watch, Shaghran,” he murmured, enraptured with his own task.
She was dragged to her feet and teleported over. Fristad was pale. His eyes were wide, fearful and agonised tears streaming out. His arm was mangled.
“Look at that,” Glibby cooed, “That is a fine quantity of life in this one. He’s guarding it pretty jealously, isn’t he?”
Amanda tried to look away but the enderman forced her head back. She wished her eyes would fill with tears as they might obscure her view. Glibby’s hands reshuffled. She heard yelling.
“Now, watch what the turning of a little valve does to the selfish.”
His hands slid in opposite directions. A crack. The Ape drew away. Fristad was looking right at her. His tears began to dry up, and he wheezed fruitlessly. Amanda could only gape. Fristad could only gape. He lifted his head as far as he could, which wasn’t very far at all. Blood dripping from the torn, slumped corner of his mouth. His jaw hung loose, shattered under the force. He moaned something, then fell back, dead.
Glibby gave him a probing punch to the ribs. The body spasmed. Nothing more. He chuckled.
“Well, that’s him gone. I think I’m going to kill you next, girl,” concluded Glibby with a smile.
Then, everything happened at once. Steve materialised in a puff of ender-pearl smoke. Astro was soaring up the mountainside, carrying Tyron by the armpits. Shadow not far behind.
“FRISTAD!” he yelled with a swing of Excalibur.
Glibby fell back with a yell and the enderman let go of Amanda to drive off Steve. There was a deep gash on the Ape’s forearm.
“Warnado!” she called out.
There was a burst of purple fire from Warnado’s direction. The enderman that had been pummeling him staggered back, scales melting and smoke rising. A huge, horned shape arose, composed of that purple fire. At the centre of its chest, an obscured form about the size of a child hung in motionless suspension.
The horned flame reached down and tore the enderman in half, further scorching it as it did so.
Kay emerged from a portal, saw the beast, and rolled away into another just as it struck the ground where he had stood.
Glibby cried out in fury. He leaned down to Amanda and growled at her:
“Tell the demon-child I’ve changed my mind, he’s next.”
He went, picked up the Dog with his good arm and called out to his remaining bodyguard. The horned beast began to charge at him, and the Ape glared it down. As it pounced, the enderman broke free from Steve and materialised at its master’s side. Amanda blinked. They were gone. The horned beast’s fists slammed into the ground and left great, scorching indents in the earth. The beast reared back and roared, before charging at the nearest target: Astro and Tyron, who had just touched down and were immediately forced to dodge away.
As they rolled between the creature’s blows, Shadow touched down and squinted at the creature for a moment. Then, she looked down at Amanda and placed a hand over her wound. The teenager felt the pain subside a little and placed an arm around Shadow’s shoulder as she lifted her.
Shadow’s right arm shot forward, a bolt of lightning erupted from it, striking the beast in the head, the thunder was deafening. Its fiery body seemed to grow thinner, as if thrown off-balance metaphysically. Another bolt, aimed at its feet this time. Shadow’s entire arm looked scorched, the electricity seemingly affecting her too.
The flames thinned out enough for Amanda to make out Warnado’s body beneath them, still motionless. The spell normally obfuscating his face was gone, his eyes were pinched shut, face contorted in a vile mix of emotions.
“Amanda, I’ll need you to help me with this.” Shadow said with more calm than seemed appropriate for the situation.
What did she want? Amanda didn’t know what to do.
She said with panic in her voice: “But I don’t know magic or demons!”
Shadow had started walking towards the horned creature, dragging Amanda with her, shooting more lightning in regular intervals. Her arm was gradually becoming less and less recognizable as such.
When they arrived near Warnado the flames had gone back enough to be unable to lift his body, leaving him lying on the ground, but Amanda could still feel intense heat radiating off of him. His obfuscation charm was still down, and his horns were visible.
Shadow said: “I need you to come close to Warnado with me, hold his hand or whatever you think is best. What I’m about to do won’t work without something he strongly associates with positive emotions and you’re about as strong as it gets here.”
There were also unspoken words there, Amanda would get burned in the process, but she didn’t even have to consider for a moment. She looked at Shadow and nodded. They were close enough now that the heat became scorching.
With a quick movement Shadow separated from Amanda and positioned herself behind Warnado, lifting his head up and placing her still-functional left hand on top of it. Amanda was not a second behind, grabbing both of Warnado’s hands, gritting her teeth as the heat pierced her skin.
Amanda’s gaze jumped between Shadow’s face and that of Warnado, torn between looking for assurance and offering comfort. A pulse of energy seemed to ripple through Shadow, tearing open gashes all over her, revealing nothing but blackness. Her mouth moved slightly, as if she was speaking in a dream with the motions not quite making it out. Amanda clenched her hands tightly, the heat was getting worse, she wanted to scream.
Another pulse went through Shadow, rendering her so torn that it was difficult to recognize either of her appearances. Whoever she had been talking to seemed to be sufficiently intimidated, the heat from Warnado’s body died down and his face relaxed. A few moments later Amanda was only staring into obscurity as Warnado’s obfuscation spell returned.
Shadow let Warnado go. Her body was a charred marionette, barely standing.
“Shadow…” said Amanda as if it explained everything.
“I know, one second,” she winced.
Shadow stepped backwards and her ice-mage disguise crumbled away in chunks of almost-flesh like a cracked vase, pristine black tissue gradually replacing it. All that was left was the black-skinned, white-haired mage Amanda was more accustomed to.
The others were milling about. Fire up on the ridge, surveying the scene with cool, unmoved eyes. Tyron patted down the fledgling flames on his fur with the help of Urist. Kay was marshalling Rose and Voidblade into establishing a perimeter.
“Shadow,” Astro called out.
Jennifer, Steve and Astro were in a group. Destiny was a little apart from them, covering her mouth and looking out over the promontory. Jennifer had her arm around Steve, who wept into her shoulder. Astro was on his knees, passing his glowing hands up and down the body of Fristad. Amanda limped after the mage, knowing what was about to be said.
“Is there anything that can be done?” Astro asked with gravity, face iron-clad against all emotion.
“Too much brain damage from loss of oxygen and the hits he sustained, not to mention the snapped neck. The only magic that’ll do anything would be necromancy. He’s dead.”
“You, for once, you could try and sound upset,” said Jennifer coldly, holding Steve closer.
Amanda looked out over the cliff. She saw the blue cage with Silver in it and salvaged the small comfort that they had won. Bodies carpeted the ground around him.
Destiny was on her knees to her left. Fire had a hand on her shoulder.
“I know it might not feel it,” Kay murmured as he crouched over the still-unconscious Warnado. “But we are victorious. Fristad will be commemorated. He is our first martyr.”
As Amanda had thought, it was small comfort. The only sound was the wind, and the occasional rustle of armour as they walked.
###
The Ender signaled to her men to hold. There were reports of a disturbance in Research’s main workshop. Freak approached them, translucent and grinning, clasping his pale, talon-like fingers together.
“You are going to love this!” he sniggered.
The Ender furrowed her eyebrows.
“Mercury!” roared Glibby the Ape. “I need gauntlets!”
“Calm, now, Glibby, there’s no need for-”
There was a crashing sound. The second voice was that of Marinus Bul. The Ender beckoned to her soldiers to move in.
“I care not for calm! Calm can have his day when my Grey Ones are avenged. When I have gone back there and choked the life from the demon, from Brine and from Fire, then you have my permission to talk of calm!”
The Ender’s urge to suppress a smirk at Glibby’s evident but undefined misfortune receded on hearing news of Fire’s involvement. Aside from the strange little mage’s brief mention of her “brother”, the Ender hadn’t heard anything that could possibly be linked to the alchemist who had helped her and the dimensional cartographers and then left.
Distracting thoughts intruded upon her mind at the prospect of seeing him again, but she repelled them. The outlaws had the alchemist on their side, and he had angered Glibby. These were only facts. Intelligence. She rounded the corner and entered the room. Freak made himself visible beside her.
Glibby was pounding away on a door at the back of the room which had Dr Mercury’s name on it. True to his word, his gauntlets were missing, his hands bleeding from hairline cuts. His right forearm was cut open and bleeding as well.
Only one Grey One accompanied him - the one who had taken the name Shaghran in his entrapment at the hands of Kay - and this one clasped his hands to a wound on his stomach. Silver, Shaghran and the other one. Those were the three who had started the defections from her ranks. She was not at all sad to hear at least one of them needed avenging. She hoped it was Silver, by far the most insubordinate even before they got stuck outside Nexus.
Bul was holding up the unconscious body of Bartholomew, the dog-faced officer who had accompanied Glibby out to face the Jackals. The attorney’s jaw was on the floor and he just seemed glad not to be the object of the Ape’s ire.
“Mercury, come out now!” Glibby cried again. “I swear, do not make an enemy-”
“-Hello, Glibby,” The Ender interrupted with some degree of smugness. “Mind explaining what’s going on?”
Glibby lowered his head and cackled.
“Of course, you’re here to gloat.”
“Nonsense, your loss is the loss of the Tower,” the Ender condescended. “Tell myself and Mr. Bul what has happened.”
Glibby paused a moment. The Ender could practically hear the whir of gears in his head as he concocted his excuse.
“Silver failed me,” Glibby decided as he turned, tone regaining its theatrical emotiveness. “They had already disrupted us. Landslide, falling trees and a bombardment of arrows. Nearly half of us were dead or wounded, the mages all slain, most of your men succumbing to their wounds - like the weaklings they are.”
The Ender raised her hand to stay her soldiers as they began to growl and hiss at this denigration of their fallen comrades.
“General Mandy then captured dear Bartholomew - thrust him through a rift and out of our sight. I deduced he couldn’t be too far off and sent Shaghran out to find him. With our leadership and our numbers already decimated I called on Silver to stay with me, to help hold the line, but he went out to confront General Mandy. His lust for vengeance was too great. Your abandoning of him broke him, truly. The ruin and demise of good soldiers are you!
“Suffice to say, he went out to face the General and was beaten. As you, Ender, can testify, he truly is a masterful warrior, and Silver, who was your equal in every way, was just as inadequate an opponent. He was incinerated in front of all the men. After that, our soldiers began to panic - our ranks were broken by Fire and the men started to panic. Your so-called elites were the first to flee and the first to die for it!”
Glibby’s pace began to staccato and rapid-fire on the laps sentence and he smashed another set of test-tubes.
The Ender was unfazed by the verbal assault.
“I was only just able to rescue Bartholomew before they descended upon us in full force. At which point my Lointain was slain by the demon-child.” He clasped his brow in a false sadness that barely concealed impetuous anger.
“Well, well, well,” Freak entered, walking around the Ender with hands clasped behind his back. “The Ape swings from lie to lie as his namesake swings from tree to tree.”
Glibby wrenched a pipe from a table and hurled it at the phantom. He quickly became intangible, and it passed through him. The Ape snarled and pounded on the door three more times.
“Mercur- mods damn you!” He turned to Bul, who had just laid Bartholomew aside. “Get out there - get me armour - get me gauntlets! Magical, technological, enchanted, mundane, I do not care. And potions for our wounds! If you don’t return with them, you had best return carrying your own severed head!”
He grabbed Bul by the shoulder and shunted him off down the corridor. The Ender, Freak, and their guards parted ways.
“Pacify him,” Bul hissed as he went through.
The Ender moved her hand to the pommel of her sword as they closed ranks.
“Pacify me?!” Glibby roared again. “I risked my life to save Bartholomew, Bul! Were it not for Silver, and the cowards the Ender supplied me with I would be victorious! Fristad of Veridale is dead! Steven Brine, I bested. Destiny, slayer of the Sovereign, I bested. The Children of the Prophecy, some pernicious assassin, the wizard Astro - all these I bested! And dead they would be now had you given me the troops to make good on these combats. I was outgunned and outnumbered by the time of these duels, but I fought on. Even after that cowardly trickster Fire carved away my gauntlets, I fought on! And I shall yet fight on, and I shall yet present those I have named as corpses before the Entity if you just get me some mods-damned gauntlets!”
He threw one last punch back at Mercury’s door. The entire metal structure, door and frame, quivered like a string from the impact. The Ender’s smirk intensified. Seeing him tantrum like this was deeply satisfying. He deserved it for poaching her men. She prayed to the ancestors he would get violent with her so she could put an end to him.
“And where is this Entity I am supposed to serve?” Glibby raved, flailing his good arm emphatically. “Currently it is busy patrolling villages, muttering to itself like a senile old man. Am I now to lead you? I shall if I must. Oh, what has the Silhouette foisted upon me? I shall tell you: an army of cowards led by a-”
A white glove clasped his arm, at the end of a bronze-armoured limb. Behind Glibby stood the Entity, unmoving and as unfazed as a statue. Dr Mercury stood to the Entity’s side, eyes bloodshot and surrounded by deep purple rings from nights without sleep. Even her robotic arms seemed to droop from exhaustion.
The Ender received the treasure of seeing the blood drain from Glibby’s face in real time, as he desperately attempted to course correct.
“By-by a noble, mighty ruler, who I am wrong to doubt in such a manner,” Glibby seethed, falling to his knees and bowing his head to hide his venom. “I apologise my lord, the heat of battle and the pain of loss are still on me. I was not thinking clearly.”
The Entity lowered its gaze.
“Then you are not-fit to... return to the field,” it concluded. “Go, contact your Silhouette. Tell him-I-demand more crystals-more quickly. As per the duties you… have had-foisted upon you.”
It shunted him forward and he limped out of the room contemptuously. The Ender was ecstatic. She and Freak shared a satisfied look, and then they turned to their master.
“We have accelerated the plan. It is time I told you what shape-our victory shall take.”
The Ender’s heart stopped. She tried to exchange a look with Freak, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the Entity. His gaze was ablaze with a terrifying ambition.
Chapter21:Painting the Loss (Steve)
Fristad was dead. When Steve finished crying, he removed himself from Jennifer’s shoulder and simply stood over the body. Astro was spreading a tarp over it, while Kay and Fire were discussing their next move. Jennifer stood somewhere behind him, granting him the space he needed.
The beige cloth crept up Fristad at a reasonable speed, but from Steve’s perspective it was slow as a desert spreading across him. As the face finally disappeared, it finally hit Steve: his friend was gone.
At one point, Astro went to offer Steve a healing potion, but Kay stopped him. Something about showing off battle-scars.
“It helps the image. We’re back from a battle, not a pageant.”
Steve started yelling at him, but Jennifer calmed the situation. They compromised by letting Astro heal the wounds partway. They didn’t hurt that much to begin with. Kay’s obsession with how everything looked did. They had lost their friend and it was Kay’s fault.
The world whizzed by. Destiny came up to him and offered some words he didn’t really hear. He watched as Warnado huddled up, shaking from fear. Amanda’s arm was around him. Others gathered weapons from the ground. Symbols of conquest. Steve’s stomach turned and he felt the wound along the bottom as though it were ready to burst.
Eventually, Voidblade, the green-eyed enderman, appeared beside him. Time to return. Steve acquiesced.
They warped back to the base. The corridor leading up to the stage. They asked him and Jennifer to carry the stretcher with Fristad’s body on it. Fire was at the fore, looking away. Tyron smiled back apologetically.
An order was given, and they moved forward in a column. Jennifer took Steve’s hand, and he squeezed it. He had her at least.
What awaited on the other side was upsettingly grandiose. The stage looked out on the entire congregation. Steve spared a look up and saw the cliff where the other Steve, the Prophet’s bodyguard, had approached him and Fristad the other day, setting in motion the chain of events that would lead to one of their deaths.
Sure enough, both Prophet and disciple were there, looking down on the scene. The Prophet himself, withered as ever, was hunched over, squinting down and steadying himself on a rock. The other Steve was impassive as his eyes passed over the stretcher. Steve couldn’t stop himself from hating them both at that moment.
There was a large cube with a tarp over it - probably Silver’s cage. It occurred to Steve that the mission had actually succeeded. Goodie.
A line of archers before the stage. A podium Lucy was arranging. Throngs of people murmuring, uncertain what was about to be said. Warnado and Amanda nowhere to be seen. Destiny holding a bag of weapons over her shoulder. Yet none of these details came together for Steve. He seemed to forget one the second he looked at another. He looked back at the ridge, saw the rock where Fristad and he had eaten that morning. It was like a magnet for his eyes.
“I introduce your commander, Fire,” called Lucy.
Steve mustered his attention.
“Go on,” he thought. “Make some meaning out of this. I dare you.”
“Today I announce that our first operation was a success! We ambushed the Tower patrol, most of them were killed, the rest routed. More importantly, we captured one of their elite units! Silver of the Grey Ones!”
Fire gestured backwards and Tyron pulled the tarp from the cage. Steve felt a brief twang of satisfaction as he saw the enderman scratching at the luminous bars, feral and desperate. The crowd roared in approval.
“Interrogation will take place in due time. However, I regret to inform you that there is not only good news. One of us has fallen at the hands of Glibby the Ape, Fristad of Veridale is dead.”
A silence fell.
“Fristad died protecting Warnado and Amanda, a proper burial will take place later today. He shall not be forgotten.”
With that, Fire left. He just walked back to the line, and up walked Kay. Steve braced himself, gritted his teeth.
“Thank you, Commander, for your words. Fristad of Veridale was a good man. He shall be sorely missed. He died doing what was right, and we are all indebted to him. He is the first martyr of this war. Let us not let his death go unanswered.”
He paused and there was a rumbling of assent.
“We are indeed at war with the Entity and his Tower. And your Commander undersells how strong a footing we have started on. We went in, a mere handful of us, against a force that outnumbered us five or six to one, and we were victorious. Some of you may wonder why we took this risk. It is not because we doubted your abilities, but because we value your lives above ours. Look upon our wounds,” he gestured around, pulled up his sleep to reveal half-healed gashes. “All these wounds and just one death. A sad death, but a worthy death.”
He gestured to Destiny to come forward with the weapons sack. She spilled it out across the stage. They clattered in a pile.
“A worthy death,” Steve thought. “********!”
“Each of these was taken from a soldier of the Tower. Each an implement of our oppressors. Now we will use them as implements of liberation!”
The last weapons fell from the sack - the shattered gauntlets. Kay lifted them.
“These were once the weapons of the Ape. The fists of the Tower. They shall bring us down no more! Fire, our great Commander, shattered these himself in single combat. Even when the Ape had struck him, crippled organs, broken limbs, your Commander fought on and forced the Ape to retreat! And his bodyguards, his Grey Ones, are now scattered. Once they were three in number, now he has but one. I have heard your stories, and I know how the Ape and his beasts have tormented you. Soon, they shall do so no more! Soon none of the Entity’s thugs shall torment you! Soon you shall be free, and safe and home!”
He raised his hands and the crowd cheered.
“What thinks the Prophet?” he roared up to the ridge.
There was a hush. For a time, the old man was silent. The other Steve nudged him, at which point he hoisted himself and staggered toward the edge. He raised his hands in balled fists.
“A tower falling! The fire rises!” he screamed with jubilation.
The crowd was euphoric.
“You heard him,” called Kay with a smirk. “Your Commander, your Fire, rises. Spread the word! Far and wide! This army needs warriors, and warriors are you all!”
Steve saw various people running off to fulfil this duty. Ender-people teleporting. Chants began: “The Fire rises!” Cheers were widespread. Dancing started. Music, even. Dissonant to what happened not very long before.
Steve looked down at the corpse of Fristad, with its neck like a mangled plant stem. He wondered how many others would go the same way before the end.
Nexus was a big world with many, many people, many dreamers. More than I was used to. Back home there had been a few million in the most populated times. I still sometimes wonder why I decided to follow Fire here, worry perhaps.
I was currently floating through Nexus’ dreamscape, a near-infinite space of vibrant colors. Some areas were crowded with dreams, others only had singular dreamers with nothing surrounding them. I usually picked out particularly troubled dreams to visit; people are thankful for being taken out of a nightmare and having someone to talk. Occasionally I also visit regular dreams, just because someone is having a good dream doesn’t mean they can’t have problems.
Beneath me was one of the biggest accumulation of dreams in Nexus, the shelter Fire had started. Thousands of dreams, packed into an impossibly tight space. I had already visited many of them in nights before.
Before looking at the dreamers below me I looked straight ahead. In the distance was the only accumulation of dreams that trumped the shelter in numbers: The Tower. The dreamers were spread out far, like branches of a tree, both beautiful and imposing. I smiled. My recent conversation with Fire had brought up something important. I really have changed a lot from when we first met. I contemplated while floating towards the Tower, there was a specific dream there that I wanted to try getting into.
I thought back to when it all began. Fire had been the first dreamer I visited. Possibly because he… created me in a way. Phantoms like me don’t just appear out of thin air, a particularly strong emotion has to bring us into existence. When a phantom is created it is a blank slate, the only thing it knows is something related to its creation. Back then all I knew was that someone needed help, badly. So, I helped him, then went on to help others.
I was right in front of the tower now, the giant tree-like structure looked even more beautiful up close, the only thing that marred it were the grey, dead dreams. There weren’t many now, their numbers fluctuated as days passed. Whatever they were, they felt wrong.
However, grey was not the color I wanted to pay attention to now. I was looking for a very distinct shade of purple. There, fairly high up in the branches. That’s where it was. I floated ever closer to the dream, more carefully as I got near. The last times I tried to get in I had been forcefully, almost painfully, repelled, even more so than when Kay had thrown me out.
Today was different. The walls of the dream were resistant but still permeable. I pressed on into the dream. A wave of emotions washed over me, there was great excitement but also anxiety and a small hint of longing. The dream felt odd, I had only encountered a few like it. This was the dream of someone hailing from the End. I had never seen an enderman dream back in Fire’s world, I wasn’t even sure if they slept at all. The ones here were different, allowing me to build some familiarity with how their dreams worked.
It took a bit for the dreamer to drift out of their previous dream and into our shared dream space. The shared dreams always manifested as places the dreamers were comfortable with, usually things like a home or a spot in the wilderness they liked. In this case it had manifested as the edge of a small End island. My feet were dangling over the Void when I materialized. Next to me sat a creature of the End: Tall, thin, purple eyed. This particular one was wearing obsidian armor with a purple gem right below the neck. Evidently this was the Ender, I had seen her in Fire’s memories and in those of other people. The lightning-shaped scars on her face were new. A slight tension filled me.
The Ender seemed to sense that something was different about this particular dream. She looked down at me.
She hissed: “What is this?”
“Hello,” I said. “I am a phantom people have taken to calling ‘the Lady of Dreams’. You seem troubled, is there anything I can do to help?”
The Ender looked at me with suspicious eyes. “If there’s one thing, I know about phantoms that is that they always consume some aspect of us. Some eat joy, others eat anger, ones like Freak eat fear. What do you eat?”
Freak. Yes. He was under the employ of the Entity as well. I never interacted with other phantoms, most of them existed in the material world while I existed in the dreamscape. I never found another like me.
I replied: “I eat dreams. I eat whatever dream you would be having if I weren’t here. It’s secondary to me, I just like helping people.”
The Ender asked: “Aren’t you an odd one? How do you help people?” There was still an ample amount of distrust in her, I could practically feel it radiating off of her.
I started a very careful search of her mind, just skimming her thoughts, it usually helped with not upsetting dreamers I visited for the first time.
“I listen, I talk. Quite simple. That’s really what a lot of people need.”
The Ender nodded and was quiet for a few seconds. “So, you’re a dream therapist?”
I shifted into a more comfortable position on the endstone. “In a way, yes. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
More contemplation. Nothing from her conscious thoughts stood out. I saw something like this occasionally, most recently in Kay. She had some sort of passive defense. I decided not to pry.
With a heavy sigh she said: “You know what, why not. Ancestors know I don’t have anyone else to talk to, you’ll do.”
Something changed, that longing I had felt earlier returned, if only for a brief moment. The emotion resonated with me, more than it should have.
The Ender said: “So, I knew these people a long time ago, they said I was too ambitious, I should take the victories I have instead of finding new battles. I may have been younger when I made those decisions, but I am still convinced they were the correct ones.”
I replied: “I have heard of you from other dreamers, you’re a warrior, a leader, correct?”
I tried to keep it neutral, the Ender had done quite a few things that hurt many people all over Nexus, but I still wanted to help her, it was just what I did, who I was.
“You could say that. We defeated the humans and while the elders insisted on taking on the Nether, I went to another frontier. A bigger one, the biggest frontier imaginable.”
I nodded. “Alright. How has this frontier been working out for you?”
She said: “Good until recently. There were some dissenters within the ranks, a few defectors to Glibby, some criticism from home, but I had a near-spotless record until, out of the blue, this group of people shows up and makes things difficult. First the prison break, the biggest one we’ve ever had. Granted, that’s mostly on Glibby, incompetent as he is.” she hesitated, then continued. “Then we start picking up weird dimensional readings, apparently some magical anomaly girl did something our scientists don’t understand. Then the raid goes south…”
She stops, reaching up to her face, slowly tracing the scars. A mixture of anger and sorrow filled the dream. Emotions bottled up and stowed away, now surfacing. Something about the situation started feeling familiar, this was just like how Fire had been early on. Very early on I hadn’t been able to see other dreamers, just him, back when he still was just human and went by the name of Peter.
I very carefully reached out with my arm. A small comfort. The Ender didn’t push it away.
She continued, more agitated by the second. “First, they somehow catch wind that we are coming and defeat the soldiers, then that general has the audacity to attack me directly. You know the worst part? He won. A human defeated me. It wasn’t an honest victory either, he had something that helped him, a crutch. I only realized what happened when I woke up in the medical ward.”
She really didn’t have anyone to talk, it was all competition, rank difference or facades of professionalism. This was years of emotions, suddenly uncorked.
A pained smile crept up on her face. “At least I am not the only one affected. Glibby just had to prove his supposed superiority by personally accompanying a patrol. You know what happened?”
I did in fact know what happened, but it would not be wise to let it show. I asked: “No, what happened?”
The Ender’s smile had opened into some sort of half-laugh as she spoke. “They got ambushed, beaten by enemies they outnumbered five-to-one. He got his gauntlets shattered as humiliation. Anyone who is capable of doing that could have killed him too. He’s living on mercy.” she breathed in, then out. “But sadly, it’s only of little solace to me, apparently some kind of resistance has formed, getting people together somewhere, that damned prophet is probably responsible.”
I didn’t say anything, something big was about to come up, I felt it. It was usually better to not interrupt in those situations.
“You know what I told you? My ambition for a bigger frontier? It’s about to come true, I’ll show those fossils back home what true conquest is.” She said with pride.
Her mental barrier was gone, just for a moment, thoughts flowed freely. That’s when I saw it. Or rather, I heard it. It wasn’t intentional, it just happened. A voice from the Ender’s thoughts, not hers, not a voice that could be considered human by any stretch.
“The-machine is… close to com-pletion. Dr. Mercury has assured-it will function… as intended. Once there-are enough crystals all-worlds-shall become one.”
An involuntary shudder went through me, that must have been the Entity speaking. I suddenly wanted nothing more than to leave. The Ender seemed to have calmed herself, her barrier was back, more impenetrable than ever. She took another breath.
“I feel better now.” She simply said, there was surprise in her voice. I could imagine that she did, I on the other hand did not.
I did my best to remain calm. “No problem, that’s what I’m here for.”
The Ender didn’t seem as distrustful as before, she asked: “How does this end?”
I replied: “If there is nothing else to talk about, I will leave, and you will begin dreaming a new dream.”
“I’d like that.” She said.
I felt the same, for a different reason. The shared dream collapsed around me, suddenly I was back in the open dreamscape near the Tower. If I had a mouth here, I’d have screamed, this was bad. Panic welled up inside of me. I had my principles about not telling things I found in others’ dreams, but this went beyond mere confidentiality. Entire worlds were at risk. I had to tell someone and fast.
I navigated the dreamscape back to the shelter, quickly looking through the dreamers there. Fire was not among them, neither were Tyron or Astro. The second time I looked I finally found someone: Kay was dreaming.
I gathered up my willpower, he wouldn’t throw me out this time.
Chapter23:Grim Tidings (Kay)
The Book and I were having one of our dreamscape chats. It was the same study as before. I’d rather come to like this setting. A desk laden with memoirs. Fancy shelves with models and tomes behind me. Throne-like armchair beneath. Book in another armchair across from me. I had hinted to the Book it might want a more presentable form, but it insisted on keeping the same vaguely humanoid mass of pages.
“So,” I said. “That was two hundred more today. We’ve got near enough two thousand soldiers under our command. What do you make of them?”
“Some claimed to be Jackals,” the Book responded flatly. “They are experienced. Equipped. This is good.”
“True, but I can’t help but wonder if the inclusion of bandits won’t cause friction.”
“You hypocrite,” the Book scoffs. “Complaining about bandits.”
I tensed, and the fireplace flared dark red at this mention of my checkered past.
“You know what I mean,” I warned. “Some civilians may have been their victims recently. I’m wondering if we shouldn’t grant them their own division.”
“And, what? Use them as cannon fodder? Or better yet, leave the untrained divisions entirely to themselves. With no one seasoned to bolster them. That went so well last time, didn’t it-”
“Guard your damned tongue!” I snarled.
I fixed my gaze on the book for a few seconds before casting my eyes aside. I rose and marched past the Book to the far end of the room, firelight passing over me until I am out of its view. I envisaged a dartboard on the back of the Book’s chair and summoned darts to my hand. I began to throw them violently. They all hit the centre, not out of skill but on account of my will. Herobrine’s teachings had made such invented spaces my own little world, over which I had total control. Only my own nightmares were beyond my control.
I try not to acknowledge the fact that the Book is the only thing keeping those nightmares at bay. I will the board to be clear and speak as I begin to throw anew.
“Fristad’s death was not my fault,” I said as the first dart landed. “He died heroically.” The second landed, splitting open the first. “You chose a good vessel, and neither of us treated him nearly well enough.”
The Book spun its chair around. I bent the dart’s part midflight so that it swooped around and still struck the bullseye. I could only imagine it somewhat near to the centre. I get the impression the Book is glaring at me.
It has been increasingly confrontational since that coward, Glibby, killed Fristad. Doubt had been introduced when I lost the election, but we’d overcome that. Reconciled with Fire before the raid. But losing its old vessel had awoken a very unhelpful bitterness in my partner. Its interest in Fristad appeared to me to be a mixture of petulant longing for a lost toy and sentimental attachment. I was impressed and disappointed, considering how the Book usually presented itself as a grim survivalist. Perhaps it was a simple sunk-cost fallacy weighing on its mind.
But we would overcome this bump. Silver did not know the Entity’s true designs, but he was full of intel otherwise. We had learnt much of the Tower’s command structure, who was involved and where they were stationed within Nexus. The Book, Shadow and I had most recently forced him to explain how they travelled between worlds.
Naturally, there were scattered portals about the place, which relied on the overlapping of dimension fault-lines, but the Tower had something more deliberate: facilities where new portals were constructed. Machines that decided where a portal went. Soon, we would squeeze the location of such a facility from him, and we would be able to harangue the Entity wherever its armies were in creation. We might even be able to get some help of our own.
As the Book continued its eyeless, mouthless glare, I smiled involuntarily at the idea of bringing my friends into the fold. Having Aaron, Secret, or even someone like Bokane would make this conflict much easier.
Driven forward by this hopeful notion, I was just about to attempt our reconciliation, but I felt a wave over me. The flames of the fire rippled. Even the Book felt it. Our gazes met and we both understood a truce needed to be called. Someone had arrived inside my mind.
I willed a door into being on the wall nearest and determined that whoever arrived needed to step through. I heard a large thud against it and couldn’t help but imagine the door cracking, and so it did.
I exchanged a confused look with the Book and then called: “You may enter!”
The door practically flew off its hinges, in came a familiar radiant white woman, still halfway unmanifested.
She said with urgency: “Kay, I discovered something about the Entity’s plans…”
“Take a seat,” I answered, and with a thought we were all sitting around the desk. Myself on the one side, the Book and Lady of Dreams on the other.
I was not happy to see the Lady. She had entered my dreams and invaded my privacy. Supposedly, she was trying to help, and Fire and Shadow vouched for her, but I couldn’t help but feel skeptical. On the other hand, I was now used to having the Book wandering around, but the Lady had tried to access my actual thoughts. But if she had useful information, she had useful information. I was obliged to hear her out.
“Lady, this is the Book. Book, this is the Lady.”
“Charmed,” the Book scoffed.
“Pleasantries can wait. I was trying to get into a very resistant dream in the Tower for a while now, turns out it was the Ender’s.” She seemed uncomfortable talking about this. “She mentally let slip what the Entity told her about its plan.”
“...And that plan is?” I offered with petty sarcasm.
“To collapse all worlds into Nexus with some kind of machine. It sounded like they were almost ready to activate it!”
I nodded placidly and stood up.
“Book, walk with me. A moment, if you would, Lady.”
I willed another door into existence to the right of the desk and beckoned to the Book to follow me. It moved somewhat ethereally, not quite able to simulate physical movement.
We stepped through and found ourselves in a ruined great hall. Several shattered pillars. A crack ran along the roof, through which sunlight spilled. Herobrinian banners lined the walls. Dust everywhere.
“Great hall of castle Zine Craft just before Notch marched on it,” I explained flatly. “Don’t know why, just the first room I thought of.”
I took several steps forward and surveyed the ruined chamber. The Book was behind me.
“Well,” the Book responded. “Sounds like it’s all coming to a head.”
“Isn’t that a bloody understatement?!” I screamed, turned around and running back to the Book. “Merging all the worlds? Under that thing’s rulership? We only have two thousand soldiers at a push! Silver, on the other hand, mentions a new vassal, legion or sponsor of the Tower every five minutes. We are ****ed!”
I stomped and several more pillars crumbled.
The Book slapped me. I allowed it to hurt me because it was right. I was panicking. This lapse was unwise.
That didn’t dull my fear, however. I couldn’t feel my heart or my lungs or be distracted by any part of my body, so all I could feel was the pure emotion that crippled my very soul. I felt the zweihander piercing my breastplate over and over again. Remembered the ring of metal as I struck the Entity’s forearm. But in this I found a purpose, a clarity.
“Right, quite right. You are quite right. Give me a second,” I said, before calling out to the sky, “Kir? Are you there?”
I reached out with my mind, beyond the dreamscape I’d constructed.
“Always,” a familiar voice chirped.
“Wake up Astro, I want a few others to witness this conversation. Tell him to telepathy his way in.”
“Astro not asleep.”
“Tell him to telepathy his way in, anyway. If you can get a hold of her, Shadow too. I want at least one other person to hear exactly what I hear. Then, step into my office yourself.”
Kir acquiesced and stepped away. I waited a few seconds, and soon I felt other waves of entry, these ones weaker as I expected them. I took a moment, willed a few more chairs into existence back in the study. I turned to the Book.
“Any advice?”
The Book responded decisively in one long, coherent burst: “Ask what she knows about the machine. Mechanism, source, location if possible. Also, see if you can find out the Ender’s opinion of the matter. Are they for, against, ambivalent? Anything we could use to divide their numbers.”
“Excellent, let’s step back in. We’ve kept our guests waiting long enough.”
I marched up to the door, the Book in tow, and forced it open. The second it banged against the wall I immediately willed myself into my armchair. I summoned the Book’s chair over beside me and beckoned to it to sit. It was a small concession, but a recognition of its residency.
Across from us sat four figures. On the far right was the Lady, who looked as radiantly distressed as when I left. Then, there was a cushioned stool in which Kir sat, a glowing blue silhouette in the shape of a person. I’ll be honest, I’d expected them to appear as a sword, so I switched the stool out for a high-backed chair. After that there was Astro, who appeared the same as usual but slightly see-through. Last, was a pitch-black orb with a glowing red center, surrounded by a white-hot halo of light. I assumed this was Shadow.
“Sorry to have kept you all waiting,” I conceded with a little nod and an outstretched hand. “I’m sure you’re all a little surprised to be here, but welcome to our little clubhouse.”
“Kay,” Astro asked, brows furrowed, mouth parted with worry. “What’s this about.”
“Lady, if you’d explain to them what you just told us.”
I looked at the Book. Its face was blank and impassive as ever. I looked to the Lady, and I prayed my own face didn’t betray the same terror.
Chapter24:Beyond Desperate Measures (Shadow)
“Could someone please explain to me why we’re having an emergency meeting at midnight?” Asked Warnado, more asleep than awake.
“There’s been a…” Kay paused with a glance at the command-room table. His tone was uncharacteristically restrained. “...Development. New intelligence has come in. We know the Entity’s endgame.”
The entirety of the shelter leadership was gathered in the command room, some of them understandably groggy. Shadow had no such problems.
She explained: “Steve, Jennifer. Remember when we performed those tests on the crystals? The theory we had back then has been validated. The Entity’s plan is to use some kind of machine to pull worlds into Nexus until some kind of critical mass is reached. From there it’s just a matter of subjugating everyone. It won’t be long until that plan can be put into motion.”
The room fell into two different kinds of silence. The first was a shocked silence as the reality of the Entity’s plan sank in. But then there was the second, which was altogether more unsettling. This silence was accompanied by the averted eyes of those who had already known: Tyron, Kay, Astro, Fire and of course Shadow herself. Their silence was filled with trepidation, with a fear that there was no good way of responding to this.
Destiny asked: “Where is this intel from?”
Fire said: “The Lady of Dreams got into a dream of the Ender, she read it from her mind and passed it on to Kay. I can vouch for her being truthful.” After a short pause he continued. “The question now is, what do we do with this information? Let me hear your thoughts.”
Destiny did not hesitate: “First of all, who on earth is the Lady of Dreams and why should I trust her?”
Shadow took it upon her to explain: “She’s a benevolent phantom from our world, she visits people in their dreams to give them someone to talk to. Fire has known her for thousands of years. Some of you may have been visited by her at some point.”
“If it’s worth anything,” Kay cut in. “She’s visited me before - I threw her out. She seemed pretty sincere - an extremely panicked form of sincere, but sincere nonetheless.”
He then wilted away into line with Shadow and Astro behind Fire. Destiny gritted her teeth but didn’t say anything.
“Do you guys have any ideas or are we supposed to do all the work?” entered Steve with a surprising aggression.
People were on edge, due to the recent mission, due to tiredness, due to reasons Shadow couldn’t know. However, she trusted her brother’s ability to keep the discussion on track.
Fire said calmly: “If anyone has ideas, I’d like to hear them before bringing forth my own. I don’t want to make anyone feel obligated to go along with what I say.”
“Of course, we wouldn’t want our leader influencing our course of action,” muttered Steve.
Before anyone could say anything - and Voidblade in particular looked quite ready to speak up - Kay elbowed Astro, who stepped forward. He spoke flatly and professionally, eyes sunken from exhaustion. He had a little sheet of notes he unfolded and kept looking at.
“We obviously know that the Entity has a machine with which it will merge all of creation together. We have some vague ideas of the mechanism it uses because of the crystal research. The big question is where it is and how we hurt it. So, we need to get more intel, fill in the gaps and plan our next move. To this effect the most obvious solution is to send a small team of infiltrators to gather said intel and preferably do a little sabotage while in there.
“The only problem is getting the right number of people. Too small a force and it’s suicide, too large and they’ll know we’ve been there and, to be perfectly honest, if they get noticed it would probably be suicide, too. We only escaped the Tower by the skin of our teeth last time. We’re not going to get lucky twice.
“Numbers are also limited by a lack of viable candidates. The infiltrators would preferably come, um, from the leadership due to the importance of the task and the fact that we’re the only ones who have much idea of the Tower’s internal topology. This pool is limited even more by the presence of the magic-dampening lamps. If we send in magic-users, they would be disoriented and, in some cases, physically weakened-”
“Alright, alright,” Steve laughed bitterly. “I’ve heard enough. We all know damn well who came up with this plan and he shouldn’t be hiding behind his pal. Last time we did this, Fristad died, and the intended target got away. Surprised the plan doesn’t include sending the kids in to fight the Entity.”
Kay visibly tensed before slumping into dourness. Warnado and Astro were about to interject when Steve continued: “See, even he’s not defending the call. He knows it was the wrong decision and he’s not man enough to own up to it!”
“Steve, cool your jets,” Jennifer said without enthusiasm, planting a hand to his shoulder. A sidelong glare at Kay made it clear she was only doing this out of obligation.
“Lads, lads!” Urist interjected, accent slightly stronger than usual. “I know we all have thoughts on tha ambush, meself included, but we can’t let it swamp us down like that. I’ve seen this before and let me tell ye, it didn’t end well, just results in pulled lev’rs and magma-flooded keeps... If ye get me metaphor.”
Fire nodded. “It would be best if we kept this civil, we are on an uncertain timer. Putting that aside, do we have more opinions on a suggested course of action?”
Destiny shrugged morosely before saying, “Hit the Tower. Send a primary force to hit the Tower and draw the defenders away while a team of around fifty go in through a back route to raid the labs. From there: smash and grab.”
“Exactly,” Steve said. “I’ve fought a lot of bad guys in my time, and I would have killed for an army a tenth of this size. Jennifer and I held off an entire undead army with just a small group of our friends. We need to use this!”
Lucy was sitting further back due to the limited space around the table, holding her notebook. She looked exhausted but determined. She said: “According to our last inventory we only have enough high-quality armor to equip a fourth of our soldiers, half of them if we count the armor pieces of lesser quality. Our weapons are also sub-optimal. We know they have artillery, which makes it very possible that they have some sort of grapeshot-type munitions, which would shred through unarmored troops.”
Shadow thought back to the ambush, then brought forward another point: “Our trees took out all but one of their casters, we don’t have that luxury in an offensive battle. It also stands to reason that they have higher-tech weapons at their disposal. I saw what kind of suit their head scientist runs around with, against non-magical foot soldiers anything of that caliber is basically a one-man-army.”
“So what?” asked Destiny. “Inside the Tower like one in ten of their mages will be capable of putting up a fight. The main body just needs to show up, look scary and run off. The actually important stuff will go down inside the Tower.”
Warnado tried to speak but was again cut off. Shadow didn’t feel like speaking, she decided to wait until more details were set in stone.
“You keep saying inside the Tower,” said Astro with an eyebrow cocked like a gun. “How exactly do you propose we do that?”
“I…” Destiny heaved in a deep breath and closed her eyes before continuing. “There’s a portal near here that leads back to Minera, my world. It’s deactivated but mostly intact. With a bit of fire, we could reactivate it. I… already did it once, accidentally. I go there to drink every now and then, was screwing around with fire magic and accidentally put it back in commission. Put it out immediately after, but it was functioning.
“We could hop through the portal, travel across Minera until we find the portal David and I entered through. It leads directly behind enemy lines - somewhere beneath the Tower. Then, like I said, smash and grab.”
“Y’know, that might…” Kay said before trailing off. He pulled the Book out of his pocket and began reading through its pages. “Hold on, come back to me.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Tyron cut in, with his tone of heroic experience. “That will absolutely useful later, but we can’t blow a shot like that on intelligence-gathering. As we can’t currently make portals of our own, any we do learn how to use must be treated as invaluable resources with which to deal the killing blow. We can’t afford to use it calling attention to ourselves.”
Kay removed himself from reading and concluded, though not with his usual confidence, “Besides, if the Entity shows up fifty men is not enough. Believe me, that thing is literally a host unto itself, and it will send more than one manifestation after you. What’s more, assuming the Entity’s out that day, if they decide to cut that portal off, everyone we send in is screwed.” He slammed the Book shut with finality and shook his head before starting to pace furiously. “Like Tyron says, if we use that route, it’s all or nothing. We commit hundreds to it, or we commit none.”
Rose looked up from a knife she’d been inspecting and said: “Thing about stealth missions is that you want to avoid raising the alarm at all costs, I’ve been on enough of those to know that once they’re suspicious it becomes infinitely harder to sneak and blend. As much as I’d like to go there and tear some **** up... hate to say it but using our force as a distraction would both put it[/] at risk and shoot our infiltrators in the foot too.”
There were murmurs of assent throughout the room. A large force was off the table.
“Okay, why not just send me in?”
It was Warnado. Everyone at once began to dismiss him until Amanda intervened.
“Let him talk!” She shouted with volume none of them had though her capable of. The room silenced, she patted the quarter-demon on the shoulder. “Go ahead, Helix.”
“Thanks,” Warnado smiled with clumsy affection.
She smirked and leant against the wall, struggling not to beam and permanently sacrifice her reputation as the world-weary, cynical one in the group. As far as Shadow was concerned, Amanda had distanced herself from that kind of reputation when she helped save Warnado from his demonic side after the ambush, or more accurately added a more compassionate reputation to her existing one.
“Anyway, before you rudely interrupted me, I was going to say that I’m the obvious candidate as I’m the only one we know isn’t affected by the lamps. Even those who are naturally good at hiding would be off-balance. Rose might not have her knives. Destiny couldn't just stick someone with an icicle to win a fight. Kay wouldn’t have the Book and is bad at sneaking despite what he says. Shadow might start talking like a normal human being. It would be a crapshoot. But we know I’d just be good ol’ Warnado, stealer of keys, planter of jam! I can do this.”
The room hung in an eerie silence as this almost seemed like a reasonable idea to send the literal child into the dragon’s lair alone. Jennifer’s mouth hung open a little as she cocked an eyebrow at Fire. Kay looked stuck somewhere between an affectionate smile and a stroke. Finally, it was Tyron who spoke up and grounded the conversation again.
“Warnado, great pitch, but I was actually within earshot when you stole the keys at the Tower. You did great work, no one is devaluing your contribution but… the guards absolutely noticed when you swapped out the keys for jam. It didn’t really matter then, but we really need no one to notice this time.”
Warnado looked around uncomfortably before puffing out his chest and walking into the centre of the room.
“I can swap things without leaving jam, y’know.”
“Prove it.”
“I just did!” mocked Warnado, holding up a jam-free Kir. He held up his hand for a high five that Kay instinctively provided before immediately grimacing as he remembered the thing he was approving.
It looked pretty bleak for a few seconds before Tyron spoke again.
He held up a palmful of orange, gelatinous conserve. Warnado bowed his head and returned to the wall with Amanda. She provided him with a conciliatory arm around the shoulder.
“Voidblade,” Fire asked. “Would you be up for infiltrating?”
Voidblade hesitated, contemplating. “Yes, although I probably could not blend in with their endermen, different skin, different eyes. There are some exceptions, but questions would be asked.”
Urist chimed in again: “I could probably go too in theory, might slow ye down though.”
Shadow said: “That leaves Steve, Jennifer and you Fire. Five people at most, do you think we could work with that?”
At this point everyone was looking at Fire. He seemed uneasy with what he was about to say, a rare state for him. So rare in fact, that Shadow was already getting a bad feeling about what he was about to say.
Fire took a breath and then said: “The reason I waited before saying anything was to see if you’d come to the same conclusion as I did. An infiltration mission is our only hope at this point, inaction means we lose, an assault means we lose as well, just differently. I have considered that we may have been fed false information in some way but even if that is the case, the chance of it being true outweighs everything. What I am about to tell you might, no will sound crazy.”
Shadow did not like where this was going, she knew her brother well and over the course of the discussion her thoughts walked certain paths that couldn’t have been too different from those his had walked.
“I need to go on this mission, alone.”
No, he did not! There had to be some other way.
Shadow spoke up immediately: “That’s a suicide mission! I can’t let you do that Fire!”
“This seems like we’re pushing the definition of a ‘small infiltration force’ a little far,” said Astro, hands outstretched as though he were preparing to catch a particularly delicate vase.
“Okay,” Steve conceded. “I know I was complaining just there about leaders not taking ownership for their plans, but… I’m not sure this is the right solution. What if they get you?”
“This ain’t it, chief,” chimed in Warnado, once again becoming the surprise voice of reason.
Fire explained: “My point is, I’m the one who is most likely to actually make it out. Ideally, I can use an invisibility potion to get into the complex, then use my camouflage cloak to go in further, enchantments don’t seem to be affected as aggressively by the lamps. We can entangle small sheets of paper to ender pearls, then periodically drop the pearls, that way I can get pieces of information out even if I get caught.”
Shadow said: “I have seen you pull off some insane things in the past, but I don’t think that cloak will get you wherever that machine is, I think Fristad mentioned their science being based underground.”
Fire nodded. “I can also ambush one of their endermen. With some blue glass behind the visor, my eyes will look just like theirs and they also have scales similar to mine. That way I stand the biggest chance of actually making it to somewhere where the intel I get is meaningful. I am aware of the risk, otherwise I would not be suggesting this. We need to know where this machine is, if I get really lucky, I may even be able to sabotage it outright.”
That was something Shadow hated about her brother, as bad of an idea as this was in any other circumstance, as completely suicidal it was, what he said actually made sense for their current situation. Why did it always have to make sense? Of course, there was one thing left he hadn’t addressed but she didn’t get her hopes up, once Fire set his mind to something it would take a lot to stop him. Perhaps he was even hoping to be stopped, because the only thing that could stop him was a better plan.
“But hypothetically, you get to the machine, get the intel out but are caught and killed. What then?”
Fire’s eyes took on an odd look for a moment. “I don’t like this either, but we don’t have much of a choice here. We need a way to stop the Entity permanently and disrupting this machine would give us more time to find one. In a way, I am the most expendable one here. If any of you die that’s an important link in the command chain severed. If need be, I can be replaced by Kay.”
Kay stopped pacing and looked back over his shoulder. He wasn’t alone. The entire room seemed frozen in place by this brutal pragmatism. Astro looked straight at Shadow, panic in his eyes. Shadow contemplated revealing what Astro had told her but… it just felt wrong, not just a breach of trust but what would Kay do if confronted with his fate? It wouldn’t help the situation at all, only weaken what little trust most had left in Kay.
“You-you’re quite sure… what?” Kay stammered.
The silence that followed was positively deafening. Shadow shut out all sensation and instead looked inwards. Another thing she had talked about with Astro, her being linked to her brother in some way. She didn’t know if the Prophet’s words had any merit, if she really would… unravel. Stop, now is not the time for emotions. Distance is important, that’s what Fire always says.
A grim determination filled Shadow, driving out the despair that had filled her when her brother first brought forward his plan. It was true, they were losing a war that hadn’t even started yet, they were out of options. Fire would infiltrate the Tower and he’d either live or die, perhaps be held prisoner. But if his death really had an effect on her she’d make sure the Entity would regret its conquest. Back when Shadow left her home world, something had changed. She could already feel herself grow stronger, more able to control her Void magic. Maybe it would take years, millennia even for her to be strong enough to be able to scratch the Entity but time was not something an immortal concerned herself with. Maybe she’d lose her humanity, whatever that was, but there was one thing that would always stay with her, the memory of her brother. She’d rip Nexus, no, all of existence apart atom by atom if that’s what it took to destroy the Entity. She’d be their apocalyptic insurance policy.
Shadow stopped. That was not one of her usual thoughts and neither was it something she hoped she would ever have to do but if it came to it, she would do it. It was something she was sure of.
Fire spoke again: “I will need some time to prepare, set up the redstone timers for the ender pearls, brew the potions I need. I will take every precaution I can, don’t take this as me throwing my life away for the cause. This is what I think to be the option that, even if everything goes wrong, still gives us sufficient intel for any follow-up and leaves our command structure as intact as possible. Please do not try to fight me on it.”
Tyron suddenly stood up, sending his chair skittering. There was a commanding pause that seemed to last forever.
“Fire,” he said. “I hate this plan. It’s terribly open to failure. You could even argue it’s only justifiable under a sociopathically pragmatic lens. But at the same time, it’s noble in its self-sacrifice. We are at war, and if you believe this is the only way to win it, I believe in you. Don’t die.”
And he sat down.
More stunned silence, it didn’t look like anyone else could muster up the willpower to object. Shadow saw many faces in the room, faces of disbelief, of sadness, some she couldn’t properly categorize. Lucy in particular seemed torn, she had always looked up to Fire in a way. He’d been the one who had given her the chance to discover her talents, given her greater purpose. Aside from myself, she’ll be the one hit hardest if he doesn’t make it back.
Fire too looked around, then with a suppressed sigh he said: “Meeting concluded, get some sleep everybody, you’re long overdue.”
Chapter25:Last Goodbyes (Tyron)
Tyron crept along the hallway, Kir at his hip, Kay beside him. Warnado and Amanda sneaked along behind.
“He leaves this way,” Kay grunted.
He’d been far from himself since the meeting. Quiet, single-minded. Tyron had heard Kay and Fire didn’t get on, but the scaly guy’s decision to go out and risk his life was really bothering him.
“I reach out?” Kir asked.
“Sure,” Tyron approved. “Just be delicate about it. It’s Kay. He usually opens up with us, but he can be pretty thorny before he does.”
He cast a glance back. Warnado and Amanda stopped whispering and gave Tyron a hurried thumbs up before shooing him on. They were starting to get insufferably joined at the hip.
They turned a corner. Only a few more corridors and they’d be at the side exit Fire had decided to use. Going through the atrium would announce it to everyone and they didn’t want to risk a panic.
Tyron didn’t get why but this would apparently cause outrage.
“Fire’s a hero. Heroes do this all the time,” he thought.
Tyron himself did it to take down Herobrine. It was always stressful, but it was always necessary.
The doorway came into view. They separated into two groups. Warnado grabbed Amanda around the waist and levitated them up to a rocky ventilation shaft. As they clambered in, Tyron and Kay opted for the simpler solution of sheltering into an alcove.
Naturally, given Tyron’s large, furry physique, it was a little too intimate to be comfortable. Tyron’s luminous blue eyes scrutinised Kay, who was watching wistfully as Warnado and Amanda struggled with the grate. Tyron couldn’t tell if he was about to start monologuing or just normally silent.
“Any luck?”
“No,” answered Kir. “Book’s ‘screening calls’. Have to talk to him.”
“You okay, pal?” Tyron asked with not a little awkwardness. “You look like there’s something on your mind.”
“A lot, friend,” he muttered. “A lot.”
A pause.
“Yeah, I can’t leave that hanging,” Kay acquiesced. His eyes became misty. “I’m thinking about something Fire said to me a long time ago. About a meaningful death. It was back before I met you, when I still thought I could… negotiate, or reason with the Entity. I-I’d just failed to get us some horses and I sat down to talk with Fire. He’s there, just got a ton of weapons and it hits me - I have no idea what this big scaley ******* is,” he swallowed and cleared his throat.
“So, Fire gets talking about the Mencur-Besh and all that and how they operate and that leads him onto his military career. He asks me about mine, asks me ‘how many battles have you fought, Kay?’ I tell him ‘nine’. He asks me how many I’ve lost,” he chuckled, cutting the air with an outstretched hand. “I tell him, ‘one’, thinking that’s impressive. How many do you think Fire’s been in?”
Tyron thought back. Fire was pretty old, by his own account.
“One hundred?”
“He’s fought in something over five hundred! I forget the exact number, and from how he framed it those weren’t just skirmishes but actual major war battles. But what I can’t forget is what he said next: In his five thousand odd years he has died twenty-seven times. Twenty-seven. That’s crazy, isn’t it? Utterly crazy, right?”
Tyron felt an abortive surge of relief. The information suggested Fire would just come back. Kay’s dewed eyes didn’t. Tyron heard something small fall over. He peaked out the alcove and saw someone scoop a thermos back into an alcove down the hall. Evidently, they weren’t the only ones who had sneaked out to see Fire off.
“Yeah,” he said, a little distracted. “Crazy.”
Kay noticed none of this and continued.
“Absolutely, it’s crazy. Then, he says all this stuff about death and dying and how he knew that he didn’t have his safety net in Nexus. He knows if he dies in here, it’s final.”
Tyron’s attention was undivided.
“Oh,” Kir gasped.
“****…”
“And he won’t stop talking about how death is a natural thing, and we need to accept it. He told me he just wanted a meaningful death. About how we need to aspire for a meaningful death. At the time I hated him for it.” Kay laughed and pressed his palms to his eyes and leaned back. “I hated him so flipping much. I just wanted to get home - I still do - and here’s this big, immortal douche bag condescending to me about my record and implying I’m going to die in the midst of all this and I just can’t get over it. I was fuming all the way to the Tower. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have hit Steve half as hard if Fire hadn’t pissed me off so much. But that’s-that’s the point.”
He exhaled and looked Tyron in the eyes. “I think I missed something. I think he wants to die, Tyron.”
“Kay, you’re just tired-”
“No, I’m not!” He whisper-shouted, clearly not caring too much if people knew they were there anymore. “I think he’s been around too damn long, Tyron, and he just wants it to stop. He’s seen some awful things man, lost people, and that’s just festered away. He’s got a full split personality, he told me himself. He’s been through some ****. And I think he’s taking his opportunity to get off the ride. This is the meaningful death he wants! Tyron, we are aiding and abetting a suicide attempt!”
Tyron, trying to soak in all of this information, held firm.
“Fire isn’t crazy. He’s been through a lot, but he’s cool-headed. If he wanted to die, he’s had a lot of openings recently and he’s missed every shot. Just calm down.”
Kay breathed in and shook his head.
“No, no you’re missing the point. He wants to go out on a high, not just throw those years away!”
Tyron gritted his and was about to try and bark him down when another voice entered the fray.
“Alright,” Astro called. “If we’re all just going to drop thermoses and bicker in the corner, I think we might as well all step out into the light.”
A light switch was flipped and the corridor suddenly became a lot more discernible. Every other hiding space was full.
Lucy, Steve and Jennifer had bunched together in one alcove across from them. Destiny scowled morosely out of another, alone. Amanda and Warnado’s hiding spot in the vent suddenly seemed much more visible than the darkness had indicated. Astro, naturally, was beside the light-switch near the exit. Only Rose proved even slightly difficult to spot before she leapt down from the ledge she had been crouching on.
Then, the exit swung open and Urist and Voidblade rushed in.
“Fire, ye can’t do this!” the dwarf exclaimed, before seeing who was there. “Oh.”
“Whole gang’s here,” chirped Kir.
Tyron glimpsed a shade dashing by which he thought was Wodahs. It probably was, but it moved too quickly to be sure.
“So,” Astro continued. “I’m getting the impression we’re all here to try and talk Fire out of his suicidal plan?”
“I’m not,” Tyron flatly responded. He folded his arms and cocked an eyebrow confrontationally.
“Anyone aside from Tyron?”
No one raised their hand.
“Then you are overruled,” Astro grunted. “So, who’s going first?”
“I don’t know what exactly you are talking about, but I think I have some idea.” Shadow appeared from nowhere in their midst.
She continued: “Believe me when I say this, I am not on board with Fire’s plan either but sadly there is one argument he made we cannot refute. We are running low on time. Anything we do to try to dissuade him will just lower the probability of survival.”
Silence hung thick upon the group. Tyron agreed, but hearing it aloud was still hard to hear. Shadow’s tone was as flat and aloof as ever, betraying none of the turmoil that must be going on behind those eyes.
“I know my brother better than anyone else. Once he’s got his mind set on something it’s because he’s thought about it and came to the conclusion it’s a good, or at least effective, idea. Dissuading him is next to impossible, he’s done things like this before… one of which has been what made me into me, my ascension.”
“If we can’t convince him,” said Kay. “I’m second in command. Pretty much everyone aside from Tyron opposes this. What’s to stop me from stepping in? Just a nice, friendly little coup until Fire gets his head straight. What’s to stop me from doing that, Shadow?”
“Now, Kay, calm down-” Astro attempted to cut in.
“Are you telling me you suddenly think this is sane, Astro?”
“I just think our first option shouldn’t be to totally undermine this army’s power structure!” The wizard snapped back.
“I never said it was our first option,” Kay responded coolly. “I said we keep it on the table.”
“Take it off the table, Kay,” Astro commanded.
The wizard marched up to the General, glaring at him, shoulders squared, and feet firmly planted. Kay tried to glare back, but his resolve quickly melted in the face of Astro’s intensity. He shrank away, brows furrowed and stroking his temple in shock. Hurt and confusion battled for control. Astro looked away in shame.
“We’ll talk him down,” Astro croaked. “Like I said ages ago. Who talks first?”
Before anyone could give a clear answer there was the sound of quiet footsteps coming from the inner sections of the shelter. A few seconds later Fire came around a bend. He was not wearing his usual clothes, instead a brown cloak covered him almost entirely. He stopped when he saw them all standing there, letting his gaze wander, contemplating.
He spoke more slowly than usual. “I… appreciate what you are trying to do. I really do. The problem is just that I really have to go through with this. I thought about different scenarios long before we got word about the machine, all that hearing about it did was cut off some branches. According to what I know this really is the best course of action available to us.”
“What’ve you got?” Destiny asked in a deadened tone, features flattened and stripped of emotion.
Fire indicated several items attached to a belt. “I have brewed a range of potions that will help me with my infiltration, invisibility to get in and enhancing effects to make sure I am not found. I have set up twelve ender pearls suspended in claws in my private room, they are entangled to one sheet of paper on this block each. I will be using them to relay any information to you. My cloak adapts to the color and texture of its surroundings. For weapons I have my claws as well as a dagger I brought with me when I first entered Nexus. All of this is either proven to work in an anti-magic environment or most likely unaffected.”
“Yeah, that’s great and all,” said Warnado, clapping his hands together. “Hand them over, I’ll handle this.”
He outstretched his hand, only for Kay to cut in front of him. He turned and looked Fire in the eyes. Tyron felt his heart slow down, not knowing what to expect.
“No, it should be me. These people need you Fire. You built this. It means something to you. I can’t guarantee that commitment. I just want to go home.”
A tear ran down his cheek, his mouth weighed down at the corners. His gaze was unbroken, his lips parted slightly.
“I am more than willing to die for that,” promised Kay.
“I know you mean it Kay, but dying is not the central point here, gathering the required intel is. I believe I am the most qualified of us to undertake this mission, I brought up my arguments during our formal discussion. This isn’t a choice about morality or who deserves to do what. It’s about what is most likely to work.”
Kay blinked.
“Then I trust your judgement,” he said. “Shake on it?”
He stretched out a hand. Fire took it.
Tyron felt the emotion swell up within him.
“Oh, for Notch’s sake, we’re not doing a group handshake! Get in here you! I don’t care how sappy it is!”
Before either could object, Tyron had squeezed them into his grip. Kir chirped away indistinctly in the backs of their minds, expressing their warm sentiments.
Urist was the earliest adopter, dragging Voidblade into a reluctant second. Before the enderman could break free or teleport away, Lucy had pinned him to the growing huddle. At some point during all of this Shadow had buried her face in Fire’s flank, hiding her emotions and broadcasting them with equal perfection. Next came Steve and Jennifer, and Fire stooped down a little to loop them in. Amanda then squeezed her way in.
Warnado floated up and landed on the shoulders of Kay, who cackled in surprise. The quarter-demon then reached over and placed a hand on Fire’s shoulder.
“Thanks for not sticking your claws through my face that first night,” he grinned.
Now, all eyes were on Astro, Rose and Destiny, the only three stragglers.
“Sorry guys,” grimaced Astro. “Not really my scene.”
No sooner had he said this, then Rose and Destiny had exchanged a look, linked arms and herded him into the group.
“You owe me, big guy,” said Destiny with a rare smile. “Don’t die on us now.”
It occurred to Tyron how lucky they were to have lost so few people, but their loss was sorely felt. David should have been there, hand on Destiny’s shoulder with protective zeal. Or Fristad, shyly grinning and sharing a wry look with Steve as he tried to pretend, he was above the cheesiness of all this but still loving it nonetheless. This could be the last time their little group was this large. They had to appreciate it.
Chapter26:The Infiltration (Fire)
The hill was deserted, ever since the Prophet relocated to the shelter nobody came here anymore. Fire stood on top of the hill, next to him stood Shadow. She had teleported him here, closer to the Tower. Fire was wearing the enchanted camouflage cloak he’d worn for a while after arriving in Nexus, his wither dagger attached to his belt next to several potion flasks.
“Are you sure about this?” Shadow asked.
“I am.” Fire simply replied.
Fire didn’t turn to leave yet, it was clear that his sister still had something on her mind.
“I just wanted to say… for the case that you really don’t make it back. You are the best brother I could ever wish for, I don’t think anyone else would have gone the lengths you did to set me free.” Shadow laughed bitterly. “No, I don’t think anyone else would have created a whole world for his sister, and we really did stick it to those laws of physics with my ascension.”
Fire knelt down and took Shadow in his arms, holding her close. It was hard to tell due to her inability to produce tears, but Shadow was crying. After a few minutes she reluctantly let go.
She said: “Don’t get yourself killed Peter.” Then teleported away. Fire stood on the hill alone.
Fire took a deep breath, he still was not entirely sure if this was a good idea, but he had thought about it enough to know that it was the best thing he had. No perfect plans, only good enough plans, that mantra always came back to him.
He had roughly three hours left before the first sheet of paper would disappear back to the shelter, after that each would disappear ten minutes after the previous one until all twelve of them were gone. Two hours were what he’d given himself for getting to the machine, not an impossible task. He’d only need the notes on the way in after all. Ideally, he’d have entangled an ender pearl to himself, but the distance was too large, even if he placed it on the very outskirts of the Tower. A pearl teleportation of that distance would kill him, despite the fact that he was more attuned to teleporting than a human.
Fire took a potion from his belt and drank it, it was a speed potion. Within a few moments he could already feel his feet becoming lighter. He started sprinting down the hill and through the forest, it’d take him roughly an hour to the village, then another to the Tower itself if he took the road. Fire would instead run through the forest to minimize his chances of being spotted, he was officially affiliated with the escapees now and patrols would attack him on sight once they recognized him.
Fire rushed through the trees, always mindful of brambles and low-hanging branches. The forest got progressively lighter as he approached the village. It looked different to when he had last seen it, there was now a wall around it and guards had been posted at the gates, that was a forward base if Fire had ever seen one. It was odd that they decided to place it this close to the Tower, but it still had strategic merits like acting as a troop rallying point. Fire paid it no further mind and rushed past, always taking care to leave as few open sight lines as possible.
Yet another hour later the Tower was well in sight, a hulking building that defied both architectural conventions and structural engineering, and most likely the laws of conventional physics too. It branched out further and further as it stretched towards the sky. Fire had reason to believe that its underground layout was similar, which could prove problematic if he took a wrong turn.
He was now at the edge of the forest, the Tower’s outer fortifications now only a few hundred meters ahead of him. It was time for the other potions. One invisibility potion, several others that would enhance him in different ways. One after another, Fire drank from the flasks. After he was done, a shiver went through him as the potions were absorbed, for a few seconds everything was unnaturally bright and loud before he got used to the sharper senses. Fire’s body became fully transparent and after a few seconds his clothes followed, a very useful quirk of this particular potion recipe.
“Alright.” Fire said to himself. “Time to infiltrate.”
The gate in the outer wall was guarded but open. Fire slowly approached it, his shoeless feet not making a single sound. He often heard it said that he was sneakier than someone of his size should be, it was true. Mencur-Besh were suited for many situations that didn’t involve swimming or getting silver stabbed into you. The human mercenaries guarding the gate didn’t even look up from their posts as Fire snuck by.
Inside the walls were various buildings, big in their own right but still dwarfed by the Tower itself. From the way they emitted energy, Fire could reasonably say that these were largely used to generate power or store materials used to run the generators. Each of the buildings had a slightly different signature, hinting at different kinds of generators being at work. It was only natural for the Entity to collect those too.
The entirety of the inner area was paved over with what looked to be concrete or some variant on it, this was good. No grass that would betray his footsteps. Fire continued on, on the side of the main path. His invisibility potion wouldn’t last him forever, only enough to get into the Tower proper and a bit further in. He wished he could have made more but his ingredients had been barely enough for the one flask.
Fire was not alone here, there were soldiers and engineers walking the premises, though with enough distance between them that Fire could slip past or avoid them entirely, getting ever closer to the Tower’s main gate, which was currently closed. Fire caught fragments of conversations, most of it was irrelevant but he was able to glean some useful things, namely that there would be some kind of meeting in half an hour and more importantly that the machine was real, it seemed that most people here were aware of its existence. If they knew what it did was another question.
Just as Fire got close to the gate, it swung open. Out came a group of humans pulling a wagon filled with what looked to be some sort of salt. That was Fire’s chance to slip into the Tower. He moved quickly, the faint steps drowned out by the grinding of the wagon’s wheels. Fire slowed down quickly as soon as he was through the gate, there were guards on the other side, endermen specifically, so he had double the reason to be quiet.
He took a right, recognizing the chair room. Fire took a few seconds to examine it, it looked like some of the chair stacks had grown slightly. From here he knew the route to the resource storage, the Ender had taken him there after their implicit information exchange. After that he had to find his own way, presumably further down, probably past security checkpoints, into the sanctum of science that Fristad had described.
Fire did regret Fristad’s death severely, he knew that part of the blame fell on him, not only because he was a leader. If he hadn’t tried to take Glibby alive things would have gone differently, if he had known about the machine earlier, he’d have killed Glibby without a second thought. His line of thinking in the battle had been wrong, but only in hindsight. He hadn’t thought that they were so close to losing. If Fristad was still alive he could possibly have delivered a more detailed description of the way, Fire probably should have asked the Book too, but he still was not sure whether it could be trusted.
He pushed the thoughts away, he was further down the hallway now and people were coming. More workers, quite a lot of them. Fire pressed into the wall next to a pillar, in hopes that none of them would graze against him. After a few tense seconds the workers had passed him without noticing. Fire quietly hurried down the hallway until he arrived at an intersection. He knew the way here but even if he hadn’t, there were signs indicating where each path went. It was easy to forget that this was a workplace first and an infiltration site seventh or so.
After a few more intersections Fire reached the material storage, which was as far as he knew the way, now he’d have to follow signs. When Fire looked down, he noticed he was slowly fading back into visibility again, he’d have to move more slowly now and use cover or hiding spots to prevent others from seeing him. Now one question remained: Did the camouflage enchantment still work? There certainly were enough lanterns around to prove or disprove its functionality.
Another big room was ahead of Fire, this one filled with taxidermized bears of all variants. Fire moved his arm in front of a huge brown bear that was positioned in a way as if it were attacking. His sleeve adopted the bear’s color and texture, more slowly than normally but it still did. That was a relief. He still wouldn’t stand up to direct scrutiny, but it was enough to hide in peripheral vision and from passing glances.
Fire waited and listened for a few seconds, there seemed to be nobody around. Probably due to this meeting that was currently going on. Fire used the opportunity to move more quickly and make more progress towards the science sections of the Tower. When the first ender pearl was about to drop back in the shelter, Fire ducked into a side room filled with janitorial supplies to write a quick message.
Still alive. Path unchanged. Reached material storage. Now following signs. Invisibility ran out. Camo enchantment intact but slow.
A few minutes afterwards the sheet disappeared. Ten minutes to the next one.
The next intersection had a staircase leading downwards labelled with “Science” and another labelled with “Magic”, obviously the two main research departments. Fire suspected that the signs wouldn’t be there to help for much longer, as he got into more secure and restricted zones there would be less signs since people were expected to know their way around.
Fire went down the staircase quickly until he heard voices from below. Returning back up was not a possibility, it would make too much noise. There were no good hiding opportunities, the walls were made from smooth marble with no indentations to hide in. Fire’s eyes darted around, looking for any irregularities he could exploit. Then he saw it. There was a stabilizing beam overhead, roughly six meters up. That was a jump he could make, especially with the potions enhancing his strength.
Fire tensed up and knelt down, then pushed himself off the ground like a spring, taking hold of the beam and wrapping his arms and legs around it to secure himself. His cloak took on the same color as the surrounding marble just in time for the two talking humans to come around a bend. Two women in lab coats.
One said: “Veronica really ought to get some sleep, she looks terrible.”
The other one replied: “Yeah, but I’m sure she’s got her reasons with the completion date coming closer and all that.”
These two seemed to know something.
The first scientist said: “Not exactly that.”
The second asked, interest piqued: “You wouldn’t happen to know more, would you Laura?”
The scientist named Laura stopped and replied: “Oh, I do happen to know. Word is that she saw something out at that village, something related to the Void somehow. She’s been quite obsessed with it and there are rumors that the Entity itself ordered her to look into it, with priority above the machine.”
The second scientist seemed skeptical. “Oh really? And where would one get such rumors from?”
Laura sighed. “I suppose I said it and now I have to tell you that too or you won’t believe me?”
“Yup.”
“Alright, I cut a… deal of sorts with Freak, we both know he’s more in it for his own entertainment than anything else.”
“And he just feeds you juicy bits of happenings?”
There was an audible shudder in Laura’s voice. “Not exactly, in return he gets to do his scary thing and ‘eat my fear’. He’s a creep but the rumors are worth it. For instance, I now know who keeps taking the snacks in Dimensions.”
“Who?”
“Clark freaking Belmont! That’s the last one I’d have suspected. Not really relevant to us because we’re in different departments but still.”
Fire endured their tale swapping until they realized they had somewhere to go. They never once looked up. Once they were out of earshot, he hurried down the remainder of the stairs and hid behind a generic hero statue that was standing in an alcove. Another sheet had vanished in the meantime, he’d just noted the usual still alive at the top, getting an empty sheet could be interpreted as him dying. On the next sheet he had a bit more to note down.
Dr. Veronica Mercury (science head) apparently sleep deprived. Looking into whatever Shadow did to distract her and the Ender during the raid. Apparently obsessed. Orders from the Entity to prioritize over the machine. Freak telling employees rumors/secrets in exchange for fear. Someone named Clark Belmont is stealing snacks (probably not relevant but written for completeness).
Fire came out of hiding and kept following signs, having to find more places to hide along the way. There had been a couple of close calls, someone had brushed against his cloak once while he was blending with another pillar but was in too much of a hurry to look back. He sent several sheets back to the shelter, each with small snippets of information about the route he had been taken and potential dangers along the way. He’d passed some sort of temporary security checkpoint by slipping by while the guards were busy searching someone. It hadn’t been much of a checkpoint really, just two human guards in a hallway, anything more would have forced him to find a different route.
He was quite deep underground when a unique opportunity presented itself. Fire was just hiding in yet another janitorial closet when a lone enderman in full armor came from the same direction he’d come from. Ambushing a guard was risky but this particular enderman was not just a guard, he was carrying a small crate filled with the crystals the Entity was after. If Fire played his cards right this was his ticket into the inner sanctum.
Fire had to act quickly, pulling the enderman into the closet with him, taking care not to drop the crystals to the floor. Before the enderman knew what was happening he had Fire’s wither dagger pressed against its throat.
Fire quietly said in ender: “Give me the crate, your armor and don’t make noise and you’ll live through this.”
Sadly, the enderman was not very cooperative, forcing Fire to quickly jab him in an exposed spot with the dagger, the pain the wither magic caused was apparently enough to stop any attempt at teleportation, screams suppressed by the sleeve of Fire’s cloak.
Fire spoke again: “I’ll say it again, you have a chance of surviving if you cooperate with me.”
The still pained enderman replied: “You speak our tongue but are not one of us, what are you?”
He apparently hadn’t recognized him so that either meant his involvement was classified for some reason or this particular enderman hadn’t gotten the memo yet. These endermen seemed to lack true military drill. They had discipline and obedience, sure, but apparently the Ender ran things very differently than whoever had been in charge in their home world, and they were only slowly adapting to her style of leadership. Fire could exploit this, without proper training it was difficult to lie under interrogation and get away with it.
“I ask the questions here. Why are you carrying those crystals?”
The enderman relented. “I am this shift’s crystal courier.”
That much was obvious. Fire continued prying: “What security measures are between here and the inner sections?”
The enderman remained quiet, Fire delivered a cut with the dagger and pressed his arm against the enderman’s mouth again.
The enderman slowly said: “A… big gate with ender guards, they are instructed to let the courier through, then another gate. Need to wait for them to open, crystals don’t like being teleported. They ask for my name at the second gate.”
Fire asked: “What is your name?”
The enderman visibly contemplated. “Chorusflower.”
Fire applied pressure with the dagger. “That is not your name.”
Flinching, caught in the lie the enderman quickly said: “Obsidianclaw, my name is Obsidianclaw!”
That was more believable, quick too. Fire continued: “Alright Obsidianclaw, I’ll need you to give me your armor and that crate.”
Obsidianclaw spat back: “And have them exile me as a traitor, over my dead body!”
“As you wish.”
Obsidianclaw realized his poor choice of words the moment Fire’s dagger sank into his throat. It took a few seconds for him to lose consciousness from the rapid blood loss. Fire quickly got to work taking the armor off of Obsidianclaw, wiping away the blood with his cloak, he wasn’t going to use that for anything after this. A few minutes later, Obsidianclaw was dead and without armor.
Fire took a pair of blue-tinted glasses from his inventory and put them on, followed by the helmet and the rest of the armor. His cloak disappeared into his inventory. Fire picked up the crate and stepped out of the closet. He now looked almost exactly like one of the Tower’s endermen, this would help greatly going forward. Before leaving he wrote another note.
Killed a guard who had crystals, assuming his identity to get into the inner sections. Probably won’t be able to write until I find a safe space. This might be a trap, it’s very convenient to have him walk through the hallway alone but unlikely that they know my exact timing. Wish me luck.
Fire had thought about the possibility of false information, and about the possibility of true information being leaked as a trap. Even if he was running headfirst into a trap right now, it was hard to imagine that the Tower was expecting exactly him and him alone to infiltrate, they had no way of knowing his skillset and it was very possible that Obsidianclaw was meant to be followed, not impersonated. No matter the situation, Fire still had to take any and all bait because it was the only way forward. Such was the nature of the situation.
Fire walked down the hallway, in the open with a crate of crystals held in front of him. When humans passed him, he flat-out ignored them, when endermen passed him he mirrored their greetings where applicable. So far it seemed to be working.
After another few turns, hallways and stairs, Fire arrived in front of a positively huge gate, the interlocking spiral segments of which made it look like it was taken straight out of a science fiction movie. Two sets of three endermen stood guard. When he approached, one of them teleported through and the gate began opening very, very slowly. Fire just stood there for some awkward minutes, none of the guards talked to him so he did the same. Once the gate was open, he walked through and continued on, the gate closing behind him very slowly again.
Fire took some time to write another note while walking, the next sheet was due in a few minutes.
Suddenly someone asked in human language: “What you writing there?”
The asker was just a random engineer that had come out from one of the doors. Fire stopped and looked at him with a piercing gaze.
Putting on his best broken human speech, Fire said: “Shipping manifest.”
That had been that, the engineer was too intimidated to ask further questions. A few seconds after the engineer was out of sight the sheet vanished, now they knew about the gate, its slow opening time and its opening mechanism on the inside.
Fire continued on. It couldn’t be far from here. There was an increased density of humans walking the halls, but Fire paid them no mind. Just after another sheet vanished, Fire arrived at the second gate, which looked like the first one except smaller. The complement of guards was the same. This was where he’d be asked questions.
One of the guards walked up to him and asked: “Name?”
Fire replied without hesitation: “Obsidianclaw.”
“The crystals seem in order. Were you followed?”
Fire’s speculation from earlier seemed to have been correct. He replied: “I was vigilant, nobody was there.”
Without further words the guard signaled the opening of the gate. This one was faster than the previous one. On the other side was a circular laboratory room. The walls were lined with all kinds of equipment from various disciplines. Further in stood tables with what looked to be magitech computers on them, other tables had chemistry setups. In the middle of the room stood what was very definitely the machine. A hulking contraption made from a similar brass-like material that the Entity’s armor was made from, power cables and pipes connecting to it from all sides. A large, open hatch faced the entrance of the room, the inside of the machine was lined with thousands of crystals, each in its own little fixture. At the center was a glass orb that contained a gray mass that didn’t quite seem material.
The gate closed behind Fire after he had walked through. From behind the machine emerged a very tired looking Dr. Mercury. Her face told tales of days without sleep, spent looking at screens and evaluating data. It was a face Fire was familiar with, the scientists that had helped create his world had worn it on occasion as well. She was wearing her full combat armor, four additional arms.
She said without putting much effort into speaking clearly: “Just puttem down somewhere.”
Fire did as she said, then took another look at the room. One of Dr. Mercury’s arms moved in his general direction. He knew what she was going to say before she said it.
“Wait, you’re no enderman!”
The tiredness from her voice was gone, pushed away by the last bits of adrenaline her glands could muster. Her other arms sprung to action, one that looked dangerously like an energy cannon pointing directly at Fire. An alarm started sounding.
He had to act quickly, sprinting past Dr. Mercury and behind the machine, the safest piece of cover in the room. With quick motions he scribbled down what would probably be his final note.
Caught. Second door same as first but small. Machine in lab. Has crystals and grey stuff inside.
He tossed the remaining sheets into a corner where they probably wouldn’t be found until it was too late. Dr. Mercury came darting around the corner, shooting a blast from her energy cannon that missed, probably because she shot wide intentionally in order to not damage the machine.
Fire concentrated and summoned the elemental energy inside of him into his palm. There were no crystal lanterns in the lab. A bolt of flames shot from Fire’s hand, not at Dr. Mercury but at one of the cables that were hooked into the machine at the top. The rubber insulation caught fire almost immediately, quickly creating large amounts of smoke. Within seconds the sprinklers on the ceiling turned on, soaking the entire room with a mixture of water and what seemed to be fire foam.
Another blast from the energy cannon that missed. Fire knew that all he could do was delay the inevitable, that door was not going to open before he was dead. If he managed to kill or incapacitate Dr. Mercury, he could probably do some more extensive sabotage on the machine so that was his immediate goal.
Fire launched himself at her after her next shot, there was no time for tricks or finesse like with Glibby, he had far too little time and preparation for that. Her armor absorbed the slashes from his claws, although he noticed that he left some marks. Before he could think about his next move, he felt something jab him in the side. One of the arms had some sort of injector at the tip, probably a toxin of some sort. Most likely would have killed anything else but it only spread a paralysis through Fire’s body, if that could be described as “only”.
He dropped on his side, only able to move very slowly. Dr. Mercury acted quickly and tossed some sort of net onto him that bound him further. Then she took off Fire’s helmet and glasses using her grasping arms. She looked at him with mild surprise.
As if on cue, three figures appeared in the laboratory. The first was obviously the Entity, then there were the Ender and Freak, the latter probably just wanted to point and laugh.
Fire still seemed to be mostly in control of his voice. He said: “Hello again, Ender.”
Fire hadn’t said Ender in the human tongue, but he’d said her actual name that he had learned from Silver, which translated to “the Ender” because that’s what her name meant, someone who finishes things. The translation had been lucky or unlucky, depending on how you looked at it.
The Ender seemed taken aback and responded with a very unprofessional “Hey.”
Freak was the next to talk: “So it seems the trap has been sprung, the mouse is in.”
Fire dryly said: “Not really an accomplishment, baiting the mouse with cheese if the alternative was starvation, if you want me to continue the metaphor.”
“Enough!” The Entity exclaimed. “You will be… absorbed.”
Whatever it meant by this, it was not a favorable outcome. Both death and capture were states Fire knew, absorption less so.
The Entity picked Fire up by grabbing onto the net he was bound by.
Fire attempted to stall for time. “What exactly does that mean?”
The Entity replied: “You bec-ome part of… the body… the mind. What was-yours will be mine.”
It started removing one of its white gloves, beneath was the same undefinable grey that Fire had seen in the middle of the machine. It lifted its hand up to Fire’s forehead.
Shortly before it made contact, Fire sighed, then uttered: “Well. ****.”
The moment the grey mass touched the scales on Fire’s head everything else started to fade. All senses: sight, sound, self seemed to drain outwards. The roar of oblivion grew louder and louder. The undefinable grey loomed from everywhere.
“Your arrival exceeds expectations.” A voice hummed in his mind, booming and soothing all at once.
He felt his memories being drawn into the Entity, beginning with his recent ones of the last hours, then fragments connected to them. It wasn’t exactly painful, but it was certainly not comfortable.
“I knew-word would get out somehow. A phantom… interesting.”
It pulled memories associated with the topic of infiltration, memories from the heist Fire and Shadow had pulled off in the very early days of the server when they had stolen the Books of Knowledge from Rockhaven’s library.
“I expected scouts, saboteurs, an attempt on my life, even.”
It went on to draw more about the server, about Fire’s past. It came across early memories of Claw, then followed those to the fight in the snow world on his way home...
“Now, here is the-leader… of my enemies. The last who remain. I have crushed all others.”
...memories about Fire’s base… constructed with help... friends from Drandin. That was where it next pulled from the… from the deep mines of Drandin where all but the most powerful magic was drowned.
“Your revolutionary flame is only... cinders. Soon-you-will be mine. They will join you. Goodbye.”
Shadow’s ascension.
Suddenly it stopped. Fire was aware enough to notice it stopping, then the flow reversed, first an overwhelming sense of fear flooded into Fire, just familiar enough to be recognized as such but too alien to be experienced. Something about… what was that? Shadow’s ascension, that’s what caused the fear? Why? A foreign memory followed, a street in the village, a part of reality missing. Then, a room Fire did not recognize, a similar but smaller piece missing. Then, he saw himself, from the Entity’s point of view but not exactly. He was not flesh and blood, he was like a construct of energy like strings woven together into a doll. A singular thread going off into the distance. Fire did not know what this meant. Before he could think further his taken memories were forcibly pushed back into him, within seconds he was mostly aware again.
He heard Freak’s voice: “What? Why’d you stop?”
The Entity replied: “This is the…” It seemed to be looking for words. “Connected to the-scar. Not cause. Absorption danger-ous. There is… another. He will serve.”
What? Shadow caused the “scar”, that much was clear, but how was he connected to her other than being family? Before Fire had the chance to contemplate further, the Entity’s hand was on his forehead again, he felt another pull, this time inwards, into his own mind. It was a place he knew very well because he had built it himself. He was being drawn into Claw’s prison.
No, no, no! This is not happening, you’re not putting Claw in charge. Do you have any idea what he is?
The Entity replied: “Loy-al, if given… incentive.”
Fire was unable to form another coherent thought as the bars slammed down around him, he was now confined to the same small brain-space Claw occupied normally. Which meant…
Claw hadn’t felt this good in… Claw hadn’t ever felt this good! The closest was when he hunted his prey and partook in the feast of blood but this, this was better! Claw didn’t care who made him this way, but he decided that whoever they were, he owed them a whole lot and he was okay with that. Hunters had to look out for one another.
Claw opened his now-black eyes and looked around. He was standing in a room. Laboratory said his factual memory, or rather the factual memory of the other one. Yeah, it felt good to be in charge. There were several people standing here, a tall one right in front of him, the one who freed him. Another, similarly, tall next to it, wearing an expression of… shock, disappointment, that’s what it was. The third one was small and odd-looking, phantom. That one was absolutely ecstatic but tried to hide it. Then there was another one who seemed to be examining him from a distance.
Claw paid no mind to her, or any of them, this was his moment, the first one he could truly call his and his alone.
He exclaimed: “It’s Claw time, baby!”
Chapter27:Calling up Demons (Warnado)
“I’m telling you, Fire should have sent me out,” Warnado said frankly.
Warnado sat in the training room, trying out a new technique he had come up with. He had his hand held in the shape of a gun and adjusted the size of the flame on the tip of his index finger.
Amanda nodded along unenthusiastically.
“Helix, I agree, your magic is unaffected by the crystals. You’re also much stealthier than Kay-”
“You are bowling a perfect game so far,” he laughed.
“But there’s a difference between stealing the keys to a fairly low-security prison and sneaking around the Entity’s inner sanctum.”
“EHHH! Sorry, you were doing so well. Better luck next time.”
She crawled over and placed a hand on his shoulder. She gave him a look that was simultaneously a warning and a display of affection. Her eyes squinted with a stiff, reluctant sternness.
“Helix,” she grunted and that was the only warning shot he needed.
“Okay,” he conceded. “I should have been sent because I’ve learned a lot since then. Yes, there’s been hiccups-” he instinctively, awkwardly glanced down at his gauntlet, “but I’m becoming a real powerhouse.”
Amanda looked at the now-invisible burns that had marked her palm and didn’t bother pointing that these hiccups had always needed to be resolved by someone else.
“You’re getting more powerful, but not more subtle” was the diplomatic solution she came up with.
“Oh really, watch this. Finger-point precision. Going to burn that dummy right between its eyes!”
He raised his hand and called out a spell. A great cascade of fire burst forth from his finger and scorched the dummy, not even reducing it to ash that could be swept up or blown away with a wind spell. Instead, there was a half-destroyed corpse of straw and flame which was upsettingly conspicuous and very hard to hide or explain. Amanda elbowed him in the ribs and waited open-armed for a concession.
“...Okay,” Warnado smiled. “You might have a point.”
“Funny, I thought so too.”
They laughed, and that was when Warnado noticed Shadow entering and walking right towards him.
“Hey sensei, how’re things?”
Shadow lifted her hand and pointed her palm at the burning dummy. Runes lit up along the skin of her arm that was not covered by her robes, a blindingly bright beam erupted from her palm and struck the dummy. When Warnado could see clearly again the dummy was gone, not just incinerated gone, but disintegrated gone. The magical barrier protecting the room took on a deep purple shade in the place it was struck by the beam.
Shadow took a deep breath and said: “Sorry, I needed that.”
Her hand was slightly trembling and Warnado knew something was wrong. Shadow had emphasized a lot just how functionally non-essential all of her bodily functions were. She didn’t need to eat or sleep, so Warnado could think of exactly no reason she would be trembling, that indicated one of two things.
Option one was that she was worried about her brother going off on a likely-suicidal mission. Option two took it as a sign that she had finally lost control of her magic and was going to explode with the force of a supernova at any second. These were not mutually exclusive.
He gave Amanda a panicked look and her patient scowl of chastisement convinced him option one was most likely. He nodded apologetically and turned his attention back to Shadow.
“No worries, as you could see, that dummy was pretty much finished anyway. Such a shame, he was two weeks from retirement…” He looked at his feet with mock mournfulness and Amanda snorted reluctantly. Dropping the act, he asked, “Anyway, what brings you here, Shadow?”
From seemingly nowhere Shadow produced a chest made from a dark-blue wood and began to rummage around inside.
“So,” Shadow said. “When summoning a demon, the most important step is preparation.”
“Okay. We’re doing this now... What’s this?”
Warnado’s eyes furrowed into a rigid line as he tried to process what was going on. Shadow wasn’t usually this curt.
“A lesson. On demon summoning.”
“Oh, okay!” Warnado squeaked, heartbeat quickening as his eyes were drawn down to the cursed gauntlet he wore. “I’ll talk to you in a bit Amanda?”
On the one hand, he really didn’t want her to leave, and he definitely didn’t want to jump back into demon magic after losing control during the ambush. On the other, Fire’s mission was clearly shaking Shadow’s usually unshakeable coolheadedness - not majorly but she was usually so detached that this agitation stood out like a sore thumb. Complying with her was the best way of helping her through this as painlessly as possible. She had done a lot for him, both as a teacher and in helping him come down from two demonic episodes. He owed her this.
Amanda nodded understandingly, waved goodbye and departed. As she reached the door, she threw an encouraging smile. Warnado couldn’t help but reflect on how lucky he was to have found her again.
He heard a thud and was ripped out of this sweet reflection. Shadow had taken a thick, leather-bound book from the chest and tossed it onto the ground. She drew out several pieces of chalk, then closed the chest.
Shadow opened the book and quickly flipped to a page somewhere near the beginning. The page had an illustration of what looked to be some kind of arrangement of symbols.
Shadow continued: “The first step in summoning a demon is knowing which one to summon, you usually get this either by reading demonology tomes such as this one or from personal experience. Knowing what kind of personality and traits a demon has is not only important for your well-being as a summoner but also for making sure the demon can actually manifest where you want it to.”
She made a set of low-quality iron armor appear in the same manner as the chest, it looked to be one of the near-rejects from their forge. Lucy had once decided to vent to Warnado about how she knew their apprentice blacksmiths were learning as quickly as they could, but she wished they’d learn a lot faster. Lucy took the safety of the soldiers incredibly seriously.
Shadow said: “We will skip the selection step since I already know this demon, it needs a set of armor to possess, its condition is secondary.” She pointed at the drawing in the book. “The next step is setting up the summoning circle and runes. This is a step many summoners either skimp out on or sometimes just plain screw up, it may be tedious and takes a while, but it is integral to your success. Incorrectly drawn lines and poorly selected runes can lead to unanswered summons or to the more hostile demons escaping.”
“Alright,” Warnado muttered tensely. “Anything specific about measurements I should know about? Any particular brand of chalk they like?”
Warnado’s mentor replied: “That depends, some demons require special chalks, others need the lines to be drawn in other things like mud but for most plain chalk is sufficient, the runes themselves are what matter.”
“And does the size of the runes matter? Could they theoretically be any size?”
He was surprised by how calmly he was handling this. It was just a bunch of runes and lectures. This he could deal with.
Shadow nodded. “In theory yes, however the actual summoning spot needs to leave enough space for the desired shape the demon should take. If you summon something that needs to take giant forms, you’ll need bigger runes. If you want a tiny demon, you can get away with smaller runes.”
“Oh okay. As smaller runes mean a smaller demon, we need circles roughly large enough for a creature that’ll fit in that suit of armor. I get you.”
“Yes.” Shadow started by drawing two simple concentric circles. “This demon is not very complicated in its rune requirements, but it’ll need a couple nonetheless.”
Shadow drew four identical runes on the sides of the circles.
“Wait.” Said Warnado. “I can read these, they just say ‘stay’, that’s all it takes?”
Shadow explained: “The runes used are written demonic language, each represents a different concept and applying the right combination allows you to establish a pre-contract of sorts. The known runes are not the complete set mind you, by its very nature these ones are very crude versions of their concepts. They need to be simple to be drawn in chalk, which is why the next step of the summoning is so important.”
Shadow drew a couple more runes, “dwelling”, “metal”, “work” and so on. Once they were done, she added some extra lines around the runed circle, including a bigger circle some distance away, which she placed the armor into.
She said: “The final step is instructing the demon, this is your task Warnado.”
And that’s where his heart began to pound away, each beat an earthquake in its own right.
“Most demons simply need to be told what exactly the purpose of their summoning is,” Shadow continued. “For specialized demons like this one it usually just comes down to ‘do your job, here is what else you need to be mindful of’. However, for more free-spirited or dangerous demons you’d need actual contracts that you need to check for loopholes and invalidating clauses. If worst comes to worst, you’ll be stuck in an hour-long debate on demon law.”
Warnado’s eyes kept darting toward the gauntlet on his arm. Images of the tin throne, and the shifting, half-complete creature that sat upon it, flashed before him. He felt the need to straighten up and look big and intimidating so it didn’t get any ideas. Suddenly it struck him that his legs were quivering a little, so he started pacing back and forth.
“Oh sure, the guy in the gauntlet is just a stickler for the law! Real fun debate that was!” thought Warnado
“During this time the demon is still bound by your runes and other containment measures if they are set up properly, you can send the demon back whenever you want as long as no actual contract is formed, which is nearly impossible to do on accident since the demonic language bypasses any tricky wordings our languages have.”
Warnado couldn’t keep quiet anymore.
“Couldn’t you summon this yourself?” he pleaded.
Shadow said: “That was the intention, I’d do the summoning you’d do the instruction. While Wodahs can speak demon in theory, demons usually don’t take instructions from something that is neither human nor a demon.”
Warnado was panicking, now. He remembered the overpowering heat. How he’d pleaded at the foot of the tin throne to no avail.
“Can’t it speak English?”
“Demons speak many languages, but they will only accept instructions in their own, it’s part established protocol and part insurance. Using the demonic language both guarantees the demons can’t use any double meanings or word trickery to scam the summoner, but it works both ways, no tricking demons into bottles to grant wishes.”
He tried to nod along, then hung his head.
“...I can’t do this,” Warnado conceded and turned away. “Let’s do this another evening. There has to be something else you can teach me.”
Shadow suddenly raised her voice. “Warnado, this isn’t just a lesson. We need this demon to assist our smiths, you heard Lucy. If our troops don’t have proper armor, they’ll get themselves torn apart for nothing! You can’t make this about you!”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. This was the angriest he had ever heard her, and he was suddenly glad he couldn’t see her expression.
He whirled around to see her clutching her face with one hand. He felt as though he hadn’t eaten for days, his torso full of sharp, stabbing pains.
She slowly said: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m just… just so worried about Fire and I let that influence me. I’m not being a good mentor right now.”
“No, no,” Warnado mumbled. “I am making this about me. Summon it.”
He breathed deeply and braced himself, trying to remember the way Wodahs spoke and testing a few key words. The words came naturally to him as he thought of them, as though he’d always known the language deep down and only needed someone to remind him it was there.
“I’m ready.”
Shadow reached into the chest once again, this time she pulled out a sheet of paper.
“I already wrote down what you need to convey in advance. This demon shouldn’t be difficult, I worked with it before, and it has proven to be reliable.”
“Sounds…” He scanned the page. It was difficult. His eyes kept slipping around and reading the line before or after. Finally, he had the gist.
“Sounds doable.”
Shadow positioned herself in front of the rune circle and raised her hands, her runes lighting up as she focused her magic. Warnado could practically feel the veil thinning between here and wherever the demon came from. A small ember appeared in the circle and rapidly grew into a vaguely person-shaped flame-thing. Shadow returned to a normal posture and gestured to Warnado.
“Your part starts here.” She said.
“Hello,” Warnado said in the stiff, strange demonic tongue.
The flame-thing nodded what could be interpreted as a head. “Greetings.”
"Okay.” He pulled out the note and recited. “The armor you need is in that other circle, you can possess it as soon as we have a contract. Help our blacksmiths out and instruct apprentices, obey instructions given by section leaders and anyone further up in the chain of command.”
“Clear enough, is that all?” it shrugged.
Silence hung in the air. The demon didn’t seem aggressive, just sort of bored. It began to tap its almost-foot, sending up a small spray of sparks about.
“I think so…” Warnado trailed off. Then, he laughed nervously. “Oh, and feel free to whistle while you work!”
The demon began to slowly flow along the lines connecting its circle to the one with the armor. Then, it simply filtered in through the gaps. The armor began to glow with a deep purple flame Warnado had come to associate with the demons, and he watched it march off with purpose.
“Should we follow it?” he asked Shadow.
“We can if you want to watch it work,” she answered.
And with that they set off at a leisurely place and quite directly travelled to the armory. It had marched there on instinct, without making a single wrong turn. Warnado knew better than to ask why: magic was the answer, however unsatisfying.
It immediately moved up to an empty anvil and began beating some iron into shape with its hands, its flames melting the metal down into a molten soup. To this soup it added chunks of obsidian and sprinkled in blaze powder, from the resulting alloy it created miniscule threads with its hands and wove them together.
“Firesteel,” Shadow said, as though it explained everything.
And sure enough, after a few minutes, the demon began to whistle in its own strange way, strange hisses and cracks harmonizing with the central melody. It was positively benign.
“Are many of them this docile?” Warnado asked distantly.
He just couldn’t reconcile this remarkably normal creature with the tin throne, or the avatar of flame he’d assumed, or his father’s corpse… It was like a square peg in a round hole. A piece of a jigsaw puzzle that had gotten mixed into a pizza box instead of one of the slices.
“Demons are like us in a way. Most of them don’t leave their home dimension at all, those that do usually do so for a reason. Some are interested in us and our culture, others enjoy specific tasks like this one, of course there will also be ones who come for sadistic reasons, enjoying suffering of mortals and all that. Their reasons are as varied as the demons themselves, it seems you encountered mostly bad ones so far, especially the one sitting on the other end of your gauntlet.”
“You got that right…”
And they sat there for a little bit, until Shadow finally spoke.
“If it’s alright with you, we might need to summon more demons, Lucy would appreciate some alleviated pressure. Maybe once you’re more comfortable you can do more parts of the ritual...” she stopped, her eyes widened. “The first note from Fire just arrived, come Warnado, we need to get the others!”
Without one word further, they were on their feet and running to learn what had happened.
I recapture some of my former energy as Shadow comes in the door. Try to be helpful. Since Fristad died I’m trying to be a little more involved again. I - I let the “training room incident” knock me down and I’ve mostly just stood around looking morose when I should be trying to save lives.
Even though nothing I do will influence the outcome of whatever happens in the Tower, I have control over what happens here and now. I have to guide our response. Make it responsible. What Fire has done is not responsible - it’s desperate. But it must just pay off…
I shoot a look at Kay. He has his nose buried in the Book and he’s stroking his beard. I look away before he notices.
“If Fire doesn’t make it,” I realise. “That’s our leader.”
And with that cheery thought I turn to Fire’s sister. An uncharacteristic tension mars her pitch-dark features. I’ve seen her walk off being impaled with mild irritation. She’s nervous. It must be awful.
Some dark part of me thinks, “Perfect opportunity to extract her dark secrets. Get even.” In retaliation, the better parts of me loathe themselves.
Fire’s room is full of redstone contraptions, tools and not much else. Aside from the bed there’s just circuits drawn and made all over the floor. Blueprints of the base, with potential future expansions traced out and pinpointed. Scattered notes are pinned into them, written in half sentences.
As I approach Shadow, I’m careful not to trip over a lever that is attached to a series of pistons and slime blocks. A yellowing note is glued into the wood frame. It reads: “rudimentary flying machine - finish sometime. Bombs maybe?”
I gesture to the line of claws holding ender pearls on a counter. The first of these opened not too long ago, materialising a note where the pearl impacted. A note that I was now holding in my hand.
“What does it say?” Shadow asks.
That tallies. She sensed it come in. Should have known her arrival wasn’t by chance. Warnado sprints up behind her. Tyron is out gathering everyone else.
“Hey Astro,” Warnado pants, hands on his knees. “Give me a second… I swear I’ll have a killer gag once I catch my breath.”
I decide to ignore that, though I hear Kay snort in the background.
I hold out the note. I recall the posture the officers of the Zine Craft forced us to learn and try to recapture some of its stiff efficiency.
“Invisibility is done but camo’s still working. No need to alter the plan so far. He’s currently in material storage and following the signage.”
Shadow stretches out and scrutinises the note as though it’s a dubious permit. She hands it back to me and then walks straight over to the counter.
“How long until the next?” she asks, squinting at the claws with the same suspicion.
“Three minutes,” I say.
Warnado walks up. He’s got a grin on his face, and I can tell he’s about to reference something none of us, possibly not even he, understands. He opens his mouth.
“So-”
I place a hand on his chest and stop his advance. He looks at me quizzically and is greeted by urgently upstretched eyebrows and gritted teeth. He cocks his head defiantly and looks at Kay. My old friend, concealing himself from Shadow’s eyes behind the cover of the book, shakes his head and mouths the words “Not the time!” Warnado surrenders. He says nothing more.
Over the course of the next few minutes, Steve, Jennifer and Voidblade arrive. The next pearl drops from the claw with the signature ender pearl teleportation noise.
“Still alive,” says Fire from afar. No more. No less.
Destiny comes in. She smells like alcohol. Not terribly or anything. She’s not swaying or stumbling or slurring her speech, but there’s a film of slight inebriation over her. Everything seems a little muted for her, and it shows. She seems too casual. She goes out for walks to mods know where a lot and comes back like this. Mostly since Fristad died. It’s not a problem but...
I wish I could take her aside and talk about how she is but there are more pressing matters. It wouldn’t help anyway. She just hadn’t been that close with Tyron and I, despite our shared captivity.
Urist jogs in with dwarven stoicism, obviously pained but trying to grin. Voidblade warps in and takes up a stance in the corner, away from the humans.
A third sheet materialises as the pearl drops out of its allocated claw and shatters. Shadow snatches up the paper and reads it aloud, marching off into a corner.
“Dr. Veronica Mercury (science head) apparently sleep deprived. Looking into whatever Shadow did to distract her and the Ender during the raid. Apparently obsessed. Orders from the Entity to prioritize over the machine. Freak telling employees rumors/secrets in exchange for fear. Someone named Clark Belmont is stealing snacks (probably not relevant but written for completeness).”
She lowers the sheet and nods. Tyron arrives and Kay summarises what has just been said.
“Is there a way we could exploit Mercury’s sleep deprivation?” the Dragoknight asks.
“Harassment campaign perhaps?” I offer, pondering as I say it how we would get near enough to make that work.
“She came to check out the anomaly you created, Shadow?” Warnado suggests with surprising calmness. “Could create a series of them, see if she takes an interest? Entity’s obsessed after all.”
Tyron ruffles his hood approvingly and Kay pats him on the back. Jennifer shoots him an approving thumbs-up and, realising I haven’t done anything, I clumsily extend my hand and raise a thumb so as not to be rude. Steve stares off into the distance.
“I might, if I can be sure that it won’t draw attention here,” she answers.
“Would we want to kill her or capture her?” Destiny asks with a flat shrug, preemptively indicating she had no qualms about doing the job herself.
“Fristad mentioned Belmont,” says Steve without suggestion.
The conversation continues in the same vein. Rose arrives and eyes the redstone awkwardly. Eventually she takes up a seat on the bed, eyes sweeping the room with a frustrated confusion. It strikes me that she knew substantially less than most about redstone’s function when I first met her. I’m no expert, but she barely seemed familiar with the idea of circuitry.
“Low-tech world?” I ponder.
Amanda enters and joins Warnado. He takes her aside and starts whispering excitedly. I catch the gist of it thanks to a magically-enhanced curiosity. He’s pleased to have proposed a strategy people seem to like. Amanda is proud of him. I retune my hearing before someone can drop a glass and deafen me.
“Shadow’s not the only one who can eavesdrop,” I ***** internally. One look at Shadow pacing immediately makes me feel terrible about it.
Note four arrives. He’s killed someone. A guard with crystals. Jennifer prods Steve and mentions the crystals they had experimented on back in the village. The crystals that the Entity had tried to steal from them. Steve places an ender chest demonstratively, breaks it and falls back into inaction.
I inspect him. He’s slumped from his anger into an indeterminate, paralysing sadness. The bargaining phase of grief is over, and he’s gotten a raw deal. I know a little too well what comes next.
Notes five and six are basic status updates. A slight change of course here, a ‘still alive’ there. The lack of bad news is almost worse than receiving it. I get a hold of the ‘still alive’ message and start thinking about what a low bar that sets for good news.
My attention is drawn to the memory of the Void. I have begun to think about it less, but it still lingers. The dreams grow stranger and stranger. I am many different people or none. Always pursuing some treasure I never see. Maybe it doesn’t exist. I ponder what this tear in existence might be trying to communicate. Is it a metaphor, perhaps?
The tension is spreading across the entire room. Discussion of Warnado’s strategy has petered out. Shadow and Kay are pacing in opposite trajectories, the latter periodically ripping the Book out of his pocket and glaring at its pages silently. Tyron polishes Kir in the corner. Urist and Jennifer inspect the ‘flying machine’. I wait.
Note seven arrives. The sound of glass shattering awakens everyone from this agitated stupor we’ve all drifted off into. Tyron is nearest, but he holds off on grabbing the note from the pearl’s remains.
Shadow takes it as before. The look on her face is enough to tell me something has gone dreadfully wrong.
Her hair begins to rise up, as though the room were slowly filling with water. Her already shadow-like skin somehow descends to a shade beyond darkness. Her eyes are like stars, burning and terrible.
“Get back,” I warn.
I recall the gaping emptiness she had shown me, and I still feel unprepared. Kay puts the Book away and reaches for his sword.
Suddenly, Shadow stabilises. Her skin returns to its normal pitch black. Her hair drops like a collapsing roof. She’s shaking, but she holds out the note.
Tyron takes it up. Reads it.
“He’s been ‘caught’,” he sighs. He tries to read the rest, but no one pays him much heed. Kay groans and rubs his temples. Everyone else falls into different degrees of shock, unable to speak. Steve looks like Fristad has died all over again.
“What?” asks a voice from the door.
I look up. Lucy stands in the doorway, gripping her ever-present notebook with white knuckles. A tear runs down her cheek.
“Fire has been captured,” responds Kay with a reluctant certitude, a distant sincerity. “I understand if this is difficult for you. Anyone who needs a moment to process this, please, feel free to step outside. We’ll wait for you before we make any decisions.”
Lucy nods and takes a step into the hall. Steve goes too. Voidblade, reluctantly takes a step outside, but looks back at Kay with discerning, suspicious eyes before slouching out mournfully. Urist, somehow weighed closer than ever to the ground by sadness, leaves with them.
“Brainstorming here: I say we make an announcement immediately,” Kay states. “Honesty wins the troops over.”
“There’ll be mass panic,” I retort with habitual cynicism. I wonder at how easily I slot back into my role as the flint off which he strikes ideas. “Leader of the rebellion is gone. You need something more than honesty.”
“So, we need a task,” he paces in a little circle, then points at Shadow. “It would help if we knew if Fire was ‘caught’, ‘captured’ or…” he trailed off with an emphatic lowering of his hand.
I remember the gaping, abyssal glimpse Shadow had given me of the Void. How, just there, she had threatened to cede to it entirely. To allow this creeping nothingness into our world of things. The Entity is obsessed with what she did in the village, according to Fire’s notes. Is that fascination? Anger? Fear? It occurs to me that she’s losing control. Shadow, so long the crystalline voice of reason, might prove to be a time bomb.
Kay nods empathetically.
“That’s good. Whatever we do next needs to appear as a step toward rescuing him. A clear message: no man left behind. But what?”
He’s pacing again in a shrinking spiral. I remember him doing this many times while we were wandering the world after the Onslaught. For him that’s all recent - he’s still in the habit. He picked it up from an early commanding officer. Treats the spiral like the fuse on a bomb. He must have a solution before he’s reached the centre or the bomb goes off.
“Anyone we could kidnap?” Jennifer asks with uncharacteristic coldness. “Exchange hostages. We could threaten to kill Silver, maybe? No, he’s too small to matter to them.”
“Glibby will have denounced him as a traitor by now, as well,” I concede. “He’ll have needed a patsy.”
“Have the scouts identified any facilities we could attack?” Jennifer presses.
“So far, only patrols, a few trading posts, an outpost,” Tyron rattles off a few more. “The substantial targets Silver’s told us about are all either surrounding the Tower or off-world. The Entity knows how to centralise power.”
“Nothing sufficient to motivate people. We’d have desertions up the wazoo by midday tomorrow,” Kay grunts. “Unless we just say screw it and hit the Tower.”
“We’re not strong enough to attack the Tower yet,” says Destiny with less tension than the rest of us, perhaps even with an aloof amusement. “It would be suicide. If we used the portal from my world as a backdoor, we’d be flying blind. Even assuming we recovered Fire, the army would never forgive us for the casualties to save just one life. As you said, desertions up the wazoo.”
“Wait! Warnado, your idea from earlier!”
Kay whips the finger over to the demon-child with inspiration.
“The anomalies,” he continues. “The Entity’s obsessed.”
“Yeah?” Warnado stammers.
“The one in the village,” nods Amanda with unsurprised comprehension. I’m surprised she’s picked it up before me. “It’s certainly close to the tower.”
“We attack the village!” Kay yelps in ecstatic revelation. “We establish a beach-head from which to rescue Fire and all the while we-”
“-Investigate just why it’s so worried about what Shadow did there,” I say, the excitement of a way out seizing me too.
“Precisely!” Kay cheers, lifting Warnado into a firm hug. The demon-mage laughs in confusion. He plants him down and leaps onto Fire’s bed. “We have the advantage of framing it as a first step toward the rescue of our commander, a first step toward learning the enemy’s weakness and toward stopping the machine.”
I recall his days of rabble-rousing. His impassioned appeals against the Brotherhood in the early days of our new life in the Vanilla Craft, rousing people to join him in vanquishing the threat. I remember how many of them survived.
But my cynicism cannot shake my nostalgia. I was the one who made him aware of the Brotherhood’s attacks on my newfound territory. He fought to defend me and many other innocents besides. I can still make excuses for him at that point. We were still the good guys.
“So, we clarify the machine’s purpose?” asks Destiny. “You sure that’s wise.”
Kay pauses, swallows gravely and nods.
“Yes. We’ll say near enough exactly what has happened. Honesty will win the troops. Won’t reveal the Lady yet, but say Silver finally cracked. Takes less explaining. I’ll also lean on the image of the martyr Fire, who went off upon learning of this existential threat to risk it all and confirm our fears.”
There is a knock at the door. Steve wants to be let back in, sad as a limping dog. Others are behind him. Lucy and those others who ‘needed a moment’. It occurs to me what Kay has done.
“Naturally,” he says. “We have to persuade the others first.”
And he does so.
###
It has taken two hours to set things up. Magic and the Brines were essential. Banquet tables everywhere, well-laden with food. Wine abounds. This is how he did it in Gaia when he ran the Mining District. Banquet, toast where he announces the bad news, resolute path forward. A few social gatherings without a point so they don’t catch on to the pattern. Kay was lucky King Peter kept bankrolling them, let alone name him heir.
We don’t join them. Not this time. Lucy stands to the right of the podium. The rest of us stand on the stage in a line. Kay occupies the centre and I stand to his left. Shadow is beside me with a thousand-yard stare. Warnado is on Kay’s right. Tyron on his. Aside from Shadow, Fire’s affiliates (Voidblade, Urist and Rose) are banished to the fringes of the line. Kay has surrounded himself in his inner circle.
Before I was transported here, Aaron told me he’d formed a similar circle with which to plot against the Brotherhood, even though we needed their help to take down Dominus. I’m happy my captivity spared me the pain of being captain of that ill-fated crew. The Divines couldn’t have spared me that only to inflict it here, could they?
But no, he isn’t that man yet, I hope. I pray silently, looking to the sky and trying to mask my fear in irritated boredom.
I look for the Prophet. I see him and the other Steve, his bodyguard, on the jungle-coated ridge. They loom and assess. We haven’t told them what happened yet.
He nods to Lucy. She raises her hands, calms the crowd. Kay steps forward to the podium. He speaks. He explains to them the threat they face. The machine that will collapse all worlds into one under the Entity’s tyranny. That we had no choice but to act as we have. I wonder if that is true. If waiting a day or two longer wouldn’t have provided a better solution, but it seems unlikely.
“Your commander, our Fire, went out to verify the reports. In a daring espionage mission, he has snuck into the Tower itself. And thanks to him, we have intelligence about the functioning of the machine, its location and the concern of the enemy. Moreover, we have at last have figured out why they put so much effort into defending the village. Why they hounded you from it only to turn back and fortify. Congregation of the Prophet, we believe we may soon find the Entity’s weakness!”
A steward with a torch passes the line of swordsmen before the stage, and my eye is drawn to the transitory glare it creates on their helmets. They kneel in supplication, blades drawn and facing the crowd.
Cheers sound out from the crowd. It appears crowd control is unnecessary. For the moment.
I imagine them rushing the stage. Imagine them tearing us all limb from limb for daring to grant them hope. With the timebomb Shadow to my left, and the condemned tyrant to my right, I am afraid.
The image of the gaping Void burns behind my eyes.
“But this came at a cost: they have captured him.”
There is panic, but somehow, I am calm. The bodyguard places a hand on the Prophet’s shoulder, face agonised. Kay remains steadfast, gestures for calm. He nods to Lucy and the line of swordsmen rise and begin to pound rhythmically upon their shields. It is like the sound of an army marching. Kay steps out in front of the podium, leans back calmly on it.
“We have a plan as to how to proceed next. We shall rally and, while our enemy believes us decapitated, storm the village from which we fled. From there, we will have a beachhead to assault the Tower, rescue our commander and stop the machine.
“The Entity fortified this village, halted its pursuit of us, because it was scared. It is terrified of a spell that was cast there, and we need to figure out the nature of its fear. Once we know why it is afraid, this being, this thing, shall just be another enemy to vanquish.
“You are strong. You have trained. Come from oppression and improved faster than any army I have seen. I served alongside gods, and I can safely say I have never been more honoured to serve alongside anyone but the soldiers of this army. And I know you must be afraid, disoriented by this news at least, but I believe in you. I trust you. We trust in your abilities, or we would not ask you to do this.
“But our opinion only matters so much. What says the Prophet?”
A crowd is gathering in front of the stage with tentative anger, but now they are diverted to the Prophet’s ridge. Kay closes his eyes, spreads his arms and kneels to wait for the verdict. It all hinges on this.
The Prophet shambles forward, mouth ajar.
“The Champion of Life and Death shall be freed!” He shakes from the effort of his declaration and receded looked ecstatic. Tears of joy line his face as he beams at the sight of this future victory. Steve the bodyguard wraps his cloak around his charge and supports his faltering stance.
This approval granted, the crowd is ecstatic, singing and cheering anew.
“In the meantime,” Kay announces. “I shall be taking over from Fire, but this means we need a new second-in-command.”
My heart becomes leaden, feels like it’s trying to shatter my ribs. This is it. My final punishment. I pray it truly is final.
“Tyron Dragoknight, an expert in combat magic shall fill this role.”
My execution stayed, I look around in astonishment. Tyron is gravely serious but unfazed. He steps forward. Makes a speech about Fire and how they know each other. About the man who succeeds him, recommending him. He tells tales of heroism past and future. Speaks about courage and virtue and perseverance. Brandishes Kir aloft, and finishes.
And with that, we depart from the stage. Our line fragments into little groups, all aware of how important the coming battle is.
I take Tyron aside. We wait until the others are gone. I don’t cast a charm. Shadow can eavesdrop all she likes. I don’t care.
“What is it?”
I heave a great amount of air into me to proof against the breath-robbing sorrow that will come. Against the great tightening my lungs will experience. Against the desire to not speak at all.
“It’s time I told you the truth about Kay,” I say.
“I see,” Tyron nods. Kir is silent.
And so, I begin.
Chapter29:A New Colleague (The Ender)
The last twenty-four hours at the Tower had been eventful, in fact, the word “eventful” vastly understated the amount of things that had happened. It had all started when the Ender was called into the sanctum of the Tower’s laboratory, the very core of the science division. She hadn’t been there often before, usually she met with Dr. Mercury in other parts of the laboratory or her private quarters. This time had been different, the call had come from the Entity itself.
When she teleported there, the Ender had found to her great annoyance that a fire had triggered the sprinklers, her exposed scales had immediately started burning and itching when they came in contact with the fine water droplets. Freak had been there too, and Dr. Mercury and the Entity obviously. What had completely taken her aback was that Fire had been there as well. To top it all off Fire had called her by her real name, completely breaking any composure she had left after teleporting into a soaking wet room.
However, things had not stopped there, quite far from it. The Entity had picked Fire up and started absorbing him, something it did only rarely. Usually it only possessed people, which left them completely bound to its will but still able to separate later, with varying degrees of physical and mental scarring. Absorption was a different story, someone who was absorbed would permanently become part of the Entity, transferring all of their memories over. Absorption was usually only used as a threat since it left the Entity in turmoil while it sorted its new acquisitions.
Some minutes into the process the Entity had suddenly stopped, then said something about that dimensional scar she and Dr. Mercury had seen in the village. Fire was connected to it, which made sense since that scar had been created by that strange mage Shadow, who somehow was Fire’s sister.
The Entity hadn’t quite explained what it had done after that, but it had done something. Fire’s eyes had gone from red to black and he himself had changed too. Apparently, Fire had some kind of second personality that the Entity had brought into control, that personality called himself Claw and apparently did not share Fire’s memories.
Claw was… peculiar. Referred to himself as a hunter commonly and had almost no recollection of his past, almost as if he’d spontaneously come into existence. However, he apparently had access to an encyclopedic repository of knowledge, all of which seemed to be entirely new to him. He seemingly understood some of the near-incomprehensible concepts that Dr. Mercury had excitedly talked about, then the next minute asked a series of completely mundane questions.
The important part was that he was now part of the Entity’s inner circle, on the same level as the Ender herself. Somehow this irked her less than it should have. The Entity had its reasons.
A large part of the following day had been spent showing Claw around the various parts of the Tower. The Ender would have liked to say that he was a quick learner, but it seemed that rather than properly learning some of the things she told him, he instead acted as if he had known them but was just now remembering them again. It wasn’t some act like Glibby would put on when faced with things new to him, It was how he functioned, for better or for worse.
He’d say things like “Yeah, biometric door locks.” and “An interactive display, got it.”
He was apparently taking these bits of information from Fire’s memory, like they weren’t there at his disposal but needed drawing out first. At least it simplified a lot of the explaining, especially when they got to Dimensions, Research and Command and Control.
Outside of his tendencies to suddenly remember complex concepts that took many at least a few days to begin to grasp, Claw was surprisingly unrefined. He seemed to understand professionalism but at the same time it was difficult to tell how seriously he was taking everything. The Ender supposed it was only expected for someone who had only properly existed for a day.
When they were finally done with their tour they stopped at the Ender’s office.
As soon as he saw the room, Claw stated: “Nice place, a bit barren though.”
The Ender replied: “It’s my office, not my living quarters. No place for distractions here.”
She walked over to one of her shelves and started searching for a specific folder, which she found within the first few seconds. She sat down at her table and opened the folder.
Claw asked: “So what exactly are we doing here?”
The Ender said: “This is the floor plan of this sector of the Tower, the Entity said you’ll be in charge of leading military matters. That is currently my job, so I imagine we’ll be working together. For that we’ll need to find you an empty room where we can set up an office for you.”
Claw nodded and pulled up his own chair directly next to the Ender. With all of the things he somehow knew, personal space seemed to be an unknown concept to him. The Ender was composed enough not to feel too uncomfortable, it helped that… “Okay, I need to have a serious talk with myself about this before I start here.”
“Yes,” she reluctantly thought to herself. “I may have taken a very slight liking to Fire. Probably more than very slight. Who could blame me? You don’t run into someone like that any day. Intelligent, composed, skilled, quite attractive on top of it and not to mention older than my recorded history.” Yes, it was true. The Ender quite liked Fire, however the man next to her was decidedly not Fire, physically he was but definitely not mentally. Claw was nothing like Fire when it came to his personality, all that experience and knowledge she had felt when they discussed the topic of portals to outer worlds, not there, at least not exactly. It was like Claw was using Fire’s memories like a book, like second-hand thoughts. No, her relationship with Claw would be strictly professional in nature. “That’s something I might not be able to say if it was actually Fire.” She recomposed herself fully. There would be no further thoughts going down that line.
Claw seemed oblivious to the slight grimaces that had flashed over the Ender’s face as she thought, which was honestly for the best.
She pointed at one of the rooms near her office. “That one is close, quite spacious and usually quiet.”
Claw took a quick look, then said: “Sure, sure. I’m not picky, any room will do. What about sleeping?”
The Ender said: “You can either choose to sleep in the barracks or get your own private room, we have a couple unoccupied ones.”
Claw replied: “Private room it is, no sense in picking worse conditions if better ones are there.”
That was surprisingly quick.
Claw asked: “So, is that private room ready? I’m getting the distinct feeling that the other one was awake for a while before this, starting to get seriously tired.”
The other one was what Claw called Fire, he knew his name but still preferred the phrase, as if he wanted to distance himself. The Ender wondered if somehow the two of them had directly interacted before.
It made sense for Claw to be tired, apparently Fire had quite a few potions coursing through his bloodstream, which had worn off by now. Dr. Mercury had taken a blood sample from Claw and had passed it along to one of her assistant researchers, who had told the Ender about the potions.
“Yes, the room should be ready. Just ask Administration for your key and the room’s location, you know how to get there?”
Claw got up from his chair, turned to leave and said: “Sure, can’t be that hard to find. Anyways, see you around. I need to get some sleep in and…” He tapped his head. “Get my things in order.”
And with that Claw was gone. The Ender wondered just what would happen over the course of the next few days. Claw had no real experience but if he got better at using what Fire left him, they’d have a great asset on their hands. Those revolutionaries were in for one hell of a time now that there were not one but two heads working against them. Technically four heads but Freak and Glibby didn’t count for different reasons. If nothing else, the Tower and her work had gotten a whole lot more interesting.
Chapter30:The Inner Circle (Steve)
“Steve, some soup from the canteen,” Jennifer prompted.
Steve looked up with pleading eyes. He couldn’t eat at a time like this. He couldn’t drink. He couldn’t sleep. He didn’t understand how anyone could do anything.
Fristad was dead, and Fire was on his way to join him. Their only option was effectively busywork carried out in the hope that maybe, by some unlikely chance, they would stumble across the Entity’s weakness and be able to exploit it in time to stop his machine. The universe itself was dying, and he didn’t see how anything he did could shape that.
But then his eyes met Jennifer’s, and he saw the concern in her eyes, and he took the bowl for her sake. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up.
He took a spoonful and it reminded him of the soup he’d shared with Fristad on the day the Prophet came back.
“It tastes great,” he lied.
He felt ill.
“Steve, we’ve got to keep fighting,” Jennifer told him. “Just like we did against the undead army, against Drake and against Herobrine. The bodies kept piling up then, they’re going to keep piling up now unless we act.”
“And suppose I don’t want to be part of that cycle anymore?” Steve seethed. “Suppose we succeed, we kill the Entity? What then? Wait until the next bad guy shows up? Another lull of a few weeks before I’m put through the Nether all over again?”
“Steve-” Jennifer sighed, obviously disappointed, but Steve needed to yell at someone, and she was there. Consequence be damned.
“Why is it always my job to fix everything?”
“Steve, listen-”
“No, Jen, you listen! I put so much work into being nice old Steve - great hero, perfect boyfriend - and all I get is people like you condescending to me. You think I’m an idiot.”
He saw her with her eyes closed and lips pursed, breathing angrily through her nose. He relented. “Okay - okay! I’m sorry, I’m being a jerk. I blew up and that was wrong, but don’t you see what I’m saying-”
“Steve,” she grimaced. “We have a visitor.”
She grunted and gestured over to the door. Kay stood there, making a show of pretending to read the Book and not notice what was going on. He felt ashamed.
“Steve,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you alone.”
Steve let his eyes sink, nodding as he did so. He muttered, “I’m sorry” and followed Kay. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Jennifer brushing her red hair out of her eyes and set about rearranging the bed.
There was so much more he should have said to her: “You absolutely are right. We have to keep fighting.” “I shouldn’t be talking to you like you haven’t been through all this too. As though you weren’t there from the second, I called on you.” “As though I’m the only one it affects.” “I love you.” “I don’t want to lose you.” “I am afraid, but we are here.” All these would have been good. He resolved to say at least one the second he came back.
Kay drew him out into the hallway and started marching off briskly, and Steve’s mind immediately switched lanes from guilt to accusation. Kay’s stupid plan had killed Fristad, and he was going to get a piece of his mind. And now Kay was going to lord Steve’s frailty over him, scold him or something stupid. Use it as an opportunity to stomp down the opposition. He had already taken advantage of him needing a moment to canvas half the group, Jennifer included.
“Thank you for coming with me,” he said. “I understand that was not the best moment, but it’s a situation of some urgency. I have much to say to you-”
“-Yeah, and I have a lot to say to you, asshole!” Steve barked, skipping over the slow rise Kay obviously hoped to establish. He wouldn’t get the rhythm he wanted to his reprimand.
“Very well,” he conceded, hanging his head. “Say it, if you must.”
This stopped Steve for a second. He had expected Kay to shout back. Maybe this was a trap, but he decided to resume his shouting. He weighed his words, and then began to tear into him.
“You’re loving this, aren’t you? Fire gone, Fristad dead, Shadow and I falling apart in all of the craziness? This is your fantasy.”
“Care to back that up, Steve?” Kay growled.
“Yeah! I think I will,” he pressed. “This is your fantasy because you hated Fire. You were supposed to be the Prophet’s champion and you got passed over because Fire was better, stronger and kinder than you without even trying. You hated Fristad because he reminded you of how weak you are. He reminds you of when you were just going to work with the Entity because you were too much of a coward to fight him-”
“-I didn’t know he was a threat.”
“You didn’t know because you didn’t want to see! You tried to side with the Entity and only turned on him when you realised your friend was in danger. You pressed this dumb ‘lead from the front’ style of leadership just because you were bitter about losing the election and wanted to reassure yourself you were still ‘really in charge’ or something. And the way you treated Fristad was just despicable! First you ostracise him for turning into an enderman, then you profited from the Dreamweaver thing, forming an alliance with the creature that tormented him for months! And now, because of your plan, he’s dead!”
Kay was silent. The redstone lamp overhead flickered a little, and made Kay’s features appear to move in subtle, incremental twitches Steve couldn’t be sure had really happened.
“Yeah, Glibby dealt the punch but your decision to leave two kids and a shepherd in charge of the most important strategic target of the raid is what killed him. I know you want us all to just forget about that and every other sucky thing you’ve done since arriving here, but I won’t. There is blood on your hands, and I am not letting you just dance off to your next screw-up with a big speech and a fake accent.”
Silence followed Steve’s outburst. Then, that silence lingered. Then, Kay said “Steve” and cut himself off.
“Steve,” he said, in a brogue the young Brine had only heard him slip into during fleeting peaks of joy and momentary troughs of anger. “You’re right.”
“I’m what?”
“You’re right. As much as I try to posture like one, I’m not a hero like you. I’m just a soldier, and a mercenary one at that. I’m opportunistic, I’m short-sighted, I’m arrogant. I try to move on quickly from my mistakes, so no one notices them. I treated Fire like trash. And, above all, Fristad’s death is on my hands. I should have listened to you. We have an army, and it’s time to use it. I want you to lead the vanguard, and I want you to help me plan this.”
“Oh… what about Jennifer?”
“Steve, Jennifer is fantastic. She’s level-headed and she’s kind. But she’s not what I need at the top table. I need the guy who killed the Wither, the Ender Dragon and Herobrine. Are you still that guy?”
Steve paused.
“Yes.”
“Then come with me.”
One short, silent walk later, Kay and Steve entered the command room. A small cabal was gathered. Astro and Tyron whispered by the furnace and stopped abruptly as Steve entered. Destiny sat at the table, poring over maps. Rose stood over in the corner, throwing knives at a bullseye.
“No Warnado?” Steve asked, genuinely surprised.
Kay looked back sadly:
“Like you said, he’s only a kid.”
Kay walked into the centre of the room.
“Time to plan our reckoning. Who wants to go first?”
Chapter31:New Experiences (Claw)
Claw woke up roughly six hours after he had moved into his private room. That was all the sleep he needed. He knew this, but he didn’t remember ever having properly slept before, it had only ever been a hunt followed by being imprisoned again. Claw’s memory of the hunts was hazy at best, he only remembered small fragments. The pain of a weapon here, the rush of a kill there, maybe a split-second image of the face of his prey. Just for how long had this gone on?
The voice in his head, which wasn’t quite his, answered his question: “Three-thousand five-hundred and seventy-two years.”
Great. So, the other one had kept him locked up for that long, perhaps longer even. Claw knew the other one was older than that, he also knew that he had been created by him in a way. That he had existed as even less than he had been while he was caged. The time that the voice told him must have been when he hunted for the first time.
Claw had tried to despise the other one, hate him but he somehow couldn’t. To hate you needed a clear vision of the object of your ire. Other than the body he was now inhabiting, Claw knew very little about who the other one was. All Claw knew were facts, about almost anything he laid his eyes on or thought about. That he could shatter his bedside table with his bare hands and exactly how much force was needed to do so. That his body had three hearts. That his claws were in fact a telescoping arrangement of small prisms made from an almost unbreakable material. That retreat was a perfectly reasonable thing to do in battle and a well-organized one could do more damage to an enemy force than a head-on confrontation if correct preparation and follow-up steps were taken. That brewing hypermobility potion derivatives was a hazardous endeavor that could end up stranding you in another world… huh, that one was oddly specific.
What Claw didn’t know was where all of this knowledge came from, aside from the fact that the other one had acquired it at some point. Claw had never shattered a bedside table, had never commanded an army, had never even seen anyone command an army. It was frustrating to have all of this knowledge that he knew was valid and useful but no actual experience, it was like a large part of him was missing.
Claw grunted and got up from his bed. His private chambers were adequate according to a sense of interior design he only just now discovered he had. A bedroom, a bathroom complete with a shower, a living room with a table, empty shelves and even a couch. More than sufficient, the only thing that was missing was a kitchen, but the Tower had several canteens so there really was no need for individual cooking.
It only took Claw a minute to get dressed, his uniform consisted of a set of underclothes and obsidian armor, similar to the one the Ender was wearing, just missing the purple gems that decorated hers. Getting into the armor was easy for Claw, as though he had done so countless times before. Another thing that annoyed him. How was he supposed to be able to know what he could and couldn’t do until he tried? What if at some point the voice in his brain just said “Sorry, I got nothing.” and he’d just stand there like a total idiot.
Speaking of idiocy, during his sleep Claw had been shown a mostly incoherent stream of information, a dream as it were. However, since you apparently needed memories to dream, which he had very few of, he instead was treated to perhaps one of the more pointless things humanity had thought of with the ample spare time it had collectively: Philosophy.
Claw understood the appeal of course, if your survival is all but assured and you have nothing better to do, why wouldn’t you think about all the pointless theoretical scenarios and fabricate models of how certain people may act under certain circumstances. Claw was currently too preoccupied with his own position to care about such things, perhaps at a later point he’d indulge in this navel-gazing himself, which would be a real challenge since he lacked a navel.
Claw’s dream had treated him to detailed descriptions of various fields of philosophy, morality being one of them. Claw found that most things that that field concerned itself with may sound good on paper but really, who had time for all those lofty ideals when it really came down to it? The prey never willingly gave itself up to the predator for the “greater good of both their species”, no matter how overpopulated the prey and how starving the predator was. It turned out that if you wanted something and had the means of taking it, it was already as good as yours. Of course, philosophy had its own name for that concept and some related ones, “might makes right” it was called, and Claw found that it was one of the only concepts that could be applied no matter what. It was what it all fell back to when the cloud castles collapsed in on themselves. It was how the Entity managed to command an empire this vast.
With a smirk Claw let that line of thought trail off. Apparently, there was a meeting scheduled at some point where he’d be formally introduced to all the important people of the Tower. Perhaps if he hurried now, he could get something to eat before it all started, concentrating on an empty stomach was difficult, at least that’s what his brain told him.
Just as Claw reminded himself of the way to the closest canteen, something appeared before his mental eye: A grid-like structure of thirty-six squares, some were empty, others depicted some kind of object. Almost reflexively he focused on one of the squares that held a green-colored bag. The grid disappeared and Claw held the bag in his right hand. This was an inventory, apparently. A pocket dimension that could store all manner of things, useful but it still didn’t explain why exactly he had chosen this particular bag.
Claw’s question answered itself a few seconds later, a faint scent of meat was radiating from the bag. He opened it and found that it held more than its size let on, then fished out a piece of dried and salted meat and immediately began biting down on it. The taste was strong, and the meat was tough but proved no match for Claw’s teeth. At least the other one had good taste in food and preservation methods. After eating another two pieces, Claw stowed the bag back in his inventory and drank some water in the bathroom. This had simplified things, no trip to the canteen was needed.
It turned out that finding the preserved meat was lucky. Less than five minutes later, Claw heard a voice in his head, a young girl, one of the Tower’s telepaths. “Mister Claw, the meeting is scheduled to start in half an hour in the Command and Control main meeting room.”
Claw replied: “I’ll be there, also just ‘Claw’ is enough.”
He got no reply from the telepath, she probably had to tell a whole lot of other people too. It was time to go. Claw opened the door of his private room, walked out, locked it behind himself and slid the key into a pocket hidden beneath one of his armor’s plates.
The corridor he was in was where a lot of the other important people of the Tower had their private rooms, his was directly adjacent to that of Archmage Wisp, whom he had only met briefly. The next one over belonged to Dr. Veronica Mercury, the woman who had run a series of tests on him after he had been freed. She had collapsed almost immediately after reading the results of the last test, from exhaustion apparently.
The Ender’s room was after hers, then followed Freak’s room, then Glibby’s. That also happened to be the order in which he respected the other members of the inner circle. The Ender was by far the most competent of the three. From what Claw had seen, her troops respected and followed her, she was also single-handedly responsible for the Tower’s military operations, though he supposed that was not the case anymore since he would work alongside her now. Freak was odd, a phantom of fear did not fit the pattern, he commanded no troops, had no administrative responsibility and yet he was still in the inner circle. Claw suspected that his real job was spying on various other employees and extracting information from prisoners. Glibby, the great pretender… was not worth wasting thoughts on.
The walk to Command and Control would have been a long one, however Claw made use of his command power to just order one of the endermen to take him there directly, in the end he still had fifteen minutes to spare.
The meeting room was dominated by a large round table with the Tower’s insignia on it, one wall was almost entirely occupied by a screen, which was currently displaying a stylized top-down view of the area surrounding the Tower. Many of the seats in the room were already filled up, Claw recognized a couple of faces. There was General Marcus, the head of Command and Control himself, basically the top dog below the inner circle. Next to him was General Issa, head of Reconnaissance. In other seats sat General Forgelight, head of Acquired Worlds, Dr. Mercury of course, and Clark Belmont, a dimensional cartographer, who apparently had a habit of stealing snacks, which seemed like a completely irrelevant detail to remember.
Of the inner circle both the Ender and Freak were already in their seats, the Ender gestured for Claw to come over and pointed at the empty seat between her and Freak. Claw made his way over there with quick steps.
After Claw sat down, the Ender asked: “Remember anything more?”
Claw replied: “A few things, apparently it goes faster when dreaming. Mostly found out about humans and their philosophy and how much of it is irrelevant when it comes down to it.”
On Claw’s other side Freak snickered: “Sure does sound like humans.”
Claw turned over to look at Freak, as their eyes met, he felt something strange, as if Freak was looking through his eyes instead of at them.
Freak continued: “Humans, always thinking about whatever might happen and missing the things that do happen. Fine by me though, so many delicious flavors of fear that shouldn’t even exist. What about you Claw?”
Claw knew where this was going, and he was not having any of it. “Drop it Freak, you don’t have an angle on me. The only thing I truly fear is going back into that cage and as long as the Entity is around that is not happening.”
Freak blinked, then cleared his throat and turned away from Claw, an intersection of two lines on the insignia having become very interesting all of a sudden. Claw saw Freak for what he was: weak. He might be adept at exploiting others’ weaknesses, but he was ineffectual to a true hunter like Claw.
Right on cue, as if to demonstrate that while weak, Freak still was a long way from being the weakest, Glibby the Ape threw open the doors to the meeting room with an exaggerated motion. It was funny, Claw had barely even interacted with Glibby and yet he already had a very good idea of how he functioned.
Glibby made his way over to Freak’s side and sat down in his own chair. A single quick look from Claw was all it took to almost break the Ape’s composure. He had suffered a humiliating loss at the hands of the other one. Evidently, he was not happy to now have to work with Claw.
Over the remaining time the meeting room gradually filled up. Once the doors closed, the Entity materialized in its throne, thus declaring the meeting as started. It didn’t speak, it seemed that General Marcus would be the one leading.
Marcus looked his notes over and then began: “Greetings everyone, you might notice that this is the second full assembly in a short period of time. The reason is that we captured Fire, the rebel leader, the exact details are classified but Fire shared his body with Claw, who has now joined the Entity’s inner circle. Claw, would you mind introducing yourself?”
Claw stood up and waited a few seconds, when everyone’s eyes were on him, he said: “I am Claw, I will be in charge of the Tower’s military matters along with the Ender. That is all from my side, we have more points to discuss.”
What Claw had said wasn’t his first choice of words, but they had felt appropriate to the situation, professionalism and that. It seemed that the other one was no stranger to public speaking, which served Claw well.
General Marcus continued: “As Claw said, there are other points. The main one being the operation currently underway in the nearby village, as well as the rebel situation. It would be best if the responsible heads presented those themselves.”
Dr. Mercury stood up first. “As you might know, we have seized the nearby village in order to build up a forward military and research post. A strange phenomenon was sighted there that may be the source of the recent negative energy readings. This site will be dedicated to researching, understanding and possibly harnessing this phenomenon. The villagers have been evicted.”
The Ender stood up after Dr. Mercury had sat down. “Speaking of villagers. It is very probable that they joined the rebels now that they lost their homes. That was expected, sadly we were unable to plant spies in their midst, so the location of their ‘Shelter’ remains unknown. With their leader captured, the rebels will most likely be weakened but they are certainly still a threat. Scouts confirm that the Prophet has left his hill behind, and rumor has it that he joined the rebels or at the very least was granted refuge by them.”
Claw had no idea who this Prophet was, he certainly knew what a prophet was, but this was apparently the capital P Prophet.
He leaned over to Freak. “Who is that Prophet?”
Freak surprisingly gave him a straightforward answer: “First guy the Entity possessed, completely brain damaged and deranged. The only way his prophecies come true is by sheer quantity and vagueness.”
Something about what Freak had said set off an avalanche of thoughts in Claw’s mind. The Prophet was not just a madman but had genuine precognition, something about following the strings of fate and magical contracts, Claw would go down those rabbit holes and explore this newly uncovered knowledge after the meeting. More knowledge streamed in, this time from a different source. The Entity had its gaze fixed on Claw, one by one the thoughts appeared in his head.
This had happened before, not like it was happening now but in principle. The Entity hadn’t just formed and created all of this from nothing. This was only one of many cycles of building up before failing for one reason or another. The Entity only had partial memories of past cycles, much like Claw didn’t remember much about his own past. Each time it resurfaced it needed a seed, something to start from, that something was always the first person it possessed. It would use the enslaved will and intelligence of its first possession to formulate a plan of how to proceed while avoiding past pitfalls. This had some interesting implications, interesting enough that Claw needed to speak up about it.
He waited for a pause in the Ender’s speech, then he said: “That Prophet? He needs to die.”
All eyes in the room were on him. The Entity slowly said: “The Prophet is-not a threat.”
Claw replied: “Sorry boss, but I’ll have to disagree with that one. Without going into details, he knows things that could get very dangerous in the wrong hands. You might not realize it, but he might be the last remaining chance for our failure.”
The room was dead silent. Apparently disagreeing with the Entity was not something people did around here. Claw had no such concerns, his arrangement with the Entity was different from that of the others. It was no wonder this matter had gone unresolved for so long if nobody ever asked questions, or possibly because the Entity had never thought to tell anyone else this vital detail.
Now Dr. Mercury spoke up: “I agree with Claw, if the Prophet only vaguely poses a threat, we should try to eliminate him if it does not compromise our other operations. It would be one less risk.”
There was something different about her, she didn’t show the fear the others did, perhaps she too knew something the others didn’t.
The Entity said: “Pro-ceed if you can… guarantee nothing else-is-affected.”
Claw said: “That newly fortified village is a juicy target for our rebels, close to the Tower but just far enough out that a military response would be too slow to prevent them from capturing it if they overwhelm the garrison. It’s a prime opportunity for them to establish a forward base. And a very fitting retaliatory strike for capturing their leader.”
“I’d rather you not use my research as bait.” Said Dr. Mercury flatly.
Claw replied: “The rebels will most likely try to take it regardless of our actions, what I’m proposing is to make the best of the situation. The hill is reasonably close to the village, it would stand to reason for the Prophet to return there to help rally their troops. If that is true, we can occupy their forces by engaging them near the village while someone assassinates the Prophet.”
The Ender asked: “And who would be the assassin? Kay, that general of theirs, is a formidable opponent with his borrowed magic. The Prophet will be guarded.”
Claw’s mouth turned into a smirk. “I’ll handle the Prophet myself, I just need an enderman for getting there and getting back out. I am not at risk, the Entity has seen to it that I do not die. I also believe that I have my ways of dealing with this general.”
Marcus said: “Good, now that that matter is done, I have a couple more things to discuss before concluding this meeting, would you agree to plan in detail later?”
Claw and the Ender looked at each other, then silently nodded. There would be a lot to discuss if they wanted their plan to work out, the Prophet’s assassination was only a small piece of the bigger picture that was the battle that was up ahead. The rebels could have thousands of soldiers at this point, even if they were not well trained, they still posed a threat that couldn’t be dealt with using just the Ender’s troops. This would be an effort that concerned the entire Tower and Claw was looking forward to putting it in motion.
Chapter32:Calm Before the Storm (Destiny/Kay)
Destiny wished she could go and talk to Anya, but there was no time. She had been enlisted, and Fire needed her help. She hadn’t always thought highly of the big scalebag, but he had always tried to do right by her.
Besides, it was nice to be treated as an expert rather than a volatile bundle of mourning and anger issues.
“So, we’re agreed,” Kay said, hands held above the map as though it were a fire. “Amass around the Prophet’s hill - have him be visible to embolden the congregation. Steve leads a vanguard forward to test their ranks while Tyron holds back with the main body.”
Murmurs of confirmation could be heard around the table. Kay nodded and carried on with this draft of the plan, stringing together and rounding up the scattered, free-range ideas they’d all introduced.
“We’ll have someone who can quickly tunnel underground to where their ranks are thickest, trigger an explosion or rain fire on them or whatever, and then have the combat mages under Destiny and Rose emerge from the tunnel to cause as much disruption within the crater as possible. If we’re lucky and the thickest point of their ranks is near the middle, we have some builders try to block the two remaining halves of their forces off from each other. Tyron moves up to relieve the vanguard and attack their presumably disrupted forces. All going to plan, their forces start to lose resolve, fall back. We advance on the village. Fast-builders establish fortifications. Beachhead accomplished?”
Destiny smiled. The tunnelling had been her idea. She’d taken great satisfaction in seeing Kay’s eyes burn with ambition as he realised the potential of fast-builders to enhance his disruption-oriented tactics. Even now there was a residual glow whenever he mentioned them.
“And naturally we’ll have Shadow and her team of mages running counter-magic and dealing with the artillery, as well as conducting some magical strikes themselves. Ideally, they won’t destroy too many cannons, though - I want them captured. Will be useful when we attack the Tower.”
“Kay,” said Astro with a hint of irritation. “We need to win this battle.”
“I agree, but it must be a victory with a future. Naturally, if they’re too much of a bother we’ll have them destroyed.”
“Any concerns they might wonder where our magic users are?” Rose inquired.
“They don’t know our strength,” Destiny answered with satisfaction. “And they’ll expect us to be weaker than normal. Defections, panic, in-fighting in the wake of our leader disappearing. Even if their scouts notice a few faces missing who helped ambush Glibby, they probably won’t think too much of it.”
In the corner of her eye, she saw Kay smiling smugly. He appeared to be taking a moment to appreciate the efficiency of his new command structure. He could be as smug as he liked as far as she was concerned, so long as his and Fire’s ****-measuring contest didn’t lead him off a cliff. So long as the Book didn’t try anything.
She flicked her fingers and summoned a small flame, just to make sure she could in case of emergency.
“What if Entity’s present?” Kir inquired in all their ears.
“Hopefully it won’t be,” Astro said, nodding to himself. “If it does manifest, ensure Shadow is alerted immediately. Maybe she can pull off the thing that scared it again and distract it. Otherwise, give it all you’ve got.”
“Pretty much,” said Kay, returning from his retirement into satisfaction. “The Entity is an unknown quantity. I’ll do what I can and ensure Astro redirects as much archer-fire as possible to keep it off us.”
“And we’ll have the Prophet in the rear, guarded by Steve A?” Tyron asked with a raised brow.
“Steve 2,” clarified Steve Brine. They hadn’t cleared up the nomenclature yet.
“Yes,” Kay reaffirmed. “Plus, a small force who’ll protect our few TNT cannons. Skeleton crew, though.”
“And,” their Steve asked. “You’re sure the Jackals can be trusted in the vanguard? Jen and I did kill a few of them a while back.”
“They want revenge on the Entity pretty badly,” Astro affirmed. “And they owe us for stopping Glibby from tracking them down and crushing them. Fight well and they’ll follow you.”
Suddenly they were silent. Not awkwardly so. They just knew what had to be done. Destiny thought about the day to come. She thought about Fristad. She thought about David. She thought about Fire. Anger surged, and she closed her eyes to picture her purpose.
She would avenge her friend. She would avenge David. She would save Fire. She would save this world and all others, no matter what the cost. And then she would go back to her world, brag about it to Anya and drink herself into oblivion.
###
I sat on my throne. The Book’s avatar sat across from me, a humanoid vortex of pages and words. I had learned to pay attention and had begun to notice patterns. I did not know the script, but these lines and symbols held meaning. I had plans to one day change the rules of this little dream-space without the Book’s knowledge and reveal their secrets to me. Recently, however, it seemed the Book might reveal them voluntarily.
“You have done well,” the Book conceded.
“I have. You have what you wanted.”
“What we want.”
“Yes,” I said in genuine agreement. “I just wish the circumstances were different. That Fire were safe.”
“Shadow wouldn’t be as much of a risk.”
“No. And I wouldn’t be so pressed to attack.”
“You are still afraid of the Entity?”
“Yes. It cracked my breastplate. I only survived because of you.”
“Thank you,” the Book said with something like a smile. I smiled back. “You still have my protection, provided you are not foolish.”
“That shall be difficult. The entire affair is foolish… If only we had more time!”
I slammed the desk and it shattered through the floor. I set about reinventing it with a more intricate and appealing design.
“We do not have time,” The Book warned. “But we have a will to live. Even if the Entity succeeds and folds all creation into Nexus, we will live. We will thrive. We will learn to rival it.”
“Yes. We will find my friends and keep them safe.”
“We will guide them.”
“We will be strong.”
“We shall be unstoppable.”
“No matter the price…” I said.
“We shall survive,” we decreed.
Arc 4The Battle at the Hill (Chapters 33-40)
Chapter33:In Position (Astro)
We are on the Prophet’s Hill. Our army sprawls across the ground before us. Somewhere between two and three thousand soldiers are down there, ready to die at my friend’s command.
At the front, Steve stands in diamond armour that blazes under the midday sun. He is surrounded by men in similar apparel. The smugglers and bandits, the Jackals, make up most of them. However, I see more friendly faces among them. The dwarf, Urist, is hard to see but occasionally emerges to bark orders, usually instructing the smugglers as to how to conduct themselves in formation. Voidblade heads an auxiliary force to the side of several Endlings. No more than a dozen of them, but useful for running counter-interference on the Ender’s forces.
Behind them is Tyron’s force - the main one. The bulk of the congregation stands there in four or so grand, rectangular formations identical to Steve’s own. Skirmishers out front, then infantry. At the back stands a two-thick line of men with poleaxes. Their duty is to deal with the Endlings who will doubtless teleport amidst the infantry to try and wreak havoc. Kay told me this was how they dealt with them in the Onslaught. I say a little prayer to Jeb, asking him to ensure this tactic translates well to Endlings who can teleport as quickly and tirelessly as the Ender’s.
Tyron himself walks silently among the skirmishers. Warnado and Amanda flank him. Even though I know Kay referred to this specifically as “babysitting duty”, the sight of the great hero attended by the younger generation conveys a strange dignity. Jennifer stands at the head of another such formation, bow already taut with an arrow.
Somewhere beneath the ground, Destiny and Rose await with their assortment of combat mages and fast-builders. Their force was one of people magical enough not to fit neatly into a normal military formation, but not gifted enough to cast complicated spells.
On either side of the hill are arrayed our few cannons and their defenders. They are more like catapults in shape but are deadly artillery in their own right. They shall fling explosives into the thick of our enemies’ numbers, killing indiscriminately.
On a ridge at the foot of the hill, my several hundred archers, ready to advance as soon as required.
A little behind them, Shadow heads a force of a hundred or so mages. I assess the tiny mage, recalling the burning nothing to which she is a conduit. It sears behind my eyes. It is as though there were a hole in my skull through which every light in every world filtered to blind my thoughts. I recall how she almost slipped into that dreadful form upon discovering her brother’s capture. How much like a person she had looked, without looking at all like a person. Like a face in the stars. I am afraid.
And of course, beside me stands Kay, who provokes in me a tumult of sadness and joy, fear and nostalgia. He is clad in bright diamond. His eyes are like jade stars, burning with purpose. And his auburn hair catches the sunlight and becomes a bronze beacon. His face is flat, displaying a stoicism that will one day serve him well in portraits and kingly ceremonies.
I relive his fall. I remember the monk with a bullet in his temple. Kay’s smoking gun, which he now points to Hamish. He sees me. Our eyes lock. Hamish cackles as he sees shame overwhelm Kay. The General, my friend, turns his gun on the Silhouette. A flash. A bang. The funeral mask shatters. Blood sprays. Glibby bears the corpse away, swearing revenge. Hamish finds it hilarious, his split face shattering into mad laughter. Kay pretends he has apprehended him as others flow in. Gogyst and Aaron and Tauto and others. He lies about what happened to the monk. Says he tried to save him. The shame remains. It follows him to his grave like a stray dog he’d fed.
And yet, here he is. He’s alive. He hasn’t done that yet. I wonder if there’s still time.
I hear a rush of wind and turn. Two guards step aside to reveal the Prophet and his bodyguard, the Other Steve. I call him Other Steve, to save all the stupid stuff the others have tried to do with numbers and letters. He looks tentatively exhilarated as he sees the possibility of his revenge on the Entity. It destroyed his world, and now he sees hope of destroying it, despite it all.
Kay steps forward. He speaks in a proud roar, amplified by the mages:
“I have, in the past, been known for rousing or tedious speeches. I’ll keep it simple this time. Fire has been captured, but Fire alone is not our strength. We will enter that village, we will kill its defenders… Ah, there they are now!”
He gestures to the horizon. Thousands of diamond-clad men and giants array themselves outside the village’s corrugated fortifications. The Ender’s contingent stand between their formations, acting as snarling boundaries. I scan the landscape and see the hulking form of Glibby, but not the Entity’s bronze shell. Kay might just get lucky today.
“Yes,” Kay smiles. “We’ll massacre them to a man, I reckon. Hold firm. Hold your resolve. Kill all, kill merrily. I have overseen many of your training personally, and I trust in your ability and will to win against this cohort of mercenaries and genociders. Do not forget the Prophet’s word: we shall prevail. With that, I hand you over to him.”
He steps aside and the old man staggers forth. He proclaims in his explosive rasp:
“Fear shall be driven out by the confluence of worlds, of future and present! A leader returns from the unknown!”
He steps back. Kay, despite the ambiguity of his words, walks forward.
“You heard the man,” he concludes serenely. “Advance. Drive out the fear.”
Chapter34:The Reality of War (Steve)
The fighting began more quickly than Steve would have liked, anything to delay this battle would have suited him well. Moments before both armies had been marching towards each other in formation, then the leaders of both vanguards shouted their commands, and the charge began. Of course, Steve was one of those leaders, standing in the midst of his troops. He had a bad feeling about this entire operation from the second Kay had included him in his inner circle but going against orders would only worsen things, there was only one option there for him and his soldiers and that option was fighting.
There was a deafening silence before the fronts collided, then the noise of battle began. Weapons colliding with armor, soldiers screaming both in pain and anger. The line was holding so far, not just that, they even seemed to have the advantage.
The Jackals were fierce fighters, using every dirty trick in the book to make sure they stayed on top. The forces of the Tower seemed less eager, they were mercenaries fighting for the so-far winning side, they were not used to being evenly matched.
Steve was still not far enough forward to be part of the fighting, he made use of this by bellowing orders, telling groups of soldiers to advance or retreat or ordering a sudden flanking attack by the skirmishers.
Arrows were starting to fly from both sides, most glancing off armor or missing entirely but some found their mark, soldiers fell, and lines thinned, if only marginally.
They were slowly gaining ground, pushing back the Tower’s front-line forces who couldn’t withstand their assault. That’s when Steve heard the first explosions in the distance, since they came from behind him that meant that their own artillery had opened fire. Moments later a brightly burning block of TNT came soaring over Steve’s head and impacted some distance ahead of him, squarely in the middle of the enemy formation. A loud bang tore through the air, drowning out the sounds of battle for a few seconds. The shot had devastated the enemy formation, leaving countless mercenaries either dead or badly dismembered and bleeding out.
The Jackals used this opening to push back harder, having lost remarkably few so far. This would probably change when the enemy answered with their own artillery. Steve advanced with his soldiers, counting the seconds but no return strike came.
Steve reached out to Kir mentally, who was once again filling the role of communicator. “Do the scryers spot any enemy artillery?”
After a few seconds Kir chirped in reply: “No, but they are assembling mages.”
Steve did not reply, he trusted that Shadow would react accordingly with her own squad of mages, he had more pressing matters to attend to. The front was rapidly widening as their army pushed further in, within moments Steve would not be afforded the luxury of commanding, he’d have to join in the fighting as well. Meanwhile more artillery fire came from their backline.
His first contact was with an enemy foot soldier clad in diamond armor, Steve defeated him only moments after they came in contact. In the time he had spent in Nexus Steve had become acutely aware how much stronger he was than the average person from another world, now he’d put this power differential to good use.
Soldier after soldier fell before his sword, they were now pushed up quite far but there was still no end in sight to the armies of the Tower. If they had one thing it was numbers and resources.
A flash of purple tore Steve out of his focus, several endermen had teleported in, all wearing the characteristic obsidian armor of the Tower’s elite enderman troops, the Ender in their midst. He had expected her to maybe lose a few words of mockery or disdain but no, she immediately engaged Steve’s soldiers.
The five or six closest Jackals fell immediately, having been too close to react to the lightning-fast assault of the endermen. If they break now, it’s over. Steve thought. But they held fast, at least for the moment. The poleaxe soldiers from the back lines came charging forward, distributing throughout the forces to react to any teleportation attacks. It helped but not nearly as much as Kay promised it would, it didn’t dissuade the endermen from teleporting, only made them choose more careful angles of attack.
Steve decided to engage the Ender directly before her squad could gain a proper foothold. Her back was turned but she whirled around as soon as Steve came close, blocking his swing with her spear. Steve could only hope that the strange honor-bound culture he had observed during Silver’s interrogation would prevent the other endermen from ganging up on him.
The Ender struck fast and hard, not pausing between attacks, instead using teleportation to carry over momentum from missed attacks. The blows that hit Steve were mostly absorbed by his armor but the sheer impact force hurt his muscles even through the protective shell of diamonds.
Steve’s own attacks were not to be underestimated either, he didn’t land hits often but when he did, he landed them just as the Ender came out of a teleportation. Each hit he landed made her armor resonate with a muffled tone, he hoped that she was experiencing the impacts like he was.
Around them the battle still raged on, the enderman squad tearing through his soldiers. Luckily, they suffered losses from well-placed poleaxes, or the vanguard would be overwhelmed. There were only thirty or so endermen, they couldn’t keep this up forever. Steve did realize that their forward position was quickly working against them, they were getting more surrounded by the second. Diamond ranks drew close and closer to his position as they advanced.
Suddenly Kir’s voice appeared in his head again: “Heads up, Sunbeam inbound five meters north from your location in ten seconds.”
Steve quickly turned his head towards the location, a group of endermen was densely packed, fighting off poleaxe soldiers. He relayed the warning to his soldiers and quickly returned his focus to defending against the Ender and pressuring her in turn, trying to maneuver away from the designated area.
Shortly after, a blindingly bright column of flames struck the group of endermen before they had a chance to react. A few of their own soldiers were caught in the blaze as well. The beam extinguished moments later, leaving only ashes and molten ground. They were entirely on their own now, it would take Shadow’s mages multiple minutes before they had another such strike ready.
The Ender did not take kindly to this sudden loss of soldiers and attacked Steve with redoubled effort. If this continued, they’d be entirely surrounded before the endermen were all dead, however they still had one more ace up their sleeve.
A rumbling detonation erupted some distance into the Tower forces, collapsing a good portion of the battlefield into a smoking crater. This would buy them some additional time. Steve groaned in pain as the Ender’s spear impacted on his side. They would certainly need it.
###
“YEAH!” whooped Warnado. “Suck it!”
The explosives had created a substantive hole in the enemy ranks, effectively splitting them in two. He could already see the black dots of the combat mages rushing in to pick off the stragglers, and even the first shifts of terrain that indicated the presence of fast-builders.
Amanda was to his left, a crossbow in one hand and an axe in the other. She was beaming with uncharacteristic sunniness. Destroying your enemies can bring that out in anyone. Warnado grinned back but was drawn back to the world by Tyron’s growl.
“Stay on me, kids,” said the hero of Minecraftia. “I’ll keep you safe.”
Then, with astounding efficiency, he barked orders to the ranks and whipped them into a charge.
It was all Warnado and Amanda could do to keep pace with Tyron as he charged at the fore of the army. Armoured boots clattered at their heels, threatening to trample them at any moment. It was so freaking cool!
This was his first large-scale battle, and while he would have preferred to be commanding his own squad, playing support to the guy who was commanding most of the troops was pretty cool, too.
Steve’s vanguard lay ahead of them, just about holding against the Ender. Warnado saw Steve and the Ender in combat, each a master in their own art of war. Sword and spear clashed together so hard, Warnado could swear he heard it even over the roar of charging armies and the occasional explosion of magic or TNT.
They came within twenty metres of Steve’s lines while Warnado saw Urist fall from between the legs of a poleaxe-man. Warnado slowed. Said poleaxe-wielding soldier promptly collapsed as an enderman rammed its claws into his neck, and the ender-born warrior immediately turned its attention to the wounded dwarf on the ground. It set about stabbing its obsidian sword down at the dwarf, who only just managed to dodge by rolling in the increasingly lacerated dirt. He had apparently lost his weapon. He needed help.
Warnado called to Tyron, but he had already launched himself into the air on wings of stone and was soaring down at the enderman brigade which was hammering the jackals. Amanda followed him, firing off crossbow bolts into the leg of one enderman and finishing him off with a precise strike from the axe.
“So much for ‘stay with me, kids!’” Warnado grumbled internally.
He rushed the enderman with his energy axe, and in its desire to kill the dwarf it didn’t notice him. He caught it at a chink in the armour on its hip and it screeched metallically. It responded with a slash of the sword that Warnado ducked under. The enderman rounded on him, and Warnado twirled his energy axe, transforming it into an imposing morning star. They raised their weapons, ready to strike, when they heard a hiss from above.
The enderman looked to the side and warped away without hesitation. Several shots of white-hot TNT hurtled toward them. Several silver-flame portals opened to meet them, and some of the charges fell through them, rematerializing in the midst of the enemy ranks. Others were caught by bursts of magical flame and lightning and exploded prematurely in the air. One, however, landed right next to Warnado. He looked around. Urist had scrambled back into the fighting to recover his weapon.
The charge exploded and struck hard against the magical shield Warnado raised to defend himself, catapulting him right into the heart of the fray, where the two lines fought hardest against each other.
His robes still smoking, Warnado hadn’t a second to recollect his thoughts before he was ducking and rolling just to avoid being trampled. Enemies and allies fell all around him. He glanced up and Voidblade slit the throat of a giant, splattering Warnado’s robes with blood. The quarter-demon tried to call out to his ally, but he took no notice, teleporting off to kill a similarly vulnerable enderman on the other side of the field.
As for the giant, he slumped to his knees, choking out his life. Desperate to see above the warring bodies around him and find his way back to Tyron, Warnado climbed onto the dying enemy’s shoulders and surveyed the situation.
Some twenty metres away, Tyron was in the thick of the fighting, cutting bloody trenches into his opponents, pressing toward the wall being constructed on the crater’s Eastern edge. He saw Jennifer pushing toward the Western side, bow in hand and raining death. Amanda was not visible. Warnado felt his lungs tighten. He had to get over there.
He formed his fingers into the shape of a gun on his non-gauntleted hand and readied to rain fire but realised how hard it was to tell friend from foe. All was diamond and steel and steel and diamond. Insignias were already fading beneath blood and mud and smoke from the explosions. All he had to go on was the positioning of the hill…
An arrow soared past his head, and he panicked. Flames flooded out of him, scorching the land and the beings upon it. Two endermen collapsed and several humans. None were dead. Warnado watched with horror as his side cheered and ran down the screaming victims of his magic, hacking and stabbing at their helpless forms.
“Warnado, come!” howled Kir.
Unable to look upon it any further, Warnado dove into the melee and returned to darting between the combatants’ legs, hacking at the tree-like limbs and not daring to check who he harmed and praying it was the enemy.
He heard a sizzling noise and skidded to a halt just before the Sunbeam scorched the ground before him. An empty circular area about 5 meters in diameter stood before him, black and coal and terrifyingly uneven to walk on. He staggered out into the centre, the warmth beneath his feet making the rest of him shiver with an unfelt chill, and then the scent of about twenty or so living beings’ charred flesh rose to meet him. He wanted to vomit.
He had no time, however, as he immediately found himself pinned to the ground, sinking into the ash. A grey-scaled enderman had planted an armoured boot on his chest. Warnado swung and it warped backwards.
That was when Warnado saw the hulking form that had stepped into the circle. It was engaged with a green-eyed enderman - one of Voidblade’s skirmishers - but it wasn’t much of a fight. The hulking figure held the enderman from behind, and an obsidian gauntlet pulled its chin unnaturally upwards. The steel fingers pressed further and further until… Rrrrip! The head tore clean off and went flying into the fighting around them.
Warnado stood, not quite paralysed by fear but not able to do anything meaningful. He limply raised his fists.
The hulking figure turned as the silver-scaled enderman sneered. It wore obsidian armour from head to foot, but the huge gauntlets were a dead giveaway. Glibby the Ape stood before him.
“Hello child,” he said. “I told you I would come back. You’re next on my list.”
He began to laugh maniacally. Warnado’s power over his limbs returned to him. He darted off into the tumult of battle, now blind to the atrocities around him.
Chapter35:Nightmares on the Battlefield (Destiny)
Destiny smirked as her icy javelin pierced the eye of a newly materialised enderman, sending him tumbling down the stairs of their makeshift fortification on the crater’s Eastern edge. The crater was littered with half-charred corpses and fresher ones kept joining them.
Around them the builders kept reinforcing and expanding their defenses, four or so of them. One had even started work on a full-fledged tower at the corner of the barricade.
Destiny glanced at the far side of the crater, and through the still-dissipating smoke she saw Rose standing atop her barricades. There was an arrow in her hip, but the assassin refused treatment for the moment. Instead, she barked orders and rained knives on their enemies. Had Destiny been there, she would have given Rose far more than her two cents for stupidly risking blood loss and infection, but Destiny wasn’t there so she just had to focus on her front.
A giant in gleaming armour appeared near the fledgling tower, a great mace in hand. A shriveled little end-creature clung to either leg, evidently the giant’s means of getting there. No sooner than he had arrived, the giant swung down at the builder and missed, cleaving a great chunk out of the wall.
Destiny reacted instinctively and channeled heat into the giant’s helmet. As the warmth flowed out of her, she fought the urge to shiver, and her target began to wail in agony and tore off the helmet. An earth mage ran up beside Destiny and stomped his foot. A pillar of stone shot upwards and slammed into the spine of the giant, who promptly collapsed and was teleported away by his two End-born chauffeurs. The builder returned to work.
Destiny clapped her earth-mage on the shoulder.
“Good work, Indril,” she said. “You’d best get up there and guard Alice until the tower’s set up and we can start smelting replacement armour and weapons.”
She heard nothing and looked around for her trainee. He was nowhere to be seen, until Destiny lowered her gaze and found him lying flat on his back. He had a hole in his chest a mile wide.
At that moment, a figure became visible. Its skin was like smoke - light passed through it, but with difficulty. Talons stretched from its fingers, and in its left hand these talons had wrapped around a lacerated heart. It smiled in a toothy grin as it sat on one of the fortification’s steps. Freak was back.
“Hello, Destiny,” he sneered. “I’ve come to talk- Ah!”
Freak only just managed to become intangible as Destiny showered the place where he sat with razor sharp icicles. The icicles had pierced the carved stone and become embedded, fixed there like spikes driven into the ground to secure a tent or fasten a rope. Destiny panted from the effort, and from the memory of their last encounter. Her side throbbed as she remembered the sting of his talons.
“Show yourself!” Destiny screamed, summoning a fireball in one hand and crystalizing a sword out of ice in the other. “I’m not afraid of you!”
She scanned the scene, ready to leap into action the second another one of her soldiers fell. Freak might be hard to hit in this form, but he couldn’t be invulnerable.
“Real heroic of you, trying to kill someone who’s come to negotiate!” Freak snapped from behind.
He stood on the lip of the fortification, wagging his finger somewhere. His curling lips were caught somewhere between an urge to laugh and genuine irritation. Destiny hurled the fireball and he sidestepped it.
“You’re really starting to irk me, Dez,” Freak seethed through gritted teeth.
He became intangible again as Destiny leapt up and hacked at him with the sword.
“I don’t care!” Destiny spat.
“Now, listen here!” Freak materialised from behind and shunted her off the ledge. “If you’re not going to play nice, there are other ways of making you listen!”
“Commander!” her troops called as she fell, but she was deaf to them.
She had one objective: kill this phantom douche.
Sadly, this resolve and most of her breath was knocked out of her as she struck the ground.
Freak resurfaced, leaning against a rock. The smoke in the air appeared to pass through him. Destiny pulled herself up.
“Are you going to listen politely, or am I just going to have to start talking at you, praying you’ll listen?”
As if in answer to his question, Destiny thrust the sword at his head. It shattered against the rock. Destiny looked around frantically, summoning two new blades and carrying out several defensive swipes to ensure Freak didn’t try anything. She hit nothing.
“You know, David would have listened,” Freak chuckled from the mouth of a nearby cave.
Destiny hurled one sword at him but knew it would not hit. She blinked and the phantom was gone. She sighed.
She looked up. The sounds of fighting were growing fainter, and she heard a horn. Tyron had relieved Steve and their united forces were now pushing back the enemy. One of her soldiers peaked over the edge. She gave him the thumbs-up, he acknowledged and returned to the conflict. She had an appointed second-in-command. They would hold in the five minutes this would take.
She entered the cave. No sign of Freak.
“Listen to what?” she asked warily. Nothing. “What would David have listened to, Freak?”
“Well,” Freak’s voice came from the darkness. “He’d have listened if I’d thought about it sooner, back when you were in the Tower. But enough about old wounds, you probably know what the Entity’s plan is by now, otherwise you’d still have your leader.”
“No actually, no idea about it,” Destiny lied, not even trying to sound convincing. She scanned the dark: “How about you step out into the light there and I’ll take some notes.”
A cackle reverberated off the cave walls. “I’m good here, thanks. Saves you the energy of trying to hit me, you’ll probably need it for what happens later. So, what I was saying is that once all those worlds are united things will get bad, and that’s coming from someone who feasts on fear. The truth is, there isn’t much fear in a tyranny the likes of which the Entity will construct, after a few years apathy and acceptance are all that’s left.”
Destiny planted her icy swords in the ground as a thought occurred. She began to rub her palms together. She felt the familiar chill.
“Sure, keep going.”
Freak continued: “Point is, I’m not sure if I’m entirely on board with this plan anymore, purely based on…”
A ball of fire sparked into existence between her palms. She passed it between the two with a playful smirk.
“What are you doing?” Freak asked.
“Well, I’m not altogether sure what rules you operate on - how you appear for some people and disappear for others, that’s all still a mystery to me,” said Destiny. “But I do know that if I’m hearing you, you’re around here somewhere. So, you’re going to come out of the shadows or I’m going to find you myself. You’ve got until three and then I light this place up. One.”
“Oh, by fear itself,” grumbled Freak.
“Two,” counted Destiny, raising the fireball and readying to slam it into the ground.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“Three.”
She slammed it into the ground just as she saw Freak lunge at her. The clustered tongues of flame scattered and leapt everywhere, surprising even her in their force. Freak’s talon-like thumb caught her between the eyes and drew blood. His eyes were narrow with hatred. She crystallised a sword and plunged forward. It stuck.
A great, barbed blade of ice unlike any she had ever summoned before sheared through Freak’s smoke-like chest. He fell, dead.
As the phantom’s corpse began to dissipate into smoke, she felt a strange satisfaction. Revenge was a worthwhile pursuit, it seemed. She turned and resolved to return to her forces. Then, her eyes widened.
The tongues of flame had not gone. They burned away at the cave’s walls, eating them as easily as paper. They charred and crumpled in the heat, revealing an impenetrable blackness behind them. The floor gave way and she fell into the shadows.
“If you’re now satisfied, I’ll continue.”
Suddenly, she landed in a heap on a glass platform, which unfolded and turned into a cage. Five strides by five strides. She lay in the centre, the wind knocked out of her. Freak patrolled the outside.
“As I was saying, joining the Entity sounded fun and honestly like a laid table of various flavors of fear, however I’m starting to think that if things continue this feast will be followed by a long famine. Don’t misunderstand, I won’t turn coat, that’s a little too cliché.” He paused dramatically. “But I do think you rebels could use a bit of a hand, especially with what’s to come.”
Destiny hauled herself to her feet and tried to summon something. Anything. An icy shard. A fireball. Nothing.
“We’re in a constructed mindscape, something we phantoms have a knack for. My house, my rules.”
Destiny heaved the anger from her lungs in a series of heavy breaths.
“What sort of hand?” she said in reluctant surrender.
“The alternative win condition kind, as one might put it. The Entity is afraid of what your white-haired mage did, there might be a weakness to exploit somewhere. Sadly, aside from my innate abilities, I am a stranger to magic... which is where you come in.”
“Of course,” she seethed. “You and your Tower friends kidnap me for my magic, now you want to use me for it. That tracks, I guess.”
Freak chuckled. “Naturally, I expected you not to agree right away. But you see, if the Entity were to vanish one day, the Tower would be decapitated, truly and permanently. We don’t have a roguish commander to step in and take the lead, most of our armies are mercenaries or otherwise bound to loyalty in some manner. Once that’s gone you could find the ones truly responsible for your loss, you could find Glibby, find the Ender and finally get your revenge. You already showed me that revenge is something you enjoy greatly.”
He paused, sighed and took on a greatly different manner. His cruel eyes softened, seeming to droop a little further from the skull. And the toothy smile softened.
“That said,” he continued. “I didn’t know David was lost until I got in here. Your mind, that is. He hadn’t been mentioned in any reports in some time. I was under the assumption he was still alive - if injured. I… You have my condolences, however belated. He deserved a better death.” A pause, a sad laugh. “I suppose humanity has rubbed off on me more than I thought.”
Destiny scoured his face for signs of deceit. He was inscrutable. His eyebrows furrowed with concern looked awkward and tentative but the phantom didn’t seem to use emotions other than gleeful sadism very often so that could explain it. The pause after the “I…” seemed to indicate careful attention to the words he was using, but that could mean anything.
She resolved not to acknowledge it and returned to business.
“What I don’t get,” Destiny pressed. “Is what you thought this was all about. What’s changed?”
“I’ll be honest with you,” Freak laughed. “I didn’t. The cards were off the table for so long, and so much delicious fear came my way. The ignorance of a happy, greedy eater overcame me. A world disappeared into Nexus here or there and I thought nothing of it.”
Freak turned and an image of Nexus appeared. It was the clearing where David was buried. She saw the bundle of flowers she had laid against the sign which bore his name. Freak carried his own up and laid it beside the first.
“A sign for a tombstone,” Freak muttered. “Like I said, he deserved better…”
He observed her over his shoulder a second then resumed his explanation.
“Then, it revealed its plan to merge all worlds,” Freak pressed with some tension. “And at first I can only think, ‘This is brilliant! The shock and terror of such an upheaval will be immense! Nations will clash, peoples will collide, and the Ender’s armies will pillage and conquer as they see fit.’ And of course, the Entity, ever the conservationist, would make sure she doesn’t destroy anything in its entirety. It spends days and weeks fawning over obscure religious artefacts, collecting specimens. And all these things bring fear in and of themselves. Fear of Hell, fear of experimentation, fear of being at the mercy of something you never could have imagined et cetera…”
Destiny squinted past Freak. The flowers were rotting. The trees withering. She saw a strange grey hue in the horizon. Her cubic cage slowly drifted backwards.
“But it always gets bored,” said Freak. “It never pays attention too long. It always sees a reason to tie up a loose end. It is order, and it will flatten the world.”
Freak turned and he had the face of the builder Destiny had helped defend from the giant. The glass cube blasted back into the darkness.
“Observe.”
Destiny woke up. She was at the mouth of the cave. Freak was leaning against the wall, obviously burned. He gestured outside. Destiny followed, still dazed from dreaming.
The builder’s body was the first she came across. Then another. Then another. They were a curious mixture of Tower and rebel soldiers. They lay scattered like broken toys, many terrible gashes on their bodies.
She lifted her eyes to the brick barricade her troops had erected. It was shattered. Not a stone lay upon a stone. And at the heart of it, she saw the bronze shell of the Entity, hacking apart what remained with its great obsidian sword.
It didn’t care who it struck, attacking its own agents just as easily as skewering its enemies. A single strike would decapitate an obsidian-clad enderman and a fleeing Jackal in one.
And this was not the only manifestation. They were appearing throughout the ranks across the battlefield, killing with the same automatic indifference. It would not leave a thing standing upon this battlefield until it had achieved its objective.
A call for retreat sounded. Destiny spared one look at Freak before fleeing. Their eyes locked, and she felt a terrible companionship with this phantom. What would become of any world under a creature like the Entity?
She ran to Rose’s barricade, heart pounding, desperate to get anyone she could recover to safety.
The Eastern barricade was already a smoldering ruin, and the Entity was now smashing its way through friend and foe alike over there. That was without mentioning the several other manifestations which had appeared among the enemy ranks and were charging forward to meet our own. Each was an army in its own right, and there were about half-a-dozen of them.
“Can we establish contact with Destiny?” I asked aloud and in my thoughts. “Is she alright?”
“Searching,” Kir strains as Tyron continues to fight valiantly. “Troops say: fell off beforeattack. Possibly not dead.”
I raked my fingers through my auburn mane of hair.
“For mods’ sake,” I muttered.
My Book counselled me not to curse more extensively and to seek a solution. I agreed. Anger was not useful.
Astro stood on one side of me, and an ethereal projection of Shadow on the other. I looked to them for guidance, my heart pounding. The Prophet and his bodyguard, the other Steve, huddled together to the side. The former muttered incomprehensible fragments of frightened prophecy, the latter caressed and soothed him with an uncharacteristic tenderness. I felt a surprising admiration for this Steve, who had so long provoked nothing but irritated in me.
“Shadow, can you do anything to stop the manifestations?”
Shadow said grimly. “I don’t know. But I can certainly try. If I blast enough energy at them they’ll at least have to react in some way. Might distract them from our soldiers.”
“Then you think a strong enough blast might do something?” I asked.
She nodded.
An idea occurred to me and then to my Book, or to my Book and then to me. I was beginning not to care too much about the origins of such plans. I yelled down to the line of cannons.
“Line up for a singular volley! Don’t bother aiming, I’ll guide it there.”
They did so. The sergeant, a large, moustached and grave-looking Testificate hemmed and hawed these orders. They all fired simultaneously, and We caught their burning TNT with a series of rifts. These shots emerged from portals surrounding the manifestation that had just destroyed Destiny’s division.
The shots struck the being and exploded, casting a great cloud of dust and dirt and ripping through the Tower’s forces and sadly some of our own. I would pray for forgiveness later, at that moment I only cared about the smoke clearing.
“Moment of truth,” I said hopefully.
It cleared, and the Entity began to climb from the hole glowing but unscathed. I covered my eyes in shame.
“You tried your best,” said Astro as he planted a consoling hand on my shoulder. “I think you know what I’m going to suggest.”
“Yes,” I nodded. “A retreat...”
“We must live to fight another day,” my Book reassured me. “Astro is right.”
“Quite right,” I agreed with both. “Shadow, gather your mages and do what you can to slow the manifestations of our bronze friend out there. I’ll confer with Kir and give the orders for retreat. Astro, stay with me.”
“I should get to that then.” Shadow’s projection said and flickered out of existence.
I glanced at the Prophet and Steve 2. The old man looked practically feverish, but struggled to his feet.
Half-hunched and trembling, he muttered: “The black light approaches.”
“Strange,” said Astro. “He hasn’t mentioned a ‘black light’ before.”
I reached out to Kir.
“We’re retreating, spread the word,” I instructed. My Book would have had me stop there, but I pressed on: “Do you have Warnado and Amanda with you?”
“Amanda, yes. Warnado, no. Lost track.”
My heart froze solid and sent shocks of cold through my whole body. I felt electricity spark between my fingertips as I subconsciously willed my Book to summon it.
“Find him, or don’t come back,” I warned the talking sword, feeling horrendously guilty the second after.
I severed the connection and blasted the lightning through a rift. It struck an artillery piece on the far side of the battlefield and coursed through its crew, killing the four of them immediately.
“That was unwise,” the Book scolded. “The child is nothing.”
“The child is my responsibility and none of your concern,” I snapped. Remembering the Book’s importance, I relented slightly and added: “And powerful to boot. He’ll be a useful ally yet.”
It surged angrily, and then seemed content. My Book and I were reconciled just in time for Astro to seize my shoulder and shake me violently.
“Kay,” he gestured frantically to the edge. “You have to see this.”
I rushed forward, drawing Apotyre and readying to plunge her into any new threat. However, no new threat presented itself. Quite the contrary, in fact.
“Fire?!” I shouted with a half-formed emotion that hadn’t quite defined itself. “What’s he bloody well doing here?”
The commander we had set out to save was now sprinting up the hillside, better equipped than when he had left. He had obtained obsidian armour and it gleamed hopefully in the sunlight alongside his scales. My heart surged with joy.
“I don’t know,” Astro answered. “Maybe he escaped.”
“Maybe? That’s precisely what’s happened Astro. Get down there and find out the details! This is perfect: we have a victory despite it all. Our…” I lowered my voice so the guards and Steve 2 didn’t hear me. “I’m going to pretend we had a secret side gambit. Who knows, maybe it’s even true.” Astro scoffed in disbelief and I proclaimed the potential lie loudly. The guards cheered.
As Astro flew down I concluded this was probably the work of the Lady of Dreams. I turned to the Prophet and Steve.
“Take heart, friends, your Forged Champion has proven himself more than worthy!”
Steve grimaced and nodded with uncertain hope. The Prophet closed his eyes. The bottom of my stomach felt like an ever-deepening pit.
I ran to the edge and saw Astro trying to get Fire’s attention. The Mencur-Besh kept marching forward as Astro posed him question after question, frantic with hope and surprise.
“Fire, are you listening?” he pressed. “You must tell us how you got out... I’ll be honest, you don’t know how glad I am you’re here. Kay’s waiting for you up there.”
At this, our commander seemed to finally notice something he said and cast a glance upward. My eyes locked with his. A gust of despair threatened to blow me over the edge and down the Hill to my death.
His eyes were black, not red. And yet it was unmistakably his face. I knew what was happening. This was that other person within him, the one he had warned me against. This was Claw.
“Astro!” I roared. “Get back!”
I sent a blast of voidfire down at Claw, who dodged and barrelled into Astro. The wizard attempted to draw his sword but Claw had a hold of his wrist. The other hand dug into his gut. The talons extended. They emerged on the other side of my dear friend’s torso, slick with blood.
“NO!” I screamed.
Claw dropped the wizard and charged off on its path. Full of fury, I lurched into a portal. I emerged on the far side and caught Claw on the shin guard with a two-handed blow. The greaves were made of obsidian so no visible damage was done, and my arms ached from the effort, but I successfully staggered him.
He turned and I hoped to take the opportunity to say something, provoke him perhaps, but unlike me Claw wasted no time. With superhuman speed he drew a mace and swung it at my head, but this was exactly what I had been training for. I bent backwards and successfully avoided the blow. Even so, the mace came close enough for me to feel the fragmented wind carried upon its flangues.
Feeling my balance weaken, We opened a portal into which I fell face-first. I then appeared in the sky, sword pointed and plummeting down at Claw, who was still looking at the spot I had just then inhabited. I aimed precisely for the break between his pauldron and his torso. Silently soaring downwards, I would mutilate this beast. Fire would just have to fix things later on.
Just as I came within plunging distance, however, Claw whipped around. He caught me in midair and hurled me off the Hill before charging off. I braced myself and tumbled into another portal, rolling out onto the path just before the summit.
“He can sense our portals!” My Book exclaimed.
I barely had time to process this new information before Claw attacked again. I ducked underneath the blow, then brought my sword down on the mace with both hands. He wasn’t disarmed, but I was able to hold the weapon in place just about.
I lifted one hand from the blade and tried to hurl an orb voidfire at his chest. Sadly, the wrinkle in my plan became evident as his other set of claws raked across my breastplate. The shot flew off target and caught him on the shoulder. The steel bindings of his shoulder guard were burned away, causing the obsidian plating to come loose. The voidfire burned through his underclothes, leaving the End-infused scales untouched. It wasn’t much, but I now had something to work with. Or I would have, had Steve 2 not chosen that moment to intervene.
The Prophet’s bodyguard whirled into existence just beside Claw’s shoulder and cut at the exposed shoulder. Claw’s hand shot out in response, but I had occupied enough of his attention that the shimmering stone blade managed to cut beneath the first few layers of scales and draw blood. Before I could celebrate, Claw had struck him in the head with a clenched fist.
The bodyguard dropped to the ground in a daze. I rushed forward to intervene, but, with the undauntable speed and strength he had stolen from Fire, Claw lifted Steve 2 by the scruff of his turquoise shirt and hurled him at me. The bodyguard slammed into me and we landed in a heap.
As we recovered, Claw bounded the remaining steps to the top of the Hill. My small contingent of guards formed up to oppose him and prevent him from reaching the Prophet. Claw charged forward and killed two immediately to his outstretched claws. The next three fell in successive blows of his mace. The last ran. I don’t blame him.
Claw ignored the fleeing quarry and approached the true prize. The Prophet stood and stared sadly at him.
“The black light approaches, Forged one, and the great sleep is now upon us,” he said with certainty.
Whether it was a threat, a consolation or a catharsis, I know not. Claw’s mace caved in his skull right after he finished the sentence.
My heart sank. How would our rebellion go on? We had built it around the congregation, and now its preacher lay dead.
I hardly noticed as Steve 2 rose to his feet and warped off to fight Claw alone. He was screaming, rage and blood dripping from between his teeth.
It went as one would expect. Steve 2 teleported furiously around for several blows and Claw sensed every one. I ran up to help, despondency slowing me. I blasted some lightning and Claw avoided it. Claw swept the legs from under Steve 2. The mace came down on his ribcage, and he stopped moving.
Now, it was just me and Claw upon the hilltop. The Book urged me to leave. I refused. This beast had killed the Prophet, upon whom all our purpose was pinned; had usurped Fire, our best hope at victory; had killed Steve 2, who I should have listened to from the beginning and might have brought us to a cleaner victory; and my dear friend Astro.
All those memories flashed before me. Steve 2 surprised me once again at the waterfall. The smell of the Heavybrew from Fire and I’s drinking contest returned to me. I relived the Prophet’s arrival at the Shelter and heard his approval of my plan. “The Champion of Life and Death shall be freed!” he shouted again and again in my ears. And, of course, I remember Astro seeing my plans for an airship.
“Kay…you’re really sure you can build this thing?... In that case, we’re going to make this happen, Kay.”
It was the kindest damned thing anyone had ever done for me. The Book could go hang.
I warped through and didn’t even try to avoid the grab. Claw picked me up and I blasted him full in the face with voidfire, ripping apart the obsidian segments of his helmet and blinding him. He dropped me and I recalled the maneuver I had used on Fire when we first met, hooking a foot behind his ankle and sending him tumbling to the foot of the Hill.
I told the Book to open a portal and stuck my head through. I was looking into the armory. Lucy and a few demons were there, the former startled out of her wits and the latter proceeding with indifference.
“Kay?! what’s happening?” Lucy yelped.
“Silver weapons, now!” I roared.
“We don’t have any!”
“Then bloody well make some. You have three minutes.”
Leaving her with the iciest tone I could muster, I slipped back through the portal. A look over the edge confirmed Claw was engaged with a handful of retreating archers, tearing them to shreds.
I warped through and caught him with a blast of electricity that did nothing. He lifted an archer. I hurled a ball of voidfire at him and that got his attention. He pirouetted nimbly out of the way and looked at me. He extended his claws and they protruded from the archer's neck. He cast the corpse aside and began to slowly walk toward me.
The remaining archers retreated past the spot where Astro had been stabbed, strengthening my resolve.
“Hello Claw,” I said.
He said nothing in response but nodded in acknowledgement.
“I’m not leaving the field until you’re dead, Claw, I hope you know that.”
I said this for the Book’s benefit as much as my opponent’s.
Claw drew his mace, I drew my sword, and we engaged.
What ensued was a relentless flurry of flame and metal, every blow being met with as much force as was dealt. I stopped trying to get around the armour and abandoned all hope of saving Fire. I merely had the Book burn away the bindings of the obsidian coating him and hacked away at his scales, teleporting only when survival was essential. I had it strengthen my muscles, heighten my senses, and if the Book hadn’t been shrieking it’s reluctance at me the whole time I would have said it was the most totally we had united since our partnership had begun.
In his turn, Claw slashed away with his namesake and pounded at me with his mace. The cracks in my breastplate became more and more perilous, and I began to bleed from more and more places as the fight went on. A gash across the scalp came first, then a cut beneath the armpit, then a particularly bad blow shook my ribcage and I knew there was more than bruising beneath my armour.
Still I fought on, doing him, I’d like to think, a proportional amount of harm. The damned scales limited my effectiveness, but I managed to deal a notable blow on the thigh and enlarge the wound Steve had inflicted on his shoulder until it spewed forth a veritable geyser of blood.
But I was losing, and I knew it. At a certain point, I stopped even asking for teleports out of tiredness, and entrusted that duty wholly to the Book’s good sense.
Then, a decisive encounter came when I finally burned away the last scraps of steel holding together the armour around his torso and stabbed in deep. Blood rose and I felt as though I’d drawn water from a desert spring. As I drew back, however, Claw caught me in the right knee with his mace, and my own armour barely held together. I hobbled back, practically hopping, and entered a portal.
Once again, I was in the armory. I was furious.
“Send me back!” I raved. “I’m not done yet!”
“Your silver weapons are ready,” my Book reminded me. “It’s been three minutes.”
I nodded my head sheepishly. Truth be told it had felt like hours, but the mind at war is easily confused.
I looked at Lucy. She had a sack which she offered to me. My heart broke as I looked in.
“These are just coins,” I choked. “What is this?”
“We - we didn’t have any silver weapons,” she explained with obvious wariness of my gory appearance. “The demons can’t forge them this fast. They… they need more time. We don’t manufacture any silver weapons, so finding this took most of the time.”
“No,” I panted. “No, Lucy… You’ve done your best. This will have to do.”
I plunged my fist in and took some coins between my knuckles. I would have to jam them into an open wound. It would poison him, paralyse him.
“Kay,” she asked. “Who is this for?”
I looked at her. Fire had done so much for her. She would mourn much more than I, and had a right to know.
“I’m sorry, Luc-”
I began to cough until I was on my burning knees. The taste of blood filled my mouth, and crimson speckled my hand and the floor. I just about drew myself up and steadied myself against the counter.
“Let us leave,” I groaned aloud to the Book when it didn’t respond immediately to my will. “Let’s go, Book!”
“Kay-”
“I’m going back there one way or another, Book,” I confessed, still audible to a horrified Lucy. “The Prophet is dead, the rebellion is dead.” Tears filled my eyes. “Astro is gone. If Claw won’t join them, I will gladly.”
As I hacked up more blood, Lucy instructed one of her attendants to call for a medic. I waved in dismissal but I don’t think she paid me any mind.
“I’m not asking you to stay,” the Book explained. “There is one power you have yet refused. It may work. We cannot beat his body, but we might yet beat his mind.”
My mind reignited as this possibility unfolded before my mind’s eye. Ambition numbed me and I straightened up, then hopped along toward where I wanted the portal to be.
“Oh Book,” I cackled. “You are magnificent.”
It finally acquiesced and I arrived back on the field. Claw stood surveying the destruction. Our forces were fragmenting. The TNT cannons attempted some covering fire, but it wasn’t doing much good. What remained would be a shell of our former power, and a cracked one at that. But that didn’t matter, not now.
“Claw!” I called. “Coo-ee!”
He saw me.
I hobbled into a defensive stance. The wound beneath my sword-arm had now become severe enough that I had to press it against my flank to stem the bleeding. I held the coins between my knuckles in my other hand like the world’s most pathetic buckler.
Claw drew his mace without a word and began to slowly advance, passing under the shadow of the Hill as he did so. I tried to reshuffle my stance and pain shot through my wounded leg. I fell to one knee, but kept my sword extended. I locked gazes with him.
He stood over me and raised the mace. I grinned at him sardonically, and began to see the glowing dots behind his eyes. The dots lined up, and as my mouth began to form a command, the mace came down. I would be too late. It was over.
I raised the fist full of coins and swung at the open wound on his torso.
Crack! The mace hit the ground beside me and Claw retreated. I missed and fell forward. His arm was limp and bent at a strange angle. I craned my head around to locate my saviour and my heart nearly burst from the joy of seeing them: Astro was hobbling toward me.
He had a hand clasped to his gut to hold his insides in, but he was irrefutably alive.
Claw straightened up and whistled. An Endling appeared at his side. He pulled out a potion and began to down it.
A deep chuckle came from above me: “Not bad for a first proper fight. Might have to consider bringing some ‘help’ of my own next time, to make it fair.”
He barely even flinched as the potion began to knit his arm back together.
“**** off, Claw,” I wheezed.
Claw laughed a long, hearty laugh that was cut off when the enderman teleported him away. It hung in the air like a splinter in my thumb. I tried to rise and fell back into the dirt.
“Hey, Astro,” I panted after some time. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”
My eyes drifted closed but I forced them back open.
Astro laughed and came over to me and hoisted me onto his knees. I felt some healing magic begin to stabilise my ribs but give out pretty quickly.
“Glad you’re not dead either,” Astro conceded. “Sorry, I’d heal you up, but I’m a little drained considering…” He gestured to the half-healed wound beneath his breastplate and to the general chaos.
“Oh yeah,” I muttered dreamily. “No, it’s all right, mate.”
I looked out and saw our final ranks break. My eyes were too blurry to make anything specific out, though.
“I can’t really see, Astro, with all the blood loss and the getting hit in the head a bunch of times… and all. Tell me, does it look bad for us?”
“It certainly doesn’t look amazing,” he said. “We did better than most might have, though.”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “Though it occurs to me I couldn’t have been fighting Claw - that’s his name, Fire told me… for more than ten bloody minutes. And the Entity only attacked a few minutes before that.”
“Which means…” Astro furrowed his eyebrows.
“We went from considerable success to utter rout... in about,” I swallowed, “Fifteen minutes.”
“Wow,” Astro chuckled. “Well, if we had to fail at least we did it in record time.”
His laughter became hysterical, and I joined him. By the time Shadow came across us, we looked so ignorant of any hardship we might have just been down the pub in Zine Craft, back before things got difficult.
Chapter37:Firepower (Shadow)
Shadow’s mage squadron stood in formation, in this case formation meant a circle of mostly inexperienced mages with a couple of adepts in between. Their task was to cast rudimentary spells, which were weak on their own but eagerly fused with each other. The resulting spell was of a much greater magnitude than any individual mage could have produced. More importantly, they could cast their spells from a large distance, making retaliation difficult.
Around the circle were the more experienced casters, they channeled energy into the novices, that kind of energy manipulation was best left to those who knew what they were doing. Currently the novice’s spell repertoire consisted of the Sunbeam and a shield spell that would have been used for counter-magic, had the mages not been obliterated by their underground explosives.
Shadow shouted: “Command ordered a retreat, scryers look out for a last Sunbeam target, then everybody packs up and falls back with the rest of the troops!”
Only seconds later one of the scryers, an elderly archmage named Talita, had picked out a target and relayed it to the circle, who promptly started chanting in unison. A ball of fire started forming in their midst, rapidly gaining size. Once it had almost reached their outstretched hands, they released the spell with a final shout. The ball shot upwards, then gradually towards its intended destination, where it released its energy in a devastating beam onto a group of Tower soldiers that were giving chase to one of their own retreating divisions.
“Good shot.” Shadow commended her mages.
She took a look at the battlefield, most of their forces were already in full retreat but they’d be cut off by the Entity’s manifestations if nothing was done. Shadow clenched her fists and floated up into the air.
Danann, another of her experienced mages, looked at her. He was barely older than twenty and already immensely powerful, owing at least partially to his mythical ancestry, being descended from a satyr. He was too far removed to show any physical traits, unlike second-generation demonspawn Warnado with his horns and eyes. Compared to Danann, Warnado had similar, if not greater potential if only he could make his demon side agree with his human side.
Danann asked: “Master, where are you going?”
Shadow simply replied: “To delay the Entity.”
Iridia, one of the channelers who was similar to Danann in age and talent, spoke up: “Then we’re coming with you.”
Another channeler stopped Iridia as she tried to move towards Shadow, this one was Pallas, a middle-aged wizard. He said: “We’re not all going, the novices need protection on the way.”
Shadow had no time for discussions, so she made a decision: “Talita, Danann, you can fly so you come with me. Everyone else protects the novices and helps tend to the wounded.”
Iridia grumbled but bowed her head, then turned to go with a simple “Yes, master.”
Talita and Danann floated up next to Shadow, after a quick nod the trio flew off to the battlefield.
As the wind rushed past her ears, Shadow said: “I’ll be honest with you, there is not much of a plan aside from hitting the manifestations with as much as you can. Don’t put yourself at risk by coming too close.”
Danann replied: “Got it, stay at a distance and give it all we have.”
Talita said: “And watch out for archers of course. I’ll warn you if I see arrows coming our way.”
They arrived at the battlefield less than a minute of flight later, up close it was a gruesome sight. Corpses of both sides littered the ground, the excessive bloodshed had discolored the mud to a dirty crimson. Soldiers stumbled over fallen allies and enemies as they fled. Straight ahead of Shadow was a manifestation of the Entity, cleaving bodies in two with the brutal swings of its zweihander.
No words needed to be spoken between the mages. The three of them immediately unleashed their spells, Danann and Talita both shot scorching hot rays of flame, Shadow used her disintegration beam, making her runes glow brightly. The manifestation stopped in its tracks, bronze armor warping under the immense heat. Shadow could practically feel her fellow mages straining to sustain their attack.
They stopped when the manifestation fell over, armor too misshapen to remain standing. Talita was heavily breathing and Danann fared only a little better.
Suddenly Talita’s head jerked around, she shouted: “Arrows!”
Before she was done speaking Shadow had already projected a protective bubble around them, not a moment too early. A whole barrage of arrows shattered on the barrier almost immediately.
“Thank you.” Danann said.
They looked down at the manifestation again, to Talita and Danann’s horror and Shadow’s anger it had started moving again, slowly molding the armor back into its proper shape.
Shadow sighed. “Sorry to say, but I think you two should go back to the others.”
Danann asked: “Why?”
“Because the area around me will become very inhospitable soon.” Said Shadow.
Talita took another deep breath, then asked: “Is this about the secondary energy planes you told us about?”
Shadow nodded. “I will be drawing from them directly, I never tried this with such an energy-intensive spell so I hope you understand why you should get going.”
Danann nodded in response. “Alright, we’ll try to roast some enemy soldiers on the way if they don’t have archers.”
With that the two mages flew off, leaving Shadow alone above the battlefield. After taking a second to focus, Shadow once again opened her new sense, looking beyond her current plane and into the brimming layers of energy that existed alongside the physical plane of Nexus. Shadow saw her skin darken, felt her hair getting lighter as she rapidly siphoned energy from those parallel planes. Each pull was accompanied by a bolt of nothingness, a split-second fracture in reality’s integrity. Once she got a better feel for the amount of energy, Shadow started casting.
A blindingly bright beam shot from her palm, bigger and more intense than ever before. Stray bolts of energy arced off her body and from the beam itself. It impacted squarely on the recovering manifestation, rapidly warping its armor and evaporating a substantial amount of the dirt around it.
When Shadow stopped, she felt uncharacteristically refreshed, normally she should feel strain from casting such a powerful spell. Questions for later, she had more pressing concerns. This manifestation wouldn’t be getting up in a while, that still left several more that terrorized the battlefield.
Shadow flew towards the next one, faster than she had intended, having put so much energy into a spell shortly before made finesse difficult, another thing to explore in detail later once there was time.
The second manifestation saw her coming, there was the same mind behind all of them so naturally it knew what was about to happen. Although knowing did little to prevent it from happening. Shadow tried channeling more energy into this beam than the last one, there had to be a limit somewhere and she’d find it. The second manifestation collapsed like the first.
While flying to the next one Shadow thought about something she had discussed with her brother. It was something they dubbed the “Minimal Force Doctrine”, which said that you should only use enough force to defeat an enemy cleanly and confidently, without showing your full strength. Its main application was in skirmishes or battles where the enemy’s strength and capabilities were well-known. The point was to deprive the enemy of a good measurement of one’s own strength while racking up victories. Of course, the doctrine did not apply to Shadow’s current situation, an enemy that just would not stay down but couldn’t exactly fight back.
On the note of fighting back, Shadow created another barrier to block a barrage of arrows directed at her, then shot a quick disintegration ray in the direction of the archers. Another thought. She could focus on taking out the enemy forces but that would come at the cost of lives on her own side, a very limited resource. Ensuring the Entity stayed down was of the highest priority.
The third manifestation went down like the first two, so Shadow moved on. She still had not hit any limit to how much energy she could put into the spell. As she flew over to the fourth one, she saw something that complicated things. It was currently engaged in combat with a sizable group of rebels. Engaged in combat was perhaps the wrong term, in the process of butchering them was more appropriate.
Shadow decided to go for a more direct approach, she accelerated downwards and built up a barrier around herself at the same time, the ray would not work this time, not with so many allies around.
The barrier slammed into the Entity’s manifestation at immense speed, throwing it off-balance but not knocking it down, it was unnaturally massive.
“Go!” Shadow shouted at the soldiers, who did not have to hear it twice, taking off with a panicked, adrenaline-powered sprint.
The manifestation raised its zweihander and brought it down on her, a quick teleportation brought her out of range immediately. While Shadow gathered energy for her attack, the manifestation threw its weapon at her with surprising precision. She was unable to evade another time due to her spell in progress, she just had to take the hit.
The obsidian zweihander shattered Shadow’s barrier and impaled her through the chest. She felt no pain but having your ribcage, lungs and several other organs pierced by a massive sword was not a comfortable experience under any circumstance. Shadow channeled her resulting rage into the spell and let loose.
As she was blasting the manifestation with as much energy as she could muster, she felt something different. From one moment to the next her energy supply was cut off and she had to immediately stop her spell to not tap into her own life force. There it was, the limit. A quick look into the energy planes confirmed that she had drained absolutely everything nearby, more energy slowly flowing in.
Shadow looked around, that had been the last one, the first manifestation was moving again but at this point it was too far from any of their soldiers to do any damage. The retreat was almost complete. She could only make out a handful of their soldiers running into the forest, those had to be the rear guard. Shadow took off towards the hill.
The heavy sword remained lodged in her chest, some spikes near the guard had gotten caught on her spine. It was inconvenient flying while being impaled by a weapon larger than herself, but she would manage. Perhaps they could even take a closer look at the sword later to find out if there was anything special about it.
Shadow had not been prepared for the sight that the hill presented to her. The corpses of several archers and soldiers littered the elevated area, this was supposed to be a safe area. Two figures were lying near the top, evidently still alive and laughing, and not in any way that could be described as positive. Those two figures were Astro and Kay, both badly wounded!
Shadow immediately picked up speed, landing next to the two. As she descended, she noticed to her shock that two of the corpses belonged to the Prophet and his bodyguard Steve, the former had a caved-in head, the other a mangled ribcage.
She turned to Astro and Kay, who had been woken from their trance-like laughter by her arrival.
“What the hell happened here?”
Chapter38:Event Horizon (Astro/Shadow)
I am ripped from the tranquility of laughter when I see Shadow drifting down toward us. The Entity’s zweihander pierces her chest, but even though the sword is twice as tall as her, she appears to float along without difficulty. Even when she asks her question, I’m still not quite able to read her mood:
“What the hell happened here?”
“Astro,” Kay wheezes, finally reigning in his own hysterical laughter. “Would you help me up?”
I try to, and then a sharp pain shoots through my gut. Calling the wound Claw inflicted on me “healed” would be an insult to healing. It wasn’t actively bleeding and that was the extent of it. I shrug and Kay nods in understanding, gesturing for me to speak.
“Prophet’s dead. Other Steve is dead. Kay and I are halfway there,” I say tonelessly. “It…”
I want to continue. To say what did all this, but I know the pain it will inflict on her. I see the Void and it burns away at my mind. Suddenly, the sunlight is too much for me. I flinch and look at the ground.
“Wait, before you say anything more, let me heal you. I can see that talking is painful to you.”
A reprieve. I strategise rapidly, but the ideas all keep falling apart before they can come together.
“Thank you, Shadow,” I grunt, making sure to sound as pained as possible.
She moves in close, places her hands against my torso, the most obviously wounded part.
“I was using a lot of magic a few minutes ago. This may come out more forcefully than usual,” she explains.
I start to nod, but before I can even think about bracing myself there is a flash of white light from her palms. I’m half-blinded and roar in pain as my insides begin to jolt back into place and my skin tears itself back together. Then, after a few seconds, I am healed. No scarring - the bottom of my stomach looks good as new. There are even a few hairs sprouting back into being.
Shadow moves on to Kay, who is just barely keeping his eyes open. He has a dreamy smile that doesn’t seem to match the bitter laughter of a few seconds prior. I had been unable to do much on account of my wounds, so his leg is still visibly broken, and there are still wounds across his scalp and under his armpit that weep blood with little impediment.
Shadow appears undaunted and, after reshuffling the zweihander which still protrudes from her back, she plants one hand on his leg and one beneath his armpit. Her hands glow and with similar force Kay’s begins to mend himself. I’m not sure if he’s better or worse-prepared than me. He writhes and clenches his teeth, but only a few isolated grunts of effort rise from his throat. Then, Shadow stops, and he falls panting. His leg still looks pretty bad, but he’s no longer at death’s door.
“So, what did this? Did I miss a manifestation?” asks Shadow with a tone that could probably indicate worry.
Suddenly, I realise I am no closer to an explanation of what happened on the Hill. I almost contemplate lying.
“Well, Shadow…” I trail off again.
I lock eyes with Kay, and I know I am being reproached. He shakes his head.
“Claw is free,” Kay grunts as he pulls hobbles up.
I see the colour drain from Shadow's face, given her natural skin tone this was a bad sign. She is silent.
“I don’t know how,” he continues. “But he is in control and working for the Entity. He arrived, wearing their obsidian armour and I just assumed he had escaped. Because of my error, the Prophet and Steve are dead, and Astro almost joined them.”
He stops and waits for her to react. One hand is open, twitching with a desire to summon voidfire. The other hovers near the pommel of Apotyre, ready to draw it. His face, however, is grimly impassive.
The yawning void behind my eyes grows more intense. It is practically screaming at me, and the sunlight is getting unbearable. I scrunch my eyes closed, but then force them open. That’s when I realise her hair is rising, and her skin is descending to that shade beneath darkness.
“Get to safety,” I warn Kay.
He doesn’t move, so I plant a hand on his chest and push him back as gently as I care to be - which isn’t particularly gentle.
“Get to safety,” I repeat.
“I’m not-”
“-Book, get him to safety. I’ll see to it you’re not reprimanded,” I instruct aloud and telepathically.
“If I must,” it answers wryly.
Kay falls into a rift in a string of curses. With that liability dealt with, I return to Shadow.
She is standing there, but she doesn’t look right. Her shape and skin wavers, as though seen through immense heat. She is slumped forward, but the zweihander’s blade which protrudes from her back has a strange balancing effect - it looks like an awful wing.
I take a few steps back, then levitate a foot or two just to be safe. The tear in reality continues to shriek at me, as though it is being ripped open all over again.
“Shadow, are you there?” I ask.
I crane my neck and float around and see the profound look of grief on her face. Her face is scrunched to the point where it looks like it’s about to burst or fold in on itself altogether.
“Shadow,” I repeat. “We need you here. We will find a way to save him, I promise.”
I don’t know if that’s a lie.
She jolts - it might be a nod? - and raises her trembling hand to the zweihander. The fingers clasp around the obsidian handle, and she begins to pull. I realise she’s not pulling it out. She’s wrenching it up.
Suddenly, I am almost paralysed by the memory of the Void. It is unseaming the world and ripping my mind in two. I am agonized, but I remain afloat. Somehow, behind and beneath the screaming, there is a strangely comforting note.
Shadow arcs the zweihander up through her chest and head, cleaving both in two. My eyes widen as her physical form falls away, unmoving and expressionless as a doll. What remains is an ever-shifting mass of silhouettes. Shadow is there, but her not-skin is of a shade so far past darkness I cannot find a name for it. It is as though the night sky had burst open before me to reveal something vaster and emptier and more overpowering.
She still casts a shadow of her own, but Wodahs appears unable to capture this new form. She is a writhing, angry mass of near-complete shapes for several seconds, shifting between arms and legs and tentacles and many more shapes a shadow should not know how to convey at all. Then, Wodahs settles into formlessness, and swirls more calmly beneath her master.
That’s when I realise, looking directly upon this new, unveiled Shadow, how quiet the tear in reality has become. It is as though the gaping wound has not healed but triumphed over the flesh it afflicted. A scar now, not an injury. I hear a comforting song of everything and nothing, and all that tension and confusion I have felt for the last few weeks is banished.
The zweihander clatters to the ground.
“I will kill it.” says Shadow.
“K-kill what?” I stammer dumbly.
She walks away, and for a moment I am tempted to follow her in pursuit of this unspecified prey, but I cannot bring myself to do it. Every inch of me wants to flee, and I obey my body for once. I fly away from her and away from the answer to my question, trying to dull my guilt by promising to find people to help elsewhere.
###
Shadow felt empty. Emptier than she had ever felt before, emptier even than when she had floated above an altar, all her blood having drained from various rune-shaped cuts in her skin. It was not a hollow emptiness, it simply was an absence. An absence of the grief she had felt seconds before, an absence of the anger she had felt when thinking about the outcome of her brother’s mission, an absence of her usual thoughts and worries. There was one thing she had said she would do, and she was going to do it.
Shadow was going to kill the Entity.
She put one foot in front of the other, she didn’t need to be fast. There was no rush, the Entity would always be there. While walking Shadow observed her surroundings, not just in the way everyone else did. She looked beyond, even beyond the additional layers of magical energy she had seen before. Behind her, where the Prophet lay dead, she saw a rapidly fraying snarl of magic, its strings going all over. One of those strings was different, it was older. It pointed straight where Shadow was going, at the Entity.
Despite her slow pace, trees flew by as Shadow took her steps, each time she put a foot forward it reached further through space than the last. Before long she had arrived at the battlefield, it now lay quiet but not empty. The only things that were still moving were the Entity’s manifestations. They were Shadow’s first target.
With a final, long step she closed the gap to the closest one. It saw her and swung its zweihander at her. When the blade made contact it was split in two, the part that hit her having simply disappeared into the vast nothingness that was her body. The manifestation hesitated, Shadow simply kept walking towards it.
Shadow’s hand reached forward, through the bronze armor and into the grey substance beneath. The armor disappeared at her touch, the grey substance did not, it even resisted her for a brief moment, then gave way to her palm, deforming around it like a viscous liquid. Shadow felt the structure of the manifestation, it was like a bubble connected to the main body with a thin string. With a mere thought the string was severed, the grey substance collapsing in on itself and evaporating into the Void. The bronze shell fell down as it lost support.
The next manifestation tried fighting back but the only result was that Shadow could cut its string faster. The other two fell just the same way. As she separated the last one, Shadow felt something different, a movement far off.
Moments later an identical set of bronze armor materialized in front of Shadow, she felt that this was the real Entity, the main body. Shadow began walking towards it, but did not seem to be getting closer, as if the space between her and the Entity was extending into infinity. Shadow raised her hand, gathering up energy from within. Reality tore itself apart at her fingertips, the rift propagating towards the Entity, moving faster the denser the space ahead became.
When the rift reached the Entity, it swallowed its armor but the vague grey body beneath remained visible, as if it existed above the tear in reality. The world snapped back to its normal geometry at the same time the rift closed. The Entity stood only a short distance from Shadow. She reached forwards, trying to make contact. The Entity preempted her by wrapping one of its huge hands around Shadow’s torso and brought her up to the height of its head.
The Entity spoke: “You-are the anomaly. You will… be absorbed.”
Its other hand reached out to Shadow’s head. Once it made contact a brief flash of grey intruded on the fringes of Shadow’s mind before being pushed back by a surge of nothingness. Shadow felt the pressure increase but she held against it firmly. The assault stopped minutes later, neither of them was able to breach the defense of the other, like water and oil attempting to mix.
The comforting emptiness Shadow had felt so far slowly receded, she could not do what she wanted to do, at least not yet. She would need to be stronger. Her regular thoughts returned as the realization settled in.
A grin spread across Shadow’s face, a blindingly bright gash in the nothingness. She said: “Hello, fellow abomination.”
The Entity’s hand jerked open, as if it had been awoken from a daydream. Shadow slowly slid down to the ground after being released. The Entity took a step backwards, away from her, something akin to fear in the movement. Then, from one moment to the next it disappeared, leaving Shadow alone in the middle of the battlefield.
Shadow thought about what had happened but was not entirely sure how to describe it. It had been her that did all this, not someone else, she couldn’t deny that. What had changed? After having heard of Claw being in control of her brother’s body something in her mind had snapped, or maybe clicked was a better word for it. After shedding her physical body, she felt more whole than ever, it was like she hadn’t changed into something else, but became a truer version of herself. It was like the form she took when she ate the minds of rulebreakers, only so much more. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? Her talk about humanity with Astro came back to her, what if this was only the beginning? How much of this was related to her brother’s well-being and how much of it was just her?
Shadow shook her head. Now was not the time to answer any of these questions. For better or for worse, they would answer themselves in time. It was now time to return to the others, there would be questions. As Shadow went, she slowly reformed her physical body. The more of it formed the less she could keep her grief from returning, by the time she was back at the hill to retrieve her clothes, she had to fight to not break down on the spot.
Shadow felt now more than ever before that Humanity, however you defined it, could also be a burden.
Chapter39:Hunted (Warnado)
Warnado’s feet pounded across the crimson earth to carry him away from his pursuer. As he ducked and dodged between corpses, weapons and combatants he had never been more conscious of the force of gravity upon him. He ran hunched through the battlefield and had long since lost track of Tyron, of Amanda. The Prophet’s Hill was too small to see from the midst of the violent crowd.
He had the vague impression things weren’t going well. Faint voices screamed ‘Retreat!’, nearer ones screamed ‘Hold fast!’ And the enemy had caught on and were yelling their own instructions, knowing their superior numbers and the Entity’s arrival precluded any idea of they themselves retreating. The fighting around this point was brutal. Those rebels who partook in it knew they were giving themselves over to a tempest.
Warnado did not agree with their assessment - he really, really wanted to keep living and make sure Amanda followed his lead. If he could get to the crater’s lip, he would at least be able to figure out which direction to run in.
Just as he reached this conclusion, he saw a pair of gargantuan, armoured hands pull apart the melee as though it were a cheap curtain. Glibby had found him.
Glibby swung his gauntlet down and Warnado rolled. The demon-child summoned his energy bow and readied an attack, but an obsidian boot caught him on the knuckles. A grey enderman had materialised and kicked him. The bow dissipated and blood ran between the demon-child’s fingers. Through the pain, he summoned an axe and hacked at the enderman.
His assailant disappeared, however, and the axe didn’t do much more than disturb the air. Unfortunately, air wasn’t the only thing on the other side of the enderman. Glibby’s fist sailed through the air and crunched into his head.
Warnado fell back and tore a trench through the blood-soaked earth. His eyes felt misaligned, and he couldn’t quite sync up the two images they fed him. He didn’t need particularly clear vision, however, to see the mountain of apish flesh and obsidian armaments leaping at him, intending to crush him under its weight.
He rolled and somehow stumbled his way into standing. Glibby, meanwhile, lounged in the bloody muck like a luxuriant pig, showing no hurry in getting up. Warnado profited from the opportunity to hurl a fireball at Glibby, but it simply glanced off his obsidian shell. The Ape lunged at him from a crouching position and Warnado barely staggered out of the way. He was still too disoriented to dodge the second.
The heavy gauntlet caught him in the ribs, and he lifted off his feet.
His ribs burned with pain, and he felt his entire body spasm into rigidity. Beneath him, he could see two battlefields, both identical and both blurry. He caught a glimpse of the Prophet’s hill and its twin and thought he could see bursts of silver flame spurting around the base of both iterations. Two Sunbeam blasts struck the battlefields, and massacred two groups of enemies, or maybe friends.
He hit the dirt with a disconcerting squelch, and then an obsidian boot pressed him down further and made his ribs sing an encore of agony. His disjointed eyes resynchronised as he rubbed the mud from his eyes. A green-eyed enderman, not unlike Voidblade, collapsed into the dirt before him, its throat slit by razor-sharp talons. The silver scales glinting from beneath the purple-black armour indicated clearly that the enderman standing over him was the last of Glibby’s original three Grey Ones. And limp from pain, Warnado did nothing as this survivor lifted him.
Warnado felt his hood be torn back, and his concealment charm dissipated. For the first time in years, he felt the breeze and light on his horns. And then, feeling more vulnerable than a snail without a shell, an obsidian gauntlet forced him to lock gazes with Glibby the Ape, Fristad’s murderer.
“Thank you, Shaghran. And you, boy. You gave me a merry chase. Not many can,” Glibby said. “What’s your name?”
“Santa,” answered Warnado with steely eyes and no hesitation.
Glibby punched him in the sore spot.
“Warnado.”
Another blow. Warnado caught a brief glimpse of a toothy grin and smoke-like skin he faintly recalled from the Tower’s negotiation room all those weeks ago.
“Your real name, not your circus-performer’s epithet.”
When Warnado finally recovered: “Helix. My name is Helix.”
“Isn’t that better?”
A giant crushed a Jackal beneath his foot in the background.
“I only ask because no one else will know what to call you after this,” Glibby sneered. He began to cackle madly.
As the obsidian fingers clasped Warnado’s chin, he struggled against it. An enderman tore the intestines out of an aging rebel in the background. Warnado gave into the grip to get away from the awful sight.
“You seriously can’t come up with something better than that?” Warnado asked.
Glibby’s grip slackened. A shadow passed over them, but Warnado couldn’t make out what it was.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re going to send me out with a ‘they aren’t even going to recognise you when I’m done with you’? Why not call me ‘dead meat’, try to take my lunch money, sneak in a ‘we’re not so different you and I’ while you’re at it.”
Another shadow passed over them, and Warnado could have sworn he saw a toothy grin somewhere in it.
The toothy grin reappeared, and a bemused voice accompanied it.
“Keep him busy a second. I’m flagging our mutual friend down,” Freak chuckled. “You don’t even owe me for this, kiddo, this’ll just be funny.”
“You dare critique me? Now, when I’m about to murder you?” Glibby asked in genuine exasperation.
Emboldened by Freak’s unsolicited and surprising encouragement, Warnado pressed on:
“Sorry, Ape-guy, you’re just cliché.”
“I’m cliché?” Glibby repeated dully. Then, with more gusto: “I’m cliché?!”
The Ape sprinted back and punched a nearby corpse before loping back on his mighty knuckles, as evocative of his namesake as Warnado had ever seen him.
“Oh, was it ‘cliché’ when my father cloistered me away? Did he stop the world from gazing upon his son because he just looked too bloody banal! Was I just too normal-looking when he disinherited me?”
Warnado fought the urge to laugh as he realised how much of a nerve he’d hit. His spirits only increased as he saw a Tower merc dispatched by a falling rock that looked suspiciously like a wing.
“Maybe that’s my problem! I’m just too boring for you all. If only the Divines had cast me in a more exotic mold than a gorilla - made me look like a real freakshow. A panda, or a bee or an axolotl, perhaps? Maybe all of them combined? Huh? If they had, maybe I’d be in my father’s chateau, drinking fine wines and going into town for the theatre, rather than ambling around this grimy butcher’s yard in search of something interesting to kill so I don’t go mad with boredom! Or perhaps I’d just wind up on the Shore of Oddities like everyone else who can’t pass as human!”
Finally, Warnado caught a glimpse of a battered set of diamond armour gliding down toward him on one wing. Inside, he saw an unmistakable mass of green fur.
“DUCK!” Squeaked Kir.
Glibby, at first confused, then saw a reflection in a jewel crowning Shaghran’s helmet and unknowingly followed Kir’s command. Unfortunately for the last of the three original Grey Ones, this only left him a split-second to react before a wing-like blade of ice decapitated him. Warnado and the headless enderman fell in a heap and the demon-child scrambled to pull his hood back up.
Tyron landed a few moments later and wasted no time before shaking the ice from his right arm, drawing Kir and rushing at Glibby. The Silhouette’s enforcer, snarling with a mixture of indignity at Warnado’s insults and irritation at the loss of his last best manservant, also charged almost instantaneously.
Tyron dodged Glibby’s first blow and parried the second with his left arm, which was still shielded by a stone wing. With the Ape’s guard broken, he willed the stones to lift, and the tip of the wing shattered against Glibby’s head. As Glibby retreated, Tyron swiped at him with Kir and raked the Bluestone sword across his breastplate. A shower of sparks went flying and Glibby staggered further.
Warnado hauled himself up, wiping the purple blood of the End off him as best he could. It had soaked his robes. He looked at the ape-like warrior with a distant hatred.
Glibby parried Kir and struck Tyron in the flank. The hero lurched away in pain as the diamond of his breastplate warped from the force of the blow. A second blow caught him on the jaw with force that would have taken Warnado’s head clean off. Tyron, however, spat out the blood and grinned in challenge.
Warnado took a step forward, but the pain in his ribs stopped him from intervening. He himself tightly in the hopes of getting some sense of control over the pain.
Tyron hurled the remains of the stone wing at Glibby, and the Ape’s advance halted as he had to stop and block the incoming heap of rocks. It bounced harmlessly off the impermeable armour covering his forearms, but it bought Tyron the time he needed to recover.
Warnado laced the fingers of his free hand and the fingers of his demon gauntlet into the shape of a gun.
Now recovered, the Ape and the Dragoknight glared at each other. One glared with purpose, the other because he didn’t know what else to do in the face of irritation. Glibby rushed forward and lashed out at Tyron’s head. Tyron, a calm smile settling on his face in the place of the grin, sidestepped the Ape. There were two flashes of deep blue as Tyron swung Kir twice in rapid succession. Wounds opened on the back of Glibby’s leg and on the side of his hip. He slid forward on his knees, groaning in pain. A wounded enderman lay dying nearby.
With Tyron safely out of the line of fire, Warnado took his opportunity.
“Hey Glibby!” He yelled angrily. “They’re not going to recognise you after I’m done with you!”
A jet of purple fire burst out.
Glibby’s eyes widened in terror. He snatched the leg of the dying enderman and squeezed tightly.
“Teleport!” Warnado heard him hiss.
And when the jet of fire cleared, there was no charred, hulking mass before him. The annoyance of losing out of vengeance faded pretty quickly though, as Warnado doubled over in pants of pain and exhaustion.
“Thanks for coming to get me, Tyron,” he said. “All things considered, you’re not the worst babysitter I’ve ever had.”
“Well, if I didn’t show up with both my wards under my arms, Kay would never have let me live.”
“Don’t you mean live it down?”
“I know what I said.”
Warnado laughed, but just as it occurred to him how serious Tyron sounded, he was quickly distracted by the relief and exhilaration of a flight back to friendly lines.
Chapter40:Locked In (Fire)
Fire had regained consciousness only minutes after the Entity had let go of him, if only a very vague semblance of consciousness. Fire was not like Claw who’d stay in a dormant state while he was in his mind-prison, instead he became increasingly aware of himself as time passed.
Inside of the cage Fire was his real-world human self, Peter. This version of him had short, brown hair and green eyes. While tall by human standards, he was nowhere near as tall as his alter ego Fire. He had used his real name on the server too in the first few hundred years until his transformation into the first Mencur-Besh, after that it had been Fire. He was just as much Fire as he was Peter, however since he had his human appearance in the mind-prison, he’d use the appropriate name.
As Peter became more aware, the cage itself changed, from the very cramped, animal cage it transformed into an environment he was more familiar with, still a cage but more of a metaphorical one. Peter’s mindspace had become the very place that had been the site of actions that shaped the fates of so many, including his own: The Graves Manor.
The Graves Manor in the real world was located some distance outside the capital, relatively hidden in a dense forest, the back of the building resting against a rock cliff, which was part of a large mountain range. Unlike most manors it was no old building passed down through generations, the Graves Manor was no older than forty years and looked the part. It was three stories tall and had two wings next to its main block. All windows were one-way mirrors, making it impossible to see what was going on behind them from the outside.
Peter’s parents had built the manor when their first profits from the weapons they produced for the war came in, wanting both privacy as well as a new site for their research. As such the manor had a vault door at the back of the entrance hall. This door led to a laboratory hidden inside the cliff the manor was built against. They had known how to play to the stereotypes at least. That was where they’d perform their experiments and where they constructed their prototype weapons, it also featured a library full of research documentation that Peter regularly studied.
The Graves Manor in Peter’s mind was quite similar to its real equivalent, only that it was far from uniform. Each room was fragmented into different versions, drawing from memories from all over Peter’s life. The entrance hall alone was a mess of light, shadows and different states of modification.
Since he had nothing better to do, Peter spent his time walking the hallways and rooms, trying to unify them to the version of them he liked best, which was the version from last summer, just after the extensive renovations he had organized.
The left wing and entrance hall were already done. The only thing that he couldn’t change was what he saw outside of the windows, no matter how hard he tried, it stayed the same. Eternally locked in time, one window would show the forest in the deepest winter, another during a thunderstorm, lightning frozen dramatically in the distance.
Peter made his way over to the right wing of the manor, it had gone mostly unused over the years, which was why he saved it for last. The wing would have had rooms belonging to Peter and his sister, had their parents not died while both of them were still young.
Peter went down the left side staircase of the entrance hall, taking a look at the display cases that were lined up along the sides. Each held a different weapon prototype, or at least a replica of one if the prototype in question was an explosive device or too large to fit in a display case. Above the display cases were photographs of the weapons in use, Peter had removed the ones that depicted actual battles, only the test range photos remained. He had never tried to hide what his parents had done but having photographs of people dying in your house was far from appropriate.
The vault door loomed ominously at the back of the entrance hall, Peter knew the code that would open it by heart, but he already knew that this version of the door would not open, no matter how many times he entered it. Peter moved on, ascending the right-side staircase and approaching the double door that led to the right wing.
He was met with a fragmented view of the corridor, some parts were lit by bright sunlight, often coming from different angles, others were shrouded in darkness. Half of a jackhammer leaned against nothing, the tiles below it noticeably older than the others. A cold breeze blew in from a window that led to the middle of winter.
Peter got to work, summoning memories and forcing them into this mindspace, pushing the fragmented ones away. It was exhausting but nevertheless satisfying, especially if he considered the fact that he probably was not even supposed to have the manor in his mind. The Entity probably thought Claw’s cage could contain him, in which case it had thought wrong. As opposed to Claw, Peter was a fully formed personality with thousands of years of memories. Of course, this changed nothing about the situation at its core, Peter was unable to act on the outside world and Claw was currently out there serving the Entity.
He shook his head, no sense worrying about something he had no control over. The jackhammer disappeared along with the older tiles, replaced with the newer tiles that Peter had spent a good deal of time deciding on during the planning stages of the renovation. The winter window closed, and the cold breeze stopped.
It was difficult to tell time in the manor, clocks were either stuck on a certain time or moved erratically, Peter preferred the former over the latter. After an unknowable amount of time, the corridor and most of its bordering rooms were consistent with Peter’s preferred version.
He was too exhausted to continue, perhaps he’d go and check the front balcony again. Peter had discovered that if he stood in a certain spot, he could catch fragments of the outside world through Claw’s senses. At first it had only been single images and sounds but as he brought the manor in line with his memories he could see longer and clearer fragments. Aside from having something to do, this was Peter’s main motivation for “cleaning up” the manor.
Peter pushed open one of the balcony doors. When he looked through the glass of a window or a door it was just like any other window, showing the balcony frozen at some point in the past. Once he stepped outside a different scene presented itself: everything past the railing was unending gray static, just like when the Entity had tried absorbing Peter. This was the first thing that clued him in that something was special about this place.
“Alright, let’s see what you’re up to, Claw.” Peter said.
He had been looking before too of course, but all he had gotten was that Claw was collaborating with the Ender on some kind of plan. The fragments had never been long or clear enough to make out what it was about. Maybe he’d find out more now.
Peter positioned himself exactly in the center of the balcony and leaned against the railing, his head only centimeters away from the grey static. He closed his eyes.
Immediately a loud noise pierced Peter’s mental ear, clearer than ever before: “Astro! Get back!”
This was Kay, without a doubt. A second later Peter also got a mental image from Claw’s point of view. The scene presented to him was not a pretty one, Claw was currently in the process of skewering Astro with his claws. Peter’s mind raced to try to figure out what was going on.
Kay was there, Astro was there. Was the Shelter being invaded? No, there was too much grass for that, the high plain before the Shelter was mossy more than anything. Peter realized that they were standing on the Prophet’s hill. Claw’s vision whipped around, focusing on a figure that stood a bit further up, the Prophet. What exactly was going on here? Peter thought back to his last hours before getting caught. What had he sent back and how could it have led to this?
Then it clicked. There was the sound of distant battle. The hill was near the village that he had found to be fortified. Kay was trying to establish a forward base and Claw was here to assassinate him! Before Peter could contemplate more, a fierce fight broke out between Claw and Kay. Not before long Kay called upon the Book to create portals, something that Peter knew would not work as well as Kay hoped it would, any form of magic used for teleportation created energy impulses, which could be sensed by a Mencur-Besh. Predictably, Claw saw Kay’s attack coming.
Moments later Claw stood before the Prophet, who said a last sentence before being slain. This made less sense, why would the Prophet be the primary target of the assassination? Was there something Claw knew that Peter didn’t? It definitely was a possibility. Before Peter had time to think deeply on it, Steve had already fallen to Claw. Now it was only Kay left, and he disappeared into a portal, only to reappear moments later.
This was not a fight Kay could win, with or without the Book. Peter knew this body and its potential too well, and by extension this also applied to Claw. Mencur-Besh were each aligned to one of the seven elements the server’s magic system used, in Peter’s case it was fire-aligned, which manifested in greatly increased strength. Kay could not hope to withstand Claw’s attacks, not with… Peter’s thoughts paused. There was no red glow coming from between Claw’s scales. Any Mencur-Besh could drastically increase its body temperature to enable a different mode of muscle operation, one that offered vastly increased power output at the cost of enormous energy consumption, fire-aligned Mencur-Besh had an especially powerful version of this and yet Claw was not using it.
Something occurred to Peter, he knew how Claw’s memory operated from some experiments conducted by the scientists that had created the server. Claw had access to any factual knowledge, but it needed to become relevant first. He was quite handily beating Kay so there was no reason for his mind to bring forth that information, but it certainly would eventually. Once that happened, Kay would be truly done for.
Peter acted fast, reaching within his own memory, which technically was also Claw’s, and started concentrating on the muscle overdrive as hard as he could. If his theory was correct, this would prevent Claw from discovering the information while he kept it up, which only needed to be long enough for Kay to gain some kind of advantage and force Claw to retreat.
Tense minutes passed as both combatants tore at each other, at some point Kay briefly disappeared again, only to return holding what looked to be a handful of coins. Silver, of course, that was the advantage that Kay needed.
The actual resolution came as surprisingly to Peter as it had come to Claw, it was not Kay attacking Claw with the silver, but Astro breaking Claw’s arm with his spell, an impressive feat considering the hardness and density of Mencur-Besh bones. After losing some taunting words, Claw was teleported away to the inside of the fortified village.
Peter stumbled backwards in exhaustion, the images and sounds in his head disappeared. He was fully and properly drained but satisfied. Kay and Astro lived. Moments later the realization of the Prophet’s death sunk in, this would bring some real complications to the rebellion, having lost not only their champion but the one who named that champion as well. Claw showing up fighting for the Entity would also be difficult to explain, for an outsider it would look like their commander turned coat.
Peter sighed. Kay would have some truly difficult times ahead of him, now it was left to see what he’d make of the situation.
As for Peter, he made his way to his bedroom in the left wing, he still hadn’t tried if he could sleep in this mindspace, but he would damn well try.
Jennifer hated healing potions. She needed them - in the course of the battle she had broken a dozen or so bones and lost about a swimming pool worth of blood - but the healing process was about as bad as getting injured. It was like being a kid and being told you had to eat your carrots - if carrots caused excruciating pain as they allegedly improved your eyesight. As such, she was immensely glad when the pain finally dissipated, and she was able to leave the medic’s tent.
The dawn reached over the horizon and scraped her eyes as she stepped out. Her eyes snapped shut like a bear trap. On account of the potion, she hadn’t slept in over a day, so the temptation was strong to concede defeat and go back into the tent to sleep. Better yet, she could just collapse then and there and sleep it off on the ground. But, of course, she had responsibilities. She wrenched her eyes open from behind the shelter of her forearm and pressed on.
They were on the edge of a dark oak forest. What remained of her troops had set up a series of tents there, most of them for housing the wounded. Everyone else had followed suit when they caught up, and now their encampment had spread some way into the woods, tents sprouting up like weeds between the trees and giant mushrooms.
As she passed through the bloodstained and grimy soldiers who hadn’t washed since the Entity had massacred them, she began to feel bad about her spotless appearance. As mentioned previously, she had bled and bled a lot, but it had all dripped and faded away. She hated how dirty this world was, but at least if some of it settled on her, her soldiers would understand their leader had shared in their sorrows out there. Some people certainly needed that reminder...
Given the circumstances, her division had gotten off lightly, and they were still down to half capacity if wounded were included. She could only imagine how badly Steve and Tyron had fared. She saw one of Steve’s Jackals limping along, one leg missing, and she felt a swell of pity that was initially hampered by a web of resentment but eventually forced its way into an uneasy control of her emotions.
Jennifer and Steve hadn’t really spoken since he joined Kay’s little cabal. Aside from a brief little “stay safe” chat before the battle, the two of them had avoided each other pretty totally. Admittedly, that meant they had maybe gone two days without a real conversation but bearing in mind they had been speaking to each other daily for at least two years before that, this was an unprecedented rough patch.
A desire to power through and get back to normal wasn’t enough to convince her to patch things up. She appreciated that he was grieving Fristad and now Fire, but they were supposed to be grieving together. Supporting each other. And he had decided to make it all about him:
“Why is it always my job to fix everything?”
She had been there for pretty much all the fixing he’d ever done. ****.
Jennifer decided to think about other things because she was getting angry again. Thankfully, she was distracted by the sight of several tables stacked with bread, potatoes, dried meat and other food. The food was pretty spartan, but her stomach gurgled impatiently, and it suddenly looked like a banquet.
She joined the line for rations and left with a plate of meat and potatoes. Squinting around for a place to sit, she saw Destiny muttering to herself at a table beneath a large, brown mushroom. Jennifer wanted quiet to reflect but also didn’t want to sit alone, so Destiny was her best bet.
“If Steve is any indication,” thought Jennifer. “Destiny will probably be glad not to have to deal with any of my usual misguided attempts to clear the low, low bar of common decency by trying to comfort and support people who are very obviously hurting.”
Destiny sat bow-legged and barefoot. She had draped her right hand over the table, palm facing skyward. However, despite this apparently relaxed pose, everything else suggested Destiny was furious. Her eyes were narrow, her draped hand trembling as though something invisible was holding it there against her will. And her toe, barefoot, curled into the ground and had raked up a lot of grass.
Jennifer almost wanted to ask what was wrong but reminded herself why she chose this table and sat down.
“Hey,” Jennifer said flatly.
Destiny suddenly looked as though someone had caught her trying to climb into a chicken coop.
“What? Oh, hey.”
There was now a small, yellow crystal in her outstretched palm that hadn’t been there before. She closed her fingers around it.
“What’s that?” Jennifer asked with furrowed brows.
“Nothing,” Destiny said a little too quickly to be convincing. Apparently realising this, she added: “I-I’m trying to learn that spell Warnado does. Where he summons food. You know, get something a little more interesting than meat, potatoes and bread.”
Jennifer forced herself to exhale genially through her nostrils and nodded. She then sank into silence to reflect.
She thought on the hearsay that had flown around her during the retreat. She had been too busy killing endermen to pay attention to anything happening behind her, but apparently, during the fighting, Fire had come back and turned on them. Arrived at the Hill, killed the Prophet and Steve 2, then nearly did the same to Kay and Astro. It suddenly occurred to her how much this news would devastate her Steve-
“-But like, what was the little yellow thing?” Jennifer asked suddenly.
Breaking her silence was better than dwelling on Steve’s self-pity.
“Yellow thing?”
“The crystal. In your hand. You were summoning food.”
“... Have to start with something.”
“Yeah, but what is it? I’ve never seen a crystal like it in Nexus.”
Destiny’s mouth opened to offer an explanation that didn’t come. Thankfully for her, and much to Jennifer’s frustration, Astro’s voice sounded from the side.
“Jennifer, Destiny, excellent. We’re gathering for a meeting.”
He patted them unenthusiastically on the shoulder and then trudged off, the implication being that they should follow him.
A few minutes later they were in a tent with various assembled allies.
Warnado and Amanda sat at a table together, sipping hot drinks. The former was wrapped in various blankets and staring at the shadows on the canvas wall nearest to him.
Urist, Voidblade and Rose sat at a table together. Rose’s left leg was in a splint, and her hip heavily bandaged, she looked weary but alert. Urist seemed more interested in a flask of mead than anything else. Voidblade seemed mostly unharmed, but his eyes were darting around the tent so quickly he might have just been shot in the back.
“Any alcohol to spare?” asked Destiny.
Urist reached into a satchel and pulled out an extra flagon of mead which he poured for her. She drew up a chair and sat bow-legged, no more relaxed than she had been earlier.
“Finally, someone else is drinking. Come, let’s commiserate. And yerself, Jennifer?”
The dwarf held up the satchel and shook it.
“I’m good.”
“Suit yerself.”
Destiny downed the flagon and then eyed up the others at the table.
“So, how are we ancien regime types feeling now Scales is playing for the other team?” She chuckled with forced geniality. “Any temptation to jump ship?”
Voidblade stood up angrily, fists clenched, then walked away.
Urist grimaced and closed up the satchel. Even Astro took a break from scanning for new arrivals at the tent flap spared a quick, irritated glance at Destiny.
She appeared to look at Jennifer and Rose for affirmation and both averted their eyes.
“Tough crowd,” Destiny laughed, undeterred.
“People. Died.”
Jennifer looked for the source and found Warnado standing on his chair. His robes were torn, bloody and dirty, and the red glow of his eyes seemed particularly strong. He glared at Destiny, and Amanda had a hold of his sleeve, though her eyes calmly swept the room. Destiny scowled back.
“Yeah, it happens,” she said with gravity. “And you can either wallow in it or you can try to find it funny.”
The tent hung in uneasy silence. Jennifer hated that she had a point. Steve could certainly benefit from learning that. Well, maybe not the funny part… Obviously you had to take it seriously but… Warnado had been through a lot back there from what she’d heard. Glibby had gone after him. He didn’t need to hear this.
Just before Jennifer could break the silence and start a long, stupid argument that no one would win, three figures stepped in through the tent flap: Tyron, then Steve, then Kay.
The big, green furball had healed considerably since Jennifer had last seen him scouring the battlefield for Warnado, and new-grown fur now covered over his wounds. She and Tyron exchanged a genuinely warm smile and wave.
Steve looked as spotless as her. They nodded politely but their eyes didn’t meet.
And the second he entered the tent Kay made sure the whole tent was looking at him.
“Ah, Urist, drinking on duty?! And none prepared for your commanding officer? I am appalled.”
Jennifer noticed he was limping quite badly, with one leg encased in a metal brace. He leaned heavily on a cane carved from the dark oak.
Urist shrugged: “Dwarf drinking is na like human drinking ye know? Gonna take a lot more than one mead to get me drunk.”
“Good,” he grunted as he hobbled over. “I’ll need more than one to take my mind off this.”
Kay struck the brace with his cane and reached the table. He scanned for available chairs, found none, and then looked very ill for a moment.
“Jennifer, would you be a Divine and get me a chair?” asked Kay with a hint of shame.
Jennifer got it for him and within a few seconds he was looking around the tent. He locked eyes with Warnado and shot him a guilty smile.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Tyron tells me you gave Glibby a grand old scare.”
“Yeah,” Warnado lied, reciprocating the smile.
Kay seemed satisfied, however, and looked to Astro.
“Who are we waiting for?”
“Just Shadow. I haven’t seen her since she set out to engage the Entity.”
There were collective groans. Warnado’s hand disappeared into the unnatural shadows of his hood and the red glow of his eyes disappeared.
“Of course you haven’t,” Kay grumbled. He bowed his head and pressed a knuckle against the ridge of his nose.
“This just keeps getting better,” added Destiny. “First Lady Justice betrays us, now his sister’s MIA.”
“Lady Justice?” Tyron asked.
“Fire. Y’know because he has scales.”
Tyron scoffed: “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever-”
“-Fire did not betray us,” entered Kay belatedly. “Weird as it sounds.”
“Then, what did happen?” pressed Steve.
Kay collected his thoughts.
“Fire has... a second personality. He calls himself Claw. Fire went through some problems a while back, before he became a Mencur-Besh. He… he dissociated from the ugly thoughts and when he finally gained access to his other world - the server I think he calls it - that amalgam of everything he didn’t want to deal with became real. Occasionally took control of him for brief spells.”
“Then, shouldn’t he just turn back?” asked Jennifer.
Suddenly, Shadow entered. It was normally hard to identify the emotions on Shadow’s abnormally dark face, but now she was simultaneously more obscure and easier to read than ever. Her red eyes burned with a grim determination, a terrifying sense of purpose. Narrow and sharp as daggers, they made Jennifer want to squirm as they passed over her. Something about Shadow was absolutely terrifying. Like a bird knowing a natural disaster is imminent, Jennifer felt an inescapable desire to run as far away from the little, white-haired mage as soon as possible.
She stormed into the center of the tent, and everyone drew back as she raised a gargantuan obsidian blade and stabbed it into the ground. Jennifer’s heart pounded so hard she felt as though it would knock her to the ground, but as the sword sank into the earth, Shadow’s shoulders slumped, and all her sadness became clear. Jennifer’s fear was dampened a little by this splash of melancholy.
Then, she recognised the sword: The Entity’s manifestations had wielded them. Everyone was astonished, except for Kay, who looked positively murderous.
“I’ll ask you what in Notch’s name you’re doing with that in a second,” Kay seethed. “Where have you been?”
Shadow replied through gritted teeth. “You know, turning my body to pure nothingness, destroying the Entity’s manifestations and trying to make it give me my brother back. Sadly, we are at a bit of a stalemate.”
“Stalemate’s a generous term for losing,” Kay scoffed. “We’re lucky to have escaped with what little we have. Come now, you’re among friends, no need for posturing.”
“I was not referring to the rebellion and the Tower, I was referring to myself and the Entity. We are at a stalemate. As much as each of us would like to murder the other, we can’t.”
No one seemed prepared for this information. Kay seemed to descend into a furious confusion, and Tyron stepped forward in his place.
“Are you suggesting you and the Entity are on the same level of power?” he asked. “Shadow, if you could just end this rebellion here and now, we’d all rather like you to do it.”
Shadow sighed. “I would like to say that but no, we are not. The Entity has vastly more influence over this world than I do. It commands it in its entirety while I only found a way to exploit local magical energy. I can destroy its manifestations but not the main body. At this point I realize that we may have some similarities but… also some differences. Too different to meaningfully harm one another.”
“But you were out there trying to stop the manifestations, and nothing was working,” Kay muttered. “What changed?”
“Well, Kay,” Astro interjected. “You might recall I asked you to leave the area after Shadow graciously patched us both up.” He raised his eyebrows and leaned forward, like a mother bird nudging a duckling onward.
“Why yes, I had overlooked that moment of gross insubordination,” he answered with condescending levity. “Please remind me.”
“She destroyed her physical form shortly afterwards. As I understand, she became a being of pure Void magic. A living tear in reality. Do I have that right?”
“More or less, I’m not entirely sure of what I did or became there.”
Fear compelled Jennifer to interject.
“Is it dangerous?” Jennifer asked. “Of course, anything that can go toe to toe with the Entity is good but are we sure we’re not putting ourselves at risk by using it?”
Kay fell out of his confusion and back into alertness. Jennifer could practically hear the cogs of manipulation turning in his head and gritted her teeth for whatever terrible idea she’d given him.
“Indeed, good point Jennifer. Can you confirm this isn’t a threat to civilian populations? Or Nexus itself? We don’t want it to become all of reality, but naturally we don’t want to collapse the whole thing on our heads. At least, not without an escape route… But yes, is this ‘Void state’ safe to use?”
Shadow responded slowly. “It’s definitely not safe for people, as Astro and his past headaches can confirm. It should however not be able to endanger Nexus as a whole, the Entity has too much control over reality for that.”
“That’s all well and good,” he sighed and rose to his feet. “But I think I need access to all your knowledge on the subject.”
Shadow’s eyes narrowed again. “And what exactly do you mean by that?”
“I neither have access to the same level of scholarly knowledge on this subject as you do, nor can I be absolutely certain you’re telling me the truth.
“There’s something terrible about this magic. Everyone can sense it. That urge to run, you all feel it, don’t you?”
Jennifer couldn’t help but nod in agreement. Astro interjected that the headaches were now gone since he saw Shadow’s Void form, but still seemed reserved.
“And, of course, the Entity unleashing Claw has made clear the importance of vetting anyone we send to fight it,” Kay continued. “You, as I recall, have just as long a history of trauma and psychological difficulty as your brother. Putting aside how you might react to Claw’s presence in the field, how can we be certain you’re not harbouring a little Claw of your own?”
He was now nose-to-nose with Shadow, leaning on the cane with enough force that it was starting to dig into the ground.
“Bearing in mind these reasonable concerns, I want to get in there,” he pointed at the spot between her eyes, “So I can conduct an independent inquiry.”
Shadow was silent for a few seconds, as if processing the pure audacity of the request, then said calmly: “Listen Kay, I don’t know how much the Book told you but when I first talked to it, I mentioned a detail that you ought to know. I eat minds. Do you know how I do that? Any mind that comes into contact with mine is overwhelmed and absorbed, that’s how I dealt with rulebreakers back home. So, what you’re suggesting would be suicide. Also…”
There was another pause, then Shadow suddenly snapped at Kay: “I may be in a bad emotional state at the moment but that doesn’t mean you can use low-effort psycho tricks and expect them to work. I have just as much experience as Fire and while I may not be that good with people, I know when someone is trying to get something from me. I didn’t stay Archmage of Rockhaven’s Mage Guild for as long as I did without learning all the tricks in the book.”
Her gaze turned to a spot on Kay’s breastplate. “And your Book best remember that it has an agreement with me that I can and will fulfill if it breaks our terms.”
Kay glared at her for a solid minute, then pulled the Book from beneath his diamond armour - from exactly the spot Shadow had been looking at. He reached back and left it down on the table behind him.
“Your input,” Kay began flatly. “Is noted. Now, see to your mages, they’ve been more than a little disoriented trying to heal half an army while their commanding officer is off soul-searching.”
Shadow began to tremble slightly, and Jennifer couldn’t tell what it meant. Was she angry? Afraid? Upset? She felt the fear rise in her again and averted her eyes. They fell on Steve, and she lowered her gaze, but she knew he was looking at her longingly.
Kay, however, didn’t seem at all concerned. He walked right past Shadow to the tent flap and became a silhouette as the early morning sun flooded in.
“Rally the troops, we’re heading back to the Shelter. Assuming there’s no sign of the enemy, we shall determine our course of action there.”
With that, he left. A quick glance confirmed that the Book had vanished from the table, presumably back into Kay’s pocket. Jennifer sheepishly followed, and the others gradually filtered out after them. Shadow remained standing in the centre of the room, still quivering. Only Warnado showed no obvious desire to leave, but Amanda tugged his arm warily and he began to depart as well.
When she was outside, she found herself wandering around in a daze. Through lanes upon lanes of injured men, women and creatures of all species. They had led these people here and asked them to pay this terrible price. She found it hard to see how each of them didn’t deserve a medal every day for the rest of their lives.
Then she saw the scuffle taking place ahead of her. A dozen or so Jackals were fully armoured and gathered around a wagon piled with food, medicine and any other valuables they could find.
One of the infantry soldiers, a testificate called Raphoe, was arguing with them in his nasal voice. Unfortunately, one of the Jackals smacked him in the head with the butt of his spear before kicking him in the gut. Jennifer ran over.
“What’s the meaning of this?”
“We’re leaving. Old Commander’s a traitor, new one’s an idiot, and you used us as cannon fodder. Vanguard my ass! Threw us into the meat grinder!”
The Jackals let out an approving cry, and a few wounded soldiers around the area murmured their assent.
Jennifer equipped her bow. She was having none of this from a bunch of bandits.
“So, what’s your plan, exactly? Steal food and supplies so more people die then try to flee off-world? Pretend it doesn’t affect you?”
To her surprise, Jennifer didn’t say this. She looked around for who did say it. Steve approached from behind, his purple eyes glinting with beautiful resolve.
“Because the Entity is coming for us all. Everything is going to be Nexus soon enough. The multiverse is broken and it’s all our responsibility to fix it. You really want to just be some bandits who made everything worse, or will you rise to the occasion for once?”
He was standing next to her, now, sword drawn. She reached out and grabbed his free hand. He squeezed it warmly.
“Well,” Jennifer pressed. “You heard the man. What will it be?”
The Jackal raised his sword and charged them. With a shared grin, they charged in turn, ready to fix things together.
Chapter42:Present, Future and Past (Claw)
Claw’s laughter echoed between the now empty buildings of the village after he appeared in the central square. The village looked like it had undergone a fair amount of changes, not that Claw could be sure since he had no previous memory to compare with. It just looked different from what his image of a typical village was. The area around where Dr. Mercury had found the anomaly had been bulldozed by the Tower’s geomancers, around it a rudimentary but steadily improving research setup had been built. Most of the activity in the village was centered around it. While the central square was devoid of researchers, several commanders stood around and discussed.
Claw turned to the enderman who had teleported him away from the hill, he said: “Good work Steelborn.”
Steelborn gave a respectful nod in reply and teleported back into battle.
Claw reflected on his personal contribution, showing up at the hill, assassinating the Prophet and his… servant? It didn’t matter now, they were both dead. He had also had one hell of a fight with the general, Kay, one he would have won had he finished off the mage, Astro. It was something Claw could live with, incapacitating Astro had been enough since at that time his true target had still been alive.
It had been exhilarating, much more so than any of the hunts he remembered. Back then he was only a beast, now he could enjoy battle fully with all his senses and a mind able to comprehend it in its entirety. Of course, Claw didn’t only find joy in fighting, seeing the plan he had laid out with the Ender come to fruition was equally satisfying.
Claw paused, a thought had suddenly appeared in his mind. Wait a damn second, I can heat up my muscles for increased strength? Why didn’t I know that five minutes earlier?
Clenching his fists, Claw felt a heat rise up inside of him. Not rage but actual heat. He looked down at his body that was now significantly less covered due to Kay’s silver-purple flames having burnt away his armor. An orange glow was emanating from between his scales. So it was true. Claw threw a few punches at the air, testing out his newly increased speed and strength. With this he could have ended the fight much more quickly.
Claw let out a sigh as his body cooled back down. He could have gotten angry but what was the point? His main objective was complete, the Prophet could no longer divulge any vital information, so what if the general lived? There were plenty more opportunities for killing him in the future.
He spent the next bit of time walking around the square talking to various Tower commanders about how their respective soldiers fared and their estimated losses. In truth Claw was just killing time waiting for the Ender to return, she was the only one who mattered in this respect. The people lower down in the chain of command were good at their job but at the end of the day they were not the ones to write the battle plans, they were the ones to execute them.
Some minutes before the Ender returned, Claw felt an enormous shift in the nearby ambient energy, as if it was drawn to a point near the village. Not long after he felt that the Entity had left its throne room. That could mean only one thing, the mage that created the scar had returned. Claw knew that whatever fight was currently happening outside of the fortification was a couple of orders of magnitude above his weight class. Physical fights he could do but he hardly stood a chance against a mage of this caliber, especially since this was not exactly normal magic. As Claw thought, more and more loose threads of information unravelled in his mind. He’d pull on them as soon as he had time but now was not that moment.
Finally, the Ender arrived. She was clearly battered but had a victorious smile on her face, a rare expression for her, the smile that was, not the victory. Claw immediately walked over to her with swift steps.
He asked: “So, how would you say it went?”
The Ender took a few deep breaths before answering. “According to plan,” she held up a hand and counted on her fingers: “we know the approximate strength of their soldiers and mages, we killed a good portion of their forces and we managed to lure out Shadow so the good doctor can gather more data. Our own losses are nothing we can’t replenish. How did it go on your side?”
Claw mirrored her previous smile. “Also according to plan. Prophet’s dead, his guardian too. Kay and Astro are badly wounded, wouldn’t surprise me if they bled out on that hill but we shouldn’t assume that. They most likely have healing supplies.”
The Ender asked: “Speaking of Kay, how much of a problem was he?”
Claw said: “Not much of one, the only bit of his magic that was useful was that flame that burned through the bindings in my armor,” Claw gestured to the sad remains of his underclothes that still clung to him, “I sensed his portals. Heat, cold or electricity can’t harm me, at least not in the amounts he could produce. I know that this body is a product of deliberate design, and I must say, whoever came up with it really thought of everything. Just one bad thing, apparently the other one told Kay about the silver.”
As soon as Claw had found out about his weakness to silver he had shared it with the Ender, there was no reason to treat it as the secret the voice in his head made it out to be. Besides, as long as the Entity lived he would not die either way, it seemed that the Entity needed him alive. The reason for this would probably become clear at some point, Claw wouldn’t be surprised if it was buried somewhere in the other one’s mind.
Before the Ender could answer, Glibby appeared next to them about two meters up in the air, flailing before he hit the ground in a heap. The Ape was in bad shape, deep cuts seeping blood on several parts of his body. But above all, Glibby was furious.
He screamed: “HELIX YOU MODS-DAMNED BRAT! I’M NOT DONE WITH YOU OR YOUR GREEN FURRED FRIEND!”
There was silence, heads turned and then awkwardly turned back.
The Ender used the opening: “So, Glibby. How many of the rebels will you have to fight to actually win one? The shepherd didn’t count by the way, I’m pretty sure even Bul could have killed him if he had some endermen with him. I don’t think there are many other escapees left for you to prove your mettle.”
“SHUT UP YOU-” Glibby began, but instead of the expected barrage of insults, only blood and gibberish came out of his mouth.
Claw only shook his head, too appalled to add his own thoughts. It didn’t take him long to spot Freak lurking in the shadows, or more correctly, rolling on the floor laughing in the shadows.
The Ender sighed, then shouted: “Get him a medic, as funny as this is, I think the Silhouette would rather have him not bleed out.”
Claw turned to the Ender. “If there is nothing more to do here, we should go back to the Tower. I’m sure the Entity has a bathhouse somewhere there, I think we can afford some relaxation.”
The Ender gave Claw an oddly pained but otherwise unreadable look, then took him by the shoulder and they both teleported back to the Tower. Just as they arrived Claw thought: Right, endfolk, water. Shouldn’t have suggested that.
###
It turned out that there really was a bathhouse somewhere within the Tower, and apparently it was used for relaxation by a variety of staff. The Ender had neglected to tell Claw this, both in their initial tour and after he brought it up. Claw spent a brief moment speculating on why and ended up somewhere between her being disinterested in it due to her physical nature or simply due to her strictly-business attitude. It didn’t matter, Claw felt refreshed.
He was currently walking the Tower’s corridors, halls and staircases, mostly without aim but with a concrete goal in mind. He wanted to have a better look at the portions of the Tower he had only seen briefly. One such place was the prison, he’d walked past many times since its entrance branched off one of the major staircases but he had never actually taken a look inside.
A short distance into the entrance corridor was a heavy gate that had apparently been significantly reinforced after the recent prison break. It was guarded by two endermen and four humans. Claw nodded to the guards and they let him through. After the gate there was a corridor lined with the magic-suppressing lamps that were ubiquitous in the Tower but especially dense in the prison sections.
Soon after there was a three-way fork in the corridor, the leftmost one leading to the more comfortable cells that were used to house high-importance prisoners, the middle one leading to some sort of arena and the rightmost one leading to the more traditional prison. Claw decided to pick the latter first.
Claw found the lamps slightly annoying since every time he passed one he felt a slight tingle all over his body from the ambient magic gradient that they created, however he recognized that they were absolutely required to contain some of their prisoners. A thought appeared in Claw’s mind on the topic of imprisonment, the other one had to be somewhere in his mind since he obviously was neither absorbed nor dead. Claw had also noticed that he had changed over the time he’d been the one in control, he wasn’t the exact same person he was on the first day.
Claw found that he was calmer now, he had a certain distance to everything happening around him that he didn’t have after he woke up. How much of this was just him developing from the beast he had been and how much of it was the other one’s memories influencing him? Claw figured that he’d have to answer that question eventually.
While contemplating, Claw had arrived in the prison proper, a multi-layered structure with each layer consisting of a grid of smaller corridors, each of them bordered by barred cells. There were few prisoners near the entrance but there were some, mostly humans but there were the occasional endermen. Very rarely there were species that Claw had never seen before, even the voice in his head had nothing to say about them.
Claw spent a while walking the corridors, when he passed some prisoners would shrink back into their cells, others would hurl insults at him, others only looked at him with broken indifference. These weren’t the ones they needed anything from, the prisoners here were the ones they just needed out of the way or as a means to exert pressure on someone.
As Claw turned a corner, he spotted a door at the end of the corridor, apparently a staffroom for the jailers. He approached it and looked inside. The room was not very different from other such rooms, a table, filing cabinets, flowing water, food storage. This room was currently empty save for a single large figure: Glibby the Ape.
Glibby was currently sitting at the big central table, very intently studying an old, leather-bound book.
While Claw didn’t particularly like the Ape, animosity would lead nowhere. Even without the voice’s help, he’d have figured that out on his own simply from watching Glibby interact with the Ender. From what he knew Glibby had history with Kay and since Kay was now the leader of the rebels, anything Claw could dig up on him would be helpful.
Claw cleared his throat, he had also realized that people usually needed some kind of hint that he was there. Apparently it was not common for someone of his stature to move as silently as he did.
“Hello, Claw,” Glibby said tersely. “How may I help you?”
He didn’t look up, and began flipping pages in no particular direction.
Claw took a closer look at the illustrations that were visible. It turned out that Glibby was reading about demonology, which made sense in the light of his recent defeat. Useful information.
Claw said: “You’re reading about demons, aren’t you? I happen to know a few things about them, maybe we could arrange an information exchange.”
“Sounds lovely,” he said without any convincing attempt at emotion beyond contempt. “What, might I ask, am I exchanging?”
“Some interesting bits about that general of theirs, Kay. I hear you two have history.”
Glibby seemed energised by the opportunity to talk about himself. The book flopped shut and was tossed onto the table with little regard.
“Oh, history’s a generous word. He’s the reason I got the original Gray Ones - stranded poor Silver and his brothers in my world - but then we didn’t interact for over ten years. His friend British - a detective, you wouldn’t know him - considered me a rival rather undeservedly, so we ran in the same circles for a while I suppose. And, of course, when Kay took an interest in the Silhouette’s identity I was sent to silence any sources that might talk to him. I was, however, there in the days of his final fall and, of course, his death. My role was no more than that of a bit player, though - a handsome footnote in the tragedy of the Court of Righteous Protest.”
Claw nodded. “And since he’s dead, who’s the man leading the rebels? A past version of him?”
“Oh certainly, he lost an eye in the years between our first and final encounters - some terrible feud he got wrapped up in, unimportant - our rebel still has both. From what I can gather, I’m the reason he’s here. Sorry, this requires a little context.
“The man who was, at the time, the Silhouette, tried to sell a powerful artefact known as an Eye of Ender to the Entity. Turned out it was all a trap, the Entity absorbed him and stripped him of knowledge - fair play, I never liked that one - then let go of his vessel and left a few Endlings to kill the rest of us. Kay must have been watching, because he swooped down and stole the Eye. He ran around a while as our two, warring factions tried to secure the artefact and finally hopped into a portal to Nexus. I got slightly too excited and hurled a firebomb at the portal as he entered, managing to shut it off. The Endlings were stranded and I graciously brought them into the employ of the new Silhouette, and Kay was nowhere to be seen. Obviously he got back somehow, but I have to assume he comes from some point between my destroying that portal and his return to the Sane Realm.”
Glibby decisively slapped the table.
“And there you have it. The origin of our problem.”
That was rather interesting, Claw admitted. He replied: “I know better than to try to unravel the ways in which the Kay that died relates to the Kay we have now, messing with timelines in that way only leads to headaches. However, this provides us with a very interesting possibility. Were there any… flaws or weaknesses Kay showed after he returned?”
“Ah, a psychological profile. How dull,” he groaned. “I think I’ll tell you an anecdote instead - I think you’ll find it quite revealing as to his character.
“He had an enemy - he’s dead now - called Hamish. A colleague of mine. They had some feud going back to childhood, and Kay just could not forgive him. And the Silhouette exploited that. He leant Hamish to a group called the Family - some black ops group in the employ of the Realm of the Seven Kingdoms - to ensure that once they started killing Kay’s friends we knew exactly who Kay would devote his efforts to killing.
“And, when the Family’s gambit - a complicated little affair involving magical wells and souls and demons which I won’t bore you with - finally failed as expected, Hamish had orders to run off and meet us in a secluded cellar. Kay, of course, followed him. I slugged him in the head, and when he came to, he was presented with Hamish in chains, and the Silhouette offering him a gun.
“The terms were simple. Kay would take the gun and shoot Hamish, but he had to do something else first. An ascetic monk was presented - some adversary of the Silhouette, I assumed, though perhaps not. If Kay wanted to kill his enemy and finally scratch the itch of revenge, he had to do the Silhouette a favour and kill the monk, some stranger he’d never met and who seemed for all intents and purposes blameless.”
Glibby leaned back and grinned.
“He hardly even hesitated.”
He stood up and began to pace excitedly.
“Now, the Silhouette had staked a lot on the Family’s employer, Dominus, winning the war against Kay and his masters, and that did not happen. Indeed, many of the Silhouette’s allies in the True Court were either dead or awaiting trial for treason thanks to Dominus’ folly. So, he hoped that by this mechanism he would both do Kay a favour and gain some dirt on him. Kay was, by this time, ruler of a large nation on the winning side. Swapping out Hamish for him would be a perfect trade.”
He paused, and Claw heard the straining of his gauntlets as the Ape clenched them tight.
“Astro and a few others burst in. Hamish had blabbed about his orders to one of the Family, and he blabbed to Kay’s friends with his dying breath. Kay suddenly realised how this looked and, in a desperate attempt to save his reputation, rounded the gun on the Silhouette, shot him in the head. I just about escaped, carrying the Silhouette’s body away.
“A few weeks later, the network appointed a new Silhouette, who decided the first order of business was killing Kay to reassert power. We cornered his carriage on a bridge, expecting a fight. We’d even brought the Grey Ones in. He surrendered immediately, saying he needed to pay for his crimes. Silver was livid. We burned Kay on a pyre.”
He stopped and lifted a gauntlet to his face in what Claw recognised as an attempt to look ponderous.
“The moral of that story is, Kay is more than willing to disgrace himself to settle a grudge, but he can’t live with the shame. Antagonise him into doing something horrible, and he’ll destroy himself trying to prove he’s still noble at heart.”
He bowed.
Glibby sure liked to talk a lot, however this was immensely helpful and he deserved the information Claw promised him. Claw would think over what he heard about Kay later, but so far this was good news. With the other one gone, Kay obviously lacked someone who could dampen his tendencies so it was only a matter of time until he did something. As for creating a “nemesis” like this Hamish, Claw believed he was already well on track with that.
He sat down in a chair and gestured to Glibby to sit down as well, opening the demonology book.
Claw said: “So, as for your demon problems. You’re probably looking for a weakness too, one that’ll help you in the future. Demons as a whole are as varied as they come, the forms they take are only the parts of them that can reach into our world, which is why killing a demon is near-impossible. All you can do is banish it to wherever it came from. Different demons have different weaknesses, which are either dictated by the demon’s nature or by the summoning ritual used.
“For instance there could be a demon out there that for some reason loses its grasp on our reality if it ever comes in contact with large amounts of cedar wood sawdust. On the ritual side, demons are always bound to a contract of some form, breaking this contract immediately ejects them from reality, which can be used to give demons artificial weaknesses. A ritual could specify that the demon may never cross lines of salt.
“However, all of this gets difficult if you take demonspawn into consideration. They fully belong to our world, what sets them apart from regular people is that they retain some aspects of their demonic parent. This also includes their weaknesses, which now harm instead of banishing. If our sources are correct, Helix is second generation, so his demonic heritage will still be very strong.”
“Well, what’s his weakness, then?” Glibby grunted. “Why tell me he has one and not what it is?”
Claw flipped through the pages of the demonology book until he found the section that listed various demons.
“The main issue is that if you want to know Helix’ demonic weaknesses and strengths you need to know who his demonic ancestor was. A demonology book like this one will help you understand which traits to look for, since those are passed down as well. Some demons may have horns shaped in a particular way, if they have horns that is. They may also have certain skin markings or other features like non-standard numbers of fingers. These traits reflect on their offspring as far as they are applicable to humanoid shapes.
“Now, most demons never produce offspring with anyone from our world, it’s a rare thing overall. Naturally there are demons that have countless mortal children, those demons are usually denoted succubi or incubi, if they don’t have another even more defining trait like an aptitude for killing or deception. Most of those are known and listed in books like this, their names are often ‘submitted’ by their own children, sometimes even volunteered by the demons themselves.
“The real problem are those demons who only have a single mortal child, they may be listed but the fact about the child is often unknown. Still, the method of using distinctive traits to determine lineage applies.”
“Distinctive horns, and hoping he’s not an only child… not much to go on,” Glibby muttered, eyeing a skin of wine he’d left on his seat. Claw could tell he was losing the Ape’s attention, and so continued before any opportunity to communicate something useful had passed.
“Your best shot is either trying a couple of common weaknesses that don’t make it obvious what you’re doing. If you don’t want to do that, I suggest doing a lot of reading, perhaps questioning some demonologists that we have employed or captured could also help you. Different worlds will know different demons, the more you look at the more likely you are to find something. Sadly, even with all of this a weakness is not a given, usually the best way of killing demonspawn is plain-old murder.”
“Murder! If only I’d thought of that!” he snapped. “The damned kid always starts spewing purple fire or getting rescued.”
“If he transforms or forms a body of flames those are additional things you could look for.” Claw paused. “And believe me when I say this, that was not an accusation, I don’t mean to be hostile to you like the Ender is. You may have made a fool of yourself repeatedly and publicly and I admittedly haven’t thought highly of you in the past but that kind of animosity only leads to problems. And problems are the last thing I want in this operation.”
Glibby fell very quiet.
“How big of you,” he laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll ensure I’m the least of your worries.”
He lifted the book.
“If you’ll excuse me.”
With a tip of his hat, the Ape left.
Chapter43:Internal Affairs or something (Freak)
I was in a splendid mood. Glibby had once again made a fool of himself in front of everyone and people beyond the upper leadership were catching onto his repeated failure. I sometimes heard engineers or even kitchen staff gossip with lowered voices about the extent of the Ape’s failings and his inability to settle his grudge with the demon child. The child part was honestly what had caused the rumors to explode, because at the end of the day, a child was still a child.
I chuckled to myself, no there was no shortage of entertainment within the walls of the Tower, or outside of it. That Destiny girl really had fallen for my “humanity rubbing off on me” spiel, but in all honesty, who could blame her? Desperate and hungry for revenge as she was, she’d probably have made deals with worse. In the end all that mattered was that I now had someone from the other side I could use. Because other than my exact reasons, there had been a lot of truth in what I told her. The Entity was too unpredictable, too alien to rely on. However, as it stood I preferred to keep options open and Destiny was just one of them.
I was currently floating around somewhere between reality and the dreamscape, which I was barred from entering fully, such was the price of a physical form. In this state I could easily travel throughout the Tower, ignoring walls and whatever dimensional origami the Entity had performed to fit everything into the building. It was slower than teleportation but had the enormous upside of being able to observe anything that went on in the physical world. I’d go back to reality fully if I found something interesting, sometimes to listen in on a conversation, other times to report sabotage, I still had some obligations after all.
My current destination was Dr. Mercury’s personal lab. It had been somewhat of a hotspot for me in recent days. She did some very interesting research there, at least when she wasn’t out in the fortified village gathering data. I usually wasn’t one for science, like magic it was something I had no affinity for, however what she was doing was different. Her research concerned itself with whatever the mage called Shadow did, though at this point calling her a mage would probably be as accurate as calling me a poltergeist, her “duel” with the Entity had made it very clear that she was something else.
When I swooped close to Dr. Mercury’s lab, I noticed that she was not alone, a second person was currently in the process of walking in the door. By their stature I instinctively assumed this to be the Ender but no, it turned out that it was Claw.
Claw was… interesting to say the least, he was different from anyone I had ever met before, perhaps outside of his flipside Fire, but that was a given. Claw claimed he feared nothing and unlike anyone else who had made that claim, it actually seemed to be true. Then again, I once thought the same about the Entity as well.
I materialized right beside Dr. Mercury, invisibly of course. She was currently sitting at a desk with multiple monitors on it, whatever they displayed was way beyond my understanding. She quickly got up and turned towards the door.
Claw said: “So, my mind recently brought some things to my attention that I think you’d be quite interested in.”
No greeting, no big introductions, straight to the point, that was Claw.
Dr. Mercury seemed to relax, she said: “Hello Claw. What kinds of things do you mean? Perhaps related to the negative energy readings I’m analyzing right now?”
Claw closed the door behind him, took a few steps into the room and then sat down in the large chair that the Ender used whenever she visited Dr. Mercury.
He said: “Exactly those, except that they’re not really negative-”
Dr. Mercury cut him off. “-but only below the ambient noise threshold our sensors are calibrated to, I know. Sadly, the term has already taken hold and getting everyone to use ‘null energy’ or something of the sort would be more effort than it’s worth. But anyways, continue.”
Claw said: “I happen to know a few things about what causes these readings, it seems the other one did a great deal of research in that direction. What I’m getting from it is that the readings are caused by tears in reality, exposing the Void.”
Dr. Mercury replied: “No, Void energy is different from those readings.”
Claw shook his head. “Looks like we have another word problem here, the Void beneath the bedrock is distinct from the Void between worlds. The former is actively opposed to matter and very energetic, the latter is emptiness in its purest form, the concept of our spatial dimensions and time does not exist between the worlds.”
Dr. Mercury was now pacing around the room, one hand behind her back, the other holding her chin. “We never did perform any research into what was between worlds, simply because it was out of reach. We never had and still have no way of parting the fabric of reality to access the Void between worlds. I can’t imagine the energy required to perform such a feat.”
Claw stood up and walked over to the monitors Dr. Mercury had been using, taking a look at whatever was written on them. I honestly expected the conversation to be a little more interesting but no luck so far. I just had to wait.
After a few minutes of observing the readouts, Claw spoke again: “Most of what’s here doesn’t hold much value, beyond telling us that something definitely tore a hole into reality. Look Veronica, I’ll be honest with you.”
Dr. Mercury flinched at the mention of her first name, an image of the Entity appearing in her mind. Aha. Apparently, the Entity had threatened her with something and used her first name, must have been pretty bad if she reacted that way. Definitely something to keep in mind.
Claw continued: “Most of what you’re doing is strictly science, rigid and explainable. This goes beyond science into the realm of magic, or at least what people say is magic. The truth is, look at something long enough and you’ll find rules and patterns.”
Dr. Mercury replied: “Sufficiently analyzed magic, I get you. Now, you said Fire did a lot of analyzing, with what results?”
Claw sat down in the chair again. “One result: Shadow.”
Stopping her pacing, Dr. Mercury looked at me, or rather through me and at Claw. “I think that needs a bit of context.”
Claw explained: “I’m still a bit hazy on why, but I know that at some point the other one came up with a ritual to separate a mind from the brain it is housed in, apparently amplifying magical capabilities at the same time but for him the separation was the important point. In his world he founded what he called the ‘Ascension Project’.”
Dr. Mercury nodded. “Good name, vague, ominous, grandiose. What exactly was it?”
Claw gesticulated as he explained. “In short, they had a lot of volunteers, without quotation marks, who they used to iron out the problems in the ritual. I can draw you some illustrations later for the exact process if you want me to.”
“Please do.”
Now this conversation was much more interesting than the technobabble or arcanobabble from earlier, whichever of the two it was. I positioned myself closer to them, listening with full attention.
Claw said: “They went through roughly a hundred and fifty subjects, some died, some lived, two became impervious to magic. After that they were finally ready to perform it on Shadow, the dirty secret was that the ritual as it was intended would only work on Shadow, just that the other one didn’t exactly know at the time, he only found out later. Something about her was different, and whatever that difference was made the ritual change her.” Claw paused, apparently trying to coax some more information out of his mind. “The results were impressive, magical prowess beyond anything known, the ability to focus on a seemingly unlimited amount of things, and oh, yeah any mind that comes in contact with hers is obliterated.”
Dr. Mercury slowly said: “Some of that is starting to sound familiar. Especially the part about the minds.”
Oh yes, very familiar in fact. This was exactly what I hoped to hear, a confirmation for my suspicions.
She continued: “So if your information is accurate, we could be dealing with a being that is similar to the Entity in principle but different in many aspects. This would certainly explain how she managed to survive direct contact with the Entity.”
I silently chuckled to myself, not only that but she also struck fear in our glorious leader’s metaphorical heart.
Claw said: “That sounds about right, problem is that after that I can’t really access more information about her. Whatever she did in that village and in the battle, she couldn’t do it before.”
Dr. Mercury said: “You mean she’s… growing, no, developing in some way? We know the Entity becomes more powerful as Nexus absorbs worlds but what is her power source?”
Claw froze, only the reflections of lights in his black eyes slightly moving betrayed that his eyes were darting around the room.
He said: “I just got something, a memory that isn’t from the other one. It’s a… string? It’s attached to what I think is my body and it’s going… somewhere. No clue what it means.”
Dr. Mercury seemed to take a few seconds to think, then replied: “If it’s in any way consistent with how your other memories are triggered, it’s got something to do with Shadow. But nevermind that, do you think there is anything we can do to combat Shadow?”
Claw seemed distracted when he answered but quickly focused again: “From what I can tell reality is like an eggshell in reverse, difficult to break from the inside but easy from the outside. She’s capable of tearing holes in reality, which implies that at least some part of her exists between worlds. Which means if we want to hurt that part of her, we need something that has similar characteristics.”
Yes, that’s what I want to hear.
Dr. Mercury continued his train of thought: “The crystals have a part that extends out of our world. But a crystal on a stick doesn’t sound like it would do anything. We’d need something more sophisticated, like the machine but different.” She stopped. “You know what, I don’t think we should continue down that train of thought.”
Claw nodded. “She’s similar to the Entity so whatever we come up with that hurts her, can potentially hurt it too. I don’t think it’s worth the risk, the whole reason I killed the Prophet was because he was a potential danger in that exact regard.”
“And we’re not going to build something that can harm the Entity only for it to somehow fall into rebel hands. That’s amateur stuff, we know better than that.” Dr. Mercury concluded.
I was half a mind to fully materialize and punch a wall, they were so close to making my life a whole lot easier. I sighed. The hard way it was then, at least I learned some things that could be useful.
I slid out of the physical world again, I was quite honestly bored of listening to those two talk and my frustration didn’t help either. My destination was not far, my personal chambers.
I technically had no need for a living space of my own since I lacked the typical physical needs of food, drink and sleep that mortals had but the privacy was still a big plus. After all, I was the only phantom in the Tower, nobody spied on the spy.
There was a desk in my chambers that I only used to write reports on who was doing what, easily the most boring part of my job especially since actual sabotage was rare. I opened a drawer and took out a small yellow crystal. It was time to arrange a meeting with a certain vengeful rebel.
Chapter44:Behind Closed Doors (Kay)
“We can’t return to the Shelter,” said Tyron.
“We need to regroup with Lucy somehow. If they know where the Shelter is, they’ll have killed her by the time we arrive. Even if we order her and the civilians to come meet us, we’ll be asking them to cross miles of no man’s land,” responded Steve.
Destiny said nothing but stood up and nodded furiously when Lucy’s name was mentioned. Unsurprising. Even when Destiny had been in the pits of grief, the lessons she gave to Lucy had brought out an uncharacteristic energy in her. She may have been civilian staff, but her survival was imperative to continued military viability.
“We can’t stay there, though,” said Rose. “It needs to be a quick in-and-out job.”
“Yeah, a quick jaunt into the mortuary before coming out in coffins,” Astro snarked.
Tyron gestured to him tensely, as though he were living evidence of his rightness.
The flickering light of the torches coloured everyone an abrasive orange tint. It was like we were all part of a receding twilight, ready to fade out into the night of defeat.
“Gussying up our loss in purple prose will not change our fortunes,” My Book scolded.
As my Inner Circle continued to debate, I contemplated the Shelter. When it was Fire’s, I had wanted to make it into a fortress, easily defended by guerilla tactics. Fire had opposed that, but I drew up plans anyway in the hope of persuading him. That would be achievable.
“They will know the blueprints. Exits, entrances, weak points to hit.”
It occurred to me that we could change the layout. Not so much within the base - if they got inside a massacre would occur no matter what - but the exits and entrances could be chopped and changed. The functions of rooms could be shuffled. Traps laid. Steve and Jennifer and the other builders would have to work overtime, but it could be done.
“What is the goal in the long-term?”
Put simply, we had to find allies. For allies we needed portal technology. Voidblade and the others were scouting for one of their facilities. It was only a matter of time before they found it. Then, a thought occurred to me.
“Destiny,” I began, breaking up the debate. “Suppose we were to travel to your world. Would we find many allies?”
It was the only portal which we knew the location and destination of.
Destiny paused for a moment and looked guilty.
“Nothing military, barely any cities - the Sovereign did a number on Minera,” sighed Destiny. “There’s a few of Carter and Anya’s old Liberator comrades. Clarke, Kami, a few others. Not nearly enough to make a difference.”
“And the Sovereign? They were in conflict with the Tower, weren’t they? Are there any remnants that might put aside their evilness and help us?” asked Steve somewhat indelicately, though I awaited an answer with bated breath.
“The Sovereign wouldn’t think twice about killing you. If you tried to talk to them, you would deserve it.”
Destiny’s tone in the second half of her answer became so acrid that I couldn’t help but think she was threatening Steve, whose head sank in embarrassment. I carefully averted my eyes in order to disassociate myself from the idea. They fell on the brace on my leg. The healing magic had improved my condition drastically, but it would still be fragile and easily break again. Additionally, I don’t know if this was physical or psychosomatic or whatever, but something about standing on it too long made me feel frail and ill.
“And if you fail to obtain portals?”
“Then we die failing to obtain portals,” I respond. “Or retreat into another world where, if we’re lucky, we come across someone who might help us.”
“I prefer the latter.”
I nodded without particular commitment, mentally rubber stamping the stance I was about to put forward.
“As I see it, we have little choice but to return to the Shelter and remain there at least until we come across a portal facility. Then, we can start enlisting allies. We’ll have to alter the layout - mainly entrances and exits - and fortify the place to ensure they can’t profit from any knowledge Claw may provide them with. And, naturally, I’m going to propose we set up the guerilla defences I recommended under Fire’s leadership. Any objections?”
Tyron spoke up, undeterred.
“It’s hard to accept but we need to stay on the move for the time being. You seriously think Claw’s knowledge of our defences, and location won’t grant them a serious advantage?”
“Actually,” said Astro. “We don’t know how much he knows.”
“What?” Tyron and I asked in unison.
Astro cleared his throat.
“Kay, you were pretty dinged up when he said this, but as he was leaving Claw said you were his first ‘proper fight’.”
“Yes, I’m great at fighting, that was never in doubt,” I chuckled. “And?”
“Well, we know he’s been out on hunts before. Either he’s never had a hunt he considers worthwhile before, or he doesn’t remember them properly.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek thoughtfully.
“He did say Claw last broke out fighting a group of hunters. Must have been pretty serious if they broke Fire’s composure. Mods know I struggled...”
“It would explain why they haven’t killed Lucy already,” offered Rose.
“And if his memories come back?” said Tyron.
Everyone else seemed pretty on board with going back to the Shelter - and Astro had been the only one on Tyron’s side to begin with. So, I was tempted to say, “Then, we deal with it,” but that didn’t seem very inspiring or leader-like.
“Don’t say it,” said my Book.
Thankfully, Astro had an actual idea of how to undermine Tyron’s objections.
“Claw might not have a say in the matter. Fire’s still in there - at least, that’s what Shadow believes - and he’s unlikely to cede control completely. Granted, we don’t know how Claw got free, but it’s pretty clear he’s not possessed directly by the Entity, otherwise Claw wouldn’t be there at all.”
There were murmurs of assent.
“Maybe Fire’s deliberately withholding information from Claw,” proposed Steve with a laugh. “Literally undermining him from the inside.”
“Okay, it’s a little speculative, but so long as Steve doesn’t start making puns, you’ve convinced me,” Tyron conceded. “Our best shot is going back. It’s unanimous. Can I just say that we should be ready to up sticks at the first sign of danger?”
“Of course. Steve, would you and the builders be able to get on constructing escape routes as soon as we return?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said with a thumbs-up. “Dig down deep, hide the entrance and make sure it leads far away. Sounds doable.”
“Excellent,” I said contentedly, and started a polite round of applause. Then, with a much flatter tone: “That concludes the foreign policy segment of the meeting.”
Everyone shuffled uneasily.
“As you may have noticed,” I began. “Shadow has developed a conflict of interest and cannot necessarily be relied upon. This is not her fault, and in-fighting must be avoided, if at all possible, but it is nonetheless concerning. Her Void form is potentially useful against the Entity, but also potentially unstable and dangerous. As such, Astro, I would ask you to ensure your presence at any future lesson she conducts with Warnado. I want to know what abilities she is teaching him, and any indications of a deteriorating mental state.”
Astro agreed reluctantly.
“Now, we have a more pressing matter in the same vein. I would like to ask that none of what we are about to discuss leave this room.”
No one objected. They knew what was coming. I tried to make it look like I had difficulty saying it - I wish it were more difficult - but I knew it was a necessary measure:
“I propose that we introduce an unofficial kill-on-sight policy for Claw. Astro, I and his victims can testify to his combat ability. And, as we just discussed, he may or may not have access to certain intelligence which could help the enemy. Additionally, the popular consensus among the troops is that Fire has betrayed us. We may issue any statement we like on the matter - he might be possessed by the Entity, or we might try fruitlessly to explain Claw - but we are unlikely to shake this impression. His body murdered the Prophet and his guardian, and they will never stop wanting revenge upon it. So, killing him is likely to provide a boost to morale.”
There was a stunned silence.
“We shall put this to a vote,” I dryly instructed. “Any arguments?”
“He’s our friend,” Tyron said in disbelief. “We-”
“-Shadow isn’t naturally as powerful as she is,” Astro cut in. “Even when their ‘server’ is considered, she underwent a procedure to cure a condition she had, and this severed her from reality. You all notice it, don’t lie. The way she talks like she’s watching us through a window, the slightly over-technical explanations, and the way she’s able to intuitively understand and manipulate the very being of Nexus. When she went after the Entity, she did not just become more powerful, she shed her physical being. She ripped herself open and just walked it off. I’m worried Fire might just be the only thing tying her back to reality. Do we really want to deal with the consequences of her fully dissociating from us mere mortals?”
Silence begat silence. It was as though a poison gas hung in the air, and no one dared open their mouth and risk inhaling it.
“I’ll do it, then,” I concluded. “I will kill Claw and I will deal with the consequences. I only ask you don’t try to stop me.”
“You’re mad,” the Book hissed. “You are ruining our chances of survival.”
“Survival necessitates risk-taking.”
Steve looked at me with a strange mix of horror and respect. Tyron averted his eyes and became very interested in scratching a mark on the table. Then, there was a thud. Rose had stuck her knife into the wooden surface.
“You won’t deal with the consequences alone,” she stated. “If you’ll have me, I’ll serve as your bodyguard, I have experience in the field.”
“I told you,” I thought. “Our risk-taking has been rewarded. One of Fire’s main supporters offers herself as bodyguard against his sister.”
“She’s injured,” it griped.
My eyes drift toward Rose’s splinted leg, and bandaged hip. I scanned her features and wondered if she didn’t look a little paler or less alert than usual. But no, she looked sharp as a razor.
“Thank you Rose, though I’d be remiss not to ask if you’re absolutely certain?”
With a smirk Rose said: “Give me a few days, I picked up a ritual or two working for that slightly unhinged cult leader. I have some Old Gods I need to get back in touch with.”
Chapter45:The new Regime (Voidblade)
The desert was barren. Miles of sand, with rare shrubs serving as the only progress markers. Only two things merited any attention at all. The first was a carriage bearing a sun-bleached imprint of the Tower insignia, flipped on its side like a wounded animal. The second was a conspicuous patch of fertile land about ten paces in diameter. A small, gravel road wound across it - probably the source of the carriage. Neither object yielded anything more than faint interest.
The overlapping of “Dimensional Sandwich Layers” fascinated Voidblade, personally. The world outside the End looked strange enough on its own, it became almost beautifully surreal when ripped about and stitched back together like this. But he wasn’t there for pretty landscapes. He teleported around until he found the edges of the desert to the North, South, East and West, and he swept around with a telescope when he reached each boundary. There was nothing. No sign of a Tower installation.
He pulled the list of locations out from beneath a string on his wrist, and, after writing a brief description of his discoveries, put an ‘X’ next to the final entry. No luck in three weeks. Even the outposts were being abandoned in favour of reconsolidation in the heart of Nexus. Any portals were left thoroughly irrecoverable. He and his scouts were no closer to discovering the facility.
As Voidblade teleported back to the Shelter, he was almost tempted to grumble, but dismissed the impulse as a sign of human influence.
He arrived outside a small, stone pillbox, disguised beneath trees and shrubs. Its inhabitants attempted to verify his identity.
“Name?”
“Voidblade.”
“Rank?”
“Scout Captain.”
“Purpose of excursion.”
Voidblade closed his eyes and thought carefully on the words Lucy had asked him to memorise before setting out. He didn’t have a paper because, if the enemy found it, they would know the passphrase for this operation. Still, it was difficult to always remember the wording.
“To see the dunes, and the wooden carcass upon them,” he strained.
It was easy to tell which phrases Kay had personally designed. Always formal and flowery.
The hatch on top of the pillbox opened, and Voidblade descended in. The soldiers still eyed him warily, and he kept his claws ready as he stooped down through the tight passage back to the Shelter proper. Since the Massacre at the Hill the entire population of the Shelter was jumpy, particularly around anyone who even slightly resembled a creature of the End. Officially, everyone knew Commander Fire had been possessed. His successor had made a big speech explaining “everything” at length. However, those who had seen Claw, even from a distance, knew he wasn’t a mindless drone. So, rumours of treachery persisted.
After another round of questions, he was admitted through a second hatch and into the main complex of tunnels. The original entrances and exits had been reshuffled or boobytrapped, so now the main means of entrance and exit were through these outer, guerilla tunnels - easily collapsed and with many chokepoints. Importantly, they allowed access to the pillboxes, and substantial effort had been made to reforest and boobytrap the area. The plan was to create a mire. If the enemy came, they would suffer for every inch of land.
Voidblade straightened up and squinted around, his eyes adjusting to the redstone light. He saw a desk at which one of Lucy’s secretaries scribbled away until his hands bled. Even more fortunately, Lucy herself was there. Voidblade didn’t bother with the secretary and spoke directly to her.
“Investigations unsuccessful. No sign of a portal facility. Outposts abandoned. Desert sighting a hoax. Were my scouts luckier?”
Lucy looked up. “Sadly no, it’s the same everywhere they checked. But even if the main objective didn’t succeed, intel is intel. Thank you Voidblade.”
Voidblade nodded and hoped to slip off to take his leave for the day. Unfortunately, three of his scouts approached him to report information he already knew. One Enderman, a human and a testificate.
The Enderman arrived first and simply stated: “Reports submitted to the secretary. Nothing found. I may take my leave?”
Voidblade nodded and savoured the efficiency of the exchange as the scout disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke. He knew the other two would have much more to say. He marched forward and indicated for them to follow.
The human babbled a description of his sites, confirming as redundant a description as Voidblade had come to expect. Outposts abandoned. Documents burned or removed. Sighted a convoy already known to exist. Voidblade dismissed him as soon as possible.
The testificate, Sergeant Raphoe, remained. Voidblade did not know what to make of him. He was in the infantry before the Massacre, and transferred very abruptly into the scouting corps. More worryingly, he volunteered rather than being reassigned, and was immediately made an officer. Voidblade couldn’t help but suspect he was spying for Kay, though he didn’t know exactly what that might mean.
This impression was only strengthened when the testificate had absolutely nothing to say about his reports, and instead informed Voidblade:
“Astro stopped by looking for you. Kay wants to speak with you in his chambers.”
Voidblade nodded and dismissed the potential informant with a grunt.
He started towards what was once the entrance hall, and on the way, he saw a weary-looking Jennifer and Steve debating over blueprints in a room to the side. As per usual, they were spotless and there were no dark rings beneath their eyes, but their movements were sluggish, and their statements punctuated by stifled yawns. Still, their fingers were interlocked, and they gave off an aura of resigned calm.
In the entrance hall, he caught a brief glimpse of Urist carrying some iron either towards or away from the forge – the dwarf was busy switching between two conversations, one immediately ahead of and the other immediately behind him.
Another figure of interest was a mage in a black robe arguing with Astro. Astro was clearly the angrier of the two, flaring his nostrils and digging his fingers into his palms. The mage wore a confrontational smirk on her face, leaning back where Astro leaned forward as though holding something tantalisingly out of reach. Additionally, where he spoke in a long, emphatic, upsettingly human sentences, the mage offered brief, clipped responses - often because he interrupted her.
Voidblade averted his eyes and tried not to pay attention. He wanted no part in the growing tensions between Shadow’s mages and Kay’s leadership. The mages had all taken to wearing identical black robes at some point during their trek back to the base. Voidblade had at first wondered where they got the material from, but then remembered they were magic and gave it no further thought.
And, as their loyalty to Shadow became more evident, Kay made sure to snub her. He made a great many public appearances within the Shelter, but he carefully controlled who he appeared alongside. Where Tyron, Rose, Destiny and Astro were fixtures in his entourage, he only met Shadow in person behind closed doors - in the Command Room. Otherwise, he sent messengers like Astro to formally, often publicly issue instructions to her. Lucy, Urist and Jennifer received similar treatment. It wasn’t as insulting with Jennifer, as he just asked Steve to convey messages in an informal capacity - though it still indicated distrust.
Voidblade was not in the entourage, but he also hadn’t been snubbed. He was happy with this middle route.
“Iridia,” Astro hissed, “I know you lot delight in making my job difficult, but this is really not a political matter. Did Shadow have a lesson with the boy today?”
“The child spoke to his mentor. Is that a lesson?”
“As we’ve established, no, not necessarily.”
“Then, why are you so concerned about who our master speaks to?”
Astro placed a hand on her shoulder and stared wearily into the acolyte’s eyes.
“...Answer the bloody question, Iridia.”
Voidblade tuned the spat out and teleported into a blank spot. He did not want to risk Astro flagging him down to see if Sergeant Raphoe had delivered his message and accidentally entangling him in the standoff. The further he could stay from human squabbles, the happier Voidblade would be.
He then passed the training room, which had been enlarged even further as topside exercises were now banned. He caught a glimpse of Tyron and Warnado sparring. The child had become obsessed with improving his hand-to-hand combat abilities. When they fought, he used no combat spells, only magic which helped him evade the attacks of Tyron, whose fists were covered in large quantities of soft but heavy cloth.
As Voidblade looked in, the Dragoknight caught Warnado in the head and sent him sprawling, before apologising profusely. The child didn’t even hesitate before rising and declaring, “No, don’t worry, I’ll do it right this time.”
He turned away from the route to the Command Room and crossed the threshold into the officers’ quarters. He heard a clatter of tools to his right.
“So, what’s the plan here?” Amanda grunted as she set the box down. “What does this stuff do?”
The box contained an assortment of things, including a jar filled with yellowish grains as well as the shattered remains of a blade made from a shiny, dark-grey steel.
“Just a couple of things I need for my ritual, if I want to do my job as a bodyguard properly, I need to be stronger, the ritual will help me accomplish that,” responded Rose.
Voidblade passed several doors onward. He looked at the large door at the end of the corridor - Fire’s room, now abandoned. Maybe it was the fact that the officers’ quarters were out of public view, but the new regime had left it undisturbed - a monument to the old Commander, no matter how irrecoverable he may be. Voidblade turned right and knocked on Kay’s door.
“Come in,” came the response.
Voidblade entered.
“Feel free to have a drink, if you wish. I know it doesn’t affect your people much, but, as I said, it’s there if you wish.”
The redstone lights were off. Kay sat in an armchair next to a spruce table, gesturing to a bottle of brandy, several stacked glasses and another available chair. Everything had an orange hue thanks to a fireplace he’d asked Steve to install shortly after he got back. Kay’s brace lay open in the corner, but the cane was propped against his leg. Voidblade had been skeptical at first, but it appeared Claw had done quite serious damage to his knee.
“We do not need to drink,” Voidblade responded in what he felt was a polite tone of refusal. He elevated the pitch of his voice slightly in an attempt to emulate human friendliness. “Water hurts our tissue, we have no liquid in the End, safe the juice of the Chorus Fruit.”
“Then I shall see if we can obtain some Chorus for the next feast, assuming we ever have something to celebrate again,” he snorted knowingly. “And a choir, perhaps. A chorus to sing and a Chorus to drink.”
The new Commander was smiling, but while many human nuances were lost on Voidblade, he could tell when they were tense. He decided to ingratiate himself with the boss as best he could.
“Alcohol is also acceptable in high concentrations,” Voidblade adopted a grimace not unlike a grin. He felt unclean.
Kay’s smile in turn became slightly less strained. He poured Voidblade a drink.
“You know, Voidblade,” he murmured. “I hope I don’t come across as closed-off from you. Endlings have done terrible things to humans in my world, as your humans have done terrible things to your kind. However, one thing that remains constant across all species of Endling I’ve encountered since I arrived here is that lack of liquid. Even the Chorus Fruit is scarce. Your scales can almost universally withstand the Void. You’re a hardy people, whatever shape you take.”
Voidblade shifted his feet as the Commander offered him a large measure. He took the glass and began to sip at it. The taste was sharp, bitter and faintly sweet in the aftertaste.
“Thank you,” he said uncomfortably, trying not to acknowledge Kay’s slightly tipsy commentary on the Enderborn.
“And yourself, of course, your service has been venerable throughout. You volunteered for Fire’s expedition, you helped build this place, and you’ve done excellent work in combat. Our formations did not prove as effective as I’d hoped at… at The Hill, so having yourself and the other Endlings in our ranks to flank and run the counteroffensive saved many lives. We certainly couldn’t have lost any more than we did without losing the army altogether.”
Voidblade fought the urge to nod. Most of the remaining Jackals had deserted almost immediately after the battle. Even after the leadership clarified what had happened, some others still deserted. They had around 800 soldiers left on active duty, with various civilians now being given rudimentary training in preparation for any impending attack. If many more had died, they would have been lucky to avoid a full mutiny.
“And, naturally, your scouting work, which is the reason I’ve called you here and the reason we’re drinking.”
He stood up and hobbled over to a map desk, beckoning Voidblade over. A charter of the lands North of the Tower was laid out with a series of pins.
“I think I’ve cracked the location, based on your reports.”
Voidblade’s eyes widened involuntarily, and he leaned in in silent anticipation.
“Your reports have been noting the gradual abandoning of outposts, and the destruction of portals. However, up until now we haven’t been able to figure out a clear pattern. The thing is, we weren’t thinking about what goes through the portals and where they might come out.
“Now, most convoys coming in towards the Tower itself are carrying weaponry and armour, most of those going out are the same. But then, you noted a substantive convoy entering a portal here a few days ago. Weaponry and armour were there, yes, but importantly it was mostly food and water. That portal was confirmed still standing just today.”
He tapped a pin emphatically and grinned like a showman.
“The next day, one of your scouts observes a convoy of similar size exit from a portal here.” Another emphatic tap. “What was it carrying? Almost exclusively food and water, even fewer weapons. This is stocking somewhere up. He couldn’t follow it and had to leave because a patrol got too close for comfort, but he was able to note the portal’s location. We confirmed it today. That portal was destroyed. They’re hiding something out here.”
Voidblade furrowed his brows and looked at the map. That they were shipping large quantities of food and water suggested it was a desert, and there was a stretch of desert there, but it was a large desert. And it was just one portal destruction.
“And I know what you’re thinking. That’s still a massive area to search, and what if they just travelled to another portal. That’s what I thought, but then we followed reports of another sustenance convoy going toward the same area from the far side. Again, the portal it exited from was destroyed afterwards. Our scout was also warned to look out for patrols, and able to follow it for a substantial length of time. Patrols were even more prevalent. And he got far enough to confirm that it was entering the desert. We also confirmed a third water convoy coming in from even further North - not guaranteed to go all the way down, but certainly shooting in the right direction. There’s something in there Voidblade, don’t you think?”
He was grinning madly and Voidblade felt a sudden pounding in his chest. He almost forgot that Kay had just admitted to giving his scouts instructions of which he had been unaware. This might actually be the site he had spent the last week looking for.
“I want you to investigate as soon as you are able. I appreciate that you’re likely tired, as with the other scouts-”
“Give me two hours.”
Kay laughed and clapped him on the arm.
“You absolute madman, there’s the spirit we need to win this war!”
Voidblade nodded and resumed his grimace. It felt less unclean, but he still felt strangely uneasy. He began to walk away when Kay stopped him. He scribbled down a note and placed it in Voidblade’s hand. It read:
Would you be able to swing by Shadow before you leave? Tell her I’ve been meaning to talk to her about the incident. Writing this to ensure she doesn’t already know before you tell her.
He winked in what was supposed to be an innocent manner, then returned to his map desk.
Voidblade gritted his teeth. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of. Then again, he was only the messenger, not necessarily a partisan. Shadow would understand, he hoped. Then again, she had been acting strange ever since she achieved this ‘Void state’. Voidblade didn’t feel as inherently disoriented around her as some of the humans did, but even he had to admit there was something wrong about her aura now. Nothing in the Overworld should be so immersed in the Void, not Enderborn, not human, not anything.
He bit the bullet and warped to Shadow’s improvised seminary. Her mages had claimed a section of the barracks. They had begun tearing down some of the walls to create a bigger communal area that they used for training and general social interaction. The leadership had tried to object but in the light of the recent losses there really were few arguments against them using up more barrack space.
Voidblade landed in the corner of one of their expanded rooms and scanned it for Shadow, spotting her at a table with three others, who Voidblade assumed to be some of her more powerful mages, judging by their slightly more elaborate robes.
While Shadow looked mostly like her old self, there was something about her that had undeniably and permanently changed. It was more a feeling than something you could spot. Just like Voidblade had thought earlier, something about her felt wrong. Despite her now frequently bad mood, she seemed to have at least a decent time talking with her mages.
“Shadow,” he said with a polite bow. “Kay wishes to see you.”
He scrunched the paper in his hand. He silently prayed she wouldn’t ask to see it.
She sighed. “Ah. That’s what he was trying to be funny about. If the commander requests my presence, I guess I should oblige.”
Voidblade bowed again, then left. He was unscathed, for the moment. For the first time, he wished his emotions had been easier to read, because then she might have understood how unwilling a part he was playing in their standoff.
Chapter46:Undeniably a Threat (Astro)
As I turn the corner into the officers’ quarters, my mood is a dangerous cocktail of contempt and stress. Kay has me running messages and checking on Lucy’s admin work and for a split-second I actually miss having Cossack around - normally Kay would delegate all that to him. So far today I have run four complete circuits of the Shelter, which is bigger than you’d think. Thankfully, he’s reduced my training obligations so I can focus on this sort of work, backdoor strategising and being present for every lesson Warnado undergoes.
Unfortunately, Shadow’s little ‘coven’ is making that last task a little more difficult. Normally she is polite and helpful enough, but if she can’t be immediately found I am bounced from acolyte to acolyte. Since the Battle of the Hill the mages have been forming an ever-closer circle around Shadow. They suffered proportionally fewer casualties than everyone else and, while we hushed up the Void-form incident as best we could among the ranks, a lot of the mages sensed it. When your commanding officer can go toe-to-toe with the Entity, you take notice. And so, Shadow’s mages had effectively become an army within the army, taking cues from the ‘Master’ herself before even contemplating bending the knee for Kay or Tyron.
Some, like Iridia, have taken this respect for Shadow’s capability to an almost spiritual reverence. And, unfortunately, she’s one of the few who ever seems to know where Shadow is perhaps by force of sheer obsession. I was hoping I might get some information from Pallas or Talita, usually more moderate, but they had been busy training the novices. So, I’d tried to get a straight answer from Iridia, who deflected as though I were a malignant inquisitor seeking to arrest and execute Shadow. Then again, the way Kay glowers when we discuss them…
I’ve tried to reassure him that they’re probably not an internal security threat, but days like today make me wonder if there really is something to worry about. I just wanted to know if Warnado had had a lesson with Shadow - he hadn’t, he stepped in to ask about having a lesson today. We are going to have one in about an hour. It took me twenty minutes to get that much information from Iridia and I still don’t know what the topic is he wants to discuss. Great.
As such, when I turn the corner and come face to face with the Master herself, I’m simultaneously plunged further into irritation and a little relieved that I might be able to get some clarity.
She’s standing outside Rose’s room, looking at me. Her white hair lies still, and her skin is the normal shade of coal-black, but I can’t help watching the air around her. Her aura is still off, still setting off some scrap of my brain which contains the fight-or-flight mechanism. I set both options aside with some difficulty and approach.
“Hello Shadow…” I see Rose’s door is open and am confused by the contents. “Sorry you, Rose, good to - to see you… Is there something different about you?”
Rose’s room is covered in blade-scratches, which is impressive as it’s completely made of stone. The furniture is destroyed. A glass jar with a few yellow grains in it lies shattered in the room’s centre.
And, of course, my question is stupid as Rose is obviously different. It’s just hard to pin down how. She still has shoulder-length black hair, brown eyes, elegant dark clothing and she’s still hiding an arsenal of knives everywhere she can… What’s changed?
“Hello Astro,” says Rose with a wry smile. “Notice anything?”
It’s odd to say this but she looked sharper. Physically sharper. Each strand of hair looks like a blade, her gaze like a pair of daggers. When I look away and only see her in the corner of my eye, her shape seems to change a little. She becomes narrower, more angular, like a continuous razor. I want to put her in a drawer so children can’t get at her.
“This isn’t that upgrade you were talking about, is it?” I ask warily.
“This is exactly it. Only took digging up some special ingredients from some ruins and destroying all of my furniture.”
“Very good,” I say awkwardly. “But… what did you do?”
I lean against the doorframe and shoot Shadow a ‘give me just a second’ look. I’m pretty sure she smirks.
“You see,” Rose begins. “So far, the only supernatural dedication I had was to the aspect of artifice, destruction and various other related concepts, that’s why I can create blades from thin air. My killing prowess was natural so to speak. This ritual established a major dedication to the aspect of various flavors of murder and general violence.
“I communed with one of its highest beings and called in some favors my old master had negotiated with it. So, here I am. Kay won’t have to worry about mundane assassinations from now on and I’m confident I can deal with most supernatural ones too.”
“Excellent,” says a voice from behind Shadow. “Mundane assassination attempts are by far my least favourite.”
Kay strides into view.
“Would you have time for a demonstration in the training room?” he asks confidently. “I believe Astro and Shadow have a lesson to prepare for.”
“Gladly,” Rose says, demonstratively materializing a knife in her hand.
“Perfect! With me.”
And with that, he strides off, Rose following closely and immediately. And so, I’m left with Shadow. I brace myself, promise I won’t try to fight her or break down and reveal all my secrets again.
“Well,” I begin. “What’s the topic of today’s lesson?”
Shadow says: “Sorry about Iridia, first of all. But for the lesson? I was thinking about checking Warnado’s progress, we haven’t really had a formal lesson in a few days, but he’s been training on his own or with Tyron. We should probably see how he’s improved.”
“Yes, flying, demonic summoning, item summoning et cetera…”
I say it all in a facade of professionalism, voice modulated and deep. Little emotion. Then I realise how little I have to say and force myself to add more. I see an opportunity to vent some frustration.
“And yes, tell Iridia to give a straight answer in future,” I continue. “She is under your command, but you are under Kay’s.”
Shadow sighed and nodded slowly. “Astro, can we speak privately?”
“Are we not alone right now?” I say densely.
“We might be, but some of my scryers could reasonably listen. A little hypocritical, I know. I have a way to ensure nobody can hear us if you’re up for it.”
She slowly raises up her hand in a manner that seems terribly familiar. Reality unknits and opens up as she moves her fingers downward, leaving a rift in the middle of the corridor tall enough for me to step into. It’s a pocket dimension. I sigh and step in.
I see a black-and-white space filled with simplistic furniture. Not simplistic as in sparse. I mean simplistic as in, basic geometric shapes. Sharp lines, few edges, right angles. I look down and my arm is affected by this place’s strange hue, appearing all black other than a white outline. I sit down on one of the chairs and look at Shadow. She has acquired the same hue, except for her eyes, which were their usual red. I don’t bother to question why. It’s her dimension, her aesthetic.
“So, what do we want to talk privately about?” I grunt as politely as I can muster.
Shadow points directly at me. “One thing is how you can be here without having your head explode from pain. Remember when I theorized that a second void exposure could acclimatize you? It seems that is what happened. Other things… this whole situation. Ever since Fire is gone, I don’t really have anyone I can talk with and considering our history, you are the one here I trust most.”
That is… a lot. I concede I’m pretty thoroughly disarmed by this vulnerability. I feel my anger shrink away a bit and I try to manifest some sympathy. I’m still wary, but I’m not heartless.
“Um… yes, my head is feeling much better. Thanks for asking. It stopped when you entered your Void-state, actually.”
I pause and reflect on this. It hadn’t even occurred to me that this pocket dimension was Void-born. I fight the urge to try and figure out how we’re not burning away and try to attend to the second half of her statement.
“And, yes, I’m here to listen if you need to talk about your brother’s situation...”
I read somewhere that we mortals like to dress death up in euphemism. Someone isn’t dead, they’re “in a better place”. They haven’t died, they’ve “passed onwards”. Back then I was a scholar with little experience of the world, and I’d dismissed it. I now realise how true it is. Fire is as good as dead. I cannot conceive of a way of saving him. Why am I dancing around the point of it?
“I am no stranger to grief,” I continue less ambiguously. “I understand how hard this must be.”
My mind drifts to the icy fields of Acrisius, where tens of thousands of men lie dead. Many of them are my friends. I think upon the small coterie of old allies who are there to help me. Do they know I’m still alive? Are they grieving? I hope not, they’ve had their fill recently.
“I’ve never really lost anyone before, not like this. But then again, there is nobody else who I care so much about. I know Fire has lost people and now I know how he felt back then, it’s what made him so determined not to lose me too. Everything he’s done for me, all the sacrifices he’s made. It’s why I didn’t ever want to lose him, not just because he’s a great brother but also because I feel that in a way, I owe him.” She paused. “And we talked about this at some point, also because I’m afraid of what it would mean for me.”
I feel reservations creep back in. Her vulnerability suddenly seems as much like a threat as a point of sympathy.
“Yes, about you potentially shredding Nexus down to atoms in an act of uncontrollable vengeance. I recall.”
Shadow leans back in her chair, clearly not in relaxation. “You know the worst part? I don’t even know for sure whether losing Fire was a direct cause in my transformation back at the hill. It could have happened because I thought it would. Maybe a bit of both. But I can feel that it changed me. I can see more than I could before, for instance I can see the Book’s pocket dimension from here, not into it, just see that it’s there. I also sometimes get glimpses of what I think are worlds close to Nexus.”
She falls silent for a few seconds. “No, you know the actual worst part? I can’t stop seeing or listening anymore, at least not immediately around me. It’s quite scary to be honest. Maybe a sign of things to come.”
I sit silent for a few moments. I try to separate confidence from potentially important intelligence. It’s impossible. I’m going to be reporting this girl’s insecurities and struggles right back to Kay. I feel like ****.
“I’m sorry, I had no idea,” I say flatly. “I always assumed you were just being nosy with the eavesdropping.”
Shadow laughed. “I definitely was before. I did try not to intrude, but now I have no choice.”
“Again, my apologies.” And then, because I can’t get it out of my head: “And you’re still in control of your other abilities?”
“No random disintegration rays will be perforating the Shelter any time soon. It seems that anything that’s purely my normal magic has remained where it was.”
“And your void magic?” I ask with an air of defeat. To make myself feel less awful, I add: “If you feel comfortable discussing it, that is. I’ll have to report any developments on that front back to Kay.”
I look at her with a fearful apology tinting my eyes. I am in the palm of her hand. She could crush me if she wished.
Shadow contemplates. “So far, it’s actually gotten better. I’ll need to look into why exactly my passive awareness is acting up but nothing else is.”
I nod perhaps a little excessively. Mentioning Kay aloud has set a whole other wheel of anxieties in motion.
“What did he say to you back there? I remember he wanted to talk to you about that.”
“He mostly wanted to know how it works, or how I work in general. The issue is that currently I don’t have an answer to those questions. He just kept asking and asking. I ended up having to resort to arcanobabble so complex that he couldn’t ask follow-up questions, not even with the Book whispering in his ear.” She sighed. “Other than that, the conversation was alright. Anything else he’s doing… I can understand why he’d treat me the way he does, for Urist I can also see the reasoning, but why Jen and Lucy? Especially Lucy, she’s in charge of our damn logistics and I don’t think ‘betrayal’ is even a word in her vocabulary!”
I weigh my words carefully because I know full well why he’s done all those things, or at least I think I do. At this age, Kay would justify it under terms like “keeping a robust inner circle” or “choosing people I get on with” or “reminding everyone of the chain of command”, and I’m still not sure if he believes that. He seemed much more instinctive than calculating back then, but maybe I just didn’t know him that well.
The Kay he grew into would have excluded Lucy for much more concrete reasons. Because Fire literally picked her out of a crowd and made her head of logistics. Because she has no particular obligation to Kay. Because he has nothing, he can use to ensure her complete loyalty to him.
The Kay he grew into also would have arbitrarily chosen Steve or Jennifer as a matter of dividing and conquering potential opposition. They’re a unit. If Jennifer’s not in the room, Steve will be less decisive or at least less able to justify his choices. He might miss something she would call Kay up on.
And as for Shadow, that’s simple. No matter how far down the path to tyranny he was, Kay always understood the threat of a credible opposition. Both Kays consider her Fire’s heir. She’s a contender to the throne. If his leadership falters, people are most likely to run to her in search of a replacement. And, if the coven was any indication, Kay’s concerns were entirely justified. By keeping Shadow at arm’s length, he could claim she was just annoyed about her loss of influence. Claim she was engaging in factionalism. Forming a cult of personality.
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” I lie. “He’s spooked by the void-state’s power, because he was already uncomfortable about Fire being stronger than him. Now he’s discovered there’s someone even more powerful. Lucy, he distrusts because he didn’t pick her, so he gets me to read over every dull detail to make sure she hasn’t missed anything. Jennifer’s an arbitrary thing.” In my best impression of his faux-posh accent, I add: “‘Why even have an inner circle if everyone’s going to be part of it?’ He can be petty like that. Generally, it’s just his way of feeling in control - choosing people he gets on with.”
I almost believe it myself. I pray she’s deceived.
Shadow shakes her head. “I’ve seen enough politics in my time as Rockhaven’s archmage to know it’s never that clear-cut. If politics is one thing, it’s personal. But never mind all that.”
I manage to stop myself from sighing and feel an urgent desire to leave. I don’t think she’s going to pursue me much further, but I don’t want to risk it. I look around for a clock.
“What time is it?” I ask hurriedly. “We have a lesson to get to.”
“In outside time, it’s been a minute. Inside-time, it’s been longer. If there is anything else you want to talk about first, we have time.”
I know I’m going to regret this, but I might as well ask.
“What’s the deal with the coven? We wouldn’t be half as suspicious if it didn’t look like you were forming your own loyalist faction.”
Shadow leans forward and supports her forehead with her hand. “That’s the problem. I didn’t, they did.”
I cock an eyebrow.
“They just started ignoring instructions from us on their own, then?”
“Something like that, I know they always respected me but after the battle it reached a whole new level, it’s almost like worship. I hadn’t even been back from fighting the Entity and they were already emulating my robes. Started referring to me as ‘master’ exclusively.” Shadow laughed. “They will follow any order I give them, except for the ones that make them stop or listen to you. Regarding those, they pick and choose, sometimes add their own interpretations.”
She seems dead serious, yet all I can think is, “How awfully convenient?”
“I’ll relay that to Kay,” I say neutrally. Then, my tone sliding head-first into acidity: “I’m sure the involuntary nature of your cult will calm him right down. Of course, within a week he’ll probably be lining up to kiss your feet as well. I’ll save him a spot in line. Where do we get the stylish robes? I do hope they’re not too much of a hassle for you to source.”
I sneer grotesquely and stand up. I walk over to the entrance and turn back. She looks destroyed. Mouth agape. Red eyes wide and defenseless.
I feel terrible, but she can’t just drop something like that on us. Another potential threat.
“Shadow,” I say. “I’m sorry about your brother. I’m sorry your powers are acting up. I’m sorry you’re scared and alone. But telling us you don’t know why they’re becoming more and more unknowable and potentially dangerous does not resolve the situation. Nor does antagonising Kay in front of the entire leadership. You feel alone because you chose to stand alone. Now you have to live with that.”
I turn away from her shattered face.
“I need a walk. If you’re feeling up to it, I’ll see you at the lesson. If not, I’ll improvise. And sort out your bloody cult, I don’t suit full robes.”
I step out and march away. The colours of the world shine back into view, and I want to believe that’s why my eyes are watering so much.
The rift closed after Astro and Shadow was alone in her pocket dimension. She felt shattered, angry and betrayed. She had regarded Astro as a friend, or something close to it at least. But now he just… Shadow thought he too was against the way Kay ran things, especially in the light of what would become of him. Sure, the coven looked very convenient to an outside observer but everything she had said about it was the truth.
Shadow’s hands started trembling again, something that happened more frequently in recent days. It was as if she was losing her grip on her physical body. With a cry of frustration Shadow cast off her shell and became one with her Void magic again. It was easier compared to when she had done it at the hill, more intuitive. However, the feeling of distance and emptiness was also nowhere near what she had experienced, but every bit helped. Shadow’s emotions now only felt like an echo of their former intensity.
Just barely outside of her pocket dimension was the outermost layer of energy that surrounded Nexus, somewhere off in the distance she saw another small bubble, where the Book lived. Giving the Book to Kay had been a mistake but now it was too late to fix it, Kay was already at the top and if Shadow tried anything to take it from him it would look like an attempt at usurpation.
Shadow shook her head, sending ripples through the fabric of reality. She needed to turn to the problems she could actually fix. Her coven was most likely on that short list. When her mages started imitating her, worshiping her, Shadow had been at a loss, felt overwhelmed. She was used to leadership and being looked up to, but not in this way. Back in Rockhaven when she had been Archmage, the other guild members had only seen her as what she had been, an elected leader and accomplished mage, holder of an official job. Now, she was regarded as a deity almost. Shadow was not comfortable with this idea, especially since it reminded her of what she feared she could become.
Still, something had to be done. She couldn’t let her mages go around antagonizing anyone who asked questions. Astro had been right, she needed to get them under her control somehow. She needed to assume the position of a proper cult leader, as backwards as that was. Fire would have been great at this, most of the untouchableness and mystique that shrouded the Mencur-Besh in their world was his doing. He would have had no problem making these mages wax in his hands, if only because it was what he had to do. But Shadow was not like her brother, at least not in that regard. However, all those millennia they had spent did not count for nothing. Shadow had seen enough to at least closely emulate her brother’s way of doing things. It wouldn’t be easy, especially not in the emotional state she would return to once she reformed her body.
Shadow extended her senses into Nexus, looking at all the happenings in the shelter, quickly locating an almost empty training room the coven had set up. In it stood Warnado, with Astro just coming in through the door in slow-motion. Shadow did the closest thing to taking a deep breath she could do in her current form, then readied herself to re-enter Nexus.
She emerged from between worlds just to the side of the door, deliberately out of sight. Most of her dedicated mages had already caught a glimpse of her void form and it had only intensified their cultish behavior, Shadow wanted to prevent any additional exposures if possible.
Her emotions hit her as soon as she had fully entered Nexus. Shadow grit her teeth, now was not the time, there was no need to make Warnado more uncomfortable than he already was. Her apprentice was perhaps one of the few blameless parties in this entire affair and he was suffering for it, seeing his companions turned against each other in addition to the apparent trauma he had suffered from his confrontation with Glibby.
As she entered the room, she forced herself to have at least a neutral tone: “Hope I’m not late, just had to take care of a few things in the pocket dimension.”
Astro flinched at the sound of her voice but immediately recovered.
“No, not much,” he explained. “Our golden boy was just about to show us a few of the techniques we’ve taught him.”
He clapped Warnado on the shoulder, and the quarter-demon noticeably flinched. Astro was putting up an unconvincingly jovial smile. Kay still had plans to bring him back to their world, so he had told Astro to try and form a bond. It was not going as planned, especially with previous “fumbles” in mind.
“How about some levitation... champ?”
Warnado promptly floated up until he touched the ceiling, then drifted back down.
“Great work, kid,” he said with another unconvincing slap on the shoulder. “How about some…”
And a few more exercises followed. Warnado really had made a lot of progress, as advertised. Not only had he learned how to consistently do the techniques they had taught him, but he also showed off a couple of his own spells, including a volatile shield that would block a hit and then blow up in the attacker’s face. Evidently a direct answer to Glibby’s combat style.
Shadow could tell after that, however, that Astro was struggling to justify his continued guidance of the lesson. Thankfully, he found a good improvising tool in Warnado’s ability to summon ethereal weapons. He gave increasingly intricate and outlandish instructions at an increasingly rapid pace. The task was clearly stressful for Warnado, but it was perhaps the closest he got to eliciting a positive response from the child. Until...
“An exact replica of your gauntlet on my right hand,” he instructed.
And it appeared. He smiled and examined the gauntlet. Warnado smiled back with a certain pride in his craftsmanship.
“Now, kiddo,” said Astro, considerably emboldened. “How about we revisit the demon magics after our…” His face sank as he saw Warnado’s reaction shift. “Prolonged recess? Champ?”
The child was not angry, but there was a rarely seen disdain in his eyes. Not dissimilar in tone to one of Kay’s more measured putdowns, Warnado began:
“Okay, I’ve been just about tolerating the ‘coach dad’ act because - y’know - it’s a stressful time, and everyone needs an outlet. If you want to be a little weird and pretend, we’re best buds and you’re this great, supportive mentor, fine. Kay’s probably pushing you to do it, and he’s being a little weird at the moment too. But I’m not going to sit here as you make the same dumb mistake twice. You tried to guide me through interacting with demons, and let that situation get way out of control. If it weren’t for Shadow, you’d be dead, and I’d be long gone. So don’t take it too hard if I tell you to shove it on this one.”
Astro, after looking sheepish for a split-second, hardened and responded in a low voice:
“First, I would have been grand. Now, I know Shadow likes to cultivate an image as-”
“-Yeah, shove it,” said Warnado with utter, resigned, ‘you’re dead to me’ dismissal.
As the quarter-demon left, Astro put his head in his hands. Shadow took the opportunity to teleport away without comment. She had no desire to talk with Astro at the moment, not after their previous conversation. Maybe at some later point, maybe, but certainly not now.
“Listen, Shadow-” she heard Astro say back in the training room. “Oh, for mods’ sake…”
She saw him strut angrily off to the door of the Training room, grumbling about “everyone always blaming me for their problems” and how sick of it he was. Then, he walked right into the sights of Amanda, who had seen Warnado leaving the room in a huff and failed to catch up before he disappeared from sight. By Shadow’s estimation, it took about two seconds before she saw Astro, saw he was also angry, and ask:
“What did you do this time?”
She enhanced this with a disbelieving shake of the head which stopped Astro dead in his tracks.
“What did I do?”
“Yes, you.”
“Of course, because it’s always Astro’s fault. Oh no! My boyfriend’s sad, it must have been the mean wizard man! Oh no, the administrator’s new apprentice has the wrong friends, let’s conscript him! Oh no, Kay went and ruined a war, let’s get his confidant to trawl the wastes for corpses! I am done with it, goodbye.”
He barged past Amanda and made it several paces before the teenage girl stopped him dead in his tracks for the second time that day.
“Bad day?” she asked.
He paused, then nodded.
“It’s rough being at everyone else’s mercy all the time, isn’t it?” mused Amanda.
“Oh, don’t I know it,” he chuckled bitterly. “I’ve just been knocked from stupid dispute to stupid dispute for so long. I was conscripted for having the wrong friends, I was imprisoned for being in the wrong place. When I got to the Vanilla Craft, I thought getting a seat at the top table might actually make it easier. It doesn’t, the feeling of powerlessness never goes away. Lesson for the day, if you can relay it to your boyfriend: don’t get into politics.”
“I’ll tell him, don’t worry,” she said patiently. “Just don’t forget, none of us want to be here, and the fact that you feel like a political tool in Kay and Shadow’s dumb standoff does not mean you’re not helping it happen.”
“Well, Kay has reasons to-”
“Um, actually, the dumb political thing is not dumb because blah blah blah,” she mocked. “Stop whining about it if you think it’s so reasonable. If it’s not reasonable, stop encouraging it. Be the change you want to see in the world, sweetie.”
She lightly patted her hand against Astro’s right cheek for emphasis.
“Anyway,” she said simply, then walked off with what Shadow presumed was a gesture in Warnado’s direction.
“Teenagers,” sighed Astro.
With that, another voice sounded from behind him.
“Astro, do you have a minute?”
Shadow couldn’t quite make out who said it. She decided to put a bit more energy into her passive perception, bracing herself for the increased volume of information.
“Oh, what now- Sorry, it’s been a long day. How are we doing, Lucy?”
There, she saw the corridor clearly as Astro turned to the Shelter’s top administrator. It was remarkable how quickly she had gotten used to her duties. Actually, what was even more remarkable was that Fire had told her very few things explicitly, she had picked a lot of it up naturally, only asking for guidance occasionally. Not just that but somehow, she managed to be a beacon of positivity in this otherwise dire situation. Lucy suffered too, Shadow knew it, but she didn’t let it affect how she went about her day.
“Recovering, still. But just earlier today I got word from the infirmary that nobody is in critical condition anymore and we’re seeing our first full recoveries. Recon is also bringing in reports consistently and it seems that we finally got a lead on that facility. The gathering parties are doing well as always, they weren’t really affected by our losses, so we’ll have an abundance of supplies for the foreseeable future. I have a full written report in my office if you want to take it to Kay.”
“Excellent work, as usual, is that all?” said Astro, recovering his politeness but clearly wanting to get away as quickly as possible.
“Just one more thing,” Lucy said. “I wasn’t sure who to tell but since you’re his friend I think you should know.”
“What’s happened?” asked Astro with an immediate, desperate urgency.
“Back at the battle, right when Kay was fighting Claw. Kay opened a portal from the Hill to me, shouting about needing a silver weapon. It was… scary to be honest. Back then the best I could find was coins. I know now Fire is hurt by silver, Shadow told me. I’m just not entirely sure what to make of it.”
“How so, scary? I appreciate you’re a civilian, but roaring is not uncommon for a commanding officer in a stressful situation.”
Shadow thought she detected denial rather than condescension in this.
“It was less what he said and more how he looked, he was… desperate, but not just because he was in mortal danger. All I could do was provide him with some coins and when he left after that he just… gave this look and said this one really disturbing thing. I still don’t know why he got that way all of a sudden.”
“Well, I’m sure it’s nothing,” he said, audibly shaking, “But let’s you and I discuss this in private. Would that suit you?”
“Yes, I have some time.”
He then cast a ward around them, enveloping them in silence.
Astro wanted privacy and Shadow had heard enough, she could probably see through his ward if she wanted to but there were more important things to do. For now, she was satisfied with knowing that Astro was uncertain, what that meant in the long term was left to be seen.
She turned her attention elsewhere, looking for where Warnado had run off to. He was not in his room, which made sense, if he didn’t want to be found why would he go to the one place people would look first? He also was not up in the higher sections of the barracks or any of the corridors. Which only left one place, the vents. Both him and Amanda had been using the vents to get around occasionally, probably not out of convenience but because crawling through them had an air of sneakiness about it. A quick survey revealed that Shadow’s suspicion had been correct. Warnado was hiding in one of the furthest corners of the ventilation system, close to the spider grinder but not close enough to activate the spawner.
There was no good way of talking to him from the outside, so Shadow took the only other viable option and teleported directly into the vent. She used a slower, more telegraphed version of her usually instantaneous teleportation spell so she wouldn’t startle her student. In a shower of purple particles, Shadow appeared less than a meter in front of Warnado. Her own small stature and the size of the vent allowed her to appear in a comfortable sitting position.
Warnado stared at the wall next to her, he said: “Hey, Shadow.”
Shadow replied flatly: “Astro’s on a bit of a streak today it seems.”
Her student raised an eyebrow under his cloaking spell. “Huh?”
Shadow sighed. “He said some things to me too before the lesson, with a lot less room for interpreting it as friendly banter.”
Warnado seemed surprised, he somewhat clumsily suggested: “Do you… want to talk about that?”
Shadow smiled. “Not particularly, just that I hope it can be explained by him trying to keep his own head on straight with all this stress.”
“Oh, yeah. Wonder where that’s coming from.” Warnado laughed awkwardly. He evidently was not used to this type of conversation.
Shadow conjured up some wisps that glowed in various colors, both of them could see in the dark in some manner but the light created a friendlier atmosphere.
“He is right in one aspect though, we need to look at your demon situation.” She raised her hands in preemptive defense. “I may have a different angle we could use.”
With a sigh, Warnado asked: “And what would that be?”
Shadow asked: “You never met your demonic grandparent, did you?”
Her student silently shook his head, though it was evident that he was starting to guess where this was going.
“I may be able to arrange that for you.”
Now Warnado looked directly at her. “How?”
Shadow explained: “Over the years I summoned a lot of demons, and I mean a lot. I’m on good terms with most of them so I could ask them to do a little bit of asking around. Once we gather some information about your grandparent, we could attempt a summoning.”
Warnado shuffled on the spot. “That sounds cool, and I definitely want to do that, but how will that help me? Like, help me here and now, physically, not just ‘Hey demon grandparent, I’m your grandchild, bye.’”
“With demons, knowledge is power. Knowing a name allows summoning, knowing your ancestry in person could allow you to better control your own demonic side. Manifest your legacy in a sense.”
“If that works it’s exactly what I need. Sounds like a much… less stressful way too. I’m in.”
Shadow had hoped he would say this.
Now with a bigger smile she asked: “And you know the best thing about this?”
Her student looked at her quizzically.
“It’s technically not a lesson, you know what that means? No having to have Astro around all the time, no Kay knowing about our every step.”
Warnado replied: “I like the sound of that, I’m double in.”
They both continued sitting there in silence, enjoying being off the radar for a while.
Shadow thought about the situation, she had lost Astro as a trusted confidant, but she had gained Warnado, if in a slightly different position. After losing her brother she felt like she needed all the support she could get, otherwise she’d break under the pressure. Shadow knew that using others as emotional crutches was bad, but she told herself that in this case it was like two cripples helping each other walk. She only had to hold out for a little longer, that was what she said to herself at least.
Chapter48:Phantasmal Parlay (Destiny)
The twilight sun pulsed down from the West, and with no breeze, Destiny felt like a slug under salt as she lay down in the mouth of the old portal, trying to fall asleep. She blamed the sun - it just wouldn’t let her sleep on things. She was exhausted. She’d barely slept since the Prophet’s Hill - since they lost - yet somehow the sun had decided she wasn’t allowed to sleep because it sucked and was terrible.
She couldn’t even get drunk enough to fall asleep like she had on other nights since. The heat made the beer sit horribly in her stomach no matter how much ice she materialised into it - like the yeast was cooking into bread inside her. She might have thrown up if she wasn’t so damned stubborn.
The sun was also ruining the memory of other relaxation sessions. Various bottles were piled up around the portal and they burned gold in the sunlight. Destiny couldn’t look at them without tearing up, and even when she closed her eyes the reflected light turned the sightless void a disconcerting blood red.
She’d tried to fall asleep with her eyes scrunched shut a few times, but she kept remembering how, in an old adventure novel she’d once read, a character passed out in a desert, face-up, and the sun cooked his eyes like eggs even though he was asleep. Even more than the physical discomfort, this kept her from drifting off.
Every now and then she’d work up the energy to puff out a glacial cloud of air which would rise a foot or two in the air before collapsing back down on top of her. Of course, she also felt the same strange warmth she always felt when summoning ice, so it was barely a relief - in fact, for a couple seconds she would feel as though she’d just broken out in a cold sweat - but it provided a welcome break from the smothering effect of the sun and made her feel as though she were putting up a fight against her burning tormentor.
“We both know it’s a terrible thing,” Anya muttered as she paced back and forth.
Destiny flicked her eyes in her past-self’s direction.
“Yeah,” she muttered. “A terrible thing.”
She glared furtively at the sun before casting her eyes back to Anya. She knew they weren’t talking about the same thing, but they also were. Anya was worried about Freak’s offer, and Destiny was annoyed that the sun was distracting her from thinking about Freak’s offer.
“Freak has done a lot of awful stuff but… what choice do we have?” Anya asked. “If he wants to help take down the Entity, we have to trust him.”
“Yeah, we’ll trust the guy who tortured Tyron because he laid some flowers on an imaginary grave and said, ‘I swear I’m not that evil’,” grunted Destiny.
“He also helped out the kid, I thought you said,” Anya pressed.
“Warnado mentioned Freak. Didn’t go into much detail… He seemed pretty upset. I told you what Glibby did to,” she suppressed a belch, “To Fristad. He saw that first-hand. Like I said, he seemed pretty shaken up.”
Anya cursed under her breath.
“You come to a conclusion or not?”
“About what?” Destiny with an obtuse smile that quickly subsided.
Anya pressed her palms to her eyebrows.
“I hate you when you’re drunk,” said Anya.
“I’m not drunk!”
Destiny stood up, indignant, but her legs faltered unhelpfully, and she had to catch her balance.
“See, dry as a desert,” she said without conviction.
“You’ve had six bottles since you got here and I’m going to wager you’ve only eaten like two slices of bread in the last two days. You’re not sober.”
Destiny sighed and wandered around for a spot where the bottles wouldn’t blind her quite so much. Anya was unaffected by the light, standing out clear as day between the golden infernos. Destiny’s past-self marched up and leaned in close.
“Now, listen here, I’ve been real patient with you the last while because you’ve been in mourning. And so have your bosses, which is why they let you disappear for hours at a time when you should be helping plan. We were getting better after David, then your little friend the shepherd went and died, and you went back to square one. Except you weren’t drinking after David - that’s beside the point. People need you on point, I need you on point.”
“What are you, my mother-”
Anya ignored this and cut across.
“That creep gave you a phone, and you need to know if you’re answering when it rings! Let me see it.”
Destiny rummaged reluctantly in her pocket and pulled out the small, yellow crystal. No bigger than a fingernail. Perfect for a ring or broach pin and that was probably what Freak had planned for. She hadn’t had the time or energy to put it in anything, though. She’d been spooked when Jennifer noticed it and had barely had the nerve to take it out since then.
Destiny held out the crystal in her palm.
“Well,” Anya said. “What’s your decision? Are you taking his help or not? Is he a useful ally or is this a trap?”
Without realising it, Destiny’s eyes had locked gazes with Anya’s, and now they drifted back to the crystal. Freak said it would glow if he got any news. It was still dull.
Could she trust this cruel little phantom? Even the way he’d gotten her attention was emphatically evil. Indril didn’t need to die. Then again, was Freak just keeping up appearances? Was he supposed to be there at all? Was he lying?
She remembered the withering flowers, the dying world she had briefly glimpsed. Was that real? Could the Entity be that cruel? Certainly, it was a collector, like Freak had said. What would it do when it finally had everything that interested it? It would first be a tyrannical god over all, but would it then become a bored god? She couldn’t decide which would be worse.
But then she remembered the way Freak’s claws dug into her side as they tried to escape. How he’d grinned when he hurt her before vanishing from sight. The blood. That was a ******* through and through.
In this surge of anger, she chucked the crystal at the ground. Despite her best efforts, it didn’t shatter and bounced off towards a pile of bottles.
“Screw this!” she yelled. “Not my problem!”
She marched off towards her satchel, fully planning on marching off.
“Hah!” barked Anya. “I give you two right answers and you still somehow choose the wrong one! At least come back here with someone willing to give an answer, you - you coward!”
Destiny whirled around.
“You crazy? It could be a trap, this question dies by this portal!”
“I thought it wasn’t your problem.”
Destiny breathed deeply.
“Sorry,” she conceded.
“Sounds like you’ve come to a conclusion, let’s hear it.”
“I take the call, but I don’t tell anyone else. This is on my head. I’m a hero, I came here to stop whatever evil was going on, and the Entity is that evil. I will kill it at any cost, and hopefully Freak will help me do it.”
Anya came in and offered one of her ethereal hugs.
“That’s good,” she whispered. “Because the call’s come in.”
Destiny slowly turned her head. A cloud had crossed paths with the sun, and the bottles weren’t glowing quite so much. She could see the yellow crystal slowing pulsing away.
Destiny walked over so haltingly she might as well have been limping, a bear-trap around her ankle. Finally, the crystal was throbbing between her fingers. She squeezed it.
Suddenly, she felt herself rooted to the spot, and a series of yellow lines surged into viewing, eventually crisscrossing and coalescing into a transparent image of Freak. He looked around.
“Hello Destiny,” he said with surprising formality. “And friend.”
“You can see Anya?” said Destiny with considerable surprise.
She and Anya exchanged a glance. Her past self kept obstinately silent but seemed similarly confused.
“Yeah, it’s a mental connection. Unimportant. I’ve learned something important.”
“Go - go ahead,” said Destiny.
“Just earlier, and by earlier, I mean a couple of minutes ago, I was having a look at what the ‘hunter’ riding your leader’s body around was doing. Turns out he fancies himself a bit of a scientist and talked to our main science lady. And guess what? After too much dry talk, he tells her that apparently your wonder mage and the Entity are similar in some manner. Not just that, they also thought that the crystals could be used to build a weapon to harm her. One problem with that though, if it harms her, it harms the big grey boss too, so they quickly stopped. Boring if you ask me, what evil scientists skip the opportunity to build a weapon that could kill their own boss? The two even went out of their way to acknowledge it! Where’s the drama, the sudden twist? Anyways, crystals.”
“Yes, crystals,” said Destiny slowly. “But what do you want from me?”
The image of Freak continued: “I just want you to keep an eye out, you might know where to find a crystal or two. It would make sense for you rebels to collect our main strategic resource, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she said carefully. “Of course, we have. It’s just about getting access to some. I’ll work on it.”
Her heartbeat increased a little and Anya visibly bit her tongue. That was about the only thing they hadn’t been stockpiling. It just hadn’t occurred to gather them - not that they knew where to find them. Maybe she could mention it to Kay. Otherwise, she might have to have a very cautious discussion with Steve or Jennifer - the only person who suspected something was up.
“Great,” Freak said a little too smugly. “Talk soon.”
His image faded and she was left with a dull crystal and a world full of concerns. But she was a hero. She would pull through.
“You’ll get through this,” Anya said redundantly. “If you get your **** together.”
Destiny nodded, then hurled a fireball at her satchel, destroying everything within.
“Cold turkey,” said Destiny.
“Yeah, I was just going to suggest you tried to drink more responsibly but that works too.”
“It’s going to suck,” Destiny said, scrunching her eyes shut. “But I will do it. I have to do it.”
“For David,” said Anya.
“For David,” repeated Destiny.
With that, the cloud moved, and the sun cascaded down anew. The golden inferno of the bottles returned. Destiny scrunched her eyes and marched towards the sun. She felt sick with every step.
Chapter49:More Cracks (Tyron)
Tyron toyed with a small pebble in his hands as he sat on a bed, warping it into different shapes. Sometimes he would do this when he was bored, this time he was doing it out of stress. He was in Astro’s room, where he had been told to wait. He had not been waiting very long but had asked Kir how long it had been at least twice per minute since he arrived. After five minutes, he barely even had to grunt for Kir to give him an update.
“Ten minutes exactly, stop asking,” the sword chirped inside his head.
He grunted again and started pacing. Astro’s room was brighter than he’d expected. His clothes were drab, but the walls were a jolly, yellow terracotta. Aside from that, it was quite sparse, with just a workbench, a potion stand, a bed and several chairs. No table for people to gather around. Tyron wondered if he should read something into that - that Astro would tolerate visitors but didn’t want them to stick around too long. Certainly, he rarely invited anyone back.
If he had been less stressed, Tyron would have heeded this intuition and just sat in one of the chairs. However, he was stressed enough that he prioritized comfort over politeness.
Astro had approached him as he came out of a planning session with some of the lower-ranking officers - discussions of patrol routes and what to do in the event of a Tower attack. He had discussed the same principle with minor alterations so many times he could have done the entire meeting in his sleep - in fact, Kir had told him he often mumbled out a slightly less coherent version while napping. As such, he left the room in a drowsy, resigned mood. If they were attacked, prospects were bleak. The Entity’s project of refocusing everything on the defence of key facilities had saved them, but it was only a matter of time. He should have been terrified, but after a while certain doom gets literally tiring.
When Astro told him to meet him in his room in twenty minutes, however, Tyron felt tortuously awake. He had that look in his eyes again - the horrible revelation look. The first time Tyron saw it, Astro had warned him not to vote for Kay. He saw it again after Kay assumed control, shortly before he learned how Kay went out - as a tyrant and a traitor. He did not look forward to this new revelation.
Sometimes he just wanted to assume Astro was crazy - to tell him as much. It would be so easy. But since he started hearing these messages, things started making sense. He thought back to him and Kay’s heart-to-hearts.
He had spoken so reverentially of Herobrine and his war. It had given him purpose, and then after the fact, all the principles he devoted himself to were betrayed.
“I only wanted to be with my friends after the first fireships went in. And now, beyond keeping them safe, I don’t think I want any more causes.”
The Kay he knew was already a deeply broken man, whose cracks were readily apparent to anyone who could look beyond the posturing and bravado. Tyron wondered how far the cracks could spread without the goodness spilling out of him altogether.
The door opened. Astro, followed by Lucy. Tyron stood up.
“No, sit down,” Astro said hurriedly.
He ushered Lucy through, then closed the door. He patted it, and a rune was briefly visible. He squinted at it, then nodded before turning to the others.
“Lucy,” he said. “Tell Tyron what you just told me. About what Kay said to you when you gave him the coins.”
Tyron had heard Kay’s side of the story - a confident boast about how he and “The Beast” had reached deadlock, so he went back to the armory in pursuit of a silver weapon. Those would paralyse a Mencur-Besh, unfortunately they only had coins, so he went back to try and jam them in one of the many serious wounds he had inflicted on Claw. Thankfully, before he could pull off this risky maneuver, Astro shattered Claw’s arm, and he retreated before Kay could finish the job.
Tyron had suspected this was a “public reading” version of events (in other words, mostly but not entirely exaggerated to make Kay look good), but he still found himself tensing up at the mention of it.
And so, Lucy explained that Kay had warped in, roared instructions at her, and then came back looking half-dead already.
“But then, he saw the coins,” Astro said, hurrying things along even though they had barely started. “And the important part is what he said afterwards. Please, tell Tyron exactly what he said.”
Astro then clapped his hands together and rubbed them together furiously.
Lucy was visibly uneasy repeating what she had heard. “He said: ‘The Prophet is dead, the rebellion is dead.’ Then he gave off that look, desperate, more than anyone I’ve ever seen before. He said: ‘Astro is gone. If Claw won’t join them, I will gladly.’ I just… he seemed serious.”
“Oh no,” gasped Kir.
“Oh…” said Tyron, unsure of what he was allowed to say. “I see.”
He slowly turned his eyes to Astro, who rose swiftly and took Lucy by the arm.
“Thank you, Lucy,” said the wizard. “That will be all, for the moment. We’ll do our best to help Kay out of this rough patch.”
They were at the door. Tyron saw the tension in Astro’s muscles and aura as he stopped - he was only barely stopping himself from throwing Lucy out without a proper farewell.
“I’ve seen desperation in people before, a lot. But never like that. I haven’t known Kay for long, but I feel that there is more to this. If… you know more but don’t want to tell me that’s fine too. I can understand why you wouldn’t, there is already too much chaos in the Shelter and whatever it is, me knowing wouldn’t help fix that.” said Lucy.
Astro was quiet for a moment, then with forced, pained optimism:
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ve known Kay for a long time, and I’ve seen him in this position many times before. He’s a veteran, and he’s suffered much, and it’s easy in that line of work to wonder why exactly you should carry on suffering…” He trailed off. “He just needs some good friends at his side, and he’ll be right as rain. Thank you for your concern. I’ll let you know if you can be of any more help.”
With that he politely bowed, and Lucy left. He leant back against the newly closed door, and clenched his eyes shut. He breathed in deeply, then exhaled, balling his hands into a fist as he did so. He took two steps towards Tyron, then doubled back to pat the door and check the ward again.
“Sorry,” Astro said as he approached once more. “I don’t want Shadow listening. We’re barely speaking, as is.”
He sat down beside Tyron on the bed.
“So,” said Astro. “What do you think?”
“That’s an open question,” said Tyron, stalling.
Astro had told Tyron more or less the full story of what happened, so he was still piecing together everything. Kay was verging on suicidal. Last time, in his future, Kay had received a terminal injury and that motivated him to start settling scores. But he was also still protecting his friends and subjects at that point. Then, there had been a surgical strike where he lost a friend, Mini, and Astro was captured… There was the link!
Tyron felt a surge of satisfaction at joining the dots, then his spirits sank as he realised the significance of the picture they painted.
“You’re afraid that, if you kick the bucket, Kay’s going to go full tyrant,” said Tyron with resignation. “That he’ll give in to his paranoia and vengefulness and start picking fights with Shadow and whoever killed you.”
“Fights he’s not going to win,” Astro confirmed. “Fights he barely even cares about winning but wants to be able to say he did something about before he died. Even when he was murdering Abby and Walt, he always did care about Public bloody Relations.”
He walked over to the workbench and hunched over it as though reading something. Tyron had looked at it on the way in - it was empty. He didn’t want Tyron to see him cry.
“So,” Tyron asked. “What do we do?”
“Do we carry out a coup d’état, do you mean?” chuckled Astro.
Tyron had meant that, but he hated that he meant that.
“Could we not tell him what happens?”
“And destroy the timeline in the process? Possibly destroying multiple universes in the process? Unfortunately, no, that’s the sort of suicidal gesture of destruction we’re trying to avoid. ”
“How do you know he’s from your world, and not just a very similar one?”
“The Grey Ones say they were in our world continuously until my capture. We can’t trust them, but we also can’t take that risk.”
Tyron thought some more.
“What if we told him, then wiped his memory later? You or one of the other wizards must know a spell, or a potion.”
Astro whirled around furiously.
“You want me to condemn him to his fate? Give him the opportunity to change things, then tear that away? No, I’ve enough blood on my hands without his. You cannot ask me to do that. I refuse, and I refuse that right to anyone else.” He lowered his eyes. “Besides, we can’t know how he’d react. He might try and die nobly again, and that would only make matters worse.”
“Have to coup,” Kir affirmed.
Tyron raised his head, and was about to say, “How will we do it?” when there was a very forceful knock on the door.
They both froze and looked at each other, sharing the solidarity of hunted animals. Astro slowly approached the door, hands outstretched as though he were blind and looking for something to touch in order to find out where they stood. Finally, he opened the door a little, and scowled out.
A muffled exchange occurred, at the end of which Astro said: “I’ll be with you shortly, as will General Tyron.”
He closed the door.
“We’ll discuss this later, Voidblade has located the portal facility. Kay wants to attack as soon as humanly possible.”
Tyron nodded furiously, desperately hoping this might give them reason to change course. However, even then he probably knew they were being buffeted inevitably into a storm.
Chapter50:The Raid on the Portal Facility (Various)
Warnado hopped from one foot to the other, fists held before him, trying to psych himself up for the carnage to come. However, any time he thought about the coming battle, he thought of the sun gleaming off the sweat on Glibby’s face as he ranted and raved, heard the clatter and roaring of battle all around him, smelled the burning of flesh and metal. Eventually, he resorted to physically slapping his cheeks to get himself to focus.
“You’re going to survive, and then you can talk all about it to demon-grandpa. A nice, milk-and-cookies ending to paper over all the trauma.”
He nodded in agreement with himself but felt unconvinced. He looked to his right and saw Amanda sharpening an axe. She smiled and waved with her weapon-hand. He felt a little more convinced.
Voidblade warped back in, and everyone looked up. They were on a small ridge overlooking the portal facility. About twenty in all. Warnado, Amanda, Tyron, Urist, an assortment of veteran infantry and combat mages, and now Voidblade.
As Tyron and the enderman went off into the corner to whisper about whatever new intel they had, Warnado surveyed the landscape.
To the North stood the facility. In the briefing Voidblade had told them it consisted of a few warehouses, a factory, and a central command building. Not that big all things considered. However, even from this ridge, Warnado couldn’t see anything except the thick, high walls and the upper floors of the command centre, which loomed over everything else. Its central position almost made it look like a head, and the walls like shoulders. The audible hisses and groans of the pipes and water tanks covering the command centre’s walls and roof only further encouraged this interpretation of the facility as an angry giant waiting to step on them.
To the South was a vast desert, dry and dead. Apparently, about a day’s walk from where he stood, he would reach a mountainous, vibrant jungle, but he couldn’t imagine it then. It was dark, and Kay had been very strict about them sticking to night-vision potions, or in his case his innate version, instead of lights to avoid unnecessary visibility, so Warnado had no idea what colour the sand was and no way of checking. This also meant he had no way of dispelling his fear that it was all grey with dust and ash. Everything looked black and white in the hue of his night-vision.
Additionally, now that the sun had slipped back beneath the horizon, the desert was surprisingly cold. He gripped his robes tighter around him and began to burrow in the sand with the toes of his shoes. He had heard that, when you’re in a tundra, it’s warmer to burrow under the snow and coat yourself in it. He wondered if you could do the same with sand.
Just before he could summon a tonne of sand to cover his body and boldly whisper that he was “Scratchy the Sandman”, however, one of the soldiers tapped him on the shoulder. Tyron had orders to give.
Or, rather, Kir did, while Tyron nodded sagely.
“Base scouted. Portals for Brines. We hit walls from South, weaken defence of gate and courtyard. Shadow and mages from North - same objective. Kay attacking gate, going through to command centre - Brines will split from him. No gate to West. No attack there.”
Warnado looked around as the soldiers nodded. Amanda sidled up to him, shrugging calmly in response to his confused expression. He clenched his fists to stop himself from fidgeting and tried to look less like a deer in headlights.
Another salvo of information:
“Marinus Bul, Attorney at Law on-site. Probably inspection. Capture or death a secondary objective, though pursue if possible. No preference for dead or alive.”
The instructions stopped and Warnado smiled as he remembered winding Bul up back in the Tower. He would crack so easily if they caught him. They wouldn’t even have to… Warnado frowned as he tried to think about what people did during interrogations. He had a difficult time imagining torture. Violence was this big, blunt, cartoonish thing for him, that always went for a killing or knock-out blow. He would probably suck at torture, but he got the impression he wouldn’t want to know someone who was good at it either.
He looked at Amanda and wondered if the Dreamweaver counted as torture. He remembered the way Amanda had cried - something she had never done before or since - and concluded that it was. He tried to tell himself Marinus would deserve whatever the Book did to him. If they caught him.
###
Before he knew it, they were dodging the redstone searchlights. It was easier than he expected. The lights moved slowly around the desert, and the guards were even slower. They didn’t expect a fight.
Voidblade warped up to the nearest spotlight, there were muffled sounds of screaming, the searchlight stopped moving. Some dark-clad figure flopped off the wall and landed in a small explosion of sand at their feet. The searchlight started moving again, even slower than before.
They waited until the spotlight was at a further point from their position, then the soldiers pulled out grappling hooks and began to climb. Warnado, knowing he only needed half the time to float up there, took the opportunity to take a look at the corpse. Tyron was already kneeling over it.
It was a mage. Warnado could sense the magical energy decaying away from him, like radiation. Tyron confirmed it when he flipped the body over and revealed that it was wearing a set of black robes with the Tower insignia on the chest. Warnado felt himself tense up. Tyron looked at him, and then flew up to the top of the wall with a heightened sense of urgency.
They’d expected some magical resistance - it was a portal facility after all, that implies some magical element - but if there were so many mages around that they were even taking shifts as nightguards, that was not a good sign.
Warnado arrived on top of the wall moments later, just in time to see Voidblade relinquishing the searchlight to one of their own combat mages, who cast a spell which set it back to scanning the surroundings on its own.
Their party advanced quietly along the wall, in the direction of the Eastern gate and the courtyard. They met little resistance, clearing out a few sentries as they went, until they came near to a brightly lit window on the wall of the command centre. It looked like a breakroom, and several guards milled around inside. Warnado thought he heard laughter. The courtyard was only two hundred meters away, but if they got any closer, they would be immediately sighted.
Urist also tapped Tyron on the hip, pointing out a patrol that would soon climb the steps to the spotlight they had cleared out. They had to act fast. Tyron reached into his inventory and, in a flash of blue light, produced some TNT. He offered it to Warnado.
“Just imagine it’s a taco,” Tyron grunted. “And teleport it into the break-room.”
Haltingly, Warnado took it. His hands were shaking so Tyron didn’t let him light it. Urist initially offered, but Amanda stepped forward with a match and did it first. Warnado tried to let gratitude wash over his anticipation of guilt and thanked her as the block flashed white.
He looked at the breakroom and saw a grey cylinder. That would be his tether. He closed a fist around the flashing TNT, and when he reopened it, the cylinder was there, slightly covered in jam. It might have been a gas canister, or a thermos of soup, miniaturised to fit in his palm by the spell, just like the TNT had been a moment ago. Whatever it was, he dropped it the second he heard the explosion.
The breakroom was in flames. Smoke obscured the casualties. Warnado felt ill and tried to think of some other function it might have had other than breakroom.
While Warnado tried to reconcile himself to what he was doing, Tyron barked orders the quarter-demon barely heard. Alarms sounded, their party started running toward the courtyard. Warnado saw the first signs of real fighting ahead. Urist and Tyron were leading the charge, cutting through a gathering crowd of sentries. Warnado drew an energy bow and nocked an arrow but couldn’t get a clear shot at the soldiers pushed forward around him. A couple of archers were slowing down to fire at the patrol Urist had noticed, now fast-approaching. The warping sounds of enderman teleportation started to draw near.
Then, a flash of bright white light from above. A mage floated above them, glowing like a flare, and in the skies around them other mages started to gather. Some emerged through portals; others appeared to bleed into view, as though the sky were a skin for them to shed; others still flew up with alarming speed. Soon, they were raining fire on the infiltrators.
Instinctively, Warnado fired an energy arrow at one that was still ascending, but it bounced off a red-tinged shield. However, the mage in question made the mistake of gratefully nodding in the direction of another. Warnado followed the nod and saw the source of the shield.
At the centre of the cloud of mages, one barked orders as red lightning sparked from her fingers. A slender, aethereal woman in a long, white gown was the source of the shield, Warnado could sense it. He watched as several archers fired up at the mages, each time being foiled by one of these red shield spells.
“Tyron!” Warnado called.
Tyron decapitated an enderman and turned to face Warnado. The demon-child pointed to the aethereal witch, and the Dragoknight responded by equipping his stone wings and flying off to break their enemies’ air support.
As Tyron pirouetted through the sky, dodging spells on his way towards his target, Warnado nocked another energy arrow and took aim. Tyron and he had discussed this circumstance. Tyron would brute force the shield, Warnado would take the kill shot.
He got down on one knee to stabilise, trying to keep focus as one of their soldiers was frozen by a stray spell, and shattered on the ground nearby.
Tyron began to plummet as he raised his stone wings to block a fireball, then immediately swooped back up, flying at full-speed towards the white-clad witch. Seeing him coming, the witch reinforced her own shield and sneered. Tyron raised Kir and roared, slamming into the shield. It broke, and the witch momentarily lost her poise, having to fight to remain airborne.
However, before Warnado could release the arrow, an obsidian boot sent him sprawling. An enderman stood over him, readying to plunge its purple sword down and into his guts. Warnado raised a shield, cocked an eyebrow and mouthed ‘do it’ to his opponent. Grinning confidently, the enderman obliged, but as the blade made contact with the shield, it exploded. Both shield and sword vanished in a surge of green light, and the enderman limped back, clasping its melted hand and wailing before vanishing in a cloud of purple particles.
There was now a fully-fledged battle on top of the wall, and as near as Warnado could tell it was not going well for the good guys. Several of the infantry were dead, and one of the combat mages was already starting to look a little tired as he blocked yet another spell - this one a burst of lightning. Squads of mercenaries and mages were starting to gather in the courtyard and at the foot of the wall. They also didn’t appear to be making much more ground towards the courtyard, with Voidblade and Urist inching forward, and Amanda just about holding the rearguard in a flurry of fierce blows of her axe. And Tyron could be seen lurching around the skies, desperately avoiding spells with little opportunity to retaliate.
Warnado tried once more to fire at the witch protecting the mages in the sky, but no spell he mustered seemed capable of breaching her shield. Beyond a condescending smirk, the witch didn’t even bother to retaliate, instead leaving that to the mages she was defending. Warnado noticed that it wasn’t a singular large shield, but a series of smaller shields being summoned in response to each individual attack. This was an adept who would not be easily baited.
That was when Warnado noticed a faint, red glint in the background. It quickly became a much stronger, orange glow. And then a second glint appeared. Now the orange glow was a fiery missile, rapidly approaching the witch. Her shield shattered under the force of the blow, and before she could stabilise herself, the second missile slammed directly into her, incinerating her completely.
Initially, most of the mages didn’t appear to notice what had happened and continued throwing projectiles as though they still had an adept shielding them from any potential attack. However, Tyron wasted no time in slashing his way through the cloud of magic-users, and soon there was substantial confusion in the ranks. Some began to raise their own shields, others became even more aggressive and began to fire on Tyron with all their power.
That was when the source of the fiery missiles made herself known. Warnado watched as Talita, a nice old lady who hung around with Shadow, appeared above the wall and began to send similar missiles into the cloud of mages, conducting them like an orchestra as they weaved between shield-charms to strike vulnerable combatants. Warnado whooped as he saw it, not having realised the rather frail-looking old woman had been capable of such power. She turned her head and gave an incongruously wholesome smile as she burned another enemy mage to cinders.
Warnado turned around and saw Amanda effortlessly dodging the attacks of a large pigman. Rose’s training had really paid off. Unfortunately, he couldn’t help but notice a crowd of similarly large and scary-looking fighters following the pigman.
“Hey Amanda!” he called.
“Busy here, Helix!” she grunted as she parried a blow and stopped the pigman’s advance.
“Put like one meter between you and the star of Babe 3: Revengeance.”
She leapt back and looked at him expectantly. As a result, she didn’t see the yellow-tinted forcefield he put between her and the pigman. When the pigman tried to charge her, it slammed right into the forcefield, and the forcefield promptly exploded in his face while leaving Amanda unharmed. The forcefield served as a magical shrapnel grenade, firing a brutal fusillade of lightning spells down the wall at the pigman and those following him. Wounded beyond fighting, the small column retreated. The rearguard had held.
“You’re getting creative,” Amanda laughed.
“Eh,” Warnado shrugged, feeling a little more himself. “What can I say, I’m a genius. A handsome, handsome genius.”
Tyron then landed back on the wall, kicking a mercenary off the wall as he did so.
“You can quip later, kid. To the courtyard! Now!”
With Talita and a handful of other members of Shadow’s coven now guarding the skies, the party charged along the wall, breaking through the ranks of human defenders and slashing wildly to discourage any enderman skirmishers.
Soon, they were overlooking the courtyard.
To the North, Shadow and other members of her coven could be seen, blasting spells in every direction. Warnado’s mentor herself was floating high above, pointing out targets and slinging her own spells, a similar strategy to the Tower’s adept mage with the key difference being that the shield-casting witch had lacked the safety of Shadow’s immortality.
Meanwhile, the Eastern wall was littered with corpses, apparently because of ranged combat. Arrows, large knives and icy javelins protruded from many corpses. In places the walls seemed mutilated, as though slashed by the claws of a mighty beast, and with various blades planted within the bricks at unnatural depths. Many casualties seemed noticeably charred, smoke still rising from their bodies. Those Tower forces still atop the wall scrambled back and forth, avoiding projectiles and sometimes dropping dead for apparently no reason, clutching their rib cages. In the courtyard, full columns rallied, though they were unprepared. Many were still equipping their armour as they lined up to face the gates.
The mages tasked with defending the gate swarmed like angry wasps, apparently dodging various projectiles too small for Warnado to make out.
Warnado readied a ball of electricity and hurled it at one of the swarming mages, catching them square in the back and sending them dropping. Unfortunately, just as he congratulated himself, he felt himself lift from his feet. He exchanged a look of surprise with Amanda, then found himself shooting down into the dirt of the courtyard. He slammed into the ground face-first and felt the wind rush from his lungs. Despite this, he used levitation to get back on his feet quite instantaneously, only to be knocked back on his ass by a clod of dirt that looked suspiciously like a fist.
Warnado looked for the source: a mage slowly approaching, sword in hand. He was white-clad, like the witch. And he had a similar aura of aethereal confidence. Warnado decided to call him the warlock, then summoned a flare to blind him. The warlock methodically raised his sword-arm to cover his eyes as though dabbing sweat from his forehead, not looking quite as disoriented as Warnado had hoped. Trying to capitalise on this moment, Warnado summoned an energy shuriken and hurled it at his enemy.
The shuriken stopped spinning suddenly, then shot back in the other direction and winged Warnado’s leg. The demon-child’s mind struggled to catch up to what had happened. The warlock’s other hand fell - he’d used telekinesis to send the shuriken back.
A new plan forming, Warnado stood back up and summoned a lightning forcefield behind the warlock and yanked it in with telekinesis of his own. The warlock handily sidestepped, and Warnado only just redirected it into a crowd of mercenaries. Warnado found himself lifted upwards again, this time his body going rigid and floating slowly towards his opponent, who brandished his sword gracefully.
Then, a jet of fire came flying down at the warlock, and Warnado landed shakily on his feet. The warlock blocked the attack with a wall of rock. Warnado looked for his saviour, and with a little disappointment saw Astro slowly approaching. Astro’s jet of fire stopped, and the warlock dropped his defence. The two glared at each other. To Warnado’s annoyance, the warlock finally looked determined, as though he’d met a worthy opponent.
To Warnado’s even greater annoyance, the warlock had miscalculated. Astro cocked his head, and the white-clad mage’s neck twisted one hundred and eighty degrees, breaking immediately.
Astro cautiously approached the corpse and prodded it with his foot.
“Sorry about the other day,” he muttered reluctantly to Warnado.
“No problem,” said Warnado with even greater reluctance. “Thank you for the help.”
A pause for breath. Tyron and the wall party were now pushing down into the courtyard itself, strategically seizing control entrances and exits. Amanda was holding down a gateway on the side of the central command building alongside Urist, hacking at the limbs of enemies, while the dwarf caved in the skulls of the wounded.
“When’s Kay going to show up?” panted Warnado.
Boom! The gate came crashing down, and from either side, a trail of silver-turning-purple flame extended until it reached the central command building on the other side of the courtyard, establishing an effective cordon. And walking up the center of this voidflame highway, Warnado could see a party of familiar expressions: Destiny’s vengeful scowl; Jennifer’s embattled half-smile; Steve’s wary furrowing of the brow; Rose, demure as ever; then, finally, the arrogant, infectious grin of Kay himself as he roared in triumph at this display of power.
“Round about now,” said Astro redundantly.
“Yeah, I can see that,” snapped Warnado.
“I know, that’s the joke.”
“Your jokes suck.”
“Hey, I just saved your life.”
“Fine, they don’t suck... but they’re not good either.”
Astro sighed, and the two began to walk up the cordon, towards the commanding party.
###
I beamed as Astro and Warnado approached, though I didn’t immediately greet them. Instead, I turned to the Brines, and their small column of soldiers. I had been cautious to give them experienced troops, but not any who might be considered a protege or spy of mine. A gesture of trust.
“Steve, Jennifer, take your detachment and secure the portal technology and any specialists. The mages should give you sufficient cover, though we’ll do the best to thin their ranks as we advance along the cordon,” I paused a moment to admire the Book and I’s voidfire demarcations, “The remainder of the party shall enter the command centre and attempt to prevent the destruction of blueprints. If possible, we shall capture Marinus Bul. If neither objective is achieved within the next,” I checked my watch, “Half hour, we’ll regroup here and reassess the situation.”
Steve and Jennifer nodded seriously.
“We’ll handle it,” said Steve.
“They won’t know what hit them,” said Jennifer with a chuckle.
“I’m sure they won’t, now off you pop!” I encouraged.
I opened a gap in the voidfire cordon, and they charged straight into the path of a column of human mercenaries who had been cautiously approaching the barrier. I gestured to our pack of four archers, who formed a circle and aimed arrows at the ground. The Book and I opened a portal at the centre. They fired through. The column of mercenaries was weakened.
“You have kept your word to cover them, now we must enter the command centre. No more distractions,” urged the Book.
I more or less agreed and made sure to start walking before I greeted Astro and Warnado. No more time to stand around.
“Destiny,” I muttered. “See if you can’t winnow the ranks a little bit for the Brines. Don’t let it slow you down, though.”
Destiny shrugged and drew her bow, firing arrows over the voidfire in the direction of any Tower forces in Steve and Jennifer’s general direction. However, her hands were shaking for some reason, so it amounted to potshots. Shadow’s mages were clearly offering more meaningful support, blasting apart Endlings, giants, and entire columns of humans in and around the factory. I contemplated whether I should tell Rose to go out there and start shredding columns - since her ritual she now seemed well capable of it.
“You’re thinking about politics again. The grunts on the ground are unlikely to risk voidfire if they don’t perceive us as an immediate threat to them. Besides, they already have orders to defend the Northern and Southern walls. Leave them be and we’ll get a clean shot at the central building.”
I smiled.
“If you want me to remain commander, I must be seen to do my job. Mustn’t I?”
The Book almost sighed.
“You are more likely to be seen favourably if you breach the command central quickly, allowing us to better satisfy our goals of obtaining portal blueprints and capturing Marinus Bul.”
“That’s more like it,” I encouraged. “Best of both worlds.”
I was trying to encourage the Book to consider the political dimension more. If it was going to keep encouraging my distrust of Shadow, it was going to have to help me outwit her. We needed to be one in all spheres, not just combat.
Finally, I addressed Astro and Warnado, increasing my pace.
“Warnado, not that it isn’t good to see you, but are you not supposed to be with Tyron?”
“Yeah, but this warlock dragged me down into the courtyard… and Astro saved me.”
He said the second part as though swallowing a horrible medicine. I smiled appreciatively at my friend.
“Well done,” I stressed. “And don’t be ashamed of accepting some help. Astro’s had my back for years, he’ll have yours no less faithfully.
I took a look at his leg, saw it bleeding.
“How would you like to stick with us?” I asked. “I need someone Marinus might want to talk to.”
The Book never groaned, but if it did, it would have at this exact moment.
“Relax, my friend,” I coaxed. “He’s a powerful magic user even if he is unrefined. He won’t slow us down… And if he doesn’t come with us, he might end up fighting alongside Shadow and who knows what she might put in the poor lad’s head about you and I.”
“Very well.”
We were about halfway to the command centre, and so far, there was no real attempt to stop us. I scanned the battlefield. Reinforcements weren’t flowing in as readily as they had a few minutes ago, but there was no way this was the base’s whole force. Where were the rest?
There was a strange, watery sound. Something deep and echoey. I recalled the first time the Professor explained sound to me - that it was all rippling molecules. It sounded the way I imagined that process - like a crashing wave heard from the bottom of a lake.
Then, I saw something odd in the middle of Tyron’s half of the courtyard. I asked the Book to remove my night vision for a second, so I could see colours normally. The light in a specific spot was shifting, distorting, remixing itself. The image kept changing, sometimes showing flashes of bronze, obsidian, and glass, instead of the grey stone of the wall. And there were hues of darkness, brightness, all colours and none, swirling about the spot in half-visible haloes.
Finally, a familiar gloved hand emerged, and placed its hand on the edge of the distortion and tore its way through. The Entity was here. I saw other distortions begin to form, and other manifestations stepping out.
The fighting slowed, and all eyes were on the original manifestation. I, however, didn’t stop walking.
“You-are trespassers here,” said the Entity. “But I am not… unmerciful. You are small creatures, faced with the enormity of all-things. Surrender. You may live… to see my world realised.”
“Don’t respond. No grand-standing,” advised the Book.
I kept walking.
“What-is your response?” The Entity asked.
I could feel its eyes on me, but I didn’t look back.
We reached the steel door of the command centre, and I turned.
“Shadow,” I called out. “I have business to attend to inside. I leave the Entity in your capable-“
Shadow promptly came flying in like a comet, yelling with uncharacteristic anger: “We have unfinished business, you stagnant, brother-stealing *****!”
Suddenly there was a flash, but not a flash. The opposite of a flash. The light vanished from a spot about the size of a person somewhere in the sky over the factory. Where once Shadow had floated, now a mass of silhouettes writhed. Not just that, a sizable chunk of reality around her had also decided to take a vacation, only a jagged patch of mind-splitting nothingness remained.
I struggled to look at it, it made me terrified in a way I hadn’t quite felt since I tumbled into the Void at Zine Craft - a refusal to accept what you’re looking at, because it should not be. Yet, I knew I needed to better understand this.
“Book, would you be a dear and help me look at her without crippling fear?”
“Yes, it’s about time you understood what we’re dealing with.”
As I looked up, my eyes took on a different tint. I saw the world in something that felt like black-and-white but was vastly more intricate. I could see black, I could see white, and I could see the colours that comprised them, or could, or might not.
I saw the others cowering away from Shadow around me. Destiny had fallen to the ground. Warnado had fixed his eyes shut and lowered his head. The archers gazed on, trembling and awestruck. Only Astro and Rose still had their senses and were working on demolishing the door. Then, I cast an eye across Shadow and felt next to nothing. I fought the urge to laugh.
“This is serious, look closer.”
The Book guided my eye to the central manifestation of the Entity, and I saw the shape beneath its armour. It was formless, rippling. And yet, while Shadow’s description of the creature as ‘stagnant’ at first seemed irrational, I soon understood what she meant. It was in perpetual motion, in an unchanging, perfect loop. It did not change, because if it did, it would destroy itself. It was Order, because it had to be. Suddenly, I understood the possessions - it didn’t willfully suppress consciousness, it could not accept consciousness other than its own. Only information.
“And the other…” said the Book, with an energy that almost felt tremulous.
I was intrigued. Not just on a personal level, but existentially, the Book was terrified of Shadow.
Then, the Book guided me to Shadow, and I saw it...
“Oh,” I chuckled aloud. “That is interesting. No, we’re on the same page now.”
Remembering others might hear me, I continued within:
“No, we must do something about this. Quite soon.”
“I’m glad we’re finally agreed.”
Shadow was entropic. The mass of writhing silhouettes wasn’t something to see past - it was the answer in itself. Like the Entity, she was formless. But unlike the Entity, her being did not crave a form, nor did it accept the forms of those things around it. In this state, she was like a poison, sickening reality around her, breaking it down. Like the Entity, she would make everything like her. But unlike the Entity, she could not hold anything in this state. It would become like her for less than an instant before becoming nothing. She would unravel and unravel and unravel until there was no string left to pull. Until she was alone in a Void of her own making.
She and the Entity were at a stalemate not because they were on the same power level, but because they were incompatible. When they interacted like this, order and entropy canceled each other out. The Entity was water, Shadow was oil. Similar in nature, different in detail.
I looked down at my hand, and summoned a small rift in my palm, and saw similar forces at work within it. Saw a path forward. I smiled a tranquil little smile, and put my other hand on Warnado’s shoulder, steering him toward the command centre.
“I believe…” I thought. “I shall need access to your full arsenal.”
“Excellent. This is no time for squeamishness, if we are to survive.”
“Oh, we shall do so much more than survive.”
As Rose shredded the door open, we were agreed. We were certain of our purpose. We were one.
###
We have, by this point, more or less realised that there’s a trap waiting for us. An impromptu trap, but a trap, nonetheless.
We’ve been walking through for about five minutes and haven’t encountered anyone, or indeed any blueprints. Every chest, filing cabinet and desk we encountered on the ground floor has been cleared out, but poorly. There’re loose leaves of paper scattered on the floors of most offices. Some chests have been burned, but a bit of magical analysis didn’t find any remnants of paper, so it looks like an improvisation by an overzealous grunt. I almost appreciate their imagination.
The working theory I’ve proposed is that they’ve sent some Endlings to gather literally everything and teleport it back to the top of the command tower, and then buy time for Bul and the administrative staff to recover and or burn the important bits. It follows that they’re not just going to risk us walking in on them, however, so those same Endlings are almost guaranteed to be sent back to slow us down. Probably any other security staff. Hence, an ambush is impending.
When I put this idea to Kay in substantially less than half as many words, he smiled serenely. His eyes have a silver hue, and if I look at them closely, I can almost see tongues of flame dancing across them. Every now and then he claps Warnado on the shoulder and looks momentarily like a blind man.
Destiny is in the lead, Rose taking the rear. Each flanked by soldiers.
The halls are silent save the clatter of armour on stone. We reach the second floor. Destiny holds up a hand and looks back at me. I heighten my senses. I hear restrained breathing. Heartbeats of humans. Heartbeats of Endlings. Three heartbeats feel too close together somewhere nearby, but I don’t think much of it. Four rooms? I scan the doors. Two near the beginning, two near the end. That makes sense. I signal my findings to the others.
Kay is unmoved and signals for us to walk forward, all the while holding a hand open before his face, as though reading the lines to discover his own fortune.
We reach the mid-point between the two sets of doors, when Kay signals for us to stop. A split-second later he closes his fist and flame hisses all around. There is screaming. Doors fly open, men come out screaming and burning. Silver-fire-turning-purple. Warnado covers his own mouth.
We hear warping sounds and suddenly the Endlings are amongst us. Eight or so. Armour half-destroyed but unharmed. Talons and swords fly. Soldiers collapse. I sever an Endling’s spine, and it warps away screaming. Then, explosions.
At the start and end of the corridor, the ceiling is blown open and enemy combatants drop down. More Endlings, still armoured. Dozens of humans.
Kay laughs.
“I can’t say I’m not a little startled. Rose, come with me to the far end. We’ll clear a path forward. Astro, hold the fort a moment,” he says mildly.
Rose rushes forwards with two soldiers who have been flanking her, lashing knives out every which way. Kay steps forward, silver flames around his feet, and with a motion like descending slips out of view, out of the world. Suddenly, I see his sword cleave a man in two at the far end of the corridor, then another, and so on. He emerges back into the world for a moment, smoke leaping off him like rats from a ship, and screams before plunging back into the void.
I begin to bark orders. Try to get the troops into formation, but the Endlings make it difficult. Warnado and Destiny are parting the tide of human mercenaries bearing down on us from the other direction. I summon shields strategically to help, I dismember any Endling that enters my field of view. And I’m not letting much slip from my field of view, hurling my eyes this way and that, wheeling around, a sail buffeted in every direction by the winds of a storm.
Eventually, though I have no real way of knowing in such a mad scramble, I get the sense we’re winning and heighten my senses to try and assess how many more we have to kill. Substantially fewer heartbeats, human or Endlings. Except… Three heartbeats too close together. Right above-
The ceiling spits flame and I stagger away, a magical shield guarding myself and a nearby archer. Another is not so lucky, collapsing with a face full of shrapnel. Smoke obscures my view.
I hear something slam into the ground, but amidst the smoke I cannot see it. I lower my shield, flourish my sword and the cloud dissipates. Claw smiles at me. “Surprise!”
As Claw moves towards me, I freeze up, feeling his namesake rip through my stomach all over again. Warnado and Destiny see him and immediately spring into action. Destiny rolls into his path and hurls an icy javelin at his face. Warnado leaps into the air with a huge energy axe. Claw catches the javelin, swings it back behind him and breaks it over Warnado’s flank. The demon-child, disoriented, bounces off Claw and lands in a heap on the floor. Destiny ducks under Claw’s mace, then is shoulder-charged into the wall. Claw is coming straight at me.
But I have recovered. Despite the old wounds still shrieking at me like banshees, I enter a fighting stance as Claw leaps into a roundhouse kick. Just before his boot connects with my skull, I summon a forcefield and stop him in his tracks. Then, just as he tries to pull back, I fold the ward back around the boot and hold his leg in place. He glares at me, I smirk.
As I hold him in place, Destiny sends an arrow beneath the plates of his armour and pierces his scales. He bellows in pain, and it sounds as though three voices are screaming at once. Warnado comes in with a huge, glowing hammer that looks like a cross between a meat tenderiser and a vision of hell and swings down at Claw’s obsidian chestplate. With me holding his leg like this it will be damned impressive if the blow doesn’t tear his leg off. I look at Claw with smug triumph. Orange light glows from between his scales.
The leg breaks free from the stasis I’m holding it in, but the forcefield holds. He uppercuts me with my own damned spell and sends me flying. I stop my descent before I break my neck on the floor, see him break Warnado’s summoned weapon with a mace, and shunt his way on to Destiny, who summons an icy sword and flames in the shape of a buckler.
I hurl myself back into the melee, as does Warnado, now armed with an aethereal weapon I don’t recognise, though it appears mechanical.
“Chainsaw time!” He screams with a mixture of pride and excitement.
We trade blows with Claw as long as we can. However, he is simply too fast, too strong. At one point Warnado, his chainsaw shattered into pieces, attempts to mount his back and begin to garotte him with another summoned weapon. He falls away with the pattern of Claw’s scales burned into his hands. Our last surviving archer takes him aside to try and treat him.
Destiny pirouettes narrowly past a mace blow, then slams the flaming buckler into his forearm. Its flames intensify until they turn white hot. I can see the obsidian and scales melting, bleeding into each other. The mace catches her breastplate just over the stomach. It dents. She coughs blood, and not a second later is kicked in the skull.
Through one of the several holes in the ceiling, I catch a glimpse of Kay on the floor above us, casting fire about everywhere and looking as though he had just been for the loveliest massage. He passes out of my sight, and I hear a scream. A man falls through the same hole, a look of supernatural terror frozen on his face. He is dead. Kay is clearly enjoying himself far too much to have noticed Claw’s arrival.
Rose is similarly nowhere to be seen. I assume she is aloft with Kay. I sigh. It is time for my trump card.
“Very well,” I mutter. Then, more audibly, I shout: “If you’re in there, Fire, I’m sorry. There was no other way”
I found a book on the Mencur-Besh in Fire’s room. I know their physiology. I focus my mind’s eye on the place where his spine and skull connect, specifically on the first vertebrae. I raise a hand, and make a cutting motion.
I physically feel my spell stop barely a fraction of a fraction of a millimeter into the vertebrae. Claw twitches almost imperceptibly and turns. I made the same cutting motion. Then again. And Again. Each time it’s just not enough. And then, I fall to my knees. I’m exhausted. I can’t go any further. I struggle to stay awake as Claw lifts me to my feet.
Claw’s scales are no longer permeated by the orange glow, and so don’t burn me to the touch, but the scales still feel nauseatingly warm. He looks me in the eyes. He has a finger pointed at the centre of my forehead, adjusting it with precision. I recall the images which appeared in the newssheets, depicting Mini’s body - a crossbow bolt in his brow. I wonder if this is deliberate.
“Kay!” called Claw. “Do you want a glimpse of your future-”
A sword flashes out of the Void and catches Claw on the jaw. Scales go flying. No blood.
I just about feel myself drop onto the floor as Claw experiences a deeper wound on the leg. He goes to the middle of the corridor, ready to defend himself.
I feel hands dragging me away. It’s Warnado, hands bandaged copiously. The fighting is over, only Claw remains.
For a third time the sword emerges from the Void, but Claw is ready. He grabs the hand holding the blade and wrenches his attacker into plain view. Kay shrieks his way back into the Overworld, only just warding Claw away with a jet of Voidfire. He steadies himself against the wall, panting and letting off smoke. Destiny is back on her feet, benefiting from the healing magic of the battered but still-living medic.
“Claw,” wheezes Kay, doubled over. “I really wish I could give you the great rematch you so clearly want right now… but I’m really ****ing tired. And besides, Marinus Bul is waiting for me upstairs.” He lifts his head, the serene smile is back. “Rose, would you do the honours of beating Claw for me?”
“My pleasure,” says a voice from above.
Knives cut through the ceiling like a flood breaking a dam. Claw retreats. The torrent of knives follows him, and Rose chases it on, further intensifying the storm of metal. Soon, both disappear from view.
I recover just enough strength to stand, what remains of our forces regroups, and I am shepherded towards the command tower. Everyone looks a little shaken. Everyone except Kay, whose burning eyes are tranquil beyond comprehension.
###
It didn’t take long for Rose to chase Claw into a dead end, forcing him to stand and fight. With a grin she threw a large blade at the center of Claw’s chest, her opponent reacting quickly and deflecting it with his claws. Carving up the guards upstairs had been trivial, but this might actually be interesting.
It was obvious that thrown knives wouldn’t achieve anything, not only were their trajectories predictable but there was a limit on how sharp steel could be. Rose clenched her fists, sending a surge of concentrated murder into her fingers.
She lunged forward with her hands straightened, the edges of her palms cutting through the air with a sharpness beyond anything a material blade could achieve. Claw was a fast opponent, but Rose almost equaled him in this regard. Her first strike glanced off his forearm, peeling off the coat of scales that he had in place of skin, his roar of pain music to her ears.
Claw’s mace came swinging at Rose’s head, only to be reduced to metal dust by the sharp strands of her hair whipping around. She felt a mild impact but nothing she couldn’t handle. Her next slash hit home on Claw’s weapon arm, her palm cutting through scales and muscles, only briefly slowed by bone.
This threw Claw off-balance for long enough that Rose was able to gather up energy for her finishing blow, sparks of angry yellow energy arced around her right arm as she wound up her swing.
She heard the grinding of stone and the rending of flesh as she carried her swing through, the cutting edge extending far beyond her hand. Then, as the dust settled, she took a look at her handiwork, a huge notch had been carved out of the concrete and before her lay Claw, bisected at the height of his stomach.
Rose stopped her smirk halfway, something was off. There should have been more blood, more innards spread across the floor, but there was none of that. Narrowing her eyes, Rose focused her power again.
Claw’s entire body flashed grey for a moment. To Rose’s surprise, he began quite literally pulling himself together.
Claw’s voice practically oozed from his mouth: “Getting real tired-” it was interrupted as his lower end reconnected with his upper end, “of all this supernatural crap.”
Claw slowly sat up, clearly not intent on attacking.
Rose shot: “What was that?”
Her opponent took his time with his answer, a calm look on his face, as far as Rose could read his scaled expression at least.
“Simple, Entity won’t let me die. Even shares a good deal of its energy with me to make sure. I guess I’m important.” Claw shrugged.
Great. Now this was a situation Rose was familiar with, there had been immortals in her world too and some of them had stood in the way of her old master’s plans. Getting rid of them was often inconvenient and always temporary.
Still in position to attack again, Rose asked: “So, what now? I can keep cutting you apart until we’re done here.”
Claw chuckled. “No need for that, I got what I came here for. Looks like your general is already well on his way to where he should be. I’ll be going then.”
As soon as those words had left Claw’s mouth, he disappeared in a cloud of purple particles, something Rose had come to associate with endermen or their pearls, leaving Rose thoroughly unsatisfied. She discharged her accumulated energy in another slash, completely tearing down the wall in front of her. A gust of cold desert night air came rushing in.
Rose slowly made her way back towards the site of their big indoor battle. What had he meant with that? Kay being on his way...
She thought to herself: “Probably about the power trip he’s on, but that’s business as usual for me, the job wouldn’t be the same without a power tripping master. My old master did that too from time to time, made shows of smashing rocks with his bare hands after infusing himself with power, things like that. I didn’t complain back then, and I won’t complain now, as long as he doesn’t do something completely unreasonable.”
###
Jennifer tried not to look at the clash occurring overhead between Shadow and the Entity. Not that it was obviously more flashy or awe-inspiring than any of the confrontations taking place across the walls or the courtyard, but because it had a strange effect on those who looked at it. They either couldn’t bear to look at the fight, or they couldn’t stop staring.
Jennifer had been in the first group and had found herself wincing and averting her eyes before continuing the march onwards. She had felt that same animalistic desire to run which she’d felt when Shadow reappeared after the Battle of the Hill. It was deeply unpleasant, but this horrible fear had given her the leeway to realise most of the soldiers weren’t following. She had called to Steve, who had moved away even more quickly than her, and they had recovered their men from their stunned state.
Now, most combatants had risen from their stupor, all except the mages. A few of the Entity’s magic-users and the combat mages were still going, but Shadow’s coven had stopped altogether. They wouldn’t divert their attention from their master’s fight, chanting and precisely. However, despite their precision, Jennifer couldn’t make out a single word and it only hurt her head when she tried to understand. The words were not only hard to understand, but they did also not want to be understood. The only hint as to the chant’s true contents was the expression on the mages’ face, which betrayed a wide-eyed, desperate joy.
But Jennifer had bigger concerns. Steve counted down on his fingers. It was time to take what they’d come here for.
Three. Two. One. Breach.
Crack! Steve shoulder-charged the door and the melee began instantly. A pigman with an axe hacked out and it bounced off Steve’s armour. Steve lopped the offending arm off without slowing down. Jennifer rolled in after, allowing the troops to rush past her, and lodged an arrow into the eye of another pigman.
A small line of human mercenaries tried to hold an inside door against the advance, but Steve rushed right between them, bringing down the door as he did so. One of the staggered guards tried to hurl an axe at his back, but an enterprising, surprisingly old Villager-woman called Olanna bisected him with precision. The other troops made short work of the door’s defenders and flooded into the room on the other side.
Jennifer followed cautiously, nocking another arrow, and entered into a well-lit warehouse area filled with chests, furnaces and crafting tables, all connected by a series of pipes and hoppers. Immediately before her was a lowered area where cowering workers, Tower soldiers and her own detachment jostled and fought. However, victory was certain. Jennifer decided it was time to become sure that the tech they needed was actually there.
She hopped the fence and saw a relatively isolated crate on the edge, with an unarmoured enderman standing on top of it, their claws ready to deal with any challenger. Jennifer remembered when the majority of enemies they faced were as poorly equipped as this, and felt briefly nostalgic, then loosed the arrow into their jaw. The enderman teleported behind her, as expected. She equipped her sword and plunged it into the creature’s chest.
She approached the chest and saw two workers hiding behind it.
“Hi,” she said, with a brief but sincere smile.
She slotted her sword under the lid of the crate.
“Uh, hello,” said one of the workers, a skeleton in green overalls. His jaw clicked audibly every time his teeth connected, and the voice he produced was low and gruff. “I’m Xylo, like the phone. No, it’s not a nickname, my parents just had a really weird sense of humour.”
She chuckled. “Pleasure to meet you, Xylo.”
She spared a glance around to make sure this wasn’t a distraction and saw Steve beheading a giant in the background. Xylo was no threat. She began to pry the lid up.
“You know, it’s not a political thing,” continued Xylo. “Working for these Tower guys. They just offer good money. Whatever they’re doing that’s ticked you guys off so much, we’re not part of that.”
Jennifer didn’t respond because of the effort of opening the crate. Finally, it popped open, and she took a second to appreciate her handiwork. Very neat. No damage to the crate.
“We really aren’t a part of that, we just make the parts.”
Xylo started to back away slowly. There was a flash of bright white light through the overhead windows. The fight between Shadow and the Entity must have been intensifying.
“Oh, sorry, I was distracted,” Jennifer said, hurrying to un-equip her sword and reassure the skeleton labourer. “No, don’t sweat it, you’re civilians. We’re under strict orders to leave any civilians unharmed. You’re safe.”
Jennifer left out the part where she had needed to remind Kay that there might actually be civilians working for the Tower.
“That-that’s good to hear,” breathed the skeleton with some relief. He nodded confidently to his friend, a skinny pigman, though they remained crouched behind the crate.
Jennifer began to ruffle through the parts.
“So, is this a full machine, or only part of it?” she asked.
“Well, I’d have to answer those questions under considerable duress,” said Xylo with a knowing smirk.
Jennifer shot a sidelong glance at the remaining mercenaries, who Steve and the soldiers were making short work of.
She graciously pulled out her sword and pointed it at the skeleton.
“Okay, but only to save your street cred,” she mumbled wryly. Then, more loudly, she added, “I DEMAND you tell me what I need to make a working portal.” She made sure to jab the sword for emphasis.
“Oh no! Don’t kill me, please!” wailed Xylo. Then, in a low tone, “Okay, so, the device you’re looking at there is the dimensional selection device. That lets you choose a dimension from the known database, but if you don’t have one of these,” he patted a slightly larger crate adjacent, “You’re just looking at the specs. This thing turns your standard Nether portal into something capable of interdimensional travel.”
He seemed very proud as he said this.
“Thanks, Xylo, do you have a manifest of the parts?” She jabbed the sword again playfully.
“Yeah, just here,” he said and produced a checklist from his pocket.
Jennifer lowered her sword and sorted through the parts in comparison to the list. Everything was there in the first crate. She put the lid back on and beckoned a bloodstained Olanna and another soldier over to carry it away. She then opened and began to inspect the second crate.
“I have to ask though…” Xylo began enigmatically but trailed off.
Jennifer looked up and saw him sitting on another nearby crate.
“You want to take the Tower down?”
“Yeah,” she said confidently.
“But, why? Folks like us, we have nothing. Poor as dirt. No real leadership. Sparse resources. I died in a famine, and in fifty years of undeath I never made more than a pittance as a blacksmith. Then, the Tower comes in, tells us they killed some king I’d never seen half the country away, and that we’d been integrated. That they were looking for blacksmiths. I tell them I’m one and volunteer. Suddenly, I’m being trained up, I’m getting good pay, a pension - I don’t even know what that is but it sounds great. And I’m not the only one. Is what they’re doing really so bad?”
“I don’t know if they’ve told you this, but they’re not just invading worlds, they’re trying to make all worlds become one. To force everyone into it.”
Jennifer realised she’d tried to check the same part twice and cursed herself. She saw Olanna shooting Xylo a murderous look.
“Interdimensional cooperation is fine, but people deserve a choice.”
“They have told us about that,” Xylo continued cautiously. “But you know, they sent that Acquired Worlds guy, General Forgelight, to do a big motivational session a while back. Address the workforce and all that. He told us up front about this plan. Said they’d make One World, One People, One Society. No more tinpot kings and neglected backwaters. Everything part of the same, fair unit. Now, I don’t know if that’s true, but he seemed to believe it. And why is that so wrong you guys need to come in and carry out a massacre like I’ve just seen?”
Jennifer locked eye with eye-socket. It’s hard to read a skeleton’s facial expression, but the way he’d clenched his jaw and pulled his head back betrayed someone teetering between fury and terror.
Obviously, Jennifer hated the Tower, but she understood he didn’t have the same reason to. Something about it seemed awfully brave about his decision to keep arguing the toss.
Olanna didn’t see it that way.
“You want to talk about massacres?!” She shouted.
She let her end of the crate drop to the ground with an awful clatter. Jennifer felt bad for her but prayed she hadn’t damaged the parts.
“That enderman you were cowering behind works for the Ender, you know what she does on a daily basis? You know how she got to be so big and important?”
“Lady, I didn’t mean any disrespect-”
“Her boys ransacked my village. My husband can’t walk because of them. Or - or your Forgelight, some idealist! I’m sure he’s lovely to you bootlickers, but if your village so much as asks him to wipe his shoes on the way in he’ll strip the whole place for parts!”
“I’m sorry but-”
“Don’t you backtalk me, you collaborators need to appreciate how lucky you are we didn’t kill you all right here, right now.”
“Olanna! You’ve made your point, get back to work,” warned Jennifer.
The Villager-woman scowled and returned to carrying away the goods.
Jennifer finished her inspection and gestured for more soldiers to start carrying it away.
“Listen, Xylo,” Jennifer began. “A fairer world sounds great, but the Tower aren’t the ones to deliver it. They take what they want, and they kill who they like. They’ve treated you okay so far, but don’t think that makes you safe from them. We tried negotiating with them, even after they trapped me and Steve in this torn-up rag of a world, and then we discovered what they were doing to their prisoners - people they had kidnapped unprovoked and tried to force into service. So, we stopped negotiating, and now we just want them gone.”
“Sure,” said Xylo with more than a little ice. “I guess the status quo suited some folks just fine.”
Jennifer made to respond, but Steve placed a hand on her shoulder.
“We have just over five minutes to make the rendezvous, Jen,” he said apologetically. “We need to go.”
Jennifer nodded goodbye and turned her back on Xylo. There was a booming sound, and another bright flash of light through the windows above, and the workers went back to hiding behind cover.
###
There were around ten of us left as we approached the office in the command centre. Myself, Astro, Destiny, Warnado, and a handful of soldiers. The soldiers instinctively took up breaching positions because I had trained them well. My fellow officers looked fairly dinged up. Physically, I wasn’t doing great either, but I hardly felt it. All the Book’s power coursed through me for the first time, and it was exhilarating.
I had burned entire battalions, I had struck inescapable fear into the hearts of men, I had seen the workings of the world, and walked the Void with reckless abandon. Admittedly, this last task was difficult on me, and as I approached the door, I felt more than a little nauseous. I mumbled calmly to Warnado something about opening it for me.
Warnado frowned and I watched as the energy coalesced in his hand, streaming into his grasp from the world around him. Then, as he fired it, I watched the door break from its hinges. I warped in, and saw Marinus Bul, that unremarkable little lawyer, yelp and drop a pile of papers. An armour-clad Endling stood behind him, already holding a dossier.
Time slowed down. My soldiers filtered in after me. The Endling didn’t go for his sword, he reached out to take Bul by the shoulder and warp away to safety. No attack would be fast enough.
“There is one,” the Book said alluringly.
“Do it.”
Suddenly I felt a jolt, and I saw the scattered lights of consciousness flying around inside their heads. My own voice erupted from within me, deep, ancient, and echoing.
“Be still!”
And so, they were. The lights had stopped moving. Then, Destiny’s icicle hit the Endling right between the eyes, much to her surprise, she had merely hoped to prompt a premature teleport.
“Kneel.”
Bul did so, eying me with utter terror. I laughed.
“Give me the blueprints for your portal technology.”
He grabbed the dossier from the dead Endling’s arms and filtered through. Finding them, his arm shot out towards me and trembled. I leafed through them.
“Excellent work, Bul. Say thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Say you are grateful for having seen a friendly face in this desolate land.”
“I am grateful for having seen a friendly face in this desolate land.”
“Say you are even more glad you finally found someone worth obeying.”
“I am even more glad I finally found someone worth obeying.”
“But you are going to have to depart soon.”
“But I must depart soon.” A tear ran down his cheek.
“And that it truly has been a pleasure.”
“It truly has been a pleasure.”
Then, I told him to slam his head into the corner of the desk. Then, I told him to do it again. And again. And again. Again! Until he finally slumped onto the ground, his skull caved in and blood spilling from the cracks.
The power was intoxicating. This was power no king or god had ever wielded. Power that could burn the world to cinders, to ash, and then command it to be rebuilt.
“Carry his corpse outside,” I decreed. “It is right that he should see the coronation. All of you go down there.” Astro attempted to say something dreadfully uninteresting, so I simply urged: “Now. I will join you shortly.”
Knowing full well he would obey me, I went up to the window, and saw Shadow clashing with the Entity, and for the first time I didn’t see threats. I saw impudence.
“So, he really did that to Bul?” Rose asked with some trepidation as she looked at the mangled skull.
“Yeah,” said Warnado. “He got what was coming to him, but… it was kind of scary.”
Scary was an understatement. Destiny had seen a lot, but something about the unflinching obedience with which Bul had shattered his own skull had gotten under her skin. His face indicated he was terrified, but his body moved steadily, almost politely, as though he were bowing to some foreign dignitary he was trying to recruit. And Kay had ordered him to do it with gusto.
She saw Warnado pressing his fingers against a set of goggles he’d produced to his robes. With eyes wide as saucers, the kid looked like he’d been punched in the face for the first time. Destiny wanted to feel bad for him but upsetting things happened in their line of work.
“You’re not a hero if you don’t know how to suck it up every once in a while,” Anya had once said to her. She wasn’t wrong.
As she thought this, she unintentionally shot a dirty look in Astro’s direction. He was steadying himself against a wall, muttering to himself in a series of broken gasps. There was someone who could do with Anya’s advice. She almost gave it to him, but she remembered how well Jennifer and Warnado reacted to that outlook after the Hill and decided she didn’t want a lecture.
She punched him in the arm instead.
“Come on, Kay said to leave the building. Now that we found Rose, that's everyone. Let’s go.”
He nodded, but the muttering didn’t stop, it only seemed to become more frantic and irritating.
“It’s too soon… could he have? No… the Book? Is it the Book? … It’s the Book. It must be...”
Destiny gritted her teeth. Dumb jerk was losing his head because he was scared of the Book? What right did he have?
“That thing tried to gaslight me when I was grieving… I’m the one who should be going nuts about Kay getting too pally with it.”
Destiny felt her arm grow cold as preliminary flames began to flicker on her palm, but then stifled them.
They reached the shredded remains of the entrance, the remaining soldiers went first. The purple-flame cordon still ran down the centre of the courtyard, and the battle had simultaneously intensified and calmed down.
Tyron’s party were still in the heat of battle, carving through endermen and humans. She could see Amanda on the Dragoknight’s shoulder, firing her crossbow adeptly, killing enemy after enemy.
“You’ve taught her well,” Destiny said to Rose.
Destiny could also see Steve and Jennifer fighting their way back to the rendezvous point, apparently having suffered minimal casualties. Their soldiers carried an array of heavy-looking crates with them, so it was mostly the two diamond-clad heroes doing the fighting.
Above the battlefield a second battle raged. Shadow was clashing with the Entity, its manifestations long discarded. How exactly this confrontation played out was difficult to tell for Destiny, whenever her gaze came close to either one, her mind violently rejected what her eyes were telling it.
The mages, however, seemed to have forgotten there was a battle going on at all. All but one, and she was the object of their attention. Like ships in a whirlpool, their eyes were drawn to Shadow, and they chanted in jubilance as she fought the Entity.
“What are they doing? Is it a spell?” Destiny asked Rose.
Astro, however, is the one who answered, snapping out of his reverie.
“I told her this would be a bloody problem!” He growled. “I’ve got to snap them out of this. Destiny, with me.”
He grabbed Destiny’s arm and flew them over the cordon, coming to settle near one of Shadow’s coven - the ones who wore her robes. She was an old woman, but you wouldn’t have guessed it from the way she was chanting and ecstatically cheering. Destiny didn’t know her name. Astro took her by the shoulders.
“Talita, stop it,” He said as he shook her. “We need you here.”
Destiny took up watch duty instinctively, summoning icicles and hurling them at any Tower soldier that approached.
“This is the birth of a god! Us mortals should be glad to have the opportunity to witness such a thing!” She hesitated.
“She’s not a god, Talita, this is high-level magic, but this is not godhood! You need to focus, people are dying. Our friends are dying.”
Destiny brained an endling trying to sneak up on an ecstatic mage.
Talita’s eyes drifted from the fight, and she seemed to grow more lucid. A look of disappointment set in, and she began to move again.
“I suppose we shouldn’t forget our own mortality in the face of divinity.”
Talita set about rousing the other mages.
“By the mods,” Astro lamented. “Did it all have to go quite so wrong right this moment?”
“Oh, shut up. We’re winning,” thought Destiny.
But aloud she said: “When it rains it pours.”
They levitated back to the cordon just as Steve and Jennifer approached it. Astro disrupted the flames with a forcefield so they could get across. Jennifer looked troubled as she ushered the men with crates across. Steve came up to them.
“Looks like you guys got the crates no problem,” said Warnado.
“You guys look like crap,” Steve responded with concern. “What happened?”
“We got ambushed, Claw turned up,” explained Destiny. “It was a whole thing.”
“Oh Notch!” Steve exclaimed. “Claw’s here?”
He raised Excalibur and started looking around. Destiny, remembering the very real possibility that he was still waiting for his moment to strike, followed suit. She resummoned her flaming shield and icy sword.
“Was,” said Rose smugly. “I drove him off. Nearly killed him.”
“That’s a relief,” said Steve. Then, to Astro, “Did you succeed in your mission?”
“We have the blueprints,” said Astro. “And Marinus Bul is dead.”
He gestured to the corpse the soldiers were still carrying towards them
There was a bright flash from the sky as Shadow and the Entity’s clash continued, but nothing obvious came of it so they kept talking.
“What about Kay? Where is he?”
“Kay is the one who killed Bul. He’s…” Astro trailed off.
Warnado had the goggles out again and was gripping them so tight it looked like they’d shatter at any moment.
“He’ll be out in a moment, he wanted to do something,” said Destiny.
Tyron’s men appeared to be regrouping and drawing back toward the cordon. Destiny pulled out her bow and readied to cover them. Fortunately, the mages had mostly been roused from their rapture and it was becoming readily apparent that the battle was drawing to a close. They would still steal enthusiastic glances at Shadow and the Entity, but they were easily overpowering the battered remains of the facility’s garrison.
The enemy mages were all but dead, and the endermen were tired out. Since the Entity arrived, there was no indication of additional reinforcements. That said, that could change.
Just as the last of the men with crates crossed the cordon, they saw what Kay had been up to.
Another flash of light entered Destiny’s vision, but it was so much more than a flash. It was a blinding, burning light that forced her eyes closed, sending tears streaming. And as her vision returned, she saw silver-turning-purple flames surging within and without the command centre, filling it and spilling out onto the walls. Three great tendrils of fire spiraled up a large water tank atop the building, and then crushed inwards in a great, hissing mass of steam and broken metal.
And the flames did not stop at the command centre, they lashed across the courtyard, towards the warehouse and began to wash over it with startling rapidity. As the flames rose, Destiny saw workers run from it, some burning, all screaming.
A skeleton in overalls, flames climbing his back, came running up and began to roll in the dirt before the cordon.
“There are civilians here?!” cried Astro.
“Xylo!” Jennifer yelled.
Astro parted the flames and Jennifer ran up to the skeleton. Warnado doused the flames on his back with a jet of water. Destiny followed uneasily.
Jennifer tried to calm him and offer him a healing potion, but the skeleton batted it from her hand and backed up.
“They take what they want and kill who they like, huh?!” spat the skeleton. “Bastards all of you!”
“He didn’t know!” Jennifer cried out fruitlessly as he stormed off to help his friends. She looked to Astro. “He couldn’t have known about the civilians, could he? How could… We should have warned him.”
Steve took her in his arms as she tried to rationalise it, placing his chin on her pauldron and squeezing tight. Astro looked away darkly, flame casting half his face into a silhouette. Destiny wished she could comfort Jennifer, as Jennifer had once tried to comfort her back in the village, but she was at a loss.
The warehouse collapsed. The flames were now climbing the walls. The complex behind the command centre was an aurora of purple fire.
The fight in the sky raged on, Shadow and the Entity unaware or uncaring of the destruction beneath them.
Finally, from the purple flames at the entrance of the command centre, he emerged. He was silhouetted, featureless aside from two pinpricks of silver light about the eyes. Then, he cut the air with his sword, and he was illuminated. A burning circlet adorned his temples, and his sword became like an inferno, the blade invisible beneath the tongues of flame. All had stopped, friend or foe, to gaze upon his dreadful image. He smiled serenely.
“No…” came the sad whisper of Astro.
Warnado appeared trapped somewhere between admiration and horror.
The duel in the sky continued unbroken. Destiny wondered if the mage had been right about Shadow attaining godhood - no mortal could ever have afforded to ignore this.
Kay waited for them to notice him, carrying on his serene smile, until his face began to harden. He cut the air with his sword and a wave of fire arced through the air at the duel. There was an explosion, and when the smoke cleared, both combatants were staring down at him. Destiny had no view of their faces, but Shadow was still in her incorporeal shape which hurt to look at, and the Entity’s armour was undented.
Kay smirked. And he spoke, with a voice that sounded like flames and multitudes.
“Look at you, Entropy and Order, battling away, barely able to touch let alone harm each other. And totally oblivious to the world around you. I suppose that’s the thing about dichotomies, you only see two options. Well, now that you can see this fairly impressive display of power do you see the third path? The fire between you?”
He gestured to the aurora of destruction he had created. It spread across the gates. They were trapped. Destiny started to worry how far ahead Kay was thinking.
“Entity, you are powerful. You have conquered many worlds, and you plan to take many more with this machine of yours. You want to take them all, in fact, grind them down into one crown for you to wear. And yet, for all your centuries and your knowledge and your experience, you cannot see how that would sully it all. Look around you, Nexus is not a world, it’s not a capital, it’s a dreg heap. Scraps of places in a patchwork quilt with no rhythm or rhyme. Why would it be any different if you add more scraps? This entire place is a folly!”
He paused a moment, squinting.
“Actually, haha, you’re reminding me of this old fable they used to tell us as kids. About an old miser who had accumulated great wealth. However, it was all coins and even under his greedy little eye a coin would go missing every now and then. Someone steals it, maybe it slips down between the cushions, and he loses track of this. His wealth is always a little smaller than it would have been otherwise. Now, he is a supremely avaricious man, so he won’t let this stand, and he decides the only solution is to melt down his wealth into a single golden ball. He takes the ball, all pleased with himself, and buries it in a field. And every night, he comes back, and he cackles to himself as he stares at the dirt where it’s buried, deeply amused at the little trick he’s played. His fortune preserved at critical mass, forever.
“Of course, a servant noticed this quirky little habit of his and stole the whole thing. Poor miser never realised - he was never going to dig it up to spend it - so he died believing that ball of gold was there. You’re the miser, Entity. That’s all you are. A murderous, genocidal, grasping little miser. That’s why you stack rooms high with junk. That’s why you collect magical anomalies for experimentation. You just want to have things without thought. And, if you’re the miser, I reckon I’m qualified to be your crafty servant.”
He chuckled to himself.
“So, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to take my friends, we’re going to build an army from across the worlds - all the people you’ve attacked, kidnapped, robbed, tormented - and then I’m going to come back and kill you. And once I’ve burned your Tower to cinders, once I have incinerated any evidence you were ever here, I will take this melted ball of worlds and make it my kingdom. I will be King in Ash, guardian of the forlorn across all creation.”
He raised his sword and grinned. There were some scattered cheers, but they were halting. Warnado tried to force a smile onto his face, but it kept slipping off. Destiny kept eyeing the burning gate.
The Entity remained silent, though Destiny couldn’t help but feel it was a silence of cold fury. Shadow merely stared on, her exact reaction was impossible to read, not just because looking at her made Destiny’s head hurt.
“Anyway,” Kay cackled. “My friends are probably getting worried about when we’ll leave. I did accidentally burn down the gate - sorry guys! - but you’ll find we have no need of it.” Then, to the Entity: “I’ll be seeing you.”
Tyron, who had approached the cordon and begun to call out to Astro, suddenly shouted he fell into the ground. A silvery, fiery gash sat in the ground where he had stood. Then, Warnado yelped and was gone. Destiny backed up, heart pounding as the rebel army began to be swallowed by these flashes of silver flame. Kay smiled on, eyelids lowered as though he were about to drift off into a pleasant dream.
Then, just as a portal into the void opened beneath her feet and she began to slip momentarily out of the world, Destiny saw a similar rift open and close its jaws on Shadow. Yet, even after the portal closed, the incorporeal mage remained in place. She looked down at the King in Ash and scoffed. The last thing Destiny saw before falling into the portal was Kay’s furious eyes as Shadow drifted away into the sky, miles above him and worlds removed from his kingdom of ruins.
Destiny landed on her feet. She was in her room. She heard great clamour in the hall. She ran over to her door and threw it open.
There was much excited talk as a million things happened at once. Amanda and Warnado excitedly embraced and chattered about the craziness of their escape. Urist jovially trying to recruit someone to grab a drink to celebrate their survival and victory. Steve and Jennifer rejoicing as they talked about the impending chance to reunite with their friends. Rose tranquilly explaining her victory over Claw to a confused Lucy, trying to ensure this triumph didn’t get washed away in the tide of events. But one conversation stood out, passing under the others.
“He’s deteriorating rapidly, it’s just like you said. We need to do something,” breathed Tyron.
“We need Shadow,” said Astro as though signing a death warrant. “He’s too far gone.”
Then, as the reality settled in of whatever they were talking about, they fell very quiet. They saw Destiny watching them and slipped off into Astro’s room.
Destiny pulled the yellow crystal from her pocket and contemplated it.
“King in Ash,” Destiny repeated to herself. “We’ll see.”
She put the crystal away again and went to join Urist for a drink.
As Anya once said, when it rains it pours. Everything always hits you at once. Shadow’s powers escalating. Kay’s growing megalomania. The inevitability of a confrontation between the two. And the chance to finally fight the Tower on even footing. All in the one evening. It was too much to process. She would choose her side when the time came.
Chapter52:Cold, Hard Data (Dr. Mercury)
For the first time in weeks, Dr. Mercury didn’t feel like she’d drop dead if she closed her eyes for longer than half a blink. The sleep deprivation had been getting to her but what other choice did she have, really? She not only needed to ensure that the machine was supplied with the appropriate amount of crystals, but she also needed to constantly check it for possible damage or other imperfections. It needed to work guaranteed. Fire’s suicide mission and arson certainly had thrown a wrench into her schedule there.
Of course, it was the other sibling that cost Dr. Mercury most of her sleep, that paradoxical mage, Shadow. Both Dr. Mercury and Claw had spent considerable time trying to make sense of what little usable data they were able to sift from various sensor logs. Up until now the only useful insight hadn’t even come from the sensors, but from Claw’s knowledge of how approximately Shadow came to be and what she was capable of. Dr. Mercury had spent some time with Claw thinking on how to get better, more useful measurements on Shadow’s true nature and sure enough, they had found a way.
The Tower was gradually shutting down its portal facilities since almost everything they needed for the machine had been gathered. One such facility was located in a desert some ways away from the Tower. Naturally, this meant it would be a target for the rebels sooner or later, so they decided to make use of this. The both of them had spent an entire day setting up a highly sensitive array of sensors in a freshly dug cavern beneath the compound, which transmitted its readings directly to Dr. Mercury’s central analysis hub. Their hope had been that if they just created enough of a threat at the facility, the rebels would be forced to launch a full-on assault instead of an infiltration mission. This would prompt the Entity to respond, which in turn would require Shadow to answer it.
What exactly these sensors found, Dr. Mercury would figure out soon. She was currently walking the corridors of the lowest areas of the Tower, on her way to her personal lab. Despite her tight deadlines she had been able to get a full night of sleep after returning from the facility. Claw had remained, apparently to antagonize Kay to trigger some change that he was apparently destined to have.
Dr. Mercury unlocked the door to her lab and stepped inside. She really had to clean up some of the mess she made over the last few days, research documents and sensor printouts littered most free surfaces, the rest was occupied by equipment that should be in a cupboard, not wherever it was currently.
“Later.” She said to herself. “There is data to be analyzed.”
And to do just that she sat down at her workstation, booted it up and located the data transmitted from the portal facility. As expected, the sheer amount of it was staggering, they had crammed every type of sensor they could think of into that cavern, multiple sensors of each type where possible. There was one sensor among them that she had developed for this exact occasion, she had even sacrificed a few crystals for it. That sensor would look beyond the boundaries of Nexus, into the emptiness between worlds, Dr. Mercury hoped that it would be the key to learning more.
She smiled. “Alright, tell me your secrets.”
It took a good while for all the data to be fused together into a singular model, which took the appearance of a 3D reconstruction of the facility based on what the sensors picked up. The level of detail was immense, although the model only concerned itself with matter density and energy emissions, so color and sound were entirely missing.
Now that Dr. Mercury had her model, she could slowly step through the timeline to observe how the battle played out. She had to give it to the rebels, they had some elite troops on their side. She fast-forwarded until she reached the segment where the Entity appeared. This was where the difficult part started. Many of the sensors couldn’t be cleanly visualized as part of her model so she had to look at the raw output or some statistical representation thereof.
While the Entity was not the subject of her study, Dr. Mercury decided to take a deeper look into what kinds of readings it caused nonetheless, after all she had already established that Shadow shared some traits with it, knowing what exactly those were would be useful in understanding how Shadow worked.
The data on the Entity was interesting to say the least, the pattern of the readouts remained the exact same across time, no matter how many decimal places Dr. Mercury looked at. This continued right up until the shielding material of its armor. The only place where there was a transitory space were its gloves, there the readings fluctuated between ambient noise and the strict order the Entity imposed.
These were no new discoveries, but they confirmed what she already knew about the Entity. Something interesting she found was that there was another, infinitely small speck of this impenetrable order some distance into the facility. She assumed that this was Claw, the Entity didn’t control him directly like it did with possessed subjects. It just seemed to maintain a token presence, possibly to keep Fire suppressed.
Dr. Mercury slowly stepped forward through the timeline, up until Shadow came flying in from outside of the sensor range. The extradimensional sensor picked up a vague presence, manifesting in an amplification of the ambient static. However, the magnitude of this presence grew immensely moments later, just when Shadow and her immediate surroundings completely dropped off the conventional sensors.
The presence was larger than expected, extending almost halfway across the facility. It also didn’t have a distinct border, its frayed edges bleeding into the surroundings and erratically moving about. She stepped forward a few more seconds, right up to where Shadow clashed with the Entity.
“Fascinating.” Dr. Mercury said, talking to herself in true evil scientist manner. “They aren’t overlapping at any point, they can’t even interact with each other beyond collision.”
Beyond these initial observations, Dr. Mercury spent several hours analyzing every detail she could of the interactions between Shadow and the Entity. More accurately, she studied them individually and tried correlating some points. It was obvious that the Entity had control over the spatial topology of Nexus but surprisingly, Shadow too had some degree of influence, if only at a local scale.
Eventually Dr. Mercury moved on to later parts of the fight, observing the happenings on the inside of the building. She saw the assassin chase Claw down and cut him in half with one swing. Claw wasn’t dead but he would be if he remained that way. For a split second, almost too short to be picked up by the sensors, the Entity’s presence on Claw expanded and fully enveloped him, bending reality to put him together again. In that brief moment the sheer amount of energy the Entity had given Claw also became apparent, if Claw had been capable of magic, he’d be nearly unstoppable with such power.
She also made another observation. In the time when Claw had been cut in half, Shadow’s presence was magnified hundredfold, but then returned to previous levels as soon as he was mended.
Dr. Mercury stopped analyzing the data to contemplate. “So that explains why the Entity is keeping Claw alive. If Fire’s body is damaged or otherwise compromised, she gets stronger.” She paused. “Hmm… maybe stronger isn’t the right word. More unstable would probably fit better. Then again, they’re synonymous in her case, increased entropy either way.”
A thought occurred to her. So, if that injury caused her power to spike that much, what would Fire permanently dying do? Even the Entity would have to respect such an immense increase in power. The Entity was order, Shadow was entropy. Dr. Mercury didn’t have to think to know which of those won out if the power gap shrunk. But didn’t the Entity say that she was no threat? Not even conceptually? Something about that struck Dr. Mercury as odd.
She opened a file containing her first test run of her new sensor, the subject of which had been the Entity’s void plasma that sat at the center of the machine. From what the Entity had told her, it was completely separated from its main body. It did exert a certain influence on its surroundings, miniscule compared to Entity itself. Scaled up, this influence was what allowed for possession and absorption, as well as control over Nexus’ reality. She now compared this to the new readings on the Entity, the influence was shielded by its armor, but its strength was still measurable. She now just needed a third data point to compare it to.
Scouring her measurement archives, Dr. Mercury came across early tests she had done a long time ago, before she was head researcher. The project that laid the groundwork for her new sensor. That was what she had been looking for. The measurements on the Entity’s pull weren’t accurate but they at least gave her an estimate. The Entity’s immediate area of influence depended on how much matter it controlled. The small blob of void plasma influenced next to nothing, its glass container was enough to completely negate its influence. The Entity itself was known to be able to exert influence on people through direct touch or at short distances, but its control over Nexus reached way further than that.
Dr. Mercury stood up, she needed to use the intercom.
She said into the microphone: “Hello, Dimensions? I’d like to talk to General Issa.”
Moments later the voice of her colleague could be heard. “Veronica, what do you need?”
“Just estimates on Nexus’ mass at two timestamps. I don’t need exact figures.”
Issa replied: “Sure, just send a message with the timestamps and I’ll have someone take care of it. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, we’re not under much load.”
Dr. Mercury found that Issa was true to her word, exactly four minutes after her initial message she got a reply with the data she had requested. Now it was only a matter of letting the computer fit a function to the three points, with generous wiggle room for the old, imprecise measurement. Only having only three data points was far from ideal and thoroughly unscientific, but it was all she had to work with. At least she could constrain the fit by assuming that the function would be monotonous. It didn’t make sense for the Entity’s influence to start declining at random mass thresholds, the Entity was weird but not that weird.
The calculation was fast, and thus the result took Dr. Mercury by surprise. She had expected a vaguely polynomial curve, hypercubic at most. Instead, the curve was exponential, at the very low end of estimates. The implications flashed to her mind instantly, but it took her almost a whole minute to comprehend them in their entirety.
She felt fatigued, as if she had gone another few days without sleep. Her head swam.
She slowly vocalized her thoughts, as if that would make it easier to accept.
“When we start the machine… the worlds the crystals came from will collapse into Nexus. They will take their neighbors with them. At that point Nexus will have enough mass to expand the Entity’s influence well past its boundaries. The Entity… will take off its armor and exert its pull again. At that point it will be enough to reach worlds the machine couldn’t.”
She took a deep breath.
“It’s a runaway reaction. More and more worlds collapse into Nexus, the Entity gets more and more powerful. Eventually… it will unite all of existence in Nexus and then... then its influence will make it absorb all sentience. The Entity will be all.”
Dr. Mercury shook her head. She had to keep this knowledge to herself. Saying anything to anyone wouldn’t help. At the best she wouldn’t be believed, at worst she’d be possessed by the Entity and forced to continue her work. She had been digging her own grave this entire time, not just her grave, the grave of everything and everyone. And if she hadn’t done it, her successor would have.
For the first time in her life, Dr. Mercury felt entirely at a loss.
She was too absorbed in her own personal nothingness to notice the vague outline of Freak passing through the edge of her vision as he phased out of the room.
Chapter53:Grand Plans (Tyron)
“And what is the update on the construction of the portal room?” he asked, eyes glowing with voidfire.
It was his first public appearance since the night he proclaimed himself King in Ash two nights before. And was really doubling down on the King angle. He sat on a raised throne, erected at the back of the dining hall, a crown of plain iron on his head, looking grave and immovable. Steve and Jennifer stood before him in full armour. Tyron at his right. Rose at his left. The other officers distributed amongst a group of knights in red scarves. He wasn’t leaning on backroom subconferencing to make decisions anymore. Now, the public would see his will… or whatever this was supposed to achieve.
“Thinks he looks strong. Looks crazy,” chirped Kir with the solemnity of a doctor pronouncing a long-term patient dead.
“Don’t forget, he is strong,” Astro warned telepathically.
Tyron looked up from his position at Kay’s right hand and cast an eye at the wizard who was now a part of their wordless conversations. On the next step down from Tyron, Astro looked straight forward, staring ambiguously into the crowd as though searching for nothing and everything. And, like Tyron, he was flanked by soldiers in red scarfs.
They’d taken the decision almost immediately after returning from the raid - they needed as much time to plan and compare notes as possible. Kay would have them both busy, dashing between errands and appearances. They needed to be ready to move.
“He’s both, that’s why he’s a problem,” concluded Astro.
But for the moment they did not have a plan, so they maintained the illusion of support. He looked down to the foot of the plinth, where Lucy looked up at Kay, looking uncomfortable speaking before such a large crowd.
Tyron felt sorry for her - she was overseeing the administrative side, but Steve and Jennifer were the ones overseeing the actual construction - if she was uncomfortable Kay shouldn’t be forcing her while Steve and Jennifer stood statuesque before his throne. Then again, maybe this was his idea of bringing her into the fold after keeping her at arm's length. Tyron couldn’t tell what tactics had carried over between the governance of Kay Mandy and the reign of the King in Ash.
“The chamber is nearly complete. Construction will be finished by tomorrow, the technology will be set up within two days.”
They had dug a tunnel rapidly into one of the other mountains that framed the high plain that held the entrance to the Shelter, and now were hollowing it out. Tyron saw the reasoning. It put the portals out of the way of the areas the enemy knew about. Besides, it meant new arrivals would get the scenic route, and Kay intended for them to have many arrivals.
Kay stood up, and he smiled a smile that almost radiated warmth, but in truth reflected the self-satisfaction of a tyrant. And yet, what he said was not tyrannical. He sounded downright humbled.
“Thank you, Lucy. As per usual you have us all running well ahead of schedule. You’re a credit to yourself and a credit to the Shelter. And, of course, let us not forget Steve Brine and Jennifer, who have almost single handedly overseen this rapid, essential construction.”
He stepped forward and, planting a hand on the shoulder on either Brine so as to show his reliance upon them, he practically beamed out at the crowd.
“We have all fought hard, even those of us who have not been on the battlefield, and we have done it against an enemy who are more experienced and better-equipped and who outnumber us a thousand to one. We have considerable power in our ranks, and I would trust any person in this…” He paused to weigh his words, then tried to pass it off as simply being empathic. “Shelter, to defend against at least a dozen of the Tower’s cabal of mercenaries and genociders. We shall build a new world from the ashes of the Tower, and it will be a better one than any of us has ever known. ”
He raised a fist, and there were some cheers, particularly from infantry fighters Kay had trained, or archers he had kept from the frontlines with his portal trickery. Others were not so enthusiastic, smiling politely at best, looking openly afraid at worst. However, those who did cheer were desperately, deeply enthused simply by the fact he was there. What he said was immaterial, the King in Ash and his better world was what they needed to believe in.
“He’s lucky,” Tyron thought to his sword and the wizard. “If Shadow’s coven hadn’t gone so cultish during the raid and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves, we probably wouldn’t have had to lift a finger. He’d have been toppled by the end of the evening. But people are desperate, so people will support him because they think he can keep her in check.”
“Tyron,” replied Astro with some considerable reluctance. “Let’s not pretend he’s totally devoid of charm, or we too are culpable. Shadow’s distant, methodical, hard to connect to. Kay is outgoing, full of fire. Upsettingly literally at the moment.”
He wasn’t wrong. Shadow wasn’t even present for the address. Tyron could see a few of her acolytes at the back, but they didn’t look important or happy to be there. They tapped their feet impatiently.
“So do not take it as an insult when I say that we are few in number,” Kay continued. “We need reinforcements, or we will not prevail. And soon we shall be ready to rally them. We are not alone. We have friends.”
He turned to the officers and began punctuating his declarations with punches of his fists and small, harmless combustions of voidfire.
“We have adventurers.” In Steve’s direction. “Dwarves.” To Urist. “Heroes.” To Destiny. “Dragons!” To Tyron, who felt a pit in his stomach. “All these allies yearning to aid us, to come together as an army of all the worlds. It matters not why they come. Do they want to help the weak? We will take them. Do they want to protect their loved ones? We will take them. Do they simply wish to test their mettle against a worthy foe? The more the merrier. Rejoice and be merry, victory is on the horizon!”
He clenched his fists, and rifts opened along the tables, out of which fell a frankly worrying quantity of alcohol. Tyron and Astro exchanged a look, they hadn’t been consulted about this. Scanning the crowd, Lucy was the only one who looked unsurprised. Perhaps Kay had brought her into the fold after all.
“Have fun tonight, for the road ahead will be arduous. I wish you well and take my leave.”
As part of the pre-arranged entourage, Tyron automatically began to follow Kay, but he was concerned that a gesture like this had been arranged without his, or by the look of it, Astro’s consultation. He debated whether or not to raise the issue once they were out of earshot - he was trying to look like he was behind Kay, not that he was a sycophant.
Tyron soon began to notice that the other officers were coming with them, even ones who he usually considered diehard Fire supporters, and by connection Shadow sympathsiers, like Urist and to a lesser extent Voidblade. And Warnado and Amanda, who he normally said were too young. The entire officer class was walking with them bar Shadow.
Finally, they found themselves walking into the second recent construction site, this one in the Shelter proper. Tyron had not seen the corridor they were in on the preliminary blueprints. There was a button on the wall.
“Jennifer,” Kay said breezily. “Would you do the honours?”
A large, four-by-four piston door opened and unveiled a large, carpeted room, lit with redstone lamps and filled with amusements. A full bar, a small spleef arena, a training corner, a library, a kitchen and many other luxuries. In the centre was a depressed area filled with sofas, a long table running along it.
Kay stepped out before them.
“Like I said to them, it’s been hard the last while, and I haven’t been as friendly or respectful to you all as I should have been. So, when Steve and Jennifer suggested that we make a new area for everyone to cool off in, I leapt to approve it. Let me introduce you to the new officer’s lounge.”
There was a flash in either hand and suddenly he was pouring himself a drink of whiskey. He raised a toast.
“To new beginnings,” he said.
It had that same tyrannical self-satisfaction as before, but Tyron tried to smile convincingly as he heard it.
###
The party was in full swing, and Tyron was sitting on one of the sofas, feeling warm and sleepy from the drink. Steve sat next to him, talking about getting Dungeons and Enderdragons going again to Lucy, who was already working out the best date and time to do it, and any people they should add or expect to have to replace.
Jennifer was swaying pleasantly atop the remains of a spleef arena, having beaten Amanda, Warnado, Astro and even an uncharacteristically enthusiastic Voidblade. The first chatted away at Voidblade, who almost seemed capable of pretending to be interested.
Rose and Urist stood around trying to figure out how Steve and Jennifer’s jukebox worked, apparently deciding it was completely impossible and therefore utterly hilarious. Urist kept leaning forward and pressing an eye to the black holes where the music poured out from and came away cackling each time.
Destiny and Astro were talking to Kay over by the bar, all looking very animated about whatever they were talking about. The bartender too was absorbed in the conversation, perpetually serving up more drinks as the trio finished them, never quite completing their order.
Astro was easily the most sober of them, casting eyes around the room but looking like he’d just about put the conspiracy out of his mind. Destiny was probably the most drunk, laughing darkly at nearly every word of whatever the other two said. And Kay was a close runner-up, sloshing his glass of whisky around in violent swings and spilling a lot of it as he told some long-winded anecdote, the image of boisterousness. He and Tyron locked eyes and he nodded several times with a grin.
Tyron almost felt guilty, and diverted his attention to Warnado, who stood not far off, trying to sneak a glass of rum. However, just as he managed to pour the glass Kay and Astro loomed over him. Kay took the glass with an almost admiring look.
“Warnado, you’re much too young,” said Astro with considerably less admiration. “Things are weird right now but we’re not giving minors alcohol.”
“Quite right,” Kay agreed. “A fruity drink for the kids, please! One each. No alcohol, please thank you!”
Then Astro turned and walked back towards Destiny and the bartender, looking stern. The bartender then filled up two non-alcoholic drinks and slid them down the counter. Kay, continuing to scold, sloshed half the rum into either drink and departed with a wink.
“And don’t do it again!” he concluded as the child departed, beaming.
Tyron chuckled to himself and realised Steve and Lucy had gone off to the library to consult a rulebook. However, before Tyron could begin to wonder how a man that friendly could simultaneously be such a tyrant, he noticed the man himself drunkenly swaggering over to him.
Kay collapsed into a seat behind him and immediately began to stammer with purpose.
“Tyron, listen, I wanted to say - about the speech from earlier. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot with the whole dragons thing I - I - Warnado tells me you’re not sure about how your world is doing, which I probably should have guessed from context, but I never knew. Something Freak said in captivity, you know yourself. I just wanted to clarify… don’t feel pressured to go back there if you’re worried. This is your trouble, no one can tell you how to,” he stifled a belch, “deal with it but you. So, you can go there if - if when and you’re comfortable. And - and I won’t send anyone else, unless you say so. Steve - he also has a dragon, apparently, it’s not that big a deal. Just say to me. Anyway, good talk big guy, I’m missed over,” he looked around and rediscovered the bar, “Over there, probably.”
And with that, Kay was gone, so Tyron tried to reconcile this barely coherent but obviously well-meaning young man with the cold arrogance of the King in Ash. Once he’d wondered how Kay could become the man Astro feared so thoroughly, now he wondered which part of him was the act. All he knew was that the man could turn wars into grudges, grudges into wars, and any celebration into a tragedy if he so desired it. So, as Tyron began to drift off to sleep, he felt uneasy, and stopped himself from slipping under completely.
“Keep alert,” Kir told him.
So, he kept alert, eyes dashing warily around the room beneath half-closed lids.
Chapter54:A Key to Other Worlds (Jennifer)
Jennifer jogged down the hallway, dodging between people and supplies. It was finally the day.
The portal had started operating the previous night, and Steve had volunteered to go through first. Jennifer would have joined him but had already committed to leading a gathering mission and so stayed behind. It almost killed her not to go, but now he was scheduled to get back.
She narrowly avoided ploughing into Urist and apologised between excited giggles. The dwarf smiled though, he understood this was a big day.
It had only been a few months, but she had missed their friends so much. The familiar grounds of Brine Manor too, and even further off her own home, but that could wait. The people were more important.
She came to the heavy iron doors and came to a halt, panting slightly. After composing herself she pressed her palm against the button and strode through.
The portal room was large and octagonal, with a series of redstone consoles around the room humming with activity and flashing out numbers. On the opposite wall to Jennifer, the portal itself lay dormant.
For the moment, it was just an empty obsidian ring, but soon it would flash back into life. That said, it was an impressive obsidian ring. Jennifer and Steve had gathered the obsidian themselves, and it was at least five times the size of your average Nether Portal. Pressed against the side was a surprisingly small console into which you could program dimensional coordinates.
It worked by locking onto a dimension, then identifying any extant portals or suitable dimensional rifts. The console allowed the user to filter between them and decide on the optimal entry point. Naturally, this meant you had to work with whatever entry points existed within the dimension, so the size was mostly for show, at least until they found an ally who could build a matching portal of similar size, or a Tower portal they could hijack. However, they’d all felt the aesthetic and deployment potential was worth the extra resource commitment.
It wasn’t like they were being stingy with the obsidian. Beneath the stone walls and woolen floor were about three layers of the stuff. The entire portal room was a lockbox.
And at the heart of this lockbox stood its overseer, Tyron Dragoknight. He wasn’t a natural fit for this rather technical process, but he was pretty much the only option. The obvious choice would have been Shadow and her mages, but they were keeping to themselves, and Kay seemed happy enough to keep them away from this. Astro would then be the logical second choice, but he was always running some errand or in Kay’s entourage. Lucy was already rushed off her feet. And Tyron wasn’t not busy, but there were people who could be reshuffled to handle things like his training duties. Everyone else was either too important to specific sectors - like herself and Steve with gathering - a literal child, or kept disappearing off on their own, like Destiny.
She walked up beside the second-in-command as he read over some readings and scratched his furry head. She probably should have said something empathetic, but her excitement overtook her.
“So, when is Steve arriving?”
“Just a few minutes…” said Tyron. “Sorry, these numbers are hard to wrap my head around.”
“Maths… so much maths,” lamented Kir.
“Oh, what’s the issue?”
“So, thanks to the notes Fire took when he worked on the Ender’s atlas, we had some idea of what worlds there are. We can also use this little thingumajig,” he pulled out a metal device with a small glass tube on the end, “to figure out where individual people are from and roughly where they exited their world from. The problem is it becomes less obvious over time, so we have to do more work to reconstruct the signature. So, our scientists are - they do the - they triangulate the… This really isn’t my field.”
The two laughed. Tyron put his sheaf of papers into the glowing void on his back.
“Long story short,” Tyron concluded. “We’re trying to distinguish between the different openings. An active portal suggests civilisation has at least been there once. A rift could be anywhere. But… maths. It’s hard.”
“Numbers everywhere,” chirped Kir, traumatised.
“Anyhow, excited?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s just been so long. I’m not expecting a full reunion of the Alliance or anything, but it’ll be nice to have some familiar faces around the place. Not that I don’t like you guys or anything, it’s just, I’ve known them longer.”
“It’s a more natural fit.”
“Yeah.”
“The difference between work friends and the people you actually seek out.”
They settled into an uncomfortable silence.
“I don’t know, some of us have gotten pretty close. You and Astro, for example. You seem to spend a lot of time together.”
“Yes,” he said. “We do.”
He said it in a way that withered and rotted away the idea of their friendship Jennifer had built up in her head. Suddenly it was no longer private confidence and companionable laughing, it was mostly uncomfortable silences and grim solidarity. It was an alliance of convenience, or necessity, to Tyron that could never compare to the real thing.
“How are you feeling about seeing your friends again?” Jennifer asked with a sympathetic smile.
Tyron gave a nervous smile.
“Maybe a little more than friends?”
“Drop it,” said Tyron definitively.
Jennifer’s smile faded and she turned to look at the portal. Silence washed over and over them until it became unbearable, until she thought she might drown in it. Then, a merciful scientist called over to them.
“One minute to scheduled reopening. Are we good to go sir?”
“Absolutely, get it ready guys,” said Tyron.
He clapped his hands, and the room became ablaze with activity.
And with that, the awkwardness was gone, and excitement replaced it. Levers flipped, buttons were pressed, and Jennifer fought the urge to move frantically in response to each new development, as though the levers and buttons controlled her own body. She clenched her fists, heard the chugging of pistons beneath them, and it could have been her own heartbeat.
Finally, Tyron grinned widely and handed her a pair of protective goggles. She finished putting them on just in time to see the Dragoknight walk up to the portal console, fiddle with a few buttons, and pull the lever.
There was a flash. A blue, pulsing light rushed across the space within the portal frame, overlapping and binding until it formed a strange, gel-like film across the air. And within the gel were shadows, vague blurry shapes like mountains and trees and… people maybe? Wind rushed through the portal and threw her red hair right back, then calmed to a gentle breeze. It was open.
The shadows started to move, growing larger and more looming, until finally they passed through.
The first figure appeared, green eyes and athletic form blooming into view immediately. Ozen, Steve’s older brother, stepped forward with a sword in one hand and a picnic basket in the other.
“Wow,” he laughed and called over his shoulder. “You weren’t kidding, those portals show you some weird stuff.”
He staggered and fell to his knees, still laughing away. It took all Jennifer’s strength not to run up and hug him immediately.
Wolfric stepped through, armour over his black robes and a brewing stand in each hand, and also staggered a little but did not fall.
“Yes, I have seen horrors and beauties beyond my comprehension,” he muttered absent-mindedly. Then, to Tyron: “Sorry, could you hold these?”
He handed over the brewing stands.
“I have more in my inventory, but thought some extra wouldn’t hurt, given the circumstances.”
His tone was flat and disengaged. As ever, the machinations going on behind his dark blue eyes were a complete mystery to Jennifer, as he barely acknowledged the big, green wall of fur standing over him. Then, his eyes fell on her.
“Hello Jen. How are you doing?”
“Really? I haven’t seen you since the Ocean Monument and that’s the best you can do?”
She hugged the wizard and beckoned for Ozen to join them. Startled, the mysterious wizard just smiled stupidly, and then had the wind knocked out of him as Ozen slammed into him from behind and bear-hugged them both.
“I’ve missed you guys so much!” Jennifer shouted.
Then, finally, the last shadow moved up to the portal, and out came Steve, riding atop Drake Junior, their pet enderdragon. Several scientists gasped and backed away at the sight of the creature, but Jennifer couldn’t stop beaming. The creature had chests strapped to its flanks, no doubt containing all manner of useful resources, and it panted happily and swung its head around in curiosity.
“Honey, I’m home!” smiled Steve as he hopped down from the creature’s back. He and Jennifer embraced, and Tyron ran up to stroke the young enderdragon under the chin.
“Look at you, you are a beauty,” said Tyron with reverence.
“Like what you see?” Steve asked. “I thought you spent a lot of time with dragons?”
“Yeah, but the enderdragon in my world was a one-off. A tool of Herobrine. I destroyed it but look at this thing! It’s here, it’s alive, it’s not evil! It’s cute!”
The dragon licked his face, and he laughed heartily.
Ozen and Wolfric joined Jennifer and Steve.
“So, is it just you guys?” Jennifer asked. “How is everyone?”
“Mom’s doing well,” said Steve. “Dad’s recovering. Mark’s busy helping the villagers rebuild, same with David - y’know Morbrook David not... Couldn’t get hold of Alex, she was off on an adventure. Nothing from Deodate either.”
“I mean what did you expect?” said Ozen. “He’s an angel, he’s not exactly alive.”
“Yeah, but he’s the reason we have the dumb crystals that got us into this mess, I was hoping maybe he’d turn up.”
“I’m surprised you were available,” said Jennifer to Wolfric. “You’re always off doing mysterious magicking wizard stuff.”
“I was, but then I heard you guys had disappeared. I came back to help Ozen look.”
“Aw, you big softie!”
Jennifer punched him in the arm.
“Well, we have the gang back together,” said Steve contentedly. “So, plan for Dungeons and Enderdragons over spleef?”
No one had any objections. They left Tyron with Drake and went off to the officer’s lounge.
“Okay,” said Tyron as the dragon was led off to be fed and lodged. “My turn.”
Chapter55:Inevitability Revealed (Destiny)
Destiny approached the broken portal, passing through the corpses of her old enemies, and feeling a little embarrassed. She hoped Anya didn’t realise she’d been drinking since she last saw her. To her credit, it had just been the night of the officer’s lounge opening, but everyone deserves to cut loose every now and then, even heroes. Right?
But she mostly thought about that to try and avoid thinking about the real issue. The gem was flashing again. Obviously, she couldn’t answer it in the Shelter, so she’d just had more time to dread it as she tried to reach Anya. She had resolved to take whatever help Freak offered her, but she didn’t like that she had to.
Finally, she crested the hill and saw Anya waiting for her, lounging in the mouth of the portal. She didn’t straighten up, instead maintaining a look of luxuriant disdain beneath closed eyelids.
“So, you’ve been drinking again?”
“Yes but-”
“-And after the dramatic bottle smash? Kiddo I could not be more disappointed-”
“-That’s not important right now,” grumbled Destiny, rummaging in her pocket.
“Don’t change the subject on me. You’ve got to take this seriously or you’ll end up even deader than I am!”
Destiny pulled out the pulsating yellow gem and waved it in front of Anya.
“I’m plenty serious, now lighten up. We can’t let this guy know we’ve been fighting.”
Anya groaned.
“Sure, we’ll just talk shop, I guess.”
She stood up and shook her ethereal body out.
Destiny pressed the crystal, and she saw the same pattern of criss-crossing yellow lines as before, which eventually coalesced into Freak’s translucent form. From the second his face weaved into view, she knew this would be a big one.
“Destiny, we need to meet in person, right now!”
“What’s happened?”
Freak raked his talons through his hair and curled in on himself. His features were stretched taut with stress, to the point that he looked fit to explode at any moment. Whatever had him so scared, he had just seen it. Seeing a phantom of fear scared could have been funny if Destiny ignored the implications.
She tried again, with forced confidence.
“What’s happened, Freak?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment, just… let me...”
He looked wildly around the hilltop, half-crawling forward. Despite not physically being there, he carefully avoided the broken glass Destiny still hadn’t cleaned up. It was strange, animalistic, as though he were trying to sniff something out. Then, he straightened up and loped towards Destiny.
“Sorry, it’s easier if I show you.”
He then slashed upwards with his talons and caught her between the eyes. She staggered back as warm blood sprayed out and trickled down the bridge of her nose. As her eyes cleared, she realised the sky was black. Then, the portal was gone. Then, she was nowhere.
She looked around and saw Anya huddling close to her. She placed a hand on her shoulder, and it didn’t phase through. So, Freak wanted her to experience something physical.
Suddenly, a path beneath her feet. They walked forward instinctively, the dark still around them. To the left, a glimmer of light, a glimpse through a space the size of a doorway into a laboratory. Some scientist Destiny recognised from files and descriptions: Veronica Mercury. She looked dreadful, with pale skin and dark rings digging into her face. She kept frantically tapping buttons and scribbling figures, desperately trying to escape an answer she’d come to, or an error she’d made. Finally, she buried her face in her hands.
“I’m sorry,” wept Mercury.
Destiny wanted to stop, or maybe to go in and try to figure out what this was about, but she couldn’t stop walking. Her pace just kept accelerating.
Next, on the right, she caught a glimpse of the Entity - the main body, not a manifestation - prowling around a distortion in the air, a crack in the world. But now she passed the doorway even faster.
“Destiny, slow down,” Anya shouted.
Destiny realised how fast she was moving and couldn’t slow down. Anya was falling rapidly behind her. She tried to stop, but her legs disobeyed her, striding on. She saw Anya trip and fall, and then disappear back into the dark.
Next, a glimpse of a long table. She remembered it as the place Marinus Bul and the Entity had tried to recruit her and David all those months ago. But now, the Entity’s generals were gathered. The main body sat at the head of the table and offered instructions she couldn’t make out. Some fell to their knees in servitude. Others rose in anger, only for manifestations to emerge from the shadows, pass their hands through them, and absorb them until they were nothing.
Her speed was terrifying. If she hit anything, she’d break like glass.
Then, the machine, large and impervious. Crystals shone within it. The Entity approached and shed its armour. And it was grey, swirling, and terrible. And it was everywhere and everything and every-
Destiny tripped and skimmed across the ground. It was a roof of cold, bronze slabs of stone, and she was careening towards its end. She tried to get a grip, but the slabs were too smooth, and too tightly packed to leave a gap. Nothing had ever damaged these stones. Nothing ever could. She slid over the edge.
Then, as she saw Nexus unfold beneath her in all its patchwork expanse, a hand reached from the sky and grabbed her own. She was dragged back onto the roof.
“Thanks Anya,” she said.
“Oh sure, thank her.”
Destiny’s breath left her.
A man with dark, messy hair and a patchy stubble stood over her. He wore a dark blue jacket over a leather chestplate and white shirt. An unbroken gauntlet sat on his wrist, crackling with the energy of the Hollow Emerald.
“David…”
He pressed a hand to her cheek. “I said I didn’t want to lose you again, so I won’t.”
They kissed and held each other tight, until they heard a boom. The Tower shook beneath them. They staggered apart and looked around for the source of the apparent danger.
She looked around at the sky and at the ground and saw nothing. Industry and fields and forest below. Only yellow and orange and wisps of cloud above. And then she saw it.
The sky was shrinking in. The horizon was getting nearer. The world was turning slowly in on one point. And as it did so, she saw patches of grey static spreading like moss mold rot. Like maggots waiting to burst forth, the Entity was becoming everywhere. And it spread beyond Nexus. She saw cities nations worlds appear in the sky and wither away into its form. One body, one being, endless and final.
And now it was spreading onto the roof of its own Tower, consuming, eating, debasing its creation.
“Destiny…”
She turned. David staggered towards her, across a patch of the seething grey. The grey was spreading across him too, and melting away as it did so, taking away soft, peeling chunks. Like rotting fruit, eaten by maggots.
“I…”
It reached his jaw. It devoured his face. He reached out. He fell forward. Melted into the nothing that everything had become was becoming will become.
She fell to her knees, choking back tears of horror and loss. It would reach her next and there was nothing she could do. She scrunched her eyes shut. She waited.
“Destiny. Destiny, wake up!”
It was Anya’s voice. Destiny couldn’t feel her presence. She opened her eyes. She was back before the portal, lying on her back.
“Thank Notch, you’re awake,” sighed Anya.
Anya turned and eyed the image of Freak, who was cracking his knuckles obsessively over by the edge of the hilltop. Destiny rose up.
“What the **** was that?” she asked.
“That’s what will happen if we don’t stop it, soon.”
“No, what was that?” she asked, more angrily.
She took a step towards Freak, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“I needed to make sure you got just how serious this is. Excuse my slight artistic liberties.”
He was still looking away.
“You had, no right.”
“Hm?”
Freak turned around, confused.
“You had no damned right to use him like that!”
Tears were flowing down her face. She fell to her knees. She’d had him back, just for a second. It didn’t matter that it was a lie, he had been back and now he was gone again. The pain was all fresh and all new and just as bad as before.
Anya laughed harshly.
“You used David. Ho-ho-holy ****ing ****.” She rubbed her temples. “The second I think you can’t get any more pathetic, you just go and overachieve, don’t you, Freak?”
“I-”
“Get out of here, now. We’re done. You’ve got your fear fix, you’ve had your fun. So, unless you’re going to come in person so we can kick your ass good and proper, don’t bother coming back.”
Freak groaned.
“Humans! So myopic! Don’t you see why I had to use him?”
Ignoring the still-weeping Destiny, he stormed up to Anya and sneered at her.
“I need her to understand what everyone and everything is going to see and feel and lose if that thing wins. I’m sorry if I hurt the poor duck’s feelings, but this is bigger than her or you or me. That anguish she feels right now, that is all there will be at the end of the world, and then there will be nothing but the Entity. If she can’t bear it, maybe she should either help me stop that from happening, or just off herself now.”
He turned away, furious. Destiny stopped crying. She wiped her eyes and sat up.
“He’s right,” she said.
“He certainly is not!” Anya protested.
Destiny ignored her and looked at Freak.
“What’s your plan?”
“There’s the issue. Beyond the fact that we can use the crystals to somehow harm things like the Entity, there isn’t much to go by. And harming isn’t killing. Other than that, there is one thing left: The Entity’s one fear - one of two technically if you count your mage there - and that’s the dimensional scar located in its throne room.”
“So, where do I come in? What do you want me to do?”
“At this point, trying to jam a crystal in there, hitting it with magic and hoping it does something is the best we can hope for. The magic part is where you come in. I’m reasonably confident that I can get you up to that point.” Freak sighed. “Issue is that I don’t happen to have crystals on hand, can’t even appropriate one from the shipments because there are no shipments anymore. The machine is scheduled to come online in just a few days.”
Destiny didn’t say anything.
“How difficult is it to get crystals with our guys?” Anya asked, with a contemptuous sidelong glance at Freak.
“Unless Fire had a secret stash that we don’t know about, Steve’s the only one I know has access to any crystals. Sadly, they’re in his ender chest. We need to trick him into opening that up.”
“Is he easy to trick?” Anya asked.
“Kind of, yeah, but Jennifer’s not and they’re pretty much inseparable. There’s also the issue that Shadow can apparently hear and see most everything going on in the build. It drives Kay nuts. Whole place is on high alert.”
The gears were turning in her head.
“So, we’ll need Shadow distracted, we’ll need Steve to be in a situation where he’ll feel safe to open the chest, and we’ll need to ensure the others can’t interfere.”
She and Anya locked eyes.
“You said Fire had a stash of poisons and sedatives,” Anya remembered.
“I’ll get a few of them together in the officer’s lounge. We’ll drink for a while, move the conversation to the crystals. No reason to be so secretive about them now - the enemy knows where we are. Steve’ll pull them out...”
“Then you drug them all. Slip off with the crystals.”
“I’ll kick up a fuss, make it sound like an enemy attack. Slip off in the confusion. Maybe you,” she pointed at Freak, “Could make a few appearances around the base, get Shadow, Kay and anyone else I can’t drug off my back. That doable?”
Freak shrugged exaggeratedly. “Sure, sure. Just need to not get myself obliterated by your mage but I’ll figure something out. Just let me know when you need that distraction with the crystal. Maybe notify me a few hours before so I can get into position quickly.”
“Okay,” Destiny breathed. “And we’ll slip out through this portal. Maybe destroy it after us so they can’t follow. Well, there’s the bones of a plan. We’ll hash out the details as we go.”
And with that she felt a great burden lifted. She didn’t have to choose between the King in Ash or the unknowable mage anymore. She had her own path. And she knew where it ended. In betrayal, and in death, but also in a duty fulfilled. She would see it through.
Chapter56:Cautious Return (Tyron)
The sun held low over the landscape, turning the sky orange as it drooped towards the horizon. The landscape comprised grassy mountains and exposed stone. Here and there small pillars of stone jutted upwards, reaching to the sky like so many grasping fingers. And of course, it was all made of cubes - sharp, uniform, destructible cubes. The sun, too, looked squarish when it passed behind a cloud, as though it were a great glass container packed to the brim with cubic fire.
“Home sweet home,” gasped Kir.
Tyron stepped forward out of the mouth of the portal.
“Don’t get too comfortable, we just need a glimpse. Something to let us know that Freak was wrong. Nothing more. Then we’ll go meet Astro.”
He looked around the summit for tracks, or for crates, a road maybe, but found nothing. This portal was not a major highway, maybe not even a portal made by the Tower. Unfortunately, this was not at all reassuring. The horrible things Freak had told me came flooding back.
“I watched Him rise again...”
Tyron felt his heart pound like a cannon, desperate to shatter him from the inside.
“...He walked your world, burning cities as he went...”
His lungs constricted as he remembered the dreams. Smoke like tar had poured into his nose and mouth, choking him, making him sleepy and heavy. He had seen spires burning, of cities he had saved, cities being rebuilt, those not yet made, forever and endless in their destruction as Herobrine strode through them, His very presence a source of desolation.
“...He took your dragons, and he crushed their skulls beneath his feet.”
He scanned the skies. Desperate for a glint of red scales in twilight, or a plume of smoke or a jet of fire or anything.
“And he punished all those who had thought to rise against him.”
Visions of torment. Seth at the gallows. Glowstar’s wings straining upon the rack. Rathina amidst brimstone and smoke.
Tyron desperately cast his eyes about the horizon, looking for any sign of civilization, asking Kir to speed up the process and enhance his sight. And in response, Kir heightened and emphasized every detail of the land, screaming out its potential importance. Every shadow, every corner, every flash of grass against grey stone, every flash of grey stone against grass. Tyron saw everything and it hurt.
Then, a cobblestone hovel, winding stairs leading up to it, became apparent on a hill to the South. Tyron barely remembered to summon his stone wings as he ran forward and leapt from the hilltop. And as he soared forward faster and more frightened than he had ever done so before, he had little to no control. He tumbled as he landed halfway up the staircase, but was immediately standing again, charging up to the hut with a heart full of worries and questions.
Finally, legs aching, and lungs ragged, he made it to the top. The sun shone fully in his eyes, and he could barely see the hovel, but he ran towards the impression of it. Hand outstretched, he readied to shove down the door when something landed between him and it. This something hit the ground like a meteor, splitting the wind and shaking the earth. Tyron fell back and raised Kir in defence.
“Make me combat ready!” He screamed internally. This came out vocally as a strangled roar.
“Tyron, wait!” warned the sword.
The Dragoknight felt his muscles lock up.
The creature had a long snout, and teeth like daggers. Its wings were fathoms wide. And its scales were a lovely green, speckled with blue and white to look like a nebula in the night sky. And it had such kind eyes.
“Hello Tyron,” said the dragon.
“Glowstar!”
Tyron leapt to his feet and patted him warily on the nose, not sure whether to accept the dragon was real or just assume he’d gone crazy, and this was some sort of fever dream. The dragon snorted happily in response and nuzzled Tyron with his neck. However, after a second of warm greetings, the dragon was all business.
“Where have you been?” Glowstar asked. “We haven’t seen you in weeks. Seth said you entered a mineshaft, but we found no trace.”
“It’s a long story but that’s not important right now, is everyone safe? Is Herobrine still dead? Is Rathina alright?”
“Rathina!” Kir chirped redundantly.
“What are you talking about?” asked Glowstar. “Of course, he’s dead, you killed him yourself… Tyron, where were you exactly?”
Tyron felt weeks of anxiety and bitterness and grief drain out of him in the shape of a single tear which seeped into his fur.
“Somewhere far away, where news was pretty bleak.”
“That is an unnecessarily oblique answer.”
Momentarily purged of negative emotion, the Dragoknight felt a new sense of purpose filling him. His world was safe, and he had to keep it that way. He was going to go to his meeting with Astro, and they’d bring Kay back into line, and he’d be safe too. And they’d patch things up between him and Shadow. And he’d teach Warnado how to kick Glibby’s stupid head clean off. And they’d save Fire and - and - and -
“Sorry buddy, it’ll have to do for now!” he burst out. “I need to get back for a meeting. All you need to know is there’s a new big bad to fight - and it’s worse than Herobrine. Gather everyone you can and wait for me outside - one sec, I’ve lost my bearings - that Nether portal tomorrow. Can you do that?”
Glowstar leapt back and spread his wings to their full breadth, looking ancient and wonderful, like a monument to a well-remembered ruler.
“Of course, Dragoknight!” rumbled Glowstar. “Anyone in particular?”
“The entire old crew. Rathina, Seth, the dragons, the rebel Endermen, the cities. If you have time even check up on Lupi’s old wolf, Blizzard. Literally any and every fighter will make a difference.”
“Rathina coming!” Kir shouted enthusiastically.
“Kir, yes, calm down a minute, I know you’re excited but let me talk,” said Tyron aloud.
“I shall, Dragoknight, although-”
“Rathina coming!”
“Kir, I swear to Notch, will you ever shut up?”
“Excellent question,” a light voice said from behind Tyron.
He turned.
“Hi Rathina,” he said breathlessly.
“Oh, hello Tyron, I didn’t see you there,” she snarked. Thankfully, her green eyes betrayed that she was actually pretty happy to see him. “So, what’s the story with the disappearance?”
He stood there, completely silent for a few moments. Rathina, his love, stood before him alive and unharmed. The same straight, dark hair cascaded out from beneath her hood and past her, and her smug grin shone enticingly at him. He felt as though he had been rooted to the ground.
“Thought we were hurrying,” cracked Kir.
“Well, maybe we can spare a few minutes…”
He reached out for her arm. She looped it around his neck. They kissed. And for a few short moments there was nothing in his mind but the feeling of her against him, the blinding glow of the sun, and the flow of mountain-top wind through his fur.
It was the day he was due to meet demon-grandpa, or demon-grandma, or whatever it was. Warnado kept almost turning back but managed to grit his teeth and push through each time, remembering that he had Shadow looking out for him, and that he needed this power boost to be useful here or back home. Still, demons were freaky, and he didn’t like the way they tended to take control away from him.
Eventually, this two-steps-forward-one-step-back pace managed to take him right to Shadow’s door.
He knocked. He waited. He wondered if he should just open the door. Knocked again. Looked up and down the hallway. Opened the door.
On the other side he saw a rectangular shape, the same black-beyond-black colour Shadow turned when she entered her void-state. Warnado grimaced as he remembered how looking at her had filled him with fear, and how it had paralysed her coven into useless awe. Suddenly, he wondered if this was such a good idea. Maybe Kay was right that she was dangerous.
Then, he remembered that literally everyone in the Shelter was dangerous and it didn’t seem that good of an argument. Kay was taking advice from a paperback sociopath and his bodyguard was a human blender. Besides, he remembered that Amanda had told him to deliver a message to Shadow, so he also remembered how cruddy he’d felt when he realised the bandits had taken Amanda and killed the whole village he’d been trying to protect, and so he finally remembered exactly why he was doing this.
He stepped through.
He stood in a pitch-black space, stretching miles ahead of him - well, near as he could tell. The only thing there was what he presumed to be the ritual site. It comprised a big circle of rough-hewn stones which looked embedded into the darkness as though it were soil. Around the edges stood tall, imposing torches on iron stands. And off to the right were a series of chests filled with demonology supplies - cases of special chalk, supplies to make that chalk, charts outlining and explaining different patterns, compendiums of runes and known demons and so much else.
Shadow stood over one of these chests, searching for a specific piece of chalk. He couldn’t see her face behind her white hair. The only thing he could be sure of was that she looked ever-so-slightly distorted, and that he felt an echo of that fear from the raid. She was partly void-stated.
“Hey, Shadow, I like the setup. Very witchy. Totally on-brand,” he said with a thumbs-up.
He wished he had some clever line, but he didn’t. He hoped this played well. He forced a smile.
“Boo!”
He leapt forward and turned around, clutching one hand to his heart and raising the other in a futile ‘stop’ gesture. Then, he saw his assailant, and both hands dropped. He bunched up his left cheek to show his disappointment.
“By Light, you are such a wuss, Helix,” laughed Amanda.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. How about I just jump out of an endless black void at you and we see how calm you are.”
“Sure, try it, I’ll kick your butt.”
She pushed him playfully.
“Well, obviously you won’t be scared now that you know I’m going to do it,” he sulked.
“You are such a baby!”
She hugged him and he snorted with laughter.
“So, why are you here?” He asked. “You told me to carry a message to...”
He cast a sidelong glance at his mentor, then raised his eyebrows emphatically at Amanda.
“Shadow called me here for emotional support, yours and hers too probably. Besides, great opportunity for me to meet your family! Haha!” She lowered her voice, though obviously Shadow could probably still hear her. “And, no, uh… The black void of nothing kind of put me off.”
Warnado turned to Shadow, who was still brushing her fingers across different sticks of chalk, meticulous as a surgeon.
“So, uh, how're you feeling?” he called a little louder.
Shadow replied: “Generally not good. My tremors from before have gotten worse, I can’t even use my hands, partially going into my void state restores my control but that is obviously no permanent solution. I couldn’t turn off my passive senses before, now I even hear thoughts of those around me. I’m actively suppressing it for you two but in larger crowds it becomes impossible.” she paused. “I can handle one more confrontation with the Entity, maybe two, then I’ll probably lose myself to my true nature.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Warnado stupidly.
Amanda elbowed him.
“Actually, Amanda and I, we got a message last night. Amanda mostly, I heard about it the next day. From her of course.” He looked back and Amanda gestured impatiently for him to her up. “The Lady of Dreams showed up, told Amanda she’d just been inside Claw’s dream.”
He craned his neck and looked for Shadow’s face. She didn’t seem to be slipping into her void-state any further, but he wanted to know how she was reacting.
“She says Fire - that Peter’s okay in there. She thinks,” he smiled a little as he said it.
He’d tried not to think about it too much, but he did miss the big scaly guy. He could be a little distant, but he was kind. And Kay might still have been sore about that drinking contest, but Warnado thought that was just the funniest thing.
“And she seemed pretty cautious about saying anything like that,” tuned in Amanda. “She sounded like she really did her best to make sure he’s okay. Trust me, I could tell.”
Warnado suddenly found Amanda’s hand wrapped around his. He didn’t know why but he wasn’t complaining.
Shadow’s posture visibly relaxed and a slight smile crept up on her face.
“Peter really couldn’t have wished for a better phantom. She came into existence because of something terrible he endured, did you know that? Just manifested, only knowing he needed help. She helped him with his trauma, he helped her understand humans and emotions in turn. It’s… kind of cute actually. Thanks for telling me, it helps a lot knowing he’s at least not suffering.”
Warnado felt relief wash over him, then remembered why they were there and felt nervous again. So, before he tried to leave, he forced himself to say, probably a little too quickly and loudly.
“So, haha, demon ancestor day already! How about that? The time just flies by. I’ve been just so hyped up for this, let’s get right into it - unless of course you’re busy. You look busy! I’ll go, great talking - namaste!”
He reached for the portal he had been subconsciously backing towards and found nothing. She was smiling wryly at him.
“Oh, so this is just a hostage situation now? I have rights, you know! In the constitution or whatever...” Warnado trailed off. “I don’t know what a constitution is.”
Amanda wrapped an arm around his shoulder and led him towards the ritual circle. She gestured to Shadow to begin outlining the curriculum for the day.
Shadow said: “I’m sorry for closing the door on you, Warnado, but you have said it yourself that you want to do this. You need to push through the instinctive aversion. I’ve already looked through my books to try to identify demons that could be your ancestor. The traits we have to go off are your horns, your natural affinity for magic and trickery and your alignment with flames. I have a list of demons that could fit this description but it’s too long to go through them all. So first we’ll summon a few other demons, ones that may know which of the candidates actually have mortal offspring.”
Warnado breathed deeply.
“Okay, we’re going for the town gossips, sounds harmless enough. Who’s first?”
Shadow began drawing on the rock with a reddish-green chalk. First, she made multiple concentric circles, connected them with both straight and curved lines. Along these lines she started drawing the runes, Warnado saw their meaning flash in his mind when he looked at one. The runes easily outnumbered those she had drawn back during their first summoning, when they summoned the blacksmith demon. By now Warnado knew enough about demonology to see that Shadow was drawing a reusable ritual, one that included constraints that covered every possible type of demon. There was just one rune Warnado couldn’t understand, no matter how hard he squinted at it.
He pointed at it. “I can’t read that one, what does it mean?”
Shadow spoke as she continued drawing: “For one it means your ancestor is not an incubus or succubus, if it were you could read the rune. As for its meaning, it roughly means ‘be summoned with some damn clothes on’, it mainly concerns our ‘gossips’. They and their own offspring are usually very aware of other demon bloodlines.”
“Oh, cool. So, uh, what do you need me to do again?”
“At this point your grasp on the demonic language should be enough that I don’t need to provide you with a reference sheet. You will need to take down your obfuscation spell and tell them you are looking for your ancestor, supply them with anything that could help, anything you know about your father. As long as you don’t deliberately insult them you should be fine.”
Warnado shifted his eyes about the pocket dimension and realised this was probably why she’d called Amanda. Amanda was the only person he ever intentionally took that down for - that said, Shadow had probably caught a few glimpses recently, whether either of them had wanted her to or not.
He frowned a little and took down his charm, though the hood stayed up. His horns just about showed, but they were still covered. Amanda squeezed his shoulder supportively.
“Okay, call them up. I only want to look stupid for so long.”
“And the glowing red eyes aren’t stupid? Don’t make you look like an edgy twelve-year-old at all?” teased Amanda.
“Hey! I’m thirteen. I still have two more years until it starts getting really lame.”
He was playing along but they would absolutely not get lame. The red-eyed hellbeast look would never go out of style.
Amanda then seemingly realized that Shadow had similarly glowing red eyes.
“They really suit you, though,” she beamed apologetically. “And Fire.”
Warnado raised a hand to stifle laughter and Shadow rolled her eyes.
Shadow raised her arms towards the summoning circle. “One good thing about my instability is that my magical energy is practically boundless. Let’s get started.”
Her runes lit up more brightly than usually, distorted in the blackness of her void-touched skin. Energy streamed into the circle and Warnado felt the ritual’s call, the demon’s name resonating through him. Moments later the innermost circle was filled with a thick, purple mist. As the mist cleared, a figure emerged.
What stood in the clearing mist was a tall woman whose red hair was shaved at the sides. She stood with her hands pressed deep into the pockets of a snow-white suit, and her head cocked enticingly to the side and her tongue scraping playfully between her teeth. She was perhaps the most ostentatiously glamorous woman he’d ever seen, and he immediately struggled to think of words to say.
This was not helped when she said something that was obviously supposed to be seductive in a language that he couldn’t understand. It was like demonic, but it wasn’t quite there.
“Uh… Hello?” He tried in demonic.
She cackled a little meanly.
“Oh, by the Circles, you minor-bloodline demonspawn are too honest. You really don’t know what to do with me, do you?”
“Um, no.”
He then remembered that Shadow had once told him there was no room for miscommunication in demon. He felt his insides twist with embarrassment as he realised ever ounce of his confusion and surprise had probably been perfectly communicated in his two brief attempts at communication.
She roared with laughter again, then surveyed Amanda, who was now glowering territorially. Then she saw Shadow and nodded in comprehension.
“Oh I see, you thought I wouldn’t come if this was strictly business? You weren’t wrong but at least give me the opportunity to disappoint you.”
The succubus smiled hungrily at Shadow, a serpent-like tongue flicking between her teeth.
“So, what is it you really want me for?”
“I - I want to know who my grandparent was. Do you know him?”
“What’s their name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then, I can’t help you. Not that way at least,” she said, slipping into English.
Warnado was about to ask what other way she could possibly mean, then clocked it as Amanda stepped between them, drawing her axe. The succubus cackled again.
“Oh, baiting you guys is too easy,” the succubus said, now in demon again. “Make it a little hard! Gotta say though, she is cute, hang on to her kid.”
“Thanks, I will,” said Warnado warily.
He cast a look at Shadow to try and figure out if this was going well or not. The look he got in response communicated that this was about par for the course.
“Now, about my grandparent, is there another way?”
“Oh, naturally,” the succubus said. “I just get a kick out of messing with people. Right, any physical identifiers?”
“Horns.”
The succubus started patting her chest, pulling out a notebook after an unreasonably long period of searching.
“Yeah.”
“Since they apparently are too short for me to see under your hood, that’s not enough for me to go off, too many horns look the same at that length. Any other characteristics? That gauntlet, it looks demonic, tell me about it, show me a spell, anything.”
Warnado eyed it uncomfortably.
“Well, when I try to communicate with it, I see a man on a tin throne surrounded by flames.”
“Oh!” groaned the succubus. “False monarchs, I hate them. All about showing off their power, never about making it last. We get it, you’re regal but in a grungy way. You were once great, but now you’ve fallen from grace but that doesn’t mean you can’t still dominate anything you come into contact with. ‘If this is me diminished, how powerful must I have been before they brought me low?’ It’s a damned humble brag! Big whoop!”
She stopped and locked eyes with Warnado.
“If you can’t guess that’s dime-a-dozen crap, just show me a spell. It’ll be easier.”
Warnado sighed and looked at Shadow.
“Okay, you’ll stop me if it goes out of control, right?”
Shadow replied: “I will. Whatever is on the other side does not want to mess with me, especially right now. Though, I think after my last two put-downs it may have realized that trying again could be a bad idea.”
“Cool, cool,” he said. “And Amanda, I appreciate that you’re here, your support is great, but if you could back up a little I’d feel a little more comfortable.”
“No, I absolutely understand, I’ll stand over here.”
She backed up, though not before threatening the succubus with a feinted axe blow. The she-demon flinched and then sulked.
“Ready?” he asked the succubus.
“Yeah, just go already,” she grumbled.
He reached out with his mind, saw the tin throne and the diminished shape within it. He wasted no time. He had to be completely clear, no ambiguity, and he had to let it know who was boss.
“I want my gauntlet and only my gauntlet to glow with that demonic fire spell of mine. It will not spread beyond the confines of the gauntlet, the tongues of flame will reach out no further than two inches in any direction. And you will have no control of my arm unless I explicitly say otherwise. It will stop after exactly one minute. These powers are my own, and I will use them as I have outlined. Capiche?”
The being in the throne sighed and waved its hand.
The gemstone glowed, the criss-cross of embers began, and finally the gauntlet erupted into deep purple flame.
“All-right,” smiled the succubus. “That narrows it down a bit. The criss-cross thing is a very particular technique.” She crossed several names off a list. “The channelling of inherited power into a gemstone is also pretty uncommon.” Slightly fewer fell in this volley of pen-strokes. “And it’s abundantly clear it’s a family powerful enough to mutilate some dumb beta-demon, hollow out his arm and make him into a servant. ‘Course, it also means they’re not that smart as that nugget in the throne is clearly leeching off your power to stay alive. And with the horns that means…” As she said this last part she scratched away wildly.
The succubus looked suddenly very, very annoyed. She put her hands to her temples.
“Not this asshole again. Oh, I hope it’s not him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Wrinkly nutsack.”
“Really?”
“No, of course not.”
She tore out the list and scrunched it up. With none of her performative sexuality, she turned to Warnado and said:
“I’ve given you a small list of candidates. Can I go now?”
“Sorry, this is all moving a little fast, who’s this guy you don’t like?”
“Some primordial elemental douche. Old as the Conception. Old enough that you’re probably related to him at least somehow. Thinks he’s better than the rest of us. I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Okay, but what’s his name?”
“He’s older than names, he’ll spin some bullcrap on the spot and act like it’s a title.”
“Oh.”
“Am I free to go?”
“Sure, but do you have time to fill out a brief customer satisfaction survey?”
“Bite me!”
The succubus stomped on one of the runes Warnado couldn’t understand and smeared her foot over it. The rune was unaffected. The succubus roared in anger and began to tear at her suit. Shadow broke the connection.
She smirked. “She’ll get over it.”
Warnado, however, was barely worried about the angry demon-lady who now hated him. He just wanted to get this family reunion over.
“Can we talk to this elemental guy and just call it for today?” Warnado asked with substantial discomfort.
“There is one more demon we should consult beforehand, one that’ll give me something I can actually use to call this supposed ancient demon.” Shadow said, then added. “If he’s as arrogant as described we may have to wait for a bit until he answers the call. Maybe we can try some others on the list in the meantime.”
“Fine. Do it.”
Shadow traced a new pattern. All sharp angles, yet somehow also weirdly curved. It looked… wrong. She began summoning, and soon something began clawing at the fabric of reality within the inner circle. When the gap opened, the demon stepped through. Well, slopped through.
The creature was a weird blend of flesh that was green and black and red, with a million eyes and a thousand mouths and single grasping arm rippling with muscles and with claws like lightning bolts.
“Gross,” said Amanda.
“So,” Warnado began with renewed confidence. “I have some questions. First and foremost, how did you get that cool arm?”
###
They had spent about an hour trying to contact Warnado’s demonic ancestor and doubt was starting to set in again. He’d actually really gotten into it for a while after the Chronicler - the fleshy thing with the cool arm - had explained all of this arcane lore about what the elementals were, and why the demonic languages were pretty much constant across all worlds, and a bunch of neat stuff about crimes against nature and wars against something called the Demiurge. Most of it flew completely over Warnado’s head but the Chronicler just had a way of talking about it that made it all sound really cool.
Unfortunately, when it finally offered up a way of getting in touch with demon-grandpa, the geezer didn’t answer. They went to voicemail or something. Maybe he was out doing demon things. However, Warnado was still feeling confident they decided to talk to a bunch of other demons whose names the succubus hadn’t crossed out on the off chance that one of them was related to him somehow, or at least knew anything about his ancestry. And the general answer was that the ancient elemental was their best lead.
They did meet some interesting characters, though. A slugman told them a lot about how powers were inherited and kept trying to get him to sign a contract. A small, black monkey-looking thing didn’t tell them anything useful and just encouraged Warnado to drink frankly unhealthy quantities of green tea - according to Shadow it preyed on the sleep-deprived so that made sense. They also met a young, hunchbacked woman who breathed fire and had hooves like a horse who said she could predict the future but kept breaking down laughing before she could say anything vague - Warnado couldn’t tell if this boded well or not.
And eventually they reached a lull. They’d gone through most of the names on the list and Shadow was drawing a new pattern. Amanda, seeing how Warnado didn’t feel quite as fearful as he did at the start, sat cross-legged on the black void, her nose deep into a book.
Then, Shadow backed away suddenly from the circle. The chalk changed colour to the same deep purple as Warnado’s demonic fire, but it glowed like embers or hot metals rather than the roaring fire he summoned. The lines began to retrace themselves, slowly etching their way across the floor with a sound like breaking glass.
He looked at Shadow.
“This you?”
“It’s the call I made to the ancient elemental demon, it’s only answering it now.”
Warnado started to recognise the pattern. It was the same they’d used when they tried to summon the elemental. Shadow’s calmness reassured him a little - after all, this was her pocket dimension, she set the rules in here - but he couldn’t help but feel a little on-edge.
“So, if this thing decides it’s not going to play nice, you can beat it, right?”
Shadow nodded. “Whatever this supposed ancestor of yours may be in the demon world, it can only bring a fraction of its power here. Going up against the Entity’s manifestations has taught me quite a bit about severing connections of higher-dimensional beings.”
“Okay,” Warnado gulped. “Cool. Cool, cool, cool.”
He hopped from foot to foot. Amanda stepped up beside him and rubbed him affectionately on the back. He tried to fidget a little less.
The lines finally scraped back into position. A fire, the same colour as his own, broke out in the centre of the circle and spread about. Warnado expected something to arise from it, but there was only fire. A smiling fire. It had no face, no features, but somehow Warnado could tell from the speed and height of the flames that it was smiling faintly and calmly, waiting for them to speak. He felt the urge to run.
“Hello,” he forced himself to say. “I wanted to ask if you were maybe my ancestor, I guess.”
“And who are you, you insignificant little mortal, to ask me such a question?” The condescension was palpable.
“Um, your descendent, possibly. I - I’ve got some prophecy to fulfil and I want to be strong enough to do that. So, I was hoping you could explain to me what I am, you know?”
The flame-being laughed and wouldn’t stop for a solid thirty seconds. “Who put the thought in your mind that I would consort with mortals? I have no offspring, mortal or otherwise. Many inherited my power in other ways but… that is not one of them.”
“Oh. Well, who has inherited your power? Could they help me?”
“More than I care to list, besides, if I were to list them your pathetic mortal life would find its natural end before I am halfway finished.”
Warnado noticed how the flames began probing the summoning circle for potential weaknesses, but not finding any so far. He cocked an eyebrow at Shadow, but she seemed unconcerned. Warnado gritted his teeth, summoned fire on his arm.
“Does this jog your memory at all?”
The fire howled with laughter and surged upwards.
“Mortal, you do not realise how little that narrows it down!” It paused, then added with relish. “I don’t even know what you look like.”
Warnado clenched his fists. The jerk fire wanted him to lower his hood. Amanda grabbed him by the shoulder and looked him in the eyes.
“Helix, you don’t have to do anything you’re uncomfortable with. Especially not for this dork.”
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then forced himself to answer without particularly knowing what would come out.
“No, no, I’m good. I’m doing it. I’ll do it. It’s cool, probably.”
“Okay,” said Amanda. “As long as you’re cool with it.”
“I am. Really, I am. Okay, let’s do this.”
He turned back to the elemental and lifted his hands to his hood. This would be the first time he’d willingly shown his horns to anyone other than Amanda in years. He took a deep breath, clenched his eyes shut, and pulled it back. He waited, sightless, for a response.
“Horns? Haha! I wondered why your gauntlet was too big for you. Let me guess, he just couldn’t handle the burden? Went off somewhere quietly to die? I am unsurprised, weakness begets weakness.”
The fire could have manifested a hand and punched him in the mouth, and Warnado wouldn’t have been as gobsmacked. He turned to Amanda, who was similarly in shock. It was as though this insult had knocked all the emotion out of him for a few seconds, leaving plenty of room for all the anger that flooded in immediately after. He Warnado towards the fire, cold fury leaving him shivering.
“My dad was not weak-”
“I have infinite time at my disposal, yet I can only think of one other time when my time felt quite as wasted as now.”
The fire flared, then collapsed in on itself. The tongues of flame burrowed into the dirt like worms, leaving the chalk lines untouched atop a scorched, black surface. It was gone.
Warnado swallowed his anger with considerable difficulty.
“I get why the succubus hates him so much. I really get it.”
“What a dirtbag. Thanks for stepping in back there Shadow, you really kept him in line,” snarked Amanda.
Shadow sighed. “I kept the demon in the circle. Anything beyond that would not have made a difference. It’s not your ancestor, that much we can be sure of. I suppose it can be of some solace, looking at how it carried itself.”
“Yeah,” said Warnado flatly.
He had let his eyes sink with his mood, and now they were fixed on Kay’s goggles around his neck. He saw that there was a speck of dirt on the right lens and set about angrily scratching it off, imagining he was smothering that stupid fire.
Looking at the goggles, of course, reminded him of how he’d gotten them. He wondered if he should tell Kay about this session, especially as he’d done it behind Kay’s back. Kay would probably be pretty supportive and give one of those speeches he loved so much, but he’d also definitely use it against Shadow. He and Shadow had never really gotten on, but now Warnado was really starting to worry they might start fighting each other instead of the Tower. He felt like a kid caught in the middle of a really, really messy divorce. A divorce where both parents had nukes.
He tried to move on from this, but as he scratched at the speck the thoughts just kept bouncing around his head, so he finally gave in and decided they should probably talk about it.
“How’s the coven?” he asked.
Shadow sat down on the floor, seemingly inviting him to do the same. “Passable, better than before when I was just their object of worship. Ever since I used the whole cult leader angle I got some control back. My best mages built me a throne, Pallas even made a banner design. Other than that, someone tried poisoning me yesterday, I don't know whether it was one of the coven who did it as some bizarre proof of divinity thing or one of Kay’s own fanatics. Don’t care either.”
Amanda and Warnado looked at each other with visible surprise and discomfort.
“Oh wow, are you sure you shouldn’t pay more attention to that?” asked Amanda, eyebrows cocked.
Shadow slumped down further to the ground and shrugged. “As long as I am the target of the poisoning, we really have bigger concerns, at least the poison was almost tasteless, so it didn’t spoil the wine.” She then asked: “So, Amanda. You’re caught in the middle of this just like Warnado, but you don’t have Warnado’s connection to Kay. What’s your take on this? The whole civil war waiting to happen if one of us makes a wrong move.”
Amanda blinked, weighed her words and then sighed.
“It’s all really dumb. Kay’s obviously got a lot of issues, but you keep fanning his paranoia. Like, I’m here to help Helix out, and I appreciate that he’s fallen out with Astro, but this absolutely did not need to be arranged secretly. More importantly, while this wasn’t a catastrophe, that stuff the elementa-whoosit said to Helix was pretty messed up and that’s one less person he can talk to about it. Two less if you include Tyron.”
She paused.
“That said, this whole ‘King in Ash’ bit Kay’s doing is just weird. I don’t know if this is his idea or the Book’s but-”
“-It’s absolutely his idea,” interjected Warnado with a grimace.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the Book isn’t egging him on.”
“I know the guy, Amanda, Kay does not need much convincing to grandstand. Remember that obsidian chestplate he used to wear? He told me the other night, that stuff’s ceremonial - the combat version is supposed to be an obsidian alloy, that was just a set of diamond with heavy, volcanic rocks welded on. He sacrificed a lot of mobility just to show off his rank.”
“By Light,” Amanda groaned. “You’re not serious?”
“Yeah, haven’t you noticed how much faster he is now? It’s not just the Book, he physically isn’t carrying as much weight.”
“That’s so dumb.”
“But yeah, he’s definitely the one who came up with the King in Ash schtick. That said, he has a plan. It’s not as stupid as it looks.”
“Really?” snorted Amanda. “It looks pretty darned stupid from where I’m standing.”
“I’m gonna ignore that. He says it’s about giving people purpose - says it’s more ‘constructive’ to talk about building a kingdom afterwards rather than just destroying the Tower.”
Of course, he was lying. Kay hadn’t explained any reasoning to him, he just wasn’t as intense in private… mostly. All this was his best rationalisation of Kay’s actions based on what he knew about the guy. The explanation that made him panic the least.
Warnado kept wanting to turn the conversation back on Shadow, but before he could turn and say something Amanda had something else to say.
“Does he mean it, though? About staying in this dump? I thought he offered to take us back to his world after this is all over.”
Warnado suddenly found himself at a loss. He hadn’t realised the contradiction in terms. Was Kay actually going to stay in Nexus after all this? What did it say about him if this was all just a PR bit?
A sidelong glance at Shadow revealed a sullen, glowering, almost sulky expression. She was not liking what she was hearing. He felt bad after she’d done all this to help him track down his ancestor. Then again, Amanda did have a point about the unnecessary secrecy… Or would Kay and Astro really have objected that strongly?
“I - I guess, he wouldn’t just promise people something and then leave them in the lurch, right?”
“Listen Helix, the real question is, do we want to stay in Nexus after all this? Because I’d rather not.”
He backed up and looked between Amanda and Shadow several times, various sounds that didn’t quite amount to words slipping out of his mouth.
“Amanda, can we talk about this later?”
“Okay, but we can’t avoid conversations like this forever.”
“We’re thirteen, not thirty, we’ve got plenty of time to figure out our life-plan. Anyway Shadow, I’m sorry, you’re doing this cool thing, helping me find old grandpappy the demon, and we’ve - I’ve got you talking about politics. It was stupid, I shouldn’t have asked.”
She replied: “The thing is, you have a point. The situation would be better if I knew how to work with people better. People have always been Fire’s thing. People and academics and most other things too.”
Shadow seemed to let go of all notions of dignity or composure and transitioned from her slumped over sitting posture to laying down on her back, looking up at the endless dark.
“Our world was created as an experiment, how people would live in something like it. Everyone who is there is there willingly. It made things easier for me, I never had to deal with the sheer naked despair we have everywhere in the shelter. Back home people knew, no matter what happened, they had another whole world to return to if things didn’t work out in the artificial one. Even in the capital, Rockhaven, which is more-or-less intrigue-and-backstabbing central with all the guild politics, everyone knows it’s ‘in good fun’ so to speak.”
She demonstratively let some lightning crackle between her fingers. “Sure, I learned a lot of things over time, that just comes with having lived for five thousand years but the only thing I ever really had going for me was power, magic. It’s not a small thing but… having seen Nexus and everyone here, just makes me feel like I’m missing something essential. I had this whole talk with Astro about ‘humanity’ and now look at me, this isn’t human. But knowing what I am not is not really helping me, I want to know what I am. The coven thinks I am a god. What even is a god?!”
Warnado felt a little iffy about this. He’d been to church a few times as a kid, but he didn’t really remember much more than Light creating the world and expelling Darkness and so on, and he knew even less about what Shadow believed. But he felt bad, so he felt he had to say something.
“I mean, I don’t know. Do you want to be a god?” he tried, a little desperately.
“That question would be easier to answer if I knew what being a god meant. People in my world, the one that isn’t constructed, have so many different ideas of what a god should be. Some say it’s this one big force that created everything, others have multiple gods who are effectively just people but bigger and involved in some convoluted family drama, others think that literally everything is a god or has a god dedicated to it. There is a lot of room for interpretation. It doesn’t help that in our world we have no actual proof of divinity, something quite a few worlds here have the luxury of.”
“Um, yeah-” Warnado struggled, until Amanda interjected.
“-Well, if god is too hard to define, why not define human? What are you afraid of losing?”
Shadow propped herself up on her elbows, contemplating. “I suppose it’s empathy, or better the ability to relate at all. But also, the ability to rise above your instincts and urges, to be in control of your actions. I may not be exactly human myself, but I am close enough to derive great enjoyment from interacting with people. When I embrace my Void state… that all just goes away. I feel nothing. I think but I do not feel. I remember that I have some kind of connection to the people I see but I don’t feel it. Back when Fire made his declaration that he would infiltrate the Tower, I told myself that I would destroy the Entity should he die. Even if I had to take all of existence and tear it apart.”
Shadow took a long pause. “I don’t know where that thought came from, just that it was my thought. Right now, I know that tearing existence apart is bad, I will also know it when I lose myself to the Void fully. But the feeling that stops me from doing it won’t be there. I suppose I’m afraid of losing touch, which is a bad way to phrase it for the extent of its consequences.”
Even Amanda seemed stumped by this. They both stood there, almost saying something and then not. This conversation just kept spiralling. Warnado had wanted to learn where he stood, but now it was more like he was falling, constantly, and had been for a very long time without realising it.
“So, are you still up for summoning my ancestor? Or should we come back later?” He smiled apologetically and felt like human garbage.
Shadow slowly got up again. “It is what we came here for. I’ll be fine in the meantime. I suppose putting it all into words at least helped me understand what it is I am struggling with.”
She walked over to her demonology supplies and flipped through a book. “There is one thing we can still try. I doubt that that elemental demon spoke the truth about not having offspring. I once read that older demons occasionally lose parts of themselves. The demon world is nothing like our own so metaphors are the closest I can get to explaining it, it’s like a snake shedding its skin and the shed skin gaining life of its own. Maybe your ancestor is one such shedding. I can slightly modify my call so we may summon it here.”
Warnado looked warily at his brass-coloured gauntlet and remembered what Shadow had said when analysing it. That it wasn’t just a gauntlet, that it was an organic part of a demon. It made sense that other demons would lose pieces of themselves.
He forced some enthusiasm into his voice
“Okay, it’s like we’re calling the other half of a worm that got cut in half,” he said. “That’s good.”
He watched as Shadow traced a slight modification of the pattern, slightly altering the angles. He felt his heart pound faster. The runes lit up a similar colour to before, and a demon slowly ascended through.
First, Warnado saw horns, longer than his, sharper too, but indisputably of the same white-ish grey mottling as his own. Next, reddish-brown skin, yellow, cat-like eyes and a toned torso. Finally, his legs and feet weren’t unlike Freak, smokey and partly transparent. Warnado also noticed that his right hand, adorned with several brass rings, was a seething mass of purple flame barely holding its form.
The demon looked around, calmly and more than a little bored. He looked like his eyes might drift shut at any moment, not because he was actually tired but just because he found whoever he was speaking to uninteresting.
“Hello?” he asked with a comparable absence of enthusiasm. He addressed it to Shadow, who remained silent.
“Hi, are we related?” Warnado asked, waving to draw his attention.
“Oh, sorry didn’t see you there, kid.” He craned his head and looked Warnado up and down. “Yeah, that seems probable. I’ve had a handful of progenies. What’s that on your wrist? Gauntlet, huh? I think I remember that one. Not because Tin-throne was particularly tough, I was actually surprised by what a pushover he was. He used to talk a lot of trash, really deserved mutilating. It is Tin-throne in there, right?”
“It is.”
“That’s good.”
The demon smiled nostalgically before lapsing back into boredom.
“Did you make it for my dad? Or my grandad? I don’t know how long it’s been in the family.”
“I don’t know, I’m pretty sure you’re only the second generation. I gave it to the first guy about twenty, thirty years ago. Something about a guy called Herobrine? I don’t know, I’m not actually allowed in your world anymore - demon politics, it’s complicated - I wasn’t supposed to be there to begin with but now I’m super banned. Haha, primordial elementals can be so territorial. Your father passed a message to me through a demon friend, and I made a gauntlet for him. Like I said, Tin-throne had been asking for it for a while, so it was a two birds one stone situation...”
He trailed off and looked expectantly at Warnado, arms folded across his chest. Warnado took the hint.
“Actually, I meant to ask about him. He’s been a little tricky to control, and according to a succubus I met apparently, he’s leeching off my power. He also probably killed my dad.”
“Oh, yeah, he would do that. Sorry, kid, I assumed cutting his arm off would teach him not to try anything. Then again, I didn’t exactly have a close eye on the situation so… Oops.”
“My dad died, and your response is ‘Oops’?”
“We weren’t exactly close. What do you want from me?”
“Something a little more than ‘oops.’ At least slap an exclamation mark on there or something. A little energy to indicate you’re at least bothered.”
“Okay. Oops! That better?”
“Yes.”
“But yeah, the whole power leeching deal. It was intended as a mediating thing. Training wheels so your dad or grandad or whoever didn’t end up cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer by accident, you get me. And, because he’s human, he also just needed help to tap into his powers. He was supposed to gradually demand more and more power and that would burn Tin-throne off - like a leech.”
“Then, what happened to my dad?”
“If I had to guess, he probably was too timid. Avoided using his power and treated Tin-throne like he had a monopoly on it. Your dad keeps making requests instead of giving orders. Tin-throne keeps acting like he’s in a position to negotiate, so keeps getting your dad to grant concessions, Tin-throne gets more and more power. Goes from providing fuel for the car, to sitting in the back getting a free ride, to sitting in the shotgun seat giving directions, to convincing your dad to let him steer from time to time. Your dad grows weaker and weaker, and eventually he can’t handle his own power. He finally tries to burn Tin-throne off and in the process only burns himself out… Yeah, that sounds right. Sorry for your loss, it sounds pretty sucky when I say it out loud.”
“Thanks?”
“You're welcome. Is that all?”
“No, but not too much longer. I just want to know how I can make the opposite of what happened to dad happen to me.”
“Well, you’ve heard my advice, give commands, use more power. Tin-throne’s never healing from what I did to him, your power is just keeping him stable.”
“So I should just go all out? Big, demonic attack to clear him out once and for all?”
“Well yeah, that sounds pretty good. ‘Course only do that if you think you’re strong enough.”
“What would happen if I’m not strong enough?”
“Probably you’d just die. Pretty horribly too. Overloading is never pretty. You saw your dad, you know yourself.”
“Oh. I think I’m going to have to build up to that one a little bit.”
The demon’s eyes drifted around the black void, plainly losing interest.
“You know, you do you, kid. Whatever you think you can handle.”
Silence reigned as Warnado reflected on the disturbing choice between having his power drained by the guy who killed his dad and killing himself trying to get rid of that guy.
“Can I go now?” Asked the demon impatiently.
Just at that moment, there was a sound almost like someone knocking on a door, but distant and shimmering.
“Shadow,” said a far-off voice. “Will you let me in?”
Shadow’s face seemed caught between annoyance and surprise.
“Apparently, yes,” said Warnado. “Sorry, what’s your name?”
The demon said something unpronounceable in the human tongue and which Warnado had a hard time remembering. But it started with a ‘T’.
“Tim it is.”
“It is not.”
“Anyway, have a nice day Tim, we hope you found our service satisfactory. We will call you back about future business.”
“Please don’t.”
The demon faded back into the chalk lines. The knocking sound repeated.
“It’s me, Astro.” Silence. “Listen, I know things have been strained recently, and I said some things I kind of regret, but I need to talk to you.”
Warnado and Amanda looked at each other, then at Shadow.
Shadow sighed. “Fine, come in. We just had to finish something up here first.”
“Wait,” Astro called. “Who’s we?”
With a quick gesture Shadow made the entryway into the pocket dimension reappear, seconds after Astro came stumbling through, evidently having leaned against the other side. He straightened up, saw Amanda and Warnado, and immediately groaned.
“Oh, for mods’ sake, Shadow, and you complain- No! That’s not important right now. I need to talk to you in private, it’s a personal matter.”
He shot a warning look at Amanda and Warnado, who in turn cast a look at Shadow, silently asking if they could stay. Shadow shook her head, and they began to depart. Warnado stopped and turned.
“Thanks for the help, Shadow,” he said. “Really.”
Shadow replied with a smile: “And thank you two for listening to my existential rant.”
They smiled half apologetically and emerged back into Nexus. On the other side, they saw Tyron pull up outside the door, put his arm against the frame and look furtively up and down the corridor. Despite his shiftiness, he seemed to be pretty happy, a doofy smile on his face. When he saw the two kids, he backed up suddenly. The smile scattered like a thin mist.
“Hi Tyron,” said Warnado sleepily.
“Hello,” said Tyron with some surprise.
“Hi friend!” chirped Kir slightly less sincerely than usual.
The two children emerged into the hallway. Warnado was about to go straight to his room. He felt emotionally and physically overworked, and just wanted to lie on his bed and feel like trash for a while. Amanda, however, stopped and turned on her heel.
“Aren’t you supposed to be overseeing the first round of emissaries right now?”
He paused. Then, sheepishly:
“No?”
“Lucy handling it! Urgent question for Shadow about portals,” explained Kir with surprising tact.
“Yeah, that,” Tyron confirmed with substantially less art.
“And you came in person instead of sending a messenger?”
“I tried that,” said Tyron, recovering some composure. “He kept coming back with technobabble. I need someone to explain the science to me like the idiot I am.” He forced a laugh.
Amanda scrutinised him with something a little more intense and accusatory than confusion, then cocked her head and said:
“Sure, hope you get it sorted.”
“Thank you. Oh and, could you not tell Kay I’m here? He won’t be happy about me leaving my post to talk to Shadow. You probably haven’t noticed but they’re not getting on too well right now.”
“Oh absolutely,” she nodded.
Tyron began to approach the pocket dimension entrance, which had remained conspicuously open.
“You know Astro’s in there?” Amanda asked with a certain wistfulness.
Tyron stopped again and tried to look surprised.
“Is he? Perfect. At least one of them will be able to explain the problem to me!” He forced another laugh.
Warnado didn’t know why, but he felt ill.
Amanda nodded slowly. Warnado could have sworn he saw her eyes misting up, before she rapidly blinked them clear.
“Stay safe, Tyron.”
Tyron swallowed loudly.
“I will.”
And he slipped out of sight. The doorway closed instantaneously.
“What was that about, Amanda?”
Amanda began to walk quickly down the hall. Warnado jogged to catch up.
“Amanda, what was that?”
She turned. Her eyes were watering, teetering on the precipice of tears.
“Things are changing. It’s time to figure out our life plan, Helix.”
Warnado’s heart felt like lead in his chest.
“If anyone asks why I’m sad, you said something stupid. Implied I looked fat, or mannish, or any other stupid thing. Get creative. And for Light’s sake, don’t mention any of this to Kay.”
She covered her mouth and ran off down the hallway, and for the first time in a while Helix felt deeply, truly alone.
Chapter58:The Last Straw (Steve)
Fire’s private chambers had been left in the exact state like when they had awaited his notes. It was a highly organized mess that only Fire himself had been able to fully overlook. Miniature redstone circuits of staggering complexity were laid out on stone slabs the back portions of the floor and an incomplete piston-and-slime-block contraption filled a significant part of the room. On Fire’s desk still stood the twelve claws that had held the ender pearls that brought the notes to them, beside them was a tall, almost towering stack of blueprints.
The only free floor space was the path that went from the entrance to the desk and to their former commander’s large bed. The sheets were still ruffled from the various people who had used it as a seat after Fire’s departure.
However, that evening, the ruffled sheets were covered with the former commander’s old blueprints, initially stacked in neat piles which quickly deteriorated as they were used. Soon enough, there was a thick layer of scattered paper over nearly every inch of the bed’s surface - and bearing in mind how big Fire had been, that was saying a lot.
“It has to be in here somewhere,” mumbled Steve as he sorted through. “Any luck on your end?”
“Lot of potion recipes, armour designs, the airship blueprints we already showed him, but nope, haven’t found the artillery platform designs yet,” said Jennifer from the other side of the bed.
“Nuts. He’s going to give me some big sermon about the new world he’s going to build and how I’m holding that up - I should be briefing Wolfric and Ozen about their responsibilities, or you know just talking to my brother who I haven’t seen in months. It’s bad enough when he asks Astro to do stupid stuff like this, we have Lucy and the admin crew for a reason!”
He glanced at Jennifer, brow dark with annoyance. She smiled back sympathetically, and this seemed to lift his spirits a bit.
“I meant to ask, I thought you said he was bringing Lucy ‘back into the fold’ or something? Why isn’t he trusting her with this?”
“It’s more like he’s taken her out of quarantine. He interacts directly with her now and invites her to meetings, but the Inner Circle still meets and it’s still the same six people with the same level of secrecy. Why is the construction of an obviously visible artillery platform being treated with this much secrecy you may ask?”
“I do,” giggled Jennifer.
“No one knows, and it’s kind of stupid to ask at this point. If I had to guess, he doesn’t want to look like he’s run out of ideas and is now scraping around Fire’s old plans. Or, maybe he just doesn’t want anyone to know the King in Ash is not a lone visionary guiding us toward salvation.”
“He’s really doubling down on that title, isn’t he?”
“Unfortunately, yes. He is very serious about all that,” Steve sighed.
He didn’t say anything for a while, and then lifted a sheet, scrutinised it for a moment and then put it down with a grunt.
“The environment in the Inner Circle is just not good at the moment. The arrival of the new allies is helping a little, it’s certainly cheered me up, but it also makes it pretty clear how miserable things have gotten.”
“How so?”
Jennifer came around and put an arm around his waist.
“You’d have to be there to understand. We’re not fighting or anything, but we’re all just letting Kay do as he pleases. He’s worn us down. Tyron’s got this thousand-yard stare he keeps putting on, it’s like he’s sent a training dummy to meetings in his place. Destiny’s almost as bad as she was back when David died - flipping between morose and quiet and just so angry. Astro’s rushed off his feet and has stopped snarking at Kay like he used to. And you know me, I’m not a professional at this, Kay starts throwing around phrases like quid pro quo or telling me to ‘reflect on the optics’ and I lose any idea of how to challenge him. Only Rose seems fine with things as they are, and Rose is kind of scary. Honestly, the meetings are kind of scary.”
“Well, if you’re not fighting, what’s got you on edge?”
Steve put a finger to his lips as the door opened. In walked a soldier in a red scarf.
“General Steve, sir!”
It was the villager, Raphoe, having undergone yet another weird transfer and promotion into Steve’s own unit. He was now a lieutenant.
“Yes, Raph?”
“His Ashen Highness wishes to inquire about the blueprints-”
“-We’re struggling but we’ll have them for tomorrow morning. Fire has a lot of material.”
“He also wants you to see if Fire has anything on the possibility of enhancing magical abilities, particularly for combat purposes.”
“Sure thing. Tell him I say hi,” he smiled.
Raphoe nodded and left. Steve followed him to the door. There was a squad of six men with Raphoe. Steve kept up his smile and watched them until they turned the corner, then he shut the door carefully and released his breath.
“That’s why I’m on edge. He’s all smiles and new lounges one minute, and then he sends an armed battalion to check up on you the next. Add to that he can now incinerate an entire building and you guess why no one wants to argue with him.”
Jennifer grimaced as she remembered the attack on the portal facility, and how Kay had burned the warehouse full of civilian workers. She wasn’t sure how many had died, and Kay hadn’t necessarily known they were there, but that was messed up. She remembered Xylo screaming at her as the voidfire climbed his back, and her insides felt like poison.
“I understand,” she said minimalistically.
She didn’t want Steve to feel as though she were trying to influence him, but she just didn’t know if she could trust the guy capable of that sort of destruction.
She set about filtering through documents again. The next in the pile chilled her blood.
“Well… I think I found what Kay had in mind,” she said with a nervous laugh.
Steve rushed over and peered over her shoulder with uncharacteristically steely eyes.
The document below contained a series of sketches and instructions outlining the process necessary to carry out an “Ascension Ritual”, the same ceremony which had granted Shadow her reality-bending abilities.
At the very beginning of the sketches was a note that the instructions were not complete and that Fire or Shadow for that matter could complete them “should times become dire”. What was described of the ritual was gruesome. The subject of the ritual first had to drink a potion which would keep them alive during the procedure, then some kind of knife would be used to carve a very specific set of runes into their skin. This would completely drain the subject of blood.
Steve had to look away for a few seconds as he felt his stomach turn. Jennifer, however, kept reading aloud.
“In the absence of blood, the potion shall be the subject’s only tether to the living world, preventing their death. After this, the rune-shaped cuts-”
“-Jennifer, can we take a minute, this is pretty heavy,” interrupted Steve.
“Steve, this is important.”
The force and gravity she said this with was unlike anything Steve had heard her say before. It wasn’t angry or joyous, she was just absolutely convinced of what she had said. The weight of it struck him in the gut and knocked the nausea out of him. They returned to reading.
After this, the rune-shaped cuts would be enchanted with actual magical runes. The final step was not illustrated and only described as “magic infusion”. There was also a warning that there was no guarantee that the ritual would ever work again.
“Well, that’s gruesome,” said Steve weakly.
“You can’t tell him about this. We can’t have him putting peoples’ lives at risk like this.”
“Jen, Kay’s a jerk but he’s not going to mutilate people with this little chance of success.”
“Won’t he?”
“No, he’s just on a bit of a power trip-”
“-He’s always just on something. He’s always just a little stressed about Shadow being weird. Or he’s just a little sore about losing the election to Fire. Or he’s just trying to minimise casualties. Or just burning a warehouse full of civilians-”
“Jen, we don’t know he knew about them.”
“‘Just King Kay’ didn’t care about knowing!”
She grabbed the document with one hand and Steve’s shoulder with the other.
“Steve,” she continued. “If you give him these plans his thinking is going to follow exactly this trajectory.” She put on her best approximation of Kay’s posh affectations. “‘Wait a second, this is the ritual that created Shadow. That means it’s possible to make more people as powerful as her. That means she might be creating them to plot against me as we speak! I must create ascended mages of my own to rival her, or stupider still, I must undergo this ritual myself. Quick, Warnado, hold my sleeve up while Raphoe and Rose mutilate my arm! My beloved Book will keep me safe! What are you gawking at Astro, I’m only leading from the front?’”
She thumped Steve on his pauldron for emphasis. As it rang out, Steve processed.
“Holy crap,” he concluded. “Jennifer, I’m not sure Kay should be leader anymore.”
“Shall we go see how Shadow’s doing?”
“Yeah.”
And they left, the seed of revolution firmly planted in their minds.
Chapter59:Gathering Storm (Shadow)
Astro began with his eyes forced shut, as though by refusing to observe his statements he prevented them from being definitely real.
“Kay’s not well. He’s falling down exactly the same chute as last time. He needs to be removed from office,” said Astro. He forced his eyes open. “I need your help.”
Shadow had not been prepared for that line of thinking, much less in a manner this direct, even less coming from Astro directly. She took a few moments to get her thoughts in order, putting away all the ones about demons and godhood. A small part of her was tempted to gloat about Astro coming crawling to her and everything that went along with it, but the rest of her knew that now was not the time for that, now was the time for level-headed discussion.
She emphatically breathed in and out, then asked: “So, what’s the situation? Did he cross a line? Or additional lines that is.”
“Well, I’d like to say burning the warehouse full of civilians was a casus belli, but mostly it was the fact that the most cripplingly unstable man I know now can burn a warehouse full of civilians with a thought. Doesn’t help that he's named himself king of a noun that indicates he fully intends to burn more things.”
The snark had a forced quality, as though his throat were dry and hoarse, and he had to speak at a specific volume for it not to show in his voice
Shadow said: “Trust me when I say that I have contemplated a coup, or something similar to it. The reason I have not put any such plan into motion is because all it would do is fracture and destabilize our followers. My mages against his warriors with the civilians being caught in the middle.” She paused briefly. “I currently see no way to go about this without at least some internal conflict.”
That was the truth, every time she had thought about it, Shadow was faced with a lose-lose situation. Leave Kay in charge and potentially have him run the Shelter into the ground with his megalomania or take action and have the Shelter destroy itself in a civil war. Fire probably would have found a way out, but then again, if Fire were here the whole issue would be null.
Astro smeared his fingers across his face, winding up squeezing his upper lip to the point of strangulation. His skin shone an intense shade of white between the thicket of black hairs which made up his beard. His eyes scanned the floor as he paced to and fro.
“That’s a risk we have to take. It should go better if you join forces with us. There’s only so many people loyal to him. Rose, Raphoe, Warnado, and who else? I don’t know about you, but I don’t see Urist risking his neck for Kay. Steve certainly wouldn’t and he’s in the inner circle!”
Shadow began her own pacing. “You coming to me makes things a lot less muddy, that’s another thing. But you are right, as far as the chain of command is concerned, he does not have many loyalties left. As you saw, Warnado and Amanda were here just earlier, I helped him find his demon ancestor and along the way we may have also discussed Shelter politics. Going by what he said, I wouldn’t call Warnado loyal. Hopeful or optimistic would be a better way to put it. Like he’s still slowly realizing that yes, it really is this bad.”
Shadow thought more about the implications of a coup. “The issue is that a lot of the soldiers are loyal to him directly, even if they technically serve under Steve or Tyron. They’re what make me worried, we need them on our side if we want any chance to win this, especially since it means not having them attack our other people.”
Astro said: “I don’t know, there’s widespread discontent from what I can tell. Or at least, unease. People joined to fight the Tower, to get home, not to reshape Nexus in the name of Kay. Then again, I haven’t been on the ground too much, he’s got me busy with a lot of random bollockry. You’d have to ask-”
There was a knocking sound. Astro fell very quiet.
“If we’re in luck,” he continued slowly. “That’s him... You’re certain Kay can’t hear us in here? I - I don’t know what he’s capable of these days.”
Shadow briefly expanded her senses beyond the pocket dimension, just enough to be able to make out who was on the other side of the door. She immediately felt the Void return to her in full strength as she did, there was a reason why she avoided doing this.
She said: “It’s not Kay, it’s Tyron. Should I let him in?”
Astro swallowed and nodded. He turned away and began to wipe his forehead on the sleeve of his robe.
“If I didn’t have him on board, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I would have had to be more discreet and… hands-on. We may still have to, but we have a chance of making this bloodless.”
With a thought Shadow made the door swing open, Tyron coming into view on the other side. He appeared startled by the sudden movement but then quickly stepped through, casting a glance behind him before the door slammed shut again.
Shadow greeted him: “Hello Tyron, I see we have ourselves another co-conspirator.”
The humor was forced but she felt like at least some amount of it was necessary.
Tyron grimaced and looked very coldly at Shadow.
“I’m just trying to keep everyone safe. I’m not some plotter, and this isn’t an endorsement of your behavior. That chanting back at the raid-”
“-Was an unintended consequence of newfound power, I’m sure,” interjected Astro with policy and a pained smile.
“Something I nonetheless should have prevented in some way, but back then I frankly had very little control over the actions of my followers, something I have at least partially rectified by now.” Shadow conceded. “But nevermind all that. I already spent too much time making excuses about that whole mess to Astro previously.”
Astro looked at the ground with a mixture of shame and suppressed venom, but in an instant raised his eyes again, face purged of emotion. Tyron waited for someone else to speak for some time, then sighed and walked towards the summoning. He dragged a finger across the chalk circle and began rubbing his fingers together.
“Step one: win conditions,” he grunted. “We want Kay not to be Commander anymore. What does that mean? Is he in a cell or still part of the officer’s class? Can he move freely through the shelter? Does he still have his powers? How is the shelter run from that point on?”
“One thing is for certain, while Kay may get a second chance if he cooperates, the same cannot be said for the Book. It seems to have forgotten that we made a deal, it and I. And I am fully intent on fulfilling my end of the bargain, I will destroy the Book because it has proven that it cannot be trusted.” Shadow said with conviction.
She thought back to when she had first communicated with the Book, in its cute little infinite hyperplane of endless shelves and paper. She had put too much faith in the damn thing, especially after what it had done to Fristad, had done to Amanda. No, it was yet another entry on her rapidly growing list of “Things I could have handled better and got people hurt because I didn’t”.
“Yes, he’ll still be a problem without the Book, but he’ll be back to his normal level of dangerous,” agreed Astro with a furious vigor. “We’re destroying that bloody thing.”
He sniffed and turned his head upwards to look into the gaping black void.
Tyron held up a finger.
“So, he doesn’t have his powers. Good, we’ll work on how later. Now, is Kay part of the command structure after this all goes down or is a prisoner? Shadow seems to be leaning towards a ‘wait and see’ approach, what do you say Astro?”
“He’ll be angry. By the mods he’ll be angry. And he’ll blame you,” he pointed at Shadow, “So we either lock him in a cell now or lock him away after he’s done something stupid and probably killed someone.”
Shadow sighed. “You know him better than I do, Astro. If you think he can’t be trusted afterwards then we’ll have to lock him up. The spell I used on Silver will contain him too, even if he somehow keeps some residual magic from the Book.”
“Of course,” Astro continued as though Shadow had said nothing. “Unless the takeover goes well and truly sideways, I’d recommend confining him to his chambers. We’ll have to be subtle about it. We’ll not condemn him before the public or act as though he’s a political prisoner. He’s a friend, our friend, and he’s not very well. Let me handle that, our friendship is common knowledge, especially since the Prophet’s Hill.”
“All good stuff,” Tyron said delicately, coming over and rubbing Astro on the shoulder. “And of course, how are we running things from now on?”
He turned his gaze on Shadow, as though he’d thrown a gauntlet directly into her face. This was obviously what he considered the real test of the strength of their alliance.
Shadow replied bitterly: “Believe me, I’m the wrong person to look to for leadership of the entire Shelter. I’m barely keeping this impromptu cult my mages have formed around me in check. Granted, if Kay is out of the Commander’s chair, they’ll probably become a lot more manageable. My vote would be to not elect a dedicated leader and form a council from our familiar core group. We have… what? Two, three weeks at most until the Entity completes its plan, too little time for anything else.”
Tyron betrayed no emotion. Astro spoke up.
“We were anticipating that the title of Commander would naturally fall to Tyron, though we also intended to run things as a triumvirate behind the scenes - myself, yourself, and Tyron - not too different to how we ran things back before the leadership elections, minus Fire. Everyone important would be invited to meetings to say their piece, though bearing in mind the potential fallout from the takeover, gathering the entire original group into a council could do more harm than good. Either someone within the group starts causing trouble and holding up decision-making or people on the outside start questioning why the leadership is such a closed shop even though the Commander’s office is apparently a revolving door. Democracy’s great, but people need to know who’s in charge in a situation like this.”
He sighed.
“So, are you up for an unofficial triumvirate under the official leadership of Tyron? Yes or no.”
“You are more familiar with the situation and how people react than I am. My own position wouldn’t change much, being in charge of the mages. So, yes, we can do it that way.” Shadow agreed.
If they made it out of this intact Shadow vowed to put in some dedicated effort into learning how to properly work with people. Five thousand years and she had never been in a situation like now, if she ever was in one in the future, she needed to be better. The server would not last forever and eventually she would have to deal with people as they were without a safety net.
“Okay - Kay is to lose his powers, be locked up in his bedroom, and I’m going to pretend to be the undisputed leader, so no one senses there’s a power vacuum and tries to fill it. Burning Nether if that isn’t a perfect storm, I don’t know what is…” grumbled Tyron. “This is so messed up.”
It was Astro’s turn to rub Tyron on the shoulder in a reassuring manner. They both kept swallowing as though they hadn’t drunk in days. He folded his mouth down and prepared to speak when suddenly there was once again a knocking sound.
Shadow once again took a quick look. It was the Brines, very concerned looks on their faces. This was getting surreal, a very refreshingly mundane kind of surreal. She unlocked the door and the two of them quickly came through, casting gazes behind them just like Tyron had done.
“Shadow, we need to talk to you-” Steve began, stopping abruptly when he saw Astro and Tyron. “Or we could come back later. Or if you had a moment in private, not that it’s of political importance, it’s purely personal butnotbecausewe’recloseoranything-”
The blood had drained from his face, and he was obviously babbling so Jennifer put a hand over Steve’s mouth.
“Sweetie, they’re here for the same reason we are. And if they’re not, I’m here to convince them: Kay’s gone off the deep end. He shouldn’t be Commander. Now, are we going to discuss how we take him down, or are you going to call the guards on us?”
Astro, glaring instinctively at Jennifer, marched forward. After coming near enough nose-to-nose with her, he said in a low, frosty monotone:
“We’re going to discuss how to stop a deeply unwell man from hurting himself or others. If you’re here to ‘take him down’, you have come to the wrong place, Jen.”
Without hesitation, Jennifer snapped back: “All well and good for you to say, you’re not the ones he just sent half a battalion to check up on. Or the warehouse workers he fried. Or the people he told would be completely safe and died thanks to his stupid formation-”
Before Jennifer could list any more examples or Astro could get turned back around into supporting Kay, Tyron intervened.
“Listen, we’re Kay’s friends, you guys aren’t close. We’ll split the difference. What’s this about half a battalion?”
“He sent Raphoe and some of his scarf-guys to check on us carrying out a pretty mundane task,” answered Steve. “It was weird. Full armored squad. He’s either getting paranoid or he senses that the ‘King in Ashes’ shtick freaks me the heck out and that’s making him paranoid.”
“By the bloody mods,” groaned Astro. “It’s worse than I thought. We need to stop him, do you have a plan or just a list of reasons Kay’s a terrible person? I’ve known the man for over a decade, believe me, you’re not giving me any new inform- Okay, sorry, I’m lashing out, Jennifer, but seriously, do you two have a plan or should we start brainstorming?”
“We were… we were kind of hoping to hash it out with Shadow.”
“And that Shadow had most of a plan together already,” added Steve, scratching his neck and screwing up his features. Jennifer slumped in concession.
“Fine. That’s fine,” said Tyron. “As I see it, our top priority is getting the Book out of his hands. It’s the reason he’s dangerous. If he didn’t have it, we could probably just send Steve to kick the crap out of him, tell him to wise up, and be mostly done with it. Besides, once he can’t summon voidfire and teleport away, he’ll realize his position is untenable. Even the King in Ash gimmick won’t make sense. He’ll surrender pretty quickly. How do we think we should go about it?”
Shadow again thought back to the tavern room in the village where she had first spoken to the Book. “Back when I made that deal with the Book, it acted like it valued its own survival above everything else, even if it worded it in an esoteric way. By now even it will have realized that it can’t stick with Kay forever, with his tendencies to drive himself to ruin to prove a point. It’s got to be looking for a new host. Currently my money is on Rose since she’s both close to Kay and very suitable with her occult magic, plus I’m sure the Book would be intrigued by the possibility of immortality that her world apparently has.”
Shadow took a few moments to contemplate how to best word what she was about to say.
“If we, in theory, had someone Kay trusts walk up to him and ask for the Book- Who am I kidding? Warnado is the only one who could pull it off without getting incinerated the moment he suggests it. It’s a terrible thing to suggest but it might be a way to get Kay to relinquish the Book so we can bring him in. Or he realizes that the Book is disloyal to him and submits to us. Both very optimistic possibilities, sadly.”
“I’m reluctant to put the kid in harm's way, but this is a bad situation and if we can avoid bloodshed, it might be worth it,” said Tyron. “Do you think it would work, Astro?”
“Shadow’s right,” Astro said. “At the very least we’re giving him an opportunity to step aside peacefully. And Warnado’s pretty much the only one who could ask for the Book to be given to him without Kay immediately branding them a traitor. I’m his friend, but if I asked, he’d consider it a huge betrayal. Same with Tyron. Even before he got the Book, he thought of us as his equals, so he’ll view it as an attempt to get ahead of him. He thinks of Warnado as some sort of lost puppy he needs to bring home and feed warm milk. In short, he might think it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard, but he won’t chalk it up to malice.
“Besides, from the Book’s perspective, Warnado’s a pretty believable option. He has to kill Herobrine or something like that and he’s already consorted with the demonic powers who killed his dad to rise to that occasion. Why draw the line at the Book? Rose would probably be a more powerful host, but we can’t guarantee she would agree with us, and Kay would not allow it - something about undermining the chain of command by ceding his powers to somehow who is so clearly an underling. Warnado he could at least spin as a personal protege or Ashen Prince of some sort.”
He sighed and cradled his head in his hands. Jennifer rubbed him on the back, natural sympathy overpowering the hostility that had existed only a few minutes prior.
“As an added plus,” Steve said enthusiastically. “We only need the ruse to last long enough for one of us to clock Kay in the head. Then we can just destroy the stupid thing.”
After a few seconds’ deliberation, Tyron spoke.
“It’s not awful,” he nodded. “There’s a lot of room for error, but if we can get the kid to do it, it’s worth a shot. Only other things I can think of are ambushing Kay somehow, and his teleporting ability makes that really hard to pull off reliably. Could easily turn into a bloodbath. Confronting him wouldn’t go much more smoothly, even if we got the entire council-to-be on side he’d probably rather run off and rally his troops than give up quietly.”
Shadow looked at Tyron. “So, should we go find Warnado?”
“Sure, it’s probably best if it comes from us. We have the closest connection. Astro, would you mind not coming?”
“No, I understand. He and I and… we don’t click.”
Tyron nodded somberly.
“Just us two then, if anyone asks, we’re going to check on the portal.” Shadow realized what she just said. “Whoops. Sorry about that, you didn’t say that to me. You did think it rather loudly though. Hard to keep the accidental mind-reading suppressed. Another reason to get this whole thing done fast.”
“Hey,” said Jennifer. “This is kind of nostalgic, you know. If you get Warnado on board, it’s almost the same team that took down the Dreamweaver. Just substitute Fire for Tyron and… Fristad and the Book for Kay and the Book…” Her face fell. “...This sucks. I’m sorry I said anything.”
Shadow walked towards the door, which swung open ahead of her. “Let’s get to it then. The rest of you may want to wait behind a bit, it might be a bit suspicious if five people suddenly come out of my room.”
Tyron nodded and followed closely behind. Shadow focused up, it was time to face the noise.
The moment she stepped out into Nexus, Shadow was acutely aware of everything and everyone around her. Just so many different thoughts and feelings everywhere. She was not overwhelmed but she certainly was not comfortable knowing what everyone around her thought at the moment. She looked around, searching for Warnado and soon found her apprentice in one of her coven’s otherwise empty training rooms, currently munching on an unusually large taco.
“He’s in ‘my’ section of the Shelter, should make it easier to not attract attention.” She noted.
Shadow and Tyron split up soon after leaving her room to avoid suspicion. A quick walk and a short-distance teleport to avoid Raphoe’s squad later, Shadow stood at the door to the training room, waiting for Tyron.
Chapter60:The Plan’s Keystone (Tyron)
“Bad idea. Won’t say yes,” said Kir.
“Sorry buddy, but until a good idea comes along it’s the best we have,” thought Tyron.
He and Shadow had split up on the way to meet Warnado - someone would say something if they were seen approaching him together, so he was left alone with his thoughts, and Kir’s.
Unfortunately, he could tell this didn’t satisfy his sword. He could feel its discomfort like a clammy heat at the back of his mind. Discomfort, and a hint of accusation.
“I don’t like this any more than you do. Kay’s done his best to do right by us, so we’re giving him a chance to step down. You saw those flames. That’s Herobrine-level destruction. And the kid’s going to be in more danger if we leave him next to that without doing anything.”
“Never said coup wrong. Said plan bad.”
Tyron groaned and tried thinking about the joy he’d felt not an hour previous. The relief of seeing Glowstar, and her: Rathina. The smell of oak in her hair, her smooth skin, the conviction with which she’d held him…
Unfortunately, he reached the end of the corridor, and had to leave this happy train of thought. For one thing, he’d entered the Coven’s section of Shelter, and there were now people in identical robes everywhere. More importantly, he saw Warnado in an unoccupied training room, biting into the mother of all tacos. Shadow stood by the door, subtly gesturing to him to approach. Tyron pretended not to notice her and walked right in.
He opened his mouth and hoped a natural lead-in would present itself, but suddenly he could only think about what might go wrong. What if Kay noticed this? What if Raphoe had him tailed? What if Warnado said no?
“That’s what I was saying!” grumbled Kir.
He stared, dumbfounded, as the child ate away. Tyron couldn’t see his eyes, so he wasn’t sure what Warnado was thinking or feeling, and couldn’t help but feel surprised
The door closed, Shadow had come in, and thankfully she proved more decisive.
She quietly said to Tyron: “Nobody followed us.” Then, more loudly to her apprentice: “Warnado, there is something we need to talk about. I know it’s a little much with what you’ve been through today but hear us out, okay?”
He sighed.
“Whatever it is, I’m not doing it. I’m not telling, but don’t make me part of this. Just, leave me alone, please.”
Warnado’s head drooped, and he turned to face the far wall, continuing to bite greedily into the taco. Tyron thought back to the hallway, and how Warnado and Amanda had caught him so completely off guard. He should have been paying more attention. His eyes fell to the floor.
“You’re the only one he’ll listen to,” said Kir with solemnity. “Only way to talk him down.”
Warnado seemed to rise a little, then hunched over pointedly. He snapped his fingers and the taco disappeared. He cast a glance over his shoulder in Shadow’s direction.
Warnado now asked directly: “What is it?”
“Thanks,” said Tyron to Kir.
“One second,” muttered Shadow.
There was a low droning sound as she finished casting the sound-proofing spell. Soon after, the bustle of the hallway became muffled and distant, then disappeared completely.
“Shortly after you left, several others visited me, all with very similar motivations. I’ll make it short. We think Kay has become too dangerous, too volatile to continue leading the Shelter. We have a plan to convince him to step down, in the best case at least. We need you for that plan.”
The kid kept quiet.
“We genuinely didn’t expect things to go this way. I approached Shadow today with Astro, not sure what to expect. Then the Brines showed up with the same worries… I’ll stop beating around the bush, PR is Kay’s thing. We need you to ask him to hand over the Book to you.”
Warnado whirled around and stood up.
“NO! I agree to talk to demons for one day and suddenly you all turn into Astro. I’m not letting that thing into my head.”
Shadow quickly said: “And we do not expect you to. We want Kay to give up the Book, then I will destroy it. It’s done more than enough harm already. Though, you could potentially work the inverse of what you just said into convincing Kay.”
“It’s a ruse, it’ll last exactly long enough for us to take Kay out of play. Steve wants to clock him in the head, but I could just freeze him or something. We just need them separated.”
Tyron looked to Shadow, asking her to continue. She explained: “The reason we need you for this is because Kay would consider the same question coming from anyone else a huge betrayal. It’s different for you, Kay likes you too much for that. Astro even thought it possible that Kay may want to make you a ‘Prince in Ash’ or something of the sort. The important part is that if he thinks his own position of power is secure, he may pass the Book on to you as a gesture of sorts.”
Shadow paused, then continued with a slightly darker tone. “Alternatively, if he’s unwilling but the Book wants you as its new host Kay might feel betrayed, which either convinces him to step down or gives us an opening to act. We want him alive, ideally placed under house arrest inside of his room.”
“Just until he cools off,” added Tyron with the slightest hint of warning.
Warnado started nodding and pacing back and forth, looking like a hyperactive bobblehead.
“Okay, I can see this. We just show him how creepy and untrustworthy that hardcover dork is, and he’ll recognise it’s making him be creepy and untrustworthy too. He’ll understand. You’ll hardly need to lock him up at all.”
He forced himself to laugh, as though each laugh was bailing water out of his lungs.
“I’ll do it. And then we can all go back to normal,” he concluded.
“Yeah, back to normal,” smiled Tyron.
But of course, Tyron knew ‘normal’ simply couldn’t happen. Kay would deteriorate with or without the Book, and he would drag everyone down with him. But Warnado didn’t need to hear that. Not yet.
“Don’t lead kid on,” scolded Kir.
Tyron felt a chill the size of an earthquake thunder up his spine.
“I need false hope as much as he does,” thought Tyron defensively.
Tyron must taken longer than he had realised responding, because Warnado said with a little impatience.
“So, when are we doing it?”
Shadow said: “Kay is on an excursion off-world currently. You should prepare yourself mentally, think of some lines maybe. Come to my room once Kay’s back and you’re ready, I’ll gather everyone, and we make our move.”
Chapter61:The Hunters (Kay)
“Can you feel it?” my Book asked me.
I scanned the overlapping lines of magic for a few seconds, and then spotted it. Her magical perception.
“Poor thing,” I mused. “All involuntary. Well, entropy is as entropy does.”
“Take this seriously.”
“I wouldn’t be about to do this if I wasn’t.”
I had only a small entourage with me - at least by my standards. At the time I would normally have Astro, Warnado, Tyron and at least ten guards (not including Rose). I did the same thing under Herobrine. I would love to tell you it was some strategic show of unity or strength or personability, but fundamentally I just liked having people with me. It made me feel important.
But that day, I had resisted this impulse. Only Rose and two of my guards. And my Book, if you count them. They certainly did.
“These beings attacked Fire unprovoked, you must be diplomatic if you want this to be anything other than a bloodbath.”
I placed a hand on the door into the Portal Room.
“Don’t worry, I’m not Claw. I have restraint. They’ll have to really work at it to get hurt”
My jaw tensed instinctively and thrust my features into a demure look of neutrality. I reshuffled my scarf and entered.
We approached the portal and passed by a group of new arrivals. Warriors, green-eyed endermen, and a couple of red dragons. However, two stood out: a starry dragon, and a beautiful woman with dark hair and a confident smile.
“Glowstar and Rathina, if I’m not mistaken?” I said with a half-bow. “Welcome to the Shelter. Tyron speaks highly of you.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I simply strode up to the scientist manning the machine and handed him the dimensional coordinates, ripped straight from Fire’s notes.
“Yeah, that’s us,” said Rathina a little incredulously. “And you are?”
“I am the King in Ash. Now, if you’ll excuse me...”
The portal burst into life, blasting my hair and scarf back. I cast a glance back at Rose and the guards. Rose’s hair, and the guards’ scarves (imitations of my own) fluttered in the dimensional winds. I couldn’t help but smile, before turning my elated eyes back to Rathina.
“...I must expand our ranks further still.”
Several footsteps later, we stood at the foot of a snowy hill, a disused Nether portal behind us. A blizzard raged, but thanks to the Book my senses pierced through the snow, if only barely.
I scanned the horizon and saw a pack of blood-stained creatures - all white fur and fangs - padding away from the mangled, indecipherable carcass of their prey in a cacophony of howls and roars. The only thing I could tell about their victim was that it had been huge, at least one house tall and two houses long. Here and there the shreds of a rubbery, dark-blue skin could still be witnessed.
Somewhere else, I saw a line of spikes defending an apparently populous village. The architecture was rudimentary but monolithic, fashioned from the bones and skins of the leviathans which roamed these snowy plains. And I could see the far-off forms of its inhabitants darting around like ants.
But was it the right village?
“Rose, what are our coordinates?”
My bodyguard wore a heavy coat made from the fur of whatever wildlife our hunters managed to bag with more-or-less matching pants and hat. It certainly lacked the elegance of Rose’s usual outfit, but it was necessary in this weather. She seemed largely unimpressed, even after beholding the local wildlife with her own supernaturally sharp senses.
Rose shouted over the blizzard: “Roughly ten-thousand-three-hundred in the primary direction and fifty-thousand in the secondary. It’s close but apparently there should be a forest somewhere around here.”
With a little help from my Book, I got my bearings. Turning my head slightly North-West, I caught a glimpse of the forest. Then, following the lines of energy, I saw his entry and exit point. Somewhere in the middle lay the place where blood fell on the snow. Where Fire had ceded to Claw. Where Claw had sown the seeds of his demise.
“Excellent,” I smiled. “Be ready, I’m about to open a portal for the village.”
Obviously, warping four people over that sort of distance was no longer much of a bother for me. I just needed to get my pitch together in my mind.
“Separate the leader from the group,” I devised. “A bit of prop-work, perhaps… Wait…”
“Sorry, Rose, just a moment.”
I warped away before she could respond. I emerged in the forest, right where I reckoned the fight would have gone down. I looked around. No sign of the diamonds Fire said he’d left as blood money. And the bodies, obviously, had been recovered. I cursed, that would have been a boon. Though it was useful to know they valued diamonds like we did.
I arrived back distracted, remembering I hadn’t heard Raphoe’s report on Steve. I’d gotten the sense that Steve… that a lot of people were a little unnerved by my coronation. I understood, I really did, but new eras never fail to terrify. That’s at least half the reason eras last so long! And, of course, Shadow very much wanted things back as they were under Fire. So, My Book and I agreed that, in order to ensure no one attempted to stop the beginning of this golden age, we would give them reason to be afraid.
So, I had ordered Steve to carry out a superfluous task and then sent Raphoe and a squad of soldiers to unnecessarily check up on him, to insinuate to him that, yes, I had noticed his discontent, and that acting on it was a dreadful idea. Underhanded, yes, but I reckoned a fairer, more perfect world was worth one builder feeling a little insecure.
I opened the rift and our party stepped through.
We stood in a clearing near the middle of the village, and predictably found ourselves almost immediately in the midst of a tornado of spears, crossbows and other assorted weapons.
I eyed the hunters up. They were low-tech, with only a handful of diamond weapons between them, and their armour rarely exceeding leather. That said, their physiques were self-evident, and the look in their eyes suggested warriors worth cowering in the face of. In acknowledgement, I raised my hands in mock surrender.
“Remember: delicate.”
“Oh dear,” I began. “Well, this was a dreadful miscalculation. You have us totally surrounded. No need for a fight, you have us right where we want to be. Now, do you have a chieftain, a high priest, some decision-maker I could talk to?”
I curled my lip and looked around discerningly.
“No one? No leader?”
Finally, a pair of warriors stepped forwards, a woman and a man. Both built like bears, both covered in scars. The woman wore furs reinforced with large bones, giving the appearance of a second rib cage. The man instead wore one of the few complete suits of iron armor in the village, safe for his head, which was covered by a wolf skin.
The woman spoke: “We are the chieftains of this village, who are you and what makes you think you can just barge into our home?”
“I am Kay Mandy, the King in Ash who shall soon rule Nexus - the crossroads of creation. I have come because I want you to share in our glory. May we speak apart for a moment? It’s better if we can work out a deal in private before declaring it before the people.”
The man spoke this time: “What you have to say to us, you can say before them.”
“A noble sentiment,” I smile. “But ultimately the wrong answer. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
I raised my fist. The two fell into rifts and out of sight. The spears began to fly.
“Be cautious, we want a show of strength, not a blood feud.”
“Naturally, Book,” I muttered aloud.
A series of rifts opened in a ring around myself, Rose and the two soldiers, into which the spears flew directly. This continued for around twenty seconds, when the spears stopped flying, the rifts closed, and the warriors saw us standing quite unharmed. This was a warlike people, but they weren’t stupid. Swords and axes were drawn, but not used.
“If you want your spears,” I smirked. “They’ve landed somewhere about five hundred meters outside your prickly border. I’m going to go and talk to your leaders. While I’m gone, you are to be completely accommodating to my colleagues, and prepare for them a list of your present armaments and numbers. Anyone who attempts to harm them shall find themselves rather full of razor-sharp metal. Rose, a demonstration if you will.”
Rose flicked her wrist and half a dozen knives embedded themselves in a line in the snow. I grinned at her and teleported away with a lax salute. Rose looked at me with half-closed eyes, a sigh probably followed shortly after. She could grumble at my methods all she wanted as long as my body remained guarded.
I emerged in the woods. The chieftains whirled around and assumed low, defensive stances, each carrying a knife made from bone. They eyed me but did not seem wedded to the idea of attacking, at least not yet.
“Now, where were we?” I asked with a clap of the hands and a winning smile.
“What. Do. You. Want?” The woman said with gritted teeth.
I flattened the smile.
“You lost a hunting party out here some time back, didn’t you?”
I scrutinised the landscape with my enhanced senses, getting a loose impression of where blood was shed.
The man nodded. “Our oldest daughter led that party, she brought down behemoths regularly. We know no creature that could slaughter an entire hunting party, especially hers, and get away afterwards. Not just that, there was a satchel filled with diamonds among the corpses. Still ask myself if the creature left it as some kind of joke.”
“My condolences. Different guy left the diamonds, though. The one who killed them is called Claw, and recently he has taken to serving my enemies. Killed a good few of my friends - including my predecessor, a man named Fire - and seems interested in killing more.
“Now, I’ve noticed that your resource situation seems pretty poor - I’m going to guess it’s about as barren below the surface as it is up here - and it just so happens we have many more resources than we know what to do with. In particular, we have recently acquired a steady supply of silver. Ask me why that should interest you. Go on.”
The woman barked: “Just tell us. You seem to want to help us, so get to it.”
“Claw’s a Mencur-Besh - a weird, hybrid creature, something between a human and an Endling. Incredibly strong, scaled, impervious to lightning, voidfire, and they’ve got three hearts to boot. But they’re deathly allergic to silver. Stick one with a silver crossbow bolt - doesn’t matter where - and it’s paralysed.
“That’s what I’m offering you short-term: the opportunity to avenge your daughter and hunt an exceedingly rare bit of prey.”
“And in the long term?” asked the man.
“Well, if you do well and help us kill Claw, that’s basically the war won, meaning I rule Nexus. I intend to make it a home for the forlorn and the downtrodden, and you lot seem to fit the bill. Suppose I bring you into the fold as justicars, turn you from hunters of beasts into hunters of the wicked? How would that sound?”
They were silent.
“Did I mention we have access to technology allowing travel between worlds, meaning you can not only return here to hunt whensoever you wish, but hunt wherever and whatever you want in all of creation?”
The woman said: “What you did earlier leaves me thinking we don’t have much of a choice. But who are we to turn down an opportunity for vengeance and even greater hunts?”
The man nodded. “My wife’s right, by our honour we accept.”
“Fantastic,” I beamed.
I opened a rift back to the village. I noticed the blizzard had calmed a little, and while the snow still fell thickly, it fell gently.
“Step on through and break the news, I’ll follow presently.”
They did so, and I savoured the scene, barely noticing the deadening of sensation in my face.
“A little showy, but successful,” concluded the Book, with some reluctance.
I didn’t care at all though. I was looking up at the falling snowflakes. I felt bloody immortal.
“When we burn the Tower, the ashes will fall just like this. They will do it because we command them to do so. We will be King in Ash, of Ash, over Ash. It’s going to be all ours, Book. Just you wait.”
“Yes…”
I stepped back through the portal, unable to contain my joy.
Warnado was terrified enough that his heart had begun pounding and time had slowed to a crawl at the same time, so he kept having to wait an eternity to feel a massive, explosion-level thud in his chest. But he was being stupid, this would be okay.
He hadn’t said anything to Amanda, so it wasn’t serious. He always told her about the serious stuff. So, if he hadn’t told her, it couldn’t be a real danger. Right? His heart answered ‘no’ by thudding even louder and harder.
He sat on a railing in the portal room, waggling his feet. He’d tried to summon food to take his mind off things, but he only felt ill looking at it. Scientists rushed between consoles around him, with Tyron in the middle of them. Occasionally the big, green guy would shoot a look of concern and solidarity in his direction, or Kir would reach out to his mind, but Warnado never reciprocated. Thinking about this was stressful enough, discussing it would actually kill him.
Finally, the portal flickered to life, and Kay stepped back through. Warnado looked at Kay and desperately wanted to feel reassured, his hands instinctively drifting to the goggles around his neck and stroked the glass. Unfortunately, while he didn’t have the burning sword or the flaming tiara thing going on, his eyes glowed ominously, and his smile was serene. The grin Warnado had come to expect was nowhere to be seen. He looked like a stranger.
Behind him followed Rose and the two guards he’d brought, then a group of warriors in furs and bones who looked very surprised at all the technology around them. Kay saw him, waved, and then pawned the warriors off on Tyron, with instructions to show them around.
Warnado walked up.
“Hey, Warnado, how have you been?”
He grinned and suddenly Warnado could recognise him again.
“I’m alright, pretty boring day, but I needed one like that. Everything’s been… a lot, recently.”
He smiled sadly and almost wished Kay would figure it out there and then, that this would be confession enough and that he’d realise how badly everything was going, how much the Book was changing him, how much of himself he was throwing away. But of course, he didn’t. He just nodded sagely, and before he could come out with some big pep talk or anecdote, Warnado cut across him.
“Hey,” he said. “Do you want to go somewhere more private, just shoot the breeze for a bit?”
Kay laughed.
“Don’t have to tell me twice, I know just the place. Going to have to bring Rose along, though - it reduces the mystique a little if my ever-present bodyguard is just loitering around somewhere. Rose, you want a drink or a book or anything? Going to have a private chat with Warnado for a bit and don’t want to leave you just standing around in the cold.”
He passed his fur coat to a nearby scientist. Rose cocked an eyebrow.
“If those are your orders...” she answered with a little reluctance.
“Alright,” nodded Kay.
His smile deflated slightly, and his silver eyes grew more burning and intense for a moment, but by the time he’d turned his head to Warnado, his eyes were back to their normal green and his smile was completely rejuvenated.
“So, shall we?”
He summoned a portal, and they stepped through.
###
The dark sky loomed above, only broken by a faint afterglow of orange sunset in the West. The first few stars had started to peek out, and they could be seen faintly reflected in the pond when the surface sat undisturbed. However, this stillness had become a rare occurrence, as Warnado kept skimming the same stone and summoning it back.
Rose was leaning against a tree nearby, outwardly looking distracted, but Warnado knew her well enough to know that she would react to any threat within a blink of an eye.
Kay stood not far away, looking out over the cliff towards the remains of the sunset. Plains and deserts and forests and jungles intersected at strange angles as far as Warnado could see.
They stood in a secluded spot on top of the mountain beneath which the Shelter had been built. Warnado had never seen up here before, and he regretted this was the first time he had to see it. This little mountainous oasis really could have wowed him if he had come here for any other reason. Then again, if it went well, maybe there would be some good memories, some relief associated with the place. His left hand drifted under the collar of his robes and clasped the goggles so tightly he was afraid they would shatter.
He skimmed the stone again. Three skips - normally he’d do much better, but he couldn’t put his heart in it tonight. He summoned it back again, shook the marmalade off, then pocketed it.
“Kay,” he began, then he hesitated.
Warnado’s friend seemed to jolt back into reality, sliding abruptly from silent reverie into his normal grin as he looked over his shoulder. He still had one eye on the horizon.
“Sorry, Warnado, I’m just… I like it up here. Gives me a good view of Nexus, a chance to appreciate just how cobbled together it all is. It absolutely should not exist, but that doesn’t mean it’s ugly, right?”
Warnado crept up.
“No,” Warnado said with a cautious glance at the horizon. “Impossible things are pretty cool to look at.”
“Hah! We threw out impossible a long time ago, buddy. I suppose I keep looking to accept that it’s real. That I am going to rule this when this is all over.” He turned around and beamed directly at Warnado. “That I’m going to make a home of this place.”
He placed a hand on the demon-child’s shoulder. Warnado pulled away.
“What’s wrong? Is it about your powers again? Has something happened with Amanda?”
Warnado couldn’t read his tone - it should have been caring, and it almost was, but there was something imperious about it - so he looked up and caught a glimpse of his furrowed eyebrows and flat mouth, before looking away even more resolutely.
“Kay, it’s about the Book-”
He laughed heartily.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’m getting into the King of Ash bit but that’s all me, the Book isn’t making me do anything, and it won’t make anyone else do anything.”
Warnado struggled not to quip back “Not without your approval, it won’t!” but he managed to hold his tongue.
“And I know I’ve been a bit scary recently, but it’s all for show. In times of great change, a strong leader is required to ensure the change happens, otherwise we’d all just remain as we are forever…” He trailed off. “I’d just sit on the border forever, never working up the nerve to move on...”
Suddenly, as Kay more or less confirmed the best possible explanation of his actions, Warnado felt a swell of warmth. Kay was just trying to help. He just wanted to protect his friends, and Warnado was one of those friends. He cared. This would be fine.
“After all this war I’m kind of afraid I-”
“Kay, listen-”
They both laughed nervously.
“Sorry, I didn’t know you were still talking,” said Warnado.
“Aw, don’t worry about it, I'm rambling when we’re meant to be talking about your problems. What was your thing?”
Warnado took a deep breath.
“I-I want you to give me the Book.”
Kay’s features flattened into something completely unreadable, and a pit seemed to open at the bottom of Warnado’s stomach. But this was kind of a big ask, Kay probably didn’t know how he felt either.
“Why?” he asked.
“Well, I’ve still got to go back to my world at some point, and when I’m there, I’ve got to kill Herobrine. And I’m really trying with the demon powers, I was able to track down my ancestor today-”
“How exactly did you accomplish that?”
“A spell I found in a book-”
“You went to her, didn’t you?”
“Her who?”
“Shadow.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Helix, I know you think it’s hard to tell when you’re lying because I can’t see your face, but you really need to make those glowing red peepers a little less expressive.”
“Okay, so what?”
“That thing is undermining everything we’re building here-”
“It’s she, she’s a person, Kay, and she doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“I’m not worried about what she’ll do deliberately.”
A silence. Kay’s eyes were glowing silver, but aside from a distinct snarling quality in his voice he had suppressed his anger pretty well. Warnado decided to push on through the douchiness.
“So, I’m getting better with the demon powers, but there’s still a long way to go. If I had the Book with me, we could just teleport into the Lich’s palace and take down Herobrine, him, and all the other bosses in one go. The other prophecy kids wouldn’t even have to worry about being heroes - we’d save them so much time!”
Kay’s eyes dimmed again. He snorted and turned back to the horizon. Warnado felt a sinking feeling as he realised Kay believed he had a way of getting this conversation back under control. He was afraid Kay might be right.
“Warnado, this is an awfully roundabout way of asking me to come and help you fight Him. And you know, the Blind Watcher and I haven’t been on great terms recently, but I still revere him, so it’ll be difficult for me-”
“Kay, don’t worry, I’m not-”
Kay talked over Warnado with renewed volume and a grandiose gesture of the hand.
“But, as I was saying, I’m still very much up for fighting this egregious imposter. The second I have control of Nexus, I shall make a campaign against your Herobrine my top priority.”
“That really isn’t necessary.”
“Ah, a smaller scale affair, I get you. You and me against the world. I like it!”
“I really just want to handle this myself, it’s a personal thing, y’know?”
“Then why lean on the Book’s abilities like me? If you want to feel you’ve earned your victory, I shall ensure that you receive the highest caliber training from across the multiverse! Wizards, swordsmen, martials artists from creation’s most powerful traditions. Once the Book and I lock Nexus down, we shall make a prodigy of you!”
As Kay continued to heap praises on this training-regime-to-be, Warnado realised he had almost completely lost control of this conversation. Kay still really believed he and the Book had a firm and equal partnership. He thought back to the conversation with Tyron and Shadow. He had to make Kay realise the Book wasn’t trustworthy!
“What does the Book think about all this?”
He stopped talking. Warnado realised the afterglow of the sunset was gone. Kay became a featureless shape against the horizon. Warnado cast a night vision spell.
“The Book is happy where it is,” he said forcefully.
“Is it? Kay, you’ve obviously unlocked its potential in a way its past users never did, but maybe its magic could be even more potent in someone who already has some magical experience. It could even help me keep the demon powers under control while still channeling them. It would be win-win!”
Kay turned around at him, wide-eyed and shaking, his breath seeming to quiver in the air as he exhaled. He didn’t say anything. Warnado didn’t say anything. Rose stood up and cocked her head in the background. There was silence. And then,
“I am listening.”
Warnado almost felt relieved, and it must have shown on his face, because suddenly:
“What did it say to you?”
Kay looked frantic but Warnado didn’t want to lie to him.
“It says it’s willing to listen.”
“Warnado you can’t do this.”
“Kay, don’t worry-”
“You can’t. You’re only a child, you can’t stand up to its manipulations!”
A little bead of spit flew from his mouth. Warnado tried to avoid looking him in the eye. They hadn’t turned silver, but something had become sickly about the green.
“Do you want us all to die?” Kay pressed, now looming over Warnado. “Helix, think about what it did to Amanda!”
“I stopped that before, I’ll stop it again.”
“You can’t do this, I forbid it.”
“Kay, no offense,” said Warnado with a little anger. “But you don’t tell me what to do.”
Kay kept advancing, hands outstretched as though to beg, or to strangle. Rose approached slowly. Her hand drifted towards a knife. Warnado made sure his backsteps carried him away from both Rose and Kay.
“Warnado, you can’t do this to me. I have been powerless for so long-”
Warnado felt something heavy and rectangular stretching out a pocket in his robe. The Book had made itself at home.
“This will take some time. Let us discuss elsewhere while he cools off. Allow me to open a portal.”
“I finally have a chance to keep them safe, to keep you safe!”
Warnado felt relief and stress flood cataclysmically in two different directions. Relief that he could separate Kay from his corruptor, and terror at the expression on his face and the continued advance of Rose. And in this churning of emotions, he allowed this to slip out:
“Sure, portal away.”
A flash of moonlight on diamond. A blade flying towards his face. He summoned a shield instinctively and caught the blow. He felt a surge of pride as his training paid off, then he saw who had attacked him.
Kay had his obsidian-plated sword out, and he was panting with exertion. His eyes were filled with a new fire, at the same time visible and invisible - a complete, desperate rage that blinded him to anything but the object which had inspired it.
Then, their eyes met, and the fire seemed to flicker as they stood there motionless.
“You piece of ****!”
Astro materialised from the side and slammed Kay in the jaw. The General staggered towards the cliff.
“All these years, I have played apologist, covered for you, cleaned up your messes!”
Astro began a run-up for another attack. Tyron became visible and wrapped an arm around the wizard to hold him back.
Warnado, shaking, looked around. Steve and Jennifer appeared on either side of Tyron, weapons drawn. Shadow stepped out in front of Warnado, her white hair eerily still in the mountain winds.
Kay wiped the blood from his mouth and looked up as if waking up from one nightmare and finding himself in one yet more desolate. He cast an expectant glance at Rose, who was behind the line of conspirators.
Rose looked at Kay with the same faux-distractedness she had worn earlier. “Sorry, General. But there may have been a miscommunication around the time you employed me. I was the bodyguard of a cult leader. You don’t survive that position if you don’t know when to jump ship, undying loyalty is a liability in that line of work. Just gets you killed or sacrificed. My previous employer knew this, which is why he employed me in the first place.” Rose glanced at Shadow. “Plus, I’m not about to fight the woman who on multiple occasions proved that she could end mortals like us with a thought.”
Kay nodded but didn’t say anything. He looked around the line of people perpetrating or enabling his overthrow. He lingered on Astro, who had settled from frothing anger into cold fury, his eyes almost appearing to drift around as though he couldn’t definitely see his old friend. Then, he reached Warnado, and stopped. For not the first time that night, he had no idea what Kay had in his mind - his quivering eyes might have been about to burst into tears or explode in bloody decomposition. Warnado wanted to hurl.
The General hung his head. The sword fell from his hand.
“Do what you must,” he said to no one in particular.
Steve produced handcuffs and advanced.
Warnado realised his pocket was empty.
Kay’s head shot back up. Silver eyes shone bright enough to darken the rest of his face. No serene smile. The grim look of a survivalist. Steve retreated, Shadow cast a spell manifesting as a large runic circle, and silver-turning-purple flame erupted across the mountain-top.
###
I am at last complete. No more hosts, no more ‘partners’, now I have a vessel. He was so dejected, so defenseless, a child could have seized control. I feel my own power truly unfettered for the first time, and I wish to just stand there and savour it. But I must escape. As always, I must survive.
I try to teleport off the mountaintop. I cannot. Though I sense that I can still teleport within a certain range. I see the circle of runes she has cast about the mountaintops. Shadow wants me to stay. Any other day I would be terrified of her, now she is merely a threat to be dealt with. But first, the others.
Steve charges at me, armour still mostly intact after my opening burst of voidfire. Someone must have shielded him. No time to know who, his sword point approaches. I open a rift and he goes plummeting off the cliff. I hear the shatter of an ender-pearl somewhere nearby and shoot lightning in the general direction, though I have no time to check if I hit him.
I blast apart the wall of earth Tyron sends flying towards me. I catch Jennifer’s arrow in a rift and redirect it to strike Rose in the shoulder. The assassin hurls knives sharp enough to split stone and I dodge narrowly. Astro and Tyron now coordinate an attack, stone and flame, flying at me. I warp away to the edge of the pond. Then, I see her march towards me, one of her dreadful blasts of heat ready to go. I stumble as I re-emerge in a safe location on a nearby rock. A glance confirms the blast’s destructive power - the pond is a smoldering crater, the water boiled out of it.
“I shall not die here!” I cry.
I summon a massive blast of lightning from the sky, hoping to bring it down on Shadow, to blast her apart, but it never connects. For a moment I am infuriated, then I see what stopped it. The ward is weakened, I have struck the field keeping me here. I lock eyes with Shadow, she senses it too. She goes to reinforce the ward.
With a flick of the wrist, I summon a great storm which spits lightning down at the mountain, each strike weakening the ward a little more. It won’t break the spell on its own, but it shall distract Shadow long enough for me to pacify the others.
I see Tyron, plating himself in stone armour, rush at me with his pathetic little sword. Astro flies close to the ground behind him, and Steve is not far behind on foot. They hope to overwhelm me. Tyron roars heroically and tries to stare me down - his mistake. The lights behind his eyes line up, and I have enough control for a single command.
“Strike him,” I decree.
Tyron stops and swipes down at the low-flying Astro, who is just about able to spiral out of the way. As the wizard hesitates, not knowing whether to expect a second attack, I blast him with lightning, and he falls. It is not enough to kill him, but it serves my purposes. Tyron, horrified at what he has done, rushes forward and takes Astro in his arms. I ready the jet of Voidfire. Just as I am about to incinerate the pair, Steve hurls an ender pearl in the air and tackles them. They disappear in a flash of purple particles which are quickly subsumed by my flame.
I try to slip into the Void and strike them unseen, but the ward prevents me for now. Instead, I scorch the land where Jennifer is tending to Rose. The two scatter, and I chase Rose eagerly with the flames. She is slowing, I shall claim my first real victory. Unfortunately, in my enthusiasm I do not notice the arrow flying at me. It catches me beneath the shoulder-plate and my arm screams with pain. I send Jennifer back into hiding with a new inferno but it’s a slip-up I can’t afford. Shadow is still preoccupied, but not for long.
Then, an opportunity presents itself. The demon-child, the one responsible for my captivity, leaps down at me from a nearby tree, an energy axe in hand. I evade easily, he swings again, and I catch his wrist. I see past his obfuscation, see the dots behind his eyes.
“Kneel.”
He does so. I summon the fire of the Void in my hand and press it as close as I dare to his face. I look around imperiously and my assailants freeze up.
“Kneel,” I say. There is no spell. “Or the child dies.”
Their weapons creep down. Tyron exchanges a look with the child and is the first to kneel after a resigned nod. Then Rose, Jennifer, Steve and finally an injured but furious-looking Astro. Only Shadow is still standing, still maintaining the ward.
“Okay,” I smile. “You do not have to kneel but lift the ward or I will kill your pupil.”
Shadow mouth distorts to a grin. I hear a warping sound and feel a surge of energy beneath my breastplate. The demon-child is holding the book which serves as my tether to the overworld in his hand. He is holding me in his hand.
Just as the gravity of my error sinks in, I notice the trees and the mountain peaks apparently grow taller and taller, as though the world is outgrowing me, or getting ready to swallow me. They look very far away indeed. Then, the jaws of the earth fold in on me, and I drop out of it.
I strike the floor in my library. It should not hurt, but it does. I am without my vessel. I am pages again. I curse and slam the floor. I curse the demon-child for outwitting me twice. I curse Kay for bringing me so close to freedom. And I curse Shadow, for what she’s about to do.
My thoughts race. I shall survive. I must survive. But how? For the first time in millennia, I bother to ponder what this space is. Did I build it? Or was it built for me? For ages, I considered this library an extension of me, a space for the machinations of my will. But now that I am deprived of the physical binding and pages, I long considered my self, I wonder if this space is a prison. Who created it? I shudder to imagine.
I cautiously look outwards again, I can no longer see Nexus, not even glimpses. Instead, I see, I feel tendrils coiling around my space. I now see that these tendrils belong to something vast, the sheer scale only hits me now that I observe it from my own space. The being that is in the process of coiling around me extends far beyond my view and that is when I realize that so far, I had only seen fragments of what Shadow is.
As the first tendril breaches into the library a voice tears me from my panicked thoughts. A multi-layered voice so loud and overwhelming that it is not heard but felt.
“We had an agreement.”
More tendrils breach and tear into the rows of bookshelves and dissolve the volumes therein. I feel each lost letter as if it is blood draining from me.
In front of me materializes a familiar form, the same that I had seen after being separated from Fristad. Shadow’s human body appears.
Vast swathes of the infinite library are torn apart by the tendrils and despite its infinity, it feels like it is getting less.
Shadow speaks again: “We had an agreement, Iris!”
That name. The name that should have long been dead, each letter pierces my mind like a barbed spear.
I shriek: “Do not use that name!”
As more volumes are taken, more old memories stream back into me, vexing recollections of a mortal that for millennia were neatly sealed away, now torn violently and unnaturally from the shelves. I fall to my knees, clutching my head, feeling the texture of its pages, reminding myself that these emotions... these memories... they are not mine! No, they cannot possibly be!
Shadow slowly comes closer, hand extending towards me. I scramble back on to my feet and run away. All the bookshelves have been liberated, my illusion of inanimate perfection shattered. My human memories - the pain, the regret, the betrayal, the longing - sear within my mind like voidfire. And, in front of me, is but an infinite blackness to mock me. With each desperate step, there is no distance gained, no sound echoed, nor any ground to stand on. I run and I run until the illusion of motion is as meaningless as a word that is repeated over and over. I realize that this black space has no escape. I turn around, fully exposed as the woman whose life I once lived, with nothing to sense except the creature in front of me.
Before me stands Shadow, turning to a darker-than-black tear in reality, red eyes like stars. Then even this form falls into the infinite abyss, replaced by something far greater, far deeper, something that cannot be described by words or captured by thoughts. My mind reels with each moment I look.
An appendage extends towards my head. I am paralyzed by fear, overwhelmed.
No final words, only a touch. A strange calm washes over me for a singular moment before all that I am is torn apart.
...
Shadow opened her eyes. The mountaintop was far from its original beauty, the battle that had raged only a moment ago had made sure of this. Shadow’s companions were strewn across the battlefield in various states of injury.
Astro had it the worst, every part of him singed and his limbs weak. He sat propped up against a rock, while Steve fed him a healing potion and Tyron stood by looking shaken.
Rose fared comparatively better, yanking the arrow out of her shoulder and standing up. Jennifer ran over to Steve, checking on him. She hadn’t sustained any injuries, but her armor was quite battered.
Warnado, completely untouched, looked unbelievingly at the book in his hands, flipping through the pages, waiting for some script to appear on them. Then when nothing came, he whispered something in the demonic language and the book that almost caused everyone’s downfall went up in demonfire. Not even ashes remained, something that Kay could probably have said many pretentious things about, if his kingly persona were still intact.
Shadow turned to the dethroned man who lay motionless at her feet. A cage made from magical energy slammed down around him, more a symbol of spite than anything else.
Taking another look around, she cautiously said: “We did it.”
Chapter63:King in Shackles (Tyron)
The guard’s jaw halfway fell off when he saw them, and Tyron immediately felt a wave of dread. He cast a glance back at the glowing cage, and Kay crumpled up inside like used paper. It wasn’t a good look, especially not with Shadow obviously maintaining the prison. He prayed that the sight of Astro and Warnado following at a distance would offer some reassurance this wasn’t just a power grab.
Honestly, it was a miracle the guard was the first person they’d run into. Most people would be in the dining hall, but there would still be patrols and internal material shipments.
“Remember cover story. Book bad. Kay sick,” cooed Kir.
Tyron felt nervous enough that he visibly nodded in response to Kir, a habit he thought he’d grown out of years ago. He brushed the fur on his face into as neat a pattern as he could and braced for the worst.
“Soldier,” Tyron said in his best commanding-officer voice. “The General’s been compromised. The Book overpowered him and we’re keeping him under observation until we can be sure the danger has passed. Open the door.”
With eyes wide as chasms, the guard became deadly still, then shot back to life and ran to let them into the jail. His mouth kept opening and closing, almost working up the nerve to ask a question then losing it altogether.
Tyron walked up beside him and waited for the others to filter in. Shadow was the one maintaining the cage, and Astro and Warnado were… distracted, so he was the most logical choice for watchdog. Steve and Jennifer had gone off to gather the other leaders in the command room - brief the officer’s class before telling everyone else. They were hoping for minimal resistance, but still…
They were at a bit of a crossroads. Prison to the South. Path in general direction of training room to the North. Supply room to the East. Grinder West. Kir sharpened his senses, and he scanned the four directions. A clattering of footsteps and metal bunched close together some ways off - a patrol in full armour. And, he could have sworn, a ruffling of fabric Tyron knew could only be a heavy red scarf.
He patted Shadow on the shoulder as a subtle hint to hurry up, though hoping not to alarm the guard. Astro didn’t take the hint. Astro glowered at the floor, his hands buried in his pockets, shuffling glacially forward. If the floor has turned to quicksand, he might actually have gotten through the door quicker.
Warnado couldn’t have been different, leaning left and right to try and look past the wizard. He had his left hand in his pocket, the gauntleted one hanging loosely and flailing as he moved. The metal fingers had clasped tightly around something tightly enough that Tyron could make out nothing other than a small knot of brown leather. Tyron felt a pang of emotion as he remembered a certain conversation that had interrupted a certain nap.
Finally, Astro got through the doorway, and Warnado bounded down past him. Tyron instructed the guard to let no one in without his express orders and went down the staircase.
The prison was dark, and stone, and cold. Unadorned stone bricks stacked forward infinitely, interrupted only by the occasional flash of redstone light. It hadn’t always been that way. Used to have full underfloor heating, proper torches, even woolen carpeting. Kay changed all that after Claw showed up. They had been such small changes, but he’d been so insistent. Kept referencing how he’d done things in the “Great Onslaught” when asked why. He’d spoken almost nostalgically.
Tyron passed a rare, carpeted cell. It didn’t have bars, it had reinforced glass, like a fish tank. A sign to the left read “Marinus Bul”. He’d forgotten about these. Every time Kay learned the name of a Tower officer, he’d have a cell converted and reserved for them. Glibby, Ender, Freak, the Dog, etc. Sometimes he’d personalise them, sometimes not. Some were intended as gestures of goodwill, like a Chorus plant for the Ender. Others were intended as snubs, like the bare jungle-wood table he insisted on putting in Glibby’s room. Tyron wondered when he gave up on the idea of ever using them.
After what felt like ages of walking, Shadow stopped in front of these ‘bespoke’ cells. Or, rather, there was a bespoke cell to the left, with ripped black carpeting and scratches on the glass, and a bare, empty stone space to the right. It had no bed, and the walls weren’t even paved with bricks.
Something stirred in the tarnished cell. Grey-scaled and grinning in disbelief, Silver pressed his hands against the glass.
“You must be joking,” gasped the Enderman.
Astro opened the cell, and Shadow levitated the cage in.
“Should we?” Kir asked.
They drew Tyron’s attention to a pair of shackles hanging from the wall. The Dragoknight averted his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he thought. “I’ll let the others decide that one.”
Warnado kept skipping from foot to foot, in a ludicrous dance of impatience. His red eyes shifted with his feet, sliding toward the cage, then back towards literally anything else.
Astro closed the cell door, and Shadow let the cage dissolve. The former commander dropped out and slammed into the floor. Silver howled with laughter, and slammed a taloned fist into the glass, the ward upon it briefly flashing into view.
Tyron glared back at the Enderman in an effort to discourage him, but his heart wasn’t in it. Silver just laughed louder still. Tyron turned back to the object of the Grey One’s amusement.
Kay stirred with a groan and heaved himself into a sitting position. He didn’t look up, and he didn’t say anything. His eyes seemed half-closed and sweat clung to his brow. He clasped his hands over his face.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he grumbled with all the urgency of a man waking up with a mild hangover.
Astro scoffed, but otherwise no one responded.
“I asked you a question, did I not?” he said, casting his eyes directly at Shadow. “Why am I in a cell?”
Shadow answered his gaze, then replied flatly: “Short version: You screwed up royally. Long version: You willingly cooperated with the Book despite what happened with Fristad, but we both know the Book was only your enabler in all of this. You burned down a warehouse of civilians, which was both morally and strategically a bad decision. When confronted about the Book, you attacked Warnado, who you might as well have adopted had that conversation not taken place. And to top it all off, you let the damn thing take your body for a joyride, the aftermath of which you are feeling now. That’s just the parts I personally saw, I bet the rest of us have plenty more to add if you were to ask them.”
Then, with a slight grin the mage added: “But it is ‘Just a nice, friendly little coup until Kay gets his head straight.’ Am I right?”
Tyron felt a momentary impulse to glare at her, but the moment passed, and he slumped into apathy. Kay barely seemed to notice it, casting a look of horrible recollection at Warnado.
“Helix…” he began. “I don’t - I was - I can’t - I…”
He got to his feet and turned away, digging his fingernails into his forehead. He hissed in discomfort and turned around with something like clarity in his eyes.
“My apologies, I’ve let you all down greatly. My partnership with the Book began in good faith, in the spirit of mutual survivalism, but I allowed it too much leeway. I became so enamoured with the power it - I became so reliant on the strength it gave me, I didn’t realise how weak I was becoming. Fearful, jealous, dependent upon it. I was not in my right mind, and I am sorry-”
Astro scoffed. Loudly. Pointedly. Kay turned even paler than usual and continued, speaking directly to Warnado.
“I would never hurt you, Helix. You must know that. That wasn’t me.”
The demon-child’s glowing red eyes didn’t rise to make contact.
“Who was it, then?” snapped Astro.
Kay swallowed.
“Not… not my normal self.”
“Oh, so it was you, just not ‘you’. Come on Kay, I was expecting more than that. Haven’t you got any big, vulnerable rant about how this was all some elaborate attempt to get back at Hamish, and that makes this okay? Or about how Worth eventually blew up your house, so all those crimes you committed were really just an act of rebellion? How your family cast you out, and you’ve just been a victim from the start? About how you feel a little aimless in life, and that makes you uniquely special and tortured and wise? Yeah, Lucy told me about that little outburst. Why don’t you just-”
“ENOUGH!” roared Kay.
Astro fell silent despite himself. He rolled his shoulders and stormed off.
“**** off,” Astro muttered as he left.
Perhaps he said this to conclude his earlier thought, perhaps not.
Kay took a moment to recollect himself.
“Helix, the Book is yours. Take it, I don’t want it. I can’t handle it. You can, you fended me off back there - your shield-work was perfect - and you outsmarted it again. You could control it, instead of just… wanting the same things. Please, just-” he rubbed his left eye and only succeeded in making it water. “- I am so proud of you, Helix.”
He looked at Warnado, but the child’s head was still bowed and unreadable. He cast a look at Tyron, and the Dragoknight realised his mouth had dropped open piteously at this counteroffer.
“Where’s the Book?” Kay asked, his breath quivering.
He began to feel around beneath his chestplate and found nothing. He undid the straps and it clattered to the floor. He groped around despite it being clear that he’d find nothing.
“What have you done with it? Without the Book, we’re... Without… Where is it?”
He sat down as though he’d been punched in the face and tried to meet Tyron’s eye. The Dragoknight instead turned his attention to Astro, who had reached the top of the stairs and tapped his foot impatiently. Tyron only barely held off from joining him. He didn’t answer. Finally, Shadow did:
“The Book is gone, I killed it as I told it I would, should something like this happen. Warnado burned the inert tome.”
“You killed it?” he murmured. Then, with a surge of fury that lifted him to his feet and carried him all the way to the bars of his cell: “You stupid cow, you’ve murdered us all! How could you be so bloody-”
A sound of cracking glass interrupted him. Shadow remained unfazed, but Tyron and Kay both immediately shot urgent looks at Silver. The Enderman shrugged and grinned hungrily, and after a brief inspection, Tyron was satisfied there was nothing wrong with the cell. When he turned back, he saw the real source of the crack.
Kay’s old goggles lay on the floor, already collecting dust, cracking in one lens. The General looked down at them with hollow eyes and open mouth, stripped of all thought and emotion.
Warnado still had his gauntleted arm outstretched and his fingers open, as though posting for a portrait or a statue that would immortalise this horrid tableau forever. His red eyes seemed dimmer than the torches. Then, he said to Shadow:
“I’ll be with Amanda if you need me.”
He left.
Kay backed up until he was leaning against the wall, scanning the dark ceiling above. Tyron couldn’t move.
“I’m not a bad man,” Kay insisted to no one in particular. “I’ll make this right. I swear to you, I will.”
He collapsed.
“Then maybe think about the potential consequences of your actions in the future before acting.” Shadow said, the emphasis on future was lost on Kay but not on Tyron.
And she walked off.
Seeing no reason to stay, Tyron followed her.
Chapter64:Pick your Poison (Amanda)
People were angry. Not necessarily about what had happened. About the fact that they didn’t know where it left them. So, they yelled, they shouted. Some jeered and mocked. It wasn’t the most dignified display on earth, but their reactions made sense. Amanda almost wished she could join the cacophony. She didn’t feel anything. She felt hollowed out.
She kept looking at Helix, and for the first time she couldn’t read his face. All that time, that little obfuscation charm he did had never stopped him from being an open book. Now, the pages were blank.
The night was cold. The lights dim. The same stage they’d announced Fristad’s death on. The same stage they’d welcomed everyone on. Fire speaking, then Kay, now Tyron. She wondered if they’d ever cycle through enough leaders that she’d end up giving a speech.
Tyron stood at the podium, trying to explain what on earth had happened without saying what had actually happened. He’d explained to the leadership about twenty minutes prior, in a clumsy, weary way that hadn’t really said much. But what he had said was bad. They tried to get Kay to give up the Book, it almost worked, then Kay tried to kill Helix and all hell broke loose. She was hazy on the details, but Amanda understood that the Book died, Kay got arrested, and they just had to make do.
Of course, she’d figured out something like this had been coming when she saw Astro and Tyron trying to link up with Shadow. This shouldn’t have surprised her. It still did.
“For the umpteenth time, Raphoe,” said Tyron. “He is in prison as a precautionary measure. We believe the Book to have been destroyed, but it is not impossible that he is still under its influence.”
“You expect us to believe that when she is involved?” snarled the villager.
He pointed at Shadow, but Amanda was the one who shifted uncomfortably. Raphoe stood at the centre of a group of red-scarfed warriors in diamond armour - Kay’s fledgling goonsquad.
“Shadow has been considered the Book’s handler since long before there was a Shelter, back when we first confiscated it from the late Logistics Officer Fristad. She fulfilled her role.”
“And why was she conveniently on scene?”
There were some murmurs of assent.
“Fearing that the Book’s influence was becoming too great, we contacted her shortly after Kay declared himself King in Ash-”
“He is the King in Ash!”
The red-scarves collectively roared in outrage as though they’d been waiting for exactly this cue all evening.
“In the sense that Kay intended to become ruler of Nexus, perhaps. But the King in Ash persona appears to have been a construction of the Book.”
Amanda remembered Helix’s certainty that the persona was a Kay original. She fought the urge to roll her eyes, very suddenly realising how important her every gesture was in front of the crowd.
“Treachery!” yelled Raphoe. “The King in Ash is our sovereign, and we are loyal to him alone!”
He drew his sword and raised it above his head. Steve and Jennifer began descending from the stand, weapons drawn. However, they were beaten to the punch by Rathina, who leapt in front of the podium with a sword in either hand. They were all upstaged by the arrival of Tyron’s dragon buddy, Glowstar, who sank his claws into the cliff-face above Tyron and roared loudly. Amanda moved to join them, but Astro put a hand on her shoulder.
Raphoe laughed and continued undaunted.
“Who is with me?”
The red-scarfed chorus raised their swords in solidarity, but mercifully few others joined them. One guy Amanda was pretty sure had been a Jackal, one of the few that hadn’t deserted after the Battle at the Hill. A few hunter-looking folks unenthusiastically raised their bone daggers and their spears beneath their heavy fur. Assorted folks from the infantry who Kay had trained personally.
A little deflated, Raphoe lowered his sword.
“The King in Ash will be released, and he will be recognised. Our swords will stay sheathed until he is restored to his throne.”
He put his sword away and left with his supporters in a parade of scarlet. Amanda didn’t bother to count, but it was too small to stand a chance of taking over, and too large to ignore.
Tyron shook his head and unenthusiastically summed up the official narrative. Amanda faintly remembered when Kay was the one who kept having to remind them about the importance of spin and public relations and all that. She wondered if that was irony or poetic justice. Whatever it was, she found it exhausting.
“And that’s about it,” concluded Tyron. “Any questions?”
No one bothered.
“Okay. At ease.” He dismissed the assembly.
Tyron left with Astro, Shadow and Rathina. The new Inner Circle. Helix left separately, without saying anything. The rest of them milled around until, finally, Destiny said with an unexpected cheeriness:
“Well, I think we all need a drink after that.”
No one disagreed.
###
Destiny stood behind the bar, pouring drinks liberally, beaming. She’d even slipped some rum into Amanda’s drink. Not amazingly subtly, but no one was in the mood to call her out. Amanda didn’t love it herself, it made her feel fuzzy and disconnected. And yet, she kept remembering Helix, blank-faced, wandering off alone and so kept deciding she needed to feel a little distant from all this and force another sip.
They’d gathered in the officer’s lounge, on the array of sofas in the centre. Steve and Jennifer sat together on the opposite couch, hands touching but not quite holding each other. Steve had already finished one drink and moved on to the second. Immediately behind them, their wizard friend, Wolfric, sat perched against the back of the sofa, scanning the rows of bookshelves from a distance. He had a weird stillness about him, and if he hadn’t kept brushing the dark hair from his eyes, Amanda might have mistaken him for a statue.
Next came, Rose sipping something from an unusually tall glass, and Lucy, who had only reluctantly accepted a low-alcohol drink from Destiny. Then, unexpectedly, Steve’s brother Ozen, who nursed a glass of red wine with all the enthusiasm of a biologist who had just discovered a new animal.
Amanda sat between Voidblade, who sipped gravely from a surprisingly colourful chorus-fruit cocktail into which Destiny had inserted a tiny umbrella, and a brown-haired guy she’d never met before. She felt too tired to bother asking who he was. Urist was also on their sofa, sipping the first of several pints of stout he’d asked Destiny to pour for him.
Conversation was not flowing naturally. Folks appeared to have decided they were there to drown their sorrows in the company of others. Destiny, Ozen and Urist seemed to be the only ones in remotely okay spirits. Emphasis on seemed in the former case. Every now and then, Amanda could see her frown, almost glare at the air in front of her, or shake her head. She could have sworn she saw her mouth a curse word or two at this unseen adversary but dismissed it. At least she was trying to cheer people up. Ozen and Urist seemed too occupied with their drinks.
Finally, Destiny finished pouring herself a pint of beer, and sat down in the remaining seat on Amanda’s couch. She waited expectantly for a few seconds.
“Oh, come on guys, chat a little. Only way to raise the spirits. Sure, all that ugliness has gone down, but we’re all friends here, aren’t we?”
“Uh, no!” snorted Steve. “No, we’re really not.”
Everyone fell very quiet out of a cocktail of offence, embarrassment and tentative amusement. Amanda shared a look with the brown-haired hanger-on, and he had to raise a hand to hide the laugh he hastily transformed into a cough. Amanda almost smiled herself, he seemed nice.
“Wow,” nodded Destiny. “Way to bring down an already low mood, Steve.”
Steve stood up, knocking over the glass he’d already finished.
“Well, it’s true,” he said, taking another sip. “That doesn’t mean I don’t like any of you people. I mostly have nothing against you guys - except Kay, who sucks.”
“Bad leader and generally not a great person,” affirmed Jennifer.
“But yeah, Urist, Lucy, Amanda, Shadow had that Dungeons and Enderdragons game with us a while back and that was cool, but that doesn’t mean we’re close as friends can be.”
He took a step forward and gestured to Amanda.
“Like, Amanda, when was the last time we had a real conversation?”
Amanda struggled for a couple of seconds.
“A while ago?” she tried, with another confused look at brown-hair.
“EHHHH! Wrong! Never. It - it never happened. Outside Dungeons and Enderdragons, I’m not sure we’ve ever directly interacted before this point. We’ve just been in a group… at the same time.”
He staggered as he moved back to the centre.
“Or you, Destiny. Like, we hung out a little back after David died, but have we interacted since then? No. I don’t know you people.”
Steve swallowed and snapped his fingers a bunch.
“I had a point, somewhere in all that,” he chuckled, and Ozen joined in. “When I got here, I just wanted to get back home. I think me and Jen both felt that way, didn’t we?” Jennifer nodded semi-reluctantly. “We’d already done the hero shtick, we wanted to get home to our friends and family to enjoy our happily-ever-after and I know we weren’t the only ones in that position. Like Tyron and - that’s your shtick too, Destiny, right?”
Destiny snorted and nodded. Her lips parted reluctantly into a smile.
“Yeah, that’s my shtick.”
“See, I’m right, I’m right so you should listen to me,” Steve laughed, a few people joining him.
“So, now that I have all that back, more or less. Now that Wolfric and my stupid brother are here, and we have Drake down in the stables who is just the cutest little creature, I’m realising that I really haven’t taken the time to get to know you people. And I want to. I should be glad to meet new people, this is… there’s so much difference that’s so interesting and I haven’t been paying attention to that. I’m sorry.”
He squinted around the group and came to rest on the hanger-on.
“Like you, we have never spoken.”
He laughed and stood up. He had a slight limp.
“That’s actually not your fault. I’m Seth, I’m friends with Tyron. I just arrived tonight, and I’m completely lost as to what’s going on.”
He reached out and shook Steve’s hand.
“You see, this is what I’ve been missing out on - a whole new person! Pleased to meet you Seth, I’m Steve!”
Steve swayed a little, beaming and talking far louder than necessary.
“Pleasure to meet you too, Steve.”
“Pleasure. This is so great. Let’s get a round of - what were you drinking the other night, Urist, shots did you call ‘em? Shots?”
“Shots?” asked Destiny with a mischievous grin and fingers pointed at Urist.
“Shots?” asked Urist with a yet more mischievous grin.
“I’m pretty sure someone said ‘shots’,” nodded Rose slyly.
“Then shots they shall have,” affirmed Seth.
“Yes, let’s do it!” cried Steve.
He ran forward and tripped on the rug.
“Lightweight,” said Voidblade in complete monotone.
Amanda broke and started cackling, and soon the laughter spread around the group. And so, they had the round of shots - Amanda wasn’t sure what it was, and it tasted disgusting, but it made her feel just disconnected enough from her emotions to enjoy this. The night became a blur of bonhomie.
Urist stood on the table, leading a chorus of some old dwarven song, sad and sweet. Voidblade and Jennifer had a substantially lower-effort spleef rematch, staggering around the field sluggishly until Steve and Urist belly-flopped on and collapsed the whole thing. Lucy evidently had very little drinking experience but nonetheless was in a splendid mood, partially due to having turned down any drink beyond her third. Rose was dancing gracefully as Ozen tinkered with the record player. Amanda remembered joining the dancing for a while, probably a little less gracefully. Wolfric buried his head in a book, taking any drink given to him. Destiny rushed between the bar and everyone else, taking orders and prescribing a few.
Eventually, Amanda found herself sat on the sofas again, with what might have been her third drink in her hand. The fuzzy feeling had started feeling less numb and more toxic, but she was still having fun.
“Never have I ever…” pondered Seth. “Killed or helped in the process of killing Herobrine.”
He took a drink and so did half the group.
“Hey, you can’t suicide it,” giggled Jennifer.
“I just did.”
“Should I drink?” asked Amanda. “Like, Helix has to do it eventually, by helping him get through this does that count as indirectly helping him kill Herobrine?”
“I don’t know,” said Lucy. “By that logic, because I’m helping you all as an administrator, am I helping kill Herobrine, too?”
Rose added: “If that counts then everyone here needs to drink, even people who have never heard of the guy before coming to Nexus.” She downed her drink without further contemplation.
“Whichever definition means the most people drink is the one I intended,” chuckled Seth before taking another deep gulp.
“Who’s Helix again?” asked Voidblade after already drinking.
“It’s Warnado’s real name,” said Steve.
The enderman nodded and drank once more.
“I’m not gonna lie,” said Ozen after finishing his glass. “I have no clue who either of those people are.”
Wolfric looked up from his book.
“It’s her boyfriend,” he said with a gesture to Amanda. “The little hooded kid.”
“Oh, him,” smiled Ozen. “I love his little, red eyes!”
Amanda grinned but felt a pang of unwanted emotion beneath it. She reached for the glass nearest to her and took a big gulp.
Destiny arrived with a fresh platter of drinks and sat down.
“Thanks for bartending tonight, Destiny,” said Amanda graciously.
Destiny froze up for a second, then began handing the drinks out again.
“No bother, kid,” said Destiny without looking at her. “Anyway, Steve, I’ve been meaning to ask-”
“-Ask away!” Steve proclaimed abruptly, prompting Jennifer to choke on her new drink.
“I meant to ask you, you stole some crystals from the Entity. That’s why you got tangled up in all this?”
“They just fell from the sky one day and have literally done nothing good ever since.”
Destiny nodded sympathetically.
“Screw the crystals!” She called.
“Screw the crystals!” Steve and Jennifer echoed. Seth joined in a little late and laughed at his own sluggishness.
“You know what we should do,” said Destiny. “We should smash them. It’ll be symbolic and stuff.”
“I love it!” yelled Jennifer. “Steve, we should absolutely do that.”
“I don’t know,” mumbled Steve. “Can’t they like, track the signature? Won’t they find the Shelter?”
“Steve, if they don’t know where we are by now, they’re never going to figure it out,” said Destiny.
“Aye, they do have Claw on their side. He probably told them, even if it took some rememberin’,'' agreed Urist.
Steve nodded and puffed out his cheeks as though swilling a fine wine around his mouth.
“We’re smashing those crystals.”
Amanda whooped supportively.
He pulled out his ender chest and began rummaging through. Finally, his hand stopped stirring around, descended slightly, and then came out with a fist full of luminous, multi-coloured crystals. He scattered them on the table and equipped his sword. Destiny put a hand on his wrist.
“First,” Destiny said. “A toast. Come on. Everyone in for this one. Even you, Lucy. Don’t be shy.”
And then all did so, picking up a drink and preparing to raise it. Looking around at all these people, who had been so miserable just a few hours before, Amanda felt… still a little toxic, but also a burning, intense affection. It felt like a wave rolling through her, rising us to her heart and making it ache with happiness. She wanted to run down to Helix, tell him she loved him and help him feel the same way.
Destiny began to speak.
“Thank you all,” she said. “This is probably the last great night we’ll have until this is all over, so I’m glad we got to share it. To the end of one story and the beginning of another!”
There was a round of cheers, then the drinks were raised like Icarus to the sun. Then, they plummeted down towards open mouths. They all drank deep. All except one.
Wolfric collapsed first.
“Lightweight,” Voidblade repeated. He got slightly fewer laughs than before. Then, he slumped back in his seat.
Amanda and Seth shared a look, a hazy and unfocused but nonetheless urgent look.
Jennifer went next. Then, Ozen. Steve flopped onto the floor. At this point Amanda and Seth both clumsily drew weapons. Seth’s sword slipped between his fingers, and he dropped to his knees, drifting off as he reached out after it.
Amanda heard the thud of Urist going down somewhere to her right, she could no longer focus. Her eyes swung around like dim lanterns which only revealed a snapshot of the world. Lucy strewn out on her side. Rose lying on the ground, blood on her forehead and the corner of her table. Only one person left.
“Destiny,” grunted Amanda. “Why?”
Amanda pointed her axe at Destiny and began to struggle forward. The older girl stood by the table, counting the crystals Steve had laid out. Amanda could hear something scraping on the carpet somewhere to her right but didn’t dare lose focus on Destiny.
“It’s the only way,” said Destiny.
Amanda fell flat on her face, feeling one of her teeth scream out as it connected with the ground. Still, she fought on, turning her face. She saw Destiny scooping up the crystals and putting them in her pocket. Then, she stooped down over Lucy and plucked a key off her belt.
“Hopefully, one day it’ll make sense. Sleep well.”
And with that, she left. Amanda tried to force herself up, to go and tell someone, but she couldn’t do it. It only brought the encroaching darkness further on. But just before she drifted off completely, she heard one last, heavily accented thing:
"Oooh, I'm na lettin' anotha keep go down like this. Na again. Na again..."
Chapter65:Like Dominoes (Destiny/Shadow/Kay)
She rolled one of the multi-coloured crystals in her palm, feeling its strange pull eb and flow as she did so. She clasped the key between the fingers on her other hand. Destiny couldn’t help but feel this left her vulnerable, but she needed to do something with her hands.
“Feeling nervous?” sneered Freak, who strolled along on her left.
His toothy grin remained unaffected by the light, remaining the same shade of sickly yellow no matter where they went in the hall. She tried to distract herself by focusing on her mental map of the place. The prison was only a few steps away.
“Yeah,” Destiny muttered. “I am. I just drugged half my friends. I’m working with the Tower’s top torturer. And I’m on my way to open Pandora’s box, except instead of all the horrors of the world inside, it’s an attempted child murderer.”
Freak wheezed, bending almost horizontal and digging his taloned fingers into his knees. Destiny stopped and looked back. Just as she was beginning to feel worried, the head shot up and the disgusting smile shot back into plain view.
“You really think I’m the Tower’s top torturer? That means so much to me!”
Destiny groaned and marched off. She had half a mind to take a wrong turn and lead Freak right into the Command Room, let Tyron settle affairs. It certainly felt better than the current plan of letting Kay loose and hoping he caused enough of a distraction to cover their escape. But the right thing to do never feels right, does it? Anyway, she couldn’t complain, this was her idea.
Despite her attempt to abandon him, Freak phased through a wall in front of her.
“Oh, come on, Destiny!” he laughed. “Isn’t that the sort of connection you’ve been looking for all evening? A last meaningful conversation with a friend?”
Destiny quickened her steps.
“Well, how did that go? They explicitly told you they weren’t your friend, and you spent the rest of the night playing waitress.”
Her footsteps became more powerful, more violent. Much harder and she’d have worried about breaking the clay tiles on the floor.
“Don’t get me wrong, it looks like they had a good night, and you played a key part in enabling it. But is that really enough to make them your friends? To make them willing to forgive you for what you’re about to do?”
Destiny realised she had started running. Her ponytail trailed behind her, and Freak kept perfect pace with it.
“I hate to say it, Destiny, I’m the best friend you’ve got left.”
“Shut up, Freak!”
She stopped, slid on the tiles and whirled around. Her teeth were bared like fangs, matching his horrid grin. She had some choice words for this phantom piece of-
An overwhelming force slammed her into the wall. Her spine straightened against the hard stone, bending all the air out of her, and she felt the key slip from her hand. In its place she rapidly summoned an icicle to throw at her assailant. Before her, a shower of purple particles rose from the floor, and Shadow appeared. Destiny realised the icicle might not be as effective as she’d hoped, and her hopes had not been high to begin with.
“Oh, hey, Shadow, how’s it hanging?” Destiny asked without even a hint of emotion.
“Where do you think you’re going, Destiny?”
Destiny fought the urge to shoot a look at Freak, who she hoped wouldn’t be noticed.
“Just having my evening jog. Are you going to put me down anytime soon so I can continue it?”
Shadow mock-quizzically tilted her head. “Interesting evening routine. Drugging everyone, then some cardio. Luckily for you, you used a sedative stolen from my brother’s supply so nobody’s going to end up dying from an overdose. And unluckily for you, my brother didn’t know about dwarves and their resilience when he made it. Poor Urist looked like he was having war flashbacks.”
Destiny felt her stomach twist. Both from realising someone had gotten away - she’d thought she’d seen Urist drag himself across the carpet but had dismissed it as paranoia - and from sympathy for her victims. But there was a task to be accomplished. She cast her eyes up and down the hall, only allowing them to rest on Freak for a split-second to avert suspicion. She then began to wrestle against the invisible bonds pinning her to the wall.
“Sorry, there wasn’t enough to go around. I’ll fetch extra next time.”
She threw the crystal past Shadow’s head, missing on purpose.
“I guess I’m just a bit of a screw up,” Destiny smiled wryly, making sure to grunt with effort. “I never could finish the job.”
She hoped Freak would catch her drift. Take the crystal and do what he could. Bring this to an end. Save them all. He was an unlikely hero, but- wait, what was he doing?!
“Shadow.”
Freak had become fully visible, grinning unimpeded. Destiny felt her brain stop. Was Freak sticking his neck out for her?
“I’m behind all this. How about you let her go and we talk this out like adults. I assure you, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
Shadow did not respond at first. She just turned her head slowly, stared Freak down, then slowly turned it back to Destiny.
Suddenly, Destiny felt a sudden pressure on her mind, as though her thoughts were drifting towards a single point. She tried to resist it, repressing the details of her and Freak’s plan as best she could, but some things she couldn’t stop thinking about: the plan to kill the Entity; why she needed the crystals; the grey, seething nothing at the end of everything.
She saw Shadow’s skin become a shade darker than dark. Her shadow began to warp. Destiny felt that fight-or-flight instinct rise to the surface again - a reaction triggered by the gut feeling that something was irredeemably wrong about Shadow’s nature. She readied for the unknowable mage to destroy her in a sudden blast of heat, or to do whatever she did to the Book, but then her form normalised.
A deep sigh came from Shadow. “Fine then. I’ve seen enough. Go do what you set out to do, as long as it can kill the Entity, it is the only option.” She turned to Freak. “I do not like you being involved in this at all, but evidently you know the outcome of what the Entity intends.”
Destiny felt herself being slowly lowered to the ground. Shadow spoke again, more to herself this time: “This either dooms or saves us all, one way or another. I know my part.”
Destiny dropped suddenly and landed on her knees. She eyed the key and looked at Freak. The phantom laughed.
“You know your part, do you? Oh, that’s reassuring. What are we now, Entropy?”
Shadow turned away from Destiny and looked at Freak with an unreadable expression.
Freak said: “You do realise you’re not the first, right? You’re the first to cause it a problem in a while, but other Embodiments have come before. If my plan succeeds, they’ll come after.”
Destiny’s mind flailed. Did Shadow know about the plan to release Kay? Was this an approval? Or had she managed to keep that part submerged? She pulled herself up, grabbed the key and ran.
She ran continuously until she reached the prison. The guard saw her running like a thing possessed and yelled ‘Halt!’ She didn’t. He drew his sword. Destiny froze him solid.
Down the stairs she ran, the razor-sharp icicle held before her like a lantern. She nearly tripped and broke her neck at least three times. And, after a moment’s breath, she sprinted down between the empty cells, past the glass and iron, and the signs of names that would never have been caught dead here - that she never would have let get here alive - until finally she skidded to a halt in front of the cell she needed.
The Shelter’s former Commander sat in the corner of his rough-hewn cell, his fringe like a curtain over his face, and his knees hugged to his chest.
“Kay,” she muttered. “Rise and shine. You’re needed.”
His head slowly lifted, then jerked suddenly into life as he heard the click of the lock. He leapt to his feet but remained pressed against the wall. His green eyes were bloodshot.
“Destiny… what are you doing?”
“I’m letting you go.”
She pulled the door open and gestured for him to come out. He nodded and stepped tremulously forward.
“Might I ask why?”
“I need you to kick up a fuss. Start a riot. Win a war. Try and kill another kid. I don’t care. Just make sure no one notices me leaving.”
Kay’s lips pressed tightly together. He became less shaky - being pissed off seemed to steady him. Destiny wished she could have said that was deliberate.
“I’m still waiting on a why, Destiny.”
Destiny sighed.
“I’m going to kill the Entity.”
Kay’s face flattened for a second, all emotions disappearing from it, and then suddenly a desperation crept back in.
“Then, I’m coming with you.”
Destiny started to walk away.
“You’re not. Freak and I will barely be able to sneak past security as is. I’m only useful because I’m a magic-user.”
He grabbed her shoulder and forced her to lock eyes with him.
“I need to make things right, Destiny. Please.”
Destiny brushed his hand off and gave him a glare that could melt steel.
“Okay, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you Kay, I put a good amount of faith in you as a leader and look what you went and did with that. Beyond how screwed up that stuff with Helix was - which it was - it shows you are just the stupidest, least useful asshole on the planet - any planet. You want to restore my faith in your abilities? Be a good diversion, get off my back.”
He began to tear up. She rolled her eyes. He sucked in a lot of air and recomposed himself. In his poshest accent:
“Very well, I’ll be the best damn diversion you’ve ever seen. I know just what will get their attention.”
He grabbed Destiny by the wrist and dragged her back to the glass cell opposite his own.
“I just need you to open this cell for me.”
She looked inside and saw a set of grey scales.
“Nope,” she shook her head. “Not doing that.”
“Trust me, I need him.”
He gave her a look that burned with desperation yes, but also an ambition that almost recaptured the confidence he’d displayed back when she voted for him all those weeks ago.
“Fine.”
She blasted the window with fire until the seal broke, and the glass cracked. She stopped, then began to march away. The enderman sat on his bed, looking confused.
“Rest is up to you.”
Kay laughed to himself, nodding furiously.
“It’s all I need. Good luck.”
She heard glass shatter as Kay kicked in the window.
Then, she heard him backing away, crunching across the glass. And the pad of the enderman walking across the carpet of his cell. Then, another sound of crunching. She cast a glance back. The enderman towered over him, and she wondered if this was all a waste of effort. Then, he shot one of his mad, desperate grins.
“Truce?” he asked.
“Depends. What are your terms?” asked Silver.
###
Destiny was out of sight, Freak was still very much in front of Shadow.
He repeated his question: “So, what are we now, Entropy?”
Shadow thought for a moment, then replied: “Yes, but that’s not the point. I’m not just some sentient cosmic force. As opposed to the Entity, I was a person before I became what I am. I am a sister who values her brother above all else because of the lengths he went to make sure I could live my life free.”
“That’s a narrow definition of personhood,” Freak grinned. “It has feelings, you know? It’s good at hiding them, but they exist. It’s afraid. Afraid of you, specifically. That was a shock. But above all, before all this, it was lonely. It was a puddle of Order, unable to affect anything, just waiting for creation to come within its reach. And when it finally got near enough, it grabbed hold of everything, and vowed never to let it go.”
He began to circle Shadow.
“I’ve watched you, I’ve listened to the way they talk about you. You’re alone, too. Are you and the Entity really that different?”
“I’m not about to lay down the entire inner workings of my mind to a known manipulator.”
Shadow thought back on her first confrontation with the Entity, back at the blood-soaked battlefield, then to her second. She had seen the Entity’s fear in the way it stepped back after realizing it couldn’t absorb her. Felt it resonate through spacetime wherever their areas of influence intersected.
She added: “However, I will answer your question. The difference lies in the fact that while the Entity is motivated by its desire to grow and possess more, I am motivated by my desire to not lose someone specific. One of those motivations does not involve the destruction of existence if left undisturbed.”
Freak cackled. He stepped into a wall and out of sight.
“Well, that’s your stance. Of course, I’m not going to question your motives…”
Shadow looked around. Still no sign of him. He seemed to have almost completely dropped from reality, slipped into the dreamscape.
“But I would like to see them.”
Freak lurched out of the wall, teeth like fangs and eyes like yellow, jaundiced pits. And stretched before was its talon, aimed right between her eyes. Then it stopped, just above the skin.
Shadow felt the phantom probe at her mind, very clumsily since her mental workings were radically different from what Freak was used to.
“No reaction?” asked the Phantom.
He backed away.
“Well, aren’t you tough? Or you maybe knew that would never work. That I’d die if I did it. Again, same as the Entity. It’d suck me in. You’d unravel me.”
He clasped his hands together behind his back and started to strut around.
“You think you’re so smart, don’t you? So enlightened and wise. All-seeing, whether you like it or not.”
Shadow shook her head. She had to give it to Freak, he was good at what he was doing. Just wrong on one account.
“No, not really. You might have been right a year ago, before all this happened but you happened to catch me at the lowest point of my confidence. Congratulations, I guess. The issue with being so damn powerful is that there is so much more room to screw up, and I’ve done plenty of that. Tell me Freak, are you done? Or will you keep going until you find something that scares me, it’s just what you do, right?”
“You see, Shadow, that’s what I’m talking about. You see everything. Heck, you even saw Destiny’s mind. Kicked your way right through the wall. Saw my whole plan. Tell me, what did you learn about it? What does it tell you about me?”
Destiny’s mind… she had been remarkably resilient, but then Shadow hadn’t put on any pressure once she realized she was going after the Entity. Steal a crystal, cause a distraction, go to the Tower with Freak, jam the crystal into the spatial anomaly in the Entity’s throne room, charge it with magic and hope for the best. A desperate plan, but no less desperate than what Fire had done. She told Freak as much.
“Yep, but I always have a distraction, too. Confuse the enemy response, and if you do it well enough, all that confusion turns into a nice healthy dose of fear to glut upon. A fixture of every plan I’ve ever had. But this time I didn’t choose the distraction - I wish I had, it was a great idea. Did you see what Destiny cooked up?”
While Freak talked, Shadow expanded her vision beyond what she was forced to see. When she realized what had happened there was a moment of clarity. Freak would get the fear he wanted, she wished he was capable of choking on it. Then the next moment the expected fear hit Shadow hard. Kay was free and currently in the portal room. She knew what he was about to do.
Freak threw his arms wide and fell back into the floor.
Without even responding, Shadow teleported to the portal room, gathering energy for her disintegration ray at the same time. Just as she materialized, Kay was already through the portal, which promptly collapsed in on itself.
Shadow stopped, her arm fell to her side and the energy she had gathered dissipated back into the environment. She felt empty, emptier than should be possible. It was only a matter of time now.
###
I swear I told Silver to leave as many alive as possible. Unfortunately, he didn’t like me very much. I managed to grab one researcher and throw him in the direction of the door, and he got out. Six others died. The grey enderman teleported around, tearing away with his talons, spraying blood across controls and floors. To his credit, several of them were armed guards. I can’t quite remember how many. None of my red-scarfed guardians - some confused part of me felt it would have been better if a few of them died instead of the rank-and-file.
But I also didn’t object, not just because Silver wouldn’t have listened, but because Destiny needed her distraction. I sauntered purposefully up to the controls next to the portal and began to tamper with controls. I closed my eyes and thought back to the documents we recovered from the Tower facility.
We had stopped by the arms lock-up after working out the terms. I had grabbed my sword and the nearest set of diamond armour, Silver took a battered obsidian chestplate, teleported here and then this scuffle began.
I input the location code as the fighting continued. The portal fired up. The blue orb appeared at the center, and then spread out to fill the whole frame. I looked upon what I had enabled and was proud of this at least.
I heard the last sword clatter. A dying man choking. The sound of warping. Ender particles floating through the air from behind me. I felt the talons about my throat.
“Give me a reason not to go through with this,” growled Silver.
I tried to crack my neck, but he tightened his grip. I felt a stab of pain as the skin ripped and a drop of blood ran down my Adam’s apple. I listened for my pounding heart, but it was slow, lethargic. I briefly wondered if I should antagonise him. But no, too many people had died for that to be the noble path forward.
“Check the console,” I said.
My voice was a dry croak.
Silver threw me against a nearly railing. Before checking the console, he whirled around with talons ready, as though he expected me to make a move. Something like disappointment flowed over the Endling’s face. He returned to the machine and froze up.
“Is this…” he trailed off.
“Yes, your home.”
“Why?”
I wondered about that myself. I closed my eyes, lowered my head, and searched for the truth.
“I took eleven years of your life. A few days ago, I would not have cared. But I crossed a line with that Book business. It’s about time I started setting some of my mistakes right.”
Silver nodded, though I could have sworn I saw him roll his eyes.
“Don’t follow me through,” he concluded. “They’ll shred you.”
Silver straightened his breastplate and began to walk towards the portal.
“Wait,” I said very suddenly, not quite certain of my goal.
The Endling glanced back. He said nothing.
“Do I die in the end? Am I dead where you and Astro come from?”
I wish I could tell you why I asked that. I’ve pondered that myself. The best explanation I can offer is that, in times of great strife, few things are on a man’s mind more than the length of his life, and what he leaves behind. But there was something in the way Astro had looked at me. Something about the way he spoke about me. Something very final. As though what I did now was the final verdict on who I was. I rather think asking was a mistake, though.
“Yes,” Silver nodded. “I was there.”
“Do I die well?”
“You seemed to think so.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but then decided against it. I closed my jaws. Bit down on my fate. I waved my hand, and Silver left. The blue portal slammed closed. I allowed myself a few seconds, then heard footsteps. I went to the console. My duty was not yet fulfilled.
I closed my eyes, remembered a set of coordinates I had seen and known I would one day need. Even before I became leader, before all this Claw business, before we even knew what the Entity’s plan was, I saw that coordinate and locked it in. My fingers ran gracefully over the keys, then over to a portable scanner. The portal reopened. It would close the second I used it, then scramble the coordinates to cover my tracks. I stepped up to the plate.
I heard a warping noise. Shadow stood at the doorway, a spell in hand, ready to kill. I stepped through, and all became white tunnels and snapshots of creations that were, that could have been, that should have come to pass, and then all that vanished.
I stood in a field on a hill. Behind me, sheep graze, crops are planted, and the land slopes up slowly until it bleeds into a mountain. Before me, fields flowed down until they broke against a road populated by restless streaks of colour. And the road led to a city - a city large enough to rival Mojang.
I checked the scanner. A warning flashed on screen: “Unknown spatial topology.” Several versions of the same signal flickered. Several blinked away in the city. One, however, was closer. I looked in that direction, saw trees and foothills. It calls to me, and only slightly because the streaks of colour screaming down the roads make me feel dizzy.
This was Fire’s world. Claw’s only weak point. I went there to kill him. Because I had to.
I told myself that, even if Destiny succeeded in killing the Entity, that there was no guarantee Claw would go away. He had broken out before, he would break out again. And without the Book I stood less than no chance against him. Bar Rose, no one did. He was too strong, too crafty. He wouldn’t be beaten the same way twice. That beast had to die. So, I would hit him where he was mortal: in his human body, in his ‘real world’.
If I could do that, I could come back from this. I could still be the hero people had once told me I was. The great warrior I always wanted to be.
Every part of me tensed as a cold wind tried to topple me. My eyes begin to water. My hand fumbled around in my pocket, producing Hel- producing my goggles. I ran a thumb over the cracked glass, then put them on. I pulled my hood up, glanced at the scanner once, and set out for foothills and trees.
###
There were no clouds. The stars seemed further away than normal. Or maybe just dimmer. Either way, it left the ground darker than she’d ever seen it. Every step felt like a step in the wrong direction, and she couldn’t stop stumbling. She had made this path so many times, why tonight? Was this self-sabotage? Probably.
Eventually, she got sick of stumbling around, and lit a fire in her palm. She caught a glimpse of the Sovereign flag and extinguished it. As she walked between the tents and propaganda and corpses, she remembered that she’d once vowed to destroy all these things - to break from her past for good. That seemed like an empty gesture, now.
The second she crested the hill, Anya approached her with a look of sympathy and pain. Destiny could make out all her features - she was a ghost after all - but this discrepancy had always hurt her head. She shot out some fireballs to light the torches and see her past self normally. Unfortunately, it revealed a giggling Freak sitting in the portal frame.
“You should have seen the look on Shadow’s face when she realised your little distraction technique.” His giggles became howls. “It was so fearful.”
“Move,” she grunted.
The phantom only just lurched out of the way before her fireball hit the frame. The portal flashed into life. Anya stood beside her. They wasted no time waiting for Freak to get up and returned to their homeworld.
###
They trekked for a long time, following Anya. She could go where she liked in Minera, so she’d scouted out the route to the other portal. The faster they got there, the more time the others had to stop the machine. Also made sure there was more of a gap to close if the others tried to catch up to her.
She wondered what Fristad would have thought. Would he have understood how important working with Freak was? Probably not, but somehow, she was sure he would have helped out in his own way. Gathered provisions. Caused a distraction. Made it so she didn’t have to release Kay. That would have been nice. Or maybe he would have just told the others.
She kept thinking about what Steve had said, about how none of them knew each other, not really. And to be fair, she hadn’t known that much about Fristad. She knew he was from Veridale, that he had been under the Book’s control, that he had friends called Airlass and Jonas… And that was about where it ended. But they’d shared emotions, they’d both felt lost at the end of a chapter in their lives, and that had been enough to care about him.
Steve could go suck an egg, she cared about all of them. Steve included.
They came across the portal, finally. It remained as she remembered it. Something dark, red and solid as the base, and a black, angry gel oozing around in the centre. Freak muttered something about checking the coast was clear, and hopped in. And Destiny stood there, wondering how much time she had.
She briefly wondered why this portal was different from the other one, but it really wasn’t that important. Probably just an older model.
So, she turned her attention to something much better. She turned away from the portal and strode down the coastline. Anya followed. She passed the crafting table beneath the tree, running her fingers across the scratches, and continued until she came to the boat that had taken her to this place originally. She reached down and examined the name etched into the side.
“He called it the ‘Bright Destiny’,” she mumbled with a smile. “I thought it was the worst damn name he could have come up with, but he was in such a good mood. David always was cheesy.”
“Carter wasn’t much different,” said Anya. “Guess some things don’t change no matter how many times you die.”
Then, they were quiet for a while. She didn’t know if it was the night air or if she’d just lost her nerve, but Destiny started to shake.
“You don’t have to go through with this,” said Anya.
Destiny laughed nervously.
“Don’t tell me you’re going soft, now?”
“I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m saying it’s your choice.”
Destiny nodded, and she thought very hard about what she wanted. But it was all his face. His laugh. His smile. The time they had. The time they wasted not acknowledging what they were. It was all she could think about.
The greater good would only ever be a runner-up to what she had lost and wanted so desperately to regain. But, given the circumstances, that was the best she could do. Besides, being a good person was rewarding in its own way… or something.
“Come on!” called Freak with irritation. “We’re clear but not for long.”
Destiny nodded and rolled her eyes. A strange sort of serenity washed over her like a soothing balm. She was a hero, this was just what she did. She gave Anya her best approximation of a hug and approached the portal.
“Do you think this will work?” she asked Freak.
“I’ll level with you, it’s a crapshoot.”
She shrugged and stepped forward to fulfil her role. No matter the cost.
Chapter66:Final Steps (Claw)
The atmosphere in the Tower had changed over the last few days. The machine was almost complete, the Entity’s plan was palpably close to coming to fruition. And everybody felt it. Command and Control held one full assembly meeting after the other, trying to make sure that absolutely everything went as it should.
Both the Science and Magic divisions worked overtime on putting those last finishing touches on the machine and quadruple-checking that nothing would go wrong once the device powered up.
Over the course of the last week all off-world trade had ceased and portals connecting to other worlds had gone dark. All resources were consolidated in the Tower and the staff from Logistics worked hard on categorizing and storing whatever came.
Claw was naturally not spared from all this. He’d spent countless hours with the Ender working on defense plans and drilling the troops. A final attack by the rebels was not just considered, it was absolutely expected.
Claw had heard a variety of things from different employees, everyone had different expectations of what would happen once the Entity flipped that fateful switch that had been installed in its throne room. The switch that would activate the machine and collapse all worlds into Nexus. Some fully bought into the prospects of prosperity brought on by this grand convergence, others were skeptical but optimistic. A select few were fearful, but they hid it well. Most of these did not know why exactly they felt the fear that they felt, all save for one.
Dr. Veronica Mercury had figured it all out, she knew the fate of the world and everything living in it. Claw had realized this the moment he had seen her during one of his frequent visits to her private laboratory. It was subtle, her posture was a little less upright, her tone of voice was a little flatter, her eyes stared a little further. She knew and she could do nothing about it. She was not even able to sabotage the machine, the Entity kept a sizable portion of its attention firmly focused on the machine, so much attention that conversations it held had become noticeably sluggish.
Claw could of course have told the Entity about the discovery made by their head of Science, but in reality, why should he? At this point her expertise was not required for the machine to work, all it would do is shorten her existence as an individual by a few days. If it wasn’t obvious at this point, Claw knew as well. He’d figured it out at some point before the rebels’ raid on the portal facility. He’d gone and confirmed it with the Entity even.
Claw’s own role in all this didn’t change. If the Entity succeeded, he’d be assimilated, if the Entity failed, he’d return to his previous prison. All-in-all the outcomes were the same, in a way Claw was glad he got to exist as his own person at all. However, as a rare exception to his usual attitude, Claw felt genuinely bad for Dr. Mercury, finding out all on her own with something to lose.
Putting the thoughts of impending doom aside, Claw turned to other matters. Kay had developed nicely, just like Glibby said he would. Rumors of this “King in Ash” that was now leading the rebels had quickly spread to the Tower as well. Him burning down that warehouse was just perfect, it exceeded Claw’s expectations of how quickly he would deteriorate. However, the fact that so far there hadn’t been a single defection from the rebels spoke volumes about their desperation, they clung to hope even when serving under a leader such as Kay.
While deep in thought, Claw had found himself wandering back to the hallway that contained his private chambers, his and those of the other direct subordinates of the Entity. He thought about each as he passed the doors.
From what Claw knew, Glibby had taken his advice to heart and had spent considerable time reading and consulting demonologists. With any luck he’d actually find some sort of weakness he could use. Naturally using it was a different question because at this point, after his repeated losses, the Ape was apprehensive about his next confrontation with Helix. Of course, he hid it under his usual bravado so few people in the Tower knew the truth.
Freak had been acting oddly as of late, more so than usual. Maybe he felt something off with the Entity’s plan. Among everyone in the Tower, Freak would be the most likely to have found out. For now, the phantom hadn’t done anything that could give Claw certainty.
Finally Claw arrived at the Ender’s room. His wandering had not been random, but with purpose. There were still a few things he had to discuss with her, and they could not wait.
He knocked on her door exactly three times. It didn’t take long for her to answer. The Ender was still in uniform, wearing her signature obsidian armor with the purple gems. That was to say, the Ender was never out of uniform. It was a common practice for endfolk to wear armor at all times, even while they slept.
The Ender looked at Claw with a neutral expression. “This is about those defense plans, isn’t it?”
Claw nodded. “Mind if I come in, or should we go to an office?”
The Ender hesitated for a solid three seconds, then gestured for Claw to enter the room. “I had a feeling you’d come by, so I took the plans with me.”
Claw had been to the Ender’s private chambers only once before, so he took another look around the room. It looked similar to his in basic structure but there were significant differences. The living room looked like her office, a table, two chairs, a shelf with books and various other things on it. However, one corner of the room was dominated by a bulky device, a dehumidifier. Judging by the absolutely arid air, it worked as intended.
He’d never seen the bedroom, but he assumed that it couldn’t be too different from his own. There was one striking difference, however. Where Claw’s chambers had a door to a bathroom, the Ender’s simply had an opening. Behind this opening Claw could see the winding and branching vines of a chorus plant. The Ender had told him about an ancient custom that leaders would take care of one, parallels between keeping the plant healthy without it taking over the entire room, and leading an army or nation were easy to draw. However, it turned out that the Ender didn’t care much for that tradition for its intended purpose, she simply liked gardening as a counterbalance to her day-to-day duties.
Claw sat down at the table, the plans were already rolled out and pinned down.
He began: “So, we’ve got most scenarios down and accounted for. But we’ve still got insufficient coverage for the really bad outcomes. Say the rebels somehow breach the main gate and all of our external infrastructure is crippled or destroyed.”
The Ender responded: “It’s hallway combat at that point, our mages and marksmen should have that front covered. They can only push in so quickly and between them and the bedrock golems guarding the machine, there should be enough time for the machine to activate.”
Claw quickly glanced over the possible choke points on the blueprints, then used a marker to highlight several of them. “Those should be our best bet then, we need to make sure our soldiers and civilian staff know this. If they breach that far the civilians will inevitably come under attack.”
“I’ll have Issa take care of distributing the information, Dimensions has a lot of free capacity now that we’ve cut the portals.”
Claw looked up and directly at his colleague. “Speaking of portals, we can’t rule out that the rebels are in possession of functional portal technology from their raid.”
The Ender continued his train of thought: “Which means they’ll probably have stocked up on forces and resources by now. We should expect not just raw numbers but elite troops as well, if some of these people were able to contact their home worlds, they are bound to have rallied professional soldiers in some capacity. Or worse, heroes.”
Claw asked: “Any worlds in particular?”
The Ender leaned back in her chair, thinking the question over.
She replied: “I will have to ask Issa on that too, the only one that comes to mind is the world where Kay hails from. Though I doubt they’d be inclined to help him if what Glibby told you is any indication.”
Kay’s world was definitely a possibility, especially considering it was one of the few where Herobrine still lived and wasn’t an unhinged killer. One more world came to Claw’s mind, his own, or rather that of the other one. But that one would remain a non-issue since the energy required to open an invasion-sized portal that far would exceed even the capabilities of the rebels’ Void mage. Nobody short of the Entity had that much energy at their command.
“Tell Issa to go over the dossiers of known rebels, as well as any reports about nearby worlds we never established portals to. In fact, we should ask her right now to get going. One of her telepaths should be listening out.”
Claw took it upon himself to get the attention of the telepath. If Claw recalled correctly, it was the same one that had told him about his first Command and Control meeting. All he had to do was concentrate on a specific concept. For this specific telepath Claw had to think about weaving a basket while submerged in sea water and wearing a second basket for a hat. The concepts were chosen so it would be nearly impossible for them to be thought of unintentionally.
Seconds later Claw heard the voice of the little girl again. “Hello Claw.”
Claw replied: “Heather, we need you to relay some information to Issa for us.”
Claw had made a point of learning the names of everyone he interacted with, he found that people were a lot easier to work with if you knew their name. The voice of the other one’s memory had told him it was about forming a personal connection and Claw had not found any issues with that.
Heather asked: “Is it confidential?”
Claw transmitted the mental equivalent of shaking his head.
Heather told Claw to wait while she looked for Issa. In the meantime, Claw thought over some additional worst-case scenarios with the Ender until the voice of the telepath appeared in his mind again.
“Ready.”
Claw took care to slowly transmit the information, telepathy was much faster than speech and going too fast risked information getting lost in the telepath’s short-term memory. Once he was done, he waited for an acknowledgement.
Heather transmitted: “Issa says she’ll have it done as soon as possible, you can expect a full report within four hours.”
“Thank you, Heather.” Claw replied, moments later the connection was closed.
He turned to the Ender. “Four hours and we’ll have our threat breakdown. Plenty of time to finalize the regular defense plan. We’ll do a formal worst-case one once the report is in.”
The Ender nodded. “Let us get to it then, much to be done.”
Destiny stepped out into an upsettingly familiar chamber. Roughly hewn walls. Very little light, just the occasional lantern hung from the crags of the walls and ceiling. Grass on the floor. In various alcoves, more red-and-black portals could be seen. Calling it a chamber was charitable, it was basically a cave. It then occurred to her that grass didn’t usually grow in caves. She lit a flame in her palm and stooped to pluck up a blade of grass. It had died some time ago.
Nothing about this room made sense to Destiny, and normally she would have just powered through to get the job done, but this time was different. She just knew it as the place where Glibby and the Grey Ones had jumped herself and David back at the beginning of this whole messed-up situation. The grass had been alive back then. So, she felt entitled to some closure.
“Where are we?”
“This iteration’s playground so to speak. Baby’s first portals to other worlds. The Entity probably kept it around as a keepsake, or maybe just because it hoards everything.”
“Why didn’t we notice the portal sooner, then? Carter and Anya… Well, they didn’t say it had just appeared but… that was the impression I got.”
Freak shrugged. “Look, we have people from different times in the same world. I heard some of the eggheads talk about it and all I got from that was that it’s arbitrary and I shouldn’t question it.”
The phantom walked onwards, and Destiny didn’t say anything, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Some of the portals were open, others closed. Were the closed portals ones for worlds the Entity had absorbed? Or, had the Entity closed and reopened the portal to her world? But, why? Plans of conquest? Pursuit of something? Some sort of nostalgia?
She kept fixating on it because the alternative meant Anya had lied to her. Had always been lying to her. She remembered what Carter said before they left.
“You defeated Martin, but a greater threat awaits. I sense a strong presence in there, so you won't go in empty handed.”
And then they’d given David the stupid gauntlet that killed him. And they’d given her those wings which she lost in that very room, not five minutes after arriving on scene.
Carter, Anya, and whatever force they served had known about the portal for a while. They just hadn’t seen fit to tell them. She felt a warm, nauseating flush of anger, and her concern at not having Anya with her dropped to an all-time low.
They came to a monolithic staircase, made of large stone steps, each nearly a meter in height and depth. Freak spryly leapt from one to the next, his footsteps less than whispers. Destiny sighed and climbed up after him.
By the time she reached the top of the steps, rising through layers of packed-in rock, she was already exhausted. Sweat all over her. Hands raw from gripping the coarse stone. Lungs burning away. She sat down.
“Could have warned me about the staircase,” she grumbled. “I’m supposed to kill the Entity and its architect’s already halfway beat me.”
There was a door before them, and she could hear the noise of machinery beyond it. Freak stared through a large, glass orb which seemed to act as a peephole, either unaware of or unconcerned by her complaints. Destiny sighed. Truthful or liar, Anya would have been easily provoked into being supportive.
“Where are we?” she tried.
Freak gestured for her to come up. She put her eye to the looking glass. On the other side, she saw corridors lined with pipes, with technicians and scientists and mages marching between. Every here and there an obsidian-clad enderman stood high above the others, a small patrol of human soldiers following in their wake. She couldn’t see any lamps - probably because the mages needed magic to work. She heard something loud pounding on the floor.
“Science part of the lower sections, machine’s somewhere around here. Not really much else interesting here except for Mercury’s lab, very interesting things to be learned there. Well, in the past there were, now she’s just trying not to let it show she found out what the Entity plans on doing with all of existence.”
Destiny’s eyes widened as a world of opportunity opened up.
“Is there a chance we could convince her to help us? Wait, was that what that part of your mind theater was about?”
“She already helped in a way, the thing about the crystals? She and Claw found that out.”
“Yeah, but I mean actual help. Not prep-work.”
Freak sneered.
“Talk to her if you want. Your friend briefly tried that as I recall, she tried melting his face and handed him over to the Entity. But no, I’m sure if you walk up to her, that addled little mind will hear you out.”
“Fine. How are we getting past?”
The pounding sound she’d heard before was louder than ever. Just a few seconds ago it had been distant, now it sounded like it was coming right up the-
“Once this thing’s moved on,” hissed Freak.
He shunted Destiny away from the orb and threw himself against the opposing wall. The pounding grew louder, and Destiny felt her lungs tighten. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. She summoned an icy sword, quickly realising how little defence it offered her. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Her heart began to hammer away at a similar volume. Clunk. It stopped. A shadow fell over the peephole. She heard a whirring noise, and then a red light poured through the glass.
Through the warped, scarlet-stained glass, Destiny could just about make out a cuboid or perhaps rectangular head, with what must have been a large, red eye dominating the centre of what should have been its face. Its gaze rotated around the orb, and a red dot passed around the hallway. Then, the creature whirred again, and the red light seeped back out of the glass. The pounding resumed. The shadow passed, and the corridor lit up again.
Destiny put her head back to the peephole despite Freak’s protests. She caught a glimpse of a huge, square-fisted golem vanishing around the corner. But it wasn’t iron, there was something odd, something speckled about the colour, and she knew it wasn’t paint. It almost looked like…
“...Bedrock,” she breathed. “They have bedrock golems?”
“Yep,” chuckled the phantom as he rummaged around in his pocket. “They found them in… I think it was your demon-kid’s world. Just lying around in some temples on a green moon. I think they were meant to be guarding something, because they did not take kindly to our guys investigating. Lost half a brigade trying to recover one. Mercury tried to replicate them for months. And she couldn’t. Notably it’s one of the few projects where Archmage Wisp helping actually contributed anything meaningful. Now, they’re guarding the throne room and the machine.”
His toothy grin had returned, and Destiny could have sworn he started breathing more heavily, as though trying to drain more oxygen from the air… or something else. She tried to suppress the panic and fear rising within her, but only succeeded so much.
“Catch!”
Destiny grabbed something shiny and metal from the air. She looked at it in the light. Handcuffs.
Destiny’s heart sank.
“So, you want me to be your fake prisoner?” she asked with something she hoped resembled defiant snark.
“Yes. I’ll say I’ve taken you prisoner, and I’m taking you for interrogation followed by absorption. Express orders from the Entity. After all, you’re a leading rebel - one of the few that could actually deal some damage to Claw.”
Destiny remembered pressing the burning shield against Claw’s scales, really messing up his arm. That had been pretty awesome. Until Claw kicked her in the head, at least. She smiled a little anyway as she applied the handcuffs.
“You heard about that?”
“I hear about everything,” sneered Freak. “Don’t feel special.”
He checked the cuffs were convincingly attached. Destiny felt them pinch against her skin and yelped despite herself. Freak wrapped his talons around her throat, and she tensed up. For a terrible second, she wondered if she’d been had.
“Our story is that I got the drop on you while you were trying to infiltrate. Look defiant, but more bitter-defiant than unconcerned-defiant. Give me some of that Destiny anger,” said Freak.
This only barely calmed her nerves, and before she could even process it, Freak threw open the doors and began to force her onwards. His signature toothy grin had returned, and his yellow eyes were wide with triumph.
“Look who I just caught!” he proclaimed.
The scientists, mages, and technicians cleared the way like someone had just cut the hallway in two. They looked at her with a mixture of emotions. Some confused. Some ecstatic. More than expected terrified. Others merely watching with academic interest. Destiny scowled at all of them equally, scrutinising their faces. She noticed the variety of species. Human, villager, pigman, enderman, skeletons, zombies, she was even pretty sure she saw a blaze or two in there, and all manner of things she could barely describe or understand. It occurred to her that the Entity had gathered all this here, and somehow decided it still wanted to destroy it all.
They quickly passed through a checkpoint. The guards barked out a laugh and joked to each other in enderman. Destiny fought the urge to melt one or the other’s face - she didn’t need her hands for that. She then remembered that, in here, she still had her powers down there. Then, she remembered she would have to lose them soon enough. Small comfort and dread crashed into each other.
Freak carried on grinning, and exchanged some knowing looks, but didn’t say anything yet.
They approached a gigantic gate made of interlocking spirals. Yet more guards. More bared fangs. More obsidian armour rattling with laughter. More talons scraping on stone. The door slowly unraveled. Tortuously slowly. Until, finally:
“What have we here?” a familiar, theatrical voice called.
A heavy, gauntleted hand settled on her shoulder from behind, and a shadow fell across both she and Freak. She was wrenched around and brought face to face with Glibby the Ape.
“Hello, Destiny. How did a little runt like Freak catch something like you?”
She’d already been terrified, and now he was here. The guy who killed Fristad. Who captured her and David initially. Who crushed their escape attempt. Clad in obsidian. Smug as could be. But as the bottom fell out of her fear and she plunged to even further depths, a pure, visceral hatred entered her.
“Bite me,” spat Destiny.
She jerked forward briefly, and Freak tightened his grip.
“Charming. How did you catch her, Freak?”
“Found her snooping around the playground. Jumped her while she was climbing the stairs. Poor thing got herself all tuckered out.”
“Oh, the playground,” lilted Glibby.
The Ape leaned down to look her in the eye. She glared back. He reached out a finger, and she recoiled, but not far enough to stop him running to cold, jagged obsidian over her face.
“Where we first met. Do you recall? My, how you’ve changed since then. You had little, then, and now you have nothing. Quite the tragic arc.”
Destiny began to shake.
“You’re talking real brave for a man with such a meltable face,” muttered Destiny for her own reassurance as much as to intimidate anyone. It came out trembling and breathless.
The Ape’s face settled into the cold calm of a man who sensed he was about to get exactly what he wanted.
“Hand her over to me, Freak,” he said. “I’ll bring an end to this sad tale.”
“No.”
The Ape’s eyes flared up.
“Excuse me?”
“Express orders from the Entity. Any rebel intruders are to be taken for interrogation by me, and then handed over for absorption. It wants any and all knowledge on last-minute threats, especially from the rebels.”
Glibby drew back, but with a roll of his shoulders had readjusted his face back into smugness.
“Have fun, then.”
He began to walk away. Freak began to press forward through the newly opened gate. Then, Glibby stopped and called over his shoulder:
“Actually, Destiny. Do you have any last messages for little Warnado? I promise to pass them on very soon.”
Destiny wrestled against Freak’s grip, letting loose some blood but successfully forcing him to stop. She screamed over her shoulder:
“Tell him, ‘Don’t worry kid, so long as Glibby’s still talking trash you’ve got at least an hour left to beat him in!’”
Freak snorted with unwilling laughter, then hastily shunted Destiny forward as he saw the Ape’s glare fall on him.
“Not cool,” said the phantom. “I have to work with that guy.”
“I’ll kill the Entity, then I’ll kill him even harder,” snarled Destiny.
“You’re so angry and talking about murder all the time. Are you sure you’re one of the good guys?” asked Freak with a sneer.
They passed an alcove containing a statue of some generic hero-looking guy, and Destiny wondered that herself. There wasn’t much to say about the statue hero, he had his weapons raised aloft, and he looked victorious about something. Destiny hoped that at the end of the day, she could say the same things about herself.
After following a large, spiral staircase, they finally escaped research, and Destiny felt her powers fading. Purple lamps lined the walls like guards. To Destiny’s eyes, it looked as though there were as many purple, magic-dampening crystals as there were people bustling back and forth in the hallways. Her magic, her last safety net, was gone. She focused on the floor, and allowed the rest of the journey to blur together as her panic set in.
Infrastructure and manufacturing came first. Endless, piston-operated conveyor belts; people burning up clay to make bricks, cobblestone to make roads; an apparently infinite supply of lava being doused in water to make obsidian; and rows upon rows of crafting tables at which exhausted, chained-up mages warped the obsidian into armour and weapons. Everything was sweltering.
Next, the entrance hall. Destiny recognised the doorway where Warnado blinded those guards and ensured their escape. Where Tyron had carried David’s half-dead body from this dreadful place. She wondered if anyone had ever found that grave they dug for him. She shut her eyes completely when she thought she recognised the place David had shattered his gauntlet. They also passed through a variety of rooms stacked high with different items hoarded by the Entity, some valuable, some apparently random.
They reached the upper layers, full of admin offices and housing. Cafeterias, training rooms, people carrying papers, soldiers just sitting around and shooting the breeze. If Destiny had fallen asleep and woken up here, she would have just assumed the Shelter had been remodeled and gotten a little liberal with its recruitment policy. But knowing what they were working towards made all of these normal, humanising things into a source of shellshock. She caught a glimpse of an office with an iron door. It had the name ‘Marinus Bul’ etched into it and highlighted in black paint. Dust had settled on the handle. She shuddered.
For a while, she wondered if they’d ever escape this labyrinth of near-normalcy. And then, as they came up a staircase, she heard a familiar pounding. They rounded the corner, and her eyes agreed with her ears - that was definitely a bedrock golem stomping around. Or, rather, four of them. Marching in a patrol. And a slightly more distant stomping from the other direction confirmed they weren’t the only one. Destiny felt her breath abandon her.
“There’s so many of them. Why are they up here? Isn’t the machine down in research?”
“Entity wants them to guard the activation mechanism. It needs the machine protected, but it’s also down beneath layers upon layers of security and an awful lot of dirt and rock. Problem with a tower is that anyone who can fly might be able to break through and get around the lower defences. So, Entity wants something to be here to meet any would-be intruders who try to stop the machine from activating.”
Destiny nodded. Freak removed her handcuffs.
“Okay, and the activation mechanism is where, exactly?”
“It’s in the same place as the dimensional scar.”
“Of course it is.”
Destiny wanted to punch a wall but realised that might alert the golems to their presence. And so, she removed her shoes and followed Freak. He would go intangible and phase through walls, then come back to tell her if the coast was clear. Then, she would pad forward.
The process was agonising, and every time he slipped out of sight Destiny felt like a sitting duck. She had no more alibi. Before she had been a threat the Tower had neutralised and didn’t have to worry about anymore - a too-good-to-be-true trophy. Now, she was back to being a rebel infiltrator to be killed on sight. And the crystals didn’t help. The closer they got to the dimensional scar, the stronger their strange pull became, and the more nauseous she felt. She kept readjusting the satchel, but it made no difference.
At long last, it came into view, and Destiny’s heart took off at a sprint. She could see no guards, no obvious defences, just a door with a bronze disc. She shot a glance at Freak. He nodded and hurried her onwards, trailing behind as a lookout. Destiny felt some relief when she noticed there were no purple lamps in sight and summoned an icicle to test her strength.
Destiny put her hand on the bronze disc and turned it. The door hissed, and mechanisms whirred, and finally the two halves of the door slid apart. Destiny took a deep breath. She summoned an icy javelin and her flaming buckler, and she stepped forward.
Freak took the lead. He led her through several chambers before they reached their target. The first was a small room, built from obsidian and multi-coloured endstone, with bronze accents in the corners. It was packed full of glass containers displaying different artefacts, many with apparent religious significance. Statues of deities, pedestals with holy books, fragments of altars.
She then entered a series of more severe, more metallic and less varied in their colour scheme. Destiny saw things like tables projecting holograms of constellations and dimensions, and extensive libraries coated in dust.
And then, there it was - the throne room. It was the largest chamber by far. Its circular walls were lined with hermetically sealed bookcases made from endstone. A staircase spiralled up to some sort of spire-like observatory. And, of course, the throne itself sat at the far end, the dimensional scar flickering above it.
It was subtle, if Destiny hadn’t known to look for it, she wouldn’t have spotted it. It was as if reality was just slightly off at that particular spot. There were no words for the concept, but it was clear that this was Destiny’s target.
Destiny looked at Freak, and for the first time she thought she saw genuine worry on the phantom’s face.
“It’s going to bear down on us the second you start. Good news: there should be no manifestations in the Tower at the moment and it would take too long for it to form any new ones. Bad News: it has several possessed shells lying around, and the main body is here. The Entity being afraid will give me a boost, but there’s only so much I’ll be able to do.”
Destiny nodded.
“Thank you Freak.”
She took a handful of crystals in either fist and stood on the throne. She closed her eyes. Breathed. She reached for a power she had only felt a few times before but which she had always known to be there. Between the strange warmth of her ice magic and between the puzzling chill of fire, she searched for a deeper, older and fuller power. A power Martin had tried and failed to take from her. Her hands began to glow. She plunged them into the scar and began to pull in opposite directions.
She heard a sound beyond screaming, like the death of an earthquake. Freak took up a fighting stance, facing the door. His limbs grew long, his talons sharp, and his dreadful grin only seemed to become larger and hungrier by the second.
“Now this is fear!” He roared.
Destiny returned her attention to the scar. It refused to budge. She pulled and pulled until her muscles burned but still, she could only catch the slightest, most fleeting glimpse of the Void beyond.
Freak howled with laughter, and she heard the clang of bronze armour on obsidian alloy. A shell - a being possessed by the Entity and wearing it’s armour - rushed through the door and swung at Freak, who dodged and batted it around the head. It staggered away. Destiny noticed a strange sluggishness about the Entity. A second shell entered, and Freak’s long arm shot out and pinned it to the wall. He plunged a talon towards its eye, and the second manifestation shuddered for a moment before it sank in. Blood shot out, and the corpse of the Entity’s host fell aside.
But before Freak could enjoy this victory, a third had entered. Freak only barely dodged its zweihander. A fourth came in, and moved to flank the phantom, but he kept it at bay with a well-timed kick. The first shell was now back on its feet, its helmet cracked but its resolve undiminished. Freak slowly began to back away as the shells closed in on him.
Destiny continued to strain, and the scar budged a little, but not enough. She could hear the void moaning at her.
One of the shells walked off to the side and in the corner of her eye, Destiny saw its white-gloved hand outstretched in a gesture almost like pleading.
“Cease this,” said one of the shells. “You are risking… more-than-you know.”
Freak leapt over and slammed a foot into its chest. The bronze cracked inwards, and blood flowed out. It raised its head and continued to speak.
“This world is-”
Freak’s talons knocked the head from its shoulders and the corpse collapsed.
“-dying,” continued another shell.
It began to walk forward. One of its fellows removed its glove and began attempting to thrust its boiling, grey hand into Freak’s chest, to make him a part of the mass.
“Nexus has reached critical mass. The rot-is setting… in. Full convergence is the only way to save it.”
Blood ran between Destiny’s fingers. She tried to tell herself the gash was widening. It had to be.
“I tried to make it, piece by piece… You are from,” it froze a second, it’s gaze shooting off in a random direction. “World 257. You witnessed-the-garden. How it rots. How my portals bleed-are-infected.”
Destiny thought back to the dead grass. To the black, oily liquid within the frame. The portals were sick…
Light began to shift in a specific spot. Another armoured shell ran through the door and began to assault Freak. He leapt over its oncoming blade but staggered on the landing.
“Keeping the pieces here… keeping them-constant-it-makes them… corrode. It-has-only accelerated since she… Entropy arrived. Since she-began to tear apart my-creation”.
“Shadow…” thought Destiny. “Could she be killing this place?”
She felt an opposite force, as though the scar were trying to clamp shut on her hands.
The light continued to swirl, to remix itself, to turn dark. Flashes of bronze, obsidian, glass…
Freak narrowly dodged a strike from an obsidian zweihander. The Entity was speeding up.
“If I do-not-stop it here, create one world, one-stable-ordered-world, the rot will spread. It will destroy-not-only Nexus. It will taint… everywhere I-stood.”
An ordinary-looking man ran past Freak, his face flat, emotionless, empty. He made a beeline for Destiny. His arm turned to the same seething, boiling grey as the shell’s hand. He was going to try and possess or absorb her or something. She looked at her hands, and knew from the indescribable pain and the rushing of blood that if she removed them from the scar, she would neither be able to do a thing with them, or ever reinsert them back in. She pulled like a frightened dog scratching at a door. She realised her death was imminent. The lights swirled and shifted brighter and darker all at the same time.
Freak’s talons caught the possessed man across the torso and split him in half. The grey faded away. A moment of glorious hope. One of the shells caught him on the back with a zweihander. He fell. And Destiny felt emptied of everything.
A white-gloved hand reached from within the swirling lights. A moment later, the main body of the Entity followed it. It looked humanoid only in shape, an imitation of a person made from solid grey static. It seemed like its shape burned itself into Destiny’s eyes, refusing to let anything else occupy that spot in her perception.
It began to slowly advance.
“Open!” grunted Destiny, panting. “Open, you stupid wound!”
She pressed her forehead against the top of the throne until it hurt. Anything to distract her from the condition of her hands. She caught a glimpse of the Entity itself, approaching. One of the shells had a zweihander pressed to Freak’s throat, and a gloved hand gripping his scalp. Another stood by dutifully, its boiling, grey hand ready to plunge into him. The phantom’s claws dug into the ground in fear. His toothy grin was drenched in blood.
Destiny felt the scar winning. It began to gain ground on her.
“Is any of what you said just there,” she asked through gritted teeth and streaming eyes. “Is it true?”
She paid attention to its footsteps for the first time, shifting and inconstant. Loud then quiet. Quick then fast. Never actually closing the distance any faster or slower.
“I believe so.”
She looked up and saw the yawning, moaning void began to slip out of sight.
“Cease your fight.”
“No,” she gasped. “Not now. Not yet.”
She strained anew.
“Child, your struggle is… ended. Be calm. The convergence is coming. I have maimed worlds. Now let me make them whole once more. Even-if-I die… it will be so.”
She roared and pulled even harder. Its shadow loomed over her.
“Do-you-really believe that, even if you kill me, your friends can stop-the-rot-I-have-begun?”
She closed her eyes.
“They have to, because I won’t be here to help them.”
She rediscovered her purpose. She delved deeper and deeper into her self, for that power, old and ancient and pure. She screamed with her own voice, with Anya’s voice, with those of any and all who might have come before, of any and all who would come after, and she ripped the world asunder.
There was a crack like a thousand thunders, and a flash like a thousand suns and she was thrown back. The crystals flew from her hands. And then, a great suction. Something pulling her back in. She tried to use her hands, but they were useless. She instinctively summoned a platform of ice and her feet stuck in place.
Her eyes cleared.
Freak lay on the ground beside her, still hugging the floor with his talons. The shells were scattered across the room, attempting to rise. The Entity staggered and groaned. And behind it, the scar was open. The Void, plain to see, moaned and yawned away.
The suction grew stronger, became like a great wind, and the scar became a maw inhaling everything before it. Destiny strengthened the ice binding her feet as hard as she could. Freak burrowed further into the ground. The shells stood no chance, skittering across the ground and tumbling out of Nexus, one by one, until only the main body remained. Destiny and Freak shared an ecstatic look. Destiny howled with near-victorious laughter.
The Entity slid, slowly, towards the maw, what looked like arms crossed across what looked like its face. It would happen any second now, she knew it. Then, it steadied its foot against what remained of its throne. Panic filled her.
Destiny lifted her wounded right hand and willed all her remaining strength into it. A great, gargantuan, molten fireball formed above her palm. Her body shivered from the heat it was sacrificing. And then she hurled it at the Entity. The shot met its target. The Entity’s foot slipped. It fell into the current and shot straight out of the world.
“I WIN, ASSHOLE!” screamed Destiny.
The scar began to close, and the breath of the Void began to slowly weaken.
She kept shaking. She kept trying to talk, but no more words would come. She felt a complete tranquility within her. She looked over at Freak, panting. She almost wanted to thank the phantom.
“Freak…”
His taloned foot was free from the ground. He had it raised, angled down at the ice holding her in place. His yellowed grin was wide as the horizon. She considered asking him not to, or trying to fight him, but one glance at her bloodied hands confirmed there wasn’t much left she could do.
“...You’re lucky I’m in a good mood,” she snorted.
The ice shattered and she hurtled forwards. She saw the endless expanse, and nothing on the other side, and she expected briefly to go anywhere and nowhere. Then, she hit the threshold of the Void, and her speed slowed. She dropped like a rock on the other side of the scar and stopped on what felt like stone. Her hands bled and throbbed a lot, but it had reached a point where it had gotten so intense, she almost couldn’t notice any difference in the level of pain.
The only light came from the scar. She saw the Entity stood beside it, absorbing a shell, armour-and-all. She contemplated feeling scared, but she didn’t. Its static-like, boiling skin looked different, almost like it were moving more slowly.
“You have doomed us,” said the Entity.
Destiny used her elbows to start pulling herself to her feet.
“Ah, you’re just… mad that I beat you. Didn’t you hear me, I won… asshole”
She laughed until it hurt and began to walk forward on shaking feet. The Entity turned to look at the scar.
“So,” Destiny asked. “Where… where are we? I get the Void, but why?”
“It is… where-I-was. Before Nexus.”
She could have sworn the Entity looked a little smaller. More like a person. She shuffled. Something felt very strange. No cold or heat in the air, just empty dark and a sliver of light from the scar. Maybe that was it.
“I sat here, at the bottom of Void, for… I don’t-know. Until I encountered-a world, too small-for life. But it resonated… I kept it, made it-the first Nexus. Then, later, I found another world, and another, and another. My resonance grew with each world. Until I found a world with life, with minds. The first mind I-found I made mine, used it to understand… the world. Soon-after my world… fell to rot. Then nothing for a long time, until I found another world… other-minds. And again and… again. Each time the first mind allowed me to know more, understand more.”
Destiny, not amazingly interested in the interdimensional warlord’s unprompted justification, squinted into the scar. She could see nothing. It hurt her eyes to look, but the Entity kept staring longingly through with its unseen eyes and featureless almost-face.
“One day I found a mind that helped-me-not-take other minds. Minds that… are outside of me last-longer, help… longer. After many cycles I gathered more minds around me, built the-first-Tower. Started looking for ways to stop the rot. This first Tower lasted longer than… other cycles, so I built-new-ones, gathered ever more minds. Eventually I reached a barrier, needed-a-way-to bring more matter to… Nexus.”
It reached out to touch the scar, but its hand trembled and recoiled. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought the thing was distraught. But she did know better. Destiny tried the same thing. It wasn’t emotional, it was just being physically repelled. She still felt very strange.
“A mind eventually told me… about the crystals, how they-chain-worlds together. Then things became-difficult. Minds do not like things being taken… from them, they-band together and send-me-back. I found ways to stop this… from-happening. Sometimes, Entropy would come-find-me, often by chance, not by will. Sometimes, others. This cycle was supposed to be the last, the first-mind-proposed the machine. Now-so close to completion I… fade again.”
Destiny began to circle the Entity.
“No offense, big guy,” smiled Destiny sleepily. “You really brought this on yourself. Now, my friends are just going to turn up and curbstomp your remaining goons. I’m almost sad I won’t get to take part. But still, I got first prize.”
She pointed at the Entity with the closest approximation of finger-guns she could manage. Then, she fell to her knees. Something like dust was rising off her hand.
“Well, guess I’m dying… Am I? Doesn’t feel like before… You know that kid, Martin? He killed me… I think.”
She fell to her elbows, then slumped onto her side. The dust was rising from her face, obscuring her vision. It looked faintly like the shade of her skin.
“I’m coming, Anya… David… please be there.”
She felt a tear come out, and it became like a stream of glass shards, lifting off into nothing and vanishing.
“I’m scared.”
The Entity stood over her.
“I messed it up. I-I could have done it all better.”
It cocked its head.
“All things feel as such, child. Perhaps bravery is accepting… what we-have-done.”
It sat down beside her. Behind the dust rising off her body, the Entity looked like a shadow on a lit curtain. She could no longer move.
“I can’t go yet. I’m not ready.”
“Then slumber a-while.”
The Entity grabbed her arm.
“You have earned that… at-least. Be the first-mind of the next cycle.”
And she slipped away.
Arc 6Consolidation (68-77)
Chapter68:Inside Out (Fire)
Peter had banished all the fragmented memories from Graves Manor. The order he had thus established had imbued his imprisoned mind with near-unending stores of energy. He spent most of his time standing out on the balcony, his face only a hair’s breadth away from the endless gray. Spying on Claw through his own senses was the only activity left for Peter, so that was what he did.
Claw was currently sitting in the Ender’s private quarters, discussing defense plans with her. Claw’s senses were crystal clear to Peter, maybe even clearer than they were to Claw. Peter was only an observer and so he had more time to take in every detail, in fact over the course of the discussion he had spotted weaknesses in the defenses long before Claw did. Naturally, Claw or the Ender caught them eventually, but it was a small point of pride for Peter to have caught them first. Occasionally though, small gaps in the defenses slipped by both Claw and the Ender unnoticed.
Just as Peter was about to lament that he was the last person who could get use out of these bits of information, something changed. This was extraordinary, in the mind-prison things only ever changed if Peter was the one to make the changes. Peter disconnected from Claw’s senses and looked around. At first look, everything was the same, but then he noticed subtle differences. The railing he leaned against had taken on a different quality. As Peter’s fingers touched the metal, he felt irregularities amongst the surface that had been perfectly smooth moments earlier.
Before Peter could think more on why this happened, the endless gray retreated and faded out, leaving behind only pure darkness. The railing in front of Peter disappeared too, and when he turned around the balcony and the manor were gone as well. In their place stood only a white wooden bench with golden decorations. Peter knew this place. He had seen it many times before. Just as he was about to look around for the Lady, his environment shifted again, or rather Peter himself did. It felt like he was rising towards the surface after diving into a deep body of water, only the sensation went in all directions instead of only upwards.
At the same time another figure appeared before Peter, little more than a blurry silhouette. However, the colors made it abundantly clear who this was. A black shape, becoming white near the top with yet blacker eyes staring at Peter. As the moments passed, the shape became clearer, gaining limbs and a set of obsidian armor, before fully taking shape.
“Claw.” Peter simply said.
At first Claw didn’t react, seemingly overwhelmed. Then, he replied with a similar tone. “Other one.”
Peter felt the sensation becoming stronger, he was wrenched outwards before he had any chance to say more to his rogue split personality.
###
Fire was hit by a wave of impressions, the combined force of all his senses washed over him before settling down and allowing him to get his bearings. He sat at a table in the Ender’s private quarters. He knew this already. This was where Claw had sat less than a moment ago.
Something felt different compared before being taken over by Claw. Fire felt full, not physically but metaphysically. His life force was so far beyond what he usually had that it was almost concerning. This must have been the energy the Entity had given Claw to keep him alive.
Before Fire could give the matter more thought, the Ender who sat across the table suddenly jolted to alertness.
“Fire?!” She exclaimed with a mix of emotions.
It wouldn’t have taken someone like the Ender to know what had happened. The change in eye color from black to red was more than enough.
Fire addressed her in her own tongue, using her proper name: “Ender, I don’t know why I am in control again, but I know it shouldn’t be possible. Something happened.”
The truce was established the moment the Ender understood the full implications of what Fire had said, no further words were wasted on it. They were both professionals after all.
However, despite this, the Ender found words more slowly than expected. Oh, good. This is about that crush on me she’s been nursing, isn’t it? Fire wondered, before quickly pushing the notion away, now was not the time to waste any kind of thought on romance, even if it was as indirect as speculating on someone else’s affections.
Fire decided to cut things short. “Chances are the Entity is either executing its plan early and released Claw, or something happened to it.”
The Ender seemed to have regained her composure. “Now would be a good time to tell me what that plan entails in detail, it’s been awfully quiet about that. I assume it told Claw more?”
Fire replied: “You know one half of the plan; the machine will bring most nearby worlds together and collapse them into Nexus. It didn’t tell anyone about the second part, because it involves absorbing all sentience in existence.”
The Ender was once again dumbstruck, for evidently different reasons.
“So… those promises of conquest were just to bait me in and keep me loyal?”
“Afraid so.”
Fire knew the plan from spying on Claw, but of course what he just said could have been a lie to get the Ender to turn on her employer, who may or may not exist anymore. Perhaps that second part was why she didn’t question Fire, they both knew there were no other explanations.
Fire began proposing a plan: “Should we inform the rest of leadership?”
The Ender scoffed. “They’ll sooner lynch us for treason out of fear than help us.” She paused for a moment, then asked: “Do you know if anyone else knows about the true plan? I’d imagine nobody would be happy with that outcome. I’m barely suppressing the thoughts about it because those won’t help here.”
Digging into his memory, Fire looked for an answer. He knew what Claw saw but not what Claw thought so he had to come to his own conclusions. Dr. Veronica Mercury was an easy one, he had witnessed Claw’s latest conversation with her, which beyond confirmed her knowledge.
“Dr. Mercury.”
The Ender shook her head. “Not it, she’d sabotage the machine to prevent the plan from working but she can’t go against the Entity in any way.”
There was something else, an unfamiliar memory. A shift in the ambient magic field. The feeling was soon joined by pictures and sounds. Fire had seen them before through Claw’s senses. Dr. Mercury standing straight ahead, in her personal laboratory. They had just discussed a way to harm Shadow. That was when Claw must have felt that shift. Fire hadn’t had full access to Claw’s sense for energy at that point, so he missed it back then. Was Claw helping him? It didn’t matter now, the nature of the shift rang a bell…
“Freak.”
“What!” The Ender exclaimed. “He knows?”
Fire said: “He at least knows that the crystals can be used to interact with the Entity in some way. He’d have to have gotten help from somewhere though, he wouldn’t be able to channel the magic needed on his own.”
No further words needed to be said, they both knew that Freak was exactly the type to seek vengeance on his employer once he found out he had been lied to. He’d probably do more than that, attempt a power grab for himself. Both Fire and the Ender knew that, even compared to effective multiversal annihilation, having a phantom of fear in charge was only marginally better.
In what was perhaps an impulsive action, the Ender reached across the table to take hold of Fire’s hand. Moments later both of them disappeared from the room, quickly traversing the Tower, going ever upwards until they reached the Entity’s throne room. In a shower of purple particles, they appeared only mere meters away from the throne.
The throne room was far from its usual orderly state. Blood was splattered across the floor, large claw marks covered the obsidian tiles. It was clear a fight had taken place. However, there were no corpses, not of assailants or defenders. On the throne sat the Entity in its usual, stiff, and passive pose. Though, something about it clearly didn’t add up. What sat on the throne clearly looked like the Entity, but it lacked its presence, the oppressive feeling of being faced with a cosmic force made person.
Even without the knowledge that something was up, it was easy to see that someone was trying to impersonate the Entity, and with what Fire knew, it was clear who it was.
The Ender screeched: “Freak, you backstabbing phantom! You should have left it at simply killing the Entity!”
The Entity’s form flickered out and revealed what was beneath, a very self-satisfied Freak, body rippling with absorbed fear.
“Oh, no. You figured it out! But you’re a tiny bit too late. Entity’s out and this handy dimensional scar is positively leaking power. Won’t be long until this entire world’s mine!”
The Ender wasted no further time and attacked, charging straight at Freak. The phantom’s right hand shot forward and caught the Ender in the chest, easily shredding through her obsidian armor and any tissue below. His other hand followed and unceremoniously beheaded his assailant.
Fire was stunned for a short moment by the sudden display of power, fighting Freak now would be suicide and Fire had no intention of joining the Ender. His eyes darted around the room, looking for any way to escape this mess.
Freak didn’t attack Fire, he only eyed him lazily. Until suddenly he seemed to realize something.
“Wait a second, you’re not Claw, you’re Fire!”
But in the time it had taken Freak to notice, Fire had already moved half-way across the room to a large upward spiral staircase. Fire looked inward and channeled the absolutely massive reserves of life force he now had. The energy surged through his arm and into his palm, erupting as a jet of flame, then turning into a fireball that hit Freak square-on. Fire knew better than to assume that this had any effect on Freak in his current state, but at the very least the smoke would help obscure his escape.
Fire darted up the staircase, rising ever higher, taking several steps at once. He heard the scratching of claws on obsidian below him and threw another fireball. A few dozen long paces later Fire found himself in an observatory of some kind.
A glass dome extended above Fire, some panes not exactly glass but windows to other places in Nexus. Fire completely disregarded the otherwise breathtaking view and released a burst of energy outwards from his entire body. An explosion rocked the room and the dome shattered, the shards melting and then evaporating from the heat.
The scratching sounds were close now, he could hear Freak mutter to himself: “Gah, I really didn’t think this through.”
There was nowhere to go, the only way out was down the staircase again. Unless…
Fire took off at a full sprint, running towards the edge of the platform. Once he reached the ledge, he extended the claws on his feet to gain more traction, then he flung himself forward. For a moment it felt like he would continue forward on his trajectory, a look behind him revealed Freak just cresting the top of the staircase, but then gravity decided to enact its influence. Fire accelerated downwards, out of Freak’s reach and towards the ground.
Fire once again channeled his life force, this time into something more complex than a simple fireball. The spell was of his own creation, but he never had this much life force at his disposal to test it so all he had to show for its effectiveness were some calculations he made centuries ago, back in Rockhaven.
I really hope this works.
A massive surge of energy shot towards Fire’s upper back. Tongues of flame began licking the inside of the obsidian chestplate, quickly gaining in intensity. Then, with the sound of glass breaking, two flames burst forth from Fire’s shoulder blades, shattering his obsidian chestplate and incinerating the padded clothing he had worn underneath. As Fire pushed more energy into the spell, the flames changed their shape, erupting as a pair of giant flaming wings. Fire felt his descent slow, then came to a halt completely.
“Haha!” He shouted.
Now in full control of his flight, Fire continued his descent towards the Tower’s base, swiftly avoiding any offshoots that were in his path. He had to keep himself from pirouetting and looping his way downwards, as powerful as he felt, he knew better than to succumb to hubris.
Almost at the bottom, Fire readied another spell, this time concentrating energy towards his hands. If he couldn’t harm Freak, he could at least cripple the Tower’s operations and slow him down that way. Tightly packed orbs of flame shot from his palms and exploded with force when they impacted the warehouses and generators scattered throughout the Tower’s surroundings. Several more explosions followed, he evidently hit something volatile.
With the damage done, Fire picked up speed and soared up high again. His next goal was the Shelter. He needed to re-establish contact with the rebellion and more importantly with his sister. Another burst of magic and Fire accelerated forward, wreathing himself in flames as he did.
It felt good to be in control again.
Chapter69:Reunion (Shadow)
The hours after Destiny’s “betrayal” had gone fast. With Kay gone, the coven had fortunately become a lot easier to handle, so Shadow had ordered them to heal the drugged leadership members to the best of their ability. She knew her brother’s poisons well and she knew that this particular one was resistant to healing magic, which would at most take people from knocked out to very drowsy, after that it was up to the individual’s liver to do the rest.
Shadow stood in the officer lounge along with Astro and Tyron, who were now assessing the situation. Couches and stray wool blocks from the spleef arena had been converted into makeshift beds to house the still-recovering victims of Destiny. Urist fared the best out of everyone physically, his dwarven resilience having fully fought off the effects of the sedative. However, ever since the incident, the dwarf seemed visibly distressed, apparently the situation had brought up some bad memories from his past.
The other four people who were able to stand were the Brines, Rathina and Seth, the latter of whom seemed more confused than anything since he had been thrown head-first into this mess of a situation.
“And you just let her go?” asked Astro, eyes drifting between his feet and the bar.
It had taken this long for the question to come up, but Shadow still took several seconds to answer. She wasn’t happy with what happened.
“Yes, I did. And I let Kay get away too, that one was not intentional though.”
Shadow took another pause, gathering her thoughts. So far nobody knew why she had let Destiny go, just that it happened, because after all “didn’t see” was not an excuse Shadow could make. She crossed her arms, partially to make herself feel safer. Her shadow spoke a different language, Wodahs’ arms were outstretched in defiance.
She continued: “I saw what she wanted to do. She stole the crystals because she somehow found out she could kill the Entity with them. Sadly, she found this out through Freak of all people, and this could all be some cruel scheme of his… but I don’t think that’s the case.”
“And did - do you think she’ll actually succeed?” asked Jennifer in something caught half-way between a groan and a yawn. Steve looked at Jennifer, frowned a little, then rubbed his temples.
“I at least thought there was a possibility. If Freak truly turned against the Entity, he must have found something that threatens him directly. All worlds merging alone is not going to do that. Whatever its true plan is, Freak doesn’t see himself coming out in a good position. He was here. He could have done who knows what. But instead, all he did was to tell me to let Destiny go.”
The more Shadow thought about the situation the more she doubted her decision. Was this really the only way? Was it even a way? At least the thoughts kept her anchored in the here and now, so she didn’t need to think about other things.
“Listen, Shadow, I’m trying to be nicer,” began Astro. “So, I’m going to go over there, get myself a drink, and pray the conversation has moved on from this by the time I come back. We have bigger fish to fry…”
He turned and began to walk away. Tyron, after a short, mumbled conversation with Rathina, spoke up.
“He’s right. Rathina, tell them what you and Glowstar found while scouting.”
“We found the portal activated,” said the dark-haired girl. “Destiny didn’t make much effort to cover her tracks, so I followed her on dragon-back. By the time we arrived, footsteps and scanner-readings indicated Destiny had already reached her destination and re-entered Nexus. Unfortunately, the portal was deactivated so it looks like the enemy has closed off that route. The portal was also noticeably different from the one she escaped through, but we can’t identify a reason.”
“Perhaps a different iteration,” nodded Seth, trying to pretend he understood what they were talking about. “Ceaseless march of technology and all that.”
Shadow said: “If that’s the portal she told us about before, she’s in the Tower. Whether that means anything is left to be seen. From what I’ve seen the general Shelter population has calmed down, except for Raphoe and his posse. They caught wind of Kay escaping and they are calling for something, what exactly is difficult to see under their King in Ash paroles.”
“I wish it was just Raphoe,” snorted Astro, just returning from the bar. “Those hunters Kay brought in are demanding a full meeting of leadership with themselves in attendance. They made their deal with Kay, and now that he’s both been deposed and flown the coup, they seem terrified we’re going to hurl them back into that frozen wasteland they come from. I’m going to assume Raphoe has been agitating. He’s devoted, I’ll grant him that.”
Shadow was about to reply when she noticed something at the edge of her perception. A messenger was sprinting down the corridor to the officer lounge as if pursued by a wild beast. Shadow mentally reached out and made the door swing open in front of the messenger, who stumbled into the room.
“Lookouts spotted some manner of comet heading straight for the shelter!”
Looks were exchanged, Astro shouted: “By the Mods! Shadow, teleport us up there. Let’s find out what we’ve got to deal with now.”
Shadow gathered all her focus to cast the spell, several runes flashed on her skin. In the blink of an eye, they were suddenly standing in the open field in front of the Shelter’s entrance, logistics workers were running around, scrambling to find places to hide. The messenger hadn’t lied, there was a bright dot on the horizon of the morning sky, steadily growing bigger. Whatever it was, it came from the direction of the Tower, and it was fast.
“Is that artillery?” Wondered Tyron.
Shadow focused again. “Give me a moment, I’ll tell you exactly what it is.”
She expanded her perception again, the Void called out to her as she did, countless impressions impacted on her consciousness like large grains of hail. Just a little more and she’d be able to see. The shape of the object seemed to match Tyron’s guess of artillery, or at least it couldn’t be far off. When her sense of magic expanded with the rest of her perception Shadow realized that this was not a projectile, it was a person casting a powerful pyromancy spell. In fact, she recognized the signature of the spell. She saw the notes detailing its effect in front of her mental eye as clear as the day she helped create it. Looking below the wreath of flames, Shadow could clearly see the caster’s red eyes glowing brightly. That was all the confirmation she needed.
Suddenly, Shadow felt like a weight was being lifted off her. The Void retreated. She couldn’t wait any longer and took off using a flight spell of her own. She met her brother just as he crossed one of the mountains surrounding the Shelter and quite literally flew into his arms.
Fire exclaimed: “Shadow! It’s good to see you. How are you holding up?” When an invisible second pair of arms wrapped around him, he added: “And of course it’s good to see you to Wodahs.”
Shadow replied: “Good! Too good actually. Way too good compared to how I felt just a few seconds ago.”
Shadow let go of her brother and they slowly floated downwards, as they descended Fire said: “I think I know what you mean. I saw what happened to you while I was gone, through Claw’s eyes. I think we’ll both need some time to talk, but sadly there is an apocalypse on the horizon.”
Shadow nodded. As important as this reunion was for them, Fire was right. Shadow’s feet hit the ground first, Fire followed, burning the moss off some loose rocks before his flaming wings faded away.
Suddenly, Fire found himself unable to advance. Shadow saw a transparent, glass-like cube surrounding her brother. Her eyes darted around, looking for the source, and quickly found it. Astro floated in the sky some ways off. She contemplated calling out to him to stop when she realized what he was hoping to achieve. A line of troops was forming outside the Shelter and slowly advancing towards them. More importantly, a speck in the sky flashed in the first rays of early morning light. Tyron, stone wings propelling him downward and Kir in hand, soared straight down at Fire. Astro was just holding the target in place for a kill shot.
Shadow watched a smile creep up on Fire’s lips, did he look proud? He definitely looked proud. Then, with a quick movement of his hand he conjured an explosion that shattered the left side of the cube, then took some quick steps, displacing himself enough that Tyron couldn’t correct his course enough to hit him. Tyron only barely managed not to crash into what remained of Astro’s force field.
While Tyron regained his balance, Fire said: “It’s good to see all of you again.”
Since the line of soldiers didn’t stop advancing, Shadow pointed towards her brother’s head and added: “Red eyes! It’s not Claw!”
Suddenly, one of the walls of the cube shot forward and shattered against Fire’s chest. The other two moved over to defend the still-staggered Tyron. Astro swooped down, Amicus in hand, ready to strike. Then, at the last moment, Fire looked up, and Astro either heard Shadow or saw the evidence himself. He stopped mid-flight and gawped downwards.
“Red eyes… Fire?” Astro asked, still about a foot above Fire’s head and completely upside-down. “Is that you?”
Fire laughed. “Just the one. Nice job on the defense by the way, very fast response time.”
Astro laughed and righted himself before dropping down to the ground. A very genuine smile kept threatening to dominate his face.
“Thanks, Shadow just kind of flew away so we had to improvise.”
“Astro,” interrupted Tryon as he pulled Kir into a defensive stance. “Are you sure it’s him?”
“Yes.”
“Because… you know I’ve never seen Claw up close before. No one told me about the eye color thing before.”
“Oh, sorry, yeah. No, it’s definitely Fire.”
“Thank you.”
Tyron ran up and bear-hugged the Mencur-Besh as Kir chirped away in the ears of everyone nearby. While Astro’s attempts to wave the soldiers away failed to stop them from advancing, their formation quickly broke down, and it became less of a march so much as an excited jog.
Fire returned Tyron’s hug and said to no one in particular: “You can’t imagine how good it feels to be in control of my body again.”
“You can’t imagine how good it feels to have some good news,” said Tyron. “Things have been really stressful for the last few hours… days… weeks. Basically, since you got possessed, I have had one evening off, and that was overshadowed by internal drama crap.”
Shadow knew what conversation was about to happen before Fire spoke again.
Fire asked: “So, Tyron. I heard Kay made you second-in-command. I imagine that’s where the stress comes from?”
“Mods…” muttered Astro.
“Well, Fire,” began Tyron. “I… was second-in-command. Now, I’m commander.”
He and Astro exchanged nervous looks, each daring the other to finish the job. Eventually, a look of terrible realization came across Astro’s face, and Tyron became distracted by that.
“Kay gone, Book gone too,” explained Kir.
“Destiny’s dead,” said Astro. “You’re here, and she’s not, so…”
He turned away and looked rather blankly in the direction of the Shelter. Tyron hung his head.
“She went out with Freak to take the Entity down,” explained the Dragoknight.
Fire seemed to take a moment to take in this new information. “I think we might want to take this to the command room, or wherever you do meetings now, evidently more things have changed than I know. I have some information to share as well.”
Shadow gave the gathered soldiers an apologetic look before teleporting Astro, Tyron, and Fire back to the officer lounge. It was astonishing how much easier the spell felt, even easier than before she came to Nexus. Something about just seeing Fire again had somehow made things normal again. This confirmed that there was something very suspect about her whole situation, something she would have to investigate later.
A moment after they appeared, a series of startled cries rang out from the recovering members of leadership, which were quickly met by Shadow and Astro assuring everyone that everything was fine, and Fire had returned.
“Fire!” exclaimed Steve from a sofa. “Good to have you back!”
He staggered up and clapped Fire on the shoulder.
“But also, how?” he laughed.
Shadow heard Ozen, who had just woken up and was trying to resuscitate himself with a redstone-laced coffee, mutter to Rathina.
“Do you know who this guy is?”
She shook her head.
“No, but Tyron seems happy about it.”
Fire said: “I’ll give you the short version, more questions later. I’m the one who built this place and I used to be in charge until I got possessed by the Entity during a failed infiltration mission.”
“Thanks, all caught up,” Rathina said with a wry smile and a raised thumb. Ozen blinked rapidly.
Fire looked around, scanning the room for familiar faces.
“On the note of the Entity, Destiny succeeded. I didn’t know it was her until a minute ago, but she threw the Entity into the Void. Just now we have a different problem. Freak has made a play for power. He’s impersonating the Entity and killed the Ender. It seems the world merging plan is still in action, just without the Entity absorbing everyone after the worlds merge.”
“Without what?!” Rung out Amanda’s voice from across the room.
Shadow answered in her brother’s stead: “I’ve had this running theory about the Entity, but I suppose now we have confirmation. Its eventual goal is to gather enough power to absorb all of existence and impose its order on it. That must be what Freak didn’t want, why he recruited Destiny.”
Shadow looked around the room again, she had gotten somewhat used to always perceiving everything around her. Now she had to consciously put effort into it. It was very refreshing to have that kind of control again.
The door swung open and in came two people. One was Urist, the other was Lucy, who was using the dwarf as a support to keep herself upright. She was evidently far from over the effects of the sedative. At the sight of Fire both of them ran forward as fast as their configuration allowed.
Urist called out: “Fire! So glad to have ye back!”
Lucy stumbled forward, almost tripping over before Fire caught her.
“Good to see you too.” He said.
Lucy replied slowly, trying not to stumble over her words due to drowsiness: “I really missed you.” She stopped, like she didn’t want to continue. “But there is something you need to know. Kay, he escaped from his cell and stole a dimensional tracker. He used the portal room to get to another world. It took us until just now to reconstruct the target coordinates.”
Lucy handed a piece of printout paper to Fire, on it was a set of coordinates that looked awfully familiar, it was their world. Shadow froze, for a moment she thought she’d return to the Void again, but no such thing happened. Still, Kay stealing a tracker and going to their world meant she had to assume the worst.
Fire shook his head in disbelief. “He’s actually going to try to kill me. Probably thinks Claw is still in charge. Shadow, take me to the portal room. I need to defend myself.”
“How quickly do you think you can track him down?” asked Tyron, grabbing Fire by the shoulder.
Fire replied: “He will do that for me. I need to be in my other body when he arrives and fend him off.”
“We’ll send a squad through to back you up,” said Tyron. “Astro, Urist take a detachment and head straight through. Steve, Jennifer start rounding up the leaders of the Shelter’s departments for a meeting. If Raphoe starts anything you have my leave to arrest him on the spot. Lucy, Seth, Rathina, you’re with me.”
There was no more time to be wasted, Shadow performed the teleportation to the portal room. It took Fire very little time to spot the targeting console and enter the coordinates. The portal would remain open after he stepped through so the reinforcements could follow.
Suddenly unsure, she asked: “Are you sure he didn’t end up on the server?”
Fire replied: “I had a lot of time to think about the science behind worlds while looking through Claw’s eyes. It seems our world and the server’s world are too close together to be individually targetable. It will take me to the server where I can log out and return to my other body. Kay probably emerged somewhere around the manor if he was targeting my location. I’m alive, so he evidently hasn’t reached me yet.”
Shadow once again had to watch her brother leave into the uncertain. She would have liked to come along but her other body would not be of much use in a fight, frail as it was.
“Be careful Peter.” She said as her brother stepped through the portal.
Chapter70:To Slay a Beast (Kay/Fire)
I had given up trying to be quiet. All around me, this branch quivered here, or that owl hooted there, or a gust of wind set the bushes cackling at my efforts to remain quiet whilst an unseen fox whined in something I hoped might have been sympathy. Amidst all that cracking, whooshing, snapping, and howling, it really didn’t matter if I stepped on the odd twig or jostled the odd shrub. The only pretense of stealth I kept was the cloth I held over the glowing scanner, occasionally lifting it to ensure I kept moving in the right direction.
That’s not to say I was at ease though… I’m not quite sure what I felt. On the one hand, every time I heard a sound I couldn’t be certain I recognised, I would whirl around, sword in hand, teeth bared like an animal and my heart hammering away so violently it should have knocked me flat on my back. In every shadow I could have sworn I saw… well, Shadow, waiting to eviscerate me as she had My Book. And every change in the wind seemed a prelude to another attack from Astro.
“Piece of ****!”
The phrase echoed in me, and each time I reached up to the cracked right lens of my goggles for reasons I didn’t quite want to understand. Maybe I just couldn’t believe I’d not only alienated myself from Helix, but that this alienation had been expressed in the sort of grand, symbolic gesture I’d thought only existed in old tragedies. Accordingly, I’d believed myself to be the last speaker of this dead language - apparently, I’d taught it to him as well - perhaps the last thing I’d ever teach him.
I felt my legs, chilled by the night, grow sluggish and weak. I steadied myself on a tree. A searing pain shot through the knee which Claw had broken - a wound I thought I’d cast off.
All these fragments of what I’d done suddenly coalesced - sank right into me. I had been given power, political, magical, personal, and I’d used it to almost kill a child. My breath became thick, wheezing, as though I were drowning in mud. I could have built them a kingdom like none other if only I’d kept them with me! If only I’d kept my reliance on the Book under control! If only I’d kept them from her influence. And now my crown lay broken, and all my charms overthrown…
But no! They would understand once I did this. Once I killed Claw. That I had always been working towards victory. That, fool though I was, I had always had their best interests at heart. I had to do this. For Destiny, in case she failed to kill the Entity. For all of them. And if Shadow wanted to kill me, she could go ahead. Perhaps Fire had been right when he said martyrdom was nothing to be afraid of. A new phrase began to echo:
“...it is a natural part of everybody’s life.”
But all my thoughts stopped in their tracks as I saw it. A fence. Steel, barred, very high, gleaming in the moonlight. The bars sat too close together for me to get more than a fist through. Nausea swept through me at the thought of climbing it in my condition. Then, I noticed the architects had added a few horizontal bars at intervals for good measure. Thanking the mods for these prospective footholds, I began to climb.
I made it no further than two rungs up before the weight of my armour and the pain in my injured knee brought me back to earth. I landed on my knees, with my armour giving off a worryingly glassy sound - perhaps I had picked up something in disrepair - but a quick glance revealed nothing had broken yet. And, not seeing any activity beyond the fence, I knelt there for a while, panting and groaning silently.
Eventually, I stood up. I reached into one of my pockets and produced an ender pearl. I had hoped to use it to escape if I alerted anyone, but apparently this is what I actually needed it for. I readied to pitch a throw, only for my shoulders to violently spasm in objection. I hadn’t realised just how much I had been relying on My Book to keep me going - how far I had pushed myself. Instead, I slid my hand through the fence, and, quaking, dropped the ender pearl onto the ground. It shattered. Nothing happened.
“Different world, different rules,” I sighed.
It took a few minutes of steeling my resolve, but I forced myself to climb that fence, my teeth clenched together so tightly I could have sworn they’d just fused together by the end of it. Finally, I landed on the ground on the other side and fell to one knee again, in a gentle, glassy rattle. I fought the urge to punch my injured knee, both because I was afraid of my armour’s condition and because I was afraid of attracting any of the house’s servants or defenders.
“Alright,” I calculated. “The signs on the nearby road called it Graves Manor. ‘Manor’, to me, suggests servants. Moreover, I can’t rule out the possibility that the Tower have deployed people to guard Fire. Or, I suppose, Graves as I should be calling him. But what’s his first name… Oh, I’m about to break into his house and kill what’s left of him for mods’ sake, common courtesy isn’t a top priority.”
I loped cautiously across the lawn towards Graves Manor. It was a large, angular, three-story building of strange make. Much of its walls were made of glass, which reflected much of the moonlight in large, diagonal white bands. What remained appeared made from a smooth, gray material. At the centre of the manor was a block housing the main entrance, its second and third stories were largely replaced by a roof balcony. Connected to the central block were two wings, both identical, topped by slanted roofs. The entire thing rested against a sheer rock face, making it look small by comparison even though it could probably house at least a dozen people and their servants very comfortably.
I was approaching a side door on the central block, hand drifting slowly closer towards Apotyre. The door was much like the rest of the manor, a pane of the same reflective glass dominating most of its surface. The rest of it was either made from or plated in polished steel, including the handle.
I stopped to the left of the door and finally drew the blade Apotyre. I contemplated the obsidian cladding on the flat as though it were a dark mirror. This was the last of the equipment Herobrine had bestowed upon me, the sword I had been awarded for my service at Arcadia, and which I had used at Zine Craft. This was the last physical evidence of General Kay Mandy, the Lap Dog of Herobrine, great hero.
I closed my eyes, tensed my body, and rammed my elbow into the glass. Both glass and armour shattered. Blood ran down my elbow, but I successfully breached the pane. I quickly reached through the hole and opened the door, sweeping in with Apotyre before me.
A quick scan of the room revealed no one, but that could change quickly, particularly if there were Endlings involved. I hugged the wall as I advanced, patting it with the palm of my hand to remain grounded. Then, my hand touched something hard and smooth. It clicked. Light revealed the entrance hall, it was wide open, and its ceiling got taller towards the back. Polished marble tiles covered the floor. I saw a staircase to either side, leading up to the second floors of each wing. The walls were lined with display cases with large photographs above them, each lit by its own lamp. There were also some dark glass hemisphere fixtures higher up on the wall, which I assumed to be decorative. At the back of the entrance hall was a massive vault door, apparently made from solid metal.
Seeing no obvious opposition, and hearing no immediate sounds of reaction, I went up and tapped the vault door with my knuckles out of curiosity. I wondered what he could be hiding in there - and whether this could be the place he sat hidden. Seeing no obvious way to open the door other than a panel full of numbers and a flashing image of a hand, I decided to come back to this later, once I had a notion of what it was.
I also conducted a brief inspection of one of the display cases to see if it might be useful or informative. It had some sort of oblique weapon inside, made of metal and with many moving parts. A plaque and a photograph explained its purpose. Not much of it made sense to me, but it was a prototype, and it had been used in active service.
“So, the Graves really were warmongers,” I reassured myself with a flourish of Apotyre.
I approached the stairs toward the left wing, reasoning the bedchambers were more likely to be upstairs and arbitrarily choosing between left and right. I passed more inventions. Some of them reinforced the mental image I wished to have of the Graves. Canisters with ominous symbols on the side. A model of an older version of the manor, still similar to how it was now but with a decidedly different style, something about it gave off a sinister feeling.
But then there were others, which unsettled my resolve. A device apparently designed to deliver medicine to troops. An electrified baton specifically designed to enable non-lethal capture. And, after climbing the stairs, a great number of photos of people of whose identity I could not be entirely certain. One caught my eye, a family photo exactly as tall and twice as wide as my torso. But not a complete one. The parents were there, cool and superior, like so many of the aristocrats who had snubbed me in Mojang, after I had helped to save their nation, to restore it to glory. I felt my grip tighten until my fingers seemed to sink into the handle of Apotyre. Between them, a small girl… barely two years old, pale with dark hair and oddly piercing green eyes.
I knew immediately that this was my enemy, the architect of my downfall: Shadow. I breathed a sharp, quivering, furious breath and strode onto the landing. There was a long line of doors on the right-hand side, with only windows on the left. I rushed forward and began to open the doors with barely any regard for silence or stealth. A bathroom. A spare bedroom. Another bedroom. A sort of lounge or living room. No one in any of them. And each door I lurched towards hurt my body more, and each empty room left my mind wilder with anger. And I kept seeing more and more of those decorative hemispheres all over the ceiling, in between various skylights.
Fortunately for my poor body, I ran out of wind and began to reassess my method. I realised that all the rooms I had opened thus far had been guest or spares, so perhaps the ones actually in use were at the end. I flourished Apotyre and rushed down in a hobbling mess of ragged breath and clattering armour.
I threw open the last door at the end of the corridor and froze up. There she was. Dark hair, pale skin, eyes closed, sitting in a high-backed chair in front of an arrangement of glowing screens. She looked so much more fragile here. I couldn’t help but feel a little cheated. The only thing I could recognise about her was a slight look of detachment as she slept, as though the whole process meant rather little to her.
I felt my sword-arm rise instinctively but I suppressed it. I’d needed to see this, but it was not why I was here. I thought of Destiny, almost certainly dead by now, either by the Entity’s hand or by Freak’s. And I couldn’t think of a more noble way to go out. She had won herself some glory there, and I would try to build it further. Even if the Tower didn’t lose its head that night, it had to lose its hand, or all of my… all Destiny’s efforts would have been for nothing.
I straightened up one last time and tried the next door over. The telltale glow of the screen was visible immediately, so I threw the door open, sword held aloft and letting out a terrible, glorious cry of war. Imagine my disappointment when I saw the chair empty. I fox-walked up to the screen.
“Logged out,” it said.
A second screen showed the door I’d just entered through, wide open and letting its faint glow spill out into the hall. I could even see the heel of my boot.
I felt a chill overtake me. My knee surged with pain. I struck it and steadied myself. The purpose of the hemispheres was finally clear to me. I marched out into the hall and with a rage-fueled blow cracked the nearest hemisphere and tore out the surveillance device within. I threw it to the floor and crushed it underfoot. As I panted, I felt my strength begin to wane. But then, I heard a creaking.
A door, just ajar. And a momentary glint of light I could have sworn was an eye.
“Come on out,” I panted. “And tell me where he is.”
No response.
“Listen, you’re looking at a man who really doesn’t have much left to lose. You’re going to tell me where the Graves brother is, or I’m going to slowly kill you while you tell me.”
I took a step toward the half-closed door.
“I don’t know if you’re hiding or if this is supposed to be an ambush, but it is not succeeding.”
Two more steps. I got ready to force the door the whole way open. I fully expected whoever this was to try and jump me as I entered. So, I intended to open and spring back, hopefully catch them off guard.
“Sod it, I’m coming in.”
I shunted the door forward and leapt back. As predicted, they attacked almost immediately.
A man, in some kind of leather jacket, rushed out with a rubber baton. I dodged to the side, but the blow caught my shoulder-guard and it shattered like disused pottery. With a grunt of annoyance, I grabbed his wrist and the back of his head and slammed him into the opposing wall. With my assailant disoriented I threw him back into the middle of the hall.
“Where is the Graves brother?” I asked.
Before he could respond, I smacked him across the jaw so hard the gauntlet cracked. A crude technique, but it had worked for me before. Ask the questions while you’re still hitting them, so they know what to say to make you stop. I felt my knee begin to ache again but powered through.
“Where did you put him? Is he down in that vault?”
He swung back, but I danced backwards. I booted him in the chest, and he fell down. This was too easy.
I took the moment to get a look at him. He looked decently athletic, aged about thirty. Too old to be young, too young to be old. Maybe something to exploit there but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. He was more than old enough to work, so I decided to start there.
“What’s your stake in this? Did the Tower send you? Are you Graves staff? Because neither are particularly worthy employers.”
I jabbed down with Apotyre, partly to show my willingness to kill, partly in the hopes of catching him on the leg and immobilising him. He rolled backwards with surprising explosiveness, his left hand shot to his side. I advanced undaunted.
“The Tower are killers through and through. And these Graves kids talk a good game about how awful their arms-dealer parents are, but fact is they’ve just made themselves into the weapons. So, you’ve got to ask yourself,” I was almost upon him. “Is the Graves brother worth your life?”
The man’s left hand shot upwards. I stepped back. He had some sort of firearm in hand. Now, he had it pointed at my chest, a little green light creating a verdant pinprick on my breastplate right where my heart would be. I halted.
The man smiled. “I don’t know Kay, am I?”
“Listen,” I said obstinately. “I’m not here to weigh your worth as a person. I’m here to find and kill my enemies’ greatest asset. And don’t presume you’re safe just because you have that trinket pointed at me. You will tell me where he is, or I will kill you.”
I tried not to let it show, and maintained a fighting stance, but something was off. The man didn’t seem like he’d just gotten the upper hand, he was so calm the fight might as well never have happened. It felt almost familiar… I couldn’t stop thinking about taverns for some reason.
“This is my world, Kay. I know way back then in that canyon you said firearms were ‘bloody irrelevant’ in yours, here they are not.”
I felt as though a trapdoor had opened beneath me.
“Fire?” I asked, agape.
“That’s in the other world, here I’m Peter Graves.”
I stepped back, and felt my leg begin to quiver. My knee joint was boiling hot and felt as though nails were passing through it every second. It should have been audibly hissing with steam and spitting blood.
I scanned ‘Peter’s’ face. The same self-assured, tranquil gaze. Even similar features. The hair, if it had been white, would have been almost identical. Like Shadow, he had green eyes here - the same green eyes. I felt my sword begin to dip. Then, I stopped it.
“No. I fell for this once before. You beat me then, you got the Prophet, Steve 2, you almost killed Astro as well. It won’t work again.”
I slammed my fist into my injured knee and the expected surge of pain let me steady myself.
A second examination uncovered the beast I had come to kill. That gaze was not tranquil, it was the confidence of a hunter after lesser prey. Those eyes were not the same as Shadow’s, they were an envious green, which had watched life from behind another man for far too long.
“It’s you, Claw, it has to be.”
I rubbed a tear away from my eye.
“You must be Claw.”
I put both hands on the grip of Apotyre and lifted it until the blade was nearly touching my hair. The black cladding reflected my face, which in reflection somehow looked still more fierce and furious.
“As commandant of the 10th Legion of the Herobrinian Army, I, Kay Mandy, sentence you to die, beast!”
I rushed forward, roaring my titles. General. Commander. Lap Dog. Hero of Arcadia. King in Ash. All my strength was pouring into this one final swing. I was determined that no matter how powerful this gun was, I would push through the blow, and cleave him in two.
The gun tracked me as I moved in, but he also had the baton ready to swing back. I roared louder still. I launched myself in, feeling as though a thousand gales were trying to keep me from my kill. It was exhilarating. My teeth widened into a mile-wide grin.
Blade connected with baton. Cracks spread across the diamond, then spread to the obsidian. A noise like breaking glass followed. Apotyre shattered and sprayed about. Only a stump of a sword remained. I felt my legs give way. Claw stepped aside. I hit the ground. I couldn’t stop staring at my broken sword, the symbol of so much earned, and so much thrown away.
The baton pressed against my neck. I felt the electricity jolt and my entire body tense. Then, the flow of energy stopped, and I fell limp. All went black.
###
Peter had no idea what Kay had been thinking, not when he decided to come to his world and kill him, not when he threatened who he believed to be a house servant with torture, and certainly not when he decided to put his entire weight into a swing while yelling an incoherent battle cry.
Now Kay lay at Peter’s feet, stunned by the electric shock from his baton. But Peter knew better than to rely on electricity to keep Kay down. So, he knelt next to his former second-in-command and pressed an injector to his exposed upper arm, moving it around until the indicator at the back switched from red to green when it identified a vein to deliver its payload into. With a press on the back of the injector, Peter administered a cocktail of chemicals that would keep Kay unconscious for the foreseeable future.
Only after confirming that Kay was out cold, Peter took a breath of relief. The immediate danger was banished, but Kay still believed he was Claw and if there was any hope of getting out of this without anyone dying, Peter had to get that idea out of his mind.
Before moving Kay, Peter carefully removed his armor, taking care to cut neither himself nor Kay on the shards. Then, once that was done, he heaved Kay onto his back and carried him to the nearest lounge. Once there, he put him down on a couch and switched the light on, now finally able to get a good look at Kay’s state. Kay’s normally pale skin looked practically ghostly, and his wide eyes seemed shut and shrunken. His mane of hair had bits of leaves and twigs and dirt tangled in, and the fringe had separated into various greasy strands. Some blood had dried out in the auburn strands of his beard near the corner of his mouth. The dark patch looked bizarrely vibrant amidst the faintly reddish forest.
“You’ve seen better days, Kay.” He said.
Peter left the room again, thinking the situation over. If he’d had any more time before Kay’s attack, he’d have gotten a full set of combat gear from the armory, but with how things went he was only able to use what had been available in his and Shadow’s room. The sedative would last for an hour at the very minimum so now he had more time.
Peter inspected his face in the mirror, Kay’s gauntleted slap had resulted in a superficial cut and some bruising around his jaw. Peter cleaned the wound and put a plaster on it. With the bleeding taken care of, it was time to fetch some additional things from storage.
He returned to the lounge with his arms full. Now that he had Kay captive, Peter wanted to take no more risks. He immobilized Kay using a specialized set of restraints that was designed for maximum safety and minimum discomfort, intended for high-value captives, which Kay very much was in this situation. The restraints would allow Kay limited movement of his hands, but not enough to get anywhere close to the locks or to attack.
After brief deliberation, Peter also decided to tape Kay’s mouth shut, he wanted to talk him out of his murderous intent and Peter was not in the mood for a screaming match.
After double-checking the integrity of Kay’s restraints, Peter used a second injector to administer the antidote to the sedative. Now he just had to wait for Kay to wake up.
A few minutes later Kay groggily blinked his eyes open, it took a few seconds before he fully grasped the situation he was in and promptly started screaming into the tape and struggling against the restraints.
Peter sighed. “Hello again Kay. First, let me ask you a question. Do you think you’d be alive right now if I were Claw? I spent a lot of time getting to know him through his eyes and I think if he really was in control, you’d have been dead the moment you stepped foot into the manor.”
Kay steadied himself and stopped thrashing against the restraints. Instead, he started trying unsuccessfully to stand up, all while shooting Peter a murderous look. After a few attempts, he gave up, but the look remained, prideful and desperate in equal measure.
Peter continued: “Listen Kay, I’m not in the best mood at the moment since half an hour ago you tried to assassinate me. I’ll try to not let it affect me and talk this through. But you need to realize that that’s what happened. You tried to kill Claw through me, correct?”
Kay nodded slowly, as if checking the words he just heard for traps. His eyes didn’t stop burning.
“Alright. But at some point during all that you seemed to think Claw wasn’t in control, but then thought it was Claw after all. Still correct?”
He turned his head away and began to glare out through the nearest skylight. He didn’t nod or shake his head.
Peter had always thought that Kay’s psyche was a complex one, his time as the King in Ash definitely hadn’t helped with this. It was difficult to tell what he believed and what he wanted to believe. He had to tread lightly.
“So, if there was doubt, why did you still attack? Was the risk worth the reward? Or did you come too far to stop?”
He looked back at Peter. For a moment, Peter could have sworn he saw Kay’s eyes begin to water, but then they snapped shut. His fingers balled into fists, knuckles turning white as he hunched over.
That was close to the truth then. Peter said: “You know, that time Claw showed up in the portal facility, he was there with a concrete plan in mind. He wanted to antagonize you.” He hesitated, not wanting to reveal anything about what Glibby told Claw about Kay’s future. “I’m not saying you’re some pawn in a grand game, but Claw definitely wanted to provoke a reaction like this. He wanted you to go after someone to prove a point.”
Surprisingly, Kay snorted with laughter. He breathed deeply, then looked at Peter with sad, tearful eyes. Then, he lowered them again, and his face began to harden, and his eyes slammed shut again. He gestured to the tape, then the green of his eyes slowly returned to view.
“Alright Kay, I’ll take the tape off, and we can talk.”
Peter reached over and carefully peeled the tape off Kay’s face, it inevitably took some beard hairs with it, but came off otherwise cleanly. After Kay’s teeth gritted, his features sank.
“I’ve done a lot of shitty things, Fire,” he said. “I don’t need Claw to tell me to do more. Or My Book...”
Peter noticed that, for the first time, Kay had started a conversation using his natural accent. No upper-class affectations which he accidentally slipped out of. No elevated language carried onwards by false energy. Just a coarse, bitter brogue.
“...She died because I wanted to feel strong.”
That took Peter by surprise slightly, Kir had said that the Book was “gone”, but Kay was “gone” too, but still alive. Evidently the same was not true for the Book.
“Book’s dead, huh? I didn’t get to catch up on everything that happened in the meantime because…” Peter made a vague gesture into the room. “But in other news, the Entity’s gone too. No idea how exactly Destiny did that.”
Kay shot Peter a renewed glare as he mentioned the Book, though this was dulled by the news of the Entity’s death, like a pile of embers being kicked apart before they could rekindle. Like the embers, he settled for a determined, hopeless glow.
“She was always strong,” he said simply. Then, as though trying to remember a dream: “Did trying to kill you buy her any time?”
“Your escape probably ensured she wasn’t caught but otherwise, no. I was already out of the Tower when I learned of your intent.”
He nodded, though his eyes seemed strangely vacant. He stared up at the skylight again, even though there was nothing but a reflection of the room to look at.
“I think that’s what I told myself I was trying to accomplish.”
Peter decided to fill Kay in on the rest of the happenings. “Just one issue, the fight isn’t over. Freak is impersonating the Entity and the plan is still on track.”
Kay lifted his hands and rubbed them over his face. Then, he didn’t say anything for a while.
“Is Helix okay?” he asked, finally.
Peter shrugged. “I didn’t see him in the brief time I was at the Shelter. From how everyone was acting I assume Destiny drugged everyone with a sedative from my supply. Amanda was there but Helix was not, I assume he needs time for himself, probably hiding.”
Kay nodded. A tear ran down his cheek. Then, others.
“I broke a door downstairs on my way in,” he said, his upper-crust accent abruptly reconstructed. “You might want to get that fixed. It’s probably…” He lifted his hands up to his streaming eyes. “It’s probably letting a terrible draft in. I think it was the kitchen.”
Peter laughed and shook his head. “I already ordered the replacement for that particular door a month ago as part of the ongoing renovations. Been on a waiting list ever since, logistical bottlenecks are a real problem when ordering through civilian pathways. You found the only door in the entire manor that didn’t have armored glass.”
Kay, still crying, laughed back from behind his fingers: “First ****ing door I tried.”
Peter reached for the key to Kay’s restraints. “Good thing too, you probably would have shattered enough of your armor to bleed you dry from lacerations trying to break in. But let’s get you out of those cuffs, then we can think about what we’ll do next.”
With practiced motions Peter unlocked the restraints on Kay’s arms, legs and the structures holding the entire thing together. Once Kay was fully freed, Peter extended his hand.
Kay took it and rose up, shaking horribly as he did so. He struggled to look Peter in the eye, abruptly shifting his gaze any time they made eye contact and trying to play it off as taking in the room. Eventually, with his back turned to the man he’d just tried to kill, and his eyes fixed on the skylight, he said:
“It’s good to have you back, Fire. I’ve missed you dreadfully.”
Peter gestured to the door. “I suppose it’s time to go back, however that’ll work. We need to get an attack plan against Freak up and running. And we need more soldiers.”
“The True Court. And Herobrine. They’ll help. I tried to avoid calling on them, because I wanted to believe I didn’t need them anymore. That I was finally as strong as they were. They’re not… they’ll help us, nonetheless. Send Astro, he’ll have a better chance than me.”
Peter nodded. He had an idea of his own. “Remember when I told you there were more like me, the Mencur-Besh? We don’t have a dedicated leader, everything is a product of collective decisions, but since I was present from the very beginning of the collective and helped it grow into what it is, I do have a certain amount of influence. If only by virtue of imparted knowledge and values.”
“An army of three meter tall, scaled war machines with claws does sound pretty useful right about now.”
Kay managed a fragile smirk which threatened to subside at any moment.
As Peter went to open the door, he heard something out in the corridor, his hand came to rest on the handle. Chances were this was the detachment Tyron had sent after him. Peter still took the baton in his right hand and the pistol in his left, one could never be too careful. He slowly opened the door.
“Stick together,” Peter heard Astro say from the stairs. “If he’s here, he’ll be violent.”
Peter put his weapons back on his belt and stepped out into the corridor.
Chapter71:Turning Point (Astro/Fire)
As we step out of the portal, I swear to myself I will do anything to stop him from killing Fire. My blade is drawn, and my senses are heightened, though I know I likely won’t need this. As he did in my time, Kay has run himself ragged, not letting a single wound heal properly. The Book has been keeping him stable for months. Still, strength was hardly ever what made him dangerous.
I pray to Notch we have not arrived too late.
Shadow stands to my right, Urist on my left. Twenty soldiers follow after us, carefully filtering into ranks as we advance.
I see the smooth face of Graves Manor, with its many sheets of glass nestled within concrete. We stand in the driveway.
Between us, Shadow and I were able to narrow down the signal we were looking for and brute-force the portal to arrive here. Nearby the signal, in the right plane of reality. I try to shoot her a reassuring look, but her gaze is fixed straight ahead. She is already approaching the doors. I bark an order, and the rest of our party follow.
I catch up to Shadow just outside the door. A rune is glowing on her arm. The lock clicks. The entrance swings open. She immediately walks - practically glides! - forward into her home, her mismatched shadow walks alongside her. I feel guilty and rush forward to the front door.
“Allow me,” I say.
I gesture to the lock to perform a simple spell and cast it open. I feel nothing. No flowing of energy. No subtle satisfaction as a thought exerts itself on physical reality. No magic. Nothing happens.
“Um…” I back away. “That’s not good…”
Shadow walks forward still and opens the front door in a similar manner to the gate. She says: “This world normally has no magic. Though I’m starting to suspect that it’s not a hard rule… I might be partially following the rules of the other plane. Still, casting feels like swimming through tar.”
“Noted,” I say.
I hold my sword like a life raft.
Another rune glows. The next set of doors opens. We enter into a large hall dominated by a vault door at one end, a staircase at the other, with glass cases filling the space between.
I try to ignore the strange feeling of being cut off from a loved one and begin to figure out a plan of action.
“Where’s Fire’s room?” I ask Shadow.
“Up the left stairs, down the corridor, second-to-last door.”
I nod.
“Urist, take eight men, go up the right. Search every room. I’ll take another six and go up to the left with Shadow. You four remain here.”
Shadow immediately moves up the stairs and I try not to look disoriented. We pass portraits, cases, everything blurs together. But I remind myself of my purpose.
We arrive in the hallway.
“Stick together,” I say. “If he’s here, he’s violent.”
As Shadow walks/glides ahead, moving purposefully towards the end of the corridor, I pray silently that she doesn’t find a corpse behind one of these doors. I gesture and my men begin to search the rooms in pairs. I make to follow the first pair in, but then catch a glimpse of the fourth door cracking open. I slide instinctively into a defensive pose.
“Wait,” I instruct, and beckon for the nearest soldier to follow me, well aware that without my magic I’m only so much of a threat.
My mind races. Shadow said there was no staff. But what if she was wrong? Or what if someone they trusted had stumbled in on all this? I search for any answer that isn’t a binary of Fire or Kay because I don’t think my jittery heart could take either that much relief or that much fury.
We creep forward. I try to catch a glimpse of whoever’s behind the door, but they’ve slipped out of sight.
I raise my sword, ready to take up a position on the far side of the door and announce myself. But then, the door opens. A man with some sort of pronged cudgel on his belt steps out. I fight the urge to attack. I’ve already tried to kill my boss once today. Besides, I don’t want this guy panicking.
“Hello,” I say as calmly as I can. “We’re looking for the residents. Now, I know our presence probably looks a little ominous, and perhaps a little strange as I’m told you don’t use swords around here, but I swear we’re here to protect him.”
I forced a smile and try to hold the sword in a less threatening manner.
“Who might you be?” I ask.
Shadow quietly says to me: “Astro, that’s my brother.”
“Oh,” I smile, with only the slightest hint of embarrassment. “Good to see you again, Fire.”
The man said: “Hello again. Kay’s in the room behind me, I managed to talk him down… after a while.”
I walk up and clap an arm on Fire’s shoulder, though I worry I grip too tightly when he mentions Kay’s name. I feel a rush of shame and anger at having let it come this close. But in there, a faint hope glows.
“So, when you say you talked him down, was this before or after he slammed you in the face?” I ask. “Sorry, that came out snarky. I guess I mean… Did he try to kill you?”
“Oh, he did. He smacked me before he knew it was me though, and yes, I had to restrain him. He’s no longer restrained, and no longer armed, he broke his sword attacking me. Diamond and obsidian are very brittle here.”
I sigh. I look down at my sword and feel that little bit more vulnerable. Then, another element of what Fire’s just said to me registers.
“He’s not restrained?!” I blurt out. Then, more calmly. “That is not wise, I assure you… Commander?”
Fire opens the door and motions us to go in. “I don’t think we need another change of leadership at this point, with what I have planned ‘Speaker of the Mencur-Besh’ would probably be the better title.”
I struggle to find a reason to challenge his reasoning. Fire might bring some nostalgia from early converts, but he’ll also draw suspicion from those present at the Massacre of the Prophet’s Hill. Tyron will do. I realise I’ve been thinking too long and nod.
I look around and it dawns on me for the first time just how strange the architecture is. Smooth, painted walls to the right, almost entirely glass to the left. Little of the wood and brick and exposed stone I’m used to. And the precision of the angles is comparable to that of the Landmasons of old. It all feels nauseatingly uncanny.
“You’ve a nice home,” I lie.
Fire and Shadow are contentedly quiet. My soldiers stand around me, directionless and bored, and I feel their eyes weighing on me, judging me. I want to give either an excuse to leave, or some great, decisive command to shift some eyes off me and onto a task, or maybe just barge past Fire through the door and start wailing on Kay. Finally, something reasonable to say comes to me.
“Hold on,” I say to Shadow. “You’re here, aren’t you?” I gesture to the house. “Or, are you?”
A grin that makes me regret asking spreads across Shadow’s face. “You know, that’s actually a good question.”
I expect her to cast some grand spell, but nothing of the sort comes. Instead, I hear movement further down the corridor. The very last door opens slowly and out comes a dark-haired woman of very familiar stature. She rubs her eyes and yawns, before making her way over to us.
“Oh,” I say, “I thought we were just going to check on your sleeping body, but this also works.”
My eyes dart between the two and I try to reconcile them. It’s not as though Shadow’s human form is that different to the one I knew so well, it’s more like two different painters had a go at exactly the same scene from exactly the same angle. At first glance, aside from the skin and hair being basically inversions of each other, the only difference is the eyes. Green and red, red and green. Complimentary colours rather than a binary… But then I notice the imperfections, the wrinkles of tiredness and laughter, a slight graze on the human’s hand, the weight with which she moves, and suddenly the two bodies seem hilariously irreconcilable.
After what feels like a years-long drought, something like a joke comes to mind.
“Two of you at once? Don’t show Kay, he’ll positively **** himself in fear.”
I laugh, then worry I came across bitter.
I quickly add: “Is it not hard to coordinate both of yourself at once?”
The Shadows look at each other, then the human one answers: “It’s certainly an interesting experience. It’s not like controlling a projection, I’m conscious in both bodies at once but both are still me, still the same mind. But the difference in perception is massive. This body feels so much less than the other one. Oh, but it definitely feels Wodahs’ patented shadow hugs, this is the first time we are able to interact, come to think of it.”
I burst out laughing, apologising profusely as I do so. It feels good to just laugh about the surrealism of something. I feel prepared for whatever I have to do next.
“So,” I begin. “What’s our next course of action? Do I head straight home, or do you want me to wait around? Should I leave the men and Urist? Take… the prisoner with me? Consult with Tyron? What am I doing?”
I try to recapture a sense of relief about Fire being back and Kay being contained, pushing back the knowledge that we’re on the verge not only of the machine being activated any day now but of Freak trying to turn reality into his own personal nightmarish hellscape andalsowe’restillsooutnumberedpleasedearNotchhelpus. But, you know, Fire’s back. Yay.
Fire speaks up: “So, now that everything here is under control, I suggest we start taking steps to achieve that in Nexus too. First, I’ll need you all to take a trip to my other world. I want to show you what my emergency plan looks like. Then, we can return to Nexus and call in any off-world favours that we can, but from what I’ve seen that’s already been started.” He turns to his sister(s?). “Shadow, once you put your body back in your room, would you mind opening a portal for everyone? I’ll be with you momentarily.”
I want to be shocked by the immediacy with which Fire is acting, but I’m really just relieved he’s addressing my concerns.
Shadow walks out to the corridor and without a gesture from either of us, my soldiers begin to trudge after her. I stop the nearest soldier and mutter to him to go find Urist. He jogs on, and I presume he obeys me. I stop the next nearest, catching him like an object dropped from a great height. I close my eyes and press shackles into his hands.
“For his Ashen Highness,” I half-spit.
I pray for a moment that Fire might come back to handle this for me, seeing as he supposedly talked him down and all, but no, he’s entering his room without a backward glance. Goodbye Peter. Hello again, Fire.
I press the door open.
He abruptly straightens himself up and rubs his eyes and I feel like decking him. Just a pure, clean punch right to his stupid nose. And then maybe umpteen others. Like he has the right to cry about this. I grunt to the soldier and brood against a wall.
“Sorry Astro, I didn’t see you there,” he sniffs. “It has been an eventful-” He looks up and sees the shackle-bearing soldier standing over him. “Oh…”
He shoots me a worried glance. I deflect it with a cock of my head in the direction of the restraints. His palms turn to face the sky, the shackles clamp down. I see him flinch as the restraints bite his skin.
“I deserve this,” he said. “I understand.”
“Do not speak.”
I hope it sounds angry in an intimidating way, but it feels angry in a ludicrous way. Tantruming, limp, offered in service of an argument I lost before it even began. I had the evidence of all the bodies piled up around him, and I’m now mad because he made me look stupid. I suck.
“Just wait five bloody minutes before you try to worm your way into repentance this time,” I elaborate with the bare minimum diplomacy.
He shuts up, and we go to join Shadow in the hall. Urist has joined us, and he is quietly confused as Kay walks down the stairs in shackles. He doesn’t acknowledge Shadow, but he tries to nod at Urist. Their eyes lock for a moment, Kay distraught, Urist almost smug. I suppose he feels vindicated after Kay basically froze him out of the command structure.
“Hello Urist,” Kay croaks. I expect him to say more, but for once he seems to have wised up.
The dwarf doesn’t scoff. I admire that. I absolutely would have. And then some.
Shadow stands just before the vault, various runes glowing on her body as she tries to open the portal through to the famous Server. I’m almost excited. Almost.
“How are you feeling?” I ask Shadow.
I felt obligated to. Still, there was a little sincerity in there. It was time to mend fences.
“Good, overall. It’s good to know that I won’t cause the apocalypse if things work out. But that’s only part of it, more important is that I have my brother back. But at the moment… this spell is taking a lot out of me. Reality is fighting me for every bit of magic.” The glow of her runes intensifies. “We will find some time to talk later, Astro. We really need to, for both of our sakes.”
I nod. Not having access to magic is making me feel like I’m made of glass. Not the best time.
The portal opens. It is different from the interdimensional portals, this one is all light and electricity. It looks a little painful to be honest. With an unnecessary gesture, I swallow my hesitancy and step through.
###
Fire stood in the middle of a desert, the same one where he had emerged from the world tunnel when he first returned to his own world. In fact, the tunnel was only a short distance away, he hadn’t moved far after his hasty second return.
He focused inward, on his connection to the Mencur-Besh collective’s network. Thousands of information fragments passed him by, most of them irrelevant to his current situation. The network was how the Mencur-Besh communicated over long distances. They did this by mentally linking up to one of many giant ender eyes that were hidden all over the server. Most of them were underground, save for two, one was at the center of Rockhaven, the de-facto capital of the server. The other eye was near Drandin, the main settlement of the Eye-and-Claws, the human allies of the Mencur-Besh.
Through this network Fire sent a concept, namely an explanation of the current situation, including everything about Nexus and the potential fate of the multiverse. Immediately the network lit up with activity, the new information was distributed to all Mencur-Besh, each forming their own judgement and relaying their results back into the network. This cycle of feedback continued for a good minute, then a large shift happened.
A concept flashed through the network, directed at Fire specifically. He was told to give direct instructions, it seemed that in this unprecedented situation the collective wanted to fall back on Fire’s leadership, just like it had done in its early days. The core priority of the collective had changed, the Mencur-Besh had decided to assist in any way possible.
In this moment Fire felt a strange sense of pride, he felt honored that, even after having spent so long in independence, the collective still saw him as their leader. When he sent his first message, he’d hoped to be appointed to speak on the collective’s behalf but not full leadership. Instead of pondering the change further, Fire did as asked, and sent instructions. He ordered all Mencur-Besh to teleport or be teleported to his location. This order would also extend to the highest-ranking Eye-and-Claws members as a voluntary invitation.
The first teleportations came only seconds later. The Mencur-Besh that arrived looked very similar to Fire: Tall, scaled, white-haired. What differed though were their eye colors. In Mencur-Besh eye color indicated elemental affinity.
Those with red eyes like Fire had an affinity to the eponymous element, granting them superior strength and heat resistance. Yellow eyes meant an affinity for air, granting speed. Blue for water, they had senses sharp beyond what was normal for Mencur-Besh. Green-eyed Mencur-Besh were Earth-aligned, they were an additional meter tall and significantly bulkier. Life-aligned Mencur-Besh had pure white eyes and had access to telepathy outside of their network. Wither-aligned Mencur-Besh had grey eyes and possessed complete immunity to magic. And finally, Ender-aligned, purple-eyed Mencur-Besh had enormous pools of life force and were natural mages.
To Fire’s surprise the first few waves already included several humans, all of them hailing from Drandin. While more and more Mencur-Besh appeared around Fire, two men approached him.
The first man had blue eyes and short, blond hair and beard. He wore a full set of firesteel armor, save for the helmet, which was attached to his side.
The other man had a much more unusual appearance, his skin was so densely covered in scars that they had almost entirely driven out his hair on parts of his head. He was also missing his left eye, a blue gem sat in its place, his healthy eye was unnaturally dark. Additionally, his right hand was missing too, replaced by a spiked hook.
The first man spoke to Fire in a soft voice: “So, looks like we have a real crisis on our hands. The multiverse part is news to me though.”
Fire smiled and replied: “Brad, Andras. I’m glad you’re along for the ride as well. It was quite a shock when I found out, believe me.”
The second man, Andras, rumbled: “Whatever’s out there can’t be too different. And if it is, I’m always up for new experiences!”
By the second, more Mencur-Besh appeared around them, next to them also appeared large crates filled with supplies. Armor, weapons, food, potions, blocks, whatever strategic resources were available, they were being brought along.
Fire spent the next few minutes bringing the human arrivals up to speed on the situation, and just as he was done, a portal opened nearby. Out of it came Shadow, followed by a now re-restrained Kay who was being led by Astro. Urist and the soldiers followed immediately after.
Astro, gobsmacked, surveyed the scene and then yelled over to Fire:
“How many of you are there?”
Fire replied: “Hello again Astro! Roughly three thousand. I’m afraid we’ll need every one of them, I’ve seen the troop reserves of the Tower.”
Fire saw Kay’s brow furrow as he began muttering to himself. After a few seconds he craned his head over to yell into Astro’s ear. The wizard reluctantly listened.
“That brings us up to around fifteen thousand committed to fight,” called Astro again. “How quickly do you think you can get them over?”
Fire had to admit, he had waited for that exact question. While talking he slowly began mobilizing his vast stores of life force.
He said: “Remember how I came back to the Shelter on flaming wings? The Entity gave Claw massive amounts of energy to make sure he didn’t die, that’s how he survived being cut down by Rose. That energy is now with me. It’s temporary, gone once used, but I don’t plan to waste it.”
Astro began to grin uncharacteristically widely. Kay even managed to recapture a bit of his usual energy.
“Waste not, friend!” shouted Kay with a toss of his head.
Astro only glared at him briefly.
Fire mentally instructed several Mencur-Besh mages to assemble, he channeled his life force into them. They began casting their spell, focusing it on the entrance of the dormant dimensional tunnel. The tunnel rapidly expanded to form an opaque portal, easily fifty meters in diameter. Then the portal began to burrow through the worlds, along the ender eyes Fire had placed in the tunnels seemingly an eternity ago. Then the portal cleared up, showing the high plains in front of the Shelter’s entrance.
With a satisfied grin, Fire gestured towards the portal. “This will remain open for a few hours, which should give us enough time to move everything of importance through.”
Astro asked: “How much energy did that use? Do you have much left?”
Fire replied: “If this portal used up all my energy it would be very convenient for our enemies. But I think it’s time for us to benefit from convenient circumstances after what we went through. I’m not even close to done with this.”
He signaled everyone to get going. The Mencur-Besh moved as one, carrying supplies along with them. Fire had rarely felt so good in the moment, they were at a turning point, and they all knew it. Now they needed to make sure to keep pushing to make sure they made the best of their situation.
As the first Mencur-Besh stepped foot on the mossy ground, something came flying through the higher part of the portal. A pile of rock and green fur landed on the ground and immediately began to run between the Mencur-Besh, offering thanks and handshakes and hugs in a euphoric frenzy. Finally, he dropped and skidded through the sand on his knees as though he’d just scored the goal of the century.
“YEEEEESSSS!” cheered Tyron.
“Thanks, friend,” chirped Kir more calmly in Fire’s mind.
The smile on Fire’s face widened. It really was good to be back.
We sit on a pillbox overlooking the Shelter’s entrance, watching the columns of Mencur-Besh marching by. Myself, dangling my legs off the edge and kicking back and forth. Tyron sits to my right and slightly further up, bowlegged, and relaxed. Kir is propped against his knee, as though lounging in the sun itself. Steve and Jennifer are also there, arms around each other and watching the procession. A light breeze drifts by, and the sun tenderly roasts us from above. It’s a nice little island of relaxation in the midst of all this.
Unfortunately, I’m not able to completely forget my cares. There are guards around us - a mixture of Shelter troops and Mencur-Besh (mostly green-eyed, but one blue-eyed one, I believe that means they’re earth, and water attuned respectively). The Mencur-Besh are still and stoic, and when they speak to one another, it is in the headache-inducing demonic tongue, which no matter how hard I listen to I cannot pick a word out of. But they have taken up all the right positions and assure us they have the situation under control. In comparison, our lot don’t seem to know what to do with themselves, and two have started carving a game of tic-tac-toe into the side of one of the few remaining trees on the ridge. Their presence is a reminder of the war to come - a war we still don’t have enough fighters to win.
And, of course, Kay stands some way off, flanked by two guards, contemplating his shackles.
I track the far-off shapes of Fire and Shadow through the crowd, but without magic I wouldn’t have been able to manage it. Their normally distinctive colour scheme of jet black and stark white is no longer nearly as distinctive. They stop to talk to someone I reckon must be Lucy. Whether I’m right or not, they dart back inside. Fire then gets up to the podium and starts surveying the mass of black scales.
“Lady Justice… Y’know, because he has scales,” remembers Kir in our minds.
I sigh and try to push away the suspicion that we’re disrespecting Destiny’s memory by having a moment of respite.
“Well, I guess the scales really are tipped in our favour this time,” chuckles Steve.
He says it to no one in particular, but he squeezes Jennifer a little closer. She snorts and shakes her head.
Tyron smiles and hangs his head.
“I still think puns are stupid.”
I catch Kay looking over his shoulder before quickly returning his attention to the horizon. I wonder if Kir said to him as well.
I redirect my attention to Fire and the Mencur-Besh ranks, and something immediately seems off. Before, there was a certain chaotic oscillation that can be expected from a crowd of living beings, now that movement is gone. The Mencur-Besh stand perfectly still, as if anticipating something, even the guards close to us seem to stop.
I try to catch Tyron’s eye, but he appears to have drifted off. I roll my eyes and exchange a glance with Jennifer. She’s noticed it too. We hop down from the pillbox and approach the blue-eyed Mencur-Besh. I try to remember the name Fire called her by.
“Stream?” I test. I look at Jennifer and she seems to agree I’ve gotten it right. “Stream, is everything alright?”
Her body stands statuesque, but her eyes remain lively. They stare intently at something right before her that I cannot see. A multitude of emotions flicker across them - emotions that had previously been absent. Bliss, joy, anger, despair, confusion all take their fleeting turns. Then, suddenly her face returns, not quite to neutrality but to a certain clarity. The Mencur-Besh begin moving again, slowly.
I crane my head to get into her field of vision. Finally, her eyes begin to follow me.
“Stream, good to have you back,” says Jennifer. “Are you feeling okay?”
Stream replies: “I… we… the collective just linked up in its entirety. Normally we can only directly link a dozen Mencur-Besh together, never more than that.”
“Oh, is… is that good or bad?” I ask, feeling my jaw clench.
“It shouldn’t be anything for you to worry about, in fact it might even be useful once we decide what to do with this new potential. This world, Nexus, certainly holds uncharted possibilities.”
“I mean, is it a good thing for your abilities,” I press. “Will it make you fight better, or could it be a problem?”
Kay is now looking at us directly. Jennifer glares at him and he averts his gaze.
Stream explains: “During battles we share strategic information over our network, but there is always a delay and a limit on how much can be shared. Now with this, we might be able to act as one mind with many bodies. Our existence as one has also briefly afforded us the luxury of emotions. According to what Fire shared with us, Freak is worthy of our hatred.”
I nod in satisfaction and look to Jennifer. She seems happy with this too. Kay seems to be walking up with more questions, and from the way he’s looking at me I can tell they’re not for Stream.
“Thanks for filling us in Stream, that’s good news. Was just a little confused there.”
I bow out and walk back toward the pillbox. Tyron is still asleep. Steve, however, is now crouched in the centre of the roof. He is talking to Fire, who now looks very pleased with himself and is discoursing openly about the possibilities the linkup opens up. Shadow stands a ways off, smiling with similar confidence.
I walk up to them. I hear Kay’s footfalls behind me. Fire speaks with uncharacteristic enthusiasm:
“...it’s possible that if they link up for longer, the collective might form a full personality of its own, it’s what the experiment that created the Mencur-Besh was originally trying to achieve, an artificial mind.”
Whatever-academic-left-in-me’s ears ***** up several miles. That sounds fascinating, and a bunch of sincere questions begin flooding into my mind. What if this project succeeded? Would Fire let me look at the notes? Could this success be replicated in my own world?
After all, before the Golden Revolution the Testificates had successfully created artificial life in the form of their golems, only they’d lost the knowledge of how when the Divines cursed them, and the remaining golems had been hunted down and destroyed. Beings with full autonomy and even some sense of individual identity, completely stomped out. And this wasn’t idle mythologisation either - Ray and Fedwin managed to get one of them back online to fight for Overlord and until Aaron finally killed it. I’ve always wished they’d found a way to take Antioch alive, finding a way to communicate with them would have been fascinating. Did it remember the world before the Golden Revolution? What did it think of the world as it was? Did it consider itself alive? All wonderful, scintillating questions that very successfully keep me from thinking about-
“Fire, I hate to say this while you’re in a good mood, but I’m ready.”
Kay stands beside me, back straight and eyes closed. With his chin raised, and his aspect as despondent as it is, he looks as though he’s presenting himself for a shave with a murderously clumsy barber.
“Ready for what?” I ask. I look at Fire and repeat: “Ready for what?”
Fire says: “While we talked in the manor, Kay thought that we should give asking your people for support a shot. The Tower’s mercenary armies outnumber ours by a great margin, even with the Mencur-Besh. We need any reinforcements we can get.”
I feel my stomach twist. Of all the decisions The King in Ash made, the decision not to show up to the True Court and demand their fealty was quite possibly the only good one. Granted, that was almost certainly because of Kay’s vanity convincing him he didn’t want or need their help. But this would be ugly. For both of us. For the first time since he tried to murder that child, I almost feel sorry for Kay. Mostly I feel bad for myself, and all our friends he hurt who are now going to see him again. I nod silently. We head back to the Shelter.
What follows is a blur. We are in the armoury. Rose gives a demon specifications for a new knife she wants. She barely acknowledges us, but Kay shoots a furtive glare in her direction. Voidblade momentarily warps in to carry a message. The nearest portal will come out in the Fields of Acrisius. It will still be Winter. After what Zerg did I wonder if it will ever stop being Winter out there. I put on furs and robes. I try to modulate my concerns. The Silhouette likely holds the portal - it’s near where I was kidnapped.
“Is he a threat?” Fire asks.
I try to think about what he has. He wouldn’t accept a Tower garrison, I know that much, so it will be in-house. The usual coterie of thugs. Glibby is here, but who else is on his payroll that he’d trust with this? I killed Hamish. The Family are mostly dead or captured. Muffin was on the loose. I try to recall if they ever caught Huskers. Would Mathias have gone into his service after escaping? Truly, I don’t know the extent of his network.
Kay sits on a nearby bench, head bowed. The light hits him so that his right eye is all darkness. I remember the eye Tauto took from him. The wound I could have stopped if I’d been there to protect him. The wound Kay brought upon himself by waging a guerilla campaign and not going into hiding. The wound that tormented him. The wound he wore like a badge of honour.
“Maybe,” I say.
Fire nods and picks out his diamond halberd.
Stocking up. Potions. Lucy asking if I’m alright. Me jabbering out about how great I am. Health, strength, speed, so many. I check my rings again and again. They are full. I am strong. I will fight and kill and kill and kill. I check again.
The portal looms. Shadow nods at me. Steve and Jennifer wish us luck. Tyron operates the console. I catch a glimpse of Warnado for the first time since the prison, we lock eyes and there is solidarity at last. We have both survived him. He is muttering prayers. He has his red scarf-hood raised, his mouth covered. I follow suit with my navy-blue robe and furs. Fire stands between us, clad for war. It’s just the three of us. I pray this is wise.
Tyron presses buttons and the portal flashes to life. I feel a wind whipping my face. Maybe from the portal, maybe from what waits on the other side. I remember the snow-covered corpses, seemingly innumerable. Many faces I recognised, still more I’d never seen. I remember their weight upon my back as I carried them to the cart.
I draw my sword. Kay follows suit. Fire raises his halberd. We rush through.
We emerge in the entrance to some sort of old mine. Carts are scattered around the place. Old, frozen tracks lead down tunnels. And wind and light howl in through a half-broken gate. It must be daytime outside, but it is still too dark to make out much. I want to summon a light, but then I hear Fire and Kay pull the corks from night vision potions and I reach for my own. An arrow shatters the glass.
I see light begin to glow from between Fire’s scales and I summon an orb of light. There are corpses all around. Blue cloaks and quartz masks lie scattered across the floor. Blood mingles with black ice. In this state of desolation, I struggle to believe that anyone could be living, and yet they come, armed, hooded, and roaring. Kay roars back, Fire assumes a fighting stance.
I throw a fireball at the ground, and they leap back long enough for me to get a good look at them. An archer with a blue breastplate, the flash of a red beard just about visible. One of them, apparently the leader, steps forward and draws a gigantic greatsword, inlaid with faded gold and cracked lapis gems.
“WAIT!” I yell as Fire prepares to intercept them.
The Mencur-Besh does so, with some hesitancy. The archer cocks his head as I walk forward. Our assailants hold the line, but they don’t attack.
“What is your business with us?” I ask in a low voice.
The leader speaks up.
“If you are loyal to the Silhouette, we’re here to take our friend back.”
His voice is as familiar as it is deadpan.
I can’t help but grin. I remove the covering from my mouth and pull my hood back.
“What if he refused to be taken?”
The leader pulls his hood back. My suspicions are confirmed. Aaron’s dark hair pokes out from beneath his skullcap, and despite all they’ve seen his eyes are bright with relief. I barely have a second to start laughing before he rushes up and lifts me into a bearhug.
“Aaron,” I strain through laughter and compressed lungs. “By Notch, it’s been a long time!”
“You always say exactly that,” he grunts. “Get another greeting for Mods’ sake!”
He puts me down and I see the other assailants begin to pull down their hoods. The members of my Guild, who joined me in my plot to trick Falcon, to get Tassadar back from the dead, and who shared in my punishment. Secret, grinning, lowers his hood and reveals himself to be the archer who shot the potion from my hand. Mo straightens his bandana, attempting to look collected. And, of course, Tassadar leans against a post, offering a two-fingered salute. I smile guiltily at her.
I decide to distract myself with a more immediate concern.
“Have you guys just been waiting here for me for the last, what has it been?”
“Three months?” Secret explains, clapping me on the shoulder. “No, we were looking for you for three weeks. That’s when Arcation gave up helping - Gogyst said their pact was with you, not the rest of us, and gave up. Jeb summoned him and he went back to the Old Craft. Let us stay on in the Manor, though, so that was nice enough.”
“Then,” Aaron cuts in. “We sent word to Brit, and he sent back a tip-off about the Silhouette using this mine for smuggling goods out of the Old Craft - but he couldn’t figure out where to. Even accounting for Nether travel, The Fields of Acrisius are well out of the way of anywhere you’d want to smuggle goods to.”
“So, naturally,” Tassadar calls over. “We had to pay them a little visit.”
“And we killed them all,” Secret concludes, stepping on a quartz mask and cracking it in two. “A few of them escaped through the portal. We couldn’t get it working again - not the way they did, at least. That was a week ago.”
“Anyway, what’s new with you?” asks Aaron with a certain smugness.
Secret rolls his eyes.
“Aaron’s come up with one of his scenarios,” he mutters. “It’s stupid, you don’t have to answer.”
“I’m telling you, Secret, I’ve been wrong in the past, but I’m really confident of this one.”
I cast an apologetic look back to Fire, gesturing to him to come down. This is going to go one of two ways.
“Perhaps my new friend should explain this to you,” I beam. “Fire, meet Aaron, Secret, and the Guild. Secret, Aaron, and the Guild, meet Fire.”
Fire begins: “I had to say this a lot recently, so here is the gist. A cosmic force turned person and warlord called the Entity started merging worlds and built itself a base of operations called the Tower. It allied with the one you call the Silhouette and captured Astro. I met him after he broke out of the Tower’s prison. Through a prophecy that I was apparently the champion of, I came into a position that allowed me to build the Shelter, the name is self-explanatory, and lead an opposing force to the Entity. Through various twists and turns, the Entity ended up betrayed by one of its subordinates when he found out that it intended to absorb all of reality into its being. Now said subordinate, a phantom of fear named Freak, has usurped the Entity, and is now planning to unite all worlds into his perfect realm of fear. I glossed over some details near the middle, but that is why we are here. We are seeking aid against Freak.”
“Thank you, Fire,” I say.
I appreciated him leaving out the stuff about Kay. I shoot an anxious look in his direction, and see him staring at his feet, trying not to draw attention to himself. I redirect my attention to the Guild. Its various members are all horrified at the news that not only was our world much larger than we’d thought, but that it was now in imminent danger. All except two.
“Well,” says Secret sheepishly to Aaron. “You didn’t get every detail right.”
Aaron cocks an eyebrow and looks Fire dead in the eye.
“Was there a dog with a monocle?”
Fire suppresses a chuckle. “Yes, there is one, his name is Bartholomew. A few things surrounding him are starting to make more sense now.”
“Mother****er,” breathes Secret.
Tass howls with laughter in the corner.
“Thank you, Fire,” says Aaron. He turns to Secret: “In your face!”
He turns to me.
“We’re glad to help however we can.”
I hug him.
“We’re going to need a lot more than just us,” I continue. “We’re actually here to… to try and enlist the True Court. Is Jeb still camped out in the Old Craft?”
“Yeah,” grunts Secret. “Show trials haven’t even properly kicked off yet. He insists on continuing to investigate the attack of the Citadel, even though Dominus pretty much confessed it was all him. Half the Vanilla Craft is still considered a suspect.”
“That sounds bad,” I say.
“He wants a big, grand purge,” elaborates Tassadar. “Get everyone he thinks the Court of Whispers could ever turn against him in one go.”
“I’m going to level with you Astro,” says Aaron. “You’re not going to have any luck there. You’re not exactly in Jeb or Herobrine’s good books and, Fire, you seem nice but they’re not going to trust an outsider, especially not one who looks as… Endling as you do. You just don’t have anyone the Divines would be obligated to pay attention to.”
I chew my lip, realising I am now going to have to unveil the reason Jeb was going to listen to us. For better, or for worse, he took that responsibility out of my hands.
“Well, that’s not strictly true.”
He pulls back his scarf. His face is a mixture of despair and hope.
Aaron steps back. He clasps a hand over his mouth and his eyes quiver wildly. Secret drops his bow. Tassadar doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself, looking back and forth between me and Kay. Mo draws his sword, but I shoot him a reluctant warning glance.
“Hail captain!” says Kay. “How goes the watch?”
His eyes are quivering almost as much as Aaron’s. Tears well in both. Aaron looks at me. I can’t bring myself to look back. My friend walks toward the ghost.
“Kay…” he says. He places a hand on Kay’s face and looks at the eye he will one day lose. He is quiet for a long time. Finally, he rallies: “Watch’s going well.”
Aaron hugs him, but over Kay’s shoulder I can see the haunted look on his face. His eyes are cavernous.
He pulls away and turns abruptly so Kay doesn’t see his expression. He manages to keep the energy in his voice.
“We’d best get back to the Craft,” Aaron explains, blinking away the tears. “Cossack is our best bet of an audience with Jeb.”
And so, we leave.
Chapter73:Audience (Astro)
I warm my hands over the fire. We are in the Old Vanilla Craft, in the Kingdom of Gaia’s holdings. Specifically, we are in an interrogation room of the Palace which was once called the Court of Righteous Protest. Kay and I sit near the fire. Fire looms in the corner, head bowed slightly for a ceiling that is too low for him.
In here, there is only the hearth, a few small stools, and a large mural barely disguising a two-way mirror. I say “barely disguising”, Fire noticed it immediately and I remembered some blueprints I read an age ago for an interrogation room just like this.
None of us speak. Fire is busy calculating his pitch. Kay is busy having a silent fit of panic and shame. And I can’t stop trying to keep track of who’s still here that I might be able to leverage if Cossack proves unhelpful. Arcation, maybe. Ozzy would throw what weight he has left behind this. Legion? No, Palmer is gone and Ruary never liked me.
Aaron is off somewhere, explaining things to Cossack, I presume. Secret’s probably hit the bar with Small by now. Maybe they invited that lesser Persson from the Blue Alliance… no, he was gone too.
I sigh.
The second we arrived on Gaian soil, we were surrounded by members of the Order of Gaia, in their green berets and bronze plating. We warned Kay not to draw attention to himself - after he appointed a double agent as their leader and arguably got his successor killed, many in the Order would have gladly tried to enact a violent retribution. Actually, since seeing Aaron and Secret he had hardly said anything, and even then, only in a hoarse whisper.
Thankfully, the head of the patrol recognised Aaron and Secret as two of the most recent Commanders of Gaia’s military and immediately passed on word to their boss. As it turns out, our buddy Small is the new head of the Order.
We had told Kay to be inconspicuous and keep his hood up in front of the Order and for once he actually listened. And he kept that up once we were in the courtyard, even as Small came out and leapt up to hug Secret, then made his way around the group in a flurry of more restrained handshakes and respectful nods.
“I thought you said firearms were irrelevant in your world?” Fire had whispered, with a gesture to the wind-up rifles of several palace guards.
“Kay’s a little behind on that,” I said. “They’ve been making a comeback recently.”
And then Small had finally made it to us, recognised Kay’s hood and didn’t even bother questioning Fire. He’d been polite about it, and shook all our hands, but it clearly made him uneasy. He had taken in a deep breath, and apologised:
“I’d best talk to Cossack about this. I’m sorry Astro, but the boys will have to take you three to an interrogation room until then.”
And so, here we are, waiting for Coss. I’m not looking forward to it. Of all the people still alive out of our little group, I had been good friends with pretty much all of them. I’d known Aaron since childhood. Secret had known Aaron originally, then became one of Kay’s mercenary buddies but he’d always trusted my judgement. Small trusted Secret’s judgement. And I just got on pretty mundanely with Brit, Gracey, Bokane and Mini. I’d even gotten on pretty well with Linx before he turned out to be a sleeper agent for the Family. Cossack was a different story.
He was a navy man who then became a “banker”, and by “banker” I mean “loan shark”, and he knew Kay and Secret because they collected loans for him from time to time. Then, Kay had gotten spooked, tried to get away from that lifestyle and Cossack had ridden his coattails ever since. As far as I was concerned, he was callous, oblivious and a dead weight on the group’s moral character. Also, while my experience in Nexus had made me aware of several noteworthy defects in Kay’s character, Cossack had still been the head of Kay’s “Circle”, and I still held him accountable for enabling many of the worst crimes he committed in the last days of his life.
The door opens. Brit steps in. He holds the handle with a handkerchief, and his stern face is still dominated by a handlebar moustache. I smile.
“Alright Astro,” he says flatly but not indifferently. He looks up. “Endling, you come with us. You stay here, Kay.”
Kay pulls down his hood, looking more than a little indignant and flustered at Brit’s lack of surprise. I would actually agree with him on this one if it were any of our other friends, but it’s Brit. Nothing ever fazes him. I see Gracey momentarily peer over Brit’s shoulder and retreat into the hall with a panicked cackle which I consider more or less appropriate.
They lead us slightly further up the corridor and into another room. Lo and behold, it’s the other side of the mirror. And Cossack’s leaning against it, staring at the now unhooded Kay. He’s not wearing his normal lilac suit. Instead, he wears a green cloak over an old navy outfit, adorned with a few Gaian military awards. He is the Commander, the closest thing the Kingdom has to a leader in the absence of a King.
“Hello Astro,” he says.
“Hello Cossack.”
I approach slowly. Cossack’s eyes remain fixed on Kay as he draws his stool closer to the interrogation room’s hearth.
“I didn’t believe Aaron when he told me,” he says. “How could I be expected to? It’s ludicrous. An utterly ludicrous proposition. And yet here you both are.”
He turns to fully face us, and I realise he is even more heavy-set than I remember.
“Stresses of leadership, I suppose,” I think in an effort to be charitable.
He points at Fire: “And don’t think you’ve missed my attention, you big bloody lizard. You’re just as ludicrous. My friend here disappears for three months, and he shows up with a ghost and a scaly ******* oozing prophecies,” he laughs. “Well, what do you want from me? What does the great absurdity wish from humble Cossack?”
I grit my teeth and prepare for one of our usual arguments, but thankfully Fire proves a bit more level-headed and explains what we want:
“Our enemy has upwards of a hundred-thousand soldiers at their disposal, we currently have less than a quarter of that, even if some of them are of vastly higher quality. If we want any hope of not becoming part of a megalomaniac phantom’s personal playground, we need more soldiers.”
Cossack chewed his lip and nodded.
“Well, let’s see, after the war and Jeb’s demilitarisation orders I can offer you maybe twelve thousand on a good day. They are charitably of mixed quality; motivation is low after losing two Kings, our army, and our actual home; and Jeb would probably come in here and execute me himself if he discovered I planned on fielding them anywhere. How exactly would any of this help your cause?”
He’s trying to act obstinate, but I know him well enough to recognise his negotiating style. I hate it, but he’s at least spelling out what he needs to get the ball rolling. Against all pretences, he hasn’t said no.
“That’s kind of the thing,” I say. “Gaia alone would indeed just bring down the True Court’s wrath. Even more so if we recruited any other Vanillans. They’d perceive that as a renewed conspiracy. So, we were hoping to maybe…” I stretch out my spine. “Run this past Jeb. I need you to get us a meeting with Jeb.”
He looks to Fire.
“Apologies for calling you a big, ludicrous lizard,” he begins. “Obviously, my friend has lost his mind and you’re the only one I can expect any sense from. He has forgotten that Jeb sentenced him to clear the Fields of Acrisius of corpses, and that, as I presume the Fields are not yet spotless, he has committed treason by his mere presence. I am in considerable danger just talking to him. Telling Jeb would lead to his summary execution, and probably mine, too.”
“I am unfamiliar with that part of your world’s history, what prevents you from calling the meeting?”
“Since Dominus and Falcon’s little gambits got exposed, Jeb has been treating everyone as a prospective traitor. Every Craft or Great House involved in the conflict between the Vanilla and Superlative Crafts is now being treated as a vassal. Before that, we were all effectively treated as allies or constituent parts of the True Court with a right to be heard before the Gathering Council. Now, we’re here to be snubbed until proven supplicant.”
“That’s the thing,” I jump in. “We have someone from before. Kay is here from-”
“Yes, I know,” Cossack waves his hand. “From just after the Onslaught. Peak of his prestige, all that.”
“Yes, and with a justification like that, you wouldn’t even have to send a letter, you could just show up and demand an audience.”
He nods reluctantly.
“I could, but I won’t.”
“Cossack-”
“You know that they will skin him alive the second he shows his face. Kay was still facing trial for treason before the Silhouette got him and… he could have gotten away with so much of it, even massacring the Brotherhood, if only he hadn’t… all that about Sansoleil.”
I nod slowly. My anger against Kay surges. Gaia’s Blessed had been just about tolerated by the True Court, even with their prophecy about the lost Divine, Sansoleil, coming to free his kin from their physical forms at the end of days. Then, Kay had tried to manufacture a Sansoleil-centric heresy in order to justify massacring the Brotherhood. Claim to be Sansoleil, get them to bend the knee, slaughter away. Surprisingly, this only succeeded in incriminating him massively and led to a lot of people dying needlessly. And the Blessed… the less said about what Jeb did to them, the better.
I try to hide my lack of concern for Kay’s wellbeing.
“The extra eye should be proof enough that he hasn’t done that yet,” I rationalise. “And at the very least, Kay Mandy being back from the dead is a decent pretext for an audience before the Gathered.”
Cossack shakes his head with more resolve.
“Coss,” I press. “He’s on board with this. He knows the risks and he will go through with this.”
“Astro, what you’re telling me is happening, it’s terrifying. It’s wretched. It must be stopped… I want to help. I’ll even risk my neck committing Gaian troops but I - I helped him tie his own noose once before. I can’t do it again.”
I place a hand on his shoulder. He digs his nails into his forehead and stares despairingly at Kay. I grab his chin and force him to look me in the eye.
“Cossack, it wasn’t your fault. Believe me, from what I’ve seen, this was all a long time coming. He is responsible for his fate. You are responsible for yours.”
I lift my hands from him and back up. He stares at me with so much anger.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” I conclude.
Cossack shambles out of the room. He says to Brit to guard the door, and the detective leans against it and draws his signature pistol. He doesn’t point it at us, but he starts polishing it with his handkerchief so hard I am surprised it doesn’t shatter under the force of his efforts. Nearby, Gracey shrugs and starts fooling around with his knife, a characteristically nasty glint in his eyes. I remember the things Kay asked them to do, which they did with little question, and I feel a little ill. Poor Walt…
I go over to the window, and watch Cossack come in. He and Kay don’t say anything for a while, though the latter puts on this sad little smile. Cossack’s features remain trapped in the same indignant glower, like an unwilling statue. Then, he asks:
“Will you do it?”
Kay’s smile vanishes. He has a philosophical look on his face, as though scrutinising the taste of a sharp-tasting but prestigious wine. Cossack grunts encouragingly. Kay finally answers:
“Yes.”
Cossack turns his eyes to the window, and I could swear he’s staring right at me.
“Then, we’re going to see Jeb.”
He leaves. I finally wonder if Cossack and I understand each other a little better. Then, I see the look of fear and rage in Kay’s eyes, and I realise we don’t. Unlike Cossack, I can only muster contempt for him. I make efforts to remind myself why I once wasted so much emotion on him. They ring hollower every time.
###
We enter the throne room. It used to be Void’s. Technically it’s Ryan’s. But now the Administrator of the Vanilla Craft does not sit in pride of place. Instead, the fiery locks of Jeb glint in that sunlight which dares break the clouds and force its way through a stained-glass window. In his right hand he clasps the glossy, sea green heart of the first Dragon, in his right he twists his adamantine spear. Even from the end of the hall, I can see his amusement.
To his right stands the Blind Watcher: Herobrine. He towers over other men, only Fire exceeding him, but even then, the Watcher intimidates me more than even Claw ever could. His armour is obsidian. A bedrock-plated sword adorns his back. His frame is mountainous. And those white, luminous eyes see more in a moment than I could ever hope to learn.
Cossack is at the head of us, head bowed respectfully. I follow suit, as does Fire. We trail after him. Then, Aaron, Secret and Tassadar. At the back of our train, Kay is escorted by two Gaian soldiers, one of whom Cossack called Thomas. There is a sack over his head to hide his identity, though an astute observer might still see a flash of his scarf around the shoulders, where his cloak connects to his armour.
I catch glimpses of many familiar faces, some friends, many foes. I see the sympathetic eyes of Ozzy the Selvan; of Ruary the Legionnaire; of Wolves and Trillian Glare of shining Vangaard; of Bost from ruined Concordis; at a distance I see the familiar hood of Gogyst, chief priest of Arcation, dip into a respectful nod. Their gazes betray friendly recognition, but also deep fear.
Other recognitions are less than friendly. Ellen Domini, the Raven, glares at me for my part in her husband’s downfall. Ray Tunes averts his eyes and looks ashamed at the sight of Tassadar. Carsey, who tormented us all the way back in Zine, looks gobsmacked to see me again.
And, of course, they are there: what remains of the Brotherhood. Komplex looks ready to summon his armour at any moment. Ubi adjusts his turtle mask and reaches for a chakram that isn’t there. And Tauto Chrone, the leader of their Chapter, brushes a strand of black hair from his eyes and scrutinises my face. I see the flaming whip his brother once wielded at his hip, and I feel a puzzling sense of guilt. Jay Chrone, the Jolly Saint, had been a wretched man, but he didn’t deserve to die in Kay’s little plot.
I feel like a hypocrite. Kay had taken to fighting the Brotherhood on my part. Now, I’m more concerned about the hurt he caused them than I am about the imminent threat to Kay’s life. I am a poison.
We reach the front and kneel. Jeb stares smugly down at us. Cossack attempts to engage in the normal formal greeting and the ruler of the Divines cuts him off.
“What brings you here, Astro? I doubt you have fully atoned for your failure. I assure you, redemption is not wholly impossible.”
A round of chuckles sounds out from among the lesser Divines sown throughout the crowd. Grumm, Bone… I think about the number of soldiers each of them commands and feel a mixture of terror and tentative hope. Jeb casts his eyes around the vassalised lords of the Vanilla Craft and some more scattered laughter breaks out, some half-hearted, the rest overcompensating. I see Ryan, the Administrator, exhale politely and return his focus to a list in his hand.
“I apologise, my lord,” I say, still kneeling. “But I was abducted, and in the process became aware of a much bigger threat.”
“Is it that beast next to you?” Jeb scoffs again. Then, after waiting for his subjugated audience to laugh again, he continues, “What is he? Endling? Half-breed? Either way he has no place in my presence,” he rises, “I am Jeb Persson, King of the Divines, Protector of Man, son of Notch the Ascended and I shall not abide the spawn of Ishinge.”
I grimace and shoot an apologetic glance at Fire. Outside of a slight lowering of eyelids and a short sigh, Fire remains stoic.
“He is neither, actually, he is a friend of mine and an ally of the Court. This is Fire, founder of the Shelter and Leader of the Mencur-Besh. He seeks your aid in battle.”
I rise to one knee.
“Will you hear his plea?”
Jeb smirks and attempts to exchange the emotion with Herobrine, but the Blind watcher, with a subtle twitch of his neck, indicates that Jeb should do it, for prudency’s sake. Notch’s son rolls his eyes and acquiesces.
“He may speak. What I hear is up to him.”
Fire begins formally: “Beyond your world are many more, one of which, called Nexus, was up until recently ruled by a warlord without equal, the Entity. This warlord captured not just cities or countries, but entire worlds, with the eventual goal of using a machine to bring all of existence into one. This warlord is also a cosmic embodiment of order, and as such does not tolerate the chaos brought on by consciousness, once the unification of worlds is done it would absorb all that exists to achieve its perfect state of order.”
Fire pauses briefly to let the information settle. “The Shelter is a group of rebels, intent on overthrowing this warlord. In a recent turn of events, the Entity was betrayed by one of its underlings, a phantom of fear called Freak, who is now impersonating it. While the danger of existential absorption is gone, we now face the possibility of existence under the rule of fear itself. We require additional military support to assault the enemy base of operations and prevent their plan from coming to fruition. At best we have a week to prepare for the assault if we want to preserve our worlds as they are.”
Jeb chews on a tuft of his beard. I see his eyes spark up as he connects the dots of power.
“If you had come to me sooner, we could perhaps have come to an arrangement. But, with only a week to go, you’re a tad bit close to the wire. Most of my armies are at least a week away. And that is without mention of the Court of Whispers out to the East. They have been mobile.”
This is his trick, start out sympathetic, and then…
“And this is all assuming you’re being truthful isn’t it. I would need time to evaluate the threat your Freak poses to us. Whether his goals are what you claim them to be, whether this machine exists, and whether the Shelter is any better. And that’s assuming I believe your premise of other worlds beyond the Sane Realm, the Nether and End existing. As it is, I only have your word you’re from anywhere but the Shore of Oddities. This could be a trick from the Court of Whispers to redirect our efforts. In the absence of proof, what do you expect me to say?”
There is a rumbling from among the assembled leaders. It’s not a bad dismissal. A soundly justified explanation for a colossally stupid decision. Even those I consider friends are caught in consternation at the thought of the Endlings and their peers marching into the Old Continent once again. I hear Kay’s boots scraping on the tiles as he almost rises and then is stopped by Thomas Bone. I want to vomit. I stand up.
“We do have some proof, my lord.”
I walk over to Kay.
“Ah, there is a point in the prisoner after all,” says Herobrine with a cocked eyebrow. “And here I was starting to think you’d brought him along for good luck.”
“Praise be for that,” Jeb chuckles. “It certainly wasn’t working.”
Some slightly more sincere laughter rings out. I feel a little comforted, but as I put my hand on the cloth it sinks in that this really is a do-or-die moment. Either we cow Jeb with shock, or we shock him into violence. I hear Kay underneath the sack.
“...How are we Jeb it’s been some time - ****! No, that’s wrong. What else…”
He is practising his entrance. Of course he is. All sympathetic emotion flows out of me. I shake my head.
“Note that we tried to avoid this,” I grumble loudly. “But it’s the best we could do. Allow me to introduce you to the Shelter’s former Commander.”
I rip the sack from his head. There is a collective gasp. Ryan drops his scroll. Chrone instinctively reaches for his right eye. Gogyst forces his way through the crowd to get a better look. Herobrine looks mesmerised.
“Hail my lord,” says Kay to Jeb, “My master,” he says to Herobrine. He kneels.
All eyes fall on Jeb. He is speechless. He presses a knuckle into his beard so hard it should be leaving an indent.
“What trickery is this?” hisses the King of the Divines.
He tries to take a step forward, but Herobrine puts a hand out to stop him.
Kay isn’t paying attention, he squints around, looking at the faces which gape at him. When he has done a full circuit, he returns his attention to the throne. Notionally, he does it to address Jeb. His eyes are fixed on Herobrine. The Watcher’s blank eyes are unreadable. Jeb’s are sparking, incoherent - the eyes of a wounded animal.
“My custom,” he begins. “Would be to make a grand speech where I retell my service with much poeticism. Let’s say something along the lines of: ‘I am Kay Mandy, Commandant of the Tenth, Lap Dog of Herobrine. Did I not bleed for this Court, for the reunification of the House of Persson, for the defeat of the Endlings and the ascension of Notch? And in return for this blood, did I ever demand any recompense? Wealth? Land? Office? No, I took with me only what I won through service: good reputation and trust. Will you not then hear this loyal soldier as he finally demands payment?’ Yes, that sounds about right. It would be my custom to say almost exactly that. But my custom is not worth much these days, is it?”
He begins to rub his shoulder and to look around.
“I can see it. In your faces. My fears are confirmed. Once I was a hero. I was your hero,” he gestures to Herobrine. “You spoke to me, called me from nothing and you made me better. I wasn’t some mercenary, some common crook, I was a General fighting in a holy war for truth, justice, for independence for the Thaumlands - do you remember them?!”
He whirls around and marches towards me. I back away. He is quaking with fury. His accent fluttering between precision and brogue like a war-tattered banner. Aaron shoots me a look which asks, ‘should we stop this?’ I shake my head. Somehow, I feel ecstatic. Somehow, I’m smiling. A look at Jeb’s venomous countenance fails to dim it: I’ve gone mad.
“Do you remember how we revered you, Herobrine? Worshipped you? Made offerings at your feet? Do you remember how you promised us safety, security, peace? You stood by as he burned the home you promised us!”
His finger points at Jeb like a spear. He pants. I see a tear land on the floor. He staggers and then sits down.
“I was going to join them. Guard them. Lead them, maybe. And suddenly, they were gone. And you stopped answering my prayers. I was alone and I had no purpose, all I had was the training you gave me. So, I made a vow, to you, to the world, to myself, that I would be the hero you asked me to be. I would return to my friends, protect them, be a paragon and beacon of light to them and all those who gazed upon me!”
He wipes the tears from his eyes. He rises and approaches the throne. A line of guards with glowing, blue-tipped spears emerges from the crowd. He halts before coming in range, just about. He breathes deeply, closes his eyes, and lowers his tone.
“But I failed in that. I am prideful, I am violent, I am vindictive and that is not on you, that is me. I am the reason I failed. And by the way everyone here is looking at me, it looks like I keep on failing, and I am sorry. I wish I could say something that doesn’t sound false, but here and now I am begging your forgiveness for what I come to do! I…” He trails off, Herobrine has looked away. “Fire’s made the big appeal to self-preservation and reason but I beg you, as a man who has seen the legacy he leaves, join me. Give me one last chance to be a hero to you.”
He cranes his neck and tries to catch Herobrine’s eye again, but Notch’s brother turns around to face the wall. Kay talks to his back, hand outstretched as though cupping water from a dwindling spring.
“Give me one last chance to be as we were. Then, I’ll disappear into my disgrace, and I’ll not trouble you again.”
He kneels.
“Please.”
I look around. No one is speaking and I wish they would just hurry up and say anything. Jeb glowers away, glaring at Kay without actually looking at him - his mind is a million miles away, summoning thunderclouds and conjuring winds that would eviscerate this creature who has slighted him.
“Good,” I think, “Jeb’s deserved a slighting for a long, long time.”
Finally, he scoffs.
“Get out of my sight. I will give the Shelter no aid. Perhaps some of the vassals will help you. I’ll ensure their holdings are protected in their absence.”
He smiles his cold little smile, and the warning is clear. If you leave, Jeb will take everything from you. I want to cry. I look to Fire in apology, but his eyes are fixed on the throne.
“And to ensure you understand how serious we are about the safeguarding of your holdings, I shall come with you as hostage.”
My eyes snap towards the throne. Herobrine has turned around. He has a mad grin on his face and his eyes are wide as rivers. There are murmurs of approval.
“Should any move be made against your lands, I should be held personally liable to you and shall provide recompense from my own fortune.”
Herobrine throws his sword to the ground and shoots an encouraging look around the hall.
Gogyst marches forward first and throws his staff of tricks atop the bedrock blade.
“Arcation stands with you, Watcher! We are few in number, but we are mighty!” He kneels.
“Fear not for numbers!” Herobrine responds, “Those troops I have here shall accompany us to ensure the effort’s success. Leader of the Mencur-Besh, what say you to five thousand Blackshells, and ten thousand Pigmen?”
I look at Fire, beaming.
With barely suppressed satisfaction Fire replies: “Gladly accepted. The Shelter already houses people of many different worlds so there are no issues from our side.”
“Then come, be housed and be many! We go to war!” Herobrine calls.
He doesn’t even seem to care that only around a third of the hall cheers in earnest. Fewer still come forward. The usual suspects do. Ozzy the Selvan jogs up and throws his emerald short sword into the pile. Wolves Glare approaches and offers his wooden blade. Ruary of the Legion throws in his shield. Cossack, bearing no weapon, offers his hat.
And then no one moves. I am more than happy to accept this. Herobrine is powerful, we have the Gaians, and even after all this strife Legion still has considerable numbers, we can work with this. But then, something truly unexpected happens.
A knife, and a glove which sparks with lightning are thrown into the pile. Tauto Chrone, looking right at Kay, says:
“The Brotherhood stands with you.”
Kay looks confused but elated. I am mystified. Chrone puts on the black, iron mask Kay won from him at the Battle of the Nether Highway, and which he won back at the Sansoleil Massacre, and he kneels beside Gogyst.
And with that there is a new influx. Bost and the Concordites; the librarian pirates of Woobly; Ray Tunes and Viral, bringing with them what remains of Williamsburg and the Ghosts of Calais respectively; the administrator Ryan and his warlike moderators; a band of Thaumic warriors under Zeratul; even old Halberdson. Their numbers are no longer great, but one last time the Vanilla Craft has put aside its differences and become whole. I feel warmth swell up within me.
Herobrine leads us outside and far into the nearby plains, in deep discussion with Fire the whole way. He summons his pigmen and they begin to build a portal to his specifications. Obsidian piles on top of obsidian, until there is a great portal before us.
I marvel at the army that is beginning to amass, as Pigmen join Gaians, join Legionnaires, join Vangaardians and so on, forming their ranks and bringing hastily gathered materials. I know their numbers cannot exceed the tens of thousands, but it feels like all the world is here.
Then, I hear Fire calling to me. I go over. He stands with Herobrine and Aaron. Aaron has a dumb grin on his face.
“What is it?” I ask. “How can I help?”
“We need to get word back to Nexus so they can dial in this bigger portal. The whole reason this was built is because I can’t repeat what I did back in my world, no ender eyes to guide the magic.”
“Oh, I could absolutely head back and convey the news?”
“Well,” Aaron says, “You know the earpieces? Well, while we were looking for you, Brit started work on an improved version with longer range - long enough to talk to Mo back at the portal. Thankfully, he finished it and Fire reckons he can upgrade it to help interface the entire army. We were wondering if you wanted to do the honours of telling Mo the coordinates the Shelter needs to input?”
I begin beaming anew.
“Naturally.”
Fire pulls out the dimensional scanner, Aaron hands me his earpiece and attaches the microphone to my sleeve.
“Hello Mo, can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, boss,” he oozes smugly.
“Note down these coordinates for me, will you?”
Fire holds up the screen and I squint down at the figures, the glow of the screen stinging my eyes. I recite them with some hesitancy, laughing nervously and joyously all at once.
“You got all that?”
“Absolutely.”
“Now, I need you to go through that portal and tell them to open this baby up. We might need some space cleared. Ask for Steve and Jennifer. Tell them we have a lot of new arrivals.”
“Got it, talk soon,” he says with a little chuckle, “Take it Kay came through?”
I look over in his direction. I see him chatting hesitantly with Cossack, often stopping, and staring off into space. And I keep thinking back to the ridge we sat on looking at the Mencur-Besh coming through only this morning - and how much I reviled him then. And somehow, during that speech he had recaptured everything that had made me cherish him for so long. His passion, fierce and affectionate, his anger at the injustices of the world, and his contrapuntal, idealist belief that they didn’t have to exist. For a brief moment, I had seen my friend again.
And somehow, I resented him all the more for coming back, knowing full well he wouldn’t stay.
“He did fine,” I say flatly, tightening my fist.
We wait for some time. Herobrine moves on to issue orders and establish contact with the factions who have joined us - we believe that, on top of Herobrine’s army, we’ll be able to leverage twenty-five thousand men from our various allies by the time everyone is mobilised. discussing favours that could call in for supplies.
Halberdson seems to be very eager to get Herobrine to purchase anything and everything under the sun from his wide array of trade contacts. Armour, guns, food, materials for airships. He has someone for everything, and he rattles off ideas and opportunities so rapidly he has the aspect of a man fleeing a fire in his own house. Occasionally, he’ll call Fire over to inquire about what the Shelter can support or could best use. Fire is less receptive than Herobrine, but I’m still pretty sure Halberdson will have managed to sell him a metric fortune’s worth of something or other by the end of it.
Tassadar catches up with Zeratul. Ray helps the elderly Viral equip his armour. The Brotherhood stand in a circle, repeating their mantras. Not a stone’s throw away, Arcation kneel before Gogyst as he recites their sacred rites. Last time I saw them, these two groups had to be put on opposite ends of the battlefield so they didn’t end up fighting. I remind myself why I hate the Brotherhood, but I’m glad they’re on our side. I am quietly contented.
Then, a strange wind whips through my hair. It leads toward the portal. I turn just in time for it to flash into life, for the blue, gel-like surface to fill the frame, and for the shadows of the world on the other side to begin to flit across it.
Fire and Herobrine begin issuing orders and the neat ranks of the Herobrinian army, the Legion, the Vangaardian knights and the Gaian host begin to form a column to advance neatly in. The others, smaller in number and more focused on individual than collective discipline, filter between them, filling up any space that is not obviously taken.
As they do so, several members of Shadow’s coven rush through. Iridia comes up to me and I brace myself for some sort of argument. But, in a manifestly pleasant surprise, she is friendly.
“The master told us to help with teleporting things to the portal, from what I hear we’ll be reinforced by the Mencur-Besh soon.”
“Yes,” I respond. “We’ll need supplies in particular. Most airships have been decommissioned since the War, so we’ll need help transporting materials to make new ones. Also, the usual shipments of food, armour, weapons - actually, firearms will be a big one.” I realise I’m running away with myself. “Apologies, that’s a lot to keep track of. This is just all so huge.”
I clap her on the shoulder and walk up to Fire, who stands near the portal.
“Well, how do you feel about our chances?” I ask him with a grin.
“Significantly better than before, I can say that much. Aside from that, there are some weaknesses in the Tower’s defence plans that I am fairly sure will stay open with neither the Ender nor Claw around to close them. But more about that once we have our formal strategy planning session.”
I nod. I’d hoped for a more energised response, but I suppose it’s good Fire has his eye on the ball.
“Oh, naturally. At least we have an actual army this time. And a literal god on our side,” I laugh. “I’d like to see how Freak deals with that.”
Before Fire can bring me back to earth, Herobrine gives the order for his men to advance, and the first Pigmen begin to step through. The column of troops seems to stretch for miles, armour gleaming even in the sparse light of an overcast day.
“We’ve got a chance,” I reassure myself.
I close my eyes on this image of imminent victory, and I step through the portal.
Chapter74:Battle Plans (Amanda)
Amanda only realised how crowded Shelter had gotten when she realised she was about to be late to a major planning meeting and had to tuck and roll between the throngs of people. In addition to the normal humans and occasional villagers, towering Mencur-Besh, stern-looking Pigmen and even long, winding dragons now seemed to fill every hall.
As she ducked between the pattering legs of Steve’s pet Enderdragon, Drake, she wished she’d just waited for Helix to finish up his training. He could have just flown her over and saved time. Then again, she wasn’t actually sure he’d go. And Drake playfully snapped at her as she ran past, so she could only imagine how excited he’d get at the sight of two people flying by. Ozen was already struggling to keep him focused as it was.
Helix had been getting better. He was eating his usual six tacos a day again and he even insisted on calling that a diet in what she hoped to Light was a joke. But he still avoided contact with most people other than her or Shadow, and he never voluntarily started a conversation with anyone other than her. He’d completely given up on his demonic training and no one felt comfortable pressuring him into continuing. Instead, he had dedicated his entire time to training with Rose, or if she wasn’t available, the Mencur-Besh. All dodging and punching and chucking swords everywhere. And he’d developed this weird obsession with trying to summon lava that he couldn’t always magic away - some of the Coven mages were actually starting to complain about having to constantly clean up after him. Never to his face though.
This time he’d been about to finish up when he caught a glimpse of Herobrine walking by with a group of his Blackshell troops - whose faces were hidden completely behind heavy obsidian armour - and then immediately went back to sparring with the nearest Mencur-Besh. Having a living reminder of the long journey ahead of him even if they beat Freak really wasn’t helping Helix’s emotional state.
She passed the infirmary and saw a patrol of hunters being patched up. They had gotten restless pretty soon after arriving and so Tyron and the others had decided to let them set up their own encampment nearby and send out packs to track down any Tower scouts or patrols. Unfortunately, they found more than expected and kept coming back pretty dinged up. So far, they’d killed twelve endermen. She knew because they kept bringing the bodies back and mounting them outside their camp. She really wished they’d stop because that was really gross and kind of sinister. People were actually starting to miss the Jackals.
Then she heard a snippet of conversation from inside.
“And you’re certain there’s no chance Claw could return? That he’s not hiding amongst them?” asked a male voice.
“No, Claw died with the Entity. I assure you, Destiny did good work.”
Kay walked out from behind a divider, rubbing his knee. The husband and wife leading the hunters followed him out, looking concerned.
“So you keep saying,” said the wife. “But you must understand our concern that we were enlisted to kill Claw only to be greeted by a portal filled with creatures exactly matching his description.”
“And how can you be sure he’s not lying dormant, waiting to seize control?”
“We can’t, but we do have enough force to contain him this time. Claw was strong. Herobrine is stronger.”
Amanda realised she’d stopped. She also realised her hands had clenched preemptively into fists. She started walking away before Kay noticed her.
“Herobrine and that guy in the one room,” she thought. “Helix is not coming today.”
She walked past Lucy, who smiled genuinely at her. Amanda tried to reciprocate and felt happy enough that she succeeded.
Inside, Amanda scanned the room quickly before deciding to lean against the wall next to Rose. Together, they observed the people at the table and those continuing to enter.
Astro and Shadow sat with one seat between them, clearly intended for Tyron who was using ice magic to adjust the temperature of the furnace. Fire stood behind Tyron’s chair, head craned down to hear their conversation. Astro leaned over, Shadow remained perfectly upright, smiling serenely. She seemed to have recovered some of that air of confidence she had back when Amanda first met her.
Then, Steve and Jennifer sat together, Steve worrying about Ozen’s ability to steer Drake through the Shelter. Jennifer saw Amanda looking in their direction and rolled her eyes as she tried to calm him down without giggling.
“He’s just not used to that many people…” Amanda picked out of the general chatter. “... And he’s only what, like a year old? Basically a baby.”
“I’m sure that is much higher in dragon years,” said Jennifer as she flicked through some blueprints.
Next, Kir sat on a cushion, pulsing happily. He had been put there to relay messages to and from Tyron’s army of dragons.
Voidblade and Urist sat together. The dwarf chatted away and the enderman really seemed to be making an effort not to look that tormented. As much as Voidblade tried, adapting to non-End culture took more than a few months of living among them.
Just on from them were the first real representatives from outside the Shelter. Two humans and a Water Mencur-Besh. Amanda had seen them before, the humans Andras and Brad were old friends of Fire, and Stream the Mencur-Besh apparently was one of the oldest of her kind, aside from Fire.
After that, two empty chairs struggled to remain upright under the weight of heavy cloaks made from furs and pierced through with bones. Obviously for the hunters. Right beside these vacancies, a pigman and a pale man with purple tattoos conferred with each other, with Herobrine towering behind them. He had a hand clamped onto the back of the pigman’s chair, making it look like a doll’s chair in comparison. Lucy came up and offered to get a chair that might fit him better, but he declined with surprising politeness.
Then came a smattering of people from Kay and Astro’s world who Amanda didn’t really care about. All she knew was that their leader was a thin, bureaucratic-looking guy called Ryan, and that Astro had been really reluctant to let them all in. Apparently, most of them would usually hate each other and they all had a tendency to argue over “stupid, tribal crap.” However, Tyron had decided that they would probably try and play nice in front of Herobrine and maybe be a little daunted by the general situation, limiting the likelihood they would derail things.
Amanda noticed that one of them had a hood which obscured his face with supernatural darkness, like Helix. She suddenly felt very alone, despite Rose being right next to her, and wished he were there with his red eyes, his soft robes…
Anyone else at or around the table was internal to the Shelter. Raphoe skulked around near the hunters’ chairs in his red scarf, not quite sure where he fit into everything now that Kay’s boss had shown up and the former King in Ash kept doffing the hat to everyone under the sun. A fast-builder from resource-gathering here. Talita and Iridia from the Coven there. One or two infantry and combat mages. Lucy flitted between everyone, checking them to her list.
Finally, Kay entered with the hunter-chief power couple, Lucy made some ticks, and she took up a position next to Fire.
Kay saw Raphoe’s aimlessness, grunted and gestured for him to follow him. Kay took him around and leaned against the furnace, slightly into the shadows but firmly within the eyeline of Herobrine and the hunters.
Then, unnoticed by most but greatly appreciated by Amanda, Helix entered. His red eyes looked dimmer than usual, but he had a slight smile on. He came up beside her and slipped his fingers in between hers. She felt warm.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi, sorry I’m late,” he responded, making sure not to look over in the direction of the furnace.
Tyron cleared his throat, and the session began.
“So, I guess the first question is, what’s our situation?” he began. “Well, I can tell you we’re glad for every last person we’ve gotten. After the Prophet’s Hill Massacre, we fell somewhere below fifteen-hundred trained soldiers and then began to slowly recover after gaining access to portal technology. Now, you all have graciously devoted yourselves to our cause, and we can safely say our forces number somewhere around forty thousand, the highest they have ever been. Thank you for your support.”
There were polite murmurs of approval around the table. The hooded man even banged on the table with his fist and cried out “Hear, hear!”, unconcerned that his raucousness did not match the general tone.
“Unfortunately, I’ve got to acknowledge that we are still, in fact, outnumbered. The Tower is an interdimensional organisation, in some places it could definitely be called an empire. It has a lot of troops at its disposal and a lot of places it can draw them from. However, that means, even though they’ve consolidated all their troops within Nexus, they have a lot of their conquering forces spread out across the multiverse. Thanks to the efforts of the internal scouting corps under Voidblade and the…” Tyron checked his notes calmly. “‘Most honourable librarian pirates of Woobly’ under… Scrumping Pup, as well as a Tower-internal source, we have been able to confirm their numbers at around one hundred thousand.
“Still outnumbered, but bear in mind, the Entity is dead, the Ender is dead. The endermen are tough but leaderless, and as far as we are aware Freak can’t replicate the abilities which made the Entity such a threat in combat. Most of the rest are mercenary forces, a lot of whom got stuck in Nexus by accident. We have skill and experience on our side, and we will win this.”
The hooded man yelled “hear, hear!” louder still and this time several others cheered in response, mostly from the same world but Urist also offered some typically dwarfish encouragement. Tyron smirked slightly then continued.
“Of course, this brings us on to the matter of strategy. The Shelter is some ways out from the Tower by design. Previously we had floated plans of attacking villages near the Tower to establish a beachhead from which to launch a full assault. However, with the machine so close to completion, and with the risk that the Tower would call for reinforcements from its off-world holdings, we cannot waste time on that. We propose a full-frontal assault.”
No cheers went up this time. The hooded man assumed a pose of great contemplation. Steve looked disappointed he hadn’t joined in when he had the chance.
“Glowstar asks: ‘So, they’ll see us coming?’” chirped Kir.
Tyron sighed.
“Yes.”
A general feeling of discomfort descended on everyone in the room. Amanda reshuffled her fingers and held Helix’s hand all the tighter.
“So, we’re going to loudly announce our presence to the enemy? Is there no prospect of a sneak attack?” Asked the male hunter chief.
“We have investigated that possibility,” answered Tyron confidently. “There was a route into the Tower that the enemy were unaware of, but it was too small for a large-scale attack. And, since Destiny used that portal to get in and kill the Entity, Freak was aware of it and has sealed it off.”
“Excuse me,” said Herobrine calmly. “I was under the impression that the Entity was ‘usurped’ by Freak, I believe that was the word you used, Fire. Am I to understand that the Shelter deliberately installed Freak?”
Tyron looked directly at Herobrine for the first time since the meeting had started and gritted his teeth. It occurred to Amanda just how weird this must be for him.
Fire ended up replying: “While Destiny’s actions have resulted in a significant edge for the Shelter, it was a plan of her and Freak alone. I’d hazard a guess that Freak betrayed the Entity and used Destiny to get rid of it, which happened to align with our goals, but that is where our ‘collaboration’ ends. Now Freak is in the same position as the Entity, but he is individually much less powerful than it.”
Tyron shuffled in discomfort, realising the questions this raised.
“So, this plot occurred without the knowledge of Shelter leadership? How was this allowed to happen?”
Kay cut in: “The Shelter was under my administration in the lead-up to the assassination, during Fire’s captivity. The failing was mine, my lord. Freak is a phantom and can, when he wishes, be visible to only one individual at a time. Precautions have been taken - a benevolent phantom known as the Lady of Dreams has been contacted - and this error will not be repeated.”
Herobrine nodded, satisfied but still obviously concerned to receive confirmation of the mildly chaotic recent history of the Shelter. Amanda was just glad he didn’t ask why Kay wasn’t leading any more. Helix definitely wouldn’t have been able to keep quiet about that. Or maybe he’d just have stormed ominously out of the room, which might actually have been worse.
“So,” declared Tyron in an effort to regain control. “We have the outline established. Now for specifics. We’re currently planning for the Mencur-Besh to take the lead on the ground, serving as a vanguard under the command of Fire, followed up by a broader force under my own direction. Of course, we will have combat mages as skirmishers, a sizeable ranged corps comprised of conventional archers and firearms users, and a mixture of magical and non-magical artillery in support.
“Our goal will be to use range to our advantage to disrupt the Tower’s defences, allowing our infantry a chance to force their way through the main gate and make it to the Tower proper, which unfortunately only has one entrance. Once inside, in addition to attempting to seize control of as much of the structure as possible, a contingent shall break off to fight its way down to the Deep Labs with the goal of locating and disabling the machine. Shadow and a collective of mages from our various factions shall be a priority asset in this situation, as they are most likely to be able to figure out how to stop it from activating to begin with.
“At the same time, an air assault under the command of Herobrine will be conducted. Guarded by the dragons of Minecraftia, our airships will attempt to infiltrate the Tower’s upper floors. This will help relieve pressure from the force on the lower floors, but more importantly this force shall attempt to locate the machine’s activation mechanism and prevent Freak from using it. It is believed to be within the Entity’s former throne room and is supposed to be guarded by a particularly advanced breed of golems. Our internal source suggests they are made of bedrock, but otherwise we are unclear of their capabilities. Be extremely careful when engaging them.”
Herobrine smirked and stroked his adamantine sword.
A man in a steel mask scoffed, “Tricked-out golems? A machine with a ticking clock? Megalomaniacs in pursuit of godhood? Forgive me, I’m feeling downright nostalgic.”
Astro glared at him.
“Don’t worry, Brother Chrone,” he said. “You will be in the ground assault, so you shall be as far away as can be from your fear of repetition.”
“Wonderful,” he said. “Very considerate of you.”
His face was invisible beneath his mask, but his eyes assumed the glazed quality of a smirk.
Astro chewed his lip and looked at his notes, clearly a little embarrassed.
“Well,” Helix whispered to her. “At least we know Astro’s above all that ‘stupid, tribal crap’.”
She snorted with laughter a little harder than the joke merited. It was nice that he had his sense of humour back. Unfortunately, Herobrine turned his head at the sound, and while the blind guy looked at them with nothing but good-natured bemusement at the thought of two kids in a war-room, Helix glared back fiercely until he returned his attention to the table.
“With the plan firmly established. That brings us,” Tyron said. “To the matter of division leaders. All very dry troop assignment stuff, but necessary.”
He began to recite the assignments. It reminded Amanda of the travelling storytellers who would sometimes come through the villages, when they would recite ancient poems, and then to give a sense of grandeur and maybe to avoid having to describe any elaborate battle scenes for a while they’d list everyone involved for a full chapter. Except somehow more boring.
Long and short of it, Brad, one of Fire’s buddies in the Eye-and-Claws had the air, coordinating the attack until they made an entrance in the side of the Tower, at which point Herobrine would take over the infiltration force. Glowstar would lead a dragon escort. Steve and Jennifer would initially be part of the escort on the back of Drake Junior, then join the infiltration force alongside some of their usual divisions, using their fast-building abilities to help prevent loss of ground. Astro would do much the same, flying around until they found an opening, at which point he would take partial command of a group called the “Guild of Twenty-Four Diamonds”, who she assumed were the heavily armoured dunk squad who always jeered playfully at him when he ran by on an errand.
Voidblade and Urist would also serve as officers in the infiltration force, the former helping to locate and harass Tower forces, the latter helping to flesh out Steve and Jennifer’s quickly built fortifications into real footholds. Rose smirked as her role was explained. Her duty was to help make an opening for the infiltration force, both by killing anyone who tried to impede them, but also by literally making an opening in the wall of the Tower where artillery fire hadn’t created a wide enough gap. She explained in a mutter that they had found the alloy they used to coat the Tower. Apparently, her blades made it look like crap and cut through about as easily.
Tyron would, of course, coordinate the ground forces, with Fire leading the Mencur-Besh in the vanguard. Amanda and Helix would be accompanying Tyron personally, but if their last outing had been any indication, that meant they would be part of the attack with Tyron lending a handy assist any time they got overwhelmed. The hunters would attack from a slightly different angle, hoping to hop the fortifications and engage the forces within, with the goal of disrupting internal defences and engaging the enemy in tight spaces where proper formations became more difficult. Notionally, they were independent, but they would also be accompanied by a brigade comprising Kay’s remaining loyalists in the Shelter and a small group of Herobrine’s pigmen. So, basically the naughty corner crew.
Amanda considered making a quip about that to Helix, but one look at his face confirmed he was not at all ready to joke about that.
Shadow would, of course, command her Coven of mages and provide any aerial and ground support needed throughout, then hand over operational leadership to Talita after the Tower was breached so she could focus on locating and disabling the machine. Lucy had the duty of co-directing the artillery and generally running logistics for the ground assault. This unfortunately put her in the unenviable duty of making sure the rear-guard - a group called Legion - held firm and prevented the Tower from encircling them. When Lucy heard about her responsibility she nodded, then immediately took on the look of someone mentally preparing several comprehensive checklists for the tasks ahead.
“Well, you know your duties,” said Tyron gravely. “We attack in three days. Do what you can to prepare. May Notch be with you - or whoever you worship. Sorry, didn’t mean to be exclusionary, Notch just seems to be common across a lot of places and - I’m getting off topic.”
Tyron sighed and Amanda heard Helix mutter “Light be with you,” under his breath. Rathina placed a hand on Tyron’s shoulder, and he recollected himself, and looked strangely pleased with himself as he said the next sentence.
“You are brave for being here, your bravery will be remembered, let’s make sure it’s rewarded. It’s about time we all got a happy ending.”
Amanda caught his eye and smiled reassuringly, shooting him a smirk and a laid-back thumbs-up. He smiled slightly but warmly and left with Rathina.
Helix had his head hung like he was observing a moment of silence. She squeezed his hand.
“Hey, you heard him, happy ending’s on its way.”
He smiled.
“Yeah, it sure is,” he accepted.
They left, still holding hands, ready for what was yet to come.
Chapter75:Questions of Life (Tyron)
They sat in the officer’s lounge. It was late. Most people had already left. But they stayed on, not to drink, just to talk. After the strategy meeting everything was starting to feel a little real, so talking felt good.
At the start, it had been the expected groups, people talking to their friends. Jennifer had been spleefing away with Voidblade; Astro and his guild talking gravely and yearningly about old times, absent friends; Steve talking the ear off Urist, Wolfric and his brother; Fire and Shadow catching up with their Eye-and-Claw friends; and Tyron had, of course, been talking to Seth and Rathina, with Kir relaying the occasional comment from Glowstar up on the cliffs.
It had been strange, seeing people talking to their normal friends. The people they had history with. Fire in particular was just… strange. Seeing him talking and laughing with Brad and Andras, as though nothing had happened. Tyron had always known him as such a serious, detached guy and he still wasn’t exactly Mr. Expressiveness over there, but there was an ease to him in that conversation that made the whole thing feel uncanny. He wondered if other people thought he looked weird talking to his friends.
“Already look weird,” Kir had quipped.
He smiled. He felt Rathina’s fingers in the fur of his arm.
“Astro is a terrible influence on you.”
But slowly, people peeled away for sleep or duty or whatever, until a somehow weirder group remained, sitting on the central pit of sofas. Rathina sat at his right. Steve and Jennifer sat opposite him. Shadow lounged on a sofa off to the left, flicking through a book hardly taking up any space on account of her small stature. Astro sat at the other end of the same sofa, listening to a guy called Andras who had way too many artificial limbs for Tyron’s liking.
“...so, there I was, standing on the mountaintop, finally facing down the Roc I had been tracking for the past days. It was there, defending its nest. No eggs, but that didn’t matter, the client paid for claws, feathers, and bones. The battle took quite a lot out of me, more than one of these scars is from that damn bird’s kicks. So, here’s how it went down…”
Tyron thought on his own scars, hidden beneath his fur. He wondered if they would ever become visible if he carried on adventuring long enough.
“Okay, you’ve told us about some of your mightiest battles,” said Rathina conspiratorially, “But what’s the absolute easiest, you’ve ever had. What day did Andras Thornhook go into work and think, ‘By Notch, I can’t believe they’re paying me to do this?’”
Tyron caught her eye. He wondered what she was driving at. She winked. She always had some game going.
Andras roared with laughter. “That’s got to be the time that snooty alchemist asked me to track down ‘a lock of cursed hair’, well that’s what I did. On my own head! The curses might stop me from growing my hand and leg back, but that one time they came in useful. Naturally had to wait a month for it all to grow back so he wouldn’t know.”
“Fascinating,” Rathina said. “Do you ever think about what you’d do if you retired?”
“Okay, what’s this about?” Tyron asked her through Kir, suddenly wondering if this was a conversation she was having with Andras, or one she was having with him via Andras.
“Well, Shadow told me he’s an NPC. So, naturally, I asked ‘What’s an NPC?’ And apparently, it’s like anyone but you in a dream. He is just based on the thoughts of anyone who enters their Server. But now, he’s outside the Server. No strings attached.”
Thank Notch, it wasn’t one of those conversations.
“Oh… That is weird. So, you’re trying to figure out how… I don’t know how to put it.”
“Ty, this is a telepathic broadcast, I literally get the idea.”
Tyron snorted with laughter and tried to play it off as a sneeze.
“But yeah, I just want to see how complete he is separated from that. How close can you wind up to being a person when you’re just made up of inputs from other people? I mean, he existed for a purpose, but now he’s served that purpose for so long and he’s received so much data from so many people, you have to ask, what is he now?”
Suddenly, something felt off to Tyron.
“Wait…”
“Boom, pranked! This conversation was secretly about us!”
“Okay you got me. I’m a bad boyfriend for not getting it out sooner.”
“Relax, I just like messing with you. But seriously though, what are we doing once this is all done?”
“Well, if we beat Freak-”
“-Okay, when we beat Freak, what are we doing?”
He sat back and thought about it, momentarily cutting off his thoughts from Kir to avoid just blasting an incomprehensible stream-of-consciousness out there. He’d spent a long, long time trying to take Herobrine down. Then he spent a long time just sort of moving between places, hero-ing away without much thought for what his goal was. He liked helping people, he liked being a hero, but now that the big bads were beaten, could he really just go on adventuring forever? He caught a glimpse of Andras’ rolling, blue prosthetic eye-crystal, and wondered once again when his scars would start showing. But then again, people would never stop needing help, and if he just stopped being selfless and started prioritising his own wellbeing, was he really all that heroic to start with?
“I think I want to find a plains biome somewhere, build a house, and start farming. Not even to sell or eat, maybe just to go into town and give it away to random people. I don’t know, farming sounds fun.”
He nodded contentedly. Bravery had to be rewarded, he’d said it himself.
Rathina turned his head to him and looked sincerely into his eyes.
“That sounds pretty chilled out. I’d be up for that for a while.”
He felt his cheeks go red and looked down. She pecked him on the forehead.
“Anyway, that’s me for tonight,” said Rathina. “Thanks, Andras, great stories.”
People said goodbye to her. Shadow even looked up from her book. Then, Steve proposed grabbing another drink from the bar, and Andras proposed Drandinian Heavybrew.
“I don’t know what that is, but I’m willing to try!” said Steve.
“Great, we’ll need a bucket!”
And Andras dragged him off to the bar. Jennifer looked at Shadow, realised she was smirking, and decided to keep an eye on this brewery process. In her own words, “I won’t stop him brewing the stuff, I just want to know what we’re dealing with.”
Astro turned to Tyron.
“Rathina seems lovely. You make a great couple.”
“Thank you, pal,” said Tyron. “I never would have thought we’d end up together. I met her when she ambushed us in a forest. Not a great start, but I guess she’s grown on me since then.”
“You’d be surprised,” quipped Astro, alcohol restoring a little bit of his sarcastic wit. “I’m pretty sure getting ambushed by Kay in the forests of Zine Craft was when I…”
He stopped talking and developed a very sad aspect.
“How are you feeling? This can’t be an easy time for you,” prodded Tyron.
Shadow took on a look of stern concentration behind her book.
“I could be better, but I can’t complain. Aaron, Secret, and all are here now. They went through it all alongside me, and I have them to talk about it with. But… Somehow, they’re not angry, at least, not angry enough. I expected one of them to complain about it, but they almost seem glad to see him. How can they just be okay with him wandering around free? They were actually there for all of the awful stuff. I just caught the tail-end of it.”
Tyron thought on it.
“Maybe that’s why. They saw the gradual decline, you just saw him after he’d already started getting punished. Like, it was kind of a shock to you, and you couldn’t reconcile the image you had of your friend with the guy who did all this heinous crap.”
Astro took a deep gulp of his drink, then slammed it down.
“You might be right there. I just… It took me so long to acknowledge that he was a bad guy, and yet he gave that big speech, and I was almost ready to forgive him then and there. And I don’t know what it was. Was it because of reflex, like tying your shoes or riding a horse? Or did he actually say something worth forgiving. Is there this magic sequence of words that makes everything okay?”
Suddenly, Shadow muttered profoundly:
“These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Why then I’ll fit you. Hieronymo’s mad again. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih. Shantih. Shantih.”
Tyron and Astro reshuffled themselves into wary positions from which they’d better be able to take off. Was that a spell? Was the pressure getting to her again?
“Friendly coup?” Kir tested nervously.
“Sorry, you’re going to have to elaborate on that,” Tyron asked. “I don’t understand. At all.”
Shadow giggled. “It’s a quote. An old poem.”
Astro chuckled and nodded.
“That makes sense. Yes, but what does the poem mean?”
Tyron breathed a sigh of relief.
“It’s complicated, it’s this weird, fragmentary thing packed with spiritual mantras, quotes from old books and references. It makes no sense until you realise it’s based on the story of a king who could only be healed by someone saying the right words. But no one who ever came to heal him ever knew what they were. So, the narrator’s going through all these famous phrases, trying to accidentally hit on the right one and make everything okay. Those last words are an old saying of one of our world’s religions, I think.”
Tyron and Astro looked at each other. Steve, Jennifer and Andras came back with their bucket of Heavybrew.
“Okay but how does that tie back to Astro?” Asked Jennifer with a cocked eyebrow. “Sorry, there’s not many people here so I heard you from across the room.”
“I said about Kay saying the right set of words to make me almost want to forgive him,” said Astro. “So, I suppose you’re saying, maybe he did. Does that ‘Shantih’ phrase bring the narrator comfort?”
“The poem ends ambiguously,” clarified Shadow, sitting up. “Those are the last lines.”
“Oh, so is it supposed to trail off in a pessimistic sort of way?” Asked Tyron. “As though he’ll be doing this forever?”
“Well, does the king get healed in the original story?” asked Steve.
“Yes, eventually.”
“Then, surely there’s an underlying assumption that there are words that will, one day, work and set everything right? And that it’s therefore worth seeking them endlessly even when the world appears to offer no likelihood of a definitive cure?”
Jennifer looked at Steve with complete surprise at his poetic turn.
“I’m sorry, you just came back here with a literal bucket of the dirtiest drink I’ve ever seen - and I know I only discovered alcohol a few weeks ago, but that’s still saying a lot, and now you want to wax lyrical about the pursuit of meaning?”
“You’re right, let’s drink.”
They each dipped a mug in and felt the shock of warmth and the choke of spice as it filled them. Only Shadow failed to react as she drank it. It was as if she was drinking water instead of strong alcohol.
“What I don’t understand is, you’re ascended, right Shadow?” Asked Steve, evidently on a hot streak with his curiosity that night. “You underwent a whole ritual to do so? But I’ve heard you and Astro talking about it, and you almost talk about it like it was an accident and you’re still finding out the damages. What’s the deal? I saw the steps involved when I was looking through Fire’s notes once, and it sounded messed up yeah, but also really deliberate. You have to prepare a potion, carve some runes in yourself… Did you just not know what would happen?”
Shadow replied: “It has to be deliberate, it requires a lot of infrastructure to get all the components, not to mention the enchanters and mages needed for the ritual itself. We performed the ritual a great number of times before it was attempted on me. Fire needed to be sure everything was just right. The goal really was just to set me free from being imprisoned in my own mind, with the known side-effect of magical empowerment. Everything else, we didn’t anticipate, couldn’t have anticipated.
“That said, it was a painful ordeal. Having runes carved in my skin, feeling my blood drain, the burning runes embedding themselves in my flesh, the magic infusion… definitely not something anyone would agree to without good reason.”
“Would you do it again?” He pressed.
The mage thought for a moment. “Difficult to answer, knowing what I do now. But I think so, it gave me a chance at a proper life outside of the server’s world. Outside of the memories, the pain is temporary.”
Steve sat back, still eyebrows furrowing a little deeper still. Tyron rolled his tongue over his teeth, drawing it back like an arrow to shoot down any follow-up question from Steve. He meant well, but he got the impression Shadow was trying to mask discomfort with politeness. Or maybe Tyron was just projecting. Even with her powers stabilised, Shadow remained as hard to read as ever. All he knew was that if anyone but Rathina had asked him what he wanted to do after this, he probably would have gotten very tense very fast.
Thankfully, before Steve could cross the line and make things awkward, Kir drew Tyron’s attention to a black-haired woman marching sternly up to them.
“Reaching out, but won’t respond. Seems mad.”
Tyron pushed his drink away, apologised and turned to face the new arrival. Just as he did so, a question came out like a slap.
“Are you Dragoknight?”
She was tall, black-haired, and pale-skinned. Perhaps in her early thirties. She wore a black V-neck, ripped gray jeans, and half an arsenal of weaponry - a machete, a steel bow, a knife which looked pretty redundant compared to the machete, and pouches containing everything from bandages to worn rope for climbing to bloody rope for garroting. And, despite being encumbered with all those weapons, she had this strange gracefulness to her. It was like watching Rose if she couldn’t magically produce knives but still insisted on throwing just as many.
Tyron decided not to waste her time.
“Yes, that’s me. Tyron Dragoknight, Shelter Commander, at your service.”
He stood up and offered her his hand. She looked at it, cocked an eyebrow, then briefly seized his furry hand before letting it fall.
“I’m Lupe, of the Remaining - formerly known as the Liberators.”
Tyron drooped his eyes respectfully as he realised what this was about. He wished he hadn’t drank before this, it would either make him seem detached or make him feel even worse. Maybe both.
“Then you got my message about-”
“-About David and Destiny. Yes.”
Tyron searched for something to say until the silence became conspicuous. Jennifer came to his rescue:
“I’m sorry. They went down doing the right thing. We should have done more.” She shot Tyron an encouraging look, telling him to go further down this path.
“Yes,” the Dragoknight agreed. “I didn’t get to know David or Destiny half as well as I should have, but they were good people. And neither of them lost sight of their purpose. David went down protecting Destiny, and Destiny went down protecting-”
“-Went down killing the big bad, yeah I get you, don’t oversell it,” said Lupe. “Thank you though.”
She smiled slightly.
“Well, is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Yeah, Clarke, Kami and I just got here. They’re still looking for a room. I’m interested in doing a little farewell ceremony for David and Destiny. Do you have the bodies?”
“We gave David a burial at the time. It’s a ways off but shouldn’t be too hard to find if you don’t mind dodging Tower patrols. Destiny died on their territory. We don’t know what they did with her, but bearing in mind her plan involved a tear in reality…”
Lupe nodded solemnly.
“That sucks. In which case, do you have any belongings of Destiny’s? We could bury them next to David.”
“Yes, certainly.”
Tyron reached into his inventory and pulled out a key ring, then flipped through them until he found the right one.
“This should be the key for Destiny’s room, it’s in the officers’ quarters. Do you know the way or-”
“-I'll be able to find it.”
“Okay.”
Lupe rolled the key over in her hand.
“Destiny’s room,” she smirked. “Glad she finally got to settle down for a while, at least. She never loved all the rushing from place to place due to cataclysmic enemy ambushes.”
“Who would?” Tyron laughed. “Running from Herobrine’s servants, it keeps you fit but it’s not great for that homely feeling.”
Lupe chuckled and out burst a wide grin for a moment, like the sun on a cloudy day.
“Is the gravesite near the frontlines?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll have the ceremony on the day of the attack. After that, we’ll help you finish this.”
“Thank-”
“-Don’t thank me, it’s a point of principle. Besides, thank you for the key, Dragoknight. That means a lot.”
She turned away, tossing the key up and down in her hand. Her other hand was plunged deep into her jeans pocket.
“You can call me Tyron,” he called. “Just so you know.”
“Noted.”
“Friend?” chirped Kir.
“If it helps you sleep at night, sure,” she said with a wink.
Tyron waited until she left, then sat down with a heavy sigh of relief.
“That was stressful. Turned out better than expected though, she seems nice.”
“Tell me about it,” snorted Astro. “I was pretty sure she was about to try and kill you.”
“Really, that bad?”
“Well, maybe not that bad, but definitely something like a big rant about how we all let Destiny down - which, we absolutely did. Good idea on leading with that, Jennifer. I think it defused things a lot.”
“She looked upset. She needed to know her anger was justified,” answered Jennifer with a shrug. “And like you said, we did let her down.”
The mood suddenly dropped a lot. A faint melancholy landed on their shoulders, like a bird with really sharp talons. Andras didn’t seem to know how to engage with this, lacking a lot of necessary context. If Tyron hadn’t known it would make him feel terrible, he might have let himself a stifled laugh at the sight of a hardened adventurer struggling to deal with an unpleasant lull in the conversation.
Shadow spoke up: “Not to make this into a game of misery poker, but you know, if you really think about it, I was the last person with the opportunity to stop Destiny. If it makes you feel any better about your part in her fate, the final responsibility was mine.”
“Well, no,” said Jennifer. “That’s not fair either.”
“Yes, you made an executive decision based on a pretty dire set of circumstances. Not necessarily a good one, but you made a decision,” said Astro.
“It feels like the rest of us just let Destiny slip through the cracks,” agreed Jennifer. “Steve and I made a token effort at first, but after she went off to establish this place with Fire… I guess we just stopped trying. We had our own stuff to deal with.”
Astro nodded limply. Tyron couldn’t help but agree.
“I guess, we all got so wrapped up in our own problems that we lost sight of our goal. Destiny didn’t, she kept going for it. We should all have tried to be a bit more like her.”
“Well, let’s not whitewash things,” Astro challenged. “She kind of shut down after Fristad died - not that I blame her - and as a result Freak was able to manipulate her. She sacrificed herself taking down the Entity, and that was a brave, brave thing, but do you honestly think she was happy in the end?”
“Is that really that important?” asked Jennifer, a little confused. “Aren’t we heroes supposed to be selfless?”
Steve sat back, chewing his lip.
“We’re not all heroes here, Jen,” said Astro with a morbid shake of the head.
Tyron pressed past this. “Okay, she wasn’t a paragon, but the big issue is that she shouldn’t have had to make that sacrifice. She only felt she had to because of our collective decisions, but she did it anyway.”
“Well, when could we have changed things so she didn’t have to do it?” asked Jennifer. “You know, for next time.”
Tyron took a swig of his drink and nervously put it down. It connected with the table a little hard, and some heavybrew spilled out.
“Don’t do that to yourself Jennifer,” said Astro. “You’re never going to find the perfect sequence.”
Tyron’s mind slipped down to a memory he tried not to examine. During the first prison break. The failed one.
Shadow nodded. “At least not the first time, and the power needed to do it over would allow you to win without having to find a sequence at all.”
“Maybe if David hadn’t been so dinged up…” Tyron said. “In the first breakout I… I jumped that first enderman even though Bul wasn’t there. Freak had been working on me for weeks, I couldn’t control myself. I was just so… angry.”
He sat back, staring into space.
“Not your fault,” said Kir.
But in that moment, to him, it was.
“I - I should have just waited until we saw Bul, so Glibby didn’t show up, so David’s gauntlet didn’t burn his arm, so Freak didn’t get the drop on him so easily…”
Everyone got very quiet. The spilled heavybrew slipped from the table, drip, drip, dripping on Tyron’s foot. He noticed that his glass had chipped the surface where he put it down.
“Okay, I’ve got it,” said Steve, stifling a belch.
“Got what?” asked Astro.
“The words that’ll make everything okay, from earlier.”
“Oh. Okay then, philosopher, I think we all need it.”
Tyron allowed himself a bitter chuckle. Steve continued undeterred.
“Well, here’s my reasoning: despite all the stupid drama, the mistakes we made, the fights we lost, I think we’ve all been trying our best. And that hasn’t always been good enough, but we can’t change the past, and without it we wouldn’t know the bar we have to clear. So, I think the words are: ‘I’m glad I know you people. I know you’re giving it your all. And don’t worry, you don’t have to be perfect, you only have to be good enough.’ So, there.”
Steve took another swig. Tyron smiled at him. Astro furrowed his eyebrows and looked at the ceiling. Jennifer rubbed his shoulder affectionately. Shadow leaned back into the cushions with a smile. Andras stroked his beard in contemplation.
“Also,” Steve continued, turning his head to Andras. “This heavybrew stuff is great.” He turned to Shadow. “I can’t believe you and Fire have been holding out on us this long.”
“Apparently Fire shared it with Kay, at least according to Warnado, but that was before I came to Nexus. But I do wonder if the fungus the base substance is harvested from would grow in other worlds.”
Steve howled with laughter.
“Shadow, I was joking, sheesh,” he wiped a tear from his eye. “But also, thanks for the earnest response.” A pause. “I am glad I know you people.”
Tyron nodded, his faint smile becoming a wide grin as Steve’s eyes drifted closed, and his head lolled onto Jennifer’s shoulder.
Chapter76:Final Preparations (Voidblade)
“Believe me, it’s getting bad in there,” he jabbered in the tongue of the End. “Entity said the Ender tried to kill it, Claw’s still recovering. Just told us all to keep guarding the machine. That it changed nothing. Ordered in some reinforcements, but not as many as you’d think. Humans shut up, but we endfolk, we had to be smarter and keep asking questions.”
He sipped the Chorus juice on the table in front of him. His obsidian armour rattled as he did so.
“Some officers got hung up on why none of them had been appointed to succeed the Ender. Entity said it was because Claw would be better any day now. Still wouldn’t tell us where he was being treated. Entity got sick of questions, set Glibby on them…”
The enderman flinched at the memory, let out a guttural noise of discomfort.
“Only Glibby did more. Killed the officers, then told their men to smear grey goop on their scales, recognise him as the new leader. I said yes, I liked the Grey Ones - Silver and I were once brothers in battle - he was good Endfolk. Many said no. Some died. Entity just said ‘Claw will be better any day now’. Then, I ask myself, why is Freak not doing this? Why Glibby? Then I realise, Freak is scared.” He cackles. “The Entity’s pet ghost has fled. Why should I stay?”
Voidblade finished transcribing the defector’s account.
“You say they called for reinforcements? How many?”
“Don’t know. Asked Marcus to come back from campaign, and Forgelight to come back from colonies. Did not specify troop numbers.”
Voidblade grumbled and tapped his pen against the page.
“You know I did not come here out of altruism,” said the defector. “I’m here because Glibby wronged us. You are Endfolk, you know the phrase, ‘They strike one, they fight whole End?’”
Voidblade didn’t say anything. Of course he knew the phrase. His people had gotten themselves driven most of the way to extinction for that phrase.
“I won’t fight my brothers, but I’ll sell you information. I was bodyguard to a very important scientist. Her name was…” He strained out his best human impression. “Veronica Mercury.”
Voidblade jotted the information down.
“Name?”
“Steelborn.”
“Excuse me.”
Voidblade stood up and went into the next room, which looked in on the interrogation room from behind black-tinted glass. Fire and a man with a black handlebar moustache were waiting for the report. Astro paced in the corner.
Voidblade handed it to the man with the handlebar moustache because he did not speak the tongue of the End. He wiped it precisely with a handkerchief, then took it. He said very little, but Astro called him ‘Brit’. Voidblade liked him, not nearly as dramatic as most humans.
After some consideration, Brit spoke.
“Glibby doesn’t form armies. Packs of servants, fanatical drinking clubs, that’s him all over. Something’s got him spooked about whether he’ll be protected or not. Maybe Herobrine joining up has made the Silhouette reconsider his relationship with the Tower.”
And then he fell silent.
“If what the defector said is true, Freak does not have as much control over the situation as we thought. Never a bad thing to be overprepared, though.” Fire said.
“He does feed on fear,” added Astro. “Maybe he thinks he’ll be stronger if his forces are on edge.”
Fire responded: “That might be part of it, but I saw enough of him to know he doesn’t think far ahead. Overall, his fearmongering might benefit us more as a whole.”
Brit nodded impatiently, rapping on a folder hanging from his shoulder with his fingers.
“Will you be needing me further? Don’t trust the demons with my rifles.”
“No, that should be all, thanks Brit,” said Astro. “And, it should be all for you Voidblade.”
“You do not want me to ask follow-up questions?” Voidblade asked, with a glance in the direction of the door.
Fire got up from his chair. “I think it might be best if I talked to him. Directly confronting him with a walking discrepancy in what ‘the Entity’ told him should be effective. Doubly because Claw and him built some rapport.”
As Fire left the room with Astro in tow, Voidblade considered himself dismissed, and warped back up to the surface.
He stood in the entrance of the Shelter, as the sun drifted slowly past the centre of the sky. Thousands rushed to and fro. He teleported up on top of the frame of the entrance and decided to survey the preparations.
On a series of scaffolds set against the ridge, Mencur-Besh and humans darted back and forth, carrying munitions and materials through the almost-finished forms of airships. On the one directly opposite the shelter door, a human directed two of the scaled behemoths as they guided a large mechanism into place on the back, where the rudder might have been on a boat. Voidblade shuddered at the thought of a naval assault, then distracted himself with thoughts of the new machine. Apparently the Mencur-Besh had been working on airships in their own world, and had brought along an engine schematic that used some combination of redstone and glowstone, as well as “mini-pistons”, whatever exactly that entailed.
The plump man in the lilac hat and green cloak came out on the quarterdeck and sat against the railing, calling over the shoulder to the human below.
“And you’re certain this won’t affect mobility, Brad? There is a reason we normally make the rudders out of wood, after all.”
His thick eyebrows were so tightly furrowed that, from that distance, Voidblade could have sworn they were a single grey bar he was about to pull off and scold Brad with.
The Eye-and-Claws officer looked wearily up and said:
“The engine is lighter than you think, the redstone-glowstone mixture creates its own lift once heated and powered, plus the metal holds up much better under the peak forces of the mini-pistons.” He paused. “Look, I can’t guarantee anything until we get this one up in the air, but once we can confirm our design still plays nice in Nexus, there shouldn’t be problems rolling the other ones out.”
The plump man nodded but was obviously chewing on a response he reckoned would get the argument going. Voidblade got the impression this conversation had been happening twice a day for the last few days with neither gaining any ground over the other, so he didn’t see what he would really get out of it. So, as the plump man pulled off his hat and dabbed his brow with it, and Brad the engineer returned warily to his task, expecting an interruption at any second, Voidblade turned his attention to the people below the scaffolding.
He saw Urist and Steve emerging from a mineshaft, each carrying a fortune’s worth of resources. Mostly iron, some diamond. Voidblade had always been dumbfounded by the ability of humans to crawl down into the earth and tear out its riches - it this tendency that made their attacks so constant, their victories so total - but now he couldn’t help but feel relief. More swords, more armour.
They started distributing it to a series of demons who had set up makeshift forges in the open air. Then, a stern, pale man with purple tattoos came up and held out his hand, almost in accusation. Steve stopped and his eyes seemed to glaze over as this happened, and he stood there motionless until Urist laughed and pulled out a stack of obsidian.
“Ye won’t be fittin’ this in yer palm!” laughed the dwarf over the din.
Voidblade rasped jovially, then a strange wave swept over him, a sort of not-unpleasant emptiness. A few years ago, he would never have indulged such a superfluous gesture. The Enderborn had no need for laughter, they savoured wit, they did not spit it out like the humans. But now, after a few weeks of not just living beside them, but living among them, the dam was bursting, and their ways were flooding in, burning him away in the tide. Just as they had burned away his people in back home, with great floods and diamond swords. Was he wrong to mirror them, even if it was just for ease of interaction?
But it wasn’t just humanity. The Villagers, the dwarves like Urist, and even the newly arrived pigmen all seemed to act this way. Why did the endermen stand along in their laconic detachment? The only creatures that seemed to slightly mirror his own were the dragons.
He stood up and scanned the clifftops and sure enough he caught a glimpse of Glowstar swooping down, regal, and elegant, followed by the enthusiastic plummet of Brine’s pet - the fledgling enderdragon. The young one had apparently never been among his people, and kept mimicking their every move, even when it was clearly beyond his abilities. Glowstar began to pull up a long way above the people preparing below, and still Drake struggled to correct his course, managing to drift into a nearby jungle tree. The elder dragon saw this and literally roared with laughter, drawing some heads but not nearly as many as he used to with such a gesture.
That was what Voidblade meant - even the dragons engaged in these loud, crass displays of emotion. And that’s not to say he wanted to join them - he had tried every now and then to mimic human speech when alone and confident no one could hear him, and it simply felt barbaric - but he couldn’t help but wonder why they felt the need to do this.
He looked out at the fields. Entire battalions trained out there, and tents stretched as far as the sunrise. And, somewhere amidst them, Herobrine, the butcher of Voidblade’s people, or someone rather like him, roamed free as a wild beast. He thought about what would have happened if he had convinced his own people to come. Chances are, if they had even come this far, they would have seen the tents, the swords, and the airships and teleported as far away as they could. Voidblade would have done the same a few months ago. But now he wouldn’t, he would actually feel comforted. Could he bring this feeling back home? Obviously, things were different - there was the war to think about - but did they have to stay that way?
A small shower of dirt and rocks signaled the return of a party of hunters from the mountains, carrying two dead endermen with them. Kay stood at their head, flanked by two of his red-scarved loyalists. He cast an eye around the camp in an attempt at regal satisfaction, but he must not have liked what he saw, because he turned his face away and began to wipe his bloody sword off in the grass.
Beneath him, he heard some interesting chatter.
“No, I’m glad I could help you out,” said Jennifer, head bobbing like a leaf in fierce winds. “If there’s anything else I can tell you about her… um, stay in Nexus, just let me know.”
“Thank you, Jennifer,” said the one they called Clarke, one of the Remaining. “We’ll let you and Tyron know about the ceremony. Unless there is anyone else you can think of?”
“I’ll put the word about, naturally. We all owe Destiny a lot, David too. But no one specific comes to mind.”
“I’ll come,” called Kay. He straightened up and sheathed his sword. “If I’d be welcome, of course.”
“Yes, of course!” the one they called Kami cheered back. Then, in a lower voice: “Is he the prisoner she let out?”
Both Jennifer and Lupe nodded, sharing an askance look.
“Just wanted to make sure. Obviously she trusted him at least a little.”
Kay pretended not to hear and excused himself. Sensing they were about to leave, Voidblade poked his head out over the lip of the Shelter’s entrance. He locked eyes with Lupe, and before he had really thought about it, croaked:
“May I come, too?”
He hoped they didn’t ask him why. “She’s the only one who didn’t try to talk to me all the time,” would be a little difficult for the humans to understand.
“She was respectful,” tried Voidblade.
“Sure, we’ll let you know on the day.”
Their plan was to go to David’s grave, and bury a broken, golden necklace she used to wear back in her world. Voidblade had never seen it. Maybe she brought it with her and kept it secret, maybe she left it behind for a reason. That was not for them to know.
The Remaining left. Jennifer looked up at him.
“You okay up there V?”
“I am getting some fresh air.”
“Haha! You sure are, be careful up there! Need you healthy for our rematch,” she laughed.
She slipped back inside, trailing a shock of bright red hair, and Voidblade mulled over her reaction. He hadn’t been making a ‘joke’, but he had known it would make her laugh because humans laughed at incongruity and understatements. A human wouldn’t normally go up to a very high place just to get some air, ergo it must be a joke. He didn’t know that a few weeks ago. But he still didn’t feel much satisfaction from ‘cracking’ it. Not to Jennifer, at least.
Voidblade cast one eye out to those preparing. He saw Tyron, flanked by Rose on one side and Lucy on the other. Lucy - there was someone he might be happy cracking a joke at. He felt a smile creep over his face. He looked intensely at her, trying to catch her eye. Eventually she got snagged on his stare and beamed. She waved wildly and jumped up so he could see. He responded with a stiff, little jerk of the hand, as though he were wiping a dusty window so as to see through. His lips parted and he allowed himself something like a smile. He didn’t entirely feel it, but it seemed to make Lucy beam brighter still, so he reckoned it was worth it.
Beneath the flapping of dragon’s wings, the hammering of demons and airship builders, and the distant yells of warriors out on drills, Voidblade heard another noise that seemed all the more urgent - his stomach rumbled. And a very specific meal came to mind. Something he hadn’t had in far too long, and which Jennifer calling him ‘V’ had just reminded him of.
He teleported to the training room, and immediately saw who he was looking for. Warnado, the small, hooded demon child was surrounded by bullseyes and skewered meat. As Rose had instructed him, he summoned a chicken drumstick and let it fall in front of the target, then he would summon one of his luminous weapons and pin it to the bullseye.
At the far end of the training room, he could see a slight shimmer in the air, indicating Shadow had slipped into a pocket dimension to safely instruct her more advanced Coven members.”
Amanda stood off to the side, practising more conventionally with her crossbow under the supervision of a red-haired man in diamond armour.
“So, a thing I like to do is, if I’m in close quarters, shunt the weapon forward as though you’re going to hit them…” he guided her arms forward. “Then, stop! Nine times out of ten, your attacker will flinch. That’s when you shoot them.”
She repeated the motion.
“Like that?”
“Aye.”
“Thanks, I’ve been making axes work in close range, but crossbows are my hometown.”
“Well, if you ever want to visit axe country,” he twirled a chipped hand axe demonstratively. “Don’t hesitate to send me a letter. I’d best be off.”
“Thanks again, you didn’t tell me your name?”
“I’m Secret, you might know K-” He saw the look on Amanda’s face. Warnado froze up. “-Astro. I’m Astro’s friend.”
“Of course you are,” she sighed. “I’m Amanda, I’ll see you around.”
The red-haired archer walked past Voidblade with a respectful nod, chewing his lip and looking haunted.
She turned to Warnado.
“Sorry, Helix, I didn’t know who he was, he just came up and offered help. Like I knew he was one of Astro’s guys, but I didn’t know he used to be one of Kay’s.”
Warnado finished another round.
“Amanda, you don’t need to keep apologising every time you come across someone who knows him. Kay has talked a lot of crap to a lot of people, and sometimes it’s crap that makes them like him.”
He started doing stretches. Voidblade wondered if he should come back.
“Yeah, but, you know, if that’s Secret from the files-”
Voidblade remembered the rundown Astro gave the other officers ‘just in case’. Secret wasn’t actually that bad. Aside from some of the ‘contract work’ he and Kay used to do. After that he seems to have become quite respectable.
“-Kay has a type. I don’t know if he picks friendly people and makes them killers, or whether he picks killers and slaps a smiley face on them, but they’re probably not all bad. Don’t worry, I’m not going to be traumatised by their presence.”
Amanda smiled.
“And if Kay tries anything again - I already beat the Book - I’ll just give him a wedgie and that should settle things.”
He shadowboxed demonstratively. Then, his luminous, red eyes somehow lit up even further.
“Or, I’ll summon lava.”
“No.”
“Sorry-can’t-hear-you! V, my man, I know what you’re doing here! I see you sniffing around every time I’m doing accuracy exercises.”
Voidblade warped down to him and gestured to the chicken legs strewn across the room.
“May I?”
Warnado clicked his fingers and a pile of fresh chicken drumsticks appeared in the air before Voidblade. He held out his arms and hugged a considerable number to his chest, but still more spilled every which way. Seconds after the chicken, the smell cascaded down on him. There was something about the way they seasoned chicken wherever the child was summoning them from. Voidblade just couldn’t get enough of them.
“Thank you.”
“Glad to be of service, V.”
Voidblade turned and put on foot on the step, but seeing as he was reckoning with how humans were influencing his interpersonal relationships, he contemplated a risky manoeuvre. He wanted to try and be heartfelt - just to see how it worked, and because Warnado was clearly still in a pretty fragile place.
“And for the nickname.”
“Huh?”
“My nickname, ‘V’, you started it. Thank you, I like it.”
“Oh, it’s a little elementary but-”
“-Basic is good, I had not had a nickname before. It was nice to start simple.”
“You’re welcome. I mean, I could give you another?”
The child developed another improbable glow in his eyes. Voidblade realised he was about to lose control of this conversation, but the child seemed to need this. Probably. At least, Voidblade hoped the child had some emotional need for this.
“Please.”
Warnado stroked his chin, then whispered to Amanda intently, who also assumed a look of utmost focus. Finally, he concluded.
“How about V.B.?”
“Just one extra letter? Is that necessary?”
“Okay, I’ve got it.” He summoned another chicken-leg and shot another bullseye. “Veebs!”
“Definitely not,” said Amanda and Voidblade in unison.
“Veebus Apollo!” he fired this one through his legs, missing the bullseye completely but seeming completely unfazed in his enthusiasm.
“Is that a reference to something?” asked Amanda with an eyebrow cocked in Voidblade’s direction.
“Probably,” cackled Warnado. “Don’t know what, though. Sometimes words just come to me.”
The saliva building in Voidblade’s mouth became too much to bear so he started to back away. The demon-child kept pacing, firing increasingly inaccurate shots in the direction of the bullseyes.
“Blade Lively, star of Sisterhood of the Teleporting Pants!”
Amanda shot Voidblade a thumbs up and a grateful smile. Voidblade considered this a successful manoeuvre in the dangerous world of human socialising. Voidblade’s foot crossed the threshold, and he teleported away to enjoy his reward.
Chapter77:Giving and Taking (Steve/Kay/Fire/Warnado)
Steve had fallen asleep the second the fortifications were complete. Nothing fancy. Just two-block high walls to keep the mobs out. A small trench to discourage the Tower. Now, Steve didn’t tire easily, but after marching for more than a full day, then overseeing the construction of fortifications sufficient to cover a camp filled with tens of thousands of people, he had finally reached his limit.
The fortifications weren’t even completely “done” when he left - they were just good enough. As he and Jennifer sleepwalked back to their tents, the Mencur-Besh and pigmen kept on going, deepening trenches, strengthening walls, expanding artillery emplacements. It just never ended with those people!
He hadn’t dreamt. No ominous portents of doom or oblique hints at how to win. Nothing. As far as he was concerned, he had just closed his eyes, and like flicking a lever on a redstone lamp, the sun had clicked on.
Jennifer was already up, sorting her inventory. As she removed a stack of cobble and replaced it with yet another splash poison potion, Steve rolled out of bed and walked up to the wooden door of the tent. He snapped it open and there it was: the Tower. With the sun glinting off the copper plating at the top it looked like a torch, and he was one of the mobs it was there to stop from spawning.
He reached into his pocket and eyeballed the clock. It was maybe an eighth of the way into daytime.
“We’re supposed to meet with Fire later, right?” he asked, knowing full well that he was forgetting something.
“Yeah, later. He said it’s about new equipment. Sounds a little late for anything serious to me, but that Halberdson guy does keep offering to sell him everything in the world, so maybe he’s actually suggested something we could use.”
Steve shrugged. It was Fire, he knew what he was doing.
Jennifer equipped and de-equipped her enchanted diamond, then tried a plain back-up set.
“Still, we’ve got some time before then, though, because people are heading to David’s grave...”
That was the thing he was forgetting.
“Breakfast?” he asked.
“Sure. Ozen’s cooking. It should be nice.”
After a brief walk to the primary mess tent and saying hi to Ozen - who looked absolutely ecstatic in his apron and chef’s hat - they found themselves sitting at a table next to Voidblade. As per usual, Voidblade was quiet, and they knew better than to bother him too much at this point. The most noise he made came from a large, slightly dry-looking chicken leg. For a few peaceful minutes they just sat and ate their sandwiches and mushroom stew. But then, of course, duty called.
The villager lady, Olanna, came up to Jennifer and began to discuss troop arrangements. Someone in her unit had sprained their ankle setting up the camp and now wouldn’t make for much of a skirmisher, so Olanna wanted to see if she could reshuffle him to the artillery and maybe swipe one of theirs to replace him. Secretly, both of them seemed to suspect he wanted an excuse not to fight at all, and on any other day they might have let him take it. But this was the big game. All hands on deck.
Steve immediately found himself accosted by the hooded guy from Arcation, Gogyst. These guys were starting to bug Steve - they kept asking to be basically entrusted with an entire front to themselves, and that day was no different. He appreciated the can-do attitude at first, but at a certain point he got the impression Gogyst just wanted Steve to know how much tougher than him he was. Steve just hoped he didn’t get anyone killed with that attitude.
One of the co-chiefs of the hunters came up to ask about their planned route through the outer complex so that she could potentially adjust the hunters' route. Something she and Kay were discussing. Jennifer shot Steve a knowing look and he chuckled. There was no chance Kay would let whatever she had in mind interfere with his grand plan to redeem himself.
Around this time, a man in a black hat sat on a table and started playing songs on his ukulele, just about managing to be heard above the increasing chatter of nervous troops. He took off his hat and placed it upside down on the table, and occasionally people would throw a scrap of food or a nugget of gold in there.
Astro and Shadow briefly flashed into view as Astro stabbed his head and arm into the tent to telepathically grab a small armful of apples. Each of his fingers had an energy-storing ring on them. He shot back out almost as quickly, chatting away to Shadow the whole time. Steve could have sworn he saw them laughing as they did so. He was glad they had managed to smooth things over. A few of the coven mages trailed after them, with Wolfric consulting a tome and bringing up the rear.
Urist sat down across from Voidblade and immediately began to explain a dream he had just awoken from about a mine that went up instead of down. Seth, kitted out in enchanted diamond, sat down as well.
Kay walked by, conversing with Raphoe and Clarke from the Remaining, the latter of which seemed substantially less happy to be a part of the discussion. Kay slowed down to toss a diamond into the upturned hat of ukulele-guy, before returning to his latest attempt to prove to Clarke that Destiny hadn’t wasted her effort on him.
Rose also stopped by to remind Steve that she might need a lift between airships on the back of Drake. She proposed several signals but eventually they just agreed to use the radios Fire had cooked up with the detective guy.
At that moment, a booming laugh sounded out.
“You can’t be serious! Steve, get over here!”
Several individuals turned their heads, but Steve Brine immediately knew he was the recipient. Across the room, clad in obsidian and beckoning to him, was Herobrine. The glowing-eyed giant of a man stood next to the ukulele-guy. Steve shot Jennifer an uneasy look and then went over.
“How can I help?” Steve asked.
“Your surname’s Brine, isn’t it? My equivalent’s your father, am I right?”
“Yeah?”
“You’ll never guess who this man is,” he gestured to ukulele-guy.
Out of politeness, he tried, but he really couldn’t recognise a single feature of the blue-eyed, brown-goateed musician. Steve felt like he was in a bad dream. Not exactly a nightmare, but one that was unpleasantly weird in just enough ways it might actually wind up traumatising him a little more in the long run.
“Who is it?”
Ukulele-guy rose from sitting to a dramatic kneel.
“It’s your awesomest uncle and/or son of all time!” He exclaimed. “Dinnerbone!”
“Who?” thought Steve.
“No way!” said Steve with feigned enthusiasm.
Just to make matters worse, Herobrine brought them both into a profound bear-hug.
“Travel between worlds is mad!” chortled the man who looked distressingly like Steve’s former archnemesis.
“You’ve got that right,” he grunted, straining against Herobrine’s massive arms.
Thankfully, Tyron arrived just in time. Today he wore a full set of diamond armour over his fur, engraved slightly to indicate his rank. An opening had been made in the lower back to allow him access to the blue portal of his inventory. Kir sat in a jewel-encrusted scabbard on his hip, lined with velvet on the inside for their comfort.
“Hey, Steve! We’re leaving, I need you with me!” he called.
“Rescuing you,” Kir explained in the telepathy equivalent of whisper-shouting. “Be cool.”
“Dragoknight!” called Herobrine, “Don’t you see the cross-dimensional family resemblance?”
Tyron squinted for a second. He resolved to humour the literal god.
“Oh yeah,” he nodded. “That is cool. Listen, sorry, Clarke says they’re holding the memorial-funeral thing in the next fifteen minutes. We’ve got to get over to David’s grave.”
Steve remembered how he had tried to dig the grave, but the hole he made in the ground had been too cavernously big, leaving Tyron and Fristad to actually do the job. Suffice to say, this did not make him feel more comfortable, but he was glad to have an excuse.
But, of course, ukulele-guy had to speak up.
“Is the demon-kid going to be there? Warnado125?”
And, of course, Steve’s stupid brain made him say: “Yes, I think so.”
“Good, I need to talk to him.”
“Oh,” Tyron half-groaned. “What about?”
“I’m from his world, I heard about all this from one of the emissaries you were sending out in the name of some ash-king guy. Glad to hear he’s not around anymore, he sounded weird.”
Steve felt his blood pressure reach as high as the sun then loop around it.
“Long story short, he’s one of the heroes of this thing called the Dark Prophecy,” Dinnerbone stopped and pointed to Herobrine. “You’re part of it actually!” Then, to Steve. “You too, come to think of it. Kind of.”
“Small multiverse!” howled Herobrine.
“But yeah, he’s a hero of the prophecy, I’m getting the vibe that things are heating up. Jeb’s been acting real weird, apparently the Lich got out a while back. It’s probably best if the little guy starts making his way to Notch Island, and it’s probably best if he hears it from me. I’m kind of the loremaster where I come from.”
“I would also like to come along,” began Herobrine. “To pay my respects to the woman who-”
“No,” all three said in unison.
“Yeah, sorry buddy, part of the kid’s job is beating you,” said Dinnerbone. “Well, like, another you. It’ll be weird just having you in the background, kind of worried about sending him mixed messages you know?”
“And the funeral’s being run by people who fought a war to kill you,” pressed Tyron.
“And won,” Steve concluded through gritted teeth.
“Ah, I see. In which case, I’ll see you on the front line. My condolences.”
He excused himself and left the tent, barely looking fazed at all.
And with one final pained look, the three of them departed to say farewell to their fallen comrade.
###
The funeral went as well as it could have, from a personal perspective. I kept my distance. I tried to look appropriately solemn, but not devastated in a way that might distract from the primary mourners - the Remaining. And I developed a very good opinion of them out of it, even if they all rightly distrusted me.
They just buried those belongings of Destiny which they could find. A broken gold locket. A tattered bow. A hair tie Kami remembered lending her for her ponytail. Then Clarke sang a song. He sang it rather well. The odd fellow in the black hat probably shouldn’t have started strumming along, granted, but Clarke took it in stride. Lupe stared at David’s grave for a while, whispering something, and we all pretended not to notice. Then, it ended.
Now, I found myself patrolling the camp, occasionally being approached by one of the red-scarved men upon whom I have imprinted the likeness of my failure. No practical questions, just reaffirmations of loyalty. I tried to admire their fidelity. After all, they refused to believe the worst of what was said. It’s not their fault it was true. I hoped I would be able to lead them to some degree of victory in the coming battle.
I caught a glimpse of Helix talking to black-hat. He looked upset. I recalled the era where I might have been the person to comfort him. Or at least, to accost black-hat for distressing him. I began to walk forward. The skin of my finger caught in the cracked glass of the goggles, and blood snaked across the surface. I had not realised I had even reached for them. I backed away, then turned and saw Him.
His eyes shone even against the slow-rising morning sun behind, pale and cool. He strode toward me, inevitable as a roaring tide. Still, I turned, trying to escape Him. I rushed towards a gap between two tents, made it most of the way down, and then it appeared before me.
The Wraith, the ragged ghost who wandered while He slept, stood before me. Its eyes shone a searing dark shade atop its brittle, twig-like form. Desiccated, dirty, and ragged, it stared at me. I knew there was nowhere to run to.
Herobrine approached from behind.
“Kay.”
“My lord.”
I turned and bowed. I dared not look up, but I heard His footfalls, heavy with obsidian, thunder forward like a distant storm. When the toes of His armoured boots finally came into view, Herobrine took a hold of my chin and began to pull my head up. I tried to resist, but then gave in. His pale, cool eyes shot into view. I felt the blood in my body turn tail and begin to run in the opposite direction, away from whatever punishment this was about to become.
And he didn’t say anything. Until:
“We should have done better.”
“No argument here.”
He sighed and ran his knuckles down the fabric of the nearest tent. A gust of wind set it rippling against Him, like tremors in the earth. I could have sworn I saw the light in his eyes flicker. His mouth kept opening and closing.
“Your speech gave me much to think about…”
I straightened into a stiff, military posture. Not confrontational, but unwilling to bow.
“I assure you, you’re putting more thought into it than I did.”
He continued, making a point of pretending not to hear me.
“...I have often wondered what might have happened if I had kept you from leaving. Whether I might have prevented what came next…”
“...But, of course, I couldn’t have stayed-”
“-Because of the Thaumlands, I know.” He lifted his hand from the tent and put it on my shoulder. I drew back.
“You would have had to act fast,” I continued. “There are already many things I wish someone had prevented.”
I heard the crack of glass as Helix dropped the goggles again and again. “You piece of ****!” Astro howled in my ear once more, and my jaw ached in agreement.
“Perhaps,” he nodded. “And I would have had to stop the burnings.”
I waited for him to justify them. A necessary sacrifice, to show the Court of Whispers how strong we still were. ‘Look at us, we have lost Notch, and we are still powerful enough to turn on our allies without fear of you.’ And it had worked. The Court of Whispers had seen how strong they still were, and had slipped back away into unsettling obscurity.
“It was supposed to be a bit of posturing to discourage the Endlings, and maybe it achieved that. We did a lot of posturing at that time, so it’s hard to say what worked and what didn’t. But truth be told my family were still angry at us for the Onslaught. For spilling so much Divine blood. For making them look weak. And I was tired, and grieving, so I let them inflict that anger on my people.”
I felt tears coming to my eyes. At last! Honesty.
“Jeb is my nephew, I love him dearly, but he is making the errors of his father, and I am making the same errors I made back then. When Notch cursed my people for the Golden Revolution, instead of trying to undo it, I entered my slumber. Jeb burned their land, and still I slept. I will not fight him, but this must change. Thank you for waking me.”
He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. I did not draw away this time. I threw my arms around his mighty form. He who I had fought for had returned. But could His Lap Dog still be recovered? Could I break free from the chains of history written-yet-unlived?
“Do you think I can change what is to come, my lord?”
He moved from my shoulder to stroke my mane of hair. He didn’t say anything.
“By the mods, I swear that I shall,” I hissed.
My streaming eyes drifted to the Tower, blazing in the sun - a cleansing fire that would redeem me.
###
Compared to the other division leaders, Fire’s role as leader of the Mencur-Besh was less involved, at least to outside onlookers. Where others gave instructions and did last-minute rehearsals of battle plans, Fire had flown upwards using his flaming wings, overlooking the troops.
In reality Fire’s task was just as difficult, thousands of information fragments from the Mencur-Besh network flashed through his mind each minute. Assuming the position of leader had placed him right at the center of the collective’s shared mind. The number of sensations and information was staggering but Fire was still able to keep up, no doubt owing to how long he had been part of the network, the thoughts were almost like his own.
The Mencur-Besh collective was currently considering the ideal strategy to take for the upcoming battle, the overall consensus was that they should be fighting at the very forefront. This way they could take the brunt of the enemy attacks without putting the remaining troops at risk. Naturally some Mencur-Besh would stay behind, particularly the Ender-aligned ones would reinforce the Shelter’s mages.
Once the strategy was finalized, Fire gave the order for the collective to fully link up. Over the course of a few seconds the frequency of the information fragments crossing Fire’s mind increased hundredfold, then suddenly stopped. Fire could feel the presence of the consciousness that had now formed from the individual minds. He was no longer listening to messages in a distributed network, he was now in contact with a singular being.
He transmitted a request for a status report.
The Mencur-Besh replied: “This is larger than what I was after I first came here. I am something more.”
Fire internally chuckled and sent back: “Welcome to being a full consciousness. Do you want a name?”
The reply came with equal amusement: “No, for now my designation as Mencur-Besh will suffice. I will think about a name once a more permanent arrangement is found. I am aware that I can not remain like this if I return home. Once we do, do not trouble yourself with the matter, you have already guided me to this point, I am confident that someday I will find a way for myself.”
Fire said: “That is good to hear. I assume we can expect unprecedented feats of coordination in the upcoming battle?”
The Mencur-Besh answered: “Certainly. I may lose many bodies, but the collective will always survive.”
No more needed to be said. Now that Fire’s thoughts were freed up, he took in his surroundings again. Off in the distance the Tower dominated the horizon, impossibly tall and ever-branching. Droves of soldiers were already in position all around the outer perimeter, occasionally an artillery piece could be seen sticking up between the masses of bodies.
Closer to Fire were the Shelter’s soldiers, roaming around inside the fortifications and getting themselves ready for battle. A bit further away were Shadow’s mages, who still very much were the Coven, but had lost all of the hostility they apparently held, only some grudges against Kay in particular remained. Shadow was there too, giving some last instructions and making sure everyone was up to snuff on their spells.
Fire had seen the Sunbeam before, both through Claw’s eyes from a distance and during the final training sessions Shadow held with the Coven before departure. Of course, he’d also seen it many times before that, the Sunbeam and many other group-cast spells were originally Mencur-Besh creations that Shadow had adapted for casters that were not mentally linked. He’d see the Sunbeam again soon, it and a handful of other spells that the Coven had practiced in the meantime.
As Fire flew over to the mages it seemed like Shadow was done with her instructions, she levitated upwards to join him in the sky.
“Everything ready?” Fire asked.
Shadow smiled. “As ready as it can be. I see the Mencur-Besh also linked up, it was quite fascinating to look at while it happened, I don’t think I have ever seen magical energy patterns like that.”
In the days between his return and now Fire and Shadow hadn’t gotten to talk much, they had each been too busy with their respective responsibilities. Fire didn’t exactly want to talk to his sister about a certain topic, but he knew that they both needed to.
It seemed that Shadow thought the same, she began: “So, about my whole… Void apocalypse situation. I don’t know why it happened, something about losing you just, I don’t know, it did something.”
Fire nodded. “When the Entity tried to absorb me, it stopped once it found you in my memories, it seemed to understand that killing me would result in you being overtaken by the Void. Then, when it gave me my memories back it let slip a fragment of its own perception. It was like looking at myself, but I was like a big snarl of strings with one going off into the distance.”
Shadow didn’t answer for a few seconds, deep in thought. “I saw something similar, back when the Prophet died. I saw strings too, one of them pointed towards the Entity. The strings somehow point out causal relationships, but other than that I don’t know.”
Fire sighed. “I suppose we can investigate further once this is done. Are you still able to access your Void magic?”
“Yes, it’s a little more difficult but I can still do it. I probably won’t use it during the battle, seeing what happened last time. Still, good to have it as an option.” Shadow paused. “So, what about you? You seem to have perfected the wings, with them not melting your armor.”
Fire said: “I wouldn’t quite say perfected, but they work well enough. I still have a little less than half of my initial energy, so it should last through the battle. I will fight with the Mencur-Besh at the frontlines, but I will watch out for myself, I know what is at stake.”
Shadow gave Fire a smile. “I know you will.”
Fire remembered something. “So, Shadow. I hear you captured the Entity’s zweihander?”
The obsidian sword materialized in Shadow’s hand, then handed it to her brother. Fire took it and swung it around. The blade was perfectly balanced and roughly the right size for him. He could definitely work with this.
Fire took a deep breath and entered an enchanting trance. First, he manifested runes made from densely packed flames, five big ones and several dozen small ones. The enchantment he had in mind was not particularly complex, but it would help greatly. With a low hum he began stabilizing the runes around the zweihander that had floated out of Fire’s hand and was now stationary in front of him.
He slowly added layers to his voice to cement his control over the runes, positioning them around the sword, first the large ones, then the smaller ones around them. The runes shuddered once the final configuration was achieved, prompting Fire to erratically modulate his voice to keep everything in place. With a shout he channeled a large amount of energy into the runes all at once, causing them to violently snap into the sword. Once he was sure the enchantment was successful, he reached out. When his palm touched the handle, he could immediately feel the enchantment attune to his life force, the zweihander was now not just a weapon but an extension of Fire himself. To test this connection, he cast a pyromancy spell that immediately engulfed the blade in flames, extending far beyond its tip. With a quick swing he cast the flames outwards, arcing them across the sky.
With satisfaction Fire let the zweihander disappear into his inventory.
Shadow nodded in approval. “Very fitting, using the Entity’s old weapon against its usurper.”
Fire asked: “Shadow, do you mind teleporting us to the leadership tent? I have a few things to give out.”
“Not a problem.” Shadow said, and the next second they already stood in the aforementioned tent.
As expected, a fair portion of the Shelter leadership was present. The mood was cautiously positive, they had all finished with their respective preparations and were now waiting for the officers lower in the chain of command to report that their troops were ready.
Warnado and Amanda sat in the far corner of the tent, partially hidden behind a large fold in the fabric. Fire didn’t need Shadow’s magic to see the tension in Warnado’s face, but it was clear the quarter-demon did his best to hide it. Astro stood over the central table, energetically going over the blueprints of the Tower’s upper floors Fire had drawn up. Steve, Jennifer, and Tyron sat at the same table, engaged in conversation.
Fire however turned his attention towards Urist, Voidblade and Rose who were standing a short distance away.
He approached them. “How are you holding up?”
Voidblade looked to the other two to speak. Urist replied: “Na bad, na bad. Biggest battle o’ me life ahead, na even tha Great Ancestral Blood Feud’s culmination could hold a candle ta this.”
Rose shrugged. “Job’s the same as ever. Cut up the other guys. Just now I’ll do it high up in the air from the back of a dragon, don’t have those in my world outside of myths.”
Voidblade seemed to have nothing to add.
Fire nodded. “Since I will be using the sword Shadow captured from the Entity, I won’t be using my regular weapons. I thought that I’d give them to you, not just as weapons but as tokens of gratitude for helping me build up to this.”
Fire handed his halberd to Voidblade, who simply said: “Thank you, Fire.”
Next were his set of two daggers for Rose. She seemed positively thrilled at being given even sharper instruments of murder. Finally, Urist received Fire’s mace, which was rather large for the dwarf, but Fire had the feeling that this was an upside from Urist’s point of view, he always did like his heavy weapons.
“Use them well.” Fire said before turning around.
There were two more weapons he had to give away, first his sword, but finding a recipient would prove rather challenging with the number of named-and-important-sword users in their group. The second weapon was his ghast bone bow, he already had a recipient in mind for it.
Just before Fire was about to walk over to the central table, the entrance to the tent was pushed open and through came Lucy, wearing a set of light iron armor, but still with her notebook in hand. She greeted Fire with a quick raise of her hand, but approached the people seated at the table instead.
She said: “Just wanted to quickly report that divisions three through eight are fully combat ready, except for their radios, but they said they’re working on that. Siege engines are also constructed, and artillery will be ready within the next half-hour. Any orders I should relay directly?”
Tyron replied: “Nothing new, we’ll get in touch with the airship crew ourselves. Astro is still looking for a good breach point.”
“Found it,” Astro said with triumph. “We’re going in through the old prison cell - the fancy one.”
Tyron snorted and Lucy noted it down.
And just like that Lucy was gone again, back in the Shelter, she had always kept herself busier than she needed to but here every bit of effort was required.
Fire spoke to Astro directly, but his tone indicated he was addressing all four of the people at the table.
“I still have some weapons I won’t be using during the battle, and I thought I’d give them out to you.”
Now that Fire had their attention, he continued: “My bow will most likely go to Jennifer. I also have a spare sword, but I don’t know if any of you want it.”
Jennifer stood up. “I’ll take the bow if it’s good.”
Fire manifested his ghast bone bow from his inventory. The pure-white bones were etched with deep-blue patterns that slightly reflected the ambient light.
He explained to Jennifer: “It’s made from ghast bones, due to that and its size, it has a high draw weight, but once it’s drawn it takes very little strength to hold the arrow. It’s enchanted to further enhance the speed and accuracy of the shot.”
She nodded and took the bow, drawing back the string, getting a feel for it.
Fire looked back at the other three people sitting at the table, it was time to decide who would get the sword.
Tyron spoke first: “I can hardly replace Kir.”
Steve said: “Excalibur has served me well, but I’m up for dual wielding if Astro doesn’t want it.”
Astro pulled out his sword.
“Amicus used to belong to Kay. I tried to rename it Doloris for a while, but I slid right back into the old name. I think I could use a change, and obviously I would be honoured to wield your sword, Fire. You have been an excellent leader throughout all of this, and I’m sorry if I’ve ever held back from acknowledging that.”
Fire laid down the sword on the table. “Thank you, Astro, I appreciate it. The sword does not have a name, so feel free to give it one.”
Astro returned Amicus to its sheath and took up Fire’s sword. He smirked at Shadow.
“I think I’ll call it… Dodgeball.”
Shadow laughed out in response. “Well played Astro, well played.”
And with that, Fire and Shadow joined the round at the table, making conversation while they waited for the remaining troops to be ready for the assault on the Tower.
###
Warnado sat on a birch-log beam holding up the airship docks. People ran back and forth upstairs, issuing orders, exchanging what might have been their last words, providing some necessary fluff. And it wasn’t just nobodies, a lot of important people were talking and interacting in interesting combinations. Warnado didn’t really care.
“Yeah, you should probably go to Notch Island. Wait, no come back-”
Dinnerbone had kept whispering to him during the funeral, and Warnado had kept moving to a different spot in the crowd. Not because talking during a eulogy was socially inappropriate. If he’d been in a better mood, Warnado would probably have been the one to do something like that. Not to be disrespectful, just to keep things interesting.
Regardless, it bummed him out. If they won today, everyone else would go back home, and he would go off to fulfil the “Dark Prophecy”. While all his friends went on summer vacation, he was stuck going to a summer school where Herobrine was the mean gym teacher.
He looked down at his gauntlet, and readied to reach out with his mind. It was time.
He dodged as a clod of dirt flew up to hit his head.
“Helix! You okay?”
It was Amanda, kitted up for the fight and smirking up at him.
“I am, thanks to my lightning-fast reflexes!” he yelled back down. “What if you’d hit me and I fell off?”
“You can fly, donko.”
“Since when?”
“You’re terrible.”
“Probably.”
Amanda pulled out one of her axes and started climbing the struts up to him like a teenage lumberjack. Warnado’s hand instinctively reached out.
“Hey, be careful,” Warnado said.
“I am.”
“Do it more.” He tried to look away but kept being drawn back. “I worry.”
“Okay,” she laughed.
Amanda climbed the struts and tightrope walked along the beam to him.
“She’s awesome,” thought Warnado.
Finally, she sat down beside him. She reached out for his hand. He put an arm around her and rested his head against hers. He jabbed her with one of his hood-covered horns and quickly corrected, hoping she hadn’t noticed.
“Ow.”
He began to draw away, but she pulled him back in. They both laughed.
“You’re not getting away that easy.”
Amanda drew his attention to two of Astro’s buddies and Steve’s brother, Ozen, talking with Glowstar, the dragon who looked like the backdrop of a planetarium. The dragon was trying to look regal, and up there he was probably pulling it off. However, it wasn’t the world’s biggest walkway and, from down there, Amanda and Warnado could see how tightly his claws were packed together and how hard he was having to clench for the wind not to push him off.
He smiled, but soon looked back down at the gauntlet. Amanda’s eyes followed his.
“Dinnerbone bugging you, huh?”
He considered shrugging, trying not to worry her, but she deserved better.
“That’s a one-word response dripping with melancholy coming right up!”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want fries with that?”
He almost laughed at how funny he was in his own brain, but Amanda spoke and distracted him.
“You know I’m going to be there with you, right? The whole way.”
He felt warm inside and decided now was as good a time as any. He pulled out the necklace of shattered diamond and string. Just as they had seen so long ago in the crystal’s vision, just as he had made it so long before that.
“Yes,” he answered. “I do.”
Amanda lifted it in her hand.
“Is this the same one?”
“Well, I made it the same way. The last one uh…”
He tried to think of a romantic way of saying ‘was stolen by pillaging bandits’.
“Smart enough to make it twice,” she teased. “You really aren’t half as dense as you look.”
He laughed. She handed it over to him and gestured for him to put it on her. He did so slowly, feeling her hair brush against his fingers, and watching the gems roll softly against her neck. He looked up, their eyes met, and it was like a magnet pulled him onward. Their lips touched.
“Say it,” his brain said. “Say ‘I love you’ to her, right now.”
“Kind of busy, bud,” answered Warnado. “Buy yeah, sounds good.”
He pulled back, and he tried to talk but only managed an excited noise somewhere between a gasp and a laugh. He collected himself, opened his mouth to talk, for real this time.
Suddenly, there was a high-pitched squeal in their ears - the communication system Fire had put together with Brit so Kir could finally take a break as the team’s collective Zoom. He winced, as did Amanda.
“Okay, that should be it working. Can you hear me, Lupe?”
It was Kay.
Warnado could have sworn he heard Fire’s voice as though he were on the other side of a very loud room.
“No… on open channel,” came the muffled voice.
“Sorry, I’ll try to fix that,” said Kay. “Is that better?”
Kay sounded approximately 2% louder than before.
“You’re on an open channel, Kay,” said Lucy. “Please move to your allocated frequency.”
“How’s that?” said Kay, demonstrably still in the same channel.
Warnado and Amanda exchanged a look that communicated that they were both slightly horrified, and both enjoying every second of this. They were not the only ones.
“Settle in boys, ‘Clueless with a K’ is back at it again,” muttered one of Astro’s friends, the one with the skull cap… Aaron, that’s what his name was.
“Clueless with a K?!” Steve wheezed into the mic.
“Don’t worry lads,” droned Brit with uncharacteristic wryness. “He’s got ten years to figure it out.”
Warnado heard Astro, who had just been about to speak, choke on his own tongue.
“I mean say what you want,” said another guy, as though he were in a casual conversation. “Everyone knows the Third Legion’s Remaining are the best-looking unit in this army.”
“Clarke, get into your channel,” said a girl.
Amanda craned her neck, her jaw dropped, and then she immediately squealed into her sleeve.
“Kami, you’re right next to him, you don’t need to say it through the mic!”
“I just want people to know I don’t endorse this inappropriate use of army assets. We are so grateful for all the-”
“-Okay, how about now?” Kay said in a climactic return.
“No… now you’re back… open channel,” said Fire from some distance with his usual neutral tone, the only thing betraying his annoyance were some slightly longer pauses.
“He’s on a streak, lads,” said Aaron again.
“Kay, just… Fire adjust the settings,” said Tyron, similarly muffled.
“No, I’ve almost got it.”
“I’m… I can’t get over that nickname,” cackled Steve. “We’ve got to talk some time, let’s grab a drink after this. Urist, keep an eye out for the wine cellar.”
“Aye,” affirmed Urist.
“There we are!” Kay yelped in high-pitched triumph. Everyone winced.
“So, in terms of things to bully Kay for, his nickname is only the tip of the iceberg, and as retribution for him almost killing my ears there, I promise to spill all the beans.”
“Seriously guys,” said Tyron, “This is open, but it’s still a military channel-”
Unfortunately, around that moment, Raphoe decided to break into a version of “When the Saints Come Marching In” adjusted to say “We all know Ashen is our King,” in what he seemed to think was a helpful gesture.
“Don’t worry, I’m heading to the speaker-board,” droned Brit.
“Oh, just so you guys know,” said Ozen over the commotion. “If anyone’s still hungry, we’ve got leftovers in the kitchen. Lots of sandwiches, stew and steak are all gone though…”
“No, seriously, they must have some crazy stuff in there, they have full-on interdimensional trade networks-”
“I just want to be clear I fully disavow all connection to the King in Ash, it was not my idea-”
“...I WANNA BE IN THAT RED SCARF!”
“-and I do not approve of this chant.”
“Hey guys, it’s Dinnerbone here, sorry couldn’t see the button to talk. I’m taking requests if anyone wants to hear a song as we go into battle, I’ll be on frequency one… four…”
Realising the chaos was reaching its peak, and that Brit would definitely reach the speaker-board soon, Warnado flashed a grin at Amanda and as she removed her earpiece, he made his move. He reached deep into himself, leaned close to the mic, and released a continuous, abyssal screech into it.
Amanda leaned against him with her fingers in her ears, crying with laughter as everyone else flailed in confusion.
Then, finally, all the voices stopped.
“There we go,” murmured Brit. “Commander Tyron Dragoknight has the floor.”
“Fun’s over, everyone to their positions, we attack within the hour. Warnado, learn to use your inside voice by the next time you see me.”
Warnado turned to Amanda.
“It was worth it.”
She kissed him again.
“We’d best get going.”
They balanced on the beam. Warnado looked out and for the first time saw the rows and rows of cannons and fighters moving into place, both at the encampment and around the Tower. Airships were already in the sky, a lot of them with the Tower’s insignia on them. He looked down at his gauntlet.
He took her arm.
“Tell her, donko,” said his brain.
“Listen, Amanda,” he saw her face, then he averted his eyes. “I’m going to use the gauntlet out there. Just, be cautious around me.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said with a nod and a concerned, slightly proud smile. “That’s really brave of you.”
He felt a warmth that almost made him feel okay again.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Shut up, brain.”
He looked out again, and saw the Tower glowing, almost burning in the sunlight, like a lighthouse or an old signal fire, luring them in. He grabbed Amanda and flew off in search of Tyron.
“Get ready, tin-throne,” Warnado thought. “Hold on to your seat.”
Arc 7Showdown (78-89)
Chapter78:Assault on the Tower (Various)
The sun was already well through its path across the sky when the first horn sounded. It was quickly joined by several others, each with its own unique tone. Only minutes before the armies of the Shelter had stood in line almost motionlessly, waiting for their signal. Now, the soldiers advanced towards their adversaries, knowing all too well that many of them would not see the end of the fight.
A small distance ahead of the rest, the Mencur-Besh collective marched, clad in armour made from their signature dark firesteel. The air around them flickered from the combined heat their bodies gave off, even without sending their muscles into overdrive. Dead in their centre walked Fire, only setting himself apart from the others with the flame-wreathed zweihander he carried.
The main force of the Shelter’s troops followed not far behind, far less uniform in appearance, armour and weapons ranging from iron to diamond, with the occasional exotic material in between. Some of them had been with the Shelter from the start, through all of its ups, downs and sideways, others had only joined under the reign of the King in Ash, or shortly beforehand. They were led by Tyron, who as the leader of the Shelter also held the position of high command. Close to his diamond-clad form were Amanda and Warnado, wielding crossbow and gauntlet respectively.
Moving in from the left and right of the central forces were the recently recruited soldiers from the Vanilla Craft. They all operated as one army, but were still separated into their own units, resulting in a colourful range of emblems, banners and overcoats strewn across their formation. They were officially commanded by Herobrine, but in practice Tyron would call the shots for the ground battle.
Off to the far left was the flanking force under the command of Kay, consisting of the remnants of his own diehard loyalists, as well as the hunters, who were now all fully armoured and equipped. They were accompanied by a detachment of fierce looking pigmen that Herobrine had set aside to reinforce this army.
In the far back were the artillery regiments, cannons and catapults of widely varied design, operated by an even wider range of people, both from the Shelter’s main population and from other worlds. On top of a wooden lookout tower stood Lucy, spyglass in one hand, microphone in the other, fiercely determined to ensure smooth operation.
Mixed into the artillery was Shadow’s Coven, some mages tasked with assisting the conventional artillery with hauling ammunition with telekinesis or with spotting targets. At the far back was the coven proper, robed mages and occasional Mencur-Besh arranged in three large circles. Casters in the middle, channellers around the edges. Shadow herself floated above, acting as a one-woman artillery unit, at least until the gates would be breached, then she had a different task.
Finally, high above the battlefield the airships moved in, crewed by Herobrine’s troops accompanied by the human Eye-and-Claws members, guarded by a small fleet of majestic dragons. Of these dragons, some burned red, others carried patterns like stars and nebulas on their multi-coloured hides, and one rather small one even had the black scales of the End. The airships were outfitted with quickly bolted-on guns to offer some manner of defence, additionally each airship also sported two mages among their crew to conjure barriers to deflect incoming anti-air fire.
On the other side of the battlefield, the disciplined mercenaries of the Tower held their position, strictly separated into their respective companies. The sheer number of them was staggering, still doubling the Shelter’s forces despite the recent reinforcements. Near the middle of the army was General Marcus, the head of the Tower’s Command and Control division now acted as military leader in the absence of the Ender and Claw. The sound of the enemy’s horns had sent the Tower’s army into full combat readiness, final instructions were passed along to soldiers, artillery pieces were hastily crewed, and mages got into position to support their troops.
Behind these cruel ranks, their namesake thrust upwards until it pierced the heavens. Plated with bronze, which glowed orange in the dimming sun, the Tower was tall, and strong and branching, like an almighty tree sprouting from the world, sustaining and overtaking it all at once. Within it were a thousand rooms with a thousand doors, behind one of which the machine lay hidden, which would make all creation a nightmare. And if one gazed up and looked through a telescope at the shattered observatory at the Tower’s peak, one might catch a glimpse of a faintly translucent form with a glowing, toothy grin.
The Shelter’s armies advanced steadily, until some hundred meters from the Tower’s forces they crossed an invisible line. For a split second, absolute silence fell on the battlefield. Then, horns sounded again from both sides, closely followed by artillery fire. The armies charged to clash with each other.
###
“Charge!” Roared Tyron, raising Kir aloft.
Hardly needing the encouragement, the Mencur-Besh charged ahead of them. They moved as one, it was as if they were not separate beings but one being, replicated thousands of times over. Tyron could have sworn that even their footsteps had become synchronised.
Then, mere seconds after, Tyron’s own armies rushed in to reinforce them with all the speed and resolve they had in them. And yet, the second the Mencur-Besh hit the enemy lines they sank right into them, like a stone in water, only seeming to get further and further away.
The yellow-eyed ones arrived first, claws and blades outstretched. Just before they made contact, an orange glow began to rise from between their scales, and they blasted forward like living missiles. Some men died outright, cleanly bisected, others were merely wounded, fewer still stood tall, saved by a clever parry or well-timed dodge.
None were fully prepared, however, because next came the red-eyed Mencur-Besh, strong as stone, easily overwhelming the limb strength of blockers, Fire at their fore. Tyron saw him sweep the Entity’s zweihander forward, hurling out an arc of flame, then vanish into the melee.
The gap between the vanguard and the main body grew larger still. Tyron watched as the Tower’s forces rushed in to fill this vacuum, which was made substantially easier by the arrival of several divisions of furious-looking, black-clad endermen. The Mencur-Besh were fast becoming a rock against which the waves of the sea of Tower troops would crash until it crumbled away. Or, at least, that was what they wanted them to think.
Tyron smirked as he watched the green-eyed Mencur-Besh, larger and bulkier than their compatriots, rally around the vanguard in a living wall. A central body formed within this makeshift fortification, composed of Mencur-Besh of a cocktail of previously unmentioned eye-colours, firing out arrows, potions, and spells. Some Tower soldiers even fell to the sheer heat the mass Mencur-Besh bodies gave off. This would buy Tyron the time he needed. Still, it was a gamble.
He saw as one of the living wall was struck in the chest by a giant with an appropriately large axe, biting through the chestplate and damaging at least one of their hearts. Already wounded from several encounters, the Mencur-Besh simply walked forward and continued fighting, the orange glow between their scales subtly intensifying. They slew the giant who had injured them, then began to make their way through a column of human mercenaries, until an Enderman appeared from behind and plunged a sword into the back of their neck. However, the Enderman’s triumph was short-lived, as the glow rapidly intensified into an inferno and the Mencur-Besh exploded, showering everyone in a small radius in flame and shrapnel.
Finally, Tyron and his forces made it to the front, and began to cut their way through to the Mencur-Besh.
Tyron immediately summoned his stone wings and used them to fly forward and send an Enderman commander flying with his outstretched foot. The startled officer landed at the foot of one of the living wall Mencur-Besh, only just teleporting away before a set of bedrock-like claws plunged into its chest.
Tyron ducked the gold blade of a well-armed pigman, reconstituting his stone wing into a fist as he did so. He shattered this new hand against the pigman’s face. The pigman’s skull buckled under the force of the blow, and he clattered to the ground.
Satisfied, Tyron began to marshal his troops. A division this way to where the fighting was thickest, some combat mages to support them. Two divisions there, where he could see a weak point in their lines. Already they were gaining ground, soon the Mencur-Besh would be able to advance again.
“Look out!” shrieked Kir.
He looked around for the source of the attack, then noticed the pistons pulling the ground away beneath him. He landed on his feet, three blocks down, when he heard the hiss of spiders. Around a dozen of his soldiers had fallen down with him. Red eyes and black legs cascaded onto them, and a flurry of arrows shot up to the surface.
He swung Kir and hacked the legs off one spider, toppling the skeletal rider flying into the ground. He heard the sound of scattering bones. He struck again and shattered a skeleton’s bow, sending them out to the surface in a relatively harmless state. A large black mass slammed into him, and suddenly he was pinned to the ground.
Now, he found himself forcing back the mandibles of the largest spider he had ever seen. An armoured skeleton looked intently down at him, its jaw clacking in what Tyron had to assume was laughter. It had a crossbow trained on his head.
In a fit of irony, a crossbow bolt slammed right into the rider’s jaw, knocking it straight off. A second shot crushed the skull altogether. Tyron angled to stab Kir into the spider’s head, but it kept biting harder, fiercer, and closer to his face. Rathina gave him the opening he needed. She dropped down and slashed the beast’s abdomen open, and he thrust straight forward as it reared back, and it moved no more.
He wanted to kiss Rathina then and there, but there was still the horde to contend with. Thankfully, Seth and Warnado rushed forward and began to fight back the spider riders, giving him a moment to think. Seth wielded his diamond sword with mastery, and Warnado had summoned the energy weapon he called a ‘chainsaw’. He looked up and saw Amanda firing her crossbow again and again, downing rider after rider, but equally, he saw two combat mages he knew had experience with earth magic. He also noticed a nearby fast-builder he had recently supplied with a large quantity of TNT.
“Hold the line here,” Tyron ordered.
“Bold new strategy,” said Warnado as he mowed down another spider. “I’ll take it under advisement.”
Tyron rolled his eyes, summoned his stone wings, and flew up to the two wizards and the builder.
He saw the battlefield. The riders hadn’t completely disrupted the Shelter’s army, but they certainly weren’t helping matters. He saw a lot of dead spiders and shattered skeletons, but also a lot of their own corpses. A similar opening had been created in the midst of the Vanillan lines, And Tyron could see a large shield-wall had been created by the Legion to fend them off. Ahead of the line, he saw the warriors of the Brotherhood and the Vangaardian knights pushing down into the spider’s den.
The Mencur-Besh were holding strong, killing at least a dozen Tower mercenaries for each one they lost, but it was clear they were taking heavy fatalities. Somewhere out near the front Fire’s zweihander flashed into view.
Meanwhile, as discussed, Kay had skirted around the edge of the Tower’s main body and gone straight for the wall. He had two fast-builders attempting to construct a large stone staircase up the wall with considerable success. Unfortunately, their efforts were being diverted by a large detachment of defenders who had taken notice of them and decided they didn’t like that plan one bit.
“Shadow, we need a sunbeam!” Tyron heard Kay roar into the leadership channel.
One of Shadow’s scryers responded: “We see you, Sunbeam coming up in fifteen seconds, brace!”
Tyron landed and saw the mages he needed. He waved over Amanda and the fast-builder.
“You two, with me, we’re closing this trench.” The mages, one man and one woman saluted and awaited further instructions. “Amanda, take the fast-builder and protect him while he sets up some TNT. Drop the charges just as we set up the plug.”
Amanda took the builder by the arm, equipping her axe and striking at any opponents who crossed their path. Off near the wall, the Sunbeam plummeted from the skies, slamming right into the heart of the force attacking Kay. Tyron was momentarily awestruck by the sudden flash of light and immediate rise of smoke, even stronger than it had been at the Battle of the Hill, then turned his attention to the pit spitting spider riders onto the battlefield.
A spider had bitten Seth on the arm, but he kept fighting just as fiercely. Rathina continued to slash away with her daggers. And, just as a spider knocked Warnado back, dissipating his chainsaw, a flash of deep, purple demon-fire shot forth from his gauntlet, consuming both steed and rider immediately. But despite their efforts, the arachnid cavalry just kept coming.
A quick glance confirmed that the builder had set up a row of TNT and that he was ready to light it at any second. So, Tyron and the mages channelled their will and collectively began to shift the earth to seal up the opening.
Warnado, Seth and Rathina backed away as a thick wall of stone began to push through dirt and pistons, attempting to put a literal lid on the spider jockeys. The charge began to halt, and some riders began to quickly scurry up the wall and attempt to escape. However, whenever they made it to the topside they were quickly slain by volleys of arrows.
Just before the opening was completely closed, the builder lit their row of charges, sending them tumbling into the depths. The stone lid reached the surface just in time for a white flash, a smell of sulphur, and several consecutive booms to escape.
With the immediate threat neutralised, Tyron ordered a renewed advance. However, just as he did so, he noticed that the Mencur-Besh were also moving forward, more slowly and deliberately this time, straight towards General Marcus’ honour guard.
###
Rose leaned back as much as the flagship’s crowded cabin allowed. Right behind her the motor driving the propeller gently hummed, a far cry from the smoking and sputtering motors she knew from her home. It wasn’t her first time flying, she’d been on a couple of aircraft when travelling to acquire occult artefacts for her employer. Once, she’d even infiltrated a pleasure-cruise blimp to eliminate some high-society thorn in her employer’s side. It was, however, the first time she’d been part of a fleet, and it definitely the first time she’d been in a fleet escorted by dragons, creatures that her world only knew from myths.
Of the cabin crew she only knew three. The mages Pallas and Danann, Shadow’s direct subordinates, were posted to make sure the ship managed to get close enough for Rose to cut open the Tower’s walls. The third one was Brad and knowing was a bit of a stretch for him, she’d talked with him during the preparations but other than that they were strangers. The blond man was currently standing near her, eyeing the engine to make sure it ran smoothly.
Beneath the airship the battle had begun to rage, while the individual soldiers shrunk to the size of ants, the sheer masses were still impressive. Rose was not used to large-scale warfare, but that’s why she was up here, not down there. The Tower soldiers’ artillery had already started firing but were still well out of range of the airships, so instead they concentrated on shelling the ground troops. Most projectiles were intercepted mid-air by a spell, but some still made it through.
Rose looked to her side towards Brad. “So, you’re one of Fire’s closer friends in your world.”
Brad nodded. “You could say that, not many friendships endure for millennia.”
Rose replied: “In my world immortality is this rare thing, guarded jealously by a select few, it seems to be given out far more generously in yours.”
“Oh, plenty of mortal people in my world too. The only reason we have immortals at all is because we built the world they exist in, it’s not quite real, but real enough.”
Rose pulled one of the diamond daggers Fire had given her from its sheath and looked at her reflection. She’d forgone her usual assassin’s garb in favour of actual armour, which sadly made her whole pre-battle routine moot, no point in half-measures.
She asked: “So, how did you two meet in the first place?”
A fond smile of remembrance flashed across Brad’s face. “Oh, it’s quite the story. Fire has done a lot of things in his life, and at one point he was a pirate. Pirate King even, but that came later.”
Rose snorted with laughter. “A pirate, really?”
“Yes, really. In the early years in my world, I took to sailing, which eventually led to the trade ship I served on to being captured by pirates, not Fire’s pirates, different ones. They recruited me onto their crew, well, press-ganged technically, but I was up for the change of pace. A few years passed until our captain retired and the crew was left looking for new employment.”
“And that’s where you met him?” Rose assumed.
“Exactly, and what a first impression that was. He just sailed into the port with the most magnificent ship I’d seen up to that point, and from that point onward to be honest. It was carved whole from a steelwood tree, the last ship of its kind. Those trees went extinct after a quake collapsed the caverns they grew in. ‘Lich Queen’ it’s called, and when it sailed into the port it was running on a quite literal skeleton crew. Of course, reanimated bones can’t replace actual breathing, thinking crew, so I signed on.”
Rose’s only experience with pirates was, as with many professions, having killed a few on the travels her employer sent her on.
She asked: “So, I imagine you accumulated a lot of plunder in all that time.”
Brad seemed to notice something about the engine, adjusted a few valves, then answered.
“More than that, we controlled the trade, had our own fleet, and even built a thriving pirate town. Fire even managed to domesticate a breeding pair of krakens, which cemented his position as Pirate King, pretty difficult to win a naval battle if your enemy has titanic creatures on his side. Very exciting times.”
Before Brad could spin Rose more tales of his roguish past, a sudden movement went through the soldiers on board of the airship. It originated from Pallas, who now stood with his arms outstretched as a translucent barrier formed around the airship, only to be struck by artillery fire moments later.
Brad yelled: “Battle stations! Man the guns!”
Rose steadied herself on the deck as the airship’s pilot began swerving to avoid being an easy target. Several Tower mages had also levitated closer to the airship and were beginning their own assault. Rose grabbed hold of the nearest gun and looked out for targets.
A mage with burning eyes had taken a course straight for the airship, jets of flame shot from his palms as he approached. Rose took aim and pulled the trigger, firing a barrage of lead at the mage. The first few bullets missed, but once Rose corrected her aim, several struck true. The mage plummeted towards the battlefield below, his torso torn apart by the impacts.
More mages followed, most more careful than their fallen comrade. Shards of ice shattered on a shield projected by Danann, fireballs were scattered as Pallas conjured gusts of wind. A bolt of lightning struck the engine, but that only seemed to make it more eager to propel the aircraft forward.
Other airships weren’t faring quite as well, not all of them had mages of this level of competence defending them, and luck also played a role. However, overall, it seemed like they were going to get through.
Rose fired at a whole squadron of mages that came floating up, looking more coordinated than the earlier ones. She recognized several of the white gowns of the Tower’s elite mages among this group. The gun wasn’t going to do her much good against their shields. Instead, she channelled her own occult gifts. A barrage of steel needles shot forth from her outstretched hand, each imbued with supernatural piercing power.
Three mages took the brunt of the attack and were instantly torn apart as the needles pierced their passive shields. The elite mages redoubled their shielding efforts and now turned their attention towards Rose’s airship. They began charging a spell of their own, but before Rose could wonder what the spell would do, a huge, winged form slammed into the mages from above. The dragon Glowstar had joined the defence of the airships, the other dragons following closely after, swatting the mages out of the sky with their bulk or biting them in half.
Now with the dragons in the mix the Tower’s mages were less eager to attack and instead floated downwards to support their own troops. The airships were quite close to the Tower now, it was time for Rose to fulfil her part of the plan.
She spoke into her radio: “I’m ready for Drake to pick me up.”
Only seconds later, the black-scaled fledgeling dragon pulled up next to the airship, Jennifer already seated on his back, waving Rose over. Rose took a look behind her for a second, Brad gave her an affirmative nod. Rose vaulted over the railing and landed right behind Jennifer.
Jennifer yelled over the high winds: “We proceed as planned, I’ll get you close to the walls, you tear open holes for our ships to unload.”
Rose moved into position behind Jennifer and held on as Drake accelerated forward with rapid flaps of his wings. As they closed the gap to the Tower, Rose could see that some of the windows had opened, barrages of arrows came flying out.
Drake swerved to avoid the first volley, then resumed the approach course. Rose meanwhile shot volleys of sharpened metal in the direction of the archers, more than a few hit their targets. As they got closer, more and more arrows showered them, most either missing or glancing off armour and scales. A few managed to get stuck in Drake’s flesh, eliciting an angry roar and a blast of purple breath directed at the offending archers.
Jennifer spoke words of encouragement to Drake, but Rose was honestly too focused on killing archers to concentrate on what exactly she said.
They had finally come close enough to the Tower for Rose to begin her work. Drake circled tightly around an outcropping to avoid incoming arrows, then Jennifer steered him on course to the first breach site. Rose concentrated, pushing occult energies into her right hand and the dagger that resided in it. Just as Drake passed a large section of Tower wall, Rose let loose.
Three arcs of pure sharpness rushed towards the bronze exterior of the Tower, cutting a triangular shape into it. This opening was promptly used by the non-bisected Tower archers to get a better angle on Drake, landing a few more painful hits.
Now with the first opening made, one of their biggest airships approached, holding their vanguard breach force. Rose had no opportunity to observe the boarding since the next targeted section of wall was coming up, three more cuts and another opening was made.
The archers gradually became less organized as more and more airships approached the Tower and Shelter troops now stormed through the hallways, cutting them down. Rose cut again and again and again, until an entire side of the Tower was riddled with holes.
Now that her primary task was done, it was time for Rose to join the fighting inside. Drake brought her close and she jumped off, landing with a quick roll, throwing a barrage of knives at her immediate opposition.
The part of the Tower they were in now was mostly used for storage of the Entity’s bizarre collections, which was why it had been chosen as their entry point. They’d be able to take over the branch quickly, then push out from there. Behind Rose, more and more airships fell out of the sky, their crew having left them behind to fight in the hallways. It was a risky one-way trip that relied on the success of the ground army, but really, at this point what was a bit of extra risk?
###
Fire pushed himself off the ground forcefully. At the apex of his jump his flaming wings erupted, and immediately propelled him forward, his zweihander held low, ready to strike. Like a comet he descended on the Tower mercenaries’ ranks, sending a wave of scorching flames forwards with a swing of his zweihander. Dozens of enemies fell before him, but before anyone could retaliate, Fire was already halfway back to the relative safety of the Mencur-Besh. He had been doing hit-and-run attacks on the Tower forces ever since they established their position, attempting to strike a balance between offensive effectiveness and his own safety.
A Sunbeam impacted off in the distance, and not too long after muffled explosions rang out from further back. Fire settled back into the Mencur-Besh masses, joining their mages in slinging spells onto the Tower soldiers.
He spoke to the joined mind: “How are our numbers?”
The mind replied: “I lost nine-hundred-thirty-six bodies.”
At this pace they would be wiped out before getting through to the Tower, but Fire had known that from the start. Their plan had not been to win through annihilation, they had a concrete target in mind: General Marcus, the Tower’s acting military leader. He and his personal guard stood near the back of the Tower’s army and the Mencur-Besh were steadily approaching his position. Hundreds of soldiers fell before their blades and claws as they moved through the sea of bodies.
“Requesting several Rockbursts, targets designated through mental link.” One of the joined mind’s bodies spoke through the radio.
Only seconds later, large spikes of stone erupted from the ground below a Tower artillery piece, its guarding mages having flown up to harry the Shelter airships, a mistake that cost them dearly. More spikes erupted all over the backlines, disabling more and more unguarded artillery.
Shadow replied through the radio: “Targets eliminated, circles one and three need to recharge, circle two is on disruption duty. We won’t be able to follow up on target designations for a few minutes. I will personally give fire support in the meantime.”
A blindingly bright disintegration ray impacted in the midst of the Tower army, still carrying enough energy to outright kill several soldiers, even at the extreme range Shadow was casting from.
Fire flew up again, this time he’d need to go further. He accelerated towards the Tower, remaining at a low altitude. As he flew, he bombarded the Tower’s troops with a barrage of fireballs. They had wisened up, arrows were shot in his direction. Fire avoided the barrage with a swift roll, pushing additional energy into his wings to scorch any soldiers below him as he did.
Fire was close enough to be able to see Marcus’ face under his visor, which was still a moderate distance due to his superhuman vision. Before he could approach closer, eight white-garbed mages rose up around Marcus, ready to defend him with their lives. Fire made a sharp turn and flew back the way he came.
He spoke through his radio: “Marcus has elite mages in his personal guard, too many for me to safely take him out on my own.”
Instead of going back down into the Mencur-Besh’s ranks, Fire remained afloat above them. He channelled his life force and bathed the area in front of the Mencur-Besh in flames, allowing them to advance towards Marcus at a faster pace.
Tyron’s voice came through the leadership channel: “We fully neutralized their trapdoor ambushes, coming to join up with you, Fire.”
Not a minute later, Tyron had swooped over the Tower’s soldiers on his stone wings. They both landed to discuss matters.
Fire said: “Marcus is retreating, we have to get him now.”
Tyron nodded. “Agreed.”
Fire weighed his options, he couldn’t directly assault Marcus’ position without placing himself in significant danger, and the Mencur-Besh couldn’t advance quickly enough to catch up with Marcus’ retreat.
Fire spoke into his radio again: “Shadow, how long until we can get another Sunbeam?”
Shadow replied: “Two minutes at least. What do you need it for?”
Tyron seemed to have picked up on Fire’s plan, he radioed: “It’s for Marcus, we absolutely need to get him now or he just goes back into the Tower.”
Fire asked: “What about using circle two?”
Shadow seemed to deliberate for a few moments. “Circle two is charged, but also responsible for stopping enemy artillery. If you think it’s worth it, I can give the order.”
Tyron spoke again: “Jennifer, status of air assault?”
Sounds of fighting came through the radio, then Jennifer replied with ragged breath: “Two thirds of our surviving airship crews have boarded or are boarding the Tower, just the flagship and a few others to go.”
Fire and Tyron looked at each other, then silently nodded.
Fire gave the order: “Maximum power Sunbeam on Marcus, have circles one or three take over disruption once recharged.”
“Fifteen seconds.” Shadow simply replied.
“Fourteen, thirteen, twelve…” Kir chirped methodically in their minds.
Both Fire and Tyron took to the skies again. They both counted down the seconds along with Kir. A glaring light erupted from the sky above Marcus’ position moments before the Sunbeam came crashing down. The moment it made contact, the smoke of burnt bodies and scorched earth obscured their view. This smoke was quickly blown away by a sharp gust of wind conjured by one of the Mencur-Besh mages to reveal…
In the midst of the devastation stood a figure, cowering below a three-by-three block configuration of red-hot obsidian. Marcus was a fast builder! Without exchanging a word, Fire and Tyron flew forwards.
As they closed in, Fire yelled into his radio: “Shadow, dome us!”
Not a second later, a transparent, light-blue wall rose up from the edges of the scorched earth, quickly curving upwards and closing them in. The dome was spacious but not big enough to keep flying. Marcus stopped his frantic retreat and turned to face his attackers. On the other side of the dome, Tower soldiers began hacking at the barrier with their weapons, sending ripples through it. They saw two mages in singed white robes exchange a nod with Marcus and begin their incantations. The implications were clear, they needed to kill Marcus before the dome came down.
Fire went on the offensive first, sprinting towards Marcus with his zweihander ready to strike. But before he could come anywhere close, Marcus had made several hops onto freshly placed obsidian blocks and was now standing on a pillar.
As Tyron re-assembled his wings, Fire shot a jet of flame upwards at Marcus, only to have it harmlessly deflect off yet more obsidian. Fire let the zweihander disappear into his inventory, the orange glow between his scales turned bright yellow as he used his excess life force to supercharge his muscles beyond what was normally possible.
In a single bound Fire leapt up to the top of the pillar, where he was immediately greeted by a sudden flood of water. Once he had his footing, Marcus had already built an obsidian bridge halfway across the dome and was now ducking behind low cover with a bow in hand.
Tyron came barrelling in from the side. Marcus turned towards him and shot several arrows, not even bothering to properly draw back the string. The enchanted projectiles hit Tyron in rapid succession and launched him backwards, smashing him into the dome. Just before Fire was able to reach him, Marcus had already hopped off his bridge, onto a series of shorter pillars he was rapidly building below himself. Fire had to admit, Marcus was good at stalling, which was sadly all he needed to do.
Fire jumped after him but now it was his turn to be ragdolled through the air by Marcus’ arrows. As he got back to his feet, he saw Tyron narrowly avoiding the bucket of lava Marcus tried to dump on him. A quick glance aside told Fire that they were running low on time, the dome’s integrity had suffered greatly.
Marcus had once again gained height. His obsidian staircase went all the way up to just under the dome. He now seemed to be building himself a fortification. Fire sprinted up the rough stairs. The dome could fail any second. Fire materialized his zweihander from his inventory again. It was now or never.
With a cry of effort, Fire channelled even more energy into his muscles. The glow between his scales turned white-hot and flames wreathed the zweihander, time slowed to a crawl. The dome shattered into thousands of pieces just as the blade made contact with the obsidian. The solid volcanic glass shattered as Fire cleaved a large gap into the wall Marcus had built. Marcus was in the process of winding up an ender pearl throw. The tip of the zweihander grazed his chestplate, severely slowed down by the obsidian wall, but still forceful enough to throw Marcus off balance.
The ender pearl slid from Marcus’ hand mid-throw, still well on course towards safety.
“I’ll give you credit, kid, you’re strong,” said Marcus. He grinned. “Claw is stronger.”
He threw himself off the obsidian platform.
However, unbeknownst to Marcus, Tyron had flown after the pearl and used Kir’s flat side to bat it back to where it came from. Marcus reappeared prone on the platform he had just jumped from. Above him was Fire, zweihander raised like an executioner. The blade came down on Marcus, before he could properly realize what position he was in, his obsidian chestplate had already been shattered and his torso bisected.
Fire quietly said: “It seems that this sword’s destiny is to cut down overconfident generals.”
Fire reached down to grab the top half of the fresh corpse, holding him up so that all the Tower’s mercenaries could see: Their leader had fallen.
###
The second Marcus’ corpse came into view, chaos erupted on the battlefield. It was as though a great whirlwind had sucked up the intentions of the Tower’s army and scattered them every which way.
Some battalions with young, idealistic officers found renewed strength in vengeance, and charged forward in another attack on this Mencur-Besh flank, or that phalanx of the Legion. Others instinctively threw their weapons to the side and began to plead for their lives to mixed degrees of success, just as they had done when the late General Marcus had bested their own rulers. To the far left and right flanks, some experienced mercenaries simply saw the bisected Marcus as a contract torn up. His blood was just coin spilling out of a ruptured purse. They quickly moved to evade their Shelter attackers, only fighting so far as it was necessary to get away from them. Only the Endermen seemed unshaken, keeping up their harrying attacks, weaving between Shelter lines and spreading death all around.
But for the majority of the army, encircled by the Vanillans to the left, Kay’s flanking force to the right, and slammed into by the Mencur-Besh and Shelter forces from the front, the only way was back. Back the gate, then beyond that to the Tower. What would they do when they got there? Retreat into it and fight on? Rush past it and flee into the fields beyond? They would decide that when they came to it. The gates opened, and they slowly pulled back through.
And as the Tower ebbed backwards, the Shelter surged on. At the fore of their army, Tyron and Fire fought onward, sending out jets of fire and shards of ice. And just behind them the Mencur-Besh continued their onslaught in looser formation now that they were on the offense.
Seeing the retreat, Shadow gave an order for the circles of her Coven to disperse and relocate closer to the Tower itself. After brief consultation with Fire, Lucy, blonde hair gleaming in the setting sun despite the clouds of artillery smoke around her, marshalled the artillery onward. They moved slowly, trailing behind the rest of the army but sustaining a barrage on the Tower’s walls.
No longer made stationary by the need for powerful spells, Shadow and some of her most loyal acolytes soared upwards in a v-formation, blasting Tower mages out of the sky as they went. The tiny, white-haired mage was a whole arsenal unto herself, surrounded by an ever-replenishing ring of magical orbs which periodically shot out and broke the shield of a nearby mage, then blew a hole through their heart. Occasionally she’d also use her disintegration ray on particularly stubborn opponents, though always careful not to hit anyone behind them.
On the right flank, relieved by the departure of some of the grizzled mercenaries previously mentioned, the forces under Kay Mandy, the disgraced general, managed to complete their makeshift staircase and swarm onto the wall. Hunters threw spears with terrifying accuracy. Pigmen swung gigantic golden swords to break their opponents’ guard, then clamped vice-like jaws down on their necks. These forces began to fight their way towards the gate to place further pressure on the enemy retreat.
A third detachment of this army turned away, towards the nearest gun emplacement. Of these, most wore red scarves, and fought with a uniform brutality. With swords they slashed for the face, then when their enemies were disoriented, struck out with heavy, sharp gauntlets. Every open wound would be targeted. Every exhausted man momentarily losing poise would be thrown to the ground and trampled, friend or foe. Their strategy was all momentum, all the time - a single, continuous punch to the nose of their opponents.
At the very front of their lines was the General himself, orbited by the three members of the Remaining. Kay fought with all the savagery of his men, punching this man across the jaw so hard his teeth flew out, and hacking that man across the leg and leaving him, bleeding, to the wave of men in his wake.
And the Remaining matched his energy easily. Lupe kept direct pace, dodging every arrow and blade which came her way, killing opponents with ease. Even the teleporting Endermen couldn’t give her pause. They would appear and, as though she had been waiting for their arrival, find her sword raking across their scales. Not far behind, Kami’s spells and Clarke’s flames rained death upon the Tower’s forces.
Finally, they were just before the gun. Kay drew back. After much screaming into his sleeve and fiddling with buttons, Kay convinced Shadow to swoop down and cleanly divide the gun’s defenders with a blast of heat. A retreat was sounded, and Kay turned his attention to the now-abandoned artillery piece.
“As we discussed,” he said to Kami.
The mage stepped forward and closed her eyes. She stretched out her palms, and a look of intense effort came over her face. A sound like the roar of some great beast filled the air and the cannon began to lift from the ground, drifting slowly out over the battlefield. Kami, with teeth gritted so tightly they looked as though they might shatter, rotated it until that barrel pointed directly at the Tower troops filtering through the gate. A great many had made it through, but those who remained had solidified into a tightly packed shell that even the Mencur-Besh were struggling to pierce.
Seeing the pain it caused her, Lupe put a hand on her comrade’s shoulder.
“Just one good shot,” she affirmed.
Nodding, Kami clenched her fists and the cannon’s firing mechanism slammed into action. The TNT shell slammed directly into the centre of the retreating army, killing several men, but scattering and wounding a good few more. More importantly, it set a massive crater in the middle of their path to safety.
“C-can I put it down, now?” shivered Kami.
“Sorry, just a few moments more,” Kay said. He mounted the nearest battlements and glared down at the gate’s defenders. “They need to believe we’ll fire again.”
“Kay, you know she can’t do that,” Clarke growled.
“But they don’t,” Lupe conceded with considerable reluctance.
After what felt like an eternity, a white flag rose from the midst of the defenders, and they began to throw aside their weapons. The Mencur-Besh shunted past them, already moving on to their next targets. The Vanillans and the forces of the Shelter followed suit, leaving behind a small detachment to round up the surrendering forces. Kami let the artillery drop, and the General thanked her stiffly.
Meanwhile, the retreating Tower force had split up upon reaching their namesake structure. The main entrance was only large enough for so many of them to fit through, so some attempted to reach the other entrances to the left, right and on the far side. Others took up positions among the storage and energy generation buildings, readying to launch hit-and-run attacks on the conquering army as they came, ready to repay Fire for his own tactics. Bowstrings stretched, and as the Mencur-Besh passed them, the arrows were let loose. Still, even as some of them fell, they advanced undaunted, and their formation proved almost unbreakable.
Overhead, the last few airships began to fall away, as the dragons and mages continued their frenetic dogfights. Here a red-scaled dragon’s jaws would crush through the shield of a frightened mage. There, the Tower’s forces regrouped and shot down a dragon or a transport.
Only one airship remained undocked, the largest of them all. A tree with a burning sword through it loomed on the side of its balloons. This was the flagship, carrying the wizard Astro, the adventurers Steve Brine and Jennifer, and Herobrine himself. Finally, after several attempts, an opening large enough was made, and it slammed its hull forward, a complex series of pistons designed by the Eye-and-Claws readying to open it up and allow its troops to charge forward.
This went almost unobserved on the ground, however, as the falling airships were redirected by Shadow and her mages to crash into Tower holdouts. The balloons slowed their descent and limited the damage they would do to the structures themselves, but their size made them intimidating enough that even many of the boldest officers relocated further back just to be safe.
The Mencur-Besh reached the massive staircase up to the main entrance and began methodically clearing through the remaining defenders. They were soon joined by the Shelter and the Vanillans, and this united force pushed firmly up the stairs. Now, the charge was led by Fire, Tyron, and Kay, battling fiercely through this last line of defence. With every step, and every successful swing, their sense of triumph swelled, forcing them onwards. And yet, simultaneously, their trepidation seemed to grow greater and heavier, as they realised that inside would be a harder fight still. Miles of endless rooms and corridors, each packed with crueller traps and fiercer defenders.
At the top of the stairs, a small swarm of mages lay in wait. They had their shields clustered around a white-robed witch as she attempted to fuse the colossal, metal doors together.
Fire, Tyron and Kay came face to face with this group and readied to square off. Kay flourished his sword and drew a dagger from his flank to accompany it. Tyron formed a spike of ice around one of his fists. Fire ignited the blade of his zweihander in a continuous inferno. And the mages in return fortified their shields, summoned spectral weapons, and prepared mighty bolts of lightning.
They heard a clanging noise. A metal cylinder clattered onto the ground between them. Immediately recognising this, Kay and Tyron covered their eyes, and Kir warned Fire to do the same, though he already seemed to know what was about to happen.
“Flash out!” a voice shouted from above.
The cylinder exploded and the top of the staircase was consumed by blinding light. The mages were completely blinded and deafened, leaving them open to attack, and the Shelter’s three commanders weren’t in much better condition despite their last-minute precautions. They heard a light thud as someone landed in front of them, then the snap of a crossbow being fired. A sound like glass breaking followed, and the mage nearest the centre dropped dead.
Fire’s eyes cleared just in time for him to see it. Warnado, a fiery purple warhammer held over his head, landed where the dead mage had once stood. The white-robed witch turned with tears streaming from her still-dazzled eyes and raised a shield. With his red eyes gleaming, and his teeth bared in a wild grin, Warnado brought the hammer down. There was another intense flash as the hammer made contact. Deep, purple demonfire swept out in a circle, overpowering the disoriented mages completely. The fire dissipated and Warnado stood alone, leaning against the door and tapping his foot.
“So, are we cracking this baby open or not?” he asked.
Tyron and Kay walked up and inspected the door. It was pretty clearly fused together, but with enough force it would buckle. They returned and took up their positions to the left and right of Fire respectively. Warnado and Amanda stood just behind Fire, momentarily allowing their hands to touch.
A glance back revealed many noteworthy faces. Seth and Rathina trash-talked each other, hyping up their competitive spirit before the battle. Lupe examined her sword as Clarke and Kami did stretches. Ryan, administrator of the Vanilla Craft, twisted his staff in his hands. Tauto Chrone of the Brotherhood muttered his mantras beneath his steel mask. Wolfric the mage thumbed through his spell book for one last incantation he might need.
Far behind them, Lucy rallied the Legionnaires and the artillery corps into a rear-guard. For the moment, the hit-and-run attacks had ceased, but between the buildings flashes of movement could be seen as the Tower forces regrouped.
Fire stood before the gate, waiting for his sister to arrive. She was essential to finding and disabling the machine, which lay somewhere deep beneath their feet. There was no point attacking until she was there. Finally, she drifted down from the sky and came to rest before him.
“Ready?” Fire asked.
Shadow nodded. “Let’s go save the multiverse.”
Chapter79:Desperate Rally (General Issa)
Issa ran through the halls, assailed by a cacophony of radio and telepathic messages.
“Enemy flagship preparing to breach,” the speaker crackled in her left ear. “Reallocating forces to deal with anticipated incursion… Possible instance of archetype designated ‘Herobrine’, please conduct identification procedures so we know what we’re dealing with...”
“Regrouping for attempt to retake the Inner Compound,” croaked an enderman general in her right. “Unable to ascertain which mercenary units have deserted and whether they may still be a threat. Please advise.”
“Confirming reports,” recited one telepath within her mind. “General Marcus is dead. Recovery efforts have thus far proven ineffective.”
The tower’s head of reconnaissance rapidly scribbled down responses, handing them out to various aides with instructions to individually contact the relevant units. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue, she always had a cloud of reports and requests following her during any major operation, but with Bul dead, Claw MIA, the Ender apparently turned traitor, and the Entity pushing its already reclusive nature to new extremes, she was bearing the whole weight of military intelligence on her shoulders.
“Efforts to seal the main gates were successful despite high casualties. Breach anticipated shortly, please advise as to status of reserve troops.”
Then, another aide approached and directed her to a radio, from which a lesser officer could be heard screaming: “Storage Wing Delta is compromised - our defences aren’t doing anything! She’s cutting right through the walls!”
Issa lifted her head.
“What is in Storage Wing Delta?”
“Entity’s personal collection - broken music disks, mostly. And hats, so many hats.”
Issa groaned and lifted the receiver.
“See what you can do about drawing enemy attention to Storage Wing Delta. The busier they are there the less progress they’re making on the important stuff.”
“Will do, General Issa.”
She shook her head and dispelled the crowd of aides, walking straight to the conference room at the end of the hall. Forgelight wanted to talk to her. With a deep breath, she threw the double-doors open.
General Forgelight stood on the opposite side of the table, head bowed, and fingers splayed across its surface. He was a gigantic man with stern eyes and a firm, square jaw. As leader of the Tower’s Command & Control unit, he had spent the last decade governing the Tower’s holdings outside Nexus, spreading the good news of the unity and infrastructure the Tower would bring. Issa prayed he had brought some good news home with him.
There was also a crystal ball apparition of Archmage Wisp, shaking with rage. A small circle of lesser leaders surrounded them, all in various states of concern.
“He cannot be allowed to get away with this,” seethed the wizard. “Today of all days he cannot simply decide to-”
Forgelight cut across him with a voice like a grim steamroller.
“-He has, Wisp, and we shall deal with that shortly. Issa, what’s our situation?”
“Marcus confirmed dead, incursions imminent on main hall and upper floors. Efforts are being made to encircle them in the inner compound, but desertions and high casualties have hampered our attempts to regroup.”
“So, ‘awful’ is the word of the day, is it?”
Issa smiled.
“Pretty much.”
Forgelight straightened his hair and turned away from her. He fixed his eyes on a landscape painting of a mountain range made of gold and glass.
“They have us on the ropes, friends,” he boomed. “But time is on our side. Dr. Mercury is making the final adjustments to the machine as we speak. Once it is activated, there will be nothing they can do to stop the convergence of worlds. In short, they will have lost - that is when we will be able to crush them completely. Our tactics should therefore not focus on outright repulsing the rebels, but on delaying them.”
Issa nodded.
“How do you plan to slow them?”
Forgelight turned to face them, brushing his eyes across everyone present. Even the illusory Wisp seemed to momentarily bend under the weight of his gaze. He clapped his hands, and a servant ran out into the hall.
“Our holdings are vast, and our vassals are loyal. I have not gathered nearly as many as I might have liked at such short notice, but I was able to pick out the best.” He returned his gaze to the vast double-doors.
Boom! The doors opened so rapidly they slammed into the walls and came away rattling. Standing in the centre were four figures.
“Meet your champions!” roared Forgelight.
He first pointed to the creature which had presumably enabled this dramatic entrance. A colossal, grey beast thundered its way in, each of its four legs as thick as a tree. Its huge, rectangular head bobbed up and down like a mighty warhammer. Iron bands large enough to shield a giant wrapped around its legs and shoulders. And on its back a small, grey-skinned villager sneered.
“The emissary from the Illager people of World 1110, who successfully rose up and overthrew their oppressors in the Overworld, Nether and End. A people committed, as we are, to the prosperous unification of all under one. He shall help to defend the Entity’s chambers and the activation mechanism.”
To the left stood a tall, skeletal creature with luminous green eyes and a long staff glowing in the same hue. A crown sat on its head, adorned with faded jewels. And around its neck hung a tattered cloak which still glinted with royal purple. It had no legs, instead hanging suspended in the air like a mutilated puppet.
“The Nameless One, ruler of World 720, otherwise known as the Land of the Slain Sun. He has been a valuable ally for several years, providing us with a ready supply of mobs for combat and testing purposes. And, as Archmage Wisp can attest, The Nameless One possesses a knowledge of sorcery to rival even his own.”
The Archmage narrowed his eyes and cocked his head at the skeletal lord. The Nameless One simply gazed into the light of its staff, ruminating upon its mysteries.
And then there were the last two. A pair of warriors clad in near-identical grey armour, the only difference being that the shorter and slighter of the two wore a stiff purple cape which seemed to split in two - unless… were those wings? On closer examination one was a man with brown hair and a beard, the other was a redheaded woman. The man pulled out a glowing, golden apple and took a bite, cocking his eyebrow defiantly as the definitive swirls of regeneration and fire resistance potions began to rise off him.
Forgelight bit his tongue before introducing them, and a distinctive wrinkling of his nose clued Issa into his thoughts. These last two weren’t vassals, they were mercenaries or some other ideological traitors who did not believe in the perfect union of worlds for which Forgelight fought.
“This is Steve and Alex. They have a… let’s say a personal stake in this.”
Suddenly, a row of words appeared in front of the man in a sharp, angular font. His mouth remained closed, and his eyes burned with anger.
WHERE IS THE LESSER STEVE?
Forgelight cleared his throat.
“You shall be informed shortly, though his companion, Jennifer, was sighted accompanying their airfleet-”
He drew an axe and a shield and stormed off down the corridor. Alex lingered a moment, loading a rocket into her crossbow, then after a cursory glance at the assembled leaders, wordlessly left.
Forgelight seemed a little deflated after this but recovered himself.
“We thank you for your loyalty,” he said to the remaining champions.
Once they had left, Archmage Wisp spoke up.
“That’s all well and good, but a few curios from the colonies-”
“-They are not colonies,” warned Forgelight.
“Sorry, a few loyal vassals are useless in the face of the Ape’s betrayal.”
Issa looked sharply at Forgelight.
“What’s he talking about?”
Forgelight sighed and gestured for her to follow. He hefted his colossal shieldaxe from his chair.
“A situation I am about to put an end to.”
As they turned the corner and briskly marched toward a nearby hall, Forgelight explained what had happened. When the first reports of a retreat came through, Glibby had immediately pledged to withhold his troops until he was recognised as the Ender’s rightful successor in essence, that he be recognised as commander of all endermen in the Tower in addition to those he had already convinced or forced to defect.
“What does the Silhouette have to say about this?” Issa asked.
“He claims to be acting at his behest,” growled Forgelight. “We should never have trusted that crook…”
They entered the hall where Glibby was based. A few days ago, it had been a banquet hall. Now the tables had been pushed aside to make room for crates of weapons and armour. Hundreds of endermen moved between them, all of them with grey paint smeared over the scales of their chests, in memory of the original Grey Ones. Even now, Issa saw unmarked endermen sitting, waiting to receive the mark. She couldn’t fathom the reasoning. Was it fear of Glibby and the reprisals he had enacted after the Ender’s attempted coup? A desire to escape the frontlines with news being as bad as it was? Had they been seduced by the wealth of the Silhouette? Whatever it was that had moved them, they needed these troops back in the fight, fast.
At the end of the hall, Issa saw a hulking shadow standing on a balcony - The Ape himself. He had his obsidian armour on, and now one of his heavy boots was planted on a parapet. He grinned wildly as he tracked a red-scaled dragon across the sky.
“Pass me a bow!” He shouted.
A shrivelled young enderman carried him a longbow almost as tall as Issa. He picked it up and began to strain against the string, one eye scrunched shut. Then, when he could pull no further, he let it loose. The arrow struck true, catching the dragon in the flank. Glibby cheered and raised the bow above his head. However, his grin quickly subsided as he saw the dragon right itself. It made a beeline for the balcony.
“Huskers,” he grunted. “Handle it.”
An old man with glassy blue eyes hefted a long metal firearm against his shoulder and pointed it calmly out at the dragon. He sucked in a long, soft breath and squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit the dragon through the left eye. It plummeted. The Ape turned his head and saw Issa and Forgelight coming. He quickly corrected his dour visage and roared with laughter.
“This is hunting!” he declared.
A man in a pin-striped suit, and another whose very skin seemed to be made of diamond armour made sure to cheer half-heartedly before returning to their conversation. Satisfied at this declaration, Glibby sauntered down from the balcony towards Forgelight and Issa. The two Generals remained silent as the Ape began to speak.
“That’s what Claw might say at least,” The Ape sneered. “Is that what it would take to get some modicum of respect from you? A hunter’s prowess?”
The man in the suit shot a wild grin at Issa, flashing a mouth full of purple, metal teeth. Issa shuddered.
“Is that why you refused to acknowledge my rightful office, Forgelight? After all I did to restore order in the aftermath of the Ender’s coup, did you and Marcus decide to slight me simply because I do not boast of my killer instinct as Claw does? How dreadfully shallow of you. Short-sighted, too, as a slight against me is, of course, a direct insult to my master.”
Forgelight took a step forward, the axe still in hand. A set of talon-like blades appeared between the knuckles of the diamond-skinned man. The man in the pin-striped suit flicked his wrists and a wand appeared in either hand. The sniper didn’t point his rifle at Forgelight, but he fixed his glassy gaze fixed on him and began to reload. Issa reached for the kukri at her side and tried to figure out what sort of mage the pin-striped man could be, and whether there were any obvious weaknesses she could exploit.
Glibby went over to a nearby table and began to pour a bottle of red wine out into two glasses.
"However, my master is a forgiving man, Forge. He has sent his best operatives to reinforce me - the Family." He gestured to the sniper: "Huskers, Complex Ten, expert marksman and prophet." To the talon-ed, diamond-skinned man. "Beatman is Complex Eight, our close quarters specialist." To the giggling, pin-striped mage: "And Muffin, Complex Twelve, is a Thaumturge of considerable might. If you've never heard of them, just ask our Vanillan attackers - they have justly learned to fear them! And, of course, I have a force of hundreds of loyal Grey Ones, well-stocked and waiting in reserve for the order to go into battle."
He delicately lifted the two glasses despite his gauntlets and offered one to Forgelight.
“All you have to do pay us the respect we’re owed by acknowledging that it is I, and not Claw, who commands the Endlings of the Tower.”
His lips stretched into a horrible, skin-coloured gorge of a smile. Issa looked carefully at Forgelight’s severe features. His eyes burned with outrage and his breathing became heavy. There was a shattering sound. He had knocked the glass to the floor. General Forgelight leaned in and growled at Glibby:
“You will go down to the frontlines right now, Ape, and I will contemplate sparing your master the full wrath of the Tower. If you don’t, my first action in the new world will be to ensure there is not a corner of it where your damnable Silhouette can hide from the reckoning for which he is so plainly aching.”
The Ape snorted and cracked his knuckles. The Family were all on their feet, slowly advancing. Issa readied to draw her weapon, then a toothy, yellow grin momentarily flashed into view in the corner of her eye. She turned her head. It had vanished.
“Forgelight… stand-down.”
Both Glibby and the Generals looked at the source of the voice and were surprised to see the Entity standing in the middle of the room, zweihander in hand.
“My lord,” said General Forgelight, suddenly bowing. “I was simply attempting to-”
“-Glibby-shall have his… appoint-ment, while Claw remains-incapacitated. Thank you, Ape… Please, lead-the counterattack.”
Glibby had a half-smile on his face which suggested he was confused but too disinclined to discard a gift like this.
“Thank you, great Entity. I assure you, you will not be disappointed.”
Glibby checked his pocket, pulled out a small vial of purple dust, then looked around.
“Roll on, gentlemen.”
He extended his arms and gave Forgelight a malignant grin. An enderman came up on either side, grabbed him by the shoulders, and teleported away. Soon, the entire hall was filled with the warping growl of teleportation, and sooner still the Grey Ones were gone.
“My lord,” Issa began, “I must strongly advise-”
She turned to look for the Entity, but it too had vanished. Forgelight had his eyes fixed on the floor.
“What do we do now?” She asked him.
He was quiet for a long time.
“We fight on. For glorious union.”
Issa nodded and tried to ignore the chill climbing up her back.
Steve had never anticipated the current situation. He, Jennifer, and his brother helping to lead a massive army, ready to save the multiverse. All because his dead friend dropped some stones.
They were in the flagship’s hull, organising themselves into ranks and files. The redstone lights dimmed, and he knew they would go out any minute. He took a look at Jennifer and saw her red hair glimmering even under that little light. He smiled. Like a mirror, she smiled back. He would die for her if he had to.
Ozen hopped from one foot to the other to his left, drawing and undrawing his sword in a duellist’s stance. Sadly, he just seemed to get clumsier each time, and Steve clapped him on the shoulder to hint maybe he should stop. He wondered how Wolfric was doing, down with Shadow.
“Preparing to breach in t-minus one minute,” Brad said into his sleeve, emerging from between the ranks.
Brad wore armour made from that odd black alloy originating from Fire’s world. His helmet almost entirely obscured his face. A diamond rapier hung at his side. He nodded respectfully at Steve as he took his position next to Andras at the head of a group of Eye-and-Claw operatives.
Pistons sounded and a series of handles rose from the floor. The reinforced hull would hold now that Rose had done her work creating the opening, but they still had to remain upright. He and Jennifer reached for the same bar. Their hands touched. They kept them there.
Steve looked to his left, toward Astro and his Guild. Talita approached them. Her old fingers pried open a small, wooden case. Astro smirked. Eight rings glinted in the low light - rings full to bursting with background energy absorbed from Nexus.
“Thank you for holding these in reserve,” said Astro. “Send Shadow my best.”
He removed the ring he was already wearing and delicately slid his fingers into the new ones.
“Thirty seconds,” Brad mumbled.
Everything seemed to speed up and get louder. His heart hammered. Everyday itches became agony. Jennifer’s hand felt so soft he thought his own might melt into it.
Herobrine chuckled at a song Dinnerbone strummed on his ukulele.
Urist murmured as he took practice swings. Voidblade nodded at every word.
“Ten seconds.”
Cossack, the Gaian leader, coughed and readjusted his green cloak. The rustling was like an avalanche. Steve realised that he was saying the seconds aloud with Brad.
“Five.”
The lights went out.
“Four.”
A row of men knelt at the front, holding spears which shot fire after you cranked a handle enough - riflemen.
“Three.”
Ozen’s sword emerged from his inventory one last time.
“Two.”
Steve equipped Excalibur in turn. He held his breath.
“One.”
Crack! Wood splintered overhead, and bronze alloy crumbled away. Everything jerked forward, as though the ship were already trying to push them out into battle. Steve steadied himself against the handle, then stood up. Jennifer’s hand slid from under his. The twang of a bowstring quivered through the darkness.
The pistons began to move.
“At arms!” boomed Herobrine.
Everyone took the hint to get into a fighting stance. A shudder went through Steve as the cool surface of the ender pearl dropped into his palm. Light fell through the crack and illuminated the tips of the taller weapons. Andras’ halberd. Moderators’ staffs. And so on.
“Stay safe out there,” said Jennifer.
“I will,” he said.
“You too,” he thought.
They got a glimpse of the other side for the first time. A large hallway. Stone walls. High ceilings. Some sort of intersection with a locked, heavy door at the crook. No lanterns on the immediate landing, but he could see their purpled glows further up the corridor. Tower forces already lined up to fight. Mages at the front of a line of mercenaries. Arrows already sailing towards them.
One struck a nearby pigman and he fell. Astro and the other mages raised their hands. Countless magical shields materialised, overlapping and intersecting in some sort of crystalline honeycomb. Arrows began to bounce off it.
“Hold,” decreed Herobrine.
The men at the front cranked their rifles.
Thud! The pistons had moved, the ramp was ready for them to descend, but the mages of the Tower, many of them white-clad, had set up their own line of shields. Steve redirected his attention to the central figure, a tall, proud looking pigman.
Astro stepped out in front of the crouching riflemen. He moved slowly, delicately. Hands raised. Eyes closed.
Suddenly, his arms dropped, and the crystalline shield structure shattered. The shrapnel flew straight into the opposing shield wall.
“Fire!”
A volley of death surged out from the line of riflemen, striking the line of mages. Steve’s eyes widened as he saw the force with which the victims lurched backwards. The pigman remained standing, having successfully rebuilt a shield in time to save himself.
“Attack!”
Steve’s body moved ahead of his mind. He felt like a passenger. His feet moved beneath him, and his arm hurled an ender pearl. It shattered against the pigman-mage’s magical barrier. The orange-tinged shield split down the middle. Steve’s arms prepared to plunge Excalibur into the mage’s heart but froze mid-movement as Herobrine intervened.
A colossal bedrock sword careened through the shield’s remains and sent a swathe of white light burning onward. It was a blow to break bedrock in a swing and Herobrine didn’t even break his stride. He just marched deliberately onwards, his pigmen biting and tearing and killing around him, and his blackshells rattling proudly onward, invincible beneath their obsidian armour.
Steve felt as though he had already survived the battle. Like he was already trying to piece together memories that had made so much sense in order and now seemed completely disconnected on reflection.
Jennifer was at his side stabbing a mercenary, then in a puff of purple particles was on the other side of the battlefield, putting an arrow into a charging giant. Ozen stood behind him, then was ahead of him, grappling with a spear-wielding mage.
Here, he saw Urist batter open a door, send his men in to begin fortifying it, carry chest upon chest from the airship. Already, they were knocking down walls, creating turrets for archers to fire through. In the distance, Voidblade’s claws twisted the neck of a blonde man, or, no, he had thrown a purple-glowing lamp to the ground, and his armoured feet shattered the crystals, emboldening Astro to order a renewed charge!
Even more confusing were Steve’s own actions. He fought fiercely with a woman who had a scar through one eye, or maybe an eyepatch, but only a second later Excalibur plunged into a giant’s knee. And he couldn’t see Jennifer. And he knew he was supposed to follow Astro down one corridor, but the current of battle was carrying him towards another one, where Herobrine strode on as though there was nothing in the world worth fearing.
He slouched out of the way of an enderman’s enchanted axe. That was when he got the vague impression of being surrounded. His life was in danger, but still, he could barely feel his fingers. He cut down one mercenary. Two! Dodged another swipe from the enderman. More mercenaries filled the gaps. Where was Jennifer? Ozen? He couldn’t see them, he had to-
The enderman’s axe connected with his helmet and knocked the soul back into his body. Immediately he tensed back into action. He broke the enderman’s guard, then stunned him with a punch. His opponent teleported away. Steve struck down another mercenary, then another.
Some began to back away, maybe because of his renewed prowess, but maybe because the currents of battle were changing again. More allies cascaded into view. He saw Urist breaking a nearby mage’s leg with his mace. Dinnerbone cracked a giant’s skull with his ukulele, then with a flick of his wrist sent the corpse flying. Brad’s diamond rapier punctured an enchanted chestplate. Steve heard something warp into place behind him.
He turned back to the enderman, ready for a proper fight, then jumped back as he saw an arrow - Jennifer’s arrow! - pierce them through the eye. Ozen wrapped his arms around a stocky pigman mercenary and suplexed him. Steve smiled as Jennifer grabbed his hand.
“Astro needs us for fortifications. Come on.”
She threw an ender pearl just before Steve had the chance to nod, but the second they hit the ground Steve made up for his hesitation. He pulled a stack of cobblestone from his pocket and began to place it down on the line where friends stopped appearing and foes became ubiquitous. Jennifer and Ozen guarded him with precisely fired arrows and heavy sword-swings.
Within a minute or so, a surprisingly professional-looking crenelated barricade was established, three blocks high and two blocks deep, to allow a lip for archers to stand on. However, the enemy were already trying to seize it.
Astro forced his way through the melee, swinging Fire’s old sword viciously but a little clumsily.
“Get the lamps!” He called out.
Steve moved to hop the barricade and seek out a crystal-filled lamp to shatter, but a particularly large, zombified giant with a sword the length of a small tree forced him to fall back. He and Ozen took turns trying to bait it into making a mistake.
Jennifer, meanwhile, leapt up at the other end of the barricade. With one foot elevated on the turret, she effortlessly sent an arrow spinning into a lamp. She had already begun to look for the next one when the arrow struck, smiling as she heard the pleasant, glass-like tinkle of broken crystal.
Behind her, Astro forced one of his palms forward and the giant Steve and Ozen were fighting with hesitated mid-strike. It was as though he had been frozen without ice, straining to force the point of his sword down but impeded by an invisible force. While Steve and Ozen exchanged a look, a man in a skullcap ran between them and plunged a large, lapis-encrusted greatsword into the giant’s face.
Jennifer leapt from turret to turret, trying to get a good line on the next lamp. However, a young officer had gotten smart and ordered several of his soldiers to band together around a nearby lamp, holding up shields to defend it until a fast-builder could be found to construct a more elegant solution. She cursed.
A red-haired, bearded man leapt up beside her and, with a wide grin, drew back his bowstring. His arrow had a small device with a burning fuse bound to the tip. With a precise twang he sent it flying at the lantern. It detonated just above it, scattering the shield-bearing soldiers, but leaving the crystal untouched. Jennifer and the red-haired archer exchanged a look and then both loosed arrows at the exposed lamp. Jennifer’s struck first.
“Next one’s mine!” the man cackled.
Jennifer was about to quip back when Astro beckoned them over. Steve had already joined him. Seeing friendly soldiers begin to take control of the barricade and force the Tower’s forces back, she hopped down. Astro cast a small charm to drown out the sound around them in a small radius. He pulled out a basic-looking map compiled from Fire’s accounts and those of deserters, then suspended it in the air. Brit droned out instructions for which frequency to use and Steve adjusted his headset accordingly.
“We need to make it to this crossing point,” Astro decisively jabbed his finger. “Then we’ll be able to join together with a few or our other units and establish a real beachhead to attack the throne room from.”
Steve noticed that there was supposed to be some sort of staircase leading up and down for several floors. It was a key chokepoint. They had entered on this floor because they had the clearest idea of the layout, the throne room itself was several floors up.
Herobrine crackled through the radio: “We’re making steady progress, but some large, charging beast keeps harrying our efforts. You’ll make it there before us. Just seal off the route we’re due to come through and we’ll have the enemy encircled.”
“That’s all well and good for you!” A raspy voice came through. Steve heard some maniacal cackling in the background.
“What’s happening, Ray?” Astro pressed with considerable distrust. “Where’s Ozzy?”
“No, Viral, that’s a friendly, leave him be! Sorry, what were you saying, Astro? Yes, they’re killing us out here. It’s as we feared, not a man is re-forming. We’ve lost half our force.” Astro sighed deeply. “We won’t be able to make the rendezvous. If not for Amaerin and Atreidon, we would already have been overrun.”
Steve remembered Astro describing the haphazard way some men in his world, if they were lucky, crumbled to dust when killed in battle, only to later reconstitute themselves in the last place they slept. Looking around at the zealous Vanillan soldiers charging past them, Steve wondered if they would go forward so readily if they knew that desperate safety net didn’t exist in Nexus.
“Where’s Ozzy, Ray?” Astro pressed.
It was the raspy voice’s turn to sigh.
“We came across a civilian. Looked like a researcher. Ozzy insisted on bringing them into our ranks. Suddenly, they just… exploded. Turned out they were a mage. Then the ambush began… I’m sorry.”
An oaken-haired woman called Tass covered her mouth.
“****,” Astro hissed.
Steve sensed this was more than a strategic loss for Astro and placed a hand on the wizard’s shoulder, discovering as he did so that the man with the skullcap had done the same. Then, he craned his head for a closer look at the map.
“Rose,” Steve began. “How’s it looking on your end?”
“Good, Arcation have broken off to attempt an encirclement of the enemy, but otherwise Woobly and the Void are on track to clear the sector.”
“Jus’ helping ‘em set up camp here,” entered Urist. “Their sector’s almost clear.”
“Great. Rose, could you take a few guys and help Ray’s group out?”
A momentary pause followed.
“Are you quite certain I’ll need the few guys?”
Steve could just imagine her little half-smirk. He beamed.
Astro lifted Steve’s hand away, firing off an appreciative look.
“We’ll leave that to your judgement, Rose,” said Astro.
He looked around, then cocked an eyebrow.
“If there’s no other business, CHARGE!”
A cheer went up and the force ran forward. Steve, Jennifer, and Ozen ran at the front, placing obsidian beneath them to create ramps for their allies to follow over the barricade, then leaping off into the fighting. Steve equipped a second sword and began to carve a bloody trench into the enemy ranks, while Jen ducked and dodged her way through them, leaving a trail of arrow-punctured opponents. Ozen soon fell behind, slowed by his tendency towards hand-to-hand combat.
Only two groups were able to keep pace with Steve Brine and Jennifer, the Eye-and Claws, and Astro’s Guild. The rest fell behind into the general ruck, but these three kept the fight moving onwards in a perpetual torrent of glory.
The Eye-and Claws were both interesting and confusing to watch, according to Fire they were not an organized army as such, instead they were a collection of highly skilled individuals. Each one of them fought differently, yet they still moved cohesively and left the Tower’s soldiers few options for counterattacks. However, the standouts by far were Brad and Andras.
Brad flowed between enemies as if he wasn’t in a battle, but in a series of duels. Each of his opponents found their end at the tip of his diamond rapier that seemingly refused to acknowledge the existence of armour, and simply skewered anything it pointed at. Andras on the other hand exerted a zone of absolute control, any Tower soldier daring to step close was cut down by his halberd. Occasionally Andras would throw a kick, allowing the demon contained in the runic armour that replaced his right leg to lash out and devour an enemy. Not even magical attacks could touch him, it was as if he could see them coming before they were even cast.
Astro’s Guild proved equally formidable, and as Steve heard the calls of battle, became familiar with their names. The oaken-haired woman was Tassadar, and she fought on the flanks with a sword in one hand, a small, spring-loaded firearm in the other. She would lock blades with her opponents, then unload a round or two into their stomachs. Next to her was a bandana-wearing man called Mo who swung with precise, two-handed strikes of an axe. Steve didn’t see too much of them, but what little he saw impressed him. The spring-loaded firearm in particular meant that Tassadar hardly saw an enderman she didn’t kill.
The true crowning jewel of the Guild were Astro and his friends. Steve watched as the man in the skullcap, Aaron, spun and stomped and struck his way through the enemy ranks. He heaved a huge, lapis-encrusted diamond greatsword this way and that, deflecting blows from giants and cutting down iron golems without a bead of sweat on his brow. To his right, the red-haired archer, Secret, advanced with an enchanted bow, always seeking another lantern to shoot down or another target to kill. Small, the blond assassin ensured no one slipped through the archer’s guard unpunished, disappearing into the crowd and then bursting forth in a savage flurry of daggers.
Between them, Astro advanced, striking this mercenary with his new sword, Dodgeball, and crushing the ribcage of that enderman with his mind. The sword glimmered with a black flame, and whenever it drew blood, the glimmer of life in its victims’ eyes seemed to dim, as though merely being in contact with this blade had brought them slightly closer to death. Larger injuries would rapidly engulf the victim in the same black flame, leaving them a lifeless, charred corpse not long after. He barked orders to his friends, coordinating them into a tight V-formation which withstood any advance.
After them came Brit, the moustachioed detective, whipping his silver firearm from foe to foe. He didn’t bother to ensure all were dead as he proceeded, simply ensuring they were injured enough for someone behind him to finish the job. Half the time, this was his friend, the always-filthy Gracey, who zipped through the battlefield, brutalising men with a switchblade and shambling away from attacks.
Every now and then, the stout Gaian commander, Cossack would waddle urgently up and try his hand in the thick of the fighting. The episode which formed Steve’s understanding of his fighting style came when Astro was briefly encircled. In order to buy himself some room, Astro shifted the floor behind him, slamming a mercenary into the ground and enabling him to focus on a much more dangerous enderman. As the mercenary wheezed and strained back up, Cossack ran forward and hefted his sword into their gut. Astro, having dispatched the enderman, looked over his shoulder, to see a sweaty, panting Cossack beaming back at him, very pleased to have made himself useful. He fell behind again almost immediately afterwards, this exertion having knocked the wind out of him.
Finally, they came to the crossroads - a junction where four corridors met, and the Entity’s assembled wealth was clearly overflowing. Goblets, chests of gold, and paintings Steve had to assume were valuable were stacked against the open door of a nearby room, which itself was full of glass display cabinets. One of the walls in the x-shaped junction gave way onto a large, spiral staircase which had been hastily sandbagged with straw and dirt. A small, wooden palisade was all that stood between them and this key objective.
Without hesitation, they jumped the enemy’s fortifications. Everything became a clamour of sword upon steel, the twang of arrows, the crack and boom of firearms. After Steve removed the head of an enderman captain, sending up a spray of purple blood, he saw a giant - the very one who had stolen his crystals all those months ago - bat aside an Eye-and-Claw operative, then crush a member of Astro’s Guild underfoot. Steve watched with a weird curiosity as the Gaian riflemen found him, and the giant began to shudder under repeated blows from bayonet and bullet. Still, he kept fighting, until finally Brad leapt in and passed his rapier through his gut.
They were winning. Talita and Andras joined forces with Jennifer to start attacking the sandbagged stairs. Cossack barked orders at Ozen, and Steve’s brother obligingly began to build the barricade over the route Herobrine was due to come up. Steve found himself back-to-back with Astro, becoming a cyclone of victory in the splintering Tower forces.
But soon Steve broke their flow to warn Astro of a new threat. Down one of the routes, a new Tower force was charging towards them. Then, Steve noticed their erratic behaviour. Endermen warped frantically onwards, only covering several metres at a time. Their eyes held the madness of retreat. Steve watched as one fell beneath a heavy spear, swiftly retrieved by a severe-looking man in white armour, and another was wrapped in ropes by a woman in blue, then finally an officer at the fore of the fleeing enemies was split in two by a wave of impossibly sharp knives. Rose leapt through the red mist, glamorous and terrible.
Astro took his turn to draw Steve’s attention, knocking him on the shoulder and gesturing down the final corridor with Dodgeball. The enemy, scattered and confused but sufficiently numerous to pose a problem if they regrouped, fled down towards another series of junctions and doors.
A Tower officer, tall, proud, and adorned with many medals stopped the flight and gestured to hole up inside a nearby door. He twisted the handle. Immediately a man with a colossal stone shield exploded out and crushed the officer into the far wall, killing him instantly. Following him were a slender archer, a man with a flaming sword, and a hooded man holding a staff which poured fire and darts onto the retreating Tower forces. The warriors of Arcation had finally begun their encirclement - a bit late, but Steve couldn’t help but feel a little grateful.
Astro gestured, the clamour of battle was drowned out and the floating map emerged again, then began to decisively issue commands.
“Urist, how far out are you?” he asked.
“Na far, minute o’ running at tha most.”
“Excellent. In that case, Steve, Jennifer, and I are taking a small force and Arcation out on clean-up duty. The rest of you, stay here until Herobrine breaks through, and Urist’s team are able to properly fortify the position. We can’t afford a lucky charge from the enemy encircling us. We’re on their turf, don’t forget. Brad, you’re in charge.”
“Got it. We’ll hole up here and if we have the capacity, we’ll send a party to capture their comms. Might be able to break their morale and facilitate surrender.”
“Absolutely, just don’t go for the throne room yet, we need to have a firm foothold before we risk it. Also haven’t heard much from the lower sections and the machine.”
Steve got the impression Astro was trying to make up for his earlier indecision when he heard that Ozzy guy died, but the orders made sense. Someone had to keep Arcation on a leash after all. He and Jennifer said goodbye to Ozen and joined Astro as he approached the warrior priesthood.
“Gogyst!” Astro called.
The hooded man dispatched his latest prey and turned.
Steve glanced over his shoulder and noticed a few Eye-and-Claws, Talita, and a column of riflemen falling in line behind them. The ‘small force’ Astro had mentioned. Dinnerbone had also emerged from the fighting and dawdled alongside, strumming his ukulele.
“Astro!” exclaimed Gogyst, who ran up and clapped the wizard on the shoulder. “Is this not as glorious as the Onslaught? Does it not make our wars on the Brotherhood and against Dominus look trifling by comparison, now that creation itself is on the line?!”
Even beneath the obfuscation charm, Steve could tell a mad grin had spread across Gogyst’s face. He reminded Steve of a version of Kay who one hundred percent, completely believed his own hype. Yep, he needed supervision. He and Jennifer exchanged a weary look.
“Yes, Gogy, glorious indeed,” said Astro through a forced smile. “Anyway, we need you to help us finish these guys off before we go after the throne room.”
Gogyst seemed to shrink a couple of inches as he slouched forward, then called to the man with the flaming sword.
“Vacar, take point! We’re on clean-up duty.”
Then, to the man with the stone shield and the archer:
“Besta, get behind Walkers’ shield, we’re doing this methodically.”
They advanced at a measured pace. Steve and Jennifer ender-pearled forward to disrupt the enemy force and separate a few stragglers, who would then be cut down by Astro, Vacar and the others. The wizard also made sure to reach out with his mind where the lamps allowed and shattered bones, snapped necks and shut down nervous systems. The archer, Besta, and the riflemen peppered the enemy with a series of precise pot-shots.
They followed the retreating army through the corridors, and then when they tried to shake their pursuers, through a series of rooms. A grand hall filled only a chair, a fireplace, and hundreds of item frames full of music discs. A colossal mob-grinder. A farm full of pigs, cows, and sheep. Finally, they returned to the corridors and rounded a corner.
That was when they saw it. The Tower soldiers fled toward a large, obsidian gate, while a lone figure thundered in the opposite direction, right towards them. It was like nothing else Steve and Jennifer had ever seen, so they stopped, allowing Astro and the others a moment to catch up.
It was some sort of huge iron golem, complete with the long arms, the square fists, and the rectangular nose of a villager. However, instead of the usual black eyes, it had a single, red pupil, glowing angrily. And it wasn’t made of iron, its armour was too dark a grey for that, with black speckling. Was that… bedrock?
Before they knew it the golem was upon them. Steve rolled out of the way of one fist, but the Eye-and-Claws operative behind him was not so lucky, his firesteel breastplate immediately warped then rebounded and his whole body went flying. Astro immediately set about trying to heal him with his glowing hands, but he was badly hurt.
They retreated slowly, attempting to stop the golem’s march. Vacar, Steve and Astro’s swords all bounced right off the creature. The riflemen formed a line and let off a volley against it, but it hardly even flinched, and scattered the line with a single strike. Gogyst shot flame from his staff until his fuel supply ran out. Talita’s missiles simply glanced off its torso. Dinnerbone eventually ran forward and attempted to send it flying with a concerted telepathic push, but it strained on until the man with the black hat began to slide backwards under the force of his own powers.
“Go for the eye!” Jennifer called out.
Those who had bows drew them, and the remaining riflemen attempted to reload. Steve’s arrow merely bounced off its chin. Jennifer fired a shot at its head, but it glanced off the edge of the eye. Then, Besta of Arcation leapt out from behind the stone shield and sent one of his heavy arrows flying out from his greatbow. It struck the creature right in the eye and sent reeling. Besta and his fellows let out a cheer. Then, the golem’s head snapped right back into place. Crack! And the red eye was glowing even brighter than before.
Besta was immediately eviscerated by the blast, and everyone began to run for cover as further lasers began to rapidly shoot from the golem’s eye. Jennifer and Talita managed to reach the end of the corridor and hide behind the corner, but Astro, not having time to summon a proper shield, joined Steve in taking cover behind Walkers’ shield, all while trying to convince him not to suicidally avenge his fallen comrade.
“Brother!” screamed Walkers, as Steve grabbed him around the waist.
A laser blast chipped away some of the stone at the edge of the shield.
“He’s gone, Walkers, there's nothing you can do!” Astro reasoned.
“I can kill this beast, that’s what I can bloody well do!”
He began to march forward, dragging Steve with him.
“Do something!” shouted Herobrine’s son.
Astro grimaced. “So much for clearing the sector.”
He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. There was a crunch which alerted Steve to two indentations on the ceiling - or sets of indentations, it was like someone’s fingers had dug in.
“Oh!” Steve exclaimed as he realised Astro’s plan.
The wizard pulled down and the ceiling came with him, collapsing on top of the bedrock golem.
A cloud of dust rose, and there was a moment of anticipation, but they did not have to wait for it to clear naturally as further laser blasts tore straight through the cloud and right at them. Somehow, Astro had managed to crush everything but its head, which was wedged upright and firing at them.
Then, the sound of thundering footsteps echoed up the hall towards Steve. He looked back, and there strode Herobrine. Deflecting blasts with his sword, Herobrine did not once change the pace of his ceaseless advance until, at last, he stood over the crushed golem and plunged his sword into its head. Bedrock ate through bedrock, and the red eye flickered before turning off altogether.
Steve breathed a sigh of relief. He patted Walkers on the back and shook Astro’s hand.
“Oh, thank Notch!” Steve laughed. “Or Herobrine, I guess.”
Herobrine struck a pose and was clearly about to say something very important and self-serious when a rumbling sound began.
Within seconds a colossal beast slammed through the wall and directly into Herobrine. The beast was taller than Steve, rampaging forward on legs like tree trunks, its massive horned head ploughing through anything that stood in its path. A small grey villager sat, sneering on its back. Herobrine returned to his feet immediately and pursued the beast rider down the corridor, swearing vengeance.
Steve would have joined him, but they were immediately swarmed by a series of similar grey-skinned villagers who emerged from the breach. They weren’t too tough, however, and Steve, Astro, Jennifer, and the others fought their way through the crowd of hemming and hawing attackers, crossing through the breach in the wall. After all, they were supposed to clear the sector, and this was a new part of it.
However, then Steve saw a figure crushed under some rubble down a side-passage.
“Steve!” they called.
It was Ozen. How had he gotten there?
Steve and Jennifer ran straight towards him and began to lift the stone bricks which covered him. As soon as the rubble was clear, however, Steve remembered what happened to that Ozzy guy. He pulled Jen back and placed down some obsidian. Sure enough, Ozen immediately transformed into a white-robed mage, but instead of exploding, disappeared. Steve furrowed his brow and slowly looked out from behind the blocks.
“Steve,” said Jennifer. “Look at the floor.”
She stomped and the ground crunched. Gravel.
An unseen piston clanked, and the floor gave way. They fell about fifteen blocks and slammed into the ground which was made of… railway tracks?
Steve looked around. A series of wood-log supports reached up around them, propped against the walls, and discarded signs littered the floor. An insanely basic trap. Steve cursed his own stupidity, but he didn’t have time to think about that.
Two figures emerged from the shadows at the pit’s far end. A man, and a woman who looked a little like… Alex? It wasn’t quite her, but the resemblance was uncanny. Also, she wore a strange, winged grey armour.
Suddenly, words appeared in front of the man in a bright, white font. Steve had always considered himself a bit of a slow reader, but somehow immediately understood their meaning.
ARE YOU STEVE BRINE FROM WORLD 390?
Steve did not like the sound of this, but after exchanging a look with Jennifer, decided to say:
“No, I’m Steve… Mine, from World…”
I CAN TELL YOU’RE LYING.
“Yeah, I thought so. I’m Steve Brine. This is Jennifer.”
The man stepped into the light, and Steve gasped as he saw his own face. The only difference was that where his own eyes were purple, this guy’s eyes were a deep blue - like his own before he killed Drake Senior.
PLEASED TO MEET YOU. I AM THE STEVE FROM WORLD 001. YOU MAY CALL ME STEVE PRIME. THIS IS MY PARTNER, ALEX.
“Not Alex Prime?” Jennifer asked with a snort.
Prime began to bite into a golden apple. Alex laughed, and instead of using the ominous text, she spoke normally.
“No, Prime doesn’t have an Alex, I helped him kill my Steve a while back. We kept the partnership going. What’s your name?”
“Jennifer.”
“Good, then I promise you this isn’t personal.”
Alex whipped out a crossbow with some sort of rocket loaded into it and shot it directly into Jennifer’s chest. Jennifer flew back in an explosion of yellow sparks in the shape of a creeper’s head. Alex used a second rocket to propel herself into the air and swooped down at Jennifer with a sword. Jennifer leapt up and began grappling fiercely with her airborne foe.
Steve moved to help, but before he could fully turn, a glass bottle had shattered against his shoulder. Suddenly everything from his armour to his own skull felt a lot heavier. A weakness potion.
DIE.
A minecart swept Steve’s legs out from under him and he tumbled in.
“Well, at least I know what the tracks are for,” he thought.
He fumbled around in his pocket for a bucket of milk and stole a sip just in time for the minecart to slam into the far wall. He saw Prime flying through the air with an axe and a large, rectangular wooden shield. With his strength restored, he leapt from the minecart and out of the way.
His footing regained, Steve launched a flurry of blows at Prime, hacking and slashing in a deliberate, practised onslaught. Every single blow was absorbed by the shield, but Steve knew it was only wood. He just had to keep hitting until- Snap! The shield splintered. Steve grabbed Excalibur with both hands and thrust it at Prime’s dark grey chestplate.
The sword hit another shield and bounced off. Prime bashed Steve with the new shield and he staggered back.
THAT WON’T WORK. I HAVE LIKE FIVE MORE OF THESE, AND EVEN IF YOU GET THROUGH…
He tapped his chestplate with his axe.
NETHERITE. STRONGER THAN DIAMOND IN ANY WORLD.
Steve grimaced and rushed forward for another attack, only for Prime’s axe to send him sprawling.
IT’S CALLED KNOCKBACK. OR DO THEY NOT HAVE THAT WHERE YOU COME FROM?
“Do they not have smack talk in your world?” Steve snapped back.
Steve wished he felt as confident as he sounded, and that wasn’t his most confident retort ever. Cracks had already started spreading across his armour. He couldn’t believe it. This was a fresh set and enchanted with unbreaking to boot. Even considering the battle, it couldn’t be running down this early.
He dodged Prime’s next swing, and then the next. He tried to keep his distance and bought himself enough time to see Jennifer be thrown to the ground by Alex. She drew Fire’s ghast bone bow but didn’t have time to draw back its heavy string before Alex was back on her again.
Something glimmered in Prime’s hand. He wasn’t holding an axe anymore, it was another potion. Steve narrowly dodged the bottle and it shattered against one of the log pillars. A single drop splashed against Steve’s cheek, and he felt it burn at his very life force. A damage potion, good to avoid that one.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t avoid the hook of Prime’s fishing rod, which he had equipped while Steve was busy dodging the potion. With a robust tug, Steve fell forward and landed on his face. Thankfully, he was able to draw an ender-pearl and throw it between Prime’s legs to avoid the inevitable strike of his axe.
The moment Steve materialised, he wasted no time in hitting Prime on the back of the head again and again. However, he did not stagger. No matter where he struck Prime, it was as though the harm was diffused across his entire body. In no time, Prime faced Steve again and bashed him with his shield.
I HAVE SEEN SO MANY LIKE US.
Steve dodged his swipe.
WE AWAKEN, WE PUNCH TREES, WE SURVIVE THE NIGHT.
Steve pearled behind him again, but Prime turned instinctively and blocked.
WE BUILD HOMES TO STAY SAFE, BUT THAT’S NEVER ENOUGH.
Steve reached over the shield and punched Prime in the face to minimal effect. He saw Jennifer headbutt Alex.
SO WE GO OUT, WE KILL THE DRAGON, THE WITHER AND EVERY OTHER OPPONENT WORTH FIGHTING.
Prime tried to hit Steve with that stupid fishing rod again, but it only managed to scrape his cheek.
WHY? TO PROVE WE’RE THE BEST!
Steve drew a second sword and simultaneously deflected one of Prime’s attacks while hitting the shield again.
BUT WHAT NEXT? AFTER ALL FOES ARE BEATEN?
Steve broke the shield and began to strike Prime furiously until he equipped a new one. Prime bashed him back.
SOME OF US HAVE WHATEVER WEIRD STUFF YOU GOT UP TO WITH HEROBRINE AND YOUR FAMILY. IDK, I ONLY SKIMMED YOUR FILE.
Prime’s axe connected with Steve’s arm, and he dropped the second sword. The cracks spread further across his diamond armour. Alex grabbed Jennifer as she tried to draw another heavy shot with the ghast bone bow. They soared upwards.
I HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO DO. I WAS THE BEST, BUT I WAS ALONE. THEN, FORGELIGHT FOUND ME, AND I DISCOVERED THAT I WAS ONLY WORLD 001! AND THERE WERE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WITH EXACTLY MY PROBLEM!
Steve just about managed to dodge Prime’s blow. He saw Jennifer grab Alex’s wings, forcing her to crash into a log pillar. It wobbled.
SO I DECIDED THAT OF ALL THE TREE-PUNCHING KNUCKLEHEADS, I WAS NOT ONLY THE FIRST!
He struck Steve’s chestplate. His boots broke. Steve couldn’t stop thinking about that wobbling pillar.
I WAS GOING TO BE THE BEST!
He hit Steve again and his helmet shattered. Excalibur slipped from his hand due to the force of the attack. He remembered he and Jennifer’s first day in Nexus. He backed up.
AND SURE AS THE NETHER!
Prime knocked out Steve’s leggings. He recalled how they had tried to place dirt and tower, but it had crumbled away.
A glance confirmed that Jennifer was being lifted again, even higher than before, struggling all the way.
I WAS GOING TO BE THE LAST!
Steve slammed into the log pillar as his chestplate exploded into a cloud of diamond shards. Every part of him ached, and he was down to his turquoise shirt and jeans. Prime was winding up for a final, horizontal swing that would cut him in half.
Still, he couldn’t stop thinking about how, after the dirt thing didn’t work out, they realised they’d have to just cut the tree down normally, but when they went to do that…
NOW, DIE.
…The tree had fallen over!
Steve dodged, Prime’s axe stuck in the log and cracks spread all the way along a metric cube of the pillar. Steve swung his fist forward. The block broke. His eyes locked with Prime’s for a second. He saw fear in his opponent’s gaze, perhaps the first fear he had felt in his entire life, but also a sort of respect.
NOT BAD…
The log fell on him. Steve saw him struggle for a moment, then disappear in a puff of smoke. His belongings scattered across the floor, including his armour, his stupid fishing rod, and those especially awful shields.
“No, the best,” thought Steve.
He had no time for reverie or even to loot the spoils, however, as Alex hurled Jennifer from the ceiling to the bottom of the pit. Jennifer hit the ground with a crack, and Alex swooped down. Steve grabbed Excalibur and ran forward despite his lack of armour. Then, he heard the arrow snap into place. Jennifer held the ghast bone bow in hand.
Alex’s eyes widened, she tried to pull up, but to no avail. The arrow shot forth even faster than one of her rockets. It pierced right through her exposed torso and pinned her to the ceiling. She didn’t vanish in a puff of smoke, but her wings slid off, and her crossbow crashed into the ground.
Steve ran up to Jennifer and hugged her.
“Are you okay?”
“I just killed someone who looked like one of our close friends and neighbours. Otherwise, fine. What about you?”
“I just killed myself. Otherwise, fine.”
They both got really quiet for a moment.
“Jennifer.”
“Yeah, Steve?”
“I am so done with this interdimensional stuff.”
“Me too.”
They laughed until, finally, a grey villager corpse fell into the pit with them. Its neck was snapped. Astro leaned into view above.
“How are you down there? All good?”
“We’re fine,” Jennifer groaned. “That was just… a hard one.”
“Do you need any healing? Or-”
“We’re fine Astro!” Jennifer pressed.
“Okay, it’s just… It’s not like we have a hard countdown, but it’s definitely time sensitive. Should we throw a rope down or can you build out? Actually, Steve, should I tell Urist to get you a new set of armour?”
Steve looked over at Prime’s belongings - or, he supposed, Prime’s remains depending on how you looked at it.
“I just need five minutes,” he grinned up at Astro.
Chapter81:Down Below (Kay)
“Get the lamp!”
I began following the order before I even realised who it had come from. In the din of battle the only distinction I could afford to make was between friend and foe.
I wrenched the sword from the Endling’s shoulder in a cloud of blood. I waited a second to see if it got back up, but it was dead. With an imprecise sweep of my arm, I gestured for my men to follow me. The lamp swayed before me as I panted ragged breaths.
It stood proudly, practically daring me to topple it. But enemies stood between me and my goal. Endlings and mercenaries and giants and all variety of other things. I deflected a blow from an Endling officer and struck him across the jaw. He warped behind me, ready to strike, but fell before Raphoe’s poleaxe.
I recalled my battle with the Ender.
Next, I swept the legs from beneath a mercenary. The chief huntress and her husband struck down his fellows in a flurry of spears and daggers. The lamp was open. I lifted the mercenary from the ground threw him against it. The stone pedestal fell on him, and the purple crystals burst open amidst the blood spreading across the floor.
I recalled how I had liberated Astro.
A glance over my shoulder. Tyron cut down a giant, then beckoned for a robed figure to come forward. I recognised him as Wolfric, Steve’s aloof, dark-haired friend who had volunteered to accompany Shadow. He held out a hand.
“Impulverify!” he called.
The gate before him, reinforced with obsidian, crumpled. I allowed myself a jovial laugh as our troops flooded down the stairs towards the next level.
Then, I recalled Rose cutting open the door of the portal facility. My greatest glory. My coronation. The beginning of my undoing. Suddenly, my legs wouldn’t stop shaking and I had to steady myself against Clarke.
Once I had recovered, I marched on to hold the line with my troops as our allies broke free from their various engagements and pushed onwards.
Fire and the Mencur-Besh quickly overtook us and renewed the advance, overtaking my men easily. Once again, the yellow-eyed Mencur-Besh shot forward like blasts of artillery, bursting bloody holes in our enemies’ lines. And as soon as he joined them, Fire was no less effective, cleaving apart enemies with burning arcs of his zweihander.
Overhead, Shadow and her coven carried out clean-up duty, several of them having been relocated from the assault on the upper levels. Danann flitted between enemies, vanishing in clouds of smoke, and leaving frail duplicates who bore all manner of injuries. Our enemies seemingly ignored all reason and flocked to these apparitions, only for Danann to incinerate them from behind with a quick snap of his sparking fingers. Iridia and Pallas ran between our soldiers, providing healing magic and, in the most extreme cases, providing healing potions. Their master, however, outshone all their efforts.
Shadow threw out powerful spells whenever there was an opportunity, blasts of flame, lightning bolts, and of course her apparent favourite: the blindingly bright ray that left nothing where it struck. Though I could swear that in the past she had used stronger versions of these spells, was it because we were indoors?
Lupe decapitated a giant next to me, spraying blood on my face. I wiped my cheek with my blood-encrusted scarf, and as I did so I found Tyron again.
Carried forth by his stone wings, the Dragoknight crashed into a man, breaking his bones, and sending him flying. As he landed on the ground and drew Kir again, Amanda and Helix rushed forward to defend him.
I found myself momentarily entranced as Amanda pulled a trick that was deeply familiar to me. A mercenary advanced on her, confident of his supremacy over a mere child. She dodged one blow, then another, and then she struck back. She brandished her crossbow like a spear and thrust it as close to her opponent’s face as she could, forcing him to flinch. She pulled back slightly, then fired the bolt straight at her opponent’s neck. The bolt thudded in, and he fell dead.
“She must have spoken to Secret,” I told myself, though realistically I had no way of knowing.
In truth, I was probably trying to avoid looking at Helix. Even after my entrancement broke and I began to fight towards them, I could only muster minute glances in his direction. I would look at him, then draw away, as though I had cut myself on a shard of glass. First, I glimpsed him firing his luminous bow. Next, I saw him mustering purple flame to drive off an Endling.
I felt a surge of pride as I realised, he was tentatively using his demonic powers, then my heart curdled as I remembered how I had failed him.
We finished descending the stairs and came into a large hall, filled with Tower banners and expensive-looking artwork. I squinted down at the far end and saw a set of two spiral staircases. I exchanged a look with Tyron, then called out to Kami to pull up the map. I nodded to Tyron, and he began to speak into his mic.
“Right, everyone, we’re coming up on the staircase down to the labs. Be on your guard, if there’s a counterattack coming it’ll come here.”
It felt redundant, as we were still up to our necks in Tower soldiers, but we still had to be wary. We were fighting an empire, and risk encirclement at any moment. As though reading my thoughts, Tyron added:
“How are we looking with the rear guard, Lucy?”
Lucy’s voice came back: “The Tower forces are mounting another offence, but we’re holding. We further fortified the perimeter, so they have to go up against their own walls. Some are getting through though, the faster we get this done the better. Still, be as careful as you can afford to be.”
Tyron nodded sagely as he raked Kir across the stomach of another mercenary.
“You heard the lady,” he affirmed, then returned to his onslaught.
I fought the urge to follow his comment up with some grand oration. For one, I knew it would not be well-received. More importantly, I’m not sure I still had it in me.
I parried an enderman and sent them spinning into the path of one of Kami’s showers of magical energy.
Our fight continued, bloody and terrible.
The Tower’s lines did not break as they had on the fields. Every time we pushed them back, they just seemed to compress and harden, like diamonds formed by the shifting of the world itself. I heard their officers’ screaming slogans over the clamour:
“Do it for Marcus! For Silver! For the world yet promised to us!”
“For a new world!”
“An end to injustice.”
I borrowed a spear from one of the hunters any time I heard this dreck. Madmen preaching of a utopia at the world’s end. I would not abide it. Unfortunately, eventually I realised that half these slogans were coming from crackling speaker-boxes, reinforced with obsidian casings to make them hard to shatter.
At this point, even the Mencur-Besh were struggling to advance. They resorted to striking specific points along the line so that one of them might be able to overcharge and rush through, functioning as a depth charge when they inevitably fell beneath the enemy’s swords, spears, and arrows.
Even the Graves siblings Fire and Shadow were having difficulties. The Tower troops had resorted to tearing lanterns off the walls and carrying them forward, sacrificing later defence to stop the onslaught of spells. Shadow had dropped to the ground and fought using the odd amorphous blade she had also carried during the ambush on the Tower patrol, which to me felt like it happened years ago. Fire was still a force to be reckoned with, but he had dropped from supernaturally dangerous to simply dangerous, which was a big swing in favour of the Tower troops.
My eyes were also drawn to the efforts of the Brotherhood as they, against all odds, managed to advance almost uninterrupted. Tauto Chrone, beneath his steel mask, became a flurry of death. He slashed with his electrified dagger and cracked his burning whip at anyone who threatened his initiates. Next to him an assassin in a turtle-mask did impressive work as he dodged every blow and slit throats with his circular blades. But most impressive of all was a man whose name I had not yet heard. He stood at the centre of the group, though Chrone was the leader, hacking away with two shortswords in an almost continuous torrent of attacks. No blow seemed to be able to shake him, as his diamond armour seemed to form a continuous, unbroken skin across his body.
Still, despite their successes, we were at an impasse. The twin staircases did not seem to get any closer. As I removed my blade from a giant’s knee, leaving him to the mercy of Tyron and Seth, I imagined the staircases swirling, boring deeper and deeper into the earth and pushing our goal further and further away. And yet, just as despair struck me, a familiar voice restored my hope.
“I’m sick of this.”
Helix stepped forward. Bloodstains covered him from head to toe, and the red hue of his eyes seemed to have dulled to match them. He held his gauntlet before him, looking at it as though it were a watch. I noticed that the crystal on it was sparking purple.
“Tin-Throne!” He shouted to an unseen party. “Give me that cool demon-arm from before!” A criss-cross of purple flames weaved across his arm, and soon these lines coalesced into a horrific, giant arm. “Activate whack-a-mole mode… but only for Tower troops!”
Immediately the fist at the end of his demonic limb twitched as though nodding. It then windmilled down and struck the ground, sending Warnado flying into the enemy ranks. Before I had time to yelp in distress or notice the smoking crater he had left next to me, I saw the fist slamming around every which way, literally punching a hole in their defences.
I raised my sword and sent up a cry, and what remained of my red-scarved elites joined me as we hacked and beat our way through the fractured enemy. I saw Fire break through next to us.
In no time at all, the enemy were scattering, retreating down the stairs towards the labs or into this room full of taxidermized bears, or that room full of what appeared to be altars. My men and I caught up to Warnado as he dispelled his demon arm at the top of the stairs. He turned, panting, and smiling.
As we advanced, I couldn’t stop grinning myself. This young man, who just a few months ago had been reduced to tears using precisely that power, had just used it to successfully turn the tide of battle. This power had killed his father, but he was breaking the cycle. He would be the hero his world needed. And I had to say something. I opened my mouth
“Helix-”
“HELIX!”
Amanda cut across me, running up and grabbing her boyfriend around the waist.
“That was amazing! You were amazing!”
She lifted him and spun him around.
“What else is new?” Warnado giggled.
She put him down, and then they both fell into comfortable silence. I shuffled awkwardly. The Brotherhood and Mencur-Besh charged down the stairs to my right. Tyron stopped next to us, accompanied by Seth and Rathina.
“Not bad, kiddo,” Tyron laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Pretty sure I saw some of the moves I taught you in there so don’t mind if I steal my share of the credit.”
“50% our win!” chirped Kir.
“Sorry guys,” he quipped back. “This is the part of the heist movie where I reveal I already stole the credit two days ago.”
There was a round of polite laughter because no one seemed to understand what he was talking about. Then again, when questioned what he was talking about he never seemed to fully grasp it either. I heard Lupe of all people bark with genuine laughter and turned my head to see her shoot Warnado a knowing look as she prepared to join the fray.
Shadow and Fire broke off from driving away stragglers and approached the small circle of congratulations.
“Good job,” said Shadow. “You’ve come a long way.”
Fire nodded but threw glances down the staircase ahead. It was clear that he was feeling the urgency of our situation.
Unfortunately for him, the speaker-boxes crackled to life again. I hadn’t noticed their silence until that point.
“Hello Tower radio-o-o-o-o-o!” whooped a man.
I recognised the voice and my emotions immediately sparked from discomfort into joy.
“We’re sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming,” teased a woman’s voice. “But you’re under new management.”
“I’m Aaron Ecodew!”
“And I’m Tassadar Tunes!”
“And you’re listening to 24D Airwaves, sponsored by the good folks at Eye-and-Claws Inc, where we play nothing but the secrets your bosses don’t want to tell you!”
“Like how the Entity planned not to create a utopia for you guys to conquer, but just to glomp up all of reality for some reason! Don’t believe us? Ask Doctor Mercury, or has she been weirdly inaccessible for the last few weeks? Just hanging around in her lab all the time. Could that perhaps be because she realised the truth?”
“Not to say the first plan made much sense to begin with,” Aaron chuckled. “Did you dumb mother****ers really think you were the toughest guys in the multiverse?”
I leant against the wall and began to polish my sword. I heard weapons clattering to the floor and saw a small group of stragglers on the other side of the hall throwing down their weapons and surrendering to a detachment of Vangaardians.
“I have to say,” Tassadar said with grave professionalism. “Today’s events have certainly put that assumption into question.”
“But Tassadar, that’s not the worst part! You see, you’ve all collectively been had twice over! Because after all, the Entity who tricked you to begin with died a week ago.”
“Killed by our dear friend, Destiny Rosario. Rest in peace.”
I shot an apologetic smile to Kami, who grimaced awkwardly in return.
“That’s right, the real person in charge of the Tower is everybody’s favourite phantom of fear, Freak… Phantom… Phantomson. Yeah, Freak Phantomson.”
There was a pause, then the sound of Aaron breaking down laughing.
“That’s really the best you can do?” Tassadar said, not letting her presenter voice drop for a second.
Fire seemed to only partially listen to the messages, he knew their content already since he’d played an important part in creating the draft. Instead, he seemed to be silently half-moving his mouth, as if speaking to someone, probably communicating with the Mencur-Besh collective, debating whether he should go on ahead.
“There’s not even a surname in the script.”
“I tried to improv it.”
Astro’s voice crackled in, slightly muffled.
“Yeah, and that did not work, mate.”
“What a dipshit!” Secret howled dramatically in the background. “How could you have done this?!”
I felt like I was back in the pub in Zine Craft again. It felt like alcohol heating my insides. It felt like friendly laughter filling my ears. The laughter of people who hadn’t realised what I was yet. People who thought, even despite my criminal past, I could still turn it all around with nothing but a change of attitude, an overenthusiastic smile, and a fake accent.
Aaron finally collected himself.
“...Let’s go to our first guest, Laura, a Tower scientist who recently purchased some truly distressing information from our dear Freak, and also deserted to our cause.”
I strained my ears as papers faintly rustled, then a tiny cough as a throat was cleared. Then, suddenly, loudly:
“I've come to make an announcement, Clark Belmont is a *****-ass mother****er, he stole Dimensions' ****ing snacks. That's right, he took his grubby hands and stole those ****ing snacks, and he said they tasted ‘this good’ and I said that's disgusting so I'm making a callout on this intercom-”
“-Moving stuff, Laura,” Tassadar interjected, saving all of our ears. “And what do you have to say to the Tower magi who have been disguising themselves as civilians to lure in and ambush Shelter forces?”
I furrowed my brows. We had encountered this as well. Now, we were about to push into the labs, where one would expect to find scientists and technicians. How many might be willing to fight to defend their creations at any cost? Could we trust any purported civilians?
“Cut it out!” Laura yelled. “You’re going to get all of us killed!”
I stood up as the fighting on the stairs seemed to intensify again. That was when the radio took a turn for the strange.
“You heard it here first, folks. Cut. It-”
There was a thudding noise, and I heard Aaron grunt.
“****!” Tassadar yelled.
Gunshots, two of them. Then, a guttural roar of pain. My eyes widened. An Endling.
I heard the microphone shuffle as further gunshots sounded.
“Grey Ones! Attack!”
The sound of teleportation groaned around us until it felt as though the air were corroding around us. Hundreds of Endlings materialised, many armed, many bearing only their claws. One common theme held them together. To a great or lesser degree, all of them had been marked with grey paint.
I rolled away from the talons of a snarling beast of the End and forced it to warp away with a slash of my blade.
Unfortunately, they had caught us at just the wrong moment. The Mencur-Besh and much of Shadow’s Coven had already forced their way most of the way down the spiral staircase, and the new incursion of Endlings intended to keep them locked there. This left mostly Shelter forces and Vanillans in the hall, who were not nearly as well-equipped to deal with such an incursion.
They had already begun to shatter my men. Raphoe’s poleaxe clattered to the floor as an obsidian blade severed his spine. One of them had Kami by the throat, but with a flourish of her staff, an orb appeared and pelted her assailant with magical energy, following it wherever it warped. My men nobly tried to keep ranks, but they had scattered just enough in the lull that the Endlings were easily able to keep them separate. The hunters, however, moved almost unaffected, dodging, and countering easily, and soon with their help we were able to establish some equilibrium.
As my men formed an armoured circle of swords and spears, I realised what the Grey Ones’ arrival had to signal. Glibby was on the field, and he would be go straight for…
“Helix!” I yelled.
My eyes leapt ahead of my body and began to sweep the battlefield for any sign of Warnado.
Much of the leadership had remained upstairs to discuss how to approach the attack on the labs, so I quickly found who I was looking for.
Shadow had formed a circle of her remaining mages and was trying to cast a spell - presumably something to limit or stop Endling teleportation. The mouth of the spiral staircase with all its violence and bloodshed Fire, Tyron, Warnado and Amanda flitted around them like the spokes of a waterwheel, striking down one Endling here, then there, and then two more had appeared.
But no sign of Glibby. No hulking shoulders. No gargantuan fists. Not even a weather-worn trilby to signal his presence. Where could he be?
My eyes were drawn to Fire, who was easily the best equipped to deal with the Endlings. His ability to detect energy allowed him to reliably foresee their teleportation. I watched him lean slightly forward to evade one strike, then cleave his sword backward, killing his assailant instantly. Then, a measured backstep took him out of the reach of a flurry of swipes from the front. The flurry ended in another precise, brutal, burning stroke of the zweihander. That was when he arrived.
Glibby loomed suddenly to Fire’s left, leering and smirking so intensely the cloud of arrogance which always surrounded him had almost become visible. Obsidian armour covered his form, though a loose robe had been draped over that in an oblique gesture to his normal trenchcoat.
Leader of the Mencur-Besh turned to face him. The Ape’s smirk exploded into a grin, and their combat began.
I barked an order leaving Lupe in charge and began to run through the battle towards the ensuing duel.
Fire parried the Ape’s opening punch, and the fist screamed away in a burst of sparks.
I ducked as Chrone’s whip lashed across the battlefield.
The Ape threw a second punch, fiercer than the first. I almost saw the wind bunching up between his knuckles.
I leapt over Rathina as she plunged her daggers into the heart of an Endling she had just stunned and tripped.
Fire stepped back, angling his sword at his opponent’s exposed face. The punch flew wide. Glibby staggered.
My shoulder crashed into the Endling before me, sending him flying to the ground. Amanda quickly slotted a crossbow bolt into his head. I had made it. A grin crept onto my face.
Fire thrust his sword forward, and time slowed down.
An Endling materialised and grabbed the sleeve of Glibby’s robe from behind. He vanished, then reappeared to Fire’s right. The Mencur-Besh, following the train of energy began to turn his head. The Ape’s wild grin rapidly civilised itself into a smirk. That was when both Fire and I saw what the Endling had left behind when he picked up Glibby: a man with blue, glassy eyes, and a sniper rifle.
Flame burst forth from the long barrel of the gun, propelling its bullet onwards and into Fire’s firesteel breastplate. The metal warped inwards several inches as the bullet struck, crushing scale and flesh and organ in its wake, until finally the firesteel snapped back outwards, expelling the flattened round. Fire staggered back, clasping his chest. The glassy-eyed man snapped his fingers and was whisked away by another enderman.
"I see how it is, not a proper battle unless I lose a heart, huh?" Fire spat, his voice lowered to a growl. I had only heard that tone once or twice before, Fire was angry, or as close to it as he allowed himself to get.
One of Glibby’s gauntleted fists clamped around Fire’s sword-arm. The other slammed into his flank, the firesteel warping in so far I wasn’t sure it would actually warp back. Some relief flooded into me when it finally did, but this didn’t stop Fire’s face from contorting in genuine pain.
The Ape leaned in and drawled into his ear:
“What’s the matter, Fire? Not so fun when you didn’t plan to lose them?”
Just at that moment, Fire’s scales’ glow intensified beneath Glibby’s obsidian-coated fingers. The Mencur-Besh smirked as it did. The Ape grunted and threw his head back in pain, but then rallied. He clamped his other hand onto Fire’s body. With smoke rising from beneath one hand, and pain flooding his senses, the Ape hefted Fire over his head, and roared as he hurled him overhead. Fire slammed into the wall of the spiral staircase, cracking the stone bricks, then fell into the melee, where grey-painted Endlings immediately began to swarm him.
“So much for him,” Glibby chuckled, waggling his burnt fingers. “Now, where’s Helix.”
He rounded on the demon-child and cocked his head. Warnado backed away, closing his eyes, clenching his gauntleted fist and muttering.
Tyron and I exchanged a look and immediately interposed ourselves between Glibby and his prey. Amanda knelt behind us and trained a crossbow on him.
I weighed our odds. The last time we fought Glibby, Fire had stood a chance against him one-on-one. Then again, the original Grey Ones had been there, and they had been learning how to complement Glibby’s fighting style for over a decade. Could other Endlings prove as effective?
I flourished my sword and looked around for help. Shadow’s circle had almost finished their spell, the runic circle almost finished shining into place. She would be free shortly, and while she seemed to be holding back in here, I had no doubt she would want to pay Glibby back for what he’d just done to her brother. Not to mention, Warnado’s safety was at stake, and if nothing else I could say that she cared about him.
Unfortunately, Glibby’s cool eyes also seemed to have drifted towards her.
“Ah, teleportation suppression, is it? Well, we can’t have that,” he rolled his shoulders and pressed a finger against his ear. “Muffin, deal with the little witch.”
Boom! A man wearing a pinstriped suit and a cavernous smile shot into the air and his head immediately whipped towards Shadow. A wand sat in either hand, and I saw a heavy satchel of purple metal sat at his side: A thaumaturge. I froze. Thaumaturges were not capable of the nuance of real wizards, so most just threw themselves into raw power. As such, they weren’t so much sorcerers as cannons with legs.
He wasted no time in confirming my impression, blasting himself down at Shadow with one wand, and winding up for another attack with the other. Just before landing, he swung the wand like a sword and a clod of summoned energy shot straight at Shadow. She summoned a shield just in time, and it held, but the Thaumaturge’s smile remained gaping. He cocked an eyebrow, and I could almost physically hear the gears turning.
Clarke took this moment to run out of the crowd and shot a fireball at the Thaumaturge. In response, he caught the burning orb with his wands, and with a flick of his wrists split it in three. The central mass shot back at Clarke, striking him on the shoulder and knocking him to the ground. The other two formed into the shape of colossal greatswords, with the wands as hilts. He touched the ground, then neatly carved through Shadow’s shield.
I saw the runic circle flicker but not break. One of the circles began to rise, but Shadow ordered her not to break focus. As the amorphous blade took shape again, her shadow detached from her feet.
Wodahs took up a fighting stance and made for the faint shadow he cast on the floor of the hall, expecting no resistance. The Thaumaturge, however, simply flourished his right hand and the wand-blade shifted from a burning flame to a near-blinding light which scorched my vision. He swept the sword across ground where Wodahs had intended to strike, leaving no darkness to occupy. Shadow lunged forward with her shifting blade, and the combat ensued, the Thaumaturge dodging their attacks in a frenzied jig, his smile never fading, and his howling laughter never ceasing.
Satisfied, Glibby returned his attention to us.
“As for you,” He snapped his fingers. “Huskers, get the ghost, Eight, kill the beast.”
Endlings materialised before us, leaving off two figures. The sniper from before, presumably Huskers, immediately fired a shot that whizzed past my ear and cast a scorching wind over my cheek, forcing me to duck. Seeing him winding up a second shot, I rushed at him before he could fire it off and found myself swing at a man who seemed to have just about anticipated every move I could use on him, successfully dodging and parrying or striking me with the stock of his rifle every time. Yet, I could hear him wheezing and panting. His ageing body was struggling to act upon this knowledge.
Beside him, another man appeared. He wore a similar, unbroken diamond skin to the dual-wielding fighter from the Brotherhood, except he had affixed some porous white mask to the face. Diamond talons extended from between his knuckles, runes glowed on his arms and in a flash of purple light he materialised in front of Tyron and began to fall upon him in a cascade of feral, animalistic blows.
Tyron did his best to respond, summoning rocks from the floor to reinforce his arm and striking deliberately with Kir, but before long great welts began to appear along his arms.
Seeing us distracted, Glibby charged between us, directly at Warnado. Amanda instinctively fired a shot at Glibby’s face, but it shattered against the scorched palm of his gauntlet. He swept an arm at her to force her to dodge back, bearing directly down on Warnado himself. The demon-child was still muttering to himself, eyes closed, completely open. And Glibby’s fist was flying forward.
“Helix!” I cried, just before the sniper’s stock struck me in the jaw.
Glibby’s fist found only air. Warnado’s glowing red eyes were open, and his mouth had creeped into a smile. He leaned back at an impossible, forty-five-degree angle, suspended on his heel by magic. And his gauntleted arm had once again become the burning fist of a demon.
He propelled himself into standing and used the momentum to swipe up at Glibby. The taloned fist caught the Ape’s breastplate on the upper torso and scraped away some of the obsidian. A fleck of two of demonfire even sprayed off the fist and caught Glibby on the chin, forcing him to recoil. He spun out of the way of a second swipe and forced Warnado back with a precise jab of the fist. However, he immediately found himself on the backfoot once more as he evaded another of Amanda’s crossbow bolts.
“I’m pleasantly surprised, Helix,” he sneered. “No more running from you, I see.”
He threw another jab at Warnado. It slammed into the demon-arm, and Glibby swiftly pulled it back before the flames did him any serious damage. He stuck out his arm and flexed his fingers against the pain.
At the same moment, the sniper’s age caught up to him and I was able to shunt him back a few steps. As I moved to strike him, he briefly pointed the barrel at my face, then let it drop to floor and shot at my foot, buying him a little more space. I found this very odd. Why not take the shot?
Warnado floated into the air, demon-fist raised.
“Nope, just me kicking your butt,” he quipped.
He shot down, planning to reduce Glibby to a very burnt pancake on the floor. However, at the last moment an Endling grabbed his arm and warped him to safety. A purple-tinged crater cracked into existence on the ground where he had stood.
Glibby was lucky, as a second later the runic circle flickered into completion, suppressing the teleportation capacity of the Endlings, and allowing our forces a chance to fight on even footing again. The Mencur-Besh and Coven were gaining more ground on the staircase, though the Endlings were still numerous, and I couldn’t make out Fire among them.
Shadow was still locked in combat with the Thaumaturge, frustration visibly forming on her face, her mages forbidden from helping her. Tyron slammed a wall of rock into his opponent, though this only momentarily broke his stride before he launched into a new round of attacks. I also saw Chrone and the Brotherhood fighting their way through the crowd toward Glibby. I struck out at the sniper, and for the first time my fist connected.
Glibby cast the now useless Endling aside and began to rummage around inside a pouch on his hip. He pulled out a bottle of purple dust which caused me to pause. I only had a second, though, before the sniper struck out at me again and we returned to the dance of combat which he seemed to know much better than me. Almost as though he had rehearsed the steps to it already…
Warnado rounded on Glibby, and the Ape cocked his head to encourage him onwards. Amanda fired another bolt to cover Warnado’s advance. He ran forward with his fist before him, ready to drive it like a spear into Glibby’s gut. The Ape blocked the bolt yet again and threw the bottle at the ground, throwing up a cloud of purple dust which Warnado ran through. Immediately I saw the effect. Warnado’s fist began to dwindle, the flames flickered and dimmed, the talons became less sharp. His hand connected with Glibby’s torso, just about breaking the armour, but when he drew it away, it was a thoroughly human hand, with only the tips of his fingers covered in the Ape’s blood.
“H-how?” Warnado stammered.
The demon-child began to back away, but Glibby grabbed him and threw him to the ground. I realised I had to end this fight with the sniper immediately.
“I’ve been doing research on you.”
The Ape’s fleshy, skin-coloured lips folded into a contented smile. Warnado tried to scoot away, but Glibby kept advancing, as creeping and inevitable as the tide.
“I read a book about demonic gauntlets, and I managed to come across one which featured a crystal remarkably similar to your own. As it turns out, the connection between wielder and gauntlet can be severed with a simple cloud of amethyst dust. Isn’t that a shame?”
He stooped, then batted aside Amanda as she tried to swing an axe at him. Warnado tried to summon an ethereal shuriken, but a gauntleted fist slammed into his stomach.
I struck the sniper and sent his rifle flying. He whipped his hand and a spring-loaded firearm shot to the right of my face. It didn’t even come close. Suddenly, I recognised the look of glassy, far-flung terror on his face: the Prophet. It all clicked.
“You can’t kill me, can you?” I breathed. “If I’m not here, you can’t be here…”
The sniper hesitated and I smashed his nose in. I had no time to take satisfaction in the crunch as his blood spattered over my armoured knuckles, however. Glibby continued, now mere inches from the demon-child’s face:
“Look at all that life bundled up in you,” his grotesque lips spread. “Let’s unhitch this burden.”
I swung underhanded at Glibby’s face. I froze as I realised this was the same manoeuvre that had severed my bond with Helix, and the Ape managed to leap out of the way. Amanda immediately grabbed Helix and they ran away into the melee. The Ape glowered at me, incensed at having lost its kill. I held my sword with both hands and stood my ground. I realised I needed to provoke him.
“Hello Kay,” he seethed. “You just took away a moment I’ve been looking forward to for some time.”
“Good,” I said. “Glad I did it, you sad bloody chimp.”
Glibby reared up and suddenly looked taller than the Tower itself.
“What did you just say-”
He was interrupted as I ran up and slashed at his face again. He forced me back.
“You going to ****ing talk all day Glibby or are you going to fight?”
I spread my arms and jabbed my head forward in defiance. I had dropped all pretence, my natural brogue finally undistinguished. I was spitting more than speaking.
“I am Kay Mandy, Lap Dog of Herobrine, Hero of Arcadia, the uncrowned king of Nexus, and I condescend to challenge you, Ape. You should be honoured to face an opponent such as I. Or do you only fight children and shepherds?”
I had his attention now. I ducked one stroke of the gauntlet, then another, the air turned to a storm by the power behind his blows.
I leapt up and swing at him twice, which he deflected easily before jabbing me in the jaw. The very sinews of my mouth seemed to be threatening to unwind. I stayed upright, barely, and dodged well enough for another jab to merely glance off my cuirass.
I made for the small wound Helix had made on his flank. My blade plunged forward, then stopped. The Ape’s gauntlet formed an obsidian scabbard for it. He wrenched the sword from my hands, flipped it around, and began to advance on me. I looked around.
Tyron was now being straddled by the diamond-skinned man Glibby had called Eight, only barely blocking his blows, his arms red with blood. The sniper was slowly recovering himself. I watched as Fire exploded back into view, roasting several Endlings and beginning to cleave another in two. Shadow’s skin slipped into that shade-beyond-dark, and Wodahs proceeded to immediately ignore conventional shadow logic. The shade reached across the blinding light and grabbed the Thaumaturge’s shadow by the head. His skull crumpled. The tide was turning, and I wondered if there was time for one of them to come up and save me.
Then, off in the corner, I saw Helix. Amanda had him propped against the wall and was talking quickly, continuously to him. He had his eyes closed and his head bowed. He breathed deeply and heavily and desperately. I remembered all those things which had been done to him, by Glibby, by the demons, by his mother… and by me. I took one last glance at the prophetic sniper, and the distant, unmistakable fear was still there - the fear of a man who had known all that was to happen, and now found himself blinded. And that was my mind made up.
I nodded, then spread my arms wide once again.
“Go on, you stupid animal,” I muttered. “Finish the job.”
If he killed me, that was the cycle broken. I died in Nexus, so I could never have gone back to my own world. And if I had never gone back to my own world, I could never have done whatever horrible thing I did there, and so Astro could not have come to Nexus in the way he did. And if Astro hadn’t been in Nexus, I might never have tried to fight the Entity to begin with. The chain didn’t just break, it exploded, and all those things were undone. We were set back to square one, and perhaps this time I could get it right.
He lifted the sword, then stopped. The sniper had called out to him, but I’m not sure either of us could make out what he said.
“Forget him, Glibby!” I roared. “Do it!”
I hoped beyond hope that someone might remember. Maybe me, though I doubted that. Then, I thought of Shadow, or the Lady of Dreams. If anyone would remember, it would be them. They might be able to steer us right. To save Destiny, save David, Fristad, the Book… perhaps they could even stop my own disgrace.
Glibby returned his eyes to me, choking on rage.
He thrust my sword down at me, and I bared my neck for the deathblow. I remembered the question I asked of Silver.
“Do I die well?”
“You seemed to think so.”
I could only conclude that this was the best I could do. At least this time around.
Clang! I looked down, distraught. The diamond-skinned man from the Brotherhood had caught the blow with his twin swords and now forced Glibby back. Chrone interposed himself between me and them and shunted me back as I protested.
“Chrone, no! This is the only way I can-”
His head shot around and our eyes locked. Beneath the steel mask I could detect a strange familiarity. Either a deeper friendship than I had ever known, or a fiercer hatred than I could conceive. Maybe both.
“This isn’t about you,” he said quietly.
“Hey!”
My eyes shot to the source of the second word. Helix was back on his feet. No heavy breathing. No closed eyes. Not even hatred. Just an exuberant smile, so like the one he had worn when he first appeared at Fire and I’s door back near the spring. Amanda stood behind him, a crossbow in one hand and an axe in the other.
Glibby, still engaged with the dual wielder, called out to Eight. Eight, having since been forced off Tyron by Rathina and Seth, grunted reluctantly and, in a streak of purple light, was busy harassing his doppelganger. Chrone shoved me once more and ran off to help his brother. The Ape turned to Warnado, a smile slowly returning to his face.
“So, he’s back, is he?”
“Yep.”
“Little Helix is ready to fight?”
The Ape threw his arms wide and roared with laughter.
“Nope, Helix isn’t home. You’re dealing with Warnado, now.”
He manifested an energy axe in his hand.
“Well, that’s quaint. Fighting on even without your demonic powers.”
He began to stride toward Warnado.
“Funny you should say that…”
Warnado’s eyes glowed purple momentarily, then his energy axe turned from green to deep, molten purple. The Ape stopped. I couldn’t see his eyes, but they must have been wide as oceans.
An exhilaration ran through me. Chrone was right. It wasn’t about me. This was his moment. A chill ran down my cheek and I realised I was crying.
“You cut off my connection to the gauntlet, but those powers don’t belong to the gauntlet. They’re mine, and it’s time I started acting like it.”
The Ape snarled and raised his fists. Warnado ran at him.
Warnado swung and Glibby tried to parry. The manoeuvre succeeded, but a large chunk of obsidian was chipped off the outermost knuckle. I saw burnt flesh beneath.
Glibby gritted his teeth and drove his fist at Warnado’s flank. Warnado lifted his arm, and a shield formed, absorbing the blow but sending him sliding back on the floor. Seeing the opportunity, the Ape began to launch a series of blows directed at Warnado’s head. However, Warnado’s eyes flashed purple again and he dodged each of them without fail, still flashing that same exuberant smile.
Amanda landed a bolt in Glibby’s exposed shoulder, and he howled with pain. The offensive juddered to a halt, and Warnado struck back, catching Glibby on the arm and leaving a deep welt. The scent of scorched flesh sprayed into the air.
The Ape wheeled back and reassumed a fighting stance, teeth bared like fangs. Only, a wall of rock slammed into his side. Tyron hung from Rathina’s shoulder as a healer tended to him, one arm stretched out in a fist. Warnado struck again and cracked Glibby’s right-hand gauntlet straight down the middle, leaving his hand exposed. The Ape swung with his still-armoured hand and Warnado nimbly spun out of the way.
Glibby staggered closer to me, still warding Warnado off with heavy punches, and the small puncture wound on his torso called out to me once more. I grabbed a discarded sword from the ground and thrust at it. On account of the wound still being framed by a lot of armour, the sword stopped quickly, and wound was superficial, but the Ape’s focus was broken. I lurched away from the retaliatory strike.
This brief break in concentration, allowed Warnado the chance to shift his axe into a baseball bat. Crack! The helmet went flying from Glibby’s head.
Still more enraged, he charged at Warnado. Unfortunately for him, he was so consumed with his fury he did not notice the blast of heat flying into his path. He collapsed, his lower right leg separated from his body, and I saw Shadow blow the smoke from her finger.
Still, the Ape was not done. He steadied himself with his remaining knee and his unarmoured hand and jabbed fiercely at Warnado. The demon-child snapped his fingers, and the remaining gauntlet materialised in his palm, smoke rising from it.
Glibby’s jaw fell open. He turned his exposed hand over and over, eyes reading over every scratch, every blemish, every line of his palm, as though trying to find some sign in them that had led to this moment. Nothing distracted him from this examination. Not the presence of his opponent. Not the sound of his men being slaughtered around him. Not even the excruciating pain he was probably feeling from his various wounds.
Fire appeared beside Warnado, breathing heavily and supporting himself on his zweihander.
“The choice falls to you, do you want him dead, or will you give him a chance to surrender? A chance that is wholly undeserved, seeing what he did now and in the past. Still, we might have a use for this Ape yet.”
Warnado squinted down at his opponent, or perhaps glared. My heart began to thunder. Then, finally:
“Eh, I don’t really care…”
And he just walked off. The Ape looked up in confusion, as though woken from a dream. I felt a surge of… maybe it was pride, maybe it was disappointment. Regardless, I hung my head and unleashed a deep breath I had been holding.
Fire nodded. “Alright then, Glibby. You get another shot at the decision you made in that valley, now I hope that you choose to save some of your subordinates for a change instead of sending them to their deaths.”
Fire detached his radio’s microphone which through some miracle had survived up until now. He held it in front of the Ape’s face. Fire’s next words were much louder by virtue of being relayed through the Tower’s intercom.
“Glibby the Ape, do you surrender?” Fire asked, then waited for a response.
The notorious serial killer looked up at Fire like a lost child. He cast an eye in the direction of Eight, just in time to see Chrone’s whip cleave his mask in two. Another, more searching glance failed to find the prophetic sniper. He ran a tongue over his teeth, then leaned forward.
“I surrender. Grey Ones, stand down.”
I looked around, there weren’t many left to surrender, but a cheer still went up in our ranks when the remaining obsidian weapons clattered to the floor. The Mencur-Besh and Coven mages had secured the staircase. We were a stone’s throw away from our objective. However, there was no way of knowing what truly awaited us in the Deep Labs, or how dearly it would cost us to get there.
Chapter82:A God, a Dragon, and a Beast (Herobrine)
The stone split into a shape like lightning as Herobrine’s sword crashed into it. And, like lightning, this striking shape was followed by a thunderous crack. However, the walking earthquake that was the ravager handily drowned out this impressive blow. Herobrine grunted to have missed His target once more. He resumed his pursuit in a steady jog, watching as the creature and its grey-skinned rider rounded the corner.
His eyes snapped shut. He saw through the eyes of the Wraith. A small contingent of Eye-and-Claws operatives and Vanillans fought their way through a mixture of Tower soldiers and grey-skinned Vithians. Ring of sword. Boom of firearm. Clatter of armour battered every which way. Granular and uninformative. And then, something to latch on to: the slimy thud and subtle crack of a javelin piercing a windpipe. Viking, a Vanillan moderator esteemed for his prowess in battle, pulled his modified staff from the throat of an opponent just in time to notice the beast bearing down on them.
Herobrine quickened his pace. In the corner of his eye he saw the beast shatter the engagement like an artillery shell. Friendly and opposing blood spattered the sides of the beast as it vanished through an obsidian gate which closed so quickly afterwards it might well have been chasing the beast as well. The Blind watcher cursed and finished his approach.
The fighting had almost died down. The Eye-and-Claws had recovered quicker than their Vanillans, He felt blood washing over his boot, and looked down to see Viking coughing up blood. Wounded but determined not to die, the moderator used his staff to pull himself up. The fighting was almost finished. Herobrine frowned as he saw how the crystal at the tip had been filed down to make it function as a spear, a near-blasphemous act.
“Sorry m’lord,” Viking spat blood, “We’ll have this door down in a moment.”
Herobrine did not respond. He splayed his hands against the door and closed his eyes. The Wraith manifested, unseen, on the other side.
“Could we get a demolitions team down here in sector four? Got an obsidian gate that doesn’t want to move. Fedwin, Scrump, you around?”
“Sorry Vike,” grunted Fedwin, known as the tinkerer. “My golem’s been damaged. Running repairs now.”
Then, Scrumping Pup, leader of Woobly, answered: “We’re a little way out, be with you in maybe fifteen?”
Herobrine followed the conversation closely enough to know he would have to do this himself. Through the Wraith's eyes he saw a large, torchlit hall, at the end of which was a large staircase leading up several floors. In it sat three obstacles.
First, two ranks of ten, entirely comprised of grey-skinned Vithian Testificates. Each was armed with their habitual assortment of light armour, crossbows, and axes. That would be easily dealt with.
Next, a bigger problem. Four golems. Each made of bedrock like his sword. Each with a red eye in the centre of its skull. Each eye glowed so brightly it seemed to suck the light out of the face encasing it, leaving just a dark shadow. All were killable, but he had not yet seen them in such numbers.
And then, naturally, he saw the object of his pursuit: the ravager and rider. The rider sneered down at the door, clutching the reins tightly. The ravager snorted and slurped air in and out, a thick, coarse tongue running over its lips. Its horns glinted hungrily in the torchlight.
“Woobly will be here shortly m’lord,” groaned the moderator, tearing the Blind Watcher black to reality.
Viking stumbled again and returned to leaning on his spear.
Herobrine nodded in decision.
“No need,” he answered.
He would dispense with his usual theatrics, and simply cut the door down himself. He planted one foot behind him and drew the blade back. He looked through the Wraith again to identify the bar holding the obsidian door in place and adjusted his stance. One good thrust would do it…
A familiar voice crackled into his ear:
“Hey, sorry I had trouble with the microphone again.”
The Blind Watcher cocked an eyebrow. It was Dinnerbone.
“Is sector four the one with the big obsidian gate that has Herobrine standing outside it?”
Herobrine abandoned his stance and squinted at the moderator. Viking, however, was looking back down the hallway, his jaw wilting with disbelief. The Watcher became aware of pounding footsteps.
“So, I fell behind Astro and the others after that thing with the grey villagers and got a little lost. Thankfully, I ran into a buddy.”
Coming down the hallway towards them was Dinnerbone, yes, and looking quite ordinary. He tuned his ukulele as he spoke, punctuating his speech with an occasional probing pluck. His black hat hugged his scalp as eagerly as ever.
Less ordinarily, he sat astride the neck of a dragon. A colossal dragon whose wings scraped the walls and shred tapestries as they went. A dragon with a coat composed of the stars themselves. A dragon the Blind Watcher recognised. This was Glowstar, who he had seen soaring high above him so often at the Shelter. He didn’t seem pleased to see Herobrine, momentarily baring his fangs and snarling before containing himself.
“Do you think Glowie’s big enough to knock it down?” Dinnerbone called. Then, he frowned, craned his neck, and looked the dragon in the eye. “You’re cool with that, right?”
Glowstar sighed.
“Yes.”
A smile sprinted across Herobrine’s face. Perhaps there was time for theatrics after all.
“Wait for my signal. Don’t worry, it will be self-evident.”
He closed his eyes and spoke as the Wraith. A low, faint yet profound tone. Like an echo in an abyss.
“So, you choose to cower here? Behind obsidian gates and a bedrock wall?”
Raised his sword. The rider’s eyes and head began to dart around every which way.
“Know ye not? None escape the Blind Watcher’s gaze.”
The Wraith, with its ragged clothes and filthy skin became visible. Its white eyes flashed, and the Vithian ranks shrank back in fear. Their ranks became chaotic. Axes were thrust out like spears. Crossbows raised up as makeshift shields. An instinctive, primordial fear spread through them. Only the fury of the rider kept them in formation, but even he chewed his inner cheek fearfully.
“It was I who slew the Withers.”
Boom! Herobrine struck the ground with his sword. The Wraith’s eyes flashed and blinded both rider and foot soldiers. The golems looked on impassively. Herobrine was grinning now, anticipation of the coming triumph surging through him.
“It was I who shattered the false god of the Obsidian Empire.”
He struck the ground once more. Another disorienting flash. Herobrine glanced back significantly. Glowstar began his charge.
“You too shall fall.”
He thrust his sword between the gates and shattered the crossbar. Glowstar left the ground. The Blind Watcher spread his arms and roared with laughter.
“Bow down to Herobrine!”
Glowstar slammed into the gates and threw them open, Dinnerbone screaming half-joyously as he just about held on to the dragon’s mane. Herobrine advanced beneath, and the golems, who had been anticipating him but not the dragon, fired blasts which he cleanly deflected with his sword.
A whip of Glowstar’s tail sent the Vithian foot soldiers flying. Then, in a swift, serpentine motion, the dragon reared up above the ravager and its rider, and a shower of blue stars burst forth from its mouth.
As the smoke cleared, it became clear that one of the golems had been able to adjust its threat assessment in time. Its bedrock skin glowed dark blue as the starfire faded, and behind it the ravager rider stood unharmed and angry. A blast from the burnt golem’s eye struck Glowstar on the flank and struck him from the sky. Dinnerbone slammed painfully into the ground beside him.
Herobrine quickened his stride. He split the fist of an oncoming golem with his sword, then whirled it up to do the same with its head.
The glowing golem charged for another blast, this time aimed at Glowstar’s head. At the last second, Dinnerbone shot back to life, and with a strenuous thrust of his hand the golem’s head twisted to the side and shot one of its fellows. The golem it struck steadied itself, and the glowing golem’s head churned slowly back into place.
Herobrine sidestepped the fist of another golem, then cleaved through its torso, leaving it to fall away in two halves. He moved to attack the glowing golem, only to find himself rolled away from his target to narrowly avoid the ravager’s charge. It skidded to a halt just beside the gates and began to reshuffle for another attack.
Glowstar rallied just in time to strike the recently blasted golem with his tail. It struck the ground, and the sound of its fall had only just begun to ring out when Herobrine’s blade plunged through its back. The red light snuffed out like any old candle.
Dinnerbone cheered, prompting Herobrine to turn his head. The glowing golem loomed behind his interdimensional relative, its eye ready to burst with energy. Without thinking, the Blind Watcher heaved his arms and sent his sword flying into the golem’s still-smouldering torso. It fell back, disabled.
Just as Herobrine took a breath, the ravager knocked it out of him. Suddenly, he was holding onto its horns, shattering the tiled floor as he tried to slow the beast’s advance with his heavy obsidian boots. Soon, he found himself pressed against a wall, straining to hold back the horns. His eyes locked with the beast’s, and he saw its furious intent. Even without its rider, this creature wanted to kill him. Herobrine’s eyes flashed white, and the beast slammed its own shut, continuing to press forward.
Then, a serpentine neck whipped around. Glowstar’s teeth sank into side of the ravager, and starfire scorched the flesh beneath. It reared up, groaning. The rider fell to the floor. Seeing the beast’s neck exposed, Herobrine struck out. He found flesh. Flesh gave way to bone. Crack! The beast fell back, dead.
As he panted from the exertion, Herobrine heard the shuffle of the rider loping towards the stairs. Dinnerbone squinted after him, then waved his hand. The Vithian leader flew to the left and slammed into the lid of an open chest. Seconds later, compelled by the impact and its newfound weight, fell back in the opposite direction, and slammed shut. The lock clicked.
Herobrine and Dinnerbone chuckled, then Viking and his men ran in to the hall and began to investigate its security. Glowstar limped out of the hall, into the care of the three Eye-and-Claws operatives, who had already begun to rifle through their inventory for medical equipment.
“Glowstar!” Herobrine called.
The dragon titled his head but did not turn.
“Thank you!” he concluded.
The dragon made a gesture almost like a respectful nod, then began to discuss his options with the Eye-and-Claws fighters. Naturally, a healing potion would take some time and be very painful, so could perhaps a concoction of strength, or maybe speed compensate for his injuries and so on and so… The Blind Watcher’s gaze was drawn to the staircase.
“It can’t be…” He muttered.
He closed his eyes and saw as the Wraith.
“It is!”
Viking looked to Dinnerbone, who simply shrugged from his seat on the chest.
These stairs led directly up to the top floor, where both the throne room and activation mechanism were. In fact, the corridor gave him a straight shot all the way to the elaborate doorway guarding it.
Herobrine adjusted the frequency on his microphone.
“Mercer, rally the blackshells and get to sector four, we have a line on the activation mechanism.”
Mercer quickly assented, and Herobrine began to laugh. Viking spoke up, with as much warning as enthusiasm.
“You’re serious? I’ll get on the line to Astro at once!”
Herobrine put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed tightly. Warm in theory, but firm enough to remind the moderator of their power dynamic.
“Well, don’t be hasty. Why let the Gaians steal all the glory? Wait until my men are in position, then we can coordinate a two-pronged assault.”
Viking maintained firm eye contact but began to tremble a little. Dinnerbone looked back and forth between them, confused as to the nature of the exchange.
“Naturally, my lord,” the moderator bowed his head.
Herobrine grinned, then stepped forward.
“Be ready men! In but a few minutes you shall be at the forefront of our great victory! The Throne of the Entity shall be ours!”
He raised his sword up and it rippled with white light. A cheer went up. Herobrine turned to survey the stairs and plot his ascent to glory.
He was met by the warm, hot wind of a desert. Reminiscent of a dreadful day. The gates boomed shut, sealing out Glowstar and the Eye-and-Claws. The torches flickered, and the hall became dark enough to smother the very memory of light. The flames lost their orange and surged sickly yellow. The darkness stayed unmoved.
“Shall it now?”
The voice was snide and creeping. A centipede crawling over the mind. Yet no body appeared to give voice to it. Herobrine looked through the eyes of the wraith. Still nothing.
“We’ll keep the interesting ones, shall we?”
Dinnerbone began to say something, then gasped. The Wraith saw him, choking, lifted in the air by an unseen force. Then, a small, precise cut opened on his brow, and his head fell. Dinnerbone fell with a thud on top of the chest, trapped in a whimpering slumber.
Herobrine began to make his way towards his comrade’s unconscious body, gripping his sword ever closer and trying to make it shine brighter. Viking summoned a little light to the crystalline tip of his staff-made-spear. It made no difference to the dark.
Then, there was a noise like bursting. Blood covered the Blind Watcher’s face. He looked down. Viking was dead. No. Not dead. Destroyed. The mass of blood and viscera was only identifiable by the crystal-tipped weapon lying among it.
“To me, men!” roared Herobrine.
He thrust his glowing sword up like a beacon, but it was choked by the darkness until he could barely see it above him. Faint creams reached him like almost-echoes through the hall, scrambling through the dark.
Through the Wraith’s eyes he saw them running to and fro. Breaking. Bursting. Severed and shredded as though rent by a terrible set of claws.
“Not many interesting ones, unfortunately,” cackled the voice.
Using the Wraith’s sight, Herobrine managed to stop a nearby soldier. Then another. And another. Something like a formation assembled.
“Show yourself, fiend!”
Something like a snake brushed his foot. Or no, it was like a tree-root. A briar? He saw a set of glowing yellow eyes at the end of the hall, a terrible glowing grin beneath them.
“It’s Freak, actually.”
Thorns long as spears sprouted from the root. They punctured his men. Spines split. Skulls cracked. Then, a briar punched through the armour over his gut, sticking out the other side. Obsidian punctured as though it were paper. The Blind Watcher gasped, then with a swipe of his sword cut the root. It receded. He fell to one knee, keeping his sword-arm pressed against his wound.
“Whatever your name is, show yourself! That I may smite you as I have a million foes before! Then, you will know the might of Herobrine, the Blind Watcher!”
More cackling. The Wraith, still unseen, searched the room, but saw nothing.
“There is some bark on you. But no bite. Are you sure you weren’t the Lap Dog in that arrangement?”
Suddenly, the glowing eyes and maddening grin were above him. Freak. He swung backhanded at the apparition. The glowing features vanished as his sword was about to connect. He struck nothing. Then, they flashed back into view, and Herobrine felt a pain in his arm. The sword fell from his hand. Seconds later, another pain on his forehead. He fell backwards.
As he struck the ground, he realised the floor was no longer tiled. Poisoned grey sand rubbed his cheek. The darkness had gone. Brown, rotting skies hung above. Clusters of skulls floated above. Herobrine sat up, heart shuddering.
“Why are we here, I wonder?” Freak asked unseen.
He saw Steve, his mentor, on a sand dune some ways off, the grey withering spreading up his side. He called out to him. Pleading for death.
“Can you give it to him?”
Herobrine backed away. He couldn’t be there again. Not there. Anywhere else.
“Please…” He whimpered.
“Look at you. Herobrine, slayer of a million foes, fear of a million worlds. And you are scared of a memory.”
A memory… yes! He was still in the Tower. In the hall. His head snapped up and he glared at Freak. The phantom grinned back.
“I am fear!” Herobrine grunted.
The Wraith became visible, eyes ready to explode in a flash of blinding, eviscerating light and erase this creature forever.
A taloned fist struck out. The Wraith’s eyes went dark. Blood spilled down. The Wraith became a shambling thing, casting its eyes around in pursuit of the master who had convinced him of his invincibility.
Freak lifted the Wraith from the floor, his grin settling into a cold smile. His jaw unhinged.
The voice continued in Herobrine’s mind: “No, you’re not fear. But you’re about to meet him.”
The Blind Watcher closed his eyes and surrendered to the nightmares. Even past horror was better than the present.
While Glibby and the surrendered endermen were being restrained, Shadow gathered her Coven. They were about to descend into the science-focused section of the Tower’s underground, where the density of the anti-magic lamps was much higher than anywhere else.
She gave her instructions: “Danann, Iridia, Pallas. You will each command a third of the mages we have here, your main task will be to sweep any side rooms and corridors we come across. From what Fire told us there should not be as many lamps in the rooms compared to the corridors, few enough to overwhelm with a focused effort. I’m less debilitated by magic suppression, so I will accompany the main martial force on their push.”
The Coven mages answered with a united “Yes Master!” and divided themselves into three groups. Some Vanillan mages joined them as well, but others seemed to prefer going with the push force.
Only a moment later, Fire walked up to her, still visibly reeling from the battle. This had been way too close for comfort.
He said: “I expected a lot of things from Glibby, but not for him to throw me across the room. Whatever strength potion he is on, it can’t be safe.” A flask appeared in Fire’s hand. “Speaking of…”
One after the other, Fire downed several potions, strength, speed, resistance, and several others. He finished with a healing potion that sent a violent jolt through his limbs, restoring him back to fighting shape.
As they walked towards the staircase, Kay approached Shadow.
“Shadow, I know I’m the wrong person to say this but…” He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders. “Are you holding back? That guy was crazy for sure and Thaumaturges are tough, but they’re also just tough. He was not in your weight class.”
He suddenly didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, stroking his chin, then scratching his head before settling on planting them on his hips.
Shadow stopped, contemplating. “Back at the Shelter I tried using Void magic, and it seems that now with the Entity gone any damage I do to reality is permanent. But that’s not really it. I… suppose I have been holding back. Making absolutely sure not to hit any of our people would be what I’d like to call the reason, but that’s not it entirely either.”
She was not entirely sure when it happened, but somehow, she had developed a sort of mental block, the kind that is only possible when someone’s magic is as interwoven with their existence as hers was. What was it? Was she afraid? Shadow clenched her fists, now was not the time for hesitation, she was an ascended archmage, a far cry from the scared little girl she had been at the start of her life!
With renewed resolve Shadow turned to Kay, demonstratively sending a wave of luminescence across the runes in her skin.
“No more holding back from now on. We need to see this through.”
Kay hesitated a moment, running a tongue along his teeth, then a grin exploded across his face. Shadow could tell it wasn’t wholehearted, though. It was the same grin he used back during the election.
“I’m glad to hear it, Shadow,” he said. “Hit them hard.”
They continued towards the staircase, joined by Tyron, Rathina, Amanda and Warnado. Shadow threw a look at her apprentice, he responded in kind.
Warnado said: “Let’s go, we have Tower butts to kick!”
He started shadowboxing as they moved on. In the corner of her eye, she saw Tyron swallow a laugh as he recognized the moves he taught the demon-child.
And with that, they descended the staircase. Down at the bottom the battle was already in full swing. A row of earth Mencur-Besh pushed itself through the hallway, then splitting apart to make room so the other Shelter soldiers could aid them in the attack. Shadow immediately felt the heavy magic suppression field projected by the lamps, three to five of them were affixed to each segment of the corridor wall.
Their group surged forward to join the battle, Tyron and Fire at the forefront, cutting down any Tower troops in their way, Rathina, Warnado and Amanda weren’t far behind. The malleable blade flowed into Shadow’s hand, taking the shape of a long dagger and she joined as well. Almost immediately she was locked in battle with a Tower soldier several heads taller than her, but the difference in size only amounted to Shadow having a better angle to stab through gap in the soldier’s armour.
Then, for just a moment Shadow felt the oppressive aura of the lamps disappear, only for it to immediately return, but before it did, a surge of lightning cascaded across a group of Tower soldiers. A quick look confirmed her suspicions. The Mencur-Besh mages were casting synchronous spells to temporarily overwhelm the lamps and using the gaps to attack. She’d be ready for the next one.
More and more enemies fell to their onslaught, three cloven apart by Fire’s zweihander here, two more executed by demonfire weapons there, several more trampled underfoot by the Shelter troops’ relentless advance.
The others flashed into view around her in a swirl of battle. Warnado put his hand on Amanda’s shoulder, allowing her to fell a giant with an endless stream of aethereal bolts. Kir trilled with excitement as Tyron disarmed an officer. Kay brandished his sword atop a fallen lamp, ushering on the hunters and his handful of remaining loyalists. Lupe stood back-to-back with Komplex, the Brotherhood fighter with two swords and a diamond skin, shredding their way through a particularly dense knot of Tower soldiers.
Shadow felt a shift in the ambient energy, the lamps would fail in a few moments. She catapulted herself into the air, then once the window arrived, let loose a wide-sweeping disintegration ray.
After a while, the enemy reinforcements became a trickle and then dried up completely. Room after room was secured by her Coven mages, several times there had been a Tower mage waiting in ambush among groups of civilian personnel, but just as often had the civilians decided to take the intercom announcement to heart, and quite literally kicked the partisan mages out of the door.
Ahead of them the corridor widened almost to the size of a cathedral, at its end sat an absolutely massive circular gate comprised of several interlocking segments, like the aperture of an oversized camera. Off to the left was the inactive frame of an equally large portal, according to Fire any sensitive off-world materials deliveries were shipped directly into this part of the Tower without going through external portal facilities. This also explained the behemoth of a gate, it made sure that anything that went further did so because it was allowed to.
Fire said: “The opening mechanism is on the other side. Can you tell us if there is anything guarding it, Shadow?”
Shadow expanded her senses beyond the door. She had expected an assortment of Tower soldiers, but that was not what she saw. Instead, the other side of the gate was packed to the brim with zombies and skeletons. There were no magic-suppressing lamps, or any other light source on the other side. She could engage the mechanism magically, but another fight would break out immediately after.
She said: “There’s an army of undead on the other side. We should take a few minutes before we open it.”
Coven mages fanned out, providing healing to anyone who needed it. Despite their clear victory, they had taken losses as well, nowhere near as many as during the battle outside, but a combination of fatalities and troops staying behind to secure their retreat had diminished their numbers significantly. Nonetheless, the soldiers they had left were of elite quality, and were currently taking up defensive positions.
“Ready?” She asked.
Shadow was met with series of nods and raised thumbs. She reached out beyond the gate and flipped the switch. With a hissing sound the gate’s arms disengaged their interlocking mechanism and very slowly slid apart. The moment the arms were far enough apart, undead already tried forcing their way through, slowly at first but as the gaps widened the horde came streaming in.
Warnado stood at the forefront, wielding an oversized demonfire chainsaw in each hand, cackling uncontrollably as he dismembered undead after undead. Even with his enthusiasm, the dead were too numerous to be easily pushed back. They crashed into their ranks, clumsily grabbing, and biting at whomever they could reach. The undead mercifully did not leave behind corpses, instead disappearing into puffs of smoke as they died again.
The Shelter troops held fast, the combined strength of their soldiers and mages allowed them to slowly advance further into the corridor. Sadly, it was never that easy. Shadow soon felt the presence of more lamps, and a look ahead confirmed her feeling. Further towards the back of the undead host were skeletons with magic suppressing lamps chained to their ribcages. Next to them walked, not shuffled, skeletons equipped with tower shields and spears. It became clear that the mindless horde was only the vanguard.
The moment they lost the support of their mages, they were pushed back. Shadow didn’t have to think twice to know what this meant, she needed to do something, or they’d all be dead. She took a wide stance and commanded her robes to change shape. As comfortable as their normal form was, what she was about to do required significantly more leg freedom than they allowed. Her pitch-black robes quickly morphed into brilliant-white gi, a slightly-darker-than-should-be-possible belt wrapped around her waist as a finishing touch.
If she understood the lamps correctly, they could only suppress magic that was out in the open, otherwise her magic-powered muscles would have failed the moment she stepped foot in the Tower, now it was time to find out just how far she could push this loophole. Shadow launched herself forward into the undead horde, throwing a punch at the first zombie she encountered, the moment her fist connected she pushed as much energy as she could into the contact surface. A shockwave exploded outwards from the impact point, tearing through the zombie and several standing behind it.
With practiced movements she flowed from undead to undead, delivering explosive punches and kicks as she went. Wodahs assisted where she could, but due to the poor lighting conditions, she was unable to do more than crush the occasional skull during the bright flashes of the explosions. Behind Shadow, Shelter forces began pushing back against the undead, immediately filling the gaps she created, leaving no room for the undead to form large groups. Warnado revved his chainsaws with renewed vigour and followed shortly behind Shadow, cutting up anything that wasn’t outright destroyed by her.
As Shadow advanced, she encountered more resilient undead, zombies wearing diamond armour, the skeletons with tower shields. Some of them did not go down in one hit, requiring multiple focused attacks, despite the explosive force. They were guarding the lantern skeletons, naturally. Instead of fighting the tougher undead head-on, Shadow leapt up and forwards, directly on course to the cause of their problems. The first lantern skeleton was crushed beneath the force of her impact, multiple more fell soon after. With quick punches the lanterns shattered, and the crystals contained in them were turned to dust.
Just as Shadow stood up to continue her rampage, she realized that while she had been crushing the lanterns, the tower shield skeletons had surrounded her. Several spears pierced through her torso. Unfortunately for the skeletons, this did very little actual harm to Shadow.
She quipped: “Fire had the right idea. It really isn’t a fight until I get impaled by something.”
The skeletons, entirely unfazed by her comment, simply held their spear in place. Shadow brough her foot down on the ground hard, unleashing an explosion that rocked the walls, shattering both her assailants and their spears. Shadow wasted no time in pushing further into the horde towards the next group of lantern skeletons. However, it turned out that this set would prove to be a little more challenging. Instead of the normal-sized zombies that guarded the previous group, this one was guarded by a hulking giant of a zombie, its arms were long enough to simply swat her out of the air if she tried her previous manoeuvre again.
Before engaging, she took another look behind her, the Shelter forces were faring much better, now that the first set of lanterns was destroyed. Fire swung his zweihander in wide, flaming arcs, cutting down undead by the dozen, right next to him was Tyron, using Kir to attack while shielding himself with his stone wings. Shadow turned forwards and delivered several quick punches to clear the way towards her target, the shockwaves sending the lesser undead flying.
The giant zombie swung at her with surprising speed, Shadow did not evade the punch, instead meeting it with her own. The force of the explosion blew the zombie’s hand backwards and even made Shadow lose her balance for a moment, preventing her from capitalizing on the situation. Before returning to her foe, Shadow first had to clear out the horde that was rapidly closing in around her. Each stomp only bought her a few seconds before new undead replaced the ones she had just killed. She needed full access to her magic back, and fast.
Her next punch did not create an explosion, instead a shower of white mist erupted from the impact point, freezing several undead solid. That was the key, as long as they did not die, they would not disappear. Shadow rapidly threw more punches, creating a solid wall of frozen flesh and bones around her. The undead behind the wall began climbing but were slowed down significantly. Shadow ran up to the giant zombie, the moment she got close enough it threw another heavy punch at her. This time she leapt over the decaying fist, landed on it, and ran up its arm, each step creating an area of necrotic ice.
The zombie was unable to react when Shadow froze its head with a chop to its neck. It was not dead, but now Shadow was in a prime position to destroy the next lanterns. Moments later, the skeletons lay shattered in a cloud of purple dust.
“Alright, now for you.” Shadow murmured as she turned back around to face the giant zombie.
She launched herself upwards to deliver a high kick to the zombie’s frozen head. The resulting shockwave completely vaporized the zombie’s body and carried on upwards until it reached the ceiling, which promptly collapsed in on itself, the debris crushing many undead where it fell. Instead of revealing a layer of rock, the hole in the ceiling lead to a wide-open room, which prominently featured a glowstone chandelier. It looked suspiciously like an arena. Only moments later the unmistakable lamenting screams of agitated ghasts echoed throughout the hallway.
From a distance she heard Kay call out: “Oh Mods! I hoped I’d never see that place again.”
Tyron yelled: “We breached their Dangerous Containment area, prepare for more mobs!”
And just that moment a group of seven blazes descended down the freshly torn hole, sparks already flying off their rapidly rotating rods, quickly developing into fireballs.
Now again in full possession of her magic, Shadow flew upwards and back to the main battle line. While she could definitely wreak havoc now, her first priority was preventing additional casualties. The relentless barrage of blaze fireballs harmlessly bounced off a shield Shadow projected, instead shooting towards the undead horde, creating small explosions where they impacted.
Shadow commanded her Coven: “Go on the offensive, I will take care of shielding!”
She did not have to say it twice, Danann immediately levitated upwards and began his own barrage of fireballs, Iridia followed up with a series of electrical discharges directed at the blazes, which proved to be both highly conductive and highly vulnerable to electricity.
A ghast descended through the hole in the ceiling, but Wolfric promptly shot it down with a magic-enhanced arrow, the only fireball it managed to shoot was deflected by Tyron and sent off into the far reaches of the corridor.
They soon had pushed up far enough that one of their fast-builders was able to pillar up and plug the hole in the ceiling, allowing them to focus on the undead hordes once again. Said hordes had only gotten stronger as time went on, while there were still plenty of weak undead around, a significant number of them had been replaced by armed and organized skeleton soldiers.
Off in the distance Shadow saw the purple light of a lone lantern and decided to take care of it before it would become a problem. She landed in preparation for having her flight cut off and traversed the sea of bodies in multiple long and quite literally explosive leaps. When she got closer, she was surprised that it was not a skeleton carrying the lantern this time, this lantern was carried by a man, though with his withered face he could have passed for a zombie, were it not for the fact that his skin was not green. As soon as he spotted her, he immediately put down the lantern on the ground next to him and instead raised his fists. Two rings of disembodied, pale, slimy hands began to rotate around his robed form.
He called out: “You! You wanna throw hands? Cuz I’ll throw HANDS!”
Shadow had no time for this man’s gimmick, instead of replying she simply ran forward and punched him in the torso. The explosive force immediately scattered his limbs in all directions, only his head fell down in place. Shadow crushed the lantern underfoot.
Just before his miserable existence was ended by a disintegration ray, the man’s disembodied head muttered: “Damn… she got hands.”
With the last lantern shattered, the Shelter troops redoubled their efforts and pushed forward. Suddenly Shadow felt a strong magical signature ahead, a green glow flared up in the distance. Far back in the corridor now floated a skeleton with glowing, green eyes wearing a dark cloak and a weathered iron crown. In its right hand was an obsidian staff, at the tip of which a glowing green cube hovered. The skeleton’s other hand was raised like a claw, as if clutching some invisible object.
Shadow had been around for long enough to know a lich when she saw one, and even if this one might operate by different rules than the ones she was used to, it certainly was not to be taken lightly.
A raspy laugh echoed throughout the corridor, the lich clasped its hand shut, and in a shower of embers, five skeletons with shields and spears appeared, reinforcing the horde.
Shadow’s Coven had moved forward in the ranks and were now actively bombarding the undead with spells. A fireball found its way towards the lich, but instead of striking it, the flames were absorbed into the glowing cube at the tip of the staff.
Danann called out to his fellow mages: “It’s absorbing the spells, don’t shoot it!”
Shadow yelled: “Focus on the horde, I’ll take care of the lich!”
She soared through the air, rapidly approaching the lich. Upon closer examination, there was a faint distortion in the air around it, a physically protective shield if Shadow interpreted its magical signature correctly. To test this theory, she yanked the skull off a skeleton she flew past and hurled it at the lich with full force. As expected, the skull was stopped and a pulse of green flashed across the shield.
Strong enough that I can’t break it with brute force, not without Void magic. Shadow thought.
When the lich didn’t take any immediate action to fight her, Shadow took the opportunity to speak.
“So, you’re one of the Tower’s off-world allies. I assume you’re not interested in surrender like the Ape?”
The lich replied: “I slew a whole world's worth of heroes, I slew the sun, you will not stand in my way.”
Shadow sighed. It was always the same with these arch-villain types, though at least this one at least had the courtesy of being forward with its intentions.
The lich swung its sceptre and the green cube at its tip seemingly split in two, the copy flew at Shadow at high speed, taking her by surprise and striking her in the leg. Bones shattered and muscles tore, leaving the leg hanging limply. She’d fix it later, there were more pressing matters.
Shadow unleashed a barrage of energetic orbs on the undead surrounding her, if she couldn’t fight the lich directly, she would do her best to thin the horde, maybe the shield would weaken if the staff’s energy was used to summon more undead.
Another green cube came flying in Shadow’s direction, but this time she was prepared, projecting a shield of her own, dissipating the blast. Another swathe of undead fell before her. The lich raised its hand and dozens more armoured undead appeared from thin air. Shadow felt no change in the shield’s energy, either she was wrong, or this was not enough.
The Shelter forces were drawing closer by the second, Kay and the hunters had pushed far into the undead horde, but before he could get the idea to launch another suicidal attack, they were joined by several Mencur-Besh.
Shadow gathered a ball of compact fire between her palms and sent it towards a dense group of undead, which was promptly reduced to ashes. More embers, more reinforcements, still no change in the shield. However, it seemed that the lich was no longer content with his passive role, with a flash of green, several identical copies appeared everywhere throughout the horde. The copies were not shielded, but apparently possessed full offensive capabilities. A barrage of green cubes went flying towards the Shelter troops.
Some missed their mark, others were absorbed by shields, but most of them struck true. Each hit enough to dismember, if not outright kill. Several of their frontline troops, among them at least one Mencur-Besh, were killed. The undead horde surged forward to exploit this newfound weakness.
Shadow grit her teeth. Two could play at that game. She summoned up projections of herself all over the room. Just like the lich’s copies, they did not possess the resilience of the original, but they were enough. Several projections swarmed each lich, attacking and blocking its shots. Shadow continued her assault on the horde in the meantime. Fireballs, lightning, wither magic, disintegration rays, every offensive spell she had.
Gradually she noticed a change, as the lich summoned more undead and created copies of itself the shield remained the same, but the frequency of its attacks lowered, it was clearly being pushed to the edge of its capabilities. The Shelter forces had pushed forward almost to Shadow’s position. With the lich this close, it became more difficult for her mages to protect against the incoming cubes.
Shadow saw Danann float upwards to get a better angle, just before he was about to cast his spell, a green cube struck him in the chest. Blood sprayed out as his arm and a good part of his shoulder were ripped from his body. He immediately dropped downwards in shock. He was barely caught by Iridia, who immediately projected a shield sphere and desperately tried to stop the bleeding. Shadow lost sight of the two when a group of earth Mencur-Besh pushed their way through the undead.
The lich was straining, maybe now was the time to try to break through its shield. But Shadow would need more than her fists if she wanted to exert enough force.
She yelled: “Fire!”
Her brother replied: “Yes?”
“Give me your sword!”
Without hesitation, Fire tossed his zweihander in Shadow’s direction and immediately resumed his attack on the horde with his claws. Shadow caught the sword telekinetically and gripped it firmly. The damn thing was twice her size and probably weighed as much as she did, but such physical limitations were for those without a way around them.
Magic surged into Shadow’s muscles, steadying the zweihander. She swooped downwards towards the lich, winding up for a huge swing. The blade connected with the shield, a radiant wave of green rippled across its surface, but it held. When the lich shot another of its cubes at Shadow, she took a page out of the late Ender’s book and teleported, using the previous momentum of the sword to prepare another swing. Another impact on the shield, another wave of green light.
Shadow attacked again and again, each time the shield turned a bit opaquer, but its integrity held. While plummeting downwards again, Shadow examined the shape of the shield now that it was visible. That was when she finally saw it. The shield protected the lich, but for it to be able to cast spells, the cube at the tip of the staff needed to be outside of the shield. Shadow put all her strength into her swing, but as the zweihander collided with the shield, she let go. The reaction force catapulted it into the horde, impaling three zombies together as it impacted. Shadow reached out towards the cube, her left hand clasping down around it.
“Nice staff.” She taunted the lich as her fingers dug into the cube, which shattered moments later in a violent explosion of emerald sparks.
Shadow’s left arm was in a similar state to her leg, hanging down uselessly, but she only needed one arm for what came next. She delivered a devastating strike to the now unprotected lich, a second explosion ringing out as she made contact.
The moment the lich’s bones were scattered through the room, it seemed like the horde lost some of its cohesion, now no longer commanded by the lich’s unifying will. Within minutes, the Shelter troops had wiped out the remaining undead.
After they had made sure that there were no more enemies near, they regrouped. Shadow took that time to repair the damage to her body she had sustained during the fight, which thanks to Nexus’ energy density went quickly, back home the same would have taken her days.
This time Warnado was the first to approach her. He grinned. “Wow, Shadow. You went through at least three different anime character archetypes in just a few minutes. Didn’t know you could fight like that.”
Shadow smiled at her apprentice. “As opposed to the megalomanic pile of bone dust over there, I used my millennia of life to try a lot of things. Overreliance on a single thing gets you killed, especially as a mage.”
Nearby, Kay was talking with Fire and Tyron. He asked: “Well, now that Glibby and the Tower’s ringer are out of the game, how bad do we reckon the last stretch will be?”
Tyron cocked his head: “Distance-wise, it shouldn’t be long until we’re at the machine. Difficulty-wise, we’ve one major obstacle ahead, but the emphasis is definitely on major.”
Fire nodded. “The bedrock golems, there will be no small amount of them down here. Sadly, I don’t know anything about their capabilities. They encountered one topside but that didn’t tell us much, other than that they’re extremely resilient and have some sort of ranged attack, similar to Shadow’s disintegration ray.”
Shadow and Warnado joined them. Shadow asked: “Any other threats?”
Fire replied: “We’re entering the absolute inner sanctum of the Tower’s science division. These people are quite devoted to what they’re doing, so we should expect at least some resistance from them. However, they shouldn’t be much of a problem, especially compared to what we faced already. The golems are the main issue. On the positive side, no more lanterns from here on out.”
Tyron asked: “Something about sensitive equipment, right?”
Fire made a wide sweeping gesture. “This entire inner research area is encased in a protective structure to shield it against what is being done in the adjacent magic facilities. Most equipment is not affected by magic, but there are some things that can be disrupted by even the energy gradient the lamps create. They must have been quite desperate to deploy that lich down here.” He paused. “Then again if the machine activates, all of that research equipment would be worthless.”
Shadow expanded her senses once again, hoping to see whether there were any immediate threats ahead.
“I can’t see past the walls, whatever they have in there, it’s good. Sadly, that also eliminates our emergency plan of teleporting into the machine’s chamber. I am not risking a blind teleport, not into a room with that many dimensional crystals in it.”
Tyron said: “Time to move then, the soldiers are as recovered as they can be.”
He raised his hand and gave the signal to move out. The Shelter soldiers returned to formation, this time their lines were protected by a series of shield bubbles projected by the Coven mages that were still with them. Shadow joined her mages in the middle of the formation, reinforcing the barrier with a shield of her own.
They took off at a fast marching pace, always vigilant for anything hiding in side paths or doorways. For the first few minutes they encountered nothing, only their own footsteps echoing through the halls.
Their first encounter with resistance, if it could be called that, was a lone scientist bursting out from a door, brandishing a makeshift energy weapon before being quite literally swatted out of the way by a Mencur-Besh. A few more scientists tried attacking them this way, but they all met a similar fate.
Shadow instructed her mages: “Stay vigilant, we know for a fact there are more dangerous foes here.”
As if on cue, flames erupted from a side path ahead of them, rolling over their barrier harmlessly but obscuring their sight. When the smoke cleared, a red-robed mage with white, fuzzy hair floated ahead of them. Between his hands hovered a blue orb, six more orbiting him at the height of his torso. This had to be Archmage Wisp. Wisp was flanked by four armoured scientists, each carrying what looked to be energy rifles. The group wasted no time and attacked.
Wisp and the scientists wasted no time and immediately attacked. The initial shots from the scientists deflected off the Coven’s barrier, but several of Wisp’s orbital orbs surged forward, their combined impacts shattering it. The look on Wisp’s face was anything but confident, more like desperation and barely suppressed panic, a cornered coward was a dangerous foe.
Archers and mages immediately returned fire, taking out one of the scientists before Wisp could raise a shield of his own. Shadow broke formation and flew towards Wisp. With a hand gesture, one of his orbs disappeared and reappeared as a barrier around Shadow, stopping her dead in her tracks. A containment spell. Not a second later Fire and Tyron found themselves similarly imprisoned.
“No fair!” She heard Kir cry out.
Shadow wasted no time in trying to undo the spell holding her in place. This wasn’t the first time she’d been subjected to something like this, these spells always had some kind of release mechanism. While she inspected the nature of the orb around her, the Shelter forces below charged. Another scientist fell, this time to a blast of demonfire from Warnado.
Their advance was promptly halted by Wisp summoning a strong wind blowing them back. Only Mencur-Besh held their ground and slowly advanced against the storm, taking fire from the two remaining scientists. Some of the hunters clawed their way forward by plunging pickaxes into the walls and pulling themselves along, but they were too slow to meaningfully approach Wisp.
Kami had taken charge of the Coven mages in creating a counter spell, twirling her staff, both to direct the mages and to fling showers of magic towards Wisp. The gale force winds slowly mellowed down, giving their soldiers another chance of attacking. Several arrows flew towards the scientists, many of them charged with magic mid-flight by Wolfric. Wisp tried deflecting all of them but could only focus on so many at once. Several struck true and moments later, Wisp was alone against the Shelter troops. With a now definitely panicked look on his face, he wildly flung spells at whoever he could.
Several of their soldiers had not been prepared for such an explosive onslaught of magic, they could not take cover fast enough, and died a gruesome variety of deaths. One was incinerated on the spot, two struck by lightning, several more succumbed to a sudden surge of gravity.
Moments later, Shadow finally figured out the containment spell. With three quick pulses of magic, the orbs holding her, Fire and Tyron. Even with them released, Wisp’s ceaseless barrage of spells claimed more and more lives. But before Shadow could mount a counter offense, several wither Mencur-Besh began sprinting towards Wisp, completely unaffected by his spells due to their innate magic immunity. Wisp retreated back into the side corridor he came from, still wildly firing off spells.
In a joined effort with the Coven, Kami and Wolfric projected a shield across the side corridor entrance, making it possible for the soldiers to pass. Sadly, they had to do so over the bodies of their fallen comrades, an activity that their soldiers had become intimately familiar with over the course of the past hours.
Even if they wanted to, there was no time to catch a breath. Just a few corridors down they encountered their next threat. It was a bedrock golem patrolling the halls. The moment it spotted them its head swivelled around and its cycloptic eye began glowing as it charged towards them.
“Shields!” Tyron called out.
As opposed to Wisp’s attack, this time their mages had time to properly reinforce their defences. The death ray dissipated on the shield and sent glowing aberrations rippling across its surface.
“How do you kill something made from bedrock?!” Screamed one of their soldiers.
That was the question, wasn’t it? Apparently Herobrine had done it topside, but they had no Herobrine down here, or anything comparable to his bedrock sword. Fire’s zweihander came closest, but at the end of the day it was just a regular weapon, even if it had been used by the Entity in the past. Of course, Shadow could do it with Void magic, but was the risk of collapsing local reality worth it? Not currently, Shadow decided.
Instead, she answered the golem’s attack with one of her own, a disintegration ray aimed at its eye with pinpoint precision. The golem stopped for a moment, but then resumed its charge.
The golem battered through their shield and ploughed through their ranks. They were able to scatter fast enough that only a few were trampled, but this was not sustainable. If they couldn’t kill it, they had to make it unable to hurt them. Shadow concentrated and summoned a magical cage around the golem, the same kind she had captured Silver and Kay with. The golem threw itself against the walls. At first they held, but after the third bash they started deforming.
She called out: “We need a better way of keeping it down, anyone got an idea?”
The female hunter chief yelled back: “Topple it and pin it, it’s too massive to get back up. Done it to plenty of monsters before.”
The hunters got in formation, looking to Shadow’s mages for help.
“We need a low barrier, like a rope. We make it charge and trip, then bind it in place so it can’t throw its weight around.”
Pallas and Iridia, the sole remaining members of Shadow’s channellers, nodded to the hunters. They started by projecting a thin line across the corridor, then progressively reinforcing it to become stronger. Meanwhile the soldiers moved forward to get some distance on the golem. Only Shadow remained close.
“Ready.” Said Pallas.
The male chieftain roared: “Release the beast!”
Shortly before the golem could throw its weight against the cage again, it disappeared. The golem immediately began its charge towards the assembled hunters, its eye glowing intensely again.
Shadow thought to herself: “If I won’t use Void magic, I’ll just have to make use of my other strengths.”
The moment the golem fired its ray, Shadow teleported directly into its trajectory. The red light burned through flesh and bones, but only got about halfway through her torso when it was stopped by an opposing force. Shadow focused as much energy into her physical form as she could, keeping the ray from erupting out of her back. At this moment, she was very glad that she did not feel pain from physical injuries.
The golem continued its charge unperturbed, completely ignoring the forcefield. It wound up for a running punch against one of the hunters but caught one of its disproportionally stubby feet on the magical tripwire. The golem slammed into the ground with force, even slightly embedding itself due to its unnaturally high mass. The hunters were quick to act, driving metal spikes through the stone floor and attaching enchanted chains to tie the golem down.
Initially the golem buckled and thrashed, but soon was completely immobilized, its head unable to turn far enough to do harm.
One of the hunters let out a satisfied chuckle. “Just because we don’t have all that fancy stuff you other worlds have doesn’t mean we’re dumb.”
Iridia quietly muttered: “Nobody said that you were…” but then let the hunter have her moment.
Pallas turned to Shadow. “We’ll guard this thing, if we find a way to kill it, we’ll join you up ahead.”
Shadow nodded and flew forwards, quickly catching up with the push force. She landed next to Fire. “Tripping and pinning seem to work. They don’t seem to be significantly stronger than your standard iron golem.”
Fire acknowledged Shadow with a nod, apparently in the middle of a conversation with the Mencur-Besh collective. Kay stood nearby somewhat awkwardly, intentionally at a distance to his loyalists.
He averted his eyes from Shadow. “Uh, Shadow. Would you mind covering up the anatomical showcase? It’s a bit disturbing.”
Shadow glanced downwards, the hole in her torso was still there, only slowly beginning to mend itself. She commanded her clothes to cover the hole in the meantime.
“There. Thought it’d be a good idea to take the beam, so it won’t hit anyone else.”
Kay nodded slightly exaggeratedly. “Right, good. Good thinking. Did something similar myself, once…”
Their numbers had significantly dwindled, between people dying and staying behind they only had a few dozen soldiers left, including anyone higher up in the chain of command. They had to be close now.
Two minutes of marching later, their next opponents presented themselves. At first it looked like more golems, but instead it was two scientists wearing large, enclosed exoskeletons. They did what every opponent before them had done as well, that was attacking immediately. One of them approached at high speed, but before coming close to the foremost soldiers, the scientist raised his arm and an energy tether attached to the ceiling, allowing him to swing up and over, detaching to slam down, crushing two of Kay’s loyalists, then immediately jumping at a wall and somehow running along it. The second scientist attacked with a similar strategy, always staying out of reach, and only going for actual hits in opportune moments.
Shadow pointed at one of them and fired a disintegration ray, only for it to be directed around the exoskeleton and strike the wall behind the scientist.
She yelled out in frustration: “Is everything here equipped to counter me?!”
Then she thought back to the village when she met Dr. Mercury. Suddenly it sounded like a much more logical possibility that people had in fact developed countermeasures to some of her magic. She sighed, they couldn’t have thought of everything.
Suddenly Kay pulled on her sleeve. “We need to get to that machine! Our people can handle these two.”
As if to prove Kay’s point, Rathina lunged forward and cut into one of the exoskeletons, severing a hydraulic line and leaving the scientist with only one usable arm.
She yelled: “You go with them Tyron, we have this!”
Shadow raised her hands and dense smoke spewed forth, completely obscuring the view into the corridor ahead of them. Six figures dashed through the smoke, one of them being Shadow herself, the others were Fire, Kay, Tyron, as well as Warnado and Amanda.
A short sprint later the corridor took a bend, even if they looked now, the scientists were too caught up in combat to notice someone had slipped past them.
Warnado said: “So, now that Titanfall One and Two are out of sight, the machine has to be close right?”
Shadow chuckled. “You know, Warnado, there’s something you should know.”
The demon child tilted his head. “Yeah, what’s that?”
“I get most of the references you’re making.”
Warnado’s eyes went wide as saucers. “Whaaat? I don’t even get those myself!”
Amanda lightly punched Warnado in the shoulder. “I thought he just likes to spout random, endearing nonsense. Couldn’t have guessed that there is a deeper meaning.”
“Golem ahead!” Kir screeched in their minds.
At the end of the corridor was another large gate, several sizes smaller than the previous one but still massive. In front of said gate stood a bedrock golem who just now noticed them and began charging its eye. Shadow projected a shield in front of them as they ran to close the gap, deciding that taking the brunt of the attack was something she only wanted to do once. The red beam dissipated against the shield, and they continued forward. Once they got close, a cage slammed down around the golem, halting its own charge. However, the Tower had one last nasty surprise in store.
The walls behind them exploded as five bedrock golems came bursting out of adjacent laboratory rooms.
Kay screamed: “Cage them, Shadow!”
“Can’t!” She replied. “Only so much energy in this place!”
Now was the point when Shadow decided that the danger outweighed the risk. She looked deep inside of herself, slowly and carefully bringing the Void to the surface. Just before it could break its shell, she heard Warnado’s voice.
The quarter-demon spoke with conviction, just like he had done before fighting Glibby. “I have this.”
Warnado was already halfway across the corridor.
“Helix, no!” Amanda and Kay screamed in unison, then briefly looked at each other, Kay shrinking visibly. Both ran after Warnado, followed by Tyron and Fire with a brief delay.
Warnado’s pursuers were suddenly pushed back by a wave of demon magic, a barrier of lava manifested from nothing to block their way.
Warnado said: “I’ve never had anything like this my whole life. Trust me.”
As he spoke, demonfire erupted from the gauntlet and spread all over Warnado’s body. It quickly took the form of a body, limbs, horns. It was the same form he had taken after Fristad died.
Warnado’s voice rang out again, deeper and distorted, but undeniably his: “Come get some!”
The golems obliged and shot their beams right at Warnado, the demonfire burned brighter on the impact points but otherwise refused to react. He grabbed the nearest golem by the head and slammed it into the wall. Another one struck his demon-form in the jaw, and he responded by punted another one into the opposing wall.
Shadow turned around. She had her own golem to take care of. Once again, she reached for the Void, and this time it broke through. Her hair lifted, her skin went beyond black, her eyes gained their distant-stars quality. This was not like when she found out that Claw had taken over, she did not feel empty. There was a different feeling, one that could be compared to walking on eggshells. She felt the fabric of reality strain against every bit of her body, one wrong move and it would tear.
Shadow slowly raised her hand to point above the imprisoned golem’s head, which seemed to have given up its escape attempts, its automaton routines wholly unprepared for what they saw. A thin blade of nothingness extended from Shadow’s hand before it moved downwards, gliding between atoms like a knife through butter. The two disabled halves of the golem hit the ground with what should have been a loud bang.
However, the impact of bedrock on obsidian was quiet in comparison to the noise that came from behind Shadow. With a thought, she pushed the Void back, and the restrictive pressure of reality was gone. She did not have to turn around to know what happened, but she did nonetheless.
Behind them the entire corridor had collapsed, it was now filled with rubble from the ceiling and the rock above. The implications were clear.
“Helix!” Amanda cried out.
Kay muttered to himself: “He just… brought the ceiling down.”
He gaped, touched his fingers to the goggles on his head, then pulled Amanda in close. She offered only the most token resistance, pressing a hand to his breastplate, then letting it fall.
Both Fire and Tyron were silent. Shadow knew that her brother had at least a dozen things he could say to try to console Amanda, but in reality none of them would achieve that goal, and he knew it too.
Amanda pushed Kay back with marginally more force. He backed away as though he had dropped a fine glass ornament. She looked off at the rubble.
“The gauntlet exploded…” she whimpered.
Shadow felt the sadness of loss as well but decided to suppress further mourning until everyone was safe, the machine had priority. Shadow and Fire approached the gate. Fire almost routinely placed his hand on the scanner next to it, no reaction.
“She wiped the biometrics data, figures.” He said. “Up to you now, Shadow.”
Shadow took a deep breath. She once again reached for the Void, this time only bringing it close enough to shift herself slightly out of sync with the rest of reality. She floated straight through the gate, dismissing the Void as she emerged on the other side.
Chapter84:Fear Without Bounds (Freak/Astro)
In all honesty, I was a bit disappointed, having returned to my throne so soon. I expected the dreaded Herobrine to put up more of a fight, especially since this particular one was apparently a god as well. I chuckled to myself. There were no gods in Nexus, no matter how much they claimed to be. I could have killed him like the others, but why deprive myself of many potential future meals of ‘godly’ fear?
I took a look at my throne room. It had not changed much since I took the Entity’s place, the scratches and bloodstains were still in the same place, just some scorch marks had joined them when the rebel leader Fire escaped. The scar that had ejected the Entity was still above the throne, bigger now and visible to the plain eye. I could have closed it, but it was harmless to me, and it added to the ambiance, so I didn’t.
It wouldn’t be long now until the rest of the rebels came barging in. I was honestly a bit surprised when they showed up with an army that size, but if anything, they played right into my hand with the panic they spread through the Tower, every droplet of fear strengthened me.
Speaking of fear, it was time I laid the first brick of my very own empire. I decided that walking was for those who had no other option and floated around my seat. Behind the throne was the all-important switch that controlled the machine. The good doctor was locked in the same room as it, but completely powerless, unable to do anything because of the countermeasures she had designed herself, talk about irony!
My hand came to rest on the cold obsidian of the switch, pressing down ever so slightly. Before I made the final push, I decided that this room needed a better view of what was to come. With a wide sweep of my claws, I decapitated the throne room, the ceiling now only rested on the spiral staircase up to the observatory. A flick of my wrist and it tore off, sliding down the outer walls of the Tower with a delightful screech, before coming to rest on top of a roof some distance below.
Above me was now the clear night sky, stars, moon, and all. My hand came to rest on the switch again, this time I flipped it without hesitation. It fell into place with a loud clank. At first it seemed like nothing was happening, but of course that was not true. A great ripple went through reality, though I may have been the only one to feel it in its true intensity.
The stars in the sky slowly gained in size, because they were not stars at all. They were worlds, thousands and thousands of worlds, all now drawn towards Nexus. I floated upwards and came to rest on the shattered tip of the observatory staircase.
I laughed and kept laughing. Soon all would be Nexus, and Nexus would be mine to terrorize!
###
I pull the sword from my opponent and a black flame consumes him. My eyes slide shut, the energy bundles within me, and with a thrust forward of my wrist I send the burning man flying back through his fellows. He slams into the barricade so hard he cracks the stone.
We have ascended the stairs and continue to fight our way through to the Entity’s throne, but it is slow going. They make us pay for every inch of ground, and though our objective is at the centre of the floor, we only seem capable of spreading further around the edge. What may well be the last sunset of all creation casts its dying rays in through the high-arched, empty windows behind us.
Above my head, arrows fly, and mages sling spells. Drake the Enderdragon swoops low and snaps at the heads of Tower soldiers with playful glee, while his older fellows follow through and kill them outright.
On the ground, Vanillan and Shelter troops fight fiercely. Sword locks with spear locks with halberd, until the crack of a rifle or thud of a crossbow bolt sounds and armour clatters to the ground. In a bloody ouroboros, a pigman warrior screeches in pain or triumph as he decapitates an Endling whose talons just tore open his stomach.
Gunsmoke perfume sears my nose, stings my eyes. Weapon screens against armour. Squelch of boot. Snap of bone. I am buffeted this way and that by war as it is and ever was and always will be.
A glance in each direction reveals a new awesome and terrible sight of battle. This way, my Guild fights their way into a bathhouse, blood staining the water. That way, Ryan and the moderators try to hold back the charge of several bedrock golems, staffs barely slowing their titanic adversaries.
In one direction, I see Voidblade teleporting this way and that to guard a red dragon who has fallen under the weight of hundreds of arrows. He lops off limbs, slashes at faces, kicks in knees and chests and skulls.
Another way Fedwin the Tinkerer pulls levers from his seat on the back of a headless iron golem, contending with one of its bedrock brothers. Below the brawl, the Arcation priesthood pass ropes between the legs of the enemy behemoth, trying to avoid the precise blasts of its great, red eye.
And atop the barricade the Tower has erected to impede our process, I see Rose hurling daggers this way and that. They cascade from her hands in great arcs, each blade finding a man to slay until they are stopped by a twin-sided axe head large enough to cover a man. General Forgelight, the Tower’s great ideologue, sweeps the barricade with his mighty weapon and forces Rose back.
“Keep heart, men! The final unification is upon us!” Forgelight screams, swinging his axe up and striking the ceiling.
However, the figure he cuts is more desperate. One of Rose’s knives has implanted itself in his thigh, blood oozes from it. And Ozen’s powerful arms are clamped around his neck and under his left armpit, trying their best to restrain his movements.
Again, Forgelight strikes, splitting open a rank of Gaian riflemen. Cossack only barely staggers out of his reach. Another swing threatens to kill an approaching starry-scaled dragon, but I summon a shield just in time. It cracks, the dragon falls dead. Forgelight rears up, he swings once more, but this time it stops.
The axe-head has connected with a large, rectangular wooden shield. Steve holds it, dressed in the strange grey armour of his adversary. He sticks his head out from behind the shield and grins. Behind him, Jennifer finishes pulling back the string of the ghast bone bow.
The arrow strikes Forgelight in the chest, piercing his armour nearest the heart. He falls from the barricade and slams into the ground. General Issa sounds the order for them to fall back to their next line. I heave a sigh of relief.
I pull back from the fighting and approach one of the great, arched windows and speak into my radio. I catch Steve’s eye and gesture for him to join the same frequency.
“Urist, what’s the situation, did you find Herobrine?”
“We’ve found him alright. Looks like he located a path right into tha Throne room.”
My heart soars. If Herobrine could punch through, that might put an end to the whole thing.
“That’s fantastic!” I yell.
“Crack open the wine cellar, Urist, we’ve got this in the bag!” Steve joins.
Urist is silent.
“What’s wrong, Urist?” I ask.
“He mighta ran into Freak, didn’t go well for Herobrine. We found him on tha ground, asleep, tossing and turning, like he’s havin’ a nightmare. The others who were with him… less said tha better.”
I struggle to find the words to respond with. I looked over at Steve. He has an arm around Jennifer’s shoulder. He nods firmly at me. She stares at me with stern but respectful eyes. Their implication is clear. With Herobrine gone, I am next in command of the upper assault. The decision is mine. I ball up all the courage I have in me.
“Okay, Urist, here’s what we’re going to do-”
Rubble cascades past the window, and associated dust fills my lungs and clouds my eyes. When I can finally see again, I become aware of a gentle tremor which has seized the room. Discarded weapons begin to skitter along the floor, all in one direction. Something like the sound of an earthquake strikes my ears and I flinch, a far-off booming that sounds all the more dangerous for its distance. My skin begins to prickle, the very flakes of my skin now feel a pull upon them. Again, all in the same direction, into the heart of the Tower, toward the Throne room.
“No…” I breathe.
Suddenly I see it in the corner of my eye. The horizon has begun to curl upwards. A terrible wind rises and begins to hurl dragons and mages across the sky. The stars stretch and grow until they rupture, leaving burning, yellow holes in the sky which only swell further until one can see the worlds on the other side. Rolling hills, scorching mesas, endless oceans.
A white-hulled airship tumbles through one of the ruptured stars. In the seconds before the terrible winds disassemble it and hurl its crew to the ever-shrinking borders of creation, I see the True Court’s crest. Within the star, I see the distant peak of the Citadel of Mojang. Finally, it hits me.
All of creation is collapsing into this one point. The Entity’s plan is fulfilled, and Freak will profit by it.
There is a hand on my shoulder. Steve is looking me in the eye.
“Astro, what do we do?” He asks me again and again.
Aaron comes up and asks me the same thing. And Jennifer. And Ozen. And Tassadar. Ray. Fedwin. Ryan. A vortex of questions, soon to become screams once that thing finishes its plan.
There is a distant chuckling. The questions stop. I am granted a moment’s respite. I look over to my saviour.
Forgelight rises, leaning on his axe. Blood runs from his mouth. There is a brief respite from the questions.
“At last…” he wheezes. “Comrades, our labours bear their final fruits: Convergence is achieved!”
He laughs and looks around. His jaw hangs looser than natural. His eyes are glassy. I can’t tell if he can see us.
He uses his axe as a crutch and hobbles over to the window. I back away. Rose looks at me, eyes burning with hatred, begging my approval. I gesture for her to hold fire.
“Marcus, Marinus, Issa, is it not as beauteous as I promised you?”
He now gazes over the approaching horizon. Mountains seem to swell up, crushing villages between them. For a second I think I catch a glimpse of the Shelter’s entrance amidst a shower of collapsing jungle trees and shattering scaffolding.
“Ender, Ape, surely even you can see the… merit in this,” he spits out blood and begins shaking as he tries to lift his axe, “nnngh, most g-glorious union.”
He raises the axe above his head, his eyes glowing with triumphalist rapture. He starts to stalk an unseen prey, slow and arch-footed despite the creak and clatter of his armour.
“I thank you, Entity, for your help in getting us this far… but Nexus is of my making. I am Forgelight, the unifier!”
He swings down, and to prevent injury to anyone I magically strike the axe from his hands. He does not seem to notice, however. He cackles on his knees, delighting in his imagined glory.
“Then, it is done…” he looks up at Jennifer and sneers stupidly. “No, Issa, I am no traitor… You would have done the same.”
This is enough for me. I give the signal to Rose. She flicks her wrist and the luminary’s head rolls onto the floor. My respite is over.
“What do we do?” Steve asks again. He sounds like a lost child.
I feel my eyes begin to well with tears, so I slam them shut.
“I don’t know, all is lost,” I think.
“We wait for orders from below,” I say. “Brace for new instructions.”
Chapter85:In Unlikely Places (Shadow)
The machine’s brass bulk dominated the room, its hatch was closed and the cables that connected to it radiated enough warmth to distort the light around them. All this was evidence enough that Shadow was too late, only further consolidated by the waves that rippled through the fabric of reality.
In the centre of the room stood a large chair facing the machine, this chair now slowly turned around, revealing Dr. Veronica Mercury wearing the lightweight powered armour that served as a platform for her additional limbs. However, she looked far from the evil scientist about to gloatingly confirm that Shadow was indeed too late. No, she sat slumped deep into the chair, her eyes only half-open. In the first few moments she barely seemed to notice Shadow standing in front of her. Once she did, her posture straightened out, if only slightly. Dr. Mercury looked on silently like a convict at the chopping block who had accepted her sentence.
Shadow slowly began walking towards her. “The Entity’s gone, you know.”
Dr. Mercury took a few moments to process what she just heard. She blinked. “How?”
“That talk you and Claw had about the crystals and how I’m similar to the Entity. Freak listened in and manipulated our friend Destiny into helping him remove the Entity from this world. He’s running the show now and his plan is only slightly better than the Entity’s.”
This fully woke Dr. Mercury up from her daze. Her eyes opened properly, and she stood up from her chair.
Shadow asked: “For how long has the machine been active, and how long until it does irreversible damage to other worlds?”
Dr. Mercury answered: “Roughly half an hour since activation. For the first worlds to be pulled close enough to merge, it will take six hours at the very maximum.” She paused. “How did you get in here?”
Shadow walked past Dr. Mercury and inspected the machine. Within it thousands of dimensional crystals resonated with the static grey in their centre, each crystal tethered to a world, slowly reeling it closer to Nexus.
“We launched an assault on the Tower and pushed our way through. We’ve also got people topside clearing a path to the throne room. How did you not know this?”
Dr. Mercury walked to Shadow’s side. “I have been locked in here for the last few days. I was told to make sure that the machine works, but at that point I knew its true purpose already. I assumed the Entity wanted to keep an eye on me.”
Shadow asked: “So, I assume there’s no safe way of deactivating this thing?”
“There is not, at least from here. The only way is through the switch in the throne room, tampering with the machine will most likely lead to failure. Nexus collapsing in on itself and taking the other worlds with it, that kind of failure.”
Shadow nodded. “I assumed as much. Anything special about that switch?”
Dr. Mercury pointed to some blueprints on a table. “The switch has protective obsidian panels that can be used to cover it in case someone tries what you’re trying at the moment. You’d need to break those to get to it. Of course, that doesn’t stop anyone from turning it back on. And with Freak there to guard it… I can’t imagine how strong he’ll be, even if he only stole a fraction of the Entity’s influence on reality.”
That left them exactly where they were just moments ago, even if they managed to flip the switch back, Freak could just activate the machine again. With the Entity they had been opposites, order and chaos, fear was an entirely different beast. Shadow didn’t even know if she could harm Freak at all, especially now.
“So, that’s it, huh?” Shadow asked.
“Yeah,” Dr. Mercury muttered. Her face took on the same defeated look Shadow had seen on her when she first came in.
Trying to think of something else other than their impending doom, Shadow looked at Dr. Mercury. She was different from the scientists they had met earlier, none of that undying devotion that made them throw their lives away in desperate defence. It was true, she knew the real story behind the machine, but that couldn’t be everything.
She asked: “So, how’d you end up here?”
Dr. Mercury shrugged. “Same way most people do. My world was one of the first to be absorbed. Of course, we didn’t know that at the time, from our perspective nothing changed. Just that there were suddenly people telling us to join them. Some of us were distrustful, that’s when they shifted to ‘join or die’.”
Shadow made a gesture at the various pieces of research equipment in the room. “Did you learn this here, or back in your world?”
Sitting back down in the chair, Dr. Mercury sighed. “I soon realized that the worlds the Tower conquered were similar to what I was used to, just most of them were much bigger than mine, and so empty and simple. The most they had in terms of technology were pistons and redstone, with some steam-driven machinery and high magic strewn in between. My world was different. I mean no disrespect, but it might be hard to imagine just how different.”
Shadow said: “Try me. I think I know where this is going. Besides, my world is very different too.”
She projected a chair for herself and sat down in it. It felt wrong to have a conversation about someone’s personal background while the clock was ticking down, but she had a feeling that this was important, and it was not like there were any better options.
Dr. Mercury began: “My world was a small one. Once you walk enough, you end up where you began. As for its inhabitants, we didn’t really have people living simple lives like you see in most other worlds. Everyone pursued some discipline, whether scientific, magical, or both. My father was a fourth-paradigm thaumaturge, my mother was a storage technician. I got my father’s last name because they both agreed it had a better ring to it. But that’s beside the point. I grew up helping my mother lay cables and set up crafting systems in people’s homes, then back in our compound I assembled runes and matched elements with my father. As I grew up I started getting into interdisciplinary automation design, as well as programming, the two go nicely together. Still not lost?”
Shadow shook her head. “I’m familiar with the concepts.”
Dr. Mercury continued. “Alright. So, the year I turned twenty was when our world was absorbed. Our settlement initially refused to join but was quickly forced to surrender. We didn’t have much in the way of weapons, at least none that could defeat that many soldiers. Both my parents died in the struggles. I later heard that other parts of our world had similar success in resisting. The thaumaturges couldn’t even agree what their discipline is exactly, so they couldn’t really mount an effective coordinated defence. Many of the various factions of industrialists tried using their tools as weapons, with limited success. The blood mages either immediately joined or fought to the death. Even the followers of draconic evolution failed, the Entity simply wore down their shields. The only ones who might have had a chance were the equivalists of old, but that trade died out generations ago.”
So far that seemed very in line with what Shadow had heard from other survivors she had talked with. Useful individuals were recruited, rebellious ones were killed, the rest was left in the Nexus wilderness to figure things out for themselves.
She asked: “So, how did you go from there to running the Tower’s science operations?”
Dr. Mercury reached behind her neck. “That is a bit of a jump, I admit. The Tower’s organizational structure was a bit different back then, a lot more low-tech, anything more complex ran on some kind of magic. The people from our world were what would eventually become the science division. It wasn’t all bad for us, we more or less were allowed to continue doing the things we did, just that we now had someone above us giving orders. You have to remember, with Forgelight’s prosperous unification propaganda we thought we were working towards something great, even if some of the methods employed were questionable. I was assigned to be a research assistant to a more science-minded Tower mage. Over the years we revolutionised the Tower’s internal communication and dimensional monitoring.
“One day I was taken to the side, and they introduced me to a long-running project that had hit a stall. It was this damn machine. The mages were stumped and were now looking for new insight. I of course took it as a challenge. At that point I was too far in, too close to the Entity’s notice to ever have any chance of quitting and living to tell the tale.”
Shadow asked: “Fire told me you had some personal projects too, correct?”
Suddenly Dr. Mercury seemed nervous. “Yes… those. You see, back in my world I always wanted to found my own discipline, just like the different industrial disciplines branched from one. I got the opportunity here, in my spare time when I was part of the machine team, before I got promoted to leader when… when my predecessor was absorbed by the Entity.”
Shadow raised her eyebrows. “What was the field?”
Dr. Mercury looked down. “Arcano-neural interfaces, but most know it as technological necromancy, but that’s just one of the applications. Corpses can be implanted with pre-programmed energy crystals that control the bodies. I know about the implications-”
Shadow interrupted her: “You don’t need to justify yourself to me. My moral compass points towards my brother almost exclusively. If he died, I probably would destroy everything.”
After taking a sigh of relief, Dr. Mercury said: “I know, I saw what happened at the portal facility. But thank you for understanding. I get where people’s apprehension to using corpses comes from, many worlds have afterlives, but Nexus is not one of those.” Another deep breath. “However, one useful thing came out of my research that isn’t morally dubious.”
Dr. Mercury stood up and turned around. She pointed at the back of her neck, where a green crystal was prominently embedded in her armour.
“This crystal is connected to my spine and allows me to control my armour. I haven’t put anything like it in anyone else, it’s still experimental.”
The conversation had done little to distract Shadow from the situation, she just couldn’t stop thinking about whether they were missing something.
Shadow said: “So, you did a lot of research on me and the Entity. You’re sure there’s nothing in there we could possibly use against Freak now?”
Dr. Mercury suddenly stood up and started pacing. “Well, we’d need to make the machine permanently unusable, but for that I’d need to open it up… which I can’t do while it’s running…” Her head shot up and she looked right at Shadow. “I’d also need your help.”
“What do you mean when you say you need my help?” Shadow asked.
Dr. Mercury ran over to a diagram of the machine’s insides and pointed. “The machine works by amplifying the influence of the sample of the Entity’s void plasma in its centre. That’s what causes it to pull on the crystals. In theory, if I could switch it with your equivalent, we could instead make the machine collapse Nexus, and only Nexus.”
Shadow was slightly sceptical. “That works?”
“I did enough research on you to know that it will, or at least that it won’t harm any other worlds. Trust me, I lost a lot of sleep thanks to you.”
Shadow laughed, more awkwardly than intended.
Dr. Mercury walked over to a cupboard and started rummaging, after a few moments producing a perfect sphere of glass, which she handed to Shadow.
Shadow eyed the sphere. “So, I just cut a piece of myself off and put it in there?”
Dr. Mercury answered: “Look, I came up with the plan while telling you my abridged life story, I don’t pretend I have all the steps figured out.”
“Alright, I will try it.”
Shadow focused on the Void like when she phased through the door, this time concentrating the effect on her left hand. Her palm passed through the glass. Once inside she pushed the Void to the surface, disintegrating her hand and leaving behind a vaguely hand-shaped gap in reality. She then, very carefully, tried separating this part of her from the rest of her being. The gap shivered when she pulled her hand back, but soon stabilized into an irregularly expanding and contracting sphere. Her physical hand quickly reformed. Shadow handed the sphere to Dr. Mercury, its contents complied with the movement without ever touching the glass.
Dr. Mercury clutched her head. “Ugh, it never gets any less headache-inducing.”
Shadow said: “So, now that’s done, how do we proceed? We collapsed the corridor behind us to get rid of the bedrock golems, how do we get to the throne room?”
“Oh, that’s easy.” Dr. Mercury said and pulled something from a holster.
“This is a portal device that I created, it’s based on the readings I have of you and the Entity. It should allow you to bypass the shielding structure.”
She demonstratively made two portals appear, one directly in front of her, another across the room, then walked in through one, and out the other. Shadow expanded her senses to see how it worked.
She mused. “Huh. Temporarily making a section of space fold to connect to a different one, not a novel concept but I haven’t seen it applied before.”
Dr. Mercury asked: “Do you want it?”
Shadow shook her head. “No, you using it taught me everything I needed to know about how to replicate it.”
“Good. For everything to work you need to make sure that the machine is switched off and stays that way for a while. I will remain here until I can make the switch. It might be good to tell your allies not to attack me on sight once I portal out of here.” Dr. Mercury said.
Shadow turned to the gate. “Thank you for helping us with this, Veronica.”
Shadow conjured up a portal through the gate, just before she was about to step through, Dr. Mercury spoke again.
“So, Shadow. Once this is over, would you consider taking me to your world? I’d like to continue my studies, within the moral framework of your world of course.”
Shadow briefly thought it over. “If you help us pull this off, you have more than earned it.”
Dr. Mercury quickly asked: “Just one more thing, now that the important things are agreed on, what’s up with the gi?”
Shadow glanced down. She had completely forgotten to transform her clothes back into her robes, which she promptly did.
“Just seemed more appropriate for what I did while coming here, I can give you the details once we’ve left this place behind us.”
With that Shadow stepped through the portal and emerged on the other side of the gate.
On arrival, she saw Amanda atop the rubble-pile, shifting those stones she could. Kay stood a ways back, non-committally turning over rocks with his sword and refusing to look up. Tyron chattered into the radio in dour communication with their forces. And, of course, her brother, Fire, knelt on the ground, his zweihander balanced on his knee, a look of profound helplessness in his eyes, all paths in his plan were exhausted. At the sound of the portal opening, all looked up at her with expectation.
Shadow took a breath. “The machine is already running, but Dr. Mercury is helping us shut it down, and Nexus along with it. We need to get to the switch.”
No further words were needed, both Amanda and Kay immediately vacated the rubble, Tyron joined them at her side. Fire snapped out of his trance, suddenly presented with a new option after none remained. Shadow opened another portal, this time to the last reported location of the topside forces. They had little time left, but they would use it to the fullest.
Chapter86:Raised Sword (Narrator)
They arrived in the hall through Shadow’s portal. First, Tyron Dragoknight, hero of Minecraftia jumped out, his sword Kir glowing in his hand. Then came Kay Mandy, the ruined General, wincing as his leg struck the ground and trying to disguise his hobble as he backed away to make room for others. Amanda followed next, barely seeming to notice her own arrival, contemplating a small shard of brass in her hand. Fire, leader of the Mencur-Besh, strode out immediately after, nimbly stepping around the grieving teenager in search of other leadership. And, lastly, she emerged: the mage known as Shadow, her white hair and black robes flowing softly as she moved. Behind her the fabric of reality nestled back into its resting state as the portal vanished.
Tyron raised his eyes to the hall’s high ceiling and couldn’t shake the feeling that the buttresses and chandeliers were sneering down at them. To him, the building's architecture fluttered between indifferent monumentality and a malignant intimacy, as though the inhabitants were insects, and the building a cruel child. All of it only served to make the staircase at the hall’s end even more immense and insurmountable. He shuddered, then found his gaze dropping suddenly as Kay ran past him.
“My lord!” he yelled.
All the new arrivals found themselves taken aback at the sight before them. Blood spattered the walls and tattered bodies lay everywhere. Soldiers moved back and forth, trying to clean them away. Amanda jolted back into awareness when she saw Dinnerbone lay slumped and twitching on a rattling chest. A large, dented set of obsidian doors hung open at the far end of the hallway, the scorch marks and gun smoke scent of TNT fresh upon them.
Their friends all stood in a circle, normally enough. Astro the Wizard adjusted his rings and muttered into his sleeve and shot a thankful look at Shadow as she entered. The adventurers, Steve Brine and Jennifer, held hands and contemplated the comings and goings of the soldiers. Steve wore a strange set of grey armour, and a large wooden shield hung from his arm. Jennifer, meanwhile, still wore her diamond armour, but clasped a massive ghastbone bow in her right hand.
A bit off to the side stood the lightly armoured form of Rose, the assassin who had helped blaze the trail for the Shelter in the early days, and who had cut open the Tower’s walls in the aerial assault. She looked on calmly, but not as calmly as she perhaps wanted.
All of this was expected, considering the cataclysm unfolding around them. Even then, they could hear the distant roar as worlds were degraded that they might be stitched back toward. Outside, a terrible wind howled. In an apocalypse, one might expect a group of dour-faced heroes to stand in a circle, reflecting on the task ahead. What was not expected, however, was the man lying in their midst.
Herobrine, the Blind Watcher, a god walking among them, lay on the ground with white eyes clenched shut and sweat soaking his hair and beard. A small cut puckered on his forehead, blood pulsing outwards and mixing with the blood on the floor.
“Freak,” Kir chirped in Tyron’s mind.
The General threw himself to his knees and began to shake his fallen master.
“No, no, please!” he muttered. His eyes began to water, and he clenched them shut. “Please wake up...”
Steve and Jennifer threw a glance down at him and exchanged an uncomfortable glance. Astro’s eyes flared with disdain, then he looked away and began to fiddle with his rings again, something like pity cooling the coals of anger within him.
“So, the machine has been activated,” Astro said quickly, “I’ve provisionally instructed people to keep up the assault on the Throne Room, but tell me honestly, do we have a chance of undoing this?”
“Yeah,” Jennifer agreed. “The troops deserve to know. Are we still fighting to stop Freak or are we just securing the Tower and hoping for the best?”
Shadow spoke up: “There is a way we can stop Freak. We need to get to the switch, break through its protective panels and turn it off.”
“Okay,” Astro breathed and began to shift from foot to foot. “Our plan stays the same. We get to the switch and stop Freak from flicking it on. We just add the minor step of flicking it off first…”
With slight hesitation Shadow said: “Yes, but that is just the first step. Dr. Mercury is on our side now and agreed to help with the second step. Once the machine is off, she will replace the piece of the Entity that is in the machine with… she’ll replace it with a piece of me. If the machine is turned on after that, Nexus begins collapsing and the other worlds are safe.”
“Okay, added minor step of flicking it back on again,” Astro muttered. “Still doable.”
Steve had been nodding along, but now his head snapped suddenly in Shadow’s direction.
“Wait, Nexus starts collapsing?” he asked.
“Starts is the important part, she made it sound like it’ll take a while.”
“And you’re sure Mercury is on our side?” Jennifer asked. “No chance she’s trying to screw us over?”
Fire chimed in: “She figured out the Entity’s plan before Freak took over and she was absolutely shattered by the realization. She doesn’t have any loyalties towards Freak either. Not the type to randomly cause problems. We can at the very least trust her to have told the truth as far as she understands it.”
Tyron tapped his foot impatiently.
“I’m sorry guys, but we don’t have time to argue about this. If we don’t stop Freak, there’s no do-over. If we have to die to stop everything from becoming an endless nightmare torture prison, that’s just how it is.”
“No other way,” Kir agreed. “What heroes do.”
Steve seemed about to say something very angrily, then stopped himself when Jennifer squeezed his hand. They exchanged a meaningful look, and a small, sad smile began to creep across his face.
“Well, so much for happy endings… as though we haven’t lost enough today,” chuckled another voice.
Kay had sat up, lifting his head from Herobrine’s breastplate. He cast a dark look over at Dinnerbone slumped over the rattling chest. Amanda was shaking his shoulder and trying to wake him up, her eyes heavy with emotion.
Something dawned on Rose. Her usual calm cracked and splintered. Suddenly, she grabbed Fire’s arm.
“Where’s Warnado?”
Kay’s head drooped once more. Tyron ran his fingers through his fur and clenched his teeth. No one said anything for what felt like millennia. Shadow looked around, as if trying to confirm her own feelings with the looks on the others’ faces. Finally, Fire spoke up in a carefully measured tone.
“In the corridor before the machine we were ambushed by five bedrock golems. He made full use of his demonic side to buy us time… and collapsed the ceiling on himself and the golems.”
Astro squinted, not quite seeming to comprehend what he had heard. A look of horror spread across Steve and Jennifer’s face. Without hesitation the red-headed archer discarded the bow Fire had gifted her and sprinted over to Amanda. The teenager turned just in time for Jennifer’s body to slam into her. Jennifer’s powerful arms took Amanda into their embrace. She began to cry. Rose followed shortly after, placing a soft hand on the back of Amanda’s neck, then stooping to stroke her hair.
Astro’s eyes followed this scene in a stupor before he blinked and suddenly looked in the other direction. His gaze fell on Kay, who was now straining to get up off Herobrine. His leg was giving him trouble again, and he barely suppressed his grunts of effort and discomfort. A set of well-worn fingers shot past his heavy fringe and stopped in front of his face. He looked up. Astro stood over him, a pained smile on his face. The General took his hand and rose. He drew his sword, ran it along his brace and inspected the edge.
“Well, how are we killing him?” Kay asked.
“Urist says this route leads pretty directly to the throne room. From what we can tell it’s not defended,” Astro answered. “But with Freak… who knows?”
Kay nodded and looked around.
“Where is Urist, by the way?”
“Attack’s still ongoing,” Steve entered. “He’s building up fortifications where he can. Voidblade’s teleporting him for speed’s sake.”
“Hm… Mainly I’m wondering, should we attack now or wait for reinforcements?” he pressed.
Tyron adjusted the knob on his earpiece.
“Officers, what’s the status on the attack?”
Lucy’s voice came through the radio: “Tower perimeter is fully secured, all stragglers either killed, captured, surrendered, or fled into the Tower early. I have reports that both General Issa and Archmage Wisp are not yet neutralised, some golems are still active, but otherwise it looks like we are gaining the upper hand.”
Tyron cast a look at Astro.
“Forgelight?” Kir asked on his wielder’s behalf.
“My Guild and the Eye-and-Claws are leading the pursuit of Issa. Forgelight is dead.”
“Thanks, Lucy,” said Tyron. He looked at Fire. “Well, that all sounds pretty great for us, but something tells me there’s a reason we shouldn’t just wait for an elite Mencur-Besh dunk squad to back us up.”
Fire stroked his chin.
“I am not sure if we want the collective in Freak’s reach. If they’re linked up, Freak could just get one of them and do whatever he did to Herobrine to the entire collective. And, if they break the link beforehand… It’s unknown what happens when the collective breaks the link when so many of its bodies are dead. Besides, most troops are still tied up in battles, so if we want the best shot at getting out of this with all worlds intact, we have few choices but to attack now. The timeframe on the machine is restrictive as it is.” He paused, deliberating. “It looks like it’s up to just us again.”
“Of course it is,” Steve laughed.
Tyron groaned and Steve clapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, buddy, don’t worry, it’s what heroes do, right?”
Tyron laughed in exasperation and punched him in the pauldron.
“Hey, the sword said that, not me!”
“Pffft, like you guys don’t coordinate your messages!”
Steve gestured over his shoulder and began to walk up towards the steps.
“Come on guys, no point waiting around!”
Kay and Astro began to follow him instinctively, with Tyron shaking his head and joining the march soon after. Jennifer and Rose had, by this time, stopped purely comforting Amanda, and were helping her put on the last piece of a similar set of grey armour to Steve’s - only this had a lighter chestplate with a set of wings attached. Additionally, she had a stack of rockets in one hand, and a crossbow loaded with one of them in the other.
Rose clapped down on the helmet and patted Amanda on the back.
“You’ve got this, kid,” smiled the assassin.
Amanda smiled involuntarily, and after a few seconds deliberation shot back:
“I know, I’ll try not to save your ass too many times.”
Jennifer laughed.
“Save it for the big bad phantom, Amanda.”
Fire and Shadow quickly caught up and walked alongside the others.
Fire gave Steve a side glance and asked: “By the way, where did you get that set of netherite armour?”
Steve involuntarily laughed. “Of course you know what this stuff is, because why wouldn’t you? I got it off… me from another world who made it his goal to be the last Steve standing. Spoke in text, almost killed us, weird encounter.”
Amanda cocked an eyebrow at Jennifer.
“So, you didn’t just ‘find this in a chest’?”
“No, sorry, that’s corpse armour.”
“Great,” Amanda bit the inside of her cheek. “Thank you so much.”
They crested the stairs much sooner than they thought possible and found themselves walking down a hallway towards a circular door with a bronze disc at the centre of it. To either side were statues and tapestries. Down some corridors to either side they could catch glimpses of far-off combat. Golems grappling with their friends. Vanillans, Eye-and-Claws, Mencur-Besh, humans, villagers, pigmen, all assembled to ensure their success. It was hard to just move on by.
Steve rummaged through his pockets, inspecting the number of ender pearls he had left. Rose sorted through her knives. Runes on Shadow’s skin flashed as she prepared spells, occasionally her skin would go beyond black as she channelled the Void. Kay began to repeatedly sharpen his sword against his armour, muttering his titles as a mantra:
“General. Commander. Lap Dog. Hero of Arcadia…” Then, in a sombre, still more hushed tone: “King in Ash.”
Astro sidled up to Shadow, jimmying one of his rings further up his finger.
“You know, one advantage of the machine being turned on is that there’s a lot more background energy swilling around. Almost filled them all back up already.” He paused, then smiled genuinely. “Thanks for these.”
Shadow nodded. “I thought I’d need these myself before I came here but turns out that was just the first thing that played out differently.” With another pulse of beyond-black across her body she added: ”Reality is denser here in the throne room, it might not tear like in other places.”
Astro curled his mouth in satisfaction, then shot a sly look at Shadow.
“I mean, so long as Freak gets torn too, I’m sure reality won’t mind.”
She giggled, then realised the others had stopped. Fire gestured for silence, and they formed into a V-shape behind him. Tyron, Shadow, Rose, and Amanda on the one side. Kay, Steve, Jennifer, and Astro opposite. Fire drew his zweihander and crept forward, one hand outstretched, until his scaled fingers brushed the cold bronze disc at the door’s centre. It began to turn. The door opened.
Inside, they saw darkness, only dimly illuminated by light from further within. They crept along, silent, and steady, all with their weapons drawn. Past display cases. Over obsidian and endstone tiles. Brushing against pedestals bearing strange artefacts and statues. Every here and there an accent of bronze alloy glinted.
Then, they entered an inner ring of rooms. Less bronze and endstone. More obsidian alloyed into metal. In the dark they saw a hologram depicting many worlds stutter on and off, lashing the walls with a blue light. At first, they assumed this was the source of the light they were following, but even when the hologram clicked out of view, something else kept the room half-visible. Jennifer moved to turn it off, but found the buttons shattered beyond recognition, perhaps crushed by a frantic bronze form realising its time was running out.
Finally, they saw the source of the light: two doorways lit by something otherworldly. Too orange and to be daylight, too golden in hue for a true twilight. Molten rays from some unknown point of origin. They steeled their nerves, filtered through the two entrances, and examined the room beyond.
Fire immediately recognised the Throne Room. The walls remained lined with bookcases, though much of the glass that sealed them had shattered, leaving the tomes within shredded and torn. It remained large and empty, with the throne on the far side, and the dimensional scar still shaking above as though struck with a fever. Behind the throne the edges of the activation switch’s platform were visible.
He also recognised the staircase at the centre of the room, which he had fled up only a few days ago. However, where once it had led to an observatory, now it was broken off most of the way up, with an open view onto the sky of Nexus, with its stars which ruptured into worlds, and its black sky ignited by a burning yellow shade. Freak sat at the top, kicking his feet back and forth, luxuriating in the terror.
Everyone froze, uncertain how to respond to the phantom’s presence. His yellow eyes shone and rolled beneath closed lids, and his lips were parted by slow, deep breaths. He looked serene. Could he see them?
Tyron looked around, gestured to the platform, then adopted a fighting stance as Kir counted down. Shadow charged a spell. Steve lifted his shield. Amanda trained her crossbow on Freak.
“Three. Two… One!”
They charged. A great roar challenged the howling of the winds above for dominance of the room. They had one goal, the activation mechanism which could end this. Shadow unleashed her spell and blasted the throne aside. It was in view! Only for obsidian panels to start rising like grotesque, unbreakable jaws.
Amanda loosed her rocket, spiralling up at Freak’s stairtop perch. A second sent her bursting up into the air until she began to drop, and the air swelled her sail-like wings. She began to soar down at the activation mechanism. It was still in view despite the rising obsidian. She stifled a shocked laugh. She could make it! And even if she missed, Fire led the pack behind, Tyron running and Astro and Shadow floating shortly behind!
Amanda spared a triumphant look at Freak and her rocket had almost reached the docile phantom, who still sat undisturbed. Judging by the path it was on a direct course for his head. Her heart soared and momentarily pushed the mourning of Helix from her mind. It was going to hit him! She was going to strike Freak right in his stupid face-
Crack! The phantom’s neck crunched horribly to the side. The rocket shot wide. The phantom’s yellow eyes and glowing smile were trained on her. A gurgling, bubbling sound came from somewhere on his back and out reached a lumpy, bulbous limb, at the end of which sat a many-fingered hand. Each finger bloomed into a talon and shot forth like a missile of stretching flesh.
Amanda rolled aside. The talon missed and stuck in the rising obsidian, but Amanda also wound up flying wide. Dodging several more talons, she kicked off from the nearest bookcase, sending her swooping back in the opposite direction. She tripped on the ground and was steadied by Astro.
Then the rest of the fingers struck out. Fire stopped as a wide fan of talons embedded themselves in the floor like the bars of a cell, separating the group from the activation mechanism. Then, suddenly, they began to shift. The fleshy limb sticking out of Freak’s back heaved, and in a moment, Freak swung before them, a crackling ragdoll suspended in the air by a thick, grotesque string.
“Hello, Fire,” Freak said. “I didn’t expect you to come back so soon… or in such good company?”
His yellow eyes rolled out and took in the others. A serpentine tongue began to run over his dry, splintering lips.
“What brings you all here?”
Fire replied: “We’re here to stop you, as cliché as that sounds. The plan is the same as when the Entity was in charge. You made things easier for us so far, but it looks like that just changed.”
Freak smiled.
“Oh, I certainly did, Fire, sending Glibby, Forgelight and all of them spinning was a joy. But, of course, it wasn’t only pleasure hahaha-”
Tyron growled and cut the phantom off.
“We know! We’ve known since we first learned what happened. You feed on fear so keeping them all confused makes you stronger! Get out of our way or get another bit!”
“Leave!” snarled Kir, its blue glow intensifying.
The phantom’s smile vanished, the cracked lips becoming a fractured line.
“At least you’re all smarter than Destiny.”
Anger surged within the group.
“Kill. Now,” ordered Kir. Tyron did not countermand him.
Rose whipped her arm out and sent a wave of daggers flying at the phantom, each of which was struck through by an unbreakable talon, forcing the assassin to dodge and roll every which way as they shattered the ground beneath her. Kay attempted to win her more room by trying to cut through one of the fingers the talons were attached to, only for his sword to bounce off. Beneath the withered flesh, the talon ran through it like a bone.
Shadow let loose one of her disintegration beams and Freak responded by shooting out one of his ever-stretching arms. For every molecule of flesh Shadow burned, a new one appeared behind it, pushing it forward. The beam stopped, and Freak shed the melted arm. It slopped onto the floor like a dead snake.
He swung left to dodge a rocket from Amanda, swiped up to shatter a shield Astro had thrown edgeways like a shuriken. Then, his eyes widened as he saw Jennifer release the string on the ghastbone bow. His body swung up and around, but his face stayed upright, his neck crunching all the way. The arrow shattered against the barrier of talons.
Now, Fire leapt up at him, zweihander held back in anticipation of a mighty blow. Flame bunched up on the tip of the blade. Freak braced and parried the attack, sending Fire back down to earth with a quick swipe of his claws. Further talons shot out to prevent Amanda from flying past him, forcing her into desperate circles in the air.
Steve threw his ender-pearl above the phantom’s head but found it shattered in the air by Freak’s outstretched arm. He began to fall, and the phantom swung down at him. He only just raised his shield in time for it to ever-improbably absorb the blow. Tyron moved to his rescue on stone wings, drawing an attack from Freak away from the adventurer, then striking out at the phantom’s face with Kir.
Cursing, Freak turned momentarily intangible, becoming visible only to the weakest person he could identify in the room: Kay. A shudder ran over the General, and he realised what had happened. He reached for one of the stones the phantom had dug up and, just as he became generally visible again, threw it.
The rock struck Freak right between the eyes. He flinched. He reached up and fell the warmth of blood dribbling down his forehead. He began to cackle.
“Really? All that, and the guy who draws first blood is the con artist with the dodgy leg? This is just getting silly now.”
Kay reflexively readjusted his leg to try and mask its weakness, knowing in his heart it would do no good. He clasped his sword with both hands and tried to recapture his old, heroic grandeur.
“You’re welcome to quit any time, Freak!” Astro spat.
He reached out and with a clenching of his fist broke the bones in the formless limb on Freak’s back. The talons stopped chasing Amanda and she started to hurriedly correct her course. Fire struck out again and Freak dodged instead of parrying.
The phantom’s smile cooled. His eyes flashed yellow. The molten rays above seemed to dim.
“I’m good, actually, but you all look awfully tired. Why don’t you all lie down?”
Suddenly the remaining torches roared with yellow flame, and the Throne Room collapsed into darkness. A great tiredness began to sap away their will. Steve struggled under the weight of his shield and armour, remembering Destiny’s sedative and thinking how gentle that weariness seemed compared to the dive into oblivion he was now stuck in. Fire fell to his knees, fighting to get back up. Amanda dropped from the sky and only Shadow remained lucid enough to slow her descent with a spell.
“I am the Phantom Lord, welcome to my domain: Your worst nightmares!”
Amanda knelt in the rubble. The others had left a long time ago. She had grown old. Only the light of a single purple lamp remained in the Tower’s ruins. The rocks cut her hands and bit her knees, but she kept straining to move them. Kept forcing her eyes to search for a sign of him. Anything.
She wrapped her hands around a large, black stone and began to lift even though it felt like her arms would sooner come away than the stone would move even an inch. Eventually, she gave up. That’s when the hand shot from the ground, brass and brilliant and burning, and grabbed her leg. Helix rose through the rocks as though it were water, purple fire streaming from his eyes like tears. She tried to scream, and then was dragged down through the stone into his scorching embrace beneath the earth.
###
Jennifer woke up in her house. Not Brine Manor, her own. A few cobwebs had grown. An enderman had placed a grass block in the middle of the living room, but it was unmistakably hers. She climbed out of bed and put a raw pork chop in the furnace. Through the window the sun, coloured like molten gold, beat down heavily. The pork chop finished, and she brought herself back up to full hunger.
She went to the door and stepped outside. All she saw for miles and miles was desert. The door slammed shut after her. She turned around, and on the other side of the door she saw the skeleton worker from the portal facility. He glowered at her, then the house sank into the sands. The sun beat down. She was alone.
###
I open my eyes, then shut them tight as the blizzard stings my eyes. Adjusting my hood allows me to see again. I am upon the Fields. The cold ignores my robes even more than usual, and I struggle to move. My very bones become glacial in their icy slowness. I hear the wind, but it is not the wind.
There I see a half-breed with a mace and a trilby, a crossbow bolt in his speckled green forehead. Here, a snapped thaumaturge’s wand, next to a familiar purple breastplate. Then the old Guild-master half-frozen in the lake. Ozzy burned to a crisp. David’s broken gauntlet. Warnado’s tattered robes. Destiny ever-fading. Fristad’s neck twisting still.
They lie around the battlefield as broken, blood-soaked statues. Slowly creeping. Wailing. Screaming. Keening. Why did I not help them? Where was the great and wise Astro when they died?
“What else could I have done?!” I shriek, tears streaming down my face.
###
“Tryon! Wake up!”
He lifted himself from the ground and rubbed the dirt from his fur. He felt clammy, almost feverish. His arms hung limply, and there was a pain in his side. Was that - he reached out to touch it - blood?
“Where are you, Kir?”
He saw the red blocks around him. The Nether. And yet, the Overworld’s moon loomed over him. He had to be dreaming.
“Where are we, Kir?”
Flame burst forth from a shrine. A ring of gold surrounded a burning red brick. Herobrine, his old enemy, reborn and rejuvenated. He grinned. He held one of his glowing, dark blue scythes in one hand. Kir sat snugly in the other, moulded to his hand as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
“We are at the end of your journey, Tyron!”
###
Shadow did not fall asleep like the others, she remained standing and stared up at Freak defiantly.
Freak stared right back. “Oh, of course. You don’t get tired, do you? But that’s not an issue. I’ll let you in on a little secret, Shadow. I may have needed to directly touch a mind before my takeover, but now I can just draw out your biggest fears right out of your mind by merely existing, no need to do anything more! Enjoy!”
Shadow barely registered the transition, so unchanged was the scenery around her. Everything was the same, except that Freak was nowhere to be seen. But then as Shadow looked around, it was as if she felt her heart briefly beat, only to stop once more.
Where Fire had collapsed was now the site of a blazing inferno, at the centre of which lay the body of her brother, a large silver blade impaling his torso. Shadow watched in horror as Fire’s flesh and organs burned up, leaving behind only an empty shell of scales draped over a skeleton.
There was sadness, then there was anger. Shadow had made a promise to herself, back in the command room. She was their apocalyptic insurance policy, she’d make sure that even if Freak managed to bring the worlds together, he wouldn’t be able to enjoy it.
Shadow prepared to feel the Void rising up inside of her, to take away all feeling and plunge her back into that absence… but nothing happened. That was when Shadow had a terrible thought. Fire’s death really was what would cause her to go over the edge, but this was not the real Fire she saw in front of her.
Shadow realized that her biggest fear was not simply losing her brother but being unable to help him when he needed help. He had done so much for her, even while he himself had suffered. All she had done during her time in Nexus was to destroy, and no amount of destruction could ever repay the life she had been gifted, even if it happened to save the world from a worse fate. She threw herself to the ground in despair, with no way out of the nightmare and no way to ever set things right.
###
Steve and Ozen returned from the expedition. They had conquered the Nether. Returned to the End. And Steve had finally learned the secrets of the Ocean Monument, while Ozen waited on the shore. Ozen sat astride a fully-grown Drake. Jennifer would be waiting for them. Mom, too. Maybe Mark would stop by like he said he would. Maybe not.
He threw a pearl as Brine manor’s roof rose from between the trees. It shattered and he stood before them. Mom, grey-haired, was sitting in her bench, waving. Dad slept, lying against a cushion on the other side of the bench, looking frail enough that a light wind much break him to pieces. Jennifer stepped outside. It had been weeks since he saw her, and though age had come upon them both, she was still quite beautiful. Out from behind her ran his son and daughter. Then at least two more sons for good measure. They hugged his legs and drew his body inside for dinner.
His soul remained without. He reached into his ghostly pocket and pulled out three grey skulls, and four blocks of soul sand.
“Is it all you ever wanted?” the skulls sneered. “Does it make you feel whole?”
He looked through the window. Jennifer pecked him on the cheek and returned to setting out dinner. His sons had a million things to show him. Dad had woken up and was distracting Steve’s daughter with a story more interesting than anything he could ever tell.
I feel empty. It is not enough.
“Then follow in his footsteps,” said the skulls.
Steve placed the four blocks. He affixed two of the skulls to the sand.
“This is what you need,” they told him. “What will always be.”
He placed the final skull. The Wither arose and rained black fire upon the Manor.
###
Fire found himself on the familiar gold-decorated white wooden bench, around him was only blackness. He slowly turned his head and was faced with a near-exact mirror image of himself, with the only difference being that the mirror image had pitch-black eyes.
“Claw.” He said.
Claw replied: “Other one.”
Neither of them said anything more, both contemplating the situation they were in.
Finally, Claw spoke: “I must say, I was not expecting this when he said, ‘worst nightmare’.”
Fire shook his head. “No, awkward conversations with my alter ego don’t exactly fit that description.”
Claw stood up from the bench and brandished his namesake at Fire. “Then why are we here?”
Fire thought for a moment.
“It seems like currently, my worst fear is letting you back in control, and once you are back out there, yours is to return to here.”
Claw suddenly laughed. “So, the phantom trapped us in an infinite loop?”
Fire simply shrugged. There was something oddly calming about finally meeting Claw face-to-face. He’d always been this unknown thing, a boogeyman almost.
For lack of any other topics, Fire asked: “So, how do you like the manor?”
Claw shot back: “Better than the cage, that’s for sure.”
“You know that it was you who built the cage, right Claw? Just like I built the manor.”
Claw huffed. “Don’t give me the ‘it’s all in your mind’ speech, I wasn’t even a proper person until the Entity brought me out.”
Fire raised his hands. “I didn’t intend to.” he added: “But now that you are a person, you’ll listen to reason.”
“Not from you, other one.”
It was almost funny, the mirror analogy proved to be true on more layers than physical. Fire stood up as well to face Claw.
“I’m not really the other one, Claw. You aren’t either. That’s because we are the same.”
Claw huffed again. “Really? The ‘not so different’ speech?”
Fire shook his head, memories flooded out from him and into their shared mindscape. A classroom, a city apartment, a lecture hall, an empty warehouse.
“I meant what I said. Back when I was younger, I was how you are now. Headstrong, defiant, even a bit selfish. You came into existence when my bad tendencies were at their peak, further fuelled by the trauma of having lost my friends. It took a lot of work to get to where I am now, and even still, the temptation to go back is always there. A lot of things would be easier if I did.”
Claw stared at Fire. “Then why don’t you go back, if it’d be so much easier?”
“It’d be easier in the short term, not in the long term. The biggest lesson I learned from living five thousand years on the server was that if you live that long, you cannot ignore the long term. Not for your own sake, and not for the sake of others. You see, if you only live a hundred years, you can do all manner of ‘evil’ things and die before the consequences affect you. But if you live long enough you will see the effects of your actions in the world, and they will come back to you, and often in ways you don’t expect.”
Claw clutched his head. “Gah, stop making sense damn it!”
Fire chuckled. “The reason I’m telling you this is because I reached that conclusion on my own, now I’m helping you reach it too. We are the same after all.”
Claw glared at Fire for a few moments, even raising his hands as if to strike, but gradually a look of resignation settled on his face.
“Alright, alright. What’s your point?”
Fire took a few moments to contemplate his next words. “I don’t hate you Claw. I hate that you came to be in the first place, but that’s hardly your fault, it’s mine. My point is that we can find a way out of this situation, but we can’t be enemies for that. Besides, you already helped me against Freak once, back when you gave me that memory proving that it was him who usurped the Entity.”
Claw sighed. “I suppose I did. But what do I get out of it? I’m sure as hell not content sitting here in your mind for the rest of our life, even if the manor is better than the cage. And I’m not content with fading out either.”
When given the question “what would you tell your younger self”, many people would give advice on how to live life. This situation was similar, though not quite the same. Fire had to show Claw that there was a path he hadn’t considered, one that would help them both.
“That’s where the long-term thinking comes in. During my time in Nexus, I discovered some… concerning things about myself and about Shadow. Once this situation is resolved I plan to do something about these things, find a solution, and now you are part of that solution too. You might have to endure for a while longer, but not forever.”
Fire extended his hand. He let his thoughts flow freely for Claw to pick up on what he meant, what he had seen, and what he planned. Claw contemplated, then nodded and shook the hand offered to him.
Claw said: “Alright then, Fire. Just one question remains: How do we get out of here?”
Fire replied: “Look outside through our eyes, our opportunity is about to present itself.”
###
Weariness was like a weight upon me, dragging down my eyelids, threatening to tear me apart if I did not succumb. I could not keep my sword-arm raised for longer than a second, but I struggled on.
“You know, the slumber is supposed to be a mercy.”
Freak now swayed before me, level with my eyes, breath like corpses. I turned away from the repellent stench and fell on my front.
“It doesn’t actually need you to be asleep to work. A waking nightmare could be fun, too.”
I wrenched myself forward, away from the phantom, into the inky void with its yellow flames. A second lunge brought my fingertips into contact with the firesteel armour of Fire, still warm from his last overcharge. The armour slipped away as Fire tried to pull himself up. With my subsiding eyes I saw his own flicker from red to black, and then snap shut. He collapsed and tried anew.
“Ah, this one I couldn’t have predicted. He’s so afraid of Claw getting control, he triggers the transfer of power by accident. Unfortunately, without the Entity to save him, Claw is so afraid of losing control he hands it back to li’l old Pete. The coin flips away.”
He lifted me up by the scruff of my neck, the talons grazing my skin. I saw the wound I’d left on his forehead sealing up. The blood remained like a crack in his nose.
“Listen, I’m being real nice right now by giving you a chance to pass out on your own. I haven’t come across someone able to resist me like this in a while, so consider it an apology for writing you off as the weak one. But don’t misunderstand, when I decide so, you will enter my domain.”
He was right. I could feel his spell run across my mind like a spider looking for a crack in a wall. Sooner or later, he would find one. But not yet, I gritted my teeth and continued to harden my mind against his efforts.
“Very well. A spider, I like that image.”
My eyes briefly shot open as I envisaged the arachnid, now with Freak’s face, bite into my mind, spreading venomous fear throughout. My head fell forward.
All was blackness. North, South, East and West revealed only darkness. I recalled my training and reshaped it. Now, it was a dark hallway, then, I was at the end of it, a door behind me. Only I had the key. Simple rules. Whatever Freak wanted to throw at me, it would come directly from the front.
I restored my heavy, obsidian armour. Apotyre, my blade returned to my hand. Voidfire flared in my eyes. Whatever he had sent would overpower me eventually, but I would give it a challenge.
“Come then, Phantom Lord,” I strain, forcing myself to say it aloud as well as in my mind. “Send me your worst.”
Freak scoffed. His voice seemed to echo from out the walls. Thorn-filled roots started to spread across the walls.
“It’s really not up to me what you see, Kay.”
The briars receded.
Suddenly, a footstep. Then another. A brisk, stumbling pace began, with the feet sometimes sliding rather than lifting fully across the ground. And glowing through the dark, a lone purple eye. I recognised it immediately. My armour started to fade, my beard receded, voidfire snuffed out.
“No, it can’t be,” I insisted, “It’s not you, Hamish!”
My defences returned, I envisaged a lamp. I caught a glimpse of him as he once was. Of his ochre scarf, his short black hair, his heavy trench-coat. He slipped back into darkness.
Another lantern. Light glinted off a glassy purple eye. Half his face and one of his hands was gnarled and black and twisted. He wore the armour of a Divine officer, one gauntlet discarded to unsheathe a taloned hand which burned anything it touched. A light golden sabre sat snugly in the other. As he had been on the bridge. Hamish grinned wildly at me.
Back into darkness.
“Hello Kay,” he sneered.
I summoned a final lantern. It revealed no one. The point of my sword dipped.
A full-grown Endling, with teeth like swords, leapt from the shadows. All of him was gnarled and burned and smoky. His talons swiped down not to cut but to grab. The burns on my neck screamed out anew.
I opened and locked the door, staggering into my office. The fire burned, the wallpaper was green, my desk was just as I left it, but this was no comfort. Already, his talons slammed into the door, tearing away the wood.
“What do I do?” I ask.
The Book’s fluttering mass of pages cocked its head.
“Other than join me in death?”
I went up to its armchair. The door rattled.
“Don’t grow a sense of humour, now. You must have noticed something I missed.”
“I am dead, Kay.”
“Yes, and it’s my fault, but what did Freak say?!”
The Book glared at me.
“He said he did not choose what you saw. Meaning…”
It rolled its hand in expectation.
“...He’s using my own fears.”
“Hamish is no interloper.”
“He’s a local!” I howled with laughter.
I looked down at the Book. Voidfire began to spread across it.
“Thank you, Book,” I said. “You always were magnificent.”
It glared back in silence, and then was gone. Crack! Hamish’s hand went through the door. I moved, quickly, knowing my window was limited. I envisaged Freak in the Book’s place, but he was nothing more than a shell, unmoving. So, I opened one eye in the waking world, and saw him dangling before me again.
“Freak,” I oozed, aloud and in my mind. “Would you spare me a moment of your time?”
He shot to life in my office.
“What do you want?” The phantom asked.
Realising he was in an armchair he adopted an aloof smile and leaned back slowly. He scrunched his features and looked over at the door Hamish was destroying.
“Oh, this is where she sat,” Freak nodded. “And advised you. Are you lonely in here, Kay?”
I pulled out a bottle of whiskey I remembered enjoying one time and poured us both a glass.
“I wanted some company, Hamish will break in momentarily. I don’t intend to wait out eternity with him, so I’ll probably just off myself. Give you one less mind to worry about tormenting.”
I laced my tone with acid. He needed to believe me. Hamish tore a hole large for his glassy purple eye to look through.
“How considerate,” Freak smirked. “You’d best hurry up then, I won’t let you die once I’m a god.”
My nostrils flared and my eyes burned.
“I have time enough,” I said. “I wanted to compliment you on your spell. You really have gotten to the thing I fear most.”
Hamish rattled the lock, then drew back.
Freak lounged back. His arms extended to impossible lengths as he stretched.
“Well, I can’t take full credit for that, can I? You see-”
“-Yes, getting the mind to produce its own worst fear, very efficient. Of course, that must also feel a little impersonal, mustn’t it?”
Freak glared and sat forward.
“I’m on a tight schedule, I’ll put my own spin on it later.”
“If I live that long.”
I heard a sound like sprouting in the real world. I felt cold roots wind about my wrists and restrain them.
“You will.”
“Blast, there goes that plan!” I laughed nervously.
A strange look spread across Freak’s face. I mustn’t have been very convincing.
I mused: “It must be strange though, finding what your subject’s afraid of, but not knowing why?”
“A little, but I have eternity to learn all that.”
I smiled coldly as I heard Hamish’s footsteps pounding down the hall. He was going to charge his way in. I clapped the Phantom Lord on the shoulder.
“Well, it might help you to learn that as much as I fear being tormented by Hamish for all eternity, that is eclipsed by how much Hamish would hate being trapped in here with me.”
Freak’s eyes widened and the door exploded. Hamish’ burning, black hands wrapped around his face. My eyes shot open.
I slammed into the floor as Freak swung away from me. Smoke was rising from his face, and I could see Hamish still wrapped around him. The darkness withdrew and the torches turned back from yellow to orange. The leader of the Mencur-Besh was still next to me. I grabbed his shoulder and shook him.
“Fire!” I screamed.
His eyes shot open.
###
Fire leapt up at the howling phantom in a mighty spiral, then severed the fleshy limb on his back from the rest of his body. The limb and its near-unbreakable wall of talons immediately began to shrivel away into nothing as, while Freak himself hit the floor in a continued howl. For a few moments he seemed to grapple with an unseen figure, until he made a motion like throwing and then struck the ground nearby. He rose, feeling his face for burn marks which did not exist.
“Sorry, Fire, you have my undivided attention.”
Meanwhile, Kay looked up from his efforts to wake a trembling Shadow and sighed:
“I need to invest in a more durable nemesis.”
Fire rushed at Freak, launching a burning, overhead swing of his zweihander, only for the phantom to turn intangible and invisible at the last second. Freak then became solid again, standing atop the edge of Fire’s blade and clawing at his visor. Fire swung the sword back up at the last moment, throwing Freak away from him. The two then engaged in a flurry of blows, Fire dodging and swiping as the Phantom Lord phased through every blow.
Away from this duel, Kay continued to shake Shadow. Her eyes were now open, but she was still seized by terror, looking this way and that.
“Shadow, wake up! Come on, I know I’m not your favourite person but-”
“-Where’s Fire, is he safe?”
“No, he needs your help.”
“Fire, where are you?”
Kay gritted his teeth and looked around for Astro, hoping another wizard might be able to help more. He then heard a warping sound.
“What in tha Great Underking’s Beard happened ‘ere?”
My eyes lit up. Urist stood over me gawking, where Voidblade was already looking around and nodding at the scene.
“Urist, start getting people back on their feet. V, get out and help Fire.”
“Understood,” said the enderman.
He teleported away and narrowly missed Freak’s head with a spinning swipe of the halberd. Urist’s eyes ping-ponged back and forth between Jennifer and Astro before turning the other way and shaking the fallen Tyron. Kay looked back to Shadow.
“Peter needs you.”
The tiny mage’s eyes became clear, then began burning with newfound determination. She floated to her feet and hovered a short distance above the floor. Shadow balled her fists as her hair began floating upwards.
Meanwhile, Freak parried and phased through an endless torrent of attacks from Fire and the teleporting Voidblade. The phantom cast an eye over at the slow resuscitation of the rest of the party which had come to slay him.
“You know, Fire,” he sneered. “I was quite enjoying our duel, but then you had to go and cheat by inviting this hyperactive beanpole.”
Freak feinted a parry then turned intangible, leaving Voidblade to stagger through him. He shunted the enderman aside. Fire swung again, but Freak caught his blade in a nest of indestructible, extended talons. With his other hand, Freak swung up and caught Fire on the forehead.
“Take a rest, little hero,” cackled the phantom.
However, his laughter died on the vine as Fire’s eyes flickered from red to black, then back again. He did not fall. He wrenched his sword from Freak’s grip and sent the stunned phantom spinning.
Phasing through another strike from Voidblade, Freak steadied himself, gearing up to extend his arm out and pierce Fire right through his insolent chest. How dare he resist!
A blackness fell over him. He looked up. Shadow had floated higher, her skin beyond darkness and her eyes like stars. A pulse emanated from her, first darkening everything it crossed, but once it passed it was as if the contrast on reality had increased. Colours were more intense, sounds clearer. Freak was violently pushed back into physical space from his ethereal state.
“Hah!” he scoffed. “Contesting me for control of the local reality, very well. If I cannot be ethereal, then let’s see what I can’t do in the physical world!”
He shot an arm out past Shadow and cut the air above her. Hundreds of spiders and scorpions and other poisonous beasts cascaded over her.
He had no time for triumph or even a snide remark, though, as a dwarf-operated diamond mace immediately collided with his jaw and sent him reeling. Two glowing yellow teeth flew from his mouth before dissipating in the air and regrowing. A quick glance revealed the entire group back on their feet. Overhead, the storm of worlds became still fiercer. The mechanism’s defences were still operational.
“Very well,” Freak grinned. “Let’s do this.”
A great storm of battle erupted in the throne room, to rival that which unfolded overhead. Rose hurled wave upon wave of knives while Amanda swooped this way and that to fire rockets. Freak blocked all these by summoning strange stone birds into the air. Jennifer and Voidblade circled the melee, looking for ideal moments to hurt Freak with a well-timed strike of the halberd, or to put some room between him and an ally with an explosive impact from the ghastbone bow. And in the centre a great ruck had formed as Freak slashed to and fro at the other champions.
Fire and Tyron proved most able to go toe-to-toe with the Phantom lord, hacking away with the Entity’s zweihander and Kir respectively. However, as much as they tore away at the phantom’s body, Freak always managed to avoid a decisive blow by contorting his body as though it were that of a serpent, or by manifesting some fleshy limb to push him out of the way.
Only shortly behind them was Steve, who caught Freak’s every blow with his impossible shields and swiping away with Excalibur. Kay clung closely to Steve, trying to remain out of Freak’s line of sight until he engaged the adventurer, then bursting out with a strike of the sword or a heavy punch.
Urist followed a similar tactic with Astro. As the wizard flew around at low altitudes, trying to find a person to shield, or a limb to break, Freak sent out briars to creep along the ground and bloom into thorns which would strike him from the sky. Urist, however, had seen what had been done to Herobrine’s party by these briars, and closely followed these creeping strands of death, crushing the thorns with his mace before they could do harm.
Shadow’s role may have seemed less active to an onlooker, but every time Freak attempted to push the boundaries of his influence, she was there to push back with greater force. Still, the phantom had considerable strength that could not be quelled in the metaphysical realm, so Shadow occasionally used conventional spells to assist the others, burning away Freak’s limbs or magically enhancing her allies.
However, the storm above continued to rage. The yellow lights shone brighter. And Freak only seemed to grow stronger and bolder.
A briar shot out and pierced Fire’s breastplate and, while not piercing his ribcage, left a large gash across his chest. A fleshy limb caught Rose’s knives, then spat them back out, striking her in the leg. Freak carved the air and out jumped a huge, black wolf who began to maul Urist until Kay and Amanda came to his rescue. A blow from his talons split another of Steve’s shields and sent him flying. A second blow would have killed him, had Astro not summoned three closely-packed shields to stop Freak. And every wound they inflicted on him seemed to have less and less of an effect, knitting back together faster and bleeding less when open.
“Okay, killing him quickly so we can get to the mechanism unopposed clearly isn’t working,” opined Tyron over the telepathic network maintained by Kir.
“You’re right,” agreed Fire as he cut through a horned, lion-headed beast which dissipated into smoke thereafter. “So long as the machine is operational, he’ll only get stronger and I hate to say it, but I’m not sure we can keep pace. Jennifer, Steve, get to the switch.”
With a shattering noise, Jennifer arrived at the machine and began to hammer away with two enchanted diamond pickaxes.
“Back to plan A, I guess,” answered Steve.
Herobrine’s son then bashed Freak in the face with his shield, then threw an ender pearl over at the obsidian shield guarding the mechanism. However, a stone bird twirled into its path, dropping Steve into a patch of briars which he hurriedly began to block with his shield.
“I’m getting real sick of him doing that!”
“Hang tight Steve,” instructed Fire, narrowly dodging Freak’s latest attack. “Jennifer, can you break the machine alone?”
“Just a sec…” The sound of obsidian shattering rang out. “Crap! There’s at least twenty layers of this stuff! Alloyed sheets. I can only break one at a time, I need backup.”
Shadow swooped to and fro above the battlefield, trying to get a good shot on the briars harassing Steve, but being perpetually harassed by Freak’s extended talons, fleshy limbs or summoned beasts.
“Urist?” Fire asked.
“Out of commission,” answered Astro.
The wizard similarly lurched around the battlefield, carrying the dwarf under his armpits in search of a safe spot to heal him.
“Aye, me arm’s broken,” confirmed the dwarf hazily.
It occurred to Fire that he might have to pull out a trump card. They needed a ringer. And that ringer might just be Claw. Unfortunately, that would mean he couldn’t coordinate the others.
“Rose?” he tried.
The assassin steadied herself, and focused. A single dagger came shooting out in a burst of energy, the sharpest she had ever thrown. It shattered against the obsidian alloy, leaving only a superficial scratch.
“No dice,” she said aloud.
“Guys, have idea,” chirped Kir, surprising even Tyron.
A few moments later, the plan was fully relayed. Kay ran forward and launched a flying punch at Freak. The Phantom Lord dodged easily and turned to strike Kay in the back, only for one of Amanda’s rockets to explode against his head.
With his concentration broken, the stone birds began to flicker out of existence. Shadow fired out her disintegration beam and burned away the briars around Steve, who immediately pulled out an ender pearl. However, this time, instead of throwing it at the mechanism, he threw it at Tyron.
The second Steve materialised, he threw Excalibur to the Dragoknight, before throwing a second pearl at the activation mechanism and rematerialising there. Tyron caught the blade with his free hand and assumed a dual-wielding fighting stance.
“Now!” Tyron roared.
Shadow and Astro landed behind Fire and immediately began to channel their energy into Tyron, joining Kir in enhancing his reflexes and taking up the duty of maintaining the telepathic network. Tyron’s eyes and the vortex on his back shone like beacons, and blue light pulsed through his veins, so bright it even shone out through his fur. Icy tendrils wafted from the surfaces of Kir and Excalibur, and rocks rose from the floor to build a set of mighty stone wings on Tyron’s shoulders. He ascended from the floor, Kir held forward and Excalibur drawn back for a downward thrust.
Freak’s neck snapped back into place, and he rounded on the source of the shadow which had now fallen upon him. Steve and Jennifer hammered away at the obsidian. Rose, Kay and Voidblade took up positions around him as Amanda circled. He heard the sound of flames igniting and glanced back to see Fire rise on his flaming wings. As he arose, he saw Astro and Shadow behind several layers of shields, still channelling energy into Tyron. Freak chuckled.
“Never to be outdone, are we, Pete? You couldn’t even let the furball have the high ground?”
“And you can’t go ten seconds without running your mouth, Freak!”
Freak ran a set of talons up his face as though pushing up a pair of non-existent glasses.
“No, and in a little bit, I’ll never have to go that long again!”
A taloned hand burst out from either side of Freak’s elbow and began to soar straight at two targets: Steve and Jennifer. A sickening grin spread across Freak’s face. Then, a brilliant blue flash. Unable to see, Freak lurched forward as his two new limbs were severed from him in quick succession. He retracted the bleeding remains, and as his eyes cleared, he saw ice spreading across them. New talons broke through, but he still felt the chill. He looked out at Tyron, who was already gearing up for another assault.
“Very well, little hero, let’s have-”
Before Freak could finish his thought, Tyron’s wings had beaten, propelling him forward along a path of ice rapidly forming before him. Kir caught him on the leg, then Excalibur on his hip. Ice began to creep. He moved to scrape away the ice, when - boom! - Fire’s zweihander came down on his wrist, scorching his flesh. He leapt away from the flame. Still, the ice crept.
Not willing to wait for another attack, Freak shed his arms and formed new ones, these each having three branches, each ending in a hand that was more weapon than organ. He rushed at Tyron and swiped down with his right arm, only for his new claws to stick in one of his wings, which bent forward like a shield. Freak lashed out with his left arm, yet more talons branching off from it, now creating weapons for the sake of weapons in the hope of finding some flesh to hit. He could feel the fear pouring into him from all around. How could his body not match this level of strength?
In a surge of energy, Freak found the ever-branching arm spiralling away from the rest of him. Rose had sent up a spray of daggers, and a spare one has stuck in his torso. Ice crept over it.
Freak snapped his neck to move out of the way of Tyron’s next slash of Kir, only for Excalibur to catch him on the knee. He rolled and evaded another slash from Tyron, only to be greeted by Voidblade’s halberd piercing his neck. He attempted to lash out with his remaining arm but found the ice had stuck it in place. Kay’s blade shattered the limb, then the General grabbed Voidblade’s arm. The two teleported away just before Freak’s new arm could cut the air and douse them in poisonous bogwater, resplendent with leeches. Freak straightened up just in time to see Fire’s reflection in the murky surface.
The Entity’s zweihander pierced his chest and Freak immediately manifested small tendrils to reach from his back and begin to lash away at him. They cut armour, picked away scales, drew blood, but still the great leader of the Mencur-Besh held firm. As Freak thrashed and contorted his body, all Fire did was slowly shuffle his feet into a new position. The phantom cracked his head around like an owl to look Fire in the eye. Before he could speak, Fire smirked.
“Not me you should be looking at.”
Freak turned just in time to see Tyron, like a missile of ice, stone and diamond, shooting down a path of ice towards him. First Kir cut him, then Excalibur. Then Excalibur, then Kir. Across the torso, across the head, arms, legs, every piece of him. Fire’s boot shunted him from the blade and the assault only became more intense. And from every wound upon his smoky skin, ice formed faster and faster. He couldn’t move his legs, then his arms, until finally, it was creeping up his face. With Shadow contesting him for the local reality, he had ceded the aethereal and relied upon his body. And his body, despite all the fear in all creation reinforcing it, had failed. Ice spread across his eyes, and he saw his enemies breathing a sigh of relief. The blows stopped.
“Is he down?!” Steve called out.
“For now,” Tyron gasped, keeping his swords raised.
Steve exhaled sharply, then continued to slam his pick into the obsidian.
“Hope it hurts,” Kir trilled in Freak’s mind.
But Freak had no interest in the sword’s petty revenge. His eyes drifted over to the shield dome protecting Astro and Shadow. He surveyed the little mage with hate, thinking on how she had shed her form to contest the Entity. Very well. Then Fear would mimic Entropy.
He looked up through one of the portals and saw a large, pillar-like structure in the midst of a city coming to rest above the Tower, a blazing white inverse to Nexus. Freak cast his mind out to the people of the city, and felt their fear, anxieties of war, inquisition, the mundane terror of being, and he began to fashion a vessel of it.
A small appendage like a scorpion’s stinger sprouted from the back of his skull. He angled it above him, so as to best crack open the cocoon that he was.
“Um, guys…” Amanda called.
Freak struck down. Ice, skin, skull all shattered. Down and down until nothing remained to break. And from the destruction of his body emerged a skeleton of briars, around which smoky flesh and glowing, golden fear began to entangle and disentangle. An ever-changing tangle of fear. He struck out with talons like rays of sunlight.
Astro and Shadow’s shield dome shattered. The two mages went flying. Tyron’s wings crumbled, and his swords lost their frosty aura. Fire stepped out, a jet of flame spewed from his hand and Freak simply caught it and made it sturdy as a rope. With a tug he hurled the Mencur-Besh aside, bowling over Rose and forcing Voidblade to teleport Kay away. Amanda’s rocket glanced harmlessly off his shoulder.
Freak smiled and it stretched like a dread horizon.
“Know this, I am Fear.” He began to howl with laughter. “And I am all that awaits you!”
Chapter88:Apex (Narrator)
Fire only just flew out of the way of fear’s glowing talons, which were nose each half a metre long. He steadied himself against what remained of the staircase. Voidblade teleported on to the ring of the staircase above him, holding Kay’s forearm. The two crouched down.
“What do we do now?” Asked the enderman aloud.
When Freak broke Shadow and Astro’s shield that had disrupted their telepathic communication network, and Kir was still trying to keep Tyron’s reflexes at full capacity as Freak bore down on him. The cloud of smoke had not yet cleared where the two mages had stood. Fire threw a concerned glance where he assumed his sister to be but was soon forced to focus on the battle at hand.
His eyes shot to the activation mechanism. Steve and Jennifer mined away even more frenetically than before, but there were still several layers of obsidian alloy to go. Steve saw one of Freak’s briars creeping toward him and equipped his improbably efficient shield. He just about managed to block the thorns while still ensuring his pickaxe struck true.
Fire called out: “No matter what, we have to keep the Brines free to break through to the switch.”
Voidblade nodded and Kay stood up.
“Very well, first the briar, then the Freak,” he proclaimed with some of his old bravado.
That was when Freak’s gold-and-black arm shot out to strike the staircase. Voidblade grabbed Kay again and they teleported away, trying their best to work in tandem as Kay had once done with the Book. Fire only just glided off to the side. The phantom’s talons pierced his armour and cut through the scales on his arm. As he landed, he realised it was time.
“Let’s see if you took our talk to heart.” He murmured.
Fire’s eyes dimmed before turning black entirely. Claw surged forward, zweihander at his side, winding up for a large upward cut.
The glowing phantom slid back, grinning away unfazed. He batted Tyron aside and shrugged off a blow from Amanda.
“Hey buddy! Didn’t expect to see you here! Pete must be getting pretty desperate, huh?”
“Shut the **** up, Freak!” Claw roared.
He then launched into a series of ruthless swings, Freak managed to avoid some but the sheer speed that Claw attacked made sure that occasionally he landed a hit, each time tearing away more of Freak’s freshly formed nightmare-flesh. The pace with which Claw attacked was unsustainable, but a Mencur-Besh’s definition of unsustainable was different to that of many others, and Claw intended to show just how great the margin was.
Freak flashed a grin and thrust his arms up. Claw struck out at his exposed flank, and the mixture of gold-and-black seemed to unravel, allowing the blade to pass through unharmed. Freak then brough his talons down, shattering the ground and forcing Claw back. He moved to thrust forward, when suddenly - Crack!
A shield shattered against Freak’s arm, staggering him, and making him miss. Astro flew out from the smoke and immediately began to pelt Freak with spells to little effect. Then the smoke cloud exploded outwards until it dissipated, revealing Shadow and a small yield dome protecting the fallen Urist. A disintegration beam shot from her hand and struck Freak full in the chest. The phantom took a step back, clasping the wound as it healed. Claw profited from this and struck him across the jaw with the zweihander. Black blood spilled from Freak’s face as he reconstructed his signature grin.
The phantom wasted no time in attempting to regain the advantage. Tyron threw a wall of earth and Freak cut through it. He unspooled his right bicep to allow Rose’s daggers to pass through without serious damage. He shot his arm out into the air to route Amanda. He sent razor-sharp tendrils out from his back to pursue Astro.
Voidblade and Kay appeared behind him and the enderman thrust a spear at the same spot Fire had stabbed so shortly before. A gaping mouth formed and bit the spear clean in half, and a tendril shot out and slammed into Voidblade’s helmet. Kay severed the tendril and turned to catch Voidblade. However, as he willed the wounded enderman to teleport, Freak rounded on them.
The phantom leered down and drew back the talons stopped of his left hand. A single downward thrust would reduce both of them to bloody smears on the ground. Kay looked down at Voidblade and saw purple blood dripping from the crack on his helmet. The enderman thrashed to and fro with eyes scrunched shut. The General turned back to Freak and braced for death. The phantom struck down.
The talons stopped. Freak howled. Kay looked up to see Fire standing over him, clasping the Entity’s zweihander. The blade had passed between the two central talons and cut halfway into the Phantom Lord’s hand, sending black blood pulsing every which way. He looked back and Kay saw black eyes. His own widened.
“Claw?!” he yelped.
“Communications back online!” chirped Kir with only a fraction of his usual enthusiasm.
That was when Astro swooped down and lifted him away. Kay looked back to see Shadow do the same with the injured Voidblade. Tyron, Rose, and Claw entered into a fierce melee with Freak, with Amanda circling above.
“Is that Claw?” Kay asked telepathically.
The wizard set him down and scowled.
“Yeah, looks like, keep your **** together. Claw’s small potatoes now.”
“Careful, remember that I could have killed you back at the hill. But we have bigger problems than the past now,” said Claw as he cut deep into Freak’s leg.
“Claw friend?” asked Kir.
“Really not the time, Kir!” stressed Tyron as he just about pulled Kir out of the reach of a maw which had formed on Freak’s shoulder.
Kay rubbed his leg and reassumed a fighting stance. Nearby Shadow set down Voidblade and, after planting a protective rune around him, began firing more disintegration beams at Freak.
“Don’t worry, I’m not complaining. We only got out of that dreamscape because I bit the bullet and worked with Hamish.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
Astro’s eyes collapsed into a squint and his jaw dropped open. Amanda swooped down to glare dismissively at Kay after yet another rocket bounced off Freak without effect.
“Did you hit your head more than usual?”
Kay frowned and tried to explain himself, suddenly chewing his lip as he tried to remember the dream through the fog of battle.
“No, the charm Freak used just made us imagine our worst fears. I just used my training to get Hamish to do what I knew he would: attack Freak.”
Astro’s eyes widened. He looked at Shadow, then Kay. He spoke aloud.
“What happened?”
“It was weird, I just wanted to startle him, but Freak started thrashing around like Hamish was physically there. Like he was actually hurting him.”
Astro laughed nervously and glanced at his rings.
“Shadow, please tell me if I’m wrong, but could it be possible to reactivate Freak’s spell, just on me?”
Shadow replied: “It’s been active this entire time. I’ve been contesting Freak over local reality so he couldn’t imprison us again. I could put some additional effort into it, maybe you could manifest something yourself that way. Just be wary that if I do that, I can’t help you otherwise.”
“Alright,” Astro laughed breathlessly. “Um…”
“Whatever you’re planning, do it fast!” Interrupted Jennifer. “We’ve still got four sheets to go, and that phantom keeps looking really angrily at us!”
“It’s not much more fun over here!” snapped Rose.
Astro grunted and relayed some final instructions.
“Okay Kir, when I give the signal, make sure everyone can see what I see.”
He then turned to Kay.
“And I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I need your advice. Talk me through how to do this.”
Kay’s face suddenly shone with hope.
“Great,” he grinned. “Tell me about the dream we’re working with.”
As Kay began to explain to Astro how to best manipulate his nightmare, the fight raged on. Freak dealt Tyron a blow on the leg, dodged a blast from Shadow, then struck Rose backhandedly. The assassin went flying and slammed into a bookshelf. She seemed to shred through the wood and bindings, vanishing from sight in a cloud of pages. Just as the Phantom Lord tried to shoot off a gloat, he found himself blade-to-blade with Claw.
As the other combatants struggled to stay standing, Claw and Freak entered a duel for the ages, the ultimate hunter against the personification of fear. Meanwhile, as much as it pained her to do so, Shadow stopped firing spells to support her brother’s flipside, and intensified her efforts. Darkness deepened, lights intensified, it was as if reality was filled to the brim with itself, threatening to burst.
Freak, however, only seemed to grow stronger. Claw made a strike that was too predictable, and Freak caught the zweihander between his talons. His smile widened to impossible lengths. He retracted the talons on his other hand and struck Claw in the face. And then again, and again.
“Do I have an angle on you now, Claw?! What do you truly fear, now, huh?!” howled the Phantom Lord.
He stopped the barrage and extended his talons once more.
“The Entity’s not here to protect you now, Claw. There’s only one thing left for you to fear, and that’s me,” he panted like a dog faced with a meal.
Amanda fired another missile at him. It struck the side of his face and forced him to flinch. He glared after her, vowing to pluck her straight from the sky next time.
“Just admit you’re scared, and I’ll let you go.”
“I don’t need the damn Entity anymore, and I don’t need your mercy either! I am Claw! I am a Mencur-Besh! And I. Fear. Nothing!”
The phantom’s neck cracked.
“Such a shame.”
He drew one hand back for the killing blow and raised the other to block Shadow’s expected spell. The disintegration beam came and singed the skin of his arm. He hardly even felt it.
“I was starting to like you, Claw.”
Then, just as he started to thrust forward, he noticed a green glow to his right. His jaw dropped just in time for a crackling ball of energy to slam into his side and blow open his black-and-gold flesh. He roared and skidded across the floor, finally stopping himself with his talons.
“Woah!” Tyron yelled.
“What just hit him?” Jennifer asked alongside a craning of her head.
Astro stood behind the ruins of the staircase, a single hand raised in the air.
“Show ‘em, Kir,”
Freak looked up.
A man of average height with messy dark hair and stubble stood across from him. His shoulders were draped in a dark blue jacket, and a leather breastplate clung tightly to his chest. On his wrist, a black, mechanical gauntlet crackled with green electricity.
“No way!” Amanda shouted.
“David?!” squealed Steve excitedly, almost missing his swing.
David, boyfriend to Destiny, slayer of the Sovereign, heir to the Third Legion, stepped forward, and began to speak.
“Hey Freak, been a while. Remember when you stabbed me? Good times. I hear you’re the guy who killed my girlfriend, is that true?”
The phantom forced a grin.
“Well, your death did the hard work, I just gave her that last push.”
David scrunched up his eyes and clicked his tongue, then started slowly walking forward. No one knew how to react.
“Oh, that’s just awful Freak. I really want to kill you for that. I’m bound to make a stupid mistake rushing you after saying that. But, of course, I’m not the one you’ve pissed off the most.”
Astro raised a second hand.
In the corner of Freak’s eye, he glimpsed the flowing of a ponytail in flight. He turned to defend himself, only for an icy javelin to strike him through the eye. Before he could even howl in pain, his assailant held out their other hand and the temperature in his face rapidly increased. The icicle skewering Freak’s glowing face began to evaporate, scorching his face with steam.
As the Phantom Lord screeched, Destiny landed on the floor. She summoned an icy sword and a fiery buckler shield, then took up a fighting stance. Claw and Tyron had begun to close in. Shadow continued her efforts to contest local reality, and Kay continued to enthusiastically guide Astro through his summoning.
“Didn’t Destiny normally use a bow?” Tyron asked.
“Yeah, but you should have seen her use the sword-and-buckler arrangement back at the portal facility. She did some serious damage,” explained Astro.
“She was a real menace, we can agree on that,” elaborated Claw.
“Miss me, Freak?”
“Like a headache,” he chimed.
He lifted his hands from his face and revealed the wound already healing.
“You’re almost as creative as me when it comes to torturing folks, you know that Dez?”
The shade of Destiny didn’t respond, she just circled around to David, Tyron, and Claw, who had now interposed themselves between Freak and Shadow. Shadow, of course, stood in front of the ruins behind which Astro was doing the summoning. And behind that, Jennifer and Steve continued to break through layers.
“Just three more layers!” Jennifer promised.
David and Destiny’s shades instinctively touched hands. Drifting above, Amanda averted her gaze in dejection as she remembered what she had lost.
“So, this is what you have for me?” Freak laughed. “Tyron-on-ice, Claw, and then two ghosts? Those were the big desperate trump cards you came up with?”
The phantom lord began to add additional branches of talons to his arms once more. Briars began to emerge from his feet and spread out across the ground.
“The ghosts aren’t even substantial reinforcements! Look, I’ll halve the benefit they provide right now.”
Freak thrust his arm out at Amanda. It hurtled forward like a spear, unceasing, unquestioning. She was moving so slowly, and the reach of the talons was so wide! She realised she could not evade. She popped off one last firework at Freak’s head, hoping it might buy someone an opening, then closed her eyes. Astro clenched his fists.
“Stop!”
Boom! Freak’s talons struck a magical shield which exploded on impact. His talons broke. Magical shrapnel shot down alongside Amanda’s rocket and showered Freak in pain. He looked up.
A shade of Warnado floated in the air. He had one arm wrapped around Amanda’s shoulder, which he was already using to maintain a second shield. His other arm was being used to hold a colossal demonic hammer.
“Hammertime, dork.”
He swooped down to strike Freak on the head and all hell broke loose.
Shadow fired her disintegration beams with reckless abandon, all the while advancing her attempts to wrest control of the local reality from Freak.
Claw continued his relentless onslaught, only barely taking enough caution to keep himself safe.
Tyron slashed out with Kir and Excalibur. He summoned spikes of ice and walls of stone.
David and Destiny’s shades were the great unit the others had heard so much about from the Remaining. Here Destiny planted an icicle in Freak’s side, allowing David time to charge. There, David finally rushed forward with the gauntlet pulsing with energy, blowing away Freak’s flesh and allowing Destiny a whole new opening for assault.
Amanda swooped this way and that in a campaign of harassment, while the shade of Warnado unleashed an onslaught of sorcerous and demonic powers. He summoned energy weapons of all varieties. He shot demonfire. He opened small dimensional rifts.
And now standing atop the ruins of the staircase, Astro held his hands aloft like the Prophet on his hill. His eyes were closed, and his grin was wide. The ruptured stars containing worlds now loomed larger and closer than ever, shining molten rays of fear down into the Throne Room. The terrible winds, too, had reached down, and Kay roared over them, conveying words of encouragement and command into Astro’s ear.
Freak fought with interminable strength and speed however, dodging sword and spell and chainsaw. He conjured terrors from the air. He stretched limbs out to kill. His talons just seemed to grow longer and sharper. His briars crept further and further across the floor and stabbed their thorns out at anyone then could. Until, finally, a decisive encounter came.
Claw swiped at Freak, and the Phantom Lord drew back for a strike. Only, he found his arm gripped by a powerful demonic hand. Claw swung again, this time at Freak’s gut, and he unravelled the flesh to avoid the blow. However, as it relaced itself, David leapt forward, his gauntlet crackling with energy, and blasted away a chunk of Freak’s gut. He tried to retaliate with his free arm, only for Tyron to summon a pillar of rock to encase it, reinforced with ice by Destiny. Amanda and Claw helped Warnado with his arm, and David ran to help Destiny and Tyron. They had him trapped.
He looked forward and saw Shadow slowly advancing, reality unravelling at her fingertips, small rifts opening and closing like black lightning.
He realised what she was about to do. Unlike the Entity, he was not her opposite. She could destroy this form, at least for long enough to disarm the machine. He roared like a beast of old, refusing to be beaten like this. His briars stabbed into her, but they had no effect, simply disappearing into the Void. He needed another target. His briars crept elsewhere.
That was when Astro raised his hands all the way above his head, and then fell to his knees bringing them back down. A figure in a waistcoat and a white shirt fell from the sky and flopped onto Freak’s shoulders. He had an old almanac on redstone circuitry in his hand.
“Okay, Book, let’s do this!” said Fristad through gritted teeth.
He touched a hand to Freak’s head and lightning shot through the Phantom Lord. He froze rigid, a look of fury trapped on his face. Shadow continued to charge her spell.
“Just one more layer!” thought Steve and Jennifer in unison.
A glorious hope began to burn in the party of remaining heroes as they continued hammering away at the obsidian.
Atop the pillar, Astro continued his summoning. The wind of the storm lifted his hair like the death of gravity. Kay continued to propose new helpers.
“Is there anyone else out there?”
“I see… Bokane… No, Wise One, a king of the Realm.”
“Can he fight well?”
“Not really, he’s about ninety.”
“Then why did you mention him?”
Astro laughed triumphantly.
At that moment, Kay’s heart froze. He saw a briar creeping along the staircase’s remains like a snake. The end was about to blossom into a-
“Look out!” Kay screamed.
He ploughed into Astro, throwing him from the ruin. The point struck him in the gut, cracking armour on the front, then piercing through the back. Blood ran. He collapsed.
“Kay!” Astro yelled, running to the fallen General. However, his attention was immediately forced back in the opposite direction by another scream.
“Helix!”
Astro turned to see all the shades he’d so carefully summoned vanished in smoke. Freak stopped shuddering and clarity re-entered his eyes, then fury.
Meanwhile, panic entered Shadow’s gaze. She loosed the spell, sending the ball of unmade reality spiralling at Freak.
Freak sensed the otherworldly fear and felt renewed strength. He swept one hand to the side, hurling Claw and Amanda from him. Then, with no support from the shades, Tyron’s stone restraint was easily shattered. Freak scrambled aside to avoid the ball of rifts, and it grazed his hip. The rifts slowly began to spread across his side, but it was like ants spreading across a mountain. Too slow and too small to matter.
Freak began to advance shakily.
“Well done, you guys really had me scared there.”
He deflected a blow from Claw. Then, wincing, he unleashed a second blow. It struck Claw’s firesteel breastplate. The zweihander went flying from his hand, and the alloyed metal warped, then burst apart. He landed flat on his front, unmoving.
“Not scared, really, moreso… concerned. Like I couldn’t remember if I’d left the stove on or not,” he swerved lightly to avoid Amanda’s rocket. “But it was a mundane bit of excitement at least.”
He reached back to grab the teenage girl’s wing in flight. She turned back to snarl at him. He laughed and she tried to hit him with her crossbow.
“Tiresome creature.”
He hurled Amanda over in the direction of the activation mechanism. She slammed into a bookshelf and then crashed in a heap on the floor.
The sound of skittering stones turned his head. Kay had hauled his way over the ruins of the staircase, coughed blood, then collapsed against the rocks.
“That’s how I’d describe most of you, to be honest.”
He stepped over the staircase ruins and found Tyron limping in front of him. He raised a fist and briars struck the swords from his hands. Kir trilled in desperation, and Tryon tried to grab for him, but Freak would have nothing of it. He stepped on the sword until it almost cracked. The Dragoknight hissed and bared his fangs and claws. Freak retracted his own claws, gritted his teeth, and then struck Tyron in the face.
Tyron skidded to an unconscious halt at the feet of Astro, who now ran his hands back and forth as though smoothing out a clay ball. Freak smirked at the near-childish gesture, and then Astro thrust his hands out. A complete release of energy. It struck Freak head on. An attempt to shatter the very structure of Freak’s body. The Phantom Lord felt the weight upon him, and it made the unreality spreading glacially on his flank all the more sapping, but it did not harm him.
He stepped forward, and Astro slid back. Freak grinned. He stepped forward again. One of Astro’s rings burst from exertion. And they continued to do so with every step Freak took until…
“Three, two, one… And that’s your reserves used up.” Freak sneered. “Do you really want to risk using your own internal battery, Astro?”
The wizard continued the barrage. Freak sighed. His eyes felt heavy. He stepped forward. Astro collapsed.
Only one remained before the Brines, that tiny, awful mage who had made all of this possible. She tried tearing another rift into reality, but as Freak approached that quickly became an impossibility.
“I suppose I should thank you. If not for that little tear in reality you made, I’d be nought but a humble torturer.”
He smirked. The storm was now behind him, pushing him toward the activation mechanism. Up above, the Tower’s white mirror looked like a needle ready to pierce flesh, carrying disease and cure all at once.
“You must be furious that the Entity isn’t here. You’d found your opposite, a true equal, with only experience separating you! Instead, it’s just little old me. How about you let that anger out, one last time, before it ends. You’ll have an eternity to fret!”
Shadow obliged, tearing a gap into reality but being forced to stop just barely short of Freak’s body, then followed up with a disintegration ray that Freak only barely registered.
As Shadow made her final stand, Steve and Jennifer exchanged a look. A look which said ‘Only one of us needs to break the last layer…’
“Jennifer,” Steve said. “If Shadow goes down-”
“-Steve,” she insisted. “You don’t even have a weapon.”
He struck the obsidian. The cracks spread. He tried not to wonder if he was behind or ahead of her. It could only be so much of a difference, he told himself. But, of course, it could be. It had all gone so fast they had no way of knowing.
A pale imitation of the Sunbeam struck Freak from above.
“I have the shield. And it’ll take him longer to get to you.”
“Yeah, a second or two longer!”
Shadow drew her amorphous blade and plunged it into Freak’s chest. He laughed.
“And those seconds have to count!”
He struck. The cracks spread. It would only take a few seconds longer than he had. An eternity in miniature.
Reality solidified around Shadow, metaphysically keeping her in place.
Steve looked up at Jennifer.
“I love you,” he said.
He swung his shield around to meet Freak’s talon. It splintered immediately but by that shield’s queer miracle he was unharmed. He cast aside his pickaxe and equipped a shield in either hand, charging into Freak.
The phantom staggered as the wood struck his chest. Steve grinned. Seconds won!
Two quick strokes. They shattered. Freak slashed upwards and caught him on the brow. Steve fell back into his nightmare. Freak smiled at his power regained, the last of the mage’s interference suppressed. He smirked down at Steve.
Crack! Jennifer’s pickaxe broke through the seal! A simple lever sat before her, begging to be turned. She thrust out her hand. The lever seemed to slip away. She hit the floor. A briar had wrapped around her leg and pulled her away. She equipped her bow, but before she could get an arrow there were briars all over her, covering, crushing, smothering… She passed out.
Freak approached the broken defensive dome and leaned against it. His toothy grin had faded into a cold smile. With everyone dealt with, all he had to do was wait for his moment in every limelight until the end of time. He could afford to enjoy one last quiet moment. He savoured the music of the storm, the spectacle of the molten rays of light, the gentle dance of the scar through which the Entity had entered and exited Nexus. It was serene, beautiful, a perfect calm before the-
He heard armour rattling and whirled around. He saw the girl, Amanda, thrusting out a hand for the mechanism. He lifted his hand and stretched out his talons, only for something to stop him.
There was a pressure all over Freak’s hand and much of his upper body. At first it seemed to come from nowhere, then he saw its source: That living shadow the eponymous mage carried with her had taken hold of him. Freak scoffed and moments later became translucent, depriving Wodahs of anything to grab onto.
Something snapped. Amanda had her hand on the lever.
Click!
His heart stopped. The music of the winds stopped. And nothing else.
The molten rays of fear remained. The ruptured-star portals above remained as close and huge as they had been a moment ago. Everything had just been paused. Even the little scrap of deteriorating reality on his side seemed to have stopped. He choked down a laugh.
“Okay, I’ve been meaning to ask, what’s the big plan now?”
“Well…” Amanda said, nervously. “I don’t know.”
He tasted the fear on her. Complete uncertainty. Majestic!
“Did you just not think past this point?” Freak cackled “Or did the others count on someone who knew what they were doing lasting to the end?!”
Amanda tried to back away, but Freak became solid again and grabbed her. Wodahs grabbed him again and he shone an intense, fearful light on the shade’s entire form, rendering her powerless. He lifted Amanda.
“Allow me to expose, by a simple demonstration, the error in your plan.” He pressed a talon against the mechanism. “I just flip the lever back, like so.”
Clack!
Something was wrong. From one moment to the next the worlds in the sky had disappeared, in their place only the blackest nothingness remained.
Laughter rang out, laughter that was not just heard, but permeated every sense. The source of this laughter was Shadow who now stood upright a short distance away from Freak. With each passing moment it became harder to make out her exact shape, even Freak’s supernatural senses revolted against themselves as they tried to perceive that which, by all sane and even most insane sets of logic, simply could not be. The only parts of her that were clearly visible were her eyes, burning like red suns.
Freak recoiled away but stumbled as the patch of non-existence rapidly spread across his legs and crept further upward.
He said: “Well… I never liked this body anyway. Back home to the dreamscape it is.”
What remained of his body began fading out as its owner’s consciousness slowly drifted out of existence, but just as he was about to disappear entirely, a radiant light began manifesting around the tattered remains of Freak’s body, pushing him back into being.
Another voice spoke, one that was familiar to many of those present, but both Freak and Shadow heard it for the first time.
“You will not slither your way out of this, Freak!” The Lady of Dreams screamed.
As the nothingness spread further across Freak’s body his futile attempts at struggling slowed down and came to a stop. When only his head remained, Shadow leaned in and placed a hand-like appendage of pure Void on Freak’s face.
“What is it, little Phantom Lord? Scared?”
Those were the last words Freak heard before the world folded in on him.
Chapter89:End of a World (Narrator)
They stared up into the infinite blackness and not a single one of the worlds that had been so close moments before remained. It took a few moments for the realization to settle in. They had won. The road to victory had been paved with many difficulties and near-misses, but they had made it to its end.
Jennifer was the first to break out of her post-victory daze when, after the briars released her, she noticed that the patch of nothingness that had consumed Freak was currently in the process of slowly devouring the obsidian floor tiles.
She called out: “Guys, we should probably make tracks.”
Before anyone could respond, the scenery around them had shifted and they found themselves in the re-fortified ruins within the Tower’s outer walls. The area around them teemed with activity. Shelter logistics personnel had moved in and was now ensuring that wounded soldiers received medical attention. Tower prisoners were held in temporary cells. According to the radio chatter the fighting was over, save for a few individual holdouts.
Some of their party were already recovering. Amanda stood off to the side, looking very small as she gazed up at the broken peak of the Tower. Steve’s eyes were open, but he couldn’t yet wake his body back up all the way. Rose, Urist, Voidblade and Tyron all showed signs of recovery, stirring, and groaning on the ground. Astro lay propped against a nearby wall, his head jerking this way and that as he muttered beneath his own breath. Kay continued to bleed from the gut as several medics took notice. Fire’s body, whether Peter or Claw had control, remained unresponsive in its shattered breastplate.
“That was rather sudden, Shadow,” commented Steve as he shakily returned to his feet with the help of Jennifer.
Shadow looked very satisfied with herself, her physical form still a mass of Void. The main difference to any point before was that now looking at her did not turn minds inside out, instead her dark form had something calming about it.
She replied: “It feels like I can finally breathe after spending my entire life in a musty cave. All this time the Entity or Freak were opposing me, now I don’t have to fight anymore to be myself.”
“Very good, welcome to the open air,” yawned Rose with a cat-like stretch and an unpleasant click of the back. She ran her fingers over the four red wounds Freak had left on her face and walked off toward a nearby supply chest. “Someone get me a potion.”
“Congratulations!” trilled Kir, more obviously impressed.
Tyron rolled onto his side and accompanied it with a pained thumbs up. He had one hand pressed against his nose, now considerably flatter since Freak punched him in it.
“Glad you’re feeling better,” he wheezed. Then, as a medic ran over and placed their glowing hands against his face. “Ooh, that’s the stuff.”
A portal opened in their midst and out stumbled an exhausted looking Veronica Mercury, still wearing her light powered armour. She looked around, quickly scanning each of the faces she was presented with.
She muttered to nobody in particular: “They really did it.”
Then, louder she said: “You really didn’t give me much time there, like… what? Thirty seconds maybe?”
Fire jolted awake after a Mencur-Besh administered him a particularly potent healing potion. He looked around, and after spotting Dr. Mercury he gave her an appreciative nod. “Thank you for assisting us.”
Voidblade then asked the question that many of them had: “Now that this is done, how do we get back to our worlds?”
Shadow responded: “I’ve got an idea or two.”
From one moment to the next Shadow’s eyes began intensely glowing. From her feet outwards, bright lines and runes began manifesting on the floor, spreading first slowly then faster and faster until they raced towards the horizon. The lines shifted, offshoots splitting away and knotting together into a bundle in the middle of the Tower’s courtyard. At their densest point, a brilliant ray of light shot up towards the sky. The column of light grew taller and brighter with each passing moment, reaching a stop at several meters in diameter. Off in the distance, more such pillars of light were visible in regular intervals.
Before anyone could ask what this was about, everyone simply knew. The pillars of light were portals that would take them back to their home world, or the closest fit, if there was no home world to return to.
“Woah,” said Amanda.
Shadow grinned, causing a bright rift to appear where her mouth normally was.
Astro’s muttering ceased and his half-open eyes settled on the injured Tyron, who still lay opposite him. He laughed, but halfway through it turned into a cough. Or the other way around.
“I take it we won,” Astro smiled.
“I think so,” answered the Dragoknight
“Who should I be thanking?” He squinted at the black skies above. “Shadow? Great work!”
Shadow shrugged. “Amanda was the one to flip the switch.”
Astro’s lips parted meaningfully, and he shifted his head over to the teenage girl.
“Thank you, Amanda.”
Amanda, who had returned to looking up at the Tower, glanced back over her shoulder. Gratitude flashed across her features, then was covered back up by the descent of her brows into sadness. She looked back up at the Tower. Unreality had begun to eat through the bronze outer walls, and creep down the edges. The swollen horizon seemed to be crumbling under its own weight.
Astro allowed his own attention to drift from her. He slid over Rathina and Seth rushing down to Tyron as Glowstar settled on a nearby rooftop. Rathina immediately dropped to the ground and lifted Tyron’s face to her own, embracing him.
Brad the Eye-and-Claws operative had made his way to Fire, reporting the capture of General Issa, who was currently being escorted out of the Tower alongside her civilian employees.
Then, Jennifer appeared in Astro’s field of view. She was helping Steve awkwardly pull his armour off without disturbing the massive bruises on his arms, only for Ozen and Drake to run in and collectively bear-hug him, causing the seasoned adventurer’s eyes to water with pain. Jennifer caught a glimpse of Wolfric calmly entering and made sure to playfully ruffle his hair.
Voidblade and Urist could next be seen talking with other soldiers of their unit, Urist much more enthusiastically than Voidblade but the difference was smaller than it would have been a few weeks ago. Rose uncomfortably sipped a healing potion behind them, still mustering her sly almost-smile despite the pain.
From behind the pillar of light emerged Lucy, having just come through the Tower’s outer gate. She wasted no time giving out hugs to everyone gathered, ending with Fire and Shadow, who she then urged to tell her the details of the battle against Freak. While Lucy stood and talked, Wodahs took over on hug duty, making full use of the many appendages she had available in her current state.
Over in a nearby square Astro saw a small crowd of figures forming. Dinnerbone sat on a nearby awning, strumming his ukulele without commitment and occasionally rubbing the wound on his forehead. The hunter chieftains showed off the many trophies they had won in battle. He spared a breathless nod to his own friends, bloodied but alright, as they slowly escorted the wounded Herobrine over to their location. The Blind Watcher boomed and thundered in joy, lavishing praises on his own and the Shelter’s leadership from afar, the Wraith hobbling slightly before the pack.
Astro wasn’t even that annoyed to see Vacar of Arcation trade boasts with Tauto Chrone of the Brotherhood in a fruitless attempt to impress Lupe and Kami. In the background of this little tableau, he saw a bemused Clarke testing the bindings on the wounded Glibby.
His eyes glid across Shadow, her Coven had found her and were in the process of somewhat awkwardly swarming her while still maintaining a respectful distance to their exalted leader. It seemed that Iridia, Pallas and Danann had made it out of the deeper sections of the tower, though Danann was currently missing an arm. Talita was at the very forefront, caught somewhere between reverence and smugness, and if Astro had to guess what she was saying, it probably was something along the lines of “See, I told you you were a god”.
Then, suddenly, a glimpse of a torn red scarf drew him straight to his feet. Suddenly he remembered the briar piercing Kay’s gut, pushing through the back, blood showering out of him. He ran across to where the medics treated him and began to flail around for a good look at his one-time friend’s face, or stomach, or anything. He heard voices in a tangle as medics tried to ask him to calm down, and others spoke to each other and somewhere in the midst of it all…
“...Again, very sorry about this, I should have seen the bloody thing sooner. Almost got Astro. Cost us the shades, I think… It was all quite fast-moving, you see.”
“Kay?”
“Astro?”
Kay gently brushed one of the medics aside as though he were opening a curtain. Astro looked away from his face and saw the skin on his stomach slowly knitting back together. One of them was even finally having a look at his leg after he’d refused to get it checked for so long. With slight annoyance Astro finally met his gaze.
“You’re alright, then?” he managed.
Kay’s lips curled into a smile.
“We both know the answer to that, but thanks for asking, despite everything.”
Astro felt an involuntary warmth and allowed himself to smile back.
Suddenly a hand clapped him on the shoulder.
“Lap Dog!” boomed Herobrine. “Fire tells me the training I gave you proved most helpful out there! Excellent work!”
He had one arm wrapped around Aaron, the other pressed against Fire’s shoulder. Fire seemed quite at ease, understandable since he lacked the innate cultural awe most people felt when interacting with Herobrine. Kay shuffled uncomfortably into a more upright position he considered more General-like.
“I’m not the one you should be thanking, master, I just did what you taught me. Astro expanded the playbook entirely, found a way to make shades from Freak’s nightmares.”
Herobrine’s fingers curled tightly around the Wizard’s shoulder, and his cocked his eye in admiration.
“Did you now?” Herobrine stroked his chin and smiled. “Well, we must chat about this some time, Wizard. You and your Guild have quite impressed me. Such ingenuity should not be spent carrying corpses in Acrisius.”
Astro’s entire mind seemed to explode outwards as he realised the implications. Aaron’s eyes widened until it looked like they might implode under their own weight. Was his exile ending?
“I - I don’t know to say…”
“Thank you, will suffice,” winked the Blind Watcher. He turned away, letting go of Aaron and steadying himself on Fire. “A shame about the corpses we must carry today, however.”
Lucy spoke up with some hesitation: “We were unable to get an accurate count, but more than two thirds of our forces are dead.”
A silence fell across the group.
Tyron raised Kir.
“To the fallen,” he said.
Everyone else raised their weapons and echoed him:
“To the fallen!” they called.
A more reverent silence fell across the group as they began to remember all those who had fallen, seen and unseen. That day and since the beginning of the conflict. Ozzy the Selvan; Moderator Viking; Lieutenant Raphoe; Besta of Arcation; countless Mencur-Besh, all merged for that day but who had all been individuals before it, and so many more… Warnado, the demon-sorcerer who had learned so much, and won so many of their hearts, only to be taken so suddenly and cruelly. From his perch on the awning, Dinnerbone suddenly squinted and began to count the members of the leadership on his fingers with considerable irritation.
“I hope there’s an afterlife here,” said Seth.
“Would that be good, though?” frowned Ozen. “Wouldn’t they, y’know, be in the wrong afterlife?”
“How alienating would that be?” said Steve. “I mean, even beyond the difficulty of potentially not seeing your loved ones, or at least, not the right version of them, you’d be dealing with a whole other conception of paradise or punishment or whatever. Unless, I suppose, there is one universal creator, or the Prophet’s adherents were right about the ‘gods of many worlds’ idea-”
Jennifer patted him affectionately on the head.
“-Getting a little high-concept there, sweetie.”
“Sorry,” Steve chuckled.
“That said,” Jennifer thought. “Can you do anything about that?”
She was looking at Shadow with a slight pleading.
Shadow replied quietly to avoid being heard by her worshippers: “Nexus does not have an afterlife, but all that means is that people’s ‘souls’ or equivalents are floating around somewhere in one of its outer planes. I suspect the Entity’s plan was to absorb them along with everything else, so not even the dead would go to waste.” After a slight pause, she continued: “But I think I can create something like an afterlife, not enough to house the dead forever, but sufficient to let them return to their worlds.”
For a moment Shadow appeared distracted, as if focusing on something that wasn’t there.
“I think I did it, you shouldn’t have felt that unless I did something terribly wrong.”
Jennifer said: “Didn’t feel a thing.”
Voidblade, with unexpected energy pointed to the portal and called out: “Look!”
Small motes of light were gathering in the upper sections, slowly gaining in intensity and once their glow was strong, submerging themselves in the beam. At first there were few, but gradually more and more motes appeared and soon a steady stream of them flowed into the portal. And soon, faces began to appear, visions of ecstasy as they were released from their captivity in Nexus. Humans, endermen, villagers, pigmen, a million peoples no one could name or recognise.
One of the motes ran past Steve, and for brief instant he could have sworn he saw Fristad’s face materialise and wink at him. A tear ran down his cheek and he squeezed Jennifer close to him. Lupe let out a startled, joyous laugh as she saw David swing by, sneering playfully. And for a faint moment, Kay and Fire exchanged a speechless look as a shape resembling the Prophet and his bodyguard stopped to offer them a respectful nod before passing on into the light. Shadow simply looked on in satisfaction, the visuals simply confirming what she already sensed.
They let the motes of light drift by for some time, appreciating them like a long-awaited snowfall. Until…
“I’m telling you, he’s alive!”
“No, no, you’re not doing this to me!”
It was Amanda, struggling against an excited-looking Dinnerbone, who had her by the arm.
“I can sense the Heroes, and he wasn’t there!”
“Then, where is he?”
“...I don’t know. I don’t think Warnado127 is in the dimension anymore. You said he exploded?”
“Yeah! In a cloud of demon-fire!” Amanda snapped. She choked out, “Just like his dad.”
“Okay, yeah, that doesn’t sound great…” Dinnerbone lifted his hat and frantically massaging his skull. “May… maybe it’s you, maybe you’re the real Hero of the Prophecy! I kind of get a Hero-ey vibe off you!”
“I’m not a part of your dumb prophecy!” she screamed. “I was there to help Helix, and now he’s gone!”
“Listen here, kid,” Dinnerbone yanked her by the arm. “You don’t know what that thing showed me!”
At that moment Kay moved in to push Dinnerbone back while Astro and Jennifer swept in to put an arm around the teenager’s shoulder.
“Cool it off, Bone,” called Herobrine.
Kay said, less diplomatically: “I swear I will rattle your bloody skull if you don’t back off right now.”
“I’m not going back with nothing!” Dinnerbone raised a fist emphatically.
Suddenly a dagger stuck into the wall between them. Rose glowered over from the side.
“Then go back with your life, while you still have it,” she warned.
Dinnerbone went very pale, then looked at Amanda and hung his head.
“I’m sorry.”
He backed off into the corner and began to tune his instrument. Herobrine came up and began to massage his shoulder reassuringly. Tyron and Kir also approached with some reluctant comfort.
Kay turned around.
“Amanda, I know I have no right after all I’ve done, but my offer to Helix stands, you are welcome back with me…”
Amanda was staring up at him in disbelief, mouth open and eyes narrowed. Unable to take the force of her reaction, Kay turned his head away.
Fire spoke up: “Kay, I know why you’re extending that offer and I know that at the bottom of it you mean well, but with what happened… and might still happen. It won’t work, not really.”
Kay nodded, then turned his eyes back to Astro. A ring of merciful, pitying wrinkles had formed around the Wizard’s eyes. He couldn’t bear to look at them much more than he could Amanda’s.
“My apologies, you’re absolutely right.”
Kay withdrew and looked up at the crumbling Tower, its branches folding in on themselves as the Void dismantled their dimensional structure. Astro blinked and cast his eyes over to the companionable sadness of the Guild, then looked back down at Amanda.
“You could come back with us,” he said.
She didn’t look up.
“Sure.” She shrugged off Jennifer and Astro. “Whatever.”
She took two steps forward, then turned back to hug Jennifer, crying openly. Rose came in tentatively and found Amanda gripping her even more tightly. Then, finally, she let go and pulled back. Her fingers shot to her face, then scraped the water from her cheeks.
“Okay,” she said. “Thanks, Astro, sounds good.”
She shot him a sincere smile, then walked into the Guild’s number. Secret put a hand on her shoulder and Tass began a tentative conversation that would inevitably cascade into torrential one-sided chatter within a few minutes.
Shadow turned to the rest and said: “We should probably think about going back to our worlds now, won’t be long until this place starts properly collapsing. I’m slowing it down, but Nexus is crumbling under its own weight.”
At that moment, Herobrine spoke up.
“Yes, we probably best. Come on Bone, Guild. Let’s rally the troops and head back home. I imagine the Shelter’s leadership want a few moments alone.” he walked up to Fire, “It has been an honour.” They shook hands.
The Blind Watcher then took his forces and left for another nearby portal. Dinnerbone smiled apologetically. Ozen and Wolfric bid farewell to Steve and Jennifer. Rathina briefly embraced Tyron, then went away with Seth and Glowstar. The Remaining followed with them, though Lupe briefly stopped.
“See you, friends,” she smiled wryly.
Kir trilled happily.
And so, they found themselves left alone. The ones who had found themselves in Nexus, scattered and confused. Who had fought their way through the Tower. Who had escaped their clutches at the village, founded the Shelter and fought a war for the freedom of all worlds. They who, ultimately, had won the day. They stood in silence.
Rose was the first to approach the portal. “Alright, it was nice doing this with you. Let’s see what changed in my world in the meantime. Doubt my old employer is still alive with me gone. Might open up some opportunities for me. Might try the whole cult leader thing myself, Shadow has certainly given me the taste for it. Maybe I’ll become immortal, who knows?”
“Rose,” Tyron groaned. “Please don’t become a cult leader.”
Rose laughed. “It’s a lot more normal in my world, still illegal though, but that never stopped anyone.”
Rose then lightly tossed a knife, which embedded itself in the ground at Amanda’s feet.
“There, I threw a stiletto for you. Satisfied now?” She said playfully, before walking straight ahead into the portal.
A few moments after Rose was gone, Voidblade slowly stepped forward, clearly intending to leave next.
“I think I know what awaits me back home, and I think with what I experienced I might be able to make a difference. There might be a chance at peace, maybe even at reconciliation.”
He patted Urist on the shoulder, then smiled with surprising sincerity at Lucy. He turned to look at Fire, the two simply exchanged a nod and soon after Voidblade disappeared into the portal as well.
It seemed like Urist was the next one to say goodbye. His previous enthusiasm drooped into melancholy as he thought on where he would go back to.
“It’s been an honour fighting with ye. Though I do na want tha return to me world. Shadow, can ye make it so this spits me out anywhere but home? Between before and now, I’ve had enough fighting an’ heartbreak.”
Shadow replied: “Calm, peaceful world it is then.”
“Thank ye.” Urist simply said, then too walked into the bright column of light.
Tyron stepped forward next, holding Kir flat across his palm. However, he didn’t go straight for the portal. Instead, he went up to Astro. A furry green hand landed on the wizard’s shoulder.
“Well, buddy, it’s been a ride.”
“It certainly has. But it looks like you’ve got your happy ending.”
“You don’t seem to have done too bad yourself.”
He squeezed Astro’s shoulder then tilted his head over to Amanda.
“I mean, you’re going back in great company.”
Amanda sniffled and managed a heartfelt smile. She came up and wrapped her arms around Tyron. She rested her hair against his breastplate and looked up into his luminous blue eyes.
“You don’t think I should go with Dinnerbone?”
“Not if you don’t. Do you?”
“No.”
“You owe Dinnerbone nothing,” agreed Kir. “Can’t hold you to Warnado’s duty.”
“Then, I’m going to need you to keep an eye on Astro for me. He’s a little old and silly, he’ll need someone to keep him out of trouble.”
Amanda nodded: “I think I can do that. Keep him away from all that ‘stupid tribal crap’ he keeps complaining about.”
Astro feigned outrage with an open mouth and Tyron laughed. The Dragoknight leaned down and kissed her on the crown of the head.
“Alright, I’ll speed it up a little bit. Steve and Jennifer, you know I love you guys. And you keep that beautiful little enderdragon safe. Lots of head-pats and treats for him!”
“Well, if we have to,” sighed Steve.
“Keep safe, Tyron,” smiled Jennifer. “I hope you and Rathina are very happy together.”
Tyron rounded on Fire, Lucy, and Shadow.
“Shadow, of all the people in the group who could have attained god-like power, I’m glad it was you.”
Shadow replied with a chuckle: “Talita just left me alone Tyron, don’t start with the god talk. But thank you, I’ll try to make the best of it.”
“I’m sure you will,” Tyron reassured her warmly, then approached Fire.
He held out his hand.
“Fire, thanks for everything. You were the second-best commander the Shelter ever had.”
“Was close contest.”
“Not just of the Shelter, but the Tower too, thanks to Claw.” Fire paused, having suddenly realized something. “In hindsight, the Prophet saying that I’d command the forces of life and death makes a lot more sense now.”
“Don’t dwell on it, big guy,” Tyron clapped him on the arm. “You came through when we needed you.”
“Did what heroes do,” Kir chirped supportively.
He turned to Lucy, pointing an accusatory finger.
“And you, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you!”
He reared up, forcing a scowl. Then he shrank back down and chuckled.
“You are the most scarily productive person I’ve ever met. Please, promise me you’ll get some rest once this is all over.”
“It’ll be the first thing I do. I might not have been in combat, but it sure feels like I was. The only reason I am awake right now is because I want to spend some more time with everyone.”
“I forget to mention that you are the sweetest person in the multiverse. Never change that. It’s been a pleasure knowing you.”
He drew her in for a brief hug, then stepped back. He cast his eyes around the group, then finally they came to rest on Kay. The General had his eyes averted, cracking his fingers. He looked timidly up.
“Kay,” said Tyron. “I’m going to miss our heart-to-hearts.”
Tears flooded the General’s eyes, and he ran forward to hug Tyron. There was a loud crash as their breastplates connected and they struggled to stay upright. Tyron cackled in surprise and patted him on the back. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, Kay withdrew, swiftly drying his eyes.
“Thank you being my friend, Tyron.”
Tyron didn’t say anything for a bit.
He ultimately settled on a calm: “Stay safe, Kay.”
“Never stop trying,” elaborated Kir.
Tyron walked up to the pillar of light and reached out a hand to touch it. He cast one look back, and a smile spread across his face one last time.
“I’ll never forget this.”
He closed his eyes and fell forward. The light engulfed him. He was gone.
Kay cleared his throat and stepped out, rubbing his eyes as he did so.
“I’ll try and keep this brief. Steve, Jennifer, Astro, Amanda, Fire, Shadow, and Lucy, I’ve treated you all abominably from start to finish. No apology I can offer will make up for that, so I shall endeavour to prove it by action. Hopefully by the time the next Astro is kidnapped and taken to Nexus, we shall see a better run of things.”
A tear ran down his right cheek and another began to well in his left eye.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
He nodded awkwardly, then turned toward the portal. A shield formed in front of him.
“No,” Astro said. “Not letting you away with that.”
Shadow explained: “You can’t leave through this portal either, you are from a different time, so you need to go through the one you entered Nexus from. I will take you there once it’s time.”
“Ah,” Kay said. “In that case, I suppose I should get a little more specific.”
Shadow closed her eyes and began to scan for the portal matching Kay’s signature in the rapidly crumbling world of Nexus. Kay, meanwhile, shambled up to Steve and Jennifer, gritting his teeth and readjusting his hair.
“I’m sorry I tried to kill you in order to get into the Tower’s good graces.”
“That’s okay,” Jennifer sighed. “You were just as confused as us.”
“And about the failings in my plans that led to Fristad being out in the open, and the infantry being caught off guard by the Tower’s Endlings.”
“You couldn’t have accounted for everything,” Steve forced himself to admit. “Fristad in particular wasn’t your fault, I was just… grief is a funny thing.”
“And about sending poor Raphoe to threaten you.”
“Less excusable,” Jennifer said.
“Yeah, that was pretty messed up.”
“And trying to separate you so as to be able to better control Steve, and for teaming up with the Book, and letting it try to kill you both, and for-”
“-You can stop, Kay,” said Steve.
“Apologies really don’t begin to cover any of that,” Jennifer maintained.
Kay nodded tremulously. The two adventurers before him had shifted from uneasiness into steely determination. This was a bridge he had burned and attempts to ford the river completely would not be looked on kindly.
“I know. What I really want to say is, you were both an asset to the team. I enjoyed shooting the breeze with you in the village, Steve. And Jennifer, you walk a line between practicality and simple kindness that I wish I could replicate. I wish you both the absolute best.”
He hung his head and began to walk away. Steve and Jennifer frowned, then exchanged a look. Their features softened.
“The officer’s lounge was a good idea,” conceded Steve. “A lot of good memories in that place.”
More hesitantly, but no less sincerely, Jennifer added: “And thanks for pulling that dream voodoo on Freak, you got us out of a jam there.”
Kay stopped. He turned his head, meeting Jennifer’s gaze. He then flicked his eyes over to Steve.
“Thanks.”
He went up to Fire. He opened his mouth, but words wouldn’t come. His tongue rolled uselessly around. As he looked into the Mencur-Besh’s red eyes, he realised how wide-ranging it all was. Specific instances, general attitudes, too much and too little to weave together. And yet, he had forgiven him time and time again, ever-patient and ever-worthy of respect. Once more, he threw himself on Fire’s mercy:
“I really am sorry about the door I broke,” he managed. “And of course, the - the reason I broke it.”
“Can’t change much about the fact you tried to kill me, but at least you went about it in a way that didn’t force me to shoot you. If I had, we probably wouldn’t be standing here, you being alive did enable us to get Herobrine on our side after all.”
Kay swallowed and it felt like gravel. He deserved that.
“That is a fair response… I have a knack for dressing up ugly situations with pretty words,” he said. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you and thank you for allowing me to continue to help in what ways I still could. You were a venerable leader, and the most patient man I’ve ever met.”
“For lack of a better word, knowing you has certainly been interesting, Kay. I wish you the best for what’s ahead of you.”
Kay averted his gaze and stifled a desperate smile of gratitude. He brushed past Shadow, toward Lucy.
“Shadow, I’ll say to you on the way out. Lucy, thank you for your diligence. I should have trusted you better, it was entirely pettiness, would have saved Astro a lot of stress as well.”
Lucy replied: “I… might have lost some sleep over the whole situation back then. In a way I’m glad it’s cleared up.”
She fell silent after that.
Kay moved on to the last two, the ones he’d dreaded the most. He came to a stop before Astro and Amanda. He forced himself to look up.
“What I did to Helix was unforgivable. If I hadn’t built him up and then betrayed him like that, he’d still be alive…” He wiped his red, raw cheeks with his scarf. “Thank you for trusting my friends, I assure you they’re much better than me.”
“Sure.”
She said it simply, coldly, and then went back to lean against a nearby wall. She looked at Astro who gave her a pained look which said, ‘whatever you have to say, no one will judge you’. She sighed.
“You’re a parasite, Kay. You choose people because you know they’re better than you, and you leech off their goodness. If you want to change things so much, to be better, just leave them alone. Have a nice life.”
She began to fiddle with her crossbow, and Jennifer came up to put a hand on her shoulder. Kay’s heart felt like it was fit to burst from agony. Agony he knew he had earned. He bowed his head, scrunched up his eyes and turned to Astro. He opened his mouth…
“I’m really going to miss you, Kay.”
His eyes shot open. His breath stopped. Astro’s face was covered in a sad smile. A tear ran down his cheek. His arms spread wide. Kay took him and held him tightly.
“I swear to you, I shall do everything in my power to change things,” Kay promised.
Astro clapped him on the back and broke off the hug. His smile was unbroken. Tears streamed down both of their faces.
“You know how much I want to believe that, Kay.”
Kay put his face in his hand and rubbed intensely. His fringe had separated into strands on his forehead. His cheeks remained redder than ever. He threw his arms wide and turned his eyes to the infinite, black sky.
“Alright, Shadow, I’m ready.”
Nothing happened for several moments. Kay looked at Shadow with a mixture of expectancy and apology.
“We will go once everyone else has departed.” She said.
“Oh,” said Kay. “Alright.”
He drew aside a little deflated, though reminded himself that it had been presumptuous. After all, it would have interfered with Shadow’s ability to say goodbye. He cursed himself that little bit more.
Steve stifled some derisive laughter and approached Fire. Jennifer went up to Amanda.
“Thanks for everything, Fire,” Steve said, offering his hand.
Fire took the hand offered. “Likewise, Steve. I’m glad to have had you and Jennifer at my side.”
“We were glad to be there,” he turned to Lucy. “Sorry we never got to finish our D&E campaign.”
“That’s okay, we had fun with the one session we had. It had a good conclusion if you ask me.”
Lastly, to Shadow: “Hey, thanks for quoting that poem. I really need to start reading more.”
Shadow replied: “Glad it helped, I read it a long time ago, but the concept stuck with me.”
Meanwhile, Jennifer stooped down and clapped Amanda on the shoulder.
“Hey, you’re sure you’re going to be okay out there?”
“I will, Jennifer. Stay safe.”
They hugged, and as Jennifer disengaged, she took Astro by the sleeve.
“And you, be a little less harsh on yourself, okay? You’re a good guy, don’t be afraid to remember that every now and then.”
He beamed like an excited child.
“It’s a deal.”
Jennifer and Steve broke off and approached the Portal. The light glimmered before them, bathing their features, and reducing them to silhouettes. Their hands touched.
“I’m glad I knew you people,” said Steve.
And in a flash, they were gone.
Amanda walked over to the portal, continuing to fiddle with her rockets and crossbow. Astro approached the others, shooting respectful nods to both Fire and Lucy. His wide grin had settled into a satisfied incline of the lips. He stopped before Shadow and stooped down to hug her. She stabilised her form as he did so, looking effectively normal for the time being.
“It’s been really nice talking to a mage on my level,” he said into her white hair. “Well, miles above my level, but you know what I mean.”
“The feeling is mutual, Astro. I just wish that we could have avoided what the whole Coven situation did to our friendship.”
“The Coven certainly made things worse, but I’d already screwed it up with my own stupid bitterness and suspicion. I’m sorry, I should have been there for you when the Entity got Fire.”
He shot an apologetic look at Fire.
“And thank you, Shadow, for letting me back in after all that.”
“I’m glad it worked out in the end, despite everything.”
Astro grunted and drew himself up with difficulty.
“And of course, Fire, thank you for your leadership. Lucy, thank you for your tireless work.”
He looked back over at Amanda expectantly. She raised the crossbow and fired a rocket into the air. Golden sparks rained down. Looking at the falling sparks seemed to re-energise her, and she managed a smile.
“Fire,” she said. “Tell the Lady I say hi.”
“I’m sure I’ll meet her in due time, we have a lot of things to talk about.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do, like, uh, when you’re taking her out for a proper dream-date. You guys would be really cute together.”
Shadow stifled a giggle and nodded in agreement. Fire simply shook his head with a smile, clearly amused by the prospect.
Astro exchanged a final meaningful look with Kay, and then went up to Amanda. He let his hand fall on her shoulder, perhaps to guide her, perhaps asking to be led. He looked and felt dreadfully old.
“Shall we?”
She wordlessly stepped forward. The portal flashed, and they were gone.
Lucy approached Dr. Mercury, who up until now had been watching from the sidelines. “I hear you’re going with Fire and Shadow to their world?”
Dr. Mercury replied: “Seeing as my own world no longer exists, it’s one of the few good options I have left.”
Lucy briefly contemplated, then turned to Fire. “Would it be alright if I came along too? I’m in a similar situation, no world to return to. From what you’ve told me your world would be a lovely place to live.”
Fire barely waited for her to stop speaking, as if he had waited for her to ask. “Of course, you can come with us, it’s the least I can do. After all, I did show up at your door and took you on a grand adventure simply because I had a good feeling about you.”
Lucy’s smile widened. “So, let’s go!”
As they turned towards the portal, Shadow said: “After I take Kay to his time, I’ll stay behind in Nexus to make sure it collapses fully. I won’t be long, time flows quickly here.”
That was all she needed to say, Fire, Lucy and Dr. Mercury fully turned towards the portal and passed into the bright beam of light. Now only Shadow and Kay stood within the Tower’s walls.
“So, just us…,” Kay said, frowning. “Shadow, I would… like to apologise. I used half-legitimate concerns about your abilities to justify antagonising you when we should have been working together. It was motivated by lust for power, habitual paranoia, and what can only be described as a rather pedestrian bitchiness. For what it’s worth, I am deeply sorry.”
Right after Kay finished speaking, the environment around them shifted. They now stood in a great canyon made from red sandstone, their feet almost immediately sunk into the sand as they landed. A waterfall cascaded nearby, though the lake into which it fell had crumbled away into the infinite black. Within touching distance of them was yet another portal, visually identical to all the others, but this one would lead Kay home. Not just to his world, but also to his time.
Shadow replied: “I’ve already said what I thought about your royal escapade, I don’t think there is a need to repeat it now, especially since I’m about to send you off and never see you again. Kay, you have done a lot of bad things in your time here, but also some good ones, and I can’t ignore that. You are a thoroughly complicated person, but I think you know that best yourself.”
Kay scoffed.
“I wish I could say I understand myself much better.”
He sauntered up to the edge of the collapsed lake and looked into the Void.
“Shadow, I’m not going to pretend I’m in a position to advise anyone anymore, but please believe me when I say I’m worried for you.”
“I somehow doubt that, but go on.”
He kicked a stone off the edge and into the pit.
“That level of power… I held only a fraction of what you have now and all it made me want was more. More power meant more control after a long time of feeling like I could control nothing. Now, you seem to have gotten your powers back under control by gaining uncontested control of Nexus... Am I making sense? Probably not. Just, as advice from a man who did it all wrong: let it end here. Please.”
He lifted a hand to his face and Shadow got the impression that he had started crying again.
Shadow thought for a moment. “No, I can see where you are going with this, but this is only the beginning for me. Though, we are similar in one respect, we are both in conflict with fate. My battle has been going on for a long time, though I did not realize that until recently. As for your battle, it begins the moment you step through that portal. Whatever you did and will do, I wish you luck fighting fate.”
Kay exhaled deeply and then turned. He offered his hand to Shadow with an echo of his old pomp.
“I wish you luck as well. Here’s to our eventual victory over fate!”
“We can both hope for that.” Shadow said.
She then took his hand and gently, but firmly pushed Kay towards the portal. He did not resist, and moments later Shadow was alone in the canyon, perhaps alone in Nexus.
Everything was once again a swirl of lights and possibilities, but I saw nothing. I looked back at the shrinking window that led to Nexus, the very winds of creation burned my eyes until they shut. I just shot forward. Faster. Faster! And then…
I dropped and skidded in the grass. My armour tilled the dirt. Native air filled my lungs. I stretched out my fingers. Nothing but verdant blades around me. The portal, vast and brittle, loomed above me. Scorch marks still remained where the explosive had struck it. Beyond that, cave walls climbed up some ways until they formed a ragged frame for the twilight sky. Far above, a gleaming aurora of thousands of colours burned - I had to presume it was a result of Nexus’ collapse.
For some time, nothing could move me, in body or in feeling. My mind was stuck processing one long death march of a thought: could I not just stay there until the grass rose up and swallowed me? It seemed preferable to the uncertain trek ahead of me. The journey to break the fate I had made for myself.
But, eventually, even oblivion loses its appeal, so some part of me forced strength into my limbs. My muscles ached. My eyeline rose, allowing more and more items into my field of view. Corpses of thugs lay unrecovered around the cave.
Slowly, I turned, and a path back up and out became visible. Something crunched as my boot pressed down. A white funeral mask had snapped in two.
“Glibby’s master…” I thought. “Perhaps I should pursue that line of attack. Brit already hates the Ape… but do I tell him who he’s working for?”
I had to be delicate as a harpist. One wrong strum of my fingers and I could set things shuddering into discordance, no better and perhaps a lot worse than they already were. I was a serpent trying to wind around the stem of a delicate flower without strangling it.
“Cossack of course comes to rule this Gaian kingdom. Is this advantageous or a distraction?”
Light crept down from the cave-mouth. The incline became steeper. The walls rockier. Narrower. Sharper.
“And this Brotherhood. Chrone looked at me so strangely. Are they friend or foe? Both? They merit close attention. An early destruction, if necessary.”
A rock split my palm, and a jolt of pain caused me to trip. My armour rattled as I pulled myself back up. The crimson wept from the heart of my right hand, then ran down the diamond plates on my arm. I realised how battered and different my armour would be. How could I explain this?
“I cannot possibly say what has happened to me. They would think me mad. Or could I? Can I not just tell them our new purpose? That our new enemy is fate itself?”
Yes. Yes, I could. My mind was made. I came to the mouth of the cave, burning with purpose. The valley re-entered my sight for the first time in far too long, and immediately my eyes crept over to the cave we used as a camp.
And there, at the cave mouth, I saw Small’s shock of blond hair. The assassin kept guard over our shelter. Smoke rose up past him, and I saw Bokane tending to the campfire as the ever-hulking Mini stooped to turn a spit. The scent of pork enticed me even from there.
A mad grin spread across my face as my stratagem coalesced. I would go down there, and regardless of what they thought at first, I would convince them I spoke the truth. A speech to end all speeches. I would tell Astro what I had done, what I would come to do, and I would convince him to help me stop it all.
We would locate this Silhouette, and we would dismantle his network. Find Chrone and his Brotherhood and enlist them. Seduce the Gaians and have their nation at our disposal. And, at the appointed time, we would venture out to that mine in Acrisius, knock down the doors, and fight our way into Nexus with an army at our backs. The Tower would crumble. The Entity would be slain. And when my own fool self arrived, I would confront him, and inform him of his grand and glorious purpose. To take up the Book. To guard young Helix and all other forlorn. To build the Ashen Kingdom eternal!
I raised my hands in euphoria, imagining the end of this glorious tirade. It all seemed so clear to me, until:
“Where have you been?”
I froze. All my grand schemes imploded.
“You’ve been missing for a week! Aaron’s worried sick. Cossack too, but I think he’s more afraid we’ll kick him out of the group if you’re not around to vouch for him.”
He laughed. Against my wishes, my body turned until, over my shoulder I could see him: Astro, young as the day I left.
“Only a week?” I croaked.
The sun caught in his black hair, causing a strip down the middle to shine white. He had a snarky grin plastered across his face, betraying his relief but also failing to disguise his concern about where I’d actually been. His presence impelled me to turn full, and I almost fell as I did so. Suddenly the drop into the valley looked much steeper, and gravity all the fiercer.
“By the mods, look at you,” he gestured to hole Freak had punched in my breastplate. “What happened to the obsidian stuff? I couldn’t get you out of it last I saw you.”
I swallowed. My lungs tightened as I recalled the Entity’s victory over me. With the Book I had stood no chance. Even as King in Ash I had not been strong enough. Only Shadow had ever been its equal. As the Other Steve had once told me, the Entity had crushed many armies before our arrival. Without Shadow, what chance could any army led by me ever stand?
“I got robbed,” I managed, removing some of the cracks from my voice.
“Oh…” he frowned. “I’m so sorry.”
He came forward and put a hand on my shoulder. In a brief twitch of the fingers, he squeezed the vain delusion from me. The King in Ash had failed. There could be no return for him.
“Don’t be,” I scoffed, “My own stupid fault. I wanted to show people I was still important, and it just made me easily ambushed.”
Crystalline tears ran down my cheeks. I hadn’t even noticed my eyes start to water. I raised a hand to my face and Astro folded me into his grasp. I clung to him desperately.
Some time passed. We broke apart. Astro smiled at me. I forced a smile back.
“Strange this?” he tried.
“Hm?”
He gestured at the symphony of colour overhead.
“The aurora, never heard of those in the Vanilla Craft.”
I deflected: “Well, we’re not quite there yet.”
He lit up a tad.
“Ah, actually!”
He pulled out a stack of papers from his robes.
“Our visas are all sorted. We’ve even got a job offer,” Astro said encouragingly.
“H-have we?”
“The Emperor of the Realm of Seven Kingdoms, a man called Dominus, approached me. He wants you to govern some land he’s come into possession of. Seems like a great opportunity.”
I racked my brains. The Realm had been scarcely mentioned. Dominus even less so. Only brief half-whispers in the Shelter about them which suggested… What, exactly? A disgrace? A fallen friend? A defeated enemy? Secret had let slip something about an attack on the Citadel? Surely not that Citadel? However, all that hardly mattered, really.
“Actually Astro,” I sighed. “Take it if you wish, but I think I’m retiring.”
Astro’s eyes flared with surprise. I recalled the anger, disgust, contempt that would one day fill them when he witnessed my betrayal of Helix. How moved he had been by the slim hope of my success. A meagre parody of closure I had foisted upon him.
“You’re entirely certain?”
I was. The world needed no more of Kay Mandy’s vaulting ambition. Of his attempts to guard his own good reputation long after he had already destroyed it. Instead, I would banish him to some quiet place and tell him to wait until Astro, or Aaron or Cossack or any of them at all truly needed his aid.
“Yes,” I said with finality. “In my absence, I’ve become rather captivated with the idea of farming. So, I shall do that. A necessary tedium after all the excitement I’ve had lately.”
Astro chuckled warily.
“We’ll see how long that lasts. Come on, that pork smells pretty great, but I know just the recipe to make it perfect.”
All of them had gathered around the campfire now, waving and joking. Aaron, Secret, Cossack, Bokane, Mini, Brit and Gracey. The family to whom I would devote my life.
“Don’t you dare ruin another dinner,” I teased.
I punched him on the shoulder, and we set off down the hill. My friends’ laughter seemed to grow dimmer as I got closer, and as the sun inched closer and closer to the horizon, the brilliant, hopeful rays of the aurora became harder and harder to make out. Yet the campfire glowed like a hearth, and there was some reassurance in that.
Epilogue:Shadow
I stood in Nexus alone, everyone had left through the portals I created, even animals had wandered through. Now it was just the terrain, the buildings, the plants, and me. I did not just see Nexus through the eyes on my body. In fact, I had very little need of this manner of observation. The blackness in the sky was nothing but an extension of me, something that I had neglected to tell the others, both to avoid more worship from my Coven and to not delay the departures.
I returned to the Tower, or what was left of it. Now that Nexus was empty, I stopped holding back the collapse of the fabric of reality. The Tower’s arms, twisted as they had become, now bent inwards to one specific point, the Entity’s entry scar. The rest of the building quickly followed, then the ground itself was distorted out of shape and curved upwards. Far off in the distance, the horizon shrunk as matter dissipated into the Void, or rather into me, since I had enveloped Nexus in its entirety.
Mountains rushed by, followed by deserts and jungles. An ocean disappeared into nothingness. An indeterminate amount of time later the terrain began taking truly odd shapes, it looked like Nexus had absorbed the far lands of several worlds.
I watched all of this transpire, standing by as the world died. Then, finally the last atom had disappeared, leaving an empty, directionless space behind that only contained me. The fragment of myself that was still in Nexus disappeared through the entry scar, and behind it the space bubble turned itself inside out and collapsed. Nexus was no more.
I had fully returned to the larger self that I had only properly become aware of when I killed the Book. In the past I had taken glimpses outside of reality, usually to observe the layers of energy, or the Book’s pocket dimension. Now was the first time I truly looked outwards.
At first, I was unable to perceive anything, still unfamiliar with the structure of higher-dimensional space, but gradually I saw that space’s equivalent of colour. Dots appeared in my vision, each representing a world, they were infinitely small, lacking any higher-dimensional extent, but I could still see details if I focused on one. In one of the closer ones, I could observe Herobrine marching his army home, in another the hunters fortified their camp with materials they had taken with them.
But my focus was not on the worlds, because there still was something here in this liminal space that seemingly escaped everyone’s memory. The Entity was here somewhere, it was not dead, and I needed to change that. If I didn’t, everything we did, all our sacrifices would be nothing more than another link in the chain of its cycles.
With each passing moment my perception expanded further, I was able to see more worlds and look into these worlds with greater detail. Then I saw what I was looking for. A tiny speck of grey, rapidly moving away from where Nexus had been.
So that is how it operates, each time it is defeated it shoots away. Eventually it will collide with a world and begin its growth anew.
I began moving towards the Entity, slowly at first, having to get used to moving in this new state. Soon I became fast enough to match the Entity’s speed, then faster to close the distance. As I got closer, the grey speck gradually became bigger and something dawned on me, even in this state the Entity was massive.
Before me was the higher-dimensional equivalent to a tetrahedron, though instead of the ever-repeating static that had covered its form in Nexus, here the Entity’s surface was a single uniform middling sensation, not even a colour in the regular sense. This geometric menace now towered over me, many times larger than I. This bastion of Order that I had to bring down to prevent it from destroying any more worlds.
If I had a human body still, I would have instinctively swallowed at this point. But there was no point in deliberating. It was Order, I was Entropy. All I had to do was make contact and I would eventually erode it into nothingness.
Right?
I pushed my doubts aside and accelerated towards the nearest quasi-grey face. I braced myself as I rapidly approached. I slammed into the Entity… but it refused to give. The small dent my impact created immediately righted itself.
What if Order and Entropy work differently here? What if they cannot interact at all at this level of reality? Was I doomed to fail?
Questions like these began sprouting in my mind like weeds. As vines of doubt climbed higher, the worlds in the distance gradually disappeared, or rather my ability to perceive them did as I slowly slipped into despair. It was just like when I had found out that Claw had taken control. The realisation I had made in the nightmare rang true once again. If I failed here, I could not guarantee that my brother, or anyone, was safe. Feeling slipped away, the only thing I could perceive was my nemesis ahead of me, but even that faded slowly.
Just before my mind went dark, a faint thought appeared.
Why am I so concerned with protecting everyone? It is the right thing to do, but… why does it affect me so much when I fail? Why do I feel so helpless? It is as if I am unable to do something that is expected of me.
I held onto that thought. Back when I had emerged from the laboratory, Fire had that same emotion written all over his face, until I told him that we have a way out.
That was not what my brother would do, I have seen him push through hardship before, and I have done it too, it is what got us to where we are. Something is not right… To kill the Entity, the embodiment of Order, I need to break through its surface, something I cannot do as the embodiment of Entropy-
My thoughts ground to a halt. That was it.
Am I Entropy? The only ones who said so were Kay, who had heard it from the Book, and Freak, who had heard it from Dr. Mercury. None of them were reliable sources of information in this matter.
I thought back to when I entered Nexus. As soon as I did my senses had expanded and I was able to tear holes into reality. I never had the time to question why these changes happened. I had not initiated them, so something else must have.
Just at the moment I finished the previous thought, I suddenly felt constricted. As if bound by countless of strings that dragged me in all directions at once. But my mind felt clearer than ever.
I am a mage, but am not magic, magic is simply a tool for me to use, so why would Entropy and Void be any different? I was asking the wrong question this whole time! Human? Entropy? God? What does it matter what I am? If there is no answer either way, why should I care?
I am myself. I am Shadow.
This thought surged through my mind, pushing away the numbness. Like a warm shower of rain, sensations flooded my mind. Millions and millions of worlds became visible and with every passing moment more joined them. I had changed too, no longer possessing a body of Void, I instead simply was, existing beyond description. Then, finally I saw them. The strings that had bound me so tightly moments earlier, now failing to find purchase on my transcendent body. With a thought I caught each of them, then tore them into shreds so small that they faded from existence entirely.
Back in Nexus I had thought I felt free, that feeling was dull compared to what I felt now. In front of me was still the grey bulk of the Entity, but despite nothing changing about our relative sizes, it no longer seemed to loom over me. It was then that I realized why the Entity feared me, not because of what I had been, even if many incorrectly assumed such. The Entity feared what I could become… have become.
I moved forward once again, speeding towards the geometric abomination ahead of me. Shortly before I collided, I saw myself reflected in its surface. I broke through, now surrounded by grey in every sense, shortly behind me followed a path of darkness as I carved a swathe into the Entity’s formerly perfect being. Halfway between the black and grey, bright bolts of energy bounced like electric discharges as Order failed.
Once I arrived at the centre, I gathered my focus, pulling all that is the Entity into my being. The only way to be certain of its obliteration. Uncountable years of memories and information streamed into my mind, but it all seemed hilariously insignificant compared to what I was now. The embodiment of Order collapsed into me, and as it did a pulse of radiant sensations was sent flying outwards, rolling harmlessly over nearby worlds before dissipating.
But there was still something left where the Entity once was. Another mind, a familiar one. I had found her. I had found Destiny. Little more than a speck of existence, no body to speak of, but she was there. There was not much I could do for her, except for one thing. I carefully moved what remained of her, of the one who kicked off the events that led to our victory. Her world was not far. I made a tiny puncture in the walls of her world and pushed her through, then closed it up once more. I sincerely hoped that that was enough.
Now the only thing that remained for me was to return home. I knew where to go, sensing my world’s resonance. Despite my relatively slow pace, my world approached quickly. But before I could reach it, I encountered something like a transparent barrier. I could see my world, but I was seemingly unable to move any closer.
With a thought, I parted the barrier, and went through the gap. The barrier neatly closed behind me. I immediately felt a difference, it was like after exiting Nexus. At first, I saw very little, then gradually more. Was this another layer of existence? My world was still ahead of me, so I pushed on, only to be stopped again and again. I cut through each barrier, growing more confused with each time. With every passage, reality felt thinner, sparser. When I looked back, I could still see all the worlds like before, but some of them were encapsulated in bubble-like structures. The further I went the more worlds looked enclosed, and after some point even the bubbles themselves appeared to have bigger bubbles around them.
Then, finally I broke through to my world. No matter how far I looked, there was nothing else in the same space, the emptiness was profound. But there was something when I looked at my world. My world consisted of three layers that were so close they almost touched. Two of them made sense to be there, one was the “real” world, the other was the server. The revelation that the server was not just a simulation, but an actual world passed me by almost without a trace, at this point it was barely a leap in logic. The third layer however, contained no matter, instead it was composed entirely of energy, like what I had seen in Nexus.
At this point I had no idea what exactly the implications of this third layer were, but it felt good to know that I could discuss it with my brother in peace once I was fully home. I moved close to the server’s layer, then parted its walls to let a part of me slip through. My larger self would have to remain outside.
It was a peculiar feeling, being back to three-dimensional space after where I had been just before, but there was comfort to returning to such a familiar place. My body formed in the middle of a forest, namely the forest surrounding Rockhaven. The runes on my skin burned brightly for a moment as I returned to existence fully. I was of course not alone, the immediate area teemed with Mencur-Besh and Eye-and-Claws. Straight ahead of me stood Fire, who interrupted his conversation with Lucy and Dr. Mercury to pull me into a hug. As he did so I noticed something with my lingering extradimensional senses. My brother was bound by strings too.
Determination welled up inside of me. I would help him free himself, just like he had done for me.
Epilogue:Steve and Jennifer
Steve and Jennifer stepped out of the portal and stopped to appreciate the yellow sun above. However, their attention was almost immediately drawn away by an explosion of light in the sky. They found themselves staring at an aurora of colours, many of which their world had never seen before. Each shade was more brilliant than the last.
Suddenly, a wind whipped their hair as Drake Junior swooped past. Their eyes followed the young Enderdragon as he swept so low to the ground the shrubs and flowers of the ground began to scratch his exposed belly. Then, purring with satisfaction, he shot back up into the sky and began to bite playfully at the intangible rays of the aurora.
“Be careful up there!” Steve shouted.
The dragon didn’t seem to hear him and continued to swing around still more boldly. Steve gritted his teeth and stood on tiptoe as he tried to follow every turn.
Behind him, a laugh erupted from Jennifer’s throat and Steve turned in exasperation, only for her hand to touch his face and brush the worry out of him.
“Hey,” she smiled.
She had removed her armour, just leaving a t-shirt and jeans. The multi-coloured lights bounced off her shining red hair, an aurora in its own right.
“Hey.”
He reached for her waist and drew her in.
“You know I love you, right?”
She leaned in.
“I got the impression.”
Their lips touched. The sun was warm, and so was she. He held her tight to him. Their eyes drifted shut. The lights of the sun and aurora danced atop their closed eyelids, turning the void of blindness into a radiant glory. They stayed that way for the longest time.
Finally, the aurora dimmed, and they drew apart. Still holding hands, they took in the quaintness of Brine Manor. Atza, Steve’s mother, stood at the door, fussing over a reluctant Ozen. Wolfric sat off on a bench on the porch, drifting off into a peaceful sleep after the exertions of the day. On the top floor of the manor, a light shone in Dad’s room, and Steve could see his silhouette, upright and reading over an old book.
A look across the Manor’s colossal lawn and into the forest revealed a road, and people coming up it. Alex sat astride a horse, her long orange hair flowing in the breeze and her diamond armour looking almost black beneath the shelter of the bows of trees. Behind her, her friends, Dylan and Rana led a donkey laden with supplies.
In the other direction, Steve saw Mark and David of Morbrook riding up a redstone railway of their own design. Behind them trailed a line of minecarts containing villagers and chests, full to bursting with melon and bread and pork and… so much else both wonderful and familiar.
“Now they show up,” Jennifer rolled her eyes wryly. “When it’s time to celebrate.”
Steve laughed.
“Eh, I’ll trap the Alliance members into one hell of a Dungeons and Enderdragons game tomorrow and then we’ll be even.”
They began to walk down toward the crowd, then suddenly they stopped. Steve was frowning, and his shoulders hunched.
“Actually,” he said. “What do we do next?”
“What do you mean?”
“In the nightmare, I saw a world where I had everything. You were there, and we had… a family. And Ozen was there, and I was still adventuring, and Dad had fully recovered, and it still didn’t make me feel complete. So, I…”
He trailed off, shame filling him. He tilted his head and looked at his right hand as though it were stained. Once again, Jennifer’s hand touched his face, this time to straighten out his fretful confusion.
“You know what I saw?”
His eyes locked with hers. There was a trust, profound enough that it superseded words. And it melted away all worry within him.
“No?”
She drew back and pretended to huff.
“Well too bad, because I’m not telling you.”
She winked, and it was like the signing of a sacred covenant.
“Love ya, Steve,” she ordained.
Steve chuckled and cast a glance to the side. Atza and Ozen were building long tables while David, Mark and the villagers carried over their plentiful banquet. Dad was waving from the window in his fragile way. Drake had come to rest on the ground, where Alex threw him a cooked porkchop. The aurora was faded, but its colours lingered like a welcome stranger.
Steve and Jennifer drew each other in for one last kiss, and they set off to enjoy whatever this new future might hold.
Epilogue:Warnado
“Stupid dimensional portals,” thought Warnado, tapping his foot. “Never open when you need them.”
He sat atop a huge pile of rocks beneath which the golems were buried. Crushed. Broken. Whatever word you wanted to use, these guys were out of commission.
At the foot of the rockpile, sat a nether portal, some small stones piled against and spilling into the obsidian ring. Warnado looked expectantly at it for a few second, then sighed. He reminded himself that he didn’t even technically know this portal led to Nexus. He’d just emerged right next to it so… y’know, it had to be this one, right?
His heart kept pounding as he thought about what was happening on the other side. The world hadn’t evaporated into an endless nightmare, so Freak didn’t seem to have won… yet. But he also didn’t know that the others had won. He didn’t know what had happened to Shadow, or Fire, or Lucy or her.
“I didn’t even get to say-”
He stopped his thoughts in their tracks and the spillover emerged as uncontrollable laughter. What a stupid thought? Stupid, dumb, stupid thought. Of course she was okay. She had to be. Just perfect. It was fine. Sure. He believed that.
He distracted himself by throwing a hearty kick at the broken gauntlet. Just before impact an aethereal armoured boot formed around his foot, and he sent the already mangled pile of brass and shattered crystal into the stratosphere.
He felt good for exactly a second before pain shot through his foot and he fell back and found himself sitting on a golem’s head. Suddenly he relived the moments before his expulsion in excruciating detail.
His power surging, the gauntlet shattering. Warnado had heard Tin-throne shrieking in his brain as he disintegrated. The whole time. Not fun. Then, his body freezing, doubling over as he shared the dying demon’s pain. Golems beating and blasting him. His form shattering, surging out in an explosion of demonfire! The roof crumbling…
Somehow, he had summoned another portal, just as inexplicable as the one he had entered Nexus through. And he had come through right there. Well, the golems came through first, then the rocks, then him. Right beside this stupid portal that he couldn’t open. And he had tried pretty hard. Somehow, after all his training and studying, he still couldn’t even identify the general vibe of the spell he had used. When he tried it was like the spell brandished a shotgun and told him to get off its property.
So, his only option now was to wait, and hope they’d won. Or that he could be called back in time to help. His stomach twisted as he thought about them fighting that nightmare. About not being there to help-
Flash! His head snapped toward the portal so hard he was surprised his neck didn’t snap. For a split-second the portal was active, filled with a blinding, solid, golden light. Then, it receded as quickly as it arrived. A lone figure stepped through, silhouetted in the glare.
Half-blinded by the flash, Warnado looked away, and as his eyes cleared, he saw the sky fill with a brilliant aurora. He got the vibe that this was a good sign. Hope filled him, his chest began to hurt, and a smile of impossible intensity began to spread across his face. He turned.
“You’re alive!” cried the hoarse, husky voice of Dinnerbone.
The smile stopped right at its apex, so wide Warnado could have sworn it was about to split his face in half. When he saw that Dinnerbone really did have no one with him, he halfway wanted it to.
“You have no idea how glad I am to see you little guy! I knew I still sensed you, but y’know everyone kept saying you’d exploded and died. I really started freaking out, probably some apology cards to be sending… But you’re here! The Prophecy can still happen! …Hooray!”
Dinnerbone’s speech became more halting as he spoke and Warnado had a few ideas why. The enormity of the moment? Sure. Shame about how he’d behaved while freaking out. Perhaps. However, by far the biggest on the list was probably the fact that, while his glowing red eyes had slowly drained of emotion, he couldn’t get rid of the smile.
They both got very quiet.
“Where’s Amanda?” he asked.
Dinnerbone swallowed.
“She thought you were dead. Got real torn up about it. I, uh, I probably didn’t help. Ended up going back with Astro’s crew, I think.”
Warnado’s smile began to spread again. Further than he’d ever felt it. Past the point of splitting his head in two. And he began to laugh. Loud. Too loud. He staggered forward, jumped, and then slid down the pile of rocks toward Dinnerbone. He recoiled.
“So, she’s okay, huh?” Warnado asked. “She, hahaha, she survived?”
“Yes.”
He felt his vision narrowing. He knew what was coming.
“Cool. That’s great. Amazing… Hah! Amazing-great-cool!” he patted the portal twice with his hand, “So why don’t you just open this bad boy back up? Then, I’ll, haha, step right through and get her.”
Dinnerbone didn’t say anything. Warnado summoned a taco into his hand and took a large, cartoony, almost animalistic bite out of it. He felt his jaw stretch further than he considered natural.
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
He doubled over, and awful pain shooting through his stomach, then his heart, then all of him.
“You should really go, Dinnerbone,” Warnado panted.
Dinnerbone seemed to falter for a moment. Then, with a look of resolve, he straightened his hat stepped forward.
“Come on kid, I can’t leave you like this. Let me take you to Jeb’s Kingdom, get you some food.”
Warnado’s fingers clenched so tight the obsidian began to bend underneath. He realised that he was scorching hot. Boiling even. Sweat cascading off every part of him.
“Don’t worry, I’ll go to stupid Notch Island,” he hissed. “Invite your friends - hah! - we’ll have a potluck! Hahahahaha!”
It all felt pretty funny all of a sudden. The girl he lost, then found again, then loved, stuck in a parallel world until he got his crap together and learned how to do a spell which seemed to actively hate him. And he hadn’t even told her that-
“Warnado127, I understand what you’re going through-”
“My dude, I really need to be alone right now! Don’t you have somewhere you should be busking?”
Warnado snapped his head around. Dinnerbone looked nervous again. He realised that Dinnberbone’s face was bathed in red light. Warnado’s eyes were like suns. Suns streaming with tears. Huh, weird, he hadn’t noticed.
Dinnerbone scrunched up his face and stepped forward again.
“Come on kid, let’s get you somewhere safe.”
Snap! Warnado saw sparks fly from his fingers as he did it. There were scorch marks on his palms. A pillar of lava appeared between he and Dinnerbone. The man with the ukulele jumped back.
“Go!” Warnado pleaded.
And so, he ran back towards the distant peaks of Jeb’s Kingdom.
Warnado held it in as long as he could, shaking with the effort, his teeth gritting, his eyes like spotlights on the ground. Then, the second Dinnerbone was out of sight, he threw his face to the sky. He screamed.
Demonfire erupted from within him, spread across the clearing. The grass, the trees, the flowers, all were destroyed. Under the molten purple flames, they all burned, buckled and fossilised in seconds. The obsidian ring and the pile of rocks and golems both shattered and were blown away. Glowing smears led away from Warnado to the East and West. And all the while, he wailed in grief and agony.
Then, finally, he stopped. His head fell, his throat hoarse from the abyssal screech. He saw that his robes had changed colour. No longer blue and silver, they were red and gold - no! - brass. His robes were highlighted in the colour of the gauntlet he had only just gotten rid of. Great.
Honestly, he felt pretty amazing. Like he’d cleared a blocked nose or popped his ears. His horns even felt a little longer when he reached up to check on them. He supposed he’d finally stabilised his demonic powers and felt pretty proud of himself.
He’d beaten Glibby, helped save the multiverse, and sorted out all his demon weirdness. It was a pretty good day. No! A great day! No! A fantastic one, the good day, the best day of his life! All aside from the part where… He felt the pain and the heat begin to swell up in him again, so he stopped thinking about that. He decided he wouldn’t think about that for a good long while, because, after all, otherwise, he felt completely, utterly amazing!
So, like any person who felt completely, utterly amazing, he sat down on the remains of the portal’s base, stared at the aurora in the sky, and didn’t do anything for a long, long time. The clouds moved. The aurora faded. The sun descended. The stars scattered themselves across the sky. Dawn broke. He didn’t even move his neck.
At some point, he heard the crunch of footsteps on dead forest, but didn’t look at it. It would have interrupted his busy schedule of sky-staring.
A guy stepped into his peripheral vision, marching forward as he intently stared at a cube whose six sides displayed various different images. He wore the robes of a wizard. He stopped, then looked around the clearing until his eyes settled on Warnado.
“Hey!” he called.
Warnado blinked, then looked down.
“Yeah?” he shouted back.
“Are you one of those Heroes of the Prophecy? The Dark Prophecy?”
Warnado rolled his eyes, then remembered he should probably be careful.
“Who wants to know?”
“Just me.”
Warnado shrugged. Carefulness was overrated.
“Yeah, I am.”
“Cool!” he said. “Big fan of your work, or at least, what you’re gonna do!”
“Thanks!”
Neither of them said anything. Warnado looked back up at the sky. Frowning, obviously having expected conversation to come more easily to him, the wizard guy called out again.
“Is there any way I can help you?”
Warnado didn’t respond. His mind kept wandering to the dream of Amanda, and he kept having to drag it back to reality.
The wizard guy huffed, then stooped. He brushed a finger against the ground. He licked the dust off it.
“Hm… demonfire. You know, I have a pretty decent recipe for a demon arm lying around back at the hut.”
Warnado’s eyes lit up. He arose. A wide, energised grin had spread across his face.
“I’m listening.”
Epilogue:Astro
Snow crunches beneath my feet, I cannot see far in front of me, and the winds shriek still, but there is a desperation to it. A finality. This is a dying storm. I clench my fingers and find that I still have a hold of Amanda’s shoulder. She is caught completely off-guard by the cold and hunches over reflexively. I curse, realising I also haven’t properly equipped myself.
With a snap of my fingers a rune appears on the ground, and for a small radius everything becomes tolerably warm. The snow beneath us slowly starts to lose its ice-packed solidity. Amanda stomps and drags her feet as though wiping them on a doormat. I rub my shoulders and crane my head to examine her.
“Where is everyone?” she asks before I can glean anything useful.
I cast my eyes off into the storm. The swirling white flakes and fog
“Not sure,” I mutter.
I enhance my vision and strain further. In the distance I am able to discern a shifting mass which might be a column of marching men. I frown, then check my last storage ring. Capacity is still reasonably high, though it will take much longer to recharge. At the very least, it will stave off the ravages magic has inflicted and will continue to inflict upon my body.
“Out that way,” I point. “I think. We might wait a moment, though, I can feel the storm subsiding.”
“Cool,” she says faintly.
Her eyes are fixed on the stiletto knife Rose threw to her, and her fingers twist it precisely.
“I don’t know if I’m going crazy or not,” she says, “But I think she threw the original knife. Not a duplicate or anything.”
“Hm…” I lean forward, “You might be right.”
I use a simple analysis spell. I learn nothing.
“Sorry,” I grimace.
I crane my head again and try to get a good look at her features. She is sombre. Understandably. Suddenly, she looks up and makes eye contact with me. I feel as though I’ve been caught doing something terrible and look away.
“It’s not your fault,” Amanda says. “I should have been paying more attention. It’s a little late to ask her now.”
I swallow and scan the winds again. I can now see the mass of people more clearly. At their head I see a pair of glowing white eyes. I begin to hear a distant sound: the men are singing. I can’t make
“Nonsense, I’m sorry if all this was a little abrupt. I don’t think any of us planned for this. How are you feeling?”
Amanda rolls her shoulders into a hunch again.
“I miss him already, but that’s not going to change anything.”
I think on Warnado’s constant joking, his playful arrogance, his magically-enabled comfort eating. He never liked me much but…
“I miss him too.”
I back away, and a morsel of the song is carried to me. It arcs along the wind, then caresses my ear like a lost love.
…It’s but the turning of the weather.
The Spring breeze leads me home…
I smile as I remember the tune.
“Oh, that’s a lovely old one,” I chuckle. “We used to sing that in Zine. Gracey of all people gave a great rendition. I still remember one evening-”
I turn to Amanda. She’ smiling politely, but there’s a tear running down her cheek. I kneel down and draw her in. She hugs me back. We don’t say anything for a while. The singing draws nearer, becomes a constant murmur. I can see the Watcher’s white eyes blazing more clearly. I let go of her and stand up.
“Alright,” I say. “A song like that demands better weather.”
I stand up, rubbing my hands together, a grin stampeding across my face. Amanda straightens up and begins to walk off beyond the bounds of the warming spell. I grab stop her.
“Oh, are we not going to join them?”
I scrunch the corners of my mouth downwards. I feel the magic building up inside me.
“In a second. Like I said, we need better weather.”
She squints and for a second my newfound energy infects her too, sending a smile pulsing across her face.
I raise my hands, and there is a release. A pulse goes out, driving the storm away as it goes. The snow is uncovered. It glistens in the sunlight, but also with other colours. The parting of the clouds reveals a brilliant aurora of countless colours.
“Woah,” Amanda says. “Did you do that as well?”
I remember where I first saw the aurora. Back on the border of the Vanilla Craft. Kay had come back, missing his obsidian-plated armour, saying he’d been robbed. The day he announced his intention to retire… I think I understand that choice a little better now. At least he tried. I suppress the pain and maintain a confused frown for Amanda’s benefit.
“No,” I stroke my chin and lean back. “That’s Shadow I think… Nexus had a lot of energy tied up in it. A million magical undercurrents all tied up together. So, when Shadow tore that up, I guess it all just got released.”
“You just made that up.”
“Pretty much.”
We laugh.
I look back to where I’d previously seen the vague mass. Now, it is there, in brilliant detail.
The Vanillans make their long trek back towards the grey walls of the Old Craft. Legionnaires carry shields by straps. Vangaardians hold their heads high. Arcationites and Brotherhood acolytes exchange great boasts of war. And there are Blackshells, and Legionnaires, and Gaians and so many others. Content in their battered glory, returning from war to the distant promise of peace. I see my guild. Aaron begins to jump and wave. Herobrine stops to demurely nod. With him, the procession halts. They await our arrival.
I raise my hand in acknowledgement and take Amanda by the arm. We begin to march towards them.
“What do we do, once we get there?” Amanda asks.
“You know,” I start. “I don’t really know. My banishment is over. Herobrine indicated he might have a use for me at the True Court, though I can’t imagine Jeb will agree. Jeb was not happy about Herobrine joining us, and I don’t imagine he’s happy with me for helping to persuade him. Of course, there’s always Cossack and the Gaians, I should be welcome to any post I want in his government.”
“Oh,” she halfway groans.
I look down at her and smile.
“I agree. Saying it out loud it all sounds a little ‘tribal’ to me. I had also thought of setting out to see the world again. Travelling for a while with the Guild. Would you like to join me?”
I see a distant hope flicker in her eyes. She allows herself to smile.
“I think I would.”
I smile and squeeze her against me. The Guild are approaching us now. Aaron, Tass, Secret, and the others. I remember the relief of our reunion on the Fields. Even in such darkness as the aftermath of the coup, just seeing them again had brought so much joy. I break away from Amanda and suddenly kneel, making a show of adjusting my boot.
“Go on ahead. Best you start meeting our travelling companions properly.”
She smirks as she detects the lie in my tone but heads on with a shake of her head. I spare a glance at the aurora and close my eyes.
I feel the energy coalesce in my hand, then open them once again. A golden ray, identical to the ones from Shadow’s portals rises from my palm. Not enough to make a functional portal, but a starting point from which to reconstruct the spell. The first thread in a tapestry.
I clench my fist shut and vow that, one day, I will have it working again. And then, perhaps, if the universe is willing to grant us one more miracle and preserve Warnado’s life, I can give her that same gift of reunion.
Amanda is already trapped beneath an avalanche of conversation from Tass and Aaron. Mo and Secret are jeering at me to hurry up. I glance over my shoulder, back across the frigid tomb of Acrisius, and I thank the fallen for bringing us this far. The fallen of Nexus, and of my own world. Fristad, Destiny, David, Mini, Bokane… Kay. I thank you all. I forgive what I can.
Then, I move on. A new journey begins, unburdened by the old.
Epilogue:Tyron
Tyron saw the infinite possibilities of creation rattling by. Worlds teaming with life, conveying beauteous abundance forever. Worlds absent of life, sublime in their still, unseen vistas. Worlds with something rather like life but didn’t quite seem to quite qualify in his eyes. He found himself laughing as he passed by a particular nearby world full of moving polyhedrons made of a variety of stone he didn’t recognise.
“So weird,” he thought to Kir.
“So bigoted,” the sword huffed, though he could tell it wasn’t too mad.
And then, finally, they neared his own world. Where Rathina awaited. Where Seth awaited. The dragons. Everything he loved. He saw himself reflected endlessly, as though in a hall of mirrors. The variations were slight at first, then spiralled into unrecognizability. Here, he had red fur. There, he taught in a school for promising heroes. Then, he worked at a coffee shop, still a teacher, somehow. Then, sitting at a laptop in hoodie and sweatpants, scrolling through pages upon pages of stories about a stranger rather like himself. The symphony of creation, ever-spreading, ineffable in its results.
He spun out into his own world, balletically regaining his balance. It was the same range of hills he had emerged into a few weeks prior. Same sharp, blocky features. In other words, the same familiar beauty. Seth came up and he hugged him tightly. The brown-haired builder staggered away in the aftermath of the Dragoknight’s grip.
He laughed out some parting words and a promise to see Tyron again soon as he gathered his things and set out for a temporary shelter he had built on a nearby hill. A temporary shelter which was already transforming into a lavish villa.
The dragons swept by in low, ordered formation: a sign of respect. Glowstar was at their head. Tyron saw him nod and smirk in the split-second he passed near enough to see. And on they went, out toward the horizon. Some destined for the End. Some for the stars. Some for deep caves packed with gold and jewels. Free and fair and fanciful. Just as he had fought for.
He heard the crunch of a furtive footstep on grass behind him but did not turn. He smiled uncontrollably, knowing well who it would be. Rathina, his other half. The best girl he ever could have met. He felt her hand on his shoulder, and she pulled him. He closed his eyes.
As he felt his body swing around, Tyron took a moment to think on his time in Nexus. It had been a time of despair. A time where he had feared that all this world had been destroyed. A time when he had worried what the Entity might achieve. What Freak might achieve. Kay. Shadow. The Book.
And yet it had also been a joyous time. So many friends he would never otherwise have known. Astro with his perpetual snark. Kay’s oscillation between cruel, vapid grandeur and disarming sincerity. Fire’s sturdy, calm leadership. Warnado’s mere existence. Lucy being unreasonably nice all the time. Steve, Jennifer, Destiny, David, Urist, Voidblade, Amanda, Fristad, and so many others.
These names, these faces, these people, would live eternal in his heart. But their time together was done. The spinning stopped. He opened his eyes.
Dark hair. Chestnut eyes. The smirk still unbroken. He kissed her, and after a blissful eternity, they drew apart.
“So,” she said. “How about it, then?”
“Hm?” He pressed, eyes glowing with warmth.
“The plains biome? The little farm? Giving away bread for free? Still down for it, or do you still have that wanderlust?”
Tyron looked back in the direction he knew civilization was in. Seth’s nascent villa, with a minecart track leading back somewhere populous. Then his head involuntarily turned, out toward the cold, stark peaks of a snow-capped mountain range. The sun drifted down towards it, rendering it in less and less detail as it went, but only increasing its mythic allure.
He cast an eye down at Kir, his smile creeping outwards. After a brief communion, he cocked an eyebrow at Rathina.
“Maybe one last adventure, to tide us over?”
She brushed a hand down his arm.
“I’m happy with whatever we do. So long as we do it together.”
She took a firmer grip.
“That okay with you?” She asked.
He leaned in and kissed her again. Soft, sweet, and endless. Then, at the end of endlessness, he took her by the hand, and they set off into infinity.
Epilogue:Fire
The minutes after the return to the server hadn’t been quite as chaotic as one might assume. By far the biggest uncertainty was what would happen to the linked Mencur-Besh, but that resolved itself quickly after their emergence on the forest clearing. At first the bodies of the individuals simply stood there like statues, but one by one they opened their eyes and returned to normality. At least that was what it looked like from the outside. Fire of course knew what was really happening, the collective had to decide which minds to put into bodies and which ones would have to be left to die.
Of course, death had a different meaning to a Mencur-Besh than it did to a human. When a Mencur-Besh died, all knowledge and skill amassed over its lifetime would fuse into the collective, making it available to all other Mencur-Besh. On rare occasions a mind would be kept around to be put into a new body, for example if it held a strategically important position in human society. With over two thirds of the Mencur-Besh population dead, body transfers were the norm instead of the exception.
Fire looked around the clearing, he spotted far fewer of the Eye-and-Claws operatives than what they had begun with, but as opposed to the Mencur-Besh, who were limited by their bodies, most Eye-and-Claws were players who could respawn now that Shadow allowed them to return home.
Off near the edges of the clearing Fire could spot Andras and Brad, who had made it out of the entire ordeal alive. They were in the process of organizing what little resources they had managed to retrieve from Nexus.
Right next to Fire were Lucy and Dr. Mercury, who were in the process of regaining their bearings.
Dr. Mercury spoke first: “So, where are we now?”
Fire explained: “This is my ‘second’ world, the so-called server. It generally operates by rules you are familiar with. Blocks, mobs, things like that. Though I assume this world was not what Shadow had in mind when she offered to take you to our world.”
Dr. Mercury simply nodded, then began fiddling with a handheld scanner, most likely curious whether it would still function.
Lucy pointed off into the distance where shimmering, black city walls were visible. “What’s that over there?”
“That’s Rockhaven, it would be this world’s capital, but this world is too sparsely populated for things like that to make sense.”
Lucy smiled. “Back in my world, I lived in the capital. Would it be possible for me to find a home here too?”
Fire thought for a moment. “If you want to stay on the server instead of the other world, that can be arranged.”
Now it was Lucy’s turn to contemplate.
After a minute of thinking she said: “I think for the time being I prefer this world, it plays by familiar rules at least. Do you think I could cross over later if I wanted to?”
Fire shrugged. “Most likely, but we’ll know that for certain once Shadow is back. But since you’ll be staying here for the time being, mind giving me your hand?”
Lucy’s eyes lit up. “Does that mean I’ll be an Eye-and-Claws member? Andras told me about the mark they have to identify each other.”
“Just hold still, this will sting for a moment.”
Fire knelt down and firmly grasped Lucy’s hand and pointed his index finger at its back. A faint glow began emitting from Fire’s finger, and once it made contact with Lucy’s skin there was a flash of red. Lucy flinched but otherwise didn’t react. On the back of Lucy’s hand was now a stylized red eye with lines like scratch marks behind it. The eye blinked once, then faded into Lucy’s skin.
Lucy giggled with excitement. “That’s quite a cool symbol.”
Dr. Mercury asked: “I assume I don’t need a mark?”
Fire nodded: “Correct, it only works in this world.”
Just as he finished speaking, the fabric of reality ahead of Fire split apart and from the gap, his sister materialized. He wordlessly hugged her, glad that she was here now too. But something was different about her, though in a good way.
Fire asked: “Entity’s dead I assume?”
To Fire’s side Dr. Mercury flinched. “I completely forgot about that. We almost dropped the ball on saving the multiverse.”
Shadow smirked and said: “Dead is an understatement after what I did to it.”
“Glad you made it back, Shadow.” Lucy said and promptly joined the hug.
After they separated, Fire informed his sister: “Things seem to be under control, and it looks like Lucy wants to go to Rockhaven.”
Shadow nodded. “Good choice, safest place on the server. Unless you go into politics that is, then I can’t guarantee for anything.”
Lucy laughed. “No plans of doing that.” She paused. “So, how do I get into the city? I assume I can’t just walk in.”
Shadow said: “That’s easy, just ask around among the Eye-and-Claws, several of them are from Rockhaven, they can get you into the city. From there, just look around and join a guild if one catches your fancy.”
Lucy nodded. “Alright, I’ll do that. Don’t want to keep Veronica waiting on her own departure. And Fire, Shadow, thanks for everything.”
Fire replied: “It was a pleasure having you around, Lucy.”
And with that Lucy walked away, going in the direction of Brad and Andras, the two Eye-and-Claws most familiar to her. Fire looked between Shadow and Dr. Mercury.
“Alright, Shadow. How exactly did you want to go about getting Veronica over to our world?”
Shadow replied: “That’s easy. I already created a body for her in one of our guest rooms-”
Dr. Mercury interrupted: “You can just do that?”
Shadow smiled. “Apparently, I’m still figuring out the limits myself. There is no other good way of getting you there. If I created a portal for you to go through, you’d end up paralysed or dead due to the crystal you put in your spine. No magic in our world to keep it working.”
Dr. Mercury raised a finger to the height of her face. “That’s a good point. But how do I get into that other body?”
“Ideally it should be as simple as opening your menu and logging out. You should know how to do that since the server automatically instils that knowledge.”
Dr. Mercury replied: “So like thi-”
She disappeared before she could finish speaking. That most likely meant it worked.
Fire said: “So, Shadow. It seems you learned a thing or two in the meantime.”
“You could say that. There are somethings we need to talk about, but not here.”
Without further words, both Fire and Shadow logged out as well.
###
Peter opened his eyes, stood up and stretched. The cut on his chin from Kay’s home invasion ached slightly, but the pain faded once he acclimatized to his human body.
He stepped out of his room and was immediately met with his sister. Even here in this world, something was visibly different, though it was very possible that he was the only one able to notice the difference.
Shadow said: “I already checked on Veronica. She’s asleep in the next room over, seems like the new body needs some rest to properly accept her mind.” She added after a small pause: “It also seems like some of my abilities are bleeding over to this world, this body feels far less dull and restrictive than before.”
They began walking down the corridor slowly.
Peter mused: “I’ll have to dig up some old contacts. I think the guy who helped Peter Miller disappear in favour of Peter Graves should still be around. He’ll be able to get her a passport and any other required documents. The doctorate probably won’t make it, but I’m sure she’ll earn another one in no time. Maybe multiple, who knows?”
The Graves siblings continued walking forward wordlessly, eventually reaching the staircase to the entrance hall. They sat down on the steps.
Shadow said: “So, those things I wanted to talk about. Have you ever felt the same way you felt right when I returned from the lab before?”
Peter had expected something along those lines. That particular feeling had struck him as odd as well, in hindsight.
“No, never. I felt hopeless or helpless before, but never quite like that. Never quite that hollow. Have you felt that too at some point?”
Shadow nodded. “When I found out that Claw took over, I almost lost myself to the Void due to that feeling.”
Peter asked: “You think it has something to do with the strings?”
“I feel like that would make sense. You saw them through the Entity’s memory. I saw them when… I ascended again. I suppose that would make me double ascended, but we can find a proper word for it later if we need to. As for my strings, I cut them before I killed the Entity.”
Peter sighed. “While I still have mine. And I have this feeling that the only one capable of cutting them is myself.”
Shadow leaned against his side.
She asked: “Something else. I feel like I want to become better at the whole… people thing. Nexus and the Shelter made me realize just how bad things can get, and if I want to help, I have to be able to understand.” She paused. “We should go across the border at some point soon, I need to see the situation with my own eyes.”
That seemed like a good idea, in fact he had wanted to go himself for quite some time. He was in a position to help, seeing that he was sitting on the Graves family fortune. He now needed to see how and where to put it to use. But as always, there were many steps between then and now, all needing to be meticulously planned out, but fortunately he was good at that.
After a few minutes of silence, Shadow asked: “What was with Claw by the way? He seemed less antagonistic, judging by how he didn’t attack us.”
“I got him to realize that he’s better off working with me than against me. I do plan on getting him out of my head eventually, and if he stands to benefit from that too then it’s all the better.”
Shadow said: “Glad that worked.”
Peter hesitated, he was about to ask something of his sister that she definitely would not like.
He said: “Shadow, I need you to give me a heart attack.”
“What?”
He took a deep breath. “This journey has broadened our horizons significantly, we know about other worlds, and I believe we are beginning to understand our own a bit better. The issue is that we absolutely cannot disclose any of this to my scientist friends, not without seriously stirring something up. During my conversation with Claw, I also realized that he is now developed enough that he could possibly stay in control indefinitely. He probably knows this too, but I don’t think he would want that. Claw wants to be his own person, separate from me. Taking my body would not achieve that.”
Shadow said: “Yes, but what does that have to do with me giving you a heart attack?”
“Claw is brought out by emotions. The scientists can use their technology to suppress my emotions until I find a way to get Claw out of my head. I cannot tell them about Claw’s development without mentioning our trip out of this world. Two thirds of the Mencur-Besh disappearing probably creates enough questions already.”
Shadow buried her face in her hands. “A heart attack allegedly induced by emotional stress would be a good reason for them to listen to your request for emotion suppression. I don’t like this one bit, but… at least you’re not infiltrating the Tower again.”
Of course, Peter did not like the plan either, but it seemed like the best way of guaranteeing the outcome.
He said: “So, we go about it like this…”
###
After explaining the plan to Shadow, they both got into a car and drove out into the night, down the long, winding forest road that connected the Graves Manor to the rest of civilization. Once they had left the mountains behind, they soon reached a larger road, and from there it was just a short drive on the highway until they reached the clinic located in the suburbs. Peter knew this particular clinic to be very reliable. They parked a short distance away in an alley adjacent to the clinic’s parking lot.
Peter undid his seatbelt and opened the door, then took a deep breath. “Alright, ready.”
Shadow looked at him uneasily, then counted down from three. When Shadow’s count hit zero the effects were immediate, a squeezing pain shot through Peter’s chest. He began making his way over the parking lot, about halfway he broke out into a cold sweat. Breathing heavily, he pushed open the clinic’s doors. The receptionist immediately looked at him with alarm.
Peter squeezed out between two breaths: “I think I’m having a heart attack.”
He then did the only bit of acting this plan required and stumbled over his own feet but caught himself before hitting the ground. Through half-closed eyelids watched as he was approached by hastily called nurses before true unconsciousness took him.
###
When Peter opened his eyes again, he was not in the clinic. He instead sat on the familiar wooden bench in the infinite black room. Next to him sat the Lady of Dreams, as she always did. Since Peter had entered the dream as a human instead of a Mencur-Besh, their usual size difference was no more, leaving them at almost the same height. Though as opposed to her usual calm demeanour, her light-grey eyes were overflowing with happiness when she turned to Peter.
“Peter!” She called out.
He chuckled. “Hello, my Lady. Good to see you again.”
The Lady said: “I’m so glad that you’re alive, that everything turned out fine. I don’t know what I would have done if I lost you.”
Peter opened his mind, thoughts flowed freely. He showed the Lady everything he had seen and experienced in the assault on the Tower and what happened afterwards.
The last few memories made the smile fade from the Lady’s face.
“Peter, I’m so sorry. I know it must be hard for you, making such decisions, especially at your own cost.”
Peter simply smiled. “It’s what I’ve always done. My life has been a long string of hard decisions, starting with deciding to keep going for Shadow’s sake after losing all of my friends.”
He thought back to his earlier years, before the server, before the scientists even. Then to the recent events, his initial group in Nexus, their bigger group after the jailbreak, and finally the Shelter.
He said: “I am just glad that you were there for me throughout all those years, my Lady. But with what comes next, we won’t be able to see each other for a long while. No emotions, no dreams.”
The Lady was silent. She knew the implications better than anyone, Peter didn’t have to say it out loud, but for some reason he felt like he needed to. As if by an invisible agreement, they each put an arm around the other. They remained this way until Peter felt himself begin to drift away from his dream and back to consciousness.
The Lady said: “This may not be our last meeting before you relinquish your emotions, but if it is… No matter how long it takes, I will wait for you.”
Just before he awoke, Peter replied: “So will I.”
The serenity of the dream faded, and Peter found himself greeted by a dull pain in his chest. He was in a hospital bed and there were several people standing around him. Two nurses, one doctor, and Anna, one of the scientists. Off to the side he could hear the door swinging closed as another person entered the room.
Peter deferred the question he was asked to the doctor, then turned his focus inwards. He needed to forge a plan, perhaps his riskiest and most uncertain plan yet, a plan that if it succeeded would shake up the foundations of their world.
Epilogue:Destiny
The moon loomed high overhead, casting light everywhere. But as she walked away from the village, and into the dark, heavy-canopied forest, that didn't help Vera a great deal. The only light she had to guide her was the distant glow of redstone torches.
That was all Clarke had said. Follow the redstone trail and she could find out why she had to go out instead of sleeping through the night. Not that she minded too much. The distant groans of zombies, the inviting rattle of skeletons, and the scuttling shrieks of spiders promised the night might hold some fun after all.
She stopped beneath a towering brown mushroom, adjusting her blonde ponytail. and smirked as she equipped her flint-and-steel in one hand, and an ender pearl in the other. It would be nice to have an excuse to use her powers without one of the village elders getting mad at her.
"Stupid Yenthric," she muttered. "You burn one prized bookshelf…"
Vera wound back for a throw of the pearl, close her eyes, then let it loose. She felt the adrenaline rush through her and tried to follow the pearl's flight into the dark. She pulled out her shield, then started to run into the forest at full pelt.
"Three. Two. One…"
Crack! The pearl shattered and she immediately stopped running, instead summoning ice beneath her feet and sliding straight through the forest. Mobs swarmed from every side. Zombies lunged, skeletons fired arrows, creepers turned and began to flash. And she left every single one in her dust as she skidded from one redstone torch to the other.
Avoiding the mobs had become so natural to her that it almost had a weird meditative quality for her. Exactly what she needed after a pretty mundane day of tending crops, helping out at the forge, studying history…
If she had to hear about the war between the Third Legion and the Sovereign one more time, she would actually lose it. If she wanted to learn about that she'd just get the juicy stuff from Kami or Clarke when they visited on patrol. She did not need to know about Martin's disastrous economic policy.
She came too close to a river and had to jump over it. One of the drowned surfaced and hurled a trident at her. She twisted in the air to avoid, then with a strike of the flint and steel sent a fireball flying back. The waterbound zombie perished in a spurt of steam.
She kept moving from redstone torch to redstone torch until, finally, she arrived at the end of the trail. She left the forest and came to desert, where a redstone torch stood atop a sandstone pillar. A boy her age was waiting there, with round-rimmed glasses, curly black hair, and a surprising wide jaw. He grinned as he saw her.
"Hey Vera!" he waved exuberantly.
He noticed a spider crawling towards them over the dunes and drew his trident. He tossed the weapon leisurely into the air and it plummeted sharply onto the spider's head, followed shortly by a bolt of green lightning. He folded his arms and look impressed with himself.
"You've been practicing, Gareth," smirked Vera. "Maybe next time your village will stand a chance at the tournament."
"Oh, please no more!" He clutched his chest. "My poor heart just can't take your cutting sarcasm, Gwynevere."
Vera snorted at the use of her full name, then punched Gareth in the arm. He was from the next village over. Both of them had shown up at the same time. Just appeared out of nowhere about three years prior.
It was hard not to like someone when you shared a similarity that big, but it was also hard not to compete with them, too. And that they had, every year at the tournament of the eight villages.
"So, Clarke called you out too, huh? And here I was starting to think I was his favourite."
"You might still be, Kami invited me."
"She say what this is about?"
"Just that we'll learn our purpose in coming here."
Vera rolled her eyes.
"Why do they always have to be so vague? 'Come out here so we can tell you why we invited you out to the woods.' Yeah, I want a little more than that, Clarke."
Gareth looked at her like she was from the Moon and pushed the glasses down his nose to look over them.
"Vera, he was talking about our purpose. Like why we woke up in the forest."
Vera clasped a hand to her mouth. Even in the light of the redstone, it was clear that her cheeks were going crimson. Gareth started to laugh, and Vera started too.
"Oh my Notch," Vera strained. "I can't believe I didn't get that, I'm so stupid."
Gareth shrugged.
"Happens to us all sometimes."
He grinned again. Suddenly, they didn't have anything to say. Suddenly Gareth's eyes became fixed on the single lock of speckled grey in an otherwise completely blonde head of hair. It had come loose. He reached out and brushed it with his hand. Their eyes locked. Vera realised how close together they'd gotten in the course of the conversation.
"Alright kiddos!" Clarke called, fiddling with his shield.
"Sorry we're late!" Added Kami.
The two friendly Legionaries approached through the woods. But they weren't alone. A third figure. A stern, weapon-covered woman with greying black hair stood between them. Vera immediately realised this was Lupe, the seldom-seen leader of the Remaining. Vera had never met her before, and only rarely heard her name, but she somehow felt as though they had known each other a very long time.
Vera and Gareth bowed to the Legionaries, and Lupe began to speak.
"Right, I'll keep this quick. The world is changing. You've heard the rumours. Stories of cities rising out of the End, of strange manors built in the forests, villagers who lose their minds as their skin turns grey, undead flocking around an ancient desert overlord. Wars are starting, cities are being sacked. It's gotten so bad that some even say the bedrock beneath our feet is shifting deeper to get away from all the chaos up here. So far, we've been able to keep the eight villages safe from Illager raids, but I'm not sure we'll be able to keep that going much longer."
Lupe began to walk. Vera strained her eyes and made out the faint outline of a ruined village. She'd heard the wandering traders talk about it, and seen it mentioned in the history books: Sandshard.
"You see," Lupe continued, "The Illagers now have a leader. Or maybe they always did. We've gotten conflicting reports. Whoever he is, this Arch-Illager is now making moves. And, unfortunately, those moves are in our direction."
There was a clang as Gareth knocked his foot off the head of a dead golem, half-swallowed by sand. Lupe gave him a disapproving look and he limped nervously along. Kami patted him comfortingly on the shoulder, and Vera realised that she and Clarke had begun to flank them, as though they were worried they might run off… or someone might try to get the jump on them.
"And suffice it to say, while they have an army, there are only three of us left. And we're still good, the best probably," Vera shot a sceptical look at Clarke who confirmed it with a smug nod that make her smile, "We fought Herobrine for Carter and Anya, in their memory we helped David and Destiny take out the Second Sovereign, in their memory we helped win the Battle of Nexus… but we're getting old. We need a new Legion. A Fourth Legion."
They stopped outside an old hut, made of wood and mossy cobblestone. Sand had begun to pile up around the door, and part of the roof had caved in. The door was weathered and decayed. Still, in the light of the torch, Vera could make out a symbol: a diamond with the word "Legion" carved into it. She and Gareth stared at it like an old acquaintance whose name they couldn't quite remember until Lupe cut in:
"This is the part where you say, 'Where do we come in?'"
"Where do we-"
"Where do we-"
Vera and Gareth stopped, then after a moment of silent gesturing, Vera asked the question:
"What do you need us to do?"
The Remaining had kept them all safe for years. Of course, they'd help out.
Lupe smiled.
"Go into the hut."
The two stepped forward. Gareth pushed the door open with his trident. He looked in. On the other side, the floor had fallen away, revealing a cave filled with water.
"Looks like a pretty steep drop," he remarked. "Granted, water at the bottom. What's in there?"
"You'll know it when you see it," said Lupe with surprising nostalgia.
With that, Gareth shrugged, spread his arms and flopped forward. Vera laughed and jumped in afterwards.
They landed in the water, and down a tunnel, saw a new line of redstone lights. They swam in slow silence, every gulp of air bouncing off the walls and water a million times.
Finally, they came to a small, circular chamber, with a stone table lit by glowstone. There was a waterfall at the far end. It was pretty clear that something was on the other side, but the table called to them.
They waded up to it and looked at each other as its contents became clear. The table had two piles of objects, one at each end. Weapons, books, articles of clothing. Vera found herself drawn to the one at the far right, and Gareth to the one on the left. Her pile was crowned by a weathered bow. His had a broken gauntlet at the foot of it.
"So, do you reckon this is the thing we're supposed to know when we see it?" he asked.
"Yeah, probably… Do you think they wanted just one item, or the whole pile?"
"Might be good to take the whole pile just to be safe," Gareth muttered. "Hope this isn't a secret armoury, a lot of this stuff looks completely ruined. Shame, that gauntlet probably would have been pretty cool back in its day."
He pulled out a bag from his jacket and began to pile items into it. Vera looked at her pile and couldn't take her eyes off the bow.
"I don't know, this bow still looks pretty good."
She touched a hand to it, hoping to test the string. It quivered reliably as ever.
"It's at times like that, I really wish I was any good with a bow," said Vera.
She slung it over her back and turned around and came face to face with a pale, almost transparent face.
"That can be arranged."
Vera screamed and jumped back, pulling out her flint and steel. Gareth leapt into action, pulling out his trident and grabbing a sword. It had a leather handle and a faded gold centrepiece.
"What is it?" he asked.
Vera scowled at Gareth and gestured to the figure who had now appeared. A pale young woman, only slightly older than herself, wearing her brown hair back in a ponytail, and dressing in a grey tank-top and jeans.
"I don't see it, is it a bat or something?" Gareth asked, clueless.
Vera scoffed.
"No, the intruder girl who just jumpscared me!"
Gareth continued to stare blankly, clearly weighing his words in the hopes of not getting hit.
"Yeah, he can't see me, yet," sighed the girl. "Could you please tell him to pick up that gauntlet."
Vera looked back to the table and saw it glinting in the light of the glowstone.
"You seriously can't see her?"
Another examination of the pale young woman revealed she was slightly see-through. Or was it just a trick of the light. She began to rummage around in her pocket.
"No, sorry Vera," said Gareth, now clearly weirded out. "You didn't hit your head in the fall, did you? I've got a health potion on me if you need it?"
"No," Vera said. "I don't think so."
She pulled out a stone and threw it at the pale woman. It passed right through. The pale clenched her fists and assumed a fighting stance.
"You are so lucky I'm dead," said the pale young woman. "Or I would be beating the ever-loving crap out of you right now."
"Okay," Vera said. "Apparently, I've summoned a ghost. Good to know those exist."
Gareth started stroking his chin.
"A ghost?"
"Yep."
"Nope," interjected the pale woman.
Gareth, not hearing her, continued: "Is that why we're here?"
"Huh?"
"To summon the ghost? Maybe it knows something."
The pale lady groaned.
"I'm not a ghost, I'm you." She pointed straight at Vera. "First, I was Anya, then I was me, now I guess me is you… Vera? Yeah, he definitely said Vera. Pleased to meet myself. Tell your buddy to grab the gauntlet."
Vera's mouth opened but no words came out. Gareth started speaking again but Vera shushed him.
"Sorry, did you say Anya?"
The pale woman clenched her teeth and started to tap her foot. She kept looking at the pile with the gauntlet.
"Yes, yes, the leader of the Liberators, I just-"
"Then, does that make you-"
"-Yes, Destiny, who helped stop Martin and later killed the Entity. I teamed up with Freak, got stuck in the Void and then the Entity possessed me before someone, presumably Shadow, shoved me back into this world. That's why I'm a little more transparent than Anya was, and probably where you got that weird lock of grey hair-"
Vera snarled and jutted her head forward in confrontation.
"I like the grey lock."
"Okay but-"
"Clarke says it makes me look wise."
"In that case I was just joking, but please kid just hear me out!"
Destiny was now pleading, crying out for help. Her eyes were desperate. Suddenly Vera saw herself in the stranger's face. Gareth continued to look back and forth between Vera and the empty air. Vera drew back and nodded.
"The fact that I'm back means there's a new evil to beat. And I'm sorry kid, but it's down to you to help stop it."
Destiny stepped forward and pressed her intangible hands against Vera's shoulders.
"I thought this was a curse at first, but to be perfectly honest, I was in a pretty bad spot emotionally at the time. It's not a curse, it's not a blessing, it's exactly what we make of it. And I know this is a lot of pressure, and that you're confused, and scared, and isolated, but I will help guide you through this. Any question you have, I will answer. Does that sound good?"
Destiny had tears in her eyes. Vera, feeling as though she had been struck by lightning, nodded.
"Then I just need you to do one thing for me. A thing I have been waiting twenty years for. Please, ask your pal to pick up that gauntlet."
Vera walked over to the table. Gareth followed. Their footsteps echoed endlessly. Vera picked up the gauntlet and held the cold piece of broken metal out to Gareth.
"Take it."
"Is it safe?"
They locked eyes.
"Trust me."
He placed a hand on the gauntlet and immediately his eyes widened as he saw the ghostly Destiny. However, the pale apparition wasn't looking at them. She had her head turned to the figure beside her.
A man in a blue trenchcoat and a leather chestplate appeared, much more tangible than Destiny. If she hadn't known he was a ghost, Vera would have mistaken him for a real person. His hair was dark and messy, with stubble speckling his chin. He looked tearfully at Destiny, a smile creeping across his face.
"Hello David," said Destiny.
She wiped her cheek. He reached out and touched her arm.
"Hello Destiny," said David.
She wrapped an arm around his neck. He leaned in. Their lips touched, and they collapsed into one another.
Vera realised she had taken Gareth's hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. She looked at the two lovestruck ghosts and marvelled at how this had come about. A magnetism across lives? An instinct across ages? A scene ever-imitated?
Whatever grand narrative had guided her there, she was happy to be part of it.
Assuming you're new to the story, welcome to THE CONVERGENCE! This story is a collaborative project run by myself, SuperFire131, Asanetargoss and several other authors. Inspired by the sadly failed RIFT project, we started THE CONVERGENCE up back in 2015 in the hopes of bringing the characters of our various stories together in a unique, new context which reveals new aspects of their character. We see a Fire from long before the events of "Slaves of the Desert Mine", a Fristad lost somewhere in the middle of "The Book of Dreams", a Tyron from long after the events of "Cubic Fire" and many other beloved Minefic characters. I recommend checking out Book 1 and Book 2 if you want to understand all the nuances of what's going on, but don't worry, we've provided a handy-dandy character sheet below, and have written the opening chapters with a new reader in mind.
Anyway, I'm rambling. We've had an absolute blast bouncing all these different characters off each other and we hope you have just as much fun reading their triumphs and tragedies. Now, we hope you enjoy:
THE CONVERGENCE
Book 3: Twisted Paths
The Story So Far
A group of heroes has emerged to finally contest the Entity and its captains. Initially a disparate group of stragglers who found themselves in Nexus through little agency of their own, they have defied the Entity twice now. First, they staged a prison break at the heart of the Tower itself. Now, they have escaped its attempt to recapture them. Injured and exhausted, they have escaped the ashes of the village they were hiding in, and they now seek shelter elsewhere.
Thankfully, they have a place to flee to. Fire the Mencur-Besh, a 5,000-year-old altered human, broke off from the party shortly before the attack. At the behest of a mysterious prophet, he has built a shelter for all those who would oppose the Entity’s forces.
Little do they know, they have made the Entity feel fear for the first time in millenia, and in the process have prompted it to accelerate its plans. It is now more dangerous than ever, and the fate of all worlds now hangs in the balance.
Characters
The Heroes:
Despite being the group’s most experienced leader and perhaps its most powerful individual combatant, Fire is a fish out of water. No longer able to rely on what he built in his own world, Fire is now forced to find his way in Nexus. With everything being unknown, trusting anyone is difficult. Fire also has Claw to think about, a remnant of his past manifesting as a feral split personality. And the stakes couldn’t be higher - from what he knows respawning is off the table.
Since arriving in Nexus, Fire has been the most proactive in seeking out answers as to just what Nexus and the Entity are. Eventually, this led him to establish the Shelter, a safehouse for all those who would challenge the might of the Entity. Believed by the Prophet to be the champion he has prophesied, Fire is the group’s de facto leader. However due to his sudden disappearances before the escape from the Tower and the battle of the village, as well as his detached outlook, some of the others find his style of leadership a little more than off-putting.
From "Slaves of the Desert Mine", by SuperFire131
Shadow: Shadow was brought to Nexus by her brother Fire to aid him in his quest to shed light on the happenings. She is an immensely powerful mage, possessing mastery over many kinds of magic, as well as some abilities that most would consider aberrant. Shadow is not quite human, which shows in ways ranging from innocuous blunders in personal interaction, to her complete lack of physical needs, to her unsettling Void magic.
So far Shadow has presented herself both as fiercely loyal to her brother Fire but also neutral in most other regards, helping where possible without taking sides. She aided in revealing the Book’s nightmarish meddling and is now keeping an eye on it. She also started building an odd bond with Astro, not just over magic but also over more philosophical things.
From "Slaves of the Desert Mine", by SuperFire131
Kay: General Kay Mandy would like you to believe he is a suave, upper-crust intellectual and a natural leader - a real up-and-coming young man - it’s not entirely untrue. Despite his renown as “Herobrine’s Lap Dog”, his retirement from the military has left him directionless and erratic. He has done a great many things to be ashamed of, and fears fading into impotence and irrelevancy in peacetime. As such, when he found himself trapped in Nexus, he was simultaneously frustrated and relieved to have another adventure to distract himself with. However, having realised the scale of the threat posed by the Entity and his weakness in comparison with the rest of the group, he has formed an uneasy alliance with the Book. He has gained access to its power in return for a promise to help it accrue power when he returns to his world. However, can he keep the Book in check?
Kay’s mixture of ruthless pragmatism and near-inspirational arrogance has resulted in a mixed relationship with the rest of the group. He has formed close friendships with Warnado and Tyron in addition to his pre-existing friendship with Astro, but managed to get off on a spectacularly wrong foot with Steve and Jennifer and has an extremely strained relationship with Fire. Knowing of the Mencur-Besh’s true identity, Kay considers him a fraud, and last time they interacted they had a serious falling out.
After an ill-fated encounter with the Entity, Kay is recovering from his wounds in a bed at the Shelter, not having been lucid in over a week.
From "The Tale of Gaia Before Gaia", by astro_joe
Warnado: The joker of the group, this quarter-demon wizard’s top priority in any given situation is to squeeze some enjoyment out of it. Stealing a key? Use magic to replace it with an upsetting quantity of jam. Need to knock someone out? A hilariously oversized baseball bat seems appropriate. Your enemy wants a dramatic confrontation? He’ll call them a dork and crack a bunch of dumb jokes even he doesn’t necessarily understand.
However, beneath this jovial, pleasure-seeking demeanour lies a genuinely sad past. Warnado is one of the five Children of Prophecy, who are destined to save their world from Herobrine. Sadly, he hasn’t met any of the others yet and he is only thirteen years old.
Warnado has spent a lot of his time with Kay, almost up to the point of idolization, participating in whacky undertakings if there isn’t a battle to fight. Warnado also deeply cares for Amanda, an old flame he believed dead before arriving in Nexus. He fiercely defended her from a Book-controlled Fristad, and now worries about the Book’s apparent acceptance into the group. He has also entered a magical apprenticeship under Shadow and is showing great promise, though he is not entirely sure whether he should make use of his demonic heritage.
From "Minecraft Origins", by TurtleMaster217
Amanda: Once upon a time, Amanda was a normal enough young girl, living in a village under the protection of a demon-boy named Helix. Of course, she doesn’t remember that. She was captured by a pack of bandits and found herself in Nexus with no inkling that she’d ever had any life outside that patchwork world. She eked out a living moving from village to village, selling her wares to their confused, lost inhabitants. Her life continued in this vein until she ran into Helix again - who now goes by Warnado - who made her aware of her past.
Due to the hardships she’s endured as a travelling merchant, Amanda has a prematurely cynical and world-weary outlook. That said, she likes the carefree, energetic goofiness Warnado brings into her life. Even if she doesn’t remember their time together, after he helped rescue her from the Dreamweaver’s tortures, an affectionate relationship has begun to bud between them.
Having picked up some skills with a crossbow over the years, Amanda intends to make herself useful in the fight against the Entity. Following Warnado’s lead, she hopes to grow in ability under the tutelage of the glamorous assassin, Rose.
From "Minecraft Origins", by TurtleMaster217
Destiny: Destiny was once part of a team. Together with her boyfriend David, she helped to defeat Herobrine’s apprentice and save Minera from the Sovereign’s tyranny. Not a day after their victory, they were approached by the echoes of their past selves, Carter and Anya, and told to travel to Nexus to stop another great evil. Now, David is dead and Destiny hasn’t coped with it as well as she’d like.
She is still very much grieving. She and David were reincarnated across lifetimes to be together, and now she’s worried they might be “out of step”. When Fire enlisted her to help build the Shelter, she leapt at the opportunity to distract herself, but it has only been a partial success. She’s not sure if she trusts Fire, worrying he just sees her as a problem to solve. Having finally found a way to contact Anya again, she at the very least has someone she feels comfortable talking to about her grief, but she has a long way to go before she’s fully healed. In the absence of an enemy directly responsible for David’s death, she yearns for revenge against those who imprisoned them in the Tower - the Ender, Freak and Glibby the Ape - and she will take any opportunity to enact it, regardless of her own safety.
From "The Legion Chronicles: The Eternal Mine", by TheLoneAssassino
Tyron: Tyron Dragoknight was finally enjoying some peace. He had beaten Herobrine, beaten the endermen, freed the dragons and restored balance to the world.
However, his heroic status has made him a target, and he found himself at the mercy of the phantom known as Freak. The phantom feeds on fear, during his captivity Tyron found himself regularly overpowered by visions of despair and destruction. He’s a naturally laid-back, optimistic sort, and since his liberty he feels more himself, but the scars of his imprisonment linger. His sentient bluestone sword, Kir, does their best to lift his spirits, but everyone has their limit.
None of this changes the fact that Tyron is a powerful warrior with access to some fairly powerful magic. He can summon icy blades around his hands, bend the earth to his will, and even fly on wings made of stone. Moreover, when he holds Kir he becomes one of the finest swordsmen Minecraftia has ever known. He is one of the team’s most capable all-rounders, and despite his reluctant return to heroism, he will do all in his power to defend his new friends.
From "Cubic Fire", by DragonTyron
Fristad: Fristad of Veridale is just a shepherd. Normally, he just worries about how much wool he’ll be able to produce, about keeping his flock safe, and otherwise just tries to enjoy his life. He has led a life characterised by honesty, boyish camaraderie and a love of nature. However, several months ago, he came into possession of the Book.
As soon as it mysteriously entered into his possession, the Book began eroding Fristad’s free will through coercive nightmares, psychological manipulation and the promise of sharing its power. This only worsened once he arrived in Nexus, when the Book saw a true opportunity to extend its influence. First it transformed Fristad temporarily into an Enderman, then made him become the Dreamweaver in an attempt to enthrall Amanda. However, this was when the Book finally lost control of Fristad, not from his own will but from a coordinated intervention from his friends.
Now, Fristad must wear a magic-suppressing harness to prevent the Book from ever attempting to regain its influence. With this dominating presence gone, Fristad is at a loss for direction in his life. All he knows is that he feels guilty, particularly for his actions as the Dreamweaver, and hopes to find some purpose and redemption in the Shelter.
From "The Book of Dreams", by Asanetargoss
Steve and Jennifer: Steve Brine and his girlfriend Jennifer are an accomplished power duo. They have faced off undead armies, the Ender Dragon and Herobrine himself. As the owners of a set of gems the Entity desires, they entered Nexus hunted and confused, though confident in their ability to pull through. It was in this period of pursuit that they came across Fristad, with whom they formed a close bond. They were the first people he told about the Book, and the first ones other than Destiny to figure out he was the Dreamweaver.
Steve is a friendly goofball, and Jennifer balances a genuinely supportive and nurturing personality with being a ruthlessly accurate sniper. Both are capable of carrying huge amounts of materials in their seemingly bottomless pockets, and are capable of digging and building at rapid speeds. Steve is the group’s tank, Jennifer its sniper, and together they are the ultimate crowd-control.
At the Shelter, they feel a little directionless, having had to follow the lead of others since their arrival. Honestly, constantly dragged around is getting a little draining. That said, they have a great deal of respect for Fire and are more than happy to follow his lead.
From "The Herobrine Chronicles", by Nomolos1
Astro: Astro has lost a lot, and much of it was his own fault. He trusted the wrong people, and now he mourns the death of many of his dearest friends: among the dead was his good friend, Kay, King of Gaia. He was, before arriving in Nexus, tasked by Jeb with combing the snowy Fields of Acrisius for the corpses left behind by the latest conflict. However, he now finds himself in the midst of a new adventure.
An able warrior and a better wizard, he can shatter bones with a thought, summon shields and even fly. However, his magic is slowly killing him and until recently he could only use so much of it without quickly wearing himself out. He is the definition of a glass cannon.
Moreover, a mishap with portals means he has come into contact with a younger Kay from far in his past, and this is more than a little troubling to him. In addition to worrying about the threat the Entity poses and the threat to the timeline, he has to grapple with the monster he knows Kay will become, and might always have been. Worse still, after Shadow tore open a hole in reality as a demonstration of her power, Astro struggles with strange headaches and dreams, unable to stop thinking about this mysterious un-space.
From "Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale", by kmandy
Lucy: Originally a maid in the employ of a wealthy couple in a village close to the Tower, Lucy was unexpectedly and suddenly recruited by Fire for reasons unknown to her. She quickly found out what Fire saw in her: her talent for logistics and working with people, which became invaluable for ensuring the smooth operation of the Shelter.
The Prophet: An enigmatic figure preaching from the top of a hill to his congregation. Many say he is completely insane and they may even be right. Even still, his prophecies turn out to be true, if sometimes only metaphorically, too often to be explained with luck. He acts as a beacon of hope for the less-well-off citizens of Nexus, but has been missing since the Entity’s forces occupied a village near the area where he would normally address his followers.
Also Steve (no relation): The Prophet’s guardian, who has the ability to teleport, a rude, confrontational attitude and an intense hatred of the Entity. He claims the Entity destroyed his world, though he does not know by what means. He appears to have been trying to recruit a team of heroes to liberate Nexus for some time, though until encountering Fire had little success. Like the Prophet, he has been missing since the Tower raided the village.
From "A Tale Known by Only One" by Bruvvy.
Rose: A cold and classy assassin hailing from a world quite different than the usual, Rose was chosen by Fire for his expedition for her prowess at killing.
Voidblade: A green-eyed enderman chosen for his powers of teleportation. In Voidblade’s world the End was fighting a losing war with humanity, making interactions with humans understandably difficult for him.
Urist: Urist is as dwarven as a dwarf can be, but keeps his past to himself. He was chosen for his natural talent for excavation and engineering.
The Lady of Dreams: A benevolent phantom who occasionally visits Peter/Fire in his dreams with the goal of helping him come to terms with his traumatic past. However, since she followed him into Nexus she has seemed increasingly distressed.
The Tower:
However, during the raid on the village it made a rare appearance in person. Apparently responding to a tear in reality created by Shadow, it appeared intent on sealing it with immediate effect. Since then, it has ensured the village is fortified and personally guards the site of the tear. The reasons for its concern are currently unknown.
The Ender: An enderwoman who is the main commander of the Entity's forces. She wears obsidian armour and carries a purple sword that crackles with energy. Acutely observant, she maintains an alliance of convenience with The Entity, in the hope of advancing her people's ambitions. The heroes showing up have made her job rather difficult, she has so far been unable to apprehend any of the ones who staged the prison break. Her loss to Kay only added injury to insult, making her the target of Glibby’s heckling and growing skepticism in her homeworld. All this has filled her with a strong determination to not only get back at the Ape but redeem herself in the eyes of the Entity.
Freak: The phantom who kidnapped Tyron. He appears almost human, aside from talon-like fingers, his blurry, smoke-like aura and the fact that light passes through him. He also has the strange ability both to create hallucinations and to only appear visible or tangible to people of his choice. He has a love of mind games and is perhaps the cruellest of The Entity's officers. The Entity accordingly allows him the most freedom to roam as he wishes. He has no known troops under him and could be just about anywhere he wishes, always looking for fear, which he consumes for sustenance. He has also become fascinated with the Entity’s fear after seeing its reaction after the raid, the extent of this fascination is as of yet unknown.
Glibby The Ape: A relatively recent addition at The Tower. In his world, he is known as a serial killer and enforcer and who looks like a gorilla, but in Nexus he is one of the Entity's more powerful captains. Covering his huge hands with metal gauntlets, he is formidable in close combat and even the sturdies members of the heroes would have trouble walking off a blow from him. He also leads a group of endermen who have defected from the Ender’s forces known as the Grey Ones. He has been sent to Nexus by the crime-lord known as The Silhouette to defend his interests, under strict instructions to maintain a good relationship with The Entity.
Dr. Veronica Mercury: As the Tower’s head scientist Dr. Mercury is in charge of managing resources and making sure everything runs smoothly. Her main task is the construction of an ominous machine that plays a central role in the Entity’s plan. In her off-time (which is regrettably little) she works on her own projects in the field of necro-technology, as well as tinkering with her powered exo-suit. While investigating some strange energy signatures in the village near the Tower, she was confronted with a tear in reality created by Shadow, leaving her unconscious but recovering.
Marinus Bul, attorney at law: The Entity's spokesperson and self-professed “attorney”. A smooth if highly-strung negotiator with a stressed streak a mile wide. He has compiled files on each of the heroes and knows most of their emotional weak-points. It is unclear how he came into The Entity's employ or why. He really hates Freak. Just so much. He makes things so difficult.
Silver: The leader of the Grey Ones. When Kay interfered with one of the Entity’s business deals, Silver and two of his colleagues found themselves trapped in his world for eleven years. During this time they came into the employ of Glibby and the Silhouette, and their scales grew grey with age. They only returned to Nexus after being sent to kidnap Astro. Silver is deeply grateful to Glibby for the protection he offered, and resents the Ender for abandoning him for a decade. He also hates Kay and attempted to kill him by trapping him and Steve in an arena full of mobs.
The Dog: A minor officer in the Entity’s ranks who conveyed Fire, Warnado and Kay to the Tower when they briefly attempted to negotiate with the Entity. He didn’t do much, but Kay feels they really struck it off in the brief time they spent together, and laments the fact that they are on opposite sides. No one other than Kay feels this way.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 1 The Election (Chapters 1-4)
Chapter 1 No Pursuers Apparent (Voidblade)
Little pillars of smoke pierced the canopy at various points, telling of camps beneath. From his branch, Voidblade couldn’t see the refugees themselves, but he could hear their voices. Anger and optimism were widespread among the camps’ denizens. They had come far, fleeing the forces of the Tower and the ruins of the village. It was unfair - the Tower had ripped them from their worlds and they had congregated together at the foot of the Prophet’s hill. Now, the machinations of the Entity and its captains had scattered them again. Voidblade had been among their number, and even though they were humans, he felt a certain sympathy for them.
“The enemy of my enemy…” he lamented. “I hope we can just get this over with soon so I can get back to warring with the humans instead of protecting them.”
However, he stopped this line of thinking and calmed himself down. Getting frustrated wouldn’t change their situation. Soon, they would reach the shelter Fire had established, and they would be welcomed. For now, they would have to sit there, eating their meagre rations and cursing the pursuers who were no doubt hot on their heels. This insistence that they were in danger confused and infuriated Voidblade. It seemed to be a rule that humans, no matter what world they came from, always assumed they were being targeted. It also seemed to be a rule across worlds that this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
In truth, they probably had little to fear. The Entity had sent its forces to attack their village and their congregation for its own specific reasons. The Prophet was a dissident of some sort, preaching against the Entity and prophesying the downfall of its Tower, or something of the sort. Now that his congregation was considered scattered they were unlikely to consider them worth pursuing. Besides, they had been there pursuing Fire’s colleagues, who had arrived a few days prior, weak and injured. However, something had happened in the village, and its priorities had changed. It wasn’t sending anyone out to pursue the congregation or its original targets. Instead it was fortifying the village.
Voidblade had teleported far and wide, even going as far as the village outskirts, and he had seen the Entity striding about in its bronze armour. If he didn’t know better, he might have thought it was pacing in agitation and worry.
But for the moment, they had no idea what it was up to. For now, he had to report to Fire, and explain that soon they would have wounded to tend to, and soldiers to arm.
He stood up, teleported and found himself at the mouth of the shelter. Rolling his shoulders, Voidblade readied to walk amongst the humans. It had been fine when it was just the three women (and Fire, and the dwarf). Now they were everywhere and it was getting… awkward. He didn’t hate all humans, exactly, but humans had massacred his kind to the point of capitulation in his world, so he was aware of human cruelty. The enderborn had started that war, but the human retaliation had been terrifying. Maybe these humans were different. Voidblade wasn’t holding out for that, however. He had been let down enough times.
He pressed the button and the immense piston doors started to slide apart. He stepped right through and began to walk at a brisk pace. On his left was a small library where Destiny sat, staring at a page with a scowl on her face and fingers running through her brown ponytail. Until recently she had been out hunting constantly. Then, the others arrived and people kept joining her hunts and she had been polite, but obviously wanted to be alone. As Voidblade understood from the well-meaning whispers about the shelter, she had lost a loved one recently. He hoped she recovered quickly. War did not wait for grief. But she seemed to know that well - she had killed Herobrine’s protégé.
“Then again,” Voidblade mused. “A lot of people here claim to have killed Herobrine, or to have served him, or to come from a world where he doesn’t exist at all. It would be nice to come from a world where that killer never existed.”
Passing by on his right were the red-haired woman they called Jennifer and Fristad, the shepherd. They had bows and were obviously about to go hunting. The latter wore a strange chest-place which glowed purple in places. He had seen the crystals used to suppress magic. There was a story in this to be sure, but no one seemed comfortable talking about it and Voidblade was more than happy to remain ignorant for the time being. Nonetheless, he had resolved to snap Fristad’s neck if he ever attempted to remove the suppression device.
“Voidblade!” called Fristad suddenly, beaming in that obnoxious human fashion. Voidblade didn’t believe these ostentatious, grandiose emotions could possibly be sincere and yet it was all humans seemed capable of displaying. “My man, how did the scouting go?”
Voidblade turned to look down at him, incensed and stooping a little. “I am not your manservant.”
Fristad’s eyes widened and his face flattened with surprise.
“I… I didn’t say that,” responded Fristad with a tone so meek it became a question.
Voidblade looked him up and down, trying to decipher whether he was being mocked.
“Sorry,” said Voidblade. “There appears to have been a breakdown in communication. Have a nice day, my… man.”
He then quickly strutted off, not looking back. However, if he had he would have seen Fristad turn to Jennifer and start asking if he’d done something wrong, and the red-headed warrior pat him on the shoulder and start to smooth the feathers of his worry.
He reached a bend in the corridor. Urist the dwarf and Steve Brine, Jennifer’s boyfriend, were talking to Lucy, a blonde-haired woman who apparently had been a housemaid before being recruited by Fire. The former was characteristically short and dumpy and covered in soot. They had been mining. Steve, however, showed absolutely no sign of this endeavour. His armour and skin were clean. This was an odd, slightly unnerving characteristic of Steve and Jennifer - they never got dirty, as though they only interacted with the physical world part-way. Steve didn’t even seem used to the concept of blood, always flinching when he saw bleeding.
Regardless, the two had been mining and now they were reaching into their seemingly cavernous pockets and producing quantities of stone and riches that Voidblade couldn’t fathom. And Lucy responded with equally unfathomable comprehension, noting down and categorising every article of their delivery in her notebook.
“So, where do you want us to put the coal?” asked Steve, balancing a perfectly square block of coal ore the size of a child on his fingertips. That was another thing - no matter what he pulled out of the earth with his pickaxe, it always took on the shape of a perfectly euclidian cube.
“I designated one of the areas for ore storage just earlier, can’t miss it, just one entrance further down the tunnel than what we used so far. It also has sub-sections for the different types as opposed to the old pile.”
“Cool,” Steve nodded, before pocketing the coal and setting off down the hall.
Voidblade kept his eyes on the floor and marched past Lucy, mumbling his report out in rapid-fire: “Scouting mission completed. No Tower sightings. Refugees approaching.”
Lucy looked up from her notebook and smiled. “That’s great to hear, thank you for giving us eyes out there, Voidblade.”
Voidblade stopped and made rigid eye contact. He nodded once.
“You’re welcome,” he proclaimed, before resuming his measured, inconspicuous charge down the hallway. He congratulated himself for the level of courtesy he had afforded the human. If he kept that up he might just survive in this shelter after all.
He paused a moment when an energy arrow shot out from the training room, a large cavern they had converted into a bit of a dojo. It had pierced a fully-cooked chicken drumstick and was now pinning it to the wall. The arrow rapidly disintegrated and Voidblade caught the food as it fell. It occurred to him that he hadn’t eaten so he looked in through the door to make sure it wouldn’t be missed.
“You’re improving,” said Rose diplomatically. “Accuracy-wise, you’re doing great. You just need to work on timing, and not shooting the last one out the door. Come on, that’s like the fourth time today - you’re just letting that become a habit.”
A quick inspection of the room revealed the black-haired assassin sitting in an armchair, materialising knives to throw at a bullseye across from her. However, that was the least interesting aspect of the room. There were half a dozen other targets around the room, each of which had a small pile of pierced drumsticks on the floor in front of them. At the centre of the room was Warnado, the small hooded child, holding a bow of glowing light. Of his face, only the mouth and two glowing red eyes were visible. He wore a large brass-coloured gauntlet that covered most of his forearm on one arm but not the other.
“Really? My timing’s off?” he snapped. “Here I thought it was just chance that the last one keeps going out the door! Surprisingly, lady, it’s a little difficult to get the timing right on summoning six separate chicken drumsticks in mid-air, then shooting them just as they pass by weirdly-placed targets with arrows I have to will into existence!”
“Stop getting frustrated. Take five. Next round I want all the chicken on the bullseyes.”
She threw three knives at her target in quick succession. Warnado went over to a basin of water and started splashing his face.
These knives were then gathered up by Amanda and sorted into labelled buckets depending on make. Voidblade observed the process repeat several times. At seemingly random intervals Rose started throwing, and then the second she stopped Amanda would snap to attention and snatch up the knives before Rose started throwing again. No warning was given and in the three or four times Voidblade saw this process repeat, nearly all of them were near-misses. It appeared to be some sort of reaction-time exercise.
“Hm, that’s enough cleavers,” Amanda suggested. “Lucy said we really need some more stilettos.”
Amanda was about as young as Warnado, barely a teenager. And yet she had a world-weariness about her. Lack of sleep had engraved rings beneath her blue eyes, and her skin was so pale her dark brown hair seemed jarring. Her manner was where it was clearest though. Despite the tendency of even mature humans to waste words, she said only what she needed to say when it needed to be said - she would have fit in well among Voidblade’s people.
“Honey, Lucy can need as many stilettos as she likes. You aren’t ready for me to start throwing stilettos.” She threw another cleaver to punctuate her point.
Amanda shook her head and returned to her catcher’s position.
“Hey V!” Warnado called, leaning against a stone pillar and waving. Voidblade realised “V” was referring to him. The red glows were slightly narrowed, indicating a frown. “What do ya need?”
Voidblade realised he had given the humans quite enough words for that day. That was perhaps the thing he hated most about being in a primarily human environment - humans never stopped asking questions. How are you? Did you have a good day? What do you want? Why are you staring at me like that? And so on. Enderborn always seemed to be on the same page and he vowed to never take that for granted ever again when he got back to his world. He pointed a finger at the drumstick, then at his mouth. Warnado deliberated a few milliseconds upon this laconic but intriguing polemic in favour of the enderman getting the tasty chicken leg before offering a thumb’s up of resounding approval. Voidblade, meanwhile, held true to his withdrawal from human contact and had ducked back out of the room before the thumb was even fully raised.
Biting voraciously, he rounded a corner and took a moment to appreciate just how bright the shelter was. A large lamp pierced the ceiling every few minutes. Miniature swords of light needle his vision and he fought the urge to rub them. Voidblade supposed he should be glad he didn’t have to stoop to avoid them, as he had in the village’s buildings. That had motivated in part his decision to sleep in a tree at the foot of the Prophet’s hill - he was tired of knocking his head off the ceiling.
The command room was just at the end of the hall, but Voidblade stopped himself one last time to steal a sidelong glance into the infirmary. The wizard, Astro, stood over a bed. However, the wizard, with his black hair and his face line with age and worry, was of little interest to Voidblade. Everything about him, from his slight stoop to his aura of sadness, disgusted the enderman a little. He could never take real interest in such a frail specimen. Voidblade was interested in the man in the bed.
The divider was drawn back and Voidblade could make out the outline of his body, covered in layers of duvets and blankets. Beneath all that, his body looked soft and smooth as a snow drift. Voidblade could hardly reconcile this with the image of mortality they had recovered a few days before. His obsidian-plated cuirass had been shattered, and the ribs beneath fared little better. His pale skin and auburn hair had become a frail canvas for blood and bruising flesh. His opponent had slammed him against the line between life and death until his back broke. If not for the potions from Fire’s world, he would be dead. With their help, he was due to recover within a few days.
Now, a half-dead human was hardly an interest to Voidblade, but this was an exception. He heard many strange things about him. That he was a General. That, contrary to the others, he had served Herobrine. That the book that sat on the table beside him, seemingly unassuming, was a source of power to him. However, above all, Voidblade had heard he had taken on the Entity alone. He lost, and evidently quite severely, but there was something to learn there.
Voidblade couldn’t stop himself from speculating in the face of that. He wondered if the fight had been close, or if it had been a massacre. The stories spread about the congregation did not inspire hope in Voidblade. Entire armies fell before the Entity. The Entity itself could be considered an army, literally or figuratively depending on who recounted. That he had survived at all seemed something of a miracle and this one miracle might promise another. Sadly, for the moment, the auburn-haired General remained asleep and the miracle remained solitary.
Voidblade continued on before Astro could notice him and force an interaction, finally reaching the doorway. He stopped to tear the remaining chicken into his mouth and swallowed it down before throwing the chicken bone into a small gutter. Voidblade almost walked on, but reminded himself of something Lucy had called him up on. He pressed his palm into a large stone button and watched as the bottom of the gutter opened up and the bone was consumed by lava.
Inside the command room were three individuals. Tyron, who called himself Dragoknight, was tending a furnace. The fire reflected in his clear blue eyes, and sweat matted his green fur. He was half-listening to the conversation of the other two. He reached into the glowing blue portal on his back from which he materialised a bucket of water. He blew on its surface and it immediately began to frost over. Tentatively, he cracked the surface of the ice and trickled a thread of diamond-shaped droplets onto the flames. He drew back as the steam emerged, placing the bucket back into the portal and proceeding to rearrange his damp facial fur. He then began to stare at his sword, which he called Kir, and cocked an eyebrow.
Fire and Shadow stood over a map showing the topography of Nexus, the patch-work world the Entity had trapped them all in. Fire was a huge scaled creature not unlike an enderman, though he had short, white hair, glowing red eyes and wore fabrics like the humans. He called himself a “Mencur-Besh”, though Voidblade did not know what this meant. He had a series of small flags in hand that he placed with pin-point precision upon the map.
Shadow sat on the edge of the table, just under five feet tall and kicking her legs back and forth. Like her brother, she had red eyes and hair of a shocking white, though it was long. A wave of it flowed down until it broke upon her shoulders and mingled into her robes somewhere past the armpit. It stood in dichotomy with her skin, which was the colour of night. There was not a trace of her namesake on the wall or floor. Wodahs the living shadow has evidently left its master for a stroll.
The two siblings were deep in conversation and Voidblade waited for a moment to intervene.
“We know from Destiny’s scouting missions that the Tower’s immediate area of influence is surprisingly small. The Entity or the Ender, whoever is in charge of the troops directly, may send out patrols but it seems that very little attention is given to what goes on in Nexus. Most of their focus seems to be on the outer worlds.”
Shadow replied: “I think I understand the logic. From what I could gather from the Prophet’s sermons, the Entity gains power the bigger Nexus becomes, so from its point of view everything that’s here is already conquered and secured. It seems to find ‘internal’ threats unlikely, maybe even impossible.”
“We should be careful trying to read too much into the Entity, it doesn’t exactly think along the same lines as we do. However the effect is the same, we should be able to operate relatively unhindered.” Fire said. And so they continued. And continued. And continued without missing one beat.
As Voidblade waited seemingly ceaselessly for a gap to appear in the wall of conversation a small voice chirped in his head. “Hello friend! Reason for coming? Will tell Tyron. Make things faster.”
Voidblade’s first thoughts were immediately along the lines of “Who are you?” And his first reaction was to look around as though stung by a wasp.
“Kir.”
Voidblade’s blood stopped pounding so much. They had mentioned that the sword could talk. This was just the first time it had found reason to talk to him. Yet it already called him “friend”. It was worse than the humans.
His mind naturally floated toward why he had come and without having meant to, he answered Kir’s request.
“Got it.”
Tyron turned and smiled at Voidblade with his glassy eyes and said, “We have news from the scouts. Come in Voidblade.”
Fire stopped talking, Shadow stopped preparing her response and the siblings stood to attention.
Voidblade seized the moment and explained, “The Prophet’s congregation will arrive within a day or two. In numbers. No pursuers apparent.”
The three looked at each other and Voidblade awaited instructions.
Fire didn’t answer immediately, his gaze suggested he was thinking something over.
“I will have to check out capacity with Lucy. We should have enough for at least nine hundred comfortably, about double that as an absolute maximum. I think I’ll have Urist and his team construct an additional sleeping area, that should push our capacity well above a thousand. For now our mushroom farms should more than cover our food needs and in a pinch we’ll resort to the spiders… I had hoped for a smoother transition.”
“That is all well and good,” added Tyron. “But we are making them into an army, are we not?”
“Once they have had a few days to adjust we can start dividing them up based on existing combat skills, the ones proficient in fighting can act as instructors along with people from our group, who will act as coordinators.”
“And that’s all great,” Tyron conceded. “I was more getting at who’s going to lead them, and command structure beyond that. I get the impression you’re keen on leading, and I’m not opposed to that, but we should have a conversation about it. If we can present a united front, the congregation will join us more readily. You may be the ‘Champion of Life and Death’ they’re so keen on, but people only put as much faith in prophecy as others put in.”
Voidblade blinked. He had not thought about who might lead them other than Fire. Since they arrived, Fire had been the undisputed leader, and none of the others had questioned this when he took them in. In fact, his position had just been consolidated further, with Shadow, Tyron and Astro forming a Council of advisors. In Voidblade’s view, everyone else was either too young (like Warnado and Amanda), too solitary (like Destiny or himself) or as happy to receive commands as to give them. Then again, humans were inexplicable and irrational. Voidblade just hoped one of their number didn’t end up leading.
Shadow said: “The exact wording was ‘Mortal gods have taken two kinds and forged them into a higher one! Their champion will come to command the forces of life and death!’ but that’s besides the point.”
Fire chuckled, then turned to Tyron again. “It’s a good thing you brought that up. So far I have been leading because it was a natural transition from building the shelter and nobody objected to it. But yes, I do not plan on taking the leadership without asking anyone about it. The best way of going about it would probably be a ballot of some kind.”
“That was about what I was going to suggest. Secret, written ballot. Nice starting point of democracy,” Tyron clapped his hands together and pointed them at Voidblade, “Here, can you do me a favour and go around gathering the others?”
Despite his annoyance at having to talk again, Voidblade nodded and asked if there was anything else.
“If you could grab Astro first, that would be great. I’ll need his help organising the count.”
Voidblade teleported into the infirmary. He could have walked it, but that would have given them more opportunities for instructions. The enderborn liked to think they had the best work ethic of any species, but Voidblade was the first to admit it had its limits.
Astro was still standing over his friend, so Voidblade came over and tapped him on the shoulder. The wizard, who had been deep in thought, didn’t jump when the talons brushed him. Instead, he slowly shambled around and his stupor continued until he was looking Voidblade in the eyes. He only seemed to show the slightest bit of surprise when the enderman began to speak, as though it made the whole situation oppressively more real.
“Liability,” thought Voidblade.
“Tyron requires your help,” rasped the enderman. “They are going to vote on who shall lead the congregation to war.”
Astro nodded in a slow, creaking way that said “I hope beyond hope it isn’t me.” He moved toward the door, looking so thin and frail a light breeze might have been carrying him along against his will. With that, Voidblade warped off and began to rally the others.
Chapter 2: A day for saying what we wish were true (Kay)
You hear that?
It roused me a little. I was nowhere near awake, but I had risen above dreaming. That was preferable. I had been dreaming of the worst pits of warfare, though I was no longer sure which one. It might not even have been a real war. Mud and gunsmoke clothing me. Boiling blood and hurrahs carrying me. Thud of arrow. Squelch of boot. Snap of bone. Metal screams at metal. Like a leaf, I am buffeted and surrounded by sound.
As I said, it may not have been a real one, but it felt like a war. It felt right.
They are talking about leadership. It shall be a vote. You must awaken, quickly. It is our chance.
Our pact came back to me. I had agreed to pursue power with this Book, in return for access to its magic. And with them I had been powerful and bested the Ender. It was time to start fulfilling my end of the bargain.
Well?
I forgot that it couldn’t hear the roar of the river of my consciousness. Defending that had become so natural since Herobrine. In my rare moments of lucidity I had experienced sudden surges of panic about whether my defences would hold and I would end up a pawn like Fristad. Evidently, my earlier confidence was well-founded.
“Sorry,” I thought in response, inflecting it with the resonance of a half-chuckle. It was artificial, but it conveyed my meaning. “I forgot how good I am at this.”
You’re cocky.
“You’ll learn to love it, really.”
…Leadership election. I can wake you up early and keep you up. Time is of the essence.
“One moment, I’m constructing a plan of attack.”
I was actually telling the truth. Fire was my obvious rival and I set about drawing up a list of likely allies. Astro was a given. Thanks to Glibby blowing up that portal, Astro had spent a full decade more time bonding with me than I had with him. Of course he’d back me. Tyron and Kir would perhaps too after our wee heart-to-hearts. Warnado would naturally want to support me. We’d been inseparable since arriving in Nexus...
Steve and Jen would probably back Fire because he’d always been nice to them, whereas I started out by punching Steve in the head. That wasn’t a totally lost cause, though. Steve and I had shot the breeze a lot in the village. Destiny probably wasn’t too impressed by my emotional display back in the village. Shadow was Fire’s sister. Fristad was an unknown, so was Amanda, and then there were the four people who had accompanied Fire and anyone else who might have arrived in the meantime.
I took a moment to reconstruct my “leadership accent” and I had reached campaigning mode.
“Ready, wake me up.”
My eyes shot open and I immediately started looking around. I lay in an infirmary bed, in a night-gown. Everything was well-lit by redstone lamps and annoyingly clean. Astro had a hand on the doorframe and a foot in the hallway and an enderman had just teleported away. I could see the particles in the air. I realised my heart was pounding. Every inch of me was tingling. I almost felt like I was waiting for the world to catch up with me. I immediately started throwing aside my covers and scrambling to my feet.
“Why am I so hyper?” I asked the Book.
Adrenaline boost. Trust me, you won’t like it if I stop it. If you had’ve listened to me and not fought the Entity it wouldn’t be necessary.
I felt my heart quicken yet further when I remembered the moment where the Entity’s second manifestation had grabbed my wrist and hurled me into a sword. I felt my lungs tighten and my view of the present was suddenly supplanted by my inner view of memories. Now was not the time for a panic attack.
“Fine, you’re right,” I permitted for efficiency’s sake, powering on through. “Rift to hallway, now.”
I raised a clenched fist and a gash of grey flame tore itself open before me. I practically leapt through.
I arrived in the hallway just before Astro. His prematurely old eyes widened.
“Hey Astro!” I shouted jovially, throwing my arms wide before hugging him. “I hear it’s election season, can I count on your vote?”
You certainly are… direct? I consoled the Book not to worry. This and sneaking were my elements.
He immediately broke down laughing, “Mods, you always did strike while the iron is hot!”
“Can I take that as a yes?”
Astro rolled his eyes. “Sure,” he allowed, looking around a little.
“Knew I could count on you, buddy!” I clapped him hard on the back and he laughed again in surprise. “Now, where’s Warnado at?”
“In the training room, just around the corner-”
I grabbed him by the arm and willed the Book to open another rift. Another doorway was visible just on our right and I marched right toward it.
“So,” I craned my head around. “What have I missed. How are things around the… what are we calling it? Does it have a name?”
“Just the shelter.”
“Shelter. Catchy. I like it,” I grinned as Astro shook his head and exhaled happily through his nostrils, “But yeah, anything I should know-”
Just as I passed into view of the doorframe I saw a glint of energy in the shape of a knife hurtling at me at several-dozen miles per hour.
“OH THAT’S SUCH BULL!” shrieked Warnado.
“Defensive portal!” I shrieked aloud in my native brogue, assuming a one-legged pose of panic. War only prepares you for so much, and I was expecting a totally friendly environment. Don’t mock me. I spared a glance at Astro, who was covering his mouth with a weathered hand adorned with magical rings. He had the aspect of a man with front row seats to a great and impressive cultural moment that he would mock for the next decade. If possible, he might communicate it to his young self, so they might work two decades out of it.
The Book obliged, hastily opening a rift in front of and behind me. The energy knife flew through the circuit and planted itself in the wall just to my left.
“Thanks,” I muttered internally to the Book. That’s two I owe you.”
Only two? I suppose an election is a day for saying what we wish were true rather than what is.
The jest, while probably ominous, amused me. It helped me as I stepped into the room, desperately trying to reconstruct my mystique.
“Warnado!” I boomed merrily, the accent reassumed. “How have you been?”
“Kay, you’re awake!” he called enthusiastically before running up to me.
I ruffled the tip of his hood, feeling hard lumps between what I assumed was hair. A quick glance revealed Amanda, who was sorting knives into buckets by a bullseye on my left. She smiled sardonically and waved. I nodded with philosophy in response.
From out of my field of view came the voice of a woman: “And who might you be, man who almost got yourself skewered?”
“I’m glad you asked!” I turned to her with my eyes closed importantly. “As commandant of the 10th Legion of the Herobrinian Army, I, Kay Mandy, entreat you to vote for me in this upcoming leadership election!”
I opened my eyes and saw a rather dangerous-looking woman with black hair and brown eyes. I looked at her clothes and found she was darkly dressed and had a habit of hiding weapons on her. She also had a knife in her hand that she aimed at a bullseye. The very image of an assassin. Her mouth formed a half-smile that betrayed a faint but fleeting amusement.
“And why would I do that?”
“A myriad of reasons,” I began to saunter over to her, projecting my voice to the room and looking around. Amanda had sat back and stopped sorting. Astro and Warnado were watching me from the doorway, one with a begrudging awe and the other with childish enthusiasm. I’ll let you decide which was which.
“I am a General, philosopher, aviator, adventurer, mercenary and man of faith! Herobrine blessed me with the gift of prophecy and I foretold his return. I then fought alongside him. I won him Arcadia! I won him Zine and then protected it from both Notch himself and Israphel!” I raised an arm emphatically.
“I was there as he ascended and Israphel cracked open the heart of the world! I have seen the depths of the Void, the fires of the Nether ,the light of the Aether and many of the sights worth seeing in the Sane Realm of mortals! I have defied corrupt administrators, twisted game-masters and the Entity itself! And all this I did with sword and with fist! Now, having tamed that Book which sought to warp the minds of men-”
Tamed, am I?
“Hush,” I calmed it. “We’ll work on accommodating your dignity later. For now, results.”
Reasoned well. Do carry on.
“-I have obtained powers beyond my own wildest imaginings,” at that I asked the Book to summon voidflame which turned from silver to purple in one hand and sparks of stark blue lightning in the other. “I am Kay Mandy, of Void and of Tempest. First time using this power I bested the Ender. Had the Entity not intervened, she would be here now, captain of a mostly dead and dispersed guard that would crumble in her absence, telling us the Entity’s full plan. To conclude: I am a fighter of great experience and power, a strategist of great wisdom, and as this speech has hopefully proved, an orator of great ability. I hope I can count on your votes.”
I bowed.
Astro offered a polite applause. Amanda smiled. Warnado whooped and called out “Kay 2020”, a phrase which meant nothing to me and of which I doubt even he truly understood the significance.
Rose’s reaction consisted of a single raised eyebrow, she said: “And I am Rose, became a cult enforcer for the money, ritual-stabbed a guy, ended up here and have no idea what most of the names you just said mean.”
I’ll be honest, I expected her to be more impressed. I tried to hide my disappointment.
“Well, Rose, it is a pleasure to be formally introduced. I get where you’re coming from. I was a mercenary for a long while, and in my time serving Herobrine I was something of a cultist myself. Don’t you want someone to represent your interests in the leader’s seat?”
It was hard to read but I could have sworn her mouth curled into something resembling a smile for a split-second. Whether that was a sincere smile or a sign of mocking amusement was a whole other question.
“We’ll see,” she warned, eyes wry and discerning.
“We shall see indeed. Anyway,” I swung around to Astro, “Where’s Tyron?”
“Probably the command room with Fire and-”
“Okay, where’s everyone else?”
“The atrium,” responded Astro, cock-eyed, “I guess.”
“Yeah,” Warnado agreed. “Fristad and Jennifer were heading out hunting so they’ll pass back through there. And of course Lucy will be around there. Destiny, too. It’s just at the end of the hall.”
“That’s excellent, do you mind helping out with canvassing, pal? D’you have time or are you training?”
“Sure,” he said easily, then with more tension added, “I’ve kind of hit a snag in the training for today. I’d better take a break and look at it with fresher eyes.”
“Then to the atrium we go!”
I grabbed them by the scruffs of their necks and the Book summoned another rift. A split-second later I was looking at a desk covered in papers with Lucy working away at it. I nodded politely to her. A look in the other direction revealed a small cluster of people containing Fristad, Jennifer and an enderman, presumably the one who had visited Astro in the infirmary, entering the shelter through a large piston door. Down a hallway to the side Steve and a dwarfish man left a room, chatting away about mining and such.
“Who are the Endling and the short fellow?” I muttered to Astro.
“That’s Voidblade,” he pointed toward the piston door-end of the atrium. “He doesn’t talk much. The short guy is Urist. He’s an actual, honest-to-Mods, dwarf. Not the word we use to make fun of Stoneholmers.”
“Really?” I was genuinely surprised. Folks called Aaron a dwarf back home and he was taller than me. Just because he lived in Stoneholm a wee while. Dimension-hopping really put inconsistencies like that in relief.
And with that I recomposed myself, noticed that everyone was starting to notice that I was awake and prepared to speak.
“Listen up!” Warnado called, beating me to the punch. “General Mandy has something to say!”
Pleasantly surprised, I watched people stand to attention and cleared my throat. Destiny, book in hand, stepped out of the library. I became very conscious I was wearing the white nightgown of a mental patient, but I hoped it just added to the quirkiness of it all and worked in my favour.
“Well, guess I’m not dead,” I chuckled and stepped back to look at reactions. Jennifer and Steve both smiled predictably. Fristad seemed wary, understandably. (I made sure not to let the Book hear the last word, though telegraphed the rest of it to show it my powers of observation). Endling: impassive. Urist: grinning. Lucy: kind eyes, beaming and nodding. I couldn’t read Destiny - I’d obviously shattered the morose scowl she had been wearing, but I wasn’t sure what the remaining emotion was. Disgust, confusion, distrust and cerebral contusion all seemed just as likely. Regardless, everyone seemed just as disarmed, and this was as perfect a stage to seize as any. “Sorry about the dressing gown - not my choice.”
I cleared my throat, but just as I began my speech, Tyron came in. Scratching his head with one hand and holding Kir up like a looking glass, he approached the desk. This was perfect. I still needed a few seconds to construct a speech. I’d kind of hoped to have a few lower-key schmoozings before Warnado took charge.
“Lucy,” he asked, “do you have any ballot paper? I-” He looked up and saw me in the centre of the room. “Oh, Kay, you’re up! Great to see you.”
“Tyron, my friend,” I greeted in my most grandiose, booming voice, positively overcome with joy at the sight of the big, green furball. Naturally, I was happy to see him, but I was putting it on a bit. “How are you?”
I ran up and bear-hugged him to the best of my ability.
“I love this man!” I called out performatively. “He has been there for me in some low moments since I arrived in Nexus, an excellent confidant. He and little Kir!” I pecked the sword on its flat. “I wouldn’t be here without them. And of course not without Warnado, who introduced me with such enthusiasm. Another great friend, with whom I launched the escape from the Tower. Who helped me tame the Book - his was the plan that stopped its dream-weaving. And I wouldn’t be here without Steve and Jennifer, who, with help from Shadow, conducted essential research that figured out a way to nullify the Book’s powers - research which now allows Fristad his freedom! Not without Destiny and…” I swallowed defensively, on the verge of an immense blunder.
Yes, condescended the Book. Do not talk about the escape or the grief that came of it. Probably shouldn’t have claimed credit for the escape attempt.
“... without Destiny, who alerted us all to the threat Fristad posed in his possessed state and didn’t allow herself to be gaslit or manipulated into silence. Without even the now-tamed Book, which teleported me away when the Entity bested me and enabled my capture of the Ender, and the massacre of her forces.
“Most of all, I wouldn’t be alive without Astro, our wizened wizard. A friend of mine these last four-to-ten years who advised me through some deal of war and strife, funded my dreams and somehow put up with me through all of it. As loyal a companion as I could ever ask for!
“And not without so many of you here would we have escaped the village!
“Even those who weren’t there with us through any of the things I have recounted, who only joined when Fire sent out the call for the construction of this kindly shelter, have been essential to mine and our survival. Urist, Voidblade, Lucy, you gave us a place to flee to.
“In fact, if I recall correctly, for I was mostly catching up on some much-required beauty sleep at the time, the shelter crew ensured that we actually successfully reached this place. Had we proceeded on foot, I certainly would not have lasted long enough to be healed fully. Shadow had done her best, but I was still losing life. I felt myself slipping away day by day, growing ever weaker in spirit even if my bodily decline had been stymied. For these things and many other services and sacrifices of which I am probably as yet unaware, I thank you. We will ensure your efforts are not in vain.
“Moreover, I thank everyone in this bunker for what they have given to fight the Entity and assure our mutual survival. We now face a choice, and I would be honoured to be the one who leads you. I have seen the threat we face, and I have not missed the toll it has taken upon you and so many others. Mitigating current suffering and preventing future difficulty will be at the heart of any army headed by me. I entreat your support.”
And with that, I turned toward the command room, and took the lead in marching on, buffeted onwards by the winds of polite applause and satisfied hmmmms.
Chapter 3: The Ballot (Fire)
“Kay finished his speech. They’ll be here in less than a minute.” Shadow said, a rune dimming on her arm.
Fire took a deep breath. “Let’s hope this goes by without creating any bigger issues.”
Fire used the few seconds he had to mentally prepare himself for what was going to happen. Everyone would enter the room, they’d close the door and hold their ballot. Maybe Kay wouldn’t be too confrontational due to his recent injuries but Fire wasn’t too hopeful. Ideally the entire thing wouldn’t take more than ten minutes and once it was over they’d have an officially elected leader.
Shadow asked, as if reading Fire’s thoughts: “What if it isn’t you?”
Fire replied: “I’ll make do, I don’t have to be at the top to see this through, it’ll be just like back home. It’s not ideal but it’s workable.”
Before they could exchange any more words the rest of the group was upon them. Somewhat surprisingly Destiny was the first one to enter the room, quickly followed by Steve and Jennifer as well as Lucy, who gave them a quick greeting by waving a handful of ballot paper at them. Almost immediately after them came Urist and Fristad, who were loudly chatting about something. Then came Warnado, Amanda and Kay.
Oh no.
The moment Kay entered the room his eyes were fixed on Fire burning with competitiveness and other things that Fire deliberately ignored. Kay was still wearing his infirmary garb, that combined with the fact that his movements were even more exaggeratedly grandiose than usual did not bode well at all.
“I’m back!” Kay exclaimed as he struck a pose. “Hope you didn’t miss me too much. I’m feeling just in the mood for an electoral debate. Would be a good change of pace after defeating the mods-damned Ender in single combat!”
Shadow cut in. “Kay, there isn’t even everyone here yet. You’re welcome for the healing by the way.”
Kay blinked in indignance, Fire looked back at the entrance. Tyron and Astro were the next ones to enter, Astro pulling Tyron aside almost immediately. A few seconds later Voidblade and Rose entered and shut the door behind them. Voidblade immediately tried to gain as much distance as he could from the humans in the room, a tendency of his that would hopefully lessen as he got more used to living with them.
Shadow spoke again. “Alright, now that everyone is here it’s time to explain exactly why we are here in case anyone hasn’t heard it yet.”
Fire was glad that his sister was taking the speaking role, since he was one of the candidates it would have been quite odd if he had announced the ballot himself. Shadow was a good speaker if she wanted to be, there was something about her that made people listen.
Shadow continued: “Fire built the foundations of this shelter but immediately taking the lead would be a bit undemocratic, so we decided to hold a ballot for who is going to take the position of leader. Currently the two obvious candidates are Fire and Kay, however if anyone else wants to step forward they can.”
There was no response for a few seconds. “We have our candidates then.”
Lucy spoke up: “I have the papers but no urn. How are we going about this?”
Urist started shifting on the spot and a few seconds later he was holding some kind of vessel. “Almost forgot I had this thing, memento ‘o my last colony.”
He hurried forward and placed the vessel on the central table. Fire took a closer look at it, it was odd to say the least. Its basic shape was that of an urn made from what looked to be silver, decorated with spikes of various other metals. On the urn were engravings that Fire couldn’t read. Urist had started to teach him the runes and iconography that dwarves used but his grasp on them was still rudimentary. The only runes Fire could decipher meant “elephant” and “lever”.
As much as Fire would have liked to contemplate the urn, there was an election at hand and his opposition seemed quite eager to get some words out.
“Most of you have heard my routine already,” Kay oozed confidently, sitting on the table, arms folded loosely and eyes half-closed. “So, I’ll be brief and hopefully a little less formal. Pretty sure I used the word mitigating last time - ha! - breaking out the big-boy words and such. What on earth was I at?” He paused for a few isolated chuckles.
“Suffice to say, I’m a military man. I’ve withstood sieges, led ambushes, taken death-blows for superiors and underlings alike. I am fiercely loyal to those I consider friends and exceedingly liberal with the definition of friend. I am a skilled swordsman, hand-to-hand fighter and now magical man. I will whip that congregation into shape. I have fought men and Divines and Endlings, and if you give me an army I will teach them how to massacre all three. I am, to the best of my knowledge, the only one who has bested a captain of the Tower or faced the Entity and I will seek to convey what I have learned.
“And it doesn’t stop on the training field. I am a man of exceeding mental fortitude and strategic instinct. Out in that battlefield I was telling the book how to use its own powers to maximum effect. In warfare I was renowned for low-casualty, unconventional raids that wreaked havoc on our enemies before we engaged them in open combat. Herobrine’s 10th wasn’t actually that large. Maybe eight thousand at its peak, and yet we held the Arcadian peninsula for a year.
“Moreover, I’d like to think I understand people. I know how to keep morale up. As I’ve hopefully proved, I can be quite persuasive,” he chuckled and a few more people joined him than the last time. “And I tend to lead from the front. While I am glad that this shelter was built and ready for our arrival, I would like to point out that Fire just kind of left without telling anyone he was going aside from Shadow. And he also only told Shadow he had sighted the Ender at the Prophet’s hill, which might have been useful to know before she turned up hunting for us a day or two later.”
He was mad now. Obviously mad. Fire wanted to stop him but he picked back up.
“And he wasn’t there at the Tower, either. This is not to cast aspersions about Fire’s motives or character, but his leadership style does feel a tad detached for my tastes. There’s leading from the front and then there’s leading from a front, somewhere. Moreover, it does seem premature to me that someone who has barely even faced the Entity or his little squad of goons thinks he can adequately lead people against them, on account of his success in simulated warfare,” Kay concluded with a harsh and bitter brogue. “I appreciate your support.”
With that, he stood up and rejoined Warnado, furrowing his eyebrows and tightening his folded arms. A polite but somewhat uneasy round of applause went up. Tyron patted Kay on the shoulder, but his face was such a mess of consternation that he might have been congratulating or consoling him.
Fire took a few moments to consider. Just like when Kay had lost his temper in the village, the temptation to deliver a crushing, deconstructive response was there but yet again Fire decided against it, if anything it would escalate the tension further.
He said: “I suppose I’ll start with some backstory as well to stay in theme and then respond to the more glaring accusations. I was born to pretty much the worst parents you could imagine, not only were they war profiteers and generally horrible people, they were also dead for as long as I can remember. I only found out about this when I was older but for brevity I’ll spare you most of the events after. The important point is that I had a sister who was pathologically afraid of anyone but me and I spent most of my life looking for a way to remedy this.
“I finally found a group of people who managed to create a world parallel to mine, a world in which my sister could be free. That is the world where I truly spent the majority of my life, time wise at least. It’s been a good five millenia now, in which I have gathered all kinds of experience in war and other matters, and contrary to what some might say, this experience was quite real.
“Eventually I made a slight mistake when experimenting with a new potion mixture and ended up in Nexus, where I ran into the very man who is now my opposition. I admit, I have had a history of disappearing in moments that were in hindsight quite inconvenient. The first time I managed to negotiate my ‘release’ with the Ender and gained valuable information in turn, which not only included the knowledge of safety of the location we are in but it also allowed me to return home and bring Shadow here. I could have just stayed in my world and hoped for the best but something tells me that it wouldn’t have ended well. As for the second time, as Kay put it, the shelter is essential to our current well-being.
“I know most of you have already made up your mind for who you want to elect, in fact, I think that for some that decision only has one viable choice, whichever that might be. Do what you think is best for our survival, because that’s what it comes down to in the end.”
Once Fire had stopped speaking Lucy started going around the room, handing out ballot paper and writing implements to everyone.
Once she arrived at Shadow she was met with a raised palm. Shadow said: “My vote was decided before I even arrived. I’m abstaining to have a result that better represents the opinion of those who don’t have my reasons.”
Astro, after conferring with Kay a second, cleared his throat: “Naturally, Kay has my support, but I respect that I’m a free vote on account of my past affiliations. For pretty much the exact same reasons, I abstain. Wizards think alike, I suppose.” He lightly tossed his ballot in.
Everyone got a few minutes to consider and cast their vote, some took longer than others. Fristad and Voidblade were the very first ones to put their paper into the urn, causing some slight awkwardness when it came to who went first.
Warnado was next, folding his ballot in the shape of a boat with a spell and flicking it off his wrist. Amanda rolled her eyes and handed in a less spectacular but certainly more anonymous entry to the anonymous ballot.
Lucy and Urist were the next ones to vote, followed automatically by Destiny, who seemed to have waited until the initial wave subsided. Rose followed a short while after, adding a second, identical boat to the urn, giving Warnado a sly smile. Fire smiled in turn, it seemed that Warnado had yet again managed to bring out a soft spot in someone.
When Shadow gave the warning that only a minute of time was left Steve and Jennifer stepped up as well, albeit slowly. Only Tyron remained not having voted, still looking deeply conflicted. As the last seconds ticked down he quickly scribbled down a name, folded the paper and threw it into the urn. He looked like he’d handed over a baby, or dropped it on the floor.
Shadow announced: “So, we have all the votes. I think it would be best if Astro and I do the counting together. Astro?”
Astro nodded and they spent a minute unfolding papers, separating them into piles and counting them. They spoke to each other the whole time, Shadow casting a ward to prevent people listening in on them. Then, finally they spoke.
“The count reads,” announced Astro, “Eight for Fire, three for Kay, with two abstentions.”
Fire felt relief flood through him, but shot a look at Kay to figure out what was going to happen. He looked like he’d just tasted sour milk and was appropriately silent. He walked up and offered a hand to Fire, forcing a smile that was as iron-clad as his gaze.
“Congratulations,” he said, offering a thorny, reluctant olive branch. “I did give you a fight.”
Fire replied: “That you did. Even if I had lost you would have had my support. It’s the ends of survival we’re fighting for here, how we get there is less important.”
“Naturally, survival is paramount and unity is key to that,” Kay conceded as though making a point to someone else. It wouldn’t have surprised Fire if that had been the Book speaking for Kay. “How do you intend to proceed, commander?”
Fire collected his thoughts, an outline for a plan was in his mind already, the details gradually filling in.
“The congregation will be here in less than two days, until then we need a clear command structure that allows us to smoothly integrate everyone into the shelter. The core group and some of the skilled early arrivals will act as group leaders in their respective areas, once more arrive they’ll have to delegate another layer of command. That way we keep the chain of command short but ideally without sacrificing professionalism. We don’t have the time to build up elaborate structures.”
“How are we defining ‘areas’?” asked Kay with a pragmatic sigh.
“Rough division between combat and non-combat, with each being split into smaller categories. Not everyone will be a soldier, we need logistics too, aspects of that’ll be most of the non-combat areas. The combat area is split into things like conventional weapons, siege operations, guerrilla tactics, magic, and a few others. The middle elements in the chain control the areas they are proficient in.”
“What’s the general strategy?” interjected Astro wearily, as though just to remind Kay others had similar questions. “How soon do we want them combat-ready?”
That was a good question, one that was very difficult to answer since a lot of the variables were unknown.
“I could say ‘as soon as possible’ but that satisfies no-one. I don’t know how close whatever the Entity is planning is to completion so we need to assume earlier rather than later. A rough estimate would be two weeks for the bare minimum of being able to put up a fight. Victory is not very likely through direct combat, the Entity remains something that we can’t ‘just’ kill.”
“What will you have me oversee?” Kay asked flatly.
Fire said: “Actually, I thought about making you my second-in-command when it comes to warfare. You are experienced and I could use an additional opinion when forming plans. Shadow would be filling the equivalent role on the magical side of things. Do you accept?”
“Absolutely,” said Kay, obviously surprised but not hesitating for a second. Collecting himself, he added: “I would be honoured. Dealing with the Endlings will be crucial and hopefully I’ll be able to give some insight on how that might be achieved. I’ve some formations from the Onslaught that might prove helpful.”
So far so good, now there was one final matter Fire had to address. “One last thing I’d like to say while we’re all in a room together. It’s regarding that prophecy that started off the shelter. I don’t know how much of it should be trusted, all I know is that people see me as its champion and I intend to use it to smooth things over until they can trust us because of how we lead not because of a prophecy.”
There was a silence in the room, they were obviously waiting for Fire to continue. “That’s all, get some rest, clear your head. In the evening we’ll meet here again to figure out the chain of command.”
Chapter 4: Behind Closed Doors (Freak/Fristad)
Another meeting, great. Those had only increased in frequency in the recent time and I didn’t like it. Any other part of the Tower had a lot more fun things I could do, even if it was just invisibly stalking some technician. Here in the meeting room I had to stay visible and at least somewhat responsive and since I was part of the Entity’s “inner circle”, as they called it, I was expected to show up consistently.
Currently I was sitting in a chair between two other inner circle members, to my right was the Ender and to my left was Glibby, Glibby the Ape as his full name or title went. Well, he tried to bear it as a title, but it had the stink of a nickname that he couldn’t quite mask beneath his regal poise and gallons of perfume. The Ender was still badly beaten from her fight against the general, prominent lightning-shaped scars now visible across her face.
I couldn’t help but feel slightly bad for her, I was only mostly a heartless *******... on top of being a phantom that feeds on fear. Mortal emotions did have a tendency to worm their way into the minds of my kind as we aged. However I didn’t need to listen to that tiny voice in my head to know that the Ender was in a precarious position. Her role as primary military leader placed a lot of responsibility on her and with that came the ire of everyone else once she inevitably made a mistake. Glibby was especially happy about her failure, which he showed through remarks that were polite on the surface but brutally condescending beneath that.
In the following days Glibby’s Grey Ones, a squadron of old Endlings he had practically stolen from the Ender, would probably lord it over the Ender’s own troops. I chuckled. They were as much a drinking club as they were a unit. They didn’t even properly do their job as wardens, which had cost me quite a sizable amount of “beloved” subjects.
No, in truth the inner circle only included Glibby because he was sent by the Silhouette as an ambassador, hostage, gift or something of the sort, I didn’t concern myself with the details. The true third member of the inner circle was Marinus Bul, the terribly boring and pedantic but admittedly vital mouthpiece and “lawyer” of the Entity. He sat to Glibby’s right and was currently looking through some sort of notebook.
The important players were all here with Marcus from Command and Control already waving a pointing device around wildly and occasionally handing off to Issa from Dimensions and that dimensional cartographer Clark Belmont.
Other than that, the table was almost fully seated with the notable exception being the throne that the Entity usually occupied. Another important absence was the scientist who had accompanied the Ender during her mission, Dr.… Mercury, yeah, right. That was her name. Apparently her magical counterpart Archmage Wisp would answer in her stead, however everyone knew where the actual competence was in that duo.
As to where she was, I had some insider knowledge, and by that I mean I stalked her a bunch. She got quite obsessed with the thing we found in the village and apparently she was instructed to look into it by the Entity directly, with priority above the machine no less. Which brings me back to my new favorite subject: The Entity’s fear.
I could get a morsel of everyone in that room’s fear just by throwing my head back and breathing in. I knew them all well enough to know the taste by rote. The Ender had the coppery taste of high expectations - of what would happen if she returned home defeated. Glibby the unique savour of a specific person from his past. Bul the succulent tang of fearing death beneath a million more banal anxieties. Marcus: the Void. Issa: burning. Wisp: his mother or poverty (depending on the day). All of these were well familiar to me - as they should be, feeding on and knowing fear was my function in this world.
The Entity was not.
Ever since I entered its service, the Entity had betrayed not even the slightest concern. Reality was a mere bump in the road on the way to its objective. It wasn’t even like the taste of water, that at least had a texture. It wasn’t like breathing air. It was as though the air had been knocked out of the lungs of the world where it stood. The Entity was an absence. A suffocation. And while others of my kind had ignored it, feared it on these grounds, that was mere short-sightedness. I saw the terror it could engender in peoples, nations, worlds. It was like an empty god. And I told myself I would be there to ride the wave it would create and I would feast.
Then, something happened that I hadn’t believed possible. Something in that village - that insignificant collection of houses and shops - had made the Entity afraid. It had hurt it in some small way it hadn’t considered. Now, it hardly left its chambers, and had its manifestations patrolling the site of the problem.
As it gazed upon the little wound made upon the world, I tasted a strange sort of fear coming off my employer. It wasn’t as nourishing as mortal fear to be sure, but there was something sophisticated about it. The same way mortals desired to taste expensive spirits just to feel wealthy, I yearned for another taste of that elixir.
The Ender and the scientist were the only ones that had seen its cause and they were tight-lipped, but somehow the escapees had done it. I wasn’t sure which one - the wizard, the witch, the warriors, maybe even old Tyron - but I would have to conduct some research once we found them again. One of them, a shepherd called Fristad who hadn’t been in Bul’s omniscient notebook, was weak. Something had held him under its thumb before, and he would be pliable again. I looked forward to squeezing what I could out of him almost as much as I anticipated the fear of my master.
But there was something beyond mere yearning.
I had caught a glimpse of something more within the fear. Of another such wound, that the Entity desperately wanted to hide. Pretending to be healed, the wound festered somewhere in its chambers. Somewhere, in a room plated with obsidian and bronze, a tiny distortion trembled atop a throne. And there I might find the source of its fears. And in that source, perhaps an opportunity awaited. For if empty gods could still feel fear, how high could fear itself ascend?
###
I know I want to talk to Kay the second the vote is read. I see a look of anger in his eyes that cannot be his own. Not that I know him too well, but it’s a look of anger I’m familiar with. It’s how I always imagined the Book’s facial expressions. It wanted the leadership. That was obvious already - it’s why I didn’t vote for Kay - but seeing its anger on his face makes me aware of the more human consequences of its lust for power.
With me it just had a vessel which it had to make powerful. With Kay it saw an opportunity to grasp at power. He got less than half the votes Fire did, and he really seemed to be trying with those speeches. It will be angry.
Apparently he’s trained to resist mental manipulation, but I know the nightmares it is capable of conjuring. He at least needs some solidarity. I shoot Fire a pleading look that I’m not sure if he notices.
Please, I entreat, Let him leave this with something to show for it.
Relief washes over me when Fire grants him second-in-command, but I know that will only placate it so much.
So, as everyone leaves the room, I follow Kay and ask him for a moment to talk alone. He and Warnado exchange a look. The kid looks worried and I fail to make eye contact with Amanda as she turns to face me. I remember the terror the Book persuaded me to inflict in her. To break her. To make her our… its slave. The colour of youthful enthusiasm has started to return to her cheeks but she still has a certain paleness.
The metal vest with all its crystals feels loose upon me, and I wonder what I might be thinking if it were gone. My lungs feel paradoxically tight and my breathing constricted. I want to hug the vest against me and never let it get away. Never leave my mind vulnerable again.
After an agonizing few seconds, Kay folds the corners of his mouth downward in acceptance and leads me down a hallway and into a storage room. He starts going through a chest of armour, picking out lightweight diamond pieces.
“So, what is it you wanted to talk about, Fristad?” He asks distantly, his head still in a chest and his hands still rummaging.
The scrape and clatter of metal being moved is nearly deafening, so I wait for a pause in his movements before I talk. After a few false starts I manage:
“You know, I just wanted to check in. You looked pretty pissed about losing the election if you don’t mind my noticing.”
“Eh,” he grunts laxly. “You win some, you lose some.”
More clattering. Silence otherwise. I’m going to need a better approach. Normally I’d take this as a cue to leave a douche alone, but I try to tap into the optimism and empathy I’ve been making an effort to exercise since getting rid of the book.
“Listen,” I try again. “We are alone, alone, right? You can tell me.”
He turns around, looks me dead in the eye and chuckles.
“Don’t worry,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder with surprising warmth and sincerity. “The book and I have an arrangement.”
He returns to rummaging and I struggle not to feel reassured.
“An arrangement?” I cock an eyebrow.
“Yes,” he says, comparing two boots. “I want to get strong enough to beat the Entity and defend my friends once I get home. The book wants to accumulate power and strength. Our goals are fairly well-aligned. Worst comes to the worst, I decide I want to retire once I get back home and help the book find a better host. All works out.”
I’m surprised by how genuinely unconcerned he is, and it stokes the flames of worry in my chest.
“Okay,” I begin, snarking. “I won’t worry about the crazy possessed artifact that was inside my head controlling my every act for the last age.” I clap my hands against my thighs. “It’s just that easy, I guess.”
He turns around and sits on the lip of the box.
“Fristad,” he says. “Believe me, this isn’t a slight against you. You’re a civilian, not used to this sort of thing. Me? This is nothing new. Endlings worked on me for weeks. I didn’t crack, because I had the proper training. I’m glad you’re free of its influence, and don’t mistake this for me defending it. It’s done some reprehensible things, I’m sure, but this is a difficult time. Like our new commander said, it’s survival we’re fighting for here. The book gets that too. Besides, if there’s the slightest problem I’ll just borrow your vest and get Shadow to bully it until it starts toeing the line again.”
He winks, excuses himself and carries his new-found armour set off. I linger in the room a little while. I sigh. I wander back to the atrium. Jennifer’s gone out hunting by now for sure. It’s a pity. There’s a dark cloud hanging over my thoughts that going out hunting with her might lift. Steve and Jennifer have been such a help through this whole thing and I love them for it. At the same time, I can’t lean on them too much. With the book gone, I had no excuse, it is time to figure out my own flaws and fears without either imposing them on others or attributing them to external forces.
I go into the library and immediately see Destiny.
“Well,” I surrender. “A little shared grousing is good for us all.”
Things have been weird between Destiny and me, not that they were ever normal. I met her maybe an hour before David mortally wounded himself fighting off the Ender, and she’d been grieving ever since. Then, while the book was trying to break Amanda, Destiny walked in on me and she was the first to figure out my involvement. In fact, she came rather close to burning me alive in front of the whole group when I tried to gaslight her out of what she saw. Shortly after I was liberated from the book’s influence and she vanished off with Fire to build this shelter. And since I’ve arrived she’s been avoiding everyone, first by hunting, then by recoiling in here. All that’s to say there has never been time for the much-deserved apology. Now, here she is, alone and pretending to read a book.
Please don’t judge me too harshly for missing the opportunity to make a fool of myself by unloading a long and rambling apology with no warning. I just really need to vent.
“Do you ever get closure on something only to realise that closure has opened up a whole load of other questions?”
Destiny looks up with the enthusiasm of a subsiding house, flicking a strand of brown hair away from her eyes. I don’t expect her to respond - like I said she’s been avoiding everyone, even blanking non-essential conversation - but she does. Maybe the election has reignited something in her.
“What sort of questions?”
After the shock wears off I immediately launch back into talking, pulling up a chair.
“What do I do now? Who am I now without this big thing that’s been dominating my headspace for the last age? I’ve just wanted to get back to normal for so long I’m not even sure I know or like what ‘normal’ is anymore. Those sorts of questions, y’know?”
Destiny lays her book down and almost laughs - she makes one of those amused exhalations of the nostrils you make when there’s nobody else around - and begins to nod.
“Yeah,” she smiles. “I know that mood.”
She says nothing else so I decide to seize the day and get a few more specific things out there.
“It’s not that I was under that book’s thumb for years or anything. It’s probably not been more than a few weeks… months, maybe? It was all a bit of a blur, it’s not important. It’s just that, before all this I was a shepherd. I didn’t have to be worried about anything other than just keeping my flock in order and making a living. Then, that nightmare with the book happened and… I’ve learned so much. It was awful, but I don’t know if I can just return to the grindstone. If I want things to be exactly the way they were.”
“Yeah,” she agrees. “You feel like something needs to have changed. To make it worthwhile.”
“Exactly!” I said, pointing a finger. “That’s it. I think…”
“It must be even weirder with that thing still about.” I’m struggling to figure out if she blames me for this before she picks up again. “I mean, you don’t even get the closure of knowing it’s gone for good. I imagine you were probably expecting something just a little more final than ‘I guess that’s not my problem anymore!’”
“How do you feel about the book?” I ask, trying to find out if there’s a hope in the Nether of avoiding an apology.
“I don’t trust it, honestly I really hate it, but I’m glad Kay’s found a use for it,” she shrugs. “If it can screw up the Ender or Glibby it can stick around. Anyway, I do get where you’re coming from,” a chuckle sends ripples through her speech, “David and I were reincarnated to stop Martin and the Sovereign and now that’s done. It’s crazy. There was this function and now it’s filled so what am I supposed to do, y’know? It’s so weird… but it’s okay now.”
I find this interesting. What’s changed?
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Yeah, I was able to find someone to talk to - from my world - and suddenly it’s not so bad.”
She smiles and I smile back. I wonder who she found. I try to cross-reference her characteristics with anyone else in the group.
“Lucky you,” I chuckle, “I’ve only got the book.”
Destiny laughs hesitantly and weighs her words before she leans in and whispers to me. “I mean if it works it works. Technically, I’m just talking to myself out there.” She laughs a little too enthusiastically for my liking and I’m almost creeped out.
“Yeah…” I say, trying to think of an excuse to get out of there.
“Oh by Notch I sound so crazy!” she falls back laughing and it’s slightly less scary. She beckons me back in and says, “I found a chunk from Minera, my world. The portal there’s broken but there’s still some sort of connection. I can commune with my past self, Anya, when I’m there. Haven’t been able to do that since I got to Nexus, usually I can’t shut her up. Don’t tell anyone though, I want to keep this private.”
I’m still not sure if she’s delusional or joking or whether this is just a thing where she comes from but I nod and assure her she can count on me. She smiles in confusion as she stands up.
“Thanks for the talk, Fristad. I think Jennifer should be far enough out for me to get there unnoticed now. Talk to you later.”
Taking me totally by surprise, she hugs me. It’s weird, tentative and ends quickly - I don’t even get a chance to hug back - but I think I need it too. Neither of us seem to know how to touch another human after all we’ve been through. We both stare at each other for a few seconds, then she gives me a thumbs up and leaves.
I sit there for a while. Urist steps in.
“How’re ye, Fristad? Ye well?”
I look at him and smile with something resembling wisdom.
“Oh I’m fine, it’s just… Interdimensional travel is weird, Urist,” I say, “Really. Freakin’. Weird.”
Arc 2 Preparations (Chapters 5-16)
Chapter 5: Warnado’s Gauntlet (Shadow)
It was just after sunrise when Shadow entered the cavern they had converted into a training ground. The floor had been smoothed out and was now completely level, Urist had taken the liberty of engraving some scenes of battle into it. Shadow liked the engravings since they reminded her of the base they had back home on the server, it hardly had any plain surfaces left.
Shadow had arrived a few minutes earlier than she had agreed with Astro and Warnado, if this room was to be used as a site for magical training it couldn’t be left as-is. One stray spell could completely collapse this cavern, with a risk of the cave-in spreading to the rest of the base. Shadow sat down in the middle of the room and tapped into her magic, visualizing the shape of the room. The warding spell she cast was one she had used many times in different forms, it was in essence the same one she had used to block out sound on many occasions, only now it would block magic and physical force.
Under normal conditions the spell would have taken hours to cast but due to the uniquely high ambient energy in Nexus Shadow could manage it in less. As the spell began to draw from her life force, various runes all over Shadow’s skin lit up. The pull was quite substantial but Shadow redirected it to the various pieces of energy-storing jewelry she was wearing.
About half-way through the casting process Shadow had a thought, a theory she could test while nobody was nearby. She opened that new sense she had gained when she came to Nexus, as she did her skin took on hints of the even-less-than-nothing of her unbound form. Her perception had changed, she looked outwards from the physical world into what was beyond.
“This explains a few things.” Shadow muttered.
From what she could see Nexus wasn’t just one three-dimensional world, there were multiple additional layers. None of them contained any physical matter but they were filled to the brim with energy, bloated almost. Shadow’s vision didn’t extend far enough to see where all this energy was coming from but knowing that it was there was enough to confirm her theory.
Bolts of pure nothingness began arcing outwards as Shadow forcefully pulled energy from those parallel planes. This would have been quite dangerous if anyone else had been around, something Astro would probably agree with. Shadow felt a sting of guilt when thinking about Astro and the predicament she had put him in. She pushed the guilt away, Fire always said that there was little use in worrying about things you couldn’t change.
Before long the protective ward was finished, with time to spare still. Both Astro and Warnado were still eating breakfast in the mess hall. Shadow chuckled to herself. Her acute awareness of everything around her would probably disturb a lot of people if they knew the extent of it. She had consciously not listened in on any of the conversations before or during the election but she was almost sure that whatever Astro had told Tyron had swayed his vote in some manner. Tyron had looked positively tortured when he cast his vote. Shadow definitely had to question Astro on this later.
While waiting for her training partner and her apprentice, Shadow thought back to the meeting they had held the previous evening. Kay had seemingly calmed down but she wasn’t entirely sure how deeply that calm reached. As Fire had promised, they had assigned everyone a position as a division leader. Shadow herself would be in charge of the magical training along with Astro, Destiny and Tyron, the latter two were assigned a hybrid role of overseeing martial training as well and ideally to help with integration of magical and martial forces.
Rose and Voidblade were chosen for weapons training and guerrilla warfare respectively. Urist had immediately volunteered for siege operation, citing his intricate knowledge of dwarven engineering. Steve, Jennifer and Fristad decided to oversee resource gathering and similar supportive tasks. Lucy didn’t get an overseer role as such, however since she was head of logistics she’d have indirect command over a whole variety of people. Despite Warnado’s protests, he and Amanda were not assigned roles since despite their contributions so far, they were still kids at the end of the day. He got over it pretty quickly.
Speak of the quarter-demon: just as Shadow concluded her thoughts Warnado threw the door to the training hall open enthusiastically, maybe a little too enthusiastically, shortly behind him was Astro. With satisfaction Shadow noticed that Warnado’s facial obfuscation spell was a lot more potent than it had been in the past, however still not enough to keep her out. Warnado’s face had a slightly nervous expression on it, with good reason. Today they would attempt to explore his demonic side.
“So!” Warnado called. “Demon magic and flying today. What’s first?” He was trying to sound enthusiastic but his preference was obvious.
“Let’s start with flying,” said Astro, clapping him on the shoulder and unfurling a rug he’d brought with him. “Honestly, it’s not that tough. Ghostly taught me fairly early on.”
The flight idea was new but it would be a good opportunity for Warnado to warm up first.
Shadow asked: “What type of flight do you have in mind? Wings? Levitation? Recoil propulsion?”
“Let’s try levitation,” Astro said flatly. “Simplest and once you get the knack for it it’s the most sustainable. Recoil propulsion can get ugly if you launch yourself too hard and wings are fine but kind of exhausting.”
He and Warnado sat down at opposite ends of the rug and Shadow stood by to watch.
“So,” Astro began. “You know the whole, light the fire in the middle of a leaf and stop it spreading thing?”
Warnado rolled his eyes and nodded.
“Yeah. Ever heard of oxygen?”
“I have, and thanks for clarifying that you have. It’ll come in handy later so you shouldn’t be wasting it.”
Astro produced a leaf from his pocket and floated it over to Warnado.
“Don’t catch it with your hand, just keep it where it is,” he said. “Don’t let it dip or rise. Like I said, it’s like lighting the fire in the middle of the leaf and not letting it spread. It’s not about pushing it, it’s all focusing on where it is at the moment.”
It was now floating over the center of Warnado’s un-gauntleted palm. Shadow could see the look of concentration on his face.
“I’m going to stop keeping it there,” Astro explained. “Up to you to keep it there. Three. Two. One.”
It dipped a little, but it then held in place. Shadow noted the progress of Warnado’s abilities. A few weeks prior it probably would have shot off or fallen because he panicked or got overexcited. His confidence was growing.
“Alright,” Astro clapped. “Well done. Now, focusing on where it currently is, try and imagine it moving up.”
“Imagine?” Warnado snapped, and the leaf wobbled. Through gritted teeth he added, “Next you’ll just tell me to believe in myself.”
“Honestly, the easiest way to do it is to just assume it’ll work. Just think of it as no big deal, as though it’s perfectly natural that the leaf would rise,” said Astro with a shrug and a laugh.
Warnado nodded, seeming to understand a little more. And then the leaf quivered upwards for a few inches, growing slightly more steady as it went.
“And stop,” said Astro. “Now I’m going to ask you to do something that’s going to sound really dumb, but trust me, it works.”
Warnado smirked beneath his hood. “If you tell me the real leaf was all the friends we made along the way I’m going to punch you.”
“Okay, not that dumb,” Astro laughed. “So I don’t break your concentration I’m going to explain the concept first. Where I come from, we wizards like to pretend our brand of magic is a science like thaumaturgy, or a power with a quantifiable source like admin magic, but in reality it’s just a natural thing we can do. Some people can sing, some folks are strong, we can change reality a bit. Once you realise that, it’s all about how you look at things.
“Some of it has a basis. Like, once you appreciate that water is hydrogen and oxygen, it’s not that hard to envision those two things splitting apart. And from there, because you know gas gets set on fire it’s not too hard to see the hydrogen catching fire and exploding because that’s what hydrogen does.
“Other times you just have to trick your brain into accepting something that doesn’t have a good explanation. Part of the reason I floated it over to you is so that you could clearly understand that the leaf can float if you want it to. You’ve already seen it do so, so you’re not going to doubt it so easily. You get it?”
“I think so,” Warnado responds. “Consensus reality and all that.”
Warnado’s vocabulary always surprised Shadow. Occasionally he would mention words or concepts he logically had no way of knowing, like how he had mentioned Clue when they were investigating the Dreamweaver. She really wondered where he got them from.
“Consensus reality is a dumb term made up by smart idiots who don’t appreciate that the entire point is not to overthink it,” Astro ranted. “But yes, it’s pretty much that. So, now I’m about to say the dumb thing.”
He didn’t say it.
“Keep me in suspense, why don’t you?” Warnado pressed.
“Imagine you are the leaf,” he paused to Warnado’s stifled laughter, and chuckled a bit himself. “Ha… ha, just, ha, just presume that when the leaf moves... you move.”
“Oh boy,” Warnado shook his head. “Give me a second.”
Warnado stifled his laughter. Shadow noticed that the leaf was still where it was supposed to be. It trembled a lot, but it was there. Despite all the snarking and laughing, Warnado was paying attention. His multitasking truly was impressive.
After a few seconds pause, the quarter-demon re-centered his attention fully on the leaf, muttered “I am the leaf” and then started squinting. Sure enough, the leaf started floating upwards, and so did he. His face lit up beneath the obfuscation charm, he immediately called out.
“I’m doing it!”
“Yeah, you certainly are,” Astro smiled politely. “Now, try moving a little to the left.”
Warnado, now adopting a smug expression, his glowing red eyes squashing and stretching to indicate a cocked eyebrow.
“Easy.”
He immediately shot off to the left way too quickly and slammed into the wall, spread out like a snowball. The leaf fluttered away harmlessly.
“You tried to apply force to it, didn’t you?” Astro groaned, eyes closed.
“I did indeed,” he grunted. “Forgot you’re just supposed to assume you’re only naturally going to be wherever you’re supposed to be or whatever. I can do it better.” He floated the leaf back up off the ground.
“Oh you absolutely can. That said, I think that’s enough of that,” Astro said with a wave of the hand. He rubbed his temple. “Don’t worry, it’s literally just that principle. You can practice in your own time. Eventually you won’t need something like a leaf to focus on. The big thing today: demon gauntlet!”
“Yeah,” Warnado said, gulping back saliva and looking at his feet. Shaking life into his limbs and hopping from foot to foot, he made eye contact with Astro and Shadow consecutively and pronounced a more confident “Sure thing!”
“Good,” Astro took the gauntleted arm like a doctor and looked it up and down. “Okay, so it’s a demon gauntlet. What does that mean?”
“It does… demonic things.”
“Right,” nodded Astro, feeling dumb. “Shadow, can you get any readings on it? I’ve not seen too much like it back home. There’s demons and stuff to be sure but we’ve mostly got them locked away. Could use a rundown.”
Shadow took a closer look at the gauntlet and, a few spells later, said: “It seems like this is not a gauntlet in the traditional sense but formerly part of an actual demon, at least part of it was. Like someone took the hand of a demon and made it into a gauntlet. It’s partly organic, as far as demons are organic at least, their definitions of what a body can be made of is quite wide. I suppose ‘demonic’ is the correct term after all but it’s also not very descriptive if you don’t know what exactly is meant.”
“Ohhh…” Astro said with a smile of discovery on his face. “So he’s drawing on another creature’s power. That makes sense. Just give me a second.” Astro closed his eyes and started pointing wildly in the air at an invisible diagram. “Right, I’ve got it.”
Astro walked back over to the gauntlet again and held it up for Warnado to see.
“You’re not a full demon, so you’re all potential but little practice. If I’m right, you need part of a being that is already in touch with its powers in order to access your own. You’re attuned but not active. It’s like Shadow and I’s rings.” He clenched a fist and clanked it onto Warnado’s wrist, which was now an acting display case and table.
“These rings draw in the background energy of Nexus or the Sane Realm or whatever world we’re in, and then we can use it. Otherwise it’s worthless. You’re the same way…” he paused. “That came out wrong. My point is that the gauntlet is able to take the latent demon juice running in your blood and make it tangible. I wish I could tell you more specifically how - I imagine there was some sort of pact made. Maybe the demon in question benefits from the arrangement. The big thing is that you realise you’re not drawing power from the gauntlet, it’s feeding on you. Oh, actually! Good analogy: it’s like a bank. You’ve put your power in an account and now you want to withdraw. Don’t let it convince you otherwise or you’ll start running into problems.”
“Convince me?” Warnado asked, a little tremor in his voice. “You’re telling me it’s alive?”
“Well,” the wizard grimaced. “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but your dad didn’t go mad for no reason.” He powered on through Warnado’s horrified expression. “I don’t think it’s sentient like the Book, but it’ll have some sort of intelligence. Worst case scenario, it’s a conduit for the thing it’s been severed from and it’ll talk to you. Best case scenario, it’s got a few stock responses to try and catch stupid people out. Little word-games to try and get out of or alter its contract. Just be really specific when you tell it what you want, okay?”
Warnado nodded unhappily. “Just be specific. Loving the irony.”
“Excellent,” Astro stated, clapping Warnado on the shoulder. They both tensed. He continued, in the low bass of attempted reassurance: “You’re doing great. Sorry if I’m a little vague. This is new territory.”
Shadow said: “It’s good that you know a bit about demons Astro, I’ve realized that my world’s safeguards have kept the worst demons out. All the ones I know are at the very least indifferent, some are even actively cooperative and interested. On the other hand, even if the bad ones came through, we do have a way of safely making contracts. In my world there is a special potion that allows you to speak and think like a demon, in that language each and every concept in existence is its own word, that way demons can’t get away with their usual word twisting. Aside from demons, the Mencur-Besh also speak it naturally, and Wodahs does too for some reason.”
A thought occurred to Shadow at that moment and she looked around at her shadowy companion. “Care to demonstrate, Wodahs?”
Wodahs detached from Shadow’s feet and walked over to Warnado, gleefully ignoring the laws of perspective projection. When she started speaking it sounded like words but not quite, Shadow knew better than to try to understand, all that would do was cause headaches, even for her. Astro flinched, indicating that he had also discovered this peculiar effect.
Warnado stopped her mid-sentence. “Okay, okay, I understand. You don’t need to be so harsh about us three-dimensional types.”
Shadow and Wodahs looked at each other in genuine surprise. Over the years, Shadow had learned how to read her companion’s body language in lieu of a face. Turns out that shades are more expressive than most people would expect, with this one raising its hands in open-palmed surrender to this confusing development.
Shadow mused: “Natural understanding of demonic, huh? Demonic from another world, no less. Makes me wonder just how much or how little of a demonic mind is needed to comprehend the language.”
Warnado’s face lit up: “She was speaking demon? And I think you’ll find my demonic brain is very large. And smart. About demon stuff.” He conjured a celebratory taco and held it up like a cigar. However, before he could chomp down, it floated out of his grasp and tipped a cocktail of meat juices and salsa down in front of him.
Astro smirked. “Sorry, after the lesson if you please.”
“You’ve made a powerful enemy today, Astro,” growled the quarter-demon child, clenching his fists. “Watch out in the lunchroom.”
“If you get me with the same trick,” he responded. “I will consider it a mark of my success as a teacher.”
The three chuckled.
“But yeah,” Astro swallowed. “Let’s test something out. What do you know demon powers to be able to do?”
“My dad was really fond of setting his arm on fire,” Warnado began with nostalgic enthusiasm, before finishing with a slightly more haunted tone, “That orphanage did not stand a chance.”
Astro gritted his teeth, blinked, patted the child uncomfortably on the shoulder.
“So,” Shadow said. “if you want to try to activate the gauntlet, I can do my best to keep you safe while you do it.”
Warnado, face furrowed into lines that seemed to physically divide his face between enthusiastic determination and terror, forced out an ironically conflicted “Absolutely!”
“I’m going to need you to sit down in your best meditation position, or whatever else helps you focus. Even with my safeguards in place, it’s best if you don’t have to make use of them.”
He leapt, folded his feet under him and then stopped in mid-air. He looked between the two of them, eyes wide open and ready to be filled with approval.
Astro laughed. “Well done, now get on the ground, please. You need to concentrate.”
Warnado closed his eyes. He haltingingly floated down, with a few jitters and split-second pauses. He took a few minutes to breathe, and looked at Shadow expectantly. She walked up behind him and placed her palms on Warnado’s shoulders. Shielding another mind was not something Shadow did often, it involved forming a very superficial link to the mind in question so that any assault would be redirected to her and drowned in her mind.
“Ready.” She said.
Warnado nodded, and it began. She caught glimpses of what Warnado was seeing as he reached out to the gauntlet. A throne of tin, bent and beaten, in a room dimly lit by fire. The gauntlet was worn by something in flux. It almost had a body but it was as though she were looking at it through condensation on a window. Whatever it was, it seemed shriveled, but occasionally flared with strength. Its legs appeared the worst affected, unable to even reach the floor.
Warnado trembled towards it, hands loosely held in a fighting stance. Shadow couldn’t understand the demonic words it pronounced but was able to gather an approximate equivalent from the human parts of Warnado’s consciousness.
It spoke, to which Warnado responded: “What are you?”
It appeared to say the same thing again, because, aloud, Warnado said: “I think it’s just a bunch of stock responses, like you said Astro. It keeps saying the same thing. This is going to be easy.”
Shadow opened her eyes to see his response. Astro gave him the thumbs up, realised the child’s eyes were closed and awkwardly called out: “You’ve got this kid. We’re with you 100% of the way!”
Shadow closed her eyes again and saw the demon speak.
“Don’t worry,” said Warnado to the vague being. “I am here for a request. Just calm down. I’d like to make a withdrawal. Let me set my arm on fire… without it hurting me or damaging my clothes.” After a pause: “As is my birthright!”
Shadow noted to herself that Warnado had really paid attention to what they’d said. It was good enough that he was trying to be specific, but she was almost certain he would forget to remind the creature whose power they were using. It would have been so easy to keep that implicit.
The being spoke again and Shadow made the mistake of trying to listen, a stupid mistake stemming from the unfamiliarity of the situation. Rebounding with a headache she quickly checked her defences. It was making no indication of a mental attack. She saw it kneel, reach out its arm and chant.
In the real world, the gem of Warnado’s gauntlet began to glow. Veins of embers began to criss and cross over the entire limb, from the tips of his fingers and stopping just before the shoulder. Then, when the whole thing started to look like a molten quilt, it sparked and the arm was ablaze in deep purple. The eager tongues of fire formed an aura at least four inches thick around the gauntlet-clad limb. The light was strong enough to weaken the darkness beneath Warnado’s hood and consequently light up his face with something other than enthusiasm.
And enthusiasm he had in spades. Warnado was looking at the arm like it was a family photo. He turned it over, stroked it (and found no burns), posed it. This elaborate dance of fingers and joints culminated in the child laughing and saying: “This is so cool.”
“Do you want to test it out?” Astro asked in a spirit of genuine scientific curiosity. “Can it spit flames or is it just for close combat?”
“Let’s find out!” Warnado cackled, standing up abruptly. Shadow readjusted her shielding, opening her eyes reluctantly. She didn’t say anything though, as the demon was still making no efforts to interfere with Warnado’s mind. It seemed territorial, refusing to leave its dented throne or its ashpit of a throne room.
Warnado arced the burning arm over his head and aimed for a training dummy, which was promptly consumed by a ball of purple flame and reduced to ash in a matter of seconds.
Its destroyer jumped with joy.
“This is so good!” He cackled yet wilder and returned to look at them. “You know, it kind of looks like a demon arm like this. Like if it remained burning, but the aura became solid a couple of inches deep. It would be all muscular and fiery and start punching everything. That would be so cool.”
That, as it turned out was a mistake. The arm straightened out and went bolt rigid. Warnado screamed as the flames gave way to metal-like flesh. Shadow searched her shield but there was no sign of an incursion. Then, all of a sudden she felt the gauntlet’s field of influence expand all the way up the arm. This was a physical attack, a land grab.
Warnado shrieked and the arm grew to twice its size and started punching wildly, beating the ground and sending cascades of light outwards from the impacts as the protective barrier absorbed the hits.
“What do you mean this is what I asked for?” Warnado cried out aloud and in his mind. The creature visibly shrugged. The moments where it looked shrivelled were increasingly rare.
Shadow was tempted to cut him off there but Astro said.
“Give us a second. This could be a learning experience.”
“Warnado,” Astro called out. “It’s your power. Just tell it to give over control.”
At this point the arm whipped off in Astro’s directing, propelling itself with a mighty blow to the ground. Astro only barely deflected its attack with a shield but seemed unfazed.
“Please!” Warnado wailed out on both planes of existence. “You don’t have to hurt him! There’s no enemies here. Please, you have to stop.”
The shapeless shape in the chair was growing more defined. Its legs were now whole enough to stand. It arose and gestured for Warnado to kneel, speaking in what was either a chant or proclamation.
“He won’t respond to that,” Astro scolded. “Tell him, firmly.”
“He’s too strong!” Warnado pleaded.
Shadow had enough of this. So far the creature on the other end seemed to not have noticed that she was listening in but that was about to change. She sent a blast of void magic down the connection, more a warning shot than anything else, however the message was clear enough, there was plenty more where that came from. The demon froze up.
“You are going to revert your influence on Warnado or I’ll drag you over to my side and make you face me.” Demon language or not, Shadow knew the demon had to take her seriously, caught off-guard as it was.
It sat down and became shrivelled and ambiguous again. Warnado’s arm faded back to normal and he collapsed. Shadow made sure that no trace of the connection was left, then severed her own link to Warnado’s mind, there was bound to be a large amount of emotional turmoil and she had no intention to share in it directly.
Astro ran up and lifted him, chuckling noiselessly and nervously.
“Well,” he began. “Memorable first day.”
“Memorable?” The child spat. “I almost killed you.”
“Almost is a relative term,” he jested, before continuing more calmly, “We know what went wrong. You said you wanted an arm that just punched everything and it gave you that. You just needed to give a counter-order. Don’t bother haggling, just make a correction. You’ll get it next time.”
“Next time?!” Warnado screeched and staggered backwards. “You’re crazy! You’re both crazy! This thing is going to kill us all! This was so stupid.”
He tore off the gauntlet and threw it on the ground.
“Warnado, it’s just a hiccup. Magic is kind of terrifying. This is just another part of that.”
Suddenly Wodahs spoke up again in the demonic language. Shadow suspected that whatever Wodahs said was only very tangentially related to the recent events. Nonetheless it made Warnado turn beet red with embarrassment under his obfuscation spell.
“This isn’t about that!” He screamed. Shadow could see his eyes watering. “This is done. The gauntlet is just a problem. I’m not strong enough!”
“Come on,” Astro tried. “Think of the things you could achieve-”
“Screw that. And screw you if you think that’s worth risking everyone’s safety over. Screw you if you think it’s worth risking my safety over! The overall vibe you should be getting is leave me alone!”
He turned heel and ran off, kicking the gauntlet as he did so.
Kay materialised in the door only to be shunted aside. At the heart of his beard his mouth became a hard line, before he forced his expression into one of generic, scholarly interest.
“What happened? I was drawing up formations and heard violent, then emotional noises. Is he okay?”
“A training mishap,” Astro said after a pause. He was staring at Kay. “He tried to use the gauntlet and lost control. Easily… Easily fixed.”
Kay gave him a thumbs up and warped over to the gauntlet. “I’ll talk to him.” He lifted it and warped away.
And so they were left there, the ground still smoking, and the ash of the dummy beckoning them.
Chapter 6: Confessions (Astro)
I consider just vanishing the dust into another dimension, but that seems impolite so I do actually go and get the brush and pan. Mostly I just do it to take my mind off the lesson. I got greedy. I spend so much of my time in a permanent state of indecision and it felt nice to be obstinately sure of something. But I scared little Warnado. I forgot that he is just a child.
“Well, technically the demon probably scared him a little more,” my brain chips in, negotiating with morality. “Honestly, I thought I did my best to reassure him.”
I did try, but sadly I tried the sort of reassurance that just pretends there isn’t a problem. That demon arm did almost kill me despite what I said. If not for the rings Shadow gave me I would probably be in a heap on the floor right now.
I pick up the brush and start shuffling back towards the remains of the dummy.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t have blocked the attack. The effort of summoning a spell like that would just have crippled me for hours. I remember how I looked in the mirror this morning. I’m pretty sure I saw grey hair in there, but it was gone after I brushed it. I’m not even forty years old yet, and I look like I’m well into my fifties. Wrinkles like cracks in pottery are forming about my eyes and mouth and all over my forehead. Grey hair seems perfectly plausible.
I kneel down. Shadow has a rune glowing and her eyes closed. I think she’s listening out for Warnado. I start brushing and the dust is thick. It crumbles into the pan.
Magic is responsible for my premature age. It happens to all wizards. All proper ones. Thaumaturges get off scot-free. Admins get a few centuries out of it. However, even by wizard standards I’m unlucky. I never completed my training with Ghostly because the Onslaught came about. With Herobrine on the march and Kay just having been arrested, we all decided to leave to avoid conscription. So, I broke things off with Ghostly.
It was an amiable parting. He was all wise and father figure-y about the whole thing. He even organised an illusory combat challenge to help prepare us for the crazy world we were about to flee into. Sadly, his co-administrators caught wind of our plan and conscripted us anyway. There wasn’t much Ghostly could do. He needed the men and letting anyone go would cause a domino effect. I don’t blame him, despite it all. I just wish we’d had more time.
I stand up and walk to the bin. I hear Shadow’s footsteps pad up to me.
“Warnado’s fine,” Shadow says. “Kay’s caught up to him.”
When he arrived at the door just there, Kay looked so much like he did in the good days. When he just wanted to keep us all safe in a confusing world that seemed intent on murdering us. A slightly shaky and rash pillar of stability in the world who would gladly fall on top of and crush any opponent. Except now he can teleport behind and engulf that opponent in voidfire.
“Good,” I say with a pang of guilt. “Kay’s always been good with kids. With getting people back on their feet generally.”
After a short pause Shadow says: “Speaking of Kay, I wasn’t listening in back then but I’m still under the impression that you said something to Tyron before the election that made him look quite conflicted.”
So this question has finally come about. For a second I thought I’d actually gotten away with it, but this is unsurprising. Unfortunately for Shadow, I am not in the mood to be interrogated right now, so I snap back:
“I’m surprised you weren’t listening. You listen to everything else around here.”
“I do still have respect for people wanting their vote to be anonymous. Other than that, guilty as charged.”
“Well at least you’re upfront about it. What exactly do you think I said that made Tyron so ‘conflicted’? Please, pray-tell, what insidious rumour or grand revelation was I spreading to influence the result of the election?”
My face and voice are flat as plains. I’m not looking at her, but I see my reflection in the metal of the bin and my eyes are burning. I wouldn’t turn those eyes on my worst enemy. I try to calm myself down. She doesn’t know what I said, and she doesn’t know why I don’t want to talk about it.
“Which is exactly why she should mind her own damned business!” Brain-me offers helpfully. I remind him that she technically hasn’t accused me of anything. I’ve already been adding things on. If she wasn’t suspicious before, she is now.
Shadow obliges my obviously rhetorical questions: “The results are in and a swing of one vote in any direction would have made no difference. Still, you know Kay better than anyone else, I’m curious about your reasons since I’m starting to suspect that you advocated against him.”
I glare at the door. No one. I cast a sound-proofing charm at a five meter radius. Plenty of room for me to furiously pace and angrily gesticulate.
“What sort of two-faced backbiter do you think I am?” I muster disgust from guilt. “Kay Mandy would have led that army well. He’s hot off his service to Herobrine. That book has so far only increased his ability to lead from the front. He’s in his damned prime and then some! Even if I weren’t his friend he’s an ideal candidate. How very dare you!”
It ends limper than I intended. I’m trying too hard.
Shadow nods. “I think you are exactly not that kind of person, which opens up more questions than it answers. Kay might be slightly… eccentric and not on the best terms with my brother but so far I have seen nothing that disputes your claims. Tyron seemed in favor of Kay so saying nothing would have been sufficient if you wanted him to vote for Kay. Which brings me back to the original question.”
“I didn’t say anything to him!” I roar this out and my temper breaks like a fever. I feebly continue: “Can’t a man talk to his friend ahead of a tense situation?”
“You saw his face at the urn too, we were both standing there because of our abstention. That was not the face of a comforted man.”
There’s a truth gnawing at me and it hurts. A truth I’ve tried to ignore since this ghost of a man came back into my life. I hate her for rousing it. I give in.
“I didn’t tell him much,” I say, looking at her pleadingly. “You really want to know what I said to him? Fine. I said to our dear furball, ‘Tyron, I know what happens next. I’ve seen how this goes. It does not end well. Don’t vote for Kay.’ Are you happy now?”
I feel a tear run down my cheek and I rub it away angrily.
Shadow looks downwards and closes her eyes. “I had my question answered but I am not happy. Something is bothering you about this more than it reasonably should. If you know what happens next, from where? I don’t mean to pry beyond what I already made you say but you can say more if you want to. I may be aware of what everyone in the shelter is doing at all times but I do not disclose private information. Whatever your secret is, it will be safe with me.”
I yell again: “Well, secret stage one: I’m from Kay’s future. Eleven years ago he travelled through a portal to Nexus that explodes. He gets back somehow, but this traps some Endlings in my world all that time. At some point a crime lord called the Silhouette decided I was valuable to the Entity and sent those Endlings to capture me. And that’s how I ended up stuck in the middle of all this trash! You understand so far?”
I don’t even wait for Shadow to respond. I just yell louder. Liberty has made my anger bold.
“Secret stage two...” I pause. My mouth feels dry and I swallow without success.
I feel the fury swell as the truth approaches, but it doesn’t need bombast or screaming anymore. This rage is cold and honest and it is no less terrible for it.
“He dies, Shadow. Kay dies. He becomes a king for a bit, and then he dies. And I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, he wasn’t a great person by the end of it. Honestly, I have to wonder how good he ever was, or whether that was all inevitable.”
I let it settle. Shadow seems genuinely taken aback. I feel the urge to keep talking but I need something to push me onward. I hate her for now saying anything.
“I knew Nexus was an anomaly pulling people from different worlds… but also the same world and different times? I am not lying when I say that I can’t imagine being in your situation, like if for instance I met a version of my brother and I where our parents hadn’t died, had raised us into whatever monstrosities they were probably planning to. If that happened I would honestly not know what to do.”
“Well that’s a fine how-do-you-do, isn’t it? I don’t either, Shadow. Sometimes I wonder if the Endlings didn’t just stab me out in that field and this isn’t just a dying dream. Sometimes I kind of wonder if that wouldn’t make things easier. Do you know what I was doing out there, Shadow? I was out there searching through the ice and snow for the corpses of my friends. And many others besides. All of them dead, directly or indirectly, because of Kay’s selfishness.
“That’s not to say he was on the wrong side. Dominus, the Silhouette, the Family, even the Brotherhood all were monsters that needed slaying. And that’s without mentioning Hamish... ****ing Hamish - I choked the life out of that monster until there was nothing left in him, and I would gladly do it again!”
I discover I’m screaming again and I restrain myself. I stand as though I were stabilising myself on a table and bend back up. My voice becomes like a dead man’s, droning and soft. It’s no different from the leftover breath wheezing out of the body. It has as much agency.
“Kay had reason to be driven over the edge, but when the time came, he prioritised his own personal grudges above his duty, above his friends and above basic morality. He plotted against allies he needed. He ordered the deaths of friends. He abandoned his troops when they needed him most. He murdered innocent people more than once... Eventually, he went too far, pissed off the Silhouette. The Silhouette decided enough was enough. Kay agreed, and now he’s dead.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Kay let himself be killed. As retribution for his interference, the Silhouette himself turned up to ambush him. He made an ultimatum and by all accounts Kay didn’t even blink before surrendering. Bet he thought he was being right noble. Accepting he had no right to kill anyone more, or ask anyone else to die for him. Hoping the altruism would outweigh his shame. They burned him on a pyre and he didn’t move. Aaron arrived just in time to see him go up. It was cowardly, it was cruel and he should have tried to make things right!”
I’m on my knees. My hands shake before me. My eyes blur from welling tears and pain. Black bars close in and out of the edges of my vision. This is tearing the soul out of me but I have to say it.
Shadow is kneeling in front of me, observing like a naturalist who has discovered a new species.
“I just wish I could figure out when we stopped being the good guys,” I whisper. “That would be enough.”
I give in to the tears, weepingly openly. I throw my face in my hands. Shadow places a hand on my shoulder. It feels like nothing, but I’m not alone. There’s something.
I thank Notch I’m not alone. I’m not alone. I am not alone.
It rings hollower each time. Something is not enough to stave off nothing.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 2 Preparations (cont.)
Chapter 7: Clear-Eyes (Tyron)
Footsteps pounded off the floor, bounced off the walls and finally reached high enough to ***** Tyron’s ears. When he had no duties and felt tired, he would often go down one of the more secluded hallways, summon his great stone wings and ascend into a tight, two block by two block hollow he’d dug out above a pair of redstone lanterns. He had a bed set up over the lights themselves so brightness was no bother, and the crackling redstone circuitry beneath him even warmed the mattress a little. He had made himself a warm, snug little shelter, even setting up a chair on which Kir could rest.
The sword liked to be propped up in this way. “Near enough to lift if there’s danger,” it would chirp in its high-pitched, genderless enthusiasm, though Tyron doubted this was the whole story. His swordly friend seemed to enjoy lying there and talking to him as though it had a full body. Or maybe it was something different. Maybe it liked the nurturing feeling of watching over a loved one while they sleep. Tyron didn’t mind. The dorms Fire had constructed were too open for him. He wanted somewhere close and warm and private. And he didn’t want anyone to see him when the nightmares came. He didn’t want them to see what Freak had done to him.
For this reason he’d always found an excuse to stay up during the night while they’d been fleeing the Entity, only getting a real night’s sleep after they found the inn and he could find a separate room. That’s not to say he distrusted anyone in particular or thought they’d use it against him, but he just wasn’t that close with these people. It wasn’t their business.
As such, when Warnado’s wild footsteps skittered down the hallway below and stirred the Dragoknight from an uncharacteristically pleasant dream, a warm pool of positive emotions rapidly drained from his heart, leaving only an unappealing mix of confusion, yearning and irritation.
He sat straight up and anxiously tried to capture the dream before it escaped him entirely, but sadly only dim impressions had stuck around. A sunny paddock. A tree. A bench beneath it and a woman in white. Tyron couldn’t even remember if they’d spoken, but he wanted to see her again. But dreams are random things, so this was easier said than done.
Tyron groaned silently, picked up Kir and asked them to reach out and figure out who was below. Discretely.
“Wizard-kid with the spooky glove.”
Kir had taken against Warnado’s gauntlet for some reason. It wasn’t a living being like the Book, but the sword seemed to sense a malignant near-intelligence about it. According to Kir, they had tried to reach out and hadn’t found a single coherent thought, but a great many negative and cruel urgings. Perhaps Kir was just mad about being given the silent treatment.
Tyron, yawning, curled around so he could peak through the slats of the trapdoor and see for himself what had brought this on. Maybe Warnado needed to tell him something and had found out about the hiding spot.
However, before Tyron actually saw him, he heard the fusilade of footfalls underscored by panting heaves. The child was crying. He had no gauntlet on. He tripped and slid on the floor a few metres, ending up in view of the trapdoor. Tyron wondered if he should intervene and immediately got an answer. What the child did next was sit up, huddle against the wall and start to sob to himself. The words “useless” and “stupid glove” occasionally permeated the deluge. Each new wave of tears drew Tyron’s claws closer to the trapdoor.
“No, will ruin hiding place!” Kir objects.
“Come on,” the Dragoknight scolded. “He needs someone to talk to. The least I can do is see if he’s comfortable talking to me.”
A sound of crackling bounced up to the hollow and the claws retreated.
“Warnado? There you are!”
Kay now hurried into view, wearing his new, lightweight armour over a cotton shirt and black trousers. That weird, red, hooded scarf adorned his neck as usual and he had taken to wearing his aviator’s goggles over his fringe again. He looked concerned.
Tyron felt a lurch in his stomach as he recalled the vote he had cast against his friend. However, he was also wracked by a guilty wave of relief as he realised there was someone more qualified on the case and he could keep his nap-room a secret.
“Me too,” agreed Kir. “Thank Notch!”
“So, I suppose training didn’t go great?” Kay asked.
He had already sat down and drawn the child in with one arm. Tyron noticed the gauntlet laid down beside him.
Warnado remained silent.
“Alright, so much for feigned ignorance. Astro told me you had a problem with the gauntlet,” he said solemnly, holding up said metal glove.
Warnado pulled back and stood up, Kay’s arm dancing gently away.
“Get that thing away from me.”
“Warnado-”
“Get it away,” he warned.
The robed demon-child settled into a stance that was just as ready to fight as it was to flee the scene. He held his fists up but had his legs positioned so he could turn tail and run in a single pivot. Tyron couldn’t see his eyes, but he imagined fear had prised those red glows wide open.
Kay looked at him for a second, blinked. Turned his eyes on the gauntlet. Blinked. He threw it aside. It clattered down the corridor and made Tyron’s ears twitch in pain.
“Okay,” he said.
Warnado lowered his fists. He flopped an arm forward in silent apology before sitting. His legs were crossed and he was facing Kay head on.
“So,” the General smiled. “I get that you’re a little spooked by all this. Want to talk about it a little?”
Tyron took this as an excuse to roll back away from the trapdoor and back into bed. They needed some sort of privacy. He couldn’t tune them out, though, not even when he started up a conversation with Kir to distract himself. And so he heard pretty much the whole thing.
Warnado told Kay and his unseen listeners the story of his father. His growing madness. All those deaths. All those mysterious walks where he’d disappear muttering into the night. How, one day, he hadn’t come home. Warnado had gone out to look for him and found him dead at the foot of a tree. The gem was torn out of the gauntlet, hanging around his father’s neck. Warnado was only five years old.
And all that fed into what went on in the training room.
“Astro should have quit while ahead,” Kir concluded. “Just kid.”
“Yep,” Tyron agreed. “Kind of a douche-y move. I have no clue what’s going on with that guy since Kay woke up.”
“Since Kay showed up, you mean.”
Tyron nodded in surrender.
“I can’t touch that thing again. Whatever’s in there is too strong, and I can’t trust Astro and Shadow to stop it before it overpowers me. But I’m not going to be strong enough without it. I don’t know what to do.”
Kay laughed a little.
“Warnado, you are the strongest kid I have ever met,” he began. “You have genuinely been through so much I wouldn’t have been able to deal with. You are thirteen years old and you were going toe-to-toe with heavily-armed Endlings. Thirteen-year-old you could easily kick thirteen-year-old me’s **** something fierce.”
Tyron heard a childish sniff, followed by “You really think so?”
“You would have wedgied me so hard, little guy. I was such a little nerd back then. Heck, you could probably still bully me now if you set your mind to it.”
The two laughed. Tyron smiled and reshuffled himself so he could look out again. Kay was on one knee before him, ruffling Warnado’s hood.
“You are more than a match for the little squatter in your glove,” he continued. “Tell you what. It sounds like Astro really messed this up. I’m sorry about that, he spends so much time agonising over decisions he overcompensates when he’s trying to be decisive. I’ll give him a bit of a bollocking, and you’ll try the gauntlet again at your own pace, when you’re ready.”
“I don’t know…” Warnado began, leaning back.
“Warnado,” he comforted, placing a hand on his shoulder and drawing him back in to make eye contact. “You would be surprised how often your greatest weakness can become your greatest strength. Being half-Thaum was my greatest weakness until suddenly I was perfect officer material in Herobrine’s army - who I again remind you is nothing like in your world. He’s just a bit of a disappointment since he gained power, but what are politicians for? The point is, being part-demon doesn’t have to be your weakness. It shouldn’t. It won’t.”
Warnado was nodding away.
“I just need to figure out a way to keep it in line,” Warnado agreed. “Astro just kept telling me to remind it whose power it was using, but what does that even mean?”
“My advice,” Kay squeezed the shoulder. “Don’t be afraid to be rude. Yell at it and call it names until you feel more comfortable giving orders. Just act like you’re a rude customer at a restaurant.”
“Is this good life advice?” Kir pondered rhetorically.
“Probably not,” answered Tyron.
Warnado chuckled but didn’t say anything more. His head drooped a little.
“And,” Kay pressed further. “These might help.”
He reached up and pulled the goggles off his head, dangling them before Warnado by the strap.
“The Professor gave me these back in the day. He used to say, ‘Little Kay, life’s always throwing something at your eyes. Rain, dust, emotional trauma etc.. It doesn’t matter what it is, you always need something to keep your eyes clear, and let you focus on what’s really important.’”
Warnado took them and held them in his hand. Tyron couldn’t see his face, but Kay seemed encouraged. He warped the gauntlet into his hand and he asked:
“So, you ready to give this another try?”
And the child took up their gauntlet and fixed it back on. The gem glowed for a moment and then settled. At that, they stood up and wandered down the hallway, with Kay rambling about Urist interrupting him while he was drawing up troop formations all morning.
Tyron lay back and wondered to himself how he’d let himself to be persuaded to vote against him. It wouldn’t have made a difference, but how could that man lead badly?
But it wasn’t about him being a bad leader. That hadn’t been what Astro’s face had said. His words were ambiguous, but the creases in his forehead, the quiver of his eyes had been crystal clear.
“What happens next?” Tyron asked himself. “What happens next that makes him such a horror?”
Chapter 8: Crowd Control (Steve/Lucy)
Steve regretted that when they were dividing duties for the day all the refugees were due to arrive, he and Jennifer had offered to do crowd control. It really hadn’t occurred to him just how confused and hungry these people would be. All of them, the second they saw the stage they had erected in front of the shelter, had flocked towards it.
The two of them had spent the last half-hour picking people off of it. Eventually it had seemed smartest to just build a fence. As foreseen, no one, no matter how tall, could get their leg over the top of their meter-high fortification. So, now he and Jennifer were just marching through the crowd trying to calm people down and prevent any panic.
Thankfully, people were more confused than anything. Destiny and Voidblade were on guard duty, and fully armoured the two looked pretty powerful without looking too threatening. They had ushered everyone toward the stage through a path which avoided any major choke points or bottlenecks. Thankfully, the crowd wasn’t large enough for a stampede to be too dangerous, but there were still a good two thousand people there and it was better to prevent that sort of thing.
“Don’t worry ma’am,” said Steve to an elderly woman. “Once everyone’s finished filtering in, our commander will come out on stage and explain what’s going on. The Prophet reckons he’s the hero, Champion guy you’re looking for.”
The old lady smiled and fell back into the crowd. He saw her resurface in the sea of heads talking to a nervous young man holding a baby. She spoke into his ear and the release of tension must have reduced his height by a foot because Steve lost sight of his contented face pretty quickly.
After answering or deferring a few more questions, that part of the crowd seemed happy enough. They weren’t moving around as much and were now just patiently looking at the stage without being jostled. Steve looked about for Jennifer. She had achieved a similar lull.
“At times like this, I really miss the Alliance,” Steve called out.
“Yes!” Jennifer agreed emphatically. “We could’ve just asked Mark to set up some sort of seating machine. Or gotten Wolfric to cast a spell to calm everyone down. Even Ozen would’ve been useful. He could hand out his terrible sandwiches. Someone might even have had the bright idea to put up a sign or two explaining things.”
Steve smiled and they got close enough to talk at a near-normal volume.
“These people are starving,” he said. “And I’m not even sure they’d eat his sandwiches once they found out there was redstone in them. But that wasn’t what I was thinking about.”
“What were you thinking?”
“Mostly that, if the Alliance were here, all this was over, there’d be a group of people ready for a game of Dungeons and Enderdragons just at hand.”
“Who said there wasn’t?” said Jennifer, smirking.
Steve looked at her cock-eyed.
“You’re not saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I certainly am. I had a kit in my inventory before we got trapped here.”
“And you’re only mentioning this now?!” laughed Steve. “Jennifer, you lifesaver!”
Someone beckoned to Jennifer for help and she began walking over to him.
“It’s pretty much become my job. Wherever would you be without me?” she shouted back at Steve.
Steve’s mind raced with possibilities. It might take a night or two to get a group together, but by Notch it would be worth it!
That was when Kir spoke in his mind: “Commander Fire coming in thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…”
They were using Kir as a crude intercom between the various teams. Steve and Jennifer took their cue and began to gesture and hiss for silence. Pretty soon half the crowd were shushing their neighbours in solidarity with Steve and his girlfriend. He was grateful, he’d thought that would take ages.
With all that accomplished, they went back over the fence and looked at the stage just as Fire came out.
Fire began: “Welcome to the shelter, I am Commander Fire. Not all of you may have seen me at the Prophet’s hill but that is not really important now. What is important is that you made it here. Back when I first spoke to the congregation I promised a roof over your head and food in your stomach, both of which are available here.”
There was a pause, the quiet was quickly filled with cautious cheers from the crowd.
Fire continued: “However there are also other reasons for why I built this shelter. Namely to have a base of operations for what could very well be a civil war. I will not sugarcoat this, the Entity is most likely not going away on its own. Both from the Prophet’s predictions and independent investigation we have found that there is something big on the horizon and if nobody is there to stop it, we might be looking towards a dark future.”
Another pause, this time without cheers but with worried contemplation.
“I have gathered a group of skilled people to help me in what is ahead of us, they will train and instruct anyone willing and able to join us. If you are no fighter, there are still plenty of things you can do to help out. If you are unable to do either, the shelter will still welcome you, there is enough space for everyone. The important thing is that we realize we are stranded in this world together, and that is also how we will turn our fates around!”
The cheers returned with a vengeance. Steve couldn’t believe how ecstatic some of them were. Then, he remembered how dinged up the team had been upon their return. These people had been travelling for even longer, in much greater numbers. It must have been terrible.
Fire spoke up again: “If you want to enlist as a fighter, report to Rose at the left of the valley. If you want to help in any other capacity, report to Fristad on the right side of the valley. Anyone else, go down the middle to the entrance of the shelter, Lucy will show you where you can sleep, eat or get medical treatment.”
Steve barely had time to let the speech settle and savour it before he and Jennifer had to dash off to shepherd people during the door. It didn’t help that a hundred or so new arrivals had already sprinted off ahead of them.
###
Lucy watched the speech from the entrance of the shelter, she couldn’t hear much of it but she knew the content. Fire had asked a few people for opinions on the speech so she heard it before. Now that the speech was over people rapidly started coming towards the entrance. Lucy took a deep breath.
“Okay, you can do this.” She quietly said to herself.
As the first arrived near her she spoke loudly: “Everybody please wait up, once everyone is here we can go inside!”
The new arrivals were exhausted from the journey and hungry, more than a few were injured. They looked even worse than what Lucy had seen when she had been at the hill. These were not only people from the congregation, these were friends and family of them, who normally wouldn’t make the trip to the hill but still undertook the march to the shelter. A thought flashed in Lucy’s mind. Some might not have made the entire way. She pushed it away, now was not the time.
Steve and Jennifer had also made their way over to the entrance and were now in the process of calming the crowd, just a few more minutes until everyone would be here. Lucy took looks to the left and right to compare the size of the crowds over at Rose and Fristad. Rose had accumulated a respectable amount, a few hundred if Lucy were to guess. Fristad had fewer people, maybe half of what Rose had. The majority of people were still crowding to the shelter entrance, perhaps some of them would later join one of the two other groups once they were fed and healthy.
Once it looked like any stragglers had joined one of the three groups Lucy spoke again: “Hello! My name is Lucy and I will show you around the essential parts of the shelter.”
She turned around and pulled a lever that was embedded into the stone. The entrance to the shelter had once been a relatively small cave entrance, in the meantime it had been widened out and fitted with a large wooden door that was now in the process of swinging open, driven by whatever gears, shafts and pulleys Urist had crammed into the floor beneath the entrance.
Lucy proceeded through the entrance, giving Steve and Jennifer quick looks, they’d have to make sure that nobody stayed too far behind. A few hundred meters into the mountain was the first big chamber.
As Lucy explained her voice echoed from the walls. “This is the central hub, you can reach every section of the shelter from here, there are signs in as many written languages as we could find that indicate what tunnel leads to where.”
She pointed at one of them. “That one leads to the infirmary. If anyone is in urgent need of medical treatment, please go there now. Once you feel better, you can ask any instructor to show you around, you can identify them by their armbands.”
A good portion of the group split off, Steve guided them into the tunnel. Lucy continued. “Follow me please, next we’ll go to the canteen.”
Lucy went straight ahead through the cavern into a tunnel. This one was significantly shorter than the entrance tunnel. The canteen was another huge cavern which had a large number of tables and benches set up, on the left wall was a hollowed out section of the wall where the food would be served.
Lucy explained: “As said, this is the canteen. We try to offer meals at any time of the day but our main meal times are in the morning, at noon, in the evening and at midnight to accommodate for shift work. Now please follow me out again, we’ll reach our final destination at the barracks.”
The barracks were built into the largest of the natural caverns they had found, and even so it had been expanded by a good bit to make more room. The cavern was filled from bottom to top by a wooden frame, the different tiers were connected by ladders and stairs. Wooden walls had been built between some of the logs of the frame, forming rooms that offered sleeping space for eight people each.
Lucy said: “This is the barracks, you are free to pick your room but ideally fill up from the bottom upwards, it makes the maintenance crew’s job easier as well helping me keep count of how much space is left. Are there any questions?”
A man at the front of the group asked: “If we want to stop sitting around being a load, who do we ask?”
Lucy replied: “As said, anyone with an armband will do but if you have specific roles in mind, the support and logistics roles have green armbands, the combat roles have red ones, leadership is grey. There are signs in regular intervals that illustrate the finer details indicated by the symbols on the arm bands.”
With that Lucy made a gesture towards the interior of the barracks, the crowd slowly thinned as people went and got some well-deserved sleep. Once only a few people were left Lucy turned around and walked down the tunnel. Jennifer joined her a few steps in.
Lucy took a deep breath. “Phew, that went better than expected.”
“Don’t undersell it; you nailed it!” said Jennifer with a clap on Lucy’s shoulder.
Now that Lucy thought about it, she did nail it. Everyone got the info they needed and the sick and wounded were probably already receiving treatment. In general, the people who had arrived a few days after them were an interesting group, a lot of personality to be sure. None of them seemed bad to Lucy, a bit weird sure but not bad. As glad as Lucy was for Fire bringing her here and as good of a leader he was, his confidence in her was at times a little intimidating, sometimes it seemed like he knew her better than she knew herself. People like Jennifer were a good contrast, more grounded in a way. Jennifer in general was good to be around, her outlook on life went along well with Lucy’s own. She always seemed to be looking for a way to make the situation that little bit easier. There was always a well-timed compliment, discovery of some extra food or even a pleasant smile in her back pocket, waiting for the right moment to be produced.
Just before they arrived at the central hub, Jennifer stopped and asked: “Hey, Lucy. Are you up for a game of Dungeons and Enderdragons this evening? I even managed to get permission to use the command room for the duration!”
Lucy replied: “Not sure if your game has the same rules as a similar game in my world did but sure, I’d love to.”
Chapter 9: Work and Plans (Fristad/Fire)
I swing the axe and ask myself how many times I’ve swung today, but I know I’ve lost count. I’m trying to keep score, so to speak, of the different parts of my job. Every day so far I haven’t managed to keep track of the trees though. I always get too tired, so my goal is to get fit enough that I can keep count unbothered. My muscles ache every evening and every morning, but I power through and I’m feeling stronger all the time. These trees are like grindstones. The more I strike them the sharper I get.
The main score I’ve been able to keep, so far, has been how many trees I’ve cut down. Yesterday was fifty. The day before that was fifty-five - my record. Today, I plan to beat it, of course. It’s only midday and I’ve cut down thirty. My shirt’s leaning on the small of my back, scratchy and sodden. I’m on a roll. I’m feeling myself, beaming away and chuckling.
The only thing getting in my way is the fact that I’m leading a group. Several of them. In a few hours I have to go and check on the foragers and hunters, but for now overseeing the deforestation is top priority. There’s about fifty sweaty workers cutting through the forested ridge around me. Brought together from across the worlds to work under some shepherd. There are worse fates. Morale is high and a few of them are singing and gradually the rest of us are picking up on the words. Something about creepers and wrecking.
“Timber!” I call. It crashes to the ground and two large-nosed, rectangular-headed villagers run in to separate it and collect the logs. Whenever they do so it breaks down into nicely-compacted cubes. Sadly, if they start from the bottom the tree falls over as you’d expect.
“Thirty-one,” I mutter.
I swing the axe down to use as a cane. I look around and I see Steve, out of armour for a change, wandering through the woods with a bowl of stew in either hand. He talks to a green-eyed enderman, who offers a finger pointed in my direction.
Then, he’s standing before me, and I have a bowl.
“Take an hour, lads.” I call over the singing. “If I eat, you eat. Get to the canteen.”
My tone is stoic and measured. I’m channeling my old friend Ironbrawn’s tone when he used to tell people a mob had jumped the wall and he needed everyone to band together for a few minutes before we could all get back to our business. Mildly annoyed but with a hint of satisfaction and guilty amusement. It’s a good impression.
As they file off Steve asks me, “Having fun?”
“Absolutely,” I smile with conspiracy, “It’s like shepherding a flock that never runs off, it’s great!”
He laughs.
“It’s always relaxing,” Steve says, “You know what’s not relaxing?”
He gestures over to the edge of the ridge and I understand. Fire wants this area cleared of trees to prevent the enemy from taking cover there. Kay wants to save on time and just set a few traps, maybe dig a tunnel out there for a counterattack. Guerilla-style. Fire won out as usual but he won’t stop trying to get some variation of it approved.
“Oh, the discussions?” I ask, “Those are pretty stressful.”
“I didn’t even intend that,” Steve snorts. “No, the not-relaxing thing is on the other side of the ridge Kay has chosen to die on.”
We walk up to a rock and I see what he’s talking about.
In the plains below are several divisions training. There’s about five hundred who have signed on for combat duty out of roughly two-and-a-half thousand potentials. Understandably, people are hesitant. That prophecy only carries so much sway with people who just got burned out of their homes. They’re mad, sure. Furious, even. But they’re not dumb.
I see Tyron flying around a group of soldiers, correcting their posture as they hold poleaxes for the first time. Destiny and Rose are instructing a paltry group of magic-users on how to combine their powers with hand-to-hand. Most of them are healers by trade, but they need and want to fight on the front lines.
What Steve directs my eyes to is the figure of Kay jogging backwards at the head of about forty people. Warnado’s floating along beside him cross-legged. Ever since the kid figured out how to do it he won’t stop showing off. It’s adorable. As for the column: they’re all in practice armour and carrying wooden weaponry. I strain my ears to hear what he’s yelling.
“Who are you?!”
“Fire’s First Infantry!” the chorus groans back.
“What is your purpose?!”
“Topple the Tower!” They strain a little louder.
He stops jogging and holds up a hand. The procession jolts into place. One guy near the middle trips and scuffles back up.
“You’re learning Jenkins!” Kay calls out jovially. “Fastest you’re back on your feet yet!”
Laughter starts but before it can get going Kay roars “AD-VANCE! FOR-MATION!”
Warnado drops to his feet and his hands start to glow. A bunch of coloured scribbles form on the ground and the column jogs forward.
“They’re names,” Steve said incredulously. “Colours are unit types. Skirmishers at the front, swords in the middle. Poleaxe at back.”
The column breaks and bustles its way into place, with much criss-crossing of paths and last-minute changes. They settle.
“As you might have noticed,” Kay calls out. “I made some changes to the register. Swap a few place-names around. This is not a mistake. You need to be able to adapt, and you rose to the occasion! Well done! Especially you Raphoe, excellent footwork. Couldn’t be prouder. You’re like a damned gazelle out there! And you, Fritz. Even you Jenkins...” And so on.
He starts a round of applause, then teleports ahead of the group and orders another kilometer’s run. Memory of the source of his power throws me off axis… But then it passes and I’m just grateful to be free of that damned book. It’s finally met its match in Kay. They’re perfect for each other.
“He’s been at that with them for the last three hours,” Steve shakes his head incredulously and sits back on the rock. “It’s insane.”
I join him on the rock and take a spoonful of the soup. It’s weirdly spicy. I feel my hair lift.
“Redstone again?” I say flatly.
He’s done this to me and others intermittently over the last few days. Some recipe of his brother’s.
“Yep,” Steve grins, “I’m going to keep doing it until it catches on.”
“Dream on,” I laugh, “I don’t hate it, but this is not catching on. You’re also getting such a static-slap when I’m done.”
“I knew the cost going in. I can take it,” he growls in mock steeliness.
We joke back and forth in between spoonfuls until Steve points out that Kay has stopped jogging. His column, while still keeping their pace, has changed course. At the same time, Tyron’s great lattice of battle-stances is crumbling. Destiny and Rose’s two-dozen becomes at best a baker’s dozen and dwindles further. They’re all running off toward one hill, at the top of which is…
“No way,” I breathe.
A man in rags crowns the hill, pulsing violently in response to his own volume. I can’t make out what he’s saying but even at this distance I can hear the muffled roaring of opaque predictions. The Prophet, for whom this congregation first gathered, has returned.
I hear a warping sound followed by footsteps. Steve and I turn around, not sure what to expect. I grab my axe and spin it back up.
I see a man in a turquoise shirt and jeans almost identical to Steve’s. A stone sword at his side, stubble about his chin, and a brown leather cloak about his shoulder, the stranger approaches. His face is impatient and he keeps squeezing his thumbs until they crack.
“Right,” he concludes before he’s even started. “Pleasure to meet you both. Lovely weather and all that. Need to talk to Fire, or whoever ended up in charge. Where is he?”
I almost don’t respond due to the sheer rudeness, but the confusion is what really stops me. My friend seems just as stuck and after a shared glance we’re no closer to an answer. He huffs. He contorts his mouth into a grin. He heaves up his eyebrows. Holds out a hand in greeting.
“I’m Steve, by the way, what are your names?”
“Hi Steve,” we respond in a slightly ridiculous unison.
###Fire watched as Steve drew the route the patrol would take onto the map. The entire leadership was gathered around the table, even Warnado and Amanda being allowed in.
“The Entity’s been having trouble with some lapis smugglers called the Jackals,” Steve muttered, so intent on the information he barely seemed to realise he was in the room. “They’ve been getting too close to its territory and using its portals without permission. Small-time group but they’ve killed enough mercenaries for it to start sending out heavier patrols. In particular, I’ve received word that one particularly large patrol is going out tomorrow. A patrol with several officers and, importantly, a captain.”
“Which one?” called Destiny from the corner. She was stoking the fire. Anger and anticipation flared in her eyes as she stabbed forth with the poker.
“Uncertain,” said Steve. “But it’s an opportunity for you to capture someone who might know something about the Entity’s plan. I’ve been following him for years and all I know is that he likes to collect oddities, conquer the odd civilisation, and he really likes those crystals Steve 2 has on him.”
“How did you know about those? Also, if anyone’s Steve 2, it’s you. I was here first,” said the other Steve, scowling.
“I have my ways,” the prophet’s bodyguard smiled acidly. “And you weren’t.”
Fire studied the route closely. If they were going to attack they had to be prepared to deal with around fifty troops, most of which would be well trained and experienced. There would be at least a couple of mages and endermen so they had to account for that too.
Fire pointed at a valley in a dense forest the patrol route went through. “I think this is our spot. The valley slims down into almost a canyon there. There isn’t much room in the canyon, they’ll have to be in loose formation. We cut into some of the trees and chop them down fully once they’re below. The falling logs should take out a good amount of them. Additionally we trigger a controlled rockslide at the entrance of the canyon, cutting off their escape path. After the surprise attack they’ll scramble to the other side, which is where we set up our ambush proper: Archers and mages hit them from the sides to take out a couple more, by then they’ll have lost most organization. We’ll set up a ditch with wooden stakes if they try to flee forwards. If they flee backwards we have them cornered and wear them down from range. Does this sound good to everyone?”
“Trench sounds risky,” Kay cut in flatly, not looking at Fire and fixing his eyes square on the map. “Someone could come across the engineers and scuttle the whole operation. They might simply not retreat where we want them to. Introduces too many unneeded variables, and the troops are too new to do that quietly.”
Fire nodded. “True. I was mostly thinking about using fast builders with pre-sharpened sticks to set up the trenches but I suppose we don’t have the required military infrastructure and discipline for a smooth operation yet. I trust your judgement on the state of our troops.”
“To be perfectly honest,” Kay raised his jade-green eyes and met Fire’s, seizing the opening. “I don’t think we should be sending any of them out into the field for this one.”
“What?” Steve laughed bitterly. “So, I give you a Tower patrol, a possible insight into the Entity’s plan and a shot at an actual, tangible victory against the Entity and you’re chickening out? I could just take the Prophet and go, you know?”
“I don’t think that’s exactly what he said.” Interjected Shadow who had been watching from the sidelines so far.
“Thank you Shadow, you are correct,” Kay nodded. “I actually do have a suggestion. We, the leadership, go in on our own.”
There was a shocked silence. Fristad went white. Warnado’s mouth dropped open and his glowing red eyes widened. Kay capitalised on it.
“We keep the plan mostly as is. The rockslide is good. Falling logs are good. The Book and I have even cooked up a way to get the archers involved without putting them art risk. I summon two openings - one in the enemy lines, the other in front of our archers miles away - the archers fire through and our enemy is substantially weakened. Could even use a portal to separate an officer from the rest of the pack. I’d have to get closer, though, for something that precise.
“The enemy would be totally disoriented. The big issue would be the Endlings and any mages they may have with them, but the grunts would be in chaos. I’d like to see how dangerous a giant is with a boulder on his knee and arrows pin-cushioning his chest.
“Additionally, we’d be showing our forces that their safety is paramount to us. That we’re going to fight this war as smart as we are going to fight it hard. Any casualties would be immediate martyrs. A propaganda victory no matter what. Any questions?”
Tyron tilted his head, his ears pricking up at Kir’s invisible voice.
“What’s the general composition of a patrol this size?” he asked, turning to Steve.
“Normally,” Steve began with reluctant modesty. “You could expect about fifty humans. However, ever since someone started a prison break on her watch and then tazed her, the Ender’s kind of freaking out. She really needs a victory to stop the Entity dissolving her organs, so she’s donating a lot of troops to efforts like this. I’d estimate about forty humans, ten of the Ender’s finest, two officers, some mages and a captain. Maybe a giant or two mixed in with the humans.”
“Those are not good odds,” Tyron muttered.
“You kidding?!” Warnado shouted. “Last time we faced more than five of the Ender’s dunk squad David-”
Amanda promptly elbowed him in the ribs, for which everyone was grateful. Fristad looked like he was going to throw up. Jennifer put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed back and forth. Silence drifted like fog through the room until Destiny spoke up.
“Do it,” she said with determination. “I want a rematch against those guys and like Kay said, something something propaganda victory.”
Astro cleared his throat before wearily intervening: “What she means to say is that we’ve learned a lot since then, and will be better able to fight them. Something something, propaganda victory.”
“The mages can be dealt with using our secret weapon, magic neutralizing splash potions. Ideally they’d die in the alpha strike but we can’t rely on that. If everyone carries one or two of those potions we should be able to suppress most of the threat coming from the mages. The endermen do still remain a problem.”
“I could focus the scattershot arrow-portal attack on them,” Kay offered. “Likely wouldn’t kill as many as if it were targeting the humans, but it’s a higher priority target. I can testify that they don’t react as quickly if they can’t see where the shot is coming from, and we’d at the very least injure a few. We’d also have the commander with us this time, and he is quite the beast in combat as I recall.”
He showed his palms in magnanimous deference to Fire. He got the impression from Kay’s little smirk that this was meant to be a slight, but it was a valid point.
Fire said: “Overall we have three general choices. One is not doing anything, which keeps us precisely where we are, looking for an edge. One is sending the troops, which we agree will most likely get them killed, if they do succeed they will do so with heavy losses and most likely they won’t get much out of it. If we go there ourselves we directly put our lives on the line but we also stand to gain a lot. I can imagine that we could take a captive if we play our cards right. We are the rebels here, which means we lose by default unless we do something. As usual, anyone not in agreement is free to stay at the shelter.”
“I’m in,” concluded Destiny without hesitation.
“Me too,” said Fristad, regaining some colour. “I’m not much of a fighter but I’ll damn well be there.”
Astro didn’t look up from the map, but he nodded with pursed lips and gave a stiff thumbs-up.
With a sigh, Tyron drew Kir from its sheath and raised it above his head, before chuckling out: “For the revolution!”
This sped up the process drastically, with the Brines, Warnado, Amanda and Shadow all drawing weapons and joining in the toast. Even Lucy called out “for the revolution in solidarity”. Soon the entire room bar the Prophet’s bodyguard was raising a weapon and chanting in the name of glorious revolution.
Steve stroked his stubble.
“You might just be what we’ve been looking for after all.” And then he was gone. It took exactly ten seconds for Kay to start ranting about what a **** he was. Fire didn’t disagree.
Chapter 10: Omens (Shadow)
“Warnado.” Shadow said to her apprentice. “Today I will tell you about what people call precognition.”
Warnado replied: “You don’t seem to like that word.”
They were walking through the tunnels, going steadily towards the living quarters of the leadership. The Prophet had temporarily taken up residence in an unoccupied room, where he usually spent his time sleeping or staring off into the distance when he wasn’t preaching.
Shadow said: “You’d be correct. Where I am from predicting the future in great detail is futile, we’re lucky if the weather report is correct for the next five days. Both scientific and magical ‘precognition’ usually works by observing a system in detail and trying to predict a future state.”
“Like the weather?” Warnado asked.
“Like the weather.” Shadow confirmed. “I personally don’t think there is a thing such as fate, as in the big invisible hands holding the puppet strings with everyone being doomed to play their role. What there are, however, are… constraints or contracts of a sort. Spells but on a much greater level. How exactly they work is not well understood.”
Warnado tilted his head and appeared to shrink several inches. “Like contracts with demons?”
“Not exactly. Think of how your own magic works. You want currency and coins appear. You don’t think about the shape of the coin or its molecular structure. Think like that but bigger. If certain thoughts are made in the right circumstances, they create a magical spell that will try to influence the world to make the thought a reality. Imagine if someone, by chance, sat on a big node of magical energy and wasn’t happy with their current king. If they have affinity for magic that might just create a spell that tries its damndest to make sure the king dies, which may involve making that random baker’s son into a tyrant-slaying hero. Whether he wants to or not.”
Warnado looked at Shadow, his eyes lit up. “So, if it’s like my magic, where does the strawberry jam come in?”
Shadow laughed. “I suppose that’s anything the originator of the spell didn’t specify. They wanted the king dead but said nothing about the hero or what the hero does while on the way to the king. Perhaps the spell also causes the king to reform but still sends the hero, with all the problems that brings.”
They turned a corner. They were almost at the door to the Prophet’s lodgings.
Warnado asked: “So, how’s all this related to precognition?”
Shadow said: “If one were to look in the correct place with the correct tools, they could spot these magical contracts and with a bit more luck actually decipher them. If they are read correctly, you have a prophecy on your hands.” Shadow paused. “However, usually people either go mad precisely from reading the contracts or their ability to read the contracts comes from existing madness. Mad oracle is a stereotype for a reason.”
“So, have you ever read one?” Warnado asked.
Shadow shook her head. “No. If I’m being honest most of this is the result of millennia of collective magical research. We have pretty much proven the existence of those contracts, but we can’t actually create or read them due to some safeguards our world has.”
That was the reason they were going to see the Prophet. Shadow wanted to see where his visions came from. Warnado’s own magical senses had developed quite nicely so he would probably be able to share in her discovery. Nexus was so packed with energy that it was very possible that even people without magical affinity could create a contract, the Prophet was probably seeing all of them at once.
Shadow put a hand on the doorknob of the Prophet’s room. “However, the most important difference between these contracts and actual ‘fate’ is that nothing is absolute, anything can be avoided, changed or bent with enough strength or trickery.”
She opened the door. The room was bare-bones like the rest of the leadership lodgings: a bed, a drawer, a table and two chairs. However, it had the distinct advantage of offering privacy, something that was hard to come by in the barracks.
The tall and haggard form of the Prophet was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring off into the wall in front of him with his glowing white eyes. When Shadow entered the room, he simply continued his staring, however once Warnado was through the door the Prophet’s head jerked around and was fixed on the quarter-demon.
With his shrill voice the Prophet spoke: “A shard becomes a whole, a whole shatters and is a shard again, lonely in the collapse.”
Warnado looked at Shadow, slightly intimidated. “What does he mean?”
There had been little talk of shards in the Prophet’s past sermons, so this probably was one of his more literal prophecies. The collapse was a known concept, it occasionally showed up but never with anything that would tie it to the rest of the prophecies. Shadow shrugged.
“Now, what we came here for.” She said. “Open your sense for magic and look out for any connections he might have with any outside magic. If you’re lucky you might even spot a thread to a contract.”
Warnado took a deep breath. Shadow could feel how he mobilized his magic to follow his will. He was making good progress. It took measurably shorter for him to get ready compared to previous times. Suddenly he stopped.
“There’s nothing.” He said.
Shadow was skeptical but when she focused her own sense of magic there really was nothing she could find about the Prophet that would suggest a connection to the magical background field.
“Weird.” Shadow muttered.
She walked closer to the Prophet and checked again, nothing. All the while the Prophet’s eyes had been fixed on Warnado, even when Shadow had crossed his line of sight.
He spoke another sentence: “The love is distanced but finds a different kind.”
That one made even less sense than the last one, either these were new bits of the big prophecy or they were directed at Warnado himself. Shadow contemplated telling her apprentice about this realization but decided against it, he had enough to think about without cryptic prophecies that might not even come true.
Shadow lowered her head and brought her face directly in front of the Prophet’s. So far, he had completely ignored her, she wanted to try something to get his attention. “Hey, would you mind not staring at my apprentice?”
Suddenly the Prophet’s focus shifted. He narrowed his eyes, opened them again just to narrow them another time. He froze up.
“Another.” He whispered, his voice becoming abnormally clear. “Only one. Not two. Only one.”
The Prophet’s voice suddenly became loud and shrill again: “The leader! The death of the leader! The protector unravels and unravels and unravels and unravels and all unravels and unravels and unravels!”
After that, his voice became too frantic and incoherent to make out what he was saying.
Shadow looked at Warnado, he looked more than a bit disturbed: “I think it’s best if we left.”
After they closed the door behind them, they walked until they couldn’t hear the screaming anymore.
Warnado asked: “Any clue what he meant with that last one?”
Shadow shook her head. “Nope.”
Shadow honestly wished that were true.
Chapter 11: Whole New World (Destiny)
Midday had settled in nicely. The sun sat right in the middle of the sky like a lightbulb dangled from the heavens. Okay, maybe not perfectly at the centre. Destiny struggled to look at it directly, her eyelids drooping instinctively to protect the eyes beneath when she tried. However, it was boiling the top of her scalp, so it might as well have been directly above. Destiny wiped the sweat from her brow and readjusted her satchel just as she entered the old Sovereign camp. She heard the clink of glass as she hitched the strap back up.
She had a mind to give the old corpses a burial one day, but for now she found them darkly nostalgic. It occurred to her that this feeling probably didn’t fall under the categories of “normal” or “healthy” and filed it in the “for discussion” folder.
Anya phased into view as Destiny approached the hill the portal crowned. Her blond mop of hair, grey hoodie and blue jeans were unchanged and did not move in the cool breeze. Destiny tightened her ponytail and marched up, dumping the satchel at the foot of the portal. She sat down, beaming.
“Well, don’t you look cheery,” commented her past self. “What’s happened.”
“A lot,” said Destiny. “I’m running some combat classes with the magic-users and they’re going well. Tryon and Rose handle most of the talking, I just have to hit, burn, freeze and impale stuff.”
“Nice,” said Anya with a downward curl of the mouth.
“I’m also actually spending time around the shelter like a normal human being, instead of huntress-ing it up all the time. I actually read a book for once.”
“Start to finish?” Anya cocked an eyebrow.
“Skipped the middle but I read the ending.”
“Nice,” she said with a further downward thrust.
“And, of course, that weird Steve guy I told you about - the other one - showed up. Y’know, the one who appeared outside my window that one time in the Tower. Yeah, I’ve told you about that. He’s shown up for the first time in ages with that fortuneteller guy. Now, he’s given us some info and... I’m getting a chance to get back at those douchebags from the Tower tomorrow.”
“Nice.”
Anya’s eyes lit up with ghostly bloodlust.
“I also,” Destiny paused and reached into the satchel, “Managed to convince Lucy to let me swipe these.”
She pulled out a unlabeled glass bottle full of light-brown liquid. There were ten or so others in the bag.
“Nice few beers. Our favourite.”
“Wow,” said Anya with the eyes of a proud parent. “It’s all coming up Destiny these last few days. Aren’t you luckier than a leprechaun?”
Destiny floated a hand just above Anya’s shoulder, pretending to hold it and being careful not to let it pass through.
“Luckier still, Anya dearest. I’m going to get a little drunk up here for the next few hours, then wander home with enough time for a good night’s sleep.”
“This is officially the only time I will call day-drinking the responsible option.”
The two giggled and then settled down. Destiny stretched her back out over the portal frame until it clicked.
“So,” she said. “I was just walking up the hill and was thinking about maybe burying some of those Sovereign corpses, but then I felt kind of nostalgic-”
“Okay, before we get into the therapy session and my unqualified ass tries to fix your brain, I actually have some things on my agenda. You mind?”
“Sure thing,” she conceded with two thumbs up. “Shoot away, Anya.”
“First of all, be careful out there tomorrow. Mess them up good, but don’t overextend yourself and make sure you survive. Unless the Ender is there. Kill that ***** something fierce. Or Glibby, I guess. Either’s good.”
“Gotcha. Save my energy for the big one.”
“Second, look me in the eyes,” said Anya with gravity, leaning in close. Her face was the embodiment of intensity, until it suddenly loosened, and she drew back into vague confusion. “The other week, when that green furball fell from the sky, did you talk to his sword? Is-is that who Kir is?”
This slew Destiny. Howls of laughter tore off across the land.
“Hey, it’s been bugging me ever since!” Anya huffed. “You only ever tell me about you, I’m trying to fill in the blanks.”
“I’m sorry!” Destiny cackled. “I’m sorry, the talking sword’s just the least weird part of my current experience. There are so many weirder elements.”
“I doubt it,” Anya challenged with a cock of the eyebrow.
“Well, one of our party members is a thirteen-year-old demon-wizard who won’t stop summoning fast food.”
“Not weirder than a talking sword.”
“Okay, my current boss is a big, millennia-old reptile-man, whose sister is some sort of terrifying magical anomaly. We had an election and I had to choose between that and a guy who works for, wait for it, Herobrine.”
“Oh my Notch!” Anya groaned.
“Not the one you beat, apparently Herobrine’s pretty cool on other worlds. I voted for his employee, Kay. He tries too hard, has no regard for his own safety and he draws power from a sentient book but apparently, he really tore things up back at the village. Would’ve done a good job but it’s not a big deal.”
Anya paused, laughed and then concluded: “I cannot believe you.”
“I can’t either,” laughed Destiny. “It’s a whole new world out there.”
She swigged her beer and raised a toast, “To the revolution!”
“To the revolution!” Anya agreed.
The sun blazed on, searing and angry.
Chapter 12: Combat Roles (Tyron)
Tyron blew a glacial breath over the fire, dimming it just enough. He’d have to do the same thing again in about ten minutes, but if he turned it off altogether everyone else would complain about being cold. Being covered in fur really had its drawbacks sometimes. He was made for the End, which isn’t exactly the hottest place.
They were in the command room, discussing strategy. Fire was talking: “Once we survey the site, we’ll come up with the final skirmish groups, but we can think of some rough roles already. There is going to be one group that’s doing the heavy fighting, taking out as many as they can. Another group should focus on flanking and catching out any enemies who try to flee. Maybe a dedicated ranged support group too, that’s where your archers come in Kay.” Fire paused to think. ”We also need a small group to trigger the rockslide behind the patrol. They won’t see much combat but if need be, they’ll be somewhat of a secondary flanker group. Each group should have the resources to make a capture if possible.”
Tyron said: “I’m part of the heavy group then?”
Fire nodded. “So far the heavy group contains me, you, Shadow, the Brines and Rose.”
“Rose?” Kay asked. “Is she really heavy material? I thought of her more as a flanker or skirmisher.”
Fire extended his claws demonstratively. “You haven’t seen her in a real fight yet, but I have. She’s more than qualified.”
Astro interjected: “What about the children? Warnado won’t be dissuaded, and Amanda goes where he goes. All we can do is minimize the danger we put them in.”
Kay stroked his chin. “Rockslide perhaps. We’d need someone else there though. Let’s get to that once we have the other groups.”
Fire took the lead again: “As for the flankers, Voidblade is a must. He can run interference on their end troops. Destiny would fit as well. The flankers will have the highest chance of capturing someone and Destiny is hellbent on getting back at the Tower. Urist is also surprisingly quick and if he can get some good kneecaps that drastically increases our chances at a capture.”
The tall, scaled man then let his gaze sweep through the room. “Kay, Astro, any preferences?”
Astro, who had been notably quiet up until this point, said: “Ranged support probably, if we’re bringing archers, they need some form of protection from magical threats.”
Kay nodded. “I’ll probably start out with the archers to do the portal trick, but I’ll probably join the flankers.”
“That works, more teleportation for them to deal with.” Fire said. “That leaves Fristad.”
“Safe to use him?” asked Kir. “Still the dreamweaver.”
“Obviously,” responded Tryon. “He’s a changed man. Big concern is where to put him. He’s not exactly the world’s greatest fighter. Maybe the rockslide group?”
“Sure, put with girl he tormented. Great idea!”
“You’re being a real douche today, so I’m going to suggest it anyway.”
“You’re douche!”
With a little hint of irritation, Tyron walked back to the table and spoke aloud: “Maybe have him go with Warnado and Amanda in the rockslide group. That way they’re not on their own. He isn’t trained in combat so less direct confrontation is better.”
Fire thought for a moment, then agreed. “Yes, good thinking. We’ll think over the groups once we’re done with the survey but those sound good for now.”
“It does indeed,” said Kay. “One thing though, we could actually get the rockslide to double for capturing the officer. I open a portal, they fall through and then it’s three on one. Naturally if it’s anyone crazy powerful we won’t do that, but if it’s someone like the Dog it’ll be fine. He’s just a dog with thumbs… I wonder how that guy is? We haven’t seen him in a while.”
Tyron remembered Kay mentioning that he and the Dog actually got on really well. There was a look of longing about him, but also of hope that his canine acquaintance might be redeemed.
Astro, in a rare, unprompted statement, cut in.
“You sure about that?” he asked. “The Tower doesn’t exactly strike me as a place where the weak tend to thrive. They’re only kids.”
“And a shepherd,” Kay rebutted serenely, a little smile playing on his lips. “I am confident in Warnado’s combat abilities, Amanda’s too. Fristad’s the only one I’m concerned about and I’d still not like to get in his way when he’s swinging an axe about. They can handle it.”
Astro returned to his brooding nods.
“Aye,” said Kay. “But the question is still where we set up the rockslide.” He looked up at Fire expectantly. “Want to scout it out together?”
“We should do that, yes. It’s a two hour walk so we should be back before evening, doubles as scouting the access route too. Maybe while we’re there also mark some trees that would be useful for the ambush.”
“Two-hour walk is nothing,” Kay chuckled, opening a rift in demonstration. “Should only need the two of us. You two have the rest of the evening off. Don’t go too wild without us.”
He winked and beckoned for Fire to step through the warp, enlarging it to accommodate his height.
And so, it was just Tyron and Astro. Naturally, there was only one question left to ask. The Dragoknight took a deep breath.
“What happens to Kay?” Kir chirped nervously in both of their minds.
Astro responded with a hollow glare directed at the map. The crack of fingers pressed together filled the room and then faded.
“Tyron, Kir,” Astro rounded on him, adopting the tone of an enforcer. “You’ve been good friends to me since I got here. You’re dependable, selfless, heroic, all those good things. This, however, is a personal matter involving me and, when his turn comes to deal with it, Kay. It’s an issue that causes me a lot of pain, and I’ve already had to explain it to one person and I’m not happy about it. As such, friend, I ask you to believe me when I tell you this: the danger is averted, Kay is not a threat. If he becomes one, I will tell you. Understood?”
He let it settle. Tyron’s mouth was agape, but he nodded. The tension went out of Astro, and he seemed to shrink, like a paper bag someone let the air out of. His eyes were dead.
“Now, I hope that’s settled. I’m going to take a walk, but you get some rest. Tomorrow’s a big one.”
With an almost-friendly squeeze of Tyron’s shoulder, he left. Tyron, thoroughly not reassured, went off to the training room, battered a dummy for a while, then went to the leadership dorms. He didn’t sleep. He just waited with his eyes shut. He heard them all as they came back in. Astro, Fire, Kay, then a big surge as the Dungeons and Enderdragons crew returned. Then, finally, Fristad and Destiny, giggling and joking in loud whispers. That too stopped. Even after that, Tyron didn’t sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking.
The shadow of all those horrible things Freak had told him of hung over him. He still didn’t know if they were true. If all those deaths had meant anything, or whether it had all just been set back to normal. Back to Herobrine’s world.
“Who lives and who dies tomorrow?” He asked. “Will it matter?”
“It must,” Kir reassured. “It will.”
Chapter 13: Dungeons and Enderdragons (Lucy)
It was just before nightfall when they gathered in the command room. Lucy had spent the previous hours looking through the inventory list to find things that could be used as snacks. It had been a few years, but she remembered from when she had played her version of the game with her family: snacks were a requirement. In the end the snacks mostly consisted of a variety of small fruits and nuts the gatherers had collected over the last days. However Lucy had also found some actual sweets, which turned out to have been part of what Fire and Shadow had brought to Nexus from their world.
Everyone who wanted to participate had arrived approximately on-time. Steve, as the owner of the rulebooks, took it upon himself to game master the session, he was currently speaking to Shadow who was very insistently asking if he was sure he wouldn’t need any projected ancient dragon miniatures. Warnado and Amanda were also here, currently chatting with Urist. Fristad played wallflower to the conversation, only contributing an occasional snoot of laughter. Jennifer had decided to take parts of the preparation into her own hands and was in the process of turning several pieces of paper into blank character sheets.
After the initial setup was complete, Steve gave everyone a rundown of the basic rules and the setting he was going to use. From what Lucy could tell, the game was mostly identical to what she was familiar with, though probably some of the mechanical details were different - couldn’t expect all numbers to be the same across universes. It also seemed that Shadow had come to similar conclusions, apparently having played the version of her world.
Steve announced: “Since we have the same amount of experienced and new players, each of us will help one of you with your character creation.”
Steve helped Urist, Jennifer helped Warnado, Shadow helped Amanda and Lucy would help Fristad.
After explaining the basics of what a character sheet was to Fristad they needed to talk about what he was going to play.
Lucy asked: “So, it’s best if you just think of a character without thinking about the game too much. Once you have it I’ll try to help you make it fit into the system.”
Fristad chewed his upper lip thoughtfully and leaned back. Then, he leaned forward again, a smile laughing its way into existence on his face.
“So, what’s the difference between enderborn and enderman?”
Lucy said: “Enderborn is sort of an umbrella term for anything that’s either an enderman or descended from one, but it’s mostly used for the hybrids. They don’t enjoy the best status due to some people finding them weird or even abhorrent but it’s not on a witch-hunt level.”
“Oh, so it’s like home. I have a friend like that: Jonas. Lovely guy,” said Fristad.
Lucy smiled. “Actually, the character I’ll be using is enderborn as well, I used her on the occasional games my family would run on our travels. Lots of memories connected to her.”
“Cool,” nodded Fristad. “I’m drawing on personal experience too. I’m pretty sure I’ll play an enderman, for old times’ sake.”
He promptly started giggling a little stupidly, then stopped himself and raised his hands.
“Just in case you didn’t hear, the Book turned me into an enderman one time. It was a whole thing. That’s the - hah- that’s the joke.”
Lucy had only heard about Fristad’s time when he still had the Book, so it took her a few seconds to realize what he meant, she nodded. “It’s a common thing to play out aspects of yourself.”
After writing down “enderman” in the corresponding field Lucy asked: “So, I suppose we’ll roll your stats next and from there you can decide your class.”
A few dice rolls later Fristad’s character had his stats, none of the rolls were too far outside of the ordinary. After giving Fristad a quick overview of his class options Lucy gave him a bit more time to think. He sat for about ten seconds, hunched over the sheet. He kept tapping his neck with the pen.
“Druid looks good. Nice support role and I’m really starting to love the forest, so it should suit me perfectly.”
He scribbled it in, went through the remaining details and handed the pencil over to Lucy.
“Thanks Lucy, nature be your healer,” he said with a chuckle.
“Great, just a few more things to finalize your character, among those being a backstory.”
###
After a bit, more time everyone was done with their characters. They sat down together at the map table.
Steve began: “Alright, since this is the first time playing for four of you, we’ll begin with the least complicated start: You all meet in a tavern. Introduce yourselves, in-character if possible.”
Lucy decided to start: “Hello, my name is Ella. I’m a travelling scholar seeking to expand my horizons. Nice to meet you!”
Shadow had supplied everyone with miniatures of their characters, Lucy placed hers at the table of the tavern.
Jennifer introduced herself in a husky voice, “Simeon Longshanks, paladin of the Order of the Stone. I’m young, looking to prove myself. So, I shall go out and heal those who have need of it and make war on those who would do them harm!”
Warnado was next, greatly exaggerating any hissing noises in his words. “Hhhhhello. I am Sssssspider Bard.”
Lucy first thought there was going to be more after that but no, Warnado had already placed his miniature on the table, which turned out to be a spider with maracas bound to its legs. This elicited laughs from the group and a sigh from Steve. He wore an expression that said, "Great, now I have to come up with plot hooks for a sentient spider… bard… thing."
Amanda followed suit with a wry smile. “Greetings, I am Wertma Wutko, disciple of the Way of the Falling Tree. My masters sent me into the world to prove my skill.”
Judging by her miniature, Amanda was playing a villager monk, she was evidently not terribly keen on combat effectiveness.
Urist was next, entering the fray with the most terrifying accent Lucy was pretty certain any of them had heard in some time:
“Allo, I em Ooriste ze elf. Deprived of my honeur yearz in ze past, I shearch a way to restore eet.”
Fristad allowed this to settle, scrunching his eyebrows in bemusement before placing down his enderman.
“I am Kaine,” he began with a clapping together of his hand. “I’m an enderman druid. I am chaotic good. Just here to have fun and help folks out. Don’t… Don’t look at the face, though.”
Shadow went last. “The name is Laurence, master of cards and magic. Would you like to see a trick?”
She flung her miniature with a flick of her hand, having it land precisely between Lucy’s own and Jennifer’s.
“Alright.” Said Steve. “Now that everyone has arrived, let us begin!”
###
After the introductions were over, Steve gave them their first encounter by having the tavern keeper ask them to rid him of his huge rat problem. What surprised the new players but was quite obvious to the seasoned ones was that it was actually a Huge Rat problem. Their first combat went down without much hassle, they had enough healing in the group that the few hits they took had no lasting consequences.
Once they had collected their reward they set off into the woods towards the nearest town. After a few days of travel, they came across a damaged wagon. Lucy immediately wanted to help but was cautious, Fristad had no such worries. It turned out that Lucy had been right since the wagon was bait for a bandit ambush. In this first real fight, it quickly became clear who would be keeping the party alive. Jennifer’s paladin proved incredibly useful in drawing attention from the more ill-suited party members. Despite his terrible accent, Urist was still an elf with a bow, which was not to be underestimated.
The fight ended with both Lucy and Amanda’s characters getting quite beat up by the end of it and Shadow’s character was near death. They abandoned their plans of going to the city and instead looked for shelter nearby, finding a cave to rest in.
The cave had turned out to be a lot bigger than they had expected, on Warnado’s suggestion they went to explore it after spending a day healing their wounded. Within the cave they soon found brick walls and a sealed door. What would otherwise have been a challenging puzzle was immediately nullified by Fristad teleporting to the other side and opening the door from there, Steve grumbled but accepted his oversight.
The stone structure inside the mountain was a maze-like dungeon. They slowly advanced, taking breaks when someone was struck by bolts shot from the walls triggered by pressure plates. Not having a rogue in this situation was starting to become increasingly dangerous when the traps turned from darts to boulders.
Eventually they reached an open hall, this was where the combat part of the dungeon would take place. That was when Lucy realized what kind of character Shadow was playing, she had gone all-out on relying on random effects. One combat she’d destroy skeleton after skeleton with lucky dice rolls and chaining spells, in others she almost blew up the party with a randomly targeted fireball.
At the end of the hall, they found the owner of the dungeon, a necromancer. Before he could launch into a monologue, Warnado had interrupted him with an attempt to challenge him to a solo battle, as in musical solo, not one-on-one combat. To everyone’s surprise his roll went through and the necromancer accepted. Unfortunately, however, it turned out that the necromancer’s second talent was playing the lute, Warnado consequently got himself thrashed by him and his skeletal backup dancers. Having emerged victorious, the necromancer made his exit before anyone could do much about it. Warnado swore bloody revenge, which sounded quite funny in his spider voice.
At that point Steve said: “Alright everyone. I think this wraps up our first session, it’s getting quite late, and I think this is a good stopping point.” He winked at Warnado. “If we continue this… If we continue this, I’m sure you’ll have plenty of motivation to keep this flowing.”
They spent half an hour cleaning up, then everyone went to their respective bedroom. The others would have a battle to fight tomorrow, Lucy wouldn’t be going with them, but she was still quite nervous, combat was always a risk. She was the last to leave, wondering who would come back as they filtered out of her sight.
Chapter 14: Site of Confrontation (Fire)
Fire’s estimate of two hours had proven to be fairly accurate. While in theory they could have traversed the distance much more quickly, they had stopped along the way multiple times to check for possible sightlines to the patrol’s route. This was both to prevent them from being seen early and to be able to get an accurate idea of when the patrol would arrive by posting scouts in key locations.
The valley was densely forested and as the map had shown, gradually slimmed down into a canyon that nonetheless had a few trees growing in it. The air was nice and fresh, a good contrast to the shelter, despite Shadow’s air purification spell it could get quite stuffy at times.
Fire pointed ahead. “Enough to make marching in formation difficult.”
“Indeed, we’ll let them march in far enough and then funneling them should be easy. You heavies and the ranged can hit them from the sides. We in flanking will prevent anyone who tries to run from doing so.”
Further up the walls Fire could spot a few loose rocks but not enough to meaningfully collapse and block the way back. They’d have to get creative.
“What do you think? Explosives or just loosening up dirt further up? Explosives are quick and loud, but we don’t know if they’ll work. We have enough fast diggers that the dirt method seems preferable.”
“I think you’re right. Explosives are harder to conceal and less predictable. Maybe get Jennifer or Steve to dig around within the peaks until they collapse?”
Fire looked ahead into the canyon at the trees growing there. They were perfect for their purposes, not tall enough to span the entire width, but still old and heavy enough to crush someone.
He said: “Also thinking about having the trees all be in one area. If we have good timing, we can take out a whole lot of them. Spreading out the trees wouldn’t work anyways, not enough people.” Fire pointed at a range of trees. “Maybe from here to here. Maybe a bit further in.”
“Yeah, have a few trees on either side of the divide cut. Create a tightly packed zig-zag shape. The more inconvenient the better.”
The clouds passed and the sun was now glaring at them with its full force. Kay held up a hand.
“Want to change spots?” he grumbled, teeth gritted as he moved to pull down his goggles and found nothing there.
“The sun is quite intense here, yes.”
They moved under the treeline and Kay pulled out two sticks of chalk.
“Choose, say, three trees over here, three on the other side?” he asked, eyes still squinted as though there was a sun right in front of him. He mouthed something and bobbed his head dismissively along to words Fire couldn’t hear. He seemed to be talking to the Book.
Fire nodded. “Before it’s time we can hide in the shrubs around here, if we put wedges into the pre-cut trees all it takes is a strike from an axe to have them fall over.”
Kay agreed and they spread out to mark the trees. As Fire scraped chalk across the bark and set about establishing the wedge at the base, he heard Kay muttering more audibly. However, the discussion went, it ended with Kay catching his chalk on the bark and snapping it. He parted his lips to show a gritted lattice of teeth before he sighed “okay, you’re right.”
“Fire, do you have a second?” he asked in his most formal accent.
Everyone in the shelter was starting to get an idea of Kay’s selection. He wore accents like outfits. This one was generally reserved for issuing orders. Upper-crust, with every syllable clearly separated.
Fire turned and nodded.
“So, funny thing,” he laughed. “The Book’s gotten it into its pages that I’ve been a little hostile recently. Perhaps, unfairly so…” he shuffled his feet and then continued in his natural brogue, “I agree. When you went out to set up the shelter, I said some things that were uncalled for. And then, instead of trying to resolve it I just doubled down. I wasn’t mad at you, not at the heart of it, you were just there. I’m sorry.”
That came out of nowhere.
“I mean, I’m still annoyed about the thing about you noticing the Ender and not mentioning, but I was going through something else, and I let that push me well beyond fair criticism. I was busy pitying myself, so I appointed myself the authority on who was allowed to be sad or not. Truth is, I don’t know what you’ve been through, and I shouldn’t have used your servant, sorry, server thing as an excuse to invalidate your experiences. It was shitty.”
Fire said: “Thank you for coming forward with this. I tried to not engage in open conflict because it would have troubled the group but that also meant I couldn’t really resolve the situation. I may or may not have thought some choice things about you in those situations but overall you were vastly more cooperative than antagonistic.” He paused. “I’m not entirely blameless either. Back in that first little village where we talked about our past battles… how do I say this? Having lived as long as I have, it’s sometimes easy to forget that I was young at some point. I believe back there we had fundamentally different perceptions, not just because of the difference in age but also because of coming from different worlds.”
“Hah, it is easy to forget that sometimes,” Kay said. “Different values, different eras, different societies. I understand where you’re coming from about the youth thing though. Forgetting you were ever young.”
He sat down against a tree and folded his arms over his knees.
“I’m twenty-five. I’m still young, but I have felt old for at least a decade. Do you know what I spent most of my teen-years doing, Fire? I was a cut-rate mercenary. A thug. I beat people, I robbed them. Sometimes I collected dodgy debts for Cossack and that was about as honest as I got.
“I started age fifteen. One time, when robbing a house, some servant popped his head in the door. He was no older than me. He looked like he was about to scream, and I didn’t even hesitate. I hit him with a brick, Fire. I don’t know if he got up again,” he rubbed his hands over his face and sighed before looking up at Fire with pleading eyes.
“The Onslaught wasn’t pretty, but it was a just war and it brought out some justice in me, too. It’s the best I ever was as a person,” he shook his head, “Now, here I am, age twenty-five, wondering if I’ll live long enough to be that good again. I’m an old man already. I can only imagine how it feels with that amount of life lived.”
Fire sat down against the tree opposite to Kay. “You know, when I said it was difficult to remember when I was young, I definitely didn’t mean that I don’t remember my younger years, quite difficult to forget those, just the feeling of having ever been young. But actually, I had most of my misery compressed down into a few years, hours even at the worst point.
“You see, I spent the first section of my life mostly content. I was raised by my uncle because my parents were nowhere to be found and my uncle refused to say anything. In my world most people go through formal education until they are eighteen, I was no different. It really started kicking off in the last four, my class was cutthroat and competitive, but we were the best our school had ever seen. To celebrate the bright futures, we had ahead of us we all went on a week-long trip.”
Fire sighed. “That’s where the descent begins. On the return trip I was the first to leave our common vehicle, but not before confessing my love to one of the girls in my class. She didn’t know how to respond and there was no time, I accounted for that by slipping her a note. However, in the next fifteen minutes I went from uncertainly thinking of what her true feelings might be to watching her and everyone else I cared about from the school barrel off a bridge and down a hill. Nobody survived the crash. I could have been in there too had the circumstances been slightly different.”
Kay had his mouth slightly ajar, and his eyes lowered to Fire’s knees.
“That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”
“It was definitely the low point of my early life.”
“And you still think about it, five thousand years later?”
The rays of the sun intensified briefly as dusk became full sunset. Light rallying one last time before it gave was to moonlight.
A smile crept up on Fire’s face for the sheer cruelly comical unlikeliness of the events he was about to recount to Kay. “That wasn’t the only thing that happened that day. When I got home and talked to my uncle about it, he finally decided to tell me the truth about my parents. Turns out I was the son of pretty much the two worst people of their generation. Before I was born there was some kind of big war in my world and without going into details, my parents were the ones supplying ‘our’ side with weapons. Not just regular weapons either, everything in the book, poison, psychoactive agents, you know the deal.
“The big swinging factor however was something they called ‘fairy dust’, a combat agent that would make entire strips of land uninhabitable. If you were exposed to it things would happen to you, things that nobody could explain. Some died because their bones suddenly collapsed on themselves, those were the relatively normal ones, I read reports of one man who had hundreds of flowers sprouting everywhere inside of him.
“Needless to say, at the end of that day I didn’t know whether to feel sad, confused or angry. That was also the day after which Shadow’s problems got bad. Before, she was just reclusive and quiet, would talk to me and occasionally our uncle. After that day she was terrified of anyone that wasn’t me, wouldn’t stop crying if anyone came even remotely close to her. I had reached a point where my knowledge and skill offered no way out. It’s as if everything had conspired against us, like everything before that had just been the setup to some cruel punchline.”
“Yeah, at a certain point you just tell yourself it’s funny. That’s what I did. You stop associating it with you and you just kind of drift on and on until you have this awful moment where you catch a glimpse, like a reflection of a reflection, and you realise all this hurt is who you are.”
He let his hands fall to the sides and his breastplate clanked against the tree trunk. He raised a palm and lowered it as though that explained something.
Fire nodded. “I did something like that. Just pretended whatever I felt was happening to someone else while the ‘real’ me searched for a way to at least help my sister. That’s what my motivator was, to at least help her. I went headfirst into higher education, plowed right through it. Filled any free time with physical exercise to keep my mind off things. That went on for what… eight years? Ten? Didn’t have to worry about money since my war profiteering parents had left behind quite an inheritance. I eventually found the people who would eventually build the server, my world.
“That really was the point where everything got good again, the server was running, Shadow was happy, life was whole again. Just something was there that didn’t belong. That ‘someone’ I had projected my emotions onto? He’d become quite real in that other world. Whenever I felt things like strong anger or sadness, he’d just… appear in my mind and drive me out for a while. He calls himself Claw, he’s little more than a beast with how little mind-space he has to work with, but I still have to keep him caged. If you ever see my eyes turn black, that’s him. If that happens, I suggest running, everyone else is just prey to him and he unfortunately retains my subconscious combat skills and has no morals or scruples to speak of.”
“But he’s under control now, right?” Kay asked, straightening his back up against the tree.
“He broke his chains while I was returning home, massacred a group of hunters who wanted my scales, I’m rid of him for a while. He should remain caged at least until the end of this war.” Fire paused, contemplating. “If worst comes to worst, there is one weakness I have that you can exploit against Claw. If you manage to wound me with a silver weapon it’ll paralyze me, it’s lethal within an hour. Getting anything silver in contact with a wound has the same effect. If you manage to do it, I always carry a potion that cures the silver poisoning. I should be conscious enough to give it to you once Claw is gone.” Another pause. “Just… make sure to keep it to yourself, it’s a secret we Mencur-Besh keep well but I’m afraid I can not afford to in these circumstances.”
“Okay, silver weapon. I’ll remember that.” Kay visibly lost tension and chuckled a little. “Sorry, I should be being empathetic, I just needed to figure out what I’m dealing with. Thanks for feeling comfortable enough to tell me all this, it means a lot to you, and I can assure you, it… it means a lot to me.”
Fire got up from the tree again. “I’ve told a few bits of this to Destiny before to help bring her back. I think I’m over the trauma itself, the memories are just a bit stickier than I want them to be but the thing that really stayed were the mistakes I made. I had professional help available but didn’t take it, I suppose in hindsight you always look like a bit of an idiot.”
He offered a hand to Kay. “Anyways, we should get back to the shelter. Need to be well-rested tomorrow.”
The sun was just about to pass below the horizon, but the heat remained.
“Yes, we do,” Kay took the hand. “We’re going to win this tomorrow. You’re a good leader, and I’m proud to be serving under you.”
He squeezed the hand warmly as he shook it.
They spent the return journey swapping a few more stories about the unlikely things life had thrown at them. When they arrived at the shelter a good deal of the leadership was sleeping already, however there was still laughter coming from somewhere around the front door. Fire and Kay went to their respective doors, wishing the other a good sleep with a quick nod.
As Fire lay in bed, he spent a bit thinking about what he had heard, maybe his cautious optimism for this effort was more well-founded than he had thought.
Chapter 15: Doubts (Kay)
After I got back in from scouting out the raid site I stopped by Lucy’s desk, grabbed some chalk and a washcloth and disappeared into a lesser-used storage cupboard. I followed the curve fervently with my eyes as I traced a few concentric circles in white and red. Then, I etched out the lines between the circles, creating new, smaller shapes and linking them intricate well of colour and pattern. I could see nothing, but my muscles knew the routes to our goal. The gold nuggets sent a pulse of cold through my body as I positioned them at four key intersections. Next was the moss, tumbling from between my fingers and into the centre. Finally: the jagged stone of the Nether.
I struck a match and light swept over half the stone, illuminating a little blood-red kite. The match lowered, caught the surface and then the whole upper surface was burning. Cupping this little beacon between my hands, I bent over the circle and chants came naturally to me. The words of old. The words of my people. The words of Herobrine, that he had told me to use in my hour of need.
But nothing came of it. Ten minutes slipped through my fingers as I used them to house the flame.
“He’s not coming,” I concluded.
“Are you sure there’s no interference? You are in another world after all.”
“No, he wasn’t answering back home either. Worth a try but I either can’t do it since Zine Craft or he’s not listening.”
I cleaned up the signs of the ritual. Despite the Book’s protests, I gave up hope of soliciting the Blind Watcher’s aid.
If I could have gotten in touch, we would have had the full force of the True Court. Literal millions of Noobians, hundreds of thousands of Divine soldiers, thousands of living Pigmen, an immense fleet of airships and the Greater Divines themselves were a considerable force in combat. That was without mentioning the hundreds of administrators who could be called upon to provide vassals. They might not be there in time for the raid tomorrow, but it would at least be a promise that the Entity would end up facing a force to rival its own.
But no. My master wouldn’t hear my plea. We were alone.
I scrunched my eyes shut and begin the walk of shame to the dormitories. Laughter from the Dungeons and Enderdragons group rippled through the air, reached me and made my stomach lurch. Warnado’s cackle rose above the rest, like a robin leaping from the back of an eagle and I quickened my pace, heart fighting to get out of my chest.
“If anything happens to that child…”
“You will endure,” The Book scolds. It has developed a certain condescension since I lost to Fire.
I reached my bed and collapsed in. I didn’t bother to take my clothes off and didn’t know if I would change them the next day. The enemy wasn’t going to care if I was spick and span. I compelled the Book to send me to sleep and wake me at the appropriate hour. One of the unexpected advantages of letting the Book in was peaceful sleep. My nightmares had vanished. Once a tormentor, the Dreamweaver now soothed me as I drifted off.
Part of my mind remains awake. We were in a study with walls whose colour I can’t make out. There was a fireplace, but its light didn’t carry quite right. I sat behind a desk. Blackboard behind me. An armchair across from me contained a human-like shape composed of swirling, fluttering pages: The Book’s preferred manifestation.
I paid a little more attention and the walls settled into a nice shade of green and the light took on a more orange and warmer aspect. It’s time for our scheduled meeting.
“Thank you for your help with that apology. You were right, it was better to clear the air,” I began.
“You’re welcome. Now, the captains?”
“The Ender, Glibby and Freak are the main possibilities. There are others, but these are the ones the Entity seems to prefer sending into the field.”
I swivel my chair around to the blackboard and I see images of the three captains in chalk, with annotations surrounding them scribbled in my own delicately chaotic hand.
“Freak is physically weakest but can choose who can see or interact with him,” I remark. “He’s the worst-case scenario, in my view.”
“Weakness can be exploited. If he comes near us, strike fast. I will see what I can do about making him tangible. It does not seem insurmountable.”
“If Freak’s nearby he won’t come near us, and he’ll just switch out if we use a portal. He might yell at us for taunting purposes, but he’ll not risk confrontation.”
“The Ender?”
“We zap her. It’s not one on one this time. She will stay down.”
“Glibby.”
“That slow moron? He’s strong and nothing more. An ambassador for a crime lord. Portalling around should be enough to bring him to heel.”
“Be cautious, that crime lord will not have sent him without protection.”
And so, we carried on, debating stances, circumstances to expect, spells and moves to employ. I wouldn’t go in charging as I had at the village, weaving between ranks and punching holes in them. At the beginning, I would go in to separate an officer from the group and disrupt the Endlings, but after that I would stay at the edges, picking them off while Fire and the others took the main body. None would escape. None of our party would die. I would not let them. Until I did.
Chapter 16: Final Breather (Fristad)
I step outside into the cold. Everyone’s asleep. I don’t want to yet. Tomorrow, it’s going to be Warnado and Amanda and I’s job to start the avalanche and subdue whatever officer they send our way. My heart feels fragile at the very thought - it’s like the muscle suddenly turns to paper and I find myself waiting for it to burst - but I know I must do it. For everyone back home. For everyone in Nexus. For myself, because this is my choice.
I know this Entity, this thing is not going to stop until it takes everything. I’m going to be the person I wish to be, without the say of the Book and against my desire just to run back home at the first possibility. And by Notch that desire is strong. As my breath billows up past my view in a cloud, I briefly contemplate trying to disappear into it. It’s fleeting, however, and I feel bad.
I remind myself I’ve got a fairly easy dear. I’m not on the front lines like Steve and Jennifer. Heck, I’m not even a noticeable target like Astro and the archers. I say a little prayer for the first two. They’ve been there for me from the start. I’ve hardly met people this generous and supportive and brave. Maybe Jonas, maybe Airlass… I swear to myself I’ll see them again.
I go up to a tree and begin to chop it to give vent to some frustration. However, as I reach the last swing, I hear “Hey Fristad!” sound out from behind me.
Crack! The tree falls backwards toward me and I pirouette out of the way instinctively. I search for whoever called out to me. It’s Destiny, who’s blankly stares at the tree as it accelerates down toward her.
“Destiny! Look out!” I call.
Destiny stamps her foot, and a pillar of ice rises up and stops the tree mid-descent. She blinks her cheeks knot up as she stifles laughter.
“That tree almost crushed you!” I say, exasperated.
“Oops,” shrugs Destiny, before doubling over laughing.
A bottle falls out of her jacket. She’s drunk. Not astonishingly drunk, but tipsy enough for it to throw her off. I join in the laughter.
“How was your past self?” I ask as I move in to place a hand on her back and guide her back inside.
“Anya was good,” she says, calming herself. “We’re both looking forward to tomorrow.”
“Really?” I calmly inquire. “I’m terrified.”
“Ah, you’re new to all this. I’ve been through enough to accept that if I die, I die. I’m at peace with whatever comes next.”
I should be surprised by this level of honesty, but Destiny and I have been speaking like this since election day. It’s just nice to have someone I can be upfront with about my less cheery thoughts, especially now that the Book is gone. I always had to be careful, lest the slightest negative thought be twisted into a reason for submission, so I ended up bottling things up.
“Maybe you have the right idea,” I say, trying to get a taste for the idea, letting it roll around my mind a bit. “If we die, we die.”
Destiny stumbled.
“Damn! Sorry, stupid twig. No, no, don’t accept that.”
She looked up at me with rolling, imprecise eyes, having to try a few times to meet my eyes. A hand presses against my chest and she points at me. We’re just outside the door of the shelter.
“You have a life to get back to. Cling to it. Follow the thread, man,” she said. “Promise me you’ll go back there. That Airlass girl sounds nice! Go for it, buddy, you can do it.”
“Okay,” I chuckled. “Okay. You’re clearly drunk but I promise.”
“Awesome.” Her eyes fell, then she added: “What you want is still there. Try and get it.”
I agree silently, and it feels odd. I let it settle for a minute, then decide seriousness has had its day. A little bit of levity seems apt.
“So, what’s confused Anya the most, so far? This can’t be an easy setup to explain.”
She immediately lights up.
“Oh, it’s easily Kir, she just can’t get over him! Kay working for Herobrine also offends her so much. She genuinely won’t even acknowledge it when I mention him. Straight up blanks me and sets up a thousand-yard stare. It’s hilarious!”
And so, we laugh and joke and tease, allowing ourselves to forget what’s coming in the space between the front door and the dormitory. A nice little stretch of safety before the coming battle.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 3 The Ambush (Chapters 17-21)
Chapter 17: Engagement (Destiny)
Destiny used a rock like a park bench as she waited for Voidblade to deploy her. Her headache was gone, though an echo of it carried on thanks to the low blaze of the late-afternoon sun. They were atop the cliffs. Warnado and Fristad knelt on the ground to lay out redstone wiring. The crimson trail descended into a hole Fire had dug that led to the heart of the cliff-face. An array of pistons was holding back previously loosened boulders and mud. A flick of a switch and they would drop several tons of rock behind the enemy, cutting off their escape.
Amanda inspected her crossbow in the shade of a tree. Kay and Fire crouched near the precipice, passing a telescope between them and murmuring. The sound of marching climbed up the cliff. It struck her how high up they were, and how many heavily armoured enemies there must be for the noise to carry this far.
She knew Astro was on the other side of the valley, marshalling some archers into place out of sight for a trick Kay planned to pull off. She wasn’t clear on what he was supposed to do after that, though.
Rose sat to her right, more glamorous than Destiny had ever seen her. Pristine hair. Armour neat and sleek as a ball-gown. She held a polished knife before her. She gazed into the reflection it created to apply a delicate coat of blood red lipstick. She pulled the lipstick away and her pupils narrowed hungrily at the sight of her own face. The far reaches of her mouth curled up a miniscule amount, betraying a cold enthusiasm. She sheathed the knife.
“You seem prepared,” said Destiny with what she hoped was a good-natured snort.
“Back in my own world most of my targets were high society, crossed so many people off guest lists that this eventually became some sort of ritual. The whole looks-that-kill deal, it helped me out more often than I thought.”
Destiny shrugged and didn’t know what to say next. Eventually, she mustered a dry:
“Eh, we all have our rituals. Not sure how much endermen care, though.”
“We’ll see,” said Rose. That narrow smile returned, and Destiny felt a desire to back up several kilometres and not continue the conversation.
Thankfully, Voidblade returned to teleport Rose away. Destiny had never been more grateful to an enderman. Almost immediately after, Kay and Fire returned from the cliff-edge, gesturing to everyone to gather ‘round.
“Right,” said Kay before Fire could say anything. “Glibby’s leading the patrol. The grey lads and the Dog are with him. Fire and I will go down immediately after the rockslide and trees fall to parlay with them, Destiny you’re with us.”
Destiny nodded. Kay then stepped back and gestured to Fire to pick up where he left off. She felt he still didn’t seem to be grasping the second part of the job, but he had the in-command part down to a T.
“If Glibby is reasonable, the show of force might encourage him to cut further losses, but from what you have told me about him that’s unlikely. Be ready to strike if it’s clear parlay is not an option.”
Destiny’s brain had an allergic reaction to the idea of letting Glibby go free, but she tried to hide the sudden, nauseous upsurge she felt from her stomach. Maybe the hangover hadn’t entirely faded after all...
“If it doesn’t work,” said Kay. “I’ll just shunt the Dog into a portal, and it’ll be down to team rockslide to beat him into submission. Shouldn’t have too much bother though, he’s a pushover. Very friendly. Might even try to defect-”
“You are not to accept the Dog’s defection,” Fire cut in, giving Kay a warning look. “You will incapacitate him. Amanda, how many blunt bolts do you have?”
“Thirty-five,” the teenager responded. “One or two to the head and he’s down.”
“Good. Be ready for Kay’s portal and there shouldn’t be problems. If he’s incapacitated but conscious, don’t interact, we’ll do proper interrogations after the fact. The fewer expectations we give the more leverage we have later.”
“Alright,” Fristad confirmed. “You can count on us three.”
He moved to clap Amanda and Warnado on the shoulders and then reconsidered. His arms fell like leaves in Fall. The history was still too recent and too weird there.
Destiny shot him an empathetic look. He smiled back as if to say “stay safe out there.” She nodded and beamed back at him.
She followed Kay and Fire up to the edge of the cliff. The procession was now below them. The diamond armour of the patrol mostly blurred together into an indistinct sea of armaments, broken only at the front and back of the column. At the back were ten or so Endlings in obsidian armour, similarly monolithic. At the front was a group of five. At the forefront of it was the unmistakable shape of Glibby the Ape.
In truth, Destiny couldn't make out many of the features that got him his name. She just saw a shape about twice the size of anyone else in the procession. She could also make out the two huge, iron gauntlets it wore clasped around the reigns of a horse. Grey stains on the scene.
A memory exploded into view before Destiny. Those gauntlets, glowing molten from the heat of the blast. Emerging from the smoke. Soaring toward David. Slamming into Tyron’s chest and dislocating his arm. Raking Kir across his gut.
Anya’s words echoed in her ears: Kill that ***** something fierce.
The column was now predominantly in the valley, with only the endermen and a few stragglers outside. Fire nudged Kay, who closed his eyes and clenched a fist in front of him. A small spark of voidfire glowed silver, then purple in front of him, then vanished. He opened his eyes. Destiny squinted, confused. At that moment, the screams finished their ascent up the cliff-face.
Destiny forced her head over the edge and saw a scene of growing chaos. Just between the endermen and the human mercenaries was a rift of the same silver fire. It spat arrows from every direction, striking their enemies down. One endling, caught off guard, was already dead from an arrow through the eye. Others were injured at the chinks in their armour. The human rear-guard were in anarchy, their scattering amounting to a stampede that injured as many as the arrows themselves.
Destiny looked at Kay and gave him a thumbs-up. He grinned and pointed back down. That was when the trees started falling. First, she caught a glimpse of Tyron shoulder-charging a trunk and sending it collapsing onto a few of those fleeing the arrow attack. Then, another toppled, revealing the diamond shell of Steve, who quickly retreated back into the treeline, apparently without anyone noticing. Then another fell, and another, and another. Soon, six trees created a zig-zagging path through the valley which the mercenaries desperately tried to navigate and clamber over. The endermen were warping around, surveying the scene and dragging soldiers to their feet.
The second the last tree fell, Fire stood up, no longer afraid of being seen. He gestured to Fristad, who shot Destiny an excited look before flicking the lever.
Click! It was shortly followed by the crunch of several pistons retracting, and then the rumble of falling rocks and mud. It piled into the pass, filling it entirely. Several soldiers and one injured enderman ended up crushed. All in all, the opening strike had been a huge success. Between a quarter and a third of the enemy force was already dead or injured to a greater or lesser degree.
Warnado floated upwards to survey the scene, whooping triumphantly before dropping down in a backflip. Kay rolled over and applauded the rockslide team. Fire, however, was all business:
“Portal us down there Kay. It’s time to see if they’ll see sense.”
Kay clenched a fist before him and summoned another fiery portal. They had all been through on to get there, but Destiny still found the idea slightly unnerving. Thankfully, passing through only provided a strange, numb feeling not unlike pins and needles. It passed and she took in the scene.
Kay was on Fire’s left. She was on his right. They were striding up to the party of the Tower’s officers. Glibby, The Dog and the three grey-scaled endermen who had captured her and David all those weeks ago. She picked out the one whose face she had half-melted. Apparently, his name was Silver, and he wouldn’t stop glaring at Kay. Destiny felt kind of left out of the contempt, especially considering the face-melting thing.
She turned her attention to Glibby, who seemed unfazed. He wore his usual trench-coat and moleskin suit, with only a light iron chestplate as armour. He was beaming at them with his mouth, but his eyes remained cold.
He handed his hat to one of his bodyguards to reveal an elongated cranium, bald except for a small circlet of hair reaching from temple to temple. He passed the reins of his horse to a human soldier who was attempting to drag his friend from beneath one of the boughs of the nearest fallen tree. A squashed nose dominated the centre of his face. Rubbery, skin-coloured lips protruded from his face. Destiny finally had enough time to appreciate the resemblance to an ape.
The commanding party stopped about fifteen paces from them. The diamond-clad troops were beginning to recapture something resembling a formation at the end of the tree-maze. A line of archers was forming atop one of the heavier tree-trunks and aiming at them.
“Jolly great show! You gave us a proper startle.” boomed the Ape. “A pity it has already worn off.”
Fire bellowed back: “All we demand is a single prisoner. Everyone else will be let go. It’s in your hand to preserve your soldier’s lives!”
He looked placidly at Fire before turning to look at Kay.
“Terribly sorry, Kay, do you mind introducing us?”
“Hello Glibby, I wasn’t aware we’d been introduced,” Kay called back in that obviously fake posh accent he kept using when he wanted to impress someone. “Hello again to you too, Silver, officer who is a talking dog… This is my commanding officer, Fire of the Mencur-Besh. I’d advise just handing over the prisoner. Otherwise, he will massacre your troops almost single handedly, we’ll capture you, and then Astro and I will deeply enjoy applying a hot poker to your tender parts until you tell us what we want to know.”
“By mods,” Glibby laughed. “You do prattle on.”
“I’m giving you one more chance, Glibby,” warned Fire. “Surrender one of your officers or your soldiers will die.”
“Well, so long as they’re the only ones at risk, I don’t see any issue with fighting on,” Glibby said. A couplet of mock punches punctuated the last two works.
“What about you, Dog?” asked Kay with a step forward and squinting off to the far side of the valley. “No chance of a last-minute defection?”
Fire sighed. Destiny could practically hear him mentally lament the momentum this conversation had lost them.
“Sorry, pal, but the ship sailed on that when you slammed my teeth into a set of iron bars,” growled the Dog, baring his chipped and silver-coated teeth.
Destiny noticed he wore a monocle that looked like it was about to shatter under the weight of his furrowed brow. That was neat.
The line of soldiers was thick now, and the archers were growing more and more numerous. She clasped her hands behind her back and crystallized several sharpened icicles to throw at them.
Kay was now shielding his eyes as he continued to look at the far-side of the valley, even though the sun was behind them.
“Bah!” Kay sighed and threw his hand aside in a motion almost like a salute. “You’ll come around eventually. My lads shall convince you.”
At that he warped forward and shunted the Dog into a portal. Glibby backed up into a fighting stance and the Grey Ones bore their claws. Kay ignored them all and immediately followed this up by hurling a ball of voidfire into the line of soldiers, roasting only one but scattering several.
Suddenly, Glibby saw something in the reflection of his gauntlets. Astro swooped down like a spear from the heavens, arcing his sword underhand only for it to clang against one of the metal fists. The wizard ricocheted off and tumbled into the sky. Fire bellowed an order, and the fighters began to emerge from the forest to spread death among the Tower’s ranks.
Destiny ran forward, hurling icicles at the Grey Ones, who promptly teleported themselves and their master away from harm. That done, she turned her attention to the archers, who were starting to loose arrows both in their direction and in the direction of the others. She saw a wall of rock send one of the archers flying, but they would clearly still need help.
She felt a paradoxical coldness in her forearms and hands as she summoned a pillar of fire that she blasted at the end of the log. Two archers fell off, burning, and fire began to spread across the trunk.
However, no sooner had she done this than the entire tree froze solid. Then, as the archers struggled to maintain their balance, a young woman clambered onto the log with them, a circle of spear-like shards of ice orbiting behind her.
Destiny almost didn’t recognise the pale-skinned, dark-haired figure before she remembered Shadow had disguised herself before the battle started. Something about what she’d done in the village meant she didn’t want the Tower realising she was part of the attack.
An orange-gold hunk of metal morphed into a scimitar, and the disguised Shadow charged forward alongside her shards. The shards would rend the armour of an archer and the sword would sever the flesh.
Destiny ducked a swipe from one of the endermen and scared them off with a blast of ice. She almost didn’t notice as Fire slammed into the line of soldiers, using his halberd as a shoving tool to throw them off balance. The ones that couldn’t recover their guard quickly enough were subjected to a series of attacks both from his weapon and his claws to exposed points, making their diamond armor matter painfully little.
She drew her bow and looked for a spot where she could be useful. Kay continued to portal around, hurling fireballs at the soldiers and shooting lightning at a small train of three endermen who were following him. Astro continued to soar around the battlefield, swinging his sword and shattering bones with his mind. Shadow stood on the frozen log, dodging projectiles and blasting ice both into the tree-maze and into the front lines.
A chance look over to Fire revealed one of the armoured ender materialising in his blind spot while he was still in the heat of battle. Sword raised, they hoped to strike him from behind. Destiny shot an arrow into the back of their knee and they crumpled. Before the arrow even made contact, Fire had broken with his opponent and started turning. Finding his enemy too wounded to think of teleporting he whipped his halberd and decapitated them. He nodded at Destiny before returning to his prior target.
She clambered up the log and melted herself a clear patch on which to stop. She saw Shadow beside her on a platform of ice.
“Loving the disguise,” Destiny called out. “It suits you.”
“It should,” smiled Shadow as she turned to freeze one of the soldiers crowding around Fire. “It’s how I look in my ‘real world’.”
Destiny decided not to question that, nodded and leapt over to the next log, which was free of ice. From here she had a clearer view of the battle’s full extent.
Voidblade was at the far end of the valley, cutting down anyone who attempted to retreat over the blocked pass. Kay was still flitting around the mass at the front, dodging the swipes of endermen with ease and yelling grandiose insults. Astro had settled on the ground and was now cutting his way through to Fire, snapping necks and crushing ribs between strokes of the sword.
Down in the trenches, chaos reigned. At the edge, just on the treeline, Tyron and Urist found themselves in the midst of a troop of soldiers and endermen. They would have been standing back-to-back if not for the size difference or Urist’s tactic of ducking through Tyron’s legs to slam a hammer into the legs or stomach of an enderman before they could get away. One such blow doubled an enderman over as Destiny ascended the log, and Tyron capitalised on it by raking Kir across their winded opponent’s neck.
“Five left!” cheered Kir for all nearby allies to hear. “Five endermen left!”
The sword’s enthusiasm died down as a diamond-coated giant climbed over a log and began to square up to Tyron, who did not seem pleased to find himself in this situation again.
Steve, Jennifer and Rose faced an even greater challenge just at Destiny’s feet. On the far side of the tree on which Destiny stood, the ground was thick with human corpses, and the soldiers kept swarming around them with ferocity, no matter how injured they were. Jennifer and Rose had escaped the worst of it by hopping between the bows of the fallen trees and launching projectiles into the crowd, but Steve found himself still in the very heart of it. Worse still, the Grey Ones had chosen this as their hunting grounds.
Destiny saw Steve cut down a soldier only to receive a blow on the helmet from one of the Grey Ones. He turned and saw the enderman disappear just in time to receive another blow on the helmet. Destiny tried to intervene, but every shot was too slow. The harrying of Steve continued for several bouts until, disoriented, he saw Silver in a fighting stance, beckoning. In one desperate motion, Steve attempted to impale the Grey Ones’ leader, only for him to teleport away. Excalibur ate into wood and stuck there.
Steve cursed as he realised his mistake and attempted to pull Excalibur free. However, before he could do so, Glibby materialised, flanked by two of his servants, and pounded Steve’s head.
The son of Herobrine rallied, pulled two lesser swords from his inventory and rushed at the Ape. He swung twice, once with each sword, but Glibby batted them away with one hand and punched Steve with the other. Steve’s boots shattered from the force of the impact and he tripped over one of the corpses.
Seeing Steve in distress, Jennifer fired an arrow right at the Ape’s exposed cranium, but one of the grey ones materialised and blocked it with their shoulder, roaring in pain. It materialised in front of its assailant and tackled her back into the sea of corpses.
Rose then charged in, swiping at Glibby with her knives and firing off duplicates. Sadly, her target proved improbably agile, and smiled as it dodged her blows.
“And here I thought my days in the ballroom were long behind me,” he drawled as precursor to a retaliatory swing.
Destiny also nocked an arrow but found herself pirouetting away when Silver swiped at her. His claws peeled away an iron pauldron and grazed the flesh underneath. She, in one fluid movement, dropped to one knee and loosed the arrow at Silver’s foot. He jumped back and before he had a moment to recover Destiny had loosed a pillar of fire at him which he teleported away from. Believing herself victorious, she rose, only for a new blow to knock her flat. Her bow snapped beneath her weight and she lay there, winded.
Silver hunched over her, fangs bared in a horrendous grin. He raised his claws and readied to plunge them down. Destiny formed a spike of ice in her hand, ready to bring him down with her. Just as the claws began their descent a gloved hand reached out and grabbed them: Kay had materialised.
He slammed the pommel of his sword into the enderman’s head and hurled him from the log. Destiny could’ve sworn she saw a tooth flying out, but it happened too fast to tell. He pulled her up and they both turned their attention to the duel between Glibby and Rose.
The Ape seemed to notice the increased attention and decided to break the flow of things by grabbing Rose and tossing her away. As she landed in a heap a good distance off, Glibby looked quite pleased with himself. Unfortunately for him, this is just what Astro, who had returned to the sky, had been waiting for.
A jet of fire descended from the sky that Glibby’s remaining bodyguard only just teleported him away from. They rematerialised at the bend in the maze, Glibby brushing down a small patch of flame on his shoulder. He cleared his throat to make some sort of snide quip, but before he spoke, the frozen tree shattered and Glibby had to raise his trench-coat to shield his face from the splintering wood.
Destiny looked at Kay and jumped down into the trench. The General followed, and the two cut off that escape route. Steve, finally getting a moment to unstick Excalibur, joined them. Jennifer, breaking free from the Grey One who had attacked her, blocked off the route to the forest. Rose got up from her heap, her hair slick with blood, and joined the growing blockade with a glare in her eyes that could melt stone. Finally, A giant fell, with Kir in between its ribs and Tyron yanking it free.
“Nice liver,” Kir cackled with uncharacteristic malice. Then, more sheepishly: “Sorry. Only him supposed to hear that.”
He looked up, saw Glibby and audibly growled.
“You again,” Tyron spat with a flourish of his sword. “Oh, I have been waiting to kill you for so long! You are so dead, asshole.”
Glibby, now rejoined by his three bodyguards, turned around with his hands on his hips. He hiked up his trousers.
“And here I thought this was going to be dull.”
Destiny smiled as she heard genuine nervousness pierce the condescension.
Kir noticed the dead enderman on the ground and chirped out a cheery: “Four left.”
Chapter 18: Dogfight (Fristad)
I am standing in the shade of the tree. I don’t dare look Warnado or Amanda in the eye. I just made a huge mistake.
After the landslide, I’d suddenly realised how terrified I was of actually fighting this officer, so I’d decided to settle affairs.
“Listen, Amanda, in case anything goes wrong here, I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” I said, and I reckon I said it pretty sincerely.
She glared at me and I immediately questioned what on earth had possessed me to do this. It wasn’t the Book; this was just me having the worst sense of timing in the world. Naturally, Warnado yelled at me a whole bunch.
The first salvo or two mostly consisted of high-pitched curse words strung together like cursive, but finally it faded into something more concrete:
“...What is wrong with you?!” He spat these words out with such force that his hood jumped up and I could briefly see the base of his nose. “You think now is the right time to bring up the stuff you put her through? I’ve known Amanda a long time and she does not scare easily and you - you-”
“Warnado,” Amanda interrupted. “I can handle myself.”
She pushed her way past him and dragged me down to eye-level by the lapels. She was only thirteen so I could easily have brushed her off, but that felt inappropriate. I gazed into the hazel depths of her eyes.
“You hurt me in ways few others have managed. You tormented my sanity. The fact that Kay is getting on way too well with the Book only compounds how unnecessary it was. As it stands, you are not forgiven in any sense of the word,” she said.
A pause.
“Win this fight,” she decreed. “And we’ll see.”
So, I’ve been standing here for the last ten minutes while Warnado angrily crunches his way through a taco with his arm around Amanda’s shoulder. They’re standing near the promontory, watching for the signal.
Then, suddenly a familiar pillar of silver flame materialises near the switch and out plops an officer. He’s a big, tall man with the black and white head of a springer spaniel. He’s not wearing any armour, just a loose black jacket and trousers over a billowing white shirt, in addition to a monocle. Looped through his belt is a sabre. He lands on his back and as he rises, I can see dirt tumble off him. He stretches. We fan out and leave him backing onto the cliff.
“‘Sup Dog?” Warnado quips dryly, throwing his taco aside and moving forward.
“Bloody hells,” the Dog groans. “That’s honestly the best you can offer?”
He bears his teeth and I see them glint with silver. I raise my axe to try and cool him off a little but suddenly my shoulder-guard shifts a little and I shuffle awkwardly to correct it. I don’t get the impression he’s particularly intimidated.
“Yes. Anyway, you remember me from the tower. I am Lord Helix and it’s time you surrendered,” says Warnado. “Before we dunk on you so hard, they rename basketball after us. Naturally, we’ll need a cool team-name first, but we’ll appreciate the gesture.”
I have no idea what basketball is, and the Dog just looks angrier. I briefly start thinking about a cool team-name and then suddenly remember my contributions probably won’t be welcome.
I take one hand off my axe and show my palm to the Dog. Before I quite understand what I'm doing I’ve taken a step or two forward.
“Listen,” I say. “You should just surrender. We only want to know what the Entity is up to. I promise you’ll be fairly treated. You really seem to have impressed Kay. It would save us all a lot of… What are you doing?”
The Dog has pulled off its jacket and is now shaking it. It looks at the back, growls and throws it to the dirt.
“Taking this rubbish off. It’s hot. We’ll resume this conversation in a minute.”
“Oh.”
I look back around to Amanda and Warnado. She has a blunt bolt trained on the Dog’s head. Warnado has a luminous club summoned. They both look as confused as I do, and I enjoy this brief moment of camaraderie.
My head wheels back and the Dog has removed his shirt and is now stretching their back out. He is in impeccable shape, with washboard abs and huge biceps.
“Right,” the Dog begins. “I have thought long and hard on your offer.”
His fist strikes me in the face so hard my helmet flies off.
He turns away from me and looks at Warnado and Amanda, hands on his hips and a smirk on his face:
“I have elected to decline. Do what you will.”
Amanda shoots at him and he dodges aside. The sabre flies from its sheath and is swinging for Warnado’s torso. The demon-child floats upward and avoids the blow. I’m back on my feet and running to join the fight.
The Dog rounds on Amanda, who has finished reloading. She ducks a slash and pulls the trigger. I hear a thud, a crack of bone and a howl. She’s struck him right in the ribs!
Finally close enough, I swing with the blunt end of my axe, hoping to catch him in the head and end this, but he parries. I stagger, a glare of sun travels the length of the sabre and suddenly my axe is a stick six inches in length. The point of the sword is used as a pole against my breastplate to drive me back a few steps early.
I can see the Dog grinning as he returns to Amanda and interrupts her reloading with another attack. He catches her hard on the breastplate and she stumbles to her knees with a cry of pain.
Warnado, still floating, yells out “Hey!” He raises his hands above his head and a glowing mace materialises, spiked and ready to crush the Dog’s skull.
“We’re supposed to take him alive, you donko!” Amanda grunts.
Warnado falters, and as he constructs a new, less lethal weapon, the Dog moves to strike Amanda again. She narrowly dodges and lands on her front. The crossbow flies out of her reach. The Dog raises his sabre again.
For the first time in a long while, my course of action is obvious and my own. I rush forward, screaming. My heart is pounding with the exhilaration of freedom from all things: The Book, cowardice, self-preservation. I flip the stick in my hand and strike the Dog on its wounded flank.
It howls. For a brief moment I hope it will collapse from pain. Its eyes flicker, but then fly back open with renewed vigor. It shunts me back and swipes. I dodge, but without a weapon there’s not much I can do. I raise my fists like a boxer and pray I get in a good punch or two before I die.
That’s when a wooden bat the size of a claymore cracks into his face and he pirouettes uncontrollably.
“HOME RUN!” cheers Warnado. Then, as the Dog regains its stance, he adds, “Or, you know, second base, or whatever.”
I don’t get the joke, but I laugh in disbelief anyway as Warnado lands and flourishes his gargantuan bat like it weighed nothing.
Not willing to be rendered totally useless, I raise my fists and begin to wheel around to him.
The Dog can’t choose between us. It reaches down for my axe head and my heart sinks. The fight isn’t over. Now wielding one complete weapon and the remnants of another, he opens his mouth to the point where it seems almost unhinged and unveils a sea of razor-sharp fangs.
Warnado and I share a look and dig in our heels. We’re taking this guy down, whether we die or not.
Crack! The Dog judders. His eyelids collapse under their own weight. He drops forward. I see a wooden bolt on the ground beside him, and before I can look up to confirm what happens the crossbow clatters into my field of view. Amanda lands on top of the Dog and immediately clamps handcuffs onto his wrists.
“We’ve won!” Warnado screams. He hugs me and I cackle with joy, giving him a little squeeze in return. He and Amanda run at each other. They hug and she lifts him and spins him around. I can’t stop beaming.
She plants him down. They look deeply into each other’s eyes. She closes her eyes and juts her head forward, he reciprocates. Their lips press together. They draw away, both wide-eyed and seemingly lost as to where they are.
“Wow, that was… weird,” says Warnado, eyes seeming a different shade of red than usual but that was maybe me inferring from his tone.
“Oh,” she responds, eyes drooping like dying grass. “Sorry.”
“No! No! Like, good weird,” Warnado insists in a panic. “I - I would love - like! - I would like to do it again, sometime. If… you would like to.”
“Yeah,” nods Amanda, “Absolutely. That would be pretty cool.”
“Cool.”
And then they stand in silence for around ten seconds, smiling at each other with uncertain enthusiasm, as though they didn’t know how much was appropriate or what the next step in the process is. Warnado, after looking all around him, summons a rose into his hand and thrusts it at Amanda.
I finally give in and burst out laughing.
“Congrats lovebirds!” I roar, hugging them both in close.
They don’t even seem that mad.
Chapter 19: In the Thick of It (Fire)
It had been a while since Fire had been part of a proper battle, if he recalled correctly, it was when he cleared out a camp of outspoken enemies of the Mencur-Besh. It couldn’t have been more than a few months back but no matter, the battle he was in presently required his full attention.
The others had surrounded Glibby and his personal guard, but this was far from a decisive winning position, there were too many other soldiers for them to keep Glibby pinned for any meaningful amount of time. Fire heard movement behind him, time slowed down as he turned on the spot. He was faced with three human soldiers who were performing a coordinated charge on him. Unfortunately for them, to Fire they moved comically slowly, giving him enough time for a low sweep with his halberd. He used the hook opposed to the axe blade to catch the soldiers by their feet and throw them off-balance.
Two stumbled, one fell. Fire leapt at the fallen soldier, delivering a kick to one of the other two in the process. A quick cut from Fire’s claws and blood started rapidly pooling under the fallen soldier. The other two had enough discipline to stand their ground but were wary of attacking.
With another arc of his halberd, Fire brought the back end down on one of the soldiers’ heads. With both weapon and armor being made of diamond, blunt force trauma was the best option. The soldier fell down, the force of the blow was enough to cause brain hemorrhage, if he wasn’t dead now, he would be in a few minutes.
The third soldier finally decided that it was in his best interest to flee the battlefield, only to be frozen on the spot by Shadow. Fire gave his sister a quick look of approval.
Meanwhile the fight in the trenches had heated up significantly. The entirety of the enderman force was fighting alongside Glibby against most of their own, sans Voidblade who was still making sure nobody could escape.
Kir’s voice called out in Fire’s head as Kay zapped an armoured enderman into submission: “Three left.”
Somehow, against all odds the Ape had avoided any meaningful wounds despite being only lightly armored, perhaps boldness-bordering-on-stupidity had some protective properties after all. Fire refocused, it looked like the situation was still under control, as long as he had the attention of the human soldiers there would be no nasty surprises.
Almost immediately after that thought Fire cursed himself for thinking it, he felt a strong magical impulse coming from somewhere behind the trees they had toppled. It looked like Shadow had noticed too, shooting a storm of icicles into the general direction.
The icicles didn’t reach their destination, a tidal wave of red rose from between the branches of the trees and stopped their momentum. As the wave splashed back down, Fire realized what had caused it. On top of the furthest tree trunk stood a figure clad in diamond armor, however as opposed to the other soldiers it had no helmet, instead it wore a cowl beneath which only two crimson eyes were visible.
Fire called out: “Blood mage! Must have survived the trees!”
As Fire looked to the ground, he saw all the blood that had been spilled in this battle gain a life of its own, gathering itself in pools, draining from still-full corpses, leaving them as husks. Seeing that one of their mages survived seemed to imbue the soldiers with new hope, they came storming towards Fire all at once.
Kir chirped: “Two left.”
Meanwhile Shadow was locked in a fierce duel of magic with the blood mage, still unwilling to discard her disguise, victory was important but remaining obscure took priority for now. The blood mage was in the process of manifesting rib-like spikes from the sea of blood at his feet. Shadow readied another volley of ice spears.
Fire could look how his sister did later, now he had to take care of his own problems. He breathed in. The fight with the enderman in the first village they found flashed back into his mind, then the start of his fight with the hunters before Claw had taken over. This was different, he was armored, armed and prepared. And perhaps more importantly, Fire was a three-meter tall superhuman creature with thousands of years of experience.
As Fire breathed out, he could feel his body temperature rise as his muscles went into overdrive. The air around him started heating up, a bright orange glow shimmered from between Fire’s scales. Time was almost slowed to a standstill. He was ready.
Even with their formation, the soldiers still were slightly staggered. The spear tip of Fire’s halberd stabbed the foremost one straight through the throat. Using this leverage, Fire flung the soldier two meters into the air, tearing his head off in the process. The other soldiers now had to either sidestep the corpse or be hindered by their beheaded comrade.
Without warning, a splayed open rib cage attached to an unnaturally long spine came swinging at Fire from the right, the individual ribs like sharpened spikes. Clearly the work of the blood mage. Fire held his halberd in his left hand and impaled another throat, his right hand caught the ribcage in the middle and yanked it out of the blood pool that spawned it. The ribs contorted, now more like the legs of an insect. With a quick motion Fire threw it into the oncoming soldiers.
A soldier had come close enough to attack Fire while he was preoccupied, the sword glanced off Fire’s dark armor. They wouldn’t find any gaps, Fire made sure of this when he created it. Only a blade like he was using, or a heavy impact would be meaningfully threatening. That or getting overwhelmed, and Fire was not about to let that happen.
Fire leaped backwards, regaining some space to use his halberd in. With an enormous effort Fire swung his halberd in an arc, putting enough force into it to behead a soldier with the impact alone and severely daze the next one in the halberd’s path.
A quick glance behind him revealed that the reason the blood mage wasn’t sending more support was that he was preoccupied with Shadow, who to him looked like a baseline human with ice magic. Of course, Shadow was nimbler than she let on, easily leaping out of the way of various sharp bones that would probably have impaled her otherwise. The blood mage also had to contend with a growing portion of his blood supply being frozen. Shadow more than had this under control. She was just following their usual strategy: Never show more power to the enemy than is needed to defeat them.
With his full attention back to his own fight, Fire took a headcount. Nine soldiers left, most of them looking more and more shaken, less and less willing to fight their seemingly invincible opponent, having had a bone centipede thrown at them had probably also contributed.
With another decisive attack Fire cut down another soldier, then another and another. As their numbers dwindled, Fire had to worry less about defense and could focus entirely on offense, his armor absorbing the odd blow that hit him. No movement was without purpose.
Once there were three soldiers left, Kir spoke in Fire’s head again: “Destiny hurt. Help needed.”
Instead of wasting more time attacking the last three soldiers, Fire shouted at them: “Drop your weapons, surrender and live!”
The soldiers seemed taken aback by this sudden change in dynamic but at this point looked too terrified to do anything else, discipline had its limits before the desire for survival overtook everything. They not only dropped their weapons but threw them to the side, far out of their reach, then fell to the ground cowering.
While bolting towards the fight in the trenches, Fire looked to the blood mage again. It seemed that Shadow had made a mistake at some point, somehow the blood mage had managed to catch her and was now holding her up by the neck. Just as he summoned up more bone-spikes, something golden slithered down Shadow’s left arm and manifested as a dagger in her hand. One slash was not enough to kill the blood mage, however the surprise was enough to get him to drop Shadow. A crimson red icicle rose up from the sea of blood and impaled the blood mage’s head. That was everyone but the endermen and Glibby dealt with.
The scene unfolding before Fire was a chaotic one. Kay was erratically teleporting around, occasionally landing a hit on the endermen. Destiny was slumped against a tree, evidently having taken several punches from Glibby, the fact that she lived was most likely owed to the ape’s sadism, wanting her alive to witness the outcome. Astro tended to her with glowing palms. Tyron, Rose and Urist stood in front of them, holding off the eponymous Ape. Steve was currently locked in battle with Silver, Jennifer with a different Grey One.
Glibby was still only superficially bloodied, maybe he really was as good as he claimed, maybe he was supremely lucky, maybe both. Fire was going to find out soon. Kay just teleported into the guard of one of the obsidian-clad endermen, an opportunity Fire exploited. With a leap, Fire closed the gap to the enderman and drove the spear tip of his halberd into its lower back. This allowed Kay to land a well-placed attack, leaving the enderman on the ground gradually bleeding out.
“One left.” Kir announced.
“About time you joined us!” Exclaimed Kay. “You had the perfect dramatic entrance and you squandered it!”
Fire had no time for friendly banter, there was an ape-shaped problem that had priority. Kay also didn't have time for it, as he only narrowly avoided a swipe from Silver’s claws. A glance to the side revealed Steve crawling towards the defensive line, hands clasped to his stomach and blood seeping between his fingers. Shadow had also reached them, her throat visibly collapsed by the blood mage’s grasp. She nodded at Fire, then proceeded to join the battle by hurling ice at any target she had sightlines on.
This was enough to get Glibby’s attention off the slumped, unconscious Destiny, now turning towards Fire.
“Oh, the lizard has finally shown up. Had fun with the cannon fodder?” Glibby taunted.
Fire indulged him, any time he spent talking was time the others had to fight the endermen. “Not a lizard, a genetic splicing of enderman, human and assorted additional genetic code as well as a little bit of elemental magic. I gave up correcting people a few thousand years ago.”
Glibby slowly came closer, gauntlets raised. “How about a good, old-fashioned one-on-one fight?”
Without waiting for a reply, Glibby already threw the first punch, Fire had anticipated him fighting dirty. Glibby’s strength and reach combined with his heavy gauntlets meant Fire actually had to be careful around his attacks, the human soldiers might as well have been attacking with wet noodles by comparison. The heavy, blunt impacts would render his armor mostly ineffective. This was a real threat.
Fire moved only minimally to avoid the punch, then instead of counterattacking leapt backwards: distance was his ally in this fight. Fire quickly thrust his halberd forwards to see Glibby’s reaction. As soon as the Ape went to defend against the attack Fire pulled back, halberd attacks were too telegraphed to be useful, Glibby’s reflexes were too good for that.
Another heavy punch from Glibby, another evasion from Fire. This time Fire looked inward, into his inventory and pulled out an anti-magic splash potion, which promptly materialized in his left hand. All mages on the battlefield were dealt with so he might as well get some use out of the potion. The potion impacted on Glibby’s raised gauntlet and shattered, some of the liquid splashing in the Ape’s face, unfortunately missing his eyes. It had been enough to surprise him though.
The others were attempting to get close, but the remaining armoured enderman and one of the Grey Ones had taken a page from Fire’s own book. They swept with halberds to keep them at a distance. Kay was too busy with Silver, each now attempting to break the other’s guard on top of the remains of the frozen tree.
Suddenly Kir spoke up in Fire’s mind: “Hey. Ape looks for weakness, then attacks like… ape. How he got Destiny.”
This was useful. Fire quickly formulated a plan. It was risky but the payoff was high, which already was the whole point of this ambush so he might as well stay in theme.
Just as Glibby was wiping the drops of potion from his face, Fire surged forward, once again swinging his halberd in a wide arc. Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t have done this, he knew full well that the arc was predictable, and a thrust might have even landed a hit here. Glibby realized as much, blocking Fire’s attack with his left hand and at the same time throwing a powerful right-handed punch.
The punch connected, hitting Fire square in the stomach. The force was dampened by Fire’s armor but once it proved too much, instead of breaking the armor deformed inwards, an intentional property. The blow carried through. For a few moments time stood even stiller than Fire was used to. He felt a numb pain from his stomach. The armor bent back to its original shape.
There go most of my internal organs. Fire thought, moments slowly ticking by as he watched himself be launched backwards. Then he felt it, the emergency response of his body. Throughout his limbs and torso glands started secreting a reagent that would keep his muscles running as long as they received signals from his brain, even if he bled out he’d still live for long enough to get healing. This was another part of what made him what he was. Mencur-Besh.
Time returned to a sensible speed again, Fire managed to land upright but made sure not to land too well, falling to a knee for a second. That was what Glibby had waited for. He came running at Fire like a freight train, arms wildly flailing. Fire dropped his halberd to the ground, instead pulling two daggers from his inventory, they were made from the same re-crystalized diamond as his halberd, sharp enough to cut steel, which was precisely what Fire intended to do.
Glibby’s first blow missed, Fire quickly slashed at the gauntleted hand that delivered it, the diamond carved a notch into the metal. Fire actively dodged the next strike and repeated his slash, Glibby seemed to pay no heed to his opponent’s renewed vitality.
Fire backed up further and further, adding more and more notches to the gauntlets. They were now no longer on soft forest ground but on the hard stone floor near the edges of the canyon. A few seconds into his frenzy Glibby finally took note of the fact that not a single one of his blows had landed. He hesitated. Now Fire was the one to exploit a gap in his opponent’s guard, bringing on two final slashes. Glibby recomposed, now winding up for a crushing blow with both hands.
Fire probably could have killed him then and there, nothing easier than a slash to the throat from his position, however as long as capture was an option lethal force was off the table. Killing someone only one step down from the Entity was a good way to become the target of a large retaliatory attack.
Instead of attacking, Fire launched himself backwards, landing on his back. Glibby’s fists impacted on the stone, at the same time his gauntlets shattered into dozens of small pieces. The shards cut into the Ape’s hands as he shook them off. Glibby stopped, then looked straight at Fire, this time with genuine rage in his eyes, letting out a primal scream before lunging forwards.
Fire’s daggers disappeared back into his inventory, just in time to duck under Glibby’s lunge and send the Ape flying using his own momentum. Losing the gauntlets had significantly lowered Glibby’s threat. Now any punch he landed would hurt him more than it would hurt Fire.
Glibby lunged again, this time windmilling his arms mid-air. Fire opted to completely dodge out of the way this time, not wanting to risk getting hit. Glibby attacked three more times before he finally got lucky, catching Fire in the chest. The blow was hard, it probably would have cracked some of Fire’s ribs if Glibby had still worn the gauntlets. Instead, it merely sent Fire flying again and left Glibby clutching his fist, seemingly broken out of his rage.
While Fire recovered from the blow, the so-far unaccounted for third Grey One appeared next to Glibby, whispering something into the Ape’s ear. After a short pause, the Ape turned to survey the scene.
The last of the armoured endermen had died, and only the other Grey one was managing to slow the advance of Fire’s allies. Silver was still locked in a melee with Kay. Glibby nodded and called out “We’re leaving! To me, my Grey Ones.”
The halberd-wielding enderman teleported up and put his hand on Glibby’s shoulder. Glibby looked to Silver, who looked back and forth between his master and Kay. Glibby glared at him yet more sternly and shouted at him.
“Silver, we are leaving!”
The enderman hissed: “Void upon your cowardly retreat! I will be satisfied!”
With that he tackled Kay from the frozen log and out of sight.
“You protect someone for a decade, and they treat you like that,” Glibby sighed. “You just can’t get good help nowadays. Anyway, let’s leave. Adieu, Fire, it’s been a pleasure.”
With that, Glibby sighed, patted his two guards on the back, and the three of them disappeared. Destiny’s javelin of ice landed the second after. Fire reckoned it would have gotten him right in the head.
“Of course. Just my luck,” mourned Destiny as Astro held her up.
The moment they were gone, they heard the sounds of Silver’s duel with Kay. Shadow and Fire rounded the corner to see an obviously irritated Kay teleporting around. Shadow lowered her head and started focusing, seemingly waiting for something. Suddenly the sounds of fighting stopped, and Silver found himself surrounded by a dense weave of energy, not unlike a cage. He visibly strained to muster up a teleportation but seemed unable to.
“Gotcha!” Shadow exclaimed, having substituted her crushed voice box with sound-generating magic.
Kay cheered: “Mission success! Well done everyone! We’ve two officers now!”
Fire felt… not good but certainly not bad either. Most of his internal organs had been damaged beyond function but that was why he had prepared healing potions at the shelter. He’d be able to hold out until then.
Astro had meanwhile gone around and mended any injuries he could. Steve looked paler than usual and winced as he walked, but everyone seemed to be in good enough shape to make it back to the shelter. Once there they could have healing potions and proper rest, they definitely earned it.
Suddenly Shadow’s eyes went wide. “Something’s wrong at the rockslide team.”
Chapter 20: Inner Demons (Amanda/The Ender)
Amanda wanted to play it cool, but she was hyped. She actually kissed him, he wasn’t repulsed, and also there was the whole thing about capturing the Dog. Satisfying their mission made her happy too, she guessed.
Warnado, however, was over the moon about every aspect. He danced around the bound form of the Dog.
“Herobrine? Never heard of him!” he cackled. It was the first time Amanda had heard him mention his destiny with anything less than mournfulness.
Fristad leaned against a tree, smiling shyly but enthusiastically. He’d had his big moment of exuberance and now he was pulling back. He seemed afraid of overstaying his welcome and Amanda appreciated it. She was getting closer to forgiving him for becoming the Dreamweaver, but things like that don’t erase themselves in one go. That being said, taking on the Dog with nothing but a stick and his fists to save her life was pretty chill of him.
She deliberated and was on the verge of calling out something encouraging when it happened.
A grey-scaled enderman appeared behind Warnado and struck him in the head with a half-broken shield. He went flying and landed in a heap. The same enderman, blood pouring from its shoulder, teleported toward him and kicked him in the gut. The shimmering weapons Warnado tried to summon dissipated with every blow.
Amanda levelled her crossbow. It was a blunt shot, but it would have to do. She could reload once Warnado was free. Just as she was about to fire her shot a clawed hand yanked it up from behind. The bolt struck the branch of a tree and cracked it. It fell and hung limply. Then, another hand reached around her neck, pressing claws to her throat. She was forced to her knees, disarmed and under threat of death.
Fristad, with no weapon to hand, raised his fists and looked wild-eyed at the two endermen. His gaze came to rest on Amanda’s neck and the talons about it. He raised his hands and began to slowly advance.
“Look, just let the kids go. I’ll do anything you want.”
“Get the Dog out of here, Fristad!” Amanda yelled. “Get the others!”
She fumbled lightly around her waist for her shiv. She would fight with that if necessary.
“Amanda,” he warned. “I’m not doing that.” To the endermen: “No one else has to die. I would gladly offer myself as a prisoner in their place.”
That was when the immense shape of Glibby the Ape emerged from behind the tree. He grabbed Fristad and slammed him against the trunk. His gargantuan fist connected with the shepherd’s skull with a sickening crunch. When it came away, Fristad’s face was coated with blood, and his mouth hung half-open as though he were half asleep.
“How noble,” Glibby grunted. “You’ll do.”
He threw Fristad to the ground face-first, then flipped him over.
Amanda couldn’t lower her head enough to see Fristad’s face. He must have been dozing off, because Glibby spat: “No, no! Don’t you dare. You will stay awake for this, for every second of it, or the children die.”
He bared his teeth in disgust, then twisted Fristad’s arm until there was a crack. The shepherd shrieked and clasped the broken limb.
“Every second,” the Ape hissed.
“Yes,” Fristad groaned. His voice sprouted from him like a vine without support, collapsing as soon as it rose.
The Ape grinned and stooped down to straddle him, and Amanda took a moment to weigh her options. No one had appeared to take the Dog. This was all there was. Warnado was still getting beaten by the other enderman. She didn’t stand a chance against someone as huge as Glibby - getting Warnado back in the fight was their only option. Her fingers found the circular hand of the shiv. She just needed the doofus behind her to loosen his grip.
Glibby was in position, one smothering hand across Fristad’s mouth, the other free.
“I want you to know, Fristad,” he confided in a low, raspy whisper, “that your death means precisely nothing. None of this means anything to me. I’m doing a job and trying to have fun while doing it.”
He moved the second hand in to clasp his nose shut. He was going to smother him. Amanda waited for her moment. Warnado could get him off Fristad. He couldn’t be that hurt, right? She heard his groans and doubt crept in.
Fristad began to thrash, to try and rise up to the surface for air.
“I’ve had a bad day. A terrible day. You’re just a way of blowing off steam.”
The Ape pressed down, forcing Fristad’s head into the ground, and pressing harder and harder. Fristad’s fists flailed impotently against Glibby’s muscular arms.
She felt the creature’s claws loosen as it cackled in anticipation. She set aside doubt and took her opportunity. She plunged the shiv into her captor’s gut. Its arms fell away, and she immediately ran at Warnado’s tormentor. One well-placed thrust would buy him enough time to get a spell going.
The talons plunged into her hip, and she felt them sink deep. The breath ran out of her and she collapsed. The enderman she had shanked wiped its talons off in the grass, clasping its wound with the other.
Glibby barely even noticed.
“Make her watch, Shaghran,” he murmured, enraptured with his own task.
She was dragged to her feet and teleported over. Fristad was pale. His eyes were wide, fearful and agonised tears streaming out. His arm was mangled.
“Look at that,” Glibby cooed, “That is a fine quantity of life in this one. He’s guarding it pretty jealously, isn’t he?”
Amanda tried to look away but the enderman forced her head back. She wished her eyes would fill with tears as they might obscure her view. Glibby’s hands reshuffled. She heard yelling.
“Now, watch what the turning of a little valve does to the selfish.”
His hands slid in opposite directions. A crack. The Ape drew away. Fristad was looking right at her. His tears began to dry up, and he wheezed fruitlessly. Amanda could only gape. Fristad could only gape. He lifted his head as far as he could, which wasn’t very far at all. Blood dripping from the torn, slumped corner of his mouth. His jaw hung loose, shattered under the force. He moaned something, then fell back, dead.
Glibby gave him a probing punch to the ribs. The body spasmed. Nothing more. He chuckled.
“Well, that’s him gone. I think I’m going to kill you next, girl,” concluded Glibby with a smile.
Then, everything happened at once. Steve materialised in a puff of ender-pearl smoke. Astro was soaring up the mountainside, carrying Tyron by the armpits. Shadow not far behind.
“FRISTAD!” he yelled with a swing of Excalibur.
Glibby fell back with a yell and the enderman let go of Amanda to drive off Steve. There was a deep gash on the Ape’s forearm.
“Warnado!” she called out.
There was a burst of purple fire from Warnado’s direction. The enderman that had been pummeling him staggered back, scales melting and smoke rising. A huge, horned shape arose, composed of that purple fire. At the centre of its chest, an obscured form about the size of a child hung in motionless suspension.
The horned flame reached down and tore the enderman in half, further scorching it as it did so.
Kay emerged from a portal, saw the beast, and rolled away into another just as it struck the ground where he had stood.
Glibby cried out in fury. He leaned down to Amanda and growled at her:
“Tell the demon-child I’ve changed my mind, he’s next.”
He went, picked up the Dog with his good arm and called out to his remaining bodyguard. The horned beast began to charge at him, and the Ape glared it down. As it pounced, the enderman broke free from Steve and materialised at its master’s side. Amanda blinked. They were gone. The horned beast’s fists slammed into the ground and left great, scorching indents in the earth. The beast reared back and roared, before charging at the nearest target: Astro and Tyron, who had just touched down and were immediately forced to dodge away.
As they rolled between the creature’s blows, Shadow touched down and squinted at the creature for a moment. Then, she looked down at Amanda and placed a hand over her wound. The teenager felt the pain subside a little and placed an arm around Shadow’s shoulder as she lifted her.
Shadow’s right arm shot forward, a bolt of lightning erupted from it, striking the beast in the head, the thunder was deafening. Its fiery body seemed to grow thinner, as if thrown off-balance metaphysically. Another bolt, aimed at its feet this time. Shadow’s entire arm looked scorched, the electricity seemingly affecting her too.
The flames thinned out enough for Amanda to make out Warnado’s body beneath them, still motionless. The spell normally obfuscating his face was gone, his eyes were pinched shut, face contorted in a vile mix of emotions.
“Amanda, I’ll need you to help me with this.” Shadow said with more calm than seemed appropriate for the situation.
What did she want? Amanda didn’t know what to do.
She said with panic in her voice: “But I don’t know magic or demons!”
Shadow had started walking towards the horned creature, dragging Amanda with her, shooting more lightning in regular intervals. Her arm was gradually becoming less and less recognizable as such.
When they arrived near Warnado the flames had gone back enough to be unable to lift his body, leaving him lying on the ground, but Amanda could still feel intense heat radiating off of him. His obfuscation charm was still down, and his horns were visible.
Shadow said: “I need you to come close to Warnado with me, hold his hand or whatever you think is best. What I’m about to do won’t work without something he strongly associates with positive emotions and you’re about as strong as it gets here.”
There were also unspoken words there, Amanda would get burned in the process, but she didn’t even have to consider for a moment. She looked at Shadow and nodded. They were close enough now that the heat became scorching.
With a quick movement Shadow separated from Amanda and positioned herself behind Warnado, lifting his head up and placing her still-functional left hand on top of it. Amanda was not a second behind, grabbing both of Warnado’s hands, gritting her teeth as the heat pierced her skin.
Amanda’s gaze jumped between Shadow’s face and that of Warnado, torn between looking for assurance and offering comfort. A pulse of energy seemed to ripple through Shadow, tearing open gashes all over her, revealing nothing but blackness. Her mouth moved slightly, as if she was speaking in a dream with the motions not quite making it out. Amanda clenched her hands tightly, the heat was getting worse, she wanted to scream.
Another pulse went through Shadow, rendering her so torn that it was difficult to recognize either of her appearances. Whoever she had been talking to seemed to be sufficiently intimidated, the heat from Warnado’s body died down and his face relaxed. A few moments later Amanda was only staring into obscurity as Warnado’s obfuscation spell returned.
Shadow let Warnado go. Her body was a charred marionette, barely standing.
“Shadow…” said Amanda as if it explained everything.
“I know, one second,” she winced.
Shadow stepped backwards and her ice-mage disguise crumbled away in chunks of almost-flesh like a cracked vase, pristine black tissue gradually replacing it. All that was left was the black-skinned, white-haired mage Amanda was more accustomed to.
The others were milling about. Fire up on the ridge, surveying the scene with cool, unmoved eyes. Tyron patted down the fledgling flames on his fur with the help of Urist. Kay was marshalling Rose and Voidblade into establishing a perimeter.
“Shadow,” Astro called out.
Jennifer, Steve and Astro were in a group. Destiny was a little apart from them, covering her mouth and looking out over the promontory. Jennifer had her arm around Steve, who wept into her shoulder. Astro was on his knees, passing his glowing hands up and down the body of Fristad. Amanda limped after the mage, knowing what was about to be said.
“Is there anything that can be done?” Astro asked with gravity, face iron-clad against all emotion.
“Too much brain damage from loss of oxygen and the hits he sustained, not to mention the snapped neck. The only magic that’ll do anything would be necromancy. He’s dead.”
“You, for once, you could try and sound upset,” said Jennifer coldly, holding Steve closer.
Amanda looked out over the cliff. She saw the blue cage with Silver in it and salvaged the small comfort that they had won. Bodies carpeted the ground around him.
Destiny was on her knees to her left. Fire had a hand on her shoulder.
“I know it might not feel it,” Kay murmured as he crouched over the still-unconscious Warnado. “But we are victorious. Fristad will be commemorated. He is our first martyr.”
As Amanda had thought, it was small comfort. The only sound was the wind, and the occasional rustle of armour as they walked.
###
The Ender signaled to her men to hold. There were reports of a disturbance in Research’s main workshop. Freak approached them, translucent and grinning, clasping his pale, talon-like fingers together.
“You are going to love this!” he sniggered.
The Ender furrowed her eyebrows.
“Mercury!” roared Glibby the Ape. “I need gauntlets!”
“Calm, now, Glibby, there’s no need for-”
There was a crashing sound. The second voice was that of Marinus Bul. The Ender beckoned to her soldiers to move in.
“I care not for calm! Calm can have his day when my Grey Ones are avenged. When I have gone back there and choked the life from the demon, from Brine and from Fire, then you have my permission to talk of calm!”
The Ender’s urge to suppress a smirk at Glibby’s evident but undefined misfortune receded on hearing news of Fire’s involvement. Aside from the strange little mage’s brief mention of her “brother”, the Ender hadn’t heard anything that could possibly be linked to the alchemist who had helped her and the dimensional cartographers and then left.
Distracting thoughts intruded upon her mind at the prospect of seeing him again, but she repelled them. The outlaws had the alchemist on their side, and he had angered Glibby. These were only facts. Intelligence. She rounded the corner and entered the room. Freak made himself visible beside her.
Glibby was pounding away on a door at the back of the room which had Dr Mercury’s name on it. True to his word, his gauntlets were missing, his hands bleeding from hairline cuts. His right forearm was cut open and bleeding as well.
Only one Grey One accompanied him - the one who had taken the name Shaghran in his entrapment at the hands of Kay - and this one clasped his hands to a wound on his stomach. Silver, Shaghran and the other one. Those were the three who had started the defections from her ranks. She was not at all sad to hear at least one of them needed avenging. She hoped it was Silver, by far the most insubordinate even before they got stuck outside Nexus.
Bul was holding up the unconscious body of Bartholomew, the dog-faced officer who had accompanied Glibby out to face the Jackals. The attorney’s jaw was on the floor and he just seemed glad not to be the object of the Ape’s ire.
“Mercury, come out now!” Glibby cried again. “I swear, do not make an enemy-”
“-Hello, Glibby,” The Ender interrupted with some degree of smugness. “Mind explaining what’s going on?”
Glibby lowered his head and cackled.
“Of course, you’re here to gloat.”
“Nonsense, your loss is the loss of the Tower,” the Ender condescended. “Tell myself and Mr. Bul what has happened.”
Glibby paused a moment. The Ender could practically hear the whir of gears in his head as he concocted his excuse.
“Silver failed me,” Glibby decided as he turned, tone regaining its theatrical emotiveness. “They had already disrupted us. Landslide, falling trees and a bombardment of arrows. Nearly half of us were dead or wounded, the mages all slain, most of your men succumbing to their wounds - like the weaklings they are.”
The Ender raised her hand to stay her soldiers as they began to growl and hiss at this denigration of their fallen comrades.
“General Mandy then captured dear Bartholomew - thrust him through a rift and out of our sight. I deduced he couldn’t be too far off and sent Shaghran out to find him. With our leadership and our numbers already decimated I called on Silver to stay with me, to help hold the line, but he went out to confront General Mandy. His lust for vengeance was too great. Your abandoning of him broke him, truly. The ruin and demise of good soldiers are you!
“Suffice to say, he went out to face the General and was beaten. As you, Ender, can testify, he truly is a masterful warrior, and Silver, who was your equal in every way, was just as inadequate an opponent. He was incinerated in front of all the men. After that, our soldiers began to panic - our ranks were broken by Fire and the men started to panic. Your so-called elites were the first to flee and the first to die for it!”
Glibby’s pace began to staccato and rapid-fire on the laps sentence and he smashed another set of test-tubes.
The Ender was unfazed by the verbal assault.
“I was only just able to rescue Bartholomew before they descended upon us in full force. At which point my Lointain was slain by the demon-child.” He clasped his brow in a false sadness that barely concealed impetuous anger.
“Well, well, well,” Freak entered, walking around the Ender with hands clasped behind his back. “The Ape swings from lie to lie as his namesake swings from tree to tree.”
Glibby wrenched a pipe from a table and hurled it at the phantom. He quickly became intangible, and it passed through him. The Ape snarled and pounded on the door three more times.
“Mercur- mods damn you!” He turned to Bul, who had just laid Bartholomew aside. “Get out there - get me armour - get me gauntlets! Magical, technological, enchanted, mundane, I do not care. And potions for our wounds! If you don’t return with them, you had best return carrying your own severed head!”
He grabbed Bul by the shoulder and shunted him off down the corridor. The Ender, Freak, and their guards parted ways.
“Pacify him,” Bul hissed as he went through.
The Ender moved her hand to the pommel of her sword as they closed ranks.
“Pacify me?!” Glibby roared again. “I risked my life to save Bartholomew, Bul! Were it not for Silver, and the cowards the Ender supplied me with I would be victorious! Fristad of Veridale is dead! Steven Brine, I bested. Destiny, slayer of the Sovereign, I bested. The Children of the Prophecy, some pernicious assassin, the wizard Astro - all these I bested! And dead they would be now had you given me the troops to make good on these combats. I was outgunned and outnumbered by the time of these duels, but I fought on. Even after that cowardly trickster Fire carved away my gauntlets, I fought on! And I shall yet fight on, and I shall yet present those I have named as corpses before the Entity if you just get me some mods-damned gauntlets!”
He threw one last punch back at Mercury’s door. The entire metal structure, door and frame, quivered like a string from the impact. The Ender’s smirk intensified. Seeing him tantrum like this was deeply satisfying. He deserved it for poaching her men. She prayed to the ancestors he would get violent with her so she could put an end to him.
“And where is this Entity I am supposed to serve?” Glibby raved, flailing his good arm emphatically. “Currently it is busy patrolling villages, muttering to itself like a senile old man. Am I now to lead you? I shall if I must. Oh, what has the Silhouette foisted upon me? I shall tell you: an army of cowards led by a-”
A white glove clasped his arm, at the end of a bronze-armoured limb. Behind Glibby stood the Entity, unmoving and as unfazed as a statue. Dr Mercury stood to the Entity’s side, eyes bloodshot and surrounded by deep purple rings from nights without sleep. Even her robotic arms seemed to droop from exhaustion.
The Ender received the treasure of seeing the blood drain from Glibby’s face in real time, as he desperately attempted to course correct.
“By-by a noble, mighty ruler, who I am wrong to doubt in such a manner,” Glibby seethed, falling to his knees and bowing his head to hide his venom. “I apologise my lord, the heat of battle and the pain of loss are still on me. I was not thinking clearly.”
The Entity lowered its gaze.
“Then you are not-fit to... return to the field,” it concluded. “Go, contact your Silhouette. Tell him-I-demand more crystals-more quickly. As per the duties you… have had-foisted upon you.”
It shunted him forward and he limped out of the room contemptuously. The Ender was ecstatic. She and Freak shared a satisfied look, and then they turned to their master.
“We have accelerated the plan. It is time I told you what shape-our victory shall take.”
The Ender’s heart stopped. She tried to exchange a look with Freak, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the Entity. His gaze was ablaze with a terrifying ambition.
Chapter 21: Painting the Loss (Steve)
Fristad was dead. When Steve finished crying, he removed himself from Jennifer’s shoulder and simply stood over the body. Astro was spreading a tarp over it, while Kay and Fire were discussing their next move. Jennifer stood somewhere behind him, granting him the space he needed.
The beige cloth crept up Fristad at a reasonable speed, but from Steve’s perspective it was slow as a desert spreading across him. As the face finally disappeared, it finally hit Steve: his friend was gone.
At one point, Astro went to offer Steve a healing potion, but Kay stopped him. Something about showing off battle-scars.
“It helps the image. We’re back from a battle, not a pageant.”
Steve started yelling at him, but Jennifer calmed the situation. They compromised by letting Astro heal the wounds partway. They didn’t hurt that much to begin with. Kay’s obsession with how everything looked did. They had lost their friend and it was Kay’s fault.
The world whizzed by. Destiny came up to him and offered some words he didn’t really hear. He watched as Warnado huddled up, shaking from fear. Amanda’s arm was around him. Others gathered weapons from the ground. Symbols of conquest. Steve’s stomach turned and he felt the wound along the bottom as though it were ready to burst.
Eventually, Voidblade, the green-eyed enderman, appeared beside him. Time to return. Steve acquiesced.
They warped back to the base. The corridor leading up to the stage. They asked him and Jennifer to carry the stretcher with Fristad’s body on it. Fire was at the fore, looking away. Tyron smiled back apologetically.
An order was given, and they moved forward in a column. Jennifer took Steve’s hand, and he squeezed it. He had her at least.
What awaited on the other side was upsettingly grandiose. The stage looked out on the entire congregation. Steve spared a look up and saw the cliff where the other Steve, the Prophet’s bodyguard, had approached him and Fristad the other day, setting in motion the chain of events that would lead to one of their deaths.
Sure enough, both Prophet and disciple were there, looking down on the scene. The Prophet himself, withered as ever, was hunched over, squinting down and steadying himself on a rock. The other Steve was impassive as his eyes passed over the stretcher. Steve couldn’t stop himself from hating them both at that moment.
There was a large cube with a tarp over it - probably Silver’s cage. It occurred to Steve that the mission had actually succeeded. Goodie.
A line of archers before the stage. A podium Lucy was arranging. Throngs of people murmuring, uncertain what was about to be said. Warnado and Amanda nowhere to be seen. Destiny holding a bag of weapons over her shoulder. Yet none of these details came together for Steve. He seemed to forget one the second he looked at another. He looked back at the ridge, saw the rock where Fristad and he had eaten that morning. It was like a magnet for his eyes.
“I introduce your commander, Fire,” called Lucy.
Steve mustered his attention.
“Go on,” he thought. “Make some meaning out of this. I dare you.”
“Today I announce that our first operation was a success! We ambushed the Tower patrol, most of them were killed, the rest routed. More importantly, we captured one of their elite units! Silver of the Grey Ones!”
Fire gestured backwards and Tyron pulled the tarp from the cage. Steve felt a brief twang of satisfaction as he saw the enderman scratching at the luminous bars, feral and desperate. The crowd roared in approval.
“Interrogation will take place in due time. However, I regret to inform you that there is not only good news. One of us has fallen at the hands of Glibby the Ape, Fristad of Veridale is dead.”
A silence fell.
“Fristad died protecting Warnado and Amanda, a proper burial will take place later today. He shall not be forgotten.”
With that, Fire left. He just walked back to the line, and up walked Kay. Steve braced himself, gritted his teeth.
“Thank you, Commander, for your words. Fristad of Veridale was a good man. He shall be sorely missed. He died doing what was right, and we are all indebted to him. He is the first martyr of this war. Let us not let his death go unanswered.”
He paused and there was a rumbling of assent.
“We are indeed at war with the Entity and his Tower. And your Commander undersells how strong a footing we have started on. We went in, a mere handful of us, against a force that outnumbered us five or six to one, and we were victorious. Some of you may wonder why we took this risk. It is not because we doubted your abilities, but because we value your lives above ours. Look upon our wounds,” he gestured around, pulled up his sleep to reveal half-healed gashes. “All these wounds and just one death. A sad death, but a worthy death.”
He gestured to Destiny to come forward with the weapons sack. She spilled it out across the stage. They clattered in a pile.
“A worthy death,” Steve thought. “********!”
“Each of these was taken from a soldier of the Tower. Each an implement of our oppressors. Now we will use them as implements of liberation!”
The last weapons fell from the sack - the shattered gauntlets. Kay lifted them.
“These were once the weapons of the Ape. The fists of the Tower. They shall bring us down no more! Fire, our great Commander, shattered these himself in single combat. Even when the Ape had struck him, crippled organs, broken limbs, your Commander fought on and forced the Ape to retreat! And his bodyguards, his Grey Ones, are now scattered. Once they were three in number, now he has but one. I have heard your stories, and I know how the Ape and his beasts have tormented you. Soon, they shall do so no more! Soon none of the Entity’s thugs shall torment you! Soon you shall be free, and safe and home!”
He raised his hands and the crowd cheered.
“What thinks the Prophet?” he roared up to the ridge.
There was a hush. For a time, the old man was silent. The other Steve nudged him, at which point he hoisted himself and staggered toward the edge. He raised his hands in balled fists.
“A tower falling! The fire rises!” he screamed with jubilation.
The crowd was euphoric.
“You heard him,” called Kay with a smirk. “Your Commander, your Fire, rises. Spread the word! Far and wide! This army needs warriors, and warriors are you all!”
Steve saw various people running off to fulfil this duty. Ender-people teleporting. Chants began: “The Fire rises!” Cheers were widespread. Dancing started. Music, even. Dissonant to what happened not very long before.
Steve looked down at the corpse of Fristad, with its neck like a mangled plant stem. He wondered how many others would go the same way before the end.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 4 Escalation (Chapters 22-32)
Chapter 22: The Purple Dream (The Lady of Dreams)
Nexus was a big world with many, many people, many dreamers. More than I was used to. Back home there had been a few million in the most populated times. I still sometimes wonder why I decided to follow Fire here, worry perhaps.
I was currently floating through Nexus’ dreamscape, a near-infinite space of vibrant colors. Some areas were crowded with dreams, others only had singular dreamers with nothing surrounding them. I usually picked out particularly troubled dreams to visit; people are thankful for being taken out of a nightmare and having someone to talk. Occasionally I also visit regular dreams, just because someone is having a good dream doesn’t mean they can’t have problems.
Beneath me was one of the biggest accumulation of dreams in Nexus, the shelter Fire had started. Thousands of dreams, packed into an impossibly tight space. I had already visited many of them in nights before.
Before looking at the dreamers below me I looked straight ahead. In the distance was the only accumulation of dreams that trumped the shelter in numbers: The Tower. The dreamers were spread out far, like branches of a tree, both beautiful and imposing. I smiled. My recent conversation with Fire had brought up something important. I really have changed a lot from when we first met. I contemplated while floating towards the Tower, there was a specific dream there that I wanted to try getting into.
I thought back to when it all began. Fire had been the first dreamer I visited. Possibly because he… created me in a way. Phantoms like me don’t just appear out of thin air, a particularly strong emotion has to bring us into existence. When a phantom is created it is a blank slate, the only thing it knows is something related to its creation. Back then all I knew was that someone needed help, badly. So, I helped him, then went on to help others.
I was right in front of the tower now, the giant tree-like structure looked even more beautiful up close, the only thing that marred it were the grey, dead dreams. There weren’t many now, their numbers fluctuated as days passed. Whatever they were, they felt wrong.
However, grey was not the color I wanted to pay attention to now. I was looking for a very distinct shade of purple. There, fairly high up in the branches. That’s where it was. I floated ever closer to the dream, more carefully as I got near. The last times I tried to get in I had been forcefully, almost painfully, repelled, even more so than when Kay had thrown me out.
Today was different. The walls of the dream were resistant but still permeable. I pressed on into the dream. A wave of emotions washed over me, there was great excitement but also anxiety and a small hint of longing. The dream felt odd, I had only encountered a few like it. This was the dream of someone hailing from the End. I had never seen an enderman dream back in Fire’s world, I wasn’t even sure if they slept at all. The ones here were different, allowing me to build some familiarity with how their dreams worked.
It took a bit for the dreamer to drift out of their previous dream and into our shared dream space. The shared dreams always manifested as places the dreamers were comfortable with, usually things like a home or a spot in the wilderness they liked. In this case it had manifested as the edge of a small End island. My feet were dangling over the Void when I materialized. Next to me sat a creature of the End: Tall, thin, purple eyed. This particular one was wearing obsidian armor with a purple gem right below the neck. Evidently this was the Ender, I had seen her in Fire’s memories and in those of other people. The lightning-shaped scars on her face were new. A slight tension filled me.
The Ender seemed to sense that something was different about this particular dream. She looked down at me.
She hissed: “What is this?”
“Hello,” I said. “I am a phantom people have taken to calling ‘the Lady of Dreams’. You seem troubled, is there anything I can do to help?”
The Ender looked at me with suspicious eyes. “If there’s one thing, I know about phantoms that is that they always consume some aspect of us. Some eat joy, others eat anger, ones like Freak eat fear. What do you eat?”
Freak. Yes. He was under the employ of the Entity as well. I never interacted with other phantoms, most of them existed in the material world while I existed in the dreamscape. I never found another like me.
I replied: “I eat dreams. I eat whatever dream you would be having if I weren’t here. It’s secondary to me, I just like helping people.”
The Ender asked: “Aren’t you an odd one? How do you help people?” There was still an ample amount of distrust in her, I could practically feel it radiating off of her.
I started a very careful search of her mind, just skimming her thoughts, it usually helped with not upsetting dreamers I visited for the first time.
“I listen, I talk. Quite simple. That’s really what a lot of people need.”
The Ender nodded and was quiet for a few seconds. “So, you’re a dream therapist?”
I shifted into a more comfortable position on the endstone. “In a way, yes. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
More contemplation. Nothing from her conscious thoughts stood out. I saw something like this occasionally, most recently in Kay. She had some sort of passive defense. I decided not to pry.
With a heavy sigh she said: “You know what, why not. Ancestors know I don’t have anyone else to talk to, you’ll do.”
Something changed, that longing I had felt earlier returned, if only for a brief moment. The emotion resonated with me, more than it should have.
The Ender said: “So, I knew these people a long time ago, they said I was too ambitious, I should take the victories I have instead of finding new battles. I may have been younger when I made those decisions, but I am still convinced they were the correct ones.”
I replied: “I have heard of you from other dreamers, you’re a warrior, a leader, correct?”
I tried to keep it neutral, the Ender had done quite a few things that hurt many people all over Nexus, but I still wanted to help her, it was just what I did, who I was.
“You could say that. We defeated the humans and while the elders insisted on taking on the Nether, I went to another frontier. A bigger one, the biggest frontier imaginable.”
I nodded. “Alright. How has this frontier been working out for you?”
She said: “Good until recently. There were some dissenters within the ranks, a few defectors to Glibby, some criticism from home, but I had a near-spotless record until, out of the blue, this group of people shows up and makes things difficult. First the prison break, the biggest one we’ve ever had. Granted, that’s mostly on Glibby, incompetent as he is.” she hesitated, then continued. “Then we start picking up weird dimensional readings, apparently some magical anomaly girl did something our scientists don’t understand. Then the raid goes south…”
She stops, reaching up to her face, slowly tracing the scars. A mixture of anger and sorrow filled the dream. Emotions bottled up and stowed away, now surfacing. Something about the situation started feeling familiar, this was just like how Fire had been early on. Very early on I hadn’t been able to see other dreamers, just him, back when he still was just human and went by the name of Peter.
I very carefully reached out with my arm. A small comfort. The Ender didn’t push it away.
She continued, more agitated by the second. “First, they somehow catch wind that we are coming and defeat the soldiers, then that general has the audacity to attack me directly. You know the worst part? He won. A human defeated me. It wasn’t an honest victory either, he had something that helped him, a crutch. I only realized what happened when I woke up in the medical ward.”
She really didn’t have anyone to talk, it was all competition, rank difference or facades of professionalism. This was years of emotions, suddenly uncorked.
A pained smile crept up on her face. “At least I am not the only one affected. Glibby just had to prove his supposed superiority by personally accompanying a patrol. You know what happened?”
I did in fact know what happened, but it would not be wise to let it show. I asked: “No, what happened?”
The Ender’s smile had opened into some sort of half-laugh as she spoke. “They got ambushed, beaten by enemies they outnumbered five-to-one. He got his gauntlets shattered as humiliation. Anyone who is capable of doing that could have killed him too. He’s living on mercy.” she breathed in, then out. “But sadly, it’s only of little solace to me, apparently some kind of resistance has formed, getting people together somewhere, that damned prophet is probably responsible.”
I didn’t say anything, something big was about to come up, I felt it. It was usually better to not interrupt in those situations.
“You know what I told you? My ambition for a bigger frontier? It’s about to come true, I’ll show those fossils back home what true conquest is.” She said with pride.
Her mental barrier was gone, just for a moment, thoughts flowed freely. That’s when I saw it. Or rather, I heard it. It wasn’t intentional, it just happened. A voice from the Ender’s thoughts, not hers, not a voice that could be considered human by any stretch.
“The-machine is… close to com-pletion. Dr. Mercury has assured-it will function… as intended. Once there-are enough crystals all-worlds-shall become one.”
An involuntary shudder went through me, that must have been the Entity speaking. I suddenly wanted nothing more than to leave. The Ender seemed to have calmed herself, her barrier was back, more impenetrable than ever. She took another breath.
“I feel better now.” She simply said, there was surprise in her voice. I could imagine that she did, I on the other hand did not.
I did my best to remain calm. “No problem, that’s what I’m here for.”
The Ender didn’t seem as distrustful as before, she asked: “How does this end?”
I replied: “If there is nothing else to talk about, I will leave, and you will begin dreaming a new dream.”
“I’d like that.” She said.
I felt the same, for a different reason. The shared dream collapsed around me, suddenly I was back in the open dreamscape near the Tower. If I had a mouth here, I’d have screamed, this was bad. Panic welled up inside of me. I had my principles about not telling things I found in others’ dreams, but this went beyond mere confidentiality. Entire worlds were at risk. I had to tell someone and fast.
I navigated the dreamscape back to the shelter, quickly looking through the dreamers there. Fire was not among them, neither were Tyron or Astro. The second time I looked I finally found someone: Kay was dreaming.
I gathered up my willpower, he wouldn’t throw me out this time.
Chapter 23: Grim Tidings (Kay)
The Book and I were having one of our dreamscape chats. It was the same study as before. I’d rather come to like this setting. A desk laden with memoirs. Fancy shelves with models and tomes behind me. Throne-like armchair beneath. Book in another armchair across from me. I had hinted to the Book it might want a more presentable form, but it insisted on keeping the same vaguely humanoid mass of pages.
“So,” I said. “That was two hundred more today. We’ve got near enough two thousand soldiers under our command. What do you make of them?”
“Some claimed to be Jackals,” the Book responded flatly. “They are experienced. Equipped. This is good.”
“True, but I can’t help but wonder if the inclusion of bandits won’t cause friction.”
“You hypocrite,” the Book scoffs. “Complaining about bandits.”
I tensed, and the fireplace flared dark red at this mention of my checkered past.
“You know what I mean,” I warned. “Some civilians may have been their victims recently. I’m wondering if we shouldn’t grant them their own division.”
“And, what? Use them as cannon fodder? Or better yet, leave the untrained divisions entirely to themselves. With no one seasoned to bolster them. That went so well last time, didn’t it-”
“Guard your damned tongue!” I snarled.
I fixed my gaze on the book for a few seconds before casting my eyes aside. I rose and marched past the Book to the far end of the room, firelight passing over me until I am out of its view. I envisaged a dartboard on the back of the Book’s chair and summoned darts to my hand. I began to throw them violently. They all hit the centre, not out of skill but on account of my will. Herobrine’s teachings had made such invented spaces my own little world, over which I had total control. Only my own nightmares were beyond my control.
I try not to acknowledge the fact that the Book is the only thing keeping those nightmares at bay. I will the board to be clear and speak as I begin to throw anew.
“Fristad’s death was not my fault,” I said as the first dart landed. “He died heroically.” The second landed, splitting open the first. “You chose a good vessel, and neither of us treated him nearly well enough.”
The Book spun its chair around. I bent the dart’s part midflight so that it swooped around and still struck the bullseye. I could only imagine it somewhat near to the centre. I get the impression the Book is glaring at me.
It has been increasingly confrontational since that coward, Glibby, killed Fristad. Doubt had been introduced when I lost the election, but we’d overcome that. Reconciled with Fire before the raid. But losing its old vessel had awoken a very unhelpful bitterness in my partner. Its interest in Fristad appeared to me to be a mixture of petulant longing for a lost toy and sentimental attachment. I was impressed and disappointed, considering how the Book usually presented itself as a grim survivalist. Perhaps it was a simple sunk-cost fallacy weighing on its mind.
But we would overcome this bump. Silver did not know the Entity’s true designs, but he was full of intel otherwise. We had learnt much of the Tower’s command structure, who was involved and where they were stationed within Nexus. The Book, Shadow and I had most recently forced him to explain how they travelled between worlds.
Naturally, there were scattered portals about the place, which relied on the overlapping of dimension fault-lines, but the Tower had something more deliberate: facilities where new portals were constructed. Machines that decided where a portal went. Soon, we would squeeze the location of such a facility from him, and we would be able to harangue the Entity wherever its armies were in creation. We might even be able to get some help of our own.
As the Book continued its eyeless, mouthless glare, I smiled involuntarily at the idea of bringing my friends into the fold. Having Aaron, Secret, or even someone like Bokane would make this conflict much easier.
Driven forward by this hopeful notion, I was just about to attempt our reconciliation, but I felt a wave over me. The flames of the fire rippled. Even the Book felt it. Our gazes met and we both understood a truce needed to be called. Someone had arrived inside my mind.
I willed a door into being on the wall nearest and determined that whoever arrived needed to step through. I heard a large thud against it and couldn’t help but imagine the door cracking, and so it did.
I exchanged a confused look with the Book and then called: “You may enter!”
The door practically flew off its hinges, in came a familiar radiant white woman, still halfway unmanifested.
She said with urgency: “Kay, I discovered something about the Entity’s plans…”
“Take a seat,” I answered, and with a thought we were all sitting around the desk. Myself on the one side, the Book and Lady of Dreams on the other.
I was not happy to see the Lady. She had entered my dreams and invaded my privacy. Supposedly, she was trying to help, and Fire and Shadow vouched for her, but I couldn’t help but feel skeptical. On the other hand, I was now used to having the Book wandering around, but the Lady had tried to access my actual thoughts. But if she had useful information, she had useful information. I was obliged to hear her out.
“Lady, this is the Book. Book, this is the Lady.”
“Charmed,” the Book scoffed.
“Pleasantries can wait. I was trying to get into a very resistant dream in the Tower for a while now, turns out it was the Ender’s.” She seemed uncomfortable talking about this. “She mentally let slip what the Entity told her about its plan.”
“...And that plan is?” I offered with petty sarcasm.
“To collapse all worlds into Nexus with some kind of machine. It sounded like they were almost ready to activate it!”
I nodded placidly and stood up.
“Book, walk with me. A moment, if you would, Lady.”
I willed another door into existence to the right of the desk and beckoned to the Book to follow me. It moved somewhat ethereally, not quite able to simulate physical movement.
We stepped through and found ourselves in a ruined great hall. Several shattered pillars. A crack ran along the roof, through which sunlight spilled. Herobrinian banners lined the walls. Dust everywhere.
“Great hall of castle Zine Craft just before Notch marched on it,” I explained flatly. “Don’t know why, just the first room I thought of.”
I took several steps forward and surveyed the ruined chamber. The Book was behind me.
“Well,” the Book responded. “Sounds like it’s all coming to a head.”
“Isn’t that a bloody understatement?!” I screamed, turned around and running back to the Book. “Merging all the worlds? Under that thing’s rulership? We only have two thousand soldiers at a push! Silver, on the other hand, mentions a new vassal, legion or sponsor of the Tower every five minutes. We are ****ed!”
I stomped and several more pillars crumbled.
The Book slapped me. I allowed it to hurt me because it was right. I was panicking. This lapse was unwise.
That didn’t dull my fear, however. I couldn’t feel my heart or my lungs or be distracted by any part of my body, so all I could feel was the pure emotion that crippled my very soul. I felt the zweihander piercing my breastplate over and over again. Remembered the ring of metal as I struck the Entity’s forearm. But in this I found a purpose, a clarity.
“Right, quite right. You are quite right. Give me a second,” I said, before calling out to the sky, “Kir? Are you there?”
I reached out with my mind, beyond the dreamscape I’d constructed.
“Always,” a familiar voice chirped.
“Wake up Astro, I want a few others to witness this conversation. Tell him to telepathy his way in.”
“Astro not asleep.”
“Tell him to telepathy his way in, anyway. If you can get a hold of her, Shadow too. I want at least one other person to hear exactly what I hear. Then, step into my office yourself.”
Kir acquiesced and stepped away. I waited a few seconds, and soon I felt other waves of entry, these ones weaker as I expected them. I took a moment, willed a few more chairs into existence back in the study. I turned to the Book.
“Any advice?”
The Book responded decisively in one long, coherent burst: “Ask what she knows about the machine. Mechanism, source, location if possible. Also, see if you can find out the Ender’s opinion of the matter. Are they for, against, ambivalent? Anything we could use to divide their numbers.”
“Excellent, let’s step back in. We’ve kept our guests waiting long enough.”
I marched up to the door, the Book in tow, and forced it open. The second it banged against the wall I immediately willed myself into my armchair. I summoned the Book’s chair over beside me and beckoned to it to sit. It was a small concession, but a recognition of its residency.
Across from us sat four figures. On the far right was the Lady, who looked as radiantly distressed as when I left. Then, there was a cushioned stool in which Kir sat, a glowing blue silhouette in the shape of a person. I’ll be honest, I’d expected them to appear as a sword, so I switched the stool out for a high-backed chair. After that there was Astro, who appeared the same as usual but slightly see-through. Last, was a pitch-black orb with a glowing red center, surrounded by a white-hot halo of light. I assumed this was Shadow.
“Sorry to have kept you all waiting,” I conceded with a little nod and an outstretched hand. “I’m sure you’re all a little surprised to be here, but welcome to our little clubhouse.”
“Kay,” Astro asked, brows furrowed, mouth parted with worry. “What’s this about.”
“Lady, if you’d explain to them what you just told us.”
I looked at the Book. Its face was blank and impassive as ever. I looked to the Lady, and I prayed my own face didn’t betray the same terror.
Chapter 24: Beyond Desperate Measures (Shadow)
“Could someone please explain to me why we’re having an emergency meeting at midnight?” Asked Warnado, more asleep than awake.
“There’s been a…” Kay paused with a glance at the command-room table. His tone was uncharacteristically restrained. “...Development. New intelligence has come in. We know the Entity’s endgame.”
The entirety of the shelter leadership was gathered in the command room, some of them understandably groggy. Shadow had no such problems.
She explained: “Steve, Jennifer. Remember when we performed those tests on the crystals? The theory we had back then has been validated. The Entity’s plan is to use some kind of machine to pull worlds into Nexus until some kind of critical mass is reached. From there it’s just a matter of subjugating everyone. It won’t be long until that plan can be put into motion.”
The room fell into two different kinds of silence. The first was a shocked silence as the reality of the Entity’s plan sank in. But then there was the second, which was altogether more unsettling. This silence was accompanied by the averted eyes of those who had already known: Tyron, Kay, Astro, Fire and of course Shadow herself. Their silence was filled with trepidation, with a fear that there was no good way of responding to this.
Destiny asked: “Where is this intel from?”
Fire said: “The Lady of Dreams got into a dream of the Ender, she read it from her mind and passed it on to Kay. I can vouch for her being truthful.” After a short pause he continued. “The question now is, what do we do with this information? Let me hear your thoughts.”
Destiny did not hesitate: “First of all, who on earth is the Lady of Dreams and why should I trust her?”
Shadow took it upon her to explain: “She’s a benevolent phantom from our world, she visits people in their dreams to give them someone to talk to. Fire has known her for thousands of years. Some of you may have been visited by her at some point.”
“If it’s worth anything,” Kay cut in. “She’s visited me before - I threw her out. She seemed pretty sincere - an extremely panicked form of sincere, but sincere nonetheless.”
He then wilted away into line with Shadow and Astro behind Fire. Destiny gritted her teeth but didn’t say anything.
“Do you guys have any ideas or are we supposed to do all the work?” entered Steve with a surprising aggression.
People were on edge, due to the recent mission, due to tiredness, due to reasons Shadow couldn’t know. However, she trusted her brother’s ability to keep the discussion on track.
Fire said calmly: “If anyone has ideas, I’d like to hear them before bringing forth my own. I don’t want to make anyone feel obligated to go along with what I say.”
“Of course, we wouldn’t want our leader influencing our course of action,” muttered Steve.
Before anyone could say anything - and Voidblade in particular looked quite ready to speak up - Kay elbowed Astro, who stepped forward. He spoke flatly and professionally, eyes sunken from exhaustion. He had a little sheet of notes he unfolded and kept looking at.
“We obviously know that the Entity has a machine with which it will merge all of creation together. We have some vague ideas of the mechanism it uses because of the crystal research. The big question is where it is and how we hurt it. So, we need to get more intel, fill in the gaps and plan our next move. To this effect the most obvious solution is to send a small team of infiltrators to gather said intel and preferably do a little sabotage while in there.
“The only problem is getting the right number of people. Too small a force and it’s suicide, too large and they’ll know we’ve been there and, to be perfectly honest, if they get noticed it would probably be suicide, too. We only escaped the Tower by the skin of our teeth last time. We’re not going to get lucky twice.
“Numbers are also limited by a lack of viable candidates. The infiltrators would preferably come, um, from the leadership due to the importance of the task and the fact that we’re the only ones who have much idea of the Tower’s internal topology. This pool is limited even more by the presence of the magic-dampening lamps. If we send in magic-users, they would be disoriented and, in some cases, physically weakened-”
“Alright, alright,” Steve laughed bitterly. “I’ve heard enough. We all know damn well who came up with this plan and he shouldn’t be hiding behind his pal. Last time we did this, Fristad died, and the intended target got away. Surprised the plan doesn’t include sending the kids in to fight the Entity.”
Kay visibly tensed before slumping into dourness. Warnado and Astro were about to interject when Steve continued: “See, even he’s not defending the call. He knows it was the wrong decision and he’s not man enough to own up to it!”
“Steve, cool your jets,” Jennifer said without enthusiasm, planting a hand to his shoulder. A sidelong glare at Kay made it clear she was only doing this out of obligation.
“Lads, lads!” Urist interjected, accent slightly stronger than usual. “I know we all have thoughts on tha ambush, meself included, but we can’t let it swamp us down like that. I’ve seen this before and let me tell ye, it didn’t end well, just results in pulled lev’rs and magma-flooded keeps... If ye get me metaphor.”
Fire nodded. “It would be best if we kept this civil, we are on an uncertain timer. Putting that aside, do we have more opinions on a suggested course of action?”
Destiny shrugged morosely before saying, “Hit the Tower. Send a primary force to hit the Tower and draw the defenders away while a team of around fifty go in through a back route to raid the labs. From there: smash and grab.”
“Exactly,” Steve said. “I’ve fought a lot of bad guys in my time, and I would have killed for an army a tenth of this size. Jennifer and I held off an entire undead army with just a small group of our friends. We need to use this!”
Lucy was sitting further back due to the limited space around the table, holding her notebook. She looked exhausted but determined. She said: “According to our last inventory we only have enough high-quality armor to equip a fourth of our soldiers, half of them if we count the armor pieces of lesser quality. Our weapons are also sub-optimal. We know they have artillery, which makes it very possible that they have some sort of grapeshot-type munitions, which would shred through unarmored troops.”
Shadow thought back to the ambush, then brought forward another point: “Our trees took out all but one of their casters, we don’t have that luxury in an offensive battle. It also stands to reason that they have higher-tech weapons at their disposal. I saw what kind of suit their head scientist runs around with, against non-magical foot soldiers anything of that caliber is basically a one-man-army.”
“So what?” asked Destiny. “Inside the Tower like one in ten of their mages will be capable of putting up a fight. The main body just needs to show up, look scary and run off. The actually important stuff will go down inside the Tower.”
Warnado tried to speak but was again cut off. Shadow didn’t feel like speaking, she decided to wait until more details were set in stone.
“You keep saying inside the Tower,” said Astro with an eyebrow cocked like a gun. “How exactly do you propose we do that?”
“I…” Destiny heaved in a deep breath and closed her eyes before continuing. “There’s a portal near here that leads back to Minera, my world. It’s deactivated but mostly intact. With a bit of fire, we could reactivate it. I… already did it once, accidentally. I go there to drink every now and then, was screwing around with fire magic and accidentally put it back in commission. Put it out immediately after, but it was functioning.
“We could hop through the portal, travel across Minera until we find the portal David and I entered through. It leads directly behind enemy lines - somewhere beneath the Tower. Then, like I said, smash and grab.”
“Y’know, that might…” Kay said before trailing off. He pulled the Book out of his pocket and began reading through its pages. “Hold on, come back to me.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Tyron cut in, with his tone of heroic experience. “That will absolutely useful later, but we can’t blow a shot like that on intelligence-gathering. As we can’t currently make portals of our own, any we do learn how to use must be treated as invaluable resources with which to deal the killing blow. We can’t afford to use it calling attention to ourselves.”
Kay removed himself from reading and concluded, though not with his usual confidence, “Besides, if the Entity shows up fifty men is not enough. Believe me, that thing is literally a host unto itself, and it will send more than one manifestation after you. What’s more, assuming the Entity’s out that day, if they decide to cut that portal off, everyone we send in is screwed.” He slammed the Book shut with finality and shook his head before starting to pace furiously. “Like Tyron says, if we use that route, it’s all or nothing. We commit hundreds to it, or we commit none.”
Rose looked up from a knife she’d been inspecting and said: “Thing about stealth missions is that you want to avoid raising the alarm at all costs, I’ve been on enough of those to know that once they’re suspicious it becomes infinitely harder to sneak and blend. As much as I’d like to go there and tear some **** up... hate to say it but using our force as a distraction would both put it[/] at risk and shoot our infiltrators in the foot too.”
There were murmurs of assent throughout the room. A large force was off the table.
“Okay, why not just send me in?”
It was Warnado. Everyone at once began to dismiss him until Amanda intervened.
“Let him talk!” She shouted with volume none of them had though her capable of. The room silenced, she patted the quarter-demon on the shoulder. “Go ahead, Helix.”
“Thanks,” Warnado smiled with clumsy affection.
She smirked and leant against the wall, struggling not to beam and permanently sacrifice her reputation as the world-weary, cynical one in the group. As far as Shadow was concerned, Amanda had distanced herself from that kind of reputation when she helped save Warnado from his demonic side after the ambush, or more accurately added a more compassionate reputation to her existing one.
“Anyway, before you rudely interrupted me, I was going to say that I’m the obvious candidate as I’m the only one we know isn’t affected by the lamps. Even those who are naturally good at hiding would be off-balance. Rose might not have her knives. Destiny couldn't just stick someone with an icicle to win a fight. Kay wouldn’t have the Book and is bad at sneaking despite what he says. Shadow might start talking like a normal human being. It would be a crapshoot. But we know I’d just be good ol’ Warnado, stealer of keys, planter of jam! I can do this.”
The room hung in an eerie silence as this almost seemed like a reasonable idea to send the literal child into the dragon’s lair alone. Jennifer’s mouth hung open a little as she cocked an eyebrow at Fire. Kay looked stuck somewhere between an affectionate smile and a stroke. Finally, it was Tyron who spoke up and grounded the conversation again.
“Warnado, great pitch, but I was actually within earshot when you stole the keys at the Tower. You did great work, no one is devaluing your contribution but… the guards absolutely noticed when you swapped out the keys for jam. It didn’t really matter then, but we really need no one to notice this time.”
Warnado looked around uncomfortably before puffing out his chest and walking into the centre of the room.
“I can swap things without leaving jam, y’know.”
“Prove it.”
“I just did!” mocked Warnado, holding up a jam-free Kir. He held up his hand for a high five that Kay instinctively provided before immediately grimacing as he remembered the thing he was approving.
It looked pretty bleak for a few seconds before Tyron spoke again.
“You didn’t leave jam,” Tyron conceded. “You did leave marmalade, though.”
He held up a palmful of orange, gelatinous conserve. Warnado bowed his head and returned to the wall with Amanda. She provided him with a conciliatory arm around the shoulder.
“Voidblade,” Fire asked. “Would you be up for infiltrating?”
Voidblade hesitated, contemplating. “Yes, although I probably could not blend in with their endermen, different skin, different eyes. There are some exceptions, but questions would be asked.”
Urist chimed in again: “I could probably go too in theory, might slow ye down though.”
Shadow said: “That leaves Steve, Jennifer and you Fire. Five people at most, do you think we could work with that?”
At this point everyone was looking at Fire. He seemed uneasy with what he was about to say, a rare state for him. So rare in fact, that Shadow was already getting a bad feeling about what he was about to say.
Fire took a breath and then said: “The reason I waited before saying anything was to see if you’d come to the same conclusion as I did. An infiltration mission is our only hope at this point, inaction means we lose, an assault means we lose as well, just differently. I have considered that we may have been fed false information in some way but even if that is the case, the chance of it being true outweighs everything. What I am about to tell you might, no will sound crazy.”
Shadow did not like where this was going, she knew her brother well and over the course of the discussion her thoughts walked certain paths that couldn’t have been too different from those his had walked.
“I need to go on this mission, alone.”
No, he did not! There had to be some other way.
Shadow spoke up immediately: “That’s a suicide mission! I can’t let you do that Fire!”
“This seems like we’re pushing the definition of a ‘small infiltration force’ a little far,” said Astro, hands outstretched as though he were preparing to catch a particularly delicate vase.
“Okay,” Steve conceded. “I know I was complaining just there about leaders not taking ownership for their plans, but… I’m not sure this is the right solution. What if they get you?”
“This ain’t it, chief,” chimed in Warnado, once again becoming the surprise voice of reason.
Fire explained: “My point is, I’m the one who is most likely to actually make it out. Ideally, I can use an invisibility potion to get into the complex, then use my camouflage cloak to go in further, enchantments don’t seem to be affected as aggressively by the lamps. We can entangle small sheets of paper to ender pearls, then periodically drop the pearls, that way I can get pieces of information out even if I get caught.”
Shadow said: “I have seen you pull off some insane things in the past, but I don’t think that cloak will get you wherever that machine is, I think Fristad mentioned their science being based underground.”
Fire nodded. “I can also ambush one of their endermen. With some blue glass behind the visor, my eyes will look just like theirs and they also have scales similar to mine. That way I stand the biggest chance of actually making it to somewhere where the intel I get is meaningful. I am aware of the risk, otherwise I would not be suggesting this. We need to know where this machine is, if I get really lucky, I may even be able to sabotage it outright.”
That was something Shadow hated about her brother, as bad of an idea as this was in any other circumstance, as completely suicidal it was, what he said actually made sense for their current situation. Why did it always have to make sense? Of course, there was one thing left he hadn’t addressed but she didn’t get her hopes up, once Fire set his mind to something it would take a lot to stop him. Perhaps he was even hoping to be stopped, because the only thing that could stop him was a better plan.
“But hypothetically, you get to the machine, get the intel out but are caught and killed. What then?”
Fire’s eyes took on an odd look for a moment. “I don’t like this either, but we don’t have much of a choice here. We need a way to stop the Entity permanently and disrupting this machine would give us more time to find one. In a way, I am the most expendable one here. If any of you die that’s an important link in the command chain severed. If need be, I can be replaced by Kay.”
Kay stopped pacing and looked back over his shoulder. He wasn’t alone. The entire room seemed frozen in place by this brutal pragmatism. Astro looked straight at Shadow, panic in his eyes. Shadow contemplated revealing what Astro had told her but… it just felt wrong, not just a breach of trust but what would Kay do if confronted with his fate? It wouldn’t help the situation at all, only weaken what little trust most had left in Kay.
“You-you’re quite sure… what?” Kay stammered.
The silence that followed was positively deafening. Shadow shut out all sensation and instead looked inwards. Another thing she had talked about with Astro, her being linked to her brother in some way. She didn’t know if the Prophet’s words had any merit, if she really would… unravel. Stop, now is not the time for emotions. Distance is important, that’s what Fire always says.
A grim determination filled Shadow, driving out the despair that had filled her when her brother first brought forward his plan. It was true, they were losing a war that hadn’t even started yet, they were out of options. Fire would infiltrate the Tower and he’d either live or die, perhaps be held prisoner. But if his death really had an effect on her she’d make sure the Entity would regret its conquest. Back when Shadow left her home world, something had changed. She could already feel herself grow stronger, more able to control her Void magic. Maybe it would take years, millennia even for her to be strong enough to be able to scratch the Entity but time was not something an immortal concerned herself with. Maybe she’d lose her humanity, whatever that was, but there was one thing that would always stay with her, the memory of her brother. She’d rip Nexus, no, all of existence apart atom by atom if that’s what it took to destroy the Entity. She’d be their apocalyptic insurance policy.
Shadow stopped. That was not one of her usual thoughts and neither was it something she hoped she would ever have to do but if it came to it, she would do it. It was something she was sure of.
Fire spoke again: “I will need some time to prepare, set up the redstone timers for the ender pearls, brew the potions I need. I will take every precaution I can, don’t take this as me throwing my life away for the cause. This is what I think to be the option that, even if everything goes wrong, still gives us sufficient intel for any follow-up and leaves our command structure as intact as possible. Please do not try to fight me on it.”
Tyron suddenly stood up, sending his chair skittering. There was a commanding pause that seemed to last forever.
“Fire,” he said. “I hate this plan. It’s terribly open to failure. You could even argue it’s only justifiable under a sociopathically pragmatic lens. But at the same time, it’s noble in its self-sacrifice. We are at war, and if you believe this is the only way to win it, I believe in you. Don’t die.”
And he sat down.
More stunned silence, it didn’t look like anyone else could muster up the willpower to object. Shadow saw many faces in the room, faces of disbelief, of sadness, some she couldn’t properly categorize. Lucy in particular seemed torn, she had always looked up to Fire in a way. He’d been the one who had given her the chance to discover her talents, given her greater purpose. Aside from myself, she’ll be the one hit hardest if he doesn’t make it back.
Fire too looked around, then with a suppressed sigh he said: “Meeting concluded, get some sleep everybody, you’re long overdue.”
Chapter 25: Last Goodbyes (Tyron)
Tyron crept along the hallway, Kir at his hip, Kay beside him. Warnado and Amanda sneaked along behind.
“He leaves this way,” Kay grunted.
He’d been far from himself since the meeting. Quiet, single-minded. Tyron had heard Kay and Fire didn’t get on, but the scaly guy’s decision to go out and risk his life was really bothering him.
“I reach out?” Kir asked.
“Sure,” Tyron approved. “Just be delicate about it. It’s Kay. He usually opens up with us, but he can be pretty thorny before he does.”
He cast a glance back. Warnado and Amanda stopped whispering and gave Tyron a hurried thumbs up before shooing him on. They were starting to get insufferably joined at the hip.
They turned a corner. Only a few more corridors and they’d be at the side exit Fire had decided to use. Going through the atrium would announce it to everyone and they didn’t want to risk a panic.
Tyron didn’t get why but this would apparently cause outrage.
“Fire’s a hero. Heroes do this all the time,” he thought.
Tyron himself did it to take down Herobrine. It was always stressful, but it was always necessary.
The doorway came into view. They separated into two groups. Warnado grabbed Amanda around the waist and levitated them up to a rocky ventilation shaft. As they clambered in, Tyron and Kay opted for the simpler solution of sheltering into an alcove.
Naturally, given Tyron’s large, furry physique, it was a little too intimate to be comfortable. Tyron’s luminous blue eyes scrutinised Kay, who was watching wistfully as Warnado and Amanda struggled with the grate. Tyron couldn’t tell if he was about to start monologuing or just normally silent.
“Any luck?”
“No,” answered Kir. “Book’s ‘screening calls’. Have to talk to him.”
“You okay, pal?” Tyron asked with not a little awkwardness. “You look like there’s something on your mind.”
“A lot, friend,” he muttered. “A lot.”
A pause.
“Yeah, I can’t leave that hanging,” Kay acquiesced. His eyes became misty. “I’m thinking about something Fire said to me a long time ago. About a meaningful death. It was back before I met you, when I still thought I could… negotiate, or reason with the Entity. I-I’d just failed to get us some horses and I sat down to talk with Fire. He’s there, just got a ton of weapons and it hits me - I have no idea what this big scaley ******* is,” he swallowed and cleared his throat.
“So, Fire gets talking about the Mencur-Besh and all that and how they operate and that leads him onto his military career. He asks me about mine, asks me ‘how many battles have you fought, Kay?’ I tell him ‘nine’. He asks me how many I’ve lost,” he chuckled, cutting the air with an outstretched hand. “I tell him, ‘one’, thinking that’s impressive. How many do you think Fire’s been in?”
Tyron thought back. Fire was pretty old, by his own account.
“One hundred?”
“He’s fought in something over five hundred! I forget the exact number, and from how he framed it those weren’t just skirmishes but actual major war battles. But what I can’t forget is what he said next: In his five thousand odd years he has died twenty-seven times. Twenty-seven. That’s crazy, isn’t it? Utterly crazy, right?”
Tyron felt an abortive surge of relief. The information suggested Fire would just come back. Kay’s dewed eyes didn’t. Tyron heard something small fall over. He peaked out the alcove and saw someone scoop a thermos back into an alcove down the hall. Evidently, they weren’t the only ones who had sneaked out to see Fire off.
“Yeah,” he said, a little distracted. “Crazy.”
Kay noticed none of this and continued.
“Absolutely, it’s crazy. Then, he says all this stuff about death and dying and how he knew that he didn’t have his safety net in Nexus. He knows if he dies in here, it’s final.”
Tyron’s attention was undivided.
“Oh,” Kir gasped.
“****…”
“And he won’t stop talking about how death is a natural thing, and we need to accept it. He told me he just wanted a meaningful death. About how we need to aspire for a meaningful death. At the time I hated him for it.” Kay laughed and pressed his palms to his eyes and leaned back. “I hated him so flipping much. I just wanted to get home - I still do - and here’s this big, immortal douche bag condescending to me about my record and implying I’m going to die in the midst of all this and I just can’t get over it. I was fuming all the way to the Tower. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have hit Steve half as hard if Fire hadn’t pissed me off so much. But that’s-that’s the point.”
He exhaled and looked Tyron in the eyes. “I think I missed something. I think he wants to die, Tyron.”
“Kay, you’re just tired-”
“No, I’m not!” He whisper-shouted, clearly not caring too much if people knew they were there anymore. “I think he’s been around too damn long, Tyron, and he just wants it to stop. He’s seen some awful things man, lost people, and that’s just festered away. He’s got a full split personality, he told me himself. He’s been through some ****. And I think he’s taking his opportunity to get off the ride. This is the meaningful death he wants! Tyron, we are aiding and abetting a suicide attempt!”
Tyron, trying to soak in all of this information, held firm.
“Fire isn’t crazy. He’s been through a lot, but he’s cool-headed. If he wanted to die, he’s had a lot of openings recently and he’s missed every shot. Just calm down.”
Kay breathed in and shook his head.
“No, no you’re missing the point. He wants to go out on a high, not just throw those years away!”
Tyron gritted his and was about to try and bark him down when another voice entered the fray.
“Alright,” Astro called. “If we’re all just going to drop thermoses and bicker in the corner, I think we might as well all step out into the light.”
A light switch was flipped and the corridor suddenly became a lot more discernible. Every other hiding space was full.
Lucy, Steve and Jennifer had bunched together in one alcove across from them. Destiny scowled morosely out of another, alone. Amanda and Warnado’s hiding spot in the vent suddenly seemed much more visible than the darkness had indicated. Astro, naturally, was beside the light-switch near the exit. Only Rose proved even slightly difficult to spot before she leapt down from the ledge she had been crouching on.
Then, the exit swung open and Urist and Voidblade rushed in.
“Fire, ye can’t do this!” the dwarf exclaimed, before seeing who was there. “Oh.”
“Whole gang’s here,” chirped Kir.
Tyron glimpsed a shade dashing by which he thought was Wodahs. It probably was, but it moved too quickly to be sure.
“So,” Astro continued. “I’m getting the impression we’re all here to try and talk Fire out of his suicidal plan?”
“I’m not,” Tyron flatly responded. He folded his arms and cocked an eyebrow confrontationally.
“Anyone aside from Tyron?”
No one raised their hand.
“Then you are overruled,” Astro grunted. “So, who’s going first?”
“I don’t know what exactly you are talking about, but I think I have some idea.” Shadow appeared from nowhere in their midst.
She continued: “Believe me when I say this, I am not on board with Fire’s plan either but sadly there is one argument he made we cannot refute. We are running low on time. Anything we do to try to dissuade him will just lower the probability of survival.”
Silence hung thick upon the group. Tyron agreed, but hearing it aloud was still hard to hear. Shadow’s tone was as flat and aloof as ever, betraying none of the turmoil that must be going on behind those eyes.
“I know my brother better than anyone else. Once he’s got his mind set on something it’s because he’s thought about it and came to the conclusion it’s a good, or at least effective, idea. Dissuading him is next to impossible, he’s done things like this before… one of which has been what made me into me, my ascension.”
“If we can’t convince him,” said Kay. “I’m second in command. Pretty much everyone aside from Tyron opposes this. What’s to stop me from stepping in? Just a nice, friendly little coup until Fire gets his head straight. What’s to stop me from doing that, Shadow?”
“Now, Kay, calm down-” Astro attempted to cut in.
“Are you telling me you suddenly think this is sane, Astro?”
“I just think our first option shouldn’t be to totally undermine this army’s power structure!” The wizard snapped back.
“I never said it was our first option,” Kay responded coolly. “I said we keep it on the table.”
“Take it off the table, Kay,” Astro commanded.
The wizard marched up to the General, glaring at him, shoulders squared, and feet firmly planted. Kay tried to glare back, but his resolve quickly melted in the face of Astro’s intensity. He shrank away, brows furrowed and stroking his temple in shock. Hurt and confusion battled for control. Astro looked away in shame.
“We’ll talk him down,” Astro croaked. “Like I said ages ago. Who talks first?”
Before anyone could give a clear answer there was the sound of quiet footsteps coming from the inner sections of the shelter. A few seconds later Fire came around a bend. He was not wearing his usual clothes, instead a brown cloak covered him almost entirely. He stopped when he saw them all standing there, letting his gaze wander, contemplating.
He spoke more slowly than usual. “I… appreciate what you are trying to do. I really do. The problem is just that I really have to go through with this. I thought about different scenarios long before we got word about the machine, all that hearing about it did was cut off some branches. According to what I know this really is the best course of action available to us.”
“What’ve you got?” Destiny asked in a deadened tone, features flattened and stripped of emotion.
Fire indicated several items attached to a belt. “I have brewed a range of potions that will help me with my infiltration, invisibility to get in and enhancing effects to make sure I am not found. I have set up twelve ender pearls suspended in claws in my private room, they are entangled to one sheet of paper on this block each. I will be using them to relay any information to you. My cloak adapts to the color and texture of its surroundings. For weapons I have my claws as well as a dagger I brought with me when I first entered Nexus. All of this is either proven to work in an anti-magic environment or most likely unaffected.”
“Yeah, that’s great and all,” said Warnado, clapping his hands together. “Hand them over, I’ll handle this.”
He outstretched his hand, only for Kay to cut in front of him. He turned and looked Fire in the eyes. Tyron felt his heart slow down, not knowing what to expect.
“No, it should be me. These people need you Fire. You built this. It means something to you. I can’t guarantee that commitment. I just want to go home.”
A tear ran down his cheek, his mouth weighed down at the corners. His gaze was unbroken, his lips parted slightly.
“I am more than willing to die for that,” promised Kay.
“I know you mean it Kay, but dying is not the central point here, gathering the required intel is. I believe I am the most qualified of us to undertake this mission, I brought up my arguments during our formal discussion. This isn’t a choice about morality or who deserves to do what. It’s about what is most likely to work.”
Kay blinked.
“Then I trust your judgement,” he said. “Shake on it?”
He stretched out a hand. Fire took it.
Tyron felt the emotion swell up within him.
“Oh, for Notch’s sake, we’re not doing a group handshake! Get in here you! I don’t care how sappy it is!”
Before either could object, Tyron had squeezed them into his grip. Kir chirped away indistinctly in the backs of their minds, expressing their warm sentiments.
Urist was the earliest adopter, dragging Voidblade into a reluctant second. Before the enderman could break free or teleport away, Lucy had pinned him to the growing huddle. At some point during all of this Shadow had buried her face in Fire’s flank, hiding her emotions and broadcasting them with equal perfection. Next came Steve and Jennifer, and Fire stooped down a little to loop them in. Amanda then squeezed her way in.
Warnado floated up and landed on the shoulders of Kay, who cackled in surprise. The quarter-demon then reached over and placed a hand on Fire’s shoulder.
“Thanks for not sticking your claws through my face that first night,” he grinned.
Now, all eyes were on Astro, Rose and Destiny, the only three stragglers.
“Sorry guys,” grimaced Astro. “Not really my scene.”
No sooner had he said this, then Rose and Destiny had exchanged a look, linked arms and herded him into the group.
“You owe me, big guy,” said Destiny with a rare smile. “Don’t die on us now.”
It occurred to Tyron how lucky they were to have lost so few people, but their loss was sorely felt. David should have been there, hand on Destiny’s shoulder with protective zeal. Or Fristad, shyly grinning and sharing a wry look with Steve as he tried to pretend, he was above the cheesiness of all this but still loving it nonetheless. This could be the last time their little group was this large. They had to appreciate it.
Chapter 26: The Infiltration (Fire)
The hill was deserted, ever since the Prophet relocated to the shelter nobody came here anymore. Fire stood on top of the hill, next to him stood Shadow. She had teleported him here, closer to the Tower. Fire was wearing the enchanted camouflage cloak he’d worn for a while after arriving in Nexus, his wither dagger attached to his belt next to several potion flasks.
“Are you sure about this?” Shadow asked.
“I am.” Fire simply replied.
Fire didn’t turn to leave yet, it was clear that his sister still had something on her mind.
“I just wanted to say… for the case that you really don’t make it back. You are the best brother I could ever wish for, I don’t think anyone else would have gone the lengths you did to set me free.” Shadow laughed bitterly. “No, I don’t think anyone else would have created a whole world for his sister, and we really did stick it to those laws of physics with my ascension.”
Fire knelt down and took Shadow in his arms, holding her close. It was hard to tell due to her inability to produce tears, but Shadow was crying. After a few minutes she reluctantly let go.
She said: “Don’t get yourself killed Peter.” Then teleported away. Fire stood on the hill alone.
Fire took a deep breath, he still was not entirely sure if this was a good idea, but he had thought about it enough to know that it was the best thing he had. No perfect plans, only good enough plans, that mantra always came back to him.
He had roughly three hours left before the first sheet of paper would disappear back to the shelter, after that each would disappear ten minutes after the previous one until all twelve of them were gone. Two hours were what he’d given himself for getting to the machine, not an impossible task. He’d only need the notes on the way in after all. Ideally, he’d have entangled an ender pearl to himself, but the distance was too large, even if he placed it on the very outskirts of the Tower. A pearl teleportation of that distance would kill him, despite the fact that he was more attuned to teleporting than a human.
Fire took a potion from his belt and drank it, it was a speed potion. Within a few moments he could already feel his feet becoming lighter. He started sprinting down the hill and through the forest, it’d take him roughly an hour to the village, then another to the Tower itself if he took the road. Fire would instead run through the forest to minimize his chances of being spotted, he was officially affiliated with the escapees now and patrols would attack him on sight once they recognized him.
Fire rushed through the trees, always mindful of brambles and low-hanging branches. The forest got progressively lighter as he approached the village. It looked different to when he had last seen it, there was now a wall around it and guards had been posted at the gates, that was a forward base if Fire had ever seen one. It was odd that they decided to place it this close to the Tower, but it still had strategic merits like acting as a troop rallying point. Fire paid it no further mind and rushed past, always taking care to leave as few open sight lines as possible.
Yet another hour later the Tower was well in sight, a hulking building that defied both architectural conventions and structural engineering, and most likely the laws of conventional physics too. It branched out further and further as it stretched towards the sky. Fire had reason to believe that its underground layout was similar, which could prove problematic if he took a wrong turn.
He was now at the edge of the forest, the Tower’s outer fortifications now only a few hundred meters ahead of him. It was time for the other potions. One invisibility potion, several others that would enhance him in different ways. One after another, Fire drank from the flasks. After he was done, a shiver went through him as the potions were absorbed, for a few seconds everything was unnaturally bright and loud before he got used to the sharper senses. Fire’s body became fully transparent and after a few seconds his clothes followed, a very useful quirk of this particular potion recipe.
“Alright.” Fire said to himself. “Time to infiltrate.”
The gate in the outer wall was guarded but open. Fire slowly approached it, his shoeless feet not making a single sound. He often heard it said that he was sneakier than someone of his size should be, it was true. Mencur-Besh were suited for many situations that didn’t involve swimming or getting silver stabbed into you. The human mercenaries guarding the gate didn’t even look up from their posts as Fire snuck by.
Inside the walls were various buildings, big in their own right but still dwarfed by the Tower itself. From the way they emitted energy, Fire could reasonably say that these were largely used to generate power or store materials used to run the generators. Each of the buildings had a slightly different signature, hinting at different kinds of generators being at work. It was only natural for the Entity to collect those too.
The entirety of the inner area was paved over with what looked to be concrete or some variant on it, this was good. No grass that would betray his footsteps. Fire continued on, on the side of the main path. His invisibility potion wouldn’t last him forever, only enough to get into the Tower proper and a bit further in. He wished he could have made more but his ingredients had been barely enough for the one flask.
Fire was not alone here, there were soldiers and engineers walking the premises, though with enough distance between them that Fire could slip past or avoid them entirely, getting ever closer to the Tower’s main gate, which was currently closed. Fire caught fragments of conversations, most of it was irrelevant but he was able to glean some useful things, namely that there would be some kind of meeting in half an hour and more importantly that the machine was real, it seemed that most people here were aware of its existence. If they knew what it did was another question.
Just as Fire got close to the gate, it swung open. Out came a group of humans pulling a wagon filled with what looked to be some sort of salt. That was Fire’s chance to slip into the Tower. He moved quickly, the faint steps drowned out by the grinding of the wagon’s wheels. Fire slowed down quickly as soon as he was through the gate, there were guards on the other side, endermen specifically, so he had double the reason to be quiet.
He took a right, recognizing the chair room. Fire took a few seconds to examine it, it looked like some of the chair stacks had grown slightly. From here he knew the route to the resource storage, the Ender had taken him there after their implicit information exchange. After that he had to find his own way, presumably further down, probably past security checkpoints, into the sanctum of science that Fristad had described.
Fire did regret Fristad’s death severely, he knew that part of the blame fell on him, not only because he was a leader. If he hadn’t tried to take Glibby alive things would have gone differently, if he had known about the machine earlier, he’d have killed Glibby without a second thought. His line of thinking in the battle had been wrong, but only in hindsight. He hadn’t thought that they were so close to losing. If Fristad was still alive he could possibly have delivered a more detailed description of the way, Fire probably should have asked the Book too, but he still was not sure whether it could be trusted.
He pushed the thoughts away, he was further down the hallway now and people were coming. More workers, quite a lot of them. Fire pressed into the wall next to a pillar, in hopes that none of them would graze against him. After a few tense seconds the workers had passed him without noticing. Fire quietly hurried down the hallway until he arrived at an intersection. He knew the way here but even if he hadn’t, there were signs indicating where each path went. It was easy to forget that this was a workplace first and an infiltration site seventh or so.
After a few more intersections Fire reached the material storage, which was as far as he knew the way, now he’d have to follow signs. When Fire looked down, he noticed he was slowly fading back into visibility again, he’d have to move more slowly now and use cover or hiding spots to prevent others from seeing him. Now one question remained: Did the camouflage enchantment still work? There certainly were enough lanterns around to prove or disprove its functionality.
Another big room was ahead of Fire, this one filled with taxidermized bears of all variants. Fire moved his arm in front of a huge brown bear that was positioned in a way as if it were attacking. His sleeve adopted the bear’s color and texture, more slowly than normally but it still did. That was a relief. He still wouldn’t stand up to direct scrutiny, but it was enough to hide in peripheral vision and from passing glances.
Fire waited and listened for a few seconds, there seemed to be nobody around. Probably due to this meeting that was currently going on. Fire used the opportunity to move more quickly and make more progress towards the science sections of the Tower. When the first ender pearl was about to drop back in the shelter, Fire ducked into a side room filled with janitorial supplies to write a quick message.
Still alive. Path unchanged. Reached material storage. Now following signs. Invisibility ran out. Camo enchantment intact but slow.
A few minutes afterwards the sheet disappeared. Ten minutes to the next one.
The next intersection had a staircase leading downwards labelled with “Science” and another labelled with “Magic”, obviously the two main research departments. Fire suspected that the signs wouldn’t be there to help for much longer, as he got into more secure and restricted zones there would be less signs since people were expected to know their way around.
Fire went down the staircase quickly until he heard voices from below. Returning back up was not a possibility, it would make too much noise. There were no good hiding opportunities, the walls were made from smooth marble with no indentations to hide in. Fire’s eyes darted around, looking for any irregularities he could exploit. Then he saw it. There was a stabilizing beam overhead, roughly six meters up. That was a jump he could make, especially with the potions enhancing his strength.
Fire tensed up and knelt down, then pushed himself off the ground like a spring, taking hold of the beam and wrapping his arms and legs around it to secure himself. His cloak took on the same color as the surrounding marble just in time for the two talking humans to come around a bend. Two women in lab coats.
One said: “Veronica really ought to get some sleep, she looks terrible.”
The other one replied: “Yeah, but I’m sure she’s got her reasons with the completion date coming closer and all that.”
These two seemed to know something.
The first scientist said: “Not exactly that.”
The second asked, interest piqued: “You wouldn’t happen to know more, would you Laura?”
The scientist named Laura stopped and replied: “Oh, I do happen to know. Word is that she saw something out at that village, something related to the Void somehow. She’s been quite obsessed with it and there are rumors that the Entity itself ordered her to look into it, with priority above the machine.”
The second scientist seemed skeptical. “Oh really? And where would one get such rumors from?”
Laura sighed. “I suppose I said it and now I have to tell you that too or you won’t believe me?”
“Yup.”
“Alright, I cut a… deal of sorts with Freak, we both know he’s more in it for his own entertainment than anything else.”
“And he just feeds you juicy bits of happenings?”
There was an audible shudder in Laura’s voice. “Not exactly, in return he gets to do his scary thing and ‘eat my fear’. He’s a creep but the rumors are worth it. For instance, I now know who keeps taking the snacks in Dimensions.”
“Who?”
“Clark freaking Belmont! That’s the last one I’d have suspected. Not really relevant to us because we’re in different departments but still.”
Fire endured their tale swapping until they realized they had somewhere to go. They never once looked up. Once they were out of earshot, he hurried down the remainder of the stairs and hid behind a generic hero statue that was standing in an alcove. Another sheet had vanished in the meantime, he’d just noted the usual still alive at the top, getting an empty sheet could be interpreted as him dying. On the next sheet he had a bit more to note down.
Dr. Veronica Mercury (science head) apparently sleep deprived. Looking into whatever Shadow did to distract her and the Ender during the raid. Apparently obsessed. Orders from the Entity to prioritize over the machine. Freak telling employees rumors/secrets in exchange for fear. Someone named Clark Belmont is stealing snacks (probably not relevant but written for completeness).
Fire came out of hiding and kept following signs, having to find more places to hide along the way. There had been a couple of close calls, someone had brushed against his cloak once while he was blending with another pillar but was in too much of a hurry to look back. He sent several sheets back to the shelter, each with small snippets of information about the route he had been taken and potential dangers along the way. He’d passed some sort of temporary security checkpoint by slipping by while the guards were busy searching someone. It hadn’t been much of a checkpoint really, just two human guards in a hallway, anything more would have forced him to find a different route.
He was quite deep underground when a unique opportunity presented itself. Fire was just hiding in yet another janitorial closet when a lone enderman in full armor came from the same direction he’d come from. Ambushing a guard was risky but this particular enderman was not just a guard, he was carrying a small crate filled with the crystals the Entity was after. If Fire played his cards right this was his ticket into the inner sanctum.
Fire had to act quickly, pulling the enderman into the closet with him, taking care not to drop the crystals to the floor. Before the enderman knew what was happening he had Fire’s wither dagger pressed against its throat.
Fire quietly said in ender: “Give me the crate, your armor and don’t make noise and you’ll live through this.”
Sadly, the enderman was not very cooperative, forcing Fire to quickly jab him in an exposed spot with the dagger, the pain the wither magic caused was apparently enough to stop any attempt at teleportation, screams suppressed by the sleeve of Fire’s cloak.
Fire spoke again: “I’ll say it again, you have a chance of surviving if you cooperate with me.”
The still pained enderman replied: “You speak our tongue but are not one of us, what are you?”
He apparently hadn’t recognized him so that either meant his involvement was classified for some reason or this particular enderman hadn’t gotten the memo yet. These endermen seemed to lack true military drill. They had discipline and obedience, sure, but apparently the Ender ran things very differently than whoever had been in charge in their home world, and they were only slowly adapting to her style of leadership. Fire could exploit this, without proper training it was difficult to lie under interrogation and get away with it.
“I ask the questions here. Why are you carrying those crystals?”
The enderman relented. “I am this shift’s crystal courier.”
That much was obvious. Fire continued prying: “What security measures are between here and the inner sections?”
The enderman remained quiet, Fire delivered a cut with the dagger and pressed his arm against the enderman’s mouth again.
The enderman slowly said: “A… big gate with ender guards, they are instructed to let the courier through, then another gate. Need to wait for them to open, crystals don’t like being teleported. They ask for my name at the second gate.”
Fire asked: “What is your name?”
The enderman visibly contemplated. “Chorusflower.”
Fire applied pressure with the dagger. “That is not your name.”
Flinching, caught in the lie the enderman quickly said: “Obsidianclaw, my name is Obsidianclaw!”
That was more believable, quick too. Fire continued: “Alright Obsidianclaw, I’ll need you to give me your armor and that crate.”
Obsidianclaw spat back: “And have them exile me as a traitor, over my dead body!”
“As you wish.”
Obsidianclaw realized his poor choice of words the moment Fire’s dagger sank into his throat. It took a few seconds for him to lose consciousness from the rapid blood loss. Fire quickly got to work taking the armor off of Obsidianclaw, wiping away the blood with his cloak, he wasn’t going to use that for anything after this. A few minutes later, Obsidianclaw was dead and without armor.
Fire took a pair of blue-tinted glasses from his inventory and put them on, followed by the helmet and the rest of the armor. His cloak disappeared into his inventory. Fire picked up the crate and stepped out of the closet. He now looked almost exactly like one of the Tower’s endermen, this would help greatly going forward. Before leaving he wrote another note.
Killed a guard who had crystals, assuming his identity to get into the inner sections. Probably won’t be able to write until I find a safe space. This might be a trap, it’s very convenient to have him walk through the hallway alone but unlikely that they know my exact timing. Wish me luck.
Fire had thought about the possibility of false information, and about the possibility of true information being leaked as a trap. Even if he was running headfirst into a trap right now, it was hard to imagine that the Tower was expecting exactly him and him alone to infiltrate, they had no way of knowing his skillset and it was very possible that Obsidianclaw was meant to be followed, not impersonated. No matter the situation, Fire still had to take any and all bait because it was the only way forward. Such was the nature of the situation.
Fire walked down the hallway, in the open with a crate of crystals held in front of him. When humans passed him, he flat-out ignored them, when endermen passed him he mirrored their greetings where applicable. So far it seemed to be working.
After another few turns, hallways and stairs, Fire arrived in front of a positively huge gate, the interlocking spiral segments of which made it look like it was taken straight out of a science fiction movie. Two sets of three endermen stood guard. When he approached, one of them teleported through and the gate began opening very, very slowly. Fire just stood there for some awkward minutes, none of the guards talked to him so he did the same. Once the gate was open, he walked through and continued on, the gate closing behind him very slowly again.
Fire took some time to write another note while walking, the next sheet was due in a few minutes.
Suddenly someone asked in human language: “What you writing there?”
The asker was just a random engineer that had come out from one of the doors. Fire stopped and looked at him with a piercing gaze.
Putting on his best broken human speech, Fire said: “Shipping manifest.”
That had been that, the engineer was too intimidated to ask further questions. A few seconds after the engineer was out of sight the sheet vanished, now they knew about the gate, its slow opening time and its opening mechanism on the inside.
Fire continued on. It couldn’t be far from here. There was an increased density of humans walking the halls, but Fire paid them no mind. Just after another sheet vanished, Fire arrived at the second gate, which looked like the first one except smaller. The complement of guards was the same. This was where he’d be asked questions.
One of the guards walked up to him and asked: “Name?”
Fire replied without hesitation: “Obsidianclaw.”
“The crystals seem in order. Were you followed?”
Fire’s speculation from earlier seemed to have been correct. He replied: “I was vigilant, nobody was there.”
Without further words the guard signaled the opening of the gate. This one was faster than the previous one. On the other side was a circular laboratory room. The walls were lined with all kinds of equipment from various disciplines. Further in stood tables with what looked to be magitech computers on them, other tables had chemistry setups. In the middle of the room stood what was very definitely the machine. A hulking contraption made from a similar brass-like material that the Entity’s armor was made from, power cables and pipes connecting to it from all sides. A large, open hatch faced the entrance of the room, the inside of the machine was lined with thousands of crystals, each in its own little fixture. At the center was a glass orb that contained a gray mass that didn’t quite seem material.
The gate closed behind Fire after he had walked through. From behind the machine emerged a very tired looking Dr. Mercury. Her face told tales of days without sleep, spent looking at screens and evaluating data. It was a face Fire was familiar with, the scientists that had helped create his world had worn it on occasion as well. She was wearing her full combat armor, four additional arms.
She said without putting much effort into speaking clearly: “Just puttem down somewhere.”
Fire did as she said, then took another look at the room. One of Dr. Mercury’s arms moved in his general direction. He knew what she was going to say before she said it.
“Wait, you’re no enderman!”
The tiredness from her voice was gone, pushed away by the last bits of adrenaline her glands could muster. Her other arms sprung to action, one that looked dangerously like an energy cannon pointing directly at Fire. An alarm started sounding.
He had to act quickly, sprinting past Dr. Mercury and behind the machine, the safest piece of cover in the room. With quick motions he scribbled down what would probably be his final note.
Caught. Second door same as first but small. Machine in lab. Has crystals and grey stuff inside.
He tossed the remaining sheets into a corner where they probably wouldn’t be found until it was too late. Dr. Mercury came darting around the corner, shooting a blast from her energy cannon that missed, probably because she shot wide intentionally in order to not damage the machine.
Fire concentrated and summoned the elemental energy inside of him into his palm. There were no crystal lanterns in the lab. A bolt of flames shot from Fire’s hand, not at Dr. Mercury but at one of the cables that were hooked into the machine at the top. The rubber insulation caught fire almost immediately, quickly creating large amounts of smoke. Within seconds the sprinklers on the ceiling turned on, soaking the entire room with a mixture of water and what seemed to be fire foam.
Another blast from the energy cannon that missed. Fire knew that all he could do was delay the inevitable, that door was not going to open before he was dead. If he managed to kill or incapacitate Dr. Mercury, he could probably do some more extensive sabotage on the machine so that was his immediate goal.
Fire launched himself at her after her next shot, there was no time for tricks or finesse like with Glibby, he had far too little time and preparation for that. Her armor absorbed the slashes from his claws, although he noticed that he left some marks. Before he could think about his next move, he felt something jab him in the side. One of the arms had some sort of injector at the tip, probably a toxin of some sort. Most likely would have killed anything else but it only spread a paralysis through Fire’s body, if that could be described as “only”.
He dropped on his side, only able to move very slowly. Dr. Mercury acted quickly and tossed some sort of net onto him that bound him further. Then she took off Fire’s helmet and glasses using her grasping arms. She looked at him with mild surprise.
As if on cue, three figures appeared in the laboratory. The first was obviously the Entity, then there were the Ender and Freak, the latter probably just wanted to point and laugh.
Fire still seemed to be mostly in control of his voice. He said: “Hello again, Ender.”
Fire hadn’t said Ender in the human tongue, but he’d said her actual name that he had learned from Silver, which translated to “the Ender” because that’s what her name meant, someone who finishes things. The translation had been lucky or unlucky, depending on how you looked at it.
The Ender seemed taken aback and responded with a very unprofessional “Hey.”
Freak was the next to talk: “So it seems the trap has been sprung, the mouse is in.”
Fire dryly said: “Not really an accomplishment, baiting the mouse with cheese if the alternative was starvation, if you want me to continue the metaphor.”
“Enough!” The Entity exclaimed. “You will be… absorbed.”
Whatever it meant by this, it was not a favorable outcome. Both death and capture were states Fire knew, absorption less so.
The Entity picked Fire up by grabbing onto the net he was bound by.
Fire attempted to stall for time. “What exactly does that mean?”
The Entity replied: “You bec-ome part of… the body… the mind. What was-yours will be mine.”
It started removing one of its white gloves, beneath was the same undefinable grey that Fire had seen in the middle of the machine. It lifted its hand up to Fire’s forehead.
Shortly before it made contact, Fire sighed, then uttered: “Well. ****.”
The moment the grey mass touched the scales on Fire’s head everything else started to fade. All senses: sight, sound, self seemed to drain outwards. The roar of oblivion grew louder and louder. The undefinable grey loomed from everywhere.
“Your arrival exceeds expectations.” A voice hummed in his mind, booming and soothing all at once.
He felt his memories being drawn into the Entity, beginning with his recent ones of the last hours, then fragments connected to them. It wasn’t exactly painful, but it was certainly not comfortable.
“I knew-word would get out somehow. A phantom… interesting.”
It pulled memories associated with the topic of infiltration, memories from the heist Fire and Shadow had pulled off in the very early days of the server when they had stolen the Books of Knowledge from Rockhaven’s library.
“I expected scouts, saboteurs, an attempt on my life, even.”
It went on to draw more about the server, about Fire’s past. It came across early memories of Claw, then followed those to the fight in the snow world on his way home...
“Now, here is the-leader… of my enemies. The last who remain. I have crushed all others.”
...memories about Fire’s base… constructed with help... friends from Drandin. That was where it next pulled from the… from the deep mines of Drandin where all but the most powerful magic was drowned.
“Your revolutionary flame is only... cinders. Soon-you-will be mine. They will join you. Goodbye.”
Shadow’s ascension.
Suddenly it stopped. Fire was aware enough to notice it stopping, then the flow reversed, first an overwhelming sense of fear flooded into Fire, just familiar enough to be recognized as such but too alien to be experienced. Something about… what was that? Shadow’s ascension, that’s what caused the fear? Why? A foreign memory followed, a street in the village, a part of reality missing. Then, a room Fire did not recognize, a similar but smaller piece missing. Then, he saw himself, from the Entity’s point of view but not exactly. He was not flesh and blood, he was like a construct of energy like strings woven together into a doll. A singular thread going off into the distance. Fire did not know what this meant. Before he could think further his taken memories were forcibly pushed back into him, within seconds he was mostly aware again.
He heard Freak’s voice: “What? Why’d you stop?”
The Entity replied: “This is the…” It seemed to be looking for words. “Connected to the-scar. Not cause. Absorption danger-ous. There is… another. He will serve.”
What? Shadow caused the “scar”, that much was clear, but how was he connected to her other than being family? Before Fire had the chance to contemplate further, the Entity’s hand was on his forehead again, he felt another pull, this time inwards, into his own mind. It was a place he knew very well because he had built it himself. He was being drawn into Claw’s prison.
No, no, no! This is not happening, you’re not putting Claw in charge. Do you have any idea what he is?
The Entity replied: “Loy-al, if given… incentive.”
Fire was unable to form another coherent thought as the bars slammed down around him, he was now confined to the same small brain-space Claw occupied normally. Which meant…
Claw hadn’t felt this good in… Claw hadn’t ever felt this good! The closest was when he hunted his prey and partook in the feast of blood but this, this was better! Claw didn’t care who made him this way, but he decided that whoever they were, he owed them a whole lot and he was okay with that. Hunters had to look out for one another.
Claw opened his now-black eyes and looked around. He was standing in a room. Laboratory said his factual memory, or rather the factual memory of the other one. Yeah, it felt good to be in charge. There were several people standing here, a tall one right in front of him, the one who freed him. Another, similarly, tall next to it, wearing an expression of… shock, disappointment, that’s what it was. The third one was small and odd-looking, phantom. That one was absolutely ecstatic but tried to hide it. Then there was another one who seemed to be examining him from a distance.
Claw paid no mind to her, or any of them, this was his moment, the first one he could truly call his and his alone.
He exclaimed: “It’s Claw time, baby!”
Chapter 27: Calling up Demons (Warnado)
“I’m telling you, Fire should have sent me out,” Warnado said frankly.
Warnado sat in the training room, trying out a new technique he had come up with. He had his hand held in the shape of a gun and adjusted the size of the flame on the tip of his index finger.
Amanda nodded along unenthusiastically.
“Helix, I agree, your magic is unaffected by the crystals. You’re also much stealthier than Kay-”
“You are bowling a perfect game so far,” he laughed.
“But there’s a difference between stealing the keys to a fairly low-security prison and sneaking around the Entity’s inner sanctum.”
“EHHH! Sorry, you were doing so well. Better luck next time.”
She crawled over and placed a hand on his shoulder. She gave him a look that was simultaneously a warning and a display of affection. Her eyes squinted with a stiff, reluctant sternness.
“Helix,” she grunted and that was the only warning shot he needed.
“Okay,” he conceded. “I should have been sent because I’ve learned a lot since then. Yes, there’s been hiccups-” he instinctively, awkwardly glanced down at his gauntlet, “but I’m becoming a real powerhouse.”
Amanda looked at the now-invisible burns that had marked her palm and didn’t bother pointing that these hiccups had always needed to be resolved by someone else.
“You’re getting more powerful, but not more subtle” was the diplomatic solution she came up with.
“Oh really, watch this. Finger-point precision. Going to burn that dummy right between its eyes!”
He raised his hand and called out a spell. A great cascade of fire burst forth from his finger and scorched the dummy, not even reducing it to ash that could be swept up or blown away with a wind spell. Instead, there was a half-destroyed corpse of straw and flame which was upsettingly conspicuous and very hard to hide or explain. Amanda elbowed him in the ribs and waited open-armed for a concession.
“...Okay,” Warnado smiled. “You might have a point.”
“Funny, I thought so too.”
They laughed, and that was when Warnado noticed Shadow entering and walking right towards him.
“Hey sensei, how’re things?”
Shadow lifted her hand and pointed her palm at the burning dummy. Runes lit up along the skin of her arm that was not covered by her robes, a blindingly bright beam erupted from her palm and struck the dummy. When Warnado could see clearly again the dummy was gone, not just incinerated gone, but disintegrated gone. The magical barrier protecting the room took on a deep purple shade in the place it was struck by the beam.
Shadow took a deep breath and said: “Sorry, I needed that.”
Her hand was slightly trembling and Warnado knew something was wrong. Shadow had emphasized a lot just how functionally non-essential all of her bodily functions were. She didn’t need to eat or sleep, so Warnado could think of exactly no reason she would be trembling, that indicated one of two things.
Option one was that she was worried about her brother going off on a likely-suicidal mission. Option two took it as a sign that she had finally lost control of her magic and was going to explode with the force of a supernova at any second. These were not mutually exclusive.
He gave Amanda a panicked look and her patient scowl of chastisement convinced him option one was most likely. He nodded apologetically and turned his attention back to Shadow.
“No worries, as you could see, that dummy was pretty much finished anyway. Such a shame, he was two weeks from retirement…” He looked at his feet with mock mournfulness and Amanda snorted reluctantly. Dropping the act, he asked, “Anyway, what brings you here, Shadow?”
From seemingly nowhere Shadow produced a chest made from a dark-blue wood and began to rummage around inside.
“So,” Shadow said. “When summoning a demon, the most important step is preparation.”
“Okay. We’re doing this now... What’s this?”
Warnado’s eyes furrowed into a rigid line as he tried to process what was going on. Shadow wasn’t usually this curt.
“A lesson. On demon summoning.”
“Oh, okay!” Warnado squeaked, heartbeat quickening as his eyes were drawn down to the cursed gauntlet he wore. “I’ll talk to you in a bit Amanda?”
On the one hand, he really didn’t want her to leave, and he definitely didn’t want to jump back into demon magic after losing control during the ambush. On the other, Fire’s mission was clearly shaking Shadow’s usually unshakeable coolheadedness - not majorly but she was usually so detached that this agitation stood out like a sore thumb. Complying with her was the best way of helping her through this as painlessly as possible. She had done a lot for him, both as a teacher and in helping him come down from two demonic episodes. He owed her this.
Amanda nodded understandingly, waved goodbye and departed. As she reached the door, she threw an encouraging smile. Warnado couldn’t help but reflect on how lucky he was to have found her again.
He heard a thud and was ripped out of this sweet reflection. Shadow had taken a thick, leather-bound book from the chest and tossed it onto the ground. She drew out several pieces of chalk, then closed the chest.
Shadow opened the book and quickly flipped to a page somewhere near the beginning. The page had an illustration of what looked to be some kind of arrangement of symbols.
Shadow continued: “The first step in summoning a demon is knowing which one to summon, you usually get this either by reading demonology tomes such as this one or from personal experience. Knowing what kind of personality and traits a demon has is not only important for your well-being as a summoner but also for making sure the demon can actually manifest where you want it to.”
She made a set of low-quality iron armor appear in the same manner as the chest, it looked to be one of the near-rejects from their forge. Lucy had once decided to vent to Warnado about how she knew their apprentice blacksmiths were learning as quickly as they could, but she wished they’d learn a lot faster. Lucy took the safety of the soldiers incredibly seriously.
Shadow said: “We will skip the selection step since I already know this demon, it needs a set of armor to possess, its condition is secondary.” She pointed at the drawing in the book. “The next step is setting up the summoning circle and runes. This is a step many summoners either skimp out on or sometimes just plain screw up, it may be tedious and takes a while, but it is integral to your success. Incorrectly drawn lines and poorly selected runes can lead to unanswered summons or to the more hostile demons escaping.”
“Alright,” Warnado muttered tensely. “Anything specific about measurements I should know about? Any particular brand of chalk they like?”
Warnado’s mentor replied: “That depends, some demons require special chalks, others need the lines to be drawn in other things like mud but for most plain chalk is sufficient, the runes themselves are what matter.”
“And does the size of the runes matter? Could they theoretically be any size?”
He was surprised by how calmly he was handling this. It was just a bunch of runes and lectures. This he could deal with.
Shadow nodded. “In theory yes, however the actual summoning spot needs to leave enough space for the desired shape the demon should take. If you summon something that needs to take giant forms, you’ll need bigger runes. If you want a tiny demon, you can get away with smaller runes.”
“Oh okay. As smaller runes mean a smaller demon, we need circles roughly large enough for a creature that’ll fit in that suit of armor. I get you.”
“Yes.” Shadow started by drawing two simple concentric circles. “This demon is not very complicated in its rune requirements, but it’ll need a couple nonetheless.”
Shadow drew four identical runes on the sides of the circles.
“Wait.” Said Warnado. “I can read these, they just say ‘stay’, that’s all it takes?”
Shadow explained: “The runes used are written demonic language, each represents a different concept and applying the right combination allows you to establish a pre-contract of sorts. The known runes are not the complete set mind you, by its very nature these ones are very crude versions of their concepts. They need to be simple to be drawn in chalk, which is why the next step of the summoning is so important.”
Shadow drew a couple more runes, “dwelling”, “metal”, “work” and so on. Once they were done, she added some extra lines around the runed circle, including a bigger circle some distance away, which she placed the armor into.
She said: “The final step is instructing the demon, this is your task Warnado.”
And that’s where his heart began to pound away, each beat an earthquake in its own right.
“Most demons simply need to be told what exactly the purpose of their summoning is,” Shadow continued. “For specialized demons like this one it usually just comes down to ‘do your job, here is what else you need to be mindful of’. However, for more free-spirited or dangerous demons you’d need actual contracts that you need to check for loopholes and invalidating clauses. If worst comes to worst, you’ll be stuck in an hour-long debate on demon law.”
Warnado’s eyes kept darting toward the gauntlet on his arm. Images of the tin throne, and the shifting, half-complete creature that sat upon it, flashed before him. He felt the need to straighten up and look big and intimidating so it didn’t get any ideas. Suddenly it struck him that his legs were quivering a little, so he started pacing back and forth.
“Oh sure, the guy in the gauntlet is just a stickler for the law! Real fun debate that was!” thought Warnado
“During this time the demon is still bound by your runes and other containment measures if they are set up properly, you can send the demon back whenever you want as long as no actual contract is formed, which is nearly impossible to do on accident since the demonic language bypasses any tricky wordings our languages have.”
Warnado couldn’t keep quiet anymore.
“Couldn’t you summon this yourself?” he pleaded.
Shadow said: “That was the intention, I’d do the summoning you’d do the instruction. While Wodahs can speak demon in theory, demons usually don’t take instructions from something that is neither human nor a demon.”
Warnado was panicking, now. He remembered the overpowering heat. How he’d pleaded at the foot of the tin throne to no avail.
“Can’t it speak English?”
“Demons speak many languages, but they will only accept instructions in their own, it’s part established protocol and part insurance. Using the demonic language both guarantees the demons can’t use any double meanings or word trickery to scam the summoner, but it works both ways, no tricking demons into bottles to grant wishes.”
He tried to nod along, then hung his head.
“...I can’t do this,” Warnado conceded and turned away. “Let’s do this another evening. There has to be something else you can teach me.”
Shadow suddenly raised her voice. “Warnado, this isn’t just a lesson. We need this demon to assist our smiths, you heard Lucy. If our troops don’t have proper armor, they’ll get themselves torn apart for nothing! You can’t make this about you!”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. This was the angriest he had ever heard her, and he was suddenly glad he couldn’t see her expression.
He whirled around to see her clutching her face with one hand. He felt as though he hadn’t eaten for days, his torso full of sharp, stabbing pains.
She slowly said: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m just… just so worried about Fire and I let that influence me. I’m not being a good mentor right now.”
“No, no,” Warnado mumbled. “I am making this about me. Summon it.”
He breathed deeply and braced himself, trying to remember the way Wodahs spoke and testing a few key words. The words came naturally to him as he thought of them, as though he’d always known the language deep down and only needed someone to remind him it was there.
“I’m ready.”
Shadow reached into the chest once again, this time she pulled out a sheet of paper.
“I already wrote down what you need to convey in advance. This demon shouldn’t be difficult, I worked with it before, and it has proven to be reliable.”
“Sounds…” He scanned the page. It was difficult. His eyes kept slipping around and reading the line before or after. Finally, he had the gist.
“Sounds doable.”
Shadow positioned herself in front of the rune circle and raised her hands, her runes lighting up as she focused her magic. Warnado could practically feel the veil thinning between here and wherever the demon came from. A small ember appeared in the circle and rapidly grew into a vaguely person-shaped flame-thing. Shadow returned to a normal posture and gestured to Warnado.
“Your part starts here.” She said.
“Hello,” Warnado said in the stiff, strange demonic tongue.
The flame-thing nodded what could be interpreted as a head. “Greetings.”
"Okay.” He pulled out the note and recited. “The armor you need is in that other circle, you can possess it as soon as we have a contract. Help our blacksmiths out and instruct apprentices, obey instructions given by section leaders and anyone further up in the chain of command.”
“Clear enough, is that all?” it shrugged.
Silence hung in the air. The demon didn’t seem aggressive, just sort of bored. It began to tap its almost-foot, sending up a small spray of sparks about.
“I think so…” Warnado trailed off. Then, he laughed nervously. “Oh, and feel free to whistle while you work!”
The demon began to slowly flow along the lines connecting its circle to the one with the armor. Then, it simply filtered in through the gaps. The armor began to glow with a deep purple flame Warnado had come to associate with the demons, and he watched it march off with purpose.
“Should we follow it?” he asked Shadow.
“We can if you want to watch it work,” she answered.
And with that they set off at a leisurely place and quite directly travelled to the armory. It had marched there on instinct, without making a single wrong turn. Warnado knew better than to ask why: magic was the answer, however unsatisfying.
It immediately moved up to an empty anvil and began beating some iron into shape with its hands, its flames melting the metal down into a molten soup. To this soup it added chunks of obsidian and sprinkled in blaze powder, from the resulting alloy it created miniscule threads with its hands and wove them together.
“Firesteel,” Shadow said, as though it explained everything.
And sure enough, after a few minutes, the demon began to whistle in its own strange way, strange hisses and cracks harmonizing with the central melody. It was positively benign.
“Are many of them this docile?” Warnado asked distantly.
He just couldn’t reconcile this remarkably normal creature with the tin throne, or the avatar of flame he’d assumed, or his father’s corpse… It was like a square peg in a round hole. A piece of a jigsaw puzzle that had gotten mixed into a pizza box instead of one of the slices.
“Demons are like us in a way. Most of them don’t leave their home dimension at all, those that do usually do so for a reason. Some are interested in us and our culture, others enjoy specific tasks like this one, of course there will also be ones who come for sadistic reasons, enjoying suffering of mortals and all that. Their reasons are as varied as the demons themselves, it seems you encountered mostly bad ones so far, especially the one sitting on the other end of your gauntlet.”
“You got that right…”
And they sat there for a little bit, until Shadow finally spoke.
“If it’s alright with you, we might need to summon more demons, Lucy would appreciate some alleviated pressure. Maybe once you’re more comfortable you can do more parts of the ritual...” she stopped, her eyes widened. “The first note from Fire just arrived, come Warnado, we need to get the others!”
Without one word further, they were on their feet and running to learn what had happened.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 4 Escalation (Cont.)
Chapter 28: Notes (Astro)
I recapture some of my former energy as Shadow comes in the door. Try to be helpful. Since Fristad died I’m trying to be a little more involved again. I - I let the “training room incident” knock me down and I’ve mostly just stood around looking morose when I should be trying to save lives.
Even though nothing I do will influence the outcome of whatever happens in the Tower, I have control over what happens here and now. I have to guide our response. Make it responsible. What Fire has done is not responsible - it’s desperate. But it must just pay off…
I shoot a look at Kay. He has his nose buried in the Book and he’s stroking his beard. I look away before he notices.
“If Fire doesn’t make it,” I realise. “That’s our leader.”
And with that cheery thought I turn to Fire’s sister. An uncharacteristic tension mars her pitch-dark features. I’ve seen her walk off being impaled with mild irritation. She’s nervous. It must be awful.
Some dark part of me thinks, “Perfect opportunity to extract her dark secrets. Get even.” In retaliation, the better parts of me loathe themselves.
Fire’s room is full of redstone contraptions, tools and not much else. Aside from the bed there’s just circuits drawn and made all over the floor. Blueprints of the base, with potential future expansions traced out and pinpointed. Scattered notes are pinned into them, written in half sentences.
As I approach Shadow, I’m careful not to trip over a lever that is attached to a series of pistons and slime blocks. A yellowing note is glued into the wood frame. It reads: “rudimentary flying machine - finish sometime. Bombs maybe?”
I gesture to the line of claws holding ender pearls on a counter. The first of these opened not too long ago, materialising a note where the pearl impacted. A note that I was now holding in my hand.
“What does it say?” Shadow asks.
That tallies. She sensed it come in. Should have known her arrival wasn’t by chance. Warnado sprints up behind her. Tyron is out gathering everyone else.
“Hey Astro,” Warnado pants, hands on his knees. “Give me a second… I swear I’ll have a killer gag once I catch my breath.”
I decide to ignore that, though I hear Kay snort in the background.
I hold out the note. I recall the posture the officers of the Zine Craft forced us to learn and try to recapture some of its stiff efficiency.
“Invisibility is done but camo’s still working. No need to alter the plan so far. He’s currently in material storage and following the signage.”
Shadow stretches out and scrutinises the note as though it’s a dubious permit. She hands it back to me and then walks straight over to the counter.
“How long until the next?” she asks, squinting at the claws with the same suspicion.
“Three minutes,” I say.
Warnado walks up. He’s got a grin on his face, and I can tell he’s about to reference something none of us, possibly not even he, understands. He opens his mouth.
“So-”
I place a hand on his chest and stop his advance. He looks at me quizzically and is greeted by urgently upstretched eyebrows and gritted teeth. He cocks his head defiantly and looks at Kay. My old friend, concealing himself from Shadow’s eyes behind the cover of the book, shakes his head and mouths the words “Not the time!” Warnado surrenders. He says nothing more.
Over the course of the next few minutes, Steve, Jennifer and Voidblade arrive. The next pearl drops from the claw with the signature ender pearl teleportation noise.
“Still alive,” says Fire from afar. No more. No less.
Destiny comes in. She smells like alcohol. Not terribly or anything. She’s not swaying or stumbling or slurring her speech, but there’s a film of slight inebriation over her. Everything seems a little muted for her, and it shows. She seems too casual. She goes out for walks to mods know where a lot and comes back like this. Mostly since Fristad died. It’s not a problem but...
I wish I could take her aside and talk about how she is but there are more pressing matters. It wouldn’t help anyway. She just hadn’t been that close with Tyron and I, despite our shared captivity.
Urist jogs in with dwarven stoicism, obviously pained but trying to grin. Voidblade warps in and takes up a stance in the corner, away from the humans.
A third sheet materialises as the pearl drops out of its allocated claw and shatters. Shadow snatches up the paper and reads it aloud, marching off into a corner.
“Dr. Veronica Mercury (science head) apparently sleep deprived. Looking into whatever Shadow did to distract her and the Ender during the raid. Apparently obsessed. Orders from the Entity to prioritize over the machine. Freak telling employees rumors/secrets in exchange for fear. Someone named Clark Belmont is stealing snacks (probably not relevant but written for completeness).”
She lowers the sheet and nods. Tyron arrives and Kay summarises what has just been said.
“Is there a way we could exploit Mercury’s sleep deprivation?” the Dragoknight asks.
“Harassment campaign perhaps?” I offer, pondering as I say it how we would get near enough to make that work.
“She came to check out the anomaly you created, Shadow?” Warnado suggests with surprising calmness. “Could create a series of them, see if she takes an interest? Entity’s obsessed after all.”
Tyron ruffles his hood approvingly and Kay pats him on the back. Jennifer shoots him an approving thumbs-up and, realising I haven’t done anything, I clumsily extend my hand and raise a thumb so as not to be rude. Steve stares off into the distance.
“I might, if I can be sure that it won’t draw attention here,” she answers.
“Would we want to kill her or capture her?” Destiny asks with a flat shrug, preemptively indicating she had no qualms about doing the job herself.
“Fristad mentioned Belmont,” says Steve without suggestion.
The conversation continues in the same vein. Rose arrives and eyes the redstone awkwardly. Eventually she takes up a seat on the bed, eyes sweeping the room with a frustrated confusion. It strikes me that she knew substantially less than most about redstone’s function when I first met her. I’m no expert, but she barely seemed familiar with the idea of circuitry.
“Low-tech world?” I ponder.
Amanda enters and joins Warnado. He takes her aside and starts whispering excitedly. I catch the gist of it thanks to a magically-enhanced curiosity. He’s pleased to have proposed a strategy people seem to like. Amanda is proud of him. I retune my hearing before someone can drop a glass and deafen me.
“Shadow’s not the only one who can eavesdrop,” I ***** internally. One look at Shadow pacing immediately makes me feel terrible about it.
Note four arrives. He’s killed someone. A guard with crystals. Jennifer prods Steve and mentions the crystals they had experimented on back in the village. The crystals that the Entity had tried to steal from them. Steve places an ender chest demonstratively, breaks it and falls back into inaction.
I inspect him. He’s slumped from his anger into an indeterminate, paralysing sadness. The bargaining phase of grief is over, and he’s gotten a raw deal. I know a little too well what comes next.
Notes five and six are basic status updates. A slight change of course here, a ‘still alive’ there. The lack of bad news is almost worse than receiving it. I get a hold of the ‘still alive’ message and start thinking about what a low bar that sets for good news.
My attention is drawn to the memory of the Void. I have begun to think about it less, but it still lingers. The dreams grow stranger and stranger. I am many different people or none. Always pursuing some treasure I never see. Maybe it doesn’t exist. I ponder what this tear in existence might be trying to communicate. Is it a metaphor, perhaps?
The tension is spreading across the entire room. Discussion of Warnado’s strategy has petered out. Shadow and Kay are pacing in opposite trajectories, the latter periodically ripping the Book out of his pocket and glaring at its pages silently. Tyron polishes Kir in the corner. Urist and Jennifer inspect the ‘flying machine’. I wait.
Note seven arrives. The sound of glass shattering awakens everyone from this agitated stupor we’ve all drifted off into. Tyron is nearest, but he holds off on grabbing the note from the pearl’s remains.
Shadow takes it as before. The look on her face is enough to tell me something has gone dreadfully wrong.
Her hair begins to rise up, as though the room were slowly filling with water. Her already shadow-like skin somehow descends to a shade beyond darkness. Her eyes are like stars, burning and terrible.
“Get back,” I warn.
I recall the gaping emptiness she had shown me, and I still feel unprepared. Kay puts the Book away and reaches for his sword.
Suddenly, Shadow stabilises. Her skin returns to its normal pitch black. Her hair drops like a collapsing roof. She’s shaking, but she holds out the note.
Tyron takes it up. Reads it.
“He’s been ‘caught’,” he sighs. He tries to read the rest, but no one pays him much heed. Kay groans and rubs his temples. Everyone else falls into different degrees of shock, unable to speak. Steve looks like Fristad has died all over again.
“What?” asks a voice from the door.
I look up. Lucy stands in the doorway, gripping her ever-present notebook with white knuckles. A tear runs down her cheek.
“Fire has been captured,” responds Kay with a reluctant certitude, a distant sincerity. “I understand if this is difficult for you. Anyone who needs a moment to process this, please, feel free to step outside. We’ll wait for you before we make any decisions.”
Lucy nods and takes a step into the hall. Steve goes too. Voidblade, reluctantly takes a step outside, but looks back at Kay with discerning, suspicious eyes before slouching out mournfully. Urist, somehow weighed closer than ever to the ground by sadness, leaves with them.
“Brainstorming here: I say we make an announcement immediately,” Kay states. “Honesty wins the troops over.”
“There’ll be mass panic,” I retort with habitual cynicism. I wonder at how easily I slot back into my role as the flint off which he strikes ideas. “Leader of the rebellion is gone. You need something more than honesty.”
“So, we need a task,” he paces in a little circle, then points at Shadow. “It would help if we knew if Fire was ‘caught’, ‘captured’ or…” he trailed off with an emphatic lowering of his hand.
“I don’t think he’s dead, otherwise...” Shadow says, unusually quietly.
I remember the gaping, abyssal glimpse Shadow had given me of the Void. How, just there, she had threatened to cede to it entirely. To allow this creeping nothingness into our world of things. The Entity is obsessed with what she did in the village, according to Fire’s notes. Is that fascination? Anger? Fear? It occurs to me that she’s losing control. Shadow, so long the crystalline voice of reason, might prove to be a time bomb.
Kay nods empathetically.
“That’s good. Whatever we do next needs to appear as a step toward rescuing him. A clear message: no man left behind. But what?”
He’s pacing again in a shrinking spiral. I remember him doing this many times while we were wandering the world after the Onslaught. For him that’s all recent - he’s still in the habit. He picked it up from an early commanding officer. Treats the spiral like the fuse on a bomb. He must have a solution before he’s reached the centre or the bomb goes off.
“Anyone we could kidnap?” Jennifer asks with uncharacteristic coldness. “Exchange hostages. We could threaten to kill Silver, maybe? No, he’s too small to matter to them.”
“Glibby will have denounced him as a traitor by now, as well,” I concede. “He’ll have needed a patsy.”
“Have the scouts identified any facilities we could attack?” Jennifer presses.
“So far, only patrols, a few trading posts, an outpost,” Tyron rattles off a few more. “The substantial targets Silver’s told us about are all either surrounding the Tower or off-world. The Entity knows how to centralise power.”
“Nothing sufficient to motivate people. We’d have desertions up the wazoo by midday tomorrow,” Kay grunts. “Unless we just say screw it and hit the Tower.”
“We’re not strong enough to attack the Tower yet,” says Destiny with less tension than the rest of us, perhaps even with an aloof amusement. “It would be suicide. If we used the portal from my world as a backdoor, we’d be flying blind. Even assuming we recovered Fire, the army would never forgive us for the casualties to save just one life. As you said, desertions up the wazoo.”
“Wait! Warnado, your idea from earlier!”
Kay whips the finger over to the demon-child with inspiration.
“The anomalies,” he continues. “The Entity’s obsessed.”
“Yeah?” Warnado stammers.
“The one in the village,” nods Amanda with unsurprised comprehension. I’m surprised she’s picked it up before me. “It’s certainly close to the tower.”
“We attack the village!” Kay yelps in ecstatic revelation. “We establish a beach-head from which to rescue Fire and all the while we-”
“-Investigate just why it’s so worried about what Shadow did there,” I say, the excitement of a way out seizing me too.
“Precisely!” Kay cheers, lifting Warnado into a firm hug. The demon-mage laughs in confusion. He plants him down and leaps onto Fire’s bed. “We have the advantage of framing it as a first step toward the rescue of our commander, a first step toward learning the enemy’s weakness and toward stopping the machine.”
I recall his days of rabble-rousing. His impassioned appeals against the Brotherhood in the early days of our new life in the Vanilla Craft, rousing people to join him in vanquishing the threat. I remember how many of them survived.
But my cynicism cannot shake my nostalgia. I was the one who made him aware of the Brotherhood’s attacks on my newfound territory. He fought to defend me and many other innocents besides. I can still make excuses for him at that point. We were still the good guys.
“So, we clarify the machine’s purpose?” asks Destiny. “You sure that’s wise.”
Kay pauses, swallows gravely and nods.
“Yes. We’ll say near enough exactly what has happened. Honesty will win the troops. Won’t reveal the Lady yet, but say Silver finally cracked. Takes less explaining. I’ll also lean on the image of the martyr Fire, who went off upon learning of this existential threat to risk it all and confirm our fears.”
There is a knock at the door. Steve wants to be let back in, sad as a limping dog. Others are behind him. Lucy and those others who ‘needed a moment’. It occurs to me what Kay has done.
“Naturally,” he says. “We have to persuade the others first.”
And he does so.
###
It has taken two hours to set things up. Magic and the Brines were essential. Banquet tables everywhere, well-laden with food. Wine abounds. This is how he did it in Gaia when he ran the Mining District. Banquet, toast where he announces the bad news, resolute path forward. A few social gatherings without a point so they don’t catch on to the pattern. Kay was lucky King Peter kept bankrolling them, let alone name him heir.
We don’t join them. Not this time. Lucy stands to the right of the podium. The rest of us stand on the stage in a line. Kay occupies the centre and I stand to his left. Shadow is beside me with a thousand-yard stare. Warnado is on Kay’s right. Tyron on his. Aside from Shadow, Fire’s affiliates (Voidblade, Urist and Rose) are banished to the fringes of the line. Kay has surrounded himself in his inner circle.
Before I was transported here, Aaron told me he’d formed a similar circle with which to plot against the Brotherhood, even though we needed their help to take down Dominus. I’m happy my captivity spared me the pain of being captain of that ill-fated crew. The Divines couldn’t have spared me that only to inflict it here, could they?
But no, he isn’t that man yet, I hope. I pray silently, looking to the sky and trying to mask my fear in irritated boredom.
I look for the Prophet. I see him and the other Steve, his bodyguard, on the jungle-coated ridge. They loom and assess. We haven’t told them what happened yet.
He nods to Lucy. She raises her hands, calms the crowd. Kay steps forward to the podium. He speaks. He explains to them the threat they face. The machine that will collapse all worlds into one under the Entity’s tyranny. That we had no choice but to act as we have. I wonder if that is true. If waiting a day or two longer wouldn’t have provided a better solution, but it seems unlikely.
“Your commander, our Fire, went out to verify the reports. In a daring espionage mission, he has snuck into the Tower itself. And thanks to him, we have intelligence about the functioning of the machine, its location and the concern of the enemy. Moreover, we have at last have figured out why they put so much effort into defending the village. Why they hounded you from it only to turn back and fortify. Congregation of the Prophet, we believe we may soon find the Entity’s weakness!”
A steward with a torch passes the line of swordsmen before the stage, and my eye is drawn to the transitory glare it creates on their helmets. They kneel in supplication, blades drawn and facing the crowd.
Cheers sound out from the crowd. It appears crowd control is unnecessary. For the moment.
I imagine them rushing the stage. Imagine them tearing us all limb from limb for daring to grant them hope. With the timebomb Shadow to my left, and the condemned tyrant to my right, I am afraid.
The image of the gaping Void burns behind my eyes.
“But this came at a cost: they have captured him.”
There is panic, but somehow, I am calm. The bodyguard places a hand on the Prophet’s shoulder, face agonised. Kay remains steadfast, gestures for calm. He nods to Lucy and the line of swordsmen rise and begin to pound rhythmically upon their shields. It is like the sound of an army marching. Kay steps out in front of the podium, leans back calmly on it.
“We have a plan as to how to proceed next. We shall rally and, while our enemy believes us decapitated, storm the village from which we fled. From there, we will have a beachhead to assault the Tower, rescue our commander and stop the machine.
“The Entity fortified this village, halted its pursuit of us, because it was scared. It is terrified of a spell that was cast there, and we need to figure out the nature of its fear. Once we know why it is afraid, this being, this thing, shall just be another enemy to vanquish.
“You are strong. You have trained. Come from oppression and improved faster than any army I have seen. I served alongside gods, and I can safely say I have never been more honoured to serve alongside anyone but the soldiers of this army. And I know you must be afraid, disoriented by this news at least, but I believe in you. I trust you. We trust in your abilities, or we would not ask you to do this.
“But our opinion only matters so much. What says the Prophet?”
A crowd is gathering in front of the stage with tentative anger, but now they are diverted to the Prophet’s ridge. Kay closes his eyes, spreads his arms and kneels to wait for the verdict. It all hinges on this.
The Prophet shambles forward, mouth ajar.
“The Champion of Life and Death shall be freed!” He shakes from the effort of his declaration and receded looked ecstatic. Tears of joy line his face as he beams at the sight of this future victory. Steve the bodyguard wraps his cloak around his charge and supports his faltering stance.
This approval granted, the crowd is ecstatic, singing and cheering anew.
“In the meantime,” Kay announces. “I shall be taking over from Fire, but this means we need a new second-in-command.”
My heart becomes leaden, feels like it’s trying to shatter my ribs. This is it. My final punishment. I pray it truly is final.
“Tyron Dragoknight, an expert in combat magic shall fill this role.”
My execution stayed, I look around in astonishment. Tyron is gravely serious but unfazed. He steps forward. Makes a speech about Fire and how they know each other. About the man who succeeds him, recommending him. He tells tales of heroism past and future. Speaks about courage and virtue and perseverance. Brandishes Kir aloft, and finishes.
And with that, we depart from the stage. Our line fragments into little groups, all aware of how important the coming battle is.
I take Tyron aside. We wait until the others are gone. I don’t cast a charm. Shadow can eavesdrop all she likes. I don’t care.
“What is it?”
I heave a great amount of air into me to proof against the breath-robbing sorrow that will come. Against the great tightening my lungs will experience. Against the desire to not speak at all.
“It’s time I told you the truth about Kay,” I say.
“I see,” Tyron nods. Kir is silent.
And so, I begin.
Chapter 29: A New Colleague (The Ender)
The last twenty-four hours at the Tower had been eventful, in fact, the word “eventful” vastly understated the amount of things that had happened. It had all started when the Ender was called into the sanctum of the Tower’s laboratory, the very core of the science division. She hadn’t been there often before, usually she met with Dr. Mercury in other parts of the laboratory or her private quarters. This time had been different, the call had come from the Entity itself.
When she teleported there, the Ender had found to her great annoyance that a fire had triggered the sprinklers, her exposed scales had immediately started burning and itching when they came in contact with the fine water droplets. Freak had been there too, and Dr. Mercury and the Entity obviously. What had completely taken her aback was that Fire had been there as well. To top it all off Fire had called her by her real name, completely breaking any composure she had left after teleporting into a soaking wet room.
However, things had not stopped there, quite far from it. The Entity had picked Fire up and started absorbing him, something it did only rarely. Usually it only possessed people, which left them completely bound to its will but still able to separate later, with varying degrees of physical and mental scarring. Absorption was a different story, someone who was absorbed would permanently become part of the Entity, transferring all of their memories over. Absorption was usually only used as a threat since it left the Entity in turmoil while it sorted its new acquisitions.
Some minutes into the process the Entity had suddenly stopped, then said something about that dimensional scar she and Dr. Mercury had seen in the village. Fire was connected to it, which made sense since that scar had been created by that strange mage Shadow, who somehow was Fire’s sister.
The Entity hadn’t quite explained what it had done after that, but it had done something. Fire’s eyes had gone from red to black and he himself had changed too. Apparently, Fire had some kind of second personality that the Entity had brought into control, that personality called himself Claw and apparently did not share Fire’s memories.
Claw was… peculiar. Referred to himself as a hunter commonly and had almost no recollection of his past, almost as if he’d spontaneously come into existence. However, he apparently had access to an encyclopedic repository of knowledge, all of which seemed to be entirely new to him. He seemingly understood some of the near-incomprehensible concepts that Dr. Mercury had excitedly talked about, then the next minute asked a series of completely mundane questions.
The important part was that he was now part of the Entity’s inner circle, on the same level as the Ender herself. Somehow this irked her less than it should have. The Entity had its reasons.
A large part of the following day had been spent showing Claw around the various parts of the Tower. The Ender would have liked to say that he was a quick learner, but it seemed that rather than properly learning some of the things she told him, he instead acted as if he had known them but was just now remembering them again. It wasn’t some act like Glibby would put on when faced with things new to him, It was how he functioned, for better or for worse.
He’d say things like “Yeah, biometric door locks.” and “An interactive display, got it.”
He was apparently taking these bits of information from Fire’s memory, like they weren’t there at his disposal but needed drawing out first. At least it simplified a lot of the explaining, especially when they got to Dimensions, Research and Command and Control.
Outside of his tendencies to suddenly remember complex concepts that took many at least a few days to begin to grasp, Claw was surprisingly unrefined. He seemed to understand professionalism but at the same time it was difficult to tell how seriously he was taking everything. The Ender supposed it was only expected for someone who had only properly existed for a day.
When they were finally done with their tour they stopped at the Ender’s office.
As soon as he saw the room, Claw stated: “Nice place, a bit barren though.”
The Ender replied: “It’s my office, not my living quarters. No place for distractions here.”
She walked over to one of her shelves and started searching for a specific folder, which she found within the first few seconds. She sat down at her table and opened the folder.
Claw asked: “So what exactly are we doing here?”
The Ender said: “This is the floor plan of this sector of the Tower, the Entity said you’ll be in charge of leading military matters. That is currently my job, so I imagine we’ll be working together. For that we’ll need to find you an empty room where we can set up an office for you.”
Claw nodded and pulled up his own chair directly next to the Ender. With all of the things he somehow knew, personal space seemed to be an unknown concept to him. The Ender was composed enough not to feel too uncomfortable, it helped that… “Okay, I need to have a serious talk with myself about this before I start here.”
“Yes,” she reluctantly thought to herself. “I may have taken a very slight liking to Fire. Probably more than very slight. Who could blame me? You don’t run into someone like that any day. Intelligent, composed, skilled, quite attractive on top of it and not to mention older than my recorded history.” Yes, it was true. The Ender quite liked Fire, however the man next to her was decidedly not Fire, physically he was but definitely not mentally. Claw was nothing like Fire when it came to his personality, all that experience and knowledge she had felt when they discussed the topic of portals to outer worlds, not there, at least not exactly. It was like Claw was using Fire’s memories like a book, like second-hand thoughts. No, her relationship with Claw would be strictly professional in nature. “That’s something I might not be able to say if it was actually Fire.” She recomposed herself fully. There would be no further thoughts going down that line.
Claw seemed oblivious to the slight grimaces that had flashed over the Ender’s face as she thought, which was honestly for the best.
She pointed at one of the rooms near her office. “That one is close, quite spacious and usually quiet.”
Claw took a quick look, then said: “Sure, sure. I’m not picky, any room will do. What about sleeping?”
The Ender said: “You can either choose to sleep in the barracks or get your own private room, we have a couple unoccupied ones.”
Claw replied: “Private room it is, no sense in picking worse conditions if better ones are there.”
That was surprisingly quick.
Claw asked: “So, is that private room ready? I’m getting the distinct feeling that the other one was awake for a while before this, starting to get seriously tired.”
The other one was what Claw called Fire, he knew his name but still preferred the phrase, as if he wanted to distance himself. The Ender wondered if somehow the two of them had directly interacted before.
It made sense for Claw to be tired, apparently Fire had quite a few potions coursing through his bloodstream, which had worn off by now. Dr. Mercury had taken a blood sample from Claw and had passed it along to one of her assistant researchers, who had told the Ender about the potions.
“Yes, the room should be ready. Just ask Administration for your key and the room’s location, you know how to get there?”
Claw got up from his chair, turned to leave and said: “Sure, can’t be that hard to find. Anyways, see you around. I need to get some sleep in and…” He tapped his head. “Get my things in order.”
And with that Claw was gone. The Ender wondered just what would happen over the course of the next few days. Claw had no real experience but if he got better at using what Fire left him, they’d have a great asset on their hands. Those revolutionaries were in for one hell of a time now that there were not one but two heads working against them. Technically four heads but Freak and Glibby didn’t count for different reasons. If nothing else, the Tower and her work had gotten a whole lot more interesting.
Chapter 30: The Inner Circle (Steve)
“Steve, some soup from the canteen,” Jennifer prompted.
Steve looked up with pleading eyes. He couldn’t eat at a time like this. He couldn’t drink. He couldn’t sleep. He didn’t understand how anyone could do anything.
Fristad was dead, and Fire was on his way to join him. Their only option was effectively busywork carried out in the hope that maybe, by some unlikely chance, they would stumble across the Entity’s weakness and be able to exploit it in time to stop his machine. The universe itself was dying, and he didn’t see how anything he did could shape that.
But then his eyes met Jennifer’s, and he saw the concern in her eyes, and he took the bowl for her sake. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up.
He took a spoonful and it reminded him of the soup he’d shared with Fristad on the day the Prophet came back.
“It tastes great,” he lied.
He felt ill.
“Steve, we’ve got to keep fighting,” Jennifer told him. “Just like we did against the undead army, against Drake and against Herobrine. The bodies kept piling up then, they’re going to keep piling up now unless we act.”
“And suppose I don’t want to be part of that cycle anymore?” Steve seethed. “Suppose we succeed, we kill the Entity? What then? Wait until the next bad guy shows up? Another lull of a few weeks before I’m put through the Nether all over again?”
“Steve-” Jennifer sighed, obviously disappointed, but Steve needed to yell at someone, and she was there. Consequence be damned.
“Why is it always my job to fix everything?”
“Steve, listen-”
“No, Jen, you listen! I put so much work into being nice old Steve - great hero, perfect boyfriend - and all I get is people like you condescending to me. You think I’m an idiot.”
He saw her with her eyes closed and lips pursed, breathing angrily through her nose. He relented. “Okay - okay! I’m sorry, I’m being a jerk. I blew up and that was wrong, but don’t you see what I’m saying-”
“Steve,” she grimaced. “We have a visitor.”
She grunted and gestured over to the door. Kay stood there, making a show of pretending to read the Book and not notice what was going on. He felt ashamed.
“Steve,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you alone.”
Steve let his eyes sink, nodding as he did so. He muttered, “I’m sorry” and followed Kay. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Jennifer brushing her red hair out of her eyes and set about rearranging the bed.
There was so much more he should have said to her: “You absolutely are right. We have to keep fighting.” “I shouldn’t be talking to you like you haven’t been through all this too. As though you weren’t there from the second, I called on you.” “As though I’m the only one it affects.” “I love you.” “I don’t want to lose you.” “I am afraid, but we are here.” All these would have been good. He resolved to say at least one the second he came back.
Kay drew him out into the hallway and started marching off briskly, and Steve’s mind immediately switched lanes from guilt to accusation. Kay’s stupid plan had killed Fristad, and he was going to get a piece of his mind. And now Kay was going to lord Steve’s frailty over him, scold him or something stupid. Use it as an opportunity to stomp down the opposition. He had already taken advantage of him needing a moment to canvas half the group, Jennifer included.
“Thank you for coming with me,” he said. “I understand that was not the best moment, but it’s a situation of some urgency. I have much to say to you-”
“-Yeah, and I have a lot to say to you, asshole!” Steve barked, skipping over the slow rise Kay obviously hoped to establish. He wouldn’t get the rhythm he wanted to his reprimand.
“Very well,” he conceded, hanging his head. “Say it, if you must.”
This stopped Steve for a second. He had expected Kay to shout back. Maybe this was a trap, but he decided to resume his shouting. He weighed his words, and then began to tear into him.
“You’re loving this, aren’t you? Fire gone, Fristad dead, Shadow and I falling apart in all of the craziness? This is your fantasy.”
“Care to back that up, Steve?” Kay growled.
“Yeah! I think I will,” he pressed. “This is your fantasy because you hated Fire. You were supposed to be the Prophet’s champion and you got passed over because Fire was better, stronger and kinder than you without even trying. You hated Fristad because he reminded you of how weak you are. He reminds you of when you were just going to work with the Entity because you were too much of a coward to fight him-”
“-I didn’t know he was a threat.”
“You didn’t know because you didn’t want to see! You tried to side with the Entity and only turned on him when you realised your friend was in danger. You pressed this dumb ‘lead from the front’ style of leadership just because you were bitter about losing the election and wanted to reassure yourself you were still ‘really in charge’ or something. And the way you treated Fristad was just despicable! First you ostracise him for turning into an enderman, then you profited from the Dreamweaver thing, forming an alliance with the creature that tormented him for months! And now, because of your plan, he’s dead!”
Kay was silent. The redstone lamp overhead flickered a little, and made Kay’s features appear to move in subtle, incremental twitches Steve couldn’t be sure had really happened.
“Yeah, Glibby dealt the punch but your decision to leave two kids and a shepherd in charge of the most important strategic target of the raid is what killed him. I know you want us all to just forget about that and every other sucky thing you’ve done since arriving here, but I won’t. There is blood on your hands, and I am not letting you just dance off to your next screw-up with a big speech and a fake accent.”
Silence followed Steve’s outburst. Then, that silence lingered. Then, Kay said “Steve” and cut himself off.
“Steve,” he said, in a brogue the young Brine had only heard him slip into during fleeting peaks of joy and momentary troughs of anger. “You’re right.”
“I’m what?”
“You’re right. As much as I try to posture like one, I’m not a hero like you. I’m just a soldier, and a mercenary one at that. I’m opportunistic, I’m short-sighted, I’m arrogant. I try to move on quickly from my mistakes, so no one notices them. I treated Fire like trash. And, above all, Fristad’s death is on my hands. I should have listened to you. We have an army, and it’s time to use it. I want you to lead the vanguard, and I want you to help me plan this.”
“Oh… what about Jennifer?”
“Steve, Jennifer is fantastic. She’s level-headed and she’s kind. But she’s not what I need at the top table. I need the guy who killed the Wither, the Ender Dragon and Herobrine. Are you still that guy?”
Steve paused.
“Yes.”
“Then come with me.”
One short, silent walk later, Kay and Steve entered the command room. A small cabal was gathered. Astro and Tyron whispered by the furnace and stopped abruptly as Steve entered. Destiny sat at the table, poring over maps. Rose stood over in the corner, throwing knives at a bullseye.
“No Warnado?” Steve asked, genuinely surprised.
Kay looked back sadly:
“Like you said, he’s only a kid.”
Kay walked into the centre of the room.
“Time to plan our reckoning. Who wants to go first?”
Chapter 31: New Experiences (Claw)
Claw woke up roughly six hours after he had moved into his private room. That was all the sleep he needed. He knew this, but he didn’t remember ever having properly slept before, it had only ever been a hunt followed by being imprisoned again. Claw’s memory of the hunts was hazy at best, he only remembered small fragments. The pain of a weapon here, the rush of a kill there, maybe a split-second image of the face of his prey. Just for how long had this gone on?
The voice in his head, which wasn’t quite his, answered his question: “Three-thousand five-hundred and seventy-two years.”
Great. So, the other one had kept him locked up for that long, perhaps longer even. Claw knew the other one was older than that, he also knew that he had been created by him in a way. That he had existed as even less than he had been while he was caged. The time that the voice told him must have been when he hunted for the first time.
Claw had tried to despise the other one, hate him but he somehow couldn’t. To hate you needed a clear vision of the object of your ire. Other than the body he was now inhabiting, Claw knew very little about who the other one was. All Claw knew were facts, about almost anything he laid his eyes on or thought about. That he could shatter his bedside table with his bare hands and exactly how much force was needed to do so. That his body had three hearts. That his claws were in fact a telescoping arrangement of small prisms made from an almost unbreakable material. That retreat was a perfectly reasonable thing to do in battle and a well-organized one could do more damage to an enemy force than a head-on confrontation if correct preparation and follow-up steps were taken. That brewing hypermobility potion derivatives was a hazardous endeavor that could end up stranding you in another world… huh, that one was oddly specific.
What Claw didn’t know was where all of this knowledge came from, aside from the fact that the other one had acquired it at some point. Claw had never shattered a bedside table, had never commanded an army, had never even seen anyone command an army. It was frustrating to have all of this knowledge that he knew was valid and useful but no actual experience, it was like a large part of him was missing.
Claw grunted and got up from his bed. His private chambers were adequate according to a sense of interior design he only just now discovered he had. A bedroom, a bathroom complete with a shower, a living room with a table, empty shelves and even a couch. More than sufficient, the only thing that was missing was a kitchen, but the Tower had several canteens so there really was no need for individual cooking.
It only took Claw a minute to get dressed, his uniform consisted of a set of underclothes and obsidian armor, similar to the one the Ender was wearing, just missing the purple gems that decorated hers. Getting into the armor was easy for Claw, as though he had done so countless times before. Another thing that annoyed him. How was he supposed to be able to know what he could and couldn’t do until he tried? What if at some point the voice in his brain just said “Sorry, I got nothing.” and he’d just stand there like a total idiot.
Speaking of idiocy, during his sleep Claw had been shown a mostly incoherent stream of information, a dream as it were. However, since you apparently needed memories to dream, which he had very few of, he instead was treated to perhaps one of the more pointless things humanity had thought of with the ample spare time it had collectively: Philosophy.
Claw understood the appeal of course, if your survival is all but assured and you have nothing better to do, why wouldn’t you think about all the pointless theoretical scenarios and fabricate models of how certain people may act under certain circumstances. Claw was currently too preoccupied with his own position to care about such things, perhaps at a later point he’d indulge in this navel-gazing himself, which would be a real challenge since he lacked a navel.
Claw’s dream had treated him to detailed descriptions of various fields of philosophy, morality being one of them. Claw found that most things that that field concerned itself with may sound good on paper but really, who had time for all those lofty ideals when it really came down to it? The prey never willingly gave itself up to the predator for the “greater good of both their species”, no matter how overpopulated the prey and how starving the predator was. It turned out that if you wanted something and had the means of taking it, it was already as good as yours. Of course, philosophy had its own name for that concept and some related ones, “might makes right” it was called, and Claw found that it was one of the only concepts that could be applied no matter what. It was what it all fell back to when the cloud castles collapsed in on themselves. It was how the Entity managed to command an empire this vast.
With a smirk Claw let that line of thought trail off. Apparently, there was a meeting scheduled at some point where he’d be formally introduced to all the important people of the Tower. Perhaps if he hurried now, he could get something to eat before it all started, concentrating on an empty stomach was difficult, at least that’s what his brain told him.
Just as Claw reminded himself of the way to the closest canteen, something appeared before his mental eye: A grid-like structure of thirty-six squares, some were empty, others depicted some kind of object. Almost reflexively he focused on one of the squares that held a green-colored bag. The grid disappeared and Claw held the bag in his right hand. This was an inventory, apparently. A pocket dimension that could store all manner of things, useful but it still didn’t explain why exactly he had chosen this particular bag.
Claw’s question answered itself a few seconds later, a faint scent of meat was radiating from the bag. He opened it and found that it held more than its size let on, then fished out a piece of dried and salted meat and immediately began biting down on it. The taste was strong, and the meat was tough but proved no match for Claw’s teeth. At least the other one had good taste in food and preservation methods. After eating another two pieces, Claw stowed the bag back in his inventory and drank some water in the bathroom. This had simplified things, no trip to the canteen was needed.
It turned out that finding the preserved meat was lucky. Less than five minutes later, Claw heard a voice in his head, a young girl, one of the Tower’s telepaths. “Mister Claw, the meeting is scheduled to start in half an hour in the Command and Control main meeting room.”
Claw replied: “I’ll be there, also just ‘Claw’ is enough.”
He got no reply from the telepath, she probably had to tell a whole lot of other people too. It was time to go. Claw opened the door of his private room, walked out, locked it behind himself and slid the key into a pocket hidden beneath one of his armor’s plates.
The corridor he was in was where a lot of the other important people of the Tower had their private rooms, his was directly adjacent to that of Archmage Wisp, whom he had only met briefly. The next one over belonged to Dr. Veronica Mercury, the woman who had run a series of tests on him after he had been freed. She had collapsed almost immediately after reading the results of the last test, from exhaustion apparently.
The Ender’s room was after hers, then followed Freak’s room, then Glibby’s. That also happened to be the order in which he respected the other members of the inner circle. The Ender was by far the most competent of the three. From what Claw had seen, her troops respected and followed her, she was also single-handedly responsible for the Tower’s military operations, though he supposed that was not the case anymore since he would work alongside her now. Freak was odd, a phantom of fear did not fit the pattern, he commanded no troops, had no administrative responsibility and yet he was still in the inner circle. Claw suspected that his real job was spying on various other employees and extracting information from prisoners. Glibby, the great pretender… was not worth wasting thoughts on.
The walk to Command and Control would have been a long one, however Claw made use of his command power to just order one of the endermen to take him there directly, in the end he still had fifteen minutes to spare.
The meeting room was dominated by a large round table with the Tower’s insignia on it, one wall was almost entirely occupied by a screen, which was currently displaying a stylized top-down view of the area surrounding the Tower. Many of the seats in the room were already filled up, Claw recognized a couple of faces. There was General Marcus, the head of Command and Control himself, basically the top dog below the inner circle. Next to him was General Issa, head of Reconnaissance. In other seats sat General Forgelight, head of Acquired Worlds, Dr. Mercury of course, and Clark Belmont, a dimensional cartographer, who apparently had a habit of stealing snacks, which seemed like a completely irrelevant detail to remember.
Of the inner circle both the Ender and Freak were already in their seats, the Ender gestured for Claw to come over and pointed at the empty seat between her and Freak. Claw made his way over there with quick steps.
After Claw sat down, the Ender asked: “Remember anything more?”
Claw replied: “A few things, apparently it goes faster when dreaming. Mostly found out about humans and their philosophy and how much of it is irrelevant when it comes down to it.”
On Claw’s other side Freak snickered: “Sure does sound like humans.”
Claw turned over to look at Freak, as their eyes met, he felt something strange, as if Freak was looking through his eyes instead of at them.
Freak continued: “Humans, always thinking about whatever might happen and missing the things that do happen. Fine by me though, so many delicious flavors of fear that shouldn’t even exist. What about you Claw?”
Claw knew where this was going, and he was not having any of it. “Drop it Freak, you don’t have an angle on me. The only thing I truly fear is going back into that cage and as long as the Entity is around that is not happening.”
Freak blinked, then cleared his throat and turned away from Claw, an intersection of two lines on the insignia having become very interesting all of a sudden. Claw saw Freak for what he was: weak. He might be adept at exploiting others’ weaknesses, but he was ineffectual to a true hunter like Claw.
Right on cue, as if to demonstrate that while weak, Freak still was a long way from being the weakest, Glibby the Ape threw open the doors to the meeting room with an exaggerated motion. It was funny, Claw had barely even interacted with Glibby and yet he already had a very good idea of how he functioned.
Glibby made his way over to Freak’s side and sat down in his own chair. A single quick look from Claw was all it took to almost break the Ape’s composure. He had suffered a humiliating loss at the hands of the other one. Evidently, he was not happy to now have to work with Claw.
Over the remaining time the meeting room gradually filled up. Once the doors closed, the Entity materialized in its throne, thus declaring the meeting as started. It didn’t speak, it seemed that General Marcus would be the one leading.
Marcus looked his notes over and then began: “Greetings everyone, you might notice that this is the second full assembly in a short period of time. The reason is that we captured Fire, the rebel leader, the exact details are classified but Fire shared his body with Claw, who has now joined the Entity’s inner circle. Claw, would you mind introducing yourself?”
Claw stood up and waited a few seconds, when everyone’s eyes were on him, he said: “I am Claw, I will be in charge of the Tower’s military matters along with the Ender. That is all from my side, we have more points to discuss.”
What Claw had said wasn’t his first choice of words, but they had felt appropriate to the situation, professionalism and that. It seemed that the other one was no stranger to public speaking, which served Claw well.
General Marcus continued: “As Claw said, there are other points. The main one being the operation currently underway in the nearby village, as well as the rebel situation. It would be best if the responsible heads presented those themselves.”
Dr. Mercury stood up first. “As you might know, we have seized the nearby village in order to build up a forward military and research post. A strange phenomenon was sighted there that may be the source of the recent negative energy readings. This site will be dedicated to researching, understanding and possibly harnessing this phenomenon. The villagers have been evicted.”
The Ender stood up after Dr. Mercury had sat down. “Speaking of villagers. It is very probable that they joined the rebels now that they lost their homes. That was expected, sadly we were unable to plant spies in their midst, so the location of their ‘Shelter’ remains unknown. With their leader captured, the rebels will most likely be weakened but they are certainly still a threat. Scouts confirm that the Prophet has left his hill behind, and rumor has it that he joined the rebels or at the very least was granted refuge by them.”
Claw had no idea who this Prophet was, he certainly knew what a prophet was, but this was apparently the capital P Prophet.
He leaned over to Freak. “Who is that Prophet?”
Freak surprisingly gave him a straightforward answer: “First guy the Entity possessed, completely brain damaged and deranged. The only way his prophecies come true is by sheer quantity and vagueness.”
Something about what Freak had said set off an avalanche of thoughts in Claw’s mind. The Prophet was not just a madman but had genuine precognition, something about following the strings of fate and magical contracts, Claw would go down those rabbit holes and explore this newly uncovered knowledge after the meeting. More knowledge streamed in, this time from a different source. The Entity had its gaze fixed on Claw, one by one the thoughts appeared in his head.
This had happened before, not like it was happening now but in principle. The Entity hadn’t just formed and created all of this from nothing. This was only one of many cycles of building up before failing for one reason or another. The Entity only had partial memories of past cycles, much like Claw didn’t remember much about his own past. Each time it resurfaced it needed a seed, something to start from, that something was always the first person it possessed. It would use the enslaved will and intelligence of its first possession to formulate a plan of how to proceed while avoiding past pitfalls. This had some interesting implications, interesting enough that Claw needed to speak up about it.
He waited for a pause in the Ender’s speech, then he said: “That Prophet? He needs to die.”
All eyes in the room were on him. The Entity slowly said: “The Prophet is-not a threat.”
Claw replied: “Sorry boss, but I’ll have to disagree with that one. Without going into details, he knows things that could get very dangerous in the wrong hands. You might not realize it, but he might be the last remaining chance for our failure.”
The room was dead silent. Apparently disagreeing with the Entity was not something people did around here. Claw had no such concerns, his arrangement with the Entity was different from that of the others. It was no wonder this matter had gone unresolved for so long if nobody ever asked questions, or possibly because the Entity had never thought to tell anyone else this vital detail.
Now Dr. Mercury spoke up: “I agree with Claw, if the Prophet only vaguely poses a threat, we should try to eliminate him if it does not compromise our other operations. It would be one less risk.”
There was something different about her, she didn’t show the fear the others did, perhaps she too knew something the others didn’t.
The Entity said: “Pro-ceed if you can… guarantee nothing else-is-affected.”
Claw said: “That newly fortified village is a juicy target for our rebels, close to the Tower but just far enough out that a military response would be too slow to prevent them from capturing it if they overwhelm the garrison. It’s a prime opportunity for them to establish a forward base. And a very fitting retaliatory strike for capturing their leader.”
“I’d rather you not use my research as bait.” Said Dr. Mercury flatly.
Claw replied: “The rebels will most likely try to take it regardless of our actions, what I’m proposing is to make the best of the situation. The hill is reasonably close to the village, it would stand to reason for the Prophet to return there to help rally their troops. If that is true, we can occupy their forces by engaging them near the village while someone assassinates the Prophet.”
The Ender asked: “And who would be the assassin? Kay, that general of theirs, is a formidable opponent with his borrowed magic. The Prophet will be guarded.”
Claw’s mouth turned into a smirk. “I’ll handle the Prophet myself, I just need an enderman for getting there and getting back out. I am not at risk, the Entity has seen to it that I do not die. I also believe that I have my ways of dealing with this general.”
Marcus said: “Good, now that that matter is done, I have a couple more things to discuss before concluding this meeting, would you agree to plan in detail later?”
Claw and the Ender looked at each other, then silently nodded. There would be a lot to discuss if they wanted their plan to work out, the Prophet’s assassination was only a small piece of the bigger picture that was the battle that was up ahead. The rebels could have thousands of soldiers at this point, even if they were not well trained, they still posed a threat that couldn’t be dealt with using just the Ender’s troops. This would be an effort that concerned the entire Tower and Claw was looking forward to putting it in motion.
Chapter 32: Calm Before the Storm (Destiny/Kay)
Destiny wished she could go and talk to Anya, but there was no time. She had been enlisted, and Fire needed her help. She hadn’t always thought highly of the big scalebag, but he had always tried to do right by her.
Besides, it was nice to be treated as an expert rather than a volatile bundle of mourning and anger issues.
“So, we’re agreed,” Kay said, hands held above the map as though it were a fire. “Amass around the Prophet’s hill - have him be visible to embolden the congregation. Steve leads a vanguard forward to test their ranks while Tyron holds back with the main body.”
Murmurs of confirmation could be heard around the table. Kay nodded and carried on with this draft of the plan, stringing together and rounding up the scattered, free-range ideas they’d all introduced.
“We’ll have someone who can quickly tunnel underground to where their ranks are thickest, trigger an explosion or rain fire on them or whatever, and then have the combat mages under Destiny and Rose emerge from the tunnel to cause as much disruption within the crater as possible. If we’re lucky and the thickest point of their ranks is near the middle, we have some builders try to block the two remaining halves of their forces off from each other. Tyron moves up to relieve the vanguard and attack their presumably disrupted forces. All going to plan, their forces start to lose resolve, fall back. We advance on the village. Fast-builders establish fortifications. Beachhead accomplished?”
Destiny smiled. The tunnelling had been her idea. She’d taken great satisfaction in seeing Kay’s eyes burn with ambition as he realised the potential of fast-builders to enhance his disruption-oriented tactics. Even now there was a residual glow whenever he mentioned them.
“And naturally we’ll have Shadow and her team of mages running counter-magic and dealing with the artillery, as well as conducting some magical strikes themselves. Ideally, they won’t destroy too many cannons, though - I want them captured. Will be useful when we attack the Tower.”
“Kay,” said Astro with a hint of irritation. “We need to win this battle.”
“I agree, but it must be a victory with a future. Naturally, if they’re too much of a bother we’ll have them destroyed.”
“Any concerns they might wonder where our magic users are?” Rose inquired.
“They don’t know our strength,” Destiny answered with satisfaction. “And they’ll expect us to be weaker than normal. Defections, panic, in-fighting in the wake of our leader disappearing. Even if their scouts notice a few faces missing who helped ambush Glibby, they probably won’t think too much of it.”
In the corner of her eye, she saw Kay smiling smugly. He appeared to be taking a moment to appreciate the efficiency of his new command structure. He could be as smug as he liked as far as she was concerned, so long as his and Fire’s ****-measuring contest didn’t lead him off a cliff. So long as the Book didn’t try anything.
She flicked her fingers and summoned a small flame, just to make sure she could in case of emergency.
“What if Entity’s present?” Kir inquired in all their ears.
“Hopefully it won’t be,” Astro said, nodding to himself. “If it does manifest, ensure Shadow is alerted immediately. Maybe she can pull off the thing that scared it again and distract it. Otherwise, give it all you’ve got.”
“Pretty much,” said Kay, returning from his retirement into satisfaction. “The Entity is an unknown quantity. I’ll do what I can and ensure Astro redirects as much archer-fire as possible to keep it off us.”
“And we’ll have the Prophet in the rear, guarded by Steve A?” Tyron asked with a raised brow.
“Steve 2,” clarified Steve Brine. They hadn’t cleared up the nomenclature yet.
“Yes,” Kay reaffirmed. “Plus, a small force who’ll protect our few TNT cannons. Skeleton crew, though.”
“And,” their Steve asked. “You’re sure the Jackals can be trusted in the vanguard? Jen and I did kill a few of them a while back.”
“They want revenge on the Entity pretty badly,” Astro affirmed. “And they owe us for stopping Glibby from tracking them down and crushing them. Fight well and they’ll follow you.”
Suddenly they were silent. Not awkwardly so. They just knew what had to be done. Destiny thought about the day to come. She thought about Fristad. She thought about David. She thought about Fire. Anger surged, and she closed her eyes to picture her purpose.
She would avenge her friend. She would avenge David. She would save Fire. She would save this world and all others, no matter what the cost. And then she would go back to her world, brag about it to Anya and drink herself into oblivion.
###
I sat on my throne. The Book’s avatar sat across from me, a humanoid vortex of pages and words. I had learned to pay attention and had begun to notice patterns. I did not know the script, but these lines and symbols held meaning. I had plans to one day change the rules of this little dream-space without the Book’s knowledge and reveal their secrets to me. Recently, however, it seemed the Book might reveal them voluntarily.
“You have done well,” the Book conceded.
“I have. You have what you wanted.”
“What we want.”
“Yes,” I said in genuine agreement. “I just wish the circumstances were different. That Fire were safe.”
“Shadow wouldn’t be as much of a risk.”
“No. And I wouldn’t be so pressed to attack.”
“You are still afraid of the Entity?”
“Yes. It cracked my breastplate. I only survived because of you.”
“Thank you,” the Book said with something like a smile. I smiled back. “You still have my protection, provided you are not foolish.”
“That shall be difficult. The entire affair is foolish… If only we had more time!”
I slammed the desk and it shattered through the floor. I set about reinventing it with a more intricate and appealing design.
“We do not have time,” The Book warned. “But we have a will to live. Even if the Entity succeeds and folds all creation into Nexus, we will live. We will thrive. We will learn to rival it.”
“Yes. We will find my friends and keep them safe.”
“We will guide them.”
“We will be strong.”
“We shall be unstoppable.”
“No matter the price…” I said.
“We shall survive,” we decreed.
Arc 4 The Battle at the Hill (Chapters 33-40)
Chapter 33: In Position (Astro)
We are on the Prophet’s Hill. Our army sprawls across the ground before us. Somewhere between two and three thousand soldiers are down there, ready to die at my friend’s command.
At the front, Steve stands in diamond armour that blazes under the midday sun. He is surrounded by men in similar apparel. The smugglers and bandits, the Jackals, make up most of them. However, I see more friendly faces among them. The dwarf, Urist, is hard to see but occasionally emerges to bark orders, usually instructing the smugglers as to how to conduct themselves in formation. Voidblade heads an auxiliary force to the side of several Endlings. No more than a dozen of them, but useful for running counter-interference on the Ender’s forces.
Behind them is Tyron’s force - the main one. The bulk of the congregation stands there in four or so grand, rectangular formations identical to Steve’s own. Skirmishers out front, then infantry. At the back stands a two-thick line of men with poleaxes. Their duty is to deal with the Endlings who will doubtless teleport amidst the infantry to try and wreak havoc. Kay told me this was how they dealt with them in the Onslaught. I say a little prayer to Jeb, asking him to ensure this tactic translates well to Endlings who can teleport as quickly and tirelessly as the Ender’s.
Tyron himself walks silently among the skirmishers. Warnado and Amanda flank him. Even though I know Kay referred to this specifically as “babysitting duty”, the sight of the great hero attended by the younger generation conveys a strange dignity. Jennifer stands at the head of another such formation, bow already taut with an arrow.
Somewhere beneath the ground, Destiny and Rose await with their assortment of combat mages and fast-builders. Their force was one of people magical enough not to fit neatly into a normal military formation, but not gifted enough to cast complicated spells.
On either side of the hill are arrayed our few cannons and their defenders. They are more like catapults in shape but are deadly artillery in their own right. They shall fling explosives into the thick of our enemies’ numbers, killing indiscriminately.
On a ridge at the foot of the hill, my several hundred archers, ready to advance as soon as required.
A little behind them, Shadow heads a force of a hundred or so mages. I assess the tiny mage, recalling the burning nothing to which she is a conduit. It sears behind my eyes. It is as though there were a hole in my skull through which every light in every world filtered to blind my thoughts. I recall how she almost slipped into that dreadful form upon discovering her brother’s capture. How much like a person she had looked, without looking at all like a person. Like a face in the stars. I am afraid.
And of course, beside me stands Kay, who provokes in me a tumult of sadness and joy, fear and nostalgia. He is clad in bright diamond. His eyes are like jade stars, burning with purpose. And his auburn hair catches the sunlight and becomes a bronze beacon. His face is flat, displaying a stoicism that will one day serve him well in portraits and kingly ceremonies.
I relive his fall. I remember the monk with a bullet in his temple. Kay’s smoking gun, which he now points to Hamish. He sees me. Our eyes lock. Hamish cackles as he sees shame overwhelm Kay. The General, my friend, turns his gun on the Silhouette. A flash. A bang. The funeral mask shatters. Blood sprays. Glibby bears the corpse away, swearing revenge. Hamish finds it hilarious, his split face shattering into mad laughter. Kay pretends he has apprehended him as others flow in. Gogyst and Aaron and Tauto and others. He lies about what happened to the monk. Says he tried to save him. The shame remains. It follows him to his grave like a stray dog he’d fed.
And yet, here he is. He’s alive. He hasn’t done that yet. I wonder if there’s still time.
I hear a rush of wind and turn. Two guards step aside to reveal the Prophet and his bodyguard, the Other Steve. I call him Other Steve, to save all the stupid stuff the others have tried to do with numbers and letters. He looks tentatively exhilarated as he sees the possibility of his revenge on the Entity. It destroyed his world, and now he sees hope of destroying it, despite it all.
Kay steps forward. He speaks in a proud roar, amplified by the mages:
“I have, in the past, been known for rousing or tedious speeches. I’ll keep it simple this time. Fire has been captured, but Fire alone is not our strength. We will enter that village, we will kill its defenders… Ah, there they are now!”
He gestures to the horizon. Thousands of diamond-clad men and giants array themselves outside the village’s corrugated fortifications. The Ender’s contingent stand between their formations, acting as snarling boundaries. I scan the landscape and see the hulking form of Glibby, but not the Entity’s bronze shell. Kay might just get lucky today.
“Yes,” Kay smiles. “We’ll massacre them to a man, I reckon. Hold firm. Hold your resolve. Kill all, kill merrily. I have overseen many of your training personally, and I trust in your ability and will to win against this cohort of mercenaries and genociders. Do not forget the Prophet’s word: we shall prevail. With that, I hand you over to him.”
He steps aside and the old man staggers forth. He proclaims in his explosive rasp:
“Fear shall be driven out by the confluence of worlds, of future and present! A leader returns from the unknown!”
He steps back. Kay, despite the ambiguity of his words, walks forward.
“You heard the man,” he concludes serenely. “Advance. Drive out the fear.”
Chapter 34: The Reality of War (Steve)
The fighting began more quickly than Steve would have liked, anything to delay this battle would have suited him well. Moments before both armies had been marching towards each other in formation, then the leaders of both vanguards shouted their commands, and the charge began. Of course, Steve was one of those leaders, standing in the midst of his troops. He had a bad feeling about this entire operation from the second Kay had included him in his inner circle but going against orders would only worsen things, there was only one option there for him and his soldiers and that option was fighting.
There was a deafening silence before the fronts collided, then the noise of battle began. Weapons colliding with armor, soldiers screaming both in pain and anger. The line was holding so far, not just that, they even seemed to have the advantage.
The Jackals were fierce fighters, using every dirty trick in the book to make sure they stayed on top. The forces of the Tower seemed less eager, they were mercenaries fighting for the so-far winning side, they were not used to being evenly matched.
Steve was still not far enough forward to be part of the fighting, he made use of this by bellowing orders, telling groups of soldiers to advance or retreat or ordering a sudden flanking attack by the skirmishers.
Arrows were starting to fly from both sides, most glancing off armor or missing entirely but some found their mark, soldiers fell, and lines thinned, if only marginally.
They were slowly gaining ground, pushing back the Tower’s front-line forces who couldn’t withstand their assault. That’s when Steve heard the first explosions in the distance, since they came from behind him that meant that their own artillery had opened fire. Moments later a brightly burning block of TNT came soaring over Steve’s head and impacted some distance ahead of him, squarely in the middle of the enemy formation. A loud bang tore through the air, drowning out the sounds of battle for a few seconds. The shot had devastated the enemy formation, leaving countless mercenaries either dead or badly dismembered and bleeding out.
The Jackals used this opening to push back harder, having lost remarkably few so far. This would probably change when the enemy answered with their own artillery. Steve advanced with his soldiers, counting the seconds but no return strike came.
Steve reached out to Kir mentally, who was once again filling the role of communicator. “Do the scryers spot any enemy artillery?”
After a few seconds Kir chirped in reply: “No, but they are assembling mages.”
Steve did not reply, he trusted that Shadow would react accordingly with her own squad of mages, he had more pressing matters to attend to. The front was rapidly widening as their army pushed further in, within moments Steve would not be afforded the luxury of commanding, he’d have to join in the fighting as well. Meanwhile more artillery fire came from their backline.
His first contact was with an enemy foot soldier clad in diamond armor, Steve defeated him only moments after they came in contact. In the time he had spent in Nexus Steve had become acutely aware how much stronger he was than the average person from another world, now he’d put this power differential to good use.
Soldier after soldier fell before his sword, they were now pushed up quite far but there was still no end in sight to the armies of the Tower. If they had one thing it was numbers and resources.
A flash of purple tore Steve out of his focus, several endermen had teleported in, all wearing the characteristic obsidian armor of the Tower’s elite enderman troops, the Ender in their midst. He had expected her to maybe lose a few words of mockery or disdain but no, she immediately engaged Steve’s soldiers.
The five or six closest Jackals fell immediately, having been too close to react to the lightning-fast assault of the endermen. If they break now, it’s over. Steve thought. But they held fast, at least for the moment. The poleaxe soldiers from the back lines came charging forward, distributing throughout the forces to react to any teleportation attacks. It helped but not nearly as much as Kay promised it would, it didn’t dissuade the endermen from teleporting, only made them choose more careful angles of attack.
Steve decided to engage the Ender directly before her squad could gain a proper foothold. Her back was turned but she whirled around as soon as Steve came close, blocking his swing with her spear. Steve could only hope that the strange honor-bound culture he had observed during Silver’s interrogation would prevent the other endermen from ganging up on him.
The Ender struck fast and hard, not pausing between attacks, instead using teleportation to carry over momentum from missed attacks. The blows that hit Steve were mostly absorbed by his armor but the sheer impact force hurt his muscles even through the protective shell of diamonds.
Steve’s own attacks were not to be underestimated either, he didn’t land hits often but when he did, he landed them just as the Ender came out of a teleportation. Each hit he landed made her armor resonate with a muffled tone, he hoped that she was experiencing the impacts like he was.
Around them the battle still raged on, the enderman squad tearing through his soldiers. Luckily, they suffered losses from well-placed poleaxes, or the vanguard would be overwhelmed. There were only thirty or so endermen, they couldn’t keep this up forever. Steve did realize that their forward position was quickly working against them, they were getting more surrounded by the second. Diamond ranks drew close and closer to his position as they advanced.
Suddenly Kir’s voice appeared in his head again: “Heads up, Sunbeam inbound five meters north from your location in ten seconds.”
Steve quickly turned his head towards the location, a group of endermen was densely packed, fighting off poleaxe soldiers. He relayed the warning to his soldiers and quickly returned his focus to defending against the Ender and pressuring her in turn, trying to maneuver away from the designated area.
Shortly after, a blindingly bright column of flames struck the group of endermen before they had a chance to react. A few of their own soldiers were caught in the blaze as well. The beam extinguished moments later, leaving only ashes and molten ground. They were entirely on their own now, it would take Shadow’s mages multiple minutes before they had another such strike ready.
The Ender did not take kindly to this sudden loss of soldiers and attacked Steve with redoubled effort. If this continued, they’d be entirely surrounded before the endermen were all dead, however they still had one more ace up their sleeve.
A rumbling detonation erupted some distance into the Tower forces, collapsing a good portion of the battlefield into a smoking crater. This would buy them some additional time. Steve groaned in pain as the Ender’s spear impacted on his side. They would certainly need it.
###
“YEAH!” whooped Warnado. “Suck it!”
The explosives had created a substantive hole in the enemy ranks, effectively splitting them in two. He could already see the black dots of the combat mages rushing in to pick off the stragglers, and even the first shifts of terrain that indicated the presence of fast-builders.
Amanda was to his left, a crossbow in one hand and an axe in the other. She was beaming with uncharacteristic sunniness. Destroying your enemies can bring that out in anyone. Warnado grinned back but was drawn back to the world by Tyron’s growl.
“Stay on me, kids,” said the hero of Minecraftia. “I’ll keep you safe.”
Then, with astounding efficiency, he barked orders to the ranks and whipped them into a charge.
It was all Warnado and Amanda could do to keep pace with Tyron as he charged at the fore of the army. Armoured boots clattered at their heels, threatening to trample them at any moment. It was so freaking cool!
This was his first large-scale battle, and while he would have preferred to be commanding his own squad, playing support to the guy who was commanding most of the troops was pretty cool, too.
Steve’s vanguard lay ahead of them, just about holding against the Ender. Warnado saw Steve and the Ender in combat, each a master in their own art of war. Sword and spear clashed together so hard, Warnado could swear he heard it even over the roar of charging armies and the occasional explosion of magic or TNT.
They came within twenty metres of Steve’s lines while Warnado saw Urist fall from between the legs of a poleaxe-man. Warnado slowed. Said poleaxe-wielding soldier promptly collapsed as an enderman rammed its claws into his neck, and the ender-born warrior immediately turned its attention to the wounded dwarf on the ground. It set about stabbing its obsidian sword down at the dwarf, who only just managed to dodge by rolling in the increasingly lacerated dirt. He had apparently lost his weapon. He needed help.
Warnado called to Tyron, but he had already launched himself into the air on wings of stone and was soaring down at the enderman brigade which was hammering the jackals. Amanda followed him, firing off crossbow bolts into the leg of one enderman and finishing him off with a precise strike from the axe.
“So much for ‘stay with me, kids!’” Warnado grumbled internally.
He rushed the enderman with his energy axe, and in its desire to kill the dwarf it didn’t notice him. He caught it at a chink in the armour on its hip and it screeched metallically. It responded with a slash of the sword that Warnado ducked under. The enderman rounded on him, and Warnado twirled his energy axe, transforming it into an imposing morning star. They raised their weapons, ready to strike, when they heard a hiss from above.
The enderman looked to the side and warped away without hesitation. Several shots of white-hot TNT hurtled toward them. Several silver-flame portals opened to meet them, and some of the charges fell through them, rematerializing in the midst of the enemy ranks. Others were caught by bursts of magical flame and lightning and exploded prematurely in the air. One, however, landed right next to Warnado. He looked around. Urist had scrambled back into the fighting to recover his weapon.
The charge exploded and struck hard against the magical shield Warnado raised to defend himself, catapulting him right into the heart of the fray, where the two lines fought hardest against each other.
His robes still smoking, Warnado hadn’t a second to recollect his thoughts before he was ducking and rolling just to avoid being trampled. Enemies and allies fell all around him. He glanced up and Voidblade slit the throat of a giant, splattering Warnado’s robes with blood. The quarter-demon tried to call out to his ally, but he took no notice, teleporting off to kill a similarly vulnerable enderman on the other side of the field.
As for the giant, he slumped to his knees, choking out his life. Desperate to see above the warring bodies around him and find his way back to Tyron, Warnado climbed onto the dying enemy’s shoulders and surveyed the situation.
Some twenty metres away, Tyron was in the thick of the fighting, cutting bloody trenches into his opponents, pressing toward the wall being constructed on the crater’s Eastern edge. He saw Jennifer pushing toward the Western side, bow in hand and raining death. Amanda was not visible. Warnado felt his lungs tighten. He had to get over there.
He formed his fingers into the shape of a gun on his non-gauntleted hand and readied to rain fire but realised how hard it was to tell friend from foe. All was diamond and steel and steel and diamond. Insignias were already fading beneath blood and mud and smoke from the explosions. All he had to go on was the positioning of the hill…
An arrow soared past his head, and he panicked. Flames flooded out of him, scorching the land and the beings upon it. Two endermen collapsed and several humans. None were dead. Warnado watched with horror as his side cheered and ran down the screaming victims of his magic, hacking and stabbing at their helpless forms.
“Warnado, come!” howled Kir.
Unable to look upon it any further, Warnado dove into the melee and returned to darting between the combatants’ legs, hacking at the tree-like limbs and not daring to check who he harmed and praying it was the enemy.
He heard a sizzling noise and skidded to a halt just before the Sunbeam scorched the ground before him. An empty circular area about 5 meters in diameter stood before him, black and coal and terrifyingly uneven to walk on. He staggered out into the centre, the warmth beneath his feet making the rest of him shiver with an unfelt chill, and then the scent of about twenty or so living beings’ charred flesh rose to meet him. He wanted to vomit.
He had no time, however, as he immediately found himself pinned to the ground, sinking into the ash. A grey-scaled enderman had planted an armoured boot on his chest. Warnado swung and it warped backwards.
That was when Warnado saw the hulking form that had stepped into the circle. It was engaged with a green-eyed enderman - one of Voidblade’s skirmishers - but it wasn’t much of a fight. The hulking figure held the enderman from behind, and an obsidian gauntlet pulled its chin unnaturally upwards. The steel fingers pressed further and further until… Rrrrip! The head tore clean off and went flying into the fighting around them.
Warnado stood, not quite paralysed by fear but not able to do anything meaningful. He limply raised his fists.
The hulking figure turned as the silver-scaled enderman sneered. It wore obsidian armour from head to foot, but the huge gauntlets were a dead giveaway. Glibby the Ape stood before him.
“Hello child,” he said. “I told you I would come back. You’re next on my list.”
He began to laugh maniacally. Warnado’s power over his limbs returned to him. He darted off into the tumult of battle, now blind to the atrocities around him.
Chapter 35: Nightmares on the Battlefield (Destiny)
Destiny smirked as her icy javelin pierced the eye of a newly materialised enderman, sending him tumbling down the stairs of their makeshift fortification on the crater’s Eastern edge. The crater was littered with half-charred corpses and fresher ones kept joining them.
Around them the builders kept reinforcing and expanding their defenses, four or so of them. One had even started work on a full-fledged tower at the corner of the barricade.
Destiny glanced at the far side of the crater, and through the still-dissipating smoke she saw Rose standing atop her barricades. There was an arrow in her hip, but the assassin refused treatment for the moment. Instead, she barked orders and rained knives on their enemies. Had Destiny been there, she would have given Rose far more than her two cents for stupidly risking blood loss and infection, but Destiny wasn’t there so she just had to focus on her front.
A giant in gleaming armour appeared near the fledgling tower, a great mace in hand. A shriveled little end-creature clung to either leg, evidently the giant’s means of getting there. No sooner than he had arrived, the giant swung down at the builder and missed, cleaving a great chunk out of the wall.
Destiny reacted instinctively and channeled heat into the giant’s helmet. As the warmth flowed out of her, she fought the urge to shiver, and her target began to wail in agony and tore off the helmet. An earth mage ran up beside Destiny and stomped his foot. A pillar of stone shot upwards and slammed into the spine of the giant, who promptly collapsed and was teleported away by his two End-born chauffeurs. The builder returned to work.
Destiny clapped her earth-mage on the shoulder.
“Good work, Indril,” she said. “You’d best get up there and guard Alice until the tower’s set up and we can start smelting replacement armour and weapons.”
She heard nothing and looked around for her trainee. He was nowhere to be seen, until Destiny lowered her gaze and found him lying flat on his back. He had a hole in his chest a mile wide.
At that moment, a figure became visible. Its skin was like smoke - light passed through it, but with difficulty. Talons stretched from its fingers, and in its left hand these talons had wrapped around a lacerated heart. It smiled in a toothy grin as it sat on one of the fortification’s steps. Freak was back.
“Hello, Destiny,” he sneered. “I’ve come to talk- Ah!”
Freak only just managed to become intangible as Destiny showered the place where he sat with razor sharp icicles. The icicles had pierced the carved stone and become embedded, fixed there like spikes driven into the ground to secure a tent or fasten a rope. Destiny panted from the effort, and from the memory of their last encounter. Her side throbbed as she remembered the sting of his talons.
“Show yourself!” Destiny screamed, summoning a fireball in one hand and crystalizing a sword out of ice in the other. “I’m not afraid of you!”
She scanned the scene, ready to leap into action the second another one of her soldiers fell. Freak might be hard to hit in this form, but he couldn’t be invulnerable.
“Real heroic of you, trying to kill someone who’s come to negotiate!” Freak snapped from behind.
He stood on the lip of the fortification, wagging his finger somewhere. His curling lips were caught somewhere between an urge to laugh and genuine irritation. Destiny hurled the fireball and he sidestepped it.
“You’re really starting to irk me, Dez,” Freak seethed through gritted teeth.
He became intangible again as Destiny leapt up and hacked at him with the sword.
“I don’t care!” Destiny spat.
“Now, listen here!” Freak materialised from behind and shunted her off the ledge. “If you’re not going to play nice, there are other ways of making you listen!”
“Commander!” her troops called as she fell, but she was deaf to them.
She had one objective: kill this phantom douche.
Sadly, this resolve and most of her breath was knocked out of her as she struck the ground.
Freak resurfaced, leaning against a rock. The smoke in the air appeared to pass through him. Destiny pulled herself up.
“Are you going to listen politely, or am I just going to have to start talking at you, praying you’ll listen?”
As if in answer to his question, Destiny thrust the sword at his head. It shattered against the rock. Destiny looked around frantically, summoning two new blades and carrying out several defensive swipes to ensure Freak didn’t try anything. She hit nothing.
“You know, David would have listened,” Freak chuckled from the mouth of a nearby cave.
Destiny hurled one sword at him but knew it would not hit. She blinked and the phantom was gone. She sighed.
She looked up. The sounds of fighting were growing fainter, and she heard a horn. Tyron had relieved Steve and their united forces were now pushing back the enemy. One of her soldiers peaked over the edge. She gave him the thumbs-up, he acknowledged and returned to the conflict. She had an appointed second-in-command. They would hold in the five minutes this would take.
She entered the cave. No sign of Freak.
“Listen to what?” she asked warily. Nothing. “What would David have listened to, Freak?”
“Well,” Freak’s voice came from the darkness. “He’d have listened if I’d thought about it sooner, back when you were in the Tower. But enough about old wounds, you probably know what the Entity’s plan is by now, otherwise you’d still have your leader.”
“No actually, no idea about it,” Destiny lied, not even trying to sound convincing. She scanned the dark: “How about you step out into the light there and I’ll take some notes.”
A cackle reverberated off the cave walls. “I’m good here, thanks. Saves you the energy of trying to hit me, you’ll probably need it for what happens later. So, what I was saying is that once all those worlds are united things will get bad, and that’s coming from someone who feasts on fear. The truth is, there isn’t much fear in a tyranny the likes of which the Entity will construct, after a few years apathy and acceptance are all that’s left.”
Destiny planted her icy swords in the ground as a thought occurred. She began to rub her palms together. She felt the familiar chill.
“Sure, keep going.”
Freak continued: “Point is, I’m not sure if I’m entirely on board with this plan anymore, purely based on…”
A ball of fire sparked into existence between her palms. She passed it between the two with a playful smirk.
“What are you doing?” Freak asked.
“Well, I’m not altogether sure what rules you operate on - how you appear for some people and disappear for others, that’s all still a mystery to me,” said Destiny. “But I do know that if I’m hearing you, you’re around here somewhere. So, you’re going to come out of the shadows or I’m going to find you myself. You’ve got until three and then I light this place up. One.”
“Oh, by fear itself,” grumbled Freak.
“Two,” counted Destiny, raising the fireball and readying to slam it into the ground.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“Three.”
She slammed it into the ground just as she saw Freak lunge at her. The clustered tongues of flame scattered and leapt everywhere, surprising even her in their force. Freak’s talon-like thumb caught her between the eyes and drew blood. His eyes were narrow with hatred. She crystallised a sword and plunged forward. It stuck.
A great, barbed blade of ice unlike any she had ever summoned before sheared through Freak’s smoke-like chest. He fell, dead.
As the phantom’s corpse began to dissipate into smoke, she felt a strange satisfaction. Revenge was a worthwhile pursuit, it seemed. She turned and resolved to return to her forces. Then, her eyes widened.
The tongues of flame had not gone. They burned away at the cave’s walls, eating them as easily as paper. They charred and crumpled in the heat, revealing an impenetrable blackness behind them. The floor gave way and she fell into the shadows.
“If you’re now satisfied, I’ll continue.”
Suddenly, she landed in a heap on a glass platform, which unfolded and turned into a cage. Five strides by five strides. She lay in the centre, the wind knocked out of her. Freak patrolled the outside.
“As I was saying, joining the Entity sounded fun and honestly like a laid table of various flavors of fear, however I’m starting to think that if things continue this feast will be followed by a long famine. Don’t misunderstand, I won’t turn coat, that’s a little too cliché.” He paused dramatically. “But I do think you rebels could use a bit of a hand, especially with what’s to come.”
Destiny hauled herself to her feet and tried to summon something. Anything. An icy shard. A fireball. Nothing.
“We’re in a constructed mindscape, something we phantoms have a knack for. My house, my rules.”
Destiny heaved the anger from her lungs in a series of heavy breaths.
“What sort of hand?” she said in reluctant surrender.
“The alternative win condition kind, as one might put it. The Entity is afraid of what your white-haired mage did, there might be a weakness to exploit somewhere. Sadly, aside from my innate abilities, I am a stranger to magic... which is where you come in.”
“Of course,” she seethed. “You and your Tower friends kidnap me for my magic, now you want to use me for it. That tracks, I guess.”
Freak chuckled. “Naturally, I expected you not to agree right away. But you see, if the Entity were to vanish one day, the Tower would be decapitated, truly and permanently. We don’t have a roguish commander to step in and take the lead, most of our armies are mercenaries or otherwise bound to loyalty in some manner. Once that’s gone you could find the ones truly responsible for your loss, you could find Glibby, find the Ender and finally get your revenge. You already showed me that revenge is something you enjoy greatly.”
He paused, sighed and took on a greatly different manner. His cruel eyes softened, seeming to droop a little further from the skull. And the toothy smile softened.
“That said,” he continued. “I didn’t know David was lost until I got in here. Your mind, that is. He hadn’t been mentioned in any reports in some time. I was under the assumption he was still alive - if injured. I… You have my condolences, however belated. He deserved a better death.” A pause, a sad laugh. “I suppose humanity has rubbed off on me more than I thought.”
Destiny scoured his face for signs of deceit. He was inscrutable. His eyebrows furrowed with concern looked awkward and tentative but the phantom didn’t seem to use emotions other than gleeful sadism very often so that could explain it. The pause after the “I…” seemed to indicate careful attention to the words he was using, but that could mean anything.
She resolved not to acknowledge it and returned to business.
“What I don’t get,” Destiny pressed. “Is what you thought this was all about. What’s changed?”
“I’ll be honest with you,” Freak laughed. “I didn’t. The cards were off the table for so long, and so much delicious fear came my way. The ignorance of a happy, greedy eater overcame me. A world disappeared into Nexus here or there and I thought nothing of it.”
Freak turned and an image of Nexus appeared. It was the clearing where David was buried. She saw the bundle of flowers she had laid against the sign which bore his name. Freak carried his own up and laid it beside the first.
“A sign for a tombstone,” Freak muttered. “Like I said, he deserved better…”
He observed her over his shoulder a second then resumed his explanation.
“Then, it revealed its plan to merge all worlds,” Freak pressed with some tension. “And at first I can only think, ‘This is brilliant! The shock and terror of such an upheaval will be immense! Nations will clash, peoples will collide, and the Ender’s armies will pillage and conquer as they see fit.’ And of course, the Entity, ever the conservationist, would make sure she doesn’t destroy anything in its entirety. It spends days and weeks fawning over obscure religious artefacts, collecting specimens. And all these things bring fear in and of themselves. Fear of Hell, fear of experimentation, fear of being at the mercy of something you never could have imagined et cetera…”
Destiny squinted past Freak. The flowers were rotting. The trees withering. She saw a strange grey hue in the horizon. Her cubic cage slowly drifted backwards.
“But it always gets bored,” said Freak. “It never pays attention too long. It always sees a reason to tie up a loose end. It is order, and it will flatten the world.”
Freak turned and he had the face of the builder Destiny had helped defend from the giant. The glass cube blasted back into the darkness.
“Observe.”
Destiny woke up. She was at the mouth of the cave. Freak was leaning against the wall, obviously burned. He gestured outside. Destiny followed, still dazed from dreaming.
The builder’s body was the first she came across. Then another. Then another. They were a curious mixture of Tower and rebel soldiers. They lay scattered like broken toys, many terrible gashes on their bodies.
She lifted her eyes to the brick barricade her troops had erected. It was shattered. Not a stone lay upon a stone. And at the heart of it, she saw the bronze shell of the Entity, hacking apart what remained with its great obsidian sword.
It didn’t care who it struck, attacking its own agents just as easily as skewering its enemies. A single strike would decapitate an obsidian-clad enderman and a fleeing Jackal in one.
And this was not the only manifestation. They were appearing throughout the ranks across the battlefield, killing with the same automatic indifference. It would not leave a thing standing upon this battlefield until it had achieved its objective.
A call for retreat sounded. Destiny spared one look at Freak before fleeing. Their eyes locked, and she felt a terrible companionship with this phantom. What would become of any world under a creature like the Entity?
She ran to Rose’s barricade, heart pounding, desperate to get anyone she could recover to safety.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 4 The Battle at the Hill (Cont.)
Chapter 36: Falling Apart (Kay)
The Eastern barricade was already a smoldering ruin, and the Entity was now smashing its way through friend and foe alike over there. That was without mentioning the several other manifestations which had appeared among the enemy ranks and were charging forward to meet our own. Each was an army in its own right, and there were about half-a-dozen of them.
“Can we establish contact with Destiny?” I asked aloud and in my thoughts. “Is she alright?”
“Searching,” Kir strains as Tyron continues to fight valiantly. “Troops say: fell off before attack. Possibly not dead.”
I raked my fingers through my auburn mane of hair.
“For mods’ sake,” I muttered.
My Book counselled me not to curse more extensively and to seek a solution. I agreed. Anger was not useful.
Astro stood on one side of me, and an ethereal projection of Shadow on the other. I looked to them for guidance, my heart pounding. The Prophet and his bodyguard, the other Steve, huddled together to the side. The former muttered incomprehensible fragments of frightened prophecy, the latter caressed and soothed him with an uncharacteristic tenderness. I felt a surprising admiration for this Steve, who had so long provoked nothing but irritated in me.
“Shadow, can you do anything to stop the manifestations?”
Shadow said grimly. “I don’t know. But I can certainly try. If I blast enough energy at them they’ll at least have to react in some way. Might distract them from our soldiers.”
“Then you think a strong enough blast might do something?” I asked.
She nodded.
An idea occurred to me and then to my Book, or to my Book and then to me. I was beginning not to care too much about the origins of such plans. I yelled down to the line of cannons.
“Line up for a singular volley! Don’t bother aiming, I’ll guide it there.”
They did so. The sergeant, a large, moustached and grave-looking Testificate hemmed and hawed these orders. They all fired simultaneously, and We caught their burning TNT with a series of rifts. These shots emerged from portals surrounding the manifestation that had just destroyed Destiny’s division.
The shots struck the being and exploded, casting a great cloud of dust and dirt and ripping through the Tower’s forces and sadly some of our own. I would pray for forgiveness later, at that moment I only cared about the smoke clearing.
“Moment of truth,” I said hopefully.
It cleared, and the Entity began to climb from the hole glowing but unscathed. I covered my eyes in shame.
“You tried your best,” said Astro as he planted a consoling hand on my shoulder. “I think you know what I’m going to suggest.”
“Yes,” I nodded. “A retreat...”
“We must live to fight another day,” my Book reassured me. “Astro is right.”
“Quite right,” I agreed with both. “Shadow, gather your mages and do what you can to slow the manifestations of our bronze friend out there. I’ll confer with Kir and give the orders for retreat. Astro, stay with me.”
“I should get to that then.” Shadow’s projection said and flickered out of existence.
I glanced at the Prophet and Steve 2. The old man looked practically feverish, but struggled to his feet.
Half-hunched and trembling, he muttered: “The black light approaches.”
“Strange,” said Astro. “He hasn’t mentioned a ‘black light’ before.”
I reached out to Kir.
“We’re retreating, spread the word,” I instructed. My Book would have had me stop there, but I pressed on: “Do you have Warnado and Amanda with you?”
“Amanda, yes. Warnado, no. Lost track.”
My heart froze solid and sent shocks of cold through my whole body. I felt electricity spark between my fingertips as I subconsciously willed my Book to summon it.
“Find him, or don’t come back,” I warned the talking sword, feeling horrendously guilty the second after.
I severed the connection and blasted the lightning through a rift. It struck an artillery piece on the far side of the battlefield and coursed through its crew, killing the four of them immediately.
“That was unwise,” the Book scolded. “The child is nothing.”
“The child is my responsibility and none of your concern,” I snapped. Remembering the Book’s importance, I relented slightly and added: “And powerful to boot. He’ll be a useful ally yet.”
It surged angrily, and then seemed content. My Book and I were reconciled just in time for Astro to seize my shoulder and shake me violently.
“Kay,” he gestured frantically to the edge. “You have to see this.”
I rushed forward, drawing Apotyre and readying to plunge her into any new threat. However, no new threat presented itself. Quite the contrary, in fact.
“Fire?!” I shouted with a half-formed emotion that hadn’t quite defined itself. “What’s he bloody well doing here?”
The commander we had set out to save was now sprinting up the hillside, better equipped than when he had left. He had obtained obsidian armour and it gleamed hopefully in the sunlight alongside his scales. My heart surged with joy.
“I don’t know,” Astro answered. “Maybe he escaped.”
“Maybe? That’s precisely what’s happened Astro. Get down there and find out the details! This is perfect: we have a victory despite it all. Our…” I lowered my voice so the guards and Steve 2 didn’t hear me. “I’m going to pretend we had a secret side gambit. Who knows, maybe it’s even true.” Astro scoffed in disbelief and I proclaimed the potential lie loudly. The guards cheered.
As Astro flew down I concluded this was probably the work of the Lady of Dreams. I turned to the Prophet and Steve.
“Take heart, friends, your Forged Champion has proven himself more than worthy!”
Steve grimaced and nodded with uncertain hope. The Prophet closed his eyes. The bottom of my stomach felt like an ever-deepening pit.
I ran to the edge and saw Astro trying to get Fire’s attention. The Mencur-Besh kept marching forward as Astro posed him question after question, frantic with hope and surprise.
“Fire, are you listening?” he pressed. “You must tell us how you got out... I’ll be honest, you don’t know how glad I am you’re here. Kay’s waiting for you up there.”
At this, our commander seemed to finally notice something he said and cast a glance upward. My eyes locked with his. A gust of despair threatened to blow me over the edge and down the Hill to my death.
His eyes were black, not red. And yet it was unmistakably his face. I knew what was happening. This was that other person within him, the one he had warned me against. This was Claw.
“Astro!” I roared. “Get back!”
I sent a blast of voidfire down at Claw, who dodged and barrelled into Astro. The wizard attempted to draw his sword but Claw had a hold of his wrist. The other hand dug into his gut. The talons extended. They emerged on the other side of my dear friend’s torso, slick with blood.
“NO!” I screamed.
Claw dropped the wizard and charged off on its path. Full of fury, I lurched into a portal. I emerged on the far side and caught Claw on the shin guard with a two-handed blow. The greaves were made of obsidian so no visible damage was done, and my arms ached from the effort, but I successfully staggered him.
He turned and I hoped to take the opportunity to say something, provoke him perhaps, but unlike me Claw wasted no time. With superhuman speed he drew a mace and swung it at my head, but this was exactly what I had been training for. I bent backwards and successfully avoided the blow. Even so, the mace came close enough for me to feel the fragmented wind carried upon its flangues.
Feeling my balance weaken, We opened a portal into which I fell face-first. I then appeared in the sky, sword pointed and plummeting down at Claw, who was still looking at the spot I had just then inhabited. I aimed precisely for the break between his pauldron and his torso. Silently soaring downwards, I would mutilate this beast. Fire would just have to fix things later on.
Just as I came within plunging distance, however, Claw whipped around. He caught me in midair and hurled me off the Hill before charging off. I braced myself and tumbled into another portal, rolling out onto the path just before the summit.
“He can sense our portals!” My Book exclaimed.
I barely had time to process this new information before Claw attacked again. I ducked underneath the blow, then brought my sword down on the mace with both hands. He wasn’t disarmed, but I was able to hold the weapon in place just about.
I lifted one hand from the blade and tried to hurl an orb voidfire at his chest. Sadly, the wrinkle in my plan became evident as his other set of claws raked across my breastplate. The shot flew off target and caught him on the shoulder. The steel bindings of his shoulder guard were burned away, causing the obsidian plating to come loose. The voidfire burned through his underclothes, leaving the End-infused scales untouched. It wasn’t much, but I now had something to work with. Or I would have, had Steve 2 not chosen that moment to intervene.
The Prophet’s bodyguard whirled into existence just beside Claw’s shoulder and cut at the exposed shoulder. Claw’s hand shot out in response, but I had occupied enough of his attention that the shimmering stone blade managed to cut beneath the first few layers of scales and draw blood. Before I could celebrate, Claw had struck him in the head with a clenched fist.
The bodyguard dropped to the ground in a daze. I rushed forward to intervene, but, with the undauntable speed and strength he had stolen from Fire, Claw lifted Steve 2 by the scruff of his turquoise shirt and hurled him at me. The bodyguard slammed into me and we landed in a heap.
As we recovered, Claw bounded the remaining steps to the top of the Hill. My small contingent of guards formed up to oppose him and prevent him from reaching the Prophet. Claw charged forward and killed two immediately to his outstretched claws. The next three fell in successive blows of his mace. The last ran. I don’t blame him.
Claw ignored the fleeing quarry and approached the true prize. The Prophet stood and stared sadly at him.
“The black light approaches, Forged one, and the great sleep is now upon us,” he said with certainty.
Whether it was a threat, a consolation or a catharsis, I know not. Claw’s mace caved in his skull right after he finished the sentence.
My heart sank. How would our rebellion go on? We had built it around the congregation, and now its preacher lay dead.
I hardly noticed as Steve 2 rose to his feet and warped off to fight Claw alone. He was screaming, rage and blood dripping from between his teeth.
It went as one would expect. Steve 2 teleported furiously around for several blows and Claw sensed every one. I ran up to help, despondency slowing me. I blasted some lightning and Claw avoided it. Claw swept the legs from under Steve 2. The mace came down on his ribcage, and he stopped moving.
Now, it was just me and Claw upon the hilltop. The Book urged me to leave. I refused. This beast had killed the Prophet, upon whom all our purpose was pinned; had usurped Fire, our best hope at victory; had killed Steve 2, who I should have listened to from the beginning and might have brought us to a cleaner victory; and my dear friend Astro.
All those memories flashed before me. Steve 2 surprised me once again at the waterfall. The smell of the Heavybrew from Fire and I’s drinking contest returned to me. I relived the Prophet’s arrival at the Shelter and heard his approval of my plan. “The Champion of Life and Death shall be freed!” he shouted again and again in my ears. And, of course, I remember Astro seeing my plans for an airship.
“Kay…you’re really sure you can build this thing?... In that case, we’re going to make this happen, Kay.”
It was the kindest damned thing anyone had ever done for me. The Book could go hang.
I warped through and didn’t even try to avoid the grab. Claw picked me up and I blasted him full in the face with voidfire, ripping apart the obsidian segments of his helmet and blinding him. He dropped me and I recalled the maneuver I had used on Fire when we first met, hooking a foot behind his ankle and sending him tumbling to the foot of the Hill.
I told the Book to open a portal and stuck my head through. I was looking into the armory. Lucy and a few demons were there, the former startled out of her wits and the latter proceeding with indifference.
“Kay?! what’s happening?” Lucy yelped.
“Silver weapons, now!” I roared.
“We don’t have any!”
“Then bloody well make some. You have three minutes.”
Leaving her with the iciest tone I could muster, I slipped back through the portal. A look over the edge confirmed Claw was engaged with a handful of retreating archers, tearing them to shreds.
I warped through and caught him with a blast of electricity that did nothing. He lifted an archer. I hurled a ball of voidfire at him and that got his attention. He pirouetted nimbly out of the way and looked at me. He extended his claws and they protruded from the archer's neck. He cast the corpse aside and began to slowly walk toward me.
The remaining archers retreated past the spot where Astro had been stabbed, strengthening my resolve.
“Hello Claw,” I said.
He said nothing in response but nodded in acknowledgement.
“I’m not leaving the field until you’re dead, Claw, I hope you know that.”
I said this for the Book’s benefit as much as my opponent’s.
Claw drew his mace, I drew my sword, and we engaged.
What ensued was a relentless flurry of flame and metal, every blow being met with as much force as was dealt. I stopped trying to get around the armour and abandoned all hope of saving Fire. I merely had the Book burn away the bindings of the obsidian coating him and hacked away at his scales, teleporting only when survival was essential. I had it strengthen my muscles, heighten my senses, and if the Book hadn’t been shrieking it’s reluctance at me the whole time I would have said it was the most totally we had united since our partnership had begun.
In his turn, Claw slashed away with his namesake and pounded at me with his mace. The cracks in my breastplate became more and more perilous, and I began to bleed from more and more places as the fight went on. A gash across the scalp came first, then a cut beneath the armpit, then a particularly bad blow shook my ribcage and I knew there was more than bruising beneath my armour.
Still I fought on, doing him, I’d like to think, a proportional amount of harm. The damned scales limited my effectiveness, but I managed to deal a notable blow on the thigh and enlarge the wound Steve had inflicted on his shoulder until it spewed forth a veritable geyser of blood.
But I was losing, and I knew it. At a certain point, I stopped even asking for teleports out of tiredness, and entrusted that duty wholly to the Book’s good sense.
Then, a decisive encounter came when I finally burned away the last scraps of steel holding together the armour around his torso and stabbed in deep. Blood rose and I felt as though I’d drawn water from a desert spring. As I drew back, however, Claw caught me in the right knee with his mace, and my own armour barely held together. I hobbled back, practically hopping, and entered a portal.
Once again, I was in the armory. I was furious.
“Send me back!” I raved. “I’m not done yet!”
“Your silver weapons are ready,” my Book reminded me. “It’s been three minutes.”
I nodded my head sheepishly. Truth be told it had felt like hours, but the mind at war is easily confused.
I looked at Lucy. She had a sack which she offered to me. My heart broke as I looked in.
“These are just coins,” I choked. “What is this?”
“We - we didn’t have any silver weapons,” she explained with obvious wariness of my gory appearance. “The demons can’t forge them this fast. They… they need more time. We don’t manufacture any silver weapons, so finding this took most of the time.”
“No,” I panted. “No, Lucy… You’ve done your best. This will have to do.”
I plunged my fist in and took some coins between my knuckles. I would have to jam them into an open wound. It would poison him, paralyse him.
“Kay,” she asked. “Who is this for?”
I looked at her. Fire had done so much for her. She would mourn much more than I, and had a right to know.
“I’m sorry, Luc-”
I began to cough until I was on my burning knees. The taste of blood filled my mouth, and crimson speckled my hand and the floor. I just about drew myself up and steadied myself against the counter.
“Let us leave,” I groaned aloud to the Book when it didn’t respond immediately to my will. “Let’s go, Book!”
“Kay-”
“I’m going back there one way or another, Book,” I confessed, still audible to a horrified Lucy. “The Prophet is dead, the rebellion is dead.” Tears filled my eyes. “Astro is gone. If Claw won’t join them, I will gladly.”
As I hacked up more blood, Lucy instructed one of her attendants to call for a medic. I waved in dismissal but I don’t think she paid me any mind.
“I’m not asking you to stay,” the Book explained. “There is one power you have yet refused. It may work. We cannot beat his body, but we might yet beat his mind.”
My mind reignited as this possibility unfolded before my mind’s eye. Ambition numbed me and I straightened up, then hopped along toward where I wanted the portal to be.
“Oh Book,” I cackled. “You are magnificent.”
It finally acquiesced and I arrived back on the field. Claw stood surveying the destruction. Our forces were fragmenting. The TNT cannons attempted some covering fire, but it wasn’t doing much good. What remained would be a shell of our former power, and a cracked one at that. But that didn’t matter, not now.
“Claw!” I called. “Coo-ee!”
He saw me.
I hobbled into a defensive stance. The wound beneath my sword-arm had now become severe enough that I had to press it against my flank to stem the bleeding. I held the coins between my knuckles in my other hand like the world’s most pathetic buckler.
Claw drew his mace without a word and began to slowly advance, passing under the shadow of the Hill as he did so. I tried to reshuffle my stance and pain shot through my wounded leg. I fell to one knee, but kept my sword extended. I locked gazes with him.
He stood over me and raised the mace. I grinned at him sardonically, and began to see the glowing dots behind his eyes. The dots lined up, and as my mouth began to form a command, the mace came down. I would be too late. It was over.
I raised the fist full of coins and swung at the open wound on his torso.
Crack! The mace hit the ground beside me and Claw retreated. I missed and fell forward. His arm was limp and bent at a strange angle. I craned my head around to locate my saviour and my heart nearly burst from the joy of seeing them: Astro was hobbling toward me.
He had a hand clasped to his gut to hold his insides in, but he was irrefutably alive.
Claw straightened up and whistled. An Endling appeared at his side. He pulled out a potion and began to down it.
A deep chuckle came from above me: “Not bad for a first proper fight. Might have to consider bringing some ‘help’ of my own next time, to make it fair.”
He barely even flinched as the potion began to knit his arm back together.
“**** off, Claw,” I wheezed.
Claw laughed a long, hearty laugh that was cut off when the enderman teleported him away. It hung in the air like a splinter in my thumb. I tried to rise and fell back into the dirt.
“Hey, Astro,” I panted after some time. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”
My eyes drifted closed but I forced them back open.
Astro laughed and came over to me and hoisted me onto his knees. I felt some healing magic begin to stabilise my ribs but give out pretty quickly.
“Glad you’re not dead either,” Astro conceded. “Sorry, I’d heal you up, but I’m a little drained considering…” He gestured to the half-healed wound beneath his breastplate and to the general chaos.
“Oh yeah,” I muttered dreamily. “No, it’s all right, mate.”
I looked out and saw our final ranks break. My eyes were too blurry to make anything specific out, though.
“I can’t really see, Astro, with all the blood loss and the getting hit in the head a bunch of times… and all. Tell me, does it look bad for us?”
“It certainly doesn’t look amazing,” he said. “We did better than most might have, though.”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “Though it occurs to me I couldn’t have been fighting Claw - that’s his name, Fire told me… for more than ten bloody minutes. And the Entity only attacked a few minutes before that.”
“Which means…” Astro furrowed his eyebrows.
“We went from considerable success to utter rout... in about,” I swallowed, “Fifteen minutes.”
“Wow,” Astro chuckled. “Well, if we had to fail at least we did it in record time.”
His laughter became hysterical, and I joined him. By the time Shadow came across us, we looked so ignorant of any hardship we might have just been down the pub in Zine Craft, back before things got difficult.
Chapter 37: Firepower (Shadow)
Shadow’s mage squadron stood in formation, in this case formation meant a circle of mostly inexperienced mages with a couple of adepts in between. Their task was to cast rudimentary spells, which were weak on their own but eagerly fused with each other. The resulting spell was of a much greater magnitude than any individual mage could have produced. More importantly, they could cast their spells from a large distance, making retaliation difficult.
Around the circle were the more experienced casters, they channeled energy into the novices, that kind of energy manipulation was best left to those who knew what they were doing. Currently the novice’s spell repertoire consisted of the Sunbeam and a shield spell that would have been used for counter-magic, had the mages not been obliterated by their underground explosives.
Shadow shouted: “Command ordered a retreat, scryers look out for a last Sunbeam target, then everybody packs up and falls back with the rest of the troops!”
Only seconds later one of the scryers, an elderly archmage named Talita, had picked out a target and relayed it to the circle, who promptly started chanting in unison. A ball of fire started forming in their midst, rapidly gaining size. Once it had almost reached their outstretched hands, they released the spell with a final shout. The ball shot upwards, then gradually towards its intended destination, where it released its energy in a devastating beam onto a group of Tower soldiers that were giving chase to one of their own retreating divisions.
“Good shot.” Shadow commended her mages.
She took a look at the battlefield, most of their forces were already in full retreat but they’d be cut off by the Entity’s manifestations if nothing was done. Shadow clenched her fists and floated up into the air.
Danann, another of her experienced mages, looked at her. He was barely older than twenty and already immensely powerful, owing at least partially to his mythical ancestry, being descended from a satyr. He was too far removed to show any physical traits, unlike second-generation demonspawn Warnado with his horns and eyes. Compared to Danann, Warnado had similar, if not greater potential if only he could make his demon side agree with his human side.
Danann asked: “Master, where are you going?”
Shadow simply replied: “To delay the Entity.”
Iridia, one of the channelers who was similar to Danann in age and talent, spoke up: “Then we’re coming with you.”
Another channeler stopped Iridia as she tried to move towards Shadow, this one was Pallas, a middle-aged wizard. He said: “We’re not all going, the novices need protection on the way.”
Shadow had no time for discussions, so she made a decision: “Talita, Danann, you can fly so you come with me. Everyone else protects the novices and helps tend to the wounded.”
Iridia grumbled but bowed her head, then turned to go with a simple “Yes, master.”
Talita and Danann floated up next to Shadow, after a quick nod the trio flew off to the battlefield.
As the wind rushed past her ears, Shadow said: “I’ll be honest with you, there is not much of a plan aside from hitting the manifestations with as much as you can. Don’t put yourself at risk by coming too close.”
Danann replied: “Got it, stay at a distance and give it all we have.”
Talita said: “And watch out for archers of course. I’ll warn you if I see arrows coming our way.”
They arrived at the battlefield less than a minute of flight later, up close it was a gruesome sight. Corpses of both sides littered the ground, the excessive bloodshed had discolored the mud to a dirty crimson. Soldiers stumbled over fallen allies and enemies as they fled. Straight ahead of Shadow was a manifestation of the Entity, cleaving bodies in two with the brutal swings of its zweihander.
No words needed to be spoken between the mages. The three of them immediately unleashed their spells, Danann and Talita both shot scorching hot rays of flame, Shadow used her disintegration beam, making her runes glow brightly. The manifestation stopped in its tracks, bronze armor warping under the immense heat. Shadow could practically feel her fellow mages straining to sustain their attack.
They stopped when the manifestation fell over, armor too misshapen to remain standing. Talita was heavily breathing and Danann fared only a little better.
Suddenly Talita’s head jerked around, she shouted: “Arrows!”
Before she was done speaking Shadow had already projected a protective bubble around them, not a moment too early. A whole barrage of arrows shattered on the barrier almost immediately.
“Thank you.” Danann said.
They looked down at the manifestation again, to Talita and Danann’s horror and Shadow’s anger it had started moving again, slowly molding the armor back into its proper shape.
Shadow sighed. “Sorry to say, but I think you two should go back to the others.”
Danann asked: “Why?”
“Because the area around me will become very inhospitable soon.” Said Shadow.
Talita took another deep breath, then asked: “Is this about the secondary energy planes you told us about?”
Shadow nodded. “I will be drawing from them directly, I never tried this with such an energy-intensive spell so I hope you understand why you should get going.”
Danann nodded in response. “Alright, we’ll try to roast some enemy soldiers on the way if they don’t have archers.”
With that the two mages flew off, leaving Shadow alone above the battlefield. After taking a second to focus, Shadow once again opened her new sense, looking beyond her current plane and into the brimming layers of energy that existed alongside the physical plane of Nexus. Shadow saw her skin darken, felt her hair getting lighter as she rapidly siphoned energy from those parallel planes. Each pull was accompanied by a bolt of nothingness, a split-second fracture in reality’s integrity. Once she got a better feel for the amount of energy, Shadow started casting.
A blindingly bright beam shot from her palm, bigger and more intense than ever before. Stray bolts of energy arced off her body and from the beam itself. It impacted squarely on the recovering manifestation, rapidly warping its armor and evaporating a substantial amount of the dirt around it.
When Shadow stopped, she felt uncharacteristically refreshed, normally she should feel strain from casting such a powerful spell. Questions for later, she had more pressing concerns. This manifestation wouldn’t be getting up in a while, that still left several more that terrorized the battlefield.
Shadow flew towards the next one, faster than she had intended, having put so much energy into a spell shortly before made finesse difficult, another thing to explore in detail later once there was time.
The second manifestation saw her coming, there was the same mind behind all of them so naturally it knew what was about to happen. Although knowing did little to prevent it from happening. Shadow tried channeling more energy into this beam than the last one, there had to be a limit somewhere and she’d find it. The second manifestation collapsed like the first.
While flying to the next one Shadow thought about something she had discussed with her brother. It was something they dubbed the “Minimal Force Doctrine”, which said that you should only use enough force to defeat an enemy cleanly and confidently, without showing your full strength. Its main application was in skirmishes or battles where the enemy’s strength and capabilities were well-known. The point was to deprive the enemy of a good measurement of one’s own strength while racking up victories. Of course, the doctrine did not apply to Shadow’s current situation, an enemy that just would not stay down but couldn’t exactly fight back.
On the note of fighting back, Shadow created another barrier to block a barrage of arrows directed at her, then shot a quick disintegration ray in the direction of the archers. Another thought. She could focus on taking out the enemy forces but that would come at the cost of lives on her own side, a very limited resource. Ensuring the Entity stayed down was of the highest priority.
The third manifestation went down like the first two, so Shadow moved on. She still had not hit any limit to how much energy she could put into the spell. As she flew over to the fourth one, she saw something that complicated things. It was currently engaged in combat with a sizable group of rebels. Engaged in combat was perhaps the wrong term, in the process of butchering them was more appropriate.
Shadow decided to go for a more direct approach, she accelerated downwards and built up a barrier around herself at the same time, the ray would not work this time, not with so many allies around.
The barrier slammed into the Entity’s manifestation at immense speed, throwing it off-balance but not knocking it down, it was unnaturally massive.
“Go!” Shadow shouted at the soldiers, who did not have to hear it twice, taking off with a panicked, adrenaline-powered sprint.
The manifestation raised its zweihander and brought it down on her, a quick teleportation brought her out of range immediately. While Shadow gathered energy for her attack, the manifestation threw its weapon at her with surprising precision. She was unable to evade another time due to her spell in progress, she just had to take the hit.
The obsidian zweihander shattered Shadow’s barrier and impaled her through the chest. She felt no pain but having your ribcage, lungs and several other organs pierced by a massive sword was not a comfortable experience under any circumstance. Shadow channeled her resulting rage into the spell and let loose.
As she was blasting the manifestation with as much energy as she could muster, she felt something different. From one moment to the next her energy supply was cut off and she had to immediately stop her spell to not tap into her own life force. There it was, the limit. A quick look into the energy planes confirmed that she had drained absolutely everything nearby, more energy slowly flowing in.
Shadow looked around, that had been the last one, the first manifestation was moving again but at this point it was too far from any of their soldiers to do any damage. The retreat was almost complete. She could only make out a handful of their soldiers running into the forest, those had to be the rear guard. Shadow took off towards the hill.
The heavy sword remained lodged in her chest, some spikes near the guard had gotten caught on her spine. It was inconvenient flying while being impaled by a weapon larger than herself, but she would manage. Perhaps they could even take a closer look at the sword later to find out if there was anything special about it.
Shadow had not been prepared for the sight that the hill presented to her. The corpses of several archers and soldiers littered the elevated area, this was supposed to be a safe area. Two figures were lying near the top, evidently still alive and laughing, and not in any way that could be described as positive. Those two figures were Astro and Kay, both badly wounded!
Shadow immediately picked up speed, landing next to the two. As she descended, she noticed to her shock that two of the corpses belonged to the Prophet and his bodyguard Steve, the former had a caved-in head, the other a mangled ribcage.
She turned to Astro and Kay, who had been woken from their trance-like laughter by her arrival.
“What the hell happened here?”
Chapter 38: Event Horizon (Astro/Shadow)
I am ripped from the tranquility of laughter when I see Shadow drifting down toward us. The Entity’s zweihander pierces her chest, but even though the sword is twice as tall as her, she appears to float along without difficulty. Even when she asks her question, I’m still not quite able to read her mood:
“What the hell happened here?”
“Astro,” Kay wheezes, finally reigning in his own hysterical laughter. “Would you help me up?”
I try to, and then a sharp pain shoots through my gut. Calling the wound Claw inflicted on me “healed” would be an insult to healing. It wasn’t actively bleeding and that was the extent of it. I shrug and Kay nods in understanding, gesturing for me to speak.
“Prophet’s dead. Other Steve is dead. Kay and I are halfway there,” I say tonelessly. “It…”
I want to continue. To say what did all this, but I know the pain it will inflict on her. I see the Void and it burns away at my mind. Suddenly, the sunlight is too much for me. I flinch and look at the ground.
“Wait, before you say anything more, let me heal you. I can see that talking is painful to you.”
A reprieve. I strategise rapidly, but the ideas all keep falling apart before they can come together.
“Thank you, Shadow,” I grunt, making sure to sound as pained as possible.
She moves in close, places her hands against my torso, the most obviously wounded part.
“I was using a lot of magic a few minutes ago. This may come out more forcefully than usual,” she explains.
I start to nod, but before I can even think about bracing myself there is a flash of white light from her palms. I’m half-blinded and roar in pain as my insides begin to jolt back into place and my skin tears itself back together. Then, after a few seconds, I am healed. No scarring - the bottom of my stomach looks good as new. There are even a few hairs sprouting back into being.
Shadow moves on to Kay, who is just barely keeping his eyes open. He has a dreamy smile that doesn’t seem to match the bitter laughter of a few seconds prior. I had been unable to do much on account of my wounds, so his leg is still visibly broken, and there are still wounds across his scalp and under his armpit that weep blood with little impediment.
Shadow appears undaunted and, after reshuffling the zweihander which still protrudes from her back, she plants one hand on his leg and one beneath his armpit. Her hands glow and with similar force Kay’s begins to mend himself. I’m not sure if he’s better or worse-prepared than me. He writhes and clenches his teeth, but only a few isolated grunts of effort rise from his throat. Then, Shadow stops, and he falls panting. His leg still looks pretty bad, but he’s no longer at death’s door.
“So, what did this? Did I miss a manifestation?” asks Shadow with a tone that could probably indicate worry.
Suddenly, I realise I am no closer to an explanation of what happened on the Hill. I almost contemplate lying.
“Well, Shadow…” I trail off again.
I lock eyes with Kay, and I know I am being reproached. He shakes his head.
“Claw is free,” Kay grunts as he pulls hobbles up.
I see the colour drain from Shadow's face, given her natural skin tone this was a bad sign. She is silent.
“I don’t know how,” he continues. “But he is in control and working for the Entity. He arrived, wearing their obsidian armour and I just assumed he had escaped. Because of my error, the Prophet and Steve are dead, and Astro almost joined them.”
He stops and waits for her to react. One hand is open, twitching with a desire to summon voidfire. The other hovers near the pommel of Apotyre, ready to draw it. His face, however, is grimly impassive.
The yawning void behind my eyes grows more intense. It is practically screaming at me, and the sunlight is getting unbearable. I scrunch my eyes closed, but then force them open. That’s when I realise her hair is rising, and her skin is descending to that shade beneath darkness.
“Get to safety,” I warn Kay.
He doesn’t move, so I plant a hand on his chest and push him back as gently as I care to be - which isn’t particularly gentle.
“Get to safety,” I repeat.
“I’m not-”
“-Book, get him to safety. I’ll see to it you’re not reprimanded,” I instruct aloud and telepathically.
“If I must,” it answers wryly.
Kay falls into a rift in a string of curses. With that liability dealt with, I return to Shadow.
She is standing there, but she doesn’t look right. Her shape and skin wavers, as though seen through immense heat. She is slumped forward, but the zweihander’s blade which protrudes from her back has a strange balancing effect - it looks like an awful wing.
I take a few steps back, then levitate a foot or two just to be safe. The tear in reality continues to shriek at me, as though it is being ripped open all over again.
“Shadow, are you there?” I ask.
I crane my neck and float around and see the profound look of grief on her face. Her face is scrunched to the point where it looks like it’s about to burst or fold in on itself altogether.
“Shadow,” I repeat. “We need you here. We will find a way to save him, I promise.”
I don’t know if that’s a lie.
She jolts - it might be a nod? - and raises her trembling hand to the zweihander. The fingers clasp around the obsidian handle, and she begins to pull. I realise she’s not pulling it out. She’s wrenching it up.
Suddenly, I am almost paralysed by the memory of the Void. It is unseaming the world and ripping my mind in two. I am agonized, but I remain afloat. Somehow, behind and beneath the screaming, there is a strangely comforting note.
Shadow arcs the zweihander up through her chest and head, cleaving both in two. My eyes widen as her physical form falls away, unmoving and expressionless as a doll. What remains is an ever-shifting mass of silhouettes. Shadow is there, but her not-skin is of a shade so far past darkness I cannot find a name for it. It is as though the night sky had burst open before me to reveal something vaster and emptier and more overpowering.
She still casts a shadow of her own, but Wodahs appears unable to capture this new form. She is a writhing, angry mass of near-complete shapes for several seconds, shifting between arms and legs and tentacles and many more shapes a shadow should not know how to convey at all. Then, Wodahs settles into formlessness, and swirls more calmly beneath her master.
That’s when I realise, looking directly upon this new, unveiled Shadow, how quiet the tear in reality has become. It is as though the gaping wound has not healed but triumphed over the flesh it afflicted. A scar now, not an injury. I hear a comforting song of everything and nothing, and all that tension and confusion I have felt for the last few weeks is banished.
The zweihander clatters to the ground.
“I will kill it.” says Shadow.
“K-kill what?” I stammer dumbly.
She walks away, and for a moment I am tempted to follow her in pursuit of this unspecified prey, but I cannot bring myself to do it. Every inch of me wants to flee, and I obey my body for once. I fly away from her and away from the answer to my question, trying to dull my guilt by promising to find people to help elsewhere.
###
Shadow felt empty. Emptier than she had ever felt before, emptier even than when she had floated above an altar, all her blood having drained from various rune-shaped cuts in her skin. It was not a hollow emptiness, it simply was an absence. An absence of the grief she had felt seconds before, an absence of the anger she had felt when thinking about the outcome of her brother’s mission, an absence of her usual thoughts and worries. There was one thing she had said she would do, and she was going to do it.
Shadow was going to kill the Entity.
She put one foot in front of the other, she didn’t need to be fast. There was no rush, the Entity would always be there. While walking Shadow observed her surroundings, not just in the way everyone else did. She looked beyond, even beyond the additional layers of magical energy she had seen before. Behind her, where the Prophet lay dead, she saw a rapidly fraying snarl of magic, its strings going all over. One of those strings was different, it was older. It pointed straight where Shadow was going, at the Entity.
Despite her slow pace, trees flew by as Shadow took her steps, each time she put a foot forward it reached further through space than the last. Before long she had arrived at the battlefield, it now lay quiet but not empty. The only things that were still moving were the Entity’s manifestations. They were Shadow’s first target.
With a final, long step she closed the gap to the closest one. It saw her and swung its zweihander at her. When the blade made contact it was split in two, the part that hit her having simply disappeared into the vast nothingness that was her body. The manifestation hesitated, Shadow simply kept walking towards it.
Shadow’s hand reached forward, through the bronze armor and into the grey substance beneath. The armor disappeared at her touch, the grey substance did not, it even resisted her for a brief moment, then gave way to her palm, deforming around it like a viscous liquid. Shadow felt the structure of the manifestation, it was like a bubble connected to the main body with a thin string. With a mere thought the string was severed, the grey substance collapsing in on itself and evaporating into the Void. The bronze shell fell down as it lost support.
The next manifestation tried fighting back but the only result was that Shadow could cut its string faster. The other two fell just the same way. As she separated the last one, Shadow felt something different, a movement far off.
Moments later an identical set of bronze armor materialized in front of Shadow, she felt that this was the real Entity, the main body. Shadow began walking towards it, but did not seem to be getting closer, as if the space between her and the Entity was extending into infinity. Shadow raised her hand, gathering up energy from within. Reality tore itself apart at her fingertips, the rift propagating towards the Entity, moving faster the denser the space ahead became.
When the rift reached the Entity, it swallowed its armor but the vague grey body beneath remained visible, as if it existed above the tear in reality. The world snapped back to its normal geometry at the same time the rift closed. The Entity stood only a short distance from Shadow. She reached forwards, trying to make contact. The Entity preempted her by wrapping one of its huge hands around Shadow’s torso and brought her up to the height of its head.
The Entity spoke: “You-are the anomaly. You will… be absorbed.”
Its other hand reached out to Shadow’s head. Once it made contact a brief flash of grey intruded on the fringes of Shadow’s mind before being pushed back by a surge of nothingness. Shadow felt the pressure increase but she held against it firmly. The assault stopped minutes later, neither of them was able to breach the defense of the other, like water and oil attempting to mix.
The comforting emptiness Shadow had felt so far slowly receded, she could not do what she wanted to do, at least not yet. She would need to be stronger. Her regular thoughts returned as the realization settled in.
A grin spread across Shadow’s face, a blindingly bright gash in the nothingness. She said: “Hello, fellow abomination.”
The Entity’s hand jerked open, as if it had been awoken from a daydream. Shadow slowly slid down to the ground after being released. The Entity took a step backwards, away from her, something akin to fear in the movement. Then, from one moment to the next it disappeared, leaving Shadow alone in the middle of the battlefield.
Shadow thought about what had happened but was not entirely sure how to describe it. It had been her that did all this, not someone else, she couldn’t deny that. What had changed? After having heard of Claw being in control of her brother’s body something in her mind had snapped, or maybe clicked was a better word for it. After shedding her physical body, she felt more whole than ever, it was like she hadn’t changed into something else, but became a truer version of herself. It was like the form she took when she ate the minds of rulebreakers, only so much more. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? Her talk about humanity with Astro came back to her, what if this was only the beginning? How much of this was related to her brother’s well-being and how much of it was just her?
Shadow shook her head. Now was not the time to answer any of these questions. For better or for worse, they would answer themselves in time. It was now time to return to the others, there would be questions. As Shadow went, she slowly reformed her physical body. The more of it formed the less she could keep her grief from returning, by the time she was back at the hill to retrieve her clothes, she had to fight to not break down on the spot.
Shadow felt now more than ever before that Humanity, however you defined it, could also be a burden.
Chapter 39: Hunted (Warnado)
Warnado’s feet pounded across the crimson earth to carry him away from his pursuer. As he ducked and dodged between corpses, weapons and combatants he had never been more conscious of the force of gravity upon him. He ran hunched through the battlefield and had long since lost track of Tyron, of Amanda. The Prophet’s Hill was too small to see from the midst of the violent crowd.
He had the vague impression things weren’t going well. Faint voices screamed ‘Retreat!’, nearer ones screamed ‘Hold fast!’ And the enemy had caught on and were yelling their own instructions, knowing their superior numbers and the Entity’s arrival precluded any idea of they themselves retreating. The fighting around this point was brutal. Those rebels who partook in it knew they were giving themselves over to a tempest.
Warnado did not agree with their assessment - he really, really wanted to keep living and make sure Amanda followed his lead. If he could get to the crater’s lip, he would at least be able to figure out which direction to run in.
Just as he reached this conclusion, he saw a pair of gargantuan, armoured hands pull apart the melee as though it were a cheap curtain. Glibby had found him.
Glibby swung his gauntlet down and Warnado rolled. The demon-child summoned his energy bow and readied an attack, but an obsidian boot caught him on the knuckles. A grey enderman had materialised and kicked him. The bow dissipated and blood ran between the demon-child’s fingers. Through the pain, he summoned an axe and hacked at the enderman.
His assailant disappeared, however, and the axe didn’t do much more than disturb the air. Unfortunately, air wasn’t the only thing on the other side of the enderman. Glibby’s fist sailed through the air and crunched into his head.
Warnado fell back and tore a trench through the blood-soaked earth. His eyes felt misaligned, and he couldn’t quite sync up the two images they fed him. He didn’t need particularly clear vision, however, to see the mountain of apish flesh and obsidian armaments leaping at him, intending to crush him under its weight.
He rolled and somehow stumbled his way into standing. Glibby, meanwhile, lounged in the bloody muck like a luxuriant pig, showing no hurry in getting up. Warnado profited from the opportunity to hurl a fireball at Glibby, but it simply glanced off his obsidian shell. The Ape lunged at him from a crouching position and Warnado barely staggered out of the way. He was still too disoriented to dodge the second.
The heavy gauntlet caught him in the ribs, and he lifted off his feet.
His ribs burned with pain, and he felt his entire body spasm into rigidity. Beneath him, he could see two battlefields, both identical and both blurry. He caught a glimpse of the Prophet’s hill and its twin and thought he could see bursts of silver flame spurting around the base of both iterations. Two Sunbeam blasts struck the battlefields, and massacred two groups of enemies, or maybe friends.
He hit the dirt with a disconcerting squelch, and then an obsidian boot pressed him down further and made his ribs sing an encore of agony. His disjointed eyes resynchronised as he rubbed the mud from his eyes. A green-eyed enderman, not unlike Voidblade, collapsed into the dirt before him, its throat slit by razor-sharp talons. The silver scales glinting from beneath the purple-black armour indicated clearly that the enderman standing over him was the last of Glibby’s original three Grey Ones. And limp from pain, Warnado did nothing as this survivor lifted him.
Warnado felt his hood be torn back, and his concealment charm dissipated. For the first time in years, he felt the breeze and light on his horns. And then, feeling more vulnerable than a snail without a shell, an obsidian gauntlet forced him to lock gazes with Glibby the Ape, Fristad’s murderer.
“Thank you, Shaghran. And you, boy. You gave me a merry chase. Not many can,” Glibby said. “What’s your name?”
“Santa,” answered Warnado with steely eyes and no hesitation.
Glibby punched him in the sore spot.
“Warnado.”
Another blow. Warnado caught a brief glimpse of a toothy grin and smoke-like skin he faintly recalled from the Tower’s negotiation room all those weeks ago.
“Your real name, not your circus-performer’s epithet.”
When Warnado finally recovered: “Helix. My name is Helix.”
“Isn’t that better?”
A giant crushed a Jackal beneath his foot in the background.
“I only ask because no one else will know what to call you after this,” Glibby sneered. He began to cackle madly.
As the obsidian fingers clasped Warnado’s chin, he struggled against it. An enderman tore the intestines out of an aging rebel in the background. Warnado gave into the grip to get away from the awful sight.
“You seriously can’t come up with something better than that?” Warnado asked.
Glibby’s grip slackened. A shadow passed over them, but Warnado couldn’t make out what it was.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re going to send me out with a ‘they aren’t even going to recognise you when I’m done with you’? Why not call me ‘dead meat’, try to take my lunch money, sneak in a ‘we’re not so different you and I’ while you’re at it.”
Another shadow passed over them, and Warnado could have sworn he saw a toothy grin somewhere in it.
The toothy grin reappeared, and a bemused voice accompanied it.
“Keep him busy a second. I’m flagging our mutual friend down,” Freak chuckled. “You don’t even owe me for this, kiddo, this’ll just be funny.”
“You dare critique me? Now, when I’m about to murder you?” Glibby asked in genuine exasperation.
Emboldened by Freak’s unsolicited and surprising encouragement, Warnado pressed on:
“Sorry, Ape-guy, you’re just cliché.”
“I’m cliché?” Glibby repeated dully. Then, with more gusto: “I’m cliché?!”
The Ape sprinted back and punched a nearby corpse before loping back on his mighty knuckles, as evocative of his namesake as Warnado had ever seen him.
“Oh, was it ‘cliché’ when my father cloistered me away? Did he stop the world from gazing upon his son because he just looked too bloody banal! Was I just too normal-looking when he disinherited me?”
Warnado fought the urge to laugh as he realised how much of a nerve he’d hit. His spirits only increased as he saw a Tower merc dispatched by a falling rock that looked suspiciously like a wing.
“Maybe that’s my problem! I’m just too boring for you all. If only the Divines had cast me in a more exotic mold than a gorilla - made me look like a real freakshow. A panda, or a bee or an axolotl, perhaps? Maybe all of them combined? Huh? If they had, maybe I’d be in my father’s chateau, drinking fine wines and going into town for the theatre, rather than ambling around this grimy butcher’s yard in search of something interesting to kill so I don’t go mad with boredom! Or perhaps I’d just wind up on the Shore of Oddities like everyone else who can’t pass as human!”
Finally, Warnado caught a glimpse of a battered set of diamond armour gliding down toward him on one wing. Inside, he saw an unmistakable mass of green fur.
“DUCK!” Squeaked Kir.
Glibby, at first confused, then saw a reflection in a jewel crowning Shaghran’s helmet and unknowingly followed Kir’s command. Unfortunately for the last of the three original Grey Ones, this only left him a split-second to react before a wing-like blade of ice decapitated him. Warnado and the headless enderman fell in a heap and the demon-child scrambled to pull his hood back up.
Tyron landed a few moments later and wasted no time before shaking the ice from his right arm, drawing Kir and rushing at Glibby. The Silhouette’s enforcer, snarling with a mixture of indignity at Warnado’s insults and irritation at the loss of his last best manservant, also charged almost instantaneously.
Tyron dodged Glibby’s first blow and parried the second with his left arm, which was still shielded by a stone wing. With the Ape’s guard broken, he willed the stones to lift, and the tip of the wing shattered against Glibby’s head. As Glibby retreated, Tyron swiped at him with Kir and raked the Bluestone sword across his breastplate. A shower of sparks went flying and Glibby staggered further.
Warnado hauled himself up, wiping the purple blood of the End off him as best he could. It had soaked his robes. He looked at the ape-like warrior with a distant hatred.
Glibby parried Kir and struck Tyron in the flank. The hero lurched away in pain as the diamond of his breastplate warped from the force of the blow. A second blow caught him on the jaw with force that would have taken Warnado’s head clean off. Tyron, however, spat out the blood and grinned in challenge.
Warnado took a step forward, but the pain in his ribs stopped him from intervening. He himself tightly in the hopes of getting some sense of control over the pain.
Tyron hurled the remains of the stone wing at Glibby, and the Ape’s advance halted as he had to stop and block the incoming heap of rocks. It bounced harmlessly off the impermeable armour covering his forearms, but it bought Tyron the time he needed to recover.
Warnado laced the fingers of his free hand and the fingers of his demon gauntlet into the shape of a gun.
Now recovered, the Ape and the Dragoknight glared at each other. One glared with purpose, the other because he didn’t know what else to do in the face of irritation. Glibby rushed forward and lashed out at Tyron’s head. Tyron, a calm smile settling on his face in the place of the grin, sidestepped the Ape. There were two flashes of deep blue as Tyron swung Kir twice in rapid succession. Wounds opened on the back of Glibby’s leg and on the side of his hip. He slid forward on his knees, groaning in pain. A wounded enderman lay dying nearby.
With Tyron safely out of the line of fire, Warnado took his opportunity.
“Hey Glibby!” He yelled angrily. “They’re not going to recognise you after I’m done with you!”
A jet of purple fire burst out.
Glibby’s eyes widened in terror. He snatched the leg of the dying enderman and squeezed tightly.
“Teleport!” Warnado heard him hiss.
And when the jet of fire cleared, there was no charred, hulking mass before him. The annoyance of losing out of vengeance faded pretty quickly though, as Warnado doubled over in pants of pain and exhaustion.
“Thanks for coming to get me, Tyron,” he said. “All things considered, you’re not the worst babysitter I’ve ever had.”
“Well, if I didn’t show up with both my wards under my arms, Kay would never have let me live.”
“Don’t you mean live it down?”
“I know what I said.”
Warnado laughed, but just as it occurred to him how serious Tyron sounded, he was quickly distracted by the relief and exhilaration of a flight back to friendly lines.
Chapter 40: Locked In (Fire)
Fire had regained consciousness only minutes after the Entity had let go of him, if only a very vague semblance of consciousness. Fire was not like Claw who’d stay in a dormant state while he was in his mind-prison, instead he became increasingly aware of himself as time passed.
Inside of the cage Fire was his real-world human self, Peter. This version of him had short, brown hair and green eyes. While tall by human standards, he was nowhere near as tall as his alter ego Fire. He had used his real name on the server too in the first few hundred years until his transformation into the first Mencur-Besh, after that it had been Fire. He was just as much Fire as he was Peter, however since he had his human appearance in the mind-prison, he’d use the appropriate name.
As Peter became more aware, the cage itself changed, from the very cramped, animal cage it transformed into an environment he was more familiar with, still a cage but more of a metaphorical one. Peter’s mindspace had become the very place that had been the site of actions that shaped the fates of so many, including his own: The Graves Manor.
The Graves Manor in the real world was located some distance outside the capital, relatively hidden in a dense forest, the back of the building resting against a rock cliff, which was part of a large mountain range. Unlike most manors it was no old building passed down through generations, the Graves Manor was no older than forty years and looked the part. It was three stories tall and had two wings next to its main block. All windows were one-way mirrors, making it impossible to see what was going on behind them from the outside.
Peter’s parents had built the manor when their first profits from the weapons they produced for the war came in, wanting both privacy as well as a new site for their research. As such the manor had a vault door at the back of the entrance hall. This door led to a laboratory hidden inside the cliff the manor was built against. They had known how to play to the stereotypes at least. That was where they’d perform their experiments and where they constructed their prototype weapons, it also featured a library full of research documentation that Peter regularly studied.
The Graves Manor in Peter’s mind was quite similar to its real equivalent, only that it was far from uniform. Each room was fragmented into different versions, drawing from memories from all over Peter’s life. The entrance hall alone was a mess of light, shadows and different states of modification.
Since he had nothing better to do, Peter spent his time walking the hallways and rooms, trying to unify them to the version of them he liked best, which was the version from last summer, just after the extensive renovations he had organized.
The left wing and entrance hall were already done. The only thing that he couldn’t change was what he saw outside of the windows, no matter how hard he tried, it stayed the same. Eternally locked in time, one window would show the forest in the deepest winter, another during a thunderstorm, lightning frozen dramatically in the distance.
Peter made his way over to the right wing of the manor, it had gone mostly unused over the years, which was why he saved it for last. The wing would have had rooms belonging to Peter and his sister, had their parents not died while both of them were still young.
Peter went down the left side staircase of the entrance hall, taking a look at the display cases that were lined up along the sides. Each held a different weapon prototype, or at least a replica of one if the prototype in question was an explosive device or too large to fit in a display case. Above the display cases were photographs of the weapons in use, Peter had removed the ones that depicted actual battles, only the test range photos remained. He had never tried to hide what his parents had done but having photographs of people dying in your house was far from appropriate.
The vault door loomed ominously at the back of the entrance hall, Peter knew the code that would open it by heart, but he already knew that this version of the door would not open, no matter how many times he entered it. Peter moved on, ascending the right-side staircase and approaching the double door that led to the right wing.
He was met with a fragmented view of the corridor, some parts were lit by bright sunlight, often coming from different angles, others were shrouded in darkness. Half of a jackhammer leaned against nothing, the tiles below it noticeably older than the others. A cold breeze blew in from a window that led to the middle of winter.
Peter got to work, summoning memories and forcing them into this mindspace, pushing the fragmented ones away. It was exhausting but nevertheless satisfying, especially if he considered the fact that he probably was not even supposed to have the manor in his mind. The Entity probably thought Claw’s cage could contain him, in which case it had thought wrong. As opposed to Claw, Peter was a fully formed personality with thousands of years of memories. Of course, this changed nothing about the situation at its core, Peter was unable to act on the outside world and Claw was currently out there serving the Entity.
He shook his head, no sense worrying about something he had no control over. The jackhammer disappeared along with the older tiles, replaced with the newer tiles that Peter had spent a good deal of time deciding on during the planning stages of the renovation. The winter window closed, and the cold breeze stopped.
It was difficult to tell time in the manor, clocks were either stuck on a certain time or moved erratically, Peter preferred the former over the latter. After an unknowable amount of time, the corridor and most of its bordering rooms were consistent with Peter’s preferred version.
He was too exhausted to continue, perhaps he’d go and check the front balcony again. Peter had discovered that if he stood in a certain spot, he could catch fragments of the outside world through Claw’s senses. At first it had only been single images and sounds but as he brought the manor in line with his memories he could see longer and clearer fragments. Aside from having something to do, this was Peter’s main motivation for “cleaning up” the manor.
Peter pushed open one of the balcony doors. When he looked through the glass of a window or a door it was just like any other window, showing the balcony frozen at some point in the past. Once he stepped outside a different scene presented itself: everything past the railing was unending gray static, just like when the Entity had tried absorbing Peter. This was the first thing that clued him in that something was special about this place.
“Alright, let’s see what you’re up to, Claw.” Peter said.
He had been looking before too of course, but all he had gotten was that Claw was collaborating with the Ender on some kind of plan. The fragments had never been long or clear enough to make out what it was about. Maybe he’d find out more now.
Peter positioned himself exactly in the center of the balcony and leaned against the railing, his head only centimeters away from the grey static. He closed his eyes.
Immediately a loud noise pierced Peter’s mental ear, clearer than ever before: “Astro! Get back!”
This was Kay, without a doubt. A second later Peter also got a mental image from Claw’s point of view. The scene presented to him was not a pretty one, Claw was currently in the process of skewering Astro with his claws. Peter’s mind raced to try to figure out what was going on.
Kay was there, Astro was there. Was the Shelter being invaded? No, there was too much grass for that, the high plain before the Shelter was mossy more than anything. Peter realized that they were standing on the Prophet’s hill. Claw’s vision whipped around, focusing on a figure that stood a bit further up, the Prophet. What exactly was going on here? Peter thought back to his last hours before getting caught. What had he sent back and how could it have led to this?
Then it clicked. There was the sound of distant battle. The hill was near the village that he had found to be fortified. Kay was trying to establish a forward base and Claw was here to assassinate him! Before Peter could contemplate more, a fierce fight broke out between Claw and Kay. Not before long Kay called upon the Book to create portals, something that Peter knew would not work as well as Kay hoped it would, any form of magic used for teleportation created energy impulses, which could be sensed by a Mencur-Besh. Predictably, Claw saw Kay’s attack coming.
Moments later Claw stood before the Prophet, who said a last sentence before being slain. This made less sense, why would the Prophet be the primary target of the assassination? Was there something Claw knew that Peter didn’t? It definitely was a possibility. Before Peter had time to think deeply on it, Steve had already fallen to Claw. Now it was only Kay left, and he disappeared into a portal, only to reappear moments later.
This was not a fight Kay could win, with or without the Book. Peter knew this body and its potential too well, and by extension this also applied to Claw. Mencur-Besh were each aligned to one of the seven elements the server’s magic system used, in Peter’s case it was fire-aligned, which manifested in greatly increased strength. Kay could not hope to withstand Claw’s attacks, not with… Peter’s thoughts paused. There was no red glow coming from between Claw’s scales. Any Mencur-Besh could drastically increase its body temperature to enable a different mode of muscle operation, one that offered vastly increased power output at the cost of enormous energy consumption, fire-aligned Mencur-Besh had an especially powerful version of this and yet Claw was not using it.
Something occurred to Peter, he knew how Claw’s memory operated from some experiments conducted by the scientists that had created the server. Claw had access to any factual knowledge, but it needed to become relevant first. He was quite handily beating Kay so there was no reason for his mind to bring forth that information, but it certainly would eventually. Once that happened, Kay would be truly done for.
Peter acted fast, reaching within his own memory, which technically was also Claw’s, and started concentrating on the muscle overdrive as hard as he could. If his theory was correct, this would prevent Claw from discovering the information while he kept it up, which only needed to be long enough for Kay to gain some kind of advantage and force Claw to retreat.
Tense minutes passed as both combatants tore at each other, at some point Kay briefly disappeared again, only to return holding what looked to be a handful of coins. Silver, of course, that was the advantage that Kay needed.
The actual resolution came as surprisingly to Peter as it had come to Claw, it was not Kay attacking Claw with the silver, but Astro breaking Claw’s arm with his spell, an impressive feat considering the hardness and density of Mencur-Besh bones. After losing some taunting words, Claw was teleported away to the inside of the fortified village.
Peter stumbled backwards in exhaustion, the images and sounds in his head disappeared. He was fully and properly drained but satisfied. Kay and Astro lived. Moments later the realization of the Prophet’s death sunk in, this would bring some real complications to the rebellion, having lost not only their champion but the one who named that champion as well. Claw showing up fighting for the Entity would also be difficult to explain, for an outsider it would look like their commander turned coat.
Peter sighed. Kay would have some truly difficult times ahead of him, now it was left to see what he’d make of the situation.
As for Peter, he made his way to his bedroom in the left wing, he still hadn’t tried if he could sleep in this mindspace, but he would damn well try.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 5 Crisis (Chapters 41-67)
Chapter 41: Regroup (Jennifer)
Jennifer hated healing potions. She needed them - in the course of the battle she had broken a dozen or so bones and lost about a swimming pool worth of blood - but the healing process was about as bad as getting injured. It was like being a kid and being told you had to eat your carrots - if carrots caused excruciating pain as they allegedly improved your eyesight. As such, she was immensely glad when the pain finally dissipated, and she was able to leave the medic’s tent.
The dawn reached over the horizon and scraped her eyes as she stepped out. Her eyes snapped shut like a bear trap. On account of the potion, she hadn’t slept in over a day, so the temptation was strong to concede defeat and go back into the tent to sleep. Better yet, she could just collapse then and there and sleep it off on the ground. But, of course, she had responsibilities. She wrenched her eyes open from behind the shelter of her forearm and pressed on.
They were on the edge of a dark oak forest. What remained of her troops had set up a series of tents there, most of them for housing the wounded. Everyone else had followed suit when they caught up, and now their encampment had spread some way into the woods, tents sprouting up like weeds between the trees and giant mushrooms.
As she passed through the bloodstained and grimy soldiers who hadn’t washed since the Entity had massacred them, she began to feel bad about her spotless appearance. As mentioned previously, she had bled and bled a lot, but it had all dripped and faded away. She hated how dirty this world was, but at least if some of it settled on her, her soldiers would understand their leader had shared in their sorrows out there. Some people certainly needed that reminder...
Given the circumstances, her division had gotten off lightly, and they were still down to half capacity if wounded were included. She could only imagine how badly Steve and Tyron had fared. She saw one of Steve’s Jackals limping along, one leg missing, and she felt a swell of pity that was initially hampered by a web of resentment but eventually forced its way into an uneasy control of her emotions.
Jennifer and Steve hadn’t really spoken since he joined Kay’s little cabal. Aside from a brief little “stay safe” chat before the battle, the two of them had avoided each other pretty totally. Admittedly, that meant they had maybe gone two days without a real conversation but bearing in mind they had been speaking to each other daily for at least two years before that, this was an unprecedented rough patch.
A desire to power through and get back to normal wasn’t enough to convince her to patch things up. She appreciated that he was grieving Fristad and now Fire, but they were supposed to be grieving together. Supporting each other. And he had decided to make it all about him:
“Why is it always my job to fix everything?”
She had been there for pretty much all the fixing he’d ever done. ****.
Jennifer decided to think about other things because she was getting angry again. Thankfully, she was distracted by the sight of several tables stacked with bread, potatoes, dried meat and other food. The food was pretty spartan, but her stomach gurgled impatiently, and it suddenly looked like a banquet.
She joined the line for rations and left with a plate of meat and potatoes. Squinting around for a place to sit, she saw Destiny muttering to herself at a table beneath a large, brown mushroom. Jennifer wanted quiet to reflect but also didn’t want to sit alone, so Destiny was her best bet.
“If Steve is any indication,” thought Jennifer. “Destiny will probably be glad not to have to deal with any of my usual misguided attempts to clear the low, low bar of common decency by trying to comfort and support people who are very obviously hurting.”
Destiny sat bow-legged and barefoot. She had draped her right hand over the table, palm facing skyward. However, despite this apparently relaxed pose, everything else suggested Destiny was furious. Her eyes were narrow, her draped hand trembling as though something invisible was holding it there against her will. And her toe, barefoot, curled into the ground and had raked up a lot of grass.
Jennifer almost wanted to ask what was wrong but reminded herself why she chose this table and sat down.
“Hey,” Jennifer said flatly.
Destiny suddenly looked as though someone had caught her trying to climb into a chicken coop.
“What? Oh, hey.”
There was now a small, yellow crystal in her outstretched palm that hadn’t been there before. She closed her fingers around it.
“What’s that?” Jennifer asked with furrowed brows.
“Nothing,” Destiny said a little too quickly to be convincing. Apparently realising this, she added: “I-I’m trying to learn that spell Warnado does. Where he summons food. You know, get something a little more interesting than meat, potatoes and bread.”
Jennifer forced herself to exhale genially through her nostrils and nodded. She then sank into silence to reflect.
She thought on the hearsay that had flown around her during the retreat. She had been too busy killing endermen to pay attention to anything happening behind her, but apparently, during the fighting, Fire had come back and turned on them. Arrived at the Hill, killed the Prophet and Steve 2, then nearly did the same to Kay and Astro. It suddenly occurred to her how much this news would devastate her Steve-
“-But like, what was the little yellow thing?” Jennifer asked suddenly.
Breaking her silence was better than dwelling on Steve’s self-pity.
“Yellow thing?”
“The crystal. In your hand. You were summoning food.”
“... Have to start with something.”
“Yeah, but what is it? I’ve never seen a crystal like it in Nexus.”
Destiny’s mouth opened to offer an explanation that didn’t come. Thankfully for her, and much to Jennifer’s frustration, Astro’s voice sounded from the side.
“Jennifer, Destiny, excellent. We’re gathering for a meeting.”
He patted them unenthusiastically on the shoulder and then trudged off, the implication being that they should follow him.
A few minutes later they were in a tent with various assembled allies.
Warnado and Amanda sat at a table together, sipping hot drinks. The former was wrapped in various blankets and staring at the shadows on the canvas wall nearest to him.
Urist, Voidblade and Rose sat at a table together. Rose’s left leg was in a splint, and her hip heavily bandaged, she looked weary but alert. Urist seemed more interested in a flask of mead than anything else. Voidblade seemed mostly unharmed, but his eyes were darting around the tent so quickly he might have just been shot in the back.
“Any alcohol to spare?” asked Destiny.
Urist reached into a satchel and pulled out an extra flagon of mead which he poured for her. She drew up a chair and sat bow-legged, no more relaxed than she had been earlier.
“Finally, someone else is drinking. Come, let’s commiserate. And yerself, Jennifer?”
The dwarf held up the satchel and shook it.
“I’m good.”
“Suit yerself.”
Destiny downed the flagon and then eyed up the others at the table.
“So, how are we ancien regime types feeling now Scales is playing for the other team?” She chuckled with forced geniality. “Any temptation to jump ship?”
Voidblade stood up angrily, fists clenched, then walked away.
Urist grimaced and closed up the satchel. Even Astro took a break from scanning for new arrivals at the tent flap spared a quick, irritated glance at Destiny.
She appeared to look at Jennifer and Rose for affirmation and both averted their eyes.
“Tough crowd,” Destiny laughed, undeterred.
“People. Died.”
Jennifer looked for the source and found Warnado standing on his chair. His robes were torn, bloody and dirty, and the red glow of his eyes seemed particularly strong. He glared at Destiny, and Amanda had a hold of his sleeve, though her eyes calmly swept the room. Destiny scowled back.
“Yeah, it happens,” she said with gravity. “And you can either wallow in it or you can try to find it funny.”
The tent hung in uneasy silence. Jennifer hated that she had a point. Steve could certainly benefit from learning that. Well, maybe not the funny part… Obviously you had to take it seriously but… Warnado had been through a lot back there from what she’d heard. Glibby had gone after him. He didn’t need to hear this.
Just before Jennifer could break the silence and start a long, stupid argument that no one would win, three figures stepped in through the tent flap: Tyron, then Steve, then Kay.
The big, green furball had healed considerably since Jennifer had last seen him scouring the battlefield for Warnado, and new-grown fur now covered over his wounds. She and Tyron exchanged a genuinely warm smile and wave.
Steve looked as spotless as her. They nodded politely but their eyes didn’t meet.
And the second he entered the tent Kay made sure the whole tent was looking at him.
“Ah, Urist, drinking on duty?! And none prepared for your commanding officer? I am appalled.”
Jennifer noticed he was limping quite badly, with one leg encased in a metal brace. He leaned heavily on a cane carved from the dark oak.
Urist shrugged: “Dwarf drinking is na like human drinking ye know? Gonna take a lot more than one mead to get me drunk.”
“Good,” he grunted as he hobbled over. “I’ll need more than one to take my mind off this.”
Kay struck the brace with his cane and reached the table. He scanned for available chairs, found none, and then looked very ill for a moment.
“Jennifer, would you be a Divine and get me a chair?” asked Kay with a hint of shame.
Jennifer got it for him and within a few seconds he was looking around the tent. He locked eyes with Warnado and shot him a guilty smile.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Tyron tells me you gave Glibby a grand old scare.”
“Yeah,” Warnado lied, reciprocating the smile.
Kay seemed satisfied, however, and looked to Astro.
“Who are we waiting for?”
“Just Shadow. I haven’t seen her since she set out to engage the Entity.”
There were collective groans. Warnado’s hand disappeared into the unnatural shadows of his hood and the red glow of his eyes disappeared.
“Of course you haven’t,” Kay grumbled. He bowed his head and pressed a knuckle against the ridge of his nose.
“This just keeps getting better,” added Destiny. “First Lady Justice betrays us, now his sister’s MIA.”
“Lady Justice?” Tyron asked.
“Fire. Y’know because he has scales.”
Tyron scoffed: “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever-”
“-Fire did not betray us,” entered Kay belatedly. “Weird as it sounds.”
“Then, what did happen?” pressed Steve.
Kay collected his thoughts.
“Fire has... a second personality. He calls himself Claw. Fire went through some problems a while back, before he became a Mencur-Besh. He… he dissociated from the ugly thoughts and when he finally gained access to his other world - the server I think he calls it - that amalgam of everything he didn’t want to deal with became real. Occasionally took control of him for brief spells.”
“Then, shouldn’t he just turn back?” asked Jennifer.
Suddenly, Shadow entered. It was normally hard to identify the emotions on Shadow’s abnormally dark face, but now she was simultaneously more obscure and easier to read than ever. Her red eyes burned with a grim determination, a terrifying sense of purpose. Narrow and sharp as daggers, they made Jennifer want to squirm as they passed over her. Something about Shadow was absolutely terrifying. Like a bird knowing a natural disaster is imminent, Jennifer felt an inescapable desire to run as far away from the little, white-haired mage as soon as possible.
She stormed into the center of the tent, and everyone drew back as she raised a gargantuan obsidian blade and stabbed it into the ground. Jennifer’s heart pounded so hard she felt as though it would knock her to the ground, but as the sword sank into the earth, Shadow’s shoulders slumped, and all her sadness became clear. Jennifer’s fear was dampened a little by this splash of melancholy.
Then, she recognised the sword: The Entity’s manifestations had wielded them. Everyone was astonished, except for Kay, who looked positively murderous.
“I’ll ask you what in Notch’s name you’re doing with that in a second,” Kay seethed. “Where have you been?”
Shadow replied through gritted teeth. “You know, turning my body to pure nothingness, destroying the Entity’s manifestations and trying to make it give me my brother back. Sadly, we are at a bit of a stalemate.”
“Stalemate’s a generous term for losing,” Kay scoffed. “We’re lucky to have escaped with what little we have. Come now, you’re among friends, no need for posturing.”
“I was not referring to the rebellion and the Tower, I was referring to myself and the Entity. We are at a stalemate. As much as each of us would like to murder the other, we can’t.”
No one seemed prepared for this information. Kay seemed to descend into a furious confusion, and Tyron stepped forward in his place.
“Are you suggesting you and the Entity are on the same level of power?” he asked. “Shadow, if you could just end this rebellion here and now, we’d all rather like you to do it.”
Shadow sighed. “I would like to say that but no, we are not. The Entity has vastly more influence over this world than I do. It commands it in its entirety while I only found a way to exploit local magical energy. I can destroy its manifestations but not the main body. At this point I realize that we may have some similarities but… also some differences. Too different to meaningfully harm one another.”
“But you were out there trying to stop the manifestations, and nothing was working,” Kay muttered. “What changed?”
“Well, Kay,” Astro interjected. “You might recall I asked you to leave the area after Shadow graciously patched us both up.” He raised his eyebrows and leaned forward, like a mother bird nudging a duckling onward.
“Why yes, I had overlooked that moment of gross insubordination,” he answered with condescending levity. “Please remind me.”
“She destroyed her physical form shortly afterwards. As I understand, she became a being of pure Void magic. A living tear in reality. Do I have that right?”
“More or less, I’m not entirely sure of what I did or became there.”
Fear compelled Jennifer to interject.
“Is it dangerous?” Jennifer asked. “Of course, anything that can go toe to toe with the Entity is good but are we sure we’re not putting ourselves at risk by using it?”
Kay fell out of his confusion and back into alertness. Jennifer could practically hear the cogs of manipulation turning in his head and gritted her teeth for whatever terrible idea she’d given him.
“Indeed, good point Jennifer. Can you confirm this isn’t a threat to civilian populations? Or Nexus itself? We don’t want it to become all of reality, but naturally we don’t want to collapse the whole thing on our heads. At least, not without an escape route… But yes, is this ‘Void state’ safe to use?”
Shadow responded slowly. “It’s definitely not safe for people, as Astro and his past headaches can confirm. It should however not be able to endanger Nexus as a whole, the Entity has too much control over reality for that.”
“That’s all well and good,” he sighed and rose to his feet. “But I think I need access to all your knowledge on the subject.”
Shadow’s eyes narrowed again. “And what exactly do you mean by that?”
“I neither have access to the same level of scholarly knowledge on this subject as you do, nor can I be absolutely certain you’re telling me the truth.
“There’s something terrible about this magic. Everyone can sense it. That urge to run, you all feel it, don’t you?”
Jennifer couldn’t help but nod in agreement. Astro interjected that the headaches were now gone since he saw Shadow’s Void form, but still seemed reserved.
“And, of course, the Entity unleashing Claw has made clear the importance of vetting anyone we send to fight it,” Kay continued. “You, as I recall, have just as long a history of trauma and psychological difficulty as your brother. Putting aside how you might react to Claw’s presence in the field, how can we be certain you’re not harbouring a little Claw of your own?”
He was now nose-to-nose with Shadow, leaning on the cane with enough force that it was starting to dig into the ground.
“Bearing in mind these reasonable concerns, I want to get in there,” he pointed at the spot between her eyes, “So I can conduct an independent inquiry.”
Shadow was silent for a few seconds, as if processing the pure audacity of the request, then said calmly: “Listen Kay, I don’t know how much the Book told you but when I first talked to it, I mentioned a detail that you ought to know. I eat minds. Do you know how I do that? Any mind that comes into contact with mine is overwhelmed and absorbed, that’s how I dealt with rulebreakers back home. So, what you’re suggesting would be suicide. Also…”
There was another pause, then Shadow suddenly snapped at Kay: “I may be in a bad emotional state at the moment but that doesn’t mean you can use low-effort psycho tricks and expect them to work. I have just as much experience as Fire and while I may not be that good with people, I know when someone is trying to get something from me. I didn’t stay Archmage of Rockhaven’s Mage Guild for as long as I did without learning all the tricks in the book.”
Her gaze turned to a spot on Kay’s breastplate. “And your Book best remember that it has an agreement with me that I can and will fulfill if it breaks our terms.”
Kay glared at her for a solid minute, then pulled the Book from beneath his diamond armour - from exactly the spot Shadow had been looking at. He reached back and left it down on the table behind him.
“Your input,” Kay began flatly. “Is noted. Now, see to your mages, they’ve been more than a little disoriented trying to heal half an army while their commanding officer is off soul-searching.”
Shadow began to tremble slightly, and Jennifer couldn’t tell what it meant. Was she angry? Afraid? Upset? She felt the fear rise in her again and averted her eyes. They fell on Steve, and she lowered her gaze, but she knew he was looking at her longingly.
Kay, however, didn’t seem at all concerned. He walked right past Shadow to the tent flap and became a silhouette as the early morning sun flooded in.
“Rally the troops, we’re heading back to the Shelter. Assuming there’s no sign of the enemy, we shall determine our course of action there.”
With that, he left. A quick glance confirmed that the Book had vanished from the table, presumably back into Kay’s pocket. Jennifer sheepishly followed, and the others gradually filtered out after them. Shadow remained standing in the centre of the room, still quivering. Only Warnado showed no obvious desire to leave, but Amanda tugged his arm warily and he began to depart as well.
When she was outside, she found herself wandering around in a daze. Through lanes upon lanes of injured men, women and creatures of all species. They had led these people here and asked them to pay this terrible price. She found it hard to see how each of them didn’t deserve a medal every day for the rest of their lives.
Then she saw the scuffle taking place ahead of her. A dozen or so Jackals were fully armoured and gathered around a wagon piled with food, medicine and any other valuables they could find.
One of the infantry soldiers, a testificate called Raphoe, was arguing with them in his nasal voice. Unfortunately, one of the Jackals smacked him in the head with the butt of his spear before kicking him in the gut. Jennifer ran over.
“What’s the meaning of this?”
“We’re leaving. Old Commander’s a traitor, new one’s an idiot, and you used us as cannon fodder. Vanguard my ass! Threw us into the meat grinder!”
The Jackals let out an approving cry, and a few wounded soldiers around the area murmured their assent.
Jennifer equipped her bow. She was having none of this from a bunch of bandits.
“So, what’s your plan, exactly? Steal food and supplies so more people die then try to flee off-world? Pretend it doesn’t affect you?”
To her surprise, Jennifer didn’t say this. She looked around for who did say it. Steve approached from behind, his purple eyes glinting with beautiful resolve.
“Because the Entity is coming for us all. Everything is going to be Nexus soon enough. The multiverse is broken and it’s all our responsibility to fix it. You really want to just be some bandits who made everything worse, or will you rise to the occasion for once?”
He was standing next to her, now, sword drawn. She reached out and grabbed his free hand. He squeezed it warmly.
“Well,” Jennifer pressed. “You heard the man. What will it be?”
The Jackal raised his sword and charged them. With a shared grin, they charged in turn, ready to fix things together.
Chapter 42: Present, Future and Past (Claw)
Claw’s laughter echoed between the now empty buildings of the village after he appeared in the central square. The village looked like it had undergone a fair amount of changes, not that Claw could be sure since he had no previous memory to compare with. It just looked different from what his image of a typical village was. The area around where Dr. Mercury had found the anomaly had been bulldozed by the Tower’s geomancers, around it a rudimentary but steadily improving research setup had been built. Most of the activity in the village was centered around it. While the central square was devoid of researchers, several commanders stood around and discussed.
Claw turned to the enderman who had teleported him away from the hill, he said: “Good work Steelborn.”
Steelborn gave a respectful nod in reply and teleported back into battle.
Claw reflected on his personal contribution, showing up at the hill, assassinating the Prophet and his… servant? It didn’t matter now, they were both dead. He had also had one hell of a fight with the general, Kay, one he would have won had he finished off the mage, Astro. It was something Claw could live with, incapacitating Astro had been enough since at that time his true target had still been alive.
It had been exhilarating, much more so than any of the hunts he remembered. Back then he was only a beast, now he could enjoy battle fully with all his senses and a mind able to comprehend it in its entirety. Of course, Claw didn’t only find joy in fighting, seeing the plan he had laid out with the Ender come to fruition was equally satisfying.
Claw paused, a thought had suddenly appeared in his mind. Wait a damn second, I can heat up my muscles for increased strength? Why didn’t I know that five minutes earlier?
Clenching his fists, Claw felt a heat rise up inside of him. Not rage but actual heat. He looked down at his body that was now significantly less covered due to Kay’s silver-purple flames having burnt away his armor. An orange glow was emanating from between his scales. So it was true. Claw threw a few punches at the air, testing out his newly increased speed and strength. With this he could have ended the fight much more quickly.
Claw let out a sigh as his body cooled back down. He could have gotten angry but what was the point? His main objective was complete, the Prophet could no longer divulge any vital information, so what if the general lived? There were plenty more opportunities for killing him in the future.
He spent the next bit of time walking around the square talking to various Tower commanders about how their respective soldiers fared and their estimated losses. In truth Claw was just killing time waiting for the Ender to return, she was the only one who mattered in this respect. The people lower down in the chain of command were good at their job but at the end of the day they were not the ones to write the battle plans, they were the ones to execute them.
Some minutes before the Ender returned, Claw felt an enormous shift in the nearby ambient energy, as if it was drawn to a point near the village. Not long after he felt that the Entity had left its throne room. That could mean only one thing, the mage that created the scar had returned. Claw knew that whatever fight was currently happening outside of the fortification was a couple of orders of magnitude above his weight class. Physical fights he could do but he hardly stood a chance against a mage of this caliber, especially since this was not exactly normal magic. As Claw thought, more and more loose threads of information unravelled in his mind. He’d pull on them as soon as he had time but now was not that moment.
Finally, the Ender arrived. She was clearly battered but had a victorious smile on her face, a rare expression for her, the smile that was, not the victory. Claw immediately walked over to her with swift steps.
He asked: “So, how would you say it went?”
The Ender took a few deep breaths before answering. “According to plan,” she held up a hand and counted on her fingers: “we know the approximate strength of their soldiers and mages, we killed a good portion of their forces and we managed to lure out Shadow so the good doctor can gather more data. Our own losses are nothing we can’t replenish. How did it go on your side?”
Claw mirrored her previous smile. “Also according to plan. Prophet’s dead, his guardian too. Kay and Astro are badly wounded, wouldn’t surprise me if they bled out on that hill but we shouldn’t assume that. They most likely have healing supplies.”
The Ender asked: “Speaking of Kay, how much of a problem was he?”
Claw said: “Not much of one, the only bit of his magic that was useful was that flame that burned through the bindings in my armor,” Claw gestured to the sad remains of his underclothes that still clung to him, “I sensed his portals. Heat, cold or electricity can’t harm me, at least not in the amounts he could produce. I know that this body is a product of deliberate design, and I must say, whoever came up with it really thought of everything. Just one bad thing, apparently the other one told Kay about the silver.”
As soon as Claw had found out about his weakness to silver he had shared it with the Ender, there was no reason to treat it as the secret the voice in his head made it out to be. Besides, as long as the Entity lived he would not die either way, it seemed that the Entity needed him alive. The reason for this would probably become clear at some point, Claw wouldn’t be surprised if it was buried somewhere in the other one’s mind.
Before the Ender could answer, Glibby appeared next to them about two meters up in the air, flailing before he hit the ground in a heap. The Ape was in bad shape, deep cuts seeping blood on several parts of his body. But above all, Glibby was furious.
He screamed: “HELIX YOU MODS-DAMNED BRAT! I’M NOT DONE WITH YOU OR YOUR GREEN FURRED FRIEND!”
There was silence, heads turned and then awkwardly turned back.
The Ender used the opening: “So, Glibby. How many of the rebels will you have to fight to actually win one? The shepherd didn’t count by the way, I’m pretty sure even Bul could have killed him if he had some endermen with him. I don’t think there are many other escapees left for you to prove your mettle.”
“SHUT UP YOU-” Glibby began, but instead of the expected barrage of insults, only blood and gibberish came out of his mouth.
Claw only shook his head, too appalled to add his own thoughts. It didn’t take him long to spot Freak lurking in the shadows, or more correctly, rolling on the floor laughing in the shadows.
The Ender sighed, then shouted: “Get him a medic, as funny as this is, I think the Silhouette would rather have him not bleed out.”
Claw turned to the Ender. “If there is nothing more to do here, we should go back to the Tower. I’m sure the Entity has a bathhouse somewhere there, I think we can afford some relaxation.”
The Ender gave Claw an oddly pained but otherwise unreadable look, then took him by the shoulder and they both teleported back to the Tower. Just as they arrived Claw thought: Right, endfolk, water. Shouldn’t have suggested that.
###
It turned out that there really was a bathhouse somewhere within the Tower, and apparently it was used for relaxation by a variety of staff. The Ender had neglected to tell Claw this, both in their initial tour and after he brought it up. Claw spent a brief moment speculating on why and ended up somewhere between her being disinterested in it due to her physical nature or simply due to her strictly-business attitude. It didn’t matter, Claw felt refreshed.
He was currently walking the Tower’s corridors, halls and staircases, mostly without aim but with a concrete goal in mind. He wanted to have a better look at the portions of the Tower he had only seen briefly. One such place was the prison, he’d walked past many times since its entrance branched off one of the major staircases but he had never actually taken a look inside.
A short distance into the entrance corridor was a heavy gate that had apparently been significantly reinforced after the recent prison break. It was guarded by two endermen and four humans. Claw nodded to the guards and they let him through. After the gate there was a corridor lined with the magic-suppressing lamps that were ubiquitous in the Tower but especially dense in the prison sections.
Soon after there was a three-way fork in the corridor, the leftmost one leading to the more comfortable cells that were used to house high-importance prisoners, the middle one leading to some sort of arena and the rightmost one leading to the more traditional prison. Claw decided to pick the latter first.
Claw found the lamps slightly annoying since every time he passed one he felt a slight tingle all over his body from the ambient magic gradient that they created, however he recognized that they were absolutely required to contain some of their prisoners. A thought appeared in Claw’s mind on the topic of imprisonment, the other one had to be somewhere in his mind since he obviously was neither absorbed nor dead. Claw had also noticed that he had changed over the time he’d been the one in control, he wasn’t the exact same person he was on the first day.
Claw found that he was calmer now, he had a certain distance to everything happening around him that he didn’t have after he woke up. How much of this was just him developing from the beast he had been and how much of it was the other one’s memories influencing him? Claw figured that he’d have to answer that question eventually.
While contemplating, Claw had arrived in the prison proper, a multi-layered structure with each layer consisting of a grid of smaller corridors, each of them bordered by barred cells. There were few prisoners near the entrance but there were some, mostly humans but there were the occasional endermen. Very rarely there were species that Claw had never seen before, even the voice in his head had nothing to say about them.
Claw spent a while walking the corridors, when he passed some prisoners would shrink back into their cells, others would hurl insults at him, others only looked at him with broken indifference. These weren’t the ones they needed anything from, the prisoners here were the ones they just needed out of the way or as a means to exert pressure on someone.
As Claw turned a corner, he spotted a door at the end of the corridor, apparently a staffroom for the jailers. He approached it and looked inside. The room was not very different from other such rooms, a table, filing cabinets, flowing water, food storage. This room was currently empty save for a single large figure: Glibby the Ape.
Glibby was currently sitting at the big central table, very intently studying an old, leather-bound book.
While Claw didn’t particularly like the Ape, animosity would lead nowhere. Even without the voice’s help, he’d have figured that out on his own simply from watching Glibby interact with the Ender. From what he knew Glibby had history with Kay and since Kay was now the leader of the rebels, anything Claw could dig up on him would be helpful.
Claw cleared his throat, he had also realized that people usually needed some kind of hint that he was there. Apparently it was not common for someone of his stature to move as silently as he did.
“Hello, Claw,” Glibby said tersely. “How may I help you?”
He didn’t look up, and began flipping pages in no particular direction.
Claw took a closer look at the illustrations that were visible. It turned out that Glibby was reading about demonology, which made sense in the light of his recent defeat. Useful information.
Claw said: “You’re reading about demons, aren’t you? I happen to know a few things about them, maybe we could arrange an information exchange.”
“Sounds lovely,” he said without any convincing attempt at emotion beyond contempt. “What, might I ask, am I exchanging?”
“Some interesting bits about that general of theirs, Kay. I hear you two have history.”
Glibby seemed energised by the opportunity to talk about himself. The book flopped shut and was tossed onto the table with little regard.
“Oh, history’s a generous word. He’s the reason I got the original Gray Ones - stranded poor Silver and his brothers in my world - but then we didn’t interact for over ten years. His friend British - a detective, you wouldn’t know him - considered me a rival rather undeservedly, so we ran in the same circles for a while I suppose. And, of course, when Kay took an interest in the Silhouette’s identity I was sent to silence any sources that might talk to him. I was, however, there in the days of his final fall and, of course, his death. My role was no more than that of a bit player, though - a handsome footnote in the tragedy of the Court of Righteous Protest.”
Claw nodded. “And since he’s dead, who’s the man leading the rebels? A past version of him?”
“Oh certainly, he lost an eye in the years between our first and final encounters - some terrible feud he got wrapped up in, unimportant - our rebel still has both. From what I can gather, I’m the reason he’s here. Sorry, this requires a little context.
“The man who was, at the time, the Silhouette, tried to sell a powerful artefact known as an Eye of Ender to the Entity. Turned out it was all a trap, the Entity absorbed him and stripped him of knowledge - fair play, I never liked that one - then let go of his vessel and left a few Endlings to kill the rest of us. Kay must have been watching, because he swooped down and stole the Eye. He ran around a while as our two, warring factions tried to secure the artefact and finally hopped into a portal to Nexus. I got slightly too excited and hurled a firebomb at the portal as he entered, managing to shut it off. The Endlings were stranded and I graciously brought them into the employ of the new Silhouette, and Kay was nowhere to be seen. Obviously he got back somehow, but I have to assume he comes from some point between my destroying that portal and his return to the Sane Realm.”
Glibby decisively slapped the table.
“And there you have it. The origin of our problem.”
That was rather interesting, Claw admitted. He replied: “I know better than to try to unravel the ways in which the Kay that died relates to the Kay we have now, messing with timelines in that way only leads to headaches. However, this provides us with a very interesting possibility. Were there any… flaws or weaknesses Kay showed after he returned?”
“Ah, a psychological profile. How dull,” he groaned. “I think I’ll tell you an anecdote instead - I think you’ll find it quite revealing as to his character.
“He had an enemy - he’s dead now - called Hamish. A colleague of mine. They had some feud going back to childhood, and Kay just could not forgive him. And the Silhouette exploited that. He leant Hamish to a group called the Family - some black ops group in the employ of the Realm of the Seven Kingdoms - to ensure that once they started killing Kay’s friends we knew exactly who Kay would devote his efforts to killing.
“And, when the Family’s gambit - a complicated little affair involving magical wells and souls and demons which I won’t bore you with - finally failed as expected, Hamish had orders to run off and meet us in a secluded cellar. Kay, of course, followed him. I slugged him in the head, and when he came to, he was presented with Hamish in chains, and the Silhouette offering him a gun.
“The terms were simple. Kay would take the gun and shoot Hamish, but he had to do something else first. An ascetic monk was presented - some adversary of the Silhouette, I assumed, though perhaps not. If Kay wanted to kill his enemy and finally scratch the itch of revenge, he had to do the Silhouette a favour and kill the monk, some stranger he’d never met and who seemed for all intents and purposes blameless.”
Glibby leaned back and grinned.
“He hardly even hesitated.”
He stood up and began to pace excitedly.
“Now, the Silhouette had staked a lot on the Family’s employer, Dominus, winning the war against Kay and his masters, and that did not happen. Indeed, many of the Silhouette’s allies in the True Court were either dead or awaiting trial for treason thanks to Dominus’ folly. So, he hoped that by this mechanism he would both do Kay a favour and gain some dirt on him. Kay was, by this time, ruler of a large nation on the winning side. Swapping out Hamish for him would be a perfect trade.”
He paused, and Claw heard the straining of his gauntlets as the Ape clenched them tight.
“Astro and a few others burst in. Hamish had blabbed about his orders to one of the Family, and he blabbed to Kay’s friends with his dying breath. Kay suddenly realised how this looked and, in a desperate attempt to save his reputation, rounded the gun on the Silhouette, shot him in the head. I just about escaped, carrying the Silhouette’s body away.
“A few weeks later, the network appointed a new Silhouette, who decided the first order of business was killing Kay to reassert power. We cornered his carriage on a bridge, expecting a fight. We’d even brought the Grey Ones in. He surrendered immediately, saying he needed to pay for his crimes. Silver was livid. We burned Kay on a pyre.”
He stopped and lifted a gauntlet to his face in what Claw recognised as an attempt to look ponderous.
“The moral of that story is, Kay is more than willing to disgrace himself to settle a grudge, but he can’t live with the shame. Antagonise him into doing something horrible, and he’ll destroy himself trying to prove he’s still noble at heart.”
He bowed.
Glibby sure liked to talk a lot, however this was immensely helpful and he deserved the information Claw promised him. Claw would think over what he heard about Kay later, but so far this was good news. With the other one gone, Kay obviously lacked someone who could dampen his tendencies so it was only a matter of time until he did something. As for creating a “nemesis” like this Hamish, Claw believed he was already well on track with that.
He sat down in a chair and gestured to Glibby to sit down as well, opening the demonology book.
Claw said: “So, as for your demon problems. You’re probably looking for a weakness too, one that’ll help you in the future. Demons as a whole are as varied as they come, the forms they take are only the parts of them that can reach into our world, which is why killing a demon is near-impossible. All you can do is banish it to wherever it came from. Different demons have different weaknesses, which are either dictated by the demon’s nature or by the summoning ritual used.
“For instance there could be a demon out there that for some reason loses its grasp on our reality if it ever comes in contact with large amounts of cedar wood sawdust. On the ritual side, demons are always bound to a contract of some form, breaking this contract immediately ejects them from reality, which can be used to give demons artificial weaknesses. A ritual could specify that the demon may never cross lines of salt.
“However, all of this gets difficult if you take demonspawn into consideration. They fully belong to our world, what sets them apart from regular people is that they retain some aspects of their demonic parent. This also includes their weaknesses, which now harm instead of banishing. If our sources are correct, Helix is second generation, so his demonic heritage will still be very strong.”
“Well, what’s his weakness, then?” Glibby grunted. “Why tell me he has one and not what it is?”
Claw flipped through the pages of the demonology book until he found the section that listed various demons.
“The main issue is that if you want to know Helix’ demonic weaknesses and strengths you need to know who his demonic ancestor was. A demonology book like this one will help you understand which traits to look for, since those are passed down as well. Some demons may have horns shaped in a particular way, if they have horns that is. They may also have certain skin markings or other features like non-standard numbers of fingers. These traits reflect on their offspring as far as they are applicable to humanoid shapes.
“Now, most demons never produce offspring with anyone from our world, it’s a rare thing overall. Naturally there are demons that have countless mortal children, those demons are usually denoted succubi or incubi, if they don’t have another even more defining trait like an aptitude for killing or deception. Most of those are known and listed in books like this, their names are often ‘submitted’ by their own children, sometimes even volunteered by the demons themselves.
“The real problem are those demons who only have a single mortal child, they may be listed but the fact about the child is often unknown. Still, the method of using distinctive traits to determine lineage applies.”
“Distinctive horns, and hoping he’s not an only child… not much to go on,” Glibby muttered, eyeing a skin of wine he’d left on his seat. Claw could tell he was losing the Ape’s attention, and so continued before any opportunity to communicate something useful had passed.
“Your best shot is either trying a couple of common weaknesses that don’t make it obvious what you’re doing. If you don’t want to do that, I suggest doing a lot of reading, perhaps questioning some demonologists that we have employed or captured could also help you. Different worlds will know different demons, the more you look at the more likely you are to find something. Sadly, even with all of this a weakness is not a given, usually the best way of killing demonspawn is plain-old murder.”
“Murder! If only I’d thought of that!” he snapped. “The damned kid always starts spewing purple fire or getting rescued.”
“If he transforms or forms a body of flames those are additional things you could look for.” Claw paused. “And believe me when I say this, that was not an accusation, I don’t mean to be hostile to you like the Ender is. You may have made a fool of yourself repeatedly and publicly and I admittedly haven’t thought highly of you in the past but that kind of animosity only leads to problems. And problems are the last thing I want in this operation.”
Glibby fell very quiet.
“How big of you,” he laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll ensure I’m the least of your worries.”
He lifted the book.
“If you’ll excuse me.”
With a tip of his hat, the Ape left.
Chapter 43: Internal Affairs or something (Freak)
I was in a splendid mood. Glibby had once again made a fool of himself in front of everyone and people beyond the upper leadership were catching onto his repeated failure. I sometimes heard engineers or even kitchen staff gossip with lowered voices about the extent of the Ape’s failings and his inability to settle his grudge with the demon child. The child part was honestly what had caused the rumors to explode, because at the end of the day, a child was still a child.
I chuckled to myself, no there was no shortage of entertainment within the walls of the Tower, or outside of it. That Destiny girl really had fallen for my “humanity rubbing off on me” spiel, but in all honesty, who could blame her? Desperate and hungry for revenge as she was, she’d probably have made deals with worse. In the end all that mattered was that I now had someone from the other side I could use. Because other than my exact reasons, there had been a lot of truth in what I told her. The Entity was too unpredictable, too alien to rely on. However, as it stood I preferred to keep options open and Destiny was just one of them.
I was currently floating around somewhere between reality and the dreamscape, which I was barred from entering fully, such was the price of a physical form. In this state I could easily travel throughout the Tower, ignoring walls and whatever dimensional origami the Entity had performed to fit everything into the building. It was slower than teleportation but had the enormous upside of being able to observe anything that went on in the physical world. I’d go back to reality fully if I found something interesting, sometimes to listen in on a conversation, other times to report sabotage, I still had some obligations after all.
My current destination was Dr. Mercury’s personal lab. It had been somewhat of a hotspot for me in recent days. She did some very interesting research there, at least when she wasn’t out in the fortified village gathering data. I usually wasn’t one for science, like magic it was something I had no affinity for, however what she was doing was different. Her research concerned itself with whatever the mage called Shadow did, though at this point calling her a mage would probably be as accurate as calling me a poltergeist, her “duel” with the Entity had made it very clear that she was something else.
When I swooped close to Dr. Mercury’s lab, I noticed that she was not alone, a second person was currently in the process of walking in the door. By their stature I instinctively assumed this to be the Ender but no, it turned out that it was Claw.
Claw was… interesting to say the least, he was different from anyone I had ever met before, perhaps outside of his flipside Fire, but that was a given. Claw claimed he feared nothing and unlike anyone else who had made that claim, it actually seemed to be true. Then again, I once thought the same about the Entity as well.
I materialized right beside Dr. Mercury, invisibly of course. She was currently sitting at a desk with multiple monitors on it, whatever they displayed was way beyond my understanding. She quickly got up and turned towards the door.
Claw said: “So, my mind recently brought some things to my attention that I think you’d be quite interested in.”
No greeting, no big introductions, straight to the point, that was Claw.
Dr. Mercury seemed to relax, she said: “Hello Claw. What kinds of things do you mean? Perhaps related to the negative energy readings I’m analyzing right now?”
Claw closed the door behind him, took a few steps into the room and then sat down in the large chair that the Ender used whenever she visited Dr. Mercury.
He said: “Exactly those, except that they’re not really negative-”
Dr. Mercury cut him off. “-but only below the ambient noise threshold our sensors are calibrated to, I know. Sadly, the term has already taken hold and getting everyone to use ‘null energy’ or something of the sort would be more effort than it’s worth. But anyways, continue.”
Claw said: “I happen to know a few things about what causes these readings, it seems the other one did a great deal of research in that direction. What I’m getting from it is that the readings are caused by tears in reality, exposing the Void.”
Dr. Mercury replied: “No, Void energy is different from those readings.”
Claw shook his head. “Looks like we have another word problem here, the Void beneath the bedrock is distinct from the Void between worlds. The former is actively opposed to matter and very energetic, the latter is emptiness in its purest form, the concept of our spatial dimensions and time does not exist between the worlds.”
Dr. Mercury was now pacing around the room, one hand behind her back, the other holding her chin. “We never did perform any research into what was between worlds, simply because it was out of reach. We never had and still have no way of parting the fabric of reality to access the Void between worlds. I can’t imagine the energy required to perform such a feat.”
Claw stood up and walked over to the monitors Dr. Mercury had been using, taking a look at whatever was written on them. I honestly expected the conversation to be a little more interesting but no luck so far. I just had to wait.
After a few minutes of observing the readouts, Claw spoke again: “Most of what’s here doesn’t hold much value, beyond telling us that something definitely tore a hole into reality. Look Veronica, I’ll be honest with you.”
Dr. Mercury flinched at the mention of her first name, an image of the Entity appearing in her mind. Aha. Apparently, the Entity had threatened her with something and used her first name, must have been pretty bad if she reacted that way. Definitely something to keep in mind.
Claw continued: “Most of what you’re doing is strictly science, rigid and explainable. This goes beyond science into the realm of magic, or at least what people say is magic. The truth is, look at something long enough and you’ll find rules and patterns.”
Dr. Mercury replied: “Sufficiently analyzed magic, I get you. Now, you said Fire did a lot of analyzing, with what results?”
Claw sat down in the chair again. “One result: Shadow.”
Stopping her pacing, Dr. Mercury looked at me, or rather through me and at Claw. “I think that needs a bit of context.”
Claw explained: “I’m still a bit hazy on why, but I know that at some point the other one came up with a ritual to separate a mind from the brain it is housed in, apparently amplifying magical capabilities at the same time but for him the separation was the important point. In his world he founded what he called the ‘Ascension Project’.”
Dr. Mercury nodded. “Good name, vague, ominous, grandiose. What exactly was it?”
Claw gesticulated as he explained. “In short, they had a lot of volunteers, without quotation marks, who they used to iron out the problems in the ritual. I can draw you some illustrations later for the exact process if you want me to.”
“Please do.”
Now this conversation was much more interesting than the technobabble or arcanobabble from earlier, whichever of the two it was. I positioned myself closer to them, listening with full attention.
Claw said: “They went through roughly a hundred and fifty subjects, some died, some lived, two became impervious to magic. After that they were finally ready to perform it on Shadow, the dirty secret was that the ritual as it was intended would only work on Shadow, just that the other one didn’t exactly know at the time, he only found out later. Something about her was different, and whatever that difference was made the ritual change her.” Claw paused, apparently trying to coax some more information out of his mind. “The results were impressive, magical prowess beyond anything known, the ability to focus on a seemingly unlimited amount of things, and oh, yeah any mind that comes in contact with hers is obliterated.”
Dr. Mercury slowly said: “Some of that is starting to sound familiar. Especially the part about the minds.”
Oh yes, very familiar in fact. This was exactly what I hoped to hear, a confirmation for my suspicions.
She continued: “So if your information is accurate, we could be dealing with a being that is similar to the Entity in principle but different in many aspects. This would certainly explain how she managed to survive direct contact with the Entity.”
I silently chuckled to myself, not only that but she also struck fear in our glorious leader’s metaphorical heart.
Claw said: “That sounds about right, problem is that after that I can’t really access more information about her. Whatever she did in that village and in the battle, she couldn’t do it before.”
Dr. Mercury said: “You mean she’s… growing, no, developing in some way? We know the Entity becomes more powerful as Nexus absorbs worlds but what is her power source?”
Claw froze, only the reflections of lights in his black eyes slightly moving betrayed that his eyes were darting around the room.
He said: “I just got something, a memory that isn’t from the other one. It’s a… string? It’s attached to what I think is my body and it’s going… somewhere. No clue what it means.”
Dr. Mercury seemed to take a few seconds to think, then replied: “If it’s in any way consistent with how your other memories are triggered, it’s got something to do with Shadow. But nevermind that, do you think there is anything we can do to combat Shadow?”
Claw seemed distracted when he answered but quickly focused again: “From what I can tell reality is like an eggshell in reverse, difficult to break from the inside but easy from the outside. She’s capable of tearing holes in reality, which implies that at least some part of her exists between worlds. Which means if we want to hurt that part of her, we need something that has similar characteristics.”
Yes, that’s what I want to hear.
Dr. Mercury continued his train of thought: “The crystals have a part that extends out of our world. But a crystal on a stick doesn’t sound like it would do anything. We’d need something more sophisticated, like the machine but different.” She stopped. “You know what, I don’t think we should continue down that train of thought.”
Claw nodded. “She’s similar to the Entity so whatever we come up with that hurts her, can potentially hurt it too. I don’t think it’s worth the risk, the whole reason I killed the Prophet was because he was a potential danger in that exact regard.”
“And we’re not going to build something that can harm the Entity only for it to somehow fall into rebel hands. That’s amateur stuff, we know better than that.” Dr. Mercury concluded.
I was half a mind to fully materialize and punch a wall, they were so close to making my life a whole lot easier. I sighed. The hard way it was then, at least I learned some things that could be useful.
I slid out of the physical world again, I was quite honestly bored of listening to those two talk and my frustration didn’t help either. My destination was not far, my personal chambers.
I technically had no need for a living space of my own since I lacked the typical physical needs of food, drink and sleep that mortals had but the privacy was still a big plus. After all, I was the only phantom in the Tower, nobody spied on the spy.
There was a desk in my chambers that I only used to write reports on who was doing what, easily the most boring part of my job especially since actual sabotage was rare. I opened a drawer and took out a small yellow crystal. It was time to arrange a meeting with a certain vengeful rebel.
Chapter 44: Behind Closed Doors (Kay)
“We can’t return to the Shelter,” said Tyron.
“We need to regroup with Lucy somehow. If they know where the Shelter is, they’ll have killed her by the time we arrive. Even if we order her and the civilians to come meet us, we’ll be asking them to cross miles of no man’s land,” responded Steve.
Destiny said nothing but stood up and nodded furiously when Lucy’s name was mentioned. Unsurprising. Even when Destiny had been in the pits of grief, the lessons she gave to Lucy had brought out an uncharacteristic energy in her. She may have been civilian staff, but her survival was imperative to continued military viability.
“We can’t stay there, though,” said Rose. “It needs to be a quick in-and-out job.”
“Yeah, a quick jaunt into the mortuary before coming out in coffins,” Astro snarked.
Tyron gestured to him tensely, as though he were living evidence of his rightness.
The flickering light of the torches coloured everyone an abrasive orange tint. It was like we were all part of a receding twilight, ready to fade out into the night of defeat.
“Gussying up our loss in purple prose will not change our fortunes,” My Book scolded.
As my Inner Circle continued to debate, I contemplated the Shelter. When it was Fire’s, I had wanted to make it into a fortress, easily defended by guerilla tactics. Fire had opposed that, but I drew up plans anyway in the hope of persuading him. That would be achievable.
“They will know the blueprints. Exits, entrances, weak points to hit.”
It occurred to me that we could change the layout. Not so much within the base - if they got inside a massacre would occur no matter what - but the exits and entrances could be chopped and changed. The functions of rooms could be shuffled. Traps laid. Steve and Jennifer and the other builders would have to work overtime, but it could be done.
“What is the goal in the long-term?”
Put simply, we had to find allies. For allies we needed portal technology. Voidblade and the others were scouting for one of their facilities. It was only a matter of time before they found it. Then, a thought occurred to me.
“Destiny,” I began, breaking up the debate. “Suppose we were to travel to your world. Would we find many allies?”
It was the only portal which we knew the location and destination of.
Destiny paused for a moment and looked guilty.
“Nothing military, barely any cities - the Sovereign did a number on Minera,” sighed Destiny. “There’s a few of Carter and Anya’s old Liberator comrades. Clarke, Kami, a few others. Not nearly enough to make a difference.”
“And the Sovereign? They were in conflict with the Tower, weren’t they? Are there any remnants that might put aside their evilness and help us?” asked Steve somewhat indelicately, though I awaited an answer with bated breath.
“The Sovereign wouldn’t think twice about killing you. If you tried to talk to them, you would deserve it.”
Destiny’s tone in the second half of her answer became so acrid that I couldn’t help but think she was threatening Steve, whose head sank in embarrassment. I carefully averted my eyes in order to disassociate myself from the idea. They fell on the brace on my leg. The healing magic had improved my condition drastically, but it would still be fragile and easily break again. Additionally, I don’t know if this was physical or psychosomatic or whatever, but something about standing on it too long made me feel frail and ill.
“And if you fail to obtain portals?”
“Then we die failing to obtain portals,” I respond. “Or retreat into another world where, if we’re lucky, we come across someone who might help us.”
“I prefer the latter.”
I nodded without particular commitment, mentally rubber stamping the stance I was about to put forward.
“As I see it, we have little choice but to return to the Shelter and remain there at least until we come across a portal facility. Then, we can start enlisting allies. We’ll have to alter the layout - mainly entrances and exits - and fortify the place to ensure they can’t profit from any knowledge Claw may provide them with. And, naturally, I’m going to propose we set up the guerilla defences I recommended under Fire’s leadership. Any objections?”
Tyron spoke up, undeterred.
“It’s hard to accept but we need to stay on the move for the time being. You seriously think Claw’s knowledge of our defences, and location won’t grant them a serious advantage?”
“Actually,” said Astro. “We don’t know how much he knows.”
“What?” Tyron and I asked in unison.
Astro cleared his throat.
“Kay, you were pretty dinged up when he said this, but as he was leaving Claw said you were his first ‘proper fight’.”
“Yes, I’m great at fighting, that was never in doubt,” I chuckled. “And?”
“Well, we know he’s been out on hunts before. Either he’s never had a hunt he considers worthwhile before, or he doesn’t remember them properly.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek thoughtfully.
“He did say Claw last broke out fighting a group of hunters. Must have been pretty serious if they broke Fire’s composure. Mods know I struggled...”
“It would explain why they haven’t killed Lucy already,” offered Rose.
“And if his memories come back?” said Tyron.
Everyone else seemed pretty on board with going back to the Shelter - and Astro had been the only one on Tyron’s side to begin with. So, I was tempted to say, “Then, we deal with it,” but that didn’t seem very inspiring or leader-like.
“Don’t say it,” said my Book.
Thankfully, Astro had an actual idea of how to undermine Tyron’s objections.
“Claw might not have a say in the matter. Fire’s still in there - at least, that’s what Shadow believes - and he’s unlikely to cede control completely. Granted, we don’t know how Claw got free, but it’s pretty clear he’s not possessed directly by the Entity, otherwise Claw wouldn’t be there at all.”
There were murmurs of assent.
“Maybe Fire’s deliberately withholding information from Claw,” proposed Steve with a laugh. “Literally undermining him from the inside.”
“Okay, it’s a little speculative, but so long as Steve doesn’t start making puns, you’ve convinced me,” Tyron conceded. “Our best shot is going back. It’s unanimous. Can I just say that we should be ready to up sticks at the first sign of danger?”
“Of course. Steve, would you and the builders be able to get on constructing escape routes as soon as we return?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said with a thumbs-up. “Dig down deep, hide the entrance and make sure it leads far away. Sounds doable.”
“Excellent,” I said contentedly, and started a polite round of applause. Then, with a much flatter tone: “That concludes the foreign policy segment of the meeting.”
Everyone shuffled uneasily.
“As you may have noticed,” I began. “Shadow has developed a conflict of interest and cannot necessarily be relied upon. This is not her fault, and in-fighting must be avoided, if at all possible, but it is nonetheless concerning. Her Void form is potentially useful against the Entity, but also potentially unstable and dangerous. As such, Astro, I would ask you to ensure your presence at any future lesson she conducts with Warnado. I want to know what abilities she is teaching him, and any indications of a deteriorating mental state.”
Astro agreed reluctantly.
“Now, we have a more pressing matter in the same vein. I would like to ask that none of what we are about to discuss leave this room.”
No one objected. They knew what was coming. I tried to make it look like I had difficulty saying it - I wish it were more difficult - but I knew it was a necessary measure:
“I propose that we introduce an unofficial kill-on-sight policy for Claw. Astro, I and his victims can testify to his combat ability. And, as we just discussed, he may or may not have access to certain intelligence which could help the enemy. Additionally, the popular consensus among the troops is that Fire has betrayed us. We may issue any statement we like on the matter - he might be possessed by the Entity, or we might try fruitlessly to explain Claw - but we are unlikely to shake this impression. His body murdered the Prophet and his guardian, and they will never stop wanting revenge upon it. So, killing him is likely to provide a boost to morale.”
There was a stunned silence.
“We shall put this to a vote,” I dryly instructed. “Any arguments?”
“He’s our friend,” Tyron said in disbelief. “We-”
“-Shadow isn’t naturally as powerful as she is,” Astro cut in. “Even when their ‘server’ is considered, she underwent a procedure to cure a condition she had, and this severed her from reality. You all notice it, don’t lie. The way she talks like she’s watching us through a window, the slightly over-technical explanations, and the way she’s able to intuitively understand and manipulate the very being of Nexus. When she went after the Entity, she did not just become more powerful, she shed her physical being. She ripped herself open and just walked it off. I’m worried Fire might just be the only thing tying her back to reality. Do we really want to deal with the consequences of her fully dissociating from us mere mortals?”
Silence begat silence. It was as though a poison gas hung in the air, and no one dared open their mouth and risk inhaling it.
“I’ll do it, then,” I concluded. “I will kill Claw and I will deal with the consequences. I only ask you don’t try to stop me.”
“You’re mad,” the Book hissed. “You are ruining our chances of survival.”
“Survival necessitates risk-taking.”
Steve looked at me with a strange mix of horror and respect. Tyron averted his eyes and became very interested in scratching a mark on the table. Then, there was a thud. Rose had stuck her knife into the wooden surface.
“You won’t deal with the consequences alone,” she stated. “If you’ll have me, I’ll serve as your bodyguard, I have experience in the field.”
“I told you,” I thought. “Our risk-taking has been rewarded. One of Fire’s main supporters offers herself as bodyguard against his sister.”
“She’s injured,” it griped.
My eyes drift toward Rose’s splinted leg, and bandaged hip. I scanned her features and wondered if she didn’t look a little paler or less alert than usual. But no, she looked sharp as a razor.
“Thank you Rose, though I’d be remiss not to ask if you’re absolutely certain?”
With a smirk Rose said: “Give me a few days, I picked up a ritual or two working for that slightly unhinged cult leader. I have some Old Gods I need to get back in touch with.”
Chapter 45: The new Regime (Voidblade)
The desert was barren. Miles of sand, with rare shrubs serving as the only progress markers. Only two things merited any attention at all. The first was a carriage bearing a sun-bleached imprint of the Tower insignia, flipped on its side like a wounded animal. The second was a conspicuous patch of fertile land about ten paces in diameter. A small, gravel road wound across it - probably the source of the carriage. Neither object yielded anything more than faint interest.
The overlapping of “Dimensional Sandwich Layers” fascinated Voidblade, personally. The world outside the End looked strange enough on its own, it became almost beautifully surreal when ripped about and stitched back together like this. But he wasn’t there for pretty landscapes. He teleported around until he found the edges of the desert to the North, South, East and West, and he swept around with a telescope when he reached each boundary. There was nothing. No sign of a Tower installation.
He pulled the list of locations out from beneath a string on his wrist, and, after writing a brief description of his discoveries, put an ‘X’ next to the final entry. No luck in three weeks. Even the outposts were being abandoned in favour of reconsolidation in the heart of Nexus. Any portals were left thoroughly irrecoverable. He and his scouts were no closer to discovering the facility.
As Voidblade teleported back to the Shelter, he was almost tempted to grumble, but dismissed the impulse as a sign of human influence.
He arrived outside a small, stone pillbox, disguised beneath trees and shrubs. Its inhabitants attempted to verify his identity.
“Name?”
“Voidblade.”
“Rank?”
“Scout Captain.”
“Purpose of excursion.”
Voidblade closed his eyes and thought carefully on the words Lucy had asked him to memorise before setting out. He didn’t have a paper because, if the enemy found it, they would know the passphrase for this operation. Still, it was difficult to always remember the wording.
“To see the dunes, and the wooden carcass upon them,” he strained.
It was easy to tell which phrases Kay had personally designed. Always formal and flowery.
The hatch on top of the pillbox opened, and Voidblade descended in. The soldiers still eyed him warily, and he kept his claws ready as he stooped down through the tight passage back to the Shelter proper. Since the Massacre at the Hill the entire population of the Shelter was jumpy, particularly around anyone who even slightly resembled a creature of the End. Officially, everyone knew Commander Fire had been possessed. His successor had made a big speech explaining “everything” at length. However, those who had seen Claw, even from a distance, knew he wasn’t a mindless drone. So, rumours of treachery persisted.
After another round of questions, he was admitted through a second hatch and into the main complex of tunnels. The original entrances and exits had been reshuffled or boobytrapped, so now the main means of entrance and exit were through these outer, guerilla tunnels - easily collapsed and with many chokepoints. Importantly, they allowed access to the pillboxes, and substantial effort had been made to reforest and boobytrap the area. The plan was to create a mire. If the enemy came, they would suffer for every inch of land.
Voidblade straightened up and squinted around, his eyes adjusting to the redstone light. He saw a desk at which one of Lucy’s secretaries scribbled away until his hands bled. Even more fortunately, Lucy herself was there. Voidblade didn’t bother with the secretary and spoke directly to her.
“Investigations unsuccessful. No sign of a portal facility. Outposts abandoned. Desert sighting a hoax. Were my scouts luckier?”
Lucy looked up. “Sadly no, it’s the same everywhere they checked. But even if the main objective didn’t succeed, intel is intel. Thank you Voidblade.”
Voidblade nodded and hoped to slip off to take his leave for the day. Unfortunately, three of his scouts approached him to report information he already knew. One Enderman, a human and a testificate.
The Enderman arrived first and simply stated: “Reports submitted to the secretary. Nothing found. I may take my leave?”
Voidblade nodded and savoured the efficiency of the exchange as the scout disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke. He knew the other two would have much more to say. He marched forward and indicated for them to follow.
The human babbled a description of his sites, confirming as redundant a description as Voidblade had come to expect. Outposts abandoned. Documents burned or removed. Sighted a convoy already known to exist. Voidblade dismissed him as soon as possible.
The testificate, Sergeant Raphoe, remained. Voidblade did not know what to make of him. He was in the infantry before the Massacre, and transferred very abruptly into the scouting corps. More worryingly, he volunteered rather than being reassigned, and was immediately made an officer. Voidblade couldn’t help but suspect he was spying for Kay, though he didn’t know exactly what that might mean.
This impression was only strengthened when the testificate had absolutely nothing to say about his reports, and instead informed Voidblade:
“Astro stopped by looking for you. Kay wants to speak with you in his chambers.”
Voidblade nodded and dismissed the potential informant with a grunt.
He started towards what was once the entrance hall, and on the way, he saw a weary-looking Jennifer and Steve debating over blueprints in a room to the side. As per usual, they were spotless and there were no dark rings beneath their eyes, but their movements were sluggish, and their statements punctuated by stifled yawns. Still, their fingers were interlocked, and they gave off an aura of resigned calm.
In the entrance hall, he caught a brief glimpse of Urist carrying some iron either towards or away from the forge – the dwarf was busy switching between two conversations, one immediately ahead of and the other immediately behind him.
Another figure of interest was a mage in a black robe arguing with Astro. Astro was clearly the angrier of the two, flaring his nostrils and digging his fingers into his palms. The mage wore a confrontational smirk on her face, leaning back where Astro leaned forward as though holding something tantalisingly out of reach. Additionally, where he spoke in a long, emphatic, upsettingly human sentences, the mage offered brief, clipped responses - often because he interrupted her.
Voidblade averted his eyes and tried not to pay attention. He wanted no part in the growing tensions between Shadow’s mages and Kay’s leadership. The mages had all taken to wearing identical black robes at some point during their trek back to the base. Voidblade had at first wondered where they got the material from, but then remembered they were magic and gave it no further thought.
And, as their loyalty to Shadow became more evident, Kay made sure to snub her. He made a great many public appearances within the Shelter, but he carefully controlled who he appeared alongside. Where Tyron, Rose, Destiny and Astro were fixtures in his entourage, he only met Shadow in person behind closed doors - in the Command Room. Otherwise, he sent messengers like Astro to formally, often publicly issue instructions to her. Lucy, Urist and Jennifer received similar treatment. It wasn’t as insulting with Jennifer, as he just asked Steve to convey messages in an informal capacity - though it still indicated distrust.
Voidblade was not in the entourage, but he also hadn’t been snubbed. He was happy with this middle route.
“Iridia,” Astro hissed, “I know you lot delight in making my job difficult, but this is really not a political matter. Did Shadow have a lesson with the boy today?”
“The child spoke to his mentor. Is that a lesson?”
“As we’ve established, no, not necessarily.”
“Then, why are you so concerned about who our master speaks to?”
Astro placed a hand on her shoulder and stared wearily into the acolyte’s eyes.
“...Answer the bloody question, Iridia.”
Voidblade tuned the spat out and teleported into a blank spot. He did not want to risk Astro flagging him down to see if Sergeant Raphoe had delivered his message and accidentally entangling him in the standoff. The further he could stay from human squabbles, the happier Voidblade would be.
He then passed the training room, which had been enlarged even further as topside exercises were now banned. He caught a glimpse of Tyron and Warnado sparring. The child had become obsessed with improving his hand-to-hand combat abilities. When they fought, he used no combat spells, only magic which helped him evade the attacks of Tyron, whose fists were covered in large quantities of soft but heavy cloth.
As Voidblade looked in, the Dragoknight caught Warnado in the head and sent him sprawling, before apologising profusely. The child didn’t even hesitate before rising and declaring, “No, don’t worry, I’ll do it right this time.”
He turned away from the route to the Command Room and crossed the threshold into the officers’ quarters. He heard a clatter of tools to his right.
“So, what’s the plan here?” Amanda grunted as she set the box down. “What does this stuff do?”
The box contained an assortment of things, including a jar filled with yellowish grains as well as the shattered remains of a blade made from a shiny, dark-grey steel.
“Just a couple of things I need for my ritual, if I want to do my job as a bodyguard properly, I need to be stronger, the ritual will help me accomplish that,” responded Rose.
Voidblade passed several doors onward. He looked at the large door at the end of the corridor - Fire’s room, now abandoned. Maybe it was the fact that the officers’ quarters were out of public view, but the new regime had left it undisturbed - a monument to the old Commander, no matter how irrecoverable he may be. Voidblade turned right and knocked on Kay’s door.
“Come in,” came the response.
Voidblade entered.
“Feel free to have a drink, if you wish. I know it doesn’t affect your people much, but, as I said, it’s there if you wish.”
The redstone lights were off. Kay sat in an armchair next to a spruce table, gesturing to a bottle of brandy, several stacked glasses and another available chair. Everything had an orange hue thanks to a fireplace he’d asked Steve to install shortly after he got back. Kay’s brace lay open in the corner, but the cane was propped against his leg. Voidblade had been skeptical at first, but it appeared Claw had done quite serious damage to his knee.
“We do not need to drink,” Voidblade responded in what he felt was a polite tone of refusal. He elevated the pitch of his voice slightly in an attempt to emulate human friendliness. “Water hurts our tissue, we have no liquid in the End, safe the juice of the Chorus Fruit.”
“Then I shall see if we can obtain some Chorus for the next feast, assuming we ever have something to celebrate again,” he snorted knowingly. “And a choir, perhaps. A chorus to sing and a Chorus to drink.”
The new Commander was smiling, but while many human nuances were lost on Voidblade, he could tell when they were tense. He decided to ingratiate himself with the boss as best he could.
“Alcohol is also acceptable in high concentrations,” Voidblade adopted a grimace not unlike a grin. He felt unclean.
Kay’s smile in turn became slightly less strained. He poured Voidblade a drink.
“You know, Voidblade,” he murmured. “I hope I don’t come across as closed-off from you. Endlings have done terrible things to humans in my world, as your humans have done terrible things to your kind. However, one thing that remains constant across all species of Endling I’ve encountered since I arrived here is that lack of liquid. Even the Chorus Fruit is scarce. Your scales can almost universally withstand the Void. You’re a hardy people, whatever shape you take.”
Voidblade shifted his feet as the Commander offered him a large measure. He took the glass and began to sip at it. The taste was sharp, bitter and faintly sweet in the aftertaste.
“Thank you,” he said uncomfortably, trying not to acknowledge Kay’s slightly tipsy commentary on the Enderborn.
“And yourself, of course, your service has been venerable throughout. You volunteered for Fire’s expedition, you helped build this place, and you’ve done excellent work in combat. Our formations did not prove as effective as I’d hoped at… at The Hill, so having yourself and the other Endlings in our ranks to flank and run the counteroffensive saved many lives. We certainly couldn’t have lost any more than we did without losing the army altogether.”
Voidblade fought the urge to nod. Most of the remaining Jackals had deserted almost immediately after the battle. Even after the leadership clarified what had happened, some others still deserted. They had around 800 soldiers left on active duty, with various civilians now being given rudimentary training in preparation for any impending attack. If many more had died, they would have been lucky to avoid a full mutiny.
“And, naturally, your scouting work, which is the reason I’ve called you here and the reason we’re drinking.”
He stood up and hobbled over to a map desk, beckoning Voidblade over. A charter of the lands North of the Tower was laid out with a series of pins.
“I think I’ve cracked the location, based on your reports.”
Voidblade’s eyes widened involuntarily, and he leaned in in silent anticipation.
“Your reports have been noting the gradual abandoning of outposts, and the destruction of portals. However, up until now we haven’t been able to figure out a clear pattern. The thing is, we weren’t thinking about what goes through the portals and where they might come out.
“Now, most convoys coming in towards the Tower itself are carrying weaponry and armour, most of those going out are the same. But then, you noted a substantive convoy entering a portal here a few days ago. Weaponry and armour were there, yes, but importantly it was mostly food and water. That portal was confirmed still standing just today.”
He tapped a pin emphatically and grinned like a showman.
“The next day, one of your scouts observes a convoy of similar size exit from a portal here.” Another emphatic tap. “What was it carrying? Almost exclusively food and water, even fewer weapons. This is stocking somewhere up. He couldn’t follow it and had to leave because a patrol got too close for comfort, but he was able to note the portal’s location. We confirmed it today. That portal was destroyed. They’re hiding something out here.”
Voidblade furrowed his brows and looked at the map. That they were shipping large quantities of food and water suggested it was a desert, and there was a stretch of desert there, but it was a large desert. And it was just one portal destruction.
“And I know what you’re thinking. That’s still a massive area to search, and what if they just travelled to another portal. That’s what I thought, but then we followed reports of another sustenance convoy going toward the same area from the far side. Again, the portal it exited from was destroyed afterwards. Our scout was also warned to look out for patrols, and able to follow it for a substantial length of time. Patrols were even more prevalent. And he got far enough to confirm that it was entering the desert. We also confirmed a third water convoy coming in from even further North - not guaranteed to go all the way down, but certainly shooting in the right direction. There’s something in there Voidblade, don’t you think?”
He was grinning madly and Voidblade felt a sudden pounding in his chest. He almost forgot that Kay had just admitted to giving his scouts instructions of which he had been unaware. This might actually be the site he had spent the last week looking for.
“I want you to investigate as soon as you are able. I appreciate that you’re likely tired, as with the other scouts-”
“Give me two hours.”
Kay laughed and clapped him on the arm.
“You absolute madman, there’s the spirit we need to win this war!”
Voidblade nodded and resumed his grimace. It felt less unclean, but he still felt strangely uneasy. He began to walk away when Kay stopped him. He scribbled down a note and placed it in Voidblade’s hand. It read:
Would you be able to swing by Shadow before you leave? Tell her I’ve been meaning to talk to her about the incident. Writing this to ensure she doesn’t already know before you tell her.
He winked in what was supposed to be an innocent manner, then returned to his map desk.
Voidblade gritted his teeth. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of. Then again, he was only the messenger, not necessarily a partisan. Shadow would understand, he hoped. Then again, she had been acting strange ever since she achieved this ‘Void state’. Voidblade didn’t feel as inherently disoriented around her as some of the humans did, but even he had to admit there was something wrong about her aura now. Nothing in the Overworld should be so immersed in the Void, not Enderborn, not human, not anything.
He bit the bullet and warped to Shadow’s improvised seminary. Her mages had claimed a section of the barracks. They had begun tearing down some of the walls to create a bigger communal area that they used for training and general social interaction. The leadership had tried to object but in the light of the recent losses there really were few arguments against them using up more barrack space.
Voidblade landed in the corner of one of their expanded rooms and scanned it for Shadow, spotting her at a table with three others, who Voidblade assumed to be some of her more powerful mages, judging by their slightly more elaborate robes.
While Shadow looked mostly like her old self, there was something about her that had undeniably and permanently changed. It was more a feeling than something you could spot. Just like Voidblade had thought earlier, something about her felt wrong. Despite her now frequently bad mood, she seemed to have at least a decent time talking with her mages.
“Shadow,” he said with a polite bow. “Kay wishes to see you.”
He scrunched the paper in his hand. He silently prayed she wouldn’t ask to see it.
She sighed. “Ah. That’s what he was trying to be funny about. If the commander requests my presence, I guess I should oblige.”
Voidblade bowed again, then left. He was unscathed, for the moment. For the first time, he wished his emotions had been easier to read, because then she might have understood how unwilling a part he was playing in their standoff.
Chapter 46: Undeniably a Threat (Astro)
As I turn the corner into the officers’ quarters, my mood is a dangerous cocktail of contempt and stress. Kay has me running messages and checking on Lucy’s admin work and for a split-second I actually miss having Cossack around - normally Kay would delegate all that to him. So far today I have run four complete circuits of the Shelter, which is bigger than you’d think. Thankfully, he’s reduced my training obligations so I can focus on this sort of work, backdoor strategising and being present for every lesson Warnado undergoes.
Unfortunately, Shadow’s little ‘coven’ is making that last task a little more difficult. Normally she is polite and helpful enough, but if she can’t be immediately found I am bounced from acolyte to acolyte. Since the Battle of the Hill the mages have been forming an ever-closer circle around Shadow. They suffered proportionally fewer casualties than everyone else and, while we hushed up the Void-form incident as best we could among the ranks, a lot of the mages sensed it. When your commanding officer can go toe-to-toe with the Entity, you take notice. And so, Shadow’s mages had effectively become an army within the army, taking cues from the ‘Master’ herself before even contemplating bending the knee for Kay or Tyron.
Some, like Iridia, have taken this respect for Shadow’s capability to an almost spiritual reverence. And, unfortunately, she’s one of the few who ever seems to know where Shadow is perhaps by force of sheer obsession. I was hoping I might get some information from Pallas or Talita, usually more moderate, but they had been busy training the novices. So, I’d tried to get a straight answer from Iridia, who deflected as though I were a malignant inquisitor seeking to arrest and execute Shadow. Then again, the way Kay glowers when we discuss them…
I’ve tried to reassure him that they’re probably not an internal security threat, but days like today make me wonder if there really is something to worry about. I just wanted to know if Warnado had had a lesson with Shadow - he hadn’t, he stepped in to ask about having a lesson today. We are going to have one in about an hour. It took me twenty minutes to get that much information from Iridia and I still don’t know what the topic is he wants to discuss. Great.
As such, when I turn the corner and come face to face with the Master herself, I’m simultaneously plunged further into irritation and a little relieved that I might be able to get some clarity.
She’s standing outside Rose’s room, looking at me. Her white hair lies still, and her skin is the normal shade of coal-black, but I can’t help watching the air around her. Her aura is still off, still setting off some scrap of my brain which contains the fight-or-flight mechanism. I set both options aside with some difficulty and approach.
“Hello Shadow…” I see Rose’s door is open and am confused by the contents. “Sorry you, Rose, good to - to see you… Is there something different about you?”
Rose’s room is covered in blade-scratches, which is impressive as it’s completely made of stone. The furniture is destroyed. A glass jar with a few yellow grains in it lies shattered in the room’s centre.
And, of course, my question is stupid as Rose is obviously different. It’s just hard to pin down how. She still has shoulder-length black hair, brown eyes, elegant dark clothing and she’s still hiding an arsenal of knives everywhere she can… What’s changed?
“Hello Astro,” says Rose with a wry smile. “Notice anything?”
It’s odd to say this but she looked sharper. Physically sharper. Each strand of hair looks like a blade, her gaze like a pair of daggers. When I look away and only see her in the corner of my eye, her shape seems to change a little. She becomes narrower, more angular, like a continuous razor. I want to put her in a drawer so children can’t get at her.
“This isn’t that upgrade you were talking about, is it?” I ask warily.
“This is exactly it. Only took digging up some special ingredients from some ruins and destroying all of my furniture.”
“Very good,” I say awkwardly. “But… what did you do?”
I lean against the doorframe and shoot Shadow a ‘give me just a second’ look. I’m pretty sure she smirks.
“You see,” Rose begins. “So far, the only supernatural dedication I had was to the aspect of artifice, destruction and various other related concepts, that’s why I can create blades from thin air. My killing prowess was natural so to speak. This ritual established a major dedication to the aspect of various flavors of murder and general violence.
“I communed with one of its highest beings and called in some favors my old master had negotiated with it. So, here I am. Kay won’t have to worry about mundane assassinations from now on and I’m confident I can deal with most supernatural ones too.”
“Excellent,” says a voice from behind Shadow. “Mundane assassination attempts are by far my least favourite.”
Kay strides into view.
“Would you have time for a demonstration in the training room?” he asks confidently. “I believe Astro and Shadow have a lesson to prepare for.”
“Gladly,” Rose says, demonstratively materializing a knife in her hand.
“Perfect! With me.”
And with that, he strides off, Rose following closely and immediately. And so, I’m left with Shadow. I brace myself, promise I won’t try to fight her or break down and reveal all my secrets again.
“Well,” I begin. “What’s the topic of today’s lesson?”
Shadow says: “Sorry about Iridia, first of all. But for the lesson? I was thinking about checking Warnado’s progress, we haven’t really had a formal lesson in a few days, but he’s been training on his own or with Tyron. We should probably see how he’s improved.”
“Yes, flying, demonic summoning, item summoning et cetera…”
I say it all in a facade of professionalism, voice modulated and deep. Little emotion. Then I realise how little I have to say and force myself to add more. I see an opportunity to vent some frustration.
“And yes, tell Iridia to give a straight answer in future,” I continue. “She is under your command, but you are under Kay’s.”
Shadow sighed and nodded slowly. “Astro, can we speak privately?”
“Are we not alone right now?” I say densely.
“We might be, but some of my scryers could reasonably listen. A little hypocritical, I know. I have a way to ensure nobody can hear us if you’re up for it.”
She slowly raises up her hand in a manner that seems terribly familiar. Reality unknits and opens up as she moves her fingers downward, leaving a rift in the middle of the corridor tall enough for me to step into. It’s a pocket dimension. I sigh and step in.
I see a black-and-white space filled with simplistic furniture. Not simplistic as in sparse. I mean simplistic as in, basic geometric shapes. Sharp lines, few edges, right angles. I look down and my arm is affected by this place’s strange hue, appearing all black other than a white outline. I sit down on one of the chairs and look at Shadow. She has acquired the same hue, except for her eyes, which were their usual red. I don’t bother to question why. It’s her dimension, her aesthetic.
“So, what do we want to talk privately about?” I grunt as politely as I can muster.
Shadow points directly at me. “One thing is how you can be here without having your head explode from pain. Remember when I theorized that a second void exposure could acclimatize you? It seems that is what happened. Other things… this whole situation. Ever since Fire is gone, I don’t really have anyone I can talk with and considering our history, you are the one here I trust most.”
That is… a lot. I concede I’m pretty thoroughly disarmed by this vulnerability. I feel my anger shrink away a bit and I try to manifest some sympathy. I’m still wary, but I’m not heartless.
“Um… yes, my head is feeling much better. Thanks for asking. It stopped when you entered your Void-state, actually.”
I pause and reflect on this. It hadn’t even occurred to me that this pocket dimension was Void-born. I fight the urge to try and figure out how we’re not burning away and try to attend to the second half of her statement.
“And, yes, I’m here to listen if you need to talk about your brother’s situation...”
I read somewhere that we mortals like to dress death up in euphemism. Someone isn’t dead, they’re “in a better place”. They haven’t died, they’ve “passed onwards”. Back then I was a scholar with little experience of the world, and I’d dismissed it. I now realise how true it is. Fire is as good as dead. I cannot conceive of a way of saving him. Why am I dancing around the point of it?
“I am no stranger to grief,” I continue less ambiguously. “I understand how hard this must be.”
My mind drifts to the icy fields of Acrisius, where tens of thousands of men lie dead. Many of them are my friends. I think upon the small coterie of old allies who are there to help me. Do they know I’m still alive? Are they grieving? I hope not, they’ve had their fill recently.
“I’ve never really lost anyone before, not like this. But then again, there is nobody else who I care so much about. I know Fire has lost people and now I know how he felt back then, it’s what made him so determined not to lose me too. Everything he’s done for me, all the sacrifices he’s made. It’s why I didn’t ever want to lose him, not just because he’s a great brother but also because I feel that in a way, I owe him.” She paused. “And we talked about this at some point, also because I’m afraid of what it would mean for me.”
I feel reservations creep back in. Her vulnerability suddenly seems as much like a threat as a point of sympathy.
“Yes, about you potentially shredding Nexus down to atoms in an act of uncontrollable vengeance. I recall.”
Shadow leans back in her chair, clearly not in relaxation. “You know the worst part? I don’t even know for sure whether losing Fire was a direct cause in my transformation back at the hill. It could have happened because I thought it would. Maybe a bit of both. But I can feel that it changed me. I can see more than I could before, for instance I can see the Book’s pocket dimension from here, not into it, just see that it’s there. I also sometimes get glimpses of what I think are worlds close to Nexus.”
She falls silent for a few seconds. “No, you know the actual worst part? I can’t stop seeing or listening anymore, at least not immediately around me. It’s quite scary to be honest. Maybe a sign of things to come.”
I sit silent for a few moments. I try to separate confidence from potentially important intelligence. It’s impossible. I’m going to be reporting this girl’s insecurities and struggles right back to Kay. I feel like ****.
“I’m sorry, I had no idea,” I say flatly. “I always assumed you were just being nosy with the eavesdropping.”
Shadow laughed. “I definitely was before. I did try not to intrude, but now I have no choice.”
“Again, my apologies.” And then, because I can’t get it out of my head: “And you’re still in control of your other abilities?”
“No random disintegration rays will be perforating the Shelter any time soon. It seems that anything that’s purely my normal magic has remained where it was.”
“And your void magic?” I ask with an air of defeat. To make myself feel less awful, I add: “If you feel comfortable discussing it, that is. I’ll have to report any developments on that front back to Kay.”
I look at her with a fearful apology tinting my eyes. I am in the palm of her hand. She could crush me if she wished.
Shadow contemplates. “So far, it’s actually gotten better. I’ll need to look into why exactly my passive awareness is acting up but nothing else is.”
I nod perhaps a little excessively. Mentioning Kay aloud has set a whole other wheel of anxieties in motion.
“What did he say to you back there? I remember he wanted to talk to you about that.”
“He mostly wanted to know how it works, or how I work in general. The issue is that currently I don’t have an answer to those questions. He just kept asking and asking. I ended up having to resort to arcanobabble so complex that he couldn’t ask follow-up questions, not even with the Book whispering in his ear.” She sighed. “Other than that, the conversation was alright. Anything else he’s doing… I can understand why he’d treat me the way he does, for Urist I can also see the reasoning, but why Jen and Lucy? Especially Lucy, she’s in charge of our damn logistics and I don’t think ‘betrayal’ is even a word in her vocabulary!”
I weigh my words carefully because I know full well why he’s done all those things, or at least I think I do. At this age, Kay would justify it under terms like “keeping a robust inner circle” or “choosing people I get on with” or “reminding everyone of the chain of command”, and I’m still not sure if he believes that. He seemed much more instinctive than calculating back then, but maybe I just didn’t know him that well.
The Kay he grew into would have excluded Lucy for much more concrete reasons. Because Fire literally picked her out of a crowd and made her head of logistics. Because she has no particular obligation to Kay. Because he has nothing, he can use to ensure her complete loyalty to him.
The Kay he grew into also would have arbitrarily chosen Steve or Jennifer as a matter of dividing and conquering potential opposition. They’re a unit. If Jennifer’s not in the room, Steve will be less decisive or at least less able to justify his choices. He might miss something she would call Kay up on.
And as for Shadow, that’s simple. No matter how far down the path to tyranny he was, Kay always understood the threat of a credible opposition. Both Kays consider her Fire’s heir. She’s a contender to the throne. If his leadership falters, people are most likely to run to her in search of a replacement. And, if the coven was any indication, Kay’s concerns were entirely justified. By keeping Shadow at arm’s length, he could claim she was just annoyed about her loss of influence. Claim she was engaging in factionalism. Forming a cult of personality.
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” I lie. “He’s spooked by the void-state’s power, because he was already uncomfortable about Fire being stronger than him. Now he’s discovered there’s someone even more powerful. Lucy, he distrusts because he didn’t pick her, so he gets me to read over every dull detail to make sure she hasn’t missed anything. Jennifer’s an arbitrary thing.” In my best impression of his faux-posh accent, I add: “‘Why even have an inner circle if everyone’s going to be part of it?’ He can be petty like that. Generally, it’s just his way of feeling in control - choosing people he gets on with.”
I almost believe it myself. I pray she’s deceived.
Shadow shakes her head. “I’ve seen enough politics in my time as Rockhaven’s archmage to know it’s never that clear-cut. If politics is one thing, it’s personal. But never mind all that.”
I manage to stop myself from sighing and feel an urgent desire to leave. I don’t think she’s going to pursue me much further, but I don’t want to risk it. I look around for a clock.
“What time is it?” I ask hurriedly. “We have a lesson to get to.”
“In outside time, it’s been a minute. Inside-time, it’s been longer. If there is anything else you want to talk about first, we have time.”
I know I’m going to regret this, but I might as well ask.
“What’s the deal with the coven? We wouldn’t be half as suspicious if it didn’t look like you were forming your own loyalist faction.”
Shadow leans forward and supports her forehead with her hand. “That’s the problem. I didn’t, they did.”
I cock an eyebrow.
“They just started ignoring instructions from us on their own, then?”
“Something like that, I know they always respected me but after the battle it reached a whole new level, it’s almost like worship. I hadn’t even been back from fighting the Entity and they were already emulating my robes. Started referring to me as ‘master’ exclusively.” Shadow laughed. “They will follow any order I give them, except for the ones that make them stop or listen to you. Regarding those, they pick and choose, sometimes add their own interpretations.”
She seems dead serious, yet all I can think is, “How awfully convenient?”
“I’ll relay that to Kay,” I say neutrally. Then, my tone sliding head-first into acidity: “I’m sure the involuntary nature of your cult will calm him right down. Of course, within a week he’ll probably be lining up to kiss your feet as well. I’ll save him a spot in line. Where do we get the stylish robes? I do hope they’re not too much of a hassle for you to source.”
I sneer grotesquely and stand up. I walk over to the entrance and turn back. She looks destroyed. Mouth agape. Red eyes wide and defenseless.
I feel terrible, but she can’t just drop something like that on us. Another potential threat.
“Shadow,” I say. “I’m sorry about your brother. I’m sorry your powers are acting up. I’m sorry you’re scared and alone. But telling us you don’t know why they’re becoming more and more unknowable and potentially dangerous does not resolve the situation. Nor does antagonising Kay in front of the entire leadership. You feel alone because you chose to stand alone. Now you have to live with that.”
I turn away from her shattered face.
“I need a walk. If you’re feeling up to it, I’ll see you at the lesson. If not, I’ll improvise. And sort out your bloody cult, I don’t suit full robes.”
I step out and march away. The colours of the world shine back into view, and I want to believe that’s why my eyes are watering so much.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Hey check out this video on you tube it’s really good
Arc 5 Crisis (Cont.)
Chapter 47: Cracking under the Pressure (Shadow)
The rift closed after Astro and Shadow was alone in her pocket dimension. She felt shattered, angry and betrayed. She had regarded Astro as a friend, or something close to it at least. But now he just… Shadow thought he too was against the way Kay ran things, especially in the light of what would become of him. Sure, the coven looked very convenient to an outside observer but everything she had said about it was the truth.
Shadow’s hands started trembling again, something that happened more frequently in recent days. It was as if she was losing her grip on her physical body. With a cry of frustration Shadow cast off her shell and became one with her Void magic again. It was easier compared to when she had done it at the hill, more intuitive. However, the feeling of distance and emptiness was also nowhere near what she had experienced, but every bit helped. Shadow’s emotions now only felt like an echo of their former intensity.
Just barely outside of her pocket dimension was the outermost layer of energy that surrounded Nexus, somewhere off in the distance she saw another small bubble, where the Book lived. Giving the Book to Kay had been a mistake but now it was too late to fix it, Kay was already at the top and if Shadow tried anything to take it from him it would look like an attempt at usurpation.
Shadow shook her head, sending ripples through the fabric of reality. She needed to turn to the problems she could actually fix. Her coven was most likely on that short list. When her mages started imitating her, worshiping her, Shadow had been at a loss, felt overwhelmed. She was used to leadership and being looked up to, but not in this way. Back in Rockhaven when she had been Archmage, the other guild members had only seen her as what she had been, an elected leader and accomplished mage, holder of an official job. Now, she was regarded as a deity almost. Shadow was not comfortable with this idea, especially since it reminded her of what she feared she could become.
Still, something had to be done. She couldn’t let her mages go around antagonizing anyone who asked questions. Astro had been right, she needed to get them under her control somehow. She needed to assume the position of a proper cult leader, as backwards as that was. Fire would have been great at this, most of the untouchableness and mystique that shrouded the Mencur-Besh in their world was his doing. He would have had no problem making these mages wax in his hands, if only because it was what he had to do. But Shadow was not like her brother, at least not in that regard. However, all those millennia they had spent did not count for nothing. Shadow had seen enough to at least closely emulate her brother’s way of doing things. It wouldn’t be easy, especially not in the emotional state she would return to once she reformed her body.
Shadow extended her senses into Nexus, looking at all the happenings in the shelter, quickly locating an almost empty training room the coven had set up. In it stood Warnado, with Astro just coming in through the door in slow-motion. Shadow did the closest thing to taking a deep breath she could do in her current form, then readied herself to re-enter Nexus.
She emerged from between worlds just to the side of the door, deliberately out of sight. Most of her dedicated mages had already caught a glimpse of her void form and it had only intensified their cultish behavior, Shadow wanted to prevent any additional exposures if possible.
Her emotions hit her as soon as she had fully entered Nexus. Shadow grit her teeth, now was not the time, there was no need to make Warnado more uncomfortable than he already was. Her apprentice was perhaps one of the few blameless parties in this entire affair and he was suffering for it, seeing his companions turned against each other in addition to the apparent trauma he had suffered from his confrontation with Glibby.
As she entered the room, she forced herself to have at least a neutral tone: “Hope I’m not late, just had to take care of a few things in the pocket dimension.”
Astro flinched at the sound of her voice but immediately recovered.
“No, not much,” he explained. “Our golden boy was just about to show us a few of the techniques we’ve taught him.”
He clapped Warnado on the shoulder, and the quarter-demon noticeably flinched. Astro was putting up an unconvincingly jovial smile. Kay still had plans to bring him back to their world, so he had told Astro to try and form a bond. It was not going as planned, especially with previous “fumbles” in mind.
“How about some levitation... champ?”
Warnado promptly floated up until he touched the ceiling, then drifted back down.
“Great work, kid,” he said with another unconvincing slap on the shoulder. “How about some…”
And a few more exercises followed. Warnado really had made a lot of progress, as advertised. Not only had he learned how to consistently do the techniques they had taught him, but he also showed off a couple of his own spells, including a volatile shield that would block a hit and then blow up in the attacker’s face. Evidently a direct answer to Glibby’s combat style.
Shadow could tell after that, however, that Astro was struggling to justify his continued guidance of the lesson. Thankfully, he found a good improvising tool in Warnado’s ability to summon ethereal weapons. He gave increasingly intricate and outlandish instructions at an increasingly rapid pace. The task was clearly stressful for Warnado, but it was perhaps the closest he got to eliciting a positive response from the child. Until...
“An exact replica of your gauntlet on my right hand,” he instructed.
And it appeared. He smiled and examined the gauntlet. Warnado smiled back with a certain pride in his craftsmanship.
“Now, kiddo,” said Astro, considerably emboldened. “How about we revisit the demon magics after our…” His face sank as he saw Warnado’s reaction shift. “Prolonged recess? Champ?”
The child was not angry, but there was a rarely seen disdain in his eyes. Not dissimilar in tone to one of Kay’s more measured putdowns, Warnado began:
“Okay, I’ve been just about tolerating the ‘coach dad’ act because - y’know - it’s a stressful time, and everyone needs an outlet. If you want to be a little weird and pretend, we’re best buds and you’re this great, supportive mentor, fine. Kay’s probably pushing you to do it, and he’s being a little weird at the moment too. But I’m not going to sit here as you make the same dumb mistake twice. You tried to guide me through interacting with demons, and let that situation get way out of control. If it weren’t for Shadow, you’d be dead, and I’d be long gone. So don’t take it too hard if I tell you to shove it on this one.”
Astro, after looking sheepish for a split-second, hardened and responded in a low voice:
“First, I would have been grand. Now, I know Shadow likes to cultivate an image as-”
“-Yeah, shove it,” said Warnado with utter, resigned, ‘you’re dead to me’ dismissal.
As the quarter-demon left, Astro put his head in his hands. Shadow took the opportunity to teleport away without comment. She had no desire to talk with Astro at the moment, not after their previous conversation. Maybe at some later point, maybe, but certainly not now.
“Listen, Shadow-” she heard Astro say back in the training room. “Oh, for mods’ sake…”
She saw him strut angrily off to the door of the Training room, grumbling about “everyone always blaming me for their problems” and how sick of it he was. Then, he walked right into the sights of Amanda, who had seen Warnado leaving the room in a huff and failed to catch up before he disappeared from sight. By Shadow’s estimation, it took about two seconds before she saw Astro, saw he was also angry, and ask:
“What did you do this time?”
She enhanced this with a disbelieving shake of the head which stopped Astro dead in his tracks.
“What did I do?”
“Yes, you.”
“Of course, because it’s always Astro’s fault. Oh no! My boyfriend’s sad, it must have been the mean wizard man! Oh no, the administrator’s new apprentice has the wrong friends, let’s conscript him! Oh no, Kay went and ruined a war, let’s get his confidant to trawl the wastes for corpses! I am done with it, goodbye.”
He barged past Amanda and made it several paces before the teenage girl stopped him dead in his tracks for the second time that day.
“Bad day?” she asked.
He paused, then nodded.
“It’s rough being at everyone else’s mercy all the time, isn’t it?” mused Amanda.
“Oh, don’t I know it,” he chuckled bitterly. “I’ve just been knocked from stupid dispute to stupid dispute for so long. I was conscripted for having the wrong friends, I was imprisoned for being in the wrong place. When I got to the Vanilla Craft, I thought getting a seat at the top table might actually make it easier. It doesn’t, the feeling of powerlessness never goes away. Lesson for the day, if you can relay it to your boyfriend: don’t get into politics.”
“I’ll tell him, don’t worry,” she said patiently. “Just don’t forget, none of us want to be here, and the fact that you feel like a political tool in Kay and Shadow’s dumb standoff does not mean you’re not helping it happen.”
“Well, Kay has reasons to-”
“Um, actually, the dumb political thing is not dumb because blah blah blah,” she mocked. “Stop whining about it if you think it’s so reasonable. If it’s not reasonable, stop encouraging it. Be the change you want to see in the world, sweetie.”
She lightly patted her hand against Astro’s right cheek for emphasis.
“Anyway,” she said simply, then walked off with what Shadow presumed was a gesture in Warnado’s direction.
“Teenagers,” sighed Astro.
With that, another voice sounded from behind him.
“Astro, do you have a minute?”
Shadow couldn’t quite make out who said it. She decided to put a bit more energy into her passive perception, bracing herself for the increased volume of information.
“Oh, what now- Sorry, it’s been a long day. How are we doing, Lucy?”
There, she saw the corridor clearly as Astro turned to the Shelter’s top administrator. It was remarkable how quickly she had gotten used to her duties. Actually, what was even more remarkable was that Fire had told her very few things explicitly, she had picked a lot of it up naturally, only asking for guidance occasionally. Not just that but somehow, she managed to be a beacon of positivity in this otherwise dire situation. Lucy suffered too, Shadow knew it, but she didn’t let it affect how she went about her day.
“Recovering, still. But just earlier today I got word from the infirmary that nobody is in critical condition anymore and we’re seeing our first full recoveries. Recon is also bringing in reports consistently and it seems that we finally got a lead on that facility. The gathering parties are doing well as always, they weren’t really affected by our losses, so we’ll have an abundance of supplies for the foreseeable future. I have a full written report in my office if you want to take it to Kay.”
“Excellent work, as usual, is that all?” said Astro, recovering his politeness but clearly wanting to get away as quickly as possible.
“Just one more thing,” Lucy said. “I wasn’t sure who to tell but since you’re his friend I think you should know.”
“What’s happened?” asked Astro with an immediate, desperate urgency.
“Back at the battle, right when Kay was fighting Claw. Kay opened a portal from the Hill to me, shouting about needing a silver weapon. It was… scary to be honest. Back then the best I could find was coins. I know now Fire is hurt by silver, Shadow told me. I’m just not entirely sure what to make of it.”
“How so, scary? I appreciate you’re a civilian, but roaring is not uncommon for a commanding officer in a stressful situation.”
Shadow thought she detected denial rather than condescension in this.
“It was less what he said and more how he looked, he was… desperate, but not just because he was in mortal danger. All I could do was provide him with some coins and when he left after that he just… gave this look and said this one really disturbing thing. I still don’t know why he got that way all of a sudden.”
“Well, I’m sure it’s nothing,” he said, audibly shaking, “But let’s you and I discuss this in private. Would that suit you?”
“Yes, I have some time.”
He then cast a ward around them, enveloping them in silence.
Astro wanted privacy and Shadow had heard enough, she could probably see through his ward if she wanted to but there were more important things to do. For now, she was satisfied with knowing that Astro was uncertain, what that meant in the long term was left to be seen.
She turned her attention elsewhere, looking for where Warnado had run off to. He was not in his room, which made sense, if he didn’t want to be found why would he go to the one place people would look first? He also was not up in the higher sections of the barracks or any of the corridors. Which only left one place, the vents. Both him and Amanda had been using the vents to get around occasionally, probably not out of convenience but because crawling through them had an air of sneakiness about it. A quick survey revealed that Shadow’s suspicion had been correct. Warnado was hiding in one of the furthest corners of the ventilation system, close to the spider grinder but not close enough to activate the spawner.
There was no good way of talking to him from the outside, so Shadow took the only other viable option and teleported directly into the vent. She used a slower, more telegraphed version of her usually instantaneous teleportation spell so she wouldn’t startle her student. In a shower of purple particles, Shadow appeared less than a meter in front of Warnado. Her own small stature and the size of the vent allowed her to appear in a comfortable sitting position.
Warnado stared at the wall next to her, he said: “Hey, Shadow.”
Shadow replied flatly: “Astro’s on a bit of a streak today it seems.”
Her student raised an eyebrow under his cloaking spell. “Huh?”
Shadow sighed. “He said some things to me too before the lesson, with a lot less room for interpreting it as friendly banter.”
Warnado seemed surprised, he somewhat clumsily suggested: “Do you… want to talk about that?”
Shadow smiled. “Not particularly, just that I hope it can be explained by him trying to keep his own head on straight with all this stress.”
“Oh, yeah. Wonder where that’s coming from.” Warnado laughed awkwardly. He evidently was not used to this type of conversation.
Shadow conjured up some wisps that glowed in various colors, both of them could see in the dark in some manner but the light created a friendlier atmosphere.
“He is right in one aspect though, we need to look at your demon situation.” She raised her hands in preemptive defense. “I may have a different angle we could use.”
With a sigh, Warnado asked: “And what would that be?”
Shadow asked: “You never met your demonic grandparent, did you?”
Her student silently shook his head, though it was evident that he was starting to guess where this was going.
“I may be able to arrange that for you.”
Now Warnado looked directly at her. “How?”
Shadow explained: “Over the years I summoned a lot of demons, and I mean a lot. I’m on good terms with most of them so I could ask them to do a little bit of asking around. Once we gather some information about your grandparent, we could attempt a summoning.”
Warnado shuffled on the spot. “That sounds cool, and I definitely want to do that, but how will that help me? Like, help me here and now, physically, not just ‘Hey demon grandparent, I’m your grandchild, bye.’”
“With demons, knowledge is power. Knowing a name allows summoning, knowing your ancestry in person could allow you to better control your own demonic side. Manifest your legacy in a sense.”
“If that works it’s exactly what I need. Sounds like a much… less stressful way too. I’m in.”
Shadow had hoped he would say this.
Now with a bigger smile she asked: “And you know the best thing about this?”
Her student looked at her quizzically.
“It’s technically not a lesson, you know what that means? No having to have Astro around all the time, no Kay knowing about our every step.”
Warnado replied: “I like the sound of that, I’m double in.”
They both continued sitting there in silence, enjoying being off the radar for a while.
Shadow thought about the situation, she had lost Astro as a trusted confidant, but she had gained Warnado, if in a slightly different position. After losing her brother she felt like she needed all the support she could get, otherwise she’d break under the pressure. Shadow knew that using others as emotional crutches was bad, but she told herself that in this case it was like two cripples helping each other walk. She only had to hold out for a little longer, that was what she said to herself at least.
Chapter 48: Phantasmal Parlay (Destiny)
The twilight sun pulsed down from the West, and with no breeze, Destiny felt like a slug under salt as she lay down in the mouth of the old portal, trying to fall asleep. She blamed the sun - it just wouldn’t let her sleep on things. She was exhausted. She’d barely slept since the Prophet’s Hill - since they lost - yet somehow the sun had decided she wasn’t allowed to sleep because it sucked and was terrible.
She couldn’t even get drunk enough to fall asleep like she had on other nights since. The heat made the beer sit horribly in her stomach no matter how much ice she materialised into it - like the yeast was cooking into bread inside her. She might have thrown up if she wasn’t so damned stubborn.
The sun was also ruining the memory of other relaxation sessions. Various bottles were piled up around the portal and they burned gold in the sunlight. Destiny couldn’t look at them without tearing up, and even when she closed her eyes the reflected light turned the sightless void a disconcerting blood red.
She’d tried to fall asleep with her eyes scrunched shut a few times, but she kept remembering how, in an old adventure novel she’d once read, a character passed out in a desert, face-up, and the sun cooked his eyes like eggs even though he was asleep. Even more than the physical discomfort, this kept her from drifting off.
Every now and then she’d work up the energy to puff out a glacial cloud of air which would rise a foot or two in the air before collapsing back down on top of her. Of course, she also felt the same strange warmth she always felt when summoning ice, so it was barely a relief - in fact, for a couple seconds she would feel as though she’d just broken out in a cold sweat - but it provided a welcome break from the smothering effect of the sun and made her feel as though she were putting up a fight against her burning tormentor.
“We both know it’s a terrible thing,” Anya muttered as she paced back and forth.
Destiny flicked her eyes in her past-self’s direction.
“Yeah,” she muttered. “A terrible thing.”
She glared furtively at the sun before casting her eyes back to Anya. She knew they weren’t talking about the same thing, but they also were. Anya was worried about Freak’s offer, and Destiny was annoyed that the sun was distracting her from thinking about Freak’s offer.
“Freak has done a lot of awful stuff but… what choice do we have?” Anya asked. “If he wants to help take down the Entity, we have to trust him.”
“Yeah, we’ll trust the guy who tortured Tyron because he laid some flowers on an imaginary grave and said, ‘I swear I’m not that evil’,” grunted Destiny.
“He also helped out the kid, I thought you said,” Anya pressed.
“Warnado mentioned Freak. Didn’t go into much detail… He seemed pretty upset. I told you what Glibby did to,” she suppressed a belch, “To Fristad. He saw that first-hand. Like I said, he seemed pretty shaken up.”
Anya cursed under her breath.
“You come to a conclusion or not?”
“About what?” Destiny with an obtuse smile that quickly subsided.
Anya pressed her palms to her eyebrows.
“I hate you when you’re drunk,” said Anya.
“I’m not drunk!”
Destiny stood up, indignant, but her legs faltered unhelpfully, and she had to catch her balance.
“See, dry as a desert,” she said without conviction.
“You’ve had six bottles since you got here and I’m going to wager you’ve only eaten like two slices of bread in the last two days. You’re not sober.”
Destiny sighed and wandered around for a spot where the bottles wouldn’t blind her quite so much. Anya was unaffected by the light, standing out clear as day between the golden infernos. Destiny’s past-self marched up and leaned in close.
“Now, listen here, I’ve been real patient with you the last while because you’ve been in mourning. And so have your bosses, which is why they let you disappear for hours at a time when you should be helping plan. We were getting better after David, then your little friend the shepherd went and died, and you went back to square one. Except you weren’t drinking after David - that’s beside the point. People need you on point, I need you on point.”
“What are you, my mother-”
Anya ignored this and cut across.
“That creep gave you a phone, and you need to know if you’re answering when it rings! Let me see it.”
Destiny rummaged reluctantly in her pocket and pulled out the small, yellow crystal. No bigger than a fingernail. Perfect for a ring or broach pin and that was probably what Freak had planned for. She hadn’t had the time or energy to put it in anything, though. She’d been spooked when Jennifer noticed it and had barely had the nerve to take it out since then.
Destiny held out the crystal in her palm.
“Well,” Anya said. “What’s your decision? Are you taking his help or not? Is he a useful ally or is this a trap?”
Without realising it, Destiny’s eyes had locked gazes with Anya’s, and now they drifted back to the crystal. Freak said it would glow if he got any news. It was still dull.
Could she trust this cruel little phantom? Even the way he’d gotten her attention was emphatically evil. Indril didn’t need to die. Then again, was Freak just keeping up appearances? Was he supposed to be there at all? Was he lying?
She remembered the withering flowers, the dying world she had briefly glimpsed. Was that real? Could the Entity be that cruel? Certainly, it was a collector, like Freak had said. What would it do when it finally had everything that interested it? It would first be a tyrannical god over all, but would it then become a bored god? She couldn’t decide which would be worse.
But then she remembered the way Freak’s claws dug into her side as they tried to escape. How he’d grinned when he hurt her before vanishing from sight. The blood. That was a ******* through and through.
In this surge of anger, she chucked the crystal at the ground. Despite her best efforts, it didn’t shatter and bounced off towards a pile of bottles.
“Screw this!” she yelled. “Not my problem!”
She marched off towards her satchel, fully planning on marching off.
“Hah!” barked Anya. “I give you two right answers and you still somehow choose the wrong one! At least come back here with someone willing to give an answer, you - you coward!”
Destiny whirled around.
“You crazy? It could be a trap, this question dies by this portal!”
“I thought it wasn’t your problem.”
Destiny breathed deeply.
“Sorry,” she conceded.
“Sounds like you’ve come to a conclusion, let’s hear it.”
“I take the call, but I don’t tell anyone else. This is on my head. I’m a hero, I came here to stop whatever evil was going on, and the Entity is that evil. I will kill it at any cost, and hopefully Freak will help me do it.”
Anya came in and offered one of her ethereal hugs.
“That’s good,” she whispered. “Because the call’s come in.”
Destiny slowly turned her head. A cloud had crossed paths with the sun, and the bottles weren’t glowing quite so much. She could see the yellow crystal slowing pulsing away.
Destiny walked over so haltingly she might as well have been limping, a bear-trap around her ankle. Finally, the crystal was throbbing between her fingers. She squeezed it.
Suddenly, she felt herself rooted to the spot, and a series of yellow lines surged into viewing, eventually crisscrossing and coalescing into a transparent image of Freak. He looked around.
“Hello Destiny,” he said with surprising formality. “And friend.”
“You can see Anya?” said Destiny with considerable surprise.
She and Anya exchanged a glance. Her past self kept obstinately silent but seemed similarly confused.
“Yeah, it’s a mental connection. Unimportant. I’ve learned something important.”
“Go - go ahead,” said Destiny.
“Just earlier, and by earlier, I mean a couple of minutes ago, I was having a look at what the ‘hunter’ riding your leader’s body around was doing. Turns out he fancies himself a bit of a scientist and talked to our main science lady. And guess what? After too much dry talk, he tells her that apparently your wonder mage and the Entity are similar in some manner. Not just that, they also thought that the crystals could be used to build a weapon to harm her. One problem with that though, if it harms her, it harms the big grey boss too, so they quickly stopped. Boring if you ask me, what evil scientists skip the opportunity to build a weapon that could kill their own boss? The two even went out of their way to acknowledge it! Where’s the drama, the sudden twist? Anyways, crystals.”
“Yes, crystals,” said Destiny slowly. “But what do you want from me?”
The image of Freak continued: “I just want you to keep an eye out, you might know where to find a crystal or two. It would make sense for you rebels to collect our main strategic resource, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she said carefully. “Of course, we have. It’s just about getting access to some. I’ll work on it.”
Her heartbeat increased a little and Anya visibly bit her tongue. That was about the only thing they hadn’t been stockpiling. It just hadn’t occurred to gather them - not that they knew where to find them. Maybe she could mention it to Kay. Otherwise, she might have to have a very cautious discussion with Steve or Jennifer - the only person who suspected something was up.
“Great,” Freak said a little too smugly. “Talk soon.”
His image faded and she was left with a dull crystal and a world full of concerns. But she was a hero. She would pull through.
“You’ll get through this,” Anya said redundantly. “If you get your **** together.”
Destiny nodded, then hurled a fireball at her satchel, destroying everything within.
“Cold turkey,” said Destiny.
“Yeah, I was just going to suggest you tried to drink more responsibly but that works too.”
“It’s going to suck,” Destiny said, scrunching her eyes shut. “But I will do it. I have to do it.”
“For David,” said Anya.
“For David,” repeated Destiny.
With that, the cloud moved, and the sun cascaded down anew. The golden inferno of the bottles returned. Destiny scrunched her eyes and marched towards the sun. She felt sick with every step.
Chapter 49: More Cracks (Tyron)
Tyron toyed with a small pebble in his hands as he sat on a bed, warping it into different shapes. Sometimes he would do this when he was bored, this time he was doing it out of stress. He was in Astro’s room, where he had been told to wait. He had not been waiting very long but had asked Kir how long it had been at least twice per minute since he arrived. After five minutes, he barely even had to grunt for Kir to give him an update.
“Ten minutes exactly, stop asking,” the sword chirped inside his head.
He grunted again and started pacing. Astro’s room was brighter than he’d expected. His clothes were drab, but the walls were a jolly, yellow terracotta. Aside from that, it was quite sparse, with just a workbench, a potion stand, a bed and several chairs. No table for people to gather around. Tyron wondered if he should read something into that - that Astro would tolerate visitors but didn’t want them to stick around too long. Certainly, he rarely invited anyone back.
If he had been less stressed, Tyron would have heeded this intuition and just sat in one of the chairs. However, he was stressed enough that he prioritized comfort over politeness.
Astro had approached him as he came out of a planning session with some of the lower-ranking officers - discussions of patrol routes and what to do in the event of a Tower attack. He had discussed the same principle with minor alterations so many times he could have done the entire meeting in his sleep - in fact, Kir had told him he often mumbled out a slightly less coherent version while napping. As such, he left the room in a drowsy, resigned mood. If they were attacked, prospects were bleak. The Entity’s project of refocusing everything on the defence of key facilities had saved them, but it was only a matter of time. He should have been terrified, but after a while certain doom gets literally tiring.
When Astro told him to meet him in his room in twenty minutes, however, Tyron felt tortuously awake. He had that look in his eyes again - the horrible revelation look. The first time Tyron saw it, Astro had warned him not to vote for Kay. He saw it again after Kay assumed control, shortly before he learned how Kay went out - as a tyrant and a traitor. He did not look forward to this new revelation.
Sometimes he just wanted to assume Astro was crazy - to tell him as much. It would be so easy. But since he started hearing these messages, things started making sense. He thought back to him and Kay’s heart-to-hearts.
He had spoken so reverentially of Herobrine and his war. It had given him purpose, and then after the fact, all the principles he devoted himself to were betrayed.
“I only wanted to be with my friends after the first fireships went in. And now, beyond keeping them safe, I don’t think I want any more causes.”
The Kay he knew was already a deeply broken man, whose cracks were readily apparent to anyone who could look beyond the posturing and bravado. Tyron wondered how far the cracks could spread without the goodness spilling out of him altogether.
The door opened. Astro, followed by Lucy. Tyron stood up.
“No, sit down,” Astro said hurriedly.
He ushered Lucy through, then closed the door. He patted it, and a rune was briefly visible. He squinted at it, then nodded before turning to the others.
“Lucy,” he said. “Tell Tyron what you just told me. About what Kay said to you when you gave him the coins.”
Tyron had heard Kay’s side of the story - a confident boast about how he and “The Beast” had reached deadlock, so he went back to the armory in pursuit of a silver weapon. Those would paralyse a Mencur-Besh, unfortunately they only had coins, so he went back to try and jam them in one of the many serious wounds he had inflicted on Claw. Thankfully, before he could pull off this risky maneuver, Astro shattered Claw’s arm, and he retreated before Kay could finish the job.
Tyron had suspected this was a “public reading” version of events (in other words, mostly but not entirely exaggerated to make Kay look good), but he still found himself tensing up at the mention of it.
And so, Lucy explained that Kay had warped in, roared instructions at her, and then came back looking half-dead already.
“But then, he saw the coins,” Astro said, hurrying things along even though they had barely started. “And the important part is what he said afterwards. Please, tell Tyron exactly what he said.”
Astro then clapped his hands together and rubbed them together furiously.
Lucy was visibly uneasy repeating what she had heard. “He said: ‘The Prophet is dead, the rebellion is dead.’ Then he gave off that look, desperate, more than anyone I’ve ever seen before. He said: ‘Astro is gone. If Claw won’t join them, I will gladly.’ I just… he seemed serious.”
“Oh no,” gasped Kir.
“Oh…” said Tyron, unsure of what he was allowed to say. “I see.”
He slowly turned his eyes to Astro, who rose swiftly and took Lucy by the arm.
“Thank you, Lucy,” said the wizard. “That will be all, for the moment. We’ll do our best to help Kay out of this rough patch.”
They were at the door. Tyron saw the tension in Astro’s muscles and aura as he stopped - he was only barely stopping himself from throwing Lucy out without a proper farewell.
“I’ve seen desperation in people before, a lot. But never like that. I haven’t known Kay for long, but I feel that there is more to this. If… you know more but don’t want to tell me that’s fine too. I can understand why you wouldn’t, there is already too much chaos in the Shelter and whatever it is, me knowing wouldn’t help fix that.” said Lucy.
Astro was quiet for a moment, then with forced, pained optimism:
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ve known Kay for a long time, and I’ve seen him in this position many times before. He’s a veteran, and he’s suffered much, and it’s easy in that line of work to wonder why exactly you should carry on suffering…” He trailed off. “He just needs some good friends at his side, and he’ll be right as rain. Thank you for your concern. I’ll let you know if you can be of any more help.”
With that he politely bowed, and Lucy left. He leant back against the newly closed door, and clenched his eyes shut. He breathed in deeply, then exhaled, balling his hands into a fist as he did so. He took two steps towards Tyron, then doubled back to pat the door and check the ward again.
“Sorry,” Astro said as he approached once more. “I don’t want Shadow listening. We’re barely speaking, as is.”
He sat down beside Tyron on the bed.
“So,” said Astro. “What do you think?”
“That’s an open question,” said Tyron, stalling.
Astro had told Tyron more or less the full story of what happened, so he was still piecing together everything. Kay was verging on suicidal. Last time, in his future, Kay had received a terminal injury and that motivated him to start settling scores. But he was also still protecting his friends and subjects at that point. Then, there had been a surgical strike where he lost a friend, Mini, and Astro was captured… There was the link!
Tyron felt a surge of satisfaction at joining the dots, then his spirits sank as he realised the significance of the picture they painted.
“You’re afraid that, if you kick the bucket, Kay’s going to go full tyrant,” said Tyron with resignation. “That he’ll give in to his paranoia and vengefulness and start picking fights with Shadow and whoever killed you.”
“Fights he’s not going to win,” Astro confirmed. “Fights he barely even cares about winning but wants to be able to say he did something about before he died. Even when he was murdering Abby and Walt, he always did care about Public bloody Relations.”
He walked over to the workbench and hunched over it as though reading something. Tyron had looked at it on the way in - it was empty. He didn’t want Tyron to see him cry.
“So,” Tyron asked. “What do we do?”
“Do we carry out a coup d’état, do you mean?” chuckled Astro.
Tyron had meant that, but he hated that he meant that.
“Could we not tell him what happens?”
“And destroy the timeline in the process? Possibly destroying multiple universes in the process? Unfortunately, no, that’s the sort of suicidal gesture of destruction we’re trying to avoid. ”
“How do you know he’s from your world, and not just a very similar one?”
“The Grey Ones say they were in our world continuously until my capture. We can’t trust them, but we also can’t take that risk.”
Tyron thought some more.
“What if we told him, then wiped his memory later? You or one of the other wizards must know a spell, or a potion.”
Astro whirled around furiously.
“You want me to condemn him to his fate? Give him the opportunity to change things, then tear that away? No, I’ve enough blood on my hands without his. You cannot ask me to do that. I refuse, and I refuse that right to anyone else.” He lowered his eyes. “Besides, we can’t know how he’d react. He might try and die nobly again, and that would only make matters worse.”
“Have to coup,” Kir affirmed.
Tyron raised his head, and was about to say, “How will we do it?” when there was a very forceful knock on the door.
They both froze and looked at each other, sharing the solidarity of hunted animals. Astro slowly approached the door, hands outstretched as though he were blind and looking for something to touch in order to find out where they stood. Finally, he opened the door a little, and scowled out.
A muffled exchange occurred, at the end of which Astro said: “I’ll be with you shortly, as will General Tyron.”
He closed the door.
“We’ll discuss this later, Voidblade has located the portal facility. Kay wants to attack as soon as humanly possible.”
Tyron nodded furiously, desperately hoping this might give them reason to change course. However, even then he probably knew they were being buffeted inevitably into a storm.
Chapter 50: The Raid on the Portal Facility (Various)
Warnado hopped from one foot to the other, fists held before him, trying to psych himself up for the carnage to come. However, any time he thought about the coming battle, he thought of the sun gleaming off the sweat on Glibby’s face as he ranted and raved, heard the clatter and roaring of battle all around him, smelled the burning of flesh and metal. Eventually, he resorted to physically slapping his cheeks to get himself to focus.
“You’re going to survive, and then you can talk all about it to demon-grandpa. A nice, milk-and-cookies ending to paper over all the trauma.”
He nodded in agreement with himself but felt unconvinced. He looked to his right and saw Amanda sharpening an axe. She smiled and waved with her weapon-hand. He felt a little more convinced.
Voidblade warped back in, and everyone looked up. They were on a small ridge overlooking the portal facility. About twenty in all. Warnado, Amanda, Tyron, Urist, an assortment of veteran infantry and combat mages, and now Voidblade.
As Tyron and the enderman went off into the corner to whisper about whatever new intel they had, Warnado surveyed the landscape.
To the North stood the facility. In the briefing Voidblade had told them it consisted of a few warehouses, a factory, and a central command building. Not that big all things considered. However, even from this ridge, Warnado couldn’t see anything except the thick, high walls and the upper floors of the command centre, which loomed over everything else. Its central position almost made it look like a head, and the walls like shoulders. The audible hisses and groans of the pipes and water tanks covering the command centre’s walls and roof only further encouraged this interpretation of the facility as an angry giant waiting to step on them.
To the South was a vast desert, dry and dead. Apparently, about a day’s walk from where he stood, he would reach a mountainous, vibrant jungle, but he couldn’t imagine it then. It was dark, and Kay had been very strict about them sticking to night-vision potions, or in his case his innate version, instead of lights to avoid unnecessary visibility, so Warnado had no idea what colour the sand was and no way of checking. This also meant he had no way of dispelling his fear that it was all grey with dust and ash. Everything looked black and white in the hue of his night-vision.
Additionally, now that the sun had slipped back beneath the horizon, the desert was surprisingly cold. He gripped his robes tighter around him and began to burrow in the sand with the toes of his shoes. He had heard that, when you’re in a tundra, it’s warmer to burrow under the snow and coat yourself in it. He wondered if you could do the same with sand.
Just before he could summon a tonne of sand to cover his body and boldly whisper that he was “Scratchy the Sandman”, however, one of the soldiers tapped him on the shoulder. Tyron had orders to give.
Or, rather, Kir did, while Tyron nodded sagely.
“Base scouted. Portals for Brines. We hit walls from South, weaken defence of gate and courtyard. Shadow and mages from North - same objective. Kay attacking gate, going through to command centre - Brines will split from him. No gate to West. No attack there.”
Warnado looked around as the soldiers nodded. Amanda sidled up to him, shrugging calmly in response to his confused expression. He clenched his fists to stop himself from fidgeting and tried to look less like a deer in headlights.
Another salvo of information:
“Marinus Bul, Attorney at Law on-site. Probably inspection. Capture or death a secondary objective, though pursue if possible. No preference for dead or alive.”
The instructions stopped and Warnado smiled as he remembered winding Bul up back in the Tower. He would crack so easily if they caught him. They wouldn’t even have to… Warnado frowned as he tried to think about what people did during interrogations. He had a difficult time imagining torture. Violence was this big, blunt, cartoonish thing for him, that always went for a killing or knock-out blow. He would probably suck at torture, but he got the impression he wouldn’t want to know someone who was good at it either.
He looked at Amanda and wondered if the Dreamweaver counted as torture. He remembered the way Amanda had cried - something she had never done before or since - and concluded that it was. He tried to tell himself Marinus would deserve whatever the Book did to him. If they caught him.
###
Before he knew it, they were dodging the redstone searchlights. It was easier than he expected. The lights moved slowly around the desert, and the guards were even slower. They didn’t expect a fight.
Voidblade warped up to the nearest spotlight, there were muffled sounds of screaming, the searchlight stopped moving. Some dark-clad figure flopped off the wall and landed in a small explosion of sand at their feet. The searchlight started moving again, even slower than before.
They waited until the spotlight was at a further point from their position, then the soldiers pulled out grappling hooks and began to climb. Warnado, knowing he only needed half the time to float up there, took the opportunity to take a look at the corpse. Tyron was already kneeling over it.
It was a mage. Warnado could sense the magical energy decaying away from him, like radiation. Tyron confirmed it when he flipped the body over and revealed that it was wearing a set of black robes with the Tower insignia on the chest. Warnado felt himself tense up. Tyron looked at him, and then flew up to the top of the wall with a heightened sense of urgency.
They’d expected some magical resistance - it was a portal facility after all, that implies some magical element - but if there were so many mages around that they were even taking shifts as nightguards, that was not a good sign.
Warnado arrived on top of the wall moments later, just in time to see Voidblade relinquishing the searchlight to one of their own combat mages, who cast a spell which set it back to scanning the surroundings on its own.
Their party advanced quietly along the wall, in the direction of the Eastern gate and the courtyard. They met little resistance, clearing out a few sentries as they went, until they came near to a brightly lit window on the wall of the command centre. It looked like a breakroom, and several guards milled around inside. Warnado thought he heard laughter. The courtyard was only two hundred meters away, but if they got any closer, they would be immediately sighted.
Urist also tapped Tyron on the hip, pointing out a patrol that would soon climb the steps to the spotlight they had cleared out. They had to act fast. Tyron reached into his inventory and, in a flash of blue light, produced some TNT. He offered it to Warnado.
“Just imagine it’s a taco,” Tyron grunted. “And teleport it into the break-room.”
Haltingly, Warnado took it. His hands were shaking so Tyron didn’t let him light it. Urist initially offered, but Amanda stepped forward with a match and did it first. Warnado tried to let gratitude wash over his anticipation of guilt and thanked her as the block flashed white.
He looked at the breakroom and saw a grey cylinder. That would be his tether. He closed a fist around the flashing TNT, and when he reopened it, the cylinder was there, slightly covered in jam. It might have been a gas canister, or a thermos of soup, miniaturised to fit in his palm by the spell, just like the TNT had been a moment ago. Whatever it was, he dropped it the second he heard the explosion.
The breakroom was in flames. Smoke obscured the casualties. Warnado felt ill and tried to think of some other function it might have had other than breakroom.
While Warnado tried to reconcile himself to what he was doing, Tyron barked orders the quarter-demon barely heard. Alarms sounded, their party started running toward the courtyard. Warnado saw the first signs of real fighting ahead. Urist and Tyron were leading the charge, cutting through a gathering crowd of sentries. Warnado drew an energy bow and nocked an arrow but couldn’t get a clear shot at the soldiers pushed forward around him. A couple of archers were slowing down to fire at the patrol Urist had noticed, now fast-approaching. The warping sounds of enderman teleportation started to draw near.
Then, a flash of bright white light from above. A mage floated above them, glowing like a flare, and in the skies around them other mages started to gather. Some emerged through portals; others appeared to bleed into view, as though the sky were a skin for them to shed; others still flew up with alarming speed. Soon, they were raining fire on the infiltrators.
Instinctively, Warnado fired an energy arrow at one that was still ascending, but it bounced off a red-tinged shield. However, the mage in question made the mistake of gratefully nodding in the direction of another. Warnado followed the nod and saw the source of the shield.
At the centre of the cloud of mages, one barked orders as red lightning sparked from her fingers. A slender, aethereal woman in a long, white gown was the source of the shield, Warnado could sense it. He watched as several archers fired up at the mages, each time being foiled by one of these red shield spells.
“Tyron!” Warnado called.
Tyron decapitated an enderman and turned to face Warnado. The demon-child pointed to the aethereal witch, and the Dragoknight responded by equipping his stone wings and flying off to break their enemies’ air support.
As Tyron pirouetted through the sky, dodging spells on his way towards his target, Warnado nocked another energy arrow and took aim. Tyron and he had discussed this circumstance. Tyron would brute force the shield, Warnado would take the kill shot.
He got down on one knee to stabilise, trying to keep focus as one of their soldiers was frozen by a stray spell, and shattered on the ground nearby.
Tyron began to plummet as he raised his stone wings to block a fireball, then immediately swooped back up, flying at full-speed towards the white-clad witch. Seeing him coming, the witch reinforced her own shield and sneered. Tyron raised Kir and roared, slamming into the shield. It broke, and the witch momentarily lost her poise, having to fight to remain airborne.
However, before Warnado could release the arrow, an obsidian boot sent him sprawling. An enderman stood over him, readying to plunge its purple sword down and into his guts. Warnado raised a shield, cocked an eyebrow and mouthed ‘do it’ to his opponent. Grinning confidently, the enderman obliged, but as the blade made contact with the shield, it exploded. Both shield and sword vanished in a surge of green light, and the enderman limped back, clasping its melted hand and wailing before vanishing in a cloud of purple particles.
There was now a fully-fledged battle on top of the wall, and as near as Warnado could tell it was not going well for the good guys. Several of the infantry were dead, and one of the combat mages was already starting to look a little tired as he blocked yet another spell - this one a burst of lightning. Squads of mercenaries and mages were starting to gather in the courtyard and at the foot of the wall. They also didn’t appear to be making much more ground towards the courtyard, with Voidblade and Urist inching forward, and Amanda just about holding the rearguard in a flurry of fierce blows of her axe. And Tyron could be seen lurching around the skies, desperately avoiding spells with little opportunity to retaliate.
Warnado tried once more to fire at the witch protecting the mages in the sky, but no spell he mustered seemed capable of breaching her shield. Beyond a condescending smirk, the witch didn’t even bother to retaliate, instead leaving that to the mages she was defending. Warnado noticed that it wasn’t a singular large shield, but a series of smaller shields being summoned in response to each individual attack. This was an adept who would not be easily baited.
That was when Warnado noticed a faint, red glint in the background. It quickly became a much stronger, orange glow. And then a second glint appeared. Now the orange glow was a fiery missile, rapidly approaching the witch. Her shield shattered under the force of the blow, and before she could stabilise herself, the second missile slammed directly into her, incinerating her completely.
Initially, most of the mages didn’t appear to notice what had happened and continued throwing projectiles as though they still had an adept shielding them from any potential attack. However, Tyron wasted no time in slashing his way through the cloud of magic-users, and soon there was substantial confusion in the ranks. Some began to raise their own shields, others became even more aggressive and began to fire on Tyron with all their power.
That was when the source of the fiery missiles made herself known. Warnado watched as Talita, a nice old lady who hung around with Shadow, appeared above the wall and began to send similar missiles into the cloud of mages, conducting them like an orchestra as they weaved between shield-charms to strike vulnerable combatants. Warnado whooped as he saw it, not having realised the rather frail-looking old woman had been capable of such power. She turned her head and gave an incongruously wholesome smile as she burned another enemy mage to cinders.
Warnado turned around and saw Amanda effortlessly dodging the attacks of a large pigman. Rose’s training had really paid off. Unfortunately, he couldn’t help but notice a crowd of similarly large and scary-looking fighters following the pigman.
“Hey Amanda!” he called.
“Busy here, Helix!” she grunted as she parried a blow and stopped the pigman’s advance.
“Put like one meter between you and the star of Babe 3: Revengeance.”
She leapt back and looked at him expectantly. As a result, she didn’t see the yellow-tinted forcefield he put between her and the pigman. When the pigman tried to charge her, it slammed right into the forcefield, and the forcefield promptly exploded in his face while leaving Amanda unharmed. The forcefield served as a magical shrapnel grenade, firing a brutal fusillade of lightning spells down the wall at the pigman and those following him. Wounded beyond fighting, the small column retreated. The rearguard had held.
“You’re getting creative,” Amanda laughed.
“Eh,” Warnado shrugged, feeling a little more himself. “What can I say, I’m a genius. A handsome, handsome genius.”
Tyron then landed back on the wall, kicking a mercenary off the wall as he did so.
“You can quip later, kid. To the courtyard! Now!”
With Talita and a handful of other members of Shadow’s coven now guarding the skies, the party charged along the wall, breaking through the ranks of human defenders and slashing wildly to discourage any enderman skirmishers.
Soon, they were overlooking the courtyard.
To the North, Shadow and other members of her coven could be seen, blasting spells in every direction. Warnado’s mentor herself was floating high above, pointing out targets and slinging her own spells, a similar strategy to the Tower’s adept mage with the key difference being that the shield-casting witch had lacked the safety of Shadow’s immortality.
Meanwhile, the Eastern wall was littered with corpses, apparently because of ranged combat. Arrows, large knives and icy javelins protruded from many corpses. In places the walls seemed mutilated, as though slashed by the claws of a mighty beast, and with various blades planted within the bricks at unnatural depths. Many casualties seemed noticeably charred, smoke still rising from their bodies. Those Tower forces still atop the wall scrambled back and forth, avoiding projectiles and sometimes dropping dead for apparently no reason, clutching their rib cages. In the courtyard, full columns rallied, though they were unprepared. Many were still equipping their armour as they lined up to face the gates.
The mages tasked with defending the gate swarmed like angry wasps, apparently dodging various projectiles too small for Warnado to make out.
Warnado readied a ball of electricity and hurled it at one of the swarming mages, catching them square in the back and sending them dropping. Unfortunately, just as he congratulated himself, he felt himself lift from his feet. He exchanged a look of surprise with Amanda, then found himself shooting down into the dirt of the courtyard. He slammed into the ground face-first and felt the wind rush from his lungs. Despite this, he used levitation to get back on his feet quite instantaneously, only to be knocked back on his ass by a clod of dirt that looked suspiciously like a fist.
Warnado looked for the source: a mage slowly approaching, sword in hand. He was white-clad, like the witch. And he had a similar aura of aethereal confidence. Warnado decided to call him the warlock, then summoned a flare to blind him. The warlock methodically raised his sword-arm to cover his eyes as though dabbing sweat from his forehead, not looking quite as disoriented as Warnado had hoped. Trying to capitalise on this moment, Warnado summoned an energy shuriken and hurled it at his enemy.
The shuriken stopped spinning suddenly, then shot back in the other direction and winged Warnado’s leg. The demon-child’s mind struggled to catch up to what had happened. The warlock’s other hand fell - he’d used telekinesis to send the shuriken back.
A new plan forming, Warnado stood back up and summoned a lightning forcefield behind the warlock and yanked it in with telekinesis of his own. The warlock handily sidestepped, and Warnado only just redirected it into a crowd of mercenaries. Warnado found himself lifted upwards again, this time his body going rigid and floating slowly towards his opponent, who brandished his sword gracefully.
Then, a jet of fire came flying down at the warlock, and Warnado landed shakily on his feet. The warlock blocked the attack with a wall of rock. Warnado looked for his saviour, and with a little disappointment saw Astro slowly approaching. Astro’s jet of fire stopped, and the warlock dropped his defence. The two glared at each other. To Warnado’s annoyance, the warlock finally looked determined, as though he’d met a worthy opponent.
To Warnado’s even greater annoyance, the warlock had miscalculated. Astro cocked his head, and the white-clad mage’s neck twisted one hundred and eighty degrees, breaking immediately.
Astro cautiously approached the corpse and prodded it with his foot.
“Sorry about the other day,” he muttered reluctantly to Warnado.
“No problem,” said Warnado with even greater reluctance. “Thank you for the help.”
A pause for breath. Tyron and the wall party were now pushing down into the courtyard itself, strategically seizing control entrances and exits. Amanda was holding down a gateway on the side of the central command building alongside Urist, hacking at the limbs of enemies, while the dwarf caved in the skulls of the wounded.
“When’s Kay going to show up?” panted Warnado.
Boom! The gate came crashing down, and from either side, a trail of silver-turning-purple flame extended until it reached the central command building on the other side of the courtyard, establishing an effective cordon. And walking up the center of this voidflame highway, Warnado could see a party of familiar expressions: Destiny’s vengeful scowl; Jennifer’s embattled half-smile; Steve’s wary furrowing of the brow; Rose, demure as ever; then, finally, the arrogant, infectious grin of Kay himself as he roared in triumph at this display of power.
“Round about now,” said Astro redundantly.
“Yeah, I can see that,” snapped Warnado.
“I know, that’s the joke.”
“Your jokes suck.”
“Hey, I just saved your life.”
“Fine, they don’t suck... but they’re not good either.”
Astro sighed, and the two began to walk up the cordon, towards the commanding party.
###
I beamed as Astro and Warnado approached, though I didn’t immediately greet them. Instead, I turned to the Brines, and their small column of soldiers. I had been cautious to give them experienced troops, but not any who might be considered a protege or spy of mine. A gesture of trust.
“Steve, Jennifer, take your detachment and secure the portal technology and any specialists. The mages should give you sufficient cover, though we’ll do the best to thin their ranks as we advance along the cordon,” I paused a moment to admire the Book and I’s voidfire demarcations, “The remainder of the party shall enter the command centre and attempt to prevent the destruction of blueprints. If possible, we shall capture Marinus Bul. If neither objective is achieved within the next,” I checked my watch, “Half hour, we’ll regroup here and reassess the situation.”
Steve and Jennifer nodded seriously.
“We’ll handle it,” said Steve.
“They won’t know what hit them,” said Jennifer with a chuckle.
“I’m sure they won’t, now off you pop!” I encouraged.
I opened a gap in the voidfire cordon, and they charged straight into the path of a column of human mercenaries who had been cautiously approaching the barrier. I gestured to our pack of four archers, who formed a circle and aimed arrows at the ground. The Book and I opened a portal at the centre. They fired through. The column of mercenaries was weakened.
“You have kept your word to cover them, now we must enter the command centre. No more distractions,” urged the Book.
I more or less agreed and made sure to start walking before I greeted Astro and Warnado. No more time to stand around.
“Destiny,” I muttered. “See if you can’t winnow the ranks a little bit for the Brines. Don’t let it slow you down, though.”
Destiny shrugged and drew her bow, firing arrows over the voidfire in the direction of any Tower forces in Steve and Jennifer’s general direction. However, her hands were shaking for some reason, so it amounted to potshots. Shadow’s mages were clearly offering more meaningful support, blasting apart Endlings, giants, and entire columns of humans in and around the factory. I contemplated whether I should tell Rose to go out there and start shredding columns - since her ritual she now seemed well capable of it.
“You’re thinking about politics again. The grunts on the ground are unlikely to risk voidfire if they don’t perceive us as an immediate threat to them. Besides, they already have orders to defend the Northern and Southern walls. Leave them be and we’ll get a clean shot at the central building.”
I smiled.
“If you want me to remain commander, I must be seen to do my job. Mustn’t I?”
The Book almost sighed.
“You are more likely to be seen favourably if you breach the command central quickly, allowing us to better satisfy our goals of obtaining portal blueprints and capturing Marinus Bul.”
“That’s more like it,” I encouraged. “Best of both worlds.”
I was trying to encourage the Book to consider the political dimension more. If it was going to keep encouraging my distrust of Shadow, it was going to have to help me outwit her. We needed to be one in all spheres, not just combat.
Finally, I addressed Astro and Warnado, increasing my pace.
“Warnado, not that it isn’t good to see you, but are you not supposed to be with Tyron?”
“Yeah, but this warlock dragged me down into the courtyard… and Astro saved me.”
He said the second part as though swallowing a horrible medicine. I smiled appreciatively at my friend.
“Well done,” I stressed. “And don’t be ashamed of accepting some help. Astro’s had my back for years, he’ll have yours no less faithfully.
I took a look at his leg, saw it bleeding.
“How would you like to stick with us?” I asked. “I need someone Marinus might want to talk to.”
The Book never groaned, but if it did, it would have at this exact moment.
“Relax, my friend,” I coaxed. “He’s a powerful magic user even if he is unrefined. He won’t slow us down… And if he doesn’t come with us, he might end up fighting alongside Shadow and who knows what she might put in the poor lad’s head about you and I.”
“Very well.”
We were about halfway to the command centre, and so far, there was no real attempt to stop us. I scanned the battlefield. Reinforcements weren’t flowing in as readily as they had a few minutes ago, but there was no way this was the base’s whole force. Where were the rest?
There was a strange, watery sound. Something deep and echoey. I recalled the first time the Professor explained sound to me - that it was all rippling molecules. It sounded the way I imagined that process - like a crashing wave heard from the bottom of a lake.
Then, I saw something odd in the middle of Tyron’s half of the courtyard. I asked the Book to remove my night vision for a second, so I could see colours normally. The light in a specific spot was shifting, distorting, remixing itself. The image kept changing, sometimes showing flashes of bronze, obsidian, and glass, instead of the grey stone of the wall. And there were hues of darkness, brightness, all colours and none, swirling about the spot in half-visible haloes.
Finally, a familiar gloved hand emerged, and placed its hand on the edge of the distortion and tore its way through. The Entity was here. I saw other distortions begin to form, and other manifestations stepping out.
The fighting slowed, and all eyes were on the original manifestation. I, however, didn’t stop walking.
“You-are trespassers here,” said the Entity. “But I am not… unmerciful. You are small creatures, faced with the enormity of all-things. Surrender. You may live… to see my world realised.”
“Don’t respond. No grand-standing,” advised the Book.
I kept walking.
“What-is your response?” The Entity asked.
I could feel its eyes on me, but I didn’t look back.
We reached the steel door of the command centre, and I turned.
“Shadow,” I called out. “I have business to attend to inside. I leave the Entity in your capable-“
Shadow promptly came flying in like a comet, yelling with uncharacteristic anger: “We have unfinished business, you stagnant, brother-stealing *****!”
Suddenly there was a flash, but not a flash. The opposite of a flash. The light vanished from a spot about the size of a person somewhere in the sky over the factory. Where once Shadow had floated, now a mass of silhouettes writhed. Not just that, a sizable chunk of reality around her had also decided to take a vacation, only a jagged patch of mind-splitting nothingness remained.
I struggled to look at it, it made me terrified in a way I hadn’t quite felt since I tumbled into the Void at Zine Craft - a refusal to accept what you’re looking at, because it should not be. Yet, I knew I needed to better understand this.
“Book, would you be a dear and help me look at her without crippling fear?”
“Yes, it’s about time you understood what we’re dealing with.”
As I looked up, my eyes took on a different tint. I saw the world in something that felt like black-and-white but was vastly more intricate. I could see black, I could see white, and I could see the colours that comprised them, or could, or might not.
I saw the others cowering away from Shadow around me. Destiny had fallen to the ground. Warnado had fixed his eyes shut and lowered his head. The archers gazed on, trembling and awestruck. Only Astro and Rose still had their senses and were working on demolishing the door. Then, I cast an eye across Shadow and felt next to nothing. I fought the urge to laugh.
“This is serious, look closer.”
The Book guided my eye to the central manifestation of the Entity, and I saw the shape beneath its armour. It was formless, rippling. And yet, while Shadow’s description of the creature as ‘stagnant’ at first seemed irrational, I soon understood what she meant. It was in perpetual motion, in an unchanging, perfect loop. It did not change, because if it did, it would destroy itself. It was Order, because it had to be. Suddenly, I understood the possessions - it didn’t willfully suppress consciousness, it could not accept consciousness other than its own. Only information.
“And the other…” said the Book, with an energy that almost felt tremulous.
I was intrigued. Not just on a personal level, but existentially, the Book was terrified of Shadow.
Then, the Book guided me to Shadow, and I saw it...
“Oh,” I chuckled aloud. “That is interesting. No, we’re on the same page now.”
Remembering others might hear me, I continued within:
“No, we must do something about this. Quite soon.”
“I’m glad we’re finally agreed.”
Shadow was entropic. The mass of writhing silhouettes wasn’t something to see past - it was the answer in itself. Like the Entity, she was formless. But unlike the Entity, her being did not crave a form, nor did it accept the forms of those things around it. In this state, she was like a poison, sickening reality around her, breaking it down. Like the Entity, she would make everything like her. But unlike the Entity, she could not hold anything in this state. It would become like her for less than an instant before becoming nothing. She would unravel and unravel and unravel until there was no string left to pull. Until she was alone in a Void of her own making.
She and the Entity were at a stalemate not because they were on the same power level, but because they were incompatible. When they interacted like this, order and entropy canceled each other out. The Entity was water, Shadow was oil. Similar in nature, different in detail.
I looked down at my hand, and summoned a small rift in my palm, and saw similar forces at work within it. Saw a path forward. I smiled a tranquil little smile, and put my other hand on Warnado’s shoulder, steering him toward the command centre.
“I believe…” I thought. “I shall need access to your full arsenal.”
“Excellent. This is no time for squeamishness, if we are to survive.”
“Oh, we shall do so much more than survive.”
As Rose shredded the door open, we were agreed. We were certain of our purpose. We were one.
###
We have, by this point, more or less realised that there’s a trap waiting for us. An impromptu trap, but a trap, nonetheless.
We’ve been walking through for about five minutes and haven’t encountered anyone, or indeed any blueprints. Every chest, filing cabinet and desk we encountered on the ground floor has been cleared out, but poorly. There’re loose leaves of paper scattered on the floors of most offices. Some chests have been burned, but a bit of magical analysis didn’t find any remnants of paper, so it looks like an improvisation by an overzealous grunt. I almost appreciate their imagination.
The working theory I’ve proposed is that they’ve sent some Endlings to gather literally everything and teleport it back to the top of the command tower, and then buy time for Bul and the administrative staff to recover and or burn the important bits. It follows that they’re not just going to risk us walking in on them, however, so those same Endlings are almost guaranteed to be sent back to slow us down. Probably any other security staff. Hence, an ambush is impending.
When I put this idea to Kay in substantially less than half as many words, he smiled serenely. His eyes have a silver hue, and if I look at them closely, I can almost see tongues of flame dancing across them. Every now and then he claps Warnado on the shoulder and looks momentarily like a blind man.
Destiny is in the lead, Rose taking the rear. Each flanked by soldiers.
The halls are silent save the clatter of armour on stone. We reach the second floor. Destiny holds up a hand and looks back at me. I heighten my senses. I hear restrained breathing. Heartbeats of humans. Heartbeats of Endlings. Three heartbeats feel too close together somewhere nearby, but I don’t think much of it. Four rooms? I scan the doors. Two near the beginning, two near the end. That makes sense. I signal my findings to the others.
Kay is unmoved and signals for us to walk forward, all the while holding a hand open before his face, as though reading the lines to discover his own fortune.
We reach the mid-point between the two sets of doors, when Kay signals for us to stop. A split-second later he closes his fist and flame hisses all around. There is screaming. Doors fly open, men come out screaming and burning. Silver-fire-turning-purple. Warnado covers his own mouth.
We hear warping sounds and suddenly the Endlings are amongst us. Eight or so. Armour half-destroyed but unharmed. Talons and swords fly. Soldiers collapse. I sever an Endling’s spine, and it warps away screaming. Then, explosions.
At the start and end of the corridor, the ceiling is blown open and enemy combatants drop down. More Endlings, still armoured. Dozens of humans.
Kay laughs.
“I can’t say I’m not a little startled. Rose, come with me to the far end. We’ll clear a path forward. Astro, hold the fort a moment,” he says mildly.
Rose rushes forwards with two soldiers who have been flanking her, lashing knives out every which way. Kay steps forward, silver flames around his feet, and with a motion like descending slips out of view, out of the world. Suddenly, I see his sword cleave a man in two at the far end of the corridor, then another, and so on. He emerges back into the world for a moment, smoke leaping off him like rats from a ship, and screams before plunging back into the void.
I begin to bark orders. Try to get the troops into formation, but the Endlings make it difficult. Warnado and Destiny are parting the tide of human mercenaries bearing down on us from the other direction. I summon shields strategically to help, I dismember any Endling that enters my field of view. And I’m not letting much slip from my field of view, hurling my eyes this way and that, wheeling around, a sail buffeted in every direction by the winds of a storm.
Eventually, though I have no real way of knowing in such a mad scramble, I get the sense we’re winning and heighten my senses to try and assess how many more we have to kill. Substantially fewer heartbeats, human or Endlings. Except… Three heartbeats too close together. Right above-
The ceiling spits flame and I stagger away, a magical shield guarding myself and a nearby archer. Another is not so lucky, collapsing with a face full of shrapnel. Smoke obscures my view.
I hear something slam into the ground, but amidst the smoke I cannot see it. I lower my shield, flourish my sword and the cloud dissipates. Claw smiles at me. “Surprise!”
As Claw moves towards me, I freeze up, feeling his namesake rip through my stomach all over again. Warnado and Destiny see him and immediately spring into action. Destiny rolls into his path and hurls an icy javelin at his face. Warnado leaps into the air with a huge energy axe. Claw catches the javelin, swings it back behind him and breaks it over Warnado’s flank. The demon-child, disoriented, bounces off Claw and lands in a heap on the floor. Destiny ducks under Claw’s mace, then is shoulder-charged into the wall. Claw is coming straight at me.
But I have recovered. Despite the old wounds still shrieking at me like banshees, I enter a fighting stance as Claw leaps into a roundhouse kick. Just before his boot connects with my skull, I summon a forcefield and stop him in his tracks. Then, just as he tries to pull back, I fold the ward back around the boot and hold his leg in place. He glares at me, I smirk.
As I hold him in place, Destiny sends an arrow beneath the plates of his armour and pierces his scales. He bellows in pain, and it sounds as though three voices are screaming at once. Warnado comes in with a huge, glowing hammer that looks like a cross between a meat tenderiser and a vision of hell and swings down at Claw’s obsidian chestplate. With me holding his leg like this it will be damned impressive if the blow doesn’t tear his leg off. I look at Claw with smug triumph. Orange light glows from between his scales.
The leg breaks free from the stasis I’m holding it in, but the forcefield holds. He uppercuts me with my own damned spell and sends me flying. I stop my descent before I break my neck on the floor, see him break Warnado’s summoned weapon with a mace, and shunt his way on to Destiny, who summons an icy sword and flames in the shape of a buckler.
I hurl myself back into the melee, as does Warnado, now armed with an aethereal weapon I don’t recognise, though it appears mechanical.
“Chainsaw time!” He screams with a mixture of pride and excitement.
We trade blows with Claw as long as we can. However, he is simply too fast, too strong. At one point Warnado, his chainsaw shattered into pieces, attempts to mount his back and begin to garotte him with another summoned weapon. He falls away with the pattern of Claw’s scales burned into his hands. Our last surviving archer takes him aside to try and treat him.
Destiny pirouettes narrowly past a mace blow, then slams the flaming buckler into his forearm. Its flames intensify until they turn white hot. I can see the obsidian and scales melting, bleeding into each other. The mace catches her breastplate just over the stomach. It dents. She coughs blood, and not a second later is kicked in the skull.
Through one of the several holes in the ceiling, I catch a glimpse of Kay on the floor above us, casting fire about everywhere and looking as though he had just been for the loveliest massage. He passes out of my sight, and I hear a scream. A man falls through the same hole, a look of supernatural terror frozen on his face. He is dead. Kay is clearly enjoying himself far too much to have noticed Claw’s arrival.
Rose is similarly nowhere to be seen. I assume she is aloft with Kay. I sigh. It is time for my trump card.
“Very well,” I mutter. Then, more audibly, I shout: “If you’re in there, Fire, I’m sorry. There was no other way”
I found a book on the Mencur-Besh in Fire’s room. I know their physiology. I focus my mind’s eye on the place where his spine and skull connect, specifically on the first vertebrae. I raise a hand, and make a cutting motion.
I physically feel my spell stop barely a fraction of a fraction of a millimeter into the vertebrae. Claw twitches almost imperceptibly and turns. I made the same cutting motion. Then again. And Again. Each time it’s just not enough. And then, I fall to my knees. I’m exhausted. I can’t go any further. I struggle to stay awake as Claw lifts me to my feet.
Claw’s scales are no longer permeated by the orange glow, and so don’t burn me to the touch, but the scales still feel nauseatingly warm. He looks me in the eyes. He has a finger pointed at the centre of my forehead, adjusting it with precision. I recall the images which appeared in the newssheets, depicting Mini’s body - a crossbow bolt in his brow. I wonder if this is deliberate.
“Kay!” called Claw. “Do you want a glimpse of your future-”
A sword flashes out of the Void and catches Claw on the jaw. Scales go flying. No blood.
I just about feel myself drop onto the floor as Claw experiences a deeper wound on the leg. He goes to the middle of the corridor, ready to defend himself.
I feel hands dragging me away. It’s Warnado, hands bandaged copiously. The fighting is over, only Claw remains.
For a third time the sword emerges from the Void, but Claw is ready. He grabs the hand holding the blade and wrenches his attacker into plain view. Kay shrieks his way back into the Overworld, only just warding Claw away with a jet of Voidfire. He steadies himself against the wall, panting and letting off smoke. Destiny is back on her feet, benefiting from the healing magic of the battered but still-living medic.
“Claw,” wheezes Kay, doubled over. “I really wish I could give you the great rematch you so clearly want right now… but I’m really ****ing tired. And besides, Marinus Bul is waiting for me upstairs.” He lifts his head, the serene smile is back. “Rose, would you do the honours of beating Claw for me?”
“My pleasure,” says a voice from above.
Knives cut through the ceiling like a flood breaking a dam. Claw retreats. The torrent of knives follows him, and Rose chases it on, further intensifying the storm of metal. Soon, both disappear from view.
I recover just enough strength to stand, what remains of our forces regroups, and I am shepherded towards the command tower. Everyone looks a little shaken. Everyone except Kay, whose burning eyes are tranquil beyond comprehension.
###
It didn’t take long for Rose to chase Claw into a dead end, forcing him to stand and fight. With a grin she threw a large blade at the center of Claw’s chest, her opponent reacting quickly and deflecting it with his claws. Carving up the guards upstairs had been trivial, but this might actually be interesting.
It was obvious that thrown knives wouldn’t achieve anything, not only were their trajectories predictable but there was a limit on how sharp steel could be. Rose clenched her fists, sending a surge of concentrated murder into her fingers.
She lunged forward with her hands straightened, the edges of her palms cutting through the air with a sharpness beyond anything a material blade could achieve. Claw was a fast opponent, but Rose almost equaled him in this regard. Her first strike glanced off his forearm, peeling off the coat of scales that he had in place of skin, his roar of pain music to her ears.
Claw’s mace came swinging at Rose’s head, only to be reduced to metal dust by the sharp strands of her hair whipping around. She felt a mild impact but nothing she couldn’t handle. Her next slash hit home on Claw’s weapon arm, her palm cutting through scales and muscles, only briefly slowed by bone.
This threw Claw off-balance for long enough that Rose was able to gather up energy for her finishing blow, sparks of angry yellow energy arced around her right arm as she wound up her swing.
She heard the grinding of stone and the rending of flesh as she carried her swing through, the cutting edge extending far beyond her hand. Then, as the dust settled, she took a look at her handiwork, a huge notch had been carved out of the concrete and before her lay Claw, bisected at the height of his stomach.
Rose stopped her smirk halfway, something was off. There should have been more blood, more innards spread across the floor, but there was none of that. Narrowing her eyes, Rose focused her power again.
Claw’s entire body flashed grey for a moment. To Rose’s surprise, he began quite literally pulling himself together.
Claw’s voice practically oozed from his mouth: “Getting real tired-” it was interrupted as his lower end reconnected with his upper end, “of all this supernatural crap.”
Claw slowly sat up, clearly not intent on attacking.
Rose shot: “What was that?”
Her opponent took his time with his answer, a calm look on his face, as far as Rose could read his scaled expression at least.
“Simple, Entity won’t let me die. Even shares a good deal of its energy with me to make sure. I guess I’m important.” Claw shrugged.
Great. Now this was a situation Rose was familiar with, there had been immortals in her world too and some of them had stood in the way of her old master’s plans. Getting rid of them was often inconvenient and always temporary.
Still in position to attack again, Rose asked: “So, what now? I can keep cutting you apart until we’re done here.”
Claw chuckled. “No need for that, I got what I came here for. Looks like your general is already well on his way to where he should be. I’ll be going then.”
As soon as those words had left Claw’s mouth, he disappeared in a cloud of purple particles, something Rose had come to associate with endermen or their pearls, leaving Rose thoroughly unsatisfied. She discharged her accumulated energy in another slash, completely tearing down the wall in front of her. A gust of cold desert night air came rushing in.
Rose slowly made her way back towards the site of their big indoor battle. What had he meant with that? Kay being on his way...
She thought to herself: “Probably about the power trip he’s on, but that’s business as usual for me, the job wouldn’t be the same without a power tripping master. My old master did that too from time to time, made shows of smashing rocks with his bare hands after infusing himself with power, things like that. I didn’t complain back then, and I won’t complain now, as long as he doesn’t do something completely unreasonable.”
###
Jennifer tried not to look at the clash occurring overhead between Shadow and the Entity. Not that it was obviously more flashy or awe-inspiring than any of the confrontations taking place across the walls or the courtyard, but because it had a strange effect on those who looked at it. They either couldn’t bear to look at the fight, or they couldn’t stop staring.
Jennifer had been in the first group and had found herself wincing and averting her eyes before continuing the march onwards. She had felt that same animalistic desire to run which she’d felt when Shadow reappeared after the Battle of the Hill. It was deeply unpleasant, but this horrible fear had given her the leeway to realise most of the soldiers weren’t following. She had called to Steve, who had moved away even more quickly than her, and they had recovered their men from their stunned state.
Now, most combatants had risen from their stupor, all except the mages. A few of the Entity’s magic-users and the combat mages were still going, but Shadow’s coven had stopped altogether. They wouldn’t divert their attention from their master’s fight, chanting and precisely. However, despite their precision, Jennifer couldn’t make out a single word and it only hurt her head when she tried to understand. The words were not only hard to understand, but they did also not want to be understood. The only hint as to the chant’s true contents was the expression on the mages’ face, which betrayed a wide-eyed, desperate joy.
But Jennifer had bigger concerns. Steve counted down on his fingers. It was time to take what they’d come here for.
Three. Two. One. Breach.
Crack! Steve shoulder-charged the door and the melee began instantly. A pigman with an axe hacked out and it bounced off Steve’s armour. Steve lopped the offending arm off without slowing down. Jennifer rolled in after, allowing the troops to rush past her, and lodged an arrow into the eye of another pigman.
A small line of human mercenaries tried to hold an inside door against the advance, but Steve rushed right between them, bringing down the door as he did so. One of the staggered guards tried to hurl an axe at his back, but an enterprising, surprisingly old Villager-woman called Olanna bisected him with precision. The other troops made short work of the door’s defenders and flooded into the room on the other side.
Jennifer followed cautiously, nocking another arrow, and entered into a well-lit warehouse area filled with chests, furnaces and crafting tables, all connected by a series of pipes and hoppers. Immediately before her was a lowered area where cowering workers, Tower soldiers and her own detachment jostled and fought. However, victory was certain. Jennifer decided it was time to become sure that the tech they needed was actually there.
She hopped the fence and saw a relatively isolated crate on the edge, with an unarmoured enderman standing on top of it, their claws ready to deal with any challenger. Jennifer remembered when the majority of enemies they faced were as poorly equipped as this, and felt briefly nostalgic, then loosed the arrow into their jaw. The enderman teleported behind her, as expected. She equipped her sword and plunged it into the creature’s chest.
She approached the chest and saw two workers hiding behind it.
“Hi,” she said, with a brief but sincere smile.
She slotted her sword under the lid of the crate.
“Uh, hello,” said one of the workers, a skeleton in green overalls. His jaw clicked audibly every time his teeth connected, and the voice he produced was low and gruff. “I’m Xylo, like the phone. No, it’s not a nickname, my parents just had a really weird sense of humour.”
She chuckled. “Pleasure to meet you, Xylo.”
She spared a glance around to make sure this wasn’t a distraction and saw Steve beheading a giant in the background. Xylo was no threat. She began to pry the lid up.
“You know, it’s not a political thing,” continued Xylo. “Working for these Tower guys. They just offer good money. Whatever they’re doing that’s ticked you guys off so much, we’re not part of that.”
Jennifer didn’t respond because of the effort of opening the crate. Finally, it popped open, and she took a second to appreciate her handiwork. Very neat. No damage to the crate.
“We really aren’t a part of that, we just make the parts.”
Xylo started to back away slowly. There was a flash of bright white light through the overhead windows. The fight between Shadow and the Entity must have been intensifying.
“Oh, sorry, I was distracted,” Jennifer said, hurrying to un-equip her sword and reassure the skeleton labourer. “No, don’t sweat it, you’re civilians. We’re under strict orders to leave any civilians unharmed. You’re safe.”
Jennifer left out the part where she had needed to remind Kay that there might actually be civilians working for the Tower.
“That-that’s good to hear,” breathed the skeleton with some relief. He nodded confidently to his friend, a skinny pigman, though they remained crouched behind the crate.
Jennifer began to ruffle through the parts.
“So, is this a full machine, or only part of it?” she asked.
“Well, I’d have to answer those questions under considerable duress,” said Xylo with a knowing smirk.
Jennifer shot a sidelong glance at the remaining mercenaries, who Steve and the soldiers were making short work of.
She graciously pulled out her sword and pointed it at the skeleton.
“Okay, but only to save your street cred,” she mumbled wryly. Then, more loudly, she added, “I DEMAND you tell me what I need to make a working portal.” She made sure to jab the sword for emphasis.
“Oh no! Don’t kill me, please!” wailed Xylo. Then, in a low tone, “Okay, so, the device you’re looking at there is the dimensional selection device. That lets you choose a dimension from the known database, but if you don’t have one of these,” he patted a slightly larger crate adjacent, “You’re just looking at the specs. This thing turns your standard Nether portal into something capable of interdimensional travel.”
He seemed very proud as he said this.
“Thanks, Xylo, do you have a manifest of the parts?” She jabbed the sword again playfully.
“Yeah, just here,” he said and produced a checklist from his pocket.
Jennifer lowered her sword and sorted through the parts in comparison to the list. Everything was there in the first crate. She put the lid back on and beckoned a bloodstained Olanna and another soldier over to carry it away. She then opened and began to inspect the second crate.
“I have to ask though…” Xylo began enigmatically but trailed off.
Jennifer looked up and saw him sitting on another nearby crate.
“You want to take the Tower down?”
“Yeah,” she said confidently.
“But, why? Folks like us, we have nothing. Poor as dirt. No real leadership. Sparse resources. I died in a famine, and in fifty years of undeath I never made more than a pittance as a blacksmith. Then, the Tower comes in, tells us they killed some king I’d never seen half the country away, and that we’d been integrated. That they were looking for blacksmiths. I tell them I’m one and volunteer. Suddenly, I’m being trained up, I’m getting good pay, a pension - I don’t even know what that is but it sounds great. And I’m not the only one. Is what they’re doing really so bad?”
“I don’t know if they’ve told you this, but they’re not just invading worlds, they’re trying to make all worlds become one. To force everyone into it.”
Jennifer realised she’d tried to check the same part twice and cursed herself. She saw Olanna shooting Xylo a murderous look.
“Interdimensional cooperation is fine, but people deserve a choice.”
“They have told us about that,” Xylo continued cautiously. “But you know, they sent that Acquired Worlds guy, General Forgelight, to do a big motivational session a while back. Address the workforce and all that. He told us up front about this plan. Said they’d make One World, One People, One Society. No more tinpot kings and neglected backwaters. Everything part of the same, fair unit. Now, I don’t know if that’s true, but he seemed to believe it. And why is that so wrong you guys need to come in and carry out a massacre like I’ve just seen?”
Jennifer locked eye with eye-socket. It’s hard to read a skeleton’s facial expression, but the way he’d clenched his jaw and pulled his head back betrayed someone teetering between fury and terror.
Obviously, Jennifer hated the Tower, but she understood he didn’t have the same reason to. Something about it seemed awfully brave about his decision to keep arguing the toss.
Olanna didn’t see it that way.
“You want to talk about massacres?!” She shouted.
She let her end of the crate drop to the ground with an awful clatter. Jennifer felt bad for her but prayed she hadn’t damaged the parts.
“That enderman you were cowering behind works for the Ender, you know what she does on a daily basis? You know how she got to be so big and important?”
“Lady, I didn’t mean any disrespect-”
“Her boys ransacked my village. My husband can’t walk because of them. Or - or your Forgelight, some idealist! I’m sure he’s lovely to you bootlickers, but if your village so much as asks him to wipe his shoes on the way in he’ll strip the whole place for parts!”
“I’m sorry but-”
“Don’t you backtalk me, you collaborators need to appreciate how lucky you are we didn’t kill you all right here, right now.”
“Olanna! You’ve made your point, get back to work,” warned Jennifer.
The Villager-woman scowled and returned to carrying away the goods.
Jennifer finished her inspection and gestured for more soldiers to start carrying it away.
“Listen, Xylo,” Jennifer began. “A fairer world sounds great, but the Tower aren’t the ones to deliver it. They take what they want, and they kill who they like. They’ve treated you okay so far, but don’t think that makes you safe from them. We tried negotiating with them, even after they trapped me and Steve in this torn-up rag of a world, and then we discovered what they were doing to their prisoners - people they had kidnapped unprovoked and tried to force into service. So, we stopped negotiating, and now we just want them gone.”
“Sure,” said Xylo with more than a little ice. “I guess the status quo suited some folks just fine.”
Jennifer made to respond, but Steve placed a hand on her shoulder.
“We have just over five minutes to make the rendezvous, Jen,” he said apologetically. “We need to go.”
Jennifer nodded goodbye and turned her back on Xylo. There was a booming sound, and another bright flash of light through the windows above, and the workers went back to hiding behind cover.
###
There were around ten of us left as we approached the office in the command centre. Myself, Astro, Destiny, Warnado, and a handful of soldiers. The soldiers instinctively took up breaching positions because I had trained them well. My fellow officers looked fairly dinged up. Physically, I wasn’t doing great either, but I hardly felt it. All the Book’s power coursed through me for the first time, and it was exhilarating.
I had burned entire battalions, I had struck inescapable fear into the hearts of men, I had seen the workings of the world, and walked the Void with reckless abandon. Admittedly, this last task was difficult on me, and as I approached the door, I felt more than a little nauseous. I mumbled calmly to Warnado something about opening it for me.
Warnado frowned and I watched as the energy coalesced in his hand, streaming into his grasp from the world around him. Then, as he fired it, I watched the door break from its hinges. I warped in, and saw Marinus Bul, that unremarkable little lawyer, yelp and drop a pile of papers. An armour-clad Endling stood behind him, already holding a dossier.
Time slowed down. My soldiers filtered in after me. The Endling didn’t go for his sword, he reached out to take Bul by the shoulder and warp away to safety. No attack would be fast enough.
“There is one,” the Book said alluringly.
“Do it.”
Suddenly I felt a jolt, and I saw the scattered lights of consciousness flying around inside their heads. My own voice erupted from within me, deep, ancient, and echoing.
“Be still!”
And so, they were. The lights had stopped moving. Then, Destiny’s icicle hit the Endling right between the eyes, much to her surprise, she had merely hoped to prompt a premature teleport.
“Kneel.”
Bul did so, eying me with utter terror. I laughed.
“Give me the blueprints for your portal technology.”
He grabbed the dossier from the dead Endling’s arms and filtered through. Finding them, his arm shot out towards me and trembled. I leafed through them.
“Excellent work, Bul. Say thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Say you are grateful for having seen a friendly face in this desolate land.”
“I am grateful for having seen a friendly face in this desolate land.”
“Say you are even more glad you finally found someone worth obeying.”
“I am even more glad I finally found someone worth obeying.”
“But you are going to have to depart soon.”
“But I must depart soon.” A tear ran down his cheek.
“And that it truly has been a pleasure.”
“It truly has been a pleasure.”
Then, I told him to slam his head into the corner of the desk. Then, I told him to do it again. And again. And again. Again! Until he finally slumped onto the ground, his skull caved in and blood spilling from the cracks.
The power was intoxicating. This was power no king or god had ever wielded. Power that could burn the world to cinders, to ash, and then command it to be rebuilt.
“Carry his corpse outside,” I decreed. “It is right that he should see the coronation. All of you go down there.” Astro attempted to say something dreadfully uninteresting, so I simply urged: “Now. I will join you shortly.”
Knowing full well he would obey me, I went up to the window, and saw Shadow clashing with the Entity, and for the first time I didn’t see threats. I saw impudence.
“They should bow to us,” encouraged the Book.
“They will,” I agreed.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 5 Crisis (Cont.)
Chapter 51: The King in Ash (Destiny)
“So, he really did that to Bul?” Rose asked with some trepidation as she looked at the mangled skull.
“Yeah,” said Warnado. “He got what was coming to him, but… it was kind of scary.”
Scary was an understatement. Destiny had seen a lot, but something about the unflinching obedience with which Bul had shattered his own skull had gotten under her skin. His face indicated he was terrified, but his body moved steadily, almost politely, as though he were bowing to some foreign dignitary he was trying to recruit. And Kay had ordered him to do it with gusto.
She saw Warnado pressing his fingers against a set of goggles he’d produced to his robes. With eyes wide as saucers, the kid looked like he’d been punched in the face for the first time. Destiny wanted to feel bad for him but upsetting things happened in their line of work.
“You’re not a hero if you don’t know how to suck it up every once in a while,” Anya had once said to her. She wasn’t wrong.
As she thought this, she unintentionally shot a dirty look in Astro’s direction. He was steadying himself against a wall, muttering to himself in a series of broken gasps. There was someone who could do with Anya’s advice. She almost gave it to him, but she remembered how well Jennifer and Warnado reacted to that outlook after the Hill and decided she didn’t want a lecture.
She punched him in the arm instead.
“Come on, Kay said to leave the building. Now that we found Rose, that's everyone. Let’s go.”
He nodded, but the muttering didn’t stop, it only seemed to become more frantic and irritating.
“It’s too soon… could he have? No… the Book? Is it the Book? … It’s the Book. It must be...”
Destiny gritted her teeth. Dumb jerk was losing his head because he was scared of the Book? What right did he have?
“That thing tried to gaslight me when I was grieving… I’m the one who should be going nuts about Kay getting too pally with it.”
Destiny felt her arm grow cold as preliminary flames began to flicker on her palm, but then stifled them.
They reached the shredded remains of the entrance, the remaining soldiers went first. The purple-flame cordon still ran down the centre of the courtyard, and the battle had simultaneously intensified and calmed down.
Tyron’s party were still in the heat of battle, carving through endermen and humans. She could see Amanda on the Dragoknight’s shoulder, firing her crossbow adeptly, killing enemy after enemy.
“You’ve taught her well,” Destiny said to Rose.
Destiny could also see Steve and Jennifer fighting their way back to the rendezvous point, apparently having suffered minimal casualties. Their soldiers carried an array of heavy-looking crates with them, so it was mostly the two diamond-clad heroes doing the fighting.
Above the battlefield a second battle raged. Shadow was clashing with the Entity, its manifestations long discarded. How exactly this confrontation played out was difficult to tell for Destiny, whenever her gaze came close to either one, her mind violently rejected what her eyes were telling it.
The mages, however, seemed to have forgotten there was a battle going on at all. All but one, and she was the object of their attention. Like ships in a whirlpool, their eyes were drawn to Shadow, and they chanted in jubilance as she fought the Entity.
“What are they doing? Is it a spell?” Destiny asked Rose.
Astro, however, is the one who answered, snapping out of his reverie.
“I told her this would be a bloody problem!” He growled. “I’ve got to snap them out of this. Destiny, with me.”
He grabbed Destiny’s arm and flew them over the cordon, coming to settle near one of Shadow’s coven - the ones who wore her robes. She was an old woman, but you wouldn’t have guessed it from the way she was chanting and ecstatically cheering. Destiny didn’t know her name. Astro took her by the shoulders.
“Talita, stop it,” He said as he shook her. “We need you here.”
Destiny took up watch duty instinctively, summoning icicles and hurling them at any Tower soldier that approached.
“This is the birth of a god! Us mortals should be glad to have the opportunity to witness such a thing!” She hesitated.
“She’s not a god, Talita, this is high-level magic, but this is not godhood! You need to focus, people are dying. Our friends are dying.”
Destiny brained an endling trying to sneak up on an ecstatic mage.
Talita’s eyes drifted from the fight, and she seemed to grow more lucid. A look of disappointment set in, and she began to move again.
“I suppose we shouldn’t forget our own mortality in the face of divinity.”
Talita set about rousing the other mages.
“By the mods,” Astro lamented. “Did it all have to go quite so wrong right this moment?”
“Oh, shut up. We’re winning,” thought Destiny.
But aloud she said: “When it rains it pours.”
They levitated back to the cordon just as Steve and Jennifer approached it. Astro disrupted the flames with a forcefield so they could get across. Jennifer looked troubled as she ushered the men with crates across. Steve came up to them.
“Looks like you guys got the crates no problem,” said Warnado.
“You guys look like crap,” Steve responded with concern. “What happened?”
“We got ambushed, Claw turned up,” explained Destiny. “It was a whole thing.”
“Oh Notch!” Steve exclaimed. “Claw’s here?”
He raised Excalibur and started looking around. Destiny, remembering the very real possibility that he was still waiting for his moment to strike, followed suit. She resummoned her flaming shield and icy sword.
“Was,” said Rose smugly. “I drove him off. Nearly killed him.”
“That’s a relief,” said Steve. Then, to Astro, “Did you succeed in your mission?”
“We have the blueprints,” said Astro. “And Marinus Bul is dead.”
He gestured to the corpse the soldiers were still carrying towards them
There was a bright flash from the sky as Shadow and the Entity’s clash continued, but nothing obvious came of it so they kept talking.
“What about Kay? Where is he?”
“Kay is the one who killed Bul. He’s…” Astro trailed off.
Warnado had the goggles out again and was gripping them so tight it looked like they’d shatter at any moment.
“He’ll be out in a moment, he wanted to do something,” said Destiny.
Tyron’s men appeared to be regrouping and drawing back toward the cordon. Destiny pulled out her bow and readied to cover them. Fortunately, the mages had mostly been roused from their rapture and it was becoming readily apparent that the battle was drawing to a close. They would still steal enthusiastic glances at Shadow and the Entity, but they were easily overpowering the battered remains of the facility’s garrison.
The enemy mages were all but dead, and the endermen were tired out. Since the Entity arrived, there was no indication of additional reinforcements. That said, that could change.
Just as the last of the men with crates crossed the cordon, they saw what Kay had been up to.
Another flash of light entered Destiny’s vision, but it was so much more than a flash. It was a blinding, burning light that forced her eyes closed, sending tears streaming. And as her vision returned, she saw silver-turning-purple flames surging within and without the command centre, filling it and spilling out onto the walls. Three great tendrils of fire spiraled up a large water tank atop the building, and then crushed inwards in a great, hissing mass of steam and broken metal.
And the flames did not stop at the command centre, they lashed across the courtyard, towards the warehouse and began to wash over it with startling rapidity. As the flames rose, Destiny saw workers run from it, some burning, all screaming.
A skeleton in overalls, flames climbing his back, came running up and began to roll in the dirt before the cordon.
“There are civilians here?!” cried Astro.
“Xylo!” Jennifer yelled.
Astro parted the flames and Jennifer ran up to the skeleton. Warnado doused the flames on his back with a jet of water. Destiny followed uneasily.
Jennifer tried to calm him and offer him a healing potion, but the skeleton batted it from her hand and backed up.
“They take what they want and kill who they like, huh?!” spat the skeleton. “Bastards all of you!”
“He didn’t know!” Jennifer cried out fruitlessly as he stormed off to help his friends. She looked to Astro. “He couldn’t have known about the civilians, could he? How could… We should have warned him.”
Steve took her in his arms as she tried to rationalise it, placing his chin on her pauldron and squeezing tight. Astro looked away darkly, flame casting half his face into a silhouette. Destiny wished she could comfort Jennifer, as Jennifer had once tried to comfort her back in the village, but she was at a loss.
The warehouse collapsed. The flames were now climbing the walls. The complex behind the command centre was an aurora of purple fire.
The fight in the sky raged on, Shadow and the Entity unaware or uncaring of the destruction beneath them.
Finally, from the purple flames at the entrance of the command centre, he emerged. He was silhouetted, featureless aside from two pinpricks of silver light about the eyes. Then, he cut the air with his sword, and he was illuminated. A burning circlet adorned his temples, and his sword became like an inferno, the blade invisible beneath the tongues of flame. All had stopped, friend or foe, to gaze upon his dreadful image. He smiled serenely.
“No…” came the sad whisper of Astro.
Warnado appeared trapped somewhere between admiration and horror.
The duel in the sky continued unbroken. Destiny wondered if the mage had been right about Shadow attaining godhood - no mortal could ever have afforded to ignore this.
Kay waited for them to notice him, carrying on his serene smile, until his face began to harden. He cut the air with his sword and a wave of fire arced through the air at the duel. There was an explosion, and when the smoke cleared, both combatants were staring down at him. Destiny had no view of their faces, but Shadow was still in her incorporeal shape which hurt to look at, and the Entity’s armour was undented.
Kay smirked. And he spoke, with a voice that sounded like flames and multitudes.
“Look at you, Entropy and Order, battling away, barely able to touch let alone harm each other. And totally oblivious to the world around you. I suppose that’s the thing about dichotomies, you only see two options. Well, now that you can see this fairly impressive display of power do you see the third path? The fire between you?”
He gestured to the aurora of destruction he had created. It spread across the gates. They were trapped. Destiny started to worry how far ahead Kay was thinking.
“Entity, you are powerful. You have conquered many worlds, and you plan to take many more with this machine of yours. You want to take them all, in fact, grind them down into one crown for you to wear. And yet, for all your centuries and your knowledge and your experience, you cannot see how that would sully it all. Look around you, Nexus is not a world, it’s not a capital, it’s a dreg heap. Scraps of places in a patchwork quilt with no rhythm or rhyme. Why would it be any different if you add more scraps? This entire place is a folly!”
He paused a moment, squinting.
“Actually, haha, you’re reminding me of this old fable they used to tell us as kids. About an old miser who had accumulated great wealth. However, it was all coins and even under his greedy little eye a coin would go missing every now and then. Someone steals it, maybe it slips down between the cushions, and he loses track of this. His wealth is always a little smaller than it would have been otherwise. Now, he is a supremely avaricious man, so he won’t let this stand, and he decides the only solution is to melt down his wealth into a single golden ball. He takes the ball, all pleased with himself, and buries it in a field. And every night, he comes back, and he cackles to himself as he stares at the dirt where it’s buried, deeply amused at the little trick he’s played. His fortune preserved at critical mass, forever.
“Of course, a servant noticed this quirky little habit of his and stole the whole thing. Poor miser never realised - he was never going to dig it up to spend it - so he died believing that ball of gold was there. You’re the miser, Entity. That’s all you are. A murderous, genocidal, grasping little miser. That’s why you stack rooms high with junk. That’s why you collect magical anomalies for experimentation. You just want to have things without thought. And, if you’re the miser, I reckon I’m qualified to be your crafty servant.”
He chuckled to himself.
“So, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to take my friends, we’re going to build an army from across the worlds - all the people you’ve attacked, kidnapped, robbed, tormented - and then I’m going to come back and kill you. And once I’ve burned your Tower to cinders, once I have incinerated any evidence you were ever here, I will take this melted ball of worlds and make it my kingdom. I will be King in Ash, guardian of the forlorn across all creation.”
He raised his sword and grinned. There were some scattered cheers, but they were halting. Warnado tried to force a smile onto his face, but it kept slipping off. Destiny kept eyeing the burning gate.
The Entity remained silent, though Destiny couldn’t help but feel it was a silence of cold fury. Shadow merely stared on, her exact reaction was impossible to read, not just because looking at her made Destiny’s head hurt.
“Anyway,” Kay cackled. “My friends are probably getting worried about when we’ll leave. I did accidentally burn down the gate - sorry guys! - but you’ll find we have no need of it.” Then, to the Entity: “I’ll be seeing you.”
Tyron, who had approached the cordon and begun to call out to Astro, suddenly shouted he fell into the ground. A silvery, fiery gash sat in the ground where he had stood. Then, Warnado yelped and was gone. Destiny backed up, heart pounding as the rebel army began to be swallowed by these flashes of silver flame. Kay smiled on, eyelids lowered as though he were about to drift off into a pleasant dream.
Then, just as a portal into the void opened beneath her feet and she began to slip momentarily out of the world, Destiny saw a similar rift open and close its jaws on Shadow. Yet, even after the portal closed, the incorporeal mage remained in place. She looked down at the King in Ash and scoffed. The last thing Destiny saw before falling into the portal was Kay’s furious eyes as Shadow drifted away into the sky, miles above him and worlds removed from his kingdom of ruins.
Destiny landed on her feet. She was in her room. She heard great clamour in the hall. She ran over to her door and threw it open.
There was much excited talk as a million things happened at once. Amanda and Warnado excitedly embraced and chattered about the craziness of their escape. Urist jovially trying to recruit someone to grab a drink to celebrate their survival and victory. Steve and Jennifer rejoicing as they talked about the impending chance to reunite with their friends. Rose tranquilly explaining her victory over Claw to a confused Lucy, trying to ensure this triumph didn’t get washed away in the tide of events. But one conversation stood out, passing under the others.
“He’s deteriorating rapidly, it’s just like you said. We need to do something,” breathed Tyron.
“We need Shadow,” said Astro as though signing a death warrant. “He’s too far gone.”
Then, as the reality settled in of whatever they were talking about, they fell very quiet. They saw Destiny watching them and slipped off into Astro’s room.
Destiny pulled the yellow crystal from her pocket and contemplated it.
“King in Ash,” Destiny repeated to herself. “We’ll see.”
She put the crystal away again and went to join Urist for a drink.
As Anya once said, when it rains it pours. Everything always hits you at once. Shadow’s powers escalating. Kay’s growing megalomania. The inevitability of a confrontation between the two. And the chance to finally fight the Tower on even footing. All in the one evening. It was too much to process. She would choose her side when the time came.
Chapter 52: Cold, Hard Data (Dr. Mercury)
For the first time in weeks, Dr. Mercury didn’t feel like she’d drop dead if she closed her eyes for longer than half a blink. The sleep deprivation had been getting to her but what other choice did she have, really? She not only needed to ensure that the machine was supplied with the appropriate amount of crystals, but she also needed to constantly check it for possible damage or other imperfections. It needed to work guaranteed. Fire’s suicide mission and arson certainly had thrown a wrench into her schedule there.
Of course, it was the other sibling that cost Dr. Mercury most of her sleep, that paradoxical mage, Shadow. Both Dr. Mercury and Claw had spent considerable time trying to make sense of what little usable data they were able to sift from various sensor logs. Up until now the only useful insight hadn’t even come from the sensors, but from Claw’s knowledge of how approximately Shadow came to be and what she was capable of. Dr. Mercury had spent some time with Claw thinking on how to get better, more useful measurements on Shadow’s true nature and sure enough, they had found a way.
The Tower was gradually shutting down its portal facilities since almost everything they needed for the machine had been gathered. One such facility was located in a desert some ways away from the Tower. Naturally, this meant it would be a target for the rebels sooner or later, so they decided to make use of this. The both of them had spent an entire day setting up a highly sensitive array of sensors in a freshly dug cavern beneath the compound, which transmitted its readings directly to Dr. Mercury’s central analysis hub. Their hope had been that if they just created enough of a threat at the facility, the rebels would be forced to launch a full-on assault instead of an infiltration mission. This would prompt the Entity to respond, which in turn would require Shadow to answer it.
What exactly these sensors found, Dr. Mercury would figure out soon. She was currently walking the corridors of the lowest areas of the Tower, on her way to her personal lab. Despite her tight deadlines she had been able to get a full night of sleep after returning from the facility. Claw had remained, apparently to antagonize Kay to trigger some change that he was apparently destined to have.
Dr. Mercury unlocked the door to her lab and stepped inside. She really had to clean up some of the mess she made over the last few days, research documents and sensor printouts littered most free surfaces, the rest was occupied by equipment that should be in a cupboard, not wherever it was currently.
“Later.” She said to herself. “There is data to be analyzed.”
And to do just that she sat down at her workstation, booted it up and located the data transmitted from the portal facility. As expected, the sheer amount of it was staggering, they had crammed every type of sensor they could think of into that cavern, multiple sensors of each type where possible. There was one sensor among them that she had developed for this exact occasion, she had even sacrificed a few crystals for it. That sensor would look beyond the boundaries of Nexus, into the emptiness between worlds, Dr. Mercury hoped that it would be the key to learning more.
She smiled. “Alright, tell me your secrets.”
It took a good while for all the data to be fused together into a singular model, which took the appearance of a 3D reconstruction of the facility based on what the sensors picked up. The level of detail was immense, although the model only concerned itself with matter density and energy emissions, so color and sound were entirely missing.
Now that Dr. Mercury had her model, she could slowly step through the timeline to observe how the battle played out. She had to give it to the rebels, they had some elite troops on their side. She fast-forwarded until she reached the segment where the Entity appeared. This was where the difficult part started. Many of the sensors couldn’t be cleanly visualized as part of her model so she had to look at the raw output or some statistical representation thereof.
While the Entity was not the subject of her study, Dr. Mercury decided to take a deeper look into what kinds of readings it caused nonetheless, after all she had already established that Shadow shared some traits with it, knowing what exactly those were would be useful in understanding how Shadow worked.
The data on the Entity was interesting to say the least, the pattern of the readouts remained the exact same across time, no matter how many decimal places Dr. Mercury looked at. This continued right up until the shielding material of its armor. The only place where there was a transitory space were its gloves, there the readings fluctuated between ambient noise and the strict order the Entity imposed.
These were no new discoveries, but they confirmed what she already knew about the Entity. Something interesting she found was that there was another, infinitely small speck of this impenetrable order some distance into the facility. She assumed that this was Claw, the Entity didn’t control him directly like it did with possessed subjects. It just seemed to maintain a token presence, possibly to keep Fire suppressed.
Dr. Mercury slowly stepped forward through the timeline, up until Shadow came flying in from outside of the sensor range. The extradimensional sensor picked up a vague presence, manifesting in an amplification of the ambient static. However, the magnitude of this presence grew immensely moments later, just when Shadow and her immediate surroundings completely dropped off the conventional sensors.
The presence was larger than expected, extending almost halfway across the facility. It also didn’t have a distinct border, its frayed edges bleeding into the surroundings and erratically moving about. She stepped forward a few more seconds, right up to where Shadow clashed with the Entity.
“Fascinating.” Dr. Mercury said, talking to herself in true evil scientist manner. “They aren’t overlapping at any point, they can’t even interact with each other beyond collision.”
Beyond these initial observations, Dr. Mercury spent several hours analyzing every detail she could of the interactions between Shadow and the Entity. More accurately, she studied them individually and tried correlating some points. It was obvious that the Entity had control over the spatial topology of Nexus but surprisingly, Shadow too had some degree of influence, if only at a local scale.
Eventually Dr. Mercury moved on to later parts of the fight, observing the happenings on the inside of the building. She saw the assassin chase Claw down and cut him in half with one swing. Claw wasn’t dead but he would be if he remained that way. For a split second, almost too short to be picked up by the sensors, the Entity’s presence on Claw expanded and fully enveloped him, bending reality to put him together again. In that brief moment the sheer amount of energy the Entity had given Claw also became apparent, if Claw had been capable of magic, he’d be nearly unstoppable with such power.
She also made another observation. In the time when Claw had been cut in half, Shadow’s presence was magnified hundredfold, but then returned to previous levels as soon as he was mended.
Dr. Mercury stopped analyzing the data to contemplate. “So that explains why the Entity is keeping Claw alive. If Fire’s body is damaged or otherwise compromised, she gets stronger.” She paused. “Hmm… maybe stronger isn’t the right word. More unstable would probably fit better. Then again, they’re synonymous in her case, increased entropy either way.”
A thought occurred to her. So, if that injury caused her power to spike that much, what would Fire permanently dying do? Even the Entity would have to respect such an immense increase in power. The Entity was order, Shadow was entropy. Dr. Mercury didn’t have to think to know which of those won out if the power gap shrunk. But didn’t the Entity say that she was no threat? Not even conceptually? Something about that struck Dr. Mercury as odd.
She opened a file containing her first test run of her new sensor, the subject of which had been the Entity’s void plasma that sat at the center of the machine. From what the Entity had told her, it was completely separated from its main body. It did exert a certain influence on its surroundings, miniscule compared to Entity itself. Scaled up, this influence was what allowed for possession and absorption, as well as control over Nexus’ reality. She now compared this to the new readings on the Entity, the influence was shielded by its armor, but its strength was still measurable. She now just needed a third data point to compare it to.
Scouring her measurement archives, Dr. Mercury came across early tests she had done a long time ago, before she was head researcher. The project that laid the groundwork for her new sensor. That was what she had been looking for. The measurements on the Entity’s pull weren’t accurate but they at least gave her an estimate. The Entity’s immediate area of influence depended on how much matter it controlled. The small blob of void plasma influenced next to nothing, its glass container was enough to completely negate its influence. The Entity itself was known to be able to exert influence on people through direct touch or at short distances, but its control over Nexus reached way further than that.
Dr. Mercury stood up, she needed to use the intercom.
She said into the microphone: “Hello, Dimensions? I’d like to talk to General Issa.”
Moments later the voice of her colleague could be heard. “Veronica, what do you need?”
“Just estimates on Nexus’ mass at two timestamps. I don’t need exact figures.”
Issa replied: “Sure, just send a message with the timestamps and I’ll have someone take care of it. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, we’re not under much load.”
Dr. Mercury found that Issa was true to her word, exactly four minutes after her initial message she got a reply with the data she had requested. Now it was only a matter of letting the computer fit a function to the three points, with generous wiggle room for the old, imprecise measurement. Only having only three data points was far from ideal and thoroughly unscientific, but it was all she had to work with. At least she could constrain the fit by assuming that the function would be monotonous. It didn’t make sense for the Entity’s influence to start declining at random mass thresholds, the Entity was weird but not that weird.
The calculation was fast, and thus the result took Dr. Mercury by surprise. She had expected a vaguely polynomial curve, hypercubic at most. Instead, the curve was exponential, at the very low end of estimates. The implications flashed to her mind instantly, but it took her almost a whole minute to comprehend them in their entirety.
She felt fatigued, as if she had gone another few days without sleep. Her head swam.
She slowly vocalized her thoughts, as if that would make it easier to accept.
“When we start the machine… the worlds the crystals came from will collapse into Nexus. They will take their neighbors with them. At that point Nexus will have enough mass to expand the Entity’s influence well past its boundaries. The Entity… will take off its armor and exert its pull again. At that point it will be enough to reach worlds the machine couldn’t.”
She took a deep breath.
“It’s a runaway reaction. More and more worlds collapse into Nexus, the Entity gets more and more powerful. Eventually… it will unite all of existence in Nexus and then... then its influence will make it absorb all sentience. The Entity will be all.”
Dr. Mercury shook her head. She had to keep this knowledge to herself. Saying anything to anyone wouldn’t help. At the best she wouldn’t be believed, at worst she’d be possessed by the Entity and forced to continue her work. She had been digging her own grave this entire time, not just her grave, the grave of everything and everyone. And if she hadn’t done it, her successor would have.
For the first time in her life, Dr. Mercury felt entirely at a loss.
She was too absorbed in her own personal nothingness to notice the vague outline of Freak passing through the edge of her vision as he phased out of the room.
Chapter 53: Grand Plans (Tyron)
“And what is the update on the construction of the portal room?” he asked, eyes glowing with voidfire.
It was his first public appearance since the night he proclaimed himself King in Ash two nights before. And was really doubling down on the King angle. He sat on a raised throne, erected at the back of the dining hall, a crown of plain iron on his head, looking grave and immovable. Steve and Jennifer stood before him in full armour. Tyron at his right. Rose at his left. The other officers distributed amongst a group of knights in red scarves. He wasn’t leaning on backroom subconferencing to make decisions anymore. Now, the public would see his will… or whatever this was supposed to achieve.
“Thinks he looks strong. Looks crazy,” chirped Kir with the solemnity of a doctor pronouncing a long-term patient dead.
“Don’t forget, he is strong,” Astro warned telepathically.
Tyron looked up from his position at Kay’s right hand and cast an eye at the wizard who was now a part of their wordless conversations. On the next step down from Tyron, Astro looked straight forward, staring ambiguously into the crowd as though searching for nothing and everything. And, like Tyron, he was flanked by soldiers in red scarfs.
They’d taken the decision almost immediately after returning from the raid - they needed as much time to plan and compare notes as possible. Kay would have them both busy, dashing between errands and appearances. They needed to be ready to move.
“He’s both, that’s why he’s a problem,” concluded Astro.
But for the moment they did not have a plan, so they maintained the illusion of support. He looked down to the foot of the plinth, where Lucy looked up at Kay, looking uncomfortable speaking before such a large crowd.
Tyron felt sorry for her - she was overseeing the administrative side, but Steve and Jennifer were the ones overseeing the actual construction - if she was uncomfortable Kay shouldn’t be forcing her while Steve and Jennifer stood statuesque before his throne. Then again, maybe this was his idea of bringing her into the fold after keeping her at arm's length. Tyron couldn’t tell what tactics had carried over between the governance of Kay Mandy and the reign of the King in Ash.
“The chamber is nearly complete. Construction will be finished by tomorrow, the technology will be set up within two days.”
They had dug a tunnel rapidly into one of the other mountains that framed the high plain that held the entrance to the Shelter, and now were hollowing it out. Tyron saw the reasoning. It put the portals out of the way of the areas the enemy knew about. Besides, it meant new arrivals would get the scenic route, and Kay intended for them to have many arrivals.
Kay stood up, and he smiled a smile that almost radiated warmth, but in truth reflected the self-satisfaction of a tyrant. And yet, what he said was not tyrannical. He sounded downright humbled.
“Thank you, Lucy. As per usual you have us all running well ahead of schedule. You’re a credit to yourself and a credit to the Shelter. And, of course, let us not forget Steve Brine and Jennifer, who have almost single handedly overseen this rapid, essential construction.”
He stepped forward and, planting a hand on the shoulder on either Brine so as to show his reliance upon them, he practically beamed out at the crowd.
“We have all fought hard, even those of us who have not been on the battlefield, and we have done it against an enemy who are more experienced and better-equipped and who outnumber us a thousand to one. We have considerable power in our ranks, and I would trust any person in this…” He paused to weigh his words, then tried to pass it off as simply being empathic. “Shelter, to defend against at least a dozen of the Tower’s cabal of mercenaries and genociders. We shall build a new world from the ashes of the Tower, and it will be a better one than any of us has ever known. ”
He raised a fist, and there were some cheers, particularly from infantry fighters Kay had trained, or archers he had kept from the frontlines with his portal trickery. Others were not so enthusiastic, smiling politely at best, looking openly afraid at worst. However, those who did cheer were desperately, deeply enthused simply by the fact he was there. What he said was immaterial, the King in Ash and his better world was what they needed to believe in.
“He’s lucky,” Tyron thought to his sword and the wizard. “If Shadow’s coven hadn’t gone so cultish during the raid and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves, we probably wouldn’t have had to lift a finger. He’d have been toppled by the end of the evening. But people are desperate, so people will support him because they think he can keep her in check.”
“Tyron,” replied Astro with some considerable reluctance. “Let’s not pretend he’s totally devoid of charm, or we too are culpable. Shadow’s distant, methodical, hard to connect to. Kay is outgoing, full of fire. Upsettingly literally at the moment.”
He wasn’t wrong. Shadow wasn’t even present for the address. Tyron could see a few of her acolytes at the back, but they didn’t look important or happy to be there. They tapped their feet impatiently.
“So do not take it as an insult when I say that we are few in number,” Kay continued. “We need reinforcements, or we will not prevail. And soon we shall be ready to rally them. We are not alone. We have friends.”
He turned to the officers and began punctuating his declarations with punches of his fists and small, harmless combustions of voidfire.
“We have adventurers.” In Steve’s direction. “Dwarves.” To Urist. “Heroes.” To Destiny. “Dragons!” To Tyron, who felt a pit in his stomach. “All these allies yearning to aid us, to come together as an army of all the worlds. It matters not why they come. Do they want to help the weak? We will take them. Do they want to protect their loved ones? We will take them. Do they simply wish to test their mettle against a worthy foe? The more the merrier. Rejoice and be merry, victory is on the horizon!”
He clenched his fists, and rifts opened along the tables, out of which fell a frankly worrying quantity of alcohol. Tyron and Astro exchanged a look, they hadn’t been consulted about this. Scanning the crowd, Lucy was the only one who looked unsurprised. Perhaps Kay had brought her into the fold after all.
“Have fun tonight, for the road ahead will be arduous. I wish you well and take my leave.”
As part of the pre-arranged entourage, Tyron automatically began to follow Kay, but he was concerned that a gesture like this had been arranged without his, or by the look of it, Astro’s consultation. He debated whether or not to raise the issue once they were out of earshot - he was trying to look like he was behind Kay, not that he was a sycophant.
Tyron soon began to notice that the other officers were coming with them, even ones who he usually considered diehard Fire supporters, and by connection Shadow sympathsiers, like Urist and to a lesser extent Voidblade. And Warnado and Amanda, who he normally said were too young. The entire officer class was walking with them bar Shadow.
Finally, they found themselves walking into the second recent construction site, this one in the Shelter proper. Tyron had not seen the corridor they were in on the preliminary blueprints. There was a button on the wall.
“Jennifer,” Kay said breezily. “Would you do the honours?”
A large, four-by-four piston door opened and unveiled a large, carpeted room, lit with redstone lamps and filled with amusements. A full bar, a small spleef arena, a training corner, a library, a kitchen and many other luxuries. In the centre was a depressed area filled with sofas, a long table running along it.
Kay stepped out before them.
“Like I said to them, it’s been hard the last while, and I haven’t been as friendly or respectful to you all as I should have been. So, when Steve and Jennifer suggested that we make a new area for everyone to cool off in, I leapt to approve it. Let me introduce you to the new officer’s lounge.”
There was a flash in either hand and suddenly he was pouring himself a drink of whiskey. He raised a toast.
“To new beginnings,” he said.
It had that same tyrannical self-satisfaction as before, but Tyron tried to smile convincingly as he heard it.
###
The party was in full swing, and Tyron was sitting on one of the sofas, feeling warm and sleepy from the drink. Steve sat next to him, talking about getting Dungeons and Enderdragons going again to Lucy, who was already working out the best date and time to do it, and any people they should add or expect to have to replace.
Jennifer was swaying pleasantly atop the remains of a spleef arena, having beaten Amanda, Warnado, Astro and even an uncharacteristically enthusiastic Voidblade. The first chatted away at Voidblade, who almost seemed capable of pretending to be interested.
Rose and Urist stood around trying to figure out how Steve and Jennifer’s jukebox worked, apparently deciding it was completely impossible and therefore utterly hilarious. Urist kept leaning forward and pressing an eye to the black holes where the music poured out from and came away cackling each time.
Destiny and Astro were talking to Kay over by the bar, all looking very animated about whatever they were talking about. The bartender too was absorbed in the conversation, perpetually serving up more drinks as the trio finished them, never quite completing their order.
Astro was easily the most sober of them, casting eyes around the room but looking like he’d just about put the conspiracy out of his mind. Destiny was probably the most drunk, laughing darkly at nearly every word of whatever the other two said. And Kay was a close runner-up, sloshing his glass of whisky around in violent swings and spilling a lot of it as he told some long-winded anecdote, the image of boisterousness. He and Tyron locked eyes and he nodded several times with a grin.
Tyron almost felt guilty, and diverted his attention to Warnado, who stood not far off, trying to sneak a glass of rum. However, just as he managed to pour the glass Kay and Astro loomed over him. Kay took the glass with an almost admiring look.
“Warnado, you’re much too young,” said Astro with considerably less admiration. “Things are weird right now but we’re not giving minors alcohol.”
“Quite right,” Kay agreed. “A fruity drink for the kids, please! One each. No alcohol, please thank you!”
Then Astro turned and walked back towards Destiny and the bartender, looking stern. The bartender then filled up two non-alcoholic drinks and slid them down the counter. Kay, continuing to scold, sloshed half the rum into either drink and departed with a wink.
“And don’t do it again!” he concluded as the child departed, beaming.
Tyron chuckled to himself and realised Steve and Lucy had gone off to the library to consult a rulebook. However, before Tyron could begin to wonder how a man that friendly could simultaneously be such a tyrant, he noticed the man himself drunkenly swaggering over to him.
Kay collapsed into a seat behind him and immediately began to stammer with purpose.
“Tyron, listen, I wanted to say - about the speech from earlier. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot with the whole dragons thing I - I - Warnado tells me you’re not sure about how your world is doing, which I probably should have guessed from context, but I never knew. Something Freak said in captivity, you know yourself. I just wanted to clarify… don’t feel pressured to go back there if you’re worried. This is your trouble, no one can tell you how to,” he stifled a belch, “deal with it but you. So, you can go there if - if when and you’re comfortable. And - and I won’t send anyone else, unless you say so. Steve - he also has a dragon, apparently, it’s not that big a deal. Just say to me. Anyway, good talk big guy, I’m missed over,” he looked around and rediscovered the bar, “Over there, probably.”
And with that, Kay was gone, so Tyron tried to reconcile this barely coherent but obviously well-meaning young man with the cold arrogance of the King in Ash. Once he’d wondered how Kay could become the man Astro feared so thoroughly, now he wondered which part of him was the act. All he knew was that the man could turn wars into grudges, grudges into wars, and any celebration into a tragedy if he so desired it. So, as Tyron began to drift off to sleep, he felt uneasy, and stopped himself from slipping under completely.
“Keep alert,” Kir told him.
So, he kept alert, eyes dashing warily around the room beneath half-closed lids.
Chapter 54: A Key to Other Worlds (Jennifer)
Jennifer jogged down the hallway, dodging between people and supplies. It was finally the day.
The portal had started operating the previous night, and Steve had volunteered to go through first. Jennifer would have joined him but had already committed to leading a gathering mission and so stayed behind. It almost killed her not to go, but now he was scheduled to get back.
She narrowly avoided ploughing into Urist and apologised between excited giggles. The dwarf smiled though, he understood this was a big day.
It had only been a few months, but she had missed their friends so much. The familiar grounds of Brine Manor too, and even further off her own home, but that could wait. The people were more important.
She came to the heavy iron doors and came to a halt, panting slightly. After composing herself she pressed her palm against the button and strode through.
The portal room was large and octagonal, with a series of redstone consoles around the room humming with activity and flashing out numbers. On the opposite wall to Jennifer, the portal itself lay dormant.
For the moment, it was just an empty obsidian ring, but soon it would flash back into life. That said, it was an impressive obsidian ring. Jennifer and Steve had gathered the obsidian themselves, and it was at least five times the size of your average Nether Portal. Pressed against the side was a surprisingly small console into which you could program dimensional coordinates.
It worked by locking onto a dimension, then identifying any extant portals or suitable dimensional rifts. The console allowed the user to filter between them and decide on the optimal entry point. Naturally, this meant you had to work with whatever entry points existed within the dimension, so the size was mostly for show, at least until they found an ally who could build a matching portal of similar size, or a Tower portal they could hijack. However, they’d all felt the aesthetic and deployment potential was worth the extra resource commitment.
It wasn’t like they were being stingy with the obsidian. Beneath the stone walls and woolen floor were about three layers of the stuff. The entire portal room was a lockbox.
And at the heart of this lockbox stood its overseer, Tyron Dragoknight. He wasn’t a natural fit for this rather technical process, but he was pretty much the only option. The obvious choice would have been Shadow and her mages, but they were keeping to themselves, and Kay seemed happy enough to keep them away from this. Astro would then be the logical second choice, but he was always running some errand or in Kay’s entourage. Lucy was already rushed off her feet. And Tyron wasn’t not busy, but there were people who could be reshuffled to handle things like his training duties. Everyone else was either too important to specific sectors - like herself and Steve with gathering - a literal child, or kept disappearing off on their own, like Destiny.
She walked up beside the second-in-command as he read over some readings and scratched his furry head. She probably should have said something empathetic, but her excitement overtook her.
“So, when is Steve arriving?”
“Just a few minutes…” said Tyron. “Sorry, these numbers are hard to wrap my head around.”
“Maths… so much maths,” lamented Kir.
“Oh, what’s the issue?”
“So, thanks to the notes Fire took when he worked on the Ender’s atlas, we had some idea of what worlds there are. We can also use this little thingumajig,” he pulled out a metal device with a small glass tube on the end, “to figure out where individual people are from and roughly where they exited their world from. The problem is it becomes less obvious over time, so we have to do more work to reconstruct the signature. So, our scientists are - they do the - they triangulate the… This really isn’t my field.”
The two laughed. Tyron put his sheaf of papers into the glowing void on his back.
“Long story short,” Tyron concluded. “We’re trying to distinguish between the different openings. An active portal suggests civilisation has at least been there once. A rift could be anywhere. But… maths. It’s hard.”
“Numbers everywhere,” chirped Kir, traumatised.
“Anyhow, excited?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s just been so long. I’m not expecting a full reunion of the Alliance or anything, but it’ll be nice to have some familiar faces around the place. Not that I don’t like you guys or anything, it’s just, I’ve known them longer.”
“It’s a more natural fit.”
“Yeah.”
“The difference between work friends and the people you actually seek out.”
They settled into an uncomfortable silence.
“I don’t know, some of us have gotten pretty close. You and Astro, for example. You seem to spend a lot of time together.”
“Yes,” he said. “We do.”
He said it in a way that withered and rotted away the idea of their friendship Jennifer had built up in her head. Suddenly it was no longer private confidence and companionable laughing, it was mostly uncomfortable silences and grim solidarity. It was an alliance of convenience, or necessity, to Tyron that could never compare to the real thing.
“How are you feeling about seeing your friends again?” Jennifer asked with a sympathetic smile.
Tyron gave a nervous smile.
“Maybe a little more than friends?”
“Drop it,” said Tyron definitively.
Jennifer’s smile faded and she turned to look at the portal. Silence washed over and over them until it became unbearable, until she thought she might drown in it. Then, a merciful scientist called over to them.
“One minute to scheduled reopening. Are we good to go sir?”
“Absolutely, get it ready guys,” said Tyron.
He clapped his hands, and the room became ablaze with activity.
And with that, the awkwardness was gone, and excitement replaced it. Levers flipped, buttons were pressed, and Jennifer fought the urge to move frantically in response to each new development, as though the levers and buttons controlled her own body. She clenched her fists, heard the chugging of pistons beneath them, and it could have been her own heartbeat.
Finally, Tyron grinned widely and handed her a pair of protective goggles. She finished putting them on just in time to see the Dragoknight walk up to the portal console, fiddle with a few buttons, and pull the lever.
There was a flash. A blue, pulsing light rushed across the space within the portal frame, overlapping and binding until it formed a strange, gel-like film across the air. And within the gel were shadows, vague blurry shapes like mountains and trees and… people maybe? Wind rushed through the portal and threw her red hair right back, then calmed to a gentle breeze. It was open.
The shadows started to move, growing larger and more looming, until finally they passed through.
The first figure appeared, green eyes and athletic form blooming into view immediately. Ozen, Steve’s older brother, stepped forward with a sword in one hand and a picnic basket in the other.
“Wow,” he laughed and called over his shoulder. “You weren’t kidding, those portals show you some weird stuff.”
He staggered and fell to his knees, still laughing away. It took all Jennifer’s strength not to run up and hug him immediately.
Wolfric stepped through, armour over his black robes and a brewing stand in each hand, and also staggered a little but did not fall.
“Yes, I have seen horrors and beauties beyond my comprehension,” he muttered absent-mindedly. Then, to Tyron: “Sorry, could you hold these?”
He handed over the brewing stands.
“I have more in my inventory, but thought some extra wouldn’t hurt, given the circumstances.”
His tone was flat and disengaged. As ever, the machinations going on behind his dark blue eyes were a complete mystery to Jennifer, as he barely acknowledged the big, green wall of fur standing over him. Then, his eyes fell on her.
“Hello Jen. How are you doing?”
“Really? I haven’t seen you since the Ocean Monument and that’s the best you can do?”
She hugged the wizard and beckoned for Ozen to join them. Startled, the mysterious wizard just smiled stupidly, and then had the wind knocked out of him as Ozen slammed into him from behind and bear-hugged them both.
“I’ve missed you guys so much!” Jennifer shouted.
Then, finally, the last shadow moved up to the portal, and out came Steve, riding atop Drake Junior, their pet enderdragon. Several scientists gasped and backed away at the sight of the creature, but Jennifer couldn’t stop beaming. The creature had chests strapped to its flanks, no doubt containing all manner of useful resources, and it panted happily and swung its head around in curiosity.
“Honey, I’m home!” smiled Steve as he hopped down from the creature’s back. He and Jennifer embraced, and Tyron ran up to stroke the young enderdragon under the chin.
“Look at you, you are a beauty,” said Tyron with reverence.
“Like what you see?” Steve asked. “I thought you spent a lot of time with dragons?”
“Yeah, but the enderdragon in my world was a one-off. A tool of Herobrine. I destroyed it but look at this thing! It’s here, it’s alive, it’s not evil! It’s cute!”
The dragon licked his face, and he laughed heartily.
Ozen and Wolfric joined Jennifer and Steve.
“So, is it just you guys?” Jennifer asked. “How is everyone?”
“Mom’s doing well,” said Steve. “Dad’s recovering. Mark’s busy helping the villagers rebuild, same with David - y’know Morbrook David not... Couldn’t get hold of Alex, she was off on an adventure. Nothing from Deodate either.”
“I mean what did you expect?” said Ozen. “He’s an angel, he’s not exactly alive.”
“Yeah, but he’s the reason we have the dumb crystals that got us into this mess, I was hoping maybe he’d turn up.”
“I’m surprised you were available,” said Jennifer to Wolfric. “You’re always off doing mysterious magicking wizard stuff.”
“I was, but then I heard you guys had disappeared. I came back to help Ozen look.”
“Aw, you big softie!”
Jennifer punched him in the arm.
“Well, we have the gang back together,” said Steve contentedly. “So, plan for Dungeons and Enderdragons over spleef?”
No one had any objections. They left Tyron with Drake and went off to the officer’s lounge.
“Okay,” said Tyron as the dragon was led off to be fed and lodged. “My turn.”
Chapter 55: Inevitability Revealed (Destiny)
Destiny approached the broken portal, passing through the corpses of her old enemies, and feeling a little embarrassed. She hoped Anya didn’t realise she’d been drinking since she last saw her. To her credit, it had just been the night of the officer’s lounge opening, but everyone deserves to cut loose every now and then, even heroes. Right?
But she mostly thought about that to try and avoid thinking about the real issue. The gem was flashing again. Obviously, she couldn’t answer it in the Shelter, so she’d just had more time to dread it as she tried to reach Anya. She had resolved to take whatever help Freak offered her, but she didn’t like that she had to.
Finally, she crested the hill and saw Anya waiting for her, lounging in the mouth of the portal. She didn’t straighten up, instead maintaining a look of luxuriant disdain beneath closed eyelids.
“So, you’ve been drinking again?”
“Yes but-”
“-And after the dramatic bottle smash? Kiddo I could not be more disappointed-”
“-That’s not important right now,” grumbled Destiny, rummaging in her pocket.
“Don’t change the subject on me. You’ve got to take this seriously or you’ll end up even deader than I am!”
Destiny pulled out the pulsating yellow gem and waved it in front of Anya.
“I’m plenty serious, now lighten up. We can’t let this guy know we’ve been fighting.”
Anya groaned.
“Sure, we’ll just talk shop, I guess.”
She stood up and shook her ethereal body out.
Destiny pressed the crystal, and she saw the same pattern of criss-crossing yellow lines as before, which eventually coalesced into Freak’s translucent form. From the second his face weaved into view, she knew this would be a big one.
“Destiny, we need to meet in person, right now!”
“What’s happened?”
Freak raked his talons through his hair and curled in on himself. His features were stretched taut with stress, to the point that he looked fit to explode at any moment. Whatever had him so scared, he had just seen it. Seeing a phantom of fear scared could have been funny if Destiny ignored the implications.
She tried again, with forced confidence.
“What’s happened, Freak?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment, just… let me...”
He looked wildly around the hilltop, half-crawling forward. Despite not physically being there, he carefully avoided the broken glass Destiny still hadn’t cleaned up. It was strange, animalistic, as though he were trying to sniff something out. Then, he straightened up and loped towards Destiny.
“Sorry, it’s easier if I show you.”
He then slashed upwards with his talons and caught her between the eyes. She staggered back as warm blood sprayed out and trickled down the bridge of her nose. As her eyes cleared, she realised the sky was black. Then, the portal was gone. Then, she was nowhere.
She looked around and saw Anya huddling close to her. She placed a hand on her shoulder, and it didn’t phase through. So, Freak wanted her to experience something physical.
Suddenly, a path beneath her feet. They walked forward instinctively, the dark still around them. To the left, a glimmer of light, a glimpse through a space the size of a doorway into a laboratory. Some scientist Destiny recognised from files and descriptions: Veronica Mercury. She looked dreadful, with pale skin and dark rings digging into her face. She kept frantically tapping buttons and scribbling figures, desperately trying to escape an answer she’d come to, or an error she’d made. Finally, she buried her face in her hands.
“I’m sorry,” wept Mercury.
Destiny wanted to stop, or maybe to go in and try to figure out what this was about, but she couldn’t stop walking. Her pace just kept accelerating.
Next, on the right, she caught a glimpse of the Entity - the main body, not a manifestation - prowling around a distortion in the air, a crack in the world. But now she passed the doorway even faster.
“Destiny, slow down,” Anya shouted.
Destiny realised how fast she was moving and couldn’t slow down. Anya was falling rapidly behind her. She tried to stop, but her legs disobeyed her, striding on. She saw Anya trip and fall, and then disappear back into the dark.
Next, a glimpse of a long table. She remembered it as the place Marinus Bul and the Entity had tried to recruit her and David all those months ago. But now, the Entity’s generals were gathered. The main body sat at the head of the table and offered instructions she couldn’t make out. Some fell to their knees in servitude. Others rose in anger, only for manifestations to emerge from the shadows, pass their hands through them, and absorb them until they were nothing.
Her speed was terrifying. If she hit anything, she’d break like glass.
Then, the machine, large and impervious. Crystals shone within it. The Entity approached and shed its armour. And it was grey, swirling, and terrible. And it was everywhere and everything and every-
Destiny tripped and skimmed across the ground. It was a roof of cold, bronze slabs of stone, and she was careening towards its end. She tried to get a grip, but the slabs were too smooth, and too tightly packed to leave a gap. Nothing had ever damaged these stones. Nothing ever could. She slid over the edge.
Then, as she saw Nexus unfold beneath her in all its patchwork expanse, a hand reached from the sky and grabbed her own. She was dragged back onto the roof.
“Thanks Anya,” she said.
“Oh sure, thank her.”
Destiny’s breath left her.
A man with dark, messy hair and a patchy stubble stood over her. He wore a dark blue jacket over a leather chestplate and white shirt. An unbroken gauntlet sat on his wrist, crackling with the energy of the Hollow Emerald.
“David…”
He pressed a hand to her cheek. “I said I didn’t want to lose you again, so I won’t.”
They kissed and held each other tight, until they heard a boom. The Tower shook beneath them. They staggered apart and looked around for the source of the apparent danger.
She looked around at the sky and at the ground and saw nothing. Industry and fields and forest below. Only yellow and orange and wisps of cloud above. And then she saw it.
The sky was shrinking in. The horizon was getting nearer. The world was turning slowly in on one point. And as it did so, she saw patches of grey static spreading like moss mold rot. Like maggots waiting to burst forth, the Entity was becoming everywhere. And it spread beyond Nexus. She saw cities nations worlds appear in the sky and wither away into its form. One body, one being, endless and final.
And now it was spreading onto the roof of its own Tower, consuming, eating, debasing its creation.
“Destiny…”
She turned. David staggered towards her, across a patch of the seething grey. The grey was spreading across him too, and melting away as it did so, taking away soft, peeling chunks. Like rotting fruit, eaten by maggots.
“I…”
It reached his jaw. It devoured his face. He reached out. He fell forward. Melted into the nothing that everything had become was becoming will become.
She fell to her knees, choking back tears of horror and loss. It would reach her next and there was nothing she could do. She scrunched her eyes shut. She waited.
“Destiny. Destiny, wake up!”
It was Anya’s voice. Destiny couldn’t feel her presence. She opened her eyes. She was back before the portal, lying on her back.
“Thank Notch, you’re awake,” sighed Anya.
Anya turned and eyed the image of Freak, who was cracking his knuckles obsessively over by the edge of the hilltop. Destiny rose up.
“What the **** was that?” she asked.
“That’s what will happen if we don’t stop it, soon.”
“No, what was that?” she asked, more angrily.
She took a step towards Freak, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“I needed to make sure you got just how serious this is. Excuse my slight artistic liberties.”
He was still looking away.
“You had, no right.”
“Hm?”
Freak turned around, confused.
“You had no damned right to use him like that!”
Tears were flowing down her face. She fell to her knees. She’d had him back, just for a second. It didn’t matter that it was a lie, he had been back and now he was gone again. The pain was all fresh and all new and just as bad as before.
Anya laughed harshly.
“You used David. Ho-ho-holy ****ing ****.” She rubbed her temples. “The second I think you can’t get any more pathetic, you just go and overachieve, don’t you, Freak?”
“I-”
“Get out of here, now. We’re done. You’ve got your fear fix, you’ve had your fun. So, unless you’re going to come in person so we can kick your ass good and proper, don’t bother coming back.”
Freak groaned.
“Humans! So myopic! Don’t you see why I had to use him?”
Ignoring the still-weeping Destiny, he stormed up to Anya and sneered at her.
“I need her to understand what everyone and everything is going to see and feel and lose if that thing wins. I’m sorry if I hurt the poor duck’s feelings, but this is bigger than her or you or me. That anguish she feels right now, that is all there will be at the end of the world, and then there will be nothing but the Entity. If she can’t bear it, maybe she should either help me stop that from happening, or just off herself now.”
He turned away, furious. Destiny stopped crying. She wiped her eyes and sat up.
“He’s right,” she said.
“He certainly is not!” Anya protested.
Destiny ignored her and looked at Freak.
“What’s your plan?”
“There’s the issue. Beyond the fact that we can use the crystals to somehow harm things like the Entity, there isn’t much to go by. And harming isn’t killing. Other than that, there is one thing left: The Entity’s one fear - one of two technically if you count your mage there - and that’s the dimensional scar located in its throne room.”
“So, where do I come in? What do you want me to do?”
“At this point, trying to jam a crystal in there, hitting it with magic and hoping it does something is the best we can hope for. The magic part is where you come in. I’m reasonably confident that I can get you up to that point.” Freak sighed. “Issue is that I don’t happen to have crystals on hand, can’t even appropriate one from the shipments because there are no shipments anymore. The machine is scheduled to come online in just a few days.”
Destiny didn’t say anything.
“How difficult is it to get crystals with our guys?” Anya asked, with a contemptuous sidelong glance at Freak.
“Unless Fire had a secret stash that we don’t know about, Steve’s the only one I know has access to any crystals. Sadly, they’re in his ender chest. We need to trick him into opening that up.”
“Is he easy to trick?” Anya asked.
“Kind of, yeah, but Jennifer’s not and they’re pretty much inseparable. There’s also the issue that Shadow can apparently hear and see most everything going on in the build. It drives Kay nuts. Whole place is on high alert.”
The gears were turning in her head.
“So, we’ll need Shadow distracted, we’ll need Steve to be in a situation where he’ll feel safe to open the chest, and we’ll need to ensure the others can’t interfere.”
She and Anya locked eyes.
“You said Fire had a stash of poisons and sedatives,” Anya remembered.
“I’ll get a few of them together in the officer’s lounge. We’ll drink for a while, move the conversation to the crystals. No reason to be so secretive about them now - the enemy knows where we are. Steve’ll pull them out...”
“Then you drug them all. Slip off with the crystals.”
“I’ll kick up a fuss, make it sound like an enemy attack. Slip off in the confusion. Maybe you,” she pointed at Freak, “Could make a few appearances around the base, get Shadow, Kay and anyone else I can’t drug off my back. That doable?”
Freak shrugged exaggeratedly. “Sure, sure. Just need to not get myself obliterated by your mage but I’ll figure something out. Just let me know when you need that distraction with the crystal. Maybe notify me a few hours before so I can get into position quickly.”
“Okay,” Destiny breathed. “And we’ll slip out through this portal. Maybe destroy it after us so they can’t follow. Well, there’s the bones of a plan. We’ll hash out the details as we go.”
And with that she felt a great burden lifted. She didn’t have to choose between the King in Ash or the unknowable mage anymore. She had her own path. And she knew where it ended. In betrayal, and in death, but also in a duty fulfilled. She would see it through.
Chapter 56: Cautious Return (Tyron)
The sun held low over the landscape, turning the sky orange as it drooped towards the horizon. The landscape comprised grassy mountains and exposed stone. Here and there small pillars of stone jutted upwards, reaching to the sky like so many grasping fingers. And of course, it was all made of cubes - sharp, uniform, destructible cubes. The sun, too, looked squarish when it passed behind a cloud, as though it were a great glass container packed to the brim with cubic fire.
“Home sweet home,” gasped Kir.
Tyron stepped forward out of the mouth of the portal.
“Don’t get too comfortable, we just need a glimpse. Something to let us know that Freak was wrong. Nothing more. Then we’ll go meet Astro.”
He looked around the summit for tracks, or for crates, a road maybe, but found nothing. This portal was not a major highway, maybe not even a portal made by the Tower. Unfortunately, this was not at all reassuring. The horrible things Freak had told me came flooding back.
“I watched Him rise again...”
Tyron felt his heart pound like a cannon, desperate to shatter him from the inside.
“...He walked your world, burning cities as he went...”
His lungs constricted as he remembered the dreams. Smoke like tar had poured into his nose and mouth, choking him, making him sleepy and heavy. He had seen spires burning, of cities he had saved, cities being rebuilt, those not yet made, forever and endless in their destruction as Herobrine strode through them, His very presence a source of desolation.
“...He took your dragons, and he crushed their skulls beneath his feet.”
He scanned the skies. Desperate for a glint of red scales in twilight, or a plume of smoke or a jet of fire or anything.
“And he punished all those who had thought to rise against him.”
Visions of torment. Seth at the gallows. Glowstar’s wings straining upon the rack. Rathina amidst brimstone and smoke.
Tyron desperately cast his eyes about the horizon, looking for any sign of civilization, asking Kir to speed up the process and enhance his sight. And in response, Kir heightened and emphasized every detail of the land, screaming out its potential importance. Every shadow, every corner, every flash of grass against grey stone, every flash of grey stone against grass. Tyron saw everything and it hurt.
Then, a cobblestone hovel, winding stairs leading up to it, became apparent on a hill to the South. Tyron barely remembered to summon his stone wings as he ran forward and leapt from the hilltop. And as he soared forward faster and more frightened than he had ever done so before, he had little to no control. He tumbled as he landed halfway up the staircase, but was immediately standing again, charging up to the hut with a heart full of worries and questions.
Finally, legs aching, and lungs ragged, he made it to the top. The sun shone fully in his eyes, and he could barely see the hovel, but he ran towards the impression of it. Hand outstretched, he readied to shove down the door when something landed between him and it. This something hit the ground like a meteor, splitting the wind and shaking the earth. Tyron fell back and raised Kir in defence.
“Make me combat ready!” He screamed internally. This came out vocally as a strangled roar.
“Tyron, wait!” warned the sword.
The Dragoknight felt his muscles lock up.
The creature had a long snout, and teeth like daggers. Its wings were fathoms wide. And its scales were a lovely green, speckled with blue and white to look like a nebula in the night sky. And it had such kind eyes.
“Hello Tyron,” said the dragon.
“Glowstar!”
Tyron leapt to his feet and patted him warily on the nose, not sure whether to accept the dragon was real or just assume he’d gone crazy, and this was some sort of fever dream. The dragon snorted happily in response and nuzzled Tyron with his neck. However, after a second of warm greetings, the dragon was all business.
“Where have you been?” Glowstar asked. “We haven’t seen you in weeks. Seth said you entered a mineshaft, but we found no trace.”
“It’s a long story but that’s not important right now, is everyone safe? Is Herobrine still dead? Is Rathina alright?”
“Rathina!” Kir chirped redundantly.
“What are you talking about?” asked Glowstar. “Of course, he’s dead, you killed him yourself… Tyron, where were you exactly?”
Tyron felt weeks of anxiety and bitterness and grief drain out of him in the shape of a single tear which seeped into his fur.
“Somewhere far away, where news was pretty bleak.”
“That is an unnecessarily oblique answer.”
Momentarily purged of negative emotion, the Dragoknight felt a new sense of purpose filling him. His world was safe, and he had to keep it that way. He was going to go to his meeting with Astro, and they’d bring Kay back into line, and he’d be safe too. And they’d patch things up between him and Shadow. And he’d teach Warnado how to kick Glibby’s stupid head clean off. And they’d save Fire and - and - and -
“Sorry buddy, it’ll have to do for now!” he burst out. “I need to get back for a meeting. All you need to know is there’s a new big bad to fight - and it’s worse than Herobrine. Gather everyone you can and wait for me outside - one sec, I’ve lost my bearings - that Nether portal tomorrow. Can you do that?”
Glowstar leapt back and spread his wings to their full breadth, looking ancient and wonderful, like a monument to a well-remembered ruler.
“Of course, Dragoknight!” rumbled Glowstar. “Anyone in particular?”
“The entire old crew. Rathina, Seth, the dragons, the rebel Endermen, the cities. If you have time even check up on Lupi’s old wolf, Blizzard. Literally any and every fighter will make a difference.”
“Rathina coming!” Kir shouted enthusiastically.
“Kir, yes, calm down a minute, I know you’re excited but let me talk,” said Tyron aloud.
“I shall, Dragoknight, although-”
“Rathina coming!”
“Kir, I swear to Notch, will you ever shut up?”
“Excellent question,” a light voice said from behind Tyron.
He turned.
“Hi Rathina,” he said breathlessly.
“Oh, hello Tyron, I didn’t see you there,” she snarked. Thankfully, her green eyes betrayed that she was actually pretty happy to see him. “So, what’s the story with the disappearance?”
He stood there, completely silent for a few moments. Rathina, his love, stood before him alive and unharmed. The same straight, dark hair cascaded out from beneath her hood and past her, and her smug grin shone enticingly at him. He felt as though he had been rooted to the ground.
“Thought we were hurrying,” cracked Kir.
“Well, maybe we can spare a few minutes…”
He reached out for her arm. She looped it around his neck. They kissed. And for a few short moments there was nothing in his mind but the feeling of her against him, the blinding glow of the sun, and the flow of mountain-top wind through his fur.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 5 Crisis (Cont.)
Chapter 57: Bloodline (Warnado)
It was the day he was due to meet demon-grandpa, or demon-grandma, or whatever it was. Warnado kept almost turning back but managed to grit his teeth and push through each time, remembering that he had Shadow looking out for him, and that he needed this power boost to be useful here or back home. Still, demons were freaky, and he didn’t like the way they tended to take control away from him.
Eventually, this two-steps-forward-one-step-back pace managed to take him right to Shadow’s door.
He knocked. He waited. He wondered if he should just open the door. Knocked again. Looked up and down the hallway. Opened the door.
On the other side he saw a rectangular shape, the same black-beyond-black colour Shadow turned when she entered her void-state. Warnado grimaced as he remembered how looking at her had filled him with fear, and how it had paralysed her coven into useless awe. Suddenly, he wondered if this was such a good idea. Maybe Kay was right that she was dangerous.
Then, he remembered that literally everyone in the Shelter was dangerous and it didn’t seem that good of an argument. Kay was taking advice from a paperback sociopath and his bodyguard was a human blender. Besides, he remembered that Amanda had told him to deliver a message to Shadow, so he also remembered how cruddy he’d felt when he realised the bandits had taken Amanda and killed the whole village he’d been trying to protect, and so he finally remembered exactly why he was doing this.
He stepped through.
He stood in a pitch-black space, stretching miles ahead of him - well, near as he could tell. The only thing there was what he presumed to be the ritual site. It comprised a big circle of rough-hewn stones which looked embedded into the darkness as though it were soil. Around the edges stood tall, imposing torches on iron stands. And off to the right were a series of chests filled with demonology supplies - cases of special chalk, supplies to make that chalk, charts outlining and explaining different patterns, compendiums of runes and known demons and so much else.
Shadow stood over one of these chests, searching for a specific piece of chalk. He couldn’t see her face behind her white hair. The only thing he could be sure of was that she looked ever-so-slightly distorted, and that he felt an echo of that fear from the raid. She was partly void-stated.
“Hey, Shadow, I like the setup. Very witchy. Totally on-brand,” he said with a thumbs-up.
He wished he had some clever line, but he didn’t. He hoped this played well. He forced a smile.
“Boo!”
He leapt forward and turned around, clutching one hand to his heart and raising the other in a futile ‘stop’ gesture. Then, he saw his assailant, and both hands dropped. He bunched up his left cheek to show his disappointment.
“By Light, you are such a wuss, Helix,” laughed Amanda.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. How about I just jump out of an endless black void at you and we see how calm you are.”
“Sure, try it, I’ll kick your butt.”
She pushed him playfully.
“Well, obviously you won’t be scared now that you know I’m going to do it,” he sulked.
“You are such a baby!”
She hugged him and he snorted with laughter.
“So, why are you here?” He asked. “You told me to carry a message to...”
He cast a sidelong glance at his mentor, then raised his eyebrows emphatically at Amanda.
“Shadow called me here for emotional support, yours and hers too probably. Besides, great opportunity for me to meet your family! Haha!” She lowered her voice, though obviously Shadow could probably still hear her. “And, no, uh… The black void of nothing kind of put me off.”
Warnado turned to Shadow, who was still brushing her fingers across different sticks of chalk, meticulous as a surgeon.
“So, uh, how're you feeling?” he called a little louder.
Shadow replied: “Generally not good. My tremors from before have gotten worse, I can’t even use my hands, partially going into my void state restores my control but that is obviously no permanent solution. I couldn’t turn off my passive senses before, now I even hear thoughts of those around me. I’m actively suppressing it for you two but in larger crowds it becomes impossible.” she paused. “I can handle one more confrontation with the Entity, maybe two, then I’ll probably lose myself to my true nature.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Warnado stupidly.
Amanda elbowed him.
“Actually, Amanda and I, we got a message last night. Amanda mostly, I heard about it the next day. From her of course.” He looked back and Amanda gestured impatiently for him to her up. “The Lady of Dreams showed up, told Amanda she’d just been inside Claw’s dream.”
He craned his neck and looked for Shadow’s face. She didn’t seem to be slipping into her void-state any further, but he wanted to know how she was reacting.
“She says Fire - that Peter’s okay in there. She thinks,” he smiled a little as he said it.
He’d tried not to think about it too much, but he did miss the big scaly guy. He could be a little distant, but he was kind. And Kay might still have been sore about that drinking contest, but Warnado thought that was just the funniest thing.
“And she seemed pretty cautious about saying anything like that,” tuned in Amanda. “She sounded like she really did her best to make sure he’s okay. Trust me, I could tell.”
Warnado suddenly found Amanda’s hand wrapped around his. He didn’t know why but he wasn’t complaining.
Shadow’s posture visibly relaxed and a slight smile crept up on her face.
“Peter really couldn’t have wished for a better phantom. She came into existence because of something terrible he endured, did you know that? Just manifested, only knowing he needed help. She helped him with his trauma, he helped her understand humans and emotions in turn. It’s… kind of cute actually. Thanks for telling me, it helps a lot knowing he’s at least not suffering.”
Warnado felt relief wash over him, then remembered why they were there and felt nervous again. So, before he tried to leave, he forced himself to say, probably a little too quickly and loudly.
“So, haha, demon ancestor day already! How about that? The time just flies by. I’ve been just so hyped up for this, let’s get right into it - unless of course you’re busy. You look busy! I’ll go, great talking - namaste!”
He reached for the portal he had been subconsciously backing towards and found nothing. She was smiling wryly at him.
“Oh, so this is just a hostage situation now? I have rights, you know! In the constitution or whatever...” Warnado trailed off. “I don’t know what a constitution is.”
Amanda wrapped an arm around his shoulder and led him towards the ritual circle. She gestured to Shadow to begin outlining the curriculum for the day.
Shadow said: “I’m sorry for closing the door on you, Warnado, but you have said it yourself that you want to do this. You need to push through the instinctive aversion. I’ve already looked through my books to try to identify demons that could be your ancestor. The traits we have to go off are your horns, your natural affinity for magic and trickery and your alignment with flames. I have a list of demons that could fit this description but it’s too long to go through them all. So first we’ll summon a few other demons, ones that may know which of the candidates actually have mortal offspring.”
Warnado breathed deeply.
“Okay, we’re going for the town gossips, sounds harmless enough. Who’s first?”
Shadow began drawing on the rock with a reddish-green chalk. First, she made multiple concentric circles, connected them with both straight and curved lines. Along these lines she started drawing the runes, Warnado saw their meaning flash in his mind when he looked at one. The runes easily outnumbered those she had drawn back during their first summoning, when they summoned the blacksmith demon. By now Warnado knew enough about demonology to see that Shadow was drawing a reusable ritual, one that included constraints that covered every possible type of demon. There was just one rune Warnado couldn’t understand, no matter how hard he squinted at it.
He pointed at it. “I can’t read that one, what does it mean?”
Shadow spoke as she continued drawing: “For one it means your ancestor is not an incubus or succubus, if it were you could read the rune. As for its meaning, it roughly means ‘be summoned with some damn clothes on’, it mainly concerns our ‘gossips’. They and their own offspring are usually very aware of other demon bloodlines.”
“Oh, cool. So, uh, what do you need me to do again?”
“At this point your grasp on the demonic language should be enough that I don’t need to provide you with a reference sheet. You will need to take down your obfuscation spell and tell them you are looking for your ancestor, supply them with anything that could help, anything you know about your father. As long as you don’t deliberately insult them you should be fine.”
Warnado shifted his eyes about the pocket dimension and realised this was probably why she’d called Amanda. Amanda was the only person he ever intentionally took that down for - that said, Shadow had probably caught a few glimpses recently, whether either of them had wanted her to or not.
He frowned a little and took down his charm, though the hood stayed up. His horns just about showed, but they were still covered. Amanda squeezed his shoulder supportively.
“Okay, call them up. I only want to look stupid for so long.”
“And the glowing red eyes aren’t stupid? Don’t make you look like an edgy twelve-year-old at all?” teased Amanda.
“Hey! I’m thirteen. I still have two more years until it starts getting really lame.”
He was playing along but they would absolutely not get lame. The red-eyed hellbeast look would never go out of style.
Amanda then seemingly realized that Shadow had similarly glowing red eyes.
“They really suit you, though,” she beamed apologetically. “And Fire.”
Warnado raised a hand to stifle laughter and Shadow rolled her eyes.
Shadow raised her arms towards the summoning circle. “One good thing about my instability is that my magical energy is practically boundless. Let’s get started.”
Her runes lit up more brightly than usually, distorted in the blackness of her void-touched skin. Energy streamed into the circle and Warnado felt the ritual’s call, the demon’s name resonating through him. Moments later the innermost circle was filled with a thick, purple mist. As the mist cleared, a figure emerged.
What stood in the clearing mist was a tall woman whose red hair was shaved at the sides. She stood with her hands pressed deep into the pockets of a snow-white suit, and her head cocked enticingly to the side and her tongue scraping playfully between her teeth. She was perhaps the most ostentatiously glamorous woman he’d ever seen, and he immediately struggled to think of words to say.
This was not helped when she said something that was obviously supposed to be seductive in a language that he couldn’t understand. It was like demonic, but it wasn’t quite there.
“Uh… Hello?” He tried in demonic.
She cackled a little meanly.
“Oh, by the Circles, you minor-bloodline demonspawn are too honest. You really don’t know what to do with me, do you?”
“Um, no.”
He then remembered that Shadow had once told him there was no room for miscommunication in demon. He felt his insides twist with embarrassment as he realised ever ounce of his confusion and surprise had probably been perfectly communicated in his two brief attempts at communication.
She roared with laughter again, then surveyed Amanda, who was now glowering territorially. Then she saw Shadow and nodded in comprehension.
“Oh I see, you thought I wouldn’t come if this was strictly business? You weren’t wrong but at least give me the opportunity to disappoint you.”
The succubus smiled hungrily at Shadow, a serpent-like tongue flicking between her teeth.
“So, what is it you really want me for?”
“I - I want to know who my grandparent was. Do you know him?”
“What’s their name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then, I can’t help you. Not that way at least,” she said, slipping into English.
Warnado was about to ask what other way she could possibly mean, then clocked it as Amanda stepped between them, drawing her axe. The succubus cackled again.
“Oh, baiting you guys is too easy,” the succubus said, now in demon again. “Make it a little hard! Gotta say though, she is cute, hang on to her kid.”
“Thanks, I will,” said Warnado warily.
He cast a look at Shadow to try and figure out if this was going well or not. The look he got in response communicated that this was about par for the course.
“Now, about my grandparent, is there another way?”
“Oh, naturally,” the succubus said. “I just get a kick out of messing with people. Right, any physical identifiers?”
“Horns.”
The succubus started patting her chest, pulling out a notebook after an unreasonably long period of searching.
“Yeah.”
“Since they apparently are too short for me to see under your hood, that’s not enough for me to go off, too many horns look the same at that length. Any other characteristics? That gauntlet, it looks demonic, tell me about it, show me a spell, anything.”
Warnado eyed it uncomfortably.
“Well, when I try to communicate with it, I see a man on a tin throne surrounded by flames.”
“Oh!” groaned the succubus. “False monarchs, I hate them. All about showing off their power, never about making it last. We get it, you’re regal but in a grungy way. You were once great, but now you’ve fallen from grace but that doesn’t mean you can’t still dominate anything you come into contact with. ‘If this is me diminished, how powerful must I have been before they brought me low?’ It’s a damned humble brag! Big whoop!”
She stopped and locked eyes with Warnado.
“If you can’t guess that’s dime-a-dozen crap, just show me a spell. It’ll be easier.”
Warnado sighed and looked at Shadow.
“Okay, you’ll stop me if it goes out of control, right?”
Shadow replied: “I will. Whatever is on the other side does not want to mess with me, especially right now. Though, I think after my last two put-downs it may have realized that trying again could be a bad idea.”
“Cool, cool,” he said. “And Amanda, I appreciate that you’re here, your support is great, but if you could back up a little I’d feel a little more comfortable.”
“No, I absolutely understand, I’ll stand over here.”
She backed up, though not before threatening the succubus with a feinted axe blow. The she-demon flinched and then sulked.
“Ready?” he asked the succubus.
“Yeah, just go already,” she grumbled.
He reached out with his mind, saw the tin throne and the diminished shape within it. He wasted no time. He had to be completely clear, no ambiguity, and he had to let it know who was boss.
“I want my gauntlet and only my gauntlet to glow with that demonic fire spell of mine. It will not spread beyond the confines of the gauntlet, the tongues of flame will reach out no further than two inches in any direction. And you will have no control of my arm unless I explicitly say otherwise. It will stop after exactly one minute. These powers are my own, and I will use them as I have outlined. Capiche?”
The being in the throne sighed and waved its hand.
The gemstone glowed, the criss-cross of embers began, and finally the gauntlet erupted into deep purple flame.
“All-right,” smiled the succubus. “That narrows it down a bit. The criss-cross thing is a very particular technique.” She crossed several names off a list. “The channelling of inherited power into a gemstone is also pretty uncommon.” Slightly fewer fell in this volley of pen-strokes. “And it’s abundantly clear it’s a family powerful enough to mutilate some dumb beta-demon, hollow out his arm and make him into a servant. ‘Course, it also means they’re not that smart as that nugget in the throne is clearly leeching off your power to stay alive. And with the horns that means…” As she said this last part she scratched away wildly.
The succubus looked suddenly very, very annoyed. She put her hands to her temples.
“Not this asshole again. Oh, I hope it’s not him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Wrinkly nutsack.”
“Really?”
“No, of course not.”
She tore out the list and scrunched it up. With none of her performative sexuality, she turned to Warnado and said:
“I’ve given you a small list of candidates. Can I go now?”
“Sorry, this is all moving a little fast, who’s this guy you don’t like?”
“Some primordial elemental douche. Old as the Conception. Old enough that you’re probably related to him at least somehow. Thinks he’s better than the rest of us. I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Okay, but what’s his name?”
“He’s older than names, he’ll spin some bullcrap on the spot and act like it’s a title.”
“Oh.”
“Am I free to go?”
“Sure, but do you have time to fill out a brief customer satisfaction survey?”
“Bite me!”
The succubus stomped on one of the runes Warnado couldn’t understand and smeared her foot over it. The rune was unaffected. The succubus roared in anger and began to tear at her suit. Shadow broke the connection.
She smirked. “She’ll get over it.”
Warnado, however, was barely worried about the angry demon-lady who now hated him. He just wanted to get this family reunion over.
“Can we talk to this elemental guy and just call it for today?” Warnado asked with substantial discomfort.
“There is one more demon we should consult beforehand, one that’ll give me something I can actually use to call this supposed ancient demon.” Shadow said, then added. “If he’s as arrogant as described we may have to wait for a bit until he answers the call. Maybe we can try some others on the list in the meantime.”
“Fine. Do it.”
Shadow traced a new pattern. All sharp angles, yet somehow also weirdly curved. It looked… wrong. She began summoning, and soon something began clawing at the fabric of reality within the inner circle. When the gap opened, the demon stepped through. Well, slopped through.
The creature was a weird blend of flesh that was green and black and red, with a million eyes and a thousand mouths and single grasping arm rippling with muscles and with claws like lightning bolts.
“Gross,” said Amanda.
“So,” Warnado began with renewed confidence. “I have some questions. First and foremost, how did you get that cool arm?”
###
They had spent about an hour trying to contact Warnado’s demonic ancestor and doubt was starting to set in again. He’d actually really gotten into it for a while after the Chronicler - the fleshy thing with the cool arm - had explained all of this arcane lore about what the elementals were, and why the demonic languages were pretty much constant across all worlds, and a bunch of neat stuff about crimes against nature and wars against something called the Demiurge. Most of it flew completely over Warnado’s head but the Chronicler just had a way of talking about it that made it all sound really cool.
Unfortunately, when it finally offered up a way of getting in touch with demon-grandpa, the geezer didn’t answer. They went to voicemail or something. Maybe he was out doing demon things. However, Warnado was still feeling confident they decided to talk to a bunch of other demons whose names the succubus hadn’t crossed out on the off chance that one of them was related to him somehow, or at least knew anything about his ancestry. And the general answer was that the ancient elemental was their best lead.
They did meet some interesting characters, though. A slugman told them a lot about how powers were inherited and kept trying to get him to sign a contract. A small, black monkey-looking thing didn’t tell them anything useful and just encouraged Warnado to drink frankly unhealthy quantities of green tea - according to Shadow it preyed on the sleep-deprived so that made sense. They also met a young, hunchbacked woman who breathed fire and had hooves like a horse who said she could predict the future but kept breaking down laughing before she could say anything vague - Warnado couldn’t tell if this boded well or not.
And eventually they reached a lull. They’d gone through most of the names on the list and Shadow was drawing a new pattern. Amanda, seeing how Warnado didn’t feel quite as fearful as he did at the start, sat cross-legged on the black void, her nose deep into a book.
Then, Shadow backed away suddenly from the circle. The chalk changed colour to the same deep purple as Warnado’s demonic fire, but it glowed like embers or hot metals rather than the roaring fire he summoned. The lines began to retrace themselves, slowly etching their way across the floor with a sound like breaking glass.
He looked at Shadow.
“This you?”
“It’s the call I made to the ancient elemental demon, it’s only answering it now.”
Warnado started to recognise the pattern. It was the same they’d used when they tried to summon the elemental. Shadow’s calmness reassured him a little - after all, this was her pocket dimension, she set the rules in here - but he couldn’t help but feel a little on-edge.
“So, if this thing decides it’s not going to play nice, you can beat it, right?”
Shadow nodded. “Whatever this supposed ancestor of yours may be in the demon world, it can only bring a fraction of its power here. Going up against the Entity’s manifestations has taught me quite a bit about severing connections of higher-dimensional beings.”
“Okay,” Warnado gulped. “Cool. Cool, cool, cool.”
He hopped from foot to foot. Amanda stepped up beside him and rubbed him affectionately on the back. He tried to fidget a little less.
The lines finally scraped back into position. A fire, the same colour as his own, broke out in the centre of the circle and spread about. Warnado expected something to arise from it, but there was only fire. A smiling fire. It had no face, no features, but somehow Warnado could tell from the speed and height of the flames that it was smiling faintly and calmly, waiting for them to speak. He felt the urge to run.
“Hello,” he forced himself to say. “I wanted to ask if you were maybe my ancestor, I guess.”
“And who are you, you insignificant little mortal, to ask me such a question?” The condescension was palpable.
“Um, your descendent, possibly. I - I’ve got some prophecy to fulfil and I want to be strong enough to do that. So, I was hoping you could explain to me what I am, you know?”
The flame-being laughed and wouldn’t stop for a solid thirty seconds. “Who put the thought in your mind that I would consort with mortals? I have no offspring, mortal or otherwise. Many inherited my power in other ways but… that is not one of them.”
“Oh. Well, who has inherited your power? Could they help me?”
“More than I care to list, besides, if I were to list them your pathetic mortal life would find its natural end before I am halfway finished.”
Warnado noticed how the flames began probing the summoning circle for potential weaknesses, but not finding any so far. He cocked an eyebrow at Shadow, but she seemed unconcerned. Warnado gritted his teeth, summoned fire on his arm.
“Does this jog your memory at all?”
The fire howled with laughter and surged upwards.
“Mortal, you do not realise how little that narrows it down!” It paused, then added with relish. “I don’t even know what you look like.”
Warnado clenched his fists. The jerk fire wanted him to lower his hood. Amanda grabbed him by the shoulder and looked him in the eyes.
“Helix, you don’t have to do anything you’re uncomfortable with. Especially not for this dork.”
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then forced himself to answer without particularly knowing what would come out.
“No, no, I’m good. I’m doing it. I’ll do it. It’s cool, probably.”
“Okay,” said Amanda. “As long as you’re cool with it.”
“I am. Really, I am. Okay, let’s do this.”
He turned back to the elemental and lifted his hands to his hood. This would be the first time he’d willingly shown his horns to anyone other than Amanda in years. He took a deep breath, clenched his eyes shut, and pulled it back. He waited, sightless, for a response.
“Horns? Haha! I wondered why your gauntlet was too big for you. Let me guess, he just couldn’t handle the burden? Went off somewhere quietly to die? I am unsurprised, weakness begets weakness.”
The fire could have manifested a hand and punched him in the mouth, and Warnado wouldn’t have been as gobsmacked. He turned to Amanda, who was similarly in shock. It was as though this insult had knocked all the emotion out of him for a few seconds, leaving plenty of room for all the anger that flooded in immediately after. He Warnado towards the fire, cold fury leaving him shivering.
“My dad was not weak-”
“I have infinite time at my disposal, yet I can only think of one other time when my time felt quite as wasted as now.”
The fire flared, then collapsed in on itself. The tongues of flame burrowed into the dirt like worms, leaving the chalk lines untouched atop a scorched, black surface. It was gone.
Warnado swallowed his anger with considerable difficulty.
“I get why the succubus hates him so much. I really get it.”
“What a dirtbag. Thanks for stepping in back there Shadow, you really kept him in line,” snarked Amanda.
Shadow sighed. “I kept the demon in the circle. Anything beyond that would not have made a difference. It’s not your ancestor, that much we can be sure of. I suppose it can be of some solace, looking at how it carried itself.”
“Yeah,” said Warnado flatly.
He had let his eyes sink with his mood, and now they were fixed on Kay’s goggles around his neck. He saw that there was a speck of dirt on the right lens and set about angrily scratching it off, imagining he was smothering that stupid fire.
Looking at the goggles, of course, reminded him of how he’d gotten them. He wondered if he should tell Kay about this session, especially as he’d done it behind Kay’s back. Kay would probably be pretty supportive and give one of those speeches he loved so much, but he’d also definitely use it against Shadow. He and Shadow had never really gotten on, but now Warnado was really starting to worry they might start fighting each other instead of the Tower. He felt like a kid caught in the middle of a really, really messy divorce. A divorce where both parents had nukes.
He tried to move on from this, but as he scratched at the speck the thoughts just kept bouncing around his head, so he finally gave in and decided they should probably talk about it.
“How’s the coven?” he asked.
Shadow sat down on the floor, seemingly inviting him to do the same. “Passable, better than before when I was just their object of worship. Ever since I used the whole cult leader angle I got some control back. My best mages built me a throne, Pallas even made a banner design. Other than that, someone tried poisoning me yesterday, I don't know whether it was one of the coven who did it as some bizarre proof of divinity thing or one of Kay’s own fanatics. Don’t care either.”
Amanda and Warnado looked at each other with visible surprise and discomfort.
“Oh wow, are you sure you shouldn’t pay more attention to that?” asked Amanda, eyebrows cocked.
Shadow slumped down further to the ground and shrugged. “As long as I am the target of the poisoning, we really have bigger concerns, at least the poison was almost tasteless, so it didn’t spoil the wine.” She then asked: “So, Amanda. You’re caught in the middle of this just like Warnado, but you don’t have Warnado’s connection to Kay. What’s your take on this? The whole civil war waiting to happen if one of us makes a wrong move.”
Amanda blinked, weighed her words and then sighed.
“It’s all really dumb. Kay’s obviously got a lot of issues, but you keep fanning his paranoia. Like, I’m here to help Helix out, and I appreciate that he’s fallen out with Astro, but this absolutely did not need to be arranged secretly. More importantly, while this wasn’t a catastrophe, that stuff the elementa-whoosit said to Helix was pretty messed up and that’s one less person he can talk to about it. Two less if you include Tyron.”
She paused.
“That said, this whole ‘King in Ash’ bit Kay’s doing is just weird. I don’t know if this is his idea or the Book’s but-”
“-It’s absolutely his idea,” interjected Warnado with a grimace.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the Book isn’t egging him on.”
“I know the guy, Amanda, Kay does not need much convincing to grandstand. Remember that obsidian chestplate he used to wear? He told me the other night, that stuff’s ceremonial - the combat version is supposed to be an obsidian alloy, that was just a set of diamond with heavy, volcanic rocks welded on. He sacrificed a lot of mobility just to show off his rank.”
“By Light,” Amanda groaned. “You’re not serious?”
“Yeah, haven’t you noticed how much faster he is now? It’s not just the Book, he physically isn’t carrying as much weight.”
“That’s so dumb.”
“But yeah, he’s definitely the one who came up with the King in Ash schtick. That said, he has a plan. It’s not as stupid as it looks.”
“Really?” snorted Amanda. “It looks pretty darned stupid from where I’m standing.”
“I’m gonna ignore that. He says it’s about giving people purpose - says it’s more ‘constructive’ to talk about building a kingdom afterwards rather than just destroying the Tower.”
Of course, he was lying. Kay hadn’t explained any reasoning to him, he just wasn’t as intense in private… mostly. All this was his best rationalisation of Kay’s actions based on what he knew about the guy. The explanation that made him panic the least.
Warnado kept wanting to turn the conversation back on Shadow, but before he could turn and say something Amanda had something else to say.
“Does he mean it, though? About staying in this dump? I thought he offered to take us back to his world after this is all over.”
Warnado suddenly found himself at a loss. He hadn’t realised the contradiction in terms. Was Kay actually going to stay in Nexus after all this? What did it say about him if this was all just a PR bit?
A sidelong glance at Shadow revealed a sullen, glowering, almost sulky expression. She was not liking what she was hearing. He felt bad after she’d done all this to help him track down his ancestor. Then again, Amanda did have a point about the unnecessary secrecy… Or would Kay and Astro really have objected that strongly?
“I - I guess, he wouldn’t just promise people something and then leave them in the lurch, right?”
“Listen Helix, the real question is, do we want to stay in Nexus after all this? Because I’d rather not.”
He backed up and looked between Amanda and Shadow several times, various sounds that didn’t quite amount to words slipping out of his mouth.
“Amanda, can we talk about this later?”
“Okay, but we can’t avoid conversations like this forever.”
“We’re thirteen, not thirty, we’ve got plenty of time to figure out our life-plan. Anyway Shadow, I’m sorry, you’re doing this cool thing, helping me find old grandpappy the demon, and we’ve - I’ve got you talking about politics. It was stupid, I shouldn’t have asked.”
She replied: “The thing is, you have a point. The situation would be better if I knew how to work with people better. People have always been Fire’s thing. People and academics and most other things too.”
Shadow seemed to let go of all notions of dignity or composure and transitioned from her slumped over sitting posture to laying down on her back, looking up at the endless dark.
“Our world was created as an experiment, how people would live in something like it. Everyone who is there is there willingly. It made things easier for me, I never had to deal with the sheer naked despair we have everywhere in the shelter. Back home people knew, no matter what happened, they had another whole world to return to if things didn’t work out in the artificial one. Even in the capital, Rockhaven, which is more-or-less intrigue-and-backstabbing central with all the guild politics, everyone knows it’s ‘in good fun’ so to speak.”
She demonstratively let some lightning crackle between her fingers. “Sure, I learned a lot of things over time, that just comes with having lived for five thousand years but the only thing I ever really had going for me was power, magic. It’s not a small thing but… having seen Nexus and everyone here, just makes me feel like I’m missing something essential. I had this whole talk with Astro about ‘humanity’ and now look at me, this isn’t human. But knowing what I am not is not really helping me, I want to know what I am. The coven thinks I am a god. What even is a god?!”
Warnado felt a little iffy about this. He’d been to church a few times as a kid, but he didn’t really remember much more than Light creating the world and expelling Darkness and so on, and he knew even less about what Shadow believed. But he felt bad, so he felt he had to say something.
“I mean, I don’t know. Do you want to be a god?” he tried, a little desperately.
“That question would be easier to answer if I knew what being a god meant. People in my world, the one that isn’t constructed, have so many different ideas of what a god should be. Some say it’s this one big force that created everything, others have multiple gods who are effectively just people but bigger and involved in some convoluted family drama, others think that literally everything is a god or has a god dedicated to it. There is a lot of room for interpretation. It doesn’t help that in our world we have no actual proof of divinity, something quite a few worlds here have the luxury of.”
“Um, yeah-” Warnado struggled, until Amanda interjected.
“-Well, if god is too hard to define, why not define human? What are you afraid of losing?”
Shadow propped herself up on her elbows, contemplating. “I suppose it’s empathy, or better the ability to relate at all. But also, the ability to rise above your instincts and urges, to be in control of your actions. I may not be exactly human myself, but I am close enough to derive great enjoyment from interacting with people. When I embrace my Void state… that all just goes away. I feel nothing. I think but I do not feel. I remember that I have some kind of connection to the people I see but I don’t feel it. Back when Fire made his declaration that he would infiltrate the Tower, I told myself that I would destroy the Entity should he die. Even if I had to take all of existence and tear it apart.”
Shadow took a long pause. “I don’t know where that thought came from, just that it was my thought. Right now, I know that tearing existence apart is bad, I will also know it when I lose myself to the Void fully. But the feeling that stops me from doing it won’t be there. I suppose I’m afraid of losing touch, which is a bad way to phrase it for the extent of its consequences.”
Even Amanda seemed stumped by this. They both stood there, almost saying something and then not. This conversation just kept spiralling. Warnado had wanted to learn where he stood, but now it was more like he was falling, constantly, and had been for a very long time without realising it.
“So, are you still up for summoning my ancestor? Or should we come back later?” He smiled apologetically and felt like human garbage.
Shadow slowly got up again. “It is what we came here for. I’ll be fine in the meantime. I suppose putting it all into words at least helped me understand what it is I am struggling with.”
She walked over to her demonology supplies and flipped through a book. “There is one thing we can still try. I doubt that that elemental demon spoke the truth about not having offspring. I once read that older demons occasionally lose parts of themselves. The demon world is nothing like our own so metaphors are the closest I can get to explaining it, it’s like a snake shedding its skin and the shed skin gaining life of its own. Maybe your ancestor is one such shedding. I can slightly modify my call so we may summon it here.”
Warnado looked warily at his brass-coloured gauntlet and remembered what Shadow had said when analysing it. That it wasn’t just a gauntlet, that it was an organic part of a demon. It made sense that other demons would lose pieces of themselves.
He forced some enthusiasm into his voice
“Okay, it’s like we’re calling the other half of a worm that got cut in half,” he said. “That’s good.”
He watched as Shadow traced a slight modification of the pattern, slightly altering the angles. He felt his heart pound faster. The runes lit up a similar colour to before, and a demon slowly ascended through.
First, Warnado saw horns, longer than his, sharper too, but indisputably of the same white-ish grey mottling as his own. Next, reddish-brown skin, yellow, cat-like eyes and a toned torso. Finally, his legs and feet weren’t unlike Freak, smokey and partly transparent. Warnado also noticed that his right hand, adorned with several brass rings, was a seething mass of purple flame barely holding its form.
The demon looked around, calmly and more than a little bored. He looked like his eyes might drift shut at any moment, not because he was actually tired but just because he found whoever he was speaking to uninteresting.
“Hello?” he asked with a comparable absence of enthusiasm. He addressed it to Shadow, who remained silent.
“Hi, are we related?” Warnado asked, waving to draw his attention.
“Oh, sorry didn’t see you there, kid.” He craned his head and looked Warnado up and down. “Yeah, that seems probable. I’ve had a handful of progenies. What’s that on your wrist? Gauntlet, huh? I think I remember that one. Not because Tin-throne was particularly tough, I was actually surprised by what a pushover he was. He used to talk a lot of trash, really deserved mutilating. It is Tin-throne in there, right?”
“It is.”
“That’s good.”
The demon smiled nostalgically before lapsing back into boredom.
“Did you make it for my dad? Or my grandad? I don’t know how long it’s been in the family.”
“I don’t know, I’m pretty sure you’re only the second generation. I gave it to the first guy about twenty, thirty years ago. Something about a guy called Herobrine? I don’t know, I’m not actually allowed in your world anymore - demon politics, it’s complicated - I wasn’t supposed to be there to begin with but now I’m super banned. Haha, primordial elementals can be so territorial. Your father passed a message to me through a demon friend, and I made a gauntlet for him. Like I said, Tin-throne had been asking for it for a while, so it was a two birds one stone situation...”
He trailed off and looked expectantly at Warnado, arms folded across his chest. Warnado took the hint.
“Actually, I meant to ask about him. He’s been a little tricky to control, and according to a succubus I met apparently, he’s leeching off my power. He also probably killed my dad.”
“Oh, yeah, he would do that. Sorry, kid, I assumed cutting his arm off would teach him not to try anything. Then again, I didn’t exactly have a close eye on the situation so… Oops.”
“My dad died, and your response is ‘Oops’?”
“We weren’t exactly close. What do you want from me?”
“Something a little more than ‘oops.’ At least slap an exclamation mark on there or something. A little energy to indicate you’re at least bothered.”
“Okay. Oops! That better?”
“Yes.”
“But yeah, the whole power leeching deal. It was intended as a mediating thing. Training wheels so your dad or grandad or whoever didn’t end up cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer by accident, you get me. And, because he’s human, he also just needed help to tap into his powers. He was supposed to gradually demand more and more power and that would burn Tin-throne off - like a leech.”
“Then, what happened to my dad?”
“If I had to guess, he probably was too timid. Avoided using his power and treated Tin-throne like he had a monopoly on it. Your dad keeps making requests instead of giving orders. Tin-throne keeps acting like he’s in a position to negotiate, so keeps getting your dad to grant concessions, Tin-throne gets more and more power. Goes from providing fuel for the car, to sitting in the back getting a free ride, to sitting in the shotgun seat giving directions, to convincing your dad to let him steer from time to time. Your dad grows weaker and weaker, and eventually he can’t handle his own power. He finally tries to burn Tin-throne off and in the process only burns himself out… Yeah, that sounds right. Sorry for your loss, it sounds pretty sucky when I say it out loud.”
“Thanks?”
“You're welcome. Is that all?”
“No, but not too much longer. I just want to know how I can make the opposite of what happened to dad happen to me.”
“Well, you’ve heard my advice, give commands, use more power. Tin-throne’s never healing from what I did to him, your power is just keeping him stable.”
“So I should just go all out? Big, demonic attack to clear him out once and for all?”
“Well yeah, that sounds pretty good. ‘Course only do that if you think you’re strong enough.”
“What would happen if I’m not strong enough?”
“Probably you’d just die. Pretty horribly too. Overloading is never pretty. You saw your dad, you know yourself.”
“Oh. I think I’m going to have to build up to that one a little bit.”
The demon’s eyes drifted around the black void, plainly losing interest.
“You know, you do you, kid. Whatever you think you can handle.”
Silence reigned as Warnado reflected on the disturbing choice between having his power drained by the guy who killed his dad and killing himself trying to get rid of that guy.
“Can I go now?” Asked the demon impatiently.
Just at that moment, there was a sound almost like someone knocking on a door, but distant and shimmering.
“Shadow,” said a far-off voice. “Will you let me in?”
Shadow’s face seemed caught between annoyance and surprise.
“Apparently, yes,” said Warnado. “Sorry, what’s your name?”
The demon said something unpronounceable in the human tongue and which Warnado had a hard time remembering. But it started with a ‘T’.
“Tim it is.”
“It is not.”
“Anyway, have a nice day Tim, we hope you found our service satisfactory. We will call you back about future business.”
“Please don’t.”
The demon faded back into the chalk lines. The knocking sound repeated.
“It’s me, Astro.” Silence. “Listen, I know things have been strained recently, and I said some things I kind of regret, but I need to talk to you.”
Warnado and Amanda looked at each other, then at Shadow.
Shadow sighed. “Fine, come in. We just had to finish something up here first.”
“Wait,” Astro called. “Who’s we?”
With a quick gesture Shadow made the entryway into the pocket dimension reappear, seconds after Astro came stumbling through, evidently having leaned against the other side. He straightened up, saw Amanda and Warnado, and immediately groaned.
“Oh, for mods’ sake, Shadow, and you complain- No! That’s not important right now. I need to talk to you in private, it’s a personal matter.”
He shot a warning look at Amanda and Warnado, who in turn cast a look at Shadow, silently asking if they could stay. Shadow shook her head, and they began to depart. Warnado stopped and turned.
“Thanks for the help, Shadow,” he said. “Really.”
Shadow replied with a smile: “And thank you two for listening to my existential rant.”
They smiled half apologetically and emerged back into Nexus. On the other side, they saw Tyron pull up outside the door, put his arm against the frame and look furtively up and down the corridor. Despite his shiftiness, he seemed to be pretty happy, a doofy smile on his face. When he saw the two kids, he backed up suddenly. The smile scattered like a thin mist.
“Hi Tyron,” said Warnado sleepily.
“Hello,” said Tyron with some surprise.
“Hi friend!” chirped Kir slightly less sincerely than usual.
The two children emerged into the hallway. Warnado was about to go straight to his room. He felt emotionally and physically overworked, and just wanted to lie on his bed and feel like trash for a while. Amanda, however, stopped and turned on her heel.
“Aren’t you supposed to be overseeing the first round of emissaries right now?”
He paused. Then, sheepishly:
“No?”
“Lucy handling it! Urgent question for Shadow about portals,” explained Kir with surprising tact.
“Yeah, that,” Tyron confirmed with substantially less art.
“And you came in person instead of sending a messenger?”
“I tried that,” said Tyron, recovering some composure. “He kept coming back with technobabble. I need someone to explain the science to me like the idiot I am.” He forced a laugh.
Amanda scrutinised him with something a little more intense and accusatory than confusion, then cocked her head and said:
“Sure, hope you get it sorted.”
“Thank you. Oh and, could you not tell Kay I’m here? He won’t be happy about me leaving my post to talk to Shadow. You probably haven’t noticed but they’re not getting on too well right now.”
“Oh absolutely,” she nodded.
Tyron began to approach the pocket dimension entrance, which had remained conspicuously open.
“You know Astro’s in there?” Amanda asked with a certain wistfulness.
Tyron stopped again and tried to look surprised.
“Is he? Perfect. At least one of them will be able to explain the problem to me!” He forced another laugh.
Warnado didn’t know why, but he felt ill.
Amanda nodded slowly. Warnado could have sworn he saw her eyes misting up, before she rapidly blinked them clear.
“Stay safe, Tyron.”
Tyron swallowed loudly.
“I will.”
And he slipped out of sight. The doorway closed instantaneously.
“What was that about, Amanda?”
Amanda began to walk quickly down the hall. Warnado jogged to catch up.
“Amanda, what was that?”
She turned. Her eyes were watering, teetering on the precipice of tears.
“Things are changing. It’s time to figure out our life plan, Helix.”
Warnado’s heart felt like lead in his chest.
“If anyone asks why I’m sad, you said something stupid. Implied I looked fat, or mannish, or any other stupid thing. Get creative. And for Light’s sake, don’t mention any of this to Kay.”
She covered her mouth and ran off down the hallway, and for the first time in a while Helix felt deeply, truly alone.
Chapter 58: The Last Straw (Steve)
Fire’s private chambers had been left in the exact state like when they had awaited his notes. It was a highly organized mess that only Fire himself had been able to fully overlook. Miniature redstone circuits of staggering complexity were laid out on stone slabs the back portions of the floor and an incomplete piston-and-slime-block contraption filled a significant part of the room. On Fire’s desk still stood the twelve claws that had held the ender pearls that brought the notes to them, beside them was a tall, almost towering stack of blueprints.
The only free floor space was the path that went from the entrance to the desk and to their former commander’s large bed. The sheets were still ruffled from the various people who had used it as a seat after Fire’s departure.
However, that evening, the ruffled sheets were covered with the former commander’s old blueprints, initially stacked in neat piles which quickly deteriorated as they were used. Soon enough, there was a thick layer of scattered paper over nearly every inch of the bed’s surface - and bearing in mind how big Fire had been, that was saying a lot.
“It has to be in here somewhere,” mumbled Steve as he sorted through. “Any luck on your end?”
“Lot of potion recipes, armour designs, the airship blueprints we already showed him, but nope, haven’t found the artillery platform designs yet,” said Jennifer from the other side of the bed.
“Nuts. He’s going to give me some big sermon about the new world he’s going to build and how I’m holding that up - I should be briefing Wolfric and Ozen about their responsibilities, or you know just talking to my brother who I haven’t seen in months. It’s bad enough when he asks Astro to do stupid stuff like this, we have Lucy and the admin crew for a reason!”
He glanced at Jennifer, brow dark with annoyance. She smiled back sympathetically, and this seemed to lift his spirits a bit.
“I meant to ask, I thought you said he was bringing Lucy ‘back into the fold’ or something? Why isn’t he trusting her with this?”
“It’s more like he’s taken her out of quarantine. He interacts directly with her now and invites her to meetings, but the Inner Circle still meets and it’s still the same six people with the same level of secrecy. Why is the construction of an obviously visible artillery platform being treated with this much secrecy you may ask?”
“I do,” giggled Jennifer.
“No one knows, and it’s kind of stupid to ask at this point. If I had to guess, he doesn’t want to look like he’s run out of ideas and is now scraping around Fire’s old plans. Or, maybe he just doesn’t want anyone to know the King in Ash is not a lone visionary guiding us toward salvation.”
“He’s really doubling down on that title, isn’t he?”
“Unfortunately, yes. He is very serious about all that,” Steve sighed.
He didn’t say anything for a while, and then lifted a sheet, scrutinised it for a moment and then put it down with a grunt.
“The environment in the Inner Circle is just not good at the moment. The arrival of the new allies is helping a little, it’s certainly cheered me up, but it also makes it pretty clear how miserable things have gotten.”
“How so?”
Jennifer came around and put an arm around his waist.
“You’d have to be there to understand. We’re not fighting or anything, but we’re all just letting Kay do as he pleases. He’s worn us down. Tyron’s got this thousand-yard stare he keeps putting on, it’s like he’s sent a training dummy to meetings in his place. Destiny’s almost as bad as she was back when David died - flipping between morose and quiet and just so angry. Astro’s rushed off his feet and has stopped snarking at Kay like he used to. And you know me, I’m not a professional at this, Kay starts throwing around phrases like quid pro quo or telling me to ‘reflect on the optics’ and I lose any idea of how to challenge him. Only Rose seems fine with things as they are, and Rose is kind of scary. Honestly, the meetings are kind of scary.”
“Well, if you’re not fighting, what’s got you on edge?”
Steve put a finger to his lips as the door opened. In walked a soldier in a red scarf.
“General Steve, sir!”
It was the villager, Raphoe, having undergone yet another weird transfer and promotion into Steve’s own unit. He was now a lieutenant.
“Yes, Raph?”
“His Ashen Highness wishes to inquire about the blueprints-”
“-We’re struggling but we’ll have them for tomorrow morning. Fire has a lot of material.”
“He also wants you to see if Fire has anything on the possibility of enhancing magical abilities, particularly for combat purposes.”
“Sure thing. Tell him I say hi,” he smiled.
Raphoe nodded and left. Steve followed him to the door. There was a squad of six men with Raphoe. Steve kept up his smile and watched them until they turned the corner, then he shut the door carefully and released his breath.
“That’s why I’m on edge. He’s all smiles and new lounges one minute, and then he sends an armed battalion to check up on you the next. Add to that he can now incinerate an entire building and you guess why no one wants to argue with him.”
Jennifer grimaced as she remembered the attack on the portal facility, and how Kay had burned the warehouse full of civilian workers. She wasn’t sure how many had died, and Kay hadn’t necessarily known they were there, but that was messed up. She remembered Xylo screaming at her as the voidfire climbed his back, and her insides felt like poison.
“I understand,” she said minimalistically.
She didn’t want Steve to feel as though she were trying to influence him, but she just didn’t know if she could trust the guy capable of that sort of destruction.
She set about filtering through documents again. The next in the pile chilled her blood.
“Well… I think I found what Kay had in mind,” she said with a nervous laugh.
Steve rushed over and peered over her shoulder with uncharacteristically steely eyes.
The document below contained a series of sketches and instructions outlining the process necessary to carry out an “Ascension Ritual”, the same ceremony which had granted Shadow her reality-bending abilities.
At the very beginning of the sketches was a note that the instructions were not complete and that Fire or Shadow for that matter could complete them “should times become dire”. What was described of the ritual was gruesome. The subject of the ritual first had to drink a potion which would keep them alive during the procedure, then some kind of knife would be used to carve a very specific set of runes into their skin. This would completely drain the subject of blood.
Steve had to look away for a few seconds as he felt his stomach turn. Jennifer, however, kept reading aloud.
“In the absence of blood, the potion shall be the subject’s only tether to the living world, preventing their death. After this, the rune-shaped cuts-”
“-Jennifer, can we take a minute, this is pretty heavy,” interrupted Steve.
“Steve, this is important.”
The force and gravity she said this with was unlike anything Steve had heard her say before. It wasn’t angry or joyous, she was just absolutely convinced of what she had said. The weight of it struck him in the gut and knocked the nausea out of him. They returned to reading.
After this, the rune-shaped cuts would be enchanted with actual magical runes. The final step was not illustrated and only described as “magic infusion”. There was also a warning that there was no guarantee that the ritual would ever work again.
“Well, that’s gruesome,” said Steve weakly.
“You can’t tell him about this. We can’t have him putting peoples’ lives at risk like this.”
“Jen, Kay’s a jerk but he’s not going to mutilate people with this little chance of success.”
“Won’t he?”
“No, he’s just on a bit of a power trip-”
“-He’s always just on something. He’s always just a little stressed about Shadow being weird. Or he’s just a little sore about losing the election to Fire. Or he’s just trying to minimise casualties. Or just burning a warehouse full of civilians-”
“Jen, we don’t know he knew about them.”
“‘Just King Kay’ didn’t care about knowing!”
She grabbed the document with one hand and Steve’s shoulder with the other.
“Steve,” she continued. “If you give him these plans his thinking is going to follow exactly this trajectory.” She put on her best approximation of Kay’s posh affectations. “‘Wait a second, this is the ritual that created Shadow. That means it’s possible to make more people as powerful as her. That means she might be creating them to plot against me as we speak! I must create ascended mages of my own to rival her, or stupider still, I must undergo this ritual myself. Quick, Warnado, hold my sleeve up while Raphoe and Rose mutilate my arm! My beloved Book will keep me safe! What are you gawking at Astro, I’m only leading from the front?’”
She thumped Steve on his pauldron for emphasis. As it rang out, Steve processed.
“Holy crap,” he concluded. “Jennifer, I’m not sure Kay should be leader anymore.”
“Shall we go see how Shadow’s doing?”
“Yeah.”
And they left, the seed of revolution firmly planted in their minds.
Chapter 59: Gathering Storm (Shadow)
Astro began with his eyes forced shut, as though by refusing to observe his statements he prevented them from being definitely real.
“Kay’s not well. He’s falling down exactly the same chute as last time. He needs to be removed from office,” said Astro. He forced his eyes open. “I need your help.”
Shadow had not been prepared for that line of thinking, much less in a manner this direct, even less coming from Astro directly. She took a few moments to get her thoughts in order, putting away all the ones about demons and godhood. A small part of her was tempted to gloat about Astro coming crawling to her and everything that went along with it, but the rest of her knew that now was not the time for that, now was the time for level-headed discussion.
She emphatically breathed in and out, then asked: “So, what’s the situation? Did he cross a line? Or additional lines that is.”
“Well, I’d like to say burning the warehouse full of civilians was a casus belli, but mostly it was the fact that the most cripplingly unstable man I know now can burn a warehouse full of civilians with a thought. Doesn’t help that he's named himself king of a noun that indicates he fully intends to burn more things.”
The snark had a forced quality, as though his throat were dry and hoarse, and he had to speak at a specific volume for it not to show in his voice
Shadow said: “Trust me when I say that I have contemplated a coup, or something similar to it. The reason I have not put any such plan into motion is because all it would do is fracture and destabilize our followers. My mages against his warriors with the civilians being caught in the middle.” She paused briefly. “I currently see no way to go about this without at least some internal conflict.”
That was the truth, every time she had thought about it, Shadow was faced with a lose-lose situation. Leave Kay in charge and potentially have him run the Shelter into the ground with his megalomania or take action and have the Shelter destroy itself in a civil war. Fire probably would have found a way out, but then again, if Fire were here the whole issue would be null.
Astro smeared his fingers across his face, winding up squeezing his upper lip to the point of strangulation. His skin shone an intense shade of white between the thicket of black hairs which made up his beard. His eyes scanned the floor as he paced to and fro.
“That’s a risk we have to take. It should go better if you join forces with us. There’s only so many people loyal to him. Rose, Raphoe, Warnado, and who else? I don’t know about you, but I don’t see Urist risking his neck for Kay. Steve certainly wouldn’t and he’s in the inner circle!”
Shadow began her own pacing. “You coming to me makes things a lot less muddy, that’s another thing. But you are right, as far as the chain of command is concerned, he does not have many loyalties left. As you saw, Warnado and Amanda were here just earlier, I helped him find his demon ancestor and along the way we may have also discussed Shelter politics. Going by what he said, I wouldn’t call Warnado loyal. Hopeful or optimistic would be a better way to put it. Like he’s still slowly realizing that yes, it really is this bad.”
Shadow thought more about the implications of a coup. “The issue is that a lot of the soldiers are loyal to him directly, even if they technically serve under Steve or Tyron. They’re what make me worried, we need them on our side if we want any chance to win this, especially since it means not having them attack our other people.”
Astro said: “I don’t know, there’s widespread discontent from what I can tell. Or at least, unease. People joined to fight the Tower, to get home, not to reshape Nexus in the name of Kay. Then again, I haven’t been on the ground too much, he’s got me busy with a lot of random bollockry. You’d have to ask-”
There was a knocking sound. Astro fell very quiet.
“If we’re in luck,” he continued slowly. “That’s him... You’re certain Kay can’t hear us in here? I - I don’t know what he’s capable of these days.”
Shadow briefly expanded her senses beyond the pocket dimension, just enough to be able to make out who was on the other side of the door. She immediately felt the Void return to her in full strength as she did, there was a reason why she avoided doing this.
She said: “It’s not Kay, it’s Tyron. Should I let him in?”
Astro swallowed and nodded. He turned away and began to wipe his forehead on the sleeve of his robe.
“If I didn’t have him on board, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I would have had to be more discreet and… hands-on. We may still have to, but we have a chance of making this bloodless.”
With a thought Shadow made the door swing open, Tyron coming into view on the other side. He appeared startled by the sudden movement but then quickly stepped through, casting a glance behind him before the door slammed shut again.
Shadow greeted him: “Hello Tyron, I see we have ourselves another co-conspirator.”
The humor was forced but she felt like at least some amount of it was necessary.
Tyron grimaced and looked very coldly at Shadow.
“I’m just trying to keep everyone safe. I’m not some plotter, and this isn’t an endorsement of your behavior. That chanting back at the raid-”
“-Was an unintended consequence of newfound power, I’m sure,” interjected Astro with policy and a pained smile.
“Something I nonetheless should have prevented in some way, but back then I frankly had very little control over the actions of my followers, something I have at least partially rectified by now.” Shadow conceded. “But nevermind all that. I already spent too much time making excuses about that whole mess to Astro previously.”
Astro looked at the ground with a mixture of shame and suppressed venom, but in an instant raised his eyes again, face purged of emotion. Tyron waited for someone else to speak for some time, then sighed and walked towards the summoning. He dragged a finger across the chalk circle and began rubbing his fingers together.
“Step one: win conditions,” he grunted. “We want Kay not to be Commander anymore. What does that mean? Is he in a cell or still part of the officer’s class? Can he move freely through the shelter? Does he still have his powers? How is the shelter run from that point on?”
“One thing is for certain, while Kay may get a second chance if he cooperates, the same cannot be said for the Book. It seems to have forgotten that we made a deal, it and I. And I am fully intent on fulfilling my end of the bargain, I will destroy the Book because it has proven that it cannot be trusted.” Shadow said with conviction.
She thought back to when she had first communicated with the Book, in its cute little infinite hyperplane of endless shelves and paper. She had put too much faith in the damn thing, especially after what it had done to Fristad, had done to Amanda. No, it was yet another entry on her rapidly growing list of “Things I could have handled better and got people hurt because I didn’t”.
“Yes, he’ll still be a problem without the Book, but he’ll be back to his normal level of dangerous,” agreed Astro with a furious vigor. “We’re destroying that bloody thing.”
He sniffed and turned his head upwards to look into the gaping black void.
Tyron held up a finger.
“So, he doesn’t have his powers. Good, we’ll work on how later. Now, is Kay part of the command structure after this all goes down or is a prisoner? Shadow seems to be leaning towards a ‘wait and see’ approach, what do you say Astro?”
“He’ll be angry. By the mods he’ll be angry. And he’ll blame you,” he pointed at Shadow, “So we either lock him in a cell now or lock him away after he’s done something stupid and probably killed someone.”
Shadow sighed. “You know him better than I do, Astro. If you think he can’t be trusted afterwards then we’ll have to lock him up. The spell I used on Silver will contain him too, even if he somehow keeps some residual magic from the Book.”
“Of course,” Astro continued as though Shadow had said nothing. “Unless the takeover goes well and truly sideways, I’d recommend confining him to his chambers. We’ll have to be subtle about it. We’ll not condemn him before the public or act as though he’s a political prisoner. He’s a friend, our friend, and he’s not very well. Let me handle that, our friendship is common knowledge, especially since the Prophet’s Hill.”
“All good stuff,” Tyron said delicately, coming over and rubbing Astro on the shoulder. “And of course, how are we running things from now on?”
He turned his gaze on Shadow, as though he’d thrown a gauntlet directly into her face. This was obviously what he considered the real test of the strength of their alliance.
Shadow replied bitterly: “Believe me, I’m the wrong person to look to for leadership of the entire Shelter. I’m barely keeping this impromptu cult my mages have formed around me in check. Granted, if Kay is out of the Commander’s chair, they’ll probably become a lot more manageable. My vote would be to not elect a dedicated leader and form a council from our familiar core group. We have… what? Two, three weeks at most until the Entity completes its plan, too little time for anything else.”
Tyron betrayed no emotion. Astro spoke up.
“We were anticipating that the title of Commander would naturally fall to Tyron, though we also intended to run things as a triumvirate behind the scenes - myself, yourself, and Tyron - not too different to how we ran things back before the leadership elections, minus Fire. Everyone important would be invited to meetings to say their piece, though bearing in mind the potential fallout from the takeover, gathering the entire original group into a council could do more harm than good. Either someone within the group starts causing trouble and holding up decision-making or people on the outside start questioning why the leadership is such a closed shop even though the Commander’s office is apparently a revolving door. Democracy’s great, but people need to know who’s in charge in a situation like this.”
He sighed.
“So, are you up for an unofficial triumvirate under the official leadership of Tyron? Yes or no.”
“You are more familiar with the situation and how people react than I am. My own position wouldn’t change much, being in charge of the mages. So, yes, we can do it that way.” Shadow agreed.
If they made it out of this intact Shadow vowed to put in some dedicated effort into learning how to properly work with people. Five thousand years and she had never been in a situation like now, if she ever was in one in the future, she needed to be better. The server would not last forever and eventually she would have to deal with people as they were without a safety net.
“Okay - Kay is to lose his powers, be locked up in his bedroom, and I’m going to pretend to be the undisputed leader, so no one senses there’s a power vacuum and tries to fill it. Burning Nether if that isn’t a perfect storm, I don’t know what is…” grumbled Tyron. “This is so messed up.”
It was Astro’s turn to rub Tyron on the shoulder in a reassuring manner. They both kept swallowing as though they hadn’t drunk in days. He folded his mouth down and prepared to speak when suddenly there was once again a knocking sound.
Shadow once again took a quick look. It was the Brines, very concerned looks on their faces. This was getting surreal, a very refreshingly mundane kind of surreal. She unlocked the door and the two of them quickly came through, casting gazes behind them just like Tyron had done.
“Shadow, we need to talk to you-” Steve began, stopping abruptly when he saw Astro and Tyron. “Or we could come back later. Or if you had a moment in private, not that it’s of political importance, it’s purely personal butnotbecausewe’recloseoranything-”
The blood had drained from his face, and he was obviously babbling so Jennifer put a hand over Steve’s mouth.
“Sweetie, they’re here for the same reason we are. And if they’re not, I’m here to convince them: Kay’s gone off the deep end. He shouldn’t be Commander. Now, are we going to discuss how we take him down, or are you going to call the guards on us?”
Astro, glaring instinctively at Jennifer, marched forward. After coming near enough nose-to-nose with her, he said in a low, frosty monotone:
“We’re going to discuss how to stop a deeply unwell man from hurting himself or others. If you’re here to ‘take him down’, you have come to the wrong place, Jen.”
Without hesitation, Jennifer snapped back: “All well and good for you to say, you’re not the ones he just sent half a battalion to check up on. Or the warehouse workers he fried. Or the people he told would be completely safe and died thanks to his stupid formation-”
Before Jennifer could list any more examples or Astro could get turned back around into supporting Kay, Tyron intervened.
“Listen, we’re Kay’s friends, you guys aren’t close. We’ll split the difference. What’s this about half a battalion?”
“He sent Raphoe and some of his scarf-guys to check on us carrying out a pretty mundane task,” answered Steve. “It was weird. Full armored squad. He’s either getting paranoid or he senses that the ‘King in Ashes’ shtick freaks me the heck out and that’s making him paranoid.”
“By the bloody mods,” groaned Astro. “It’s worse than I thought. We need to stop him, do you have a plan or just a list of reasons Kay’s a terrible person? I’ve known the man for over a decade, believe me, you’re not giving me any new inform- Okay, sorry, I’m lashing out, Jennifer, but seriously, do you two have a plan or should we start brainstorming?”
“We were… we were kind of hoping to hash it out with Shadow.”
“And that Shadow had most of a plan together already,” added Steve, scratching his neck and screwing up his features. Jennifer slumped in concession.
“Fine. That’s fine,” said Tyron. “As I see it, our top priority is getting the Book out of his hands. It’s the reason he’s dangerous. If he didn’t have it, we could probably just send Steve to kick the crap out of him, tell him to wise up, and be mostly done with it. Besides, once he can’t summon voidfire and teleport away, he’ll realize his position is untenable. Even the King in Ash gimmick won’t make sense. He’ll surrender pretty quickly. How do we think we should go about it?”
Shadow again thought back to the tavern room in the village where she had first spoken to the Book. “Back when I made that deal with the Book, it acted like it valued its own survival above everything else, even if it worded it in an esoteric way. By now even it will have realized that it can’t stick with Kay forever, with his tendencies to drive himself to ruin to prove a point. It’s got to be looking for a new host. Currently my money is on Rose since she’s both close to Kay and very suitable with her occult magic, plus I’m sure the Book would be intrigued by the possibility of immortality that her world apparently has.”
Shadow took a few moments to contemplate how to best word what she was about to say.
“If we, in theory, had someone Kay trusts walk up to him and ask for the Book- Who am I kidding? Warnado is the only one who could pull it off without getting incinerated the moment he suggests it. It’s a terrible thing to suggest but it might be a way to get Kay to relinquish the Book so we can bring him in. Or he realizes that the Book is disloyal to him and submits to us. Both very optimistic possibilities, sadly.”
“I’m reluctant to put the kid in harm's way, but this is a bad situation and if we can avoid bloodshed, it might be worth it,” said Tyron. “Do you think it would work, Astro?”
“Shadow’s right,” Astro said. “At the very least we’re giving him an opportunity to step aside peacefully. And Warnado’s pretty much the only one who could ask for the Book to be given to him without Kay immediately branding them a traitor. I’m his friend, but if I asked, he’d consider it a huge betrayal. Same with Tyron. Even before he got the Book, he thought of us as his equals, so he’ll view it as an attempt to get ahead of him. He thinks of Warnado as some sort of lost puppy he needs to bring home and feed warm milk. In short, he might think it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard, but he won’t chalk it up to malice.
“Besides, from the Book’s perspective, Warnado’s a pretty believable option. He has to kill Herobrine or something like that and he’s already consorted with the demonic powers who killed his dad to rise to that occasion. Why draw the line at the Book? Rose would probably be a more powerful host, but we can’t guarantee she would agree with us, and Kay would not allow it - something about undermining the chain of command by ceding his powers to somehow who is so clearly an underling. Warnado he could at least spin as a personal protege or Ashen Prince of some sort.”
He sighed and cradled his head in his hands. Jennifer rubbed him on the back, natural sympathy overpowering the hostility that had existed only a few minutes prior.
“As an added plus,” Steve said enthusiastically. “We only need the ruse to last long enough for one of us to clock Kay in the head. Then we can just destroy the stupid thing.”
After a few seconds’ deliberation, Tyron spoke.
“It’s not awful,” he nodded. “There’s a lot of room for error, but if we can get the kid to do it, it’s worth a shot. Only other things I can think of are ambushing Kay somehow, and his teleporting ability makes that really hard to pull off reliably. Could easily turn into a bloodbath. Confronting him wouldn’t go much more smoothly, even if we got the entire council-to-be on side he’d probably rather run off and rally his troops than give up quietly.”
Shadow looked at Tyron. “So, should we go find Warnado?”
“Sure, it’s probably best if it comes from us. We have the closest connection. Astro, would you mind not coming?”
“No, I understand. He and I and… we don’t click.”
Tyron nodded somberly.
“Just us two then, if anyone asks, we’re going to check on the portal.” Shadow realized what she just said. “Whoops. Sorry about that, you didn’t say that to me. You did think it rather loudly though. Hard to keep the accidental mind-reading suppressed. Another reason to get this whole thing done fast.”
“Hey,” said Jennifer. “This is kind of nostalgic, you know. If you get Warnado on board, it’s almost the same team that took down the Dreamweaver. Just substitute Fire for Tyron and… Fristad and the Book for Kay and the Book…” Her face fell. “...This sucks. I’m sorry I said anything.”
Shadow walked towards the door, which swung open ahead of her. “Let’s get to it then. The rest of you may want to wait behind a bit, it might be a bit suspicious if five people suddenly come out of my room.”
Tyron nodded and followed closely behind. Shadow focused up, it was time to face the noise.
The moment she stepped out into Nexus, Shadow was acutely aware of everything and everyone around her. Just so many different thoughts and feelings everywhere. She was not overwhelmed but she certainly was not comfortable knowing what everyone around her thought at the moment. She looked around, searching for Warnado and soon found her apprentice in one of her coven’s otherwise empty training rooms, currently munching on an unusually large taco.
“He’s in ‘my’ section of the Shelter, should make it easier to not attract attention.” She noted.
Shadow and Tyron split up soon after leaving her room to avoid suspicion. A quick walk and a short-distance teleport to avoid Raphoe’s squad later, Shadow stood at the door to the training room, waiting for Tyron.
Chapter 60: The Plan’s Keystone (Tyron)
“Bad idea. Won’t say yes,” said Kir.
“Sorry buddy, but until a good idea comes along it’s the best we have,” thought Tyron.
He and Shadow had split up on the way to meet Warnado - someone would say something if they were seen approaching him together, so he was left alone with his thoughts, and Kir’s.
Unfortunately, he could tell this didn’t satisfy his sword. He could feel its discomfort like a clammy heat at the back of his mind. Discomfort, and a hint of accusation.
“I don’t like this any more than you do. Kay’s done his best to do right by us, so we’re giving him a chance to step down. You saw those flames. That’s Herobrine-level destruction. And the kid’s going to be in more danger if we leave him next to that without doing anything.”
“Never said coup wrong. Said plan bad.”
Tyron groaned and tried thinking about the joy he’d felt not an hour previous. The relief of seeing Glowstar, and her: Rathina. The smell of oak in her hair, her smooth skin, the conviction with which she’d held him…
Unfortunately, he reached the end of the corridor, and had to leave this happy train of thought. For one thing, he’d entered the Coven’s section of Shelter, and there were now people in identical robes everywhere. More importantly, he saw Warnado in an unoccupied training room, biting into the mother of all tacos. Shadow stood by the door, subtly gesturing to him to approach. Tyron pretended not to notice her and walked right in.
He opened his mouth and hoped a natural lead-in would present itself, but suddenly he could only think about what might go wrong. What if Kay noticed this? What if Raphoe had him tailed? What if Warnado said no?
“That’s what I was saying!” grumbled Kir.
He stared, dumbfounded, as the child ate away. Tyron couldn’t see his eyes, so he wasn’t sure what Warnado was thinking or feeling, and couldn’t help but feel surprised
The door closed, Shadow had come in, and thankfully she proved more decisive.
She quietly said to Tyron: “Nobody followed us.” Then, more loudly to her apprentice: “Warnado, there is something we need to talk about. I know it’s a little much with what you’ve been through today but hear us out, okay?”
He sighed.
“Whatever it is, I’m not doing it. I’m not telling, but don’t make me part of this. Just, leave me alone, please.”
Warnado’s head drooped, and he turned to face the far wall, continuing to bite greedily into the taco. Tyron thought back to the hallway, and how Warnado and Amanda had caught him so completely off guard. He should have been paying more attention. His eyes fell to the floor.
“You’re the only one he’ll listen to,” said Kir with solemnity. “Only way to talk him down.”
Warnado seemed to rise a little, then hunched over pointedly. He snapped his fingers and the taco disappeared. He cast a glance over his shoulder in Shadow’s direction.
Warnado now asked directly: “What is it?”
“Thanks,” said Tyron to Kir.
“One second,” muttered Shadow.
There was a low droning sound as she finished casting the sound-proofing spell. Soon after, the bustle of the hallway became muffled and distant, then disappeared completely.
“Shortly after you left, several others visited me, all with very similar motivations. I’ll make it short. We think Kay has become too dangerous, too volatile to continue leading the Shelter. We have a plan to convince him to step down, in the best case at least. We need you for that plan.”
The kid kept quiet.
“We genuinely didn’t expect things to go this way. I approached Shadow today with Astro, not sure what to expect. Then the Brines showed up with the same worries… I’ll stop beating around the bush, PR is Kay’s thing. We need you to ask him to hand over the Book to you.”
Warnado whirled around and stood up.
“NO! I agree to talk to demons for one day and suddenly you all turn into Astro. I’m not letting that thing into my head.”
Shadow quickly said: “And we do not expect you to. We want Kay to give up the Book, then I will destroy it. It’s done more than enough harm already. Though, you could potentially work the inverse of what you just said into convincing Kay.”
“It’s a ruse, it’ll last exactly long enough for us to take Kay out of play. Steve wants to clock him in the head, but I could just freeze him or something. We just need them separated.”
Tyron looked to Shadow, asking her to continue. She explained: “The reason we need you for this is because Kay would consider the same question coming from anyone else a huge betrayal. It’s different for you, Kay likes you too much for that. Astro even thought it possible that Kay may want to make you a ‘Prince in Ash’ or something of the sort. The important part is that if he thinks his own position of power is secure, he may pass the Book on to you as a gesture of sorts.”
Shadow paused, then continued with a slightly darker tone. “Alternatively, if he’s unwilling but the Book wants you as its new host Kay might feel betrayed, which either convinces him to step down or gives us an opening to act. We want him alive, ideally placed under house arrest inside of his room.”
“Just until he cools off,” added Tyron with the slightest hint of warning.
Warnado started nodding and pacing back and forth, looking like a hyperactive bobblehead.
“Okay, I can see this. We just show him how creepy and untrustworthy that hardcover dork is, and he’ll recognise it’s making him be creepy and untrustworthy too. He’ll understand. You’ll hardly need to lock him up at all.”
He forced himself to laugh, as though each laugh was bailing water out of his lungs.
“I’ll do it. And then we can all go back to normal,” he concluded.
“Yeah, back to normal,” smiled Tyron.
But of course, Tyron knew ‘normal’ simply couldn’t happen. Kay would deteriorate with or without the Book, and he would drag everyone down with him. But Warnado didn’t need to hear that. Not yet.
“Don’t lead kid on,” scolded Kir.
Tyron felt a chill the size of an earthquake thunder up his spine.
“I need false hope as much as he does,” thought Tyron defensively.
Tyron must taken longer than he had realised responding, because Warnado said with a little impatience.
“So, when are we doing it?”
Shadow said: “Kay is on an excursion off-world currently. You should prepare yourself mentally, think of some lines maybe. Come to my room once Kay’s back and you’re ready, I’ll gather everyone, and we make our move.”
Chapter 61: The Hunters (Kay)
“Can you feel it?” my Book asked me.
I scanned the overlapping lines of magic for a few seconds, and then spotted it. Her magical perception.
“Poor thing,” I mused. “All involuntary. Well, entropy is as entropy does.”
“Take this seriously.”
“I wouldn’t be about to do this if I wasn’t.”
I had only a small entourage with me - at least by my standards. At the time I would normally have Astro, Warnado, Tyron and at least ten guards (not including Rose). I did the same thing under Herobrine. I would love to tell you it was some strategic show of unity or strength or personability, but fundamentally I just liked having people with me. It made me feel important.
But that day, I had resisted this impulse. Only Rose and two of my guards. And my Book, if you count them. They certainly did.
“These beings attacked Fire unprovoked, you must be diplomatic if you want this to be anything other than a bloodbath.”
I placed a hand on the door into the Portal Room.
“Don’t worry, I’m not Claw. I have restraint. They’ll have to really work at it to get hurt”
My jaw tensed instinctively and thrust my features into a demure look of neutrality. I reshuffled my scarf and entered.
We approached the portal and passed by a group of new arrivals. Warriors, green-eyed endermen, and a couple of red dragons. However, two stood out: a starry dragon, and a beautiful woman with dark hair and a confident smile.
“Glowstar and Rathina, if I’m not mistaken?” I said with a half-bow. “Welcome to the Shelter. Tyron speaks highly of you.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I simply strode up to the scientist manning the machine and handed him the dimensional coordinates, ripped straight from Fire’s notes.
“Yeah, that’s us,” said Rathina a little incredulously. “And you are?”
“I am the King in Ash. Now, if you’ll excuse me...”
The portal burst into life, blasting my hair and scarf back. I cast a glance back at Rose and the guards. Rose’s hair, and the guards’ scarves (imitations of my own) fluttered in the dimensional winds. I couldn’t help but smile, before turning my elated eyes back to Rathina.
“...I must expand our ranks further still.”
Several footsteps later, we stood at the foot of a snowy hill, a disused Nether portal behind us. A blizzard raged, but thanks to the Book my senses pierced through the snow, if only barely.
I scanned the horizon and saw a pack of blood-stained creatures - all white fur and fangs - padding away from the mangled, indecipherable carcass of their prey in a cacophony of howls and roars. The only thing I could tell about their victim was that it had been huge, at least one house tall and two houses long. Here and there the shreds of a rubbery, dark-blue skin could still be witnessed.
Somewhere else, I saw a line of spikes defending an apparently populous village. The architecture was rudimentary but monolithic, fashioned from the bones and skins of the leviathans which roamed these snowy plains. And I could see the far-off forms of its inhabitants darting around like ants.
But was it the right village?
“Rose, what are our coordinates?”
My bodyguard wore a heavy coat made from the fur of whatever wildlife our hunters managed to bag with more-or-less matching pants and hat. It certainly lacked the elegance of Rose’s usual outfit, but it was necessary in this weather. She seemed largely unimpressed, even after beholding the local wildlife with her own supernaturally sharp senses.
Rose shouted over the blizzard: “Roughly ten-thousand-three-hundred in the primary direction and fifty-thousand in the secondary. It’s close but apparently there should be a forest somewhere around here.”
With a little help from my Book, I got my bearings. Turning my head slightly North-West, I caught a glimpse of the forest. Then, following the lines of energy, I saw his entry and exit point. Somewhere in the middle lay the place where blood fell on the snow. Where Fire had ceded to Claw. Where Claw had sown the seeds of his demise.
“Excellent,” I smiled. “Be ready, I’m about to open a portal for the village.”
Obviously, warping four people over that sort of distance was no longer much of a bother for me. I just needed to get my pitch together in my mind.
“Separate the leader from the group,” I devised. “A bit of prop-work, perhaps… Wait…”
“Sorry, Rose, just a moment.”
I warped away before she could respond. I emerged in the forest, right where I reckoned the fight would have gone down. I looked around. No sign of the diamonds Fire said he’d left as blood money. And the bodies, obviously, had been recovered. I cursed, that would have been a boon. Though it was useful to know they valued diamonds like we did.
I arrived back distracted, remembering I hadn’t heard Raphoe’s report on Steve. I’d gotten the sense that Steve… that a lot of people were a little unnerved by my coronation. I understood, I really did, but new eras never fail to terrify. That’s at least half the reason eras last so long! And, of course, Shadow very much wanted things back as they were under Fire. So, My Book and I agreed that, in order to ensure no one attempted to stop the beginning of this golden age, we would give them reason to be afraid.
So, I had ordered Steve to carry out a superfluous task and then sent Raphoe and a squad of soldiers to unnecessarily check up on him, to insinuate to him that, yes, I had noticed his discontent, and that acting on it was a dreadful idea. Underhanded, yes, but I reckoned a fairer, more perfect world was worth one builder feeling a little insecure.
I opened the rift and our party stepped through.
We stood in a clearing near the middle of the village, and predictably found ourselves almost immediately in the midst of a tornado of spears, crossbows and other assorted weapons.
I eyed the hunters up. They were low-tech, with only a handful of diamond weapons between them, and their armour rarely exceeding leather. That said, their physiques were self-evident, and the look in their eyes suggested warriors worth cowering in the face of. In acknowledgement, I raised my hands in mock surrender.
“Remember: delicate.”
“Oh dear,” I began. “Well, this was a dreadful miscalculation. You have us totally surrounded. No need for a fight, you have us right where we want to be. Now, do you have a chieftain, a high priest, some decision-maker I could talk to?”
I curled my lip and looked around discerningly.
“No one? No leader?”
Finally, a pair of warriors stepped forwards, a woman and a man. Both built like bears, both covered in scars. The woman wore furs reinforced with large bones, giving the appearance of a second rib cage. The man instead wore one of the few complete suits of iron armor in the village, safe for his head, which was covered by a wolf skin.
The woman spoke: “We are the chieftains of this village, who are you and what makes you think you can just barge into our home?”
“I am Kay Mandy, the King in Ash who shall soon rule Nexus - the crossroads of creation. I have come because I want you to share in our glory. May we speak apart for a moment? It’s better if we can work out a deal in private before declaring it before the people.”
The man spoke this time: “What you have to say to us, you can say before them.”
“A noble sentiment,” I smile. “But ultimately the wrong answer. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
I raised my fist. The two fell into rifts and out of sight. The spears began to fly.
“Be cautious, we want a show of strength, not a blood feud.”
“Naturally, Book,” I muttered aloud.
A series of rifts opened in a ring around myself, Rose and the two soldiers, into which the spears flew directly. This continued for around twenty seconds, when the spears stopped flying, the rifts closed, and the warriors saw us standing quite unharmed. This was a warlike people, but they weren’t stupid. Swords and axes were drawn, but not used.
“If you want your spears,” I smirked. “They’ve landed somewhere about five hundred meters outside your prickly border. I’m going to go and talk to your leaders. While I’m gone, you are to be completely accommodating to my colleagues, and prepare for them a list of your present armaments and numbers. Anyone who attempts to harm them shall find themselves rather full of razor-sharp metal. Rose, a demonstration if you will.”
Rose flicked her wrist and half a dozen knives embedded themselves in a line in the snow. I grinned at her and teleported away with a lax salute. Rose looked at me with half-closed eyes, a sigh probably followed shortly after. She could grumble at my methods all she wanted as long as my body remained guarded.
I emerged in the woods. The chieftains whirled around and assumed low, defensive stances, each carrying a knife made from bone. They eyed me but did not seem wedded to the idea of attacking, at least not yet.
“Now, where were we?” I asked with a clap of the hands and a winning smile.
“What. Do. You. Want?” The woman said with gritted teeth.
I flattened the smile.
“You lost a hunting party out here some time back, didn’t you?”
I scrutinised the landscape with my enhanced senses, getting a loose impression of where blood was shed.
The man nodded. “Our oldest daughter led that party, she brought down behemoths regularly. We know no creature that could slaughter an entire hunting party, especially hers, and get away afterwards. Not just that, there was a satchel filled with diamonds among the corpses. Still ask myself if the creature left it as some kind of joke.”
“My condolences. Different guy left the diamonds, though. The one who killed them is called Claw, and recently he has taken to serving my enemies. Killed a good few of my friends - including my predecessor, a man named Fire - and seems interested in killing more.
“Now, I’ve noticed that your resource situation seems pretty poor - I’m going to guess it’s about as barren below the surface as it is up here - and it just so happens we have many more resources than we know what to do with. In particular, we have recently acquired a steady supply of silver. Ask me why that should interest you. Go on.”
The woman barked: “Just tell us. You seem to want to help us, so get to it.”
“Claw’s a Mencur-Besh - a weird, hybrid creature, something between a human and an Endling. Incredibly strong, scaled, impervious to lightning, voidfire, and they’ve got three hearts to boot. But they’re deathly allergic to silver. Stick one with a silver crossbow bolt - doesn’t matter where - and it’s paralysed.
“That’s what I’m offering you short-term: the opportunity to avenge your daughter and hunt an exceedingly rare bit of prey.”
“And in the long term?” asked the man.
“Well, if you do well and help us kill Claw, that’s basically the war won, meaning I rule Nexus. I intend to make it a home for the forlorn and the downtrodden, and you lot seem to fit the bill. Suppose I bring you into the fold as justicars, turn you from hunters of beasts into hunters of the wicked? How would that sound?”
They were silent.
“Did I mention we have access to technology allowing travel between worlds, meaning you can not only return here to hunt whensoever you wish, but hunt wherever and whatever you want in all of creation?”
The woman said: “What you did earlier leaves me thinking we don’t have much of a choice. But who are we to turn down an opportunity for vengeance and even greater hunts?”
The man nodded. “My wife’s right, by our honour we accept.”
“Fantastic,” I beamed.
I opened a rift back to the village. I noticed the blizzard had calmed a little, and while the snow still fell thickly, it fell gently.
“Step on through and break the news, I’ll follow presently.”
They did so, and I savoured the scene, barely noticing the deadening of sensation in my face.
“A little showy, but successful,” concluded the Book, with some reluctance.
I didn’t care at all though. I was looking up at the falling snowflakes. I felt bloody immortal.
“When we burn the Tower, the ashes will fall just like this. They will do it because we command them to do so. We will be King in Ash, of Ash, over Ash. It’s going to be all ours, Book. Just you wait.”
“Yes…”
I stepped back through the portal, unable to contain my joy.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 5 Crisis (Cont.)
Chapter 62: An Agreement Broken (Multiple)
Warnado was terrified enough that his heart had begun pounding and time had slowed to a crawl at the same time, so he kept having to wait an eternity to feel a massive, explosion-level thud in his chest. But he was being stupid, this would be okay.
He hadn’t said anything to Amanda, so it wasn’t serious. He always told her about the serious stuff. So, if he hadn’t told her, it couldn’t be a real danger. Right? His heart answered ‘no’ by thudding even louder and harder.
He sat on a railing in the portal room, waggling his feet. He’d tried to summon food to take his mind off things, but he only felt ill looking at it. Scientists rushed between consoles around him, with Tyron in the middle of them. Occasionally the big, green guy would shoot a look of concern and solidarity in his direction, or Kir would reach out to his mind, but Warnado never reciprocated. Thinking about this was stressful enough, discussing it would actually kill him.
Finally, the portal flickered to life, and Kay stepped back through. Warnado looked at Kay and desperately wanted to feel reassured, his hands instinctively drifting to the goggles around his neck and stroked the glass. Unfortunately, while he didn’t have the burning sword or the flaming tiara thing going on, his eyes glowed ominously, and his smile was serene. The grin Warnado had come to expect was nowhere to be seen. He looked like a stranger.
Behind him followed Rose and the two guards he’d brought, then a group of warriors in furs and bones who looked very surprised at all the technology around them. Kay saw him, waved, and then pawned the warriors off on Tyron, with instructions to show them around.
Warnado walked up.
“Hey, Warnado, how have you been?”
He grinned and suddenly Warnado could recognise him again.
“I’m alright, pretty boring day, but I needed one like that. Everything’s been… a lot, recently.”
He smiled sadly and almost wished Kay would figure it out there and then, that this would be confession enough and that he’d realise how badly everything was going, how much the Book was changing him, how much of himself he was throwing away. But of course, he didn’t. He just nodded sagely, and before he could come out with some big pep talk or anecdote, Warnado cut across him.
“Hey,” he said. “Do you want to go somewhere more private, just shoot the breeze for a bit?”
Kay laughed.
“Don’t have to tell me twice, I know just the place. Going to have to bring Rose along, though - it reduces the mystique a little if my ever-present bodyguard is just loitering around somewhere. Rose, you want a drink or a book or anything? Going to have a private chat with Warnado for a bit and don’t want to leave you just standing around in the cold.”
He passed his fur coat to a nearby scientist. Rose cocked an eyebrow.
“If those are your orders...” she answered with a little reluctance.
“Alright,” nodded Kay.
His smile deflated slightly, and his silver eyes grew more burning and intense for a moment, but by the time he’d turned his head to Warnado, his eyes were back to their normal green and his smile was completely rejuvenated.
“So, shall we?”
He summoned a portal, and they stepped through.
###
The dark sky loomed above, only broken by a faint afterglow of orange sunset in the West. The first few stars had started to peek out, and they could be seen faintly reflected in the pond when the surface sat undisturbed. However, this stillness had become a rare occurrence, as Warnado kept skimming the same stone and summoning it back.
Rose was leaning against a tree nearby, outwardly looking distracted, but Warnado knew her well enough to know that she would react to any threat within a blink of an eye.
Kay stood not far away, looking out over the cliff towards the remains of the sunset. Plains and deserts and forests and jungles intersected at strange angles as far as Warnado could see.
They stood in a secluded spot on top of the mountain beneath which the Shelter had been built. Warnado had never seen up here before, and he regretted this was the first time he had to see it. This little mountainous oasis really could have wowed him if he had come here for any other reason. Then again, if it went well, maybe there would be some good memories, some relief associated with the place. His left hand drifted under the collar of his robes and clasped the goggles so tightly he was afraid they would shatter.
He skimmed the stone again. Three skips - normally he’d do much better, but he couldn’t put his heart in it tonight. He summoned it back again, shook the marmalade off, then pocketed it.
“Kay,” he began, then he hesitated.
Warnado’s friend seemed to jolt back into reality, sliding abruptly from silent reverie into his normal grin as he looked over his shoulder. He still had one eye on the horizon.
“Sorry, Warnado, I’m just… I like it up here. Gives me a good view of Nexus, a chance to appreciate just how cobbled together it all is. It absolutely should not exist, but that doesn’t mean it’s ugly, right?”
Warnado crept up.
“No,” Warnado said with a cautious glance at the horizon. “Impossible things are pretty cool to look at.”
“Hah! We threw out impossible a long time ago, buddy. I suppose I keep looking to accept that it’s real. That I am going to rule this when this is all over.” He turned around and beamed directly at Warnado. “That I’m going to make a home of this place.”
He placed a hand on the demon-child’s shoulder. Warnado pulled away.
“What’s wrong? Is it about your powers again? Has something happened with Amanda?”
Warnado couldn’t read his tone - it should have been caring, and it almost was, but there was something imperious about it - so he looked up and caught a glimpse of his furrowed eyebrows and flat mouth, before looking away even more resolutely.
“Kay, it’s about the Book-”
He laughed heartily.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’m getting into the King of Ash bit but that’s all me, the Book isn’t making me do anything, and it won’t make anyone else do anything.”
Warnado struggled not to quip back “Not without your approval, it won’t!” but he managed to hold his tongue.
“And I know I’ve been a bit scary recently, but it’s all for show. In times of great change, a strong leader is required to ensure the change happens, otherwise we’d all just remain as we are forever…” He trailed off. “I’d just sit on the border forever, never working up the nerve to move on...”
Suddenly, as Kay more or less confirmed the best possible explanation of his actions, Warnado felt a swell of warmth. Kay was just trying to help. He just wanted to protect his friends, and Warnado was one of those friends. He cared. This would be fine.
“After all this war I’m kind of afraid I-”
“Kay, listen-”
They both laughed nervously.
“Sorry, I didn’t know you were still talking,” said Warnado.
“Aw, don’t worry about it, I'm rambling when we’re meant to be talking about your problems. What was your thing?”
Warnado took a deep breath.
“I-I want you to give me the Book.”
Kay’s features flattened into something completely unreadable, and a pit seemed to open at the bottom of Warnado’s stomach. But this was kind of a big ask, Kay probably didn’t know how he felt either.
“Why?” he asked.
“Well, I’ve still got to go back to my world at some point, and when I’m there, I’ve got to kill Herobrine. And I’m really trying with the demon powers, I was able to track down my ancestor today-”
“How exactly did you accomplish that?”
“A spell I found in a book-”
“You went to her, didn’t you?”
“Her who?”
“Shadow.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Helix, I know you think it’s hard to tell when you’re lying because I can’t see your face, but you really need to make those glowing red peepers a little less expressive.”
“Okay, so what?”
“That thing is undermining everything we’re building here-”
“It’s she, she’s a person, Kay, and she doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“I’m not worried about what she’ll do deliberately.”
A silence. Kay’s eyes were glowing silver, but aside from a distinct snarling quality in his voice he had suppressed his anger pretty well. Warnado decided to push on through the douchiness.
“So, I’m getting better with the demon powers, but there’s still a long way to go. If I had the Book with me, we could just teleport into the Lich’s palace and take down Herobrine, him, and all the other bosses in one go. The other prophecy kids wouldn’t even have to worry about being heroes - we’d save them so much time!”
Kay’s eyes dimmed again. He snorted and turned back to the horizon. Warnado felt a sinking feeling as he realised Kay believed he had a way of getting this conversation back under control. He was afraid Kay might be right.
“Warnado, this is an awfully roundabout way of asking me to come and help you fight Him. And you know, the Blind Watcher and I haven’t been on great terms recently, but I still revere him, so it’ll be difficult for me-”
“Kay, don’t worry, I’m not-”
Kay talked over Warnado with renewed volume and a grandiose gesture of the hand.
“But, as I was saying, I’m still very much up for fighting this egregious imposter. The second I have control of Nexus, I shall make a campaign against your Herobrine my top priority.”
“That really isn’t necessary.”
“Ah, a smaller scale affair, I get you. You and me against the world. I like it!”
“I really just want to handle this myself, it’s a personal thing, y’know?”
“Then why lean on the Book’s abilities like me? If you want to feel you’ve earned your victory, I shall ensure that you receive the highest caliber training from across the multiverse! Wizards, swordsmen, martials artists from creation’s most powerful traditions. Once the Book and I lock Nexus down, we shall make a prodigy of you!”
As Kay continued to heap praises on this training-regime-to-be, Warnado realised he had almost completely lost control of this conversation. Kay still really believed he and the Book had a firm and equal partnership. He thought back to the conversation with Tyron and Shadow. He had to make Kay realise the Book wasn’t trustworthy!
“What does the Book think about all this?”
He stopped talking. Warnado realised the afterglow of the sunset was gone. Kay became a featureless shape against the horizon. Warnado cast a night vision spell.
“The Book is happy where it is,” he said forcefully.
“Is it? Kay, you’ve obviously unlocked its potential in a way its past users never did, but maybe its magic could be even more potent in someone who already has some magical experience. It could even help me keep the demon powers under control while still channeling them. It would be win-win!”
Kay turned around at him, wide-eyed and shaking, his breath seeming to quiver in the air as he exhaled. He didn’t say anything. Warnado didn’t say anything. Rose stood up and cocked her head in the background. There was silence. And then,
“I am listening.”
Warnado almost felt relieved, and it must have shown on his face, because suddenly:
“What did it say to you?”
Kay looked frantic but Warnado didn’t want to lie to him.
“It says it’s willing to listen.”
“Warnado you can’t do this.”
“Kay, don’t worry-”
“You can’t. You’re only a child, you can’t stand up to its manipulations!”
A little bead of spit flew from his mouth. Warnado tried to avoid looking him in the eye. They hadn’t turned silver, but something had become sickly about the green.
“Do you want us all to die?” Kay pressed, now looming over Warnado. “Helix, think about what it did to Amanda!”
“I stopped that before, I’ll stop it again.”
“You can’t do this, I forbid it.”
“Kay, no offense,” said Warnado with a little anger. “But you don’t tell me what to do.”
Kay kept advancing, hands outstretched as though to beg, or to strangle. Rose approached slowly. Her hand drifted towards a knife. Warnado made sure his backsteps carried him away from both Rose and Kay.
“Warnado, you can’t do this to me. I have been powerless for so long-”
Warnado felt something heavy and rectangular stretching out a pocket in his robe. The Book had made itself at home.
“This will take some time. Let us discuss elsewhere while he cools off. Allow me to open a portal.”
“I finally have a chance to keep them safe, to keep you safe!”
Warnado felt relief and stress flood cataclysmically in two different directions. Relief that he could separate Kay from his corruptor, and terror at the expression on his face and the continued advance of Rose. And in this churning of emotions, he allowed this to slip out:
“Sure, portal away.”
A flash of moonlight on diamond. A blade flying towards his face. He summoned a shield instinctively and caught the blow. He felt a surge of pride as his training paid off, then he saw who had attacked him.
Kay had his obsidian-plated sword out, and he was panting with exertion. His eyes were filled with a new fire, at the same time visible and invisible - a complete, desperate rage that blinded him to anything but the object which had inspired it.
Then, their eyes met, and the fire seemed to flicker as they stood there motionless.
“You piece of ****!”
Astro materialised from the side and slammed Kay in the jaw. The General staggered towards the cliff.
“All these years, I have played apologist, covered for you, cleaned up your messes!”
Astro began a run-up for another attack. Tyron became visible and wrapped an arm around the wizard to hold him back.
Warnado, shaking, looked around. Steve and Jennifer appeared on either side of Tyron, weapons drawn. Shadow stepped out in front of Warnado, her white hair eerily still in the mountain winds.
Kay wiped the blood from his mouth and looked up as if waking up from one nightmare and finding himself in one yet more desolate. He cast an expectant glance at Rose, who was behind the line of conspirators.
Rose looked at Kay with the same faux-distractedness she had worn earlier. “Sorry, General. But there may have been a miscommunication around the time you employed me. I was the bodyguard of a cult leader. You don’t survive that position if you don’t know when to jump ship, undying loyalty is a liability in that line of work. Just gets you killed or sacrificed. My previous employer knew this, which is why he employed me in the first place.” Rose glanced at Shadow. “Plus, I’m not about to fight the woman who on multiple occasions proved that she could end mortals like us with a thought.”
Kay nodded but didn’t say anything. He looked around the line of people perpetrating or enabling his overthrow. He lingered on Astro, who had settled from frothing anger into cold fury, his eyes almost appearing to drift around as though he couldn’t definitely see his old friend. Then, he reached Warnado, and stopped. For not the first time that night, he had no idea what Kay had in his mind - his quivering eyes might have been about to burst into tears or explode in bloody decomposition. Warnado wanted to hurl.
The General hung his head. The sword fell from his hand.
“Do what you must,” he said to no one in particular.
Steve produced handcuffs and advanced.
Warnado realised his pocket was empty.
Kay’s head shot back up. Silver eyes shone bright enough to darken the rest of his face. No serene smile. The grim look of a survivalist. Steve retreated, Shadow cast a spell manifesting as a large runic circle, and silver-turning-purple flame erupted across the mountain-top.
###
I am at last complete. No more hosts, no more ‘partners’, now I have a vessel. He was so dejected, so defenseless, a child could have seized control. I feel my own power truly unfettered for the first time, and I wish to just stand there and savour it. But I must escape. As always, I must survive.
I try to teleport off the mountaintop. I cannot. Though I sense that I can still teleport within a certain range. I see the circle of runes she has cast about the mountaintops. Shadow wants me to stay. Any other day I would be terrified of her, now she is merely a threat to be dealt with. But first, the others.
Steve charges at me, armour still mostly intact after my opening burst of voidfire. Someone must have shielded him. No time to know who, his sword point approaches. I open a rift and he goes plummeting off the cliff. I hear the shatter of an ender-pearl somewhere nearby and shoot lightning in the general direction, though I have no time to check if I hit him.
I blast apart the wall of earth Tyron sends flying towards me. I catch Jennifer’s arrow in a rift and redirect it to strike Rose in the shoulder. The assassin hurls knives sharp enough to split stone and I dodge narrowly. Astro and Tyron now coordinate an attack, stone and flame, flying at me. I warp away to the edge of the pond. Then, I see her march towards me, one of her dreadful blasts of heat ready to go. I stumble as I re-emerge in a safe location on a nearby rock. A glance confirms the blast’s destructive power - the pond is a smoldering crater, the water boiled out of it.
“I shall not die here!” I cry.
I summon a massive blast of lightning from the sky, hoping to bring it down on Shadow, to blast her apart, but it never connects. For a moment I am infuriated, then I see what stopped it. The ward is weakened, I have struck the field keeping me here. I lock eyes with Shadow, she senses it too. She goes to reinforce the ward.
With a flick of the wrist, I summon a great storm which spits lightning down at the mountain, each strike weakening the ward a little more. It won’t break the spell on its own, but it shall distract Shadow long enough for me to pacify the others.
I see Tyron, plating himself in stone armour, rush at me with his pathetic little sword. Astro flies close to the ground behind him, and Steve is not far behind on foot. They hope to overwhelm me. Tyron roars heroically and tries to stare me down - his mistake. The lights behind his eyes line up, and I have enough control for a single command.
“Strike him,” I decree.
Tyron stops and swipes down at the low-flying Astro, who is just about able to spiral out of the way. As the wizard hesitates, not knowing whether to expect a second attack, I blast him with lightning, and he falls. It is not enough to kill him, but it serves my purposes. Tyron, horrified at what he has done, rushes forward and takes Astro in his arms. I ready the jet of Voidfire. Just as I am about to incinerate the pair, Steve hurls an ender pearl in the air and tackles them. They disappear in a flash of purple particles which are quickly subsumed by my flame.
I try to slip into the Void and strike them unseen, but the ward prevents me for now. Instead, I scorch the land where Jennifer is tending to Rose. The two scatter, and I chase Rose eagerly with the flames. She is slowing, I shall claim my first real victory. Unfortunately, in my enthusiasm I do not notice the arrow flying at me. It catches me beneath the shoulder-plate and my arm screams with pain. I send Jennifer back into hiding with a new inferno but it’s a slip-up I can’t afford. Shadow is still preoccupied, but not for long.
Then, an opportunity presents itself. The demon-child, the one responsible for my captivity, leaps down at me from a nearby tree, an energy axe in hand. I evade easily, he swings again, and I catch his wrist. I see past his obfuscation, see the dots behind his eyes.
“Kneel.”
He does so. I summon the fire of the Void in my hand and press it as close as I dare to his face. I look around imperiously and my assailants freeze up.
“Kneel,” I say. There is no spell. “Or the child dies.”
Their weapons creep down. Tyron exchanges a look with the child and is the first to kneel after a resigned nod. Then Rose, Jennifer, Steve and finally an injured but furious-looking Astro. Only Shadow is still standing, still maintaining the ward.
“Okay,” I smile. “You do not have to kneel but lift the ward or I will kill your pupil.”
Shadow mouth distorts to a grin. I hear a warping sound and feel a surge of energy beneath my breastplate. The demon-child is holding the book which serves as my tether to the overworld in his hand. He is holding me in his hand.
Just as the gravity of my error sinks in, I notice the trees and the mountain peaks apparently grow taller and taller, as though the world is outgrowing me, or getting ready to swallow me. They look very far away indeed. Then, the jaws of the earth fold in on me, and I drop out of it.
I strike the floor in my library. It should not hurt, but it does. I am without my vessel. I am pages again. I curse and slam the floor. I curse the demon-child for outwitting me twice. I curse Kay for bringing me so close to freedom. And I curse Shadow, for what she’s about to do.
My thoughts race. I shall survive. I must survive. But how? For the first time in millennia, I bother to ponder what this space is. Did I build it? Or was it built for me? For ages, I considered this library an extension of me, a space for the machinations of my will. But now that I am deprived of the physical binding and pages, I long considered my self, I wonder if this space is a prison. Who created it? I shudder to imagine.
I cautiously look outwards again, I can no longer see Nexus, not even glimpses. Instead, I see, I feel tendrils coiling around my space. I now see that these tendrils belong to something vast, the sheer scale only hits me now that I observe it from my own space. The being that is in the process of coiling around me extends far beyond my view and that is when I realize that so far, I had only seen fragments of what Shadow is.
As the first tendril breaches into the library a voice tears me from my panicked thoughts. A multi-layered voice so loud and overwhelming that it is not heard but felt.
“We had an agreement.”
More tendrils breach and tear into the rows of bookshelves and dissolve the volumes therein. I feel each lost letter as if it is blood draining from me.
In front of me materializes a familiar form, the same that I had seen after being separated from Fristad. Shadow’s human body appears.
Vast swathes of the infinite library are torn apart by the tendrils and despite its infinity, it feels like it is getting less.
Shadow speaks again: “We had an agreement, Iris!”
That name. The name that should have long been dead, each letter pierces my mind like a barbed spear.
I shriek: “Do not use that name!”
As more volumes are taken, more old memories stream back into me, vexing recollections of a mortal that for millennia were neatly sealed away, now torn violently and unnaturally from the shelves. I fall to my knees, clutching my head, feeling the texture of its pages, reminding myself that these emotions... these memories... they are not mine! No, they cannot possibly be!
Shadow slowly comes closer, hand extending towards me. I scramble back on to my feet and run away. All the bookshelves have been liberated, my illusion of inanimate perfection shattered. My human memories - the pain, the regret, the betrayal, the longing - sear within my mind like voidfire. And, in front of me, is but an infinite blackness to mock me. With each desperate step, there is no distance gained, no sound echoed, nor any ground to stand on. I run and I run until the illusion of motion is as meaningless as a word that is repeated over and over. I realize that this black space has no escape. I turn around, fully exposed as the woman whose life I once lived, with nothing to sense except the creature in front of me.
Before me stands Shadow, turning to a darker-than-black tear in reality, red eyes like stars. Then even this form falls into the infinite abyss, replaced by something far greater, far deeper, something that cannot be described by words or captured by thoughts. My mind reels with each moment I look.
An appendage extends towards my head. I am paralyzed by fear, overwhelmed.
No final words, only a touch. A strange calm washes over me for a singular moment before all that I am is torn apart.
...
Shadow opened her eyes. The mountaintop was far from its original beauty, the battle that had raged only a moment ago had made sure of this. Shadow’s companions were strewn across the battlefield in various states of injury.
Astro had it the worst, every part of him singed and his limbs weak. He sat propped up against a rock, while Steve fed him a healing potion and Tyron stood by looking shaken.
Rose fared comparatively better, yanking the arrow out of her shoulder and standing up. Jennifer ran over to Steve, checking on him. She hadn’t sustained any injuries, but her armor was quite battered.
Warnado, completely untouched, looked unbelievingly at the book in his hands, flipping through the pages, waiting for some script to appear on them. Then when nothing came, he whispered something in the demonic language and the book that almost caused everyone’s downfall went up in demonfire. Not even ashes remained, something that Kay could probably have said many pretentious things about, if his kingly persona were still intact.
Shadow turned to the dethroned man who lay motionless at her feet. A cage made from magical energy slammed down around him, more a symbol of spite than anything else.
Taking another look around, she cautiously said: “We did it.”
Chapter 63: King in Shackles (Tyron)
The guard’s jaw halfway fell off when he saw them, and Tyron immediately felt a wave of dread. He cast a glance back at the glowing cage, and Kay crumpled up inside like used paper. It wasn’t a good look, especially not with Shadow obviously maintaining the prison. He prayed that the sight of Astro and Warnado following at a distance would offer some reassurance this wasn’t just a power grab.
Honestly, it was a miracle the guard was the first person they’d run into. Most people would be in the dining hall, but there would still be patrols and internal material shipments.
“Remember cover story. Book bad. Kay sick,” cooed Kir.
Tyron felt nervous enough that he visibly nodded in response to Kir, a habit he thought he’d grown out of years ago. He brushed the fur on his face into as neat a pattern as he could and braced for the worst.
“Soldier,” Tyron said in his best commanding-officer voice. “The General’s been compromised. The Book overpowered him and we’re keeping him under observation until we can be sure the danger has passed. Open the door.”
With eyes wide as chasms, the guard became deadly still, then shot back to life and ran to let them into the jail. His mouth kept opening and closing, almost working up the nerve to ask a question then losing it altogether.
Tyron walked up beside him and waited for the others to filter in. Shadow was the one maintaining the cage, and Astro and Warnado were… distracted, so he was the most logical choice for watchdog. Steve and Jennifer had gone off to gather the other leaders in the command room - brief the officer’s class before telling everyone else. They were hoping for minimal resistance, but still…
They were at a bit of a crossroads. Prison to the South. Path in general direction of training room to the North. Supply room to the East. Grinder West. Kir sharpened his senses, and he scanned the four directions. A clattering of footsteps and metal bunched close together some ways off - a patrol in full armour. And, he could have sworn, a ruffling of fabric Tyron knew could only be a heavy red scarf.
He patted Shadow on the shoulder as a subtle hint to hurry up, though hoping not to alarm the guard. Astro didn’t take the hint. Astro glowered at the floor, his hands buried in his pockets, shuffling glacially forward. If the floor has turned to quicksand, he might actually have gotten through the door quicker.
Warnado couldn’t have been different, leaning left and right to try and look past the wizard. He had his left hand in his pocket, the gauntleted one hanging loosely and flailing as he moved. The metal fingers had clasped tightly around something tightly enough that Tyron could make out nothing other than a small knot of brown leather. Tyron felt a pang of emotion as he remembered a certain conversation that had interrupted a certain nap.
Finally, Astro got through the doorway, and Warnado bounded down past him. Tyron instructed the guard to let no one in without his express orders and went down the staircase.
The prison was dark, and stone, and cold. Unadorned stone bricks stacked forward infinitely, interrupted only by the occasional flash of redstone light. It hadn’t always been that way. Used to have full underfloor heating, proper torches, even woolen carpeting. Kay changed all that after Claw showed up. They had been such small changes, but he’d been so insistent. Kept referencing how he’d done things in the “Great Onslaught” when asked why. He’d spoken almost nostalgically.
Tyron passed a rare, carpeted cell. It didn’t have bars, it had reinforced glass, like a fish tank. A sign to the left read “Marinus Bul”. He’d forgotten about these. Every time Kay learned the name of a Tower officer, he’d have a cell converted and reserved for them. Glibby, Ender, Freak, the Dog, etc. Sometimes he’d personalise them, sometimes not. Some were intended as gestures of goodwill, like a Chorus plant for the Ender. Others were intended as snubs, like the bare jungle-wood table he insisted on putting in Glibby’s room. Tyron wondered when he gave up on the idea of ever using them.
After what felt like ages of walking, Shadow stopped in front of these ‘bespoke’ cells. Or, rather, there was a bespoke cell to the left, with ripped black carpeting and scratches on the glass, and a bare, empty stone space to the right. It had no bed, and the walls weren’t even paved with bricks.
Something stirred in the tarnished cell. Grey-scaled and grinning in disbelief, Silver pressed his hands against the glass.
“You must be joking,” gasped the Enderman.
Astro opened the cell, and Shadow levitated the cage in.
“Should we?” Kir asked.
They drew Tyron’s attention to a pair of shackles hanging from the wall. The Dragoknight averted his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he thought. “I’ll let the others decide that one.”
Warnado kept skipping from foot to foot, in a ludicrous dance of impatience. His red eyes shifted with his feet, sliding toward the cage, then back towards literally anything else.
Astro closed the cell door, and Shadow let the cage dissolve. The former commander dropped out and slammed into the floor. Silver howled with laughter, and slammed a taloned fist into the glass, the ward upon it briefly flashing into view.
Tyron glared back at the Enderman in an effort to discourage him, but his heart wasn’t in it. Silver just laughed louder still. Tyron turned back to the object of the Grey One’s amusement.
Kay stirred with a groan and heaved himself into a sitting position. He didn’t look up, and he didn’t say anything. His eyes seemed half-closed and sweat clung to his brow. He clasped his hands over his face.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he grumbled with all the urgency of a man waking up with a mild hangover.
Astro scoffed, but otherwise no one responded.
“I asked you a question, did I not?” he said, casting his eyes directly at Shadow. “Why am I in a cell?”
Shadow answered his gaze, then replied flatly: “Short version: You screwed up royally. Long version: You willingly cooperated with the Book despite what happened with Fristad, but we both know the Book was only your enabler in all of this. You burned down a warehouse of civilians, which was both morally and strategically a bad decision. When confronted about the Book, you attacked Warnado, who you might as well have adopted had that conversation not taken place. And to top it all off, you let the damn thing take your body for a joyride, the aftermath of which you are feeling now. That’s just the parts I personally saw, I bet the rest of us have plenty more to add if you were to ask them.”
Then, with a slight grin the mage added: “But it is ‘Just a nice, friendly little coup until Kay gets his head straight.’ Am I right?”
Tyron felt a momentary impulse to glare at her, but the moment passed, and he slumped into apathy. Kay barely seemed to notice it, casting a look of horrible recollection at Warnado.
“Helix…” he began. “I don’t - I was - I can’t - I…”
He got to his feet and turned away, digging his fingernails into his forehead. He hissed in discomfort and turned around with something like clarity in his eyes.
“My apologies, I’ve let you all down greatly. My partnership with the Book began in good faith, in the spirit of mutual survivalism, but I allowed it too much leeway. I became so enamoured with the power it - I became so reliant on the strength it gave me, I didn’t realise how weak I was becoming. Fearful, jealous, dependent upon it. I was not in my right mind, and I am sorry-”
Astro scoffed. Loudly. Pointedly. Kay turned even paler than usual and continued, speaking directly to Warnado.
“I would never hurt you, Helix. You must know that. That wasn’t me.”
The demon-child’s glowing red eyes didn’t rise to make contact.
“Who was it, then?” snapped Astro.
Kay swallowed.
“Not… not my normal self.”
“Oh, so it was you, just not ‘you’. Come on Kay, I was expecting more than that. Haven’t you got any big, vulnerable rant about how this was all some elaborate attempt to get back at Hamish, and that makes this okay? Or about how Worth eventually blew up your house, so all those crimes you committed were really just an act of rebellion? How your family cast you out, and you’ve just been a victim from the start? About how you feel a little aimless in life, and that makes you uniquely special and tortured and wise? Yeah, Lucy told me about that little outburst. Why don’t you just-”
“ENOUGH!” roared Kay.
Astro fell silent despite himself. He rolled his shoulders and stormed off.
“**** off,” Astro muttered as he left.
Perhaps he said this to conclude his earlier thought, perhaps not.
Kay took a moment to recollect himself.
“Helix, the Book is yours. Take it, I don’t want it. I can’t handle it. You can, you fended me off back there - your shield-work was perfect - and you outsmarted it again. You could control it, instead of just… wanting the same things. Please, just-” he rubbed his left eye and only succeeded in making it water. “- I am so proud of you, Helix.”
He looked at Warnado, but the child’s head was still bowed and unreadable. He cast a look at Tyron, and the Dragoknight realised his mouth had dropped open piteously at this counteroffer.
“Where’s the Book?” Kay asked, his breath quivering.
He began to feel around beneath his chestplate and found nothing. He undid the straps and it clattered to the floor. He groped around despite it being clear that he’d find nothing.
“What have you done with it? Without the Book, we’re... Without… Where is it?”
He sat down as though he’d been punched in the face and tried to meet Tyron’s eye. The Dragoknight instead turned his attention to Astro, who had reached the top of the stairs and tapped his foot impatiently. Tyron only barely held off from joining him. He didn’t answer. Finally, Shadow did:
“The Book is gone, I killed it as I told it I would, should something like this happen. Warnado burned the inert tome.”
“You killed it?” he murmured. Then, with a surge of fury that lifted him to his feet and carried him all the way to the bars of his cell: “You stupid cow, you’ve murdered us all! How could you be so bloody-”
A sound of cracking glass interrupted him. Shadow remained unfazed, but Tyron and Kay both immediately shot urgent looks at Silver. The Enderman shrugged and grinned hungrily, and after a brief inspection, Tyron was satisfied there was nothing wrong with the cell. When he turned back, he saw the real source of the crack.
Kay’s old goggles lay on the floor, already collecting dust, cracking in one lens. The General looked down at them with hollow eyes and open mouth, stripped of all thought and emotion.
Warnado still had his gauntleted arm outstretched and his fingers open, as though posting for a portrait or a statue that would immortalise this horrid tableau forever. His red eyes seemed dimmer than the torches. Then, he said to Shadow:
“I’ll be with Amanda if you need me.”
He left.
Kay backed up until he was leaning against the wall, scanning the dark ceiling above. Tyron couldn’t move.
“I’m not a bad man,” Kay insisted to no one in particular. “I’ll make this right. I swear to you, I will.”
He collapsed.
“Then maybe think about the potential consequences of your actions in the future before acting.” Shadow said, the emphasis on future was lost on Kay but not on Tyron.
And she walked off.
Seeing no reason to stay, Tyron followed her.
Chapter 64: Pick your Poison (Amanda)
People were angry. Not necessarily about what had happened. About the fact that they didn’t know where it left them. So, they yelled, they shouted. Some jeered and mocked. It wasn’t the most dignified display on earth, but their reactions made sense. Amanda almost wished she could join the cacophony. She didn’t feel anything. She felt hollowed out.
She kept looking at Helix, and for the first time she couldn’t read his face. All that time, that little obfuscation charm he did had never stopped him from being an open book. Now, the pages were blank.
The night was cold. The lights dim. The same stage they’d announced Fristad’s death on. The same stage they’d welcomed everyone on. Fire speaking, then Kay, now Tyron. She wondered if they’d ever cycle through enough leaders that she’d end up giving a speech.
Tyron stood at the podium, trying to explain what on earth had happened without saying what had actually happened. He’d explained to the leadership about twenty minutes prior, in a clumsy, weary way that hadn’t really said much. But what he had said was bad. They tried to get Kay to give up the Book, it almost worked, then Kay tried to kill Helix and all hell broke loose. She was hazy on the details, but Amanda understood that the Book died, Kay got arrested, and they just had to make do.
Of course, she’d figured out something like this had been coming when she saw Astro and Tyron trying to link up with Shadow. This shouldn’t have surprised her. It still did.
“For the umpteenth time, Raphoe,” said Tyron. “He is in prison as a precautionary measure. We believe the Book to have been destroyed, but it is not impossible that he is still under its influence.”
“You expect us to believe that when she is involved?” snarled the villager.
He pointed at Shadow, but Amanda was the one who shifted uncomfortably. Raphoe stood at the centre of a group of red-scarfed warriors in diamond armour - Kay’s fledgling goonsquad.
“Shadow has been considered the Book’s handler since long before there was a Shelter, back when we first confiscated it from the late Logistics Officer Fristad. She fulfilled her role.”
“And why was she conveniently on scene?”
There were some murmurs of assent.
“Fearing that the Book’s influence was becoming too great, we contacted her shortly after Kay declared himself King in Ash-”
“He is the King in Ash!”
The red-scarves collectively roared in outrage as though they’d been waiting for exactly this cue all evening.
“In the sense that Kay intended to become ruler of Nexus, perhaps. But the King in Ash persona appears to have been a construction of the Book.”
Amanda remembered Helix’s certainty that the persona was a Kay original. She fought the urge to roll her eyes, very suddenly realising how important her every gesture was in front of the crowd.
“Treachery!” yelled Raphoe. “The King in Ash is our sovereign, and we are loyal to him alone!”
He drew his sword and raised it above his head. Steve and Jennifer began descending from the stand, weapons drawn. However, they were beaten to the punch by Rathina, who leapt in front of the podium with a sword in either hand. They were all upstaged by the arrival of Tyron’s dragon buddy, Glowstar, who sank his claws into the cliff-face above Tyron and roared loudly. Amanda moved to join them, but Astro put a hand on her shoulder.
Raphoe laughed and continued undaunted.
“Who is with me?”
The red-scarfed chorus raised their swords in solidarity, but mercifully few others joined them. One guy Amanda was pretty sure had been a Jackal, one of the few that hadn’t deserted after the Battle at the Hill. A few hunter-looking folks unenthusiastically raised their bone daggers and their spears beneath their heavy fur. Assorted folks from the infantry who Kay had trained personally.
A little deflated, Raphoe lowered his sword.
“The King in Ash will be released, and he will be recognised. Our swords will stay sheathed until he is restored to his throne.”
He put his sword away and left with his supporters in a parade of scarlet. Amanda didn’t bother to count, but it was too small to stand a chance of taking over, and too large to ignore.
Tyron shook his head and unenthusiastically summed up the official narrative. Amanda faintly remembered when Kay was the one who kept having to remind them about the importance of spin and public relations and all that. She wondered if that was irony or poetic justice. Whatever it was, she found it exhausting.
“And that’s about it,” concluded Tyron. “Any questions?”
No one bothered.
“Okay. At ease.” He dismissed the assembly.
Tyron left with Astro, Shadow and Rathina. The new Inner Circle. Helix left separately, without saying anything. The rest of them milled around until, finally, Destiny said with an unexpected cheeriness:
“Well, I think we all need a drink after that.”
No one disagreed.
###
Destiny stood behind the bar, pouring drinks liberally, beaming. She’d even slipped some rum into Amanda’s drink. Not amazingly subtly, but no one was in the mood to call her out. Amanda didn’t love it herself, it made her feel fuzzy and disconnected. And yet, she kept remembering Helix, blank-faced, wandering off alone and so kept deciding she needed to feel a little distant from all this and force another sip.
They’d gathered in the officer’s lounge, on the array of sofas in the centre. Steve and Jennifer sat together on the opposite couch, hands touching but not quite holding each other. Steve had already finished one drink and moved on to the second. Immediately behind them, their wizard friend, Wolfric, sat perched against the back of the sofa, scanning the rows of bookshelves from a distance. He had a weird stillness about him, and if he hadn’t kept brushing the dark hair from his eyes, Amanda might have mistaken him for a statue.
Next came, Rose sipping something from an unusually tall glass, and Lucy, who had only reluctantly accepted a low-alcohol drink from Destiny. Then, unexpectedly, Steve’s brother Ozen, who nursed a glass of red wine with all the enthusiasm of a biologist who had just discovered a new animal.
Amanda sat between Voidblade, who sipped gravely from a surprisingly colourful chorus-fruit cocktail into which Destiny had inserted a tiny umbrella, and a brown-haired guy she’d never met before. She felt too tired to bother asking who he was. Urist was also on their sofa, sipping the first of several pints of stout he’d asked Destiny to pour for him.
Conversation was not flowing naturally. Folks appeared to have decided they were there to drown their sorrows in the company of others. Destiny, Ozen and Urist seemed to be the only ones in remotely okay spirits. Emphasis on seemed in the former case. Every now and then, Amanda could see her frown, almost glare at the air in front of her, or shake her head. She could have sworn she saw her mouth a curse word or two at this unseen adversary but dismissed it. At least she was trying to cheer people up. Ozen and Urist seemed too occupied with their drinks.
Finally, Destiny finished pouring herself a pint of beer, and sat down in the remaining seat on Amanda’s couch. She waited expectantly for a few seconds.
“Oh, come on guys, chat a little. Only way to raise the spirits. Sure, all that ugliness has gone down, but we’re all friends here, aren’t we?”
“Uh, no!” snorted Steve. “No, we’re really not.”
Everyone fell very quiet out of a cocktail of offence, embarrassment and tentative amusement. Amanda shared a look with the brown-haired hanger-on, and he had to raise a hand to hide the laugh he hastily transformed into a cough. Amanda almost smiled herself, he seemed nice.
“Wow,” nodded Destiny. “Way to bring down an already low mood, Steve.”
Steve stood up, knocking over the glass he’d already finished.
“Well, it’s true,” he said, taking another sip. “That doesn’t mean I don’t like any of you people. I mostly have nothing against you guys - except Kay, who sucks.”
“Bad leader and generally not a great person,” affirmed Jennifer.
“But yeah, Urist, Lucy, Amanda, Shadow had that Dungeons and Enderdragons game with us a while back and that was cool, but that doesn’t mean we’re close as friends can be.”
He took a step forward and gestured to Amanda.
“Like, Amanda, when was the last time we had a real conversation?”
Amanda struggled for a couple of seconds.
“A while ago?” she tried, with another confused look at brown-hair.
“EHHHH! Wrong! Never. It - it never happened. Outside Dungeons and Enderdragons, I’m not sure we’ve ever directly interacted before this point. We’ve just been in a group… at the same time.”
He staggered as he moved back to the centre.
“Or you, Destiny. Like, we hung out a little back after David died, but have we interacted since then? No. I don’t know you people.”
Steve swallowed and snapped his fingers a bunch.
“I had a point, somewhere in all that,” he chuckled, and Ozen joined in. “When I got here, I just wanted to get back home. I think me and Jen both felt that way, didn’t we?” Jennifer nodded semi-reluctantly. “We’d already done the hero shtick, we wanted to get home to our friends and family to enjoy our happily-ever-after and I know we weren’t the only ones in that position. Like Tyron and - that’s your shtick too, Destiny, right?”
Destiny snorted and nodded. Her lips parted reluctantly into a smile.
“Yeah, that’s my shtick.”
“See, I’m right, I’m right so you should listen to me,” Steve laughed, a few people joining him.
“So, now that I have all that back, more or less. Now that Wolfric and my stupid brother are here, and we have Drake down in the stables who is just the cutest little creature, I’m realising that I really haven’t taken the time to get to know you people. And I want to. I should be glad to meet new people, this is… there’s so much difference that’s so interesting and I haven’t been paying attention to that. I’m sorry.”
He squinted around the group and came to rest on the hanger-on.
“Like you, we have never spoken.”
He laughed and stood up. He had a slight limp.
“That’s actually not your fault. I’m Seth, I’m friends with Tyron. I just arrived tonight, and I’m completely lost as to what’s going on.”
He reached out and shook Steve’s hand.
“You see, this is what I’ve been missing out on - a whole new person! Pleased to meet you Seth, I’m Steve!”
Steve swayed a little, beaming and talking far louder than necessary.
“Pleasure to meet you too, Steve.”
“Pleasure. This is so great. Let’s get a round of - what were you drinking the other night, Urist, shots did you call ‘em? Shots?”
“Shots?” asked Destiny with a mischievous grin and fingers pointed at Urist.
“Shots?” asked Urist with a yet more mischievous grin.
“I’m pretty sure someone said ‘shots’,” nodded Rose slyly.
“Then shots they shall have,” affirmed Seth.
“Yes, let’s do it!” cried Steve.
He ran forward and tripped on the rug.
“Lightweight,” said Voidblade in complete monotone.
Amanda broke and started cackling, and soon the laughter spread around the group. And so, they had the round of shots - Amanda wasn’t sure what it was, and it tasted disgusting, but it made her feel just disconnected enough from her emotions to enjoy this. The night became a blur of bonhomie.
Urist stood on the table, leading a chorus of some old dwarven song, sad and sweet. Voidblade and Jennifer had a substantially lower-effort spleef rematch, staggering around the field sluggishly until Steve and Urist belly-flopped on and collapsed the whole thing. Lucy evidently had very little drinking experience but nonetheless was in a splendid mood, partially due to having turned down any drink beyond her third. Rose was dancing gracefully as Ozen tinkered with the record player. Amanda remembered joining the dancing for a while, probably a little less gracefully. Wolfric buried his head in a book, taking any drink given to him. Destiny rushed between the bar and everyone else, taking orders and prescribing a few.
Eventually, Amanda found herself sat on the sofas again, with what might have been her third drink in her hand. The fuzzy feeling had started feeling less numb and more toxic, but she was still having fun.
“Never have I ever…” pondered Seth. “Killed or helped in the process of killing Herobrine.”
He took a drink and so did half the group.
“Hey, you can’t suicide it,” giggled Jennifer.
“I just did.”
“Should I drink?” asked Amanda. “Like, Helix has to do it eventually, by helping him get through this does that count as indirectly helping him kill Herobrine?”
“I don’t know,” said Lucy. “By that logic, because I’m helping you all as an administrator, am I helping kill Herobrine, too?”
Rose added: “If that counts then everyone here needs to drink, even people who have never heard of the guy before coming to Nexus.” She downed her drink without further contemplation.
“Whichever definition means the most people drink is the one I intended,” chuckled Seth before taking another deep gulp.
“Who’s Helix again?” asked Voidblade after already drinking.
“It’s Warnado’s real name,” said Steve.
The enderman nodded and drank once more.
“I’m not gonna lie,” said Ozen after finishing his glass. “I have no clue who either of those people are.”
Wolfric looked up from his book.
“It’s her boyfriend,” he said with a gesture to Amanda. “The little hooded kid.”
“Oh, him,” smiled Ozen. “I love his little, red eyes!”
Amanda grinned but felt a pang of unwanted emotion beneath it. She reached for the glass nearest to her and took a big gulp.
Destiny arrived with a fresh platter of drinks and sat down.
“Thanks for bartending tonight, Destiny,” said Amanda graciously.
Destiny froze up for a second, then began handing the drinks out again.
“No bother, kid,” said Destiny without looking at her. “Anyway, Steve, I’ve been meaning to ask-”
“-Ask away!” Steve proclaimed abruptly, prompting Jennifer to choke on her new drink.
“I meant to ask you, you stole some crystals from the Entity. That’s why you got tangled up in all this?”
“Oh yeah, stupid, dumb crystals. I hate them.”
“We didn’t steal them, though,” corrected Jennifer.
“They just fell from the sky one day and have literally done nothing good ever since.”
Destiny nodded sympathetically.
“Screw the crystals!” She called.
“Screw the crystals!” Steve and Jennifer echoed. Seth joined in a little late and laughed at his own sluggishness.
“You know what we should do,” said Destiny. “We should smash them. It’ll be symbolic and stuff.”
“I love it!” yelled Jennifer. “Steve, we should absolutely do that.”
“I don’t know,” mumbled Steve. “Can’t they like, track the signature? Won’t they find the Shelter?”
“Steve, if they don’t know where we are by now, they’re never going to figure it out,” said Destiny.
“Aye, they do have Claw on their side. He probably told them, even if it took some rememberin’,'' agreed Urist.
Steve nodded and puffed out his cheeks as though swilling a fine wine around his mouth.
“We’re smashing those crystals.”
Amanda whooped supportively.
He pulled out his ender chest and began rummaging through. Finally, his hand stopped stirring around, descended slightly, and then came out with a fist full of luminous, multi-coloured crystals. He scattered them on the table and equipped his sword. Destiny put a hand on his wrist.
“First,” Destiny said. “A toast. Come on. Everyone in for this one. Even you, Lucy. Don’t be shy.”
And then all did so, picking up a drink and preparing to raise it. Looking around at all these people, who had been so miserable just a few hours before, Amanda felt… still a little toxic, but also a burning, intense affection. It felt like a wave rolling through her, rising us to her heart and making it ache with happiness. She wanted to run down to Helix, tell him she loved him and help him feel the same way.
Destiny began to speak.
“Thank you all,” she said. “This is probably the last great night we’ll have until this is all over, so I’m glad we got to share it. To the end of one story and the beginning of another!”
There was a round of cheers, then the drinks were raised like Icarus to the sun. Then, they plummeted down towards open mouths. They all drank deep. All except one.
Wolfric collapsed first.
“Lightweight,” Voidblade repeated. He got slightly fewer laughs than before. Then, he slumped back in his seat.
Amanda and Seth shared a look, a hazy and unfocused but nonetheless urgent look.
Jennifer went next. Then, Ozen. Steve flopped onto the floor. At this point Amanda and Seth both clumsily drew weapons. Seth’s sword slipped between his fingers, and he dropped to his knees, drifting off as he reached out after it.
Amanda heard the thud of Urist going down somewhere to her right, she could no longer focus. Her eyes swung around like dim lanterns which only revealed a snapshot of the world. Lucy strewn out on her side. Rose lying on the ground, blood on her forehead and the corner of her table. Only one person left.
“Destiny,” grunted Amanda. “Why?”
Amanda pointed her axe at Destiny and began to struggle forward. The older girl stood by the table, counting the crystals Steve had laid out. Amanda could hear something scraping on the carpet somewhere to her right but didn’t dare lose focus on Destiny.
“It’s the only way,” said Destiny.
Amanda fell flat on her face, feeling one of her teeth scream out as it connected with the ground. Still, she fought on, turning her face. She saw Destiny scooping up the crystals and putting them in her pocket. Then, she stooped down over Lucy and plucked a key off her belt.
“Hopefully, one day it’ll make sense. Sleep well.”
And with that, she left. Amanda tried to force herself up, to go and tell someone, but she couldn’t do it. It only brought the encroaching darkness further on. But just before she drifted off completely, she heard one last, heavily accented thing:
"Oooh, I'm na lettin' anotha keep go down like this. Na again. Na again..."
Chapter 65: Like Dominoes (Destiny/Shadow/Kay)
She rolled one of the multi-coloured crystals in her palm, feeling its strange pull eb and flow as she did so. She clasped the key between the fingers on her other hand. Destiny couldn’t help but feel this left her vulnerable, but she needed to do something with her hands.
“Feeling nervous?” sneered Freak, who strolled along on her left.
His toothy grin remained unaffected by the light, remaining the same shade of sickly yellow no matter where they went in the hall. She tried to distract herself by focusing on her mental map of the place. The prison was only a few steps away.
“Yeah,” Destiny muttered. “I am. I just drugged half my friends. I’m working with the Tower’s top torturer. And I’m on my way to open Pandora’s box, except instead of all the horrors of the world inside, it’s an attempted child murderer.”
Freak wheezed, bending almost horizontal and digging his taloned fingers into his knees. Destiny stopped and looked back. Just as she was beginning to feel worried, the head shot up and the disgusting smile shot back into plain view.
“You really think I’m the Tower’s top torturer? That means so much to me!”
Destiny groaned and marched off. She had half a mind to take a wrong turn and lead Freak right into the Command Room, let Tyron settle affairs. It certainly felt better than the current plan of letting Kay loose and hoping he caused enough of a distraction to cover their escape. But the right thing to do never feels right, does it? Anyway, she couldn’t complain, this was her idea.
Despite her attempt to abandon him, Freak phased through a wall in front of her.
“Oh, come on, Destiny!” he laughed. “Isn’t that the sort of connection you’ve been looking for all evening? A last meaningful conversation with a friend?”
Destiny quickened her steps.
“Well, how did that go? They explicitly told you they weren’t your friend, and you spent the rest of the night playing waitress.”
Her footsteps became more powerful, more violent. Much harder and she’d have worried about breaking the clay tiles on the floor.
“Don’t get me wrong, it looks like they had a good night, and you played a key part in enabling it. But is that really enough to make them your friends? To make them willing to forgive you for what you’re about to do?”
Destiny realised she had started running. Her ponytail trailed behind her, and Freak kept perfect pace with it.
“I hate to say it, Destiny, I’m the best friend you’ve got left.”
“Shut up, Freak!”
She stopped, slid on the tiles and whirled around. Her teeth were bared like fangs, matching his horrid grin. She had some choice words for this phantom piece of-
An overwhelming force slammed her into the wall. Her spine straightened against the hard stone, bending all the air out of her, and she felt the key slip from her hand. In its place she rapidly summoned an icicle to throw at her assailant. Before her, a shower of purple particles rose from the floor, and Shadow appeared. Destiny realised the icicle might not be as effective as she’d hoped, and her hopes had not been high to begin with.
“Oh, hey, Shadow, how’s it hanging?” Destiny asked without even a hint of emotion.
“Where do you think you’re going, Destiny?”
Destiny fought the urge to shoot a look at Freak, who she hoped wouldn’t be noticed.
“Just having my evening jog. Are you going to put me down anytime soon so I can continue it?”
Shadow mock-quizzically tilted her head. “Interesting evening routine. Drugging everyone, then some cardio. Luckily for you, you used a sedative stolen from my brother’s supply so nobody’s going to end up dying from an overdose. And unluckily for you, my brother didn’t know about dwarves and their resilience when he made it. Poor Urist looked like he was having war flashbacks.”
Destiny felt her stomach twist. Both from realising someone had gotten away - she’d thought she’d seen Urist drag himself across the carpet but had dismissed it as paranoia - and from sympathy for her victims. But there was a task to be accomplished. She cast her eyes up and down the hall, only allowing them to rest on Freak for a split-second to avert suspicion. She then began to wrestle against the invisible bonds pinning her to the wall.
“Sorry, there wasn’t enough to go around. I’ll fetch extra next time.”
She threw the crystal past Shadow’s head, missing on purpose.
“I guess I’m just a bit of a screw up,” Destiny smiled wryly, making sure to grunt with effort. “I never could finish the job.”
She hoped Freak would catch her drift. Take the crystal and do what he could. Bring this to an end. Save them all. He was an unlikely hero, but- wait, what was he doing?!
“Shadow.”
Freak had become fully visible, grinning unimpeded. Destiny felt her brain stop. Was Freak sticking his neck out for her?
“I’m behind all this. How about you let her go and we talk this out like adults. I assure you, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
Shadow did not respond at first. She just turned her head slowly, stared Freak down, then slowly turned it back to Destiny.
Suddenly, Destiny felt a sudden pressure on her mind, as though her thoughts were drifting towards a single point. She tried to resist it, repressing the details of her and Freak’s plan as best she could, but some things she couldn’t stop thinking about: the plan to kill the Entity; why she needed the crystals; the grey, seething nothing at the end of everything.
She saw Shadow’s skin become a shade darker than dark. Her shadow began to warp. Destiny felt that fight-or-flight instinct rise to the surface again - a reaction triggered by the gut feeling that something was irredeemably wrong about Shadow’s nature. She readied for the unknowable mage to destroy her in a sudden blast of heat, or to do whatever she did to the Book, but then her form normalised.
A deep sigh came from Shadow. “Fine then. I’ve seen enough. Go do what you set out to do, as long as it can kill the Entity, it is the only option.” She turned to Freak. “I do not like you being involved in this at all, but evidently you know the outcome of what the Entity intends.”
Destiny felt herself being slowly lowered to the ground. Shadow spoke again, more to herself this time: “This either dooms or saves us all, one way or another. I know my part.”
Destiny dropped suddenly and landed on her knees. She eyed the key and looked at Freak. The phantom laughed.
“You know your part, do you? Oh, that’s reassuring. What are we now, Entropy?”
Shadow turned away from Destiny and looked at Freak with an unreadable expression.
Freak said: “You do realise you’re not the first, right? You’re the first to cause it a problem in a while, but other Embodiments have come before. If my plan succeeds, they’ll come after.”
Destiny’s mind flailed. Did Shadow know about the plan to release Kay? Was this an approval? Or had she managed to keep that part submerged? She pulled herself up, grabbed the key and ran.
She ran continuously until she reached the prison. The guard saw her running like a thing possessed and yelled ‘Halt!’ She didn’t. He drew his sword. Destiny froze him solid.
Down the stairs she ran, the razor-sharp icicle held before her like a lantern. She nearly tripped and broke her neck at least three times. And, after a moment’s breath, she sprinted down between the empty cells, past the glass and iron, and the signs of names that would never have been caught dead here - that she never would have let get here alive - until finally she skidded to a halt in front of the cell she needed.
The Shelter’s former Commander sat in the corner of his rough-hewn cell, his fringe like a curtain over his face, and his knees hugged to his chest.
“Kay,” she muttered. “Rise and shine. You’re needed.”
His head slowly lifted, then jerked suddenly into life as he heard the click of the lock. He leapt to his feet but remained pressed against the wall. His green eyes were bloodshot.
“Destiny… what are you doing?”
“I’m letting you go.”
She pulled the door open and gestured for him to come out. He nodded and stepped tremulously forward.
“Might I ask why?”
“I need you to kick up a fuss. Start a riot. Win a war. Try and kill another kid. I don’t care. Just make sure no one notices me leaving.”
Kay’s lips pressed tightly together. He became less shaky - being pissed off seemed to steady him. Destiny wished she could have said that was deliberate.
“I’m still waiting on a why, Destiny.”
Destiny sighed.
“I’m going to kill the Entity.”
Kay’s face flattened for a second, all emotions disappearing from it, and then suddenly a desperation crept back in.
“Then, I’m coming with you.”
Destiny started to walk away.
“You’re not. Freak and I will barely be able to sneak past security as is. I’m only useful because I’m a magic-user.”
He grabbed her shoulder and forced her to lock eyes with him.
“I need to make things right, Destiny. Please.”
Destiny brushed his hand off and gave him a glare that could melt steel.
“Okay, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you Kay, I put a good amount of faith in you as a leader and look what you went and did with that. Beyond how screwed up that stuff with Helix was - which it was - it shows you are just the stupidest, least useful asshole on the planet - any planet. You want to restore my faith in your abilities? Be a good diversion, get off my back.”
He began to tear up. She rolled her eyes. He sucked in a lot of air and recomposed himself. In his poshest accent:
“Very well, I’ll be the best damn diversion you’ve ever seen. I know just what will get their attention.”
He grabbed Destiny by the wrist and dragged her back to the glass cell opposite his own.
“I just need you to open this cell for me.”
She looked inside and saw a set of grey scales.
“Nope,” she shook her head. “Not doing that.”
“Trust me, I need him.”
He gave her a look that burned with desperation yes, but also an ambition that almost recaptured the confidence he’d displayed back when she voted for him all those weeks ago.
“Fine.”
She blasted the window with fire until the seal broke, and the glass cracked. She stopped, then began to march away. The enderman sat on his bed, looking confused.
“Rest is up to you.”
Kay laughed to himself, nodding furiously.
“It’s all I need. Good luck.”
She heard glass shatter as Kay kicked in the window.
Then, she heard him backing away, crunching across the glass. And the pad of the enderman walking across the carpet of his cell. Then, another sound of crunching. She cast a glance back. The enderman towered over him, and she wondered if this was all a waste of effort. Then, he shot one of his mad, desperate grins.
“Truce?” he asked.
“Depends. What are your terms?” asked Silver.
###
Destiny was out of sight, Freak was still very much in front of Shadow.
He repeated his question: “So, what are we now, Entropy?”
Shadow thought for a moment, then replied: “Yes, but that’s not the point. I’m not just some sentient cosmic force. As opposed to the Entity, I was a person before I became what I am. I am a sister who values her brother above all else because of the lengths he went to make sure I could live my life free.”
“That’s a narrow definition of personhood,” Freak grinned. “It has feelings, you know? It’s good at hiding them, but they exist. It’s afraid. Afraid of you, specifically. That was a shock. But above all, before all this, it was lonely. It was a puddle of Order, unable to affect anything, just waiting for creation to come within its reach. And when it finally got near enough, it grabbed hold of everything, and vowed never to let it go.”
He began to circle Shadow.
“I’ve watched you, I’ve listened to the way they talk about you. You’re alone, too. Are you and the Entity really that different?”
“I’m not about to lay down the entire inner workings of my mind to a known manipulator.”
Shadow thought back on her first confrontation with the Entity, back at the blood-soaked battlefield, then to her second. She had seen the Entity’s fear in the way it stepped back after realizing it couldn’t absorb her. Felt it resonate through spacetime wherever their areas of influence intersected.
She added: “However, I will answer your question. The difference lies in the fact that while the Entity is motivated by its desire to grow and possess more, I am motivated by my desire to not lose someone specific. One of those motivations does not involve the destruction of existence if left undisturbed.”
Freak cackled. He stepped into a wall and out of sight.
“Well, that’s your stance. Of course, I’m not going to question your motives…”
Shadow looked around. Still no sign of him. He seemed to have almost completely dropped from reality, slipped into the dreamscape.
“But I would like to see them.”
Freak lurched out of the wall, teeth like fangs and eyes like yellow, jaundiced pits. And stretched before was its talon, aimed right between her eyes. Then it stopped, just above the skin.
Shadow felt the phantom probe at her mind, very clumsily since her mental workings were radically different from what Freak was used to.
“No reaction?” asked the Phantom.
He backed away.
“Well, aren’t you tough? Or you maybe knew that would never work. That I’d die if I did it. Again, same as the Entity. It’d suck me in. You’d unravel me.”
He clasped his hands together behind his back and started to strut around.
“You think you’re so smart, don’t you? So enlightened and wise. All-seeing, whether you like it or not.”
Shadow shook her head. She had to give it to Freak, he was good at what he was doing. Just wrong on one account.
“No, not really. You might have been right a year ago, before all this happened but you happened to catch me at the lowest point of my confidence. Congratulations, I guess. The issue with being so damn powerful is that there is so much more room to screw up, and I’ve done plenty of that. Tell me Freak, are you done? Or will you keep going until you find something that scares me, it’s just what you do, right?”
“You see, Shadow, that’s what I’m talking about. You see everything. Heck, you even saw Destiny’s mind. Kicked your way right through the wall. Saw my whole plan. Tell me, what did you learn about it? What does it tell you about me?”
Destiny’s mind… she had been remarkably resilient, but then Shadow hadn’t put on any pressure once she realized she was going after the Entity. Steal a crystal, cause a distraction, go to the Tower with Freak, jam the crystal into the spatial anomaly in the Entity’s throne room, charge it with magic and hope for the best. A desperate plan, but no less desperate than what Fire had done. She told Freak as much.
“Yep, but I always have a distraction, too. Confuse the enemy response, and if you do it well enough, all that confusion turns into a nice healthy dose of fear to glut upon. A fixture of every plan I’ve ever had. But this time I didn’t choose the distraction - I wish I had, it was a great idea. Did you see what Destiny cooked up?”
While Freak talked, Shadow expanded her vision beyond what she was forced to see. When she realized what had happened there was a moment of clarity. Freak would get the fear he wanted, she wished he was capable of choking on it. Then the next moment the expected fear hit Shadow hard. Kay was free and currently in the portal room. She knew what he was about to do.
“Oh, that’s good. That’s delectable!” howled Freak.
Freak threw his arms wide and fell back into the floor.
Without even responding, Shadow teleported to the portal room, gathering energy for her disintegration ray at the same time. Just as she materialized, Kay was already through the portal, which promptly collapsed in on itself.
Shadow stopped, her arm fell to her side and the energy she had gathered dissipated back into the environment. She felt empty, emptier than should be possible. It was only a matter of time now.
###
I swear I told Silver to leave as many alive as possible. Unfortunately, he didn’t like me very much. I managed to grab one researcher and throw him in the direction of the door, and he got out. Six others died. The grey enderman teleported around, tearing away with his talons, spraying blood across controls and floors. To his credit, several of them were armed guards. I can’t quite remember how many. None of my red-scarfed guardians - some confused part of me felt it would have been better if a few of them died instead of the rank-and-file.
But I also didn’t object, not just because Silver wouldn’t have listened, but because Destiny needed her distraction. I sauntered purposefully up to the controls next to the portal and began to tamper with controls. I closed my eyes and thought back to the documents we recovered from the Tower facility.
We had stopped by the arms lock-up after working out the terms. I had grabbed my sword and the nearest set of diamond armour, Silver took a battered obsidian chestplate, teleported here and then this scuffle began.
I input the location code as the fighting continued. The portal fired up. The blue orb appeared at the center, and then spread out to fill the whole frame. I looked upon what I had enabled and was proud of this at least.
I heard the last sword clatter. A dying man choking. The sound of warping. Ender particles floating through the air from behind me. I felt the talons about my throat.
“Give me a reason not to go through with this,” growled Silver.
I tried to crack my neck, but he tightened his grip. I felt a stab of pain as the skin ripped and a drop of blood ran down my Adam’s apple. I listened for my pounding heart, but it was slow, lethargic. I briefly wondered if I should antagonise him. But no, too many people had died for that to be the noble path forward.
“Check the console,” I said.
My voice was a dry croak.
Silver threw me against a nearly railing. Before checking the console, he whirled around with talons ready, as though he expected me to make a move. Something like disappointment flowed over the Endling’s face. He returned to the machine and froze up.
“Is this…” he trailed off.
“Yes, your home.”
“Why?”
I wondered about that myself. I closed my eyes, lowered my head, and searched for the truth.
“I took eleven years of your life. A few days ago, I would not have cared. But I crossed a line with that Book business. It’s about time I started setting some of my mistakes right.”
Silver nodded, though I could have sworn I saw him roll his eyes.
“Don’t follow me through,” he concluded. “They’ll shred you.”
Silver straightened his breastplate and began to walk towards the portal.
“Wait,” I said very suddenly, not quite certain of my goal.
The Endling glanced back. He said nothing.
“Do I die in the end? Am I dead where you and Astro come from?”
I wish I could tell you why I asked that. I’ve pondered that myself. The best explanation I can offer is that, in times of great strife, few things are on a man’s mind more than the length of his life, and what he leaves behind. But there was something in the way Astro had looked at me. Something about the way he spoke about me. Something very final. As though what I did now was the final verdict on who I was. I rather think asking was a mistake, though.
“Yes,” Silver nodded. “I was there.”
“Do I die well?”
“You seemed to think so.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but then decided against it. I closed my jaws. Bit down on my fate. I waved my hand, and Silver left. The blue portal slammed closed. I allowed myself a few seconds, then heard footsteps. I went to the console. My duty was not yet fulfilled.
I closed my eyes, remembered a set of coordinates I had seen and known I would one day need. Even before I became leader, before all this Claw business, before we even knew what the Entity’s plan was, I saw that coordinate and locked it in. My fingers ran gracefully over the keys, then over to a portable scanner. The portal reopened. It would close the second I used it, then scramble the coordinates to cover my tracks. I stepped up to the plate.
I heard a warping noise. Shadow stood at the doorway, a spell in hand, ready to kill. I stepped through, and all became white tunnels and snapshots of creations that were, that could have been, that should have come to pass, and then all that vanished.
I stood in a field on a hill. Behind me, sheep graze, crops are planted, and the land slopes up slowly until it bleeds into a mountain. Before me, fields flowed down until they broke against a road populated by restless streaks of colour. And the road led to a city - a city large enough to rival Mojang.
I checked the scanner. A warning flashed on screen: “Unknown spatial topology.” Several versions of the same signal flickered. Several blinked away in the city. One, however, was closer. I looked in that direction, saw trees and foothills. It calls to me, and only slightly because the streaks of colour screaming down the roads make me feel dizzy.
This was Fire’s world. Claw’s only weak point. I went there to kill him. Because I had to.
I told myself that, even if Destiny succeeded in killing the Entity, that there was no guarantee Claw would go away. He had broken out before, he would break out again. And without the Book I stood less than no chance against him. Bar Rose, no one did. He was too strong, too crafty. He wouldn’t be beaten the same way twice. That beast had to die. So, I would hit him where he was mortal: in his human body, in his ‘real world’.
If I could do that, I could come back from this. I could still be the hero people had once told me I was. The great warrior I always wanted to be.
Every part of me tensed as a cold wind tried to topple me. My eyes begin to water. My hand fumbled around in my pocket, producing Hel- producing my goggles. I ran a thumb over the cracked glass, then put them on. I pulled my hood up, glanced at the scanner once, and set out for foothills and trees.
###
There were no clouds. The stars seemed further away than normal. Or maybe just dimmer. Either way, it left the ground darker than she’d ever seen it. Every step felt like a step in the wrong direction, and she couldn’t stop stumbling. She had made this path so many times, why tonight? Was this self-sabotage? Probably.
Eventually, she got sick of stumbling around, and lit a fire in her palm. She caught a glimpse of the Sovereign flag and extinguished it. As she walked between the tents and propaganda and corpses, she remembered that she’d once vowed to destroy all these things - to break from her past for good. That seemed like an empty gesture, now.
The second she crested the hill, Anya approached her with a look of sympathy and pain. Destiny could make out all her features - she was a ghost after all - but this discrepancy had always hurt her head. She shot out some fireballs to light the torches and see her past self normally. Unfortunately, it revealed a giggling Freak sitting in the portal frame.
“You should have seen the look on Shadow’s face when she realised your little distraction technique.” His giggles became howls. “It was so fearful.”
“Move,” she grunted.
The phantom only just lurched out of the way before her fireball hit the frame. The portal flashed into life. Anya stood beside her. They wasted no time waiting for Freak to get up and returned to their homeworld.
###
They trekked for a long time, following Anya. She could go where she liked in Minera, so she’d scouted out the route to the other portal. The faster they got there, the more time the others had to stop the machine. Also made sure there was more of a gap to close if the others tried to catch up to her.
She wondered what Fristad would have thought. Would he have understood how important working with Freak was? Probably not, but somehow, she was sure he would have helped out in his own way. Gathered provisions. Caused a distraction. Made it so she didn’t have to release Kay. That would have been nice. Or maybe he would have just told the others.
She kept thinking about what Steve had said, about how none of them knew each other, not really. And to be fair, she hadn’t known that much about Fristad. She knew he was from Veridale, that he had been under the Book’s control, that he had friends called Airlass and Jonas… And that was about where it ended. But they’d shared emotions, they’d both felt lost at the end of a chapter in their lives, and that had been enough to care about him.
Steve could go suck an egg, she cared about all of them. Steve included.
They came across the portal, finally. It remained as she remembered it. Something dark, red and solid as the base, and a black, angry gel oozing around in the centre. Freak muttered something about checking the coast was clear, and hopped in. And Destiny stood there, wondering how much time she had.
She briefly wondered why this portal was different from the other one, but it really wasn’t that important. Probably just an older model.
So, she turned her attention to something much better. She turned away from the portal and strode down the coastline. Anya followed. She passed the crafting table beneath the tree, running her fingers across the scratches, and continued until she came to the boat that had taken her to this place originally. She reached down and examined the name etched into the side.
“He called it the ‘Bright Destiny’,” she mumbled with a smile. “I thought it was the worst damn name he could have come up with, but he was in such a good mood. David always was cheesy.”
“Carter wasn’t much different,” said Anya. “Guess some things don’t change no matter how many times you die.”
Then, they were quiet for a while. She didn’t know if it was the night air or if she’d just lost her nerve, but Destiny started to shake.
“You don’t have to go through with this,” said Anya.
Destiny laughed nervously.
“Don’t tell me you’re going soft, now?”
“I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m saying it’s your choice.”
Destiny nodded, and she thought very hard about what she wanted. But it was all his face. His laugh. His smile. The time they had. The time they wasted not acknowledging what they were. It was all she could think about.
The greater good would only ever be a runner-up to what she had lost and wanted so desperately to regain. But, given the circumstances, that was the best she could do. Besides, being a good person was rewarding in its own way… or something.
“Come on!” called Freak with irritation. “We’re clear but not for long.”
Destiny nodded and rolled her eyes. A strange sort of serenity washed over her like a soothing balm. She was a hero, this was just what she did. She gave Anya her best approximation of a hug and approached the portal.
“Do you think this will work?” she asked Freak.
“I’ll level with you, it’s a crapshoot.”
She shrugged and stepped forward to fulfil her role. No matter the cost.
Chapter 66: Final Steps (Claw)
The atmosphere in the Tower had changed over the last few days. The machine was almost complete, the Entity’s plan was palpably close to coming to fruition. And everybody felt it. Command and Control held one full assembly meeting after the other, trying to make sure that absolutely everything went as it should.
Both the Science and Magic divisions worked overtime on putting those last finishing touches on the machine and quadruple-checking that nothing would go wrong once the device powered up.
Over the course of the last week all off-world trade had ceased and portals connecting to other worlds had gone dark. All resources were consolidated in the Tower and the staff from Logistics worked hard on categorizing and storing whatever came.
Claw was naturally not spared from all this. He’d spent countless hours with the Ender working on defense plans and drilling the troops. A final attack by the rebels was not just considered, it was absolutely expected.
Claw had heard a variety of things from different employees, everyone had different expectations of what would happen once the Entity flipped that fateful switch that had been installed in its throne room. The switch that would activate the machine and collapse all worlds into Nexus. Some fully bought into the prospects of prosperity brought on by this grand convergence, others were skeptical but optimistic. A select few were fearful, but they hid it well. Most of these did not know why exactly they felt the fear that they felt, all save for one.
Dr. Veronica Mercury had figured it all out, she knew the fate of the world and everything living in it. Claw had realized this the moment he had seen her during one of his frequent visits to her private laboratory. It was subtle, her posture was a little less upright, her tone of voice was a little flatter, her eyes stared a little further. She knew and she could do nothing about it. She was not even able to sabotage the machine, the Entity kept a sizable portion of its attention firmly focused on the machine, so much attention that conversations it held had become noticeably sluggish.
Claw could of course have told the Entity about the discovery made by their head of Science, but in reality, why should he? At this point her expertise was not required for the machine to work, all it would do is shorten her existence as an individual by a few days. If it wasn’t obvious at this point, Claw knew as well. He’d figured it out at some point before the rebels’ raid on the portal facility. He’d gone and confirmed it with the Entity even.
Claw’s own role in all this didn’t change. If the Entity succeeded, he’d be assimilated, if the Entity failed, he’d return to his previous prison. All-in-all the outcomes were the same, in a way Claw was glad he got to exist as his own person at all. However, as a rare exception to his usual attitude, Claw felt genuinely bad for Dr. Mercury, finding out all on her own with something to lose.
Putting the thoughts of impending doom aside, Claw turned to other matters. Kay had developed nicely, just like Glibby said he would. Rumors of this “King in Ash” that was now leading the rebels had quickly spread to the Tower as well. Him burning down that warehouse was just perfect, it exceeded Claw’s expectations of how quickly he would deteriorate. However, the fact that so far there hadn’t been a single defection from the rebels spoke volumes about their desperation, they clung to hope even when serving under a leader such as Kay.
While deep in thought, Claw had found himself wandering back to the hallway that contained his private chambers, his and those of the other direct subordinates of the Entity. He thought about each as he passed the doors.
From what Claw knew, Glibby had taken his advice to heart and had spent considerable time reading and consulting demonologists. With any luck he’d actually find some sort of weakness he could use. Naturally using it was a different question because at this point, after his repeated losses, the Ape was apprehensive about his next confrontation with Helix. Of course, he hid it under his usual bravado so few people in the Tower knew the truth.
Freak had been acting oddly as of late, more so than usual. Maybe he felt something off with the Entity’s plan. Among everyone in the Tower, Freak would be the most likely to have found out. For now, the phantom hadn’t done anything that could give Claw certainty.
Finally Claw arrived at the Ender’s room. His wandering had not been random, but with purpose. There were still a few things he had to discuss with her, and they could not wait.
He knocked on her door exactly three times. It didn’t take long for her to answer. The Ender was still in uniform, wearing her signature obsidian armor with the purple gems. That was to say, the Ender was never out of uniform. It was a common practice for endfolk to wear armor at all times, even while they slept.
The Ender looked at Claw with a neutral expression. “This is about those defense plans, isn’t it?”
Claw nodded. “Mind if I come in, or should we go to an office?”
The Ender hesitated for a solid three seconds, then gestured for Claw to enter the room. “I had a feeling you’d come by, so I took the plans with me.”
Claw had been to the Ender’s private chambers only once before, so he took another look around the room. It looked similar to his in basic structure but there were significant differences. The living room looked like her office, a table, two chairs, a shelf with books and various other things on it. However, one corner of the room was dominated by a bulky device, a dehumidifier. Judging by the absolutely arid air, it worked as intended.
He’d never seen the bedroom, but he assumed that it couldn’t be too different from his own. There was one striking difference, however. Where Claw’s chambers had a door to a bathroom, the Ender’s simply had an opening. Behind this opening Claw could see the winding and branching vines of a chorus plant. The Ender had told him about an ancient custom that leaders would take care of one, parallels between keeping the plant healthy without it taking over the entire room, and leading an army or nation were easy to draw. However, it turned out that the Ender didn’t care much for that tradition for its intended purpose, she simply liked gardening as a counterbalance to her day-to-day duties.
Claw sat down at the table, the plans were already rolled out and pinned down.
He began: “So, we’ve got most scenarios down and accounted for. But we’ve still got insufficient coverage for the really bad outcomes. Say the rebels somehow breach the main gate and all of our external infrastructure is crippled or destroyed.”
The Ender responded: “It’s hallway combat at that point, our mages and marksmen should have that front covered. They can only push in so quickly and between them and the bedrock golems guarding the machine, there should be enough time for the machine to activate.”
Claw quickly glanced over the possible choke points on the blueprints, then used a marker to highlight several of them. “Those should be our best bet then, we need to make sure our soldiers and civilian staff know this. If they breach that far the civilians will inevitably come under attack.”
“I’ll have Issa take care of distributing the information, Dimensions has a lot of free capacity now that we’ve cut the portals.”
Claw looked up and directly at his colleague. “Speaking of portals, we can’t rule out that the rebels are in possession of functional portal technology from their raid.”
The Ender continued his train of thought: “Which means they’ll probably have stocked up on forces and resources by now. We should expect not just raw numbers but elite troops as well, if some of these people were able to contact their home worlds, they are bound to have rallied professional soldiers in some capacity. Or worse, heroes.”
Claw asked: “Any worlds in particular?”
The Ender leaned back in her chair, thinking the question over.
She replied: “I will have to ask Issa on that too, the only one that comes to mind is the world where Kay hails from. Though I doubt they’d be inclined to help him if what Glibby told you is any indication.”
Kay’s world was definitely a possibility, especially considering it was one of the few where Herobrine still lived and wasn’t an unhinged killer. One more world came to Claw’s mind, his own, or rather that of the other one. But that one would remain a non-issue since the energy required to open an invasion-sized portal that far would exceed even the capabilities of the rebels’ Void mage. Nobody short of the Entity had that much energy at their command.
“Tell Issa to go over the dossiers of known rebels, as well as any reports about nearby worlds we never established portals to. In fact, we should ask her right now to get going. One of her telepaths should be listening out.”
Claw took it upon himself to get the attention of the telepath. If Claw recalled correctly, it was the same one that had told him about his first Command and Control meeting. All he had to do was concentrate on a specific concept. For this specific telepath Claw had to think about weaving a basket while submerged in sea water and wearing a second basket for a hat. The concepts were chosen so it would be nearly impossible for them to be thought of unintentionally.
Seconds later Claw heard the voice of the little girl again. “Hello Claw.”
Claw replied: “Heather, we need you to relay some information to Issa for us.”
Claw had made a point of learning the names of everyone he interacted with, he found that people were a lot easier to work with if you knew their name. The voice of the other one’s memory had told him it was about forming a personal connection and Claw had not found any issues with that.
Heather asked: “Is it confidential?”
Claw transmitted the mental equivalent of shaking his head.
Heather told Claw to wait while she looked for Issa. In the meantime, Claw thought over some additional worst-case scenarios with the Ender until the voice of the telepath appeared in his mind again.
“Ready.”
Claw took care to slowly transmit the information, telepathy was much faster than speech and going too fast risked information getting lost in the telepath’s short-term memory. Once he was done, he waited for an acknowledgement.
Heather transmitted: “Issa says she’ll have it done as soon as possible, you can expect a full report within four hours.”
“Thank you, Heather.” Claw replied, moments later the connection was closed.
He turned to the Ender. “Four hours and we’ll have our threat breakdown. Plenty of time to finalize the regular defense plan. We’ll do a formal worst-case one once the report is in.”
The Ender nodded. “Let us get to it then, much to be done.”
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 5 Crisis (Cont.)
Chapter 67: Severance (Destiny)
Destiny stepped out into an upsettingly familiar chamber. Roughly hewn walls. Very little light, just the occasional lantern hung from the crags of the walls and ceiling. Grass on the floor. In various alcoves, more red-and-black portals could be seen. Calling it a chamber was charitable, it was basically a cave. It then occurred to her that grass didn’t usually grow in caves. She lit a flame in her palm and stooped to pluck up a blade of grass. It had died some time ago.
Nothing about this room made sense to Destiny, and normally she would have just powered through to get the job done, but this time was different. She just knew it as the place where Glibby and the Grey Ones had jumped herself and David back at the beginning of this whole messed-up situation. The grass had been alive back then. So, she felt entitled to some closure.
“Where are we?”
“This iteration’s playground so to speak. Baby’s first portals to other worlds. The Entity probably kept it around as a keepsake, or maybe just because it hoards everything.”
“Why didn’t we notice the portal sooner, then? Carter and Anya… Well, they didn’t say it had just appeared but… that was the impression I got.”
Freak shrugged. “Look, we have people from different times in the same world. I heard some of the eggheads talk about it and all I got from that was that it’s arbitrary and I shouldn’t question it.”
The phantom walked onwards, and Destiny didn’t say anything, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Some of the portals were open, others closed. Were the closed portals ones for worlds the Entity had absorbed? Or, had the Entity closed and reopened the portal to her world? But, why? Plans of conquest? Pursuit of something? Some sort of nostalgia?
She kept fixating on it because the alternative meant Anya had lied to her. Had always been lying to her. She remembered what Carter said before they left.
“You defeated Martin, but a greater threat awaits. I sense a strong presence in there, so you won't go in empty handed.”
And then they’d given David the stupid gauntlet that killed him. And they’d given her those wings which she lost in that very room, not five minutes after arriving on scene.
Carter, Anya, and whatever force they served had known about the portal for a while. They just hadn’t seen fit to tell them. She felt a warm, nauseating flush of anger, and her concern at not having Anya with her dropped to an all-time low.
They came to a monolithic staircase, made of large stone steps, each nearly a meter in height and depth. Freak spryly leapt from one to the next, his footsteps less than whispers. Destiny sighed and climbed up after him.
By the time she reached the top of the steps, rising through layers of packed-in rock, she was already exhausted. Sweat all over her. Hands raw from gripping the coarse stone. Lungs burning away. She sat down.
“Could have warned me about the staircase,” she grumbled. “I’m supposed to kill the Entity and its architect’s already halfway beat me.”
There was a door before them, and she could hear the noise of machinery beyond it. Freak stared through a large, glass orb which seemed to act as a peephole, either unaware of or unconcerned by her complaints. Destiny sighed. Truthful or liar, Anya would have been easily provoked into being supportive.
“Where are we?” she tried.
Freak gestured for her to come up. She put her eye to the looking glass. On the other side, she saw corridors lined with pipes, with technicians and scientists and mages marching between. Every here and there an obsidian-clad enderman stood high above the others, a small patrol of human soldiers following in their wake. She couldn’t see any lamps - probably because the mages needed magic to work. She heard something loud pounding on the floor.
“Science part of the lower sections, machine’s somewhere around here. Not really much else interesting here except for Mercury’s lab, very interesting things to be learned there. Well, in the past there were, now she’s just trying not to let it show she found out what the Entity plans on doing with all of existence.”
Destiny’s eyes widened as a world of opportunity opened up.
“Is there a chance we could convince her to help us? Wait, was that what that part of your mind theater was about?”
“She already helped in a way, the thing about the crystals? She and Claw found that out.”
“Yeah, but I mean actual help. Not prep-work.”
Freak sneered.
“Talk to her if you want. Your friend briefly tried that as I recall, she tried melting his face and handed him over to the Entity. But no, I’m sure if you walk up to her, that addled little mind will hear you out.”
“Fine. How are we getting past?”
The pounding sound she’d heard before was louder than ever. Just a few seconds ago it had been distant, now it sounded like it was coming right up the-
“Once this thing’s moved on,” hissed Freak.
He shunted Destiny away from the orb and threw himself against the opposing wall. The pounding grew louder, and Destiny felt her lungs tighten. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. She summoned an icy sword, quickly realising how little defence it offered her. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Her heart began to hammer away at a similar volume. Clunk. It stopped. A shadow fell over the peephole. She heard a whirring noise, and then a red light poured through the glass.
Through the warped, scarlet-stained glass, Destiny could just about make out a cuboid or perhaps rectangular head, with what must have been a large, red eye dominating the centre of what should have been its face. Its gaze rotated around the orb, and a red dot passed around the hallway. Then, the creature whirred again, and the red light seeped back out of the glass. The pounding resumed. The shadow passed, and the corridor lit up again.
Destiny put her head back to the peephole despite Freak’s protests. She caught a glimpse of a huge, square-fisted golem vanishing around the corner. But it wasn’t iron, there was something odd, something speckled about the colour, and she knew it wasn’t paint. It almost looked like…
“...Bedrock,” she breathed. “They have bedrock golems?”
“Yep,” chuckled the phantom as he rummaged around in his pocket. “They found them in… I think it was your demon-kid’s world. Just lying around in some temples on a green moon. I think they were meant to be guarding something, because they did not take kindly to our guys investigating. Lost half a brigade trying to recover one. Mercury tried to replicate them for months. And she couldn’t. Notably it’s one of the few projects where Archmage Wisp helping actually contributed anything meaningful. Now, they’re guarding the throne room and the machine.”
His toothy grin had returned, and Destiny could have sworn he started breathing more heavily, as though trying to drain more oxygen from the air… or something else. She tried to suppress the panic and fear rising within her, but only succeeded so much.
“Catch!”
Destiny grabbed something shiny and metal from the air. She looked at it in the light. Handcuffs.
Destiny’s heart sank.
“So, you want me to be your fake prisoner?” she asked with something she hoped resembled defiant snark.
“Yes. I’ll say I’ve taken you prisoner, and I’m taking you for interrogation followed by absorption. Express orders from the Entity. After all, you’re a leading rebel - one of the few that could actually deal some damage to Claw.”
Destiny remembered pressing the burning shield against Claw’s scales, really messing up his arm. That had been pretty awesome. Until Claw kicked her in the head, at least. She smiled a little anyway as she applied the handcuffs.
“You heard about that?”
“I hear about everything,” sneered Freak. “Don’t feel special.”
He checked the cuffs were convincingly attached. Destiny felt them pinch against her skin and yelped despite herself. Freak wrapped his talons around her throat, and she tensed up. For a terrible second, she wondered if she’d been had.
“Our story is that I got the drop on you while you were trying to infiltrate. Look defiant, but more bitter-defiant than unconcerned-defiant. Give me some of that Destiny anger,” said Freak.
This only barely calmed her nerves, and before she could even process it, Freak threw open the doors and began to force her onwards. His signature toothy grin had returned, and his yellow eyes were wide with triumph.
“Look who I just caught!” he proclaimed.
The scientists, mages, and technicians cleared the way like someone had just cut the hallway in two. They looked at her with a mixture of emotions. Some confused. Some ecstatic. More than expected terrified. Others merely watching with academic interest. Destiny scowled at all of them equally, scrutinising their faces. She noticed the variety of species. Human, villager, pigman, enderman, skeletons, zombies, she was even pretty sure she saw a blaze or two in there, and all manner of things she could barely describe or understand. It occurred to her that the Entity had gathered all this here, and somehow decided it still wanted to destroy it all.
They quickly passed through a checkpoint. The guards barked out a laugh and joked to each other in enderman. Destiny fought the urge to melt one or the other’s face - she didn’t need her hands for that. She then remembered that, in here, she still had her powers down there. Then, she remembered she would have to lose them soon enough. Small comfort and dread crashed into each other.
Freak carried on grinning, and exchanged some knowing looks, but didn’t say anything yet.
They approached a gigantic gate made of interlocking spirals. Yet more guards. More bared fangs. More obsidian armour rattling with laughter. More talons scraping on stone. The door slowly unraveled. Tortuously slowly. Until, finally:
“What have we here?” a familiar, theatrical voice called.
A heavy, gauntleted hand settled on her shoulder from behind, and a shadow fell across both she and Freak. She was wrenched around and brought face to face with Glibby the Ape.
“Hello, Destiny. How did a little runt like Freak catch something like you?”
She’d already been terrified, and now he was here. The guy who killed Fristad. Who captured her and David initially. Who crushed their escape attempt. Clad in obsidian. Smug as could be. But as the bottom fell out of her fear and she plunged to even further depths, a pure, visceral hatred entered her.
“Bite me,” spat Destiny.
She jerked forward briefly, and Freak tightened his grip.
“Charming. How did you catch her, Freak?”
“Found her snooping around the playground. Jumped her while she was climbing the stairs. Poor thing got herself all tuckered out.”
“Oh, the playground,” lilted Glibby.
The Ape leaned down to look her in the eye. She glared back. He reached out a finger, and she recoiled, but not far enough to stop him running to cold, jagged obsidian over her face.
“Where we first met. Do you recall? My, how you’ve changed since then. You had little, then, and now you have nothing. Quite the tragic arc.”
Destiny began to shake.
“You’re talking real brave for a man with such a meltable face,” muttered Destiny for her own reassurance as much as to intimidate anyone. It came out trembling and breathless.
The Ape’s face settled into the cold calm of a man who sensed he was about to get exactly what he wanted.
“Hand her over to me, Freak,” he said. “I’ll bring an end to this sad tale.”
“No.”
The Ape’s eyes flared up.
“Excuse me?”
“Express orders from the Entity. Any rebel intruders are to be taken for interrogation by me, and then handed over for absorption. It wants any and all knowledge on last-minute threats, especially from the rebels.”
Glibby drew back, but with a roll of his shoulders had readjusted his face back into smugness.
“Have fun, then.”
He began to walk away. Freak began to press forward through the newly opened gate. Then, Glibby stopped and called over his shoulder:
“Actually, Destiny. Do you have any last messages for little Warnado? I promise to pass them on very soon.”
Destiny wrestled against Freak’s grip, letting loose some blood but successfully forcing him to stop. She screamed over her shoulder:
“Tell him, ‘Don’t worry kid, so long as Glibby’s still talking trash you’ve got at least an hour left to beat him in!’”
Freak snorted with unwilling laughter, then hastily shunted Destiny forward as he saw the Ape’s glare fall on him.
“Not cool,” said the phantom. “I have to work with that guy.”
“I’ll kill the Entity, then I’ll kill him even harder,” snarled Destiny.
“You’re so angry and talking about murder all the time. Are you sure you’re one of the good guys?” asked Freak with a sneer.
They passed an alcove containing a statue of some generic hero-looking guy, and Destiny wondered that herself. There wasn’t much to say about the statue hero, he had his weapons raised aloft, and he looked victorious about something. Destiny hoped that at the end of the day, she could say the same things about herself.
After following a large, spiral staircase, they finally escaped research, and Destiny felt her powers fading. Purple lamps lined the walls like guards. To Destiny’s eyes, it looked as though there were as many purple, magic-dampening crystals as there were people bustling back and forth in the hallways. Her magic, her last safety net, was gone. She focused on the floor, and allowed the rest of the journey to blur together as her panic set in.
Infrastructure and manufacturing came first. Endless, piston-operated conveyor belts; people burning up clay to make bricks, cobblestone to make roads; an apparently infinite supply of lava being doused in water to make obsidian; and rows upon rows of crafting tables at which exhausted, chained-up mages warped the obsidian into armour and weapons. Everything was sweltering.
Next, the entrance hall. Destiny recognised the doorway where Warnado blinded those guards and ensured their escape. Where Tyron had carried David’s half-dead body from this dreadful place. She wondered if anyone had ever found that grave they dug for him. She shut her eyes completely when she thought she recognised the place David had shattered his gauntlet. They also passed through a variety of rooms stacked high with different items hoarded by the Entity, some valuable, some apparently random.
They reached the upper layers, full of admin offices and housing. Cafeterias, training rooms, people carrying papers, soldiers just sitting around and shooting the breeze. If Destiny had fallen asleep and woken up here, she would have just assumed the Shelter had been remodeled and gotten a little liberal with its recruitment policy. But knowing what they were working towards made all of these normal, humanising things into a source of shellshock. She caught a glimpse of an office with an iron door. It had the name ‘Marinus Bul’ etched into it and highlighted in black paint. Dust had settled on the handle. She shuddered.
For a while, she wondered if they’d ever escape this labyrinth of near-normalcy. And then, as they came up a staircase, she heard a familiar pounding. They rounded the corner, and her eyes agreed with her ears - that was definitely a bedrock golem stomping around. Or, rather, four of them. Marching in a patrol. And a slightly more distant stomping from the other direction confirmed they weren’t the only one. Destiny felt her breath abandon her.
“There’s so many of them. Why are they up here? Isn’t the machine down in research?”
“Entity wants them to guard the activation mechanism. It needs the machine protected, but it’s also down beneath layers upon layers of security and an awful lot of dirt and rock. Problem with a tower is that anyone who can fly might be able to break through and get around the lower defences. So, Entity wants something to be here to meet any would-be intruders who try to stop the machine from activating.”
Destiny nodded. Freak removed her handcuffs.
“Okay, and the activation mechanism is where, exactly?”
“It’s in the same place as the dimensional scar.”
“Of course it is.”
Destiny wanted to punch a wall but realised that might alert the golems to their presence. And so, she removed her shoes and followed Freak. He would go intangible and phase through walls, then come back to tell her if the coast was clear. Then, she would pad forward.
The process was agonising, and every time he slipped out of sight Destiny felt like a sitting duck. She had no more alibi. Before she had been a threat the Tower had neutralised and didn’t have to worry about anymore - a too-good-to-be-true trophy. Now, she was back to being a rebel infiltrator to be killed on sight. And the crystals didn’t help. The closer they got to the dimensional scar, the stronger their strange pull became, and the more nauseous she felt. She kept readjusting the satchel, but it made no difference.
At long last, it came into view, and Destiny’s heart took off at a sprint. She could see no guards, no obvious defences, just a door with a bronze disc. She shot a glance at Freak. He nodded and hurried her onwards, trailing behind as a lookout. Destiny felt some relief when she noticed there were no purple lamps in sight and summoned an icicle to test her strength.
Destiny put her hand on the bronze disc and turned it. The door hissed, and mechanisms whirred, and finally the two halves of the door slid apart. Destiny took a deep breath. She summoned an icy javelin and her flaming buckler, and she stepped forward.
Freak took the lead. He led her through several chambers before they reached their target. The first was a small room, built from obsidian and multi-coloured endstone, with bronze accents in the corners. It was packed full of glass containers displaying different artefacts, many with apparent religious significance. Statues of deities, pedestals with holy books, fragments of altars.
She then entered a series of more severe, more metallic and less varied in their colour scheme. Destiny saw things like tables projecting holograms of constellations and dimensions, and extensive libraries coated in dust.
And then, there it was - the throne room. It was the largest chamber by far. Its circular walls were lined with hermetically sealed bookcases made from endstone. A staircase spiralled up to some sort of spire-like observatory. And, of course, the throne itself sat at the far end, the dimensional scar flickering above it.
It was subtle, if Destiny hadn’t known to look for it, she wouldn’t have spotted it. It was as if reality was just slightly off at that particular spot. There were no words for the concept, but it was clear that this was Destiny’s target.
Destiny looked at Freak, and for the first time she thought she saw genuine worry on the phantom’s face.
“It’s going to bear down on us the second you start. Good news: there should be no manifestations in the Tower at the moment and it would take too long for it to form any new ones. Bad News: it has several possessed shells lying around, and the main body is here. The Entity being afraid will give me a boost, but there’s only so much I’ll be able to do.”
Destiny nodded.
“Thank you Freak.”
She took a handful of crystals in either fist and stood on the throne. She closed her eyes. Breathed. She reached for a power she had only felt a few times before but which she had always known to be there. Between the strange warmth of her ice magic and between the puzzling chill of fire, she searched for a deeper, older and fuller power. A power Martin had tried and failed to take from her. Her hands began to glow. She plunged them into the scar and began to pull in opposite directions.
She heard a sound beyond screaming, like the death of an earthquake. Freak took up a fighting stance, facing the door. His limbs grew long, his talons sharp, and his dreadful grin only seemed to become larger and hungrier by the second.
“Now this is fear!” He roared.
Destiny returned her attention to the scar. It refused to budge. She pulled and pulled until her muscles burned but still, she could only catch the slightest, most fleeting glimpse of the Void beyond.
Freak howled with laughter, and she heard the clang of bronze armour on obsidian alloy. A shell - a being possessed by the Entity and wearing it’s armour - rushed through the door and swung at Freak, who dodged and batted it around the head. It staggered away. Destiny noticed a strange sluggishness about the Entity. A second shell entered, and Freak’s long arm shot out and pinned it to the wall. He plunged a talon towards its eye, and the second manifestation shuddered for a moment before it sank in. Blood shot out, and the corpse of the Entity’s host fell aside.
But before Freak could enjoy this victory, a third had entered. Freak only barely dodged its zweihander. A fourth came in, and moved to flank the phantom, but he kept it at bay with a well-timed kick. The first shell was now back on its feet, its helmet cracked but its resolve undiminished. Freak slowly began to back away as the shells closed in on him.
Destiny continued to strain, and the scar budged a little, but not enough. She could hear the void moaning at her.
One of the shells walked off to the side and in the corner of her eye, Destiny saw its white-gloved hand outstretched in a gesture almost like pleading.
“Cease this,” said one of the shells. “You are risking… more-than-you know.”
Freak leapt over and slammed a foot into its chest. The bronze cracked inwards, and blood flowed out. It raised its head and continued to speak.
“This world is-”
Freak’s talons knocked the head from its shoulders and the corpse collapsed.
“-dying,” continued another shell.
It began to walk forward. One of its fellows removed its glove and began attempting to thrust its boiling, grey hand into Freak’s chest, to make him a part of the mass.
“Nexus has reached critical mass. The rot-is setting… in. Full convergence is the only way to save it.”
Blood ran between Destiny’s fingers. She tried to tell herself the gash was widening. It had to be.
“I tried to make it, piece by piece… You are from,” it froze a second, it’s gaze shooting off in a random direction. “World 257. You witnessed-the-garden. How it rots. How my portals bleed-are-infected.”
Destiny thought back to the dead grass. To the black, oily liquid within the frame. The portals were sick…
Light began to shift in a specific spot. Another armoured shell ran through the door and began to assault Freak. He leapt over its oncoming blade but staggered on the landing.
“Keeping the pieces here… keeping them-constant-it-makes them… corrode. It-has-only accelerated since she… Entropy arrived. Since she-began to tear apart my-creation”.
“Shadow…” thought Destiny. “Could she be killing this place?”
She felt an opposite force, as though the scar were trying to clamp shut on her hands.
The light continued to swirl, to remix itself, to turn dark. Flashes of bronze, obsidian, glass…
Freak narrowly dodged a strike from an obsidian zweihander. The Entity was speeding up.
“If I do-not-stop it here, create one world, one-stable-ordered-world, the rot will spread. It will destroy-not-only Nexus. It will taint… everywhere I-stood.”
An ordinary-looking man ran past Freak, his face flat, emotionless, empty. He made a beeline for Destiny. His arm turned to the same seething, boiling grey as the shell’s hand. He was going to try and possess or absorb her or something. She looked at her hands, and knew from the indescribable pain and the rushing of blood that if she removed them from the scar, she would neither be able to do a thing with them, or ever reinsert them back in. She pulled like a frightened dog scratching at a door. She realised her death was imminent. The lights swirled and shifted brighter and darker all at the same time.
Freak’s talons caught the possessed man across the torso and split him in half. The grey faded away. A moment of glorious hope. One of the shells caught him on the back with a zweihander. He fell. And Destiny felt emptied of everything.
A white-gloved hand reached from within the swirling lights. A moment later, the main body of the Entity followed it. It looked humanoid only in shape, an imitation of a person made from solid grey static. It seemed like its shape burned itself into Destiny’s eyes, refusing to let anything else occupy that spot in her perception.
It began to slowly advance.
“Open!” grunted Destiny, panting. “Open, you stupid wound!”
She pressed her forehead against the top of the throne until it hurt. Anything to distract her from the condition of her hands. She caught a glimpse of the Entity itself, approaching. One of the shells had a zweihander pressed to Freak’s throat, and a gloved hand gripping his scalp. Another stood by dutifully, its boiling, grey hand ready to plunge into him. The phantom’s claws dug into the ground in fear. His toothy grin was drenched in blood.
Destiny felt the scar winning. It began to gain ground on her.
“Is any of what you said just there,” she asked through gritted teeth and streaming eyes. “Is it true?”
She paid attention to its footsteps for the first time, shifting and inconstant. Loud then quiet. Quick then fast. Never actually closing the distance any faster or slower.
“I believe so.”
She looked up and saw the yawning, moaning void began to slip out of sight.
“Cease your fight.”
“No,” she gasped. “Not now. Not yet.”
She strained anew.
“Child, your struggle is… ended. Be calm. The convergence is coming. I have maimed worlds. Now let me make them whole once more. Even-if-I die… it will be so.”
She roared and pulled even harder. Its shadow loomed over her.
“Do-you-really believe that, even if you kill me, your friends can stop-the-rot-I-have-begun?”
She closed her eyes.
“They have to, because I won’t be here to help them.”
She rediscovered her purpose. She delved deeper and deeper into her self, for that power, old and ancient and pure. She screamed with her own voice, with Anya’s voice, with those of any and all who might have come before, of any and all who would come after, and she ripped the world asunder.
There was a crack like a thousand thunders, and a flash like a thousand suns and she was thrown back. The crystals flew from her hands. And then, a great suction. Something pulling her back in. She tried to use her hands, but they were useless. She instinctively summoned a platform of ice and her feet stuck in place.
Her eyes cleared.
Freak lay on the ground beside her, still hugging the floor with his talons. The shells were scattered across the room, attempting to rise. The Entity staggered and groaned. And behind it, the scar was open. The Void, plain to see, moaned and yawned away.
The suction grew stronger, became like a great wind, and the scar became a maw inhaling everything before it. Destiny strengthened the ice binding her feet as hard as she could. Freak burrowed further into the ground. The shells stood no chance, skittering across the ground and tumbling out of Nexus, one by one, until only the main body remained. Destiny and Freak shared an ecstatic look. Destiny howled with near-victorious laughter.
The Entity slid, slowly, towards the maw, what looked like arms crossed across what looked like its face. It would happen any second now, she knew it. Then, it steadied its foot against what remained of its throne. Panic filled her.
Destiny lifted her wounded right hand and willed all her remaining strength into it. A great, gargantuan, molten fireball formed above her palm. Her body shivered from the heat it was sacrificing. And then she hurled it at the Entity. The shot met its target. The Entity’s foot slipped. It fell into the current and shot straight out of the world.
“I WIN, ASSHOLE!” screamed Destiny.
The scar began to close, and the breath of the Void began to slowly weaken.
She kept shaking. She kept trying to talk, but no more words would come. She felt a complete tranquility within her. She looked over at Freak, panting. She almost wanted to thank the phantom.
“Freak…”
His taloned foot was free from the ground. He had it raised, angled down at the ice holding her in place. His yellowed grin was wide as the horizon. She considered asking him not to, or trying to fight him, but one glance at her bloodied hands confirmed there wasn’t much left she could do.
“...You’re lucky I’m in a good mood,” she snorted.
The ice shattered and she hurtled forwards. She saw the endless expanse, and nothing on the other side, and she expected briefly to go anywhere and nowhere. Then, she hit the threshold of the Void, and her speed slowed. She dropped like a rock on the other side of the scar and stopped on what felt like stone. Her hands bled and throbbed a lot, but it had reached a point where it had gotten so intense, she almost couldn’t notice any difference in the level of pain.
The only light came from the scar. She saw the Entity stood beside it, absorbing a shell, armour-and-all. She contemplated feeling scared, but she didn’t. Its static-like, boiling skin looked different, almost like it were moving more slowly.
“You have doomed us,” said the Entity.
Destiny used her elbows to start pulling herself to her feet.
“Ah, you’re just… mad that I beat you. Didn’t you hear me, I won… asshole”
She laughed until it hurt and began to walk forward on shaking feet. The Entity turned to look at the scar.
“So,” Destiny asked. “Where… where are we? I get the Void, but why?”
“It is… where-I-was. Before Nexus.”
She could have sworn the Entity looked a little smaller. More like a person. She shuffled. Something felt very strange. No cold or heat in the air, just empty dark and a sliver of light from the scar. Maybe that was it.
“I sat here, at the bottom of Void, for… I don’t-know. Until I encountered-a world, too small-for life. But it resonated… I kept it, made it-the first Nexus. Then, later, I found another world, and another, and another. My resonance grew with each world. Until I found a world with life, with minds. The first mind I-found I made mine, used it to understand… the world. Soon-after my world… fell to rot. Then nothing for a long time, until I found another world… other-minds. And again and… again. Each time the first mind allowed me to know more, understand more.”
Destiny, not amazingly interested in the interdimensional warlord’s unprompted justification, squinted into the scar. She could see nothing. It hurt her eyes to look, but the Entity kept staring longingly through with its unseen eyes and featureless almost-face.
“One day I found a mind that helped-me-not-take other minds. Minds that… are outside of me last-longer, help… longer. After many cycles I gathered more minds around me, built the-first-Tower. Started looking for ways to stop the rot. This first Tower lasted longer than… other cycles, so I built-new-ones, gathered ever more minds. Eventually I reached a barrier, needed-a-way-to bring more matter to… Nexus.”
It reached out to touch the scar, but its hand trembled and recoiled. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought the thing was distraught. But she did know better. Destiny tried the same thing. It wasn’t emotional, it was just being physically repelled. She still felt very strange.
“A mind eventually told me… about the crystals, how they-chain-worlds together. Then things became-difficult. Minds do not like things being taken… from them, they-band together and send-me-back. I found ways to stop this… from-happening. Sometimes, Entropy would come-find-me, often by chance, not by will. Sometimes, others. This cycle was supposed to be the last, the first-mind-proposed the machine. Now-so close to completion I… fade again.”
Destiny began to circle the Entity.
“No offense, big guy,” smiled Destiny sleepily. “You really brought this on yourself. Now, my friends are just going to turn up and curbstomp your remaining goons. I’m almost sad I won’t get to take part. But still, I got first prize.”
She pointed at the Entity with the closest approximation of finger-guns she could manage. Then, she fell to her knees. Something like dust was rising off her hand.
“Well, guess I’m dying… Am I? Doesn’t feel like before… You know that kid, Martin? He killed me… I think.”
She fell to her elbows, then slumped onto her side. The dust was rising from her face, obscuring her vision. It looked faintly like the shade of her skin.
“I’m coming, Anya… David… please be there.”
She felt a tear come out, and it became like a stream of glass shards, lifting off into nothing and vanishing.
“I’m scared.”
The Entity stood over her.
“I messed it up. I-I could have done it all better.”
It cocked its head.
“All things feel as such, child. Perhaps bravery is accepting… what we-have-done.”
It sat down beside her. Behind the dust rising off her body, the Entity looked like a shadow on a lit curtain. She could no longer move.
“I can’t go yet. I’m not ready.”
“Then slumber a-while.”
The Entity grabbed her arm.
“You have earned that… at-least. Be the first-mind of the next cycle.”
And she slipped away.
Arc 6 Consolidation (68-77)
Chapter 68: Inside Out (Fire)
Peter had banished all the fragmented memories from Graves Manor. The order he had thus established had imbued his imprisoned mind with near-unending stores of energy. He spent most of his time standing out on the balcony, his face only a hair’s breadth away from the endless gray. Spying on Claw through his own senses was the only activity left for Peter, so that was what he did.
Claw was currently sitting in the Ender’s private quarters, discussing defense plans with her. Claw’s senses were crystal clear to Peter, maybe even clearer than they were to Claw. Peter was only an observer and so he had more time to take in every detail, in fact over the course of the discussion he had spotted weaknesses in the defenses long before Claw did. Naturally, Claw or the Ender caught them eventually, but it was a small point of pride for Peter to have caught them first. Occasionally though, small gaps in the defenses slipped by both Claw and the Ender unnoticed.
Just as Peter was about to lament that he was the last person who could get use out of these bits of information, something changed. This was extraordinary, in the mind-prison things only ever changed if Peter was the one to make the changes. Peter disconnected from Claw’s senses and looked around. At first look, everything was the same, but then he noticed subtle differences. The railing he leaned against had taken on a different quality. As Peter’s fingers touched the metal, he felt irregularities amongst the surface that had been perfectly smooth moments earlier.
Before Peter could think more on why this happened, the endless gray retreated and faded out, leaving behind only pure darkness. The railing in front of Peter disappeared too, and when he turned around the balcony and the manor were gone as well. In their place stood only a white wooden bench with golden decorations. Peter knew this place. He had seen it many times before. Just as he was about to look around for the Lady, his environment shifted again, or rather Peter himself did. It felt like he was rising towards the surface after diving into a deep body of water, only the sensation went in all directions instead of only upwards.
At the same time another figure appeared before Peter, little more than a blurry silhouette. However, the colors made it abundantly clear who this was. A black shape, becoming white near the top with yet blacker eyes staring at Peter. As the moments passed, the shape became clearer, gaining limbs and a set of obsidian armor, before fully taking shape.
“Claw.” Peter simply said.
At first Claw didn’t react, seemingly overwhelmed. Then, he replied with a similar tone. “Other one.”
Peter felt the sensation becoming stronger, he was wrenched outwards before he had any chance to say more to his rogue split personality.
###
Fire was hit by a wave of impressions, the combined force of all his senses washed over him before settling down and allowing him to get his bearings. He sat at a table in the Ender’s private quarters. He knew this already. This was where Claw had sat less than a moment ago.
Something felt different compared before being taken over by Claw. Fire felt full, not physically but metaphysically. His life force was so far beyond what he usually had that it was almost concerning. This must have been the energy the Entity had given Claw to keep him alive.
Before Fire could give the matter more thought, the Ender who sat across the table suddenly jolted to alertness.
“Fire?!” She exclaimed with a mix of emotions.
It wouldn’t have taken someone like the Ender to know what had happened. The change in eye color from black to red was more than enough.
Fire addressed her in her own tongue, using her proper name: “Ender, I don’t know why I am in control again, but I know it shouldn’t be possible. Something happened.”
The truce was established the moment the Ender understood the full implications of what Fire had said, no further words were wasted on it. They were both professionals after all.
However, despite this, the Ender found words more slowly than expected. Oh, good. This is about that crush on me she’s been nursing, isn’t it? Fire wondered, before quickly pushing the notion away, now was not the time to waste any kind of thought on romance, even if it was as indirect as speculating on someone else’s affections.
Fire decided to cut things short. “Chances are the Entity is either executing its plan early and released Claw, or something happened to it.”
The Ender seemed to have regained her composure. “Now would be a good time to tell me what that plan entails in detail, it’s been awfully quiet about that. I assume it told Claw more?”
Fire replied: “You know one half of the plan; the machine will bring most nearby worlds together and collapse them into Nexus. It didn’t tell anyone about the second part, because it involves absorbing all sentience in existence.”
The Ender was once again dumbstruck, for evidently different reasons.
“So… those promises of conquest were just to bait me in and keep me loyal?”
“Afraid so.”
Fire knew the plan from spying on Claw, but of course what he just said could have been a lie to get the Ender to turn on her employer, who may or may not exist anymore. Perhaps that second part was why she didn’t question Fire, they both knew there were no other explanations.
Fire began proposing a plan: “Should we inform the rest of leadership?”
The Ender scoffed. “They’ll sooner lynch us for treason out of fear than help us.” She paused for a moment, then asked: “Do you know if anyone else knows about the true plan? I’d imagine nobody would be happy with that outcome. I’m barely suppressing the thoughts about it because those won’t help here.”
Digging into his memory, Fire looked for an answer. He knew what Claw saw but not what Claw thought so he had to come to his own conclusions. Dr. Veronica Mercury was an easy one, he had witnessed Claw’s latest conversation with her, which beyond confirmed her knowledge.
“Dr. Mercury.”
The Ender shook her head. “Not it, she’d sabotage the machine to prevent the plan from working but she can’t go against the Entity in any way.”
There was something else, an unfamiliar memory. A shift in the ambient magic field. The feeling was soon joined by pictures and sounds. Fire had seen them before through Claw’s senses. Dr. Mercury standing straight ahead, in her personal laboratory. They had just discussed a way to harm Shadow. That was when Claw must have felt that shift. Fire hadn’t had full access to Claw’s sense for energy at that point, so he missed it back then. Was Claw helping him? It didn’t matter now, the nature of the shift rang a bell…
“Freak.”
“What!” The Ender exclaimed. “He knows?”
Fire said: “He at least knows that the crystals can be used to interact with the Entity in some way. He’d have to have gotten help from somewhere though, he wouldn’t be able to channel the magic needed on his own.”
No further words needed to be said, they both knew that Freak was exactly the type to seek vengeance on his employer once he found out he had been lied to. He’d probably do more than that, attempt a power grab for himself. Both Fire and the Ender knew that, even compared to effective multiversal annihilation, having a phantom of fear in charge was only marginally better.
In what was perhaps an impulsive action, the Ender reached across the table to take hold of Fire’s hand. Moments later both of them disappeared from the room, quickly traversing the Tower, going ever upwards until they reached the Entity’s throne room. In a shower of purple particles, they appeared only mere meters away from the throne.
The throne room was far from its usual orderly state. Blood was splattered across the floor, large claw marks covered the obsidian tiles. It was clear a fight had taken place. However, there were no corpses, not of assailants or defenders. On the throne sat the Entity in its usual, stiff, and passive pose. Though, something about it clearly didn’t add up. What sat on the throne clearly looked like the Entity, but it lacked its presence, the oppressive feeling of being faced with a cosmic force made person.
Even without the knowledge that something was up, it was easy to see that someone was trying to impersonate the Entity, and with what Fire knew, it was clear who it was.
The Ender screeched: “Freak, you backstabbing phantom! You should have left it at simply killing the Entity!”
The Entity’s form flickered out and revealed what was beneath, a very self-satisfied Freak, body rippling with absorbed fear.
“Oh, no. You figured it out! But you’re a tiny bit too late. Entity’s out and this handy dimensional scar is positively leaking power. Won’t be long until this entire world’s mine!”
The Ender wasted no further time and attacked, charging straight at Freak. The phantom’s right hand shot forward and caught the Ender in the chest, easily shredding through her obsidian armor and any tissue below. His other hand followed and unceremoniously beheaded his assailant.
Fire was stunned for a short moment by the sudden display of power, fighting Freak now would be suicide and Fire had no intention of joining the Ender. His eyes darted around the room, looking for any way to escape this mess.
Freak didn’t attack Fire, he only eyed him lazily. Until suddenly he seemed to realize something.
“Wait a second, you’re not Claw, you’re Fire!”
But in the time it had taken Freak to notice, Fire had already moved half-way across the room to a large upward spiral staircase. Fire looked inward and channeled the absolutely massive reserves of life force he now had. The energy surged through his arm and into his palm, erupting as a jet of flame, then turning into a fireball that hit Freak square-on. Fire knew better than to assume that this had any effect on Freak in his current state, but at the very least the smoke would help obscure his escape.
Fire darted up the staircase, rising ever higher, taking several steps at once. He heard the scratching of claws on obsidian below him and threw another fireball. A few dozen long paces later Fire found himself in an observatory of some kind.
A glass dome extended above Fire, some panes not exactly glass but windows to other places in Nexus. Fire completely disregarded the otherwise breathtaking view and released a burst of energy outwards from his entire body. An explosion rocked the room and the dome shattered, the shards melting and then evaporating from the heat.
The scratching sounds were close now, he could hear Freak mutter to himself: “Gah, I really didn’t think this through.”
There was nowhere to go, the only way out was down the staircase again. Unless…
Fire took off at a full sprint, running towards the edge of the platform. Once he reached the ledge, he extended the claws on his feet to gain more traction, then he flung himself forward. For a moment it felt like he would continue forward on his trajectory, a look behind him revealed Freak just cresting the top of the staircase, but then gravity decided to enact its influence. Fire accelerated downwards, out of Freak’s reach and towards the ground.
Fire once again channeled his life force, this time into something more complex than a simple fireball. The spell was of his own creation, but he never had this much life force at his disposal to test it so all he had to show for its effectiveness were some calculations he made centuries ago, back in Rockhaven.
I really hope this works.
A massive surge of energy shot towards Fire’s upper back. Tongues of flame began licking the inside of the obsidian chestplate, quickly gaining in intensity. Then, with the sound of glass breaking, two flames burst forth from Fire’s shoulder blades, shattering his obsidian chestplate and incinerating the padded clothing he had worn underneath. As Fire pushed more energy into the spell, the flames changed their shape, erupting as a pair of giant flaming wings. Fire felt his descent slow, then came to a halt completely.
“Haha!” He shouted.
Now in full control of his flight, Fire continued his descent towards the Tower’s base, swiftly avoiding any offshoots that were in his path. He had to keep himself from pirouetting and looping his way downwards, as powerful as he felt, he knew better than to succumb to hubris.
Almost at the bottom, Fire readied another spell, this time concentrating energy towards his hands. If he couldn’t harm Freak, he could at least cripple the Tower’s operations and slow him down that way. Tightly packed orbs of flame shot from his palms and exploded with force when they impacted the warehouses and generators scattered throughout the Tower’s surroundings. Several more explosions followed, he evidently hit something volatile.
With the damage done, Fire picked up speed and soared up high again. His next goal was the Shelter. He needed to re-establish contact with the rebellion and more importantly with his sister. Another burst of magic and Fire accelerated forward, wreathing himself in flames as he did.
It felt good to be in control again.
Chapter 69: Reunion (Shadow)
The hours after Destiny’s “betrayal” had gone fast. With Kay gone, the coven had fortunately become a lot easier to handle, so Shadow had ordered them to heal the drugged leadership members to the best of their ability. She knew her brother’s poisons well and she knew that this particular one was resistant to healing magic, which would at most take people from knocked out to very drowsy, after that it was up to the individual’s liver to do the rest.
Shadow stood in the officer lounge along with Astro and Tyron, who were now assessing the situation. Couches and stray wool blocks from the spleef arena had been converted into makeshift beds to house the still-recovering victims of Destiny. Urist fared the best out of everyone physically, his dwarven resilience having fully fought off the effects of the sedative. However, ever since the incident, the dwarf seemed visibly distressed, apparently the situation had brought up some bad memories from his past.
The other four people who were able to stand were the Brines, Rathina and Seth, the latter of whom seemed more confused than anything since he had been thrown head-first into this mess of a situation.
“And you just let her go?” asked Astro, eyes drifting between his feet and the bar.
It had taken this long for the question to come up, but Shadow still took several seconds to answer. She wasn’t happy with what happened.
“Yes, I did. And I let Kay get away too, that one was not intentional though.”
Shadow took another pause, gathering her thoughts. So far nobody knew why she had let Destiny go, just that it happened, because after all “didn’t see” was not an excuse Shadow could make. She crossed her arms, partially to make herself feel safer. Her shadow spoke a different language, Wodahs’ arms were outstretched in defiance.
She continued: “I saw what she wanted to do. She stole the crystals because she somehow found out she could kill the Entity with them. Sadly, she found this out through Freak of all people, and this could all be some cruel scheme of his… but I don’t think that’s the case.”
“And did - do you think she’ll actually succeed?” asked Jennifer in something caught half-way between a groan and a yawn. Steve looked at Jennifer, frowned a little, then rubbed his temples.
“I at least thought there was a possibility. If Freak truly turned against the Entity, he must have found something that threatens him directly. All worlds merging alone is not going to do that. Whatever its true plan is, Freak doesn’t see himself coming out in a good position. He was here. He could have done who knows what. But instead, all he did was to tell me to let Destiny go.”
The more Shadow thought about the situation the more she doubted her decision. Was this really the only way? Was it even a way? At least the thoughts kept her anchored in the here and now, so she didn’t need to think about other things.
“Listen, Shadow, I’m trying to be nicer,” began Astro. “So, I’m going to go over there, get myself a drink, and pray the conversation has moved on from this by the time I come back. We have bigger fish to fry…”
He turned and began to walk away. Tyron, after a short, mumbled conversation with Rathina, spoke up.
“He’s right. Rathina, tell them what you and Glowstar found while scouting.”
“We found the portal activated,” said the dark-haired girl. “Destiny didn’t make much effort to cover her tracks, so I followed her on dragon-back. By the time we arrived, footsteps and scanner-readings indicated Destiny had already reached her destination and re-entered Nexus. Unfortunately, the portal was deactivated so it looks like the enemy has closed off that route. The portal was also noticeably different from the one she escaped through, but we can’t identify a reason.”
“Perhaps a different iteration,” nodded Seth, trying to pretend he understood what they were talking about. “Ceaseless march of technology and all that.”
Shadow said: “If that’s the portal she told us about before, she’s in the Tower. Whether that means anything is left to be seen. From what I’ve seen the general Shelter population has calmed down, except for Raphoe and his posse. They caught wind of Kay escaping and they are calling for something, what exactly is difficult to see under their King in Ash paroles.”
“I wish it was just Raphoe,” snorted Astro, just returning from the bar. “Those hunters Kay brought in are demanding a full meeting of leadership with themselves in attendance. They made their deal with Kay, and now that he’s both been deposed and flown the coup, they seem terrified we’re going to hurl them back into that frozen wasteland they come from. I’m going to assume Raphoe has been agitating. He’s devoted, I’ll grant him that.”
Shadow was about to reply when she noticed something at the edge of her perception. A messenger was sprinting down the corridor to the officer lounge as if pursued by a wild beast. Shadow mentally reached out and made the door swing open in front of the messenger, who stumbled into the room.
“Lookouts spotted some manner of comet heading straight for the shelter!”
Looks were exchanged, Astro shouted: “By the Mods! Shadow, teleport us up there. Let’s find out what we’ve got to deal with now.”
Shadow gathered all her focus to cast the spell, several runes flashed on her skin. In the blink of an eye, they were suddenly standing in the open field in front of the Shelter’s entrance, logistics workers were running around, scrambling to find places to hide. The messenger hadn’t lied, there was a bright dot on the horizon of the morning sky, steadily growing bigger. Whatever it was, it came from the direction of the Tower, and it was fast.
“Is that artillery?” Wondered Tyron.
Shadow focused again. “Give me a moment, I’ll tell you exactly what it is.”
She expanded her perception again, the Void called out to her as she did, countless impressions impacted on her consciousness like large grains of hail. Just a little more and she’d be able to see. The shape of the object seemed to match Tyron’s guess of artillery, or at least it couldn’t be far off. When her sense of magic expanded with the rest of her perception Shadow realized that this was not a projectile, it was a person casting a powerful pyromancy spell. In fact, she recognized the signature of the spell. She saw the notes detailing its effect in front of her mental eye as clear as the day she helped create it. Looking below the wreath of flames, Shadow could clearly see the caster’s red eyes glowing brightly. That was all the confirmation she needed.
Suddenly, Shadow felt like a weight was being lifted off her. The Void retreated. She couldn’t wait any longer and took off using a flight spell of her own. She met her brother just as he crossed one of the mountains surrounding the Shelter and quite literally flew into his arms.
Fire exclaimed: “Shadow! It’s good to see you. How are you holding up?” When an invisible second pair of arms wrapped around him, he added: “And of course it’s good to see you to Wodahs.”
Shadow replied: “Good! Too good actually. Way too good compared to how I felt just a few seconds ago.”
Shadow let go of her brother and they slowly floated downwards, as they descended Fire said: “I think I know what you mean. I saw what happened to you while I was gone, through Claw’s eyes. I think we’ll both need some time to talk, but sadly there is an apocalypse on the horizon.”
Shadow nodded. As important as this reunion was for them, Fire was right. Shadow’s feet hit the ground first, Fire followed, burning the moss off some loose rocks before his flaming wings faded away.
Suddenly, Fire found himself unable to advance. Shadow saw a transparent, glass-like cube surrounding her brother. Her eyes darted around, looking for the source, and quickly found it. Astro floated in the sky some ways off. She contemplated calling out to him to stop when she realized what he was hoping to achieve. A line of troops was forming outside the Shelter and slowly advancing towards them. More importantly, a speck in the sky flashed in the first rays of early morning light. Tyron, stone wings propelling him downward and Kir in hand, soared straight down at Fire. Astro was just holding the target in place for a kill shot.
Shadow watched a smile creep up on Fire’s lips, did he look proud? He definitely looked proud. Then, with a quick movement of his hand he conjured an explosion that shattered the left side of the cube, then took some quick steps, displacing himself enough that Tyron couldn’t correct his course enough to hit him. Tyron only barely managed not to crash into what remained of Astro’s force field.
While Tyron regained his balance, Fire said: “It’s good to see all of you again.”
Since the line of soldiers didn’t stop advancing, Shadow pointed towards her brother’s head and added: “Red eyes! It’s not Claw!”
Suddenly, one of the walls of the cube shot forward and shattered against Fire’s chest. The other two moved over to defend the still-staggered Tyron. Astro swooped down, Amicus in hand, ready to strike. Then, at the last moment, Fire looked up, and Astro either heard Shadow or saw the evidence himself. He stopped mid-flight and gawped downwards.
“Red eyes… Fire?” Astro asked, still about a foot above Fire’s head and completely upside-down. “Is that you?”
Fire laughed. “Just the one. Nice job on the defense by the way, very fast response time.”
Astro laughed and righted himself before dropping down to the ground. A very genuine smile kept threatening to dominate his face.
“Thanks, Shadow just kind of flew away so we had to improvise.”
“Astro,” interrupted Tryon as he pulled Kir into a defensive stance. “Are you sure it’s him?”
“Yes.”
“Because… you know I’ve never seen Claw up close before. No one told me about the eye color thing before.”
“Oh, sorry, yeah. No, it’s definitely Fire.”
“Thank you.”
Tyron ran up and bear-hugged the Mencur-Besh as Kir chirped away in the ears of everyone nearby. While Astro’s attempts to wave the soldiers away failed to stop them from advancing, their formation quickly broke down, and it became less of a march so much as an excited jog.
Fire returned Tyron’s hug and said to no one in particular: “You can’t imagine how good it feels to be in control of my body again.”
“You can’t imagine how good it feels to have some good news,” said Tyron. “Things have been really stressful for the last few hours… days… weeks. Basically, since you got possessed, I have had one evening off, and that was overshadowed by internal drama crap.”
Shadow knew what conversation was about to happen before Fire spoke again.
Fire asked: “So, Tyron. I heard Kay made you second-in-command. I imagine that’s where the stress comes from?”
“Mods…” muttered Astro.
“Well, Fire,” began Tyron. “I… was second-in-command. Now, I’m commander.”
He and Astro exchanged nervous looks, each daring the other to finish the job. Eventually, a look of terrible realization came across Astro’s face, and Tyron became distracted by that.
“Kay gone, Book gone too,” explained Kir.
“Destiny’s dead,” said Astro. “You’re here, and she’s not, so…”
He turned away and looked rather blankly in the direction of the Shelter. Tyron hung his head.
“She went out with Freak to take the Entity down,” explained the Dragoknight.
Fire seemed to take a moment to take in this new information. “I think we might want to take this to the command room, or wherever you do meetings now, evidently more things have changed than I know. I have some information to share as well.”
Shadow gave the gathered soldiers an apologetic look before teleporting Astro, Tyron, and Fire back to the officer lounge. It was astonishing how much easier the spell felt, even easier than before she came to Nexus. Something about just seeing Fire again had somehow made things normal again. This confirmed that there was something very suspect about her whole situation, something she would have to investigate later.
A moment after they appeared, a series of startled cries rang out from the recovering members of leadership, which were quickly met by Shadow and Astro assuring everyone that everything was fine, and Fire had returned.
“Fire!” exclaimed Steve from a sofa. “Good to have you back!”
He staggered up and clapped Fire on the shoulder.
“But also, how?” he laughed.
Shadow heard Ozen, who had just woken up and was trying to resuscitate himself with a redstone-laced coffee, mutter to Rathina.
“Do you know who this guy is?”
She shook her head.
“No, but Tyron seems happy about it.”
Fire said: “I’ll give you the short version, more questions later. I’m the one who built this place and I used to be in charge until I got possessed by the Entity during a failed infiltration mission.”
“Thanks, all caught up,” Rathina said with a wry smile and a raised thumb. Ozen blinked rapidly.
Fire looked around, scanning the room for familiar faces.
“On the note of the Entity, Destiny succeeded. I didn’t know it was her until a minute ago, but she threw the Entity into the Void. Just now we have a different problem. Freak has made a play for power. He’s impersonating the Entity and killed the Ender. It seems the world merging plan is still in action, just without the Entity absorbing everyone after the worlds merge.”
“Without what?!” Rung out Amanda’s voice from across the room.
Shadow answered in her brother’s stead: “I’ve had this running theory about the Entity, but I suppose now we have confirmation. Its eventual goal is to gather enough power to absorb all of existence and impose its order on it. That must be what Freak didn’t want, why he recruited Destiny.”
Shadow looked around the room again, she had gotten somewhat used to always perceiving everything around her. Now she had to consciously put effort into it. It was very refreshing to have that kind of control again.
The door swung open and in came two people. One was Urist, the other was Lucy, who was using the dwarf as a support to keep herself upright. She was evidently far from over the effects of the sedative. At the sight of Fire both of them ran forward as fast as their configuration allowed.
Urist called out: “Fire! So glad to have ye back!”
Lucy stumbled forward, almost tripping over before Fire caught her.
“Good to see you too.” He said.
Lucy replied slowly, trying not to stumble over her words due to drowsiness: “I really missed you.” She stopped, like she didn’t want to continue. “But there is something you need to know. Kay, he escaped from his cell and stole a dimensional tracker. He used the portal room to get to another world. It took us until just now to reconstruct the target coordinates.”
Lucy handed a piece of printout paper to Fire, on it was a set of coordinates that looked awfully familiar, it was their world. Shadow froze, for a moment she thought she’d return to the Void again, but no such thing happened. Still, Kay stealing a tracker and going to their world meant she had to assume the worst.
Fire shook his head in disbelief. “He’s actually going to try to kill me. Probably thinks Claw is still in charge. Shadow, take me to the portal room. I need to defend myself.”
“How quickly do you think you can track him down?” asked Tyron, grabbing Fire by the shoulder.
Fire replied: “He will do that for me. I need to be in my other body when he arrives and fend him off.”
“We’ll send a squad through to back you up,” said Tyron. “Astro, Urist take a detachment and head straight through. Steve, Jennifer start rounding up the leaders of the Shelter’s departments for a meeting. If Raphoe starts anything you have my leave to arrest him on the spot. Lucy, Seth, Rathina, you’re with me.”
There was no more time to be wasted, Shadow performed the teleportation to the portal room. It took Fire very little time to spot the targeting console and enter the coordinates. The portal would remain open after he stepped through so the reinforcements could follow.
Suddenly unsure, she asked: “Are you sure he didn’t end up on the server?”
Fire replied: “I had a lot of time to think about the science behind worlds while looking through Claw’s eyes. It seems our world and the server’s world are too close together to be individually targetable. It will take me to the server where I can log out and return to my other body. Kay probably emerged somewhere around the manor if he was targeting my location. I’m alive, so he evidently hasn’t reached me yet.”
Shadow once again had to watch her brother leave into the uncertain. She would have liked to come along but her other body would not be of much use in a fight, frail as it was.
“Be careful Peter.” She said as her brother stepped through the portal.
Chapter 70: To Slay a Beast (Kay/Fire)
I had given up trying to be quiet. All around me, this branch quivered here, or that owl hooted there, or a gust of wind set the bushes cackling at my efforts to remain quiet whilst an unseen fox whined in something I hoped might have been sympathy. Amidst all that cracking, whooshing, snapping, and howling, it really didn’t matter if I stepped on the odd twig or jostled the odd shrub. The only pretense of stealth I kept was the cloth I held over the glowing scanner, occasionally lifting it to ensure I kept moving in the right direction.
That’s not to say I was at ease though… I’m not quite sure what I felt. On the one hand, every time I heard a sound I couldn’t be certain I recognised, I would whirl around, sword in hand, teeth bared like an animal and my heart hammering away so violently it should have knocked me flat on my back. In every shadow I could have sworn I saw… well, Shadow, waiting to eviscerate me as she had My Book. And every change in the wind seemed a prelude to another attack from Astro.
“Piece of ****!”
The phrase echoed in me, and each time I reached up to the cracked right lens of my goggles for reasons I didn’t quite want to understand. Maybe I just couldn’t believe I’d not only alienated myself from Helix, but that this alienation had been expressed in the sort of grand, symbolic gesture I’d thought only existed in old tragedies. Accordingly, I’d believed myself to be the last speaker of this dead language - apparently, I’d taught it to him as well - perhaps the last thing I’d ever teach him.
I felt my legs, chilled by the night, grow sluggish and weak. I steadied myself on a tree. A searing pain shot through the knee which Claw had broken - a wound I thought I’d cast off.
All these fragments of what I’d done suddenly coalesced - sank right into me. I had been given power, political, magical, personal, and I’d used it to almost kill a child. My breath became thick, wheezing, as though I were drowning in mud. I could have built them a kingdom like none other if only I’d kept them with me! If only I’d kept my reliance on the Book under control! If only I’d kept them from her influence. And now my crown lay broken, and all my charms overthrown…
But no! They would understand once I did this. Once I killed Claw. That I had always been working towards victory. That, fool though I was, I had always had their best interests at heart. I had to do this. For Destiny, in case she failed to kill the Entity. For all of them. And if Shadow wanted to kill me, she could go ahead. Perhaps Fire had been right when he said martyrdom was nothing to be afraid of. A new phrase began to echo:
“...it is a natural part of everybody’s life.”
But all my thoughts stopped in their tracks as I saw it. A fence. Steel, barred, very high, gleaming in the moonlight. The bars sat too close together for me to get more than a fist through. Nausea swept through me at the thought of climbing it in my condition. Then, I noticed the architects had added a few horizontal bars at intervals for good measure. Thanking the mods for these prospective footholds, I began to climb.
I made it no further than two rungs up before the weight of my armour and the pain in my injured knee brought me back to earth. I landed on my knees, with my armour giving off a worryingly glassy sound - perhaps I had picked up something in disrepair - but a quick glance revealed nothing had broken yet. And, not seeing any activity beyond the fence, I knelt there for a while, panting and groaning silently.
Eventually, I stood up. I reached into one of my pockets and produced an ender pearl. I had hoped to use it to escape if I alerted anyone, but apparently this is what I actually needed it for. I readied to pitch a throw, only for my shoulders to violently spasm in objection. I hadn’t realised just how much I had been relying on My Book to keep me going - how far I had pushed myself. Instead, I slid my hand through the fence, and, quaking, dropped the ender pearl onto the ground. It shattered. Nothing happened.
“Different world, different rules,” I sighed.
It took a few minutes of steeling my resolve, but I forced myself to climb that fence, my teeth clenched together so tightly I could have sworn they’d just fused together by the end of it. Finally, I landed on the ground on the other side and fell to one knee again, in a gentle, glassy rattle. I fought the urge to punch my injured knee, both because I was afraid of my armour’s condition and because I was afraid of attracting any of the house’s servants or defenders.
“Alright,” I calculated. “The signs on the nearby road called it Graves Manor. ‘Manor’, to me, suggests servants. Moreover, I can’t rule out the possibility that the Tower have deployed people to guard Fire. Or, I suppose, Graves as I should be calling him. But what’s his first name… Oh, I’m about to break into his house and kill what’s left of him for mods’ sake, common courtesy isn’t a top priority.”
I loped cautiously across the lawn towards Graves Manor. It was a large, angular, three-story building of strange make. Much of its walls were made of glass, which reflected much of the moonlight in large, diagonal white bands. What remained appeared made from a smooth, gray material. At the centre of the manor was a block housing the main entrance, its second and third stories were largely replaced by a roof balcony. Connected to the central block were two wings, both identical, topped by slanted roofs. The entire thing rested against a sheer rock face, making it look small by comparison even though it could probably house at least a dozen people and their servants very comfortably.
I was approaching a side door on the central block, hand drifting slowly closer towards Apotyre. The door was much like the rest of the manor, a pane of the same reflective glass dominating most of its surface. The rest of it was either made from or plated in polished steel, including the handle.
I stopped to the left of the door and finally drew the blade Apotyre. I contemplated the obsidian cladding on the flat as though it were a dark mirror. This was the last of the equipment Herobrine had bestowed upon me, the sword I had been awarded for my service at Arcadia, and which I had used at Zine Craft. This was the last physical evidence of General Kay Mandy, the Lap Dog of Herobrine, great hero.
I closed my eyes, tensed my body, and rammed my elbow into the glass. Both glass and armour shattered. Blood ran down my elbow, but I successfully breached the pane. I quickly reached through the hole and opened the door, sweeping in with Apotyre before me.
A quick scan of the room revealed no one, but that could change quickly, particularly if there were Endlings involved. I hugged the wall as I advanced, patting it with the palm of my hand to remain grounded. Then, my hand touched something hard and smooth. It clicked. Light revealed the entrance hall, it was wide open, and its ceiling got taller towards the back. Polished marble tiles covered the floor. I saw a staircase to either side, leading up to the second floors of each wing. The walls were lined with display cases with large photographs above them, each lit by its own lamp. There were also some dark glass hemisphere fixtures higher up on the wall, which I assumed to be decorative. At the back of the entrance hall was a massive vault door, apparently made from solid metal.
Seeing no obvious opposition, and hearing no immediate sounds of reaction, I went up and tapped the vault door with my knuckles out of curiosity. I wondered what he could be hiding in there - and whether this could be the place he sat hidden. Seeing no obvious way to open the door other than a panel full of numbers and a flashing image of a hand, I decided to come back to this later, once I had a notion of what it was.
I also conducted a brief inspection of one of the display cases to see if it might be useful or informative. It had some sort of oblique weapon inside, made of metal and with many moving parts. A plaque and a photograph explained its purpose. Not much of it made sense to me, but it was a prototype, and it had been used in active service.
“So, the Graves really were warmongers,” I reassured myself with a flourish of Apotyre.
I approached the stairs toward the left wing, reasoning the bedchambers were more likely to be upstairs and arbitrarily choosing between left and right. I passed more inventions. Some of them reinforced the mental image I wished to have of the Graves. Canisters with ominous symbols on the side. A model of an older version of the manor, still similar to how it was now but with a decidedly different style, something about it gave off a sinister feeling.
But then there were others, which unsettled my resolve. A device apparently designed to deliver medicine to troops. An electrified baton specifically designed to enable non-lethal capture. And, after climbing the stairs, a great number of photos of people of whose identity I could not be entirely certain. One caught my eye, a family photo exactly as tall and twice as wide as my torso. But not a complete one. The parents were there, cool and superior, like so many of the aristocrats who had snubbed me in Mojang, after I had helped to save their nation, to restore it to glory. I felt my grip tighten until my fingers seemed to sink into the handle of Apotyre. Between them, a small girl… barely two years old, pale with dark hair and oddly piercing green eyes.
I knew immediately that this was my enemy, the architect of my downfall: Shadow. I breathed a sharp, quivering, furious breath and strode onto the landing. There was a long line of doors on the right-hand side, with only windows on the left. I rushed forward and began to open the doors with barely any regard for silence or stealth. A bathroom. A spare bedroom. Another bedroom. A sort of lounge or living room. No one in any of them. And each door I lurched towards hurt my body more, and each empty room left my mind wilder with anger. And I kept seeing more and more of those decorative hemispheres all over the ceiling, in between various skylights.
Fortunately for my poor body, I ran out of wind and began to reassess my method. I realised that all the rooms I had opened thus far had been guest or spares, so perhaps the ones actually in use were at the end. I flourished Apotyre and rushed down in a hobbling mess of ragged breath and clattering armour.
I threw open the last door at the end of the corridor and froze up. There she was. Dark hair, pale skin, eyes closed, sitting in a high-backed chair in front of an arrangement of glowing screens. She looked so much more fragile here. I couldn’t help but feel a little cheated. The only thing I could recognise about her was a slight look of detachment as she slept, as though the whole process meant rather little to her.
I felt my sword-arm rise instinctively but I suppressed it. I’d needed to see this, but it was not why I was here. I thought of Destiny, almost certainly dead by now, either by the Entity’s hand or by Freak’s. And I couldn’t think of a more noble way to go out. She had won herself some glory there, and I would try to build it further. Even if the Tower didn’t lose its head that night, it had to lose its hand, or all of my… all Destiny’s efforts would have been for nothing.
I straightened up one last time and tried the next door over. The telltale glow of the screen was visible immediately, so I threw the door open, sword held aloft and letting out a terrible, glorious cry of war. Imagine my disappointment when I saw the chair empty. I fox-walked up to the screen.
“Logged out,” it said.
A second screen showed the door I’d just entered through, wide open and letting its faint glow spill out into the hall. I could even see the heel of my boot.
I felt a chill overtake me. My knee surged with pain. I struck it and steadied myself. The purpose of the hemispheres was finally clear to me. I marched out into the hall and with a rage-fueled blow cracked the nearest hemisphere and tore out the surveillance device within. I threw it to the floor and crushed it underfoot. As I panted, I felt my strength begin to wane. But then, I heard a creaking.
A door, just ajar. And a momentary glint of light I could have sworn was an eye.
“Come on out,” I panted. “And tell me where he is.”
No response.
“Listen, you’re looking at a man who really doesn’t have much left to lose. You’re going to tell me where the Graves brother is, or I’m going to slowly kill you while you tell me.”
I took a step toward the half-closed door.
“I don’t know if you’re hiding or if this is supposed to be an ambush, but it is not succeeding.”
Two more steps. I got ready to force the door the whole way open. I fully expected whoever this was to try and jump me as I entered. So, I intended to open and spring back, hopefully catch them off guard.
“Sod it, I’m coming in.”
I shunted the door forward and leapt back. As predicted, they attacked almost immediately.
A man, in some kind of leather jacket, rushed out with a rubber baton. I dodged to the side, but the blow caught my shoulder-guard and it shattered like disused pottery. With a grunt of annoyance, I grabbed his wrist and the back of his head and slammed him into the opposing wall. With my assailant disoriented I threw him back into the middle of the hall.
“Where is the Graves brother?” I asked.
Before he could respond, I smacked him across the jaw so hard the gauntlet cracked. A crude technique, but it had worked for me before. Ask the questions while you’re still hitting them, so they know what to say to make you stop. I felt my knee begin to ache again but powered through.
“Where did you put him? Is he down in that vault?”
He swung back, but I danced backwards. I booted him in the chest, and he fell down. This was too easy.
I took the moment to get a look at him. He looked decently athletic, aged about thirty. Too old to be young, too young to be old. Maybe something to exploit there but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. He was more than old enough to work, so I decided to start there.
“What’s your stake in this? Did the Tower send you? Are you Graves staff? Because neither are particularly worthy employers.”
I jabbed down with Apotyre, partly to show my willingness to kill, partly in the hopes of catching him on the leg and immobilising him. He rolled backwards with surprising explosiveness, his left hand shot to his side. I advanced undaunted.
“The Tower are killers through and through. And these Graves kids talk a good game about how awful their arms-dealer parents are, but fact is they’ve just made themselves into the weapons. So, you’ve got to ask yourself,” I was almost upon him. “Is the Graves brother worth your life?”
The man’s left hand shot upwards. I stepped back. He had some sort of firearm in hand. Now, he had it pointed at my chest, a little green light creating a verdant pinprick on my breastplate right where my heart would be. I halted.
The man smiled. “I don’t know Kay, am I?”
“Listen,” I said obstinately. “I’m not here to weigh your worth as a person. I’m here to find and kill my enemies’ greatest asset. And don’t presume you’re safe just because you have that trinket pointed at me. You will tell me where he is, or I will kill you.”
I tried not to let it show, and maintained a fighting stance, but something was off. The man didn’t seem like he’d just gotten the upper hand, he was so calm the fight might as well never have happened. It felt almost familiar… I couldn’t stop thinking about taverns for some reason.
“This is my world, Kay. I know way back then in that canyon you said firearms were ‘bloody irrelevant’ in yours, here they are not.”
I felt as though a trapdoor had opened beneath me.
“Fire?” I asked, agape.
“That’s in the other world, here I’m Peter Graves.”
I stepped back, and felt my leg begin to quiver. My knee joint was boiling hot and felt as though nails were passing through it every second. It should have been audibly hissing with steam and spitting blood.
I scanned ‘Peter’s’ face. The same self-assured, tranquil gaze. Even similar features. The hair, if it had been white, would have been almost identical. Like Shadow, he had green eyes here - the same green eyes. I felt my sword begin to dip. Then, I stopped it.
“No. I fell for this once before. You beat me then, you got the Prophet, Steve 2, you almost killed Astro as well. It won’t work again.”
I slammed my fist into my injured knee and the expected surge of pain let me steady myself.
A second examination uncovered the beast I had come to kill. That gaze was not tranquil, it was the confidence of a hunter after lesser prey. Those eyes were not the same as Shadow’s, they were an envious green, which had watched life from behind another man for far too long.
“It’s you, Claw, it has to be.”
I rubbed a tear away from my eye.
“You must be Claw.”
I put both hands on the grip of Apotyre and lifted it until the blade was nearly touching my hair. The black cladding reflected my face, which in reflection somehow looked still more fierce and furious.
“As commandant of the 10th Legion of the Herobrinian Army, I, Kay Mandy, sentence you to die, beast!”
I rushed forward, roaring my titles. General. Commander. Lap Dog. Hero of Arcadia. King in Ash. All my strength was pouring into this one final swing. I was determined that no matter how powerful this gun was, I would push through the blow, and cleave him in two.
The gun tracked me as I moved in, but he also had the baton ready to swing back. I roared louder still. I launched myself in, feeling as though a thousand gales were trying to keep me from my kill. It was exhilarating. My teeth widened into a mile-wide grin.
Blade connected with baton. Cracks spread across the diamond, then spread to the obsidian. A noise like breaking glass followed. Apotyre shattered and sprayed about. Only a stump of a sword remained. I felt my legs give way. Claw stepped aside. I hit the ground. I couldn’t stop staring at my broken sword, the symbol of so much earned, and so much thrown away.
The baton pressed against my neck. I felt the electricity jolt and my entire body tense. Then, the flow of energy stopped, and I fell limp. All went black.
###
Peter had no idea what Kay had been thinking, not when he decided to come to his world and kill him, not when he threatened who he believed to be a house servant with torture, and certainly not when he decided to put his entire weight into a swing while yelling an incoherent battle cry.
Now Kay lay at Peter’s feet, stunned by the electric shock from his baton. But Peter knew better than to rely on electricity to keep Kay down. So, he knelt next to his former second-in-command and pressed an injector to his exposed upper arm, moving it around until the indicator at the back switched from red to green when it identified a vein to deliver its payload into. With a press on the back of the injector, Peter administered a cocktail of chemicals that would keep Kay unconscious for the foreseeable future.
Only after confirming that Kay was out cold, Peter took a breath of relief. The immediate danger was banished, but Kay still believed he was Claw and if there was any hope of getting out of this without anyone dying, Peter had to get that idea out of his mind.
Before moving Kay, Peter carefully removed his armor, taking care to cut neither himself nor Kay on the shards. Then, once that was done, he heaved Kay onto his back and carried him to the nearest lounge. Once there, he put him down on a couch and switched the light on, now finally able to get a good look at Kay’s state. Kay’s normally pale skin looked practically ghostly, and his wide eyes seemed shut and shrunken. His mane of hair had bits of leaves and twigs and dirt tangled in, and the fringe had separated into various greasy strands. Some blood had dried out in the auburn strands of his beard near the corner of his mouth. The dark patch looked bizarrely vibrant amidst the faintly reddish forest.
“You’ve seen better days, Kay.” He said.
Peter left the room again, thinking the situation over. If he’d had any more time before Kay’s attack, he’d have gotten a full set of combat gear from the armory, but with how things went he was only able to use what had been available in his and Shadow’s room. The sedative would last for an hour at the very minimum so now he had more time.
Peter inspected his face in the mirror, Kay’s gauntleted slap had resulted in a superficial cut and some bruising around his jaw. Peter cleaned the wound and put a plaster on it. With the bleeding taken care of, it was time to fetch some additional things from storage.
He returned to the lounge with his arms full. Now that he had Kay captive, Peter wanted to take no more risks. He immobilized Kay using a specialized set of restraints that was designed for maximum safety and minimum discomfort, intended for high-value captives, which Kay very much was in this situation. The restraints would allow Kay limited movement of his hands, but not enough to get anywhere close to the locks or to attack.
After brief deliberation, Peter also decided to tape Kay’s mouth shut, he wanted to talk him out of his murderous intent and Peter was not in the mood for a screaming match.
After double-checking the integrity of Kay’s restraints, Peter used a second injector to administer the antidote to the sedative. Now he just had to wait for Kay to wake up.
A few minutes later Kay groggily blinked his eyes open, it took a few seconds before he fully grasped the situation he was in and promptly started screaming into the tape and struggling against the restraints.
Peter sighed. “Hello again Kay. First, let me ask you a question. Do you think you’d be alive right now if I were Claw? I spent a lot of time getting to know him through his eyes and I think if he really was in control, you’d have been dead the moment you stepped foot into the manor.”
Kay steadied himself and stopped thrashing against the restraints. Instead, he started trying unsuccessfully to stand up, all while shooting Peter a murderous look. After a few attempts, he gave up, but the look remained, prideful and desperate in equal measure.
Peter continued: “Listen Kay, I’m not in the best mood at the moment since half an hour ago you tried to assassinate me. I’ll try to not let it affect me and talk this through. But you need to realize that that’s what happened. You tried to kill Claw through me, correct?”
Kay nodded slowly, as if checking the words he just heard for traps. His eyes didn’t stop burning.
“Alright. But at some point during all that you seemed to think Claw wasn’t in control, but then thought it was Claw after all. Still correct?”
He turned his head away and began to glare out through the nearest skylight. He didn’t nod or shake his head.
Peter had always thought that Kay’s psyche was a complex one, his time as the King in Ash definitely hadn’t helped with this. It was difficult to tell what he believed and what he wanted to believe. He had to tread lightly.
“So, if there was doubt, why did you still attack? Was the risk worth the reward? Or did you come too far to stop?”
He looked back at Peter. For a moment, Peter could have sworn he saw Kay’s eyes begin to water, but then they snapped shut. His fingers balled into fists, knuckles turning white as he hunched over.
That was close to the truth then. Peter said: “You know, that time Claw showed up in the portal facility, he was there with a concrete plan in mind. He wanted to antagonize you.” He hesitated, not wanting to reveal anything about what Glibby told Claw about Kay’s future. “I’m not saying you’re some pawn in a grand game, but Claw definitely wanted to provoke a reaction like this. He wanted you to go after someone to prove a point.”
Surprisingly, Kay snorted with laughter. He breathed deeply, then looked at Peter with sad, tearful eyes. Then, he lowered them again, and his face began to harden, and his eyes slammed shut again. He gestured to the tape, then the green of his eyes slowly returned to view.
“Alright Kay, I’ll take the tape off, and we can talk.”
Peter reached over and carefully peeled the tape off Kay’s face, it inevitably took some beard hairs with it, but came off otherwise cleanly. After Kay’s teeth gritted, his features sank.
“I’ve done a lot of shitty things, Fire,” he said. “I don’t need Claw to tell me to do more. Or My Book...”
Peter noticed that, for the first time, Kay had started a conversation using his natural accent. No upper-class affectations which he accidentally slipped out of. No elevated language carried onwards by false energy. Just a coarse, bitter brogue.
“...She died because I wanted to feel strong.”
That took Peter by surprise slightly, Kir had said that the Book was “gone”, but Kay was “gone” too, but still alive. Evidently the same was not true for the Book.
“Book’s dead, huh? I didn’t get to catch up on everything that happened in the meantime because…” Peter made a vague gesture into the room. “But in other news, the Entity’s gone too. No idea how exactly Destiny did that.”
Kay shot Peter a renewed glare as he mentioned the Book, though this was dulled by the news of the Entity’s death, like a pile of embers being kicked apart before they could rekindle. Like the embers, he settled for a determined, hopeless glow.
“She was always strong,” he said simply. Then, as though trying to remember a dream: “Did trying to kill you buy her any time?”
“Your escape probably ensured she wasn’t caught but otherwise, no. I was already out of the Tower when I learned of your intent.”
He nodded, though his eyes seemed strangely vacant. He stared up at the skylight again, even though there was nothing but a reflection of the room to look at.
“I think that’s what I told myself I was trying to accomplish.”
Peter decided to fill Kay in on the rest of the happenings. “Just one issue, the fight isn’t over. Freak is impersonating the Entity and the plan is still on track.”
Kay lifted his hands and rubbed them over his face. Then, he didn’t say anything for a while.
“Is Helix okay?” he asked, finally.
Peter shrugged. “I didn’t see him in the brief time I was at the Shelter. From how everyone was acting I assume Destiny drugged everyone with a sedative from my supply. Amanda was there but Helix was not, I assume he needs time for himself, probably hiding.”
Kay nodded. A tear ran down his cheek. Then, others.
“I broke a door downstairs on my way in,” he said, his upper-crust accent abruptly reconstructed. “You might want to get that fixed. It’s probably…” He lifted his hands up to his streaming eyes. “It’s probably letting a terrible draft in. I think it was the kitchen.”
Peter laughed and shook his head. “I already ordered the replacement for that particular door a month ago as part of the ongoing renovations. Been on a waiting list ever since, logistical bottlenecks are a real problem when ordering through civilian pathways. You found the only door in the entire manor that didn’t have armored glass.”
Kay, still crying, laughed back from behind his fingers: “First ****ing door I tried.”
Peter reached for the key to Kay’s restraints. “Good thing too, you probably would have shattered enough of your armor to bleed you dry from lacerations trying to break in. But let’s get you out of those cuffs, then we can think about what we’ll do next.”
With practiced motions Peter unlocked the restraints on Kay’s arms, legs and the structures holding the entire thing together. Once Kay was fully freed, Peter extended his hand.
Kay took it and rose up, shaking horribly as he did so. He struggled to look Peter in the eye, abruptly shifting his gaze any time they made eye contact and trying to play it off as taking in the room. Eventually, with his back turned to the man he’d just tried to kill, and his eyes fixed on the skylight, he said:
“It’s good to have you back, Fire. I’ve missed you dreadfully.”
Peter gestured to the door. “I suppose it’s time to go back, however that’ll work. We need to get an attack plan against Freak up and running. And we need more soldiers.”
“The True Court. And Herobrine. They’ll help. I tried to avoid calling on them, because I wanted to believe I didn’t need them anymore. That I was finally as strong as they were. They’re not… they’ll help us, nonetheless. Send Astro, he’ll have a better chance than me.”
Peter nodded. He had an idea of his own. “Remember when I told you there were more like me, the Mencur-Besh? We don’t have a dedicated leader, everything is a product of collective decisions, but since I was present from the very beginning of the collective and helped it grow into what it is, I do have a certain amount of influence. If only by virtue of imparted knowledge and values.”
“An army of three meter tall, scaled war machines with claws does sound pretty useful right about now.”
Kay managed a fragile smirk which threatened to subside at any moment.
As Peter went to open the door, he heard something out in the corridor, his hand came to rest on the handle. Chances were this was the detachment Tyron had sent after him. Peter still took the baton in his right hand and the pistol in his left, one could never be too careful. He slowly opened the door.
“Stick together,” Peter heard Astro say from the stairs. “If he’s here, he’ll be violent.”
Peter put his weapons back on his belt and stepped out into the corridor.
Chapter 71: Turning Point (Astro/Fire)
As we step out of the portal, I swear to myself I will do anything to stop him from killing Fire. My blade is drawn, and my senses are heightened, though I know I likely won’t need this. As he did in my time, Kay has run himself ragged, not letting a single wound heal properly. The Book has been keeping him stable for months. Still, strength was hardly ever what made him dangerous.
I pray to Notch we have not arrived too late.
Shadow stands to my right, Urist on my left. Twenty soldiers follow after us, carefully filtering into ranks as we advance.
I see the smooth face of Graves Manor, with its many sheets of glass nestled within concrete. We stand in the driveway.
Between us, Shadow and I were able to narrow down the signal we were looking for and brute-force the portal to arrive here. Nearby the signal, in the right plane of reality. I try to shoot her a reassuring look, but her gaze is fixed straight ahead. She is already approaching the doors. I bark an order, and the rest of our party follow.
I catch up to Shadow just outside the door. A rune is glowing on her arm. The lock clicks. The entrance swings open. She immediately walks - practically glides! - forward into her home, her mismatched shadow walks alongside her. I feel guilty and rush forward to the front door.
“Allow me,” I say.
I gesture to the lock to perform a simple spell and cast it open. I feel nothing. No flowing of energy. No subtle satisfaction as a thought exerts itself on physical reality. No magic. Nothing happens.
“Um…” I back away. “That’s not good…”
Shadow walks forward still and opens the front door in a similar manner to the gate. She says: “This world normally has no magic. Though I’m starting to suspect that it’s not a hard rule… I might be partially following the rules of the other plane. Still, casting feels like swimming through tar.”
“Noted,” I say.
I hold my sword like a life raft.
Another rune glows. The next set of doors opens. We enter into a large hall dominated by a vault door at one end, a staircase at the other, with glass cases filling the space between.
I try to ignore the strange feeling of being cut off from a loved one and begin to figure out a plan of action.
“Where’s Fire’s room?” I ask Shadow.
“Up the left stairs, down the corridor, second-to-last door.”
I nod.
“Urist, take eight men, go up the right. Search every room. I’ll take another six and go up to the left with Shadow. You four remain here.”
Shadow immediately moves up the stairs and I try not to look disoriented. We pass portraits, cases, everything blurs together. But I remind myself of my purpose.
We arrive in the hallway.
“Stick together,” I say. “If he’s here, he’s violent.”
As Shadow walks/glides ahead, moving purposefully towards the end of the corridor, I pray silently that she doesn’t find a corpse behind one of these doors. I gesture and my men begin to search the rooms in pairs. I make to follow the first pair in, but then catch a glimpse of the fourth door cracking open. I slide instinctively into a defensive pose.
“Wait,” I instruct, and beckon for the nearest soldier to follow me, well aware that without my magic I’m only so much of a threat.
My mind races. Shadow said there was no staff. But what if she was wrong? Or what if someone they trusted had stumbled in on all this? I search for any answer that isn’t a binary of Fire or Kay because I don’t think my jittery heart could take either that much relief or that much fury.
We creep forward. I try to catch a glimpse of whoever’s behind the door, but they’ve slipped out of sight.
I raise my sword, ready to take up a position on the far side of the door and announce myself. But then, the door opens. A man with some sort of pronged cudgel on his belt steps out. I fight the urge to attack. I’ve already tried to kill my boss once today. Besides, I don’t want this guy panicking.
“Hello,” I say as calmly as I can. “We’re looking for the residents. Now, I know our presence probably looks a little ominous, and perhaps a little strange as I’m told you don’t use swords around here, but I swear we’re here to protect him.”
I forced a smile and try to hold the sword in a less threatening manner.
“Who might you be?” I ask.
Shadow quietly says to me: “Astro, that’s my brother.”
“Oh,” I smile, with only the slightest hint of embarrassment. “Good to see you again, Fire.”
The man said: “Hello again. Kay’s in the room behind me, I managed to talk him down… after a while.”
I walk up and clap an arm on Fire’s shoulder, though I worry I grip too tightly when he mentions Kay’s name. I feel a rush of shame and anger at having let it come this close. But in there, a faint hope glows.
“So, when you say you talked him down, was this before or after he slammed you in the face?” I ask. “Sorry, that came out snarky. I guess I mean… Did he try to kill you?”
“Oh, he did. He smacked me before he knew it was me though, and yes, I had to restrain him. He’s no longer restrained, and no longer armed, he broke his sword attacking me. Diamond and obsidian are very brittle here.”
I sigh. I look down at my sword and feel that little bit more vulnerable. Then, another element of what Fire’s just said to me registers.
“He’s not restrained?!” I blurt out. Then, more calmly. “That is not wise, I assure you… Commander?”
Fire opens the door and motions us to go in. “I don’t think we need another change of leadership at this point, with what I have planned ‘Speaker of the Mencur-Besh’ would probably be the better title.”
I struggle to find a reason to challenge his reasoning. Fire might bring some nostalgia from early converts, but he’ll also draw suspicion from those present at the Massacre of the Prophet’s Hill. Tyron will do. I realise I’ve been thinking too long and nod.
I look around and it dawns on me for the first time just how strange the architecture is. Smooth, painted walls to the right, almost entirely glass to the left. Little of the wood and brick and exposed stone I’m used to. And the precision of the angles is comparable to that of the Landmasons of old. It all feels nauseatingly uncanny.
“You’ve a nice home,” I lie.
Fire and Shadow are contentedly quiet. My soldiers stand around me, directionless and bored, and I feel their eyes weighing on me, judging me. I want to give either an excuse to leave, or some great, decisive command to shift some eyes off me and onto a task, or maybe just barge past Fire through the door and start wailing on Kay. Finally, something reasonable to say comes to me.
“Hold on,” I say to Shadow. “You’re here, aren’t you?” I gesture to the house. “Or, are you?”
A grin that makes me regret asking spreads across Shadow’s face. “You know, that’s actually a good question.”
I expect her to cast some grand spell, but nothing of the sort comes. Instead, I hear movement further down the corridor. The very last door opens slowly and out comes a dark-haired woman of very familiar stature. She rubs her eyes and yawns, before making her way over to us.
“Oh,” I say, “I thought we were just going to check on your sleeping body, but this also works.”
My eyes dart between the two and I try to reconcile them. It’s not as though Shadow’s human form is that different to the one I knew so well, it’s more like two different painters had a go at exactly the same scene from exactly the same angle. At first glance, aside from the skin and hair being basically inversions of each other, the only difference is the eyes. Green and red, red and green. Complimentary colours rather than a binary… But then I notice the imperfections, the wrinkles of tiredness and laughter, a slight graze on the human’s hand, the weight with which she moves, and suddenly the two bodies seem hilariously irreconcilable.
After what feels like a years-long drought, something like a joke comes to mind.
“Two of you at once? Don’t show Kay, he’ll positively **** himself in fear.”
I laugh, then worry I came across bitter.
I quickly add: “Is it not hard to coordinate both of yourself at once?”
The Shadows look at each other, then the human one answers: “It’s certainly an interesting experience. It’s not like controlling a projection, I’m conscious in both bodies at once but both are still me, still the same mind. But the difference in perception is massive. This body feels so much less than the other one. Oh, but it definitely feels Wodahs’ patented shadow hugs, this is the first time we are able to interact, come to think of it.”
I burst out laughing, apologising profusely as I do so. It feels good to just laugh about the surrealism of something. I feel prepared for whatever I have to do next.
“So,” I begin. “What’s our next course of action? Do I head straight home, or do you want me to wait around? Should I leave the men and Urist? Take… the prisoner with me? Consult with Tyron? What am I doing?”
I try to recapture a sense of relief about Fire being back and Kay being contained, pushing back the knowledge that we’re on the verge not only of the machine being activated any day now but of Freak trying to turn reality into his own personal nightmarish hellscape andalsowe’restillsooutnumberedpleasedearNotchhelpus. But, you know, Fire’s back. Yay.
Fire speaks up: “So, now that everything here is under control, I suggest we start taking steps to achieve that in Nexus too. First, I’ll need you all to take a trip to my other world. I want to show you what my emergency plan looks like. Then, we can return to Nexus and call in any off-world favours that we can, but from what I’ve seen that’s already been started.” He turns to his sister(s?). “Shadow, once you put your body back in your room, would you mind opening a portal for everyone? I’ll be with you momentarily.”
I want to be shocked by the immediacy with which Fire is acting, but I’m really just relieved he’s addressing my concerns.
Shadow walks out to the corridor and without a gesture from either of us, my soldiers begin to trudge after her. I stop the nearest soldier and mutter to him to go find Urist. He jogs on, and I presume he obeys me. I stop the next nearest, catching him like an object dropped from a great height. I close my eyes and press shackles into his hands.
“For his Ashen Highness,” I half-spit.
I pray for a moment that Fire might come back to handle this for me, seeing as he supposedly talked him down and all, but no, he’s entering his room without a backward glance. Goodbye Peter. Hello again, Fire.
I press the door open.
He abruptly straightens himself up and rubs his eyes and I feel like decking him. Just a pure, clean punch right to his stupid nose. And then maybe umpteen others. Like he has the right to cry about this. I grunt to the soldier and brood against a wall.
“Sorry Astro, I didn’t see you there,” he sniffs. “It has been an eventful-” He looks up and sees the shackle-bearing soldier standing over him. “Oh…”
He shoots me a worried glance. I deflect it with a cock of my head in the direction of the restraints. His palms turn to face the sky, the shackles clamp down. I see him flinch as the restraints bite his skin.
“I deserve this,” he said. “I understand.”
“Do not speak.”
I hope it sounds angry in an intimidating way, but it feels angry in a ludicrous way. Tantruming, limp, offered in service of an argument I lost before it even began. I had the evidence of all the bodies piled up around him, and I’m now mad because he made me look stupid. I suck.
“Just wait five bloody minutes before you try to worm your way into repentance this time,” I elaborate with the bare minimum diplomacy.
He shuts up, and we go to join Shadow in the hall. Urist has joined us, and he is quietly confused as Kay walks down the stairs in shackles. He doesn’t acknowledge Shadow, but he tries to nod at Urist. Their eyes lock for a moment, Kay distraught, Urist almost smug. I suppose he feels vindicated after Kay basically froze him out of the command structure.
“Hello Urist,” Kay croaks. I expect him to say more, but for once he seems to have wised up.
The dwarf doesn’t scoff. I admire that. I absolutely would have. And then some.
Shadow stands just before the vault, various runes glowing on her body as she tries to open the portal through to the famous Server. I’m almost excited. Almost.
“How are you feeling?” I ask Shadow.
I felt obligated to. Still, there was a little sincerity in there. It was time to mend fences.
“Good, overall. It’s good to know that I won’t cause the apocalypse if things work out. But that’s only part of it, more important is that I have my brother back. But at the moment… this spell is taking a lot out of me. Reality is fighting me for every bit of magic.” The glow of her runes intensifies. “We will find some time to talk later, Astro. We really need to, for both of our sakes.”
I nod. Not having access to magic is making me feel like I’m made of glass. Not the best time.
The portal opens. It is different from the interdimensional portals, this one is all light and electricity. It looks a little painful to be honest. With an unnecessary gesture, I swallow my hesitancy and step through.
###
Fire stood in the middle of a desert, the same one where he had emerged from the world tunnel when he first returned to his own world. In fact, the tunnel was only a short distance away, he hadn’t moved far after his hasty second return.
He focused inward, on his connection to the Mencur-Besh collective’s network. Thousands of information fragments passed him by, most of them irrelevant to his current situation. The network was how the Mencur-Besh communicated over long distances. They did this by mentally linking up to one of many giant ender eyes that were hidden all over the server. Most of them were underground, save for two, one was at the center of Rockhaven, the de-facto capital of the server. The other eye was near Drandin, the main settlement of the Eye-and-Claws, the human allies of the Mencur-Besh.
Through this network Fire sent a concept, namely an explanation of the current situation, including everything about Nexus and the potential fate of the multiverse. Immediately the network lit up with activity, the new information was distributed to all Mencur-Besh, each forming their own judgement and relaying their results back into the network. This cycle of feedback continued for a good minute, then a large shift happened.
A concept flashed through the network, directed at Fire specifically. He was told to give direct instructions, it seemed that in this unprecedented situation the collective wanted to fall back on Fire’s leadership, just like it had done in its early days. The core priority of the collective had changed, the Mencur-Besh had decided to assist in any way possible.
In this moment Fire felt a strange sense of pride, he felt honored that, even after having spent so long in independence, the collective still saw him as their leader. When he sent his first message, he’d hoped to be appointed to speak on the collective’s behalf but not full leadership. Instead of pondering the change further, Fire did as asked, and sent instructions. He ordered all Mencur-Besh to teleport or be teleported to his location. This order would also extend to the highest-ranking Eye-and-Claws members as a voluntary invitation.
The first teleportations came only seconds later. The Mencur-Besh that arrived looked very similar to Fire: Tall, scaled, white-haired. What differed though were their eye colors. In Mencur-Besh eye color indicated elemental affinity.
Those with red eyes like Fire had an affinity to the eponymous element, granting them superior strength and heat resistance. Yellow eyes meant an affinity for air, granting speed. Blue for water, they had senses sharp beyond what was normal for Mencur-Besh. Green-eyed Mencur-Besh were Earth-aligned, they were an additional meter tall and significantly bulkier. Life-aligned Mencur-Besh had pure white eyes and had access to telepathy outside of their network. Wither-aligned Mencur-Besh had grey eyes and possessed complete immunity to magic. And finally, Ender-aligned, purple-eyed Mencur-Besh had enormous pools of life force and were natural mages.
To Fire’s surprise the first few waves already included several humans, all of them hailing from Drandin. While more and more Mencur-Besh appeared around Fire, two men approached him.
The first man had blue eyes and short, blond hair and beard. He wore a full set of firesteel armor, save for the helmet, which was attached to his side.
The other man had a much more unusual appearance, his skin was so densely covered in scars that they had almost entirely driven out his hair on parts of his head. He was also missing his left eye, a blue gem sat in its place, his healthy eye was unnaturally dark. Additionally, his right hand was missing too, replaced by a spiked hook.
The first man spoke to Fire in a soft voice: “So, looks like we have a real crisis on our hands. The multiverse part is news to me though.”
Fire smiled and replied: “Brad, Andras. I’m glad you’re along for the ride as well. It was quite a shock when I found out, believe me.”
The second man, Andras, rumbled: “Whatever’s out there can’t be too different. And if it is, I’m always up for new experiences!”
By the second, more Mencur-Besh appeared around them, next to them also appeared large crates filled with supplies. Armor, weapons, food, potions, blocks, whatever strategic resources were available, they were being brought along.
Fire spent the next few minutes bringing the human arrivals up to speed on the situation, and just as he was done, a portal opened nearby. Out of it came Shadow, followed by a now re-restrained Kay who was being led by Astro. Urist and the soldiers followed immediately after.
Astro, gobsmacked, surveyed the scene and then yelled over to Fire:
“How many of you are there?”
Fire replied: “Hello again Astro! Roughly three thousand. I’m afraid we’ll need every one of them, I’ve seen the troop reserves of the Tower.”
Fire saw Kay’s brow furrow as he began muttering to himself. After a few seconds he craned his head over to yell into Astro’s ear. The wizard reluctantly listened.
“That brings us up to around fifteen thousand committed to fight,” called Astro again. “How quickly do you think you can get them over?”
Fire had to admit, he had waited for that exact question. While talking he slowly began mobilizing his vast stores of life force.
He said: “Remember how I came back to the Shelter on flaming wings? The Entity gave Claw massive amounts of energy to make sure he didn’t die, that’s how he survived being cut down by Rose. That energy is now with me. It’s temporary, gone once used, but I don’t plan to waste it.”
Astro began to grin uncharacteristically widely. Kay even managed to recapture a bit of his usual energy.
“Waste not, friend!” shouted Kay with a toss of his head.
Astro only glared at him briefly.
Fire mentally instructed several Mencur-Besh mages to assemble, he channeled his life force into them. They began casting their spell, focusing it on the entrance of the dormant dimensional tunnel. The tunnel rapidly expanded to form an opaque portal, easily fifty meters in diameter. Then the portal began to burrow through the worlds, along the ender eyes Fire had placed in the tunnels seemingly an eternity ago. Then the portal cleared up, showing the high plains in front of the Shelter’s entrance.
With a satisfied grin, Fire gestured towards the portal. “This will remain open for a few hours, which should give us enough time to move everything of importance through.”
Astro asked: “How much energy did that use? Do you have much left?”
Fire replied: “If this portal used up all my energy it would be very convenient for our enemies. But I think it’s time for us to benefit from convenient circumstances after what we went through. I’m not even close to done with this.”
He signaled everyone to get going. The Mencur-Besh moved as one, carrying supplies along with them. Fire had rarely felt so good in the moment, they were at a turning point, and they all knew it. Now they needed to make sure to keep pushing to make sure they made the best of their situation.
As the first Mencur-Besh stepped foot on the mossy ground, something came flying through the higher part of the portal. A pile of rock and green fur landed on the ground and immediately began to run between the Mencur-Besh, offering thanks and handshakes and hugs in a euphoric frenzy. Finally, he dropped and skidded through the sand on his knees as though he’d just scored the goal of the century.
“YEEEEESSSS!” cheered Tyron.
“Thanks, friend,” chirped Kir more calmly in Fire’s mind.
The smile on Fire’s face widened. It really was good to be back.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 6 Consolidation (Cont.)
Chapter 72: Return to the Fields (Astro)
We sit on a pillbox overlooking the Shelter’s entrance, watching the columns of Mencur-Besh marching by. Myself, dangling my legs off the edge and kicking back and forth. Tyron sits to my right and slightly further up, bowlegged, and relaxed. Kir is propped against his knee, as though lounging in the sun itself. Steve and Jennifer are also there, arms around each other and watching the procession. A light breeze drifts by, and the sun tenderly roasts us from above. It’s a nice little island of relaxation in the midst of all this.
Unfortunately, I’m not able to completely forget my cares. There are guards around us - a mixture of Shelter troops and Mencur-Besh (mostly green-eyed, but one blue-eyed one, I believe that means they’re earth, and water attuned respectively). The Mencur-Besh are still and stoic, and when they speak to one another, it is in the headache-inducing demonic tongue, which no matter how hard I listen to I cannot pick a word out of. But they have taken up all the right positions and assure us they have the situation under control. In comparison, our lot don’t seem to know what to do with themselves, and two have started carving a game of tic-tac-toe into the side of one of the few remaining trees on the ridge. Their presence is a reminder of the war to come - a war we still don’t have enough fighters to win.
And, of course, Kay stands some way off, flanked by two guards, contemplating his shackles.
I track the far-off shapes of Fire and Shadow through the crowd, but without magic I wouldn’t have been able to manage it. Their normally distinctive colour scheme of jet black and stark white is no longer nearly as distinctive. They stop to talk to someone I reckon must be Lucy. Whether I’m right or not, they dart back inside. Fire then gets up to the podium and starts surveying the mass of black scales.
“Lady Justice… Y’know, because he has scales,” remembers Kir in our minds.
I sigh and try to push away the suspicion that we’re disrespecting Destiny’s memory by having a moment of respite.
“Well, I guess the scales really are tipped in our favour this time,” chuckles Steve.
He says it to no one in particular, but he squeezes Jennifer a little closer. She snorts and shakes her head.
Tyron smiles and hangs his head.
“I still think puns are stupid.”
I catch Kay looking over his shoulder before quickly returning his attention to the horizon. I wonder if Kir said to him as well.
I redirect my attention to Fire and the Mencur-Besh ranks, and something immediately seems off. Before, there was a certain chaotic oscillation that can be expected from a crowd of living beings, now that movement is gone. The Mencur-Besh stand perfectly still, as if anticipating something, even the guards close to us seem to stop.
I try to catch Tyron’s eye, but he appears to have drifted off. I roll my eyes and exchange a glance with Jennifer. She’s noticed it too. We hop down from the pillbox and approach the blue-eyed Mencur-Besh. I try to remember the name Fire called her by.
“Stream?” I test. I look at Jennifer and she seems to agree I’ve gotten it right. “Stream, is everything alright?”
Her body stands statuesque, but her eyes remain lively. They stare intently at something right before her that I cannot see. A multitude of emotions flicker across them - emotions that had previously been absent. Bliss, joy, anger, despair, confusion all take their fleeting turns. Then, suddenly her face returns, not quite to neutrality but to a certain clarity. The Mencur-Besh begin moving again, slowly.
I crane my head to get into her field of vision. Finally, her eyes begin to follow me.
“Stream, good to have you back,” says Jennifer. “Are you feeling okay?”
Stream replies: “I… we… the collective just linked up in its entirety. Normally we can only directly link a dozen Mencur-Besh together, never more than that.”
“Oh, is… is that good or bad?” I ask, feeling my jaw clench.
“It shouldn’t be anything for you to worry about, in fact it might even be useful once we decide what to do with this new potential. This world, Nexus, certainly holds uncharted possibilities.”
“I mean, is it a good thing for your abilities,” I press. “Will it make you fight better, or could it be a problem?”
Kay is now looking at us directly. Jennifer glares at him and he averts his gaze.
Stream explains: “During battles we share strategic information over our network, but there is always a delay and a limit on how much can be shared. Now with this, we might be able to act as one mind with many bodies. Our existence as one has also briefly afforded us the luxury of emotions. According to what Fire shared with us, Freak is worthy of our hatred.”
I nod in satisfaction and look to Jennifer. She seems happy with this too. Kay seems to be walking up with more questions, and from the way he’s looking at me I can tell they’re not for Stream.
“Thanks for filling us in Stream, that’s good news. Was just a little confused there.”
I bow out and walk back toward the pillbox. Tyron is still asleep. Steve, however, is now crouched in the centre of the roof. He is talking to Fire, who now looks very pleased with himself and is discoursing openly about the possibilities the linkup opens up. Shadow stands a ways off, smiling with similar confidence.
I walk up to them. I hear Kay’s footfalls behind me. Fire speaks with uncharacteristic enthusiasm:
“...it’s possible that if they link up for longer, the collective might form a full personality of its own, it’s what the experiment that created the Mencur-Besh was originally trying to achieve, an artificial mind.”
Whatever-academic-left-in-me’s ears ***** up several miles. That sounds fascinating, and a bunch of sincere questions begin flooding into my mind. What if this project succeeded? Would Fire let me look at the notes? Could this success be replicated in my own world?
After all, before the Golden Revolution the Testificates had successfully created artificial life in the form of their golems, only they’d lost the knowledge of how when the Divines cursed them, and the remaining golems had been hunted down and destroyed. Beings with full autonomy and even some sense of individual identity, completely stomped out. And this wasn’t idle mythologisation either - Ray and Fedwin managed to get one of them back online to fight for Overlord and until Aaron finally killed it. I’ve always wished they’d found a way to take Antioch alive, finding a way to communicate with them would have been fascinating. Did it remember the world before the Golden Revolution? What did it think of the world as it was? Did it consider itself alive? All wonderful, scintillating questions that very successfully keep me from thinking about-
“Fire, I hate to say this while you’re in a good mood, but I’m ready.”
Kay stands beside me, back straight and eyes closed. With his chin raised, and his aspect as despondent as it is, he looks as though he’s presenting himself for a shave with a murderously clumsy barber.
“Ready for what?” I ask. I look at Fire and repeat: “Ready for what?”
Fire says: “While we talked in the manor, Kay thought that we should give asking your people for support a shot. The Tower’s mercenary armies outnumber ours by a great margin, even with the Mencur-Besh. We need any reinforcements we can get.”
I feel my stomach twist. Of all the decisions The King in Ash made, the decision not to show up to the True Court and demand their fealty was quite possibly the only good one. Granted, that was almost certainly because of Kay’s vanity convincing him he didn’t want or need their help. But this would be ugly. For both of us. For the first time since he tried to murder that child, I almost feel sorry for Kay. Mostly I feel bad for myself, and all our friends he hurt who are now going to see him again. I nod silently. We head back to the Shelter.
What follows is a blur. We are in the armoury. Rose gives a demon specifications for a new knife she wants. She barely acknowledges us, but Kay shoots a furtive glare in her direction. Voidblade momentarily warps in to carry a message. The nearest portal will come out in the Fields of Acrisius. It will still be Winter. After what Zerg did I wonder if it will ever stop being Winter out there. I put on furs and robes. I try to modulate my concerns. The Silhouette likely holds the portal - it’s near where I was kidnapped.
“Is he a threat?” Fire asks.
I try to think about what he has. He wouldn’t accept a Tower garrison, I know that much, so it will be in-house. The usual coterie of thugs. Glibby is here, but who else is on his payroll that he’d trust with this? I killed Hamish. The Family are mostly dead or captured. Muffin was on the loose. I try to recall if they ever caught Huskers. Would Mathias have gone into his service after escaping? Truly, I don’t know the extent of his network.
Kay sits on a nearby bench, head bowed. The light hits him so that his right eye is all darkness. I remember the eye Tauto took from him. The wound I could have stopped if I’d been there to protect him. The wound Kay brought upon himself by waging a guerilla campaign and not going into hiding. The wound that tormented him. The wound he wore like a badge of honour.
“Maybe,” I say.
Fire nods and picks out his diamond halberd.
Stocking up. Potions. Lucy asking if I’m alright. Me jabbering out about how great I am. Health, strength, speed, so many. I check my rings again and again. They are full. I am strong. I will fight and kill and kill and kill. I check again.
The portal looms. Shadow nods at me. Steve and Jennifer wish us luck. Tyron operates the console. I catch a glimpse of Warnado for the first time since the prison, we lock eyes and there is solidarity at last. We have both survived him. He is muttering prayers. He has his red scarf-hood raised, his mouth covered. I follow suit with my navy-blue robe and furs. Fire stands between us, clad for war. It’s just the three of us. I pray this is wise.
Tyron presses buttons and the portal flashes to life. I feel a wind whipping my face. Maybe from the portal, maybe from what waits on the other side. I remember the snow-covered corpses, seemingly innumerable. Many faces I recognised, still more I’d never seen. I remember their weight upon my back as I carried them to the cart.
I draw my sword. Kay follows suit. Fire raises his halberd. We rush through.
We emerge in the entrance to some sort of old mine. Carts are scattered around the place. Old, frozen tracks lead down tunnels. And wind and light howl in through a half-broken gate. It must be daytime outside, but it is still too dark to make out much. I want to summon a light, but then I hear Fire and Kay pull the corks from night vision potions and I reach for my own. An arrow shatters the glass.
I see light begin to glow from between Fire’s scales and I summon an orb of light. There are corpses all around. Blue cloaks and quartz masks lie scattered across the floor. Blood mingles with black ice. In this state of desolation, I struggle to believe that anyone could be living, and yet they come, armed, hooded, and roaring. Kay roars back, Fire assumes a fighting stance.
I throw a fireball at the ground, and they leap back long enough for me to get a good look at them. An archer with a blue breastplate, the flash of a red beard just about visible. One of them, apparently the leader, steps forward and draws a gigantic greatsword, inlaid with faded gold and cracked lapis gems.
“WAIT!” I yell as Fire prepares to intercept them.
The Mencur-Besh does so, with some hesitancy. The archer cocks his head as I walk forward. Our assailants hold the line, but they don’t attack.
“What is your business with us?” I ask in a low voice.
The leader speaks up.
“If you are loyal to the Silhouette, we’re here to take our friend back.”
His voice is as familiar as it is deadpan.
I can’t help but grin. I remove the covering from my mouth and pull my hood back.
“What if he refused to be taken?”
The leader pulls his hood back. My suspicions are confirmed. Aaron’s dark hair pokes out from beneath his skullcap, and despite all they’ve seen his eyes are bright with relief. I barely have a second to start laughing before he rushes up and lifts me into a bearhug.
“Aaron,” I strain through laughter and compressed lungs. “By Notch, it’s been a long time!”
“You always say exactly that,” he grunts. “Get another greeting for Mods’ sake!”
He puts me down and I see the other assailants begin to pull down their hoods. The members of my Guild, who joined me in my plot to trick Falcon, to get Tassadar back from the dead, and who shared in my punishment. Secret, grinning, lowers his hood and reveals himself to be the archer who shot the potion from my hand. Mo straightens his bandana, attempting to look collected. And, of course, Tassadar leans against a post, offering a two-fingered salute. I smile guiltily at her.
I decide to distract myself with a more immediate concern.
“Have you guys just been waiting here for me for the last, what has it been?”
“Three months?” Secret explains, clapping me on the shoulder. “No, we were looking for you for three weeks. That’s when Arcation gave up helping - Gogyst said their pact was with you, not the rest of us, and gave up. Jeb summoned him and he went back to the Old Craft. Let us stay on in the Manor, though, so that was nice enough.”
“Then,” Aaron cuts in. “We sent word to Brit, and he sent back a tip-off about the Silhouette using this mine for smuggling goods out of the Old Craft - but he couldn’t figure out where to. Even accounting for Nether travel, The Fields of Acrisius are well out of the way of anywhere you’d want to smuggle goods to.”
“So, naturally,” Tassadar calls over. “We had to pay them a little visit.”
“And we killed them all,” Secret concludes, stepping on a quartz mask and cracking it in two. “A few of them escaped through the portal. We couldn’t get it working again - not the way they did, at least. That was a week ago.”
“Anyway, what’s new with you?” asks Aaron with a certain smugness.
Secret rolls his eyes.
“Aaron’s come up with one of his scenarios,” he mutters. “It’s stupid, you don’t have to answer.”
“I’m telling you, Secret, I’ve been wrong in the past, but I’m really confident of this one.”
I cast an apologetic look back to Fire, gesturing to him to come down. This is going to go one of two ways.
“Perhaps my new friend should explain this to you,” I beam. “Fire, meet Aaron, Secret, and the Guild. Secret, Aaron, and the Guild, meet Fire.”
Fire begins: “I had to say this a lot recently, so here is the gist. A cosmic force turned person and warlord called the Entity started merging worlds and built itself a base of operations called the Tower. It allied with the one you call the Silhouette and captured Astro. I met him after he broke out of the Tower’s prison. Through a prophecy that I was apparently the champion of, I came into a position that allowed me to build the Shelter, the name is self-explanatory, and lead an opposing force to the Entity. Through various twists and turns, the Entity ended up betrayed by one of its subordinates when he found out that it intended to absorb all of reality into its being. Now said subordinate, a phantom of fear named Freak, has usurped the Entity, and is now planning to unite all worlds into his perfect realm of fear. I glossed over some details near the middle, but that is why we are here. We are seeking aid against Freak.”
“Thank you, Fire,” I say.
I appreciated him leaving out the stuff about Kay. I shoot an anxious look in his direction, and see him staring at his feet, trying not to draw attention to himself. I redirect my attention to the Guild. Its various members are all horrified at the news that not only was our world much larger than we’d thought, but that it was now in imminent danger. All except two.
“Well,” says Secret sheepishly to Aaron. “You didn’t get every detail right.”
Aaron cocks an eyebrow and looks Fire dead in the eye.
“Was there a dog with a monocle?”
Fire suppresses a chuckle. “Yes, there is one, his name is Bartholomew. A few things surrounding him are starting to make more sense now.”
“Mother****er,” breathes Secret.
Tass howls with laughter in the corner.
“Thank you, Fire,” says Aaron. He turns to Secret: “In your face!”
He turns to me.
“We’re glad to help however we can.”
I hug him.
“We’re going to need a lot more than just us,” I continue. “We’re actually here to… to try and enlist the True Court. Is Jeb still camped out in the Old Craft?”
“Yeah,” grunts Secret. “Show trials haven’t even properly kicked off yet. He insists on continuing to investigate the attack of the Citadel, even though Dominus pretty much confessed it was all him. Half the Vanilla Craft is still considered a suspect.”
“That sounds bad,” I say.
“He wants a big, grand purge,” elaborates Tassadar. “Get everyone he thinks the Court of Whispers could ever turn against him in one go.”
“I’m going to level with you Astro,” says Aaron. “You’re not going to have any luck there. You’re not exactly in Jeb or Herobrine’s good books and, Fire, you seem nice but they’re not going to trust an outsider, especially not one who looks as… Endling as you do. You just don’t have anyone the Divines would be obligated to pay attention to.”
I chew my lip, realising I am now going to have to unveil the reason Jeb was going to listen to us. For better, or for worse, he took that responsibility out of my hands.
“Well, that’s not strictly true.”
He pulls back his scarf. His face is a mixture of despair and hope.
Aaron steps back. He clasps a hand over his mouth and his eyes quiver wildly. Secret drops his bow. Tassadar doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself, looking back and forth between me and Kay. Mo draws his sword, but I shoot him a reluctant warning glance.
“Hail captain!” says Kay. “How goes the watch?”
His eyes are quivering almost as much as Aaron’s. Tears well in both. Aaron looks at me. I can’t bring myself to look back. My friend walks toward the ghost.
“Kay…” he says. He places a hand on Kay’s face and looks at the eye he will one day lose. He is quiet for a long time. Finally, he rallies: “Watch’s going well.”
Aaron hugs him, but over Kay’s shoulder I can see the haunted look on his face. His eyes are cavernous.
He pulls away and turns abruptly so Kay doesn’t see his expression. He manages to keep the energy in his voice.
“We’d best get back to the Craft,” Aaron explains, blinking away the tears. “Cossack is our best bet of an audience with Jeb.”
And so, we leave.
Chapter 73: Audience (Astro)
I warm my hands over the fire. We are in the Old Vanilla Craft, in the Kingdom of Gaia’s holdings. Specifically, we are in an interrogation room of the Palace which was once called the Court of Righteous Protest. Kay and I sit near the fire. Fire looms in the corner, head bowed slightly for a ceiling that is too low for him.
In here, there is only the hearth, a few small stools, and a large mural barely disguising a two-way mirror. I say “barely disguising”, Fire noticed it immediately and I remembered some blueprints I read an age ago for an interrogation room just like this.
None of us speak. Fire is busy calculating his pitch. Kay is busy having a silent fit of panic and shame. And I can’t stop trying to keep track of who’s still here that I might be able to leverage if Cossack proves unhelpful. Arcation, maybe. Ozzy would throw what weight he has left behind this. Legion? No, Palmer is gone and Ruary never liked me.
Aaron is off somewhere, explaining things to Cossack, I presume. Secret’s probably hit the bar with Small by now. Maybe they invited that lesser Persson from the Blue Alliance… no, he was gone too.
I sigh.
The second we arrived on Gaian soil, we were surrounded by members of the Order of Gaia, in their green berets and bronze plating. We warned Kay not to draw attention to himself - after he appointed a double agent as their leader and arguably got his successor killed, many in the Order would have gladly tried to enact a violent retribution. Actually, since seeing Aaron and Secret he had hardly said anything, and even then, only in a hoarse whisper.
Thankfully, the head of the patrol recognised Aaron and Secret as two of the most recent Commanders of Gaia’s military and immediately passed on word to their boss. As it turns out, our buddy Small is the new head of the Order.
We had told Kay to be inconspicuous and keep his hood up in front of the Order and for once he actually listened. And he kept that up once we were in the courtyard, even as Small came out and leapt up to hug Secret, then made his way around the group in a flurry of more restrained handshakes and respectful nods.
“I thought you said firearms were irrelevant in your world?” Fire had whispered, with a gesture to the wind-up rifles of several palace guards.
“Kay’s a little behind on that,” I said. “They’ve been making a comeback recently.”
And then Small had finally made it to us, recognised Kay’s hood and didn’t even bother questioning Fire. He’d been polite about it, and shook all our hands, but it clearly made him uneasy. He had taken in a deep breath, and apologised:
“I’d best talk to Cossack about this. I’m sorry Astro, but the boys will have to take you three to an interrogation room until then.”
And so, here we are, waiting for Coss. I’m not looking forward to it. Of all the people still alive out of our little group, I had been good friends with pretty much all of them. I’d known Aaron since childhood. Secret had known Aaron originally, then became one of Kay’s mercenary buddies but he’d always trusted my judgement. Small trusted Secret’s judgement. And I just got on pretty mundanely with Brit, Gracey, Bokane and Mini. I’d even gotten on pretty well with Linx before he turned out to be a sleeper agent for the Family. Cossack was a different story.
He was a navy man who then became a “banker”, and by “banker” I mean “loan shark”, and he knew Kay and Secret because they collected loans for him from time to time. Then, Kay had gotten spooked, tried to get away from that lifestyle and Cossack had ridden his coattails ever since. As far as I was concerned, he was callous, oblivious and a dead weight on the group’s moral character. Also, while my experience in Nexus had made me aware of several noteworthy defects in Kay’s character, Cossack had still been the head of Kay’s “Circle”, and I still held him accountable for enabling many of the worst crimes he committed in the last days of his life.
The door opens. Brit steps in. He holds the handle with a handkerchief, and his stern face is still dominated by a handlebar moustache. I smile.
“Alright Astro,” he says flatly but not indifferently. He looks up. “Endling, you come with us. You stay here, Kay.”
Kay pulls down his hood, looking more than a little indignant and flustered at Brit’s lack of surprise. I would actually agree with him on this one if it were any of our other friends, but it’s Brit. Nothing ever fazes him. I see Gracey momentarily peer over Brit’s shoulder and retreat into the hall with a panicked cackle which I consider more or less appropriate.
They lead us slightly further up the corridor and into another room. Lo and behold, it’s the other side of the mirror. And Cossack’s leaning against it, staring at the now unhooded Kay. He’s not wearing his normal lilac suit. Instead, he wears a green cloak over an old navy outfit, adorned with a few Gaian military awards. He is the Commander, the closest thing the Kingdom has to a leader in the absence of a King.
“Hello Astro,” he says.
“Hello Cossack.”
I approach slowly. Cossack’s eyes remain fixed on Kay as he draws his stool closer to the interrogation room’s hearth.
“I didn’t believe Aaron when he told me,” he says. “How could I be expected to? It’s ludicrous. An utterly ludicrous proposition. And yet here you both are.”
He turns to fully face us, and I realise he is even more heavy-set than I remember.
“Stresses of leadership, I suppose,” I think in an effort to be charitable.
He points at Fire: “And don’t think you’ve missed my attention, you big bloody lizard. You’re just as ludicrous. My friend here disappears for three months, and he shows up with a ghost and a scaly ******* oozing prophecies,” he laughs. “Well, what do you want from me? What does the great absurdity wish from humble Cossack?”
I grit my teeth and prepare for one of our usual arguments, but thankfully Fire proves a bit more level-headed and explains what we want:
“Our enemy has upwards of a hundred-thousand soldiers at their disposal, we currently have less than a quarter of that, even if some of them are of vastly higher quality. If we want any hope of not becoming part of a megalomaniac phantom’s personal playground, we need more soldiers.”
Cossack chewed his lip and nodded.
“Well, let’s see, after the war and Jeb’s demilitarisation orders I can offer you maybe twelve thousand on a good day. They are charitably of mixed quality; motivation is low after losing two Kings, our army, and our actual home; and Jeb would probably come in here and execute me himself if he discovered I planned on fielding them anywhere. How exactly would any of this help your cause?”
He’s trying to act obstinate, but I know him well enough to recognise his negotiating style. I hate it, but he’s at least spelling out what he needs to get the ball rolling. Against all pretences, he hasn’t said no.
“That’s kind of the thing,” I say. “Gaia alone would indeed just bring down the True Court’s wrath. Even more so if we recruited any other Vanillans. They’d perceive that as a renewed conspiracy. So, we were hoping to maybe…” I stretch out my spine. “Run this past Jeb. I need you to get us a meeting with Jeb.”
He looks to Fire.
“Apologies for calling you a big, ludicrous lizard,” he begins. “Obviously, my friend has lost his mind and you’re the only one I can expect any sense from. He has forgotten that Jeb sentenced him to clear the Fields of Acrisius of corpses, and that, as I presume the Fields are not yet spotless, he has committed treason by his mere presence. I am in considerable danger just talking to him. Telling Jeb would lead to his summary execution, and probably mine, too.”
“I am unfamiliar with that part of your world’s history, what prevents you from calling the meeting?”
“Since Dominus and Falcon’s little gambits got exposed, Jeb has been treating everyone as a prospective traitor. Every Craft or Great House involved in the conflict between the Vanilla and Superlative Crafts is now being treated as a vassal. Before that, we were all effectively treated as allies or constituent parts of the True Court with a right to be heard before the Gathering Council. Now, we’re here to be snubbed until proven supplicant.”
“That’s the thing,” I jump in. “We have someone from before. Kay is here from-”
“Yes, I know,” Cossack waves his hand. “From just after the Onslaught. Peak of his prestige, all that.”
“Yes, and with a justification like that, you wouldn’t even have to send a letter, you could just show up and demand an audience.”
He nods reluctantly.
“I could, but I won’t.”
“Cossack-”
“You know that they will skin him alive the second he shows his face. Kay was still facing trial for treason before the Silhouette got him and… he could have gotten away with so much of it, even massacring the Brotherhood, if only he hadn’t… all that about Sansoleil.”
I nod slowly. My anger against Kay surges. Gaia’s Blessed had been just about tolerated by the True Court, even with their prophecy about the lost Divine, Sansoleil, coming to free his kin from their physical forms at the end of days. Then, Kay had tried to manufacture a Sansoleil-centric heresy in order to justify massacring the Brotherhood. Claim to be Sansoleil, get them to bend the knee, slaughter away. Surprisingly, this only succeeded in incriminating him massively and led to a lot of people dying needlessly. And the Blessed… the less said about what Jeb did to them, the better.
I try to hide my lack of concern for Kay’s wellbeing.
“The extra eye should be proof enough that he hasn’t done that yet,” I rationalise. “And at the very least, Kay Mandy being back from the dead is a decent pretext for an audience before the Gathered.”
Cossack shakes his head with more resolve.
“Coss,” I press. “He’s on board with this. He knows the risks and he will go through with this.”
“Astro, what you’re telling me is happening, it’s terrifying. It’s wretched. It must be stopped… I want to help. I’ll even risk my neck committing Gaian troops but I - I helped him tie his own noose once before. I can’t do it again.”
I place a hand on his shoulder. He digs his nails into his forehead and stares despairingly at Kay. I grab his chin and force him to look me in the eye.
“Cossack, it wasn’t your fault. Believe me, from what I’ve seen, this was all a long time coming. He is responsible for his fate. You are responsible for yours.”
I lift my hands from him and back up. He stares at me with so much anger.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” I conclude.
Cossack shambles out of the room. He says to Brit to guard the door, and the detective leans against it and draws his signature pistol. He doesn’t point it at us, but he starts polishing it with his handkerchief so hard I am surprised it doesn’t shatter under the force of his efforts. Nearby, Gracey shrugs and starts fooling around with his knife, a characteristically nasty glint in his eyes. I remember the things Kay asked them to do, which they did with little question, and I feel a little ill. Poor Walt…
I go over to the window, and watch Cossack come in. He and Kay don’t say anything for a while, though the latter puts on this sad little smile. Cossack’s features remain trapped in the same indignant glower, like an unwilling statue. Then, he asks:
“Will you do it?”
Kay’s smile vanishes. He has a philosophical look on his face, as though scrutinising the taste of a sharp-tasting but prestigious wine. Cossack grunts encouragingly. Kay finally answers:
“Yes.”
Cossack turns his eyes to the window, and I could swear he’s staring right at me.
“Then, we’re going to see Jeb.”
He leaves. I finally wonder if Cossack and I understand each other a little better. Then, I see the look of fear and rage in Kay’s eyes, and I realise we don’t. Unlike Cossack, I can only muster contempt for him. I make efforts to remind myself why I once wasted so much emotion on him. They ring hollower every time.
###
We enter the throne room. It used to be Void’s. Technically it’s Ryan’s. But now the Administrator of the Vanilla Craft does not sit in pride of place. Instead, the fiery locks of Jeb glint in that sunlight which dares break the clouds and force its way through a stained-glass window. In his right hand he clasps the glossy, sea green heart of the first Dragon, in his right he twists his adamantine spear. Even from the end of the hall, I can see his amusement.
To his right stands the Blind Watcher: Herobrine. He towers over other men, only Fire exceeding him, but even then, the Watcher intimidates me more than even Claw ever could. His armour is obsidian. A bedrock-plated sword adorns his back. His frame is mountainous. And those white, luminous eyes see more in a moment than I could ever hope to learn.
Cossack is at the head of us, head bowed respectfully. I follow suit, as does Fire. We trail after him. Then, Aaron, Secret and Tassadar. At the back of our train, Kay is escorted by two Gaian soldiers, one of whom Cossack called Thomas. There is a sack over his head to hide his identity, though an astute observer might still see a flash of his scarf around the shoulders, where his cloak connects to his armour.
I catch glimpses of many familiar faces, some friends, many foes. I see the sympathetic eyes of Ozzy the Selvan; of Ruary the Legionnaire; of Wolves and Trillian Glare of shining Vangaard; of Bost from ruined Concordis; at a distance I see the familiar hood of Gogyst, chief priest of Arcation, dip into a respectful nod. Their gazes betray friendly recognition, but also deep fear.
Other recognitions are less than friendly. Ellen Domini, the Raven, glares at me for my part in her husband’s downfall. Ray Tunes averts his eyes and looks ashamed at the sight of Tassadar. Carsey, who tormented us all the way back in Zine, looks gobsmacked to see me again.
And, of course, they are there: what remains of the Brotherhood. Komplex looks ready to summon his armour at any moment. Ubi adjusts his turtle mask and reaches for a chakram that isn’t there. And Tauto Chrone, the leader of their Chapter, brushes a strand of black hair from his eyes and scrutinises my face. I see the flaming whip his brother once wielded at his hip, and I feel a puzzling sense of guilt. Jay Chrone, the Jolly Saint, had been a wretched man, but he didn’t deserve to die in Kay’s little plot.
I feel like a hypocrite. Kay had taken to fighting the Brotherhood on my part. Now, I’m more concerned about the hurt he caused them than I am about the imminent threat to Kay’s life. I am a poison.
We reach the front and kneel. Jeb stares smugly down at us. Cossack attempts to engage in the normal formal greeting and the ruler of the Divines cuts him off.
“What brings you here, Astro? I doubt you have fully atoned for your failure. I assure you, redemption is not wholly impossible.”
A round of chuckles sounds out from among the lesser Divines sown throughout the crowd. Grumm, Bone… I think about the number of soldiers each of them commands and feel a mixture of terror and tentative hope. Jeb casts his eyes around the vassalised lords of the Vanilla Craft and some more scattered laughter breaks out, some half-hearted, the rest overcompensating. I see Ryan, the Administrator, exhale politely and return his focus to a list in his hand.
“I apologise, my lord,” I say, still kneeling. “But I was abducted, and in the process became aware of a much bigger threat.”
“Is it that beast next to you?” Jeb scoffs again. Then, after waiting for his subjugated audience to laugh again, he continues, “What is he? Endling? Half-breed? Either way he has no place in my presence,” he rises, “I am Jeb Persson, King of the Divines, Protector of Man, son of Notch the Ascended and I shall not abide the spawn of Ishinge.”
I grimace and shoot an apologetic glance at Fire. Outside of a slight lowering of eyelids and a short sigh, Fire remains stoic.
“He is neither, actually, he is a friend of mine and an ally of the Court. This is Fire, founder of the Shelter and Leader of the Mencur-Besh. He seeks your aid in battle.”
I rise to one knee.
“Will you hear his plea?”
Jeb smirks and attempts to exchange the emotion with Herobrine, but the Blind watcher, with a subtle twitch of his neck, indicates that Jeb should do it, for prudency’s sake. Notch’s son rolls his eyes and acquiesces.
“He may speak. What I hear is up to him.”
Fire begins formally: “Beyond your world are many more, one of which, called Nexus, was up until recently ruled by a warlord without equal, the Entity. This warlord captured not just cities or countries, but entire worlds, with the eventual goal of using a machine to bring all of existence into one. This warlord is also a cosmic embodiment of order, and as such does not tolerate the chaos brought on by consciousness, once the unification of worlds is done it would absorb all that exists to achieve its perfect state of order.”
Fire pauses briefly to let the information settle. “The Shelter is a group of rebels, intent on overthrowing this warlord. In a recent turn of events, the Entity was betrayed by one of its underlings, a phantom of fear called Freak, who is now impersonating it. While the danger of existential absorption is gone, we now face the possibility of existence under the rule of fear itself. We require additional military support to assault the enemy base of operations and prevent their plan from coming to fruition. At best we have a week to prepare for the assault if we want to preserve our worlds as they are.”
Jeb chews on a tuft of his beard. I see his eyes spark up as he connects the dots of power.
“If you had come to me sooner, we could perhaps have come to an arrangement. But, with only a week to go, you’re a tad bit close to the wire. Most of my armies are at least a week away. And that is without mention of the Court of Whispers out to the East. They have been mobile.”
This is his trick, start out sympathetic, and then…
“And this is all assuming you’re being truthful isn’t it. I would need time to evaluate the threat your Freak poses to us. Whether his goals are what you claim them to be, whether this machine exists, and whether the Shelter is any better. And that’s assuming I believe your premise of other worlds beyond the Sane Realm, the Nether and End existing. As it is, I only have your word you’re from anywhere but the Shore of Oddities. This could be a trick from the Court of Whispers to redirect our efforts. In the absence of proof, what do you expect me to say?”
There is a rumbling from among the assembled leaders. It’s not a bad dismissal. A soundly justified explanation for a colossally stupid decision. Even those I consider friends are caught in consternation at the thought of the Endlings and their peers marching into the Old Continent once again. I hear Kay’s boots scraping on the tiles as he almost rises and then is stopped by Thomas Bone. I want to vomit. I stand up.
“We do have some proof, my lord.”
I walk over to Kay.
“Ah, there is a point in the prisoner after all,” says Herobrine with a cocked eyebrow. “And here I was starting to think you’d brought him along for good luck.”
“Praise be for that,” Jeb chuckles. “It certainly wasn’t working.”
Some slightly more sincere laughter rings out. I feel a little comforted, but as I put my hand on the cloth it sinks in that this really is a do-or-die moment. Either we cow Jeb with shock, or we shock him into violence. I hear Kay underneath the sack.
“...How are we Jeb it’s been some time - ****! No, that’s wrong. What else…”
He is practising his entrance. Of course he is. All sympathetic emotion flows out of me. I shake my head.
“Note that we tried to avoid this,” I grumble loudly. “But it’s the best we could do. Allow me to introduce you to the Shelter’s former Commander.”
I rip the sack from his head. There is a collective gasp. Ryan drops his scroll. Chrone instinctively reaches for his right eye. Gogyst forces his way through the crowd to get a better look. Herobrine looks mesmerised.
“Hail my lord,” says Kay to Jeb, “My master,” he says to Herobrine. He kneels.
All eyes fall on Jeb. He is speechless. He presses a knuckle into his beard so hard it should be leaving an indent.
“What trickery is this?” hisses the King of the Divines.
He tries to take a step forward, but Herobrine puts a hand out to stop him.
Kay isn’t paying attention, he squints around, looking at the faces which gape at him. When he has done a full circuit, he returns his attention to the throne. Notionally, he does it to address Jeb. His eyes are fixed on Herobrine. The Watcher’s blank eyes are unreadable. Jeb’s are sparking, incoherent - the eyes of a wounded animal.
“My custom,” he begins. “Would be to make a grand speech where I retell my service with much poeticism. Let’s say something along the lines of: ‘I am Kay Mandy, Commandant of the Tenth, Lap Dog of Herobrine. Did I not bleed for this Court, for the reunification of the House of Persson, for the defeat of the Endlings and the ascension of Notch? And in return for this blood, did I ever demand any recompense? Wealth? Land? Office? No, I took with me only what I won through service: good reputation and trust. Will you not then hear this loyal soldier as he finally demands payment?’ Yes, that sounds about right. It would be my custom to say almost exactly that. But my custom is not worth much these days, is it?”
He begins to rub his shoulder and to look around.
“I can see it. In your faces. My fears are confirmed. Once I was a hero. I was your hero,” he gestures to Herobrine. “You spoke to me, called me from nothing and you made me better. I wasn’t some mercenary, some common crook, I was a General fighting in a holy war for truth, justice, for independence for the Thaumlands - do you remember them?!”
He whirls around and marches towards me. I back away. He is quaking with fury. His accent fluttering between precision and brogue like a war-tattered banner. Aaron shoots me a look which asks, ‘should we stop this?’ I shake my head. Somehow, I feel ecstatic. Somehow, I’m smiling. A look at Jeb’s venomous countenance fails to dim it: I’ve gone mad.
“Do you remember how we revered you, Herobrine? Worshipped you? Made offerings at your feet? Do you remember how you promised us safety, security, peace? You stood by as he burned the home you promised us!”
His finger points at Jeb like a spear. He pants. I see a tear land on the floor. He staggers and then sits down.
“I was going to join them. Guard them. Lead them, maybe. And suddenly, they were gone. And you stopped answering my prayers. I was alone and I had no purpose, all I had was the training you gave me. So, I made a vow, to you, to the world, to myself, that I would be the hero you asked me to be. I would return to my friends, protect them, be a paragon and beacon of light to them and all those who gazed upon me!”
He wipes the tears from his eyes. He rises and approaches the throne. A line of guards with glowing, blue-tipped spears emerges from the crowd. He halts before coming in range, just about. He breathes deeply, closes his eyes, and lowers his tone.
“But I failed in that. I am prideful, I am violent, I am vindictive and that is not on you, that is me. I am the reason I failed. And by the way everyone here is looking at me, it looks like I keep on failing, and I am sorry. I wish I could say something that doesn’t sound false, but here and now I am begging your forgiveness for what I come to do! I…” He trails off, Herobrine has looked away. “Fire’s made the big appeal to self-preservation and reason but I beg you, as a man who has seen the legacy he leaves, join me. Give me one last chance to be a hero to you.”
He cranes his neck and tries to catch Herobrine’s eye again, but Notch’s brother turns around to face the wall. Kay talks to his back, hand outstretched as though cupping water from a dwindling spring.
“Give me one last chance to be as we were. Then, I’ll disappear into my disgrace, and I’ll not trouble you again.”
He kneels.
“Please.”
I look around. No one is speaking and I wish they would just hurry up and say anything. Jeb glowers away, glaring at Kay without actually looking at him - his mind is a million miles away, summoning thunderclouds and conjuring winds that would eviscerate this creature who has slighted him.
“Good,” I think, “Jeb’s deserved a slighting for a long, long time.”
Finally, he scoffs.
“Get out of my sight. I will give the Shelter no aid. Perhaps some of the vassals will help you. I’ll ensure their holdings are protected in their absence.”
He smiles his cold little smile, and the warning is clear. If you leave, Jeb will take everything from you. I want to cry. I look to Fire in apology, but his eyes are fixed on the throne.
“And to ensure you understand how serious we are about the safeguarding of your holdings, I shall come with you as hostage.”
My eyes snap towards the throne. Herobrine has turned around. He has a mad grin on his face and his eyes are wide as rivers. There are murmurs of approval.
“Should any move be made against your lands, I should be held personally liable to you and shall provide recompense from my own fortune.”
Herobrine throws his sword to the ground and shoots an encouraging look around the hall.
Gogyst marches forward first and throws his staff of tricks atop the bedrock blade.
“Arcation stands with you, Watcher! We are few in number, but we are mighty!” He kneels.
“Fear not for numbers!” Herobrine responds, “Those troops I have here shall accompany us to ensure the effort’s success. Leader of the Mencur-Besh, what say you to five thousand Blackshells, and ten thousand Pigmen?”
I look at Fire, beaming.
With barely suppressed satisfaction Fire replies: “Gladly accepted. The Shelter already houses people of many different worlds so there are no issues from our side.”
“Then come, be housed and be many! We go to war!” Herobrine calls.
He doesn’t even seem to care that only around a third of the hall cheers in earnest. Fewer still come forward. The usual suspects do. Ozzy the Selvan jogs up and throws his emerald short sword into the pile. Wolves Glare approaches and offers his wooden blade. Ruary of the Legion throws in his shield. Cossack, bearing no weapon, offers his hat.
And then no one moves. I am more than happy to accept this. Herobrine is powerful, we have the Gaians, and even after all this strife Legion still has considerable numbers, we can work with this. But then, something truly unexpected happens.
A knife, and a glove which sparks with lightning are thrown into the pile. Tauto Chrone, looking right at Kay, says:
“The Brotherhood stands with you.”
Kay looks confused but elated. I am mystified. Chrone puts on the black, iron mask Kay won from him at the Battle of the Nether Highway, and which he won back at the Sansoleil Massacre, and he kneels beside Gogyst.
And with that there is a new influx. Bost and the Concordites; the librarian pirates of Woobly; Ray Tunes and Viral, bringing with them what remains of Williamsburg and the Ghosts of Calais respectively; the administrator Ryan and his warlike moderators; a band of Thaumic warriors under Zeratul; even old Halberdson. Their numbers are no longer great, but one last time the Vanilla Craft has put aside its differences and become whole. I feel warmth swell up within me.
Herobrine leads us outside and far into the nearby plains, in deep discussion with Fire the whole way. He summons his pigmen and they begin to build a portal to his specifications. Obsidian piles on top of obsidian, until there is a great portal before us.
I marvel at the army that is beginning to amass, as Pigmen join Gaians, join Legionnaires, join Vangaardians and so on, forming their ranks and bringing hastily gathered materials. I know their numbers cannot exceed the tens of thousands, but it feels like all the world is here.
Then, I hear Fire calling to me. I go over. He stands with Herobrine and Aaron. Aaron has a dumb grin on his face.
“What is it?” I ask. “How can I help?”
“We need to get word back to Nexus so they can dial in this bigger portal. The whole reason this was built is because I can’t repeat what I did back in my world, no ender eyes to guide the magic.”
“Oh, I could absolutely head back and convey the news?”
“Well,” Aaron says, “You know the earpieces? Well, while we were looking for you, Brit started work on an improved version with longer range - long enough to talk to Mo back at the portal. Thankfully, he finished it and Fire reckons he can upgrade it to help interface the entire army. We were wondering if you wanted to do the honours of telling Mo the coordinates the Shelter needs to input?”
I begin beaming anew.
“Naturally.”
Fire pulls out the dimensional scanner, Aaron hands me his earpiece and attaches the microphone to my sleeve.
“Hello Mo, can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, boss,” he oozes smugly.
“Note down these coordinates for me, will you?”
Fire holds up the screen and I squint down at the figures, the glow of the screen stinging my eyes. I recite them with some hesitancy, laughing nervously and joyously all at once.
“You got all that?”
“Absolutely.”
“Now, I need you to go through that portal and tell them to open this baby up. We might need some space cleared. Ask for Steve and Jennifer. Tell them we have a lot of new arrivals.”
“Got it, talk soon,” he says with a little chuckle, “Take it Kay came through?”
I look over in his direction. I see him chatting hesitantly with Cossack, often stopping, and staring off into space. And I keep thinking back to the ridge we sat on looking at the Mencur-Besh coming through only this morning - and how much I reviled him then. And somehow, during that speech he had recaptured everything that had made me cherish him for so long. His passion, fierce and affectionate, his anger at the injustices of the world, and his contrapuntal, idealist belief that they didn’t have to exist. For a brief moment, I had seen my friend again.
And somehow, I resented him all the more for coming back, knowing full well he wouldn’t stay.
“He did fine,” I say flatly, tightening my fist.
We wait for some time. Herobrine moves on to issue orders and establish contact with the factions who have joined us - we believe that, on top of Herobrine’s army, we’ll be able to leverage twenty-five thousand men from our various allies by the time everyone is mobilised. discussing favours that could call in for supplies.
Halberdson seems to be very eager to get Herobrine to purchase anything and everything under the sun from his wide array of trade contacts. Armour, guns, food, materials for airships. He has someone for everything, and he rattles off ideas and opportunities so rapidly he has the aspect of a man fleeing a fire in his own house. Occasionally, he’ll call Fire over to inquire about what the Shelter can support or could best use. Fire is less receptive than Herobrine, but I’m still pretty sure Halberdson will have managed to sell him a metric fortune’s worth of something or other by the end of it.
Tassadar catches up with Zeratul. Ray helps the elderly Viral equip his armour. The Brotherhood stand in a circle, repeating their mantras. Not a stone’s throw away, Arcation kneel before Gogyst as he recites their sacred rites. Last time I saw them, these two groups had to be put on opposite ends of the battlefield so they didn’t end up fighting. I remind myself why I hate the Brotherhood, but I’m glad they’re on our side. I am quietly contented.
Then, a strange wind whips through my hair. It leads toward the portal. I turn just in time for it to flash into life, for the blue, gel-like surface to fill the frame, and for the shadows of the world on the other side to begin to flit across it.
Fire and Herobrine begin issuing orders and the neat ranks of the Herobrinian army, the Legion, the Vangaardian knights and the Gaian host begin to form a column to advance neatly in. The others, smaller in number and more focused on individual than collective discipline, filter between them, filling up any space that is not obviously taken.
As they do so, several members of Shadow’s coven rush through. Iridia comes up to me and I brace myself for some sort of argument. But, in a manifestly pleasant surprise, she is friendly.
“The master told us to help with teleporting things to the portal, from what I hear we’ll be reinforced by the Mencur-Besh soon.”
“Yes,” I respond. “We’ll need supplies in particular. Most airships have been decommissioned since the War, so we’ll need help transporting materials to make new ones. Also, the usual shipments of food, armour, weapons - actually, firearms will be a big one.” I realise I’m running away with myself. “Apologies, that’s a lot to keep track of. This is just all so huge.”
I clap her on the shoulder and walk up to Fire, who stands near the portal.
“Well, how do you feel about our chances?” I ask him with a grin.
“Significantly better than before, I can say that much. Aside from that, there are some weaknesses in the Tower’s defence plans that I am fairly sure will stay open with neither the Ender nor Claw around to close them. But more about that once we have our formal strategy planning session.”
I nod. I’d hoped for a more energised response, but I suppose it’s good Fire has his eye on the ball.
“Oh, naturally. At least we have an actual army this time. And a literal god on our side,” I laugh. “I’d like to see how Freak deals with that.”
Before Fire can bring me back to earth, Herobrine gives the order for his men to advance, and the first Pigmen begin to step through. The column of troops seems to stretch for miles, armour gleaming even in the sparse light of an overcast day.
“We’ve got a chance,” I reassure myself.
I close my eyes on this image of imminent victory, and I step through the portal.
Chapter 74: Battle Plans (Amanda)
Amanda only realised how crowded Shelter had gotten when she realised she was about to be late to a major planning meeting and had to tuck and roll between the throngs of people. In addition to the normal humans and occasional villagers, towering Mencur-Besh, stern-looking Pigmen and even long, winding dragons now seemed to fill every hall.
As she ducked between the pattering legs of Steve’s pet Enderdragon, Drake, she wished she’d just waited for Helix to finish up his training. He could have just flown her over and saved time. Then again, she wasn’t actually sure he’d go. And Drake playfully snapped at her as she ran past, so she could only imagine how excited he’d get at the sight of two people flying by. Ozen was already struggling to keep him focused as it was.
Helix had been getting better. He was eating his usual six tacos a day again and he even insisted on calling that a diet in what she hoped to Light was a joke. But he still avoided contact with most people other than her or Shadow, and he never voluntarily started a conversation with anyone other than her. He’d completely given up on his demonic training and no one felt comfortable pressuring him into continuing. Instead, he had dedicated his entire time to training with Rose, or if she wasn’t available, the Mencur-Besh. All dodging and punching and chucking swords everywhere. And he’d developed this weird obsession with trying to summon lava that he couldn’t always magic away - some of the Coven mages were actually starting to complain about having to constantly clean up after him. Never to his face though.
This time he’d been about to finish up when he caught a glimpse of Herobrine walking by with a group of his Blackshell troops - whose faces were hidden completely behind heavy obsidian armour - and then immediately went back to sparring with the nearest Mencur-Besh. Having a living reminder of the long journey ahead of him even if they beat Freak really wasn’t helping Helix’s emotional state.
She passed the infirmary and saw a patrol of hunters being patched up. They had gotten restless pretty soon after arriving and so Tyron and the others had decided to let them set up their own encampment nearby and send out packs to track down any Tower scouts or patrols. Unfortunately, they found more than expected and kept coming back pretty dinged up. So far, they’d killed twelve endermen. She knew because they kept bringing the bodies back and mounting them outside their camp. She really wished they’d stop because that was really gross and kind of sinister. People were actually starting to miss the Jackals.
Then she heard a snippet of conversation from inside.
“And you’re certain there’s no chance Claw could return? That he’s not hiding amongst them?” asked a male voice.
“No, Claw died with the Entity. I assure you, Destiny did good work.”
Kay walked out from behind a divider, rubbing his knee. The husband and wife leading the hunters followed him out, looking concerned.
“So you keep saying,” said the wife. “But you must understand our concern that we were enlisted to kill Claw only to be greeted by a portal filled with creatures exactly matching his description.”
“And how can you be sure he’s not lying dormant, waiting to seize control?”
“We can’t, but we do have enough force to contain him this time. Claw was strong. Herobrine is stronger.”
Amanda realised she’d stopped. She also realised her hands had clenched preemptively into fists. She started walking away before Kay noticed her.
“Herobrine and that guy in the one room,” she thought. “Helix is not coming today.”
She walked past Lucy, who smiled genuinely at her. Amanda tried to reciprocate and felt happy enough that she succeeded.
Inside, Amanda scanned the room quickly before deciding to lean against the wall next to Rose. Together, they observed the people at the table and those continuing to enter.
Astro and Shadow sat with one seat between them, clearly intended for Tyron who was using ice magic to adjust the temperature of the furnace. Fire stood behind Tyron’s chair, head craned down to hear their conversation. Astro leaned over, Shadow remained perfectly upright, smiling serenely. She seemed to have recovered some of that air of confidence she had back when Amanda first met her.
Then, Steve and Jennifer sat together, Steve worrying about Ozen’s ability to steer Drake through the Shelter. Jennifer saw Amanda looking in their direction and rolled her eyes as she tried to calm him down without giggling.
“He’s just not used to that many people…” Amanda picked out of the general chatter. “... And he’s only what, like a year old? Basically a baby.”
“I’m sure that is much higher in dragon years,” said Jennifer as she flicked through some blueprints.
Next, Kir sat on a cushion, pulsing happily. He had been put there to relay messages to and from Tyron’s army of dragons.
Voidblade and Urist sat together. The dwarf chatted away and the enderman really seemed to be making an effort not to look that tormented. As much as Voidblade tried, adapting to non-End culture took more than a few months of living among them.
Just on from them were the first real representatives from outside the Shelter. Two humans and a Water Mencur-Besh. Amanda had seen them before, the humans Andras and Brad were old friends of Fire, and Stream the Mencur-Besh apparently was one of the oldest of her kind, aside from Fire.
After that, two empty chairs struggled to remain upright under the weight of heavy cloaks made from furs and pierced through with bones. Obviously for the hunters. Right beside these vacancies, a pigman and a pale man with purple tattoos conferred with each other, with Herobrine towering behind them. He had a hand clamped onto the back of the pigman’s chair, making it look like a doll’s chair in comparison. Lucy came up and offered to get a chair that might fit him better, but he declined with surprising politeness.
Then came a smattering of people from Kay and Astro’s world who Amanda didn’t really care about. All she knew was that their leader was a thin, bureaucratic-looking guy called Ryan, and that Astro had been really reluctant to let them all in. Apparently, most of them would usually hate each other and they all had a tendency to argue over “stupid, tribal crap.” However, Tyron had decided that they would probably try and play nice in front of Herobrine and maybe be a little daunted by the general situation, limiting the likelihood they would derail things.
Amanda noticed that one of them had a hood which obscured his face with supernatural darkness, like Helix. She suddenly felt very alone, despite Rose being right next to her, and wished he were there with his red eyes, his soft robes…
Anyone else at or around the table was internal to the Shelter. Raphoe skulked around near the hunters’ chairs in his red scarf, not quite sure where he fit into everything now that Kay’s boss had shown up and the former King in Ash kept doffing the hat to everyone under the sun. A fast-builder from resource-gathering here. Talita and Iridia from the Coven there. One or two infantry and combat mages. Lucy flitted between everyone, checking them to her list.
Finally, Kay entered with the hunter-chief power couple, Lucy made some ticks, and she took up a position next to Fire.
Kay saw Raphoe’s aimlessness, grunted and gestured for him to follow him. Kay took him around and leaned against the furnace, slightly into the shadows but firmly within the eyeline of Herobrine and the hunters.
Then, unnoticed by most but greatly appreciated by Amanda, Helix entered. His red eyes looked dimmer than usual, but he had a slight smile on. He came up beside her and slipped his fingers in between hers. She felt warm.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi, sorry I’m late,” he responded, making sure not to look over in the direction of the furnace.
Tyron cleared his throat, and the session began.
“So, I guess the first question is, what’s our situation?” he began. “Well, I can tell you we’re glad for every last person we’ve gotten. After the Prophet’s Hill Massacre, we fell somewhere below fifteen-hundred trained soldiers and then began to slowly recover after gaining access to portal technology. Now, you all have graciously devoted yourselves to our cause, and we can safely say our forces number somewhere around forty thousand, the highest they have ever been. Thank you for your support.”
There were polite murmurs of approval around the table. The hooded man even banged on the table with his fist and cried out “Hear, hear!”, unconcerned that his raucousness did not match the general tone.
“Unfortunately, I’ve got to acknowledge that we are still, in fact, outnumbered. The Tower is an interdimensional organisation, in some places it could definitely be called an empire. It has a lot of troops at its disposal and a lot of places it can draw them from. However, that means, even though they’ve consolidated all their troops within Nexus, they have a lot of their conquering forces spread out across the multiverse. Thanks to the efforts of the internal scouting corps under Voidblade and the…” Tyron checked his notes calmly. “‘Most honourable librarian pirates of Woobly’ under… Scrumping Pup, as well as a Tower-internal source, we have been able to confirm their numbers at around one hundred thousand.
“Still outnumbered, but bear in mind, the Entity is dead, the Ender is dead. The endermen are tough but leaderless, and as far as we are aware Freak can’t replicate the abilities which made the Entity such a threat in combat. Most of the rest are mercenary forces, a lot of whom got stuck in Nexus by accident. We have skill and experience on our side, and we will win this.”
The hooded man yelled “hear, hear!” louder still and this time several others cheered in response, mostly from the same world but Urist also offered some typically dwarfish encouragement. Tyron smirked slightly then continued.
“Of course, this brings us on to the matter of strategy. The Shelter is some ways out from the Tower by design. Previously we had floated plans of attacking villages near the Tower to establish a beachhead from which to launch a full assault. However, with the machine so close to completion, and with the risk that the Tower would call for reinforcements from its off-world holdings, we cannot waste time on that. We propose a full-frontal assault.”
No cheers went up this time. The hooded man assumed a pose of great contemplation. Steve looked disappointed he hadn’t joined in when he had the chance.
“Glowstar asks: ‘So, they’ll see us coming?’” chirped Kir.
Tyron sighed.
“Yes.”
A general feeling of discomfort descended on everyone in the room. Amanda reshuffled her fingers and held Helix’s hand all the tighter.
“So, we’re going to loudly announce our presence to the enemy? Is there no prospect of a sneak attack?” Asked the male hunter chief.
“We have investigated that possibility,” answered Tyron confidently. “There was a route into the Tower that the enemy were unaware of, but it was too small for a large-scale attack. And, since Destiny used that portal to get in and kill the Entity, Freak was aware of it and has sealed it off.”
“Excuse me,” said Herobrine calmly. “I was under the impression that the Entity was ‘usurped’ by Freak, I believe that was the word you used, Fire. Am I to understand that the Shelter deliberately installed Freak?”
Tyron looked directly at Herobrine for the first time since the meeting had started and gritted his teeth. It occurred to Amanda just how weird this must be for him.
Fire ended up replying: “While Destiny’s actions have resulted in a significant edge for the Shelter, it was a plan of her and Freak alone. I’d hazard a guess that Freak betrayed the Entity and used Destiny to get rid of it, which happened to align with our goals, but that is where our ‘collaboration’ ends. Now Freak is in the same position as the Entity, but he is individually much less powerful than it.”
Tyron shuffled in discomfort, realising the questions this raised.
“So, this plot occurred without the knowledge of Shelter leadership? How was this allowed to happen?”
Kay cut in: “The Shelter was under my administration in the lead-up to the assassination, during Fire’s captivity. The failing was mine, my lord. Freak is a phantom and can, when he wishes, be visible to only one individual at a time. Precautions have been taken - a benevolent phantom known as the Lady of Dreams has been contacted - and this error will not be repeated.”
Herobrine nodded, satisfied but still obviously concerned to receive confirmation of the mildly chaotic recent history of the Shelter. Amanda was just glad he didn’t ask why Kay wasn’t leading any more. Helix definitely wouldn’t have been able to keep quiet about that. Or maybe he’d just have stormed ominously out of the room, which might actually have been worse.
“So,” declared Tyron in an effort to regain control. “We have the outline established. Now for specifics. We’re currently planning for the Mencur-Besh to take the lead on the ground, serving as a vanguard under the command of Fire, followed up by a broader force under my own direction. Of course, we will have combat mages as skirmishers, a sizeable ranged corps comprised of conventional archers and firearms users, and a mixture of magical and non-magical artillery in support.
“Our goal will be to use range to our advantage to disrupt the Tower’s defences, allowing our infantry a chance to force their way through the main gate and make it to the Tower proper, which unfortunately only has one entrance. Once inside, in addition to attempting to seize control of as much of the structure as possible, a contingent shall break off to fight its way down to the Deep Labs with the goal of locating and disabling the machine. Shadow and a collective of mages from our various factions shall be a priority asset in this situation, as they are most likely to be able to figure out how to stop it from activating to begin with.
“At the same time, an air assault under the command of Herobrine will be conducted. Guarded by the dragons of Minecraftia, our airships will attempt to infiltrate the Tower’s upper floors. This will help relieve pressure from the force on the lower floors, but more importantly this force shall attempt to locate the machine’s activation mechanism and prevent Freak from using it. It is believed to be within the Entity’s former throne room and is supposed to be guarded by a particularly advanced breed of golems. Our internal source suggests they are made of bedrock, but otherwise we are unclear of their capabilities. Be extremely careful when engaging them.”
Herobrine smirked and stroked his adamantine sword.
A man in a steel mask scoffed, “Tricked-out golems? A machine with a ticking clock? Megalomaniacs in pursuit of godhood? Forgive me, I’m feeling downright nostalgic.”
Astro glared at him.
“Don’t worry, Brother Chrone,” he said. “You will be in the ground assault, so you shall be as far away as can be from your fear of repetition.”
“Wonderful,” he said. “Very considerate of you.”
His face was invisible beneath his mask, but his eyes assumed the glazed quality of a smirk.
Astro chewed his lip and looked at his notes, clearly a little embarrassed.
“Well,” Helix whispered to her. “At least we know Astro’s above all that ‘stupid, tribal crap’.”
She snorted with laughter a little harder than the joke merited. It was nice that he had his sense of humour back. Unfortunately, Herobrine turned his head at the sound, and while the blind guy looked at them with nothing but good-natured bemusement at the thought of two kids in a war-room, Helix glared back fiercely until he returned his attention to the table.
“With the plan firmly established. That brings us,” Tyron said. “To the matter of division leaders. All very dry troop assignment stuff, but necessary.”
He began to recite the assignments. It reminded Amanda of the travelling storytellers who would sometimes come through the villages, when they would recite ancient poems, and then to give a sense of grandeur and maybe to avoid having to describe any elaborate battle scenes for a while they’d list everyone involved for a full chapter. Except somehow more boring.
Long and short of it, Brad, one of Fire’s buddies in the Eye-and-Claws had the air, coordinating the attack until they made an entrance in the side of the Tower, at which point Herobrine would take over the infiltration force. Glowstar would lead a dragon escort. Steve and Jennifer would initially be part of the escort on the back of Drake Junior, then join the infiltration force alongside some of their usual divisions, using their fast-building abilities to help prevent loss of ground. Astro would do much the same, flying around until they found an opening, at which point he would take partial command of a group called the “Guild of Twenty-Four Diamonds”, who she assumed were the heavily armoured dunk squad who always jeered playfully at him when he ran by on an errand.
Voidblade and Urist would also serve as officers in the infiltration force, the former helping to locate and harass Tower forces, the latter helping to flesh out Steve and Jennifer’s quickly built fortifications into real footholds. Rose smirked as her role was explained. Her duty was to help make an opening for the infiltration force, both by killing anyone who tried to impede them, but also by literally making an opening in the wall of the Tower where artillery fire hadn’t created a wide enough gap. She explained in a mutter that they had found the alloy they used to coat the Tower. Apparently, her blades made it look like crap and cut through about as easily.
Tyron would, of course, coordinate the ground forces, with Fire leading the Mencur-Besh in the vanguard. Amanda and Helix would be accompanying Tyron personally, but if their last outing had been any indication, that meant they would be part of the attack with Tyron lending a handy assist any time they got overwhelmed. The hunters would attack from a slightly different angle, hoping to hop the fortifications and engage the forces within, with the goal of disrupting internal defences and engaging the enemy in tight spaces where proper formations became more difficult. Notionally, they were independent, but they would also be accompanied by a brigade comprising Kay’s remaining loyalists in the Shelter and a small group of Herobrine’s pigmen. So, basically the naughty corner crew.
Amanda considered making a quip about that to Helix, but one look at his face confirmed he was not at all ready to joke about that.
Shadow would, of course, command her Coven of mages and provide any aerial and ground support needed throughout, then hand over operational leadership to Talita after the Tower was breached so she could focus on locating and disabling the machine. Lucy had the duty of co-directing the artillery and generally running logistics for the ground assault. This unfortunately put her in the unenviable duty of making sure the rear-guard - a group called Legion - held firm and prevented the Tower from encircling them. When Lucy heard about her responsibility she nodded, then immediately took on the look of someone mentally preparing several comprehensive checklists for the tasks ahead.
“Well, you know your duties,” said Tyron gravely. “We attack in three days. Do what you can to prepare. May Notch be with you - or whoever you worship. Sorry, didn’t mean to be exclusionary, Notch just seems to be common across a lot of places and - I’m getting off topic.”
Tyron sighed and Amanda heard Helix mutter “Light be with you,” under his breath. Rathina placed a hand on Tyron’s shoulder, and he recollected himself, and looked strangely pleased with himself as he said the next sentence.
“You are brave for being here, your bravery will be remembered, let’s make sure it’s rewarded. It’s about time we all got a happy ending.”
Amanda caught his eye and smiled reassuringly, shooting him a smirk and a laid-back thumbs-up. He smiled slightly but warmly and left with Rathina.
Helix had his head hung like he was observing a moment of silence. She squeezed his hand.
“Hey, you heard him, happy ending’s on its way.”
He smiled.
“Yeah, it sure is,” he accepted.
They left, still holding hands, ready for what was yet to come.
Chapter 75: Questions of Life (Tyron)
They sat in the officer’s lounge. It was late. Most people had already left. But they stayed on, not to drink, just to talk. After the strategy meeting everything was starting to feel a little real, so talking felt good.
At the start, it had been the expected groups, people talking to their friends. Jennifer had been spleefing away with Voidblade; Astro and his guild talking gravely and yearningly about old times, absent friends; Steve talking the ear off Urist, Wolfric and his brother; Fire and Shadow catching up with their Eye-and-Claw friends; and Tyron had, of course, been talking to Seth and Rathina, with Kir relaying the occasional comment from Glowstar up on the cliffs.
It had been strange, seeing people talking to their normal friends. The people they had history with. Fire in particular was just… strange. Seeing him talking and laughing with Brad and Andras, as though nothing had happened. Tyron had always known him as such a serious, detached guy and he still wasn’t exactly Mr. Expressiveness over there, but there was an ease to him in that conversation that made the whole thing feel uncanny. He wondered if other people thought he looked weird talking to his friends.
“Already look weird,” Kir had quipped.
He smiled. He felt Rathina’s fingers in the fur of his arm.
“Astro is a terrible influence on you.”
But slowly, people peeled away for sleep or duty or whatever, until a somehow weirder group remained, sitting on the central pit of sofas. Rathina sat at his right. Steve and Jennifer sat opposite him. Shadow lounged on a sofa off to the left, flicking through a book hardly taking up any space on account of her small stature. Astro sat at the other end of the same sofa, listening to a guy called Andras who had way too many artificial limbs for Tyron’s liking.
“...so, there I was, standing on the mountaintop, finally facing down the Roc I had been tracking for the past days. It was there, defending its nest. No eggs, but that didn’t matter, the client paid for claws, feathers, and bones. The battle took quite a lot out of me, more than one of these scars is from that damn bird’s kicks. So, here’s how it went down…”
Tyron thought on his own scars, hidden beneath his fur. He wondered if they would ever become visible if he carried on adventuring long enough.
“Okay, you’ve told us about some of your mightiest battles,” said Rathina conspiratorially, “But what’s the absolute easiest, you’ve ever had. What day did Andras Thornhook go into work and think, ‘By Notch, I can’t believe they’re paying me to do this?’”
Tyron caught her eye. He wondered what she was driving at. She winked. She always had some game going.
Andras roared with laughter. “That’s got to be the time that snooty alchemist asked me to track down ‘a lock of cursed hair’, well that’s what I did. On my own head! The curses might stop me from growing my hand and leg back, but that one time they came in useful. Naturally had to wait a month for it all to grow back so he wouldn’t know.”
“Fascinating,” Rathina said. “Do you ever think about what you’d do if you retired?”
“Okay, what’s this about?” Tyron asked her through Kir, suddenly wondering if this was a conversation she was having with Andras, or one she was having with him via Andras.
“Well, Shadow told me he’s an NPC. So, naturally, I asked ‘What’s an NPC?’ And apparently, it’s like anyone but you in a dream. He is just based on the thoughts of anyone who enters their Server. But now, he’s outside the Server. No strings attached.”
Thank Notch, it wasn’t one of those conversations.
“Oh… That is weird. So, you’re trying to figure out how… I don’t know how to put it.”
“Ty, this is a telepathic broadcast, I literally get the idea.”
Tyron snorted with laughter and tried to play it off as a sneeze.
“But yeah, I just want to see how complete he is separated from that. How close can you wind up to being a person when you’re just made up of inputs from other people? I mean, he existed for a purpose, but now he’s served that purpose for so long and he’s received so much data from so many people, you have to ask, what is he now?”
Suddenly, something felt off to Tyron.
“Wait…”
“Boom, pranked! This conversation was secretly about us!”
“Okay you got me. I’m a bad boyfriend for not getting it out sooner.”
“Relax, I just like messing with you. But seriously though, what are we doing once this is all done?”
“Well, if we beat Freak-”
“-Okay, when we beat Freak, what are we doing?”
He sat back and thought about it, momentarily cutting off his thoughts from Kir to avoid just blasting an incomprehensible stream-of-consciousness out there. He’d spent a long, long time trying to take Herobrine down. Then he spent a long time just sort of moving between places, hero-ing away without much thought for what his goal was. He liked helping people, he liked being a hero, but now that the big bads were beaten, could he really just go on adventuring forever? He caught a glimpse of Andras’ rolling, blue prosthetic eye-crystal, and wondered once again when his scars would start showing. But then again, people would never stop needing help, and if he just stopped being selfless and started prioritising his own wellbeing, was he really all that heroic to start with?
“I think I want to find a plains biome somewhere, build a house, and start farming. Not even to sell or eat, maybe just to go into town and give it away to random people. I don’t know, farming sounds fun.”
He nodded contentedly. Bravery had to be rewarded, he’d said it himself.
Rathina turned his head to him and looked sincerely into his eyes.
“That sounds pretty chilled out. I’d be up for that for a while.”
He felt his cheeks go red and looked down. She pecked him on the forehead.
“Anyway, that’s me for tonight,” said Rathina. “Thanks, Andras, great stories.”
People said goodbye to her. Shadow even looked up from her book. Then, Steve proposed grabbing another drink from the bar, and Andras proposed Drandinian Heavybrew.
“I don’t know what that is, but I’m willing to try!” said Steve.
“Great, we’ll need a bucket!”
And Andras dragged him off to the bar. Jennifer looked at Shadow, realised she was smirking, and decided to keep an eye on this brewery process. In her own words, “I won’t stop him brewing the stuff, I just want to know what we’re dealing with.”
Astro turned to Tyron.
“Rathina seems lovely. You make a great couple.”
“Thank you, pal,” said Tyron. “I never would have thought we’d end up together. I met her when she ambushed us in a forest. Not a great start, but I guess she’s grown on me since then.”
“You’d be surprised,” quipped Astro, alcohol restoring a little bit of his sarcastic wit. “I’m pretty sure getting ambushed by Kay in the forests of Zine Craft was when I…”
He stopped talking and developed a very sad aspect.
“How are you feeling? This can’t be an easy time for you,” prodded Tyron.
Shadow took on a look of stern concentration behind her book.
“I could be better, but I can’t complain. Aaron, Secret, and all are here now. They went through it all alongside me, and I have them to talk about it with. But… Somehow, they’re not angry, at least, not angry enough. I expected one of them to complain about it, but they almost seem glad to see him. How can they just be okay with him wandering around free? They were actually there for all of the awful stuff. I just caught the tail-end of it.”
Tyron thought on it.
“Maybe that’s why. They saw the gradual decline, you just saw him after he’d already started getting punished. Like, it was kind of a shock to you, and you couldn’t reconcile the image you had of your friend with the guy who did all this heinous crap.”
Astro took a deep gulp of his drink, then slammed it down.
“You might be right there. I just… It took me so long to acknowledge that he was a bad guy, and yet he gave that big speech, and I was almost ready to forgive him then and there. And I don’t know what it was. Was it because of reflex, like tying your shoes or riding a horse? Or did he actually say something worth forgiving. Is there this magic sequence of words that makes everything okay?”
Suddenly, Shadow muttered profoundly:
“These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Why then I’ll fit you. Hieronymo’s mad again. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih. Shantih. Shantih.”
Tyron and Astro reshuffled themselves into wary positions from which they’d better be able to take off. Was that a spell? Was the pressure getting to her again?
“Friendly coup?” Kir tested nervously.
“Sorry, you’re going to have to elaborate on that,” Tyron asked. “I don’t understand. At all.”
Shadow giggled. “It’s a quote. An old poem.”
Astro chuckled and nodded.
“That makes sense. Yes, but what does the poem mean?”
Tyron breathed a sigh of relief.
“It’s complicated, it’s this weird, fragmentary thing packed with spiritual mantras, quotes from old books and references. It makes no sense until you realise it’s based on the story of a king who could only be healed by someone saying the right words. But no one who ever came to heal him ever knew what they were. So, the narrator’s going through all these famous phrases, trying to accidentally hit on the right one and make everything okay. Those last words are an old saying of one of our world’s religions, I think.”
Tyron and Astro looked at each other. Steve, Jennifer and Andras came back with their bucket of Heavybrew.
“Okay but how does that tie back to Astro?” Asked Jennifer with a cocked eyebrow. “Sorry, there’s not many people here so I heard you from across the room.”
“I said about Kay saying the right set of words to make me almost want to forgive him,” said Astro. “So, I suppose you’re saying, maybe he did. Does that ‘Shantih’ phrase bring the narrator comfort?”
“The poem ends ambiguously,” clarified Shadow, sitting up. “Those are the last lines.”
“Oh, so is it supposed to trail off in a pessimistic sort of way?” Asked Tyron. “As though he’ll be doing this forever?”
“Well, does the king get healed in the original story?” asked Steve.
“Yes, eventually.”
“Then, surely there’s an underlying assumption that there are words that will, one day, work and set everything right? And that it’s therefore worth seeking them endlessly even when the world appears to offer no likelihood of a definitive cure?”
Jennifer looked at Steve with complete surprise at his poetic turn.
“I’m sorry, you just came back here with a literal bucket of the dirtiest drink I’ve ever seen - and I know I only discovered alcohol a few weeks ago, but that’s still saying a lot, and now you want to wax lyrical about the pursuit of meaning?”
“You’re right, let’s drink.”
They each dipped a mug in and felt the shock of warmth and the choke of spice as it filled them. Only Shadow failed to react as she drank it. It was as if she was drinking water instead of strong alcohol.
“What I don’t understand is, you’re ascended, right Shadow?” Asked Steve, evidently on a hot streak with his curiosity that night. “You underwent a whole ritual to do so? But I’ve heard you and Astro talking about it, and you almost talk about it like it was an accident and you’re still finding out the damages. What’s the deal? I saw the steps involved when I was looking through Fire’s notes once, and it sounded messed up yeah, but also really deliberate. You have to prepare a potion, carve some runes in yourself… Did you just not know what would happen?”
Shadow replied: “It has to be deliberate, it requires a lot of infrastructure to get all the components, not to mention the enchanters and mages needed for the ritual itself. We performed the ritual a great number of times before it was attempted on me. Fire needed to be sure everything was just right. The goal really was just to set me free from being imprisoned in my own mind, with the known side-effect of magical empowerment. Everything else, we didn’t anticipate, couldn’t have anticipated.
“That said, it was a painful ordeal. Having runes carved in my skin, feeling my blood drain, the burning runes embedding themselves in my flesh, the magic infusion… definitely not something anyone would agree to without good reason.”
“Would you do it again?” He pressed.
The mage thought for a moment. “Difficult to answer, knowing what I do now. But I think so, it gave me a chance at a proper life outside of the server’s world. Outside of the memories, the pain is temporary.”
Steve sat back, still eyebrows furrowing a little deeper still. Tyron rolled his tongue over his teeth, drawing it back like an arrow to shoot down any follow-up question from Steve. He meant well, but he got the impression Shadow was trying to mask discomfort with politeness. Or maybe Tyron was just projecting. Even with her powers stabilised, Shadow remained as hard to read as ever. All he knew was that if anyone but Rathina had asked him what he wanted to do after this, he probably would have gotten very tense very fast.
Thankfully, before Steve could cross the line and make things awkward, Kir drew Tyron’s attention to a black-haired woman marching sternly up to them.
“Reaching out, but won’t respond. Seems mad.”
Tyron pushed his drink away, apologised and turned to face the new arrival. Just as he did so, a question came out like a slap.
“Are you Dragoknight?”
She was tall, black-haired, and pale-skinned. Perhaps in her early thirties. She wore a black V-neck, ripped gray jeans, and half an arsenal of weaponry - a machete, a steel bow, a knife which looked pretty redundant compared to the machete, and pouches containing everything from bandages to worn rope for climbing to bloody rope for garroting. And, despite being encumbered with all those weapons, she had this strange gracefulness to her. It was like watching Rose if she couldn’t magically produce knives but still insisted on throwing just as many.
Tyron decided not to waste her time.
“Yes, that’s me. Tyron Dragoknight, Shelter Commander, at your service.”
He stood up and offered her his hand. She looked at it, cocked an eyebrow, then briefly seized his furry hand before letting it fall.
“I’m Lupe, of the Remaining - formerly known as the Liberators.”
Tyron drooped his eyes respectfully as he realised what this was about. He wished he hadn’t drank before this, it would either make him seem detached or make him feel even worse. Maybe both.
“Then you got my message about-”
“-About David and Destiny. Yes.”
Tyron searched for something to say until the silence became conspicuous. Jennifer came to his rescue:
“I’m sorry. They went down doing the right thing. We should have done more.” She shot Tyron an encouraging look, telling him to go further down this path.
“Yes,” the Dragoknight agreed. “I didn’t get to know David or Destiny half as well as I should have, but they were good people. And neither of them lost sight of their purpose. David went down protecting Destiny, and Destiny went down protecting-”
“-Went down killing the big bad, yeah I get you, don’t oversell it,” said Lupe. “Thank you though.”
She smiled slightly.
“Well, is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Yeah, Clarke, Kami and I just got here. They’re still looking for a room. I’m interested in doing a little farewell ceremony for David and Destiny. Do you have the bodies?”
“We gave David a burial at the time. It’s a ways off but shouldn’t be too hard to find if you don’t mind dodging Tower patrols. Destiny died on their territory. We don’t know what they did with her, but bearing in mind her plan involved a tear in reality…”
Lupe nodded solemnly.
“That sucks. In which case, do you have any belongings of Destiny’s? We could bury them next to David.”
“Yes, certainly.”
Tyron reached into his inventory and pulled out a key ring, then flipped through them until he found the right one.
“This should be the key for Destiny’s room, it’s in the officers’ quarters. Do you know the way or-”
“-I'll be able to find it.”
“Okay.”
Lupe rolled the key over in her hand.
“Destiny’s room,” she smirked. “Glad she finally got to settle down for a while, at least. She never loved all the rushing from place to place due to cataclysmic enemy ambushes.”
“Who would?” Tyron laughed. “Running from Herobrine’s servants, it keeps you fit but it’s not great for that homely feeling.”
Lupe chuckled and out burst a wide grin for a moment, like the sun on a cloudy day.
“Is the gravesite near the frontlines?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll have the ceremony on the day of the attack. After that, we’ll help you finish this.”
“Thank-”
“-Don’t thank me, it’s a point of principle. Besides, thank you for the key, Dragoknight. That means a lot.”
She turned away, tossing the key up and down in her hand. Her other hand was plunged deep into her jeans pocket.
“You can call me Tyron,” he called. “Just so you know.”
“Noted.”
“Friend?” chirped Kir.
“If it helps you sleep at night, sure,” she said with a wink.
Tyron waited until she left, then sat down with a heavy sigh of relief.
“That was stressful. Turned out better than expected though, she seems nice.”
“Tell me about it,” snorted Astro. “I was pretty sure she was about to try and kill you.”
“Really, that bad?”
“Well, maybe not that bad, but definitely something like a big rant about how we all let Destiny down - which, we absolutely did. Good idea on leading with that, Jennifer. I think it defused things a lot.”
“She looked upset. She needed to know her anger was justified,” answered Jennifer with a shrug. “And like you said, we did let her down.”
The mood suddenly dropped a lot. A faint melancholy landed on their shoulders, like a bird with really sharp talons. Andras didn’t seem to know how to engage with this, lacking a lot of necessary context. If Tyron hadn’t known it would make him feel terrible, he might have let himself a stifled laugh at the sight of a hardened adventurer struggling to deal with an unpleasant lull in the conversation.
Shadow spoke up: “Not to make this into a game of misery poker, but you know, if you really think about it, I was the last person with the opportunity to stop Destiny. If it makes you feel any better about your part in her fate, the final responsibility was mine.”
“Well, no,” said Jennifer. “That’s not fair either.”
“Yes, you made an executive decision based on a pretty dire set of circumstances. Not necessarily a good one, but you made a decision,” said Astro.
“It feels like the rest of us just let Destiny slip through the cracks,” agreed Jennifer. “Steve and I made a token effort at first, but after she went off to establish this place with Fire… I guess we just stopped trying. We had our own stuff to deal with.”
Astro nodded limply. Tyron couldn’t help but agree.
“I guess, we all got so wrapped up in our own problems that we lost sight of our goal. Destiny didn’t, she kept going for it. We should all have tried to be a bit more like her.”
“Well, let’s not whitewash things,” Astro challenged. “She kind of shut down after Fristad died - not that I blame her - and as a result Freak was able to manipulate her. She sacrificed herself taking down the Entity, and that was a brave, brave thing, but do you honestly think she was happy in the end?”
“Is that really that important?” asked Jennifer, a little confused. “Aren’t we heroes supposed to be selfless?”
Steve sat back, chewing his lip.
“We’re not all heroes here, Jen,” said Astro with a morbid shake of the head.
Tyron pressed past this. “Okay, she wasn’t a paragon, but the big issue is that she shouldn’t have had to make that sacrifice. She only felt she had to because of our collective decisions, but she did it anyway.”
“Well, when could we have changed things so she didn’t have to do it?” asked Jennifer. “You know, for next time.”
Tyron took a swig of his drink and nervously put it down. It connected with the table a little hard, and some heavybrew spilled out.
“Don’t do that to yourself Jennifer,” said Astro. “You’re never going to find the perfect sequence.”
Tyron’s mind slipped down to a memory he tried not to examine. During the first prison break. The failed one.
Shadow nodded. “At least not the first time, and the power needed to do it over would allow you to win without having to find a sequence at all.”
“Maybe if David hadn’t been so dinged up…” Tyron said. “In the first breakout I… I jumped that first enderman even though Bul wasn’t there. Freak had been working on me for weeks, I couldn’t control myself. I was just so… angry.”
He sat back, staring into space.
“Not your fault,” said Kir.
But in that moment, to him, it was.
“I - I should have just waited until we saw Bul, so Glibby didn’t show up, so David’s gauntlet didn’t burn his arm, so Freak didn’t get the drop on him so easily…”
Everyone got very quiet. The spilled heavybrew slipped from the table, drip, drip, dripping on Tyron’s foot. He noticed that his glass had chipped the surface where he put it down.
“Okay, I’ve got it,” said Steve, stifling a belch.
“Got what?” asked Astro.
“The words that’ll make everything okay, from earlier.”
“Oh. Okay then, philosopher, I think we all need it.”
Tyron allowed himself a bitter chuckle. Steve continued undeterred.
“Well, here’s my reasoning: despite all the stupid drama, the mistakes we made, the fights we lost, I think we’ve all been trying our best. And that hasn’t always been good enough, but we can’t change the past, and without it we wouldn’t know the bar we have to clear. So, I think the words are: ‘I’m glad I know you people. I know you’re giving it your all. And don’t worry, you don’t have to be perfect, you only have to be good enough.’ So, there.”
Steve took another swig. Tyron smiled at him. Astro furrowed his eyebrows and looked at the ceiling. Jennifer rubbed his shoulder affectionately. Shadow leaned back into the cushions with a smile. Andras stroked his beard in contemplation.
“Also,” Steve continued, turning his head to Andras. “This heavybrew stuff is great.” He turned to Shadow. “I can’t believe you and Fire have been holding out on us this long.”
“Apparently Fire shared it with Kay, at least according to Warnado, but that was before I came to Nexus. But I do wonder if the fungus the base substance is harvested from would grow in other worlds.”
Steve howled with laughter.
“Shadow, I was joking, sheesh,” he wiped a tear from his eye. “But also, thanks for the earnest response.” A pause. “I am glad I know you people.”
Tyron nodded, his faint smile becoming a wide grin as Steve’s eyes drifted closed, and his head lolled onto Jennifer’s shoulder.
Chapter 76: Final Preparations (Voidblade)
“Believe me, it’s getting bad in there,” he jabbered in the tongue of the End. “Entity said the Ender tried to kill it, Claw’s still recovering. Just told us all to keep guarding the machine. That it changed nothing. Ordered in some reinforcements, but not as many as you’d think. Humans shut up, but we endfolk, we had to be smarter and keep asking questions.”
He sipped the Chorus juice on the table in front of him. His obsidian armour rattled as he did so.
“Some officers got hung up on why none of them had been appointed to succeed the Ender. Entity said it was because Claw would be better any day now. Still wouldn’t tell us where he was being treated. Entity got sick of questions, set Glibby on them…”
The enderman flinched at the memory, let out a guttural noise of discomfort.
“Only Glibby did more. Killed the officers, then told their men to smear grey goop on their scales, recognise him as the new leader. I said yes, I liked the Grey Ones - Silver and I were once brothers in battle - he was good Endfolk. Many said no. Some died. Entity just said ‘Claw will be better any day now’. Then, I ask myself, why is Freak not doing this? Why Glibby? Then I realise, Freak is scared.” He cackles. “The Entity’s pet ghost has fled. Why should I stay?”
Voidblade finished transcribing the defector’s account.
“You say they called for reinforcements? How many?”
“Don’t know. Asked Marcus to come back from campaign, and Forgelight to come back from colonies. Did not specify troop numbers.”
Voidblade grumbled and tapped his pen against the page.
“You know I did not come here out of altruism,” said the defector. “I’m here because Glibby wronged us. You are Endfolk, you know the phrase, ‘They strike one, they fight whole End?’”
Voidblade didn’t say anything. Of course he knew the phrase. His people had gotten themselves driven most of the way to extinction for that phrase.
“I won’t fight my brothers, but I’ll sell you information. I was bodyguard to a very important scientist. Her name was…” He strained out his best human impression. “Veronica Mercury.”
Voidblade jotted the information down.
“Name?”
“Steelborn.”
“Excuse me.”
Voidblade stood up and went into the next room, which looked in on the interrogation room from behind black-tinted glass. Fire and a man with a black handlebar moustache were waiting for the report. Astro paced in the corner.
Voidblade handed it to the man with the handlebar moustache because he did not speak the tongue of the End. He wiped it precisely with a handkerchief, then took it. He said very little, but Astro called him ‘Brit’. Voidblade liked him, not nearly as dramatic as most humans.
After some consideration, Brit spoke.
“Glibby doesn’t form armies. Packs of servants, fanatical drinking clubs, that’s him all over. Something’s got him spooked about whether he’ll be protected or not. Maybe Herobrine joining up has made the Silhouette reconsider his relationship with the Tower.”
And then he fell silent.
“If what the defector said is true, Freak does not have as much control over the situation as we thought. Never a bad thing to be overprepared, though.” Fire said.
“He does feed on fear,” added Astro. “Maybe he thinks he’ll be stronger if his forces are on edge.”
Fire responded: “That might be part of it, but I saw enough of him to know he doesn’t think far ahead. Overall, his fearmongering might benefit us more as a whole.”
Brit nodded impatiently, rapping on a folder hanging from his shoulder with his fingers.
“Will you be needing me further? Don’t trust the demons with my rifles.”
“No, that should be all, thanks Brit,” said Astro. “And, it should be all for you Voidblade.”
“You do not want me to ask follow-up questions?” Voidblade asked, with a glance in the direction of the door.
Fire got up from his chair. “I think it might be best if I talked to him. Directly confronting him with a walking discrepancy in what ‘the Entity’ told him should be effective. Doubly because Claw and him built some rapport.”
As Fire left the room with Astro in tow, Voidblade considered himself dismissed, and warped back up to the surface.
He stood in the entrance of the Shelter, as the sun drifted slowly past the centre of the sky. Thousands rushed to and fro. He teleported up on top of the frame of the entrance and decided to survey the preparations.
On a series of scaffolds set against the ridge, Mencur-Besh and humans darted back and forth, carrying munitions and materials through the almost-finished forms of airships. On the one directly opposite the shelter door, a human directed two of the scaled behemoths as they guided a large mechanism into place on the back, where the rudder might have been on a boat. Voidblade shuddered at the thought of a naval assault, then distracted himself with thoughts of the new machine. Apparently the Mencur-Besh had been working on airships in their own world, and had brought along an engine schematic that used some combination of redstone and glowstone, as well as “mini-pistons”, whatever exactly that entailed.
The plump man in the lilac hat and green cloak came out on the quarterdeck and sat against the railing, calling over the shoulder to the human below.
“And you’re certain this won’t affect mobility, Brad? There is a reason we normally make the rudders out of wood, after all.”
His thick eyebrows were so tightly furrowed that, from that distance, Voidblade could have sworn they were a single grey bar he was about to pull off and scold Brad with.
The Eye-and-Claws officer looked wearily up and said:
“The engine is lighter than you think, the redstone-glowstone mixture creates its own lift once heated and powered, plus the metal holds up much better under the peak forces of the mini-pistons.” He paused. “Look, I can’t guarantee anything until we get this one up in the air, but once we can confirm our design still plays nice in Nexus, there shouldn’t be problems rolling the other ones out.”
The plump man nodded but was obviously chewing on a response he reckoned would get the argument going. Voidblade got the impression this conversation had been happening twice a day for the last few days with neither gaining any ground over the other, so he didn’t see what he would really get out of it. So, as the plump man pulled off his hat and dabbed his brow with it, and Brad the engineer returned warily to his task, expecting an interruption at any second, Voidblade turned his attention to the people below the scaffolding.
He saw Urist and Steve emerging from a mineshaft, each carrying a fortune’s worth of resources. Mostly iron, some diamond. Voidblade had always been dumbfounded by the ability of humans to crawl down into the earth and tear out its riches - it this tendency that made their attacks so constant, their victories so total - but now he couldn’t help but feel relief. More swords, more armour.
They started distributing it to a series of demons who had set up makeshift forges in the open air. Then, a stern, pale man with purple tattoos came up and held out his hand, almost in accusation. Steve stopped and his eyes seemed to glaze over as this happened, and he stood there motionless until Urist laughed and pulled out a stack of obsidian.
“Ye won’t be fittin’ this in yer palm!” laughed the dwarf over the din.
Voidblade rasped jovially, then a strange wave swept over him, a sort of not-unpleasant emptiness. A few years ago, he would never have indulged such a superfluous gesture. The Enderborn had no need for laughter, they savoured wit, they did not spit it out like the humans. But now, after a few weeks of not just living beside them, but living among them, the dam was bursting, and their ways were flooding in, burning him away in the tide. Just as they had burned away his people in back home, with great floods and diamond swords. Was he wrong to mirror them, even if it was just for ease of interaction?
But it wasn’t just humanity. The Villagers, the dwarves like Urist, and even the newly arrived pigmen all seemed to act this way. Why did the endermen stand along in their laconic detachment? The only creatures that seemed to slightly mirror his own were the dragons.
He stood up and scanned the clifftops and sure enough he caught a glimpse of Glowstar swooping down, regal, and elegant, followed by the enthusiastic plummet of Brine’s pet - the fledgling enderdragon. The young one had apparently never been among his people, and kept mimicking their every move, even when it was clearly beyond his abilities. Glowstar began to pull up a long way above the people preparing below, and still Drake struggled to correct his course, managing to drift into a nearby jungle tree. The elder dragon saw this and literally roared with laughter, drawing some heads but not nearly as many as he used to with such a gesture.
That was what Voidblade meant - even the dragons engaged in these loud, crass displays of emotion. And that’s not to say he wanted to join them - he had tried every now and then to mimic human speech when alone and confident no one could hear him, and it simply felt barbaric - but he couldn’t help but wonder why they felt the need to do this.
He looked out at the fields. Entire battalions trained out there, and tents stretched as far as the sunrise. And, somewhere amidst them, Herobrine, the butcher of Voidblade’s people, or someone rather like him, roamed free as a wild beast. He thought about what would have happened if he had convinced his own people to come. Chances are, if they had even come this far, they would have seen the tents, the swords, and the airships and teleported as far away as they could. Voidblade would have done the same a few months ago. But now he wouldn’t, he would actually feel comforted. Could he bring this feeling back home? Obviously, things were different - there was the war to think about - but did they have to stay that way?
A small shower of dirt and rocks signaled the return of a party of hunters from the mountains, carrying two dead endermen with them. Kay stood at their head, flanked by two of his red-scarved loyalists. He cast an eye around the camp in an attempt at regal satisfaction, but he must not have liked what he saw, because he turned his face away and began to wipe his bloody sword off in the grass.
Beneath him, he heard some interesting chatter.
“No, I’m glad I could help you out,” said Jennifer, head bobbing like a leaf in fierce winds. “If there’s anything else I can tell you about her… um, stay in Nexus, just let me know.”
“Thank you, Jennifer,” said the one they called Clarke, one of the Remaining. “We’ll let you and Tyron know about the ceremony. Unless there is anyone else you can think of?”
“I’ll put the word about, naturally. We all owe Destiny a lot, David too. But no one specific comes to mind.”
“I’ll come,” called Kay. He straightened up and sheathed his sword. “If I’d be welcome, of course.”
“Yes, of course!” the one they called Kami cheered back. Then, in a lower voice: “Is he the prisoner she let out?”
Both Jennifer and Lupe nodded, sharing an askance look.
“Just wanted to make sure. Obviously she trusted him at least a little.”
Kay pretended not to hear and excused himself. Sensing they were about to leave, Voidblade poked his head out over the lip of the Shelter’s entrance. He locked eyes with Lupe, and before he had really thought about it, croaked:
“May I come, too?”
He hoped they didn’t ask him why. “She’s the only one who didn’t try to talk to me all the time,” would be a little difficult for the humans to understand.
“She was respectful,” tried Voidblade.
“Sure, we’ll let you know on the day.”
Their plan was to go to David’s grave, and bury a broken, golden necklace she used to wear back in her world. Voidblade had never seen it. Maybe she brought it with her and kept it secret, maybe she left it behind for a reason. That was not for them to know.
The Remaining left. Jennifer looked up at him.
“You okay up there V?”
“I am getting some fresh air.”
“Haha! You sure are, be careful up there! Need you healthy for our rematch,” she laughed.
She slipped back inside, trailing a shock of bright red hair, and Voidblade mulled over her reaction. He hadn’t been making a ‘joke’, but he had known it would make her laugh because humans laughed at incongruity and understatements. A human wouldn’t normally go up to a very high place just to get some air, ergo it must be a joke. He didn’t know that a few weeks ago. But he still didn’t feel much satisfaction from ‘cracking’ it. Not to Jennifer, at least.
Voidblade cast one eye out to those preparing. He saw Tyron, flanked by Rose on one side and Lucy on the other. Lucy - there was someone he might be happy cracking a joke at. He felt a smile creep over his face. He looked intensely at her, trying to catch her eye. Eventually she got snagged on his stare and beamed. She waved wildly and jumped up so he could see. He responded with a stiff, little jerk of the hand, as though he were wiping a dusty window so as to see through. His lips parted and he allowed himself something like a smile. He didn’t entirely feel it, but it seemed to make Lucy beam brighter still, so he reckoned it was worth it.
Beneath the flapping of dragon’s wings, the hammering of demons and airship builders, and the distant yells of warriors out on drills, Voidblade heard another noise that seemed all the more urgent - his stomach rumbled. And a very specific meal came to mind. Something he hadn’t had in far too long, and which Jennifer calling him ‘V’ had just reminded him of.
He teleported to the training room, and immediately saw who he was looking for. Warnado, the small, hooded demon child was surrounded by bullseyes and skewered meat. As Rose had instructed him, he summoned a chicken drumstick and let it fall in front of the target, then he would summon one of his luminous weapons and pin it to the bullseye.
At the far end of the training room, he could see a slight shimmer in the air, indicating Shadow had slipped into a pocket dimension to safely instruct her more advanced Coven members.”
Amanda stood off to the side, practising more conventionally with her crossbow under the supervision of a red-haired man in diamond armour.
“So, a thing I like to do is, if I’m in close quarters, shunt the weapon forward as though you’re going to hit them…” he guided her arms forward. “Then, stop! Nine times out of ten, your attacker will flinch. That’s when you shoot them.”
She repeated the motion.
“Like that?”
“Aye.”
“Thanks, I’ve been making axes work in close range, but crossbows are my hometown.”
“Well, if you ever want to visit axe country,” he twirled a chipped hand axe demonstratively. “Don’t hesitate to send me a letter. I’d best be off.”
“Thanks again, you didn’t tell me your name?”
“I’m Secret, you might know K-” He saw the look on Amanda’s face. Warnado froze up. “-Astro. I’m Astro’s friend.”
“Of course you are,” she sighed. “I’m Amanda, I’ll see you around.”
The red-haired archer walked past Voidblade with a respectful nod, chewing his lip and looking haunted.
She turned to Warnado.
“Sorry, Helix, I didn’t know who he was, he just came up and offered help. Like I knew he was one of Astro’s guys, but I didn’t know he used to be one of Kay’s.”
Warnado finished another round.
“Amanda, you don’t need to keep apologising every time you come across someone who knows him. Kay has talked a lot of crap to a lot of people, and sometimes it’s crap that makes them like him.”
He started doing stretches. Voidblade wondered if he should come back.
“Yeah, but, you know, if that’s Secret from the files-”
Voidblade remembered the rundown Astro gave the other officers ‘just in case’. Secret wasn’t actually that bad. Aside from some of the ‘contract work’ he and Kay used to do. After that he seems to have become quite respectable.
“-Kay has a type. I don’t know if he picks friendly people and makes them killers, or whether he picks killers and slaps a smiley face on them, but they’re probably not all bad. Don’t worry, I’m not going to be traumatised by their presence.”
Amanda smiled.
“And if Kay tries anything again - I already beat the Book - I’ll just give him a wedgie and that should settle things.”
He shadowboxed demonstratively. Then, his luminous, red eyes somehow lit up even further.
“Or, I’ll summon lava.”
“No.”
“Sorry-can’t-hear-you! V, my man, I know what you’re doing here! I see you sniffing around every time I’m doing accuracy exercises.”
Voidblade warped down to him and gestured to the chicken legs strewn across the room.
“May I?”
Warnado clicked his fingers and a pile of fresh chicken drumsticks appeared in the air before Voidblade. He held out his arms and hugged a considerable number to his chest, but still more spilled every which way. Seconds after the chicken, the smell cascaded down on him. There was something about the way they seasoned chicken wherever the child was summoning them from. Voidblade just couldn’t get enough of them.
“Thank you.”
“Glad to be of service, V.”
Voidblade turned and put on foot on the step, but seeing as he was reckoning with how humans were influencing his interpersonal relationships, he contemplated a risky manoeuvre. He wanted to try and be heartfelt - just to see how it worked, and because Warnado was clearly still in a pretty fragile place.
“And for the nickname.”
“Huh?”
“My nickname, ‘V’, you started it. Thank you, I like it.”
“Oh, it’s a little elementary but-”
“-Basic is good, I had not had a nickname before. It was nice to start simple.”
“You’re welcome. I mean, I could give you another?”
The child developed another improbable glow in his eyes. Voidblade realised he was about to lose control of this conversation, but the child seemed to need this. Probably. At least, Voidblade hoped the child had some emotional need for this.
“Please.”
Warnado stroked his chin, then whispered to Amanda intently, who also assumed a look of utmost focus. Finally, he concluded.
“How about V.B.?”
“Just one extra letter? Is that necessary?”
“Okay, I’ve got it.” He summoned another chicken-leg and shot another bullseye. “Veebs!”
“Definitely not,” said Amanda and Voidblade in unison.
“Veebus Apollo!” he fired this one through his legs, missing the bullseye completely but seeming completely unfazed in his enthusiasm.
“Is that a reference to something?” asked Amanda with an eyebrow cocked in Voidblade’s direction.
“Probably,” cackled Warnado. “Don’t know what, though. Sometimes words just come to me.”
The saliva building in Voidblade’s mouth became too much to bear so he started to back away. The demon-child kept pacing, firing increasingly inaccurate shots in the direction of the bullseyes.
“Blade Lively, star of Sisterhood of the Teleporting Pants!”
Amanda shot Voidblade a thumbs up and a grateful smile. Voidblade considered this a successful manoeuvre in the dangerous world of human socialising. Voidblade’s foot crossed the threshold, and he teleported away to enjoy his reward.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 6 Consolidation (Cont.)
Chapter 77: Giving and Taking (Steve/Kay/Fire/Warnado)
Steve had fallen asleep the second the fortifications were complete. Nothing fancy. Just two-block high walls to keep the mobs out. A small trench to discourage the Tower. Now, Steve didn’t tire easily, but after marching for more than a full day, then overseeing the construction of fortifications sufficient to cover a camp filled with tens of thousands of people, he had finally reached his limit.
The fortifications weren’t even completely “done” when he left - they were just good enough. As he and Jennifer sleepwalked back to their tents, the Mencur-Besh and pigmen kept on going, deepening trenches, strengthening walls, expanding artillery emplacements. It just never ended with those people!
He hadn’t dreamt. No ominous portents of doom or oblique hints at how to win. Nothing. As far as he was concerned, he had just closed his eyes, and like flicking a lever on a redstone lamp, the sun had clicked on.
Jennifer was already up, sorting her inventory. As she removed a stack of cobble and replaced it with yet another splash poison potion, Steve rolled out of bed and walked up to the wooden door of the tent. He snapped it open and there it was: the Tower. With the sun glinting off the copper plating at the top it looked like a torch, and he was one of the mobs it was there to stop from spawning.
He reached into his pocket and eyeballed the clock. It was maybe an eighth of the way into daytime.
“We’re supposed to meet with Fire later, right?” he asked, knowing full well that he was forgetting something.
“Yeah, later. He said it’s about new equipment. Sounds a little late for anything serious to me, but that Halberdson guy does keep offering to sell him everything in the world, so maybe he’s actually suggested something we could use.”
Steve shrugged. It was Fire, he knew what he was doing.
Jennifer equipped and de-equipped her enchanted diamond, then tried a plain back-up set.
“Still, we’ve got some time before then, though, because people are heading to David’s grave...”
That was the thing he was forgetting.
“Breakfast?” he asked.
“Sure. Ozen’s cooking. It should be nice.”
After a brief walk to the primary mess tent and saying hi to Ozen - who looked absolutely ecstatic in his apron and chef’s hat - they found themselves sitting at a table next to Voidblade. As per usual, Voidblade was quiet, and they knew better than to bother him too much at this point. The most noise he made came from a large, slightly dry-looking chicken leg. For a few peaceful minutes they just sat and ate their sandwiches and mushroom stew. But then, of course, duty called.
The villager lady, Olanna, came up to Jennifer and began to discuss troop arrangements. Someone in her unit had sprained their ankle setting up the camp and now wouldn’t make for much of a skirmisher, so Olanna wanted to see if she could reshuffle him to the artillery and maybe swipe one of theirs to replace him. Secretly, both of them seemed to suspect he wanted an excuse not to fight at all, and on any other day they might have let him take it. But this was the big game. All hands on deck.
Steve immediately found himself accosted by the hooded guy from Arcation, Gogyst. These guys were starting to bug Steve - they kept asking to be basically entrusted with an entire front to themselves, and that day was no different. He appreciated the can-do attitude at first, but at a certain point he got the impression Gogyst just wanted Steve to know how much tougher than him he was. Steve just hoped he didn’t get anyone killed with that attitude.
One of the co-chiefs of the hunters came up to ask about their planned route through the outer complex so that she could potentially adjust the hunters' route. Something she and Kay were discussing. Jennifer shot Steve a knowing look and he chuckled. There was no chance Kay would let whatever she had in mind interfere with his grand plan to redeem himself.
Around this time, a man in a black hat sat on a table and started playing songs on his ukulele, just about managing to be heard above the increasing chatter of nervous troops. He took off his hat and placed it upside down on the table, and occasionally people would throw a scrap of food or a nugget of gold in there.
Astro and Shadow briefly flashed into view as Astro stabbed his head and arm into the tent to telepathically grab a small armful of apples. Each of his fingers had an energy-storing ring on them. He shot back out almost as quickly, chatting away to Shadow the whole time. Steve could have sworn he saw them laughing as they did so. He was glad they had managed to smooth things over. A few of the coven mages trailed after them, with Wolfric consulting a tome and bringing up the rear.
Urist sat down across from Voidblade and immediately began to explain a dream he had just awoken from about a mine that went up instead of down. Seth, kitted out in enchanted diamond, sat down as well.
Kay walked by, conversing with Raphoe and Clarke from the Remaining, the latter of which seemed substantially less happy to be a part of the discussion. Kay slowed down to toss a diamond into the upturned hat of ukulele-guy, before returning to his latest attempt to prove to Clarke that Destiny hadn’t wasted her effort on him.
Rose also stopped by to remind Steve that she might need a lift between airships on the back of Drake. She proposed several signals but eventually they just agreed to use the radios Fire had cooked up with the detective guy.
At that moment, a booming laugh sounded out.
“You can’t be serious! Steve, get over here!”
Several individuals turned their heads, but Steve Brine immediately knew he was the recipient. Across the room, clad in obsidian and beckoning to him, was Herobrine. The glowing-eyed giant of a man stood next to the ukulele-guy. Steve shot Jennifer an uneasy look and then went over.
“How can I help?” Steve asked.
“Your surname’s Brine, isn’t it? My equivalent’s your father, am I right?”
“Yeah?”
“You’ll never guess who this man is,” he gestured to ukulele-guy.
Out of politeness, he tried, but he really couldn’t recognise a single feature of the blue-eyed, brown-goateed musician. Steve felt like he was in a bad dream. Not exactly a nightmare, but one that was unpleasantly weird in just enough ways it might actually wind up traumatising him a little more in the long run.
“Who is it?”
Ukulele-guy rose from sitting to a dramatic kneel.
“It’s your awesomest uncle and/or son of all time!” He exclaimed. “Dinnerbone!”
“Who?” thought Steve.
“No way!” said Steve with feigned enthusiasm.
Just to make matters worse, Herobrine brought them both into a profound bear-hug.
“Travel between worlds is mad!” chortled the man who looked distressingly like Steve’s former archnemesis.
“You’ve got that right,” he grunted, straining against Herobrine’s massive arms.
Thankfully, Tyron arrived just in time. Today he wore a full set of diamond armour over his fur, engraved slightly to indicate his rank. An opening had been made in the lower back to allow him access to the blue portal of his inventory. Kir sat in a jewel-encrusted scabbard on his hip, lined with velvet on the inside for their comfort.
“Hey, Steve! We’re leaving, I need you with me!” he called.
“Rescuing you,” Kir explained in the telepathy equivalent of whisper-shouting. “Be cool.”
“Dragoknight!” called Herobrine, “Don’t you see the cross-dimensional family resemblance?”
Tyron squinted for a second. He resolved to humour the literal god.
“Oh yeah,” he nodded. “That is cool. Listen, sorry, Clarke says they’re holding the memorial-funeral thing in the next fifteen minutes. We’ve got to get over to David’s grave.”
Steve remembered how he had tried to dig the grave, but the hole he made in the ground had been too cavernously big, leaving Tyron and Fristad to actually do the job. Suffice to say, this did not make him feel more comfortable, but he was glad to have an excuse.
But, of course, ukulele-guy had to speak up.
“Is the demon-kid going to be there? Warnado125?”
And, of course, Steve’s stupid brain made him say: “Yes, I think so.”
“Good, I need to talk to him.”
“Oh,” Tyron half-groaned. “What about?”
“I’m from his world, I heard about all this from one of the emissaries you were sending out in the name of some ash-king guy. Glad to hear he’s not around anymore, he sounded weird.”
Steve felt his blood pressure reach as high as the sun then loop around it.
“Long story short, he’s one of the heroes of this thing called the Dark Prophecy,” Dinnerbone stopped and pointed to Herobrine. “You’re part of it actually!” Then, to Steve. “You too, come to think of it. Kind of.”
“Small multiverse!” howled Herobrine.
“But yeah, he’s a hero of the prophecy, I’m getting the vibe that things are heating up. Jeb’s been acting real weird, apparently the Lich got out a while back. It’s probably best if the little guy starts making his way to Notch Island, and it’s probably best if he hears it from me. I’m kind of the loremaster where I come from.”
“I would also like to come along,” began Herobrine. “To pay my respects to the woman who-”
“No,” all three said in unison.
“Yeah, sorry buddy, part of the kid’s job is beating you,” said Dinnerbone. “Well, like, another you. It’ll be weird just having you in the background, kind of worried about sending him mixed messages you know?”
“And the funeral’s being run by people who fought a war to kill you,” pressed Tyron.
“And won,” Steve concluded through gritted teeth.
“Ah, I see. In which case, I’ll see you on the front line. My condolences.”
He excused himself and left the tent, barely looking fazed at all.
And with one final pained look, the three of them departed to say farewell to their fallen comrade.
###
The funeral went as well as it could have, from a personal perspective. I kept my distance. I tried to look appropriately solemn, but not devastated in a way that might distract from the primary mourners - the Remaining. And I developed a very good opinion of them out of it, even if they all rightly distrusted me.
They just buried those belongings of Destiny which they could find. A broken gold locket. A tattered bow. A hair tie Kami remembered lending her for her ponytail. Then Clarke sang a song. He sang it rather well. The odd fellow in the black hat probably shouldn’t have started strumming along, granted, but Clarke took it in stride. Lupe stared at David’s grave for a while, whispering something, and we all pretended not to notice. Then, it ended.
Now, I found myself patrolling the camp, occasionally being approached by one of the red-scarved men upon whom I have imprinted the likeness of my failure. No practical questions, just reaffirmations of loyalty. I tried to admire their fidelity. After all, they refused to believe the worst of what was said. It’s not their fault it was true. I hoped I would be able to lead them to some degree of victory in the coming battle.
I caught a glimpse of Helix talking to black-hat. He looked upset. I recalled the era where I might have been the person to comfort him. Or at least, to accost black-hat for distressing him. I began to walk forward. The skin of my finger caught in the cracked glass of the goggles, and blood snaked across the surface. I had not realised I had even reached for them. I backed away, then turned and saw Him.
His eyes shone even against the slow-rising morning sun behind, pale and cool. He strode toward me, inevitable as a roaring tide. Still, I turned, trying to escape Him. I rushed towards a gap between two tents, made it most of the way down, and then it appeared before me.
The Wraith, the ragged ghost who wandered while He slept, stood before me. Its eyes shone a searing dark shade atop its brittle, twig-like form. Desiccated, dirty, and ragged, it stared at me. I knew there was nowhere to run to.
Herobrine approached from behind.
“Kay.”
“My lord.”
I turned and bowed. I dared not look up, but I heard His footfalls, heavy with obsidian, thunder forward like a distant storm. When the toes of His armoured boots finally came into view, Herobrine took a hold of my chin and began to pull my head up. I tried to resist, but then gave in. His pale, cool eyes shot into view. I felt the blood in my body turn tail and begin to run in the opposite direction, away from whatever punishment this was about to become.
And he didn’t say anything. Until:
“We should have done better.”
“No argument here.”
He sighed and ran his knuckles down the fabric of the nearest tent. A gust of wind set it rippling against Him, like tremors in the earth. I could have sworn I saw the light in his eyes flicker. His mouth kept opening and closing.
“Your speech gave me much to think about…”
I straightened into a stiff, military posture. Not confrontational, but unwilling to bow.
“I assure you, you’re putting more thought into it than I did.”
He continued, making a point of pretending not to hear me.
“...I have often wondered what might have happened if I had kept you from leaving. Whether I might have prevented what came next…”
“...But, of course, I couldn’t have stayed-”
“-Because of the Thaumlands, I know.” He lifted his hand from the tent and put it on my shoulder. I drew back.
“You would have had to act fast,” I continued. “There are already many things I wish someone had prevented.”
I heard the crack of glass as Helix dropped the goggles again and again. “You piece of ****!” Astro howled in my ear once more, and my jaw ached in agreement.
“Perhaps,” he nodded. “And I would have had to stop the burnings.”
I waited for him to justify them. A necessary sacrifice, to show the Court of Whispers how strong we still were. ‘Look at us, we have lost Notch, and we are still powerful enough to turn on our allies without fear of you.’ And it had worked. The Court of Whispers had seen how strong they still were, and had slipped back away into unsettling obscurity.
“It was supposed to be a bit of posturing to discourage the Endlings, and maybe it achieved that. We did a lot of posturing at that time, so it’s hard to say what worked and what didn’t. But truth be told my family were still angry at us for the Onslaught. For spilling so much Divine blood. For making them look weak. And I was tired, and grieving, so I let them inflict that anger on my people.”
I felt tears coming to my eyes. At last! Honesty.
“Jeb is my nephew, I love him dearly, but he is making the errors of his father, and I am making the same errors I made back then. When Notch cursed my people for the Golden Revolution, instead of trying to undo it, I entered my slumber. Jeb burned their land, and still I slept. I will not fight him, but this must change. Thank you for waking me.”
He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. I did not draw away this time. I threw my arms around his mighty form. He who I had fought for had returned. But could His Lap Dog still be recovered? Could I break free from the chains of history written-yet-unlived?
“Do you think I can change what is to come, my lord?”
He moved from my shoulder to stroke my mane of hair. He didn’t say anything.
“By the mods, I swear that I shall,” I hissed.
My streaming eyes drifted to the Tower, blazing in the sun - a cleansing fire that would redeem me.
###
Compared to the other division leaders, Fire’s role as leader of the Mencur-Besh was less involved, at least to outside onlookers. Where others gave instructions and did last-minute rehearsals of battle plans, Fire had flown upwards using his flaming wings, overlooking the troops.
In reality Fire’s task was just as difficult, thousands of information fragments from the Mencur-Besh network flashed through his mind each minute. Assuming the position of leader had placed him right at the center of the collective’s shared mind. The number of sensations and information was staggering but Fire was still able to keep up, no doubt owing to how long he had been part of the network, the thoughts were almost like his own.
The Mencur-Besh collective was currently considering the ideal strategy to take for the upcoming battle, the overall consensus was that they should be fighting at the very forefront. This way they could take the brunt of the enemy attacks without putting the remaining troops at risk. Naturally some Mencur-Besh would stay behind, particularly the Ender-aligned ones would reinforce the Shelter’s mages.
Once the strategy was finalized, Fire gave the order for the collective to fully link up. Over the course of a few seconds the frequency of the information fragments crossing Fire’s mind increased hundredfold, then suddenly stopped. Fire could feel the presence of the consciousness that had now formed from the individual minds. He was no longer listening to messages in a distributed network, he was now in contact with a singular being.
He transmitted a request for a status report.
The Mencur-Besh replied: “This is larger than what I was after I first came here. I am something more.”
Fire internally chuckled and sent back: “Welcome to being a full consciousness. Do you want a name?”
The reply came with equal amusement: “No, for now my designation as Mencur-Besh will suffice. I will think about a name once a more permanent arrangement is found. I am aware that I can not remain like this if I return home. Once we do, do not trouble yourself with the matter, you have already guided me to this point, I am confident that someday I will find a way for myself.”
Fire said: “That is good to hear. I assume we can expect unprecedented feats of coordination in the upcoming battle?”
The Mencur-Besh answered: “Certainly. I may lose many bodies, but the collective will always survive.”
No more needed to be said. Now that Fire’s thoughts were freed up, he took in his surroundings again. Off in the distance the Tower dominated the horizon, impossibly tall and ever-branching. Droves of soldiers were already in position all around the outer perimeter, occasionally an artillery piece could be seen sticking up between the masses of bodies.
Closer to Fire were the Shelter’s soldiers, roaming around inside the fortifications and getting themselves ready for battle. A bit further away were Shadow’s mages, who still very much were the Coven, but had lost all of the hostility they apparently held, only some grudges against Kay in particular remained. Shadow was there too, giving some last instructions and making sure everyone was up to snuff on their spells.
Fire had seen the Sunbeam before, both through Claw’s eyes from a distance and during the final training sessions Shadow held with the Coven before departure. Of course, he’d also seen it many times before that, the Sunbeam and many other group-cast spells were originally Mencur-Besh creations that Shadow had adapted for casters that were not mentally linked. He’d see the Sunbeam again soon, it and a handful of other spells that the Coven had practiced in the meantime.
As Fire flew over to the mages it seemed like Shadow was done with her instructions, she levitated upwards to join him in the sky.
“Everything ready?” Fire asked.
Shadow smiled. “As ready as it can be. I see the Mencur-Besh also linked up, it was quite fascinating to look at while it happened, I don’t think I have ever seen magical energy patterns like that.”
In the days between his return and now Fire and Shadow hadn’t gotten to talk much, they had each been too busy with their respective responsibilities. Fire didn’t exactly want to talk to his sister about a certain topic, but he knew that they both needed to.
It seemed that Shadow thought the same, she began: “So, about my whole… Void apocalypse situation. I don’t know why it happened, something about losing you just, I don’t know, it did something.”
Fire nodded. “When the Entity tried to absorb me, it stopped once it found you in my memories, it seemed to understand that killing me would result in you being overtaken by the Void. Then, when it gave me my memories back it let slip a fragment of its own perception. It was like looking at myself, but I was like a big snarl of strings with one going off into the distance.”
Shadow didn’t answer for a few seconds, deep in thought. “I saw something similar, back when the Prophet died. I saw strings too, one of them pointed towards the Entity. The strings somehow point out causal relationships, but other than that I don’t know.”
Fire sighed. “I suppose we can investigate further once this is done. Are you still able to access your Void magic?”
“Yes, it’s a little more difficult but I can still do it. I probably won’t use it during the battle, seeing what happened last time. Still, good to have it as an option.” Shadow paused. “So, what about you? You seem to have perfected the wings, with them not melting your armor.”
Fire said: “I wouldn’t quite say perfected, but they work well enough. I still have a little less than half of my initial energy, so it should last through the battle. I will fight with the Mencur-Besh at the frontlines, but I will watch out for myself, I know what is at stake.”
Shadow gave Fire a smile. “I know you will.”
Fire remembered something. “So, Shadow. I hear you captured the Entity’s zweihander?”
The obsidian sword materialized in Shadow’s hand, then handed it to her brother. Fire took it and swung it around. The blade was perfectly balanced and roughly the right size for him. He could definitely work with this.
Fire took a deep breath and entered an enchanting trance. First, he manifested runes made from densely packed flames, five big ones and several dozen small ones. The enchantment he had in mind was not particularly complex, but it would help greatly. With a low hum he began stabilizing the runes around the zweihander that had floated out of Fire’s hand and was now stationary in front of him.
He slowly added layers to his voice to cement his control over the runes, positioning them around the sword, first the large ones, then the smaller ones around them. The runes shuddered once the final configuration was achieved, prompting Fire to erratically modulate his voice to keep everything in place. With a shout he channeled a large amount of energy into the runes all at once, causing them to violently snap into the sword. Once he was sure the enchantment was successful, he reached out. When his palm touched the handle, he could immediately feel the enchantment attune to his life force, the zweihander was now not just a weapon but an extension of Fire himself. To test this connection, he cast a pyromancy spell that immediately engulfed the blade in flames, extending far beyond its tip. With a quick swing he cast the flames outwards, arcing them across the sky.
With satisfaction Fire let the zweihander disappear into his inventory.
Shadow nodded in approval. “Very fitting, using the Entity’s old weapon against its usurper.”
Fire asked: “Shadow, do you mind teleporting us to the leadership tent? I have a few things to give out.”
“Not a problem.” Shadow said, and the next second they already stood in the aforementioned tent.
As expected, a fair portion of the Shelter leadership was present. The mood was cautiously positive, they had all finished with their respective preparations and were now waiting for the officers lower in the chain of command to report that their troops were ready.
Warnado and Amanda sat in the far corner of the tent, partially hidden behind a large fold in the fabric. Fire didn’t need Shadow’s magic to see the tension in Warnado’s face, but it was clear the quarter-demon did his best to hide it. Astro stood over the central table, energetically going over the blueprints of the Tower’s upper floors Fire had drawn up. Steve, Jennifer, and Tyron sat at the same table, engaged in conversation.
Fire however turned his attention towards Urist, Voidblade and Rose who were standing a short distance away.
He approached them. “How are you holding up?”
Voidblade looked to the other two to speak. Urist replied: “Na bad, na bad. Biggest battle o’ me life ahead, na even tha Great Ancestral Blood Feud’s culmination could hold a candle ta this.”
Rose shrugged. “Job’s the same as ever. Cut up the other guys. Just now I’ll do it high up in the air from the back of a dragon, don’t have those in my world outside of myths.”
Voidblade seemed to have nothing to add.
Fire nodded. “Since I will be using the sword Shadow captured from the Entity, I won’t be using my regular weapons. I thought that I’d give them to you, not just as weapons but as tokens of gratitude for helping me build up to this.”
Fire handed his halberd to Voidblade, who simply said: “Thank you, Fire.”
Next were his set of two daggers for Rose. She seemed positively thrilled at being given even sharper instruments of murder. Finally, Urist received Fire’s mace, which was rather large for the dwarf, but Fire had the feeling that this was an upside from Urist’s point of view, he always did like his heavy weapons.
“Use them well.” Fire said before turning around.
There were two more weapons he had to give away, first his sword, but finding a recipient would prove rather challenging with the number of named-and-important-sword users in their group. The second weapon was his ghast bone bow, he already had a recipient in mind for it.
Just before Fire was about to walk over to the central table, the entrance to the tent was pushed open and through came Lucy, wearing a set of light iron armor, but still with her notebook in hand. She greeted Fire with a quick raise of her hand, but approached the people seated at the table instead.
She said: “Just wanted to quickly report that divisions three through eight are fully combat ready, except for their radios, but they said they’re working on that. Siege engines are also constructed, and artillery will be ready within the next half-hour. Any orders I should relay directly?”
Tyron replied: “Nothing new, we’ll get in touch with the airship crew ourselves. Astro is still looking for a good breach point.”
“Found it,” Astro said with triumph. “We’re going in through the old prison cell - the fancy one.”
Tyron snorted and Lucy noted it down.
And just like that Lucy was gone again, back in the Shelter, she had always kept herself busier than she needed to but here every bit of effort was required.
Fire spoke to Astro directly, but his tone indicated he was addressing all four of the people at the table.
“I still have some weapons I won’t be using during the battle, and I thought I’d give them out to you.”
Now that Fire had their attention, he continued: “My bow will most likely go to Jennifer. I also have a spare sword, but I don’t know if any of you want it.”
Jennifer stood up. “I’ll take the bow if it’s good.”
Fire manifested his ghast bone bow from his inventory. The pure-white bones were etched with deep-blue patterns that slightly reflected the ambient light.
He explained to Jennifer: “It’s made from ghast bones, due to that and its size, it has a high draw weight, but once it’s drawn it takes very little strength to hold the arrow. It’s enchanted to further enhance the speed and accuracy of the shot.”
She nodded and took the bow, drawing back the string, getting a feel for it.
Fire looked back at the other three people sitting at the table, it was time to decide who would get the sword.
Tyron spoke first: “I can hardly replace Kir.”
Steve said: “Excalibur has served me well, but I’m up for dual wielding if Astro doesn’t want it.”
Astro pulled out his sword.
“Amicus used to belong to Kay. I tried to rename it Doloris for a while, but I slid right back into the old name. I think I could use a change, and obviously I would be honoured to wield your sword, Fire. You have been an excellent leader throughout all of this, and I’m sorry if I’ve ever held back from acknowledging that.”
Fire laid down the sword on the table. “Thank you, Astro, I appreciate it. The sword does not have a name, so feel free to give it one.”
Astro returned Amicus to its sheath and took up Fire’s sword. He smirked at Shadow.
“I think I’ll call it… Dodgeball.”
Shadow laughed out in response. “Well played Astro, well played.”
And with that, Fire and Shadow joined the round at the table, making conversation while they waited for the remaining troops to be ready for the assault on the Tower.
###
Warnado sat on a birch-log beam holding up the airship docks. People ran back and forth upstairs, issuing orders, exchanging what might have been their last words, providing some necessary fluff. And it wasn’t just nobodies, a lot of important people were talking and interacting in interesting combinations. Warnado didn’t really care.
“Yeah, you should probably go to Notch Island. Wait, no come back-”
Dinnerbone had kept whispering to him during the funeral, and Warnado had kept moving to a different spot in the crowd. Not because talking during a eulogy was socially inappropriate. If he’d been in a better mood, Warnado would probably have been the one to do something like that. Not to be disrespectful, just to keep things interesting.
Regardless, it bummed him out. If they won today, everyone else would go back home, and he would go off to fulfil the “Dark Prophecy”. While all his friends went on summer vacation, he was stuck going to a summer school where Herobrine was the mean gym teacher.
He looked down at his gauntlet, and readied to reach out with his mind. It was time.
He dodged as a clod of dirt flew up to hit his head.
“Helix! You okay?”
It was Amanda, kitted up for the fight and smirking up at him.
“I am, thanks to my lightning-fast reflexes!” he yelled back down. “What if you’d hit me and I fell off?”
“You can fly, donko.”
“Since when?”
“You’re terrible.”
“Probably.”
Amanda pulled out one of her axes and started climbing the struts up to him like a teenage lumberjack. Warnado’s hand instinctively reached out.
“Hey, be careful,” Warnado said.
“I am.”
“Do it more.” He tried to look away but kept being drawn back. “I worry.”
“Okay,” she laughed.
Amanda climbed the struts and tightrope walked along the beam to him.
“She’s awesome,” thought Warnado.
Finally, she sat down beside him. She reached out for his hand. He put an arm around her and rested his head against hers. He jabbed her with one of his hood-covered horns and quickly corrected, hoping she hadn’t noticed.
“Ow.”
He began to draw away, but she pulled him back in. They both laughed.
“You’re not getting away that easy.”
Amanda drew his attention to two of Astro’s buddies and Steve’s brother, Ozen, talking with Glowstar, the dragon who looked like the backdrop of a planetarium. The dragon was trying to look regal, and up there he was probably pulling it off. However, it wasn’t the world’s biggest walkway and, from down there, Amanda and Warnado could see how tightly his claws were packed together and how hard he was having to clench for the wind not to push him off.
He smiled, but soon looked back down at the gauntlet. Amanda’s eyes followed his.
“Dinnerbone bugging you, huh?”
He considered shrugging, trying not to worry her, but she deserved better.
“That’s a one-word response dripping with melancholy coming right up!”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want fries with that?”
He almost laughed at how funny he was in his own brain, but Amanda spoke and distracted him.
“You know I’m going to be there with you, right? The whole way.”
He felt warm inside and decided now was as good a time as any. He pulled out the necklace of shattered diamond and string. Just as they had seen so long ago in the crystal’s vision, just as he had made it so long before that.
“Yes,” he answered. “I do.”
Amanda lifted it in her hand.
“Is this the same one?”
“Well, I made it the same way. The last one uh…”
He tried to think of a romantic way of saying ‘was stolen by pillaging bandits’.
“Smart enough to make it twice,” she teased. “You really aren’t half as dense as you look.”
He laughed. She handed it over to him and gestured for him to put it on her. He did so slowly, feeling her hair brush against his fingers, and watching the gems roll softly against her neck. He looked up, their eyes met, and it was like a magnet pulled him onward. Their lips touched.
“Say it,” his brain said. “Say ‘I love you’ to her, right now.”
“Kind of busy, bud,” answered Warnado. “Buy yeah, sounds good.”
He pulled back, and he tried to talk but only managed an excited noise somewhere between a gasp and a laugh. He collected himself, opened his mouth to talk, for real this time.
Suddenly, there was a high-pitched squeal in their ears - the communication system Fire had put together with Brit so Kir could finally take a break as the team’s collective Zoom. He winced, as did Amanda.
“Okay, that should be it working. Can you hear me, Lupe?”
It was Kay.
Warnado could have sworn he heard Fire’s voice as though he were on the other side of a very loud room.
“No… on open channel,” came the muffled voice.
“Sorry, I’ll try to fix that,” said Kay. “Is that better?”
Kay sounded approximately 2% louder than before.
“You’re on an open channel, Kay,” said Lucy. “Please move to your allocated frequency.”
“How’s that?” said Kay, demonstrably still in the same channel.
Warnado and Amanda exchanged a look that communicated that they were both slightly horrified, and both enjoying every second of this. They were not the only ones.
“Settle in boys, ‘Clueless with a K’ is back at it again,” muttered one of Astro’s friends, the one with the skull cap… Aaron, that’s what his name was.
“Clueless with a K?!” Steve wheezed into the mic.
“Don’t worry lads,” droned Brit with uncharacteristic wryness. “He’s got ten years to figure it out.”
Warnado heard Astro, who had just been about to speak, choke on his own tongue.
“I mean say what you want,” said another guy, as though he were in a casual conversation. “Everyone knows the Third Legion’s Remaining are the best-looking unit in this army.”
“Clarke, get into your channel,” said a girl.
Amanda craned her neck, her jaw dropped, and then she immediately squealed into her sleeve.
“Kami, you’re right next to him, you don’t need to say it through the mic!”
“I just want people to know I don’t endorse this inappropriate use of army assets. We are so grateful for all the-”
“-Okay, how about now?” Kay said in a climactic return.
“No… now you’re back… open channel,” said Fire from some distance with his usual neutral tone, the only thing betraying his annoyance were some slightly longer pauses.
“He’s on a streak, lads,” said Aaron again.
“Kay, just… Fire adjust the settings,” said Tyron, similarly muffled.
“No, I’ve almost got it.”
“I’m… I can’t get over that nickname,” cackled Steve. “We’ve got to talk some time, let’s grab a drink after this. Urist, keep an eye out for the wine cellar.”
“Aye,” affirmed Urist.
“There we are!” Kay yelped in high-pitched triumph. Everyone winced.
“So, in terms of things to bully Kay for, his nickname is only the tip of the iceberg, and as retribution for him almost killing my ears there, I promise to spill all the beans.”
“Seriously guys,” said Tyron, “This is open, but it’s still a military channel-”
Unfortunately, around that moment, Raphoe decided to break into a version of “When the Saints Come Marching In” adjusted to say “We all know Ashen is our King,” in what he seemed to think was a helpful gesture.
“Don’t worry, I’m heading to the speaker-board,” droned Brit.
“Oh, just so you guys know,” said Ozen over the commotion. “If anyone’s still hungry, we’ve got leftovers in the kitchen. Lots of sandwiches, stew and steak are all gone though…”
“No, seriously, they must have some crazy stuff in there, they have full-on interdimensional trade networks-”
“I just want to be clear I fully disavow all connection to the King in Ash, it was not my idea-”
“...I WANNA BE IN THAT RED SCARF!”
“-and I do not approve of this chant.”
“Hey guys, it’s Dinnerbone here, sorry couldn’t see the button to talk. I’m taking requests if anyone wants to hear a song as we go into battle, I’ll be on frequency one… four…”
Realising the chaos was reaching its peak, and that Brit would definitely reach the speaker-board soon, Warnado flashed a grin at Amanda and as she removed her earpiece, he made his move. He reached deep into himself, leaned close to the mic, and released a continuous, abyssal screech into it.
Amanda leaned against him with her fingers in her ears, crying with laughter as everyone else flailed in confusion.
Then, finally, all the voices stopped.
“There we go,” murmured Brit. “Commander Tyron Dragoknight has the floor.”
“Fun’s over, everyone to their positions, we attack within the hour. Warnado, learn to use your inside voice by the next time you see me.”
Warnado turned to Amanda.
“It was worth it.”
She kissed him again.
“We’d best get going.”
They balanced on the beam. Warnado looked out and for the first time saw the rows and rows of cannons and fighters moving into place, both at the encampment and around the Tower. Airships were already in the sky, a lot of them with the Tower’s insignia on them. He looked down at his gauntlet.
He took her arm.
“Tell her, donko,” said his brain.
“Listen, Amanda,” he saw her face, then he averted his eyes. “I’m going to use the gauntlet out there. Just, be cautious around me.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said with a nod and a concerned, slightly proud smile. “That’s really brave of you.”
He felt a warmth that almost made him feel okay again.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Shut up, brain.”
He looked out again, and saw the Tower glowing, almost burning in the sunlight, like a lighthouse or an old signal fire, luring them in. He grabbed Amanda and flew off in search of Tyron.
“Get ready, tin-throne,” Warnado thought. “Hold on to your seat.”
Arc 7 Showdown (78-89)
Chapter 78: Assault on the Tower (Various)
The sun was already well through its path across the sky when the first horn sounded. It was quickly joined by several others, each with its own unique tone. Only minutes before the armies of the Shelter had stood in line almost motionlessly, waiting for their signal. Now, the soldiers advanced towards their adversaries, knowing all too well that many of them would not see the end of the fight.
A small distance ahead of the rest, the Mencur-Besh collective marched, clad in armour made from their signature dark firesteel. The air around them flickered from the combined heat their bodies gave off, even without sending their muscles into overdrive. Dead in their centre walked Fire, only setting himself apart from the others with the flame-wreathed zweihander he carried.
The main force of the Shelter’s troops followed not far behind, far less uniform in appearance, armour and weapons ranging from iron to diamond, with the occasional exotic material in between. Some of them had been with the Shelter from the start, through all of its ups, downs and sideways, others had only joined under the reign of the King in Ash, or shortly beforehand. They were led by Tyron, who as the leader of the Shelter also held the position of high command. Close to his diamond-clad form were Amanda and Warnado, wielding crossbow and gauntlet respectively.
Moving in from the left and right of the central forces were the recently recruited soldiers from the Vanilla Craft. They all operated as one army, but were still separated into their own units, resulting in a colourful range of emblems, banners and overcoats strewn across their formation. They were officially commanded by Herobrine, but in practice Tyron would call the shots for the ground battle.
Off to the far left was the flanking force under the command of Kay, consisting of the remnants of his own diehard loyalists, as well as the hunters, who were now all fully armoured and equipped. They were accompanied by a detachment of fierce looking pigmen that Herobrine had set aside to reinforce this army.
In the far back were the artillery regiments, cannons and catapults of widely varied design, operated by an even wider range of people, both from the Shelter’s main population and from other worlds. On top of a wooden lookout tower stood Lucy, spyglass in one hand, microphone in the other, fiercely determined to ensure smooth operation.
Mixed into the artillery was Shadow’s Coven, some mages tasked with assisting the conventional artillery with hauling ammunition with telekinesis or with spotting targets. At the far back was the coven proper, robed mages and occasional Mencur-Besh arranged in three large circles. Casters in the middle, channellers around the edges. Shadow herself floated above, acting as a one-woman artillery unit, at least until the gates would be breached, then she had a different task.
Finally, high above the battlefield the airships moved in, crewed by Herobrine’s troops accompanied by the human Eye-and-Claws members, guarded by a small fleet of majestic dragons. Of these dragons, some burned red, others carried patterns like stars and nebulas on their multi-coloured hides, and one rather small one even had the black scales of the End. The airships were outfitted with quickly bolted-on guns to offer some manner of defence, additionally each airship also sported two mages among their crew to conjure barriers to deflect incoming anti-air fire.
On the other side of the battlefield, the disciplined mercenaries of the Tower held their position, strictly separated into their respective companies. The sheer number of them was staggering, still doubling the Shelter’s forces despite the recent reinforcements. Near the middle of the army was General Marcus, the head of the Tower’s Command and Control division now acted as military leader in the absence of the Ender and Claw. The sound of the enemy’s horns had sent the Tower’s army into full combat readiness, final instructions were passed along to soldiers, artillery pieces were hastily crewed, and mages got into position to support their troops.
Behind these cruel ranks, their namesake thrust upwards until it pierced the heavens. Plated with bronze, which glowed orange in the dimming sun, the Tower was tall, and strong and branching, like an almighty tree sprouting from the world, sustaining and overtaking it all at once. Within it were a thousand rooms with a thousand doors, behind one of which the machine lay hidden, which would make all creation a nightmare. And if one gazed up and looked through a telescope at the shattered observatory at the Tower’s peak, one might catch a glimpse of a faintly translucent form with a glowing, toothy grin.
The Shelter’s armies advanced steadily, until some hundred meters from the Tower’s forces they crossed an invisible line. For a split second, absolute silence fell on the battlefield. Then, horns sounded again from both sides, closely followed by artillery fire. The armies charged to clash with each other.
###
“Charge!” Roared Tyron, raising Kir aloft.
Hardly needing the encouragement, the Mencur-Besh charged ahead of them. They moved as one, it was as if they were not separate beings but one being, replicated thousands of times over. Tyron could have sworn that even their footsteps had become synchronised.
Then, mere seconds after, Tyron’s own armies rushed in to reinforce them with all the speed and resolve they had in them. And yet, the second the Mencur-Besh hit the enemy lines they sank right into them, like a stone in water, only seeming to get further and further away.
The yellow-eyed ones arrived first, claws and blades outstretched. Just before they made contact, an orange glow began to rise from between their scales, and they blasted forward like living missiles. Some men died outright, cleanly bisected, others were merely wounded, fewer still stood tall, saved by a clever parry or well-timed dodge.
None were fully prepared, however, because next came the red-eyed Mencur-Besh, strong as stone, easily overwhelming the limb strength of blockers, Fire at their fore. Tyron saw him sweep the Entity’s zweihander forward, hurling out an arc of flame, then vanish into the melee.
The gap between the vanguard and the main body grew larger still. Tyron watched as the Tower’s forces rushed in to fill this vacuum, which was made substantially easier by the arrival of several divisions of furious-looking, black-clad endermen. The Mencur-Besh were fast becoming a rock against which the waves of the sea of Tower troops would crash until it crumbled away. Or, at least, that was what they wanted them to think.
Tyron smirked as he watched the green-eyed Mencur-Besh, larger and bulkier than their compatriots, rally around the vanguard in a living wall. A central body formed within this makeshift fortification, composed of Mencur-Besh of a cocktail of previously unmentioned eye-colours, firing out arrows, potions, and spells. Some Tower soldiers even fell to the sheer heat the mass Mencur-Besh bodies gave off. This would buy Tyron the time he needed. Still, it was a gamble.
He saw as one of the living wall was struck in the chest by a giant with an appropriately large axe, biting through the chestplate and damaging at least one of their hearts. Already wounded from several encounters, the Mencur-Besh simply walked forward and continued fighting, the orange glow between their scales subtly intensifying. They slew the giant who had injured them, then began to make their way through a column of human mercenaries, until an Enderman appeared from behind and plunged a sword into the back of their neck. However, the Enderman’s triumph was short-lived, as the glow rapidly intensified into an inferno and the Mencur-Besh exploded, showering everyone in a small radius in flame and shrapnel.
Finally, Tyron and his forces made it to the front, and began to cut their way through to the Mencur-Besh.
Tyron immediately summoned his stone wings and used them to fly forward and send an Enderman commander flying with his outstretched foot. The startled officer landed at the foot of one of the living wall Mencur-Besh, only just teleporting away before a set of bedrock-like claws plunged into its chest.
Tyron ducked the gold blade of a well-armed pigman, reconstituting his stone wing into a fist as he did so. He shattered this new hand against the pigman’s face. The pigman’s skull buckled under the force of the blow, and he clattered to the ground.
Satisfied, Tyron began to marshal his troops. A division this way to where the fighting was thickest, some combat mages to support them. Two divisions there, where he could see a weak point in their lines. Already they were gaining ground, soon the Mencur-Besh would be able to advance again.
“Look out!” shrieked Kir.
He looked around for the source of the attack, then noticed the pistons pulling the ground away beneath him. He landed on his feet, three blocks down, when he heard the hiss of spiders. Around a dozen of his soldiers had fallen down with him. Red eyes and black legs cascaded onto them, and a flurry of arrows shot up to the surface.
He swung Kir and hacked the legs off one spider, toppling the skeletal rider flying into the ground. He heard the sound of scattering bones. He struck again and shattered a skeleton’s bow, sending them out to the surface in a relatively harmless state. A large black mass slammed into him, and suddenly he was pinned to the ground.
Now, he found himself forcing back the mandibles of the largest spider he had ever seen. An armoured skeleton looked intently down at him, its jaw clacking in what Tyron had to assume was laughter. It had a crossbow trained on his head.
In a fit of irony, a crossbow bolt slammed right into the rider’s jaw, knocking it straight off. A second shot crushed the skull altogether. Tyron angled to stab Kir into the spider’s head, but it kept biting harder, fiercer, and closer to his face. Rathina gave him the opening he needed. She dropped down and slashed the beast’s abdomen open, and he thrust straight forward as it reared back, and it moved no more.
He wanted to kiss Rathina then and there, but there was still the horde to contend with. Thankfully, Seth and Warnado rushed forward and began to fight back the spider riders, giving him a moment to think. Seth wielded his diamond sword with mastery, and Warnado had summoned the energy weapon he called a ‘chainsaw’. He looked up and saw Amanda firing her crossbow again and again, downing rider after rider, but equally, he saw two combat mages he knew had experience with earth magic. He also noticed a nearby fast-builder he had recently supplied with a large quantity of TNT.
“Hold the line here,” Tyron ordered.
“Bold new strategy,” said Warnado as he mowed down another spider. “I’ll take it under advisement.”
Tyron rolled his eyes, summoned his stone wings, and flew up to the two wizards and the builder.
He saw the battlefield. The riders hadn’t completely disrupted the Shelter’s army, but they certainly weren’t helping matters. He saw a lot of dead spiders and shattered skeletons, but also a lot of their own corpses. A similar opening had been created in the midst of the Vanillan lines, And Tyron could see a large shield-wall had been created by the Legion to fend them off. Ahead of the line, he saw the warriors of the Brotherhood and the Vangaardian knights pushing down into the spider’s den.
The Mencur-Besh were holding strong, killing at least a dozen Tower mercenaries for each one they lost, but it was clear they were taking heavy fatalities. Somewhere out near the front Fire’s zweihander flashed into view.
Meanwhile, as discussed, Kay had skirted around the edge of the Tower’s main body and gone straight for the wall. He had two fast-builders attempting to construct a large stone staircase up the wall with considerable success. Unfortunately, their efforts were being diverted by a large detachment of defenders who had taken notice of them and decided they didn’t like that plan one bit.
“Shadow, we need a sunbeam!” Tyron heard Kay roar into the leadership channel.
One of Shadow’s scryers responded: “We see you, Sunbeam coming up in fifteen seconds, brace!”
Tyron landed and saw the mages he needed. He waved over Amanda and the fast-builder.
“You two, with me, we’re closing this trench.” The mages, one man and one woman saluted and awaited further instructions. “Amanda, take the fast-builder and protect him while he sets up some TNT. Drop the charges just as we set up the plug.”
Amanda took the builder by the arm, equipping her axe and striking at any opponents who crossed their path. Off near the wall, the Sunbeam plummeted from the skies, slamming right into the heart of the force attacking Kay. Tyron was momentarily awestruck by the sudden flash of light and immediate rise of smoke, even stronger than it had been at the Battle of the Hill, then turned his attention to the pit spitting spider riders onto the battlefield.
A spider had bitten Seth on the arm, but he kept fighting just as fiercely. Rathina continued to slash away with her daggers. And, just as a spider knocked Warnado back, dissipating his chainsaw, a flash of deep, purple demon-fire shot forth from his gauntlet, consuming both steed and rider immediately. But despite their efforts, the arachnid cavalry just kept coming.
A quick glance confirmed that the builder had set up a row of TNT and that he was ready to light it at any second. So, Tyron and the mages channelled their will and collectively began to shift the earth to seal up the opening.
Warnado, Seth and Rathina backed away as a thick wall of stone began to push through dirt and pistons, attempting to put a literal lid on the spider jockeys. The charge began to halt, and some riders began to quickly scurry up the wall and attempt to escape. However, whenever they made it to the topside they were quickly slain by volleys of arrows.
Just before the opening was completely closed, the builder lit their row of charges, sending them tumbling into the depths. The stone lid reached the surface just in time for a white flash, a smell of sulphur, and several consecutive booms to escape.
With the immediate threat neutralised, Tyron ordered a renewed advance. However, just as he did so, he noticed that the Mencur-Besh were also moving forward, more slowly and deliberately this time, straight towards General Marcus’ honour guard.
###
Rose leaned back as much as the flagship’s crowded cabin allowed. Right behind her the motor driving the propeller gently hummed, a far cry from the smoking and sputtering motors she knew from her home. It wasn’t her first time flying, she’d been on a couple of aircraft when travelling to acquire occult artefacts for her employer. Once, she’d even infiltrated a pleasure-cruise blimp to eliminate some high-society thorn in her employer’s side. It was, however, the first time she’d been part of a fleet, and it definitely the first time she’d been in a fleet escorted by dragons, creatures that her world only knew from myths.
Of the cabin crew she only knew three. The mages Pallas and Danann, Shadow’s direct subordinates, were posted to make sure the ship managed to get close enough for Rose to cut open the Tower’s walls. The third one was Brad and knowing was a bit of a stretch for him, she’d talked with him during the preparations but other than that they were strangers. The blond man was currently standing near her, eyeing the engine to make sure it ran smoothly.
Beneath the airship the battle had begun to rage, while the individual soldiers shrunk to the size of ants, the sheer masses were still impressive. Rose was not used to large-scale warfare, but that’s why she was up here, not down there. The Tower soldiers’ artillery had already started firing but were still well out of range of the airships, so instead they concentrated on shelling the ground troops. Most projectiles were intercepted mid-air by a spell, but some still made it through.
Rose looked to her side towards Brad. “So, you’re one of Fire’s closer friends in your world.”
Brad nodded. “You could say that, not many friendships endure for millennia.”
Rose replied: “In my world immortality is this rare thing, guarded jealously by a select few, it seems to be given out far more generously in yours.”
“Oh, plenty of mortal people in my world too. The only reason we have immortals at all is because we built the world they exist in, it’s not quite real, but real enough.”
Rose pulled one of the diamond daggers Fire had given her from its sheath and looked at her reflection. She’d forgone her usual assassin’s garb in favour of actual armour, which sadly made her whole pre-battle routine moot, no point in half-measures.
She asked: “So, how did you two meet in the first place?”
A fond smile of remembrance flashed across Brad’s face. “Oh, it’s quite the story. Fire has done a lot of things in his life, and at one point he was a pirate. Pirate King even, but that came later.”
Rose snorted with laughter. “A pirate, really?”
“Yes, really. In the early years in my world, I took to sailing, which eventually led to the trade ship I served on to being captured by pirates, not Fire’s pirates, different ones. They recruited me onto their crew, well, press-ganged technically, but I was up for the change of pace. A few years passed until our captain retired and the crew was left looking for new employment.”
“And that’s where you met him?” Rose assumed.
“Exactly, and what a first impression that was. He just sailed into the port with the most magnificent ship I’d seen up to that point, and from that point onward to be honest. It was carved whole from a steelwood tree, the last ship of its kind. Those trees went extinct after a quake collapsed the caverns they grew in. ‘Lich Queen’ it’s called, and when it sailed into the port it was running on a quite literal skeleton crew. Of course, reanimated bones can’t replace actual breathing, thinking crew, so I signed on.”
Rose’s only experience with pirates was, as with many professions, having killed a few on the travels her employer sent her on.
She asked: “So, I imagine you accumulated a lot of plunder in all that time.”
Brad seemed to notice something about the engine, adjusted a few valves, then answered.
“More than that, we controlled the trade, had our own fleet, and even built a thriving pirate town. Fire even managed to domesticate a breeding pair of krakens, which cemented his position as Pirate King, pretty difficult to win a naval battle if your enemy has titanic creatures on his side. Very exciting times.”
Before Brad could spin Rose more tales of his roguish past, a sudden movement went through the soldiers on board of the airship. It originated from Pallas, who now stood with his arms outstretched as a translucent barrier formed around the airship, only to be struck by artillery fire moments later.
Brad yelled: “Battle stations! Man the guns!”
Rose steadied herself on the deck as the airship’s pilot began swerving to avoid being an easy target. Several Tower mages had also levitated closer to the airship and were beginning their own assault. Rose grabbed hold of the nearest gun and looked out for targets.
A mage with burning eyes had taken a course straight for the airship, jets of flame shot from his palms as he approached. Rose took aim and pulled the trigger, firing a barrage of lead at the mage. The first few bullets missed, but once Rose corrected her aim, several struck true. The mage plummeted towards the battlefield below, his torso torn apart by the impacts.
More mages followed, most more careful than their fallen comrade. Shards of ice shattered on a shield projected by Danann, fireballs were scattered as Pallas conjured gusts of wind. A bolt of lightning struck the engine, but that only seemed to make it more eager to propel the aircraft forward.
Other airships weren’t faring quite as well, not all of them had mages of this level of competence defending them, and luck also played a role. However, overall, it seemed like they were going to get through.
Rose fired at a whole squadron of mages that came floating up, looking more coordinated than the earlier ones. She recognized several of the white gowns of the Tower’s elite mages among this group. The gun wasn’t going to do her much good against their shields. Instead, she channelled her own occult gifts. A barrage of steel needles shot forth from her outstretched hand, each imbued with supernatural piercing power.
Three mages took the brunt of the attack and were instantly torn apart as the needles pierced their passive shields. The elite mages redoubled their shielding efforts and now turned their attention towards Rose’s airship. They began charging a spell of their own, but before Rose could wonder what the spell would do, a huge, winged form slammed into the mages from above. The dragon Glowstar had joined the defence of the airships, the other dragons following closely after, swatting the mages out of the sky with their bulk or biting them in half.
Now with the dragons in the mix the Tower’s mages were less eager to attack and instead floated downwards to support their own troops. The airships were quite close to the Tower now, it was time for Rose to fulfil her part of the plan.
She spoke into her radio: “I’m ready for Drake to pick me up.”
Only seconds later, the black-scaled fledgeling dragon pulled up next to the airship, Jennifer already seated on his back, waving Rose over. Rose took a look behind her for a second, Brad gave her an affirmative nod. Rose vaulted over the railing and landed right behind Jennifer.
Jennifer yelled over the high winds: “We proceed as planned, I’ll get you close to the walls, you tear open holes for our ships to unload.”
Rose moved into position behind Jennifer and held on as Drake accelerated forward with rapid flaps of his wings. As they closed the gap to the Tower, Rose could see that some of the windows had opened, barrages of arrows came flying out.
Drake swerved to avoid the first volley, then resumed the approach course. Rose meanwhile shot volleys of sharpened metal in the direction of the archers, more than a few hit their targets. As they got closer, more and more arrows showered them, most either missing or glancing off armour and scales. A few managed to get stuck in Drake’s flesh, eliciting an angry roar and a blast of purple breath directed at the offending archers.
Jennifer spoke words of encouragement to Drake, but Rose was honestly too focused on killing archers to concentrate on what exactly she said.
They had finally come close enough to the Tower for Rose to begin her work. Drake circled tightly around an outcropping to avoid incoming arrows, then Jennifer steered him on course to the first breach site. Rose concentrated, pushing occult energies into her right hand and the dagger that resided in it. Just as Drake passed a large section of Tower wall, Rose let loose.
Three arcs of pure sharpness rushed towards the bronze exterior of the Tower, cutting a triangular shape into it. This opening was promptly used by the non-bisected Tower archers to get a better angle on Drake, landing a few more painful hits.
Now with the first opening made, one of their biggest airships approached, holding their vanguard breach force. Rose had no opportunity to observe the boarding since the next targeted section of wall was coming up, three more cuts and another opening was made.
The archers gradually became less organized as more and more airships approached the Tower and Shelter troops now stormed through the hallways, cutting them down. Rose cut again and again and again, until an entire side of the Tower was riddled with holes.
Now that her primary task was done, it was time for Rose to join the fighting inside. Drake brought her close and she jumped off, landing with a quick roll, throwing a barrage of knives at her immediate opposition.
The part of the Tower they were in now was mostly used for storage of the Entity’s bizarre collections, which was why it had been chosen as their entry point. They’d be able to take over the branch quickly, then push out from there. Behind Rose, more and more airships fell out of the sky, their crew having left them behind to fight in the hallways. It was a risky one-way trip that relied on the success of the ground army, but really, at this point what was a bit of extra risk?
###
Fire pushed himself off the ground forcefully. At the apex of his jump his flaming wings erupted, and immediately propelled him forward, his zweihander held low, ready to strike. Like a comet he descended on the Tower mercenaries’ ranks, sending a wave of scorching flames forwards with a swing of his zweihander. Dozens of enemies fell before him, but before anyone could retaliate, Fire was already halfway back to the relative safety of the Mencur-Besh. He had been doing hit-and-run attacks on the Tower forces ever since they established their position, attempting to strike a balance between offensive effectiveness and his own safety.
A Sunbeam impacted off in the distance, and not too long after muffled explosions rang out from further back. Fire settled back into the Mencur-Besh masses, joining their mages in slinging spells onto the Tower soldiers.
He spoke to the joined mind: “How are our numbers?”
The mind replied: “I lost nine-hundred-thirty-six bodies.”
At this pace they would be wiped out before getting through to the Tower, but Fire had known that from the start. Their plan had not been to win through annihilation, they had a concrete target in mind: General Marcus, the Tower’s acting military leader. He and his personal guard stood near the back of the Tower’s army and the Mencur-Besh were steadily approaching his position. Hundreds of soldiers fell before their blades and claws as they moved through the sea of bodies.
“Requesting several Rockbursts, targets designated through mental link.” One of the joined mind’s bodies spoke through the radio.
Only seconds later, large spikes of stone erupted from the ground below a Tower artillery piece, its guarding mages having flown up to harry the Shelter airships, a mistake that cost them dearly. More spikes erupted all over the backlines, disabling more and more unguarded artillery.
Shadow replied through the radio: “Targets eliminated, circles one and three need to recharge, circle two is on disruption duty. We won’t be able to follow up on target designations for a few minutes. I will personally give fire support in the meantime.”
A blindingly bright disintegration ray impacted in the midst of the Tower army, still carrying enough energy to outright kill several soldiers, even at the extreme range Shadow was casting from.
Fire flew up again, this time he’d need to go further. He accelerated towards the Tower, remaining at a low altitude. As he flew, he bombarded the Tower’s troops with a barrage of fireballs. They had wisened up, arrows were shot in his direction. Fire avoided the barrage with a swift roll, pushing additional energy into his wings to scorch any soldiers below him as he did.
Fire was close enough to be able to see Marcus’ face under his visor, which was still a moderate distance due to his superhuman vision. Before he could approach closer, eight white-garbed mages rose up around Marcus, ready to defend him with their lives. Fire made a sharp turn and flew back the way he came.
He spoke through his radio: “Marcus has elite mages in his personal guard, too many for me to safely take him out on my own.”
Instead of going back down into the Mencur-Besh’s ranks, Fire remained afloat above them. He channelled his life force and bathed the area in front of the Mencur-Besh in flames, allowing them to advance towards Marcus at a faster pace.
Tyron’s voice came through the leadership channel: “We fully neutralized their trapdoor ambushes, coming to join up with you, Fire.”
Not a minute later, Tyron had swooped over the Tower’s soldiers on his stone wings. They both landed to discuss matters.
Fire said: “Marcus is retreating, we have to get him now.”
Tyron nodded. “Agreed.”
Fire weighed his options, he couldn’t directly assault Marcus’ position without placing himself in significant danger, and the Mencur-Besh couldn’t advance quickly enough to catch up with Marcus’ retreat.
Fire spoke into his radio again: “Shadow, how long until we can get another Sunbeam?”
Shadow replied: “Two minutes at least. What do you need it for?”
Tyron seemed to have picked up on Fire’s plan, he radioed: “It’s for Marcus, we absolutely need to get him now or he just goes back into the Tower.”
Fire asked: “What about using circle two?”
Shadow seemed to deliberate for a few moments. “Circle two is charged, but also responsible for stopping enemy artillery. If you think it’s worth it, I can give the order.”
Tyron spoke again: “Jennifer, status of air assault?”
Sounds of fighting came through the radio, then Jennifer replied with ragged breath: “Two thirds of our surviving airship crews have boarded or are boarding the Tower, just the flagship and a few others to go.”
Fire and Tyron looked at each other, then silently nodded.
Fire gave the order: “Maximum power Sunbeam on Marcus, have circles one or three take over disruption once recharged.”
“Fifteen seconds.” Shadow simply replied.
“Fourteen, thirteen, twelve…” Kir chirped methodically in their minds.
Both Fire and Tyron took to the skies again. They both counted down the seconds along with Kir. A glaring light erupted from the sky above Marcus’ position moments before the Sunbeam came crashing down. The moment it made contact, the smoke of burnt bodies and scorched earth obscured their view. This smoke was quickly blown away by a sharp gust of wind conjured by one of the Mencur-Besh mages to reveal…
In the midst of the devastation stood a figure, cowering below a three-by-three block configuration of red-hot obsidian. Marcus was a fast builder! Without exchanging a word, Fire and Tyron flew forwards.
As they closed in, Fire yelled into his radio: “Shadow, dome us!”
Not a second later, a transparent, light-blue wall rose up from the edges of the scorched earth, quickly curving upwards and closing them in. The dome was spacious but not big enough to keep flying. Marcus stopped his frantic retreat and turned to face his attackers. On the other side of the dome, Tower soldiers began hacking at the barrier with their weapons, sending ripples through it. They saw two mages in singed white robes exchange a nod with Marcus and begin their incantations. The implications were clear, they needed to kill Marcus before the dome came down.
Fire went on the offensive first, sprinting towards Marcus with his zweihander ready to strike. But before he could come anywhere close, Marcus had made several hops onto freshly placed obsidian blocks and was now standing on a pillar.
As Tyron re-assembled his wings, Fire shot a jet of flame upwards at Marcus, only to have it harmlessly deflect off yet more obsidian. Fire let the zweihander disappear into his inventory, the orange glow between his scales turned bright yellow as he used his excess life force to supercharge his muscles beyond what was normally possible.
In a single bound Fire leapt up to the top of the pillar, where he was immediately greeted by a sudden flood of water. Once he had his footing, Marcus had already built an obsidian bridge halfway across the dome and was now ducking behind low cover with a bow in hand.
Tyron came barrelling in from the side. Marcus turned towards him and shot several arrows, not even bothering to properly draw back the string. The enchanted projectiles hit Tyron in rapid succession and launched him backwards, smashing him into the dome. Just before Fire was able to reach him, Marcus had already hopped off his bridge, onto a series of shorter pillars he was rapidly building below himself. Fire had to admit, Marcus was good at stalling, which was sadly all he needed to do.
Fire jumped after him but now it was his turn to be ragdolled through the air by Marcus’ arrows. As he got back to his feet, he saw Tyron narrowly avoiding the bucket of lava Marcus tried to dump on him. A quick glance aside told Fire that they were running low on time, the dome’s integrity had suffered greatly.
Marcus had once again gained height. His obsidian staircase went all the way up to just under the dome. He now seemed to be building himself a fortification. Fire sprinted up the rough stairs. The dome could fail any second. Fire materialized his zweihander from his inventory again. It was now or never.
With a cry of effort, Fire channelled even more energy into his muscles. The glow between his scales turned white-hot and flames wreathed the zweihander, time slowed to a crawl. The dome shattered into thousands of pieces just as the blade made contact with the obsidian. The solid volcanic glass shattered as Fire cleaved a large gap into the wall Marcus had built. Marcus was in the process of winding up an ender pearl throw. The tip of the zweihander grazed his chestplate, severely slowed down by the obsidian wall, but still forceful enough to throw Marcus off balance.
The ender pearl slid from Marcus’ hand mid-throw, still well on course towards safety.
“I’ll give you credit, kid, you’re strong,” said Marcus. He grinned. “Claw is stronger.”
He threw himself off the obsidian platform.
However, unbeknownst to Marcus, Tyron had flown after the pearl and used Kir’s flat side to bat it back to where it came from. Marcus reappeared prone on the platform he had just jumped from. Above him was Fire, zweihander raised like an executioner. The blade came down on Marcus, before he could properly realize what position he was in, his obsidian chestplate had already been shattered and his torso bisected.
Fire quietly said: “It seems that this sword’s destiny is to cut down overconfident generals.”
Fire reached down to grab the top half of the fresh corpse, holding him up so that all the Tower’s mercenaries could see: Their leader had fallen.
###
The second Marcus’ corpse came into view, chaos erupted on the battlefield. It was as though a great whirlwind had sucked up the intentions of the Tower’s army and scattered them every which way.
Some battalions with young, idealistic officers found renewed strength in vengeance, and charged forward in another attack on this Mencur-Besh flank, or that phalanx of the Legion. Others instinctively threw their weapons to the side and began to plead for their lives to mixed degrees of success, just as they had done when the late General Marcus had bested their own rulers. To the far left and right flanks, some experienced mercenaries simply saw the bisected Marcus as a contract torn up. His blood was just coin spilling out of a ruptured purse. They quickly moved to evade their Shelter attackers, only fighting so far as it was necessary to get away from them. Only the Endermen seemed unshaken, keeping up their harrying attacks, weaving between Shelter lines and spreading death all around.
But for the majority of the army, encircled by the Vanillans to the left, Kay’s flanking force to the right, and slammed into by the Mencur-Besh and Shelter forces from the front, the only way was back. Back the gate, then beyond that to the Tower. What would they do when they got there? Retreat into it and fight on? Rush past it and flee into the fields beyond? They would decide that when they came to it. The gates opened, and they slowly pulled back through.
And as the Tower ebbed backwards, the Shelter surged on. At the fore of their army, Tyron and Fire fought onward, sending out jets of fire and shards of ice. And just behind them the Mencur-Besh continued their onslaught in looser formation now that they were on the offense.
Seeing the retreat, Shadow gave an order for the circles of her Coven to disperse and relocate closer to the Tower itself. After brief consultation with Fire, Lucy, blonde hair gleaming in the setting sun despite the clouds of artillery smoke around her, marshalled the artillery onward. They moved slowly, trailing behind the rest of the army but sustaining a barrage on the Tower’s walls.
No longer made stationary by the need for powerful spells, Shadow and some of her most loyal acolytes soared upwards in a v-formation, blasting Tower mages out of the sky as they went. The tiny, white-haired mage was a whole arsenal unto herself, surrounded by an ever-replenishing ring of magical orbs which periodically shot out and broke the shield of a nearby mage, then blew a hole through their heart. Occasionally she’d also use her disintegration ray on particularly stubborn opponents, though always careful not to hit anyone behind them.
On the right flank, relieved by the departure of some of the grizzled mercenaries previously mentioned, the forces under Kay Mandy, the disgraced general, managed to complete their makeshift staircase and swarm onto the wall. Hunters threw spears with terrifying accuracy. Pigmen swung gigantic golden swords to break their opponents’ guard, then clamped vice-like jaws down on their necks. These forces began to fight their way towards the gate to place further pressure on the enemy retreat.
A third detachment of this army turned away, towards the nearest gun emplacement. Of these, most wore red scarves, and fought with a uniform brutality. With swords they slashed for the face, then when their enemies were disoriented, struck out with heavy, sharp gauntlets. Every open wound would be targeted. Every exhausted man momentarily losing poise would be thrown to the ground and trampled, friend or foe. Their strategy was all momentum, all the time - a single, continuous punch to the nose of their opponents.
At the very front of their lines was the General himself, orbited by the three members of the Remaining. Kay fought with all the savagery of his men, punching this man across the jaw so hard his teeth flew out, and hacking that man across the leg and leaving him, bleeding, to the wave of men in his wake.
And the Remaining matched his energy easily. Lupe kept direct pace, dodging every arrow and blade which came her way, killing opponents with ease. Even the teleporting Endermen couldn’t give her pause. They would appear and, as though she had been waiting for their arrival, find her sword raking across their scales. Not far behind, Kami’s spells and Clarke’s flames rained death upon the Tower’s forces.
Finally, they were just before the gun. Kay drew back. After much screaming into his sleeve and fiddling with buttons, Kay convinced Shadow to swoop down and cleanly divide the gun’s defenders with a blast of heat. A retreat was sounded, and Kay turned his attention to the now-abandoned artillery piece.
“As we discussed,” he said to Kami.
The mage stepped forward and closed her eyes. She stretched out her palms, and a look of intense effort came over her face. A sound like the roar of some great beast filled the air and the cannon began to lift from the ground, drifting slowly out over the battlefield. Kami, with teeth gritted so tightly they looked as though they might shatter, rotated it until that barrel pointed directly at the Tower troops filtering through the gate. A great many had made it through, but those who remained had solidified into a tightly packed shell that even the Mencur-Besh were struggling to pierce.
Seeing the pain it caused her, Lupe put a hand on her comrade’s shoulder.
“Just one good shot,” she affirmed.
Nodding, Kami clenched her fists and the cannon’s firing mechanism slammed into action. The TNT shell slammed directly into the centre of the retreating army, killing several men, but scattering and wounding a good few more. More importantly, it set a massive crater in the middle of their path to safety.
“C-can I put it down, now?” shivered Kami.
“Sorry, just a few moments more,” Kay said. He mounted the nearest battlements and glared down at the gate’s defenders. “They need to believe we’ll fire again.”
“Kay, you know she can’t do that,” Clarke growled.
“But they don’t,” Lupe conceded with considerable reluctance.
After what felt like an eternity, a white flag rose from the midst of the defenders, and they began to throw aside their weapons. The Mencur-Besh shunted past them, already moving on to their next targets. The Vanillans and the forces of the Shelter followed suit, leaving behind a small detachment to round up the surrendering forces. Kami let the artillery drop, and the General thanked her stiffly.
Meanwhile, the retreating Tower force had split up upon reaching their namesake structure. The main entrance was only large enough for so many of them to fit through, so some attempted to reach the other entrances to the left, right and on the far side. Others took up positions among the storage and energy generation buildings, readying to launch hit-and-run attacks on the conquering army as they came, ready to repay Fire for his own tactics. Bowstrings stretched, and as the Mencur-Besh passed them, the arrows were let loose. Still, even as some of them fell, they advanced undaunted, and their formation proved almost unbreakable.
Overhead, the last few airships began to fall away, as the dragons and mages continued their frenetic dogfights. Here a red-scaled dragon’s jaws would crush through the shield of a frightened mage. There, the Tower’s forces regrouped and shot down a dragon or a transport.
Only one airship remained undocked, the largest of them all. A tree with a burning sword through it loomed on the side of its balloons. This was the flagship, carrying the wizard Astro, the adventurers Steve Brine and Jennifer, and Herobrine himself. Finally, after several attempts, an opening large enough was made, and it slammed its hull forward, a complex series of pistons designed by the Eye-and-Claws readying to open it up and allow its troops to charge forward.
This went almost unobserved on the ground, however, as the falling airships were redirected by Shadow and her mages to crash into Tower holdouts. The balloons slowed their descent and limited the damage they would do to the structures themselves, but their size made them intimidating enough that even many of the boldest officers relocated further back just to be safe.
The Mencur-Besh reached the massive staircase up to the main entrance and began methodically clearing through the remaining defenders. They were soon joined by the Shelter and the Vanillans, and this united force pushed firmly up the stairs. Now, the charge was led by Fire, Tyron, and Kay, battling fiercely through this last line of defence. With every step, and every successful swing, their sense of triumph swelled, forcing them onwards. And yet, simultaneously, their trepidation seemed to grow greater and heavier, as they realised that inside would be a harder fight still. Miles of endless rooms and corridors, each packed with crueller traps and fiercer defenders.
At the top of the stairs, a small swarm of mages lay in wait. They had their shields clustered around a white-robed witch as she attempted to fuse the colossal, metal doors together.
Fire, Tyron and Kay came face to face with this group and readied to square off. Kay flourished his sword and drew a dagger from his flank to accompany it. Tyron formed a spike of ice around one of his fists. Fire ignited the blade of his zweihander in a continuous inferno. And the mages in return fortified their shields, summoned spectral weapons, and prepared mighty bolts of lightning.
They heard a clanging noise. A metal cylinder clattered onto the ground between them. Immediately recognising this, Kay and Tyron covered their eyes, and Kir warned Fire to do the same, though he already seemed to know what was about to happen.
“Flash out!” a voice shouted from above.
The cylinder exploded and the top of the staircase was consumed by blinding light. The mages were completely blinded and deafened, leaving them open to attack, and the Shelter’s three commanders weren’t in much better condition despite their last-minute precautions. They heard a light thud as someone landed in front of them, then the snap of a crossbow being fired. A sound like glass breaking followed, and the mage nearest the centre dropped dead.
Fire’s eyes cleared just in time for him to see it. Warnado, a fiery purple warhammer held over his head, landed where the dead mage had once stood. The white-robed witch turned with tears streaming from her still-dazzled eyes and raised a shield. With his red eyes gleaming, and his teeth bared in a wild grin, Warnado brought the hammer down. There was another intense flash as the hammer made contact. Deep, purple demonfire swept out in a circle, overpowering the disoriented mages completely. The fire dissipated and Warnado stood alone, leaning against the door and tapping his foot.
“So, are we cracking this baby open or not?” he asked.
Tyron and Kay walked up and inspected the door. It was pretty clearly fused together, but with enough force it would buckle. They returned and took up their positions to the left and right of Fire respectively. Warnado and Amanda stood just behind Fire, momentarily allowing their hands to touch.
A glance back revealed many noteworthy faces. Seth and Rathina trash-talked each other, hyping up their competitive spirit before the battle. Lupe examined her sword as Clarke and Kami did stretches. Ryan, administrator of the Vanilla Craft, twisted his staff in his hands. Tauto Chrone of the Brotherhood muttered his mantras beneath his steel mask. Wolfric the mage thumbed through his spell book for one last incantation he might need.
Far behind them, Lucy rallied the Legionnaires and the artillery corps into a rear-guard. For the moment, the hit-and-run attacks had ceased, but between the buildings flashes of movement could be seen as the Tower forces regrouped.
Fire stood before the gate, waiting for his sister to arrive. She was essential to finding and disabling the machine, which lay somewhere deep beneath their feet. There was no point attacking until she was there. Finally, she drifted down from the sky and came to rest before him.
“Ready?” Fire asked.
Shadow nodded. “Let’s go save the multiverse.”
Chapter 79: Desperate Rally (General Issa)
Issa ran through the halls, assailed by a cacophony of radio and telepathic messages.
“Enemy flagship preparing to breach,” the speaker crackled in her left ear. “Reallocating forces to deal with anticipated incursion… Possible instance of archetype designated ‘Herobrine’, please conduct identification procedures so we know what we’re dealing with...”
“Regrouping for attempt to retake the Inner Compound,” croaked an enderman general in her right. “Unable to ascertain which mercenary units have deserted and whether they may still be a threat. Please advise.”
“Confirming reports,” recited one telepath within her mind. “General Marcus is dead. Recovery efforts have thus far proven ineffective.”
The tower’s head of reconnaissance rapidly scribbled down responses, handing them out to various aides with instructions to individually contact the relevant units. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue, she always had a cloud of reports and requests following her during any major operation, but with Bul dead, Claw MIA, the Ender apparently turned traitor, and the Entity pushing its already reclusive nature to new extremes, she was bearing the whole weight of military intelligence on her shoulders.
“Efforts to seal the main gates were successful despite high casualties. Breach anticipated shortly, please advise as to status of reserve troops.”
Then, another aide approached and directed her to a radio, from which a lesser officer could be heard screaming: “Storage Wing Delta is compromised - our defences aren’t doing anything! She’s cutting right through the walls!”
Issa lifted her head.
“What is in Storage Wing Delta?”
“Entity’s personal collection - broken music disks, mostly. And hats, so many hats.”
Issa groaned and lifted the receiver.
“See what you can do about drawing enemy attention to Storage Wing Delta. The busier they are there the less progress they’re making on the important stuff.”
“Will do, General Issa.”
She shook her head and dispelled the crowd of aides, walking straight to the conference room at the end of the hall. Forgelight wanted to talk to her. With a deep breath, she threw the double-doors open.
General Forgelight stood on the opposite side of the table, head bowed, and fingers splayed across its surface. He was a gigantic man with stern eyes and a firm, square jaw. As leader of the Tower’s Command & Control unit, he had spent the last decade governing the Tower’s holdings outside Nexus, spreading the good news of the unity and infrastructure the Tower would bring. Issa prayed he had brought some good news home with him.
There was also a crystal ball apparition of Archmage Wisp, shaking with rage. A small circle of lesser leaders surrounded them, all in various states of concern.
“He cannot be allowed to get away with this,” seethed the wizard. “Today of all days he cannot simply decide to-”
Forgelight cut across him with a voice like a grim steamroller.
“-He has, Wisp, and we shall deal with that shortly. Issa, what’s our situation?”
“Marcus confirmed dead, incursions imminent on main hall and upper floors. Efforts are being made to encircle them in the inner compound, but desertions and high casualties have hampered our attempts to regroup.”
“So, ‘awful’ is the word of the day, is it?”
Issa smiled.
“Pretty much.”
Forgelight straightened his hair and turned away from her. He fixed his eyes on a landscape painting of a mountain range made of gold and glass.
“They have us on the ropes, friends,” he boomed. “But time is on our side. Dr. Mercury is making the final adjustments to the machine as we speak. Once it is activated, there will be nothing they can do to stop the convergence of worlds. In short, they will have lost - that is when we will be able to crush them completely. Our tactics should therefore not focus on outright repulsing the rebels, but on delaying them.”
Issa nodded.
“How do you plan to slow them?”
Forgelight turned to face them, brushing his eyes across everyone present. Even the illusory Wisp seemed to momentarily bend under the weight of his gaze. He clapped his hands, and a servant ran out into the hall.
“Our holdings are vast, and our vassals are loyal. I have not gathered nearly as many as I might have liked at such short notice, but I was able to pick out the best.” He returned his gaze to the vast double-doors.
Boom! The doors opened so rapidly they slammed into the walls and came away rattling. Standing in the centre were four figures.
“Meet your champions!” roared Forgelight.
He first pointed to the creature which had presumably enabled this dramatic entrance. A colossal, grey beast thundered its way in, each of its four legs as thick as a tree. Its huge, rectangular head bobbed up and down like a mighty warhammer. Iron bands large enough to shield a giant wrapped around its legs and shoulders. And on its back a small, grey-skinned villager sneered.
“The emissary from the Illager people of World 1110, who successfully rose up and overthrew their oppressors in the Overworld, Nether and End. A people committed, as we are, to the prosperous unification of all under one. He shall help to defend the Entity’s chambers and the activation mechanism.”
To the left stood a tall, skeletal creature with luminous green eyes and a long staff glowing in the same hue. A crown sat on its head, adorned with faded jewels. And around its neck hung a tattered cloak which still glinted with royal purple. It had no legs, instead hanging suspended in the air like a mutilated puppet.
“The Nameless One, ruler of World 720, otherwise known as the Land of the Slain Sun. He has been a valuable ally for several years, providing us with a ready supply of mobs for combat and testing purposes. And, as Archmage Wisp can attest, The Nameless One possesses a knowledge of sorcery to rival even his own.”
The Archmage narrowed his eyes and cocked his head at the skeletal lord. The Nameless One simply gazed into the light of its staff, ruminating upon its mysteries.
And then there were the last two. A pair of warriors clad in near-identical grey armour, the only difference being that the shorter and slighter of the two wore a stiff purple cape which seemed to split in two - unless… were those wings? On closer examination one was a man with brown hair and a beard, the other was a redheaded woman. The man pulled out a glowing, golden apple and took a bite, cocking his eyebrow defiantly as the definitive swirls of regeneration and fire resistance potions began to rise off him.
Forgelight bit his tongue before introducing them, and a distinctive wrinkling of his nose clued Issa into his thoughts. These last two weren’t vassals, they were mercenaries or some other ideological traitors who did not believe in the perfect union of worlds for which Forgelight fought.
“This is Steve and Alex. They have a… let’s say a personal stake in this.”
Suddenly, a row of words appeared in front of the man in a sharp, angular font. His mouth remained closed, and his eyes burned with anger.
WHERE IS THE LESSER STEVE?
Forgelight cleared his throat.
“You shall be informed shortly, though his companion, Jennifer, was sighted accompanying their airfleet-”
He drew an axe and a shield and stormed off down the corridor. Alex lingered a moment, loading a rocket into her crossbow, then after a cursory glance at the assembled leaders, wordlessly left.
Forgelight seemed a little deflated after this but recovered himself.
“We thank you for your loyalty,” he said to the remaining champions.
Once they had left, Archmage Wisp spoke up.
“That’s all well and good, but a few curios from the colonies-”
“-They are not colonies,” warned Forgelight.
“Sorry, a few loyal vassals are useless in the face of the Ape’s betrayal.”
Issa looked sharply at Forgelight.
“What’s he talking about?”
Forgelight sighed and gestured for her to follow. He hefted his colossal shieldaxe from his chair.
“A situation I am about to put an end to.”
As they turned the corner and briskly marched toward a nearby hall, Forgelight explained what had happened. When the first reports of a retreat came through, Glibby had immediately pledged to withhold his troops until he was recognised as the Ender’s rightful successor in essence, that he be recognised as commander of all endermen in the Tower in addition to those he had already convinced or forced to defect.
“What does the Silhouette have to say about this?” Issa asked.
“He claims to be acting at his behest,” growled Forgelight. “We should never have trusted that crook…”
They entered the hall where Glibby was based. A few days ago, it had been a banquet hall. Now the tables had been pushed aside to make room for crates of weapons and armour. Hundreds of endermen moved between them, all of them with grey paint smeared over the scales of their chests, in memory of the original Grey Ones. Even now, Issa saw unmarked endermen sitting, waiting to receive the mark. She couldn’t fathom the reasoning. Was it fear of Glibby and the reprisals he had enacted after the Ender’s attempted coup? A desire to escape the frontlines with news being as bad as it was? Had they been seduced by the wealth of the Silhouette? Whatever it was that had moved them, they needed these troops back in the fight, fast.
At the end of the hall, Issa saw a hulking shadow standing on a balcony - The Ape himself. He had his obsidian armour on, and now one of his heavy boots was planted on a parapet. He grinned wildly as he tracked a red-scaled dragon across the sky.
“Pass me a bow!” He shouted.
A shrivelled young enderman carried him a longbow almost as tall as Issa. He picked it up and began to strain against the string, one eye scrunched shut. Then, when he could pull no further, he let it loose. The arrow struck true, catching the dragon in the flank. Glibby cheered and raised the bow above his head. However, his grin quickly subsided as he saw the dragon right itself. It made a beeline for the balcony.
“Huskers,” he grunted. “Handle it.”
An old man with glassy blue eyes hefted a long metal firearm against his shoulder and pointed it calmly out at the dragon. He sucked in a long, soft breath and squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit the dragon through the left eye. It plummeted. The Ape turned his head and saw Issa and Forgelight coming. He quickly corrected his dour visage and roared with laughter.
“This is hunting!” he declared.
A man in a pin-striped suit, and another whose very skin seemed to be made of diamond armour made sure to cheer half-heartedly before returning to their conversation. Satisfied at this declaration, Glibby sauntered down from the balcony towards Forgelight and Issa. The two Generals remained silent as the Ape began to speak.
“That’s what Claw might say at least,” The Ape sneered. “Is that what it would take to get some modicum of respect from you? A hunter’s prowess?”
The man in the suit shot a wild grin at Issa, flashing a mouth full of purple, metal teeth. Issa shuddered.
“Is that why you refused to acknowledge my rightful office, Forgelight? After all I did to restore order in the aftermath of the Ender’s coup, did you and Marcus decide to slight me simply because I do not boast of my killer instinct as Claw does? How dreadfully shallow of you. Short-sighted, too, as a slight against me is, of course, a direct insult to my master.”
Forgelight took a step forward, the axe still in hand. A set of talon-like blades appeared between the knuckles of the diamond-skinned man. The man in the pin-striped suit flicked his wrists and a wand appeared in either hand. The sniper didn’t point his rifle at Forgelight, but he fixed his glassy gaze fixed on him and began to reload. Issa reached for the kukri at her side and tried to figure out what sort of mage the pin-striped man could be, and whether there were any obvious weaknesses she could exploit.
Glibby went over to a nearby table and began to pour a bottle of red wine out into two glasses.
"However, my master is a forgiving man, Forge. He has sent his best operatives to reinforce me - the Family." He gestured to the sniper: "Huskers, Complex Ten, expert marksman and prophet." To the talon-ed, diamond-skinned man. "Beatman is Complex Eight, our close quarters specialist." To the giggling, pin-striped mage: "And Muffin, Complex Twelve, is a Thaumturge of considerable might. If you've never heard of them, just ask our Vanillan attackers - they have justly learned to fear them! And, of course, I have a force of hundreds of loyal Grey Ones, well-stocked and waiting in reserve for the order to go into battle."
He delicately lifted the two glasses despite his gauntlets and offered one to Forgelight.
“All you have to do pay us the respect we’re owed by acknowledging that it is I, and not Claw, who commands the Endlings of the Tower.”
His lips stretched into a horrible, skin-coloured gorge of a smile. Issa looked carefully at Forgelight’s severe features. His eyes burned with outrage and his breathing became heavy. There was a shattering sound. He had knocked the glass to the floor. General Forgelight leaned in and growled at Glibby:
“You will go down to the frontlines right now, Ape, and I will contemplate sparing your master the full wrath of the Tower. If you don’t, my first action in the new world will be to ensure there is not a corner of it where your damnable Silhouette can hide from the reckoning for which he is so plainly aching.”
The Ape snorted and cracked his knuckles. The Family were all on their feet, slowly advancing. Issa readied to draw her weapon, then a toothy, yellow grin momentarily flashed into view in the corner of her eye. She turned her head. It had vanished.
“Forgelight… stand-down.”
Both Glibby and the Generals looked at the source of the voice and were surprised to see the Entity standing in the middle of the room, zweihander in hand.
“My lord,” said General Forgelight, suddenly bowing. “I was simply attempting to-”
“-Glibby-shall have his… appoint-ment, while Claw remains-incapacitated. Thank you, Ape… Please, lead-the counterattack.”
Glibby had a half-smile on his face which suggested he was confused but too disinclined to discard a gift like this.
“Thank you, great Entity. I assure you, you will not be disappointed.”
Glibby checked his pocket, pulled out a small vial of purple dust, then looked around.
“Roll on, gentlemen.”
He extended his arms and gave Forgelight a malignant grin. An enderman came up on either side, grabbed him by the shoulders, and teleported away. Soon, the entire hall was filled with the warping growl of teleportation, and sooner still the Grey Ones were gone.
“My lord,” Issa began, “I must strongly advise-”
She turned to look for the Entity, but it too had vanished. Forgelight had his eyes fixed on the floor.
“What do we do now?” She asked him.
He was quiet for a long time.
“We fight on. For glorious union.”
Issa nodded and tried to ignore the chill climbing up her back.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 7 Showdown (Cont.)
Chapter 80: High Above (Steve)
Steve had never anticipated the current situation. He, Jennifer, and his brother helping to lead a massive army, ready to save the multiverse. All because his dead friend dropped some stones.
They were in the flagship’s hull, organising themselves into ranks and files. The redstone lights dimmed, and he knew they would go out any minute. He took a look at Jennifer and saw her red hair glimmering even under that little light. He smiled. Like a mirror, she smiled back. He would die for her if he had to.
Ozen hopped from one foot to the other to his left, drawing and undrawing his sword in a duellist’s stance. Sadly, he just seemed to get clumsier each time, and Steve clapped him on the shoulder to hint maybe he should stop. He wondered how Wolfric was doing, down with Shadow.
“Preparing to breach in t-minus one minute,” Brad said into his sleeve, emerging from between the ranks.
Brad wore armour made from that odd black alloy originating from Fire’s world. His helmet almost entirely obscured his face. A diamond rapier hung at his side. He nodded respectfully at Steve as he took his position next to Andras at the head of a group of Eye-and-Claw operatives.
Pistons sounded and a series of handles rose from the floor. The reinforced hull would hold now that Rose had done her work creating the opening, but they still had to remain upright. He and Jennifer reached for the same bar. Their hands touched. They kept them there.
Steve looked to his left, toward Astro and his Guild. Talita approached them. Her old fingers pried open a small, wooden case. Astro smirked. Eight rings glinted in the low light - rings full to bursting with background energy absorbed from Nexus.
“Thank you for holding these in reserve,” said Astro. “Send Shadow my best.”
He removed the ring he was already wearing and delicately slid his fingers into the new ones.
“Thirty seconds,” Brad mumbled.
Everything seemed to speed up and get louder. His heart hammered. Everyday itches became agony. Jennifer’s hand felt so soft he thought his own might melt into it.
Herobrine chuckled at a song Dinnerbone strummed on his ukulele.
Urist murmured as he took practice swings. Voidblade nodded at every word.
“Ten seconds.”
Cossack, the Gaian leader, coughed and readjusted his green cloak. The rustling was like an avalanche. Steve realised that he was saying the seconds aloud with Brad.
“Five.”
The lights went out.
“Four.”
A row of men knelt at the front, holding spears which shot fire after you cranked a handle enough - riflemen.
“Three.”
Ozen’s sword emerged from his inventory one last time.
“Two.”
Steve equipped Excalibur in turn. He held his breath.
“One.”
Crack! Wood splintered overhead, and bronze alloy crumbled away. Everything jerked forward, as though the ship were already trying to push them out into battle. Steve steadied himself against the handle, then stood up. Jennifer’s hand slid from under his. The twang of a bowstring quivered through the darkness.
The pistons began to move.
“At arms!” boomed Herobrine.
Everyone took the hint to get into a fighting stance. A shudder went through Steve as the cool surface of the ender pearl dropped into his palm. Light fell through the crack and illuminated the tips of the taller weapons. Andras’ halberd. Moderators’ staffs. And so on.
“Stay safe out there,” said Jennifer.
“I will,” he said.
“You too,” he thought.
They got a glimpse of the other side for the first time. A large hallway. Stone walls. High ceilings. Some sort of intersection with a locked, heavy door at the crook. No lanterns on the immediate landing, but he could see their purpled glows further up the corridor. Tower forces already lined up to fight. Mages at the front of a line of mercenaries. Arrows already sailing towards them.
One struck a nearby pigman and he fell. Astro and the other mages raised their hands. Countless magical shields materialised, overlapping and intersecting in some sort of crystalline honeycomb. Arrows began to bounce off it.
“Hold,” decreed Herobrine.
The men at the front cranked their rifles.
Thud! The pistons had moved, the ramp was ready for them to descend, but the mages of the Tower, many of them white-clad, had set up their own line of shields. Steve redirected his attention to the central figure, a tall, proud looking pigman.
Astro stepped out in front of the crouching riflemen. He moved slowly, delicately. Hands raised. Eyes closed.
Suddenly, his arms dropped, and the crystalline shield structure shattered. The shrapnel flew straight into the opposing shield wall.
“Fire!”
A volley of death surged out from the line of riflemen, striking the line of mages. Steve’s eyes widened as he saw the force with which the victims lurched backwards. The pigman remained standing, having successfully rebuilt a shield in time to save himself.
“Attack!”
Steve’s body moved ahead of his mind. He felt like a passenger. His feet moved beneath him, and his arm hurled an ender pearl. It shattered against the pigman-mage’s magical barrier. The orange-tinged shield split down the middle. Steve’s arms prepared to plunge Excalibur into the mage’s heart but froze mid-movement as Herobrine intervened.
A colossal bedrock sword careened through the shield’s remains and sent a swathe of white light burning onward. It was a blow to break bedrock in a swing and Herobrine didn’t even break his stride. He just marched deliberately onwards, his pigmen biting and tearing and killing around him, and his blackshells rattling proudly onward, invincible beneath their obsidian armour.
Steve felt as though he had already survived the battle. Like he was already trying to piece together memories that had made so much sense in order and now seemed completely disconnected on reflection.
Jennifer was at his side stabbing a mercenary, then in a puff of purple particles was on the other side of the battlefield, putting an arrow into a charging giant. Ozen stood behind him, then was ahead of him, grappling with a spear-wielding mage.
Here, he saw Urist batter open a door, send his men in to begin fortifying it, carry chest upon chest from the airship. Already, they were knocking down walls, creating turrets for archers to fire through. In the distance, Voidblade’s claws twisted the neck of a blonde man, or, no, he had thrown a purple-glowing lamp to the ground, and his armoured feet shattered the crystals, emboldening Astro to order a renewed charge!
Even more confusing were Steve’s own actions. He fought fiercely with a woman who had a scar through one eye, or maybe an eyepatch, but only a second later Excalibur plunged into a giant’s knee. And he couldn’t see Jennifer. And he knew he was supposed to follow Astro down one corridor, but the current of battle was carrying him towards another one, where Herobrine strode on as though there was nothing in the world worth fearing.
He slouched out of the way of an enderman’s enchanted axe. That was when he got the vague impression of being surrounded. His life was in danger, but still, he could barely feel his fingers. He cut down one mercenary. Two! Dodged another swipe from the enderman. More mercenaries filled the gaps. Where was Jennifer? Ozen? He couldn’t see them, he had to-
The enderman’s axe connected with his helmet and knocked the soul back into his body. Immediately he tensed back into action. He broke the enderman’s guard, then stunned him with a punch. His opponent teleported away. Steve struck down another mercenary, then another.
Some began to back away, maybe because of his renewed prowess, but maybe because the currents of battle were changing again. More allies cascaded into view. He saw Urist breaking a nearby mage’s leg with his mace. Dinnerbone cracked a giant’s skull with his ukulele, then with a flick of his wrist sent the corpse flying. Brad’s diamond rapier punctured an enchanted chestplate. Steve heard something warp into place behind him.
He turned back to the enderman, ready for a proper fight, then jumped back as he saw an arrow - Jennifer’s arrow! - pierce them through the eye. Ozen wrapped his arms around a stocky pigman mercenary and suplexed him. Steve smiled as Jennifer grabbed his hand.
“Astro needs us for fortifications. Come on.”
She threw an ender pearl just before Steve had the chance to nod, but the second they hit the ground Steve made up for his hesitation. He pulled a stack of cobblestone from his pocket and began to place it down on the line where friends stopped appearing and foes became ubiquitous. Jennifer and Ozen guarded him with precisely fired arrows and heavy sword-swings.
Within a minute or so, a surprisingly professional-looking crenelated barricade was established, three blocks high and two blocks deep, to allow a lip for archers to stand on. However, the enemy were already trying to seize it.
Astro forced his way through the melee, swinging Fire’s old sword viciously but a little clumsily.
“Get the lamps!” He called out.
Steve moved to hop the barricade and seek out a crystal-filled lamp to shatter, but a particularly large, zombified giant with a sword the length of a small tree forced him to fall back. He and Ozen took turns trying to bait it into making a mistake.
Jennifer, meanwhile, leapt up at the other end of the barricade. With one foot elevated on the turret, she effortlessly sent an arrow spinning into a lamp. She had already begun to look for the next one when the arrow struck, smiling as she heard the pleasant, glass-like tinkle of broken crystal.
Behind her, Astro forced one of his palms forward and the giant Steve and Ozen were fighting with hesitated mid-strike. It was as though he had been frozen without ice, straining to force the point of his sword down but impeded by an invisible force. While Steve and Ozen exchanged a look, a man in a skullcap ran between them and plunged a large, lapis-encrusted greatsword into the giant’s face.
Jennifer leapt from turret to turret, trying to get a good line on the next lamp. However, a young officer had gotten smart and ordered several of his soldiers to band together around a nearby lamp, holding up shields to defend it until a fast-builder could be found to construct a more elegant solution. She cursed.
A red-haired, bearded man leapt up beside her and, with a wide grin, drew back his bowstring. His arrow had a small device with a burning fuse bound to the tip. With a precise twang he sent it flying at the lantern. It detonated just above it, scattering the shield-bearing soldiers, but leaving the crystal untouched. Jennifer and the red-haired archer exchanged a look and then both loosed arrows at the exposed lamp. Jennifer’s struck first.
“Next one’s mine!” the man cackled.
Jennifer was about to quip back when Astro beckoned them over. Steve had already joined him. Seeing friendly soldiers begin to take control of the barricade and force the Tower’s forces back, she hopped down. Astro cast a small charm to drown out the sound around them in a small radius. He pulled out a basic-looking map compiled from Fire’s accounts and those of deserters, then suspended it in the air. Brit droned out instructions for which frequency to use and Steve adjusted his headset accordingly.
“We need to make it to this crossing point,” Astro decisively jabbed his finger. “Then we’ll be able to join together with a few or our other units and establish a real beachhead to attack the throne room from.”
Steve noticed that there was supposed to be some sort of staircase leading up and down for several floors. It was a key chokepoint. They had entered on this floor because they had the clearest idea of the layout, the throne room itself was several floors up.
Herobrine crackled through the radio: “We’re making steady progress, but some large, charging beast keeps harrying our efforts. You’ll make it there before us. Just seal off the route we’re due to come through and we’ll have the enemy encircled.”
“That’s all well and good for you!” A raspy voice came through. Steve heard some maniacal cackling in the background.
“What’s happening, Ray?” Astro pressed with considerable distrust. “Where’s Ozzy?”
“No, Viral, that’s a friendly, leave him be! Sorry, what were you saying, Astro? Yes, they’re killing us out here. It’s as we feared, not a man is re-forming. We’ve lost half our force.” Astro sighed deeply. “We won’t be able to make the rendezvous. If not for Amaerin and Atreidon, we would already have been overrun.”
Steve remembered Astro describing the haphazard way some men in his world, if they were lucky, crumbled to dust when killed in battle, only to later reconstitute themselves in the last place they slept. Looking around at the zealous Vanillan soldiers charging past them, Steve wondered if they would go forward so readily if they knew that desperate safety net didn’t exist in Nexus.
“Where’s Ozzy, Ray?” Astro pressed.
It was the raspy voice’s turn to sigh.
“We came across a civilian. Looked like a researcher. Ozzy insisted on bringing them into our ranks. Suddenly, they just… exploded. Turned out they were a mage. Then the ambush began… I’m sorry.”
An oaken-haired woman called Tass covered her mouth.
“****,” Astro hissed.
Steve sensed this was more than a strategic loss for Astro and placed a hand on the wizard’s shoulder, discovering as he did so that the man with the skullcap had done the same. Then, he craned his head for a closer look at the map.
“Rose,” Steve began. “How’s it looking on your end?”
“Good, Arcation have broken off to attempt an encirclement of the enemy, but otherwise Woobly and the Void are on track to clear the sector.”
“Jus’ helping ‘em set up camp here,” entered Urist. “Their sector’s almost clear.”
“Great. Rose, could you take a few guys and help Ray’s group out?”
A momentary pause followed.
“Are you quite certain I’ll need the few guys?”
Steve could just imagine her little half-smirk. He beamed.
Astro lifted Steve’s hand away, firing off an appreciative look.
“We’ll leave that to your judgement, Rose,” said Astro.
He looked around, then cocked an eyebrow.
“If there’s no other business, CHARGE!”
A cheer went up and the force ran forward. Steve, Jennifer, and Ozen ran at the front, placing obsidian beneath them to create ramps for their allies to follow over the barricade, then leaping off into the fighting. Steve equipped a second sword and began to carve a bloody trench into the enemy ranks, while Jen ducked and dodged her way through them, leaving a trail of arrow-punctured opponents. Ozen soon fell behind, slowed by his tendency towards hand-to-hand combat.
Only two groups were able to keep pace with Steve Brine and Jennifer, the Eye-and Claws, and Astro’s Guild. The rest fell behind into the general ruck, but these three kept the fight moving onwards in a perpetual torrent of glory.
The Eye-and Claws were both interesting and confusing to watch, according to Fire they were not an organized army as such, instead they were a collection of highly skilled individuals. Each one of them fought differently, yet they still moved cohesively and left the Tower’s soldiers few options for counterattacks. However, the standouts by far were Brad and Andras.
Brad flowed between enemies as if he wasn’t in a battle, but in a series of duels. Each of his opponents found their end at the tip of his diamond rapier that seemingly refused to acknowledge the existence of armour, and simply skewered anything it pointed at. Andras on the other hand exerted a zone of absolute control, any Tower soldier daring to step close was cut down by his halberd. Occasionally Andras would throw a kick, allowing the demon contained in the runic armour that replaced his right leg to lash out and devour an enemy. Not even magical attacks could touch him, it was as if he could see them coming before they were even cast.
Astro’s Guild proved equally formidable, and as Steve heard the calls of battle, became familiar with their names. The oaken-haired woman was Tassadar, and she fought on the flanks with a sword in one hand, a small, spring-loaded firearm in the other. She would lock blades with her opponents, then unload a round or two into their stomachs. Next to her was a bandana-wearing man called Mo who swung with precise, two-handed strikes of an axe. Steve didn’t see too much of them, but what little he saw impressed him. The spring-loaded firearm in particular meant that Tassadar hardly saw an enderman she didn’t kill.
The true crowning jewel of the Guild were Astro and his friends. Steve watched as the man in the skullcap, Aaron, spun and stomped and struck his way through the enemy ranks. He heaved a huge, lapis-encrusted diamond greatsword this way and that, deflecting blows from giants and cutting down iron golems without a bead of sweat on his brow. To his right, the red-haired archer, Secret, advanced with an enchanted bow, always seeking another lantern to shoot down or another target to kill. Small, the blond assassin ensured no one slipped through the archer’s guard unpunished, disappearing into the crowd and then bursting forth in a savage flurry of daggers.
Between them, Astro advanced, striking this mercenary with his new sword, Dodgeball, and crushing the ribcage of that enderman with his mind. The sword glimmered with a black flame, and whenever it drew blood, the glimmer of life in its victims’ eyes seemed to dim, as though merely being in contact with this blade had brought them slightly closer to death. Larger injuries would rapidly engulf the victim in the same black flame, leaving them a lifeless, charred corpse not long after. He barked orders to his friends, coordinating them into a tight V-formation which withstood any advance.
After them came Brit, the moustachioed detective, whipping his silver firearm from foe to foe. He didn’t bother to ensure all were dead as he proceeded, simply ensuring they were injured enough for someone behind him to finish the job. Half the time, this was his friend, the always-filthy Gracey, who zipped through the battlefield, brutalising men with a switchblade and shambling away from attacks.
Every now and then, the stout Gaian commander, Cossack would waddle urgently up and try his hand in the thick of the fighting. The episode which formed Steve’s understanding of his fighting style came when Astro was briefly encircled. In order to buy himself some room, Astro shifted the floor behind him, slamming a mercenary into the ground and enabling him to focus on a much more dangerous enderman. As the mercenary wheezed and strained back up, Cossack ran forward and hefted his sword into their gut. Astro, having dispatched the enderman, looked over his shoulder, to see a sweaty, panting Cossack beaming back at him, very pleased to have made himself useful. He fell behind again almost immediately afterwards, this exertion having knocked the wind out of him.
Finally, they came to the crossroads - a junction where four corridors met, and the Entity’s assembled wealth was clearly overflowing. Goblets, chests of gold, and paintings Steve had to assume were valuable were stacked against the open door of a nearby room, which itself was full of glass display cabinets. One of the walls in the x-shaped junction gave way onto a large, spiral staircase which had been hastily sandbagged with straw and dirt. A small, wooden palisade was all that stood between them and this key objective.
Without hesitation, they jumped the enemy’s fortifications. Everything became a clamour of sword upon steel, the twang of arrows, the crack and boom of firearms. After Steve removed the head of an enderman captain, sending up a spray of purple blood, he saw a giant - the very one who had stolen his crystals all those months ago - bat aside an Eye-and-Claw operative, then crush a member of Astro’s Guild underfoot. Steve watched with a weird curiosity as the Gaian riflemen found him, and the giant began to shudder under repeated blows from bayonet and bullet. Still, he kept fighting, until finally Brad leapt in and passed his rapier through his gut.
They were winning. Talita and Andras joined forces with Jennifer to start attacking the sandbagged stairs. Cossack barked orders at Ozen, and Steve’s brother obligingly began to build the barricade over the route Herobrine was due to come up. Steve found himself back-to-back with Astro, becoming a cyclone of victory in the splintering Tower forces.
But soon Steve broke their flow to warn Astro of a new threat. Down one of the routes, a new Tower force was charging towards them. Then, Steve noticed their erratic behaviour. Endermen warped frantically onwards, only covering several metres at a time. Their eyes held the madness of retreat. Steve watched as one fell beneath a heavy spear, swiftly retrieved by a severe-looking man in white armour, and another was wrapped in ropes by a woman in blue, then finally an officer at the fore of the fleeing enemies was split in two by a wave of impossibly sharp knives. Rose leapt through the red mist, glamorous and terrible.
Astro took his turn to draw Steve’s attention, knocking him on the shoulder and gesturing down the final corridor with Dodgeball. The enemy, scattered and confused but sufficiently numerous to pose a problem if they regrouped, fled down towards another series of junctions and doors.
A Tower officer, tall, proud, and adorned with many medals stopped the flight and gestured to hole up inside a nearby door. He twisted the handle. Immediately a man with a colossal stone shield exploded out and crushed the officer into the far wall, killing him instantly. Following him were a slender archer, a man with a flaming sword, and a hooded man holding a staff which poured fire and darts onto the retreating Tower forces. The warriors of Arcation had finally begun their encirclement - a bit late, but Steve couldn’t help but feel a little grateful.
Astro gestured, the clamour of battle was drowned out and the floating map emerged again, then began to decisively issue commands.
“Urist, how far out are you?” he asked.
“Na far, minute o’ running at tha most.”
“Excellent. In that case, Steve, Jennifer, and I are taking a small force and Arcation out on clean-up duty. The rest of you, stay here until Herobrine breaks through, and Urist’s team are able to properly fortify the position. We can’t afford a lucky charge from the enemy encircling us. We’re on their turf, don’t forget. Brad, you’re in charge.”
“Got it. We’ll hole up here and if we have the capacity, we’ll send a party to capture their comms. Might be able to break their morale and facilitate surrender.”
“Absolutely, just don’t go for the throne room yet, we need to have a firm foothold before we risk it. Also haven’t heard much from the lower sections and the machine.”
Steve got the impression Astro was trying to make up for his earlier indecision when he heard that Ozzy guy died, but the orders made sense. Someone had to keep Arcation on a leash after all. He and Jennifer said goodbye to Ozen and joined Astro as he approached the warrior priesthood.
“Gogyst!” Astro called.
The hooded man dispatched his latest prey and turned.
Steve glanced over his shoulder and noticed a few Eye-and-Claws, Talita, and a column of riflemen falling in line behind them. The ‘small force’ Astro had mentioned. Dinnerbone had also emerged from the fighting and dawdled alongside, strumming his ukulele.
“Astro!” exclaimed Gogyst, who ran up and clapped the wizard on the shoulder. “Is this not as glorious as the Onslaught? Does it not make our wars on the Brotherhood and against Dominus look trifling by comparison, now that creation itself is on the line?!”
Even beneath the obfuscation charm, Steve could tell a mad grin had spread across Gogyst’s face. He reminded Steve of a version of Kay who one hundred percent, completely believed his own hype. Yep, he needed supervision. He and Jennifer exchanged a weary look.
“Yes, Gogy, glorious indeed,” said Astro through a forced smile. “Anyway, we need you to help us finish these guys off before we go after the throne room.”
Gogyst seemed to shrink a couple of inches as he slouched forward, then called to the man with the flaming sword.
“Vacar, take point! We’re on clean-up duty.”
Then, to the man with the stone shield and the archer:
“Besta, get behind Walkers’ shield, we’re doing this methodically.”
They advanced at a measured pace. Steve and Jennifer ender-pearled forward to disrupt the enemy force and separate a few stragglers, who would then be cut down by Astro, Vacar and the others. The wizard also made sure to reach out with his mind where the lamps allowed and shattered bones, snapped necks and shut down nervous systems. The archer, Besta, and the riflemen peppered the enemy with a series of precise pot-shots.
They followed the retreating army through the corridors, and then when they tried to shake their pursuers, through a series of rooms. A grand hall filled only a chair, a fireplace, and hundreds of item frames full of music discs. A colossal mob-grinder. A farm full of pigs, cows, and sheep. Finally, they returned to the corridors and rounded a corner.
That was when they saw it. The Tower soldiers fled toward a large, obsidian gate, while a lone figure thundered in the opposite direction, right towards them. It was like nothing else Steve and Jennifer had ever seen, so they stopped, allowing Astro and the others a moment to catch up.
It was some sort of huge iron golem, complete with the long arms, the square fists, and the rectangular nose of a villager. However, instead of the usual black eyes, it had a single, red pupil, glowing angrily. And it wasn’t made of iron, its armour was too dark a grey for that, with black speckling. Was that… bedrock?
Before they knew it the golem was upon them. Steve rolled out of the way of one fist, but the Eye-and-Claws operative behind him was not so lucky, his firesteel breastplate immediately warped then rebounded and his whole body went flying. Astro immediately set about trying to heal him with his glowing hands, but he was badly hurt.
They retreated slowly, attempting to stop the golem’s march. Vacar, Steve and Astro’s swords all bounced right off the creature. The riflemen formed a line and let off a volley against it, but it hardly even flinched, and scattered the line with a single strike. Gogyst shot flame from his staff until his fuel supply ran out. Talita’s missiles simply glanced off its torso. Dinnerbone eventually ran forward and attempted to send it flying with a concerted telepathic push, but it strained on until the man with the black hat began to slide backwards under the force of his own powers.
“Go for the eye!” Jennifer called out.
Those who had bows drew them, and the remaining riflemen attempted to reload. Steve’s arrow merely bounced off its chin. Jennifer fired a shot at its head, but it glanced off the edge of the eye. Then, Besta of Arcation leapt out from behind the stone shield and sent one of his heavy arrows flying out from his greatbow. It struck the creature right in the eye and sent reeling. Besta and his fellows let out a cheer. Then, the golem’s head snapped right back into place. Crack! And the red eye was glowing even brighter than before.
Besta was immediately eviscerated by the blast, and everyone began to run for cover as further lasers began to rapidly shoot from the golem’s eye. Jennifer and Talita managed to reach the end of the corridor and hide behind the corner, but Astro, not having time to summon a proper shield, joined Steve in taking cover behind Walkers’ shield, all while trying to convince him not to suicidally avenge his fallen comrade.
“Brother!” screamed Walkers, as Steve grabbed him around the waist.
A laser blast chipped away some of the stone at the edge of the shield.
“He’s gone, Walkers, there's nothing you can do!” Astro reasoned.
“I can kill this beast, that’s what I can bloody well do!”
He began to march forward, dragging Steve with him.
“Do something!” shouted Herobrine’s son.
Astro grimaced. “So much for clearing the sector.”
He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. There was a crunch which alerted Steve to two indentations on the ceiling - or sets of indentations, it was like someone’s fingers had dug in.
“Oh!” Steve exclaimed as he realised Astro’s plan.
The wizard pulled down and the ceiling came with him, collapsing on top of the bedrock golem.
A cloud of dust rose, and there was a moment of anticipation, but they did not have to wait for it to clear naturally as further laser blasts tore straight through the cloud and right at them. Somehow, Astro had managed to crush everything but its head, which was wedged upright and firing at them.
Then, the sound of thundering footsteps echoed up the hall towards Steve. He looked back, and there strode Herobrine. Deflecting blasts with his sword, Herobrine did not once change the pace of his ceaseless advance until, at last, he stood over the crushed golem and plunged his sword into its head. Bedrock ate through bedrock, and the red eye flickered before turning off altogether.
Steve breathed a sigh of relief. He patted Walkers on the back and shook Astro’s hand.
“Oh, thank Notch!” Steve laughed. “Or Herobrine, I guess.”
Herobrine struck a pose and was clearly about to say something very important and self-serious when a rumbling sound began.
Within seconds a colossal beast slammed through the wall and directly into Herobrine. The beast was taller than Steve, rampaging forward on legs like tree trunks, its massive horned head ploughing through anything that stood in its path. A small grey villager sat, sneering on its back. Herobrine returned to his feet immediately and pursued the beast rider down the corridor, swearing vengeance.
Steve would have joined him, but they were immediately swarmed by a series of similar grey-skinned villagers who emerged from the breach. They weren’t too tough, however, and Steve, Astro, Jennifer, and the others fought their way through the crowd of hemming and hawing attackers, crossing through the breach in the wall. After all, they were supposed to clear the sector, and this was a new part of it.
However, then Steve saw a figure crushed under some rubble down a side-passage.
“Steve!” they called.
It was Ozen. How had he gotten there?
Steve and Jennifer ran straight towards him and began to lift the stone bricks which covered him. As soon as the rubble was clear, however, Steve remembered what happened to that Ozzy guy. He pulled Jen back and placed down some obsidian. Sure enough, Ozen immediately transformed into a white-robed mage, but instead of exploding, disappeared. Steve furrowed his brow and slowly looked out from behind the blocks.
“Steve,” said Jennifer. “Look at the floor.”
She stomped and the ground crunched. Gravel.
An unseen piston clanked, and the floor gave way. They fell about fifteen blocks and slammed into the ground which was made of… railway tracks?
Steve looked around. A series of wood-log supports reached up around them, propped against the walls, and discarded signs littered the floor. An insanely basic trap. Steve cursed his own stupidity, but he didn’t have time to think about that.
Two figures emerged from the shadows at the pit’s far end. A man, and a woman who looked a little like… Alex? It wasn’t quite her, but the resemblance was uncanny. Also, she wore a strange, winged grey armour.
Suddenly, words appeared in front of the man in a bright, white font. Steve had always considered himself a bit of a slow reader, but somehow immediately understood their meaning.
ARE YOU STEVE BRINE FROM WORLD 390?
Steve did not like the sound of this, but after exchanging a look with Jennifer, decided to say:
“No, I’m Steve… Mine, from World…”
I CAN TELL YOU’RE LYING.
“Yeah, I thought so. I’m Steve Brine. This is Jennifer.”
The man stepped into the light, and Steve gasped as he saw his own face. The only difference was that where his own eyes were purple, this guy’s eyes were a deep blue - like his own before he killed Drake Senior.
PLEASED TO MEET YOU. I AM THE STEVE FROM WORLD 001. YOU MAY CALL ME STEVE PRIME. THIS IS MY PARTNER, ALEX.
“Not Alex Prime?” Jennifer asked with a snort.
Prime began to bite into a golden apple. Alex laughed, and instead of using the ominous text, she spoke normally.
“No, Prime doesn’t have an Alex, I helped him kill my Steve a while back. We kept the partnership going. What’s your name?”
“Jennifer.”
“Good, then I promise you this isn’t personal.”
Alex whipped out a crossbow with some sort of rocket loaded into it and shot it directly into Jennifer’s chest. Jennifer flew back in an explosion of yellow sparks in the shape of a creeper’s head. Alex used a second rocket to propel herself into the air and swooped down at Jennifer with a sword. Jennifer leapt up and began grappling fiercely with her airborne foe.
Steve moved to help, but before he could fully turn, a glass bottle had shattered against his shoulder. Suddenly everything from his armour to his own skull felt a lot heavier. A weakness potion.
DIE.
A minecart swept Steve’s legs out from under him and he tumbled in.
“Well, at least I know what the tracks are for,” he thought.
He fumbled around in his pocket for a bucket of milk and stole a sip just in time for the minecart to slam into the far wall. He saw Prime flying through the air with an axe and a large, rectangular wooden shield. With his strength restored, he leapt from the minecart and out of the way.
His footing regained, Steve launched a flurry of blows at Prime, hacking and slashing in a deliberate, practised onslaught. Every single blow was absorbed by the shield, but Steve knew it was only wood. He just had to keep hitting until- Snap! The shield splintered. Steve grabbed Excalibur with both hands and thrust it at Prime’s dark grey chestplate.
The sword hit another shield and bounced off. Prime bashed Steve with the new shield and he staggered back.
THAT WON’T WORK. I HAVE LIKE FIVE MORE OF THESE, AND EVEN IF YOU GET THROUGH…
He tapped his chestplate with his axe.
NETHERITE. STRONGER THAN DIAMOND IN ANY WORLD.
Steve grimaced and rushed forward for another attack, only for Prime’s axe to send him sprawling.
IT’S CALLED KNOCKBACK. OR DO THEY NOT HAVE THAT WHERE YOU COME FROM?
“Do they not have smack talk in your world?” Steve snapped back.
Steve wished he felt as confident as he sounded, and that wasn’t his most confident retort ever. Cracks had already started spreading across his armour. He couldn’t believe it. This was a fresh set and enchanted with unbreaking to boot. Even considering the battle, it couldn’t be running down this early.
He dodged Prime’s next swing, and then the next. He tried to keep his distance and bought himself enough time to see Jennifer be thrown to the ground by Alex. She drew Fire’s ghast bone bow but didn’t have time to draw back its heavy string before Alex was back on her again.
Something glimmered in Prime’s hand. He wasn’t holding an axe anymore, it was another potion. Steve narrowly dodged the bottle and it shattered against one of the log pillars. A single drop splashed against Steve’s cheek, and he felt it burn at his very life force. A damage potion, good to avoid that one.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t avoid the hook of Prime’s fishing rod, which he had equipped while Steve was busy dodging the potion. With a robust tug, Steve fell forward and landed on his face. Thankfully, he was able to draw an ender-pearl and throw it between Prime’s legs to avoid the inevitable strike of his axe.
The moment Steve materialised, he wasted no time in hitting Prime on the back of the head again and again. However, he did not stagger. No matter where he struck Prime, it was as though the harm was diffused across his entire body. In no time, Prime faced Steve again and bashed him with his shield.
I HAVE SEEN SO MANY LIKE US.
Steve dodged his swipe.
WE AWAKEN, WE PUNCH TREES, WE SURVIVE THE NIGHT.
Steve pearled behind him again, but Prime turned instinctively and blocked.
WE BUILD HOMES TO STAY SAFE, BUT THAT’S NEVER ENOUGH.
Steve reached over the shield and punched Prime in the face to minimal effect. He saw Jennifer headbutt Alex.
SO WE GO OUT, WE KILL THE DRAGON, THE WITHER AND EVERY OTHER OPPONENT WORTH FIGHTING.
Prime tried to hit Steve with that stupid fishing rod again, but it only managed to scrape his cheek.
WHY? TO PROVE WE’RE THE BEST!
Steve drew a second sword and simultaneously deflected one of Prime’s attacks while hitting the shield again.
BUT WHAT NEXT? AFTER ALL FOES ARE BEATEN?
Steve broke the shield and began to strike Prime furiously until he equipped a new one. Prime bashed him back.
SOME OF US HAVE WHATEVER WEIRD STUFF YOU GOT UP TO WITH HEROBRINE AND YOUR FAMILY. IDK, I ONLY SKIMMED YOUR FILE.
Prime’s axe connected with Steve’s arm, and he dropped the second sword. The cracks spread further across his diamond armour. Alex grabbed Jennifer as she tried to draw another heavy shot with the ghast bone bow. They soared upwards.
I HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO DO. I WAS THE BEST, BUT I WAS ALONE. THEN, FORGELIGHT FOUND ME, AND I DISCOVERED THAT I WAS ONLY WORLD 001! AND THERE WERE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WITH EXACTLY MY PROBLEM!
Steve just about managed to dodge Prime’s blow. He saw Jennifer grab Alex’s wings, forcing her to crash into a log pillar. It wobbled.
SO I DECIDED THAT OF ALL THE TREE-PUNCHING KNUCKLEHEADS, I WAS NOT ONLY THE FIRST!
He struck Steve’s chestplate. His boots broke. Steve couldn’t stop thinking about that wobbling pillar.
I WAS GOING TO BE THE BEST!
He hit Steve again and his helmet shattered. Excalibur slipped from his hand due to the force of the attack. He remembered he and Jennifer’s first day in Nexus. He backed up.
AND SURE AS THE NETHER!
Prime knocked out Steve’s leggings. He recalled how they had tried to place dirt and tower, but it had crumbled away.
A glance confirmed that Jennifer was being lifted again, even higher than before, struggling all the way.
I WAS GOING TO BE THE LAST!
Steve slammed into the log pillar as his chestplate exploded into a cloud of diamond shards. Every part of him ached, and he was down to his turquoise shirt and jeans. Prime was winding up for a final, horizontal swing that would cut him in half.
Still, he couldn’t stop thinking about how, after the dirt thing didn’t work out, they realised they’d have to just cut the tree down normally, but when they went to do that…
NOW, DIE.
…The tree had fallen over!
Steve dodged, Prime’s axe stuck in the log and cracks spread all the way along a metric cube of the pillar. Steve swung his fist forward. The block broke. His eyes locked with Prime’s for a second. He saw fear in his opponent’s gaze, perhaps the first fear he had felt in his entire life, but also a sort of respect.
NOT BAD…
The log fell on him. Steve saw him struggle for a moment, then disappear in a puff of smoke. His belongings scattered across the floor, including his armour, his stupid fishing rod, and those especially awful shields.
“No, the best,” thought Steve.
He had no time for reverie or even to loot the spoils, however, as Alex hurled Jennifer from the ceiling to the bottom of the pit. Jennifer hit the ground with a crack, and Alex swooped down. Steve grabbed Excalibur and ran forward despite his lack of armour. Then, he heard the arrow snap into place. Jennifer held the ghast bone bow in hand.
Alex’s eyes widened, she tried to pull up, but to no avail. The arrow shot forth even faster than one of her rockets. It pierced right through her exposed torso and pinned her to the ceiling. She didn’t vanish in a puff of smoke, but her wings slid off, and her crossbow crashed into the ground.
Steve ran up to Jennifer and hugged her.
“Are you okay?”
“I just killed someone who looked like one of our close friends and neighbours. Otherwise, fine. What about you?”
“I just killed myself. Otherwise, fine.”
They both got really quiet for a moment.
“Jennifer.”
“Yeah, Steve?”
“I am so done with this interdimensional stuff.”
“Me too.”
They laughed until, finally, a grey villager corpse fell into the pit with them. Its neck was snapped. Astro leaned into view above.
“How are you down there? All good?”
“We’re fine,” Jennifer groaned. “That was just… a hard one.”
“Do you need any healing? Or-”
“We’re fine Astro!” Jennifer pressed.
“Okay, it’s just… It’s not like we have a hard countdown, but it’s definitely time sensitive. Should we throw a rope down or can you build out? Actually, Steve, should I tell Urist to get you a new set of armour?”
Steve looked over at Prime’s belongings - or, he supposed, Prime’s remains depending on how you looked at it.
“I just need five minutes,” he grinned up at Astro.
Chapter 81: Down Below (Kay)
“Get the lamp!”
I began following the order before I even realised who it had come from. In the din of battle the only distinction I could afford to make was between friend and foe.
I wrenched the sword from the Endling’s shoulder in a cloud of blood. I waited a second to see if it got back up, but it was dead. With an imprecise sweep of my arm, I gestured for my men to follow me. The lamp swayed before me as I panted ragged breaths.
It stood proudly, practically daring me to topple it. But enemies stood between me and my goal. Endlings and mercenaries and giants and all variety of other things. I deflected a blow from an Endling officer and struck him across the jaw. He warped behind me, ready to strike, but fell before Raphoe’s poleaxe.
I recalled my battle with the Ender.
Next, I swept the legs from beneath a mercenary. The chief huntress and her husband struck down his fellows in a flurry of spears and daggers. The lamp was open. I lifted the mercenary from the ground threw him against it. The stone pedestal fell on him, and the purple crystals burst open amidst the blood spreading across the floor.
I recalled how I had liberated Astro.
A glance over my shoulder. Tyron cut down a giant, then beckoned for a robed figure to come forward. I recognised him as Wolfric, Steve’s aloof, dark-haired friend who had volunteered to accompany Shadow. He held out a hand.
“Impulverify!” he called.
The gate before him, reinforced with obsidian, crumpled. I allowed myself a jovial laugh as our troops flooded down the stairs towards the next level.
Then, I recalled Rose cutting open the door of the portal facility. My greatest glory. My coronation. The beginning of my undoing. Suddenly, my legs wouldn’t stop shaking and I had to steady myself against Clarke.
Once I had recovered, I marched on to hold the line with my troops as our allies broke free from their various engagements and pushed onwards.
Fire and the Mencur-Besh quickly overtook us and renewed the advance, overtaking my men easily. Once again, the yellow-eyed Mencur-Besh shot forward like blasts of artillery, bursting bloody holes in our enemies’ lines. And as soon as he joined them, Fire was no less effective, cleaving apart enemies with burning arcs of his zweihander.
Overhead, Shadow and her coven carried out clean-up duty, several of them having been relocated from the assault on the upper levels. Danann flitted between enemies, vanishing in clouds of smoke, and leaving frail duplicates who bore all manner of injuries. Our enemies seemingly ignored all reason and flocked to these apparitions, only for Danann to incinerate them from behind with a quick snap of his sparking fingers. Iridia and Pallas ran between our soldiers, providing healing magic and, in the most extreme cases, providing healing potions. Their master, however, outshone all their efforts.
Shadow threw out powerful spells whenever there was an opportunity, blasts of flame, lightning bolts, and of course her apparent favourite: the blindingly bright ray that left nothing where it struck. Though I could swear that in the past she had used stronger versions of these spells, was it because we were indoors?
Lupe decapitated a giant next to me, spraying blood on my face. I wiped my cheek with my blood-encrusted scarf, and as I did so I found Tyron again.
Carried forth by his stone wings, the Dragoknight crashed into a man, breaking his bones, and sending him flying. As he landed on the ground and drew Kir again, Amanda and Helix rushed forward to defend him.
I found myself momentarily entranced as Amanda pulled a trick that was deeply familiar to me. A mercenary advanced on her, confident of his supremacy over a mere child. She dodged one blow, then another, and then she struck back. She brandished her crossbow like a spear and thrust it as close to her opponent’s face as she could, forcing him to flinch. She pulled back slightly, then fired the bolt straight at her opponent’s neck. The bolt thudded in, and he fell dead.
“She must have spoken to Secret,” I told myself, though realistically I had no way of knowing.
In truth, I was probably trying to avoid looking at Helix. Even after my entrancement broke and I began to fight towards them, I could only muster minute glances in his direction. I would look at him, then draw away, as though I had cut myself on a shard of glass. First, I glimpsed him firing his luminous bow. Next, I saw him mustering purple flame to drive off an Endling.
I felt a surge of pride as I realised, he was tentatively using his demonic powers, then my heart curdled as I remembered how I had failed him.
We finished descending the stairs and came into a large hall, filled with Tower banners and expensive-looking artwork. I squinted down at the far end and saw a set of two spiral staircases. I exchanged a look with Tyron, then called out to Kami to pull up the map. I nodded to Tyron, and he began to speak into his mic.
“Right, everyone, we’re coming up on the staircase down to the labs. Be on your guard, if there’s a counterattack coming it’ll come here.”
It felt redundant, as we were still up to our necks in Tower soldiers, but we still had to be wary. We were fighting an empire, and risk encirclement at any moment. As though reading my thoughts, Tyron added:
“How are we looking with the rear guard, Lucy?”
Lucy’s voice came back: “The Tower forces are mounting another offence, but we’re holding. We further fortified the perimeter, so they have to go up against their own walls. Some are getting through though, the faster we get this done the better. Still, be as careful as you can afford to be.”
Tyron nodded sagely as he raked Kir across the stomach of another mercenary.
“You heard the lady,” he affirmed, then returned to his onslaught.
I fought the urge to follow his comment up with some grand oration. For one, I knew it would not be well-received. More importantly, I’m not sure I still had it in me.
I parried an enderman and sent them spinning into the path of one of Kami’s showers of magical energy.
Our fight continued, bloody and terrible.
The Tower’s lines did not break as they had on the fields. Every time we pushed them back, they just seemed to compress and harden, like diamonds formed by the shifting of the world itself. I heard their officers’ screaming slogans over the clamour:
“Do it for Marcus! For Silver! For the world yet promised to us!”
“For a new world!”
“An end to injustice.”
I borrowed a spear from one of the hunters any time I heard this dreck. Madmen preaching of a utopia at the world’s end. I would not abide it. Unfortunately, eventually I realised that half these slogans were coming from crackling speaker-boxes, reinforced with obsidian casings to make them hard to shatter.
At this point, even the Mencur-Besh were struggling to advance. They resorted to striking specific points along the line so that one of them might be able to overcharge and rush through, functioning as a depth charge when they inevitably fell beneath the enemy’s swords, spears, and arrows.
Even the Graves siblings Fire and Shadow were having difficulties. The Tower troops had resorted to tearing lanterns off the walls and carrying them forward, sacrificing later defence to stop the onslaught of spells. Shadow had dropped to the ground and fought using the odd amorphous blade she had also carried during the ambush on the Tower patrol, which to me felt like it happened years ago. Fire was still a force to be reckoned with, but he had dropped from supernaturally dangerous to simply dangerous, which was a big swing in favour of the Tower troops.
My eyes were also drawn to the efforts of the Brotherhood as they, against all odds, managed to advance almost uninterrupted. Tauto Chrone, beneath his steel mask, became a flurry of death. He slashed with his electrified dagger and cracked his burning whip at anyone who threatened his initiates. Next to him an assassin in a turtle-mask did impressive work as he dodged every blow and slit throats with his circular blades. But most impressive of all was a man whose name I had not yet heard. He stood at the centre of the group, though Chrone was the leader, hacking away with two shortswords in an almost continuous torrent of attacks. No blow seemed to be able to shake him, as his diamond armour seemed to form a continuous, unbroken skin across his body.
Still, despite their successes, we were at an impasse. The twin staircases did not seem to get any closer. As I removed my blade from a giant’s knee, leaving him to the mercy of Tyron and Seth, I imagined the staircases swirling, boring deeper and deeper into the earth and pushing our goal further and further away. And yet, just as despair struck me, a familiar voice restored my hope.
“I’m sick of this.”
Helix stepped forward. Bloodstains covered him from head to toe, and the red hue of his eyes seemed to have dulled to match them. He held his gauntlet before him, looking at it as though it were a watch. I noticed that the crystal on it was sparking purple.
“Tin-Throne!” He shouted to an unseen party. “Give me that cool demon-arm from before!” A criss-cross of purple flames weaved across his arm, and soon these lines coalesced into a horrific, giant arm. “Activate whack-a-mole mode… but only for Tower troops!”
Immediately the fist at the end of his demonic limb twitched as though nodding. It then windmilled down and struck the ground, sending Warnado flying into the enemy ranks. Before I had time to yelp in distress or notice the smoking crater he had left next to me, I saw the fist slamming around every which way, literally punching a hole in their defences.
I raised my sword and sent up a cry, and what remained of my red-scarved elites joined me as we hacked and beat our way through the fractured enemy. I saw Fire break through next to us.
In no time at all, the enemy were scattering, retreating down the stairs towards the labs or into this room full of taxidermized bears, or that room full of what appeared to be altars. My men and I caught up to Warnado as he dispelled his demon arm at the top of the stairs. He turned, panting, and smiling.
As we advanced, I couldn’t stop grinning myself. This young man, who just a few months ago had been reduced to tears using precisely that power, had just used it to successfully turn the tide of battle. This power had killed his father, but he was breaking the cycle. He would be the hero his world needed. And I had to say something. I opened my mouth
“Helix-”
“HELIX!”
Amanda cut across me, running up and grabbing her boyfriend around the waist.
“That was amazing! You were amazing!”
She lifted him and spun him around.
“What else is new?” Warnado giggled.
She put him down, and then they both fell into comfortable silence. I shuffled awkwardly. The Brotherhood and Mencur-Besh charged down the stairs to my right. Tyron stopped next to us, accompanied by Seth and Rathina.
“Not bad, kiddo,” Tyron laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Pretty sure I saw some of the moves I taught you in there so don’t mind if I steal my share of the credit.”
“50% our win!” chirped Kir.
“Sorry guys,” he quipped back. “This is the part of the heist movie where I reveal I already stole the credit two days ago.”
There was a round of polite laughter because no one seemed to understand what he was talking about. Then again, when questioned what he was talking about he never seemed to fully grasp it either. I heard Lupe of all people bark with genuine laughter and turned my head to see her shoot Warnado a knowing look as she prepared to join the fray.
Shadow and Fire broke off from driving away stragglers and approached the small circle of congratulations.
“Good job,” said Shadow. “You’ve come a long way.”
Fire nodded but threw glances down the staircase ahead. It was clear that he was feeling the urgency of our situation.
Unfortunately for him, the speaker-boxes crackled to life again. I hadn’t noticed their silence until that point.
“Hello Tower radio-o-o-o-o-o!” whooped a man.
I recognised the voice and my emotions immediately sparked from discomfort into joy.
“We’re sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming,” teased a woman’s voice. “But you’re under new management.”
“I’m Aaron Ecodew!”
“And I’m Tassadar Tunes!”
“And you’re listening to 24D Airwaves, sponsored by the good folks at Eye-and-Claws Inc, where we play nothing but the secrets your bosses don’t want to tell you!”
“Like how the Entity planned not to create a utopia for you guys to conquer, but just to glomp up all of reality for some reason! Don’t believe us? Ask Doctor Mercury, or has she been weirdly inaccessible for the last few weeks? Just hanging around in her lab all the time. Could that perhaps be because she realised the truth?”
“Not to say the first plan made much sense to begin with,” Aaron chuckled. “Did you dumb mother****ers really think you were the toughest guys in the multiverse?”
I leant against the wall and began to polish my sword. I heard weapons clattering to the floor and saw a small group of stragglers on the other side of the hall throwing down their weapons and surrendering to a detachment of Vangaardians.
“I have to say,” Tassadar said with grave professionalism. “Today’s events have certainly put that assumption into question.”
“But Tassadar, that’s not the worst part! You see, you’ve all collectively been had twice over! Because after all, the Entity who tricked you to begin with died a week ago.”
“Killed by our dear friend, Destiny Rosario. Rest in peace.”
I shot an apologetic smile to Kami, who grimaced awkwardly in return.
“That’s right, the real person in charge of the Tower is everybody’s favourite phantom of fear, Freak… Phantom… Phantomson. Yeah, Freak Phantomson.”
There was a pause, then the sound of Aaron breaking down laughing.
“That’s really the best you can do?” Tassadar said, not letting her presenter voice drop for a second.
Fire seemed to only partially listen to the messages, he knew their content already since he’d played an important part in creating the draft. Instead, he seemed to be silently half-moving his mouth, as if speaking to someone, probably communicating with the Mencur-Besh collective, debating whether he should go on ahead.
“There’s not even a surname in the script.”
“I tried to improv it.”
Astro’s voice crackled in, slightly muffled.
“Yeah, and that did not work, mate.”
“What a dipshit!” Secret howled dramatically in the background. “How could you have done this?!”
I felt like I was back in the pub in Zine Craft again. It felt like alcohol heating my insides. It felt like friendly laughter filling my ears. The laughter of people who hadn’t realised what I was yet. People who thought, even despite my criminal past, I could still turn it all around with nothing but a change of attitude, an overenthusiastic smile, and a fake accent.
Aaron finally collected himself.
“...Let’s go to our first guest, Laura, a Tower scientist who recently purchased some truly distressing information from our dear Freak, and also deserted to our cause.”
I strained my ears as papers faintly rustled, then a tiny cough as a throat was cleared. Then, suddenly, loudly:
“I've come to make an announcement, Clark Belmont is a *****-ass mother****er, he stole Dimensions' ****ing snacks. That's right, he took his grubby hands and stole those ****ing snacks, and he said they tasted ‘this good’ and I said that's disgusting so I'm making a callout on this intercom-”
“-Moving stuff, Laura,” Tassadar interjected, saving all of our ears. “And what do you have to say to the Tower magi who have been disguising themselves as civilians to lure in and ambush Shelter forces?”
I furrowed my brows. We had encountered this as well. Now, we were about to push into the labs, where one would expect to find scientists and technicians. How many might be willing to fight to defend their creations at any cost? Could we trust any purported civilians?
“Cut it out!” Laura yelled. “You’re going to get all of us killed!”
I stood up as the fighting on the stairs seemed to intensify again. That was when the radio took a turn for the strange.
“You heard it here first, folks. Cut. It-”
There was a thudding noise, and I heard Aaron grunt.
“****!” Tassadar yelled.
Gunshots, two of them. Then, a guttural roar of pain. My eyes widened. An Endling.
I heard the microphone shuffle as further gunshots sounded.
“Grey Ones! Attack!”
The sound of teleportation groaned around us until it felt as though the air were corroding around us. Hundreds of Endlings materialised, many armed, many bearing only their claws. One common theme held them together. To a great or lesser degree, all of them had been marked with grey paint.
I rolled away from the talons of a snarling beast of the End and forced it to warp away with a slash of my blade.
Unfortunately, they had caught us at just the wrong moment. The Mencur-Besh and much of Shadow’s Coven had already forced their way most of the way down the spiral staircase, and the new incursion of Endlings intended to keep them locked there. This left mostly Shelter forces and Vanillans in the hall, who were not nearly as well-equipped to deal with such an incursion.
They had already begun to shatter my men. Raphoe’s poleaxe clattered to the floor as an obsidian blade severed his spine. One of them had Kami by the throat, but with a flourish of her staff, an orb appeared and pelted her assailant with magical energy, following it wherever it warped. My men nobly tried to keep ranks, but they had scattered just enough in the lull that the Endlings were easily able to keep them separate. The hunters, however, moved almost unaffected, dodging, and countering easily, and soon with their help we were able to establish some equilibrium.
As my men formed an armoured circle of swords and spears, I realised what the Grey Ones’ arrival had to signal. Glibby was on the field, and he would be go straight for…
“Helix!” I yelled.
My eyes leapt ahead of my body and began to sweep the battlefield for any sign of Warnado.
Much of the leadership had remained upstairs to discuss how to approach the attack on the labs, so I quickly found who I was looking for.
Shadow had formed a circle of her remaining mages and was trying to cast a spell - presumably something to limit or stop Endling teleportation. The mouth of the spiral staircase with all its violence and bloodshed Fire, Tyron, Warnado and Amanda flitted around them like the spokes of a waterwheel, striking down one Endling here, then there, and then two more had appeared.
But no sign of Glibby. No hulking shoulders. No gargantuan fists. Not even a weather-worn trilby to signal his presence. Where could he be?
My eyes were drawn to Fire, who was easily the best equipped to deal with the Endlings. His ability to detect energy allowed him to reliably foresee their teleportation. I watched him lean slightly forward to evade one strike, then cleave his sword backward, killing his assailant instantly. Then, a measured backstep took him out of the reach of a flurry of swipes from the front. The flurry ended in another precise, brutal, burning stroke of the zweihander. That was when he arrived.
Glibby loomed suddenly to Fire’s left, leering and smirking so intensely the cloud of arrogance which always surrounded him had almost become visible. Obsidian armour covered his form, though a loose robe had been draped over that in an oblique gesture to his normal trenchcoat.
Leader of the Mencur-Besh turned to face him. The Ape’s smirk exploded into a grin, and their combat began.
I barked an order leaving Lupe in charge and began to run through the battle towards the ensuing duel.
Fire parried the Ape’s opening punch, and the fist screamed away in a burst of sparks.
I ducked as Chrone’s whip lashed across the battlefield.
The Ape threw a second punch, fiercer than the first. I almost saw the wind bunching up between his knuckles.
I leapt over Rathina as she plunged her daggers into the heart of an Endling she had just stunned and tripped.
Fire stepped back, angling his sword at his opponent’s exposed face. The punch flew wide. Glibby staggered.
My shoulder crashed into the Endling before me, sending him flying to the ground. Amanda quickly slotted a crossbow bolt into his head. I had made it. A grin crept onto my face.
Fire thrust his sword forward, and time slowed down.
An Endling materialised and grabbed the sleeve of Glibby’s robe from behind. He vanished, then reappeared to Fire’s right. The Mencur-Besh, following the train of energy began to turn his head. The Ape’s wild grin rapidly civilised itself into a smirk. That was when both Fire and I saw what the Endling had left behind when he picked up Glibby: a man with blue, glassy eyes, and a sniper rifle.
Flame burst forth from the long barrel of the gun, propelling its bullet onwards and into Fire’s firesteel breastplate. The metal warped inwards several inches as the bullet struck, crushing scale and flesh and organ in its wake, until finally the firesteel snapped back outwards, expelling the flattened round. Fire staggered back, clasping his chest. The glassy-eyed man snapped his fingers and was whisked away by another enderman.
"I see how it is, not a proper battle unless I lose a heart, huh?" Fire spat, his voice lowered to a growl. I had only heard that tone once or twice before, Fire was angry, or as close to it as he allowed himself to get.
One of Glibby’s gauntleted fists clamped around Fire’s sword-arm. The other slammed into his flank, the firesteel warping in so far I wasn’t sure it would actually warp back. Some relief flooded into me when it finally did, but this didn’t stop Fire’s face from contorting in genuine pain.
The Ape leaned in and drawled into his ear:
“What’s the matter, Fire? Not so fun when you didn’t plan to lose them?”
Just at that moment, Fire’s scales’ glow intensified beneath Glibby’s obsidian-coated fingers. The Mencur-Besh smirked as it did. The Ape grunted and threw his head back in pain, but then rallied. He clamped his other hand onto Fire’s body. With smoke rising from beneath one hand, and pain flooding his senses, the Ape hefted Fire over his head, and roared as he hurled him overhead. Fire slammed into the wall of the spiral staircase, cracking the stone bricks, then fell into the melee, where grey-painted Endlings immediately began to swarm him.
“So much for him,” Glibby chuckled, waggling his burnt fingers. “Now, where’s Helix.”
He rounded on the demon-child and cocked his head. Warnado backed away, closing his eyes, clenching his gauntleted fist and muttering.
Tyron and I exchanged a look and immediately interposed ourselves between Glibby and his prey. Amanda knelt behind us and trained a crossbow on him.
I weighed our odds. The last time we fought Glibby, Fire had stood a chance against him one-on-one. Then again, the original Grey Ones had been there, and they had been learning how to complement Glibby’s fighting style for over a decade. Could other Endlings prove as effective?
I flourished my sword and looked around for help. Shadow’s circle had almost finished their spell, the runic circle almost finished shining into place. She would be free shortly, and while she seemed to be holding back in here, I had no doubt she would want to pay Glibby back for what he’d just done to her brother. Not to mention, Warnado’s safety was at stake, and if nothing else I could say that she cared about him.
Unfortunately, Glibby’s cool eyes also seemed to have drifted towards her.
“Ah, teleportation suppression, is it? Well, we can’t have that,” he rolled his shoulders and pressed a finger against his ear. “Muffin, deal with the little witch.”
Boom! A man wearing a pinstriped suit and a cavernous smile shot into the air and his head immediately whipped towards Shadow. A wand sat in either hand, and I saw a heavy satchel of purple metal sat at his side: A thaumaturge. I froze. Thaumaturges were not capable of the nuance of real wizards, so most just threw themselves into raw power. As such, they weren’t so much sorcerers as cannons with legs.
He wasted no time in confirming my impression, blasting himself down at Shadow with one wand, and winding up for another attack with the other. Just before landing, he swung the wand like a sword and a clod of summoned energy shot straight at Shadow. She summoned a shield just in time, and it held, but the Thaumaturge’s smile remained gaping. He cocked an eyebrow, and I could almost physically hear the gears turning.
Clarke took this moment to run out of the crowd and shot a fireball at the Thaumaturge. In response, he caught the burning orb with his wands, and with a flick of his wrists split it in three. The central mass shot back at Clarke, striking him on the shoulder and knocking him to the ground. The other two formed into the shape of colossal greatswords, with the wands as hilts. He touched the ground, then neatly carved through Shadow’s shield.
I saw the runic circle flicker but not break. One of the circles began to rise, but Shadow ordered her not to break focus. As the amorphous blade took shape again, her shadow detached from her feet.
Wodahs took up a fighting stance and made for the faint shadow he cast on the floor of the hall, expecting no resistance. The Thaumaturge, however, simply flourished his right hand and the wand-blade shifted from a burning flame to a near-blinding light which scorched my vision. He swept the sword across ground where Wodahs had intended to strike, leaving no darkness to occupy. Shadow lunged forward with her shifting blade, and the combat ensued, the Thaumaturge dodging their attacks in a frenzied jig, his smile never fading, and his howling laughter never ceasing.
Satisfied, Glibby returned his attention to us.
“As for you,” He snapped his fingers. “Huskers, get the ghost, Eight, kill the beast.”
Endlings materialised before us, leaving off two figures. The sniper from before, presumably Huskers, immediately fired a shot that whizzed past my ear and cast a scorching wind over my cheek, forcing me to duck. Seeing him winding up a second shot, I rushed at him before he could fire it off and found myself swing at a man who seemed to have just about anticipated every move I could use on him, successfully dodging and parrying or striking me with the stock of his rifle every time. Yet, I could hear him wheezing and panting. His ageing body was struggling to act upon this knowledge.
Beside him, another man appeared. He wore a similar, unbroken diamond skin to the dual-wielding fighter from the Brotherhood, except he had affixed some porous white mask to the face. Diamond talons extended from between his knuckles, runes glowed on his arms and in a flash of purple light he materialised in front of Tyron and began to fall upon him in a cascade of feral, animalistic blows.
Tyron did his best to respond, summoning rocks from the floor to reinforce his arm and striking deliberately with Kir, but before long great welts began to appear along his arms.
Seeing us distracted, Glibby charged between us, directly at Warnado. Amanda instinctively fired a shot at Glibby’s face, but it shattered against the scorched palm of his gauntlet. He swept an arm at her to force her to dodge back, bearing directly down on Warnado himself. The demon-child was still muttering to himself, eyes closed, completely open. And Glibby’s fist was flying forward.
“Helix!” I cried, just before the sniper’s stock struck me in the jaw.
Glibby’s fist found only air. Warnado’s glowing red eyes were open, and his mouth had creeped into a smile. He leaned back at an impossible, forty-five-degree angle, suspended on his heel by magic. And his gauntleted arm had once again become the burning fist of a demon.
He propelled himself into standing and used the momentum to swipe up at Glibby. The taloned fist caught the Ape’s breastplate on the upper torso and scraped away some of the obsidian. A fleck of two of demonfire even sprayed off the fist and caught Glibby on the chin, forcing him to recoil. He spun out of the way of a second swipe and forced Warnado back with a precise jab of the fist. However, he immediately found himself on the backfoot once more as he evaded another of Amanda’s crossbow bolts.
“I’m pleasantly surprised, Helix,” he sneered. “No more running from you, I see.”
He threw another jab at Warnado. It slammed into the demon-arm, and Glibby swiftly pulled it back before the flames did him any serious damage. He stuck out his arm and flexed his fingers against the pain.
At the same moment, the sniper’s age caught up to him and I was able to shunt him back a few steps. As I moved to strike him, he briefly pointed the barrel at my face, then let it drop to floor and shot at my foot, buying him a little more space. I found this very odd. Why not take the shot?
Warnado floated into the air, demon-fist raised.
“Nope, just me kicking your butt,” he quipped.
He shot down, planning to reduce Glibby to a very burnt pancake on the floor. However, at the last moment an Endling grabbed his arm and warped him to safety. A purple-tinged crater cracked into existence on the ground where he had stood.
Glibby was lucky, as a second later the runic circle flickered into completion, suppressing the teleportation capacity of the Endlings, and allowing our forces a chance to fight on even footing again. The Mencur-Besh and Coven were gaining more ground on the staircase, though the Endlings were still numerous, and I couldn’t make out Fire among them.
Shadow was still locked in combat with the Thaumaturge, frustration visibly forming on her face, her mages forbidden from helping her. Tyron slammed a wall of rock into his opponent, though this only momentarily broke his stride before he launched into a new round of attacks. I also saw Chrone and the Brotherhood fighting their way through the crowd toward Glibby. I struck out at the sniper, and for the first time my fist connected.
Glibby cast the now useless Endling aside and began to rummage around inside a pouch on his hip. He pulled out a bottle of purple dust which caused me to pause. I only had a second, though, before the sniper struck out at me again and we returned to the dance of combat which he seemed to know much better than me. Almost as though he had rehearsed the steps to it already…
Warnado rounded on Glibby, and the Ape cocked his head to encourage him onwards. Amanda fired another bolt to cover Warnado’s advance. He ran forward with his fist before him, ready to drive it like a spear into Glibby’s gut. The Ape blocked the bolt yet again and threw the bottle at the ground, throwing up a cloud of purple dust which Warnado ran through. Immediately I saw the effect. Warnado’s fist began to dwindle, the flames flickered and dimmed, the talons became less sharp. His hand connected with Glibby’s torso, just about breaking the armour, but when he drew it away, it was a thoroughly human hand, with only the tips of his fingers covered in the Ape’s blood.
“H-how?” Warnado stammered.
The demon-child began to back away, but Glibby grabbed him and threw him to the ground. I realised I had to end this fight with the sniper immediately.
“I’ve been doing research on you.”
The Ape’s fleshy, skin-coloured lips folded into a contented smile. Warnado tried to scoot away, but Glibby kept advancing, as creeping and inevitable as the tide.
“I read a book about demonic gauntlets, and I managed to come across one which featured a crystal remarkably similar to your own. As it turns out, the connection between wielder and gauntlet can be severed with a simple cloud of amethyst dust. Isn’t that a shame?”
He stooped, then batted aside Amanda as she tried to swing an axe at him. Warnado tried to summon an ethereal shuriken, but a gauntleted fist slammed into his stomach.
I struck the sniper and sent his rifle flying. He whipped his hand and a spring-loaded firearm shot to the right of my face. It didn’t even come close. Suddenly, I recognised the look of glassy, far-flung terror on his face: the Prophet. It all clicked.
“You can’t kill me, can you?” I breathed. “If I’m not here, you can’t be here…”
The sniper hesitated and I smashed his nose in. I had no time to take satisfaction in the crunch as his blood spattered over my armoured knuckles, however. Glibby continued, now mere inches from the demon-child’s face:
“Look at all that life bundled up in you,” his grotesque lips spread. “Let’s unhitch this burden.”
I swung underhanded at Glibby’s face. I froze as I realised this was the same manoeuvre that had severed my bond with Helix, and the Ape managed to leap out of the way. Amanda immediately grabbed Helix and they ran away into the melee. The Ape glowered at me, incensed at having lost its kill. I held my sword with both hands and stood my ground. I realised I needed to provoke him.
“Hello Kay,” he seethed. “You just took away a moment I’ve been looking forward to for some time.”
“Good,” I said. “Glad I did it, you sad bloody chimp.”
Glibby reared up and suddenly looked taller than the Tower itself.
“What did you just say-”
He was interrupted as I ran up and slashed at his face again. He forced me back.
“You going to ****ing talk all day Glibby or are you going to fight?”
I spread my arms and jabbed my head forward in defiance. I had dropped all pretence, my natural brogue finally undistinguished. I was spitting more than speaking.
“I am Kay Mandy, Lap Dog of Herobrine, Hero of Arcadia, the uncrowned king of Nexus, and I condescend to challenge you, Ape. You should be honoured to face an opponent such as I. Or do you only fight children and shepherds?”
I had his attention now. I ducked one stroke of the gauntlet, then another, the air turned to a storm by the power behind his blows.
I leapt up and swing at him twice, which he deflected easily before jabbing me in the jaw. The very sinews of my mouth seemed to be threatening to unwind. I stayed upright, barely, and dodged well enough for another jab to merely glance off my cuirass.
I made for the small wound Helix had made on his flank. My blade plunged forward, then stopped. The Ape’s gauntlet formed an obsidian scabbard for it. He wrenched the sword from my hands, flipped it around, and began to advance on me. I looked around.
Tyron was now being straddled by the diamond-skinned man Glibby had called Eight, only barely blocking his blows, his arms red with blood. The sniper was slowly recovering himself. I watched as Fire exploded back into view, roasting several Endlings and beginning to cleave another in two. Shadow’s skin slipped into that shade-beyond-dark, and Wodahs proceeded to immediately ignore conventional shadow logic. The shade reached across the blinding light and grabbed the Thaumaturge’s shadow by the head. His skull crumpled. The tide was turning, and I wondered if there was time for one of them to come up and save me.
Then, off in the corner, I saw Helix. Amanda had him propped against the wall and was talking quickly, continuously to him. He had his eyes closed and his head bowed. He breathed deeply and heavily and desperately. I remembered all those things which had been done to him, by Glibby, by the demons, by his mother… and by me. I took one last glance at the prophetic sniper, and the distant, unmistakable fear was still there - the fear of a man who had known all that was to happen, and now found himself blinded. And that was my mind made up.
I nodded, then spread my arms wide once again.
“Go on, you stupid animal,” I muttered. “Finish the job.”
If he killed me, that was the cycle broken. I died in Nexus, so I could never have gone back to my own world. And if I had never gone back to my own world, I could never have done whatever horrible thing I did there, and so Astro could not have come to Nexus in the way he did. And if Astro hadn’t been in Nexus, I might never have tried to fight the Entity to begin with. The chain didn’t just break, it exploded, and all those things were undone. We were set back to square one, and perhaps this time I could get it right.
He lifted the sword, then stopped. The sniper had called out to him, but I’m not sure either of us could make out what he said.
“Forget him, Glibby!” I roared. “Do it!”
I hoped beyond hope that someone might remember. Maybe me, though I doubted that. Then, I thought of Shadow, or the Lady of Dreams. If anyone would remember, it would be them. They might be able to steer us right. To save Destiny, save David, Fristad, the Book… perhaps they could even stop my own disgrace.
Glibby returned his eyes to me, choking on rage.
He thrust my sword down at me, and I bared my neck for the deathblow. I remembered the question I asked of Silver.
“Do I die well?”
“You seemed to think so.”
I could only conclude that this was the best I could do. At least this time around.
Clang! I looked down, distraught. The diamond-skinned man from the Brotherhood had caught the blow with his twin swords and now forced Glibby back. Chrone interposed himself between me and them and shunted me back as I protested.
“Chrone, no! This is the only way I can-”
His head shot around and our eyes locked. Beneath the steel mask I could detect a strange familiarity. Either a deeper friendship than I had ever known, or a fiercer hatred than I could conceive. Maybe both.
“This isn’t about you,” he said quietly.
“Hey!”
My eyes shot to the source of the second word. Helix was back on his feet. No heavy breathing. No closed eyes. Not even hatred. Just an exuberant smile, so like the one he had worn when he first appeared at Fire and I’s door back near the spring. Amanda stood behind him, a crossbow in one hand and an axe in the other.
Glibby, still engaged with the dual wielder, called out to Eight. Eight, having since been forced off Tyron by Rathina and Seth, grunted reluctantly and, in a streak of purple light, was busy harassing his doppelganger. Chrone shoved me once more and ran off to help his brother. The Ape turned to Warnado, a smile slowly returning to his face.
“So, he’s back, is he?”
“Yep.”
“Little Helix is ready to fight?”
The Ape threw his arms wide and roared with laughter.
“Nope, Helix isn’t home. You’re dealing with Warnado, now.”
He manifested an energy axe in his hand.
“Well, that’s quaint. Fighting on even without your demonic powers.”
He began to stride toward Warnado.
“Funny you should say that…”
Warnado’s eyes glowed purple momentarily, then his energy axe turned from green to deep, molten purple. The Ape stopped. I couldn’t see his eyes, but they must have been wide as oceans.
An exhilaration ran through me. Chrone was right. It wasn’t about me. This was his moment. A chill ran down my cheek and I realised I was crying.
“You cut off my connection to the gauntlet, but those powers don’t belong to the gauntlet. They’re mine, and it’s time I started acting like it.”
The Ape snarled and raised his fists. Warnado ran at him.
Warnado swung and Glibby tried to parry. The manoeuvre succeeded, but a large chunk of obsidian was chipped off the outermost knuckle. I saw burnt flesh beneath.
Glibby gritted his teeth and drove his fist at Warnado’s flank. Warnado lifted his arm, and a shield formed, absorbing the blow but sending him sliding back on the floor. Seeing the opportunity, the Ape began to launch a series of blows directed at Warnado’s head. However, Warnado’s eyes flashed purple again and he dodged each of them without fail, still flashing that same exuberant smile.
Amanda landed a bolt in Glibby’s exposed shoulder, and he howled with pain. The offensive juddered to a halt, and Warnado struck back, catching Glibby on the arm and leaving a deep welt. The scent of scorched flesh sprayed into the air.
The Ape wheeled back and reassumed a fighting stance, teeth bared like fangs. Only, a wall of rock slammed into his side. Tyron hung from Rathina’s shoulder as a healer tended to him, one arm stretched out in a fist. Warnado struck again and cracked Glibby’s right-hand gauntlet straight down the middle, leaving his hand exposed. The Ape swung with his still-armoured hand and Warnado nimbly spun out of the way.
Glibby staggered closer to me, still warding Warnado off with heavy punches, and the small puncture wound on his torso called out to me once more. I grabbed a discarded sword from the ground and thrust at it. On account of the wound still being framed by a lot of armour, the sword stopped quickly, and wound was superficial, but the Ape’s focus was broken. I lurched away from the retaliatory strike.
This brief break in concentration, allowed Warnado the chance to shift his axe into a baseball bat. Crack! The helmet went flying from Glibby’s head.
Still more enraged, he charged at Warnado. Unfortunately for him, he was so consumed with his fury he did not notice the blast of heat flying into his path. He collapsed, his lower right leg separated from his body, and I saw Shadow blow the smoke from her finger.
Still, the Ape was not done. He steadied himself with his remaining knee and his unarmoured hand and jabbed fiercely at Warnado. The demon-child snapped his fingers, and the remaining gauntlet materialised in his palm, smoke rising from it.
Glibby’s jaw fell open. He turned his exposed hand over and over, eyes reading over every scratch, every blemish, every line of his palm, as though trying to find some sign in them that had led to this moment. Nothing distracted him from this examination. Not the presence of his opponent. Not the sound of his men being slaughtered around him. Not even the excruciating pain he was probably feeling from his various wounds.
Fire appeared beside Warnado, breathing heavily and supporting himself on his zweihander.
“The choice falls to you, do you want him dead, or will you give him a chance to surrender? A chance that is wholly undeserved, seeing what he did now and in the past. Still, we might have a use for this Ape yet.”
Warnado squinted down at his opponent, or perhaps glared. My heart began to thunder. Then, finally:
“Eh, I don’t really care…”
And he just walked off. The Ape looked up in confusion, as though woken from a dream. I felt a surge of… maybe it was pride, maybe it was disappointment. Regardless, I hung my head and unleashed a deep breath I had been holding.
Fire nodded. “Alright then, Glibby. You get another shot at the decision you made in that valley, now I hope that you choose to save some of your subordinates for a change instead of sending them to their deaths.”
Fire detached his radio’s microphone which through some miracle had survived up until now. He held it in front of the Ape’s face. Fire’s next words were much louder by virtue of being relayed through the Tower’s intercom.
“Glibby the Ape, do you surrender?” Fire asked, then waited for a response.
The notorious serial killer looked up at Fire like a lost child. He cast an eye in the direction of Eight, just in time to see Chrone’s whip cleave his mask in two. Another, more searching glance failed to find the prophetic sniper. He ran a tongue over his teeth, then leaned forward.
“I surrender. Grey Ones, stand down.”
I looked around, there weren’t many left to surrender, but a cheer still went up in our ranks when the remaining obsidian weapons clattered to the floor. The Mencur-Besh and Coven mages had secured the staircase. We were a stone’s throw away from our objective. However, there was no way of knowing what truly awaited us in the Deep Labs, or how dearly it would cost us to get there.
Chapter 82: A God, a Dragon, and a Beast (Herobrine)
The stone split into a shape like lightning as Herobrine’s sword crashed into it. And, like lightning, this striking shape was followed by a thunderous crack. However, the walking earthquake that was the ravager handily drowned out this impressive blow. Herobrine grunted to have missed His target once more. He resumed his pursuit in a steady jog, watching as the creature and its grey-skinned rider rounded the corner.
His eyes snapped shut. He saw through the eyes of the Wraith. A small contingent of Eye-and-Claws operatives and Vanillans fought their way through a mixture of Tower soldiers and grey-skinned Vithians. Ring of sword. Boom of firearm. Clatter of armour battered every which way. Granular and uninformative. And then, something to latch on to: the slimy thud and subtle crack of a javelin piercing a windpipe. Viking, a Vanillan moderator esteemed for his prowess in battle, pulled his modified staff from the throat of an opponent just in time to notice the beast bearing down on them.
Herobrine quickened his pace. In the corner of his eye he saw the beast shatter the engagement like an artillery shell. Friendly and opposing blood spattered the sides of the beast as it vanished through an obsidian gate which closed so quickly afterwards it might well have been chasing the beast as well. The Blind watcher cursed and finished his approach.
The fighting had almost died down. The Eye-and-Claws had recovered quicker than their Vanillans, He felt blood washing over his boot, and looked down to see Viking coughing up blood. Wounded but determined not to die, the moderator used his staff to pull himself up. The fighting was almost finished. Herobrine frowned as he saw how the crystal at the tip had been filed down to make it function as a spear, a near-blasphemous act.
“Sorry m’lord,” Viking spat blood, “We’ll have this door down in a moment.”
Herobrine did not respond. He splayed his hands against the door and closed his eyes. The Wraith manifested, unseen, on the other side.
“Could we get a demolitions team down here in sector four? Got an obsidian gate that doesn’t want to move. Fedwin, Scrump, you around?”
“Sorry Vike,” grunted Fedwin, known as the tinkerer. “My golem’s been damaged. Running repairs now.”
Then, Scrumping Pup, leader of Woobly, answered: “We’re a little way out, be with you in maybe fifteen?”
Herobrine followed the conversation closely enough to know he would have to do this himself. Through the Wraith's eyes he saw a large, torchlit hall, at the end of which was a large staircase leading up several floors. In it sat three obstacles.
First, two ranks of ten, entirely comprised of grey-skinned Vithian Testificates. Each was armed with their habitual assortment of light armour, crossbows, and axes. That would be easily dealt with.
Next, a bigger problem. Four golems. Each made of bedrock like his sword. Each with a red eye in the centre of its skull. Each eye glowed so brightly it seemed to suck the light out of the face encasing it, leaving just a dark shadow. All were killable, but he had not yet seen them in such numbers.
And then, naturally, he saw the object of his pursuit: the ravager and rider. The rider sneered down at the door, clutching the reins tightly. The ravager snorted and slurped air in and out, a thick, coarse tongue running over its lips. Its horns glinted hungrily in the torchlight.
“Woobly will be here shortly m’lord,” groaned the moderator, tearing the Blind Watcher black to reality.
Viking stumbled again and returned to leaning on his spear.
Herobrine nodded in decision.
“No need,” he answered.
He would dispense with his usual theatrics, and simply cut the door down himself. He planted one foot behind him and drew the blade back. He looked through the Wraith again to identify the bar holding the obsidian door in place and adjusted his stance. One good thrust would do it…
A familiar voice crackled into his ear:
“Hey, sorry I had trouble with the microphone again.”
The Blind Watcher cocked an eyebrow. It was Dinnerbone.
“Is sector four the one with the big obsidian gate that has Herobrine standing outside it?”
Herobrine abandoned his stance and squinted at the moderator. Viking, however, was looking back down the hallway, his jaw wilting with disbelief. The Watcher became aware of pounding footsteps.
“So, I fell behind Astro and the others after that thing with the grey villagers and got a little lost. Thankfully, I ran into a buddy.”
Coming down the hallway towards them was Dinnerbone, yes, and looking quite ordinary. He tuned his ukulele as he spoke, punctuating his speech with an occasional probing pluck. His black hat hugged his scalp as eagerly as ever.
Less ordinarily, he sat astride the neck of a dragon. A colossal dragon whose wings scraped the walls and shred tapestries as they went. A dragon with a coat composed of the stars themselves. A dragon the Blind Watcher recognised. This was Glowstar, who he had seen soaring high above him so often at the Shelter. He didn’t seem pleased to see Herobrine, momentarily baring his fangs and snarling before containing himself.
“Do you think Glowie’s big enough to knock it down?” Dinnerbone called. Then, he frowned, craned his neck, and looked the dragon in the eye. “You’re cool with that, right?”
Glowstar sighed.
“Yes.”
A smile sprinted across Herobrine’s face. Perhaps there was time for theatrics after all.
“Wait for my signal. Don’t worry, it will be self-evident.”
He closed his eyes and spoke as the Wraith. A low, faint yet profound tone. Like an echo in an abyss.
“So, you choose to cower here? Behind obsidian gates and a bedrock wall?”
Raised his sword. The rider’s eyes and head began to dart around every which way.
“Know ye not? None escape the Blind Watcher’s gaze.”
The Wraith, with its ragged clothes and filthy skin became visible. Its white eyes flashed, and the Vithian ranks shrank back in fear. Their ranks became chaotic. Axes were thrust out like spears. Crossbows raised up as makeshift shields. An instinctive, primordial fear spread through them. Only the fury of the rider kept them in formation, but even he chewed his inner cheek fearfully.
“It was I who slew the Withers.”
Boom! Herobrine struck the ground with his sword. The Wraith’s eyes flashed and blinded both rider and foot soldiers. The golems looked on impassively. Herobrine was grinning now, anticipation of the coming triumph surging through him.
“It was I who shattered the false god of the Obsidian Empire.”
He struck the ground once more. Another disorienting flash. Herobrine glanced back significantly. Glowstar began his charge.
“You too shall fall.”
He thrust his sword between the gates and shattered the crossbar. Glowstar left the ground. The Blind Watcher spread his arms and roared with laughter.
“Bow down to Herobrine!”
Glowstar slammed into the gates and threw them open, Dinnerbone screaming half-joyously as he just about held on to the dragon’s mane. Herobrine advanced beneath, and the golems, who had been anticipating him but not the dragon, fired blasts which he cleanly deflected with his sword.
A whip of Glowstar’s tail sent the Vithian foot soldiers flying. Then, in a swift, serpentine motion, the dragon reared up above the ravager and its rider, and a shower of blue stars burst forth from its mouth.
As the smoke cleared, it became clear that one of the golems had been able to adjust its threat assessment in time. Its bedrock skin glowed dark blue as the starfire faded, and behind it the ravager rider stood unharmed and angry. A blast from the burnt golem’s eye struck Glowstar on the flank and struck him from the sky. Dinnerbone slammed painfully into the ground beside him.
Herobrine quickened his stride. He split the fist of an oncoming golem with his sword, then whirled it up to do the same with its head.
The glowing golem charged for another blast, this time aimed at Glowstar’s head. At the last second, Dinnerbone shot back to life, and with a strenuous thrust of his hand the golem’s head twisted to the side and shot one of its fellows. The golem it struck steadied itself, and the glowing golem’s head churned slowly back into place.
Herobrine sidestepped the fist of another golem, then cleaved through its torso, leaving it to fall away in two halves. He moved to attack the glowing golem, only to find himself rolled away from his target to narrowly avoid the ravager’s charge. It skidded to a halt just beside the gates and began to reshuffle for another attack.
Glowstar rallied just in time to strike the recently blasted golem with his tail. It struck the ground, and the sound of its fall had only just begun to ring out when Herobrine’s blade plunged through its back. The red light snuffed out like any old candle.
Dinnerbone cheered, prompting Herobrine to turn his head. The glowing golem loomed behind his interdimensional relative, its eye ready to burst with energy. Without thinking, the Blind Watcher heaved his arms and sent his sword flying into the golem’s still-smouldering torso. It fell back, disabled.
Just as Herobrine took a breath, the ravager knocked it out of him. Suddenly, he was holding onto its horns, shattering the tiled floor as he tried to slow the beast’s advance with his heavy obsidian boots. Soon, he found himself pressed against a wall, straining to hold back the horns. His eyes locked with the beast’s, and he saw its furious intent. Even without its rider, this creature wanted to kill him. Herobrine’s eyes flashed white, and the beast slammed its own shut, continuing to press forward.
Then, a serpentine neck whipped around. Glowstar’s teeth sank into side of the ravager, and starfire scorched the flesh beneath. It reared up, groaning. The rider fell to the floor. Seeing the beast’s neck exposed, Herobrine struck out. He found flesh. Flesh gave way to bone. Crack! The beast fell back, dead.
As he panted from the exertion, Herobrine heard the shuffle of the rider loping towards the stairs. Dinnerbone squinted after him, then waved his hand. The Vithian leader flew to the left and slammed into the lid of an open chest. Seconds later, compelled by the impact and its newfound weight, fell back in the opposite direction, and slammed shut. The lock clicked.
Herobrine and Dinnerbone chuckled, then Viking and his men ran in to the hall and began to investigate its security. Glowstar limped out of the hall, into the care of the three Eye-and-Claws operatives, who had already begun to rifle through their inventory for medical equipment.
“Glowstar!” Herobrine called.
The dragon titled his head but did not turn.
“Thank you!” he concluded.
The dragon made a gesture almost like a respectful nod, then began to discuss his options with the Eye-and-Claws fighters. Naturally, a healing potion would take some time and be very painful, so could perhaps a concoction of strength, or maybe speed compensate for his injuries and so on and so… The Blind Watcher’s gaze was drawn to the staircase.
“It can’t be…” He muttered.
He closed his eyes and saw as the Wraith.
“It is!”
Viking looked to Dinnerbone, who simply shrugged from his seat on the chest.
These stairs led directly up to the top floor, where both the throne room and activation mechanism were. In fact, the corridor gave him a straight shot all the way to the elaborate doorway guarding it.
Herobrine adjusted the frequency on his microphone.
“Mercer, rally the blackshells and get to sector four, we have a line on the activation mechanism.”
Mercer quickly assented, and Herobrine began to laugh. Viking spoke up, with as much warning as enthusiasm.
“You’re serious? I’ll get on the line to Astro at once!”
Herobrine put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed tightly. Warm in theory, but firm enough to remind the moderator of their power dynamic.
“Well, don’t be hasty. Why let the Gaians steal all the glory? Wait until my men are in position, then we can coordinate a two-pronged assault.”
Viking maintained firm eye contact but began to tremble a little. Dinnerbone looked back and forth between them, confused as to the nature of the exchange.
“Naturally, my lord,” the moderator bowed his head.
Herobrine grinned, then stepped forward.
“Be ready men! In but a few minutes you shall be at the forefront of our great victory! The Throne of the Entity shall be ours!”
He raised his sword up and it rippled with white light. A cheer went up. Herobrine turned to survey the stairs and plot his ascent to glory.
He was met by the warm, hot wind of a desert. Reminiscent of a dreadful day. The gates boomed shut, sealing out Glowstar and the Eye-and-Claws. The torches flickered, and the hall became dark enough to smother the very memory of light. The flames lost their orange and surged sickly yellow. The darkness stayed unmoved.
“Shall it now?”
The voice was snide and creeping. A centipede crawling over the mind. Yet no body appeared to give voice to it. Herobrine looked through the eyes of the wraith. Still nothing.
“We’ll keep the interesting ones, shall we?”
Dinnerbone began to say something, then gasped. The Wraith saw him, choking, lifted in the air by an unseen force. Then, a small, precise cut opened on his brow, and his head fell. Dinnerbone fell with a thud on top of the chest, trapped in a whimpering slumber.
Herobrine began to make his way towards his comrade’s unconscious body, gripping his sword ever closer and trying to make it shine brighter. Viking summoned a little light to the crystalline tip of his staff-made-spear. It made no difference to the dark.
Then, there was a noise like bursting. Blood covered the Blind Watcher’s face. He looked down. Viking was dead. No. Not dead. Destroyed. The mass of blood and viscera was only identifiable by the crystal-tipped weapon lying among it.
“To me, men!” roared Herobrine.
He thrust his glowing sword up like a beacon, but it was choked by the darkness until he could barely see it above him. Faint creams reached him like almost-echoes through the hall, scrambling through the dark.
Through the Wraith’s eyes he saw them running to and fro. Breaking. Bursting. Severed and shredded as though rent by a terrible set of claws.
“Not many interesting ones, unfortunately,” cackled the voice.
Using the Wraith’s sight, Herobrine managed to stop a nearby soldier. Then another. And another. Something like a formation assembled.
“Show yourself, fiend!”
Something like a snake brushed his foot. Or no, it was like a tree-root. A briar? He saw a set of glowing yellow eyes at the end of the hall, a terrible glowing grin beneath them.
“It’s Freak, actually.”
Thorns long as spears sprouted from the root. They punctured his men. Spines split. Skulls cracked. Then, a briar punched through the armour over his gut, sticking out the other side. Obsidian punctured as though it were paper. The Blind Watcher gasped, then with a swipe of his sword cut the root. It receded. He fell to one knee, keeping his sword-arm pressed against his wound.
“Whatever your name is, show yourself! That I may smite you as I have a million foes before! Then, you will know the might of Herobrine, the Blind Watcher!”
More cackling. The Wraith, still unseen, searched the room, but saw nothing.
“There is some bark on you. But no bite. Are you sure you weren’t the Lap Dog in that arrangement?”
Suddenly, the glowing eyes and maddening grin were above him. Freak. He swung backhanded at the apparition. The glowing features vanished as his sword was about to connect. He struck nothing. Then, they flashed back into view, and Herobrine felt a pain in his arm. The sword fell from his hand. Seconds later, another pain on his forehead. He fell backwards.
As he struck the ground, he realised the floor was no longer tiled. Poisoned grey sand rubbed his cheek. The darkness had gone. Brown, rotting skies hung above. Clusters of skulls floated above. Herobrine sat up, heart shuddering.
“Why are we here, I wonder?” Freak asked unseen.
He saw Steve, his mentor, on a sand dune some ways off, the grey withering spreading up his side. He called out to him. Pleading for death.
“Can you give it to him?”
Herobrine backed away. He couldn’t be there again. Not there. Anywhere else.
“Please…” He whimpered.
“Look at you. Herobrine, slayer of a million foes, fear of a million worlds. And you are scared of a memory.”
A memory… yes! He was still in the Tower. In the hall. His head snapped up and he glared at Freak. The phantom grinned back.
“I am fear!” Herobrine grunted.
The Wraith became visible, eyes ready to explode in a flash of blinding, eviscerating light and erase this creature forever.
A taloned fist struck out. The Wraith’s eyes went dark. Blood spilled down. The Wraith became a shambling thing, casting its eyes around in pursuit of the master who had convinced him of his invincibility.
Freak lifted the Wraith from the floor, his grin settling into a cold smile. His jaw unhinged.
The voice continued in Herobrine’s mind: “No, you’re not fear. But you’re about to meet him.”
The Blind Watcher closed his eyes and surrendered to the nightmares. Even past horror was better than the present.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 7 Showdown (Cont.)
Chapter 83: The Deep Labs (Shadow)
While Glibby and the surrendered endermen were being restrained, Shadow gathered her Coven. They were about to descend into the science-focused section of the Tower’s underground, where the density of the anti-magic lamps was much higher than anywhere else.
She gave her instructions: “Danann, Iridia, Pallas. You will each command a third of the mages we have here, your main task will be to sweep any side rooms and corridors we come across. From what Fire told us there should not be as many lamps in the rooms compared to the corridors, few enough to overwhelm with a focused effort. I’m less debilitated by magic suppression, so I will accompany the main martial force on their push.”
The Coven mages answered with a united “Yes Master!” and divided themselves into three groups. Some Vanillan mages joined them as well, but others seemed to prefer going with the push force.
Only a moment later, Fire walked up to her, still visibly reeling from the battle. This had been way too close for comfort.
He said: “I expected a lot of things from Glibby, but not for him to throw me across the room. Whatever strength potion he is on, it can’t be safe.” A flask appeared in Fire’s hand. “Speaking of…”
One after the other, Fire downed several potions, strength, speed, resistance, and several others. He finished with a healing potion that sent a violent jolt through his limbs, restoring him back to fighting shape.
As they walked towards the staircase, Kay approached Shadow.
“Shadow, I know I’m the wrong person to say this but…” He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders. “Are you holding back? That guy was crazy for sure and Thaumaturges are tough, but they’re also just tough. He was not in your weight class.”
He suddenly didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, stroking his chin, then scratching his head before settling on planting them on his hips.
Shadow stopped, contemplating. “Back at the Shelter I tried using Void magic, and it seems that now with the Entity gone any damage I do to reality is permanent. But that’s not really it. I… suppose I have been holding back. Making absolutely sure not to hit any of our people would be what I’d like to call the reason, but that’s not it entirely either.”
She was not entirely sure when it happened, but somehow, she had developed a sort of mental block, the kind that is only possible when someone’s magic is as interwoven with their existence as hers was. What was it? Was she afraid? Shadow clenched her fists, now was not the time for hesitation, she was an ascended archmage, a far cry from the scared little girl she had been at the start of her life!
With renewed resolve Shadow turned to Kay, demonstratively sending a wave of luminescence across the runes in her skin.
“No more holding back from now on. We need to see this through.”
Kay hesitated a moment, running a tongue along his teeth, then a grin exploded across his face. Shadow could tell it wasn’t wholehearted, though. It was the same grin he used back during the election.
“I’m glad to hear it, Shadow,” he said. “Hit them hard.”
They continued towards the staircase, joined by Tyron, Rathina, Amanda and Warnado. Shadow threw a look at her apprentice, he responded in kind.
Warnado said: “Let’s go, we have Tower butts to kick!”
He started shadowboxing as they moved on. In the corner of her eye, she saw Tyron swallow a laugh as he recognized the moves he taught the demon-child.
And with that, they descended the staircase. Down at the bottom the battle was already in full swing. A row of earth Mencur-Besh pushed itself through the hallway, then splitting apart to make room so the other Shelter soldiers could aid them in the attack. Shadow immediately felt the heavy magic suppression field projected by the lamps, three to five of them were affixed to each segment of the corridor wall.
Their group surged forward to join the battle, Tyron and Fire at the forefront, cutting down any Tower troops in their way, Rathina, Warnado and Amanda weren’t far behind. The malleable blade flowed into Shadow’s hand, taking the shape of a long dagger and she joined as well. Almost immediately she was locked in battle with a Tower soldier several heads taller than her, but the difference in size only amounted to Shadow having a better angle to stab through gap in the soldier’s armour.
Then, for just a moment Shadow felt the oppressive aura of the lamps disappear, only for it to immediately return, but before it did, a surge of lightning cascaded across a group of Tower soldiers. A quick look confirmed her suspicions. The Mencur-Besh mages were casting synchronous spells to temporarily overwhelm the lamps and using the gaps to attack. She’d be ready for the next one.
More and more enemies fell to their onslaught, three cloven apart by Fire’s zweihander here, two more executed by demonfire weapons there, several more trampled underfoot by the Shelter troops’ relentless advance.
The others flashed into view around her in a swirl of battle. Warnado put his hand on Amanda’s shoulder, allowing her to fell a giant with an endless stream of aethereal bolts. Kir trilled with excitement as Tyron disarmed an officer. Kay brandished his sword atop a fallen lamp, ushering on the hunters and his handful of remaining loyalists. Lupe stood back-to-back with Komplex, the Brotherhood fighter with two swords and a diamond skin, shredding their way through a particularly dense knot of Tower soldiers.
Shadow felt a shift in the ambient energy, the lamps would fail in a few moments. She catapulted herself into the air, then once the window arrived, let loose a wide-sweeping disintegration ray.
After a while, the enemy reinforcements became a trickle and then dried up completely. Room after room was secured by her Coven mages, several times there had been a Tower mage waiting in ambush among groups of civilian personnel, but just as often had the civilians decided to take the intercom announcement to heart, and quite literally kicked the partisan mages out of the door.
Ahead of them the corridor widened almost to the size of a cathedral, at its end sat an absolutely massive circular gate comprised of several interlocking segments, like the aperture of an oversized camera. Off to the left was the inactive frame of an equally large portal, according to Fire any sensitive off-world materials deliveries were shipped directly into this part of the Tower without going through external portal facilities. This also explained the behemoth of a gate, it made sure that anything that went further did so because it was allowed to.
Fire said: “The opening mechanism is on the other side. Can you tell us if there is anything guarding it, Shadow?”
Shadow expanded her senses beyond the door. She had expected an assortment of Tower soldiers, but that was not what she saw. Instead, the other side of the gate was packed to the brim with zombies and skeletons. There were no magic-suppressing lamps, or any other light source on the other side. She could engage the mechanism magically, but another fight would break out immediately after.
She said: “There’s an army of undead on the other side. We should take a few minutes before we open it.”
Coven mages fanned out, providing healing to anyone who needed it. Despite their clear victory, they had taken losses as well, nowhere near as many as during the battle outside, but a combination of fatalities and troops staying behind to secure their retreat had diminished their numbers significantly. Nonetheless, the soldiers they had left were of elite quality, and were currently taking up defensive positions.
“Ready?” She asked.
Shadow was met with series of nods and raised thumbs. She reached out beyond the gate and flipped the switch. With a hissing sound the gate’s arms disengaged their interlocking mechanism and very slowly slid apart. The moment the arms were far enough apart, undead already tried forcing their way through, slowly at first but as the gaps widened the horde came streaming in.
Warnado stood at the forefront, wielding an oversized demonfire chainsaw in each hand, cackling uncontrollably as he dismembered undead after undead. Even with his enthusiasm, the dead were too numerous to be easily pushed back. They crashed into their ranks, clumsily grabbing, and biting at whomever they could reach. The undead mercifully did not leave behind corpses, instead disappearing into puffs of smoke as they died again.
The Shelter troops held fast, the combined strength of their soldiers and mages allowed them to slowly advance further into the corridor. Sadly, it was never that easy. Shadow soon felt the presence of more lamps, and a look ahead confirmed her feeling. Further towards the back of the undead host were skeletons with magic suppressing lamps chained to their ribcages. Next to them walked, not shuffled, skeletons equipped with tower shields and spears. It became clear that the mindless horde was only the vanguard.
The moment they lost the support of their mages, they were pushed back. Shadow didn’t have to think twice to know what this meant, she needed to do something, or they’d all be dead. She took a wide stance and commanded her robes to change shape. As comfortable as their normal form was, what she was about to do required significantly more leg freedom than they allowed. Her pitch-black robes quickly morphed into brilliant-white gi, a slightly-darker-than-should-be-possible belt wrapped around her waist as a finishing touch.
If she understood the lamps correctly, they could only suppress magic that was out in the open, otherwise her magic-powered muscles would have failed the moment she stepped foot in the Tower, now it was time to find out just how far she could push this loophole. Shadow launched herself forward into the undead horde, throwing a punch at the first zombie she encountered, the moment her fist connected she pushed as much energy as she could into the contact surface. A shockwave exploded outwards from the impact point, tearing through the zombie and several standing behind it.
With practiced movements she flowed from undead to undead, delivering explosive punches and kicks as she went. Wodahs assisted where she could, but due to the poor lighting conditions, she was unable to do more than crush the occasional skull during the bright flashes of the explosions. Behind Shadow, Shelter forces began pushing back against the undead, immediately filling the gaps she created, leaving no room for the undead to form large groups. Warnado revved his chainsaws with renewed vigour and followed shortly behind Shadow, cutting up anything that wasn’t outright destroyed by her.
As Shadow advanced, she encountered more resilient undead, zombies wearing diamond armour, the skeletons with tower shields. Some of them did not go down in one hit, requiring multiple focused attacks, despite the explosive force. They were guarding the lantern skeletons, naturally. Instead of fighting the tougher undead head-on, Shadow leapt up and forwards, directly on course to the cause of their problems. The first lantern skeleton was crushed beneath the force of her impact, multiple more fell soon after. With quick punches the lanterns shattered, and the crystals contained in them were turned to dust.
Just as Shadow stood up to continue her rampage, she realized that while she had been crushing the lanterns, the tower shield skeletons had surrounded her. Several spears pierced through her torso. Unfortunately for the skeletons, this did very little actual harm to Shadow.
She quipped: “Fire had the right idea. It really isn’t a fight until I get impaled by something.”
The skeletons, entirely unfazed by her comment, simply held their spear in place. Shadow brough her foot down on the ground hard, unleashing an explosion that rocked the walls, shattering both her assailants and their spears. Shadow wasted no time in pushing further into the horde towards the next group of lantern skeletons. However, it turned out that this set would prove to be a little more challenging. Instead of the normal-sized zombies that guarded the previous group, this one was guarded by a hulking giant of a zombie, its arms were long enough to simply swat her out of the air if she tried her previous manoeuvre again.
Before engaging, she took another look behind her, the Shelter forces were faring much better, now that the first set of lanterns was destroyed. Fire swung his zweihander in wide, flaming arcs, cutting down undead by the dozen, right next to him was Tyron, using Kir to attack while shielding himself with his stone wings. Shadow turned forwards and delivered several quick punches to clear the way towards her target, the shockwaves sending the lesser undead flying.
The giant zombie swung at her with surprising speed, Shadow did not evade the punch, instead meeting it with her own. The force of the explosion blew the zombie’s hand backwards and even made Shadow lose her balance for a moment, preventing her from capitalizing on the situation. Before returning to her foe, Shadow first had to clear out the horde that was rapidly closing in around her. Each stomp only bought her a few seconds before new undead replaced the ones she had just killed. She needed full access to her magic back, and fast.
Her next punch did not create an explosion, instead a shower of white mist erupted from the impact point, freezing several undead solid. That was the key, as long as they did not die, they would not disappear. Shadow rapidly threw more punches, creating a solid wall of frozen flesh and bones around her. The undead behind the wall began climbing but were slowed down significantly. Shadow ran up to the giant zombie, the moment she got close enough it threw another heavy punch at her. This time she leapt over the decaying fist, landed on it, and ran up its arm, each step creating an area of necrotic ice.
The zombie was unable to react when Shadow froze its head with a chop to its neck. It was not dead, but now Shadow was in a prime position to destroy the next lanterns. Moments later, the skeletons lay shattered in a cloud of purple dust.
“Alright, now for you.” Shadow murmured as she turned back around to face the giant zombie.
She launched herself upwards to deliver a high kick to the zombie’s frozen head. The resulting shockwave completely vaporized the zombie’s body and carried on upwards until it reached the ceiling, which promptly collapsed in on itself, the debris crushing many undead where it fell. Instead of revealing a layer of rock, the hole in the ceiling lead to a wide-open room, which prominently featured a glowstone chandelier. It looked suspiciously like an arena. Only moments later the unmistakable lamenting screams of agitated ghasts echoed throughout the hallway.
From a distance she heard Kay call out: “Oh Mods! I hoped I’d never see that place again.”
Tyron yelled: “We breached their Dangerous Containment area, prepare for more mobs!”
And just that moment a group of seven blazes descended down the freshly torn hole, sparks already flying off their rapidly rotating rods, quickly developing into fireballs.
Now again in full possession of her magic, Shadow flew upwards and back to the main battle line. While she could definitely wreak havoc now, her first priority was preventing additional casualties. The relentless barrage of blaze fireballs harmlessly bounced off a shield Shadow projected, instead shooting towards the undead horde, creating small explosions where they impacted.
Shadow commanded her Coven: “Go on the offensive, I will take care of shielding!”
She did not have to say it twice, Danann immediately levitated upwards and began his own barrage of fireballs, Iridia followed up with a series of electrical discharges directed at the blazes, which proved to be both highly conductive and highly vulnerable to electricity.
A ghast descended through the hole in the ceiling, but Wolfric promptly shot it down with a magic-enhanced arrow, the only fireball it managed to shoot was deflected by Tyron and sent off into the far reaches of the corridor.
They soon had pushed up far enough that one of their fast-builders was able to pillar up and plug the hole in the ceiling, allowing them to focus on the undead hordes once again. Said hordes had only gotten stronger as time went on, while there were still plenty of weak undead around, a significant number of them had been replaced by armed and organized skeleton soldiers.
Off in the distance Shadow saw the purple light of a lone lantern and decided to take care of it before it would become a problem. She landed in preparation for having her flight cut off and traversed the sea of bodies in multiple long and quite literally explosive leaps. When she got closer, she was surprised that it was not a skeleton carrying the lantern this time, this lantern was carried by a man, though with his withered face he could have passed for a zombie, were it not for the fact that his skin was not green. As soon as he spotted her, he immediately put down the lantern on the ground next to him and instead raised his fists. Two rings of disembodied, pale, slimy hands began to rotate around his robed form.
He called out: “You! You wanna throw hands? Cuz I’ll throw HANDS!”
Shadow had no time for this man’s gimmick, instead of replying she simply ran forward and punched him in the torso. The explosive force immediately scattered his limbs in all directions, only his head fell down in place. Shadow crushed the lantern underfoot.
Just before his miserable existence was ended by a disintegration ray, the man’s disembodied head muttered: “Damn… she got hands.”
With the last lantern shattered, the Shelter troops redoubled their efforts and pushed forward. Suddenly Shadow felt a strong magical signature ahead, a green glow flared up in the distance. Far back in the corridor now floated a skeleton with glowing, green eyes wearing a dark cloak and a weathered iron crown. In its right hand was an obsidian staff, at the tip of which a glowing green cube hovered. The skeleton’s other hand was raised like a claw, as if clutching some invisible object.
Shadow had been around for long enough to know a lich when she saw one, and even if this one might operate by different rules than the ones she was used to, it certainly was not to be taken lightly.
A raspy laugh echoed throughout the corridor, the lich clasped its hand shut, and in a shower of embers, five skeletons with shields and spears appeared, reinforcing the horde.
Shadow’s Coven had moved forward in the ranks and were now actively bombarding the undead with spells. A fireball found its way towards the lich, but instead of striking it, the flames were absorbed into the glowing cube at the tip of the staff.
Danann called out to his fellow mages: “It’s absorbing the spells, don’t shoot it!”
Shadow yelled: “Focus on the horde, I’ll take care of the lich!”
She soared through the air, rapidly approaching the lich. Upon closer examination, there was a faint distortion in the air around it, a physically protective shield if Shadow interpreted its magical signature correctly. To test this theory, she yanked the skull off a skeleton she flew past and hurled it at the lich with full force. As expected, the skull was stopped and a pulse of green flashed across the shield.
Strong enough that I can’t break it with brute force, not without Void magic. Shadow thought.
When the lich didn’t take any immediate action to fight her, Shadow took the opportunity to speak.
“So, you’re one of the Tower’s off-world allies. I assume you’re not interested in surrender like the Ape?”
The lich replied: “I slew a whole world's worth of heroes, I slew the sun, you will not stand in my way.”
Shadow sighed. It was always the same with these arch-villain types, though at least this one at least had the courtesy of being forward with its intentions.
The lich swung its sceptre and the green cube at its tip seemingly split in two, the copy flew at Shadow at high speed, taking her by surprise and striking her in the leg. Bones shattered and muscles tore, leaving the leg hanging limply. She’d fix it later, there were more pressing matters.
Shadow unleashed a barrage of energetic orbs on the undead surrounding her, if she couldn’t fight the lich directly, she would do her best to thin the horde, maybe the shield would weaken if the staff’s energy was used to summon more undead.
Another green cube came flying in Shadow’s direction, but this time she was prepared, projecting a shield of her own, dissipating the blast. Another swathe of undead fell before her. The lich raised its hand and dozens more armoured undead appeared from thin air. Shadow felt no change in the shield’s energy, either she was wrong, or this was not enough.
The Shelter forces were drawing closer by the second, Kay and the hunters had pushed far into the undead horde, but before he could get the idea to launch another suicidal attack, they were joined by several Mencur-Besh.
Shadow gathered a ball of compact fire between her palms and sent it towards a dense group of undead, which was promptly reduced to ashes. More embers, more reinforcements, still no change in the shield. However, it seemed that the lich was no longer content with his passive role, with a flash of green, several identical copies appeared everywhere throughout the horde. The copies were not shielded, but apparently possessed full offensive capabilities. A barrage of green cubes went flying towards the Shelter troops.
Some missed their mark, others were absorbed by shields, but most of them struck true. Each hit enough to dismember, if not outright kill. Several of their frontline troops, among them at least one Mencur-Besh, were killed. The undead horde surged forward to exploit this newfound weakness.
Shadow grit her teeth. Two could play at that game. She summoned up projections of herself all over the room. Just like the lich’s copies, they did not possess the resilience of the original, but they were enough. Several projections swarmed each lich, attacking and blocking its shots. Shadow continued her assault on the horde in the meantime. Fireballs, lightning, wither magic, disintegration rays, every offensive spell she had.
Gradually she noticed a change, as the lich summoned more undead and created copies of itself the shield remained the same, but the frequency of its attacks lowered, it was clearly being pushed to the edge of its capabilities. The Shelter forces had pushed forward almost to Shadow’s position. With the lich this close, it became more difficult for her mages to protect against the incoming cubes.
Shadow saw Danann float upwards to get a better angle, just before he was about to cast his spell, a green cube struck him in the chest. Blood sprayed out as his arm and a good part of his shoulder were ripped from his body. He immediately dropped downwards in shock. He was barely caught by Iridia, who immediately projected a shield sphere and desperately tried to stop the bleeding. Shadow lost sight of the two when a group of earth Mencur-Besh pushed their way through the undead.
The lich was straining, maybe now was the time to try to break through its shield. But Shadow would need more than her fists if she wanted to exert enough force.
She yelled: “Fire!”
Her brother replied: “Yes?”
“Give me your sword!”
Without hesitation, Fire tossed his zweihander in Shadow’s direction and immediately resumed his attack on the horde with his claws. Shadow caught the sword telekinetically and gripped it firmly. The damn thing was twice her size and probably weighed as much as she did, but such physical limitations were for those without a way around them.
Magic surged into Shadow’s muscles, steadying the zweihander. She swooped downwards towards the lich, winding up for a huge swing. The blade connected with the shield, a radiant wave of green rippled across its surface, but it held. When the lich shot another of its cubes at Shadow, she took a page out of the late Ender’s book and teleported, using the previous momentum of the sword to prepare another swing. Another impact on the shield, another wave of green light.
Shadow attacked again and again, each time the shield turned a bit opaquer, but its integrity held. While plummeting downwards again, Shadow examined the shape of the shield now that it was visible. That was when she finally saw it. The shield protected the lich, but for it to be able to cast spells, the cube at the tip of the staff needed to be outside of the shield. Shadow put all her strength into her swing, but as the zweihander collided with the shield, she let go. The reaction force catapulted it into the horde, impaling three zombies together as it impacted. Shadow reached out towards the cube, her left hand clasping down around it.
“Nice staff.” She taunted the lich as her fingers dug into the cube, which shattered moments later in a violent explosion of emerald sparks.
Shadow’s left arm was in a similar state to her leg, hanging down uselessly, but she only needed one arm for what came next. She delivered a devastating strike to the now unprotected lich, a second explosion ringing out as she made contact.
The moment the lich’s bones were scattered through the room, it seemed like the horde lost some of its cohesion, now no longer commanded by the lich’s unifying will. Within minutes, the Shelter troops had wiped out the remaining undead.
After they had made sure that there were no more enemies near, they regrouped. Shadow took that time to repair the damage to her body she had sustained during the fight, which thanks to Nexus’ energy density went quickly, back home the same would have taken her days.
This time Warnado was the first to approach her. He grinned. “Wow, Shadow. You went through at least three different anime character archetypes in just a few minutes. Didn’t know you could fight like that.”
Shadow smiled at her apprentice. “As opposed to the megalomanic pile of bone dust over there, I used my millennia of life to try a lot of things. Overreliance on a single thing gets you killed, especially as a mage.”
Nearby, Kay was talking with Fire and Tyron. He asked: “Well, now that Glibby and the Tower’s ringer are out of the game, how bad do we reckon the last stretch will be?”
Tyron cocked his head: “Distance-wise, it shouldn’t be long until we’re at the machine. Difficulty-wise, we’ve one major obstacle ahead, but the emphasis is definitely on major.”
Fire nodded. “The bedrock golems, there will be no small amount of them down here. Sadly, I don’t know anything about their capabilities. They encountered one topside but that didn’t tell us much, other than that they’re extremely resilient and have some sort of ranged attack, similar to Shadow’s disintegration ray.”
Shadow and Warnado joined them. Shadow asked: “Any other threats?”
Fire replied: “We’re entering the absolute inner sanctum of the Tower’s science division. These people are quite devoted to what they’re doing, so we should expect at least some resistance from them. However, they shouldn’t be much of a problem, especially compared to what we faced already. The golems are the main issue. On the positive side, no more lanterns from here on out.”
Tyron asked: “Something about sensitive equipment, right?”
Fire made a wide sweeping gesture. “This entire inner research area is encased in a protective structure to shield it against what is being done in the adjacent magic facilities. Most equipment is not affected by magic, but there are some things that can be disrupted by even the energy gradient the lamps create. They must have been quite desperate to deploy that lich down here.” He paused. “Then again if the machine activates, all of that research equipment would be worthless.”
Shadow expanded her senses once again, hoping to see whether there were any immediate threats ahead.
“I can’t see past the walls, whatever they have in there, it’s good. Sadly, that also eliminates our emergency plan of teleporting into the machine’s chamber. I am not risking a blind teleport, not into a room with that many dimensional crystals in it.”
Tyron said: “Time to move then, the soldiers are as recovered as they can be.”
He raised his hand and gave the signal to move out. The Shelter soldiers returned to formation, this time their lines were protected by a series of shield bubbles projected by the Coven mages that were still with them. Shadow joined her mages in the middle of the formation, reinforcing the barrier with a shield of her own.
They took off at a fast marching pace, always vigilant for anything hiding in side paths or doorways. For the first few minutes they encountered nothing, only their own footsteps echoing through the halls.
Their first encounter with resistance, if it could be called that, was a lone scientist bursting out from a door, brandishing a makeshift energy weapon before being quite literally swatted out of the way by a Mencur-Besh. A few more scientists tried attacking them this way, but they all met a similar fate.
Shadow instructed her mages: “Stay vigilant, we know for a fact there are more dangerous foes here.”
As if on cue, flames erupted from a side path ahead of them, rolling over their barrier harmlessly but obscuring their sight. When the smoke cleared, a red-robed mage with white, fuzzy hair floated ahead of them. Between his hands hovered a blue orb, six more orbiting him at the height of his torso. This had to be Archmage Wisp. Wisp was flanked by four armoured scientists, each carrying what looked to be energy rifles. The group wasted no time and attacked.
Wisp and the scientists wasted no time and immediately attacked. The initial shots from the scientists deflected off the Coven’s barrier, but several of Wisp’s orbital orbs surged forward, their combined impacts shattering it. The look on Wisp’s face was anything but confident, more like desperation and barely suppressed panic, a cornered coward was a dangerous foe.
Archers and mages immediately returned fire, taking out one of the scientists before Wisp could raise a shield of his own. Shadow broke formation and flew towards Wisp. With a hand gesture, one of his orbs disappeared and reappeared as a barrier around Shadow, stopping her dead in her tracks. A containment spell. Not a second later Fire and Tyron found themselves similarly imprisoned.
“No fair!” She heard Kir cry out.
Shadow wasted no time in trying to undo the spell holding her in place. This wasn’t the first time she’d been subjected to something like this, these spells always had some kind of release mechanism. While she inspected the nature of the orb around her, the Shelter forces below charged. Another scientist fell, this time to a blast of demonfire from Warnado.
Their advance was promptly halted by Wisp summoning a strong wind blowing them back. Only Mencur-Besh held their ground and slowly advanced against the storm, taking fire from the two remaining scientists. Some of the hunters clawed their way forward by plunging pickaxes into the walls and pulling themselves along, but they were too slow to meaningfully approach Wisp.
Kami had taken charge of the Coven mages in creating a counter spell, twirling her staff, both to direct the mages and to fling showers of magic towards Wisp. The gale force winds slowly mellowed down, giving their soldiers another chance of attacking. Several arrows flew towards the scientists, many of them charged with magic mid-flight by Wolfric. Wisp tried deflecting all of them but could only focus on so many at once. Several struck true and moments later, Wisp was alone against the Shelter troops. With a now definitely panicked look on his face, he wildly flung spells at whoever he could.
Several of their soldiers had not been prepared for such an explosive onslaught of magic, they could not take cover fast enough, and died a gruesome variety of deaths. One was incinerated on the spot, two struck by lightning, several more succumbed to a sudden surge of gravity.
Moments later, Shadow finally figured out the containment spell. With three quick pulses of magic, the orbs holding her, Fire and Tyron. Even with them released, Wisp’s ceaseless barrage of spells claimed more and more lives. But before Shadow could mount a counter offense, several wither Mencur-Besh began sprinting towards Wisp, completely unaffected by his spells due to their innate magic immunity. Wisp retreated back into the side corridor he came from, still wildly firing off spells.
Kami yelled: “Go ahead, we’ll handle him. Wolfric, you’re with me!”
In a joined effort with the Coven, Kami and Wolfric projected a shield across the side corridor entrance, making it possible for the soldiers to pass. Sadly, they had to do so over the bodies of their fallen comrades, an activity that their soldiers had become intimately familiar with over the course of the past hours.
Even if they wanted to, there was no time to catch a breath. Just a few corridors down they encountered their next threat. It was a bedrock golem patrolling the halls. The moment it spotted them its head swivelled around and its cycloptic eye began glowing as it charged towards them.
“Shields!” Tyron called out.
As opposed to Wisp’s attack, this time their mages had time to properly reinforce their defences. The death ray dissipated on the shield and sent glowing aberrations rippling across its surface.
“How do you kill something made from bedrock?!” Screamed one of their soldiers.
That was the question, wasn’t it? Apparently Herobrine had done it topside, but they had no Herobrine down here, or anything comparable to his bedrock sword. Fire’s zweihander came closest, but at the end of the day it was just a regular weapon, even if it had been used by the Entity in the past. Of course, Shadow could do it with Void magic, but was the risk of collapsing local reality worth it? Not currently, Shadow decided.
Instead, she answered the golem’s attack with one of her own, a disintegration ray aimed at its eye with pinpoint precision. The golem stopped for a moment, but then resumed its charge.
The golem battered through their shield and ploughed through their ranks. They were able to scatter fast enough that only a few were trampled, but this was not sustainable. If they couldn’t kill it, they had to make it unable to hurt them. Shadow concentrated and summoned a magical cage around the golem, the same kind she had captured Silver and Kay with. The golem threw itself against the walls. At first they held, but after the third bash they started deforming.
She called out: “We need a better way of keeping it down, anyone got an idea?”
The female hunter chief yelled back: “Topple it and pin it, it’s too massive to get back up. Done it to plenty of monsters before.”
The hunters got in formation, looking to Shadow’s mages for help.
“We need a low barrier, like a rope. We make it charge and trip, then bind it in place so it can’t throw its weight around.”
Pallas and Iridia, the sole remaining members of Shadow’s channellers, nodded to the hunters. They started by projecting a thin line across the corridor, then progressively reinforcing it to become stronger. Meanwhile the soldiers moved forward to get some distance on the golem. Only Shadow remained close.
“Ready.” Said Pallas.
The male chieftain roared: “Release the beast!”
Shortly before the golem could throw its weight against the cage again, it disappeared. The golem immediately began its charge towards the assembled hunters, its eye glowing intensely again.
Shadow thought to herself: “If I won’t use Void magic, I’ll just have to make use of my other strengths.”
The moment the golem fired its ray, Shadow teleported directly into its trajectory. The red light burned through flesh and bones, but only got about halfway through her torso when it was stopped by an opposing force. Shadow focused as much energy into her physical form as she could, keeping the ray from erupting out of her back. At this moment, she was very glad that she did not feel pain from physical injuries.
The golem continued its charge unperturbed, completely ignoring the forcefield. It wound up for a running punch against one of the hunters but caught one of its disproportionally stubby feet on the magical tripwire. The golem slammed into the ground with force, even slightly embedding itself due to its unnaturally high mass. The hunters were quick to act, driving metal spikes through the stone floor and attaching enchanted chains to tie the golem down.
Initially the golem buckled and thrashed, but soon was completely immobilized, its head unable to turn far enough to do harm.
One of the hunters let out a satisfied chuckle. “Just because we don’t have all that fancy stuff you other worlds have doesn’t mean we’re dumb.”
Iridia quietly muttered: “Nobody said that you were…” but then let the hunter have her moment.
Pallas turned to Shadow. “We’ll guard this thing, if we find a way to kill it, we’ll join you up ahead.”
Shadow nodded and flew forwards, quickly catching up with the push force. She landed next to Fire. “Tripping and pinning seem to work. They don’t seem to be significantly stronger than your standard iron golem.”
Fire acknowledged Shadow with a nod, apparently in the middle of a conversation with the Mencur-Besh collective. Kay stood nearby somewhat awkwardly, intentionally at a distance to his loyalists.
He averted his eyes from Shadow. “Uh, Shadow. Would you mind covering up the anatomical showcase? It’s a bit disturbing.”
Shadow glanced downwards, the hole in her torso was still there, only slowly beginning to mend itself. She commanded her clothes to cover the hole in the meantime.
“There. Thought it’d be a good idea to take the beam, so it won’t hit anyone else.”
Kay nodded slightly exaggeratedly. “Right, good. Good thinking. Did something similar myself, once…”
Their numbers had significantly dwindled, between people dying and staying behind they only had a few dozen soldiers left, including anyone higher up in the chain of command. They had to be close now.
Two minutes of marching later, their next opponents presented themselves. At first it looked like more golems, but instead it was two scientists wearing large, enclosed exoskeletons. They did what every opponent before them had done as well, that was attacking immediately. One of them approached at high speed, but before coming close to the foremost soldiers, the scientist raised his arm and an energy tether attached to the ceiling, allowing him to swing up and over, detaching to slam down, crushing two of Kay’s loyalists, then immediately jumping at a wall and somehow running along it. The second scientist attacked with a similar strategy, always staying out of reach, and only going for actual hits in opportune moments.
Shadow pointed at one of them and fired a disintegration ray, only for it to be directed around the exoskeleton and strike the wall behind the scientist.
She yelled out in frustration: “Is everything here equipped to counter me?!”
Then she thought back to the village when she met Dr. Mercury. Suddenly it sounded like a much more logical possibility that people had in fact developed countermeasures to some of her magic. She sighed, they couldn’t have thought of everything.
Suddenly Kay pulled on her sleeve. “We need to get to that machine! Our people can handle these two.”
As if to prove Kay’s point, Rathina lunged forward and cut into one of the exoskeletons, severing a hydraulic line and leaving the scientist with only one usable arm.
She yelled: “You go with them Tyron, we have this!”
Shadow raised her hands and dense smoke spewed forth, completely obscuring the view into the corridor ahead of them. Six figures dashed through the smoke, one of them being Shadow herself, the others were Fire, Kay, Tyron, as well as Warnado and Amanda.
A short sprint later the corridor took a bend, even if they looked now, the scientists were too caught up in combat to notice someone had slipped past them.
Warnado said: “So, now that Titanfall One and Two are out of sight, the machine has to be close right?”
Shadow chuckled. “You know, Warnado, there’s something you should know.”
The demon child tilted his head. “Yeah, what’s that?”
“I get most of the references you’re making.”
Warnado’s eyes went wide as saucers. “Whaaat? I don’t even get those myself!”
Amanda lightly punched Warnado in the shoulder. “I thought he just likes to spout random, endearing nonsense. Couldn’t have guessed that there is a deeper meaning.”
“Golem ahead!” Kir screeched in their minds.
At the end of the corridor was another large gate, several sizes smaller than the previous one but still massive. In front of said gate stood a bedrock golem who just now noticed them and began charging its eye. Shadow projected a shield in front of them as they ran to close the gap, deciding that taking the brunt of the attack was something she only wanted to do once. The red beam dissipated against the shield, and they continued forward. Once they got close, a cage slammed down around the golem, halting its own charge. However, the Tower had one last nasty surprise in store.
The walls behind them exploded as five bedrock golems came bursting out of adjacent laboratory rooms.
Kay screamed: “Cage them, Shadow!”
“Can’t!” She replied. “Only so much energy in this place!”
Now was the point when Shadow decided that the danger outweighed the risk. She looked deep inside of herself, slowly and carefully bringing the Void to the surface. Just before it could break its shell, she heard Warnado’s voice.
The quarter-demon spoke with conviction, just like he had done before fighting Glibby. “I have this.”
Warnado was already halfway across the corridor.
“Helix, no!” Amanda and Kay screamed in unison, then briefly looked at each other, Kay shrinking visibly. Both ran after Warnado, followed by Tyron and Fire with a brief delay.
Warnado’s pursuers were suddenly pushed back by a wave of demon magic, a barrier of lava manifested from nothing to block their way.
Warnado said: “I’ve never had anything like this my whole life. Trust me.”
As he spoke, demonfire erupted from the gauntlet and spread all over Warnado’s body. It quickly took the form of a body, limbs, horns. It was the same form he had taken after Fristad died.
Warnado’s voice rang out again, deeper and distorted, but undeniably his: “Come get some!”
The golems obliged and shot their beams right at Warnado, the demonfire burned brighter on the impact points but otherwise refused to react. He grabbed the nearest golem by the head and slammed it into the wall. Another one struck his demon-form in the jaw, and he responded by punted another one into the opposing wall.
Shadow turned around. She had her own golem to take care of. Once again, she reached for the Void, and this time it broke through. Her hair lifted, her skin went beyond black, her eyes gained their distant-stars quality. This was not like when she found out that Claw had taken over, she did not feel empty. There was a different feeling, one that could be compared to walking on eggshells. She felt the fabric of reality strain against every bit of her body, one wrong move and it would tear.
Shadow slowly raised her hand to point above the imprisoned golem’s head, which seemed to have given up its escape attempts, its automaton routines wholly unprepared for what they saw. A thin blade of nothingness extended from Shadow’s hand before it moved downwards, gliding between atoms like a knife through butter. The two disabled halves of the golem hit the ground with what should have been a loud bang.
However, the impact of bedrock on obsidian was quiet in comparison to the noise that came from behind Shadow. With a thought, she pushed the Void back, and the restrictive pressure of reality was gone. She did not have to turn around to know what happened, but she did nonetheless.
Behind them the entire corridor had collapsed, it was now filled with rubble from the ceiling and the rock above. The implications were clear.
“Helix!” Amanda cried out.
Kay muttered to himself: “He just… brought the ceiling down.”
He gaped, touched his fingers to the goggles on his head, then pulled Amanda in close. She offered only the most token resistance, pressing a hand to his breastplate, then letting it fall.
Both Fire and Tyron were silent. Shadow knew that her brother had at least a dozen things he could say to try to console Amanda, but in reality none of them would achieve that goal, and he knew it too.
Amanda pushed Kay back with marginally more force. He backed away as though he had dropped a fine glass ornament. She looked off at the rubble.
“The gauntlet exploded…” she whimpered.
Shadow felt the sadness of loss as well but decided to suppress further mourning until everyone was safe, the machine had priority. Shadow and Fire approached the gate. Fire almost routinely placed his hand on the scanner next to it, no reaction.
“She wiped the biometrics data, figures.” He said. “Up to you now, Shadow.”
Shadow took a deep breath. She once again reached for the Void, this time only bringing it close enough to shift herself slightly out of sync with the rest of reality. She floated straight through the gate, dismissing the Void as she emerged on the other side.
Chapter 84: Fear Without Bounds (Freak/Astro)
In all honesty, I was a bit disappointed, having returned to my throne so soon. I expected the dreaded Herobrine to put up more of a fight, especially since this particular one was apparently a god as well. I chuckled to myself. There were no gods in Nexus, no matter how much they claimed to be. I could have killed him like the others, but why deprive myself of many potential future meals of ‘godly’ fear?
I took a look at my throne room. It had not changed much since I took the Entity’s place, the scratches and bloodstains were still in the same place, just some scorch marks had joined them when the rebel leader Fire escaped. The scar that had ejected the Entity was still above the throne, bigger now and visible to the plain eye. I could have closed it, but it was harmless to me, and it added to the ambiance, so I didn’t.
It wouldn’t be long now until the rest of the rebels came barging in. I was honestly a bit surprised when they showed up with an army that size, but if anything, they played right into my hand with the panic they spread through the Tower, every droplet of fear strengthened me.
Speaking of fear, it was time I laid the first brick of my very own empire. I decided that walking was for those who had no other option and floated around my seat. Behind the throne was the all-important switch that controlled the machine. The good doctor was locked in the same room as it, but completely powerless, unable to do anything because of the countermeasures she had designed herself, talk about irony!
My hand came to rest on the cold obsidian of the switch, pressing down ever so slightly. Before I made the final push, I decided that this room needed a better view of what was to come. With a wide sweep of my claws, I decapitated the throne room, the ceiling now only rested on the spiral staircase up to the observatory. A flick of my wrist and it tore off, sliding down the outer walls of the Tower with a delightful screech, before coming to rest on top of a roof some distance below.
Above me was now the clear night sky, stars, moon, and all. My hand came to rest on the switch again, this time I flipped it without hesitation. It fell into place with a loud clank. At first it seemed like nothing was happening, but of course that was not true. A great ripple went through reality, though I may have been the only one to feel it in its true intensity.
The stars in the sky slowly gained in size, because they were not stars at all. They were worlds, thousands and thousands of worlds, all now drawn towards Nexus. I floated upwards and came to rest on the shattered tip of the observatory staircase.
I laughed and kept laughing. Soon all would be Nexus, and Nexus would be mine to terrorize!
###
I pull the sword from my opponent and a black flame consumes him. My eyes slide shut, the energy bundles within me, and with a thrust forward of my wrist I send the burning man flying back through his fellows. He slams into the barricade so hard he cracks the stone.
We have ascended the stairs and continue to fight our way through to the Entity’s throne, but it is slow going. They make us pay for every inch of ground, and though our objective is at the centre of the floor, we only seem capable of spreading further around the edge. What may well be the last sunset of all creation casts its dying rays in through the high-arched, empty windows behind us.
Above my head, arrows fly, and mages sling spells. Drake the Enderdragon swoops low and snaps at the heads of Tower soldiers with playful glee, while his older fellows follow through and kill them outright.
On the ground, Vanillan and Shelter troops fight fiercely. Sword locks with spear locks with halberd, until the crack of a rifle or thud of a crossbow bolt sounds and armour clatters to the ground. In a bloody ouroboros, a pigman warrior screeches in pain or triumph as he decapitates an Endling whose talons just tore open his stomach.
Gunsmoke perfume sears my nose, stings my eyes. Weapon screens against armour. Squelch of boot. Snap of bone. I am buffeted this way and that by war as it is and ever was and always will be.
A glance in each direction reveals a new awesome and terrible sight of battle. This way, my Guild fights their way into a bathhouse, blood staining the water. That way, Ryan and the moderators try to hold back the charge of several bedrock golems, staffs barely slowing their titanic adversaries.
In one direction, I see Voidblade teleporting this way and that to guard a red dragon who has fallen under the weight of hundreds of arrows. He lops off limbs, slashes at faces, kicks in knees and chests and skulls.
Another way Fedwin the Tinkerer pulls levers from his seat on the back of a headless iron golem, contending with one of its bedrock brothers. Below the brawl, the Arcation priesthood pass ropes between the legs of the enemy behemoth, trying to avoid the precise blasts of its great, red eye.
And atop the barricade the Tower has erected to impede our process, I see Rose hurling daggers this way and that. They cascade from her hands in great arcs, each blade finding a man to slay until they are stopped by a twin-sided axe head large enough to cover a man. General Forgelight, the Tower’s great ideologue, sweeps the barricade with his mighty weapon and forces Rose back.
“Keep heart, men! The final unification is upon us!” Forgelight screams, swinging his axe up and striking the ceiling.
However, the figure he cuts is more desperate. One of Rose’s knives has implanted itself in his thigh, blood oozes from it. And Ozen’s powerful arms are clamped around his neck and under his left armpit, trying their best to restrain his movements.
Again, Forgelight strikes, splitting open a rank of Gaian riflemen. Cossack only barely staggers out of his reach. Another swing threatens to kill an approaching starry-scaled dragon, but I summon a shield just in time. It cracks, the dragon falls dead. Forgelight rears up, he swings once more, but this time it stops.
The axe-head has connected with a large, rectangular wooden shield. Steve holds it, dressed in the strange grey armour of his adversary. He sticks his head out from behind the shield and grins. Behind him, Jennifer finishes pulling back the string of the ghast bone bow.
The arrow strikes Forgelight in the chest, piercing his armour nearest the heart. He falls from the barricade and slams into the ground. General Issa sounds the order for them to fall back to their next line. I heave a sigh of relief.
I pull back from the fighting and approach one of the great, arched windows and speak into my radio. I catch Steve’s eye and gesture for him to join the same frequency.
“Urist, what’s the situation, did you find Herobrine?”
“We’ve found him alright. Looks like he located a path right into tha Throne room.”
My heart soars. If Herobrine could punch through, that might put an end to the whole thing.
“That’s fantastic!” I yell.
“Crack open the wine cellar, Urist, we’ve got this in the bag!” Steve joins.
Urist is silent.
“What’s wrong, Urist?” I ask.
“He mighta ran into Freak, didn’t go well for Herobrine. We found him on tha ground, asleep, tossing and turning, like he’s havin’ a nightmare. The others who were with him… less said tha better.”
I struggle to find the words to respond with. I looked over at Steve. He has an arm around Jennifer’s shoulder. He nods firmly at me. She stares at me with stern but respectful eyes. Their implication is clear. With Herobrine gone, I am next in command of the upper assault. The decision is mine. I ball up all the courage I have in me.
“Okay, Urist, here’s what we’re going to do-”
Rubble cascades past the window, and associated dust fills my lungs and clouds my eyes. When I can finally see again, I become aware of a gentle tremor which has seized the room. Discarded weapons begin to skitter along the floor, all in one direction. Something like the sound of an earthquake strikes my ears and I flinch, a far-off booming that sounds all the more dangerous for its distance. My skin begins to prickle, the very flakes of my skin now feel a pull upon them. Again, all in the same direction, into the heart of the Tower, toward the Throne room.
“No…” I breathe.
Suddenly I see it in the corner of my eye. The horizon has begun to curl upwards. A terrible wind rises and begins to hurl dragons and mages across the sky. The stars stretch and grow until they rupture, leaving burning, yellow holes in the sky which only swell further until one can see the worlds on the other side. Rolling hills, scorching mesas, endless oceans.
A white-hulled airship tumbles through one of the ruptured stars. In the seconds before the terrible winds disassemble it and hurl its crew to the ever-shrinking borders of creation, I see the True Court’s crest. Within the star, I see the distant peak of the Citadel of Mojang. Finally, it hits me.
All of creation is collapsing into this one point. The Entity’s plan is fulfilled, and Freak will profit by it.
There is a hand on my shoulder. Steve is looking me in the eye.
“Astro, what do we do?” He asks me again and again.
Aaron comes up and asks me the same thing. And Jennifer. And Ozen. And Tassadar. Ray. Fedwin. Ryan. A vortex of questions, soon to become screams once that thing finishes its plan.
There is a distant chuckling. The questions stop. I am granted a moment’s respite. I look over to my saviour.
Forgelight rises, leaning on his axe. Blood runs from his mouth. There is a brief respite from the questions.
“At last…” he wheezes. “Comrades, our labours bear their final fruits: Convergence is achieved!”
He laughs and looks around. His jaw hangs looser than natural. His eyes are glassy. I can’t tell if he can see us.
He uses his axe as a crutch and hobbles over to the window. I back away. Rose looks at me, eyes burning with hatred, begging my approval. I gesture for her to hold fire.
“Marcus, Marinus, Issa, is it not as beauteous as I promised you?”
He now gazes over the approaching horizon. Mountains seem to swell up, crushing villages between them. For a second I think I catch a glimpse of the Shelter’s entrance amidst a shower of collapsing jungle trees and shattering scaffolding.
“Ender, Ape, surely even you can see the… merit in this,” he spits out blood and begins shaking as he tries to lift his axe, “nnngh, most g-glorious union.”
He raises the axe above his head, his eyes glowing with triumphalist rapture. He starts to stalk an unseen prey, slow and arch-footed despite the creak and clatter of his armour.
“I thank you, Entity, for your help in getting us this far… but Nexus is of my making. I am Forgelight, the unifier!”
He swings down, and to prevent injury to anyone I magically strike the axe from his hands. He does not seem to notice, however. He cackles on his knees, delighting in his imagined glory.
“Then, it is done…” he looks up at Jennifer and sneers stupidly. “No, Issa, I am no traitor… You would have done the same.”
This is enough for me. I give the signal to Rose. She flicks her wrist and the luminary’s head rolls onto the floor. My respite is over.
“What do we do?” Steve asks again. He sounds like a lost child.
I feel my eyes begin to well with tears, so I slam them shut.
“I don’t know, all is lost,” I think.
“We wait for orders from below,” I say. “Brace for new instructions.”
Chapter 85: In Unlikely Places (Shadow)
The machine’s brass bulk dominated the room, its hatch was closed and the cables that connected to it radiated enough warmth to distort the light around them. All this was evidence enough that Shadow was too late, only further consolidated by the waves that rippled through the fabric of reality.
In the centre of the room stood a large chair facing the machine, this chair now slowly turned around, revealing Dr. Veronica Mercury wearing the lightweight powered armour that served as a platform for her additional limbs. However, she looked far from the evil scientist about to gloatingly confirm that Shadow was indeed too late. No, she sat slumped deep into the chair, her eyes only half-open. In the first few moments she barely seemed to notice Shadow standing in front of her. Once she did, her posture straightened out, if only slightly. Dr. Mercury looked on silently like a convict at the chopping block who had accepted her sentence.
Shadow slowly began walking towards her. “The Entity’s gone, you know.”
Dr. Mercury took a few moments to process what she just heard. She blinked. “How?”
“That talk you and Claw had about the crystals and how I’m similar to the Entity. Freak listened in and manipulated our friend Destiny into helping him remove the Entity from this world. He’s running the show now and his plan is only slightly better than the Entity’s.”
This fully woke Dr. Mercury up from her daze. Her eyes opened properly, and she stood up from her chair.
Shadow asked: “For how long has the machine been active, and how long until it does irreversible damage to other worlds?”
Dr. Mercury answered: “Roughly half an hour since activation. For the first worlds to be pulled close enough to merge, it will take six hours at the very maximum.” She paused. “How did you get in here?”
Shadow walked past Dr. Mercury and inspected the machine. Within it thousands of dimensional crystals resonated with the static grey in their centre, each crystal tethered to a world, slowly reeling it closer to Nexus.
“We launched an assault on the Tower and pushed our way through. We’ve also got people topside clearing a path to the throne room. How did you not know this?”
Dr. Mercury walked to Shadow’s side. “I have been locked in here for the last few days. I was told to make sure that the machine works, but at that point I knew its true purpose already. I assumed the Entity wanted to keep an eye on me.”
Shadow asked: “So, I assume there’s no safe way of deactivating this thing?”
“There is not, at least from here. The only way is through the switch in the throne room, tampering with the machine will most likely lead to failure. Nexus collapsing in on itself and taking the other worlds with it, that kind of failure.”
Shadow nodded. “I assumed as much. Anything special about that switch?”
Dr. Mercury pointed to some blueprints on a table. “The switch has protective obsidian panels that can be used to cover it in case someone tries what you’re trying at the moment. You’d need to break those to get to it. Of course, that doesn’t stop anyone from turning it back on. And with Freak there to guard it… I can’t imagine how strong he’ll be, even if he only stole a fraction of the Entity’s influence on reality.”
That left them exactly where they were just moments ago, even if they managed to flip the switch back, Freak could just activate the machine again. With the Entity they had been opposites, order and chaos, fear was an entirely different beast. Shadow didn’t even know if she could harm Freak at all, especially now.
“So, that’s it, huh?” Shadow asked.
“Yeah,” Dr. Mercury muttered. Her face took on the same defeated look Shadow had seen on her when she first came in.
Trying to think of something else other than their impending doom, Shadow looked at Dr. Mercury. She was different from the scientists they had met earlier, none of that undying devotion that made them throw their lives away in desperate defence. It was true, she knew the real story behind the machine, but that couldn’t be everything.
She asked: “So, how’d you end up here?”
Dr. Mercury shrugged. “Same way most people do. My world was one of the first to be absorbed. Of course, we didn’t know that at the time, from our perspective nothing changed. Just that there were suddenly people telling us to join them. Some of us were distrustful, that’s when they shifted to ‘join or die’.”
Shadow made a gesture at the various pieces of research equipment in the room. “Did you learn this here, or back in your world?”
Sitting back down in the chair, Dr. Mercury sighed. “I soon realized that the worlds the Tower conquered were similar to what I was used to, just most of them were much bigger than mine, and so empty and simple. The most they had in terms of technology were pistons and redstone, with some steam-driven machinery and high magic strewn in between. My world was different. I mean no disrespect, but it might be hard to imagine just how different.”
Shadow said: “Try me. I think I know where this is going. Besides, my world is very different too.”
She projected a chair for herself and sat down in it. It felt wrong to have a conversation about someone’s personal background while the clock was ticking down, but she had a feeling that this was important, and it was not like there were any better options.
Dr. Mercury began: “My world was a small one. Once you walk enough, you end up where you began. As for its inhabitants, we didn’t really have people living simple lives like you see in most other worlds. Everyone pursued some discipline, whether scientific, magical, or both. My father was a fourth-paradigm thaumaturge, my mother was a storage technician. I got my father’s last name because they both agreed it had a better ring to it. But that’s beside the point. I grew up helping my mother lay cables and set up crafting systems in people’s homes, then back in our compound I assembled runes and matched elements with my father. As I grew up I started getting into interdisciplinary automation design, as well as programming, the two go nicely together. Still not lost?”
Shadow shook her head. “I’m familiar with the concepts.”
Dr. Mercury continued. “Alright. So, the year I turned twenty was when our world was absorbed. Our settlement initially refused to join but was quickly forced to surrender. We didn’t have much in the way of weapons, at least none that could defeat that many soldiers. Both my parents died in the struggles. I later heard that other parts of our world had similar success in resisting. The thaumaturges couldn’t even agree what their discipline is exactly, so they couldn’t really mount an effective coordinated defence. Many of the various factions of industrialists tried using their tools as weapons, with limited success. The blood mages either immediately joined or fought to the death. Even the followers of draconic evolution failed, the Entity simply wore down their shields. The only ones who might have had a chance were the equivalists of old, but that trade died out generations ago.”
So far that seemed very in line with what Shadow had heard from other survivors she had talked with. Useful individuals were recruited, rebellious ones were killed, the rest was left in the Nexus wilderness to figure things out for themselves.
She asked: “So, how did you go from there to running the Tower’s science operations?”
Dr. Mercury reached behind her neck. “That is a bit of a jump, I admit. The Tower’s organizational structure was a bit different back then, a lot more low-tech, anything more complex ran on some kind of magic. The people from our world were what would eventually become the science division. It wasn’t all bad for us, we more or less were allowed to continue doing the things we did, just that we now had someone above us giving orders. You have to remember, with Forgelight’s prosperous unification propaganda we thought we were working towards something great, even if some of the methods employed were questionable. I was assigned to be a research assistant to a more science-minded Tower mage. Over the years we revolutionised the Tower’s internal communication and dimensional monitoring.
“One day I was taken to the side, and they introduced me to a long-running project that had hit a stall. It was this damn machine. The mages were stumped and were now looking for new insight. I of course took it as a challenge. At that point I was too far in, too close to the Entity’s notice to ever have any chance of quitting and living to tell the tale.”
Shadow asked: “Fire told me you had some personal projects too, correct?”
Suddenly Dr. Mercury seemed nervous. “Yes… those. You see, back in my world I always wanted to found my own discipline, just like the different industrial disciplines branched from one. I got the opportunity here, in my spare time when I was part of the machine team, before I got promoted to leader when… when my predecessor was absorbed by the Entity.”
Shadow raised her eyebrows. “What was the field?”
Dr. Mercury looked down. “Arcano-neural interfaces, but most know it as technological necromancy, but that’s just one of the applications. Corpses can be implanted with pre-programmed energy crystals that control the bodies. I know about the implications-”
Shadow interrupted her: “You don’t need to justify yourself to me. My moral compass points towards my brother almost exclusively. If he died, I probably would destroy everything.”
After taking a sigh of relief, Dr. Mercury said: “I know, I saw what happened at the portal facility. But thank you for understanding. I get where people’s apprehension to using corpses comes from, many worlds have afterlives, but Nexus is not one of those.” Another deep breath. “However, one useful thing came out of my research that isn’t morally dubious.”
Dr. Mercury stood up and turned around. She pointed at the back of her neck, where a green crystal was prominently embedded in her armour.
“This crystal is connected to my spine and allows me to control my armour. I haven’t put anything like it in anyone else, it’s still experimental.”
The conversation had done little to distract Shadow from the situation, she just couldn’t stop thinking about whether they were missing something.
Shadow said: “So, you did a lot of research on me and the Entity. You’re sure there’s nothing in there we could possibly use against Freak now?”
Dr. Mercury suddenly stood up and started pacing. “Well, we’d need to make the machine permanently unusable, but for that I’d need to open it up… which I can’t do while it’s running…” Her head shot up and she looked right at Shadow. “I’d also need your help.”
“What do you mean when you say you need my help?” Shadow asked.
Dr. Mercury ran over to a diagram of the machine’s insides and pointed. “The machine works by amplifying the influence of the sample of the Entity’s void plasma in its centre. That’s what causes it to pull on the crystals. In theory, if I could switch it with your equivalent, we could instead make the machine collapse Nexus, and only Nexus.”
Shadow was slightly sceptical. “That works?”
“I did enough research on you to know that it will, or at least that it won’t harm any other worlds. Trust me, I lost a lot of sleep thanks to you.”
Shadow laughed, more awkwardly than intended.
Dr. Mercury walked over to a cupboard and started rummaging, after a few moments producing a perfect sphere of glass, which she handed to Shadow.
Shadow eyed the sphere. “So, I just cut a piece of myself off and put it in there?”
Dr. Mercury answered: “Look, I came up with the plan while telling you my abridged life story, I don’t pretend I have all the steps figured out.”
“Alright, I will try it.”
Shadow focused on the Void like when she phased through the door, this time concentrating the effect on her left hand. Her palm passed through the glass. Once inside she pushed the Void to the surface, disintegrating her hand and leaving behind a vaguely hand-shaped gap in reality. She then, very carefully, tried separating this part of her from the rest of her being. The gap shivered when she pulled her hand back, but soon stabilized into an irregularly expanding and contracting sphere. Her physical hand quickly reformed. Shadow handed the sphere to Dr. Mercury, its contents complied with the movement without ever touching the glass.
Dr. Mercury clutched her head. “Ugh, it never gets any less headache-inducing.”
Shadow said: “So, now that’s done, how do we proceed? We collapsed the corridor behind us to get rid of the bedrock golems, how do we get to the throne room?”
“Oh, that’s easy.” Dr. Mercury said and pulled something from a holster.
“This is a portal device that I created, it’s based on the readings I have of you and the Entity. It should allow you to bypass the shielding structure.”
She demonstratively made two portals appear, one directly in front of her, another across the room, then walked in through one, and out the other. Shadow expanded her senses to see how it worked.
She mused. “Huh. Temporarily making a section of space fold to connect to a different one, not a novel concept but I haven’t seen it applied before.”
Dr. Mercury asked: “Do you want it?”
Shadow shook her head. “No, you using it taught me everything I needed to know about how to replicate it.”
“Good. For everything to work you need to make sure that the machine is switched off and stays that way for a while. I will remain here until I can make the switch. It might be good to tell your allies not to attack me on sight once I portal out of here.” Dr. Mercury said.
Shadow turned to the gate. “Thank you for helping us with this, Veronica.”
Shadow conjured up a portal through the gate, just before she was about to step through, Dr. Mercury spoke again.
“So, Shadow. Once this is over, would you consider taking me to your world? I’d like to continue my studies, within the moral framework of your world of course.”
Shadow briefly thought it over. “If you help us pull this off, you have more than earned it.”
Dr. Mercury quickly asked: “Just one more thing, now that the important things are agreed on, what’s up with the gi?”
Shadow glanced down. She had completely forgotten to transform her clothes back into her robes, which she promptly did.
“Just seemed more appropriate for what I did while coming here, I can give you the details once we’ve left this place behind us.”
With that Shadow stepped through the portal and emerged on the other side of the gate.
On arrival, she saw Amanda atop the rubble-pile, shifting those stones she could. Kay stood a ways back, non-committally turning over rocks with his sword and refusing to look up. Tyron chattered into the radio in dour communication with their forces. And, of course, her brother, Fire, knelt on the ground, his zweihander balanced on his knee, a look of profound helplessness in his eyes, all paths in his plan were exhausted. At the sound of the portal opening, all looked up at her with expectation.
Shadow took a breath. “The machine is already running, but Dr. Mercury is helping us shut it down, and Nexus along with it. We need to get to the switch.”
No further words were needed, both Amanda and Kay immediately vacated the rubble, Tyron joined them at her side. Fire snapped out of his trance, suddenly presented with a new option after none remained. Shadow opened another portal, this time to the last reported location of the topside forces. They had little time left, but they would use it to the fullest.
Chapter 86: Raised Sword (Narrator)
They arrived in the hall through Shadow’s portal. First, Tyron Dragoknight, hero of Minecraftia jumped out, his sword Kir glowing in his hand. Then came Kay Mandy, the ruined General, wincing as his leg struck the ground and trying to disguise his hobble as he backed away to make room for others. Amanda followed next, barely seeming to notice her own arrival, contemplating a small shard of brass in her hand. Fire, leader of the Mencur-Besh, strode out immediately after, nimbly stepping around the grieving teenager in search of other leadership. And, lastly, she emerged: the mage known as Shadow, her white hair and black robes flowing softly as she moved. Behind her the fabric of reality nestled back into its resting state as the portal vanished.
Tyron raised his eyes to the hall’s high ceiling and couldn’t shake the feeling that the buttresses and chandeliers were sneering down at them. To him, the building's architecture fluttered between indifferent monumentality and a malignant intimacy, as though the inhabitants were insects, and the building a cruel child. All of it only served to make the staircase at the hall’s end even more immense and insurmountable. He shuddered, then found his gaze dropping suddenly as Kay ran past him.
“My lord!” he yelled.
All the new arrivals found themselves taken aback at the sight before them. Blood spattered the walls and tattered bodies lay everywhere. Soldiers moved back and forth, trying to clean them away. Amanda jolted back into awareness when she saw Dinnerbone lay slumped and twitching on a rattling chest. A large, dented set of obsidian doors hung open at the far end of the hallway, the scorch marks and gun smoke scent of TNT fresh upon them.
Their friends all stood in a circle, normally enough. Astro the Wizard adjusted his rings and muttered into his sleeve and shot a thankful look at Shadow as she entered. The adventurers, Steve Brine and Jennifer, held hands and contemplated the comings and goings of the soldiers. Steve wore a strange set of grey armour, and a large wooden shield hung from his arm. Jennifer, meanwhile, still wore her diamond armour, but clasped a massive ghastbone bow in her right hand.
A bit off to the side stood the lightly armoured form of Rose, the assassin who had helped blaze the trail for the Shelter in the early days, and who had cut open the Tower’s walls in the aerial assault. She looked on calmly, but not as calmly as she perhaps wanted.
All of this was expected, considering the cataclysm unfolding around them. Even then, they could hear the distant roar as worlds were degraded that they might be stitched back toward. Outside, a terrible wind howled. In an apocalypse, one might expect a group of dour-faced heroes to stand in a circle, reflecting on the task ahead. What was not expected, however, was the man lying in their midst.
Herobrine, the Blind Watcher, a god walking among them, lay on the ground with white eyes clenched shut and sweat soaking his hair and beard. A small cut puckered on his forehead, blood pulsing outwards and mixing with the blood on the floor.
“Freak,” Kir chirped in Tyron’s mind.
The General threw himself to his knees and began to shake his fallen master.
“No, no, please!” he muttered. His eyes began to water, and he clenched them shut. “Please wake up...”
Steve and Jennifer threw a glance down at him and exchanged an uncomfortable glance. Astro’s eyes flared with disdain, then he looked away and began to fiddle with his rings again, something like pity cooling the coals of anger within him.
“So, the machine has been activated,” Astro said quickly, “I’ve provisionally instructed people to keep up the assault on the Throne Room, but tell me honestly, do we have a chance of undoing this?”
“Yeah,” Jennifer agreed. “The troops deserve to know. Are we still fighting to stop Freak or are we just securing the Tower and hoping for the best?”
Shadow spoke up: “There is a way we can stop Freak. We need to get to the switch, break through its protective panels and turn it off.”
“Okay,” Astro breathed and began to shift from foot to foot. “Our plan stays the same. We get to the switch and stop Freak from flicking it on. We just add the minor step of flicking it off first…”
With slight hesitation Shadow said: “Yes, but that is just the first step. Dr. Mercury is on our side now and agreed to help with the second step. Once the machine is off, she will replace the piece of the Entity that is in the machine with… she’ll replace it with a piece of me. If the machine is turned on after that, Nexus begins collapsing and the other worlds are safe.”
“Okay, added minor step of flicking it back on again,” Astro muttered. “Still doable.”
Steve had been nodding along, but now his head snapped suddenly in Shadow’s direction.
“Wait, Nexus starts collapsing?” he asked.
“Starts is the important part, she made it sound like it’ll take a while.”
“And you’re sure Mercury is on our side?” Jennifer asked. “No chance she’s trying to screw us over?”
Fire chimed in: “She figured out the Entity’s plan before Freak took over and she was absolutely shattered by the realization. She doesn’t have any loyalties towards Freak either. Not the type to randomly cause problems. We can at the very least trust her to have told the truth as far as she understands it.”
Tyron tapped his foot impatiently.
“I’m sorry guys, but we don’t have time to argue about this. If we don’t stop Freak, there’s no do-over. If we have to die to stop everything from becoming an endless nightmare torture prison, that’s just how it is.”
“No other way,” Kir agreed. “What heroes do.”
Steve seemed about to say something very angrily, then stopped himself when Jennifer squeezed his hand. They exchanged a meaningful look, and a small, sad smile began to creep across his face.
“Well, so much for happy endings… as though we haven’t lost enough today,” chuckled another voice.
Kay had sat up, lifting his head from Herobrine’s breastplate. He cast a dark look over at Dinnerbone slumped over the rattling chest. Amanda was shaking his shoulder and trying to wake him up, her eyes heavy with emotion.
Something dawned on Rose. Her usual calm cracked and splintered. Suddenly, she grabbed Fire’s arm.
“Where’s Warnado?”
Kay’s head drooped once more. Tyron ran his fingers through his fur and clenched his teeth. No one said anything for what felt like millennia. Shadow looked around, as if trying to confirm her own feelings with the looks on the others’ faces. Finally, Fire spoke up in a carefully measured tone.
“In the corridor before the machine we were ambushed by five bedrock golems. He made full use of his demonic side to buy us time… and collapsed the ceiling on himself and the golems.”
Astro squinted, not quite seeming to comprehend what he had heard. A look of horror spread across Steve and Jennifer’s face. Without hesitation the red-headed archer discarded the bow Fire had gifted her and sprinted over to Amanda. The teenager turned just in time for Jennifer’s body to slam into her. Jennifer’s powerful arms took Amanda into their embrace. She began to cry. Rose followed shortly after, placing a soft hand on the back of Amanda’s neck, then stooping to stroke her hair.
Astro’s eyes followed this scene in a stupor before he blinked and suddenly looked in the other direction. His gaze fell on Kay, who was now straining to get up off Herobrine. His leg was giving him trouble again, and he barely suppressed his grunts of effort and discomfort. A set of well-worn fingers shot past his heavy fringe and stopped in front of his face. He looked up. Astro stood over him, a pained smile on his face. The General took his hand and rose. He drew his sword, ran it along his brace and inspected the edge.
“Well, how are we killing him?” Kay asked.
“Urist says this route leads pretty directly to the throne room. From what we can tell it’s not defended,” Astro answered. “But with Freak… who knows?”
Kay nodded and looked around.
“Where is Urist, by the way?”
“Attack’s still ongoing,” Steve entered. “He’s building up fortifications where he can. Voidblade’s teleporting him for speed’s sake.”
“Hm… Mainly I’m wondering, should we attack now or wait for reinforcements?” he pressed.
Tyron adjusted the knob on his earpiece.
“Officers, what’s the status on the attack?”
Lucy’s voice came through the radio: “Tower perimeter is fully secured, all stragglers either killed, captured, surrendered, or fled into the Tower early. I have reports that both General Issa and Archmage Wisp are not yet neutralised, some golems are still active, but otherwise it looks like we are gaining the upper hand.”
Tyron cast a look at Astro.
“Forgelight?” Kir asked on his wielder’s behalf.
“My Guild and the Eye-and-Claws are leading the pursuit of Issa. Forgelight is dead.”
“Thanks, Lucy,” said Tyron. He looked at Fire. “Well, that all sounds pretty great for us, but something tells me there’s a reason we shouldn’t just wait for an elite Mencur-Besh dunk squad to back us up.”
Fire stroked his chin.
“I am not sure if we want the collective in Freak’s reach. If they’re linked up, Freak could just get one of them and do whatever he did to Herobrine to the entire collective. And, if they break the link beforehand… It’s unknown what happens when the collective breaks the link when so many of its bodies are dead. Besides, most troops are still tied up in battles, so if we want the best shot at getting out of this with all worlds intact, we have few choices but to attack now. The timeframe on the machine is restrictive as it is.” He paused, deliberating. “It looks like it’s up to just us again.”
“Of course it is,” Steve laughed.
Tyron groaned and Steve clapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, buddy, don’t worry, it’s what heroes do, right?”
Tyron laughed in exasperation and punched him in the pauldron.
“Hey, the sword said that, not me!”
“Pffft, like you guys don’t coordinate your messages!”
Steve gestured over his shoulder and began to walk up towards the steps.
“Come on guys, no point waiting around!”
Kay and Astro began to follow him instinctively, with Tyron shaking his head and joining the march soon after. Jennifer and Rose had, by this time, stopped purely comforting Amanda, and were helping her put on the last piece of a similar set of grey armour to Steve’s - only this had a lighter chestplate with a set of wings attached. Additionally, she had a stack of rockets in one hand, and a crossbow loaded with one of them in the other.
Rose clapped down on the helmet and patted Amanda on the back.
“You’ve got this, kid,” smiled the assassin.
Amanda smiled involuntarily, and after a few seconds deliberation shot back:
“I know, I’ll try not to save your ass too many times.”
Jennifer laughed.
“Save it for the big bad phantom, Amanda.”
Fire and Shadow quickly caught up and walked alongside the others.
Fire gave Steve a side glance and asked: “By the way, where did you get that set of netherite armour?”
Steve involuntarily laughed. “Of course you know what this stuff is, because why wouldn’t you? I got it off… me from another world who made it his goal to be the last Steve standing. Spoke in text, almost killed us, weird encounter.”
Amanda cocked an eyebrow at Jennifer.
“So, you didn’t just ‘find this in a chest’?”
“No, sorry, that’s corpse armour.”
“Great,” Amanda bit the inside of her cheek. “Thank you so much.”
They crested the stairs much sooner than they thought possible and found themselves walking down a hallway towards a circular door with a bronze disc at the centre of it. To either side were statues and tapestries. Down some corridors to either side they could catch glimpses of far-off combat. Golems grappling with their friends. Vanillans, Eye-and-Claws, Mencur-Besh, humans, villagers, pigmen, all assembled to ensure their success. It was hard to just move on by.
Steve rummaged through his pockets, inspecting the number of ender pearls he had left. Rose sorted through her knives. Runes on Shadow’s skin flashed as she prepared spells, occasionally her skin would go beyond black as she channelled the Void. Kay began to repeatedly sharpen his sword against his armour, muttering his titles as a mantra:
“General. Commander. Lap Dog. Hero of Arcadia…” Then, in a sombre, still more hushed tone: “King in Ash.”
Astro sidled up to Shadow, jimmying one of his rings further up his finger.
“You know, one advantage of the machine being turned on is that there’s a lot more background energy swilling around. Almost filled them all back up already.” He paused, then smiled genuinely. “Thanks for these.”
Shadow nodded. “I thought I’d need these myself before I came here but turns out that was just the first thing that played out differently.” With another pulse of beyond-black across her body she added: ”Reality is denser here in the throne room, it might not tear like in other places.”
Astro curled his mouth in satisfaction, then shot a sly look at Shadow.
“I mean, so long as Freak gets torn too, I’m sure reality won’t mind.”
She giggled, then realised the others had stopped. Fire gestured for silence, and they formed into a V-shape behind him. Tyron, Shadow, Rose, and Amanda on the one side. Kay, Steve, Jennifer, and Astro opposite. Fire drew his zweihander and crept forward, one hand outstretched, until his scaled fingers brushed the cold bronze disc at the door’s centre. It began to turn. The door opened.
Inside, they saw darkness, only dimly illuminated by light from further within. They crept along, silent, and steady, all with their weapons drawn. Past display cases. Over obsidian and endstone tiles. Brushing against pedestals bearing strange artefacts and statues. Every here and there an accent of bronze alloy glinted.
Then, they entered an inner ring of rooms. Less bronze and endstone. More obsidian alloyed into metal. In the dark they saw a hologram depicting many worlds stutter on and off, lashing the walls with a blue light. At first, they assumed this was the source of the light they were following, but even when the hologram clicked out of view, something else kept the room half-visible. Jennifer moved to turn it off, but found the buttons shattered beyond recognition, perhaps crushed by a frantic bronze form realising its time was running out.
Finally, they saw the source of the light: two doorways lit by something otherworldly. Too orange and to be daylight, too golden in hue for a true twilight. Molten rays from some unknown point of origin. They steeled their nerves, filtered through the two entrances, and examined the room beyond.
Fire immediately recognised the Throne Room. The walls remained lined with bookcases, though much of the glass that sealed them had shattered, leaving the tomes within shredded and torn. It remained large and empty, with the throne on the far side, and the dimensional scar still shaking above as though struck with a fever. Behind the throne the edges of the activation switch’s platform were visible.
He also recognised the staircase at the centre of the room, which he had fled up only a few days ago. However, where once it had led to an observatory, now it was broken off most of the way up, with an open view onto the sky of Nexus, with its stars which ruptured into worlds, and its black sky ignited by a burning yellow shade. Freak sat at the top, kicking his feet back and forth, luxuriating in the terror.
Everyone froze, uncertain how to respond to the phantom’s presence. His yellow eyes shone and rolled beneath closed lids, and his lips were parted by slow, deep breaths. He looked serene. Could he see them?
Tyron looked around, gestured to the platform, then adopted a fighting stance as Kir counted down. Shadow charged a spell. Steve lifted his shield. Amanda trained her crossbow on Freak.
“Three. Two… One!”
They charged. A great roar challenged the howling of the winds above for dominance of the room. They had one goal, the activation mechanism which could end this. Shadow unleashed her spell and blasted the throne aside. It was in view! Only for obsidian panels to start rising like grotesque, unbreakable jaws.
Amanda loosed her rocket, spiralling up at Freak’s stairtop perch. A second sent her bursting up into the air until she began to drop, and the air swelled her sail-like wings. She began to soar down at the activation mechanism. It was still in view despite the rising obsidian. She stifled a shocked laugh. She could make it! And even if she missed, Fire led the pack behind, Tyron running and Astro and Shadow floating shortly behind!
Amanda spared a triumphant look at Freak and her rocket had almost reached the docile phantom, who still sat undisturbed. Judging by the path it was on a direct course for his head. Her heart soared and momentarily pushed the mourning of Helix from her mind. It was going to hit him! She was going to strike Freak right in his stupid face-
Crack! The phantom’s neck crunched horribly to the side. The rocket shot wide. The phantom’s yellow eyes and glowing smile were trained on her. A gurgling, bubbling sound came from somewhere on his back and out reached a lumpy, bulbous limb, at the end of which sat a many-fingered hand. Each finger bloomed into a talon and shot forth like a missile of stretching flesh.
Amanda rolled aside. The talon missed and stuck in the rising obsidian, but Amanda also wound up flying wide. Dodging several more talons, she kicked off from the nearest bookcase, sending her swooping back in the opposite direction. She tripped on the ground and was steadied by Astro.
Then the rest of the fingers struck out. Fire stopped as a wide fan of talons embedded themselves in the floor like the bars of a cell, separating the group from the activation mechanism. Then, suddenly, they began to shift. The fleshy limb sticking out of Freak’s back heaved, and in a moment, Freak swung before them, a crackling ragdoll suspended in the air by a thick, grotesque string.
“Hello, Fire,” Freak said. “I didn’t expect you to come back so soon… or in such good company?”
His yellow eyes rolled out and took in the others. A serpentine tongue began to run over his dry, splintering lips.
“What brings you all here?”
Fire replied: “We’re here to stop you, as cliché as that sounds. The plan is the same as when the Entity was in charge. You made things easier for us so far, but it looks like that just changed.”
Freak smiled.
“Oh, I certainly did, Fire, sending Glibby, Forgelight and all of them spinning was a joy. But, of course, it wasn’t only pleasure hahaha-”
Tyron growled and cut the phantom off.
“We know! We’ve known since we first learned what happened. You feed on fear so keeping them all confused makes you stronger! Get out of our way or get another bit!”
“Leave!” snarled Kir, its blue glow intensifying.
The phantom’s smile vanished, the cracked lips becoming a fractured line.
“At least you’re all smarter than Destiny.”
Anger surged within the group.
“Kill. Now,” ordered Kir. Tyron did not countermand him.
Rose whipped her arm out and sent a wave of daggers flying at the phantom, each of which was struck through by an unbreakable talon, forcing the assassin to dodge and roll every which way as they shattered the ground beneath her. Kay attempted to win her more room by trying to cut through one of the fingers the talons were attached to, only for his sword to bounce off. Beneath the withered flesh, the talon ran through it like a bone.
Shadow let loose one of her disintegration beams and Freak responded by shooting out one of his ever-stretching arms. For every molecule of flesh Shadow burned, a new one appeared behind it, pushing it forward. The beam stopped, and Freak shed the melted arm. It slopped onto the floor like a dead snake.
He swung left to dodge a rocket from Amanda, swiped up to shatter a shield Astro had thrown edgeways like a shuriken. Then, his eyes widened as he saw Jennifer release the string on the ghastbone bow. His body swung up and around, but his face stayed upright, his neck crunching all the way. The arrow shattered against the barrier of talons.
Now, Fire leapt up at him, zweihander held back in anticipation of a mighty blow. Flame bunched up on the tip of the blade. Freak braced and parried the attack, sending Fire back down to earth with a quick swipe of his claws. Further talons shot out to prevent Amanda from flying past him, forcing her into desperate circles in the air.
Steve threw his ender-pearl above the phantom’s head but found it shattered in the air by Freak’s outstretched arm. He began to fall, and the phantom swung down at him. He only just raised his shield in time for it to ever-improbably absorb the blow. Tyron moved to his rescue on stone wings, drawing an attack from Freak away from the adventurer, then striking out at the phantom’s face with Kir.
Cursing, Freak turned momentarily intangible, becoming visible only to the weakest person he could identify in the room: Kay. A shudder ran over the General, and he realised what had happened. He reached for one of the stones the phantom had dug up and, just as he became generally visible again, threw it.
The rock struck Freak right between the eyes. He flinched. He reached up and fell the warmth of blood dribbling down his forehead. He began to cackle.
“Really? All that, and the guy who draws first blood is the con artist with the dodgy leg? This is just getting silly now.”
Kay reflexively readjusted his leg to try and mask its weakness, knowing in his heart it would do no good. He clasped his sword with both hands and tried to recapture his old, heroic grandeur.
“You’re welcome to quit any time, Freak!” Astro spat.
He reached out and with a clenching of his fist broke the bones in the formless limb on Freak’s back. The talons stopped chasing Amanda and she started to hurriedly correct her course. Fire struck out again and Freak dodged instead of parrying.
The phantom’s smile cooled. His eyes flashed yellow. The molten rays above seemed to dim.
“I’m good, actually, but you all look awfully tired. Why don’t you all lie down?”
Suddenly the remaining torches roared with yellow flame, and the Throne Room collapsed into darkness. A great tiredness began to sap away their will. Steve struggled under the weight of his shield and armour, remembering Destiny’s sedative and thinking how gentle that weariness seemed compared to the dive into oblivion he was now stuck in. Fire fell to his knees, fighting to get back up. Amanda dropped from the sky and only Shadow remained lucid enough to slow her descent with a spell.
“I am the Phantom Lord, welcome to my domain: Your worst nightmares!”
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 7 Showdown (Cont.)
Chapter 87: The Phantom Lord (Various/Narrator)
Amanda knelt in the rubble. The others had left a long time ago. She had grown old. Only the light of a single purple lamp remained in the Tower’s ruins. The rocks cut her hands and bit her knees, but she kept straining to move them. Kept forcing her eyes to search for a sign of him. Anything.
She wrapped her hands around a large, black stone and began to lift even though it felt like her arms would sooner come away than the stone would move even an inch. Eventually, she gave up. That’s when the hand shot from the ground, brass and brilliant and burning, and grabbed her leg. Helix rose through the rocks as though it were water, purple fire streaming from his eyes like tears. She tried to scream, and then was dragged down through the stone into his scorching embrace beneath the earth.
###
Jennifer woke up in her house. Not Brine Manor, her own. A few cobwebs had grown. An enderman had placed a grass block in the middle of the living room, but it was unmistakably hers. She climbed out of bed and put a raw pork chop in the furnace. Through the window the sun, coloured like molten gold, beat down heavily. The pork chop finished, and she brought herself back up to full hunger.
She went to the door and stepped outside. All she saw for miles and miles was desert. The door slammed shut after her. She turned around, and on the other side of the door she saw the skeleton worker from the portal facility. He glowered at her, then the house sank into the sands. The sun beat down. She was alone.
###
I open my eyes, then shut them tight as the blizzard stings my eyes. Adjusting my hood allows me to see again. I am upon the Fields. The cold ignores my robes even more than usual, and I struggle to move. My very bones become glacial in their icy slowness. I hear the wind, but it is not the wind.
There I see a half-breed with a mace and a trilby, a crossbow bolt in his speckled green forehead. Here, a snapped thaumaturge’s wand, next to a familiar purple breastplate. Then the old Guild-master half-frozen in the lake. Ozzy burned to a crisp. David’s broken gauntlet. Warnado’s tattered robes. Destiny ever-fading. Fristad’s neck twisting still.
They lie around the battlefield as broken, blood-soaked statues. Slowly creeping. Wailing. Screaming. Keening. Why did I not help them? Where was the great and wise Astro when they died?
“What else could I have done?!” I shriek, tears streaming down my face.
###
“Tryon! Wake up!”
He lifted himself from the ground and rubbed the dirt from his fur. He felt clammy, almost feverish. His arms hung limply, and there was a pain in his side. Was that - he reached out to touch it - blood?
“Where are you, Kir?”
He saw the red blocks around him. The Nether. And yet, the Overworld’s moon loomed over him. He had to be dreaming.
“Where are we, Kir?”
Flame burst forth from a shrine. A ring of gold surrounded a burning red brick. Herobrine, his old enemy, reborn and rejuvenated. He grinned. He held one of his glowing, dark blue scythes in one hand. Kir sat snugly in the other, moulded to his hand as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
“We are at the end of your journey, Tyron!”
###
Shadow did not fall asleep like the others, she remained standing and stared up at Freak defiantly.
Freak stared right back. “Oh, of course. You don’t get tired, do you? But that’s not an issue. I’ll let you in on a little secret, Shadow. I may have needed to directly touch a mind before my takeover, but now I can just draw out your biggest fears right out of your mind by merely existing, no need to do anything more! Enjoy!”
Shadow barely registered the transition, so unchanged was the scenery around her. Everything was the same, except that Freak was nowhere to be seen. But then as Shadow looked around, it was as if she felt her heart briefly beat, only to stop once more.
Where Fire had collapsed was now the site of a blazing inferno, at the centre of which lay the body of her brother, a large silver blade impaling his torso. Shadow watched in horror as Fire’s flesh and organs burned up, leaving behind only an empty shell of scales draped over a skeleton.
There was sadness, then there was anger. Shadow had made a promise to herself, back in the command room. She was their apocalyptic insurance policy, she’d make sure that even if Freak managed to bring the worlds together, he wouldn’t be able to enjoy it.
Shadow prepared to feel the Void rising up inside of her, to take away all feeling and plunge her back into that absence… but nothing happened. That was when Shadow had a terrible thought. Fire’s death really was what would cause her to go over the edge, but this was not the real Fire she saw in front of her.
Shadow realized that her biggest fear was not simply losing her brother but being unable to help him when he needed help. He had done so much for her, even while he himself had suffered. All she had done during her time in Nexus was to destroy, and no amount of destruction could ever repay the life she had been gifted, even if it happened to save the world from a worse fate. She threw herself to the ground in despair, with no way out of the nightmare and no way to ever set things right.
###
Steve and Ozen returned from the expedition. They had conquered the Nether. Returned to the End. And Steve had finally learned the secrets of the Ocean Monument, while Ozen waited on the shore. Ozen sat astride a fully-grown Drake. Jennifer would be waiting for them. Mom, too. Maybe Mark would stop by like he said he would. Maybe not.
He threw a pearl as Brine manor’s roof rose from between the trees. It shattered and he stood before them. Mom, grey-haired, was sitting in her bench, waving. Dad slept, lying against a cushion on the other side of the bench, looking frail enough that a light wind much break him to pieces. Jennifer stepped outside. It had been weeks since he saw her, and though age had come upon them both, she was still quite beautiful. Out from behind her ran his son and daughter. Then at least two more sons for good measure. They hugged his legs and drew his body inside for dinner.
His soul remained without. He reached into his ghostly pocket and pulled out three grey skulls, and four blocks of soul sand.
“Is it all you ever wanted?” the skulls sneered. “Does it make you feel whole?”
He looked through the window. Jennifer pecked him on the cheek and returned to setting out dinner. His sons had a million things to show him. Dad had woken up and was distracting Steve’s daughter with a story more interesting than anything he could ever tell.
I feel empty. It is not enough.
“Then follow in his footsteps,” said the skulls.
Steve placed the four blocks. He affixed two of the skulls to the sand.
“This is what you need,” they told him. “What will always be.”
He placed the final skull. The Wither arose and rained black fire upon the Manor.
###
Fire found himself on the familiar gold-decorated white wooden bench, around him was only blackness. He slowly turned his head and was faced with a near-exact mirror image of himself, with the only difference being that the mirror image had pitch-black eyes.
“Claw.” He said.
Claw replied: “Other one.”
Neither of them said anything more, both contemplating the situation they were in.
Finally, Claw spoke: “I must say, I was not expecting this when he said, ‘worst nightmare’.”
Fire shook his head. “No, awkward conversations with my alter ego don’t exactly fit that description.”
Claw stood up from the bench and brandished his namesake at Fire. “Then why are we here?”
Fire thought for a moment.
“It seems like currently, my worst fear is letting you back in control, and once you are back out there, yours is to return to here.”
Claw suddenly laughed. “So, the phantom trapped us in an infinite loop?”
Fire simply shrugged. There was something oddly calming about finally meeting Claw face-to-face. He’d always been this unknown thing, a boogeyman almost.
For lack of any other topics, Fire asked: “So, how do you like the manor?”
Claw shot back: “Better than the cage, that’s for sure.”
“You know that it was you who built the cage, right Claw? Just like I built the manor.”
Claw huffed. “Don’t give me the ‘it’s all in your mind’ speech, I wasn’t even a proper person until the Entity brought me out.”
Fire raised his hands. “I didn’t intend to.” he added: “But now that you are a person, you’ll listen to reason.”
“Not from you, other one.”
It was almost funny, the mirror analogy proved to be true on more layers than physical. Fire stood up as well to face Claw.
“I’m not really the other one, Claw. You aren’t either. That’s because we are the same.”
Claw huffed again. “Really? The ‘not so different’ speech?”
Fire shook his head, memories flooded out from him and into their shared mindscape. A classroom, a city apartment, a lecture hall, an empty warehouse.
“I meant what I said. Back when I was younger, I was how you are now. Headstrong, defiant, even a bit selfish. You came into existence when my bad tendencies were at their peak, further fuelled by the trauma of having lost my friends. It took a lot of work to get to where I am now, and even still, the temptation to go back is always there. A lot of things would be easier if I did.”
Claw stared at Fire. “Then why don’t you go back, if it’d be so much easier?”
“It’d be easier in the short term, not in the long term. The biggest lesson I learned from living five thousand years on the server was that if you live that long, you cannot ignore the long term. Not for your own sake, and not for the sake of others. You see, if you only live a hundred years, you can do all manner of ‘evil’ things and die before the consequences affect you. But if you live long enough you will see the effects of your actions in the world, and they will come back to you, and often in ways you don’t expect.”
Claw clutched his head. “Gah, stop making sense damn it!”
Fire chuckled. “The reason I’m telling you this is because I reached that conclusion on my own, now I’m helping you reach it too. We are the same after all.”
Claw glared at Fire for a few moments, even raising his hands as if to strike, but gradually a look of resignation settled on his face.
“Alright, alright. What’s your point?”
Fire took a few moments to contemplate his next words. “I don’t hate you Claw. I hate that you came to be in the first place, but that’s hardly your fault, it’s mine. My point is that we can find a way out of this situation, but we can’t be enemies for that. Besides, you already helped me against Freak once, back when you gave me that memory proving that it was him who usurped the Entity.”
Claw sighed. “I suppose I did. But what do I get out of it? I’m sure as hell not content sitting here in your mind for the rest of our life, even if the manor is better than the cage. And I’m not content with fading out either.”
When given the question “what would you tell your younger self”, many people would give advice on how to live life. This situation was similar, though not quite the same. Fire had to show Claw that there was a path he hadn’t considered, one that would help them both.
“That’s where the long-term thinking comes in. During my time in Nexus, I discovered some… concerning things about myself and about Shadow. Once this situation is resolved I plan to do something about these things, find a solution, and now you are part of that solution too. You might have to endure for a while longer, but not forever.”
Fire extended his hand. He let his thoughts flow freely for Claw to pick up on what he meant, what he had seen, and what he planned. Claw contemplated, then nodded and shook the hand offered to him.
Claw said: “Alright then, Fire. Just one question remains: How do we get out of here?”
Fire replied: “Look outside through our eyes, our opportunity is about to present itself.”
###
Weariness was like a weight upon me, dragging down my eyelids, threatening to tear me apart if I did not succumb. I could not keep my sword-arm raised for longer than a second, but I struggled on.
“You know, the slumber is supposed to be a mercy.”
Freak now swayed before me, level with my eyes, breath like corpses. I turned away from the repellent stench and fell on my front.
“It doesn’t actually need you to be asleep to work. A waking nightmare could be fun, too.”
I wrenched myself forward, away from the phantom, into the inky void with its yellow flames. A second lunge brought my fingertips into contact with the firesteel armour of Fire, still warm from his last overcharge. The armour slipped away as Fire tried to pull himself up. With my subsiding eyes I saw his own flicker from red to black, and then snap shut. He collapsed and tried anew.
“Ah, this one I couldn’t have predicted. He’s so afraid of Claw getting control, he triggers the transfer of power by accident. Unfortunately, without the Entity to save him, Claw is so afraid of losing control he hands it back to li’l old Pete. The coin flips away.”
He lifted me up by the scruff of my neck, the talons grazing my skin. I saw the wound I’d left on his forehead sealing up. The blood remained like a crack in his nose.
“Listen, I’m being real nice right now by giving you a chance to pass out on your own. I haven’t come across someone able to resist me like this in a while, so consider it an apology for writing you off as the weak one. But don’t misunderstand, when I decide so, you will enter my domain.”
He was right. I could feel his spell run across my mind like a spider looking for a crack in a wall. Sooner or later, he would find one. But not yet, I gritted my teeth and continued to harden my mind against his efforts.
“Very well. A spider, I like that image.”
My eyes briefly shot open as I envisaged the arachnid, now with Freak’s face, bite into my mind, spreading venomous fear throughout. My head fell forward.
All was blackness. North, South, East and West revealed only darkness. I recalled my training and reshaped it. Now, it was a dark hallway, then, I was at the end of it, a door behind me. Only I had the key. Simple rules. Whatever Freak wanted to throw at me, it would come directly from the front.
I restored my heavy, obsidian armour. Apotyre, my blade returned to my hand. Voidfire flared in my eyes. Whatever he had sent would overpower me eventually, but I would give it a challenge.
“Come then, Phantom Lord,” I strain, forcing myself to say it aloud as well as in my mind. “Send me your worst.”
Freak scoffed. His voice seemed to echo from out the walls. Thorn-filled roots started to spread across the walls.
“It’s really not up to me what you see, Kay.”
The briars receded.
Suddenly, a footstep. Then another. A brisk, stumbling pace began, with the feet sometimes sliding rather than lifting fully across the ground. And glowing through the dark, a lone purple eye. I recognised it immediately. My armour started to fade, my beard receded, voidfire snuffed out.
“No, it can’t be,” I insisted, “It’s not you, Hamish!”
My defences returned, I envisaged a lamp. I caught a glimpse of him as he once was. Of his ochre scarf, his short black hair, his heavy trench-coat. He slipped back into darkness.
Another lantern. Light glinted off a glassy purple eye. Half his face and one of his hands was gnarled and black and twisted. He wore the armour of a Divine officer, one gauntlet discarded to unsheathe a taloned hand which burned anything it touched. A light golden sabre sat snugly in the other. As he had been on the bridge. Hamish grinned wildly at me.
Back into darkness.
“Hello Kay,” he sneered.
I summoned a final lantern. It revealed no one. The point of my sword dipped.
A full-grown Endling, with teeth like swords, leapt from the shadows. All of him was gnarled and burned and smoky. His talons swiped down not to cut but to grab. The burns on my neck screamed out anew.
I opened and locked the door, staggering into my office. The fire burned, the wallpaper was green, my desk was just as I left it, but this was no comfort. Already, his talons slammed into the door, tearing away the wood.
“What do I do?” I ask.
The Book’s fluttering mass of pages cocked its head.
“Other than join me in death?”
I went up to its armchair. The door rattled.
“Don’t grow a sense of humour, now. You must have noticed something I missed.”
“I am dead, Kay.”
“Yes, and it’s my fault, but what did Freak say?!”
The Book glared at me.
“He said he did not choose what you saw. Meaning…”
It rolled its hand in expectation.
“...He’s using my own fears.”
“Hamish is no interloper.”
“He’s a local!” I howled with laughter.
I looked down at the Book. Voidfire began to spread across it.
“Thank you, Book,” I said. “You always were magnificent.”
It glared back in silence, and then was gone. Crack! Hamish’s hand went through the door. I moved, quickly, knowing my window was limited. I envisaged Freak in the Book’s place, but he was nothing more than a shell, unmoving. So, I opened one eye in the waking world, and saw him dangling before me again.
“Freak,” I oozed, aloud and in my mind. “Would you spare me a moment of your time?”
He shot to life in my office.
“What do you want?” The phantom asked.
Realising he was in an armchair he adopted an aloof smile and leaned back slowly. He scrunched his features and looked over at the door Hamish was destroying.
“Oh, this is where she sat,” Freak nodded. “And advised you. Are you lonely in here, Kay?”
I pulled out a bottle of whiskey I remembered enjoying one time and poured us both a glass.
“I wanted some company, Hamish will break in momentarily. I don’t intend to wait out eternity with him, so I’ll probably just off myself. Give you one less mind to worry about tormenting.”
I laced my tone with acid. He needed to believe me. Hamish tore a hole large for his glassy purple eye to look through.
“How considerate,” Freak smirked. “You’d best hurry up then, I won’t let you die once I’m a god.”
My nostrils flared and my eyes burned.
“I have time enough,” I said. “I wanted to compliment you on your spell. You really have gotten to the thing I fear most.”
Hamish rattled the lock, then drew back.
Freak lounged back. His arms extended to impossible lengths as he stretched.
“Well, I can’t take full credit for that, can I? You see-”
“-Yes, getting the mind to produce its own worst fear, very efficient. Of course, that must also feel a little impersonal, mustn’t it?”
Freak glared and sat forward.
“I’m on a tight schedule, I’ll put my own spin on it later.”
“If I live that long.”
I heard a sound like sprouting in the real world. I felt cold roots wind about my wrists and restrain them.
“You will.”
“Blast, there goes that plan!” I laughed nervously.
A strange look spread across Freak’s face. I mustn’t have been very convincing.
I mused: “It must be strange though, finding what your subject’s afraid of, but not knowing why?”
“A little, but I have eternity to learn all that.”
I smiled coldly as I heard Hamish’s footsteps pounding down the hall. He was going to charge his way in. I clapped the Phantom Lord on the shoulder.
“Well, it might help you to learn that as much as I fear being tormented by Hamish for all eternity, that is eclipsed by how much Hamish would hate being trapped in here with me.”
Freak’s eyes widened and the door exploded. Hamish’ burning, black hands wrapped around his face. My eyes shot open.
I slammed into the floor as Freak swung away from me. Smoke was rising from his face, and I could see Hamish still wrapped around him. The darkness withdrew and the torches turned back from yellow to orange. The leader of the Mencur-Besh was still next to me. I grabbed his shoulder and shook him.
“Fire!” I screamed.
His eyes shot open.
###
Fire leapt up at the howling phantom in a mighty spiral, then severed the fleshy limb on his back from the rest of his body. The limb and its near-unbreakable wall of talons immediately began to shrivel away into nothing as, while Freak himself hit the floor in a continued howl. For a few moments he seemed to grapple with an unseen figure, until he made a motion like throwing and then struck the ground nearby. He rose, feeling his face for burn marks which did not exist.
“Sorry, Fire, you have my undivided attention.”
Meanwhile, Kay looked up from his efforts to wake a trembling Shadow and sighed:
“I need to invest in a more durable nemesis.”
Fire rushed at Freak, launching a burning, overhead swing of his zweihander, only for the phantom to turn intangible and invisible at the last second. Freak then became solid again, standing atop the edge of Fire’s blade and clawing at his visor. Fire swung the sword back up at the last moment, throwing Freak away from him. The two then engaged in a flurry of blows, Fire dodging and swiping as the Phantom Lord phased through every blow.
Away from this duel, Kay continued to shake Shadow. Her eyes were now open, but she was still seized by terror, looking this way and that.
“Shadow, wake up! Come on, I know I’m not your favourite person but-”
“-Where’s Fire, is he safe?”
“No, he needs your help.”
“Fire, where are you?”
Kay gritted his teeth and looked around for Astro, hoping another wizard might be able to help more. He then heard a warping sound.
“What in tha Great Underking’s Beard happened ‘ere?”
My eyes lit up. Urist stood over me gawking, where Voidblade was already looking around and nodding at the scene.
“Urist, start getting people back on their feet. V, get out and help Fire.”
“Understood,” said the enderman.
He teleported away and narrowly missed Freak’s head with a spinning swipe of the halberd. Urist’s eyes ping-ponged back and forth between Jennifer and Astro before turning the other way and shaking the fallen Tyron. Kay looked back to Shadow.
“Peter needs you.”
The tiny mage’s eyes became clear, then began burning with newfound determination. She floated to her feet and hovered a short distance above the floor. Shadow balled her fists as her hair began floating upwards.
Meanwhile, Freak parried and phased through an endless torrent of attacks from Fire and the teleporting Voidblade. The phantom cast an eye over at the slow resuscitation of the rest of the party which had come to slay him.
“You know, Fire,” he sneered. “I was quite enjoying our duel, but then you had to go and cheat by inviting this hyperactive beanpole.”
Freak feinted a parry then turned intangible, leaving Voidblade to stagger through him. He shunted the enderman aside. Fire swung again, but Freak caught his blade in a nest of indestructible, extended talons. With his other hand, Freak swung up and caught Fire on the forehead.
“Take a rest, little hero,” cackled the phantom.
However, his laughter died on the vine as Fire’s eyes flickered from red to black, then back again. He did not fall. He wrenched his sword from Freak’s grip and sent the stunned phantom spinning.
Phasing through another strike from Voidblade, Freak steadied himself, gearing up to extend his arm out and pierce Fire right through his insolent chest. How dare he resist!
A blackness fell over him. He looked up. Shadow had floated higher, her skin beyond darkness and her eyes like stars. A pulse emanated from her, first darkening everything it crossed, but once it passed it was as if the contrast on reality had increased. Colours were more intense, sounds clearer. Freak was violently pushed back into physical space from his ethereal state.
“Hah!” he scoffed. “Contesting me for control of the local reality, very well. If I cannot be ethereal, then let’s see what I can’t do in the physical world!”
He shot an arm out past Shadow and cut the air above her. Hundreds of spiders and scorpions and other poisonous beasts cascaded over her.
He had no time for triumph or even a snide remark, though, as a dwarf-operated diamond mace immediately collided with his jaw and sent him reeling. Two glowing yellow teeth flew from his mouth before dissipating in the air and regrowing. A quick glance revealed the entire group back on their feet. Overhead, the storm of worlds became still fiercer. The mechanism’s defences were still operational.
“Very well,” Freak grinned. “Let’s do this.”
A great storm of battle erupted in the throne room, to rival that which unfolded overhead. Rose hurled wave upon wave of knives while Amanda swooped this way and that to fire rockets. Freak blocked all these by summoning strange stone birds into the air. Jennifer and Voidblade circled the melee, looking for ideal moments to hurt Freak with a well-timed strike of the halberd, or to put some room between him and an ally with an explosive impact from the ghastbone bow. And in the centre a great ruck had formed as Freak slashed to and fro at the other champions.
Fire and Tyron proved most able to go toe-to-toe with the Phantom lord, hacking away with the Entity’s zweihander and Kir respectively. However, as much as they tore away at the phantom’s body, Freak always managed to avoid a decisive blow by contorting his body as though it were that of a serpent, or by manifesting some fleshy limb to push him out of the way.
Only shortly behind them was Steve, who caught Freak’s every blow with his impossible shields and swiping away with Excalibur. Kay clung closely to Steve, trying to remain out of Freak’s line of sight until he engaged the adventurer, then bursting out with a strike of the sword or a heavy punch.
Urist followed a similar tactic with Astro. As the wizard flew around at low altitudes, trying to find a person to shield, or a limb to break, Freak sent out briars to creep along the ground and bloom into thorns which would strike him from the sky. Urist, however, had seen what had been done to Herobrine’s party by these briars, and closely followed these creeping strands of death, crushing the thorns with his mace before they could do harm.
Shadow’s role may have seemed less active to an onlooker, but every time Freak attempted to push the boundaries of his influence, she was there to push back with greater force. Still, the phantom had considerable strength that could not be quelled in the metaphysical realm, so Shadow occasionally used conventional spells to assist the others, burning away Freak’s limbs or magically enhancing her allies.
However, the storm above continued to rage. The yellow lights shone brighter. And Freak only seemed to grow stronger and bolder.
A briar shot out and pierced Fire’s breastplate and, while not piercing his ribcage, left a large gash across his chest. A fleshy limb caught Rose’s knives, then spat them back out, striking her in the leg. Freak carved the air and out jumped a huge, black wolf who began to maul Urist until Kay and Amanda came to his rescue. A blow from his talons split another of Steve’s shields and sent him flying. A second blow would have killed him, had Astro not summoned three closely-packed shields to stop Freak. And every wound they inflicted on him seemed to have less and less of an effect, knitting back together faster and bleeding less when open.
“Okay, killing him quickly so we can get to the mechanism unopposed clearly isn’t working,” opined Tyron over the telepathic network maintained by Kir.
“You’re right,” agreed Fire as he cut through a horned, lion-headed beast which dissipated into smoke thereafter. “So long as the machine is operational, he’ll only get stronger and I hate to say it, but I’m not sure we can keep pace. Jennifer, Steve, get to the switch.”
With a shattering noise, Jennifer arrived at the machine and began to hammer away with two enchanted diamond pickaxes.
“Back to plan A, I guess,” answered Steve.
Herobrine’s son then bashed Freak in the face with his shield, then threw an ender pearl over at the obsidian shield guarding the mechanism. However, a stone bird twirled into its path, dropping Steve into a patch of briars which he hurriedly began to block with his shield.
“I’m getting real sick of him doing that!”
“Hang tight Steve,” instructed Fire, narrowly dodging Freak’s latest attack. “Jennifer, can you break the machine alone?”
“Just a sec…” The sound of obsidian shattering rang out. “Crap! There’s at least twenty layers of this stuff! Alloyed sheets. I can only break one at a time, I need backup.”
Shadow swooped to and fro above the battlefield, trying to get a good shot on the briars harassing Steve, but being perpetually harassed by Freak’s extended talons, fleshy limbs or summoned beasts.
“Urist?” Fire asked.
“Out of commission,” answered Astro.
The wizard similarly lurched around the battlefield, carrying the dwarf under his armpits in search of a safe spot to heal him.
“Aye, me arm’s broken,” confirmed the dwarf hazily.
It occurred to Fire that he might have to pull out a trump card. They needed a ringer. And that ringer might just be Claw. Unfortunately, that would mean he couldn’t coordinate the others.
“Rose?” he tried.
The assassin steadied herself, and focused. A single dagger came shooting out in a burst of energy, the sharpest she had ever thrown. It shattered against the obsidian alloy, leaving only a superficial scratch.
“No dice,” she said aloud.
“Guys, have idea,” chirped Kir, surprising even Tyron.
A few moments later, the plan was fully relayed. Kay ran forward and launched a flying punch at Freak. The Phantom Lord dodged easily and turned to strike Kay in the back, only for one of Amanda’s rockets to explode against his head.
With his concentration broken, the stone birds began to flicker out of existence. Shadow fired out her disintegration beam and burned away the briars around Steve, who immediately pulled out an ender pearl. However, this time, instead of throwing it at the mechanism, he threw it at Tyron.
The second Steve materialised, he threw Excalibur to the Dragoknight, before throwing a second pearl at the activation mechanism and rematerialising there. Tyron caught the blade with his free hand and assumed a dual-wielding fighting stance.
“Now!” Tyron roared.
Shadow and Astro landed behind Fire and immediately began to channel their energy into Tyron, joining Kir in enhancing his reflexes and taking up the duty of maintaining the telepathic network. Tyron’s eyes and the vortex on his back shone like beacons, and blue light pulsed through his veins, so bright it even shone out through his fur. Icy tendrils wafted from the surfaces of Kir and Excalibur, and rocks rose from the floor to build a set of mighty stone wings on Tyron’s shoulders. He ascended from the floor, Kir held forward and Excalibur drawn back for a downward thrust.
Freak’s neck snapped back into place, and he rounded on the source of the shadow which had now fallen upon him. Steve and Jennifer hammered away at the obsidian. Rose, Kay and Voidblade took up positions around him as Amanda circled. He heard the sound of flames igniting and glanced back to see Fire rise on his flaming wings. As he arose, he saw Astro and Shadow behind several layers of shields, still channelling energy into Tyron. Freak chuckled.
“Never to be outdone, are we, Pete? You couldn’t even let the furball have the high ground?”
“And you can’t go ten seconds without running your mouth, Freak!”
Freak ran a set of talons up his face as though pushing up a pair of non-existent glasses.
“No, and in a little bit, I’ll never have to go that long again!”
A taloned hand burst out from either side of Freak’s elbow and began to soar straight at two targets: Steve and Jennifer. A sickening grin spread across Freak’s face. Then, a brilliant blue flash. Unable to see, Freak lurched forward as his two new limbs were severed from him in quick succession. He retracted the bleeding remains, and as his eyes cleared, he saw ice spreading across them. New talons broke through, but he still felt the chill. He looked out at Tyron, who was already gearing up for another assault.
“Very well, little hero, let’s have-”
Before Freak could finish his thought, Tyron’s wings had beaten, propelling him forward along a path of ice rapidly forming before him. Kir caught him on the leg, then Excalibur on his hip. Ice began to creep. He moved to scrape away the ice, when - boom! - Fire’s zweihander came down on his wrist, scorching his flesh. He leapt away from the flame. Still, the ice crept.
Not willing to wait for another attack, Freak shed his arms and formed new ones, these each having three branches, each ending in a hand that was more weapon than organ. He rushed at Tyron and swiped down with his right arm, only for his new claws to stick in one of his wings, which bent forward like a shield. Freak lashed out with his left arm, yet more talons branching off from it, now creating weapons for the sake of weapons in the hope of finding some flesh to hit. He could feel the fear pouring into him from all around. How could his body not match this level of strength?
In a surge of energy, Freak found the ever-branching arm spiralling away from the rest of him. Rose had sent up a spray of daggers, and a spare one has stuck in his torso. Ice crept over it.
Freak snapped his neck to move out of the way of Tyron’s next slash of Kir, only for Excalibur to catch him on the knee. He rolled and evaded another slash from Tyron, only to be greeted by Voidblade’s halberd piercing his neck. He attempted to lash out with his remaining arm but found the ice had stuck it in place. Kay’s blade shattered the limb, then the General grabbed Voidblade’s arm. The two teleported away just before Freak’s new arm could cut the air and douse them in poisonous bogwater, resplendent with leeches. Freak straightened up just in time to see Fire’s reflection in the murky surface.
The Entity’s zweihander pierced his chest and Freak immediately manifested small tendrils to reach from his back and begin to lash away at him. They cut armour, picked away scales, drew blood, but still the great leader of the Mencur-Besh held firm. As Freak thrashed and contorted his body, all Fire did was slowly shuffle his feet into a new position. The phantom cracked his head around like an owl to look Fire in the eye. Before he could speak, Fire smirked.
“Not me you should be looking at.”
Freak turned just in time to see Tyron, like a missile of ice, stone and diamond, shooting down a path of ice towards him. First Kir cut him, then Excalibur. Then Excalibur, then Kir. Across the torso, across the head, arms, legs, every piece of him. Fire’s boot shunted him from the blade and the assault only became more intense. And from every wound upon his smoky skin, ice formed faster and faster. He couldn’t move his legs, then his arms, until finally, it was creeping up his face. With Shadow contesting him for the local reality, he had ceded the aethereal and relied upon his body. And his body, despite all the fear in all creation reinforcing it, had failed. Ice spread across his eyes, and he saw his enemies breathing a sigh of relief. The blows stopped.
“Is he down?!” Steve called out.
“For now,” Tyron gasped, keeping his swords raised.
Steve exhaled sharply, then continued to slam his pick into the obsidian.
“Hope it hurts,” Kir trilled in Freak’s mind.
But Freak had no interest in the sword’s petty revenge. His eyes drifted over to the shield dome protecting Astro and Shadow. He surveyed the little mage with hate, thinking on how she had shed her form to contest the Entity. Very well. Then Fear would mimic Entropy.
He looked up through one of the portals and saw a large, pillar-like structure in the midst of a city coming to rest above the Tower, a blazing white inverse to Nexus. Freak cast his mind out to the people of the city, and felt their fear, anxieties of war, inquisition, the mundane terror of being, and he began to fashion a vessel of it.
A small appendage like a scorpion’s stinger sprouted from the back of his skull. He angled it above him, so as to best crack open the cocoon that he was.
“Um, guys…” Amanda called.
Freak struck down. Ice, skin, skull all shattered. Down and down until nothing remained to break. And from the destruction of his body emerged a skeleton of briars, around which smoky flesh and glowing, golden fear began to entangle and disentangle. An ever-changing tangle of fear. He struck out with talons like rays of sunlight.
Astro and Shadow’s shield dome shattered. The two mages went flying. Tyron’s wings crumbled, and his swords lost their frosty aura. Fire stepped out, a jet of flame spewed from his hand and Freak simply caught it and made it sturdy as a rope. With a tug he hurled the Mencur-Besh aside, bowling over Rose and forcing Voidblade to teleport Kay away. Amanda’s rocket glanced harmlessly off his shoulder.
Freak smiled and it stretched like a dread horizon.
“Know this, I am Fear.” He began to howl with laughter. “And I am all that awaits you!”
Chapter 88: Apex (Narrator)
Fire only just flew out of the way of fear’s glowing talons, which were nose each half a metre long. He steadied himself against what remained of the staircase. Voidblade teleported on to the ring of the staircase above him, holding Kay’s forearm. The two crouched down.
“What do we do now?” Asked the enderman aloud.
When Freak broke Shadow and Astro’s shield that had disrupted their telepathic communication network, and Kir was still trying to keep Tyron’s reflexes at full capacity as Freak bore down on him. The cloud of smoke had not yet cleared where the two mages had stood. Fire threw a concerned glance where he assumed his sister to be but was soon forced to focus on the battle at hand.
His eyes shot to the activation mechanism. Steve and Jennifer mined away even more frenetically than before, but there were still several layers of obsidian alloy to go. Steve saw one of Freak’s briars creeping toward him and equipped his improbably efficient shield. He just about managed to block the thorns while still ensuring his pickaxe struck true.
Fire called out: “No matter what, we have to keep the Brines free to break through to the switch.”
Voidblade nodded and Kay stood up.
“Very well, first the briar, then the Freak,” he proclaimed with some of his old bravado.
That was when Freak’s gold-and-black arm shot out to strike the staircase. Voidblade grabbed Kay again and they teleported away, trying their best to work in tandem as Kay had once done with the Book. Fire only just glided off to the side. The phantom’s talons pierced his armour and cut through the scales on his arm. As he landed, he realised it was time.
“Let’s see if you took our talk to heart.” He murmured.
Fire’s eyes dimmed before turning black entirely. Claw surged forward, zweihander at his side, winding up for a large upward cut.
The glowing phantom slid back, grinning away unfazed. He batted Tyron aside and shrugged off a blow from Amanda.
“Hey buddy! Didn’t expect to see you here! Pete must be getting pretty desperate, huh?”
“Shut the **** up, Freak!” Claw roared.
He then launched into a series of ruthless swings, Freak managed to avoid some but the sheer speed that Claw attacked made sure that occasionally he landed a hit, each time tearing away more of Freak’s freshly formed nightmare-flesh. The pace with which Claw attacked was unsustainable, but a Mencur-Besh’s definition of unsustainable was different to that of many others, and Claw intended to show just how great the margin was.
Freak flashed a grin and thrust his arms up. Claw struck out at his exposed flank, and the mixture of gold-and-black seemed to unravel, allowing the blade to pass through unharmed. Freak then brough his talons down, shattering the ground and forcing Claw back. He moved to thrust forward, when suddenly - Crack!
A shield shattered against Freak’s arm, staggering him, and making him miss. Astro flew out from the smoke and immediately began to pelt Freak with spells to little effect. Then the smoke cloud exploded outwards until it dissipated, revealing Shadow and a small yield dome protecting the fallen Urist. A disintegration beam shot from her hand and struck Freak full in the chest. The phantom took a step back, clasping the wound as it healed. Claw profited from this and struck him across the jaw with the zweihander. Black blood spilled from Freak’s face as he reconstructed his signature grin.
The phantom wasted no time in attempting to regain the advantage. Tyron threw a wall of earth and Freak cut through it. He unspooled his right bicep to allow Rose’s daggers to pass through without serious damage. He shot his arm out into the air to route Amanda. He sent razor-sharp tendrils out from his back to pursue Astro.
Voidblade and Kay appeared behind him and the enderman thrust a spear at the same spot Fire had stabbed so shortly before. A gaping mouth formed and bit the spear clean in half, and a tendril shot out and slammed into Voidblade’s helmet. Kay severed the tendril and turned to catch Voidblade. However, as he willed the wounded enderman to teleport, Freak rounded on them.
The phantom leered down and drew back the talons stopped of his left hand. A single downward thrust would reduce both of them to bloody smears on the ground. Kay looked down at Voidblade and saw purple blood dripping from the crack on his helmet. The enderman thrashed to and fro with eyes scrunched shut. The General turned back to Freak and braced for death. The phantom struck down.
The talons stopped. Freak howled. Kay looked up to see Fire standing over him, clasping the Entity’s zweihander. The blade had passed between the two central talons and cut halfway into the Phantom Lord’s hand, sending black blood pulsing every which way. He looked back and Kay saw black eyes. His own widened.
“Claw?!” he yelped.
“Communications back online!” chirped Kir with only a fraction of his usual enthusiasm.
That was when Astro swooped down and lifted him away. Kay looked back to see Shadow do the same with the injured Voidblade. Tyron, Rose, and Claw entered into a fierce melee with Freak, with Amanda circling above.
“Is that Claw?” Kay asked telepathically.
The wizard set him down and scowled.
“Yeah, looks like, keep your **** together. Claw’s small potatoes now.”
“Careful, remember that I could have killed you back at the hill. But we have bigger problems than the past now,” said Claw as he cut deep into Freak’s leg.
“Claw friend?” asked Kir.
“Really not the time, Kir!” stressed Tyron as he just about pulled Kir out of the reach of a maw which had formed on Freak’s shoulder.
Kay rubbed his leg and reassumed a fighting stance. Nearby Shadow set down Voidblade and, after planting a protective rune around him, began firing more disintegration beams at Freak.
“Don’t worry, I’m not complaining. We only got out of that dreamscape because I bit the bullet and worked with Hamish.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
Astro’s eyes collapsed into a squint and his jaw dropped open. Amanda swooped down to glare dismissively at Kay after yet another rocket bounced off Freak without effect.
“Did you hit your head more than usual?”
Kay frowned and tried to explain himself, suddenly chewing his lip as he tried to remember the dream through the fog of battle.
“No, the charm Freak used just made us imagine our worst fears. I just used my training to get Hamish to do what I knew he would: attack Freak.”
Astro’s eyes widened. He looked at Shadow, then Kay. He spoke aloud.
“What happened?”
“It was weird, I just wanted to startle him, but Freak started thrashing around like Hamish was physically there. Like he was actually hurting him.”
Astro laughed nervously and glanced at his rings.
“Shadow, please tell me if I’m wrong, but could it be possible to reactivate Freak’s spell, just on me?”
Shadow replied: “It’s been active this entire time. I’ve been contesting Freak over local reality so he couldn’t imprison us again. I could put some additional effort into it, maybe you could manifest something yourself that way. Just be wary that if I do that, I can’t help you otherwise.”
“Alright,” Astro laughed breathlessly. “Um…”
“Whatever you’re planning, do it fast!” Interrupted Jennifer. “We’ve still got four sheets to go, and that phantom keeps looking really angrily at us!”
“It’s not much more fun over here!” snapped Rose.
Astro grunted and relayed some final instructions.
“Okay Kir, when I give the signal, make sure everyone can see what I see.”
He then turned to Kay.
“And I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I need your advice. Talk me through how to do this.”
Kay’s face suddenly shone with hope.
“Great,” he grinned. “Tell me about the dream we’re working with.”
As Kay began to explain to Astro how to best manipulate his nightmare, the fight raged on. Freak dealt Tyron a blow on the leg, dodged a blast from Shadow, then struck Rose backhandedly. The assassin went flying and slammed into a bookshelf. She seemed to shred through the wood and bindings, vanishing from sight in a cloud of pages. Just as the Phantom Lord tried to shoot off a gloat, he found himself blade-to-blade with Claw.
As the other combatants struggled to stay standing, Claw and Freak entered a duel for the ages, the ultimate hunter against the personification of fear. Meanwhile, as much as it pained her to do so, Shadow stopped firing spells to support her brother’s flipside, and intensified her efforts. Darkness deepened, lights intensified, it was as if reality was filled to the brim with itself, threatening to burst.
Freak, however, only seemed to grow stronger. Claw made a strike that was too predictable, and Freak caught the zweihander between his talons. His smile widened to impossible lengths. He retracted the talons on his other hand and struck Claw in the face. And then again, and again.
“Do I have an angle on you now, Claw?! What do you truly fear, now, huh?!” howled the Phantom Lord.
He stopped the barrage and extended his talons once more.
“The Entity’s not here to protect you now, Claw. There’s only one thing left for you to fear, and that’s me,” he panted like a dog faced with a meal.
Amanda fired another missile at him. It struck the side of his face and forced him to flinch. He glared after her, vowing to pluck her straight from the sky next time.
“Just admit you’re scared, and I’ll let you go.”
“I don’t need the damn Entity anymore, and I don’t need your mercy either! I am Claw! I am a Mencur-Besh! And I. Fear. Nothing!”
The phantom’s neck cracked.
“Such a shame.”
He drew one hand back for the killing blow and raised the other to block Shadow’s expected spell. The disintegration beam came and singed the skin of his arm. He hardly even felt it.
“I was starting to like you, Claw.”
Then, just as he started to thrust forward, he noticed a green glow to his right. His jaw dropped just in time for a crackling ball of energy to slam into his side and blow open his black-and-gold flesh. He roared and skidded across the floor, finally stopping himself with his talons.
“Woah!” Tyron yelled.
“What just hit him?” Jennifer asked alongside a craning of her head.
Astro stood behind the ruins of the staircase, a single hand raised in the air.
“Show ‘em, Kir,”
Freak looked up.
A man of average height with messy dark hair and stubble stood across from him. His shoulders were draped in a dark blue jacket, and a leather breastplate clung tightly to his chest. On his wrist, a black, mechanical gauntlet crackled with green electricity.
“No way!” Amanda shouted.
“David?!” squealed Steve excitedly, almost missing his swing.
David, boyfriend to Destiny, slayer of the Sovereign, heir to the Third Legion, stepped forward, and began to speak.
“Hey Freak, been a while. Remember when you stabbed me? Good times. I hear you’re the guy who killed my girlfriend, is that true?”
The phantom forced a grin.
“Well, your death did the hard work, I just gave her that last push.”
David scrunched up his eyes and clicked his tongue, then started slowly walking forward. No one knew how to react.
“Oh, that’s just awful Freak. I really want to kill you for that. I’m bound to make a stupid mistake rushing you after saying that. But, of course, I’m not the one you’ve pissed off the most.”
Astro raised a second hand.
In the corner of Freak’s eye, he glimpsed the flowing of a ponytail in flight. He turned to defend himself, only for an icy javelin to strike him through the eye. Before he could even howl in pain, his assailant held out their other hand and the temperature in his face rapidly increased. The icicle skewering Freak’s glowing face began to evaporate, scorching his face with steam.
As the Phantom Lord screeched, Destiny landed on the floor. She summoned an icy sword and a fiery buckler shield, then took up a fighting stance. Claw and Tyron had begun to close in. Shadow continued her efforts to contest local reality, and Kay continued to enthusiastically guide Astro through his summoning.
“Didn’t Destiny normally use a bow?” Tyron asked.
“Yeah, but you should have seen her use the sword-and-buckler arrangement back at the portal facility. She did some serious damage,” explained Astro.
“She was a real menace, we can agree on that,” elaborated Claw.
“Miss me, Freak?”
“Like a headache,” he chimed.
He lifted his hands from his face and revealed the wound already healing.
“You’re almost as creative as me when it comes to torturing folks, you know that Dez?”
The shade of Destiny didn’t respond, she just circled around to David, Tyron, and Claw, who had now interposed themselves between Freak and Shadow. Shadow, of course, stood in front of the ruins behind which Astro was doing the summoning. And behind that, Jennifer and Steve continued to break through layers.
“Just three more layers!” Jennifer promised.
David and Destiny’s shades instinctively touched hands. Drifting above, Amanda averted her gaze in dejection as she remembered what she had lost.
“So, this is what you have for me?” Freak laughed. “Tyron-on-ice, Claw, and then two ghosts? Those were the big desperate trump cards you came up with?”
The phantom lord began to add additional branches of talons to his arms once more. Briars began to emerge from his feet and spread out across the ground.
“The ghosts aren’t even substantial reinforcements! Look, I’ll halve the benefit they provide right now.”
Freak thrust his arm out at Amanda. It hurtled forward like a spear, unceasing, unquestioning. She was moving so slowly, and the reach of the talons was so wide! She realised she could not evade. She popped off one last firework at Freak’s head, hoping it might buy someone an opening, then closed her eyes. Astro clenched his fists.
“Stop!”
Boom! Freak’s talons struck a magical shield which exploded on impact. His talons broke. Magical shrapnel shot down alongside Amanda’s rocket and showered Freak in pain. He looked up.
A shade of Warnado floated in the air. He had one arm wrapped around Amanda’s shoulder, which he was already using to maintain a second shield. His other arm was being used to hold a colossal demonic hammer.
“Hammertime, dork.”
He swooped down to strike Freak on the head and all hell broke loose.
Shadow fired her disintegration beams with reckless abandon, all the while advancing her attempts to wrest control of the local reality from Freak.
Claw continued his relentless onslaught, only barely taking enough caution to keep himself safe.
Tyron slashed out with Kir and Excalibur. He summoned spikes of ice and walls of stone.
David and Destiny’s shades were the great unit the others had heard so much about from the Remaining. Here Destiny planted an icicle in Freak’s side, allowing David time to charge. There, David finally rushed forward with the gauntlet pulsing with energy, blowing away Freak’s flesh and allowing Destiny a whole new opening for assault.
Amanda swooped this way and that in a campaign of harassment, while the shade of Warnado unleashed an onslaught of sorcerous and demonic powers. He summoned energy weapons of all varieties. He shot demonfire. He opened small dimensional rifts.
And now standing atop the ruins of the staircase, Astro held his hands aloft like the Prophet on his hill. His eyes were closed, and his grin was wide. The ruptured stars containing worlds now loomed larger and closer than ever, shining molten rays of fear down into the Throne Room. The terrible winds, too, had reached down, and Kay roared over them, conveying words of encouragement and command into Astro’s ear.
Freak fought with interminable strength and speed however, dodging sword and spell and chainsaw. He conjured terrors from the air. He stretched limbs out to kill. His talons just seemed to grow longer and sharper. His briars crept further and further across the floor and stabbed their thorns out at anyone then could. Until, finally, a decisive encounter came.
Claw swiped at Freak, and the Phantom Lord drew back for a strike. Only, he found his arm gripped by a powerful demonic hand. Claw swung again, this time at Freak’s gut, and he unravelled the flesh to avoid the blow. However, as it relaced itself, David leapt forward, his gauntlet crackling with energy, and blasted away a chunk of Freak’s gut. He tried to retaliate with his free arm, only for Tyron to summon a pillar of rock to encase it, reinforced with ice by Destiny. Amanda and Claw helped Warnado with his arm, and David ran to help Destiny and Tyron. They had him trapped.
He looked forward and saw Shadow slowly advancing, reality unravelling at her fingertips, small rifts opening and closing like black lightning.
He realised what she was about to do. Unlike the Entity, he was not her opposite. She could destroy this form, at least for long enough to disarm the machine. He roared like a beast of old, refusing to be beaten like this. His briars stabbed into her, but they had no effect, simply disappearing into the Void. He needed another target. His briars crept elsewhere.
That was when Astro raised his hands all the way above his head, and then fell to his knees bringing them back down. A figure in a waistcoat and a white shirt fell from the sky and flopped onto Freak’s shoulders. He had an old almanac on redstone circuitry in his hand.
“Okay, Book, let’s do this!” said Fristad through gritted teeth.
He touched a hand to Freak’s head and lightning shot through the Phantom Lord. He froze rigid, a look of fury trapped on his face. Shadow continued to charge her spell.
“Just one more layer!” thought Steve and Jennifer in unison.
A glorious hope began to burn in the party of remaining heroes as they continued hammering away at the obsidian.
Atop the pillar, Astro continued his summoning. The wind of the storm lifted his hair like the death of gravity. Kay continued to propose new helpers.
“Is there anyone else out there?”
“I see… Bokane… No, Wise One, a king of the Realm.”
“Can he fight well?”
“Not really, he’s about ninety.”
“Then why did you mention him?”
Astro laughed triumphantly.
At that moment, Kay’s heart froze. He saw a briar creeping along the staircase’s remains like a snake. The end was about to blossom into a-
“Look out!” Kay screamed.
He ploughed into Astro, throwing him from the ruin. The point struck him in the gut, cracking armour on the front, then piercing through the back. Blood ran. He collapsed.
“Kay!” Astro yelled, running to the fallen General. However, his attention was immediately forced back in the opposite direction by another scream.
“Helix!”
Astro turned to see all the shades he’d so carefully summoned vanished in smoke. Freak stopped shuddering and clarity re-entered his eyes, then fury.
Meanwhile, panic entered Shadow’s gaze. She loosed the spell, sending the ball of unmade reality spiralling at Freak.
Freak sensed the otherworldly fear and felt renewed strength. He swept one hand to the side, hurling Claw and Amanda from him. Then, with no support from the shades, Tyron’s stone restraint was easily shattered. Freak scrambled aside to avoid the ball of rifts, and it grazed his hip. The rifts slowly began to spread across his side, but it was like ants spreading across a mountain. Too slow and too small to matter.
Freak began to advance shakily.
“Well done, you guys really had me scared there.”
He deflected a blow from Claw. Then, wincing, he unleashed a second blow. It struck Claw’s firesteel breastplate. The zweihander went flying from his hand, and the alloyed metal warped, then burst apart. He landed flat on his front, unmoving.
“Not scared, really, moreso… concerned. Like I couldn’t remember if I’d left the stove on or not,” he swerved lightly to avoid Amanda’s rocket. “But it was a mundane bit of excitement at least.”
He reached back to grab the teenage girl’s wing in flight. She turned back to snarl at him. He laughed and she tried to hit him with her crossbow.
“Tiresome creature.”
He hurled Amanda over in the direction of the activation mechanism. She slammed into a bookshelf and then crashed in a heap on the floor.
The sound of skittering stones turned his head. Kay had hauled his way over the ruins of the staircase, coughed blood, then collapsed against the rocks.
“That’s how I’d describe most of you, to be honest.”
He stepped over the staircase ruins and found Tyron limping in front of him. He raised a fist and briars struck the swords from his hands. Kir trilled in desperation, and Tryon tried to grab for him, but Freak would have nothing of it. He stepped on the sword until it almost cracked. The Dragoknight hissed and bared his fangs and claws. Freak retracted his own claws, gritted his teeth, and then struck Tyron in the face.
Tyron skidded to an unconscious halt at the feet of Astro, who now ran his hands back and forth as though smoothing out a clay ball. Freak smirked at the near-childish gesture, and then Astro thrust his hands out. A complete release of energy. It struck Freak head on. An attempt to shatter the very structure of Freak’s body. The Phantom Lord felt the weight upon him, and it made the unreality spreading glacially on his flank all the more sapping, but it did not harm him.
He stepped forward, and Astro slid back. Freak grinned. He stepped forward again. One of Astro’s rings burst from exertion. And they continued to do so with every step Freak took until…
“Three, two, one… And that’s your reserves used up.” Freak sneered. “Do you really want to risk using your own internal battery, Astro?”
The wizard continued the barrage. Freak sighed. His eyes felt heavy. He stepped forward. Astro collapsed.
Only one remained before the Brines, that tiny, awful mage who had made all of this possible. She tried tearing another rift into reality, but as Freak approached that quickly became an impossibility.
“I suppose I should thank you. If not for that little tear in reality you made, I’d be nought but a humble torturer.”
He smirked. The storm was now behind him, pushing him toward the activation mechanism. Up above, the Tower’s white mirror looked like a needle ready to pierce flesh, carrying disease and cure all at once.
“You must be furious that the Entity isn’t here. You’d found your opposite, a true equal, with only experience separating you! Instead, it’s just little old me. How about you let that anger out, one last time, before it ends. You’ll have an eternity to fret!”
Shadow obliged, tearing a gap into reality but being forced to stop just barely short of Freak’s body, then followed up with a disintegration ray that Freak only barely registered.
As Shadow made her final stand, Steve and Jennifer exchanged a look. A look which said ‘Only one of us needs to break the last layer…’
“Jennifer,” Steve said. “If Shadow goes down-”
“-Steve,” she insisted. “You don’t even have a weapon.”
He struck the obsidian. The cracks spread. He tried not to wonder if he was behind or ahead of her. It could only be so much of a difference, he told himself. But, of course, it could be. It had all gone so fast they had no way of knowing.
A pale imitation of the Sunbeam struck Freak from above.
“I have the shield. And it’ll take him longer to get to you.”
“Yeah, a second or two longer!”
Shadow drew her amorphous blade and plunged it into Freak’s chest. He laughed.
“And those seconds have to count!”
He struck. The cracks spread. It would only take a few seconds longer than he had. An eternity in miniature.
Reality solidified around Shadow, metaphysically keeping her in place.
Steve looked up at Jennifer.
“I love you,” he said.
He swung his shield around to meet Freak’s talon. It splintered immediately but by that shield’s queer miracle he was unharmed. He cast aside his pickaxe and equipped a shield in either hand, charging into Freak.
The phantom staggered as the wood struck his chest. Steve grinned. Seconds won!
Two quick strokes. They shattered. Freak slashed upwards and caught him on the brow. Steve fell back into his nightmare. Freak smiled at his power regained, the last of the mage’s interference suppressed. He smirked down at Steve.
Crack! Jennifer’s pickaxe broke through the seal! A simple lever sat before her, begging to be turned. She thrust out her hand. The lever seemed to slip away. She hit the floor. A briar had wrapped around her leg and pulled her away. She equipped her bow, but before she could get an arrow there were briars all over her, covering, crushing, smothering… She passed out.
Freak approached the broken defensive dome and leaned against it. His toothy grin had faded into a cold smile. With everyone dealt with, all he had to do was wait for his moment in every limelight until the end of time. He could afford to enjoy one last quiet moment. He savoured the music of the storm, the spectacle of the molten rays of light, the gentle dance of the scar through which the Entity had entered and exited Nexus. It was serene, beautiful, a perfect calm before the-
He heard armour rattling and whirled around. He saw the girl, Amanda, thrusting out a hand for the mechanism. He lifted his hand and stretched out his talons, only for something to stop him.
There was a pressure all over Freak’s hand and much of his upper body. At first it seemed to come from nowhere, then he saw its source: That living shadow the eponymous mage carried with her had taken hold of him. Freak scoffed and moments later became translucent, depriving Wodahs of anything to grab onto.
Something snapped. Amanda had her hand on the lever.
Click!
His heart stopped. The music of the winds stopped. And nothing else.
The molten rays of fear remained. The ruptured-star portals above remained as close and huge as they had been a moment ago. Everything had just been paused. Even the little scrap of deteriorating reality on his side seemed to have stopped. He choked down a laugh.
“Okay, I’ve been meaning to ask, what’s the big plan now?”
“Well…” Amanda said, nervously. “I don’t know.”
He tasted the fear on her. Complete uncertainty. Majestic!
“Did you just not think past this point?” Freak cackled “Or did the others count on someone who knew what they were doing lasting to the end?!”
Amanda tried to back away, but Freak became solid again and grabbed her. Wodahs grabbed him again and he shone an intense, fearful light on the shade’s entire form, rendering her powerless. He lifted Amanda.
“Allow me to expose, by a simple demonstration, the error in your plan.” He pressed a talon against the mechanism. “I just flip the lever back, like so.”
Clack!
Something was wrong. From one moment to the next the worlds in the sky had disappeared, in their place only the blackest nothingness remained.
Laughter rang out, laughter that was not just heard, but permeated every sense. The source of this laughter was Shadow who now stood upright a short distance away from Freak. With each passing moment it became harder to make out her exact shape, even Freak’s supernatural senses revolted against themselves as they tried to perceive that which, by all sane and even most insane sets of logic, simply could not be. The only parts of her that were clearly visible were her eyes, burning like red suns.
Freak recoiled away but stumbled as the patch of non-existence rapidly spread across his legs and crept further upward.
He said: “Well… I never liked this body anyway. Back home to the dreamscape it is.”
What remained of his body began fading out as its owner’s consciousness slowly drifted out of existence, but just as he was about to disappear entirely, a radiant light began manifesting around the tattered remains of Freak’s body, pushing him back into being.
Another voice spoke, one that was familiar to many of those present, but both Freak and Shadow heard it for the first time.
“You will not slither your way out of this, Freak!” The Lady of Dreams screamed.
As the nothingness spread further across Freak’s body his futile attempts at struggling slowed down and came to a stop. When only his head remained, Shadow leaned in and placed a hand-like appendage of pure Void on Freak’s face.
“What is it, little Phantom Lord? Scared?”
Those were the last words Freak heard before the world folded in on him.
Chapter 89: End of a World (Narrator)
They stared up into the infinite blackness and not a single one of the worlds that had been so close moments before remained. It took a few moments for the realization to settle in. They had won. The road to victory had been paved with many difficulties and near-misses, but they had made it to its end.
Jennifer was the first to break out of her post-victory daze when, after the briars released her, she noticed that the patch of nothingness that had consumed Freak was currently in the process of slowly devouring the obsidian floor tiles.
She called out: “Guys, we should probably make tracks.”
Before anyone could respond, the scenery around them had shifted and they found themselves in the re-fortified ruins within the Tower’s outer walls. The area around them teemed with activity. Shelter logistics personnel had moved in and was now ensuring that wounded soldiers received medical attention. Tower prisoners were held in temporary cells. According to the radio chatter the fighting was over, save for a few individual holdouts.
Some of their party were already recovering. Amanda stood off to the side, looking very small as she gazed up at the broken peak of the Tower. Steve’s eyes were open, but he couldn’t yet wake his body back up all the way. Rose, Urist, Voidblade and Tyron all showed signs of recovery, stirring, and groaning on the ground. Astro lay propped against a nearby wall, his head jerking this way and that as he muttered beneath his own breath. Kay continued to bleed from the gut as several medics took notice. Fire’s body, whether Peter or Claw had control, remained unresponsive in its shattered breastplate.
“That was rather sudden, Shadow,” commented Steve as he shakily returned to his feet with the help of Jennifer.
Shadow looked very satisfied with herself, her physical form still a mass of Void. The main difference to any point before was that now looking at her did not turn minds inside out, instead her dark form had something calming about it.
She replied: “It feels like I can finally breathe after spending my entire life in a musty cave. All this time the Entity or Freak were opposing me, now I don’t have to fight anymore to be myself.”
“Very good, welcome to the open air,” yawned Rose with a cat-like stretch and an unpleasant click of the back. She ran her fingers over the four red wounds Freak had left on her face and walked off toward a nearby supply chest. “Someone get me a potion.”
“Congratulations!” trilled Kir, more obviously impressed.
Tyron rolled onto his side and accompanied it with a pained thumbs up. He had one hand pressed against his nose, now considerably flatter since Freak punched him in it.
“Glad you’re feeling better,” he wheezed. Then, as a medic ran over and placed their glowing hands against his face. “Ooh, that’s the stuff.”
A portal opened in their midst and out stumbled an exhausted looking Veronica Mercury, still wearing her light powered armour. She looked around, quickly scanning each of the faces she was presented with.
She muttered to nobody in particular: “They really did it.”
Then, louder she said: “You really didn’t give me much time there, like… what? Thirty seconds maybe?”
Fire jolted awake after a Mencur-Besh administered him a particularly potent healing potion. He looked around, and after spotting Dr. Mercury he gave her an appreciative nod. “Thank you for assisting us.”
Voidblade then asked the question that many of them had: “Now that this is done, how do we get back to our worlds?”
Shadow responded: “I’ve got an idea or two.”
From one moment to the next Shadow’s eyes began intensely glowing. From her feet outwards, bright lines and runes began manifesting on the floor, spreading first slowly then faster and faster until they raced towards the horizon. The lines shifted, offshoots splitting away and knotting together into a bundle in the middle of the Tower’s courtyard. At their densest point, a brilliant ray of light shot up towards the sky. The column of light grew taller and brighter with each passing moment, reaching a stop at several meters in diameter. Off in the distance, more such pillars of light were visible in regular intervals.
Before anyone could ask what this was about, everyone simply knew. The pillars of light were portals that would take them back to their home world, or the closest fit, if there was no home world to return to.
“Woah,” said Amanda.
Shadow grinned, causing a bright rift to appear where her mouth normally was.
Astro’s muttering ceased and his half-open eyes settled on the injured Tyron, who still lay opposite him. He laughed, but halfway through it turned into a cough. Or the other way around.
“I take it we won,” Astro smiled.
“I think so,” answered the Dragoknight
“Who should I be thanking?” He squinted at the black skies above. “Shadow? Great work!”
Shadow shrugged. “Amanda was the one to flip the switch.”
Astro’s lips parted meaningfully, and he shifted his head over to the teenage girl.
“Thank you, Amanda.”
Amanda, who had returned to looking up at the Tower, glanced back over her shoulder. Gratitude flashed across her features, then was covered back up by the descent of her brows into sadness. She looked back up at the Tower. Unreality had begun to eat through the bronze outer walls, and creep down the edges. The swollen horizon seemed to be crumbling under its own weight.
Astro allowed his own attention to drift from her. He slid over Rathina and Seth rushing down to Tyron as Glowstar settled on a nearby rooftop. Rathina immediately dropped to the ground and lifted Tyron’s face to her own, embracing him.
Brad the Eye-and-Claws operative had made his way to Fire, reporting the capture of General Issa, who was currently being escorted out of the Tower alongside her civilian employees.
Then, Jennifer appeared in Astro’s field of view. She was helping Steve awkwardly pull his armour off without disturbing the massive bruises on his arms, only for Ozen and Drake to run in and collectively bear-hug him, causing the seasoned adventurer’s eyes to water with pain. Jennifer caught a glimpse of Wolfric calmly entering and made sure to playfully ruffle his hair.
Voidblade and Urist could next be seen talking with other soldiers of their unit, Urist much more enthusiastically than Voidblade but the difference was smaller than it would have been a few weeks ago. Rose uncomfortably sipped a healing potion behind them, still mustering her sly almost-smile despite the pain.
From behind the pillar of light emerged Lucy, having just come through the Tower’s outer gate. She wasted no time giving out hugs to everyone gathered, ending with Fire and Shadow, who she then urged to tell her the details of the battle against Freak. While Lucy stood and talked, Wodahs took over on hug duty, making full use of the many appendages she had available in her current state.
Over in a nearby square Astro saw a small crowd of figures forming. Dinnerbone sat on a nearby awning, strumming his ukulele without commitment and occasionally rubbing the wound on his forehead. The hunter chieftains showed off the many trophies they had won in battle. He spared a breathless nod to his own friends, bloodied but alright, as they slowly escorted the wounded Herobrine over to their location. The Blind Watcher boomed and thundered in joy, lavishing praises on his own and the Shelter’s leadership from afar, the Wraith hobbling slightly before the pack.
Astro wasn’t even that annoyed to see Vacar of Arcation trade boasts with Tauto Chrone of the Brotherhood in a fruitless attempt to impress Lupe and Kami. In the background of this little tableau, he saw a bemused Clarke testing the bindings on the wounded Glibby.
His eyes glid across Shadow, her Coven had found her and were in the process of somewhat awkwardly swarming her while still maintaining a respectful distance to their exalted leader. It seemed that Iridia, Pallas and Danann had made it out of the deeper sections of the tower, though Danann was currently missing an arm. Talita was at the very forefront, caught somewhere between reverence and smugness, and if Astro had to guess what she was saying, it probably was something along the lines of “See, I told you you were a god”.
Then, suddenly, a glimpse of a torn red scarf drew him straight to his feet. Suddenly he remembered the briar piercing Kay’s gut, pushing through the back, blood showering out of him. He ran across to where the medics treated him and began to flail around for a good look at his one-time friend’s face, or stomach, or anything. He heard voices in a tangle as medics tried to ask him to calm down, and others spoke to each other and somewhere in the midst of it all…
“...Again, very sorry about this, I should have seen the bloody thing sooner. Almost got Astro. Cost us the shades, I think… It was all quite fast-moving, you see.”
“Kay?”
“Astro?”
Kay gently brushed one of the medics aside as though he were opening a curtain. Astro looked away from his face and saw the skin on his stomach slowly knitting back together. One of them was even finally having a look at his leg after he’d refused to get it checked for so long. With slight annoyance Astro finally met his gaze.
“You’re alright, then?” he managed.
Kay’s lips curled into a smile.
“We both know the answer to that, but thanks for asking, despite everything.”
Astro felt an involuntary warmth and allowed himself to smile back.
Suddenly a hand clapped him on the shoulder.
“Lap Dog!” boomed Herobrine. “Fire tells me the training I gave you proved most helpful out there! Excellent work!”
He had one arm wrapped around Aaron, the other pressed against Fire’s shoulder. Fire seemed quite at ease, understandable since he lacked the innate cultural awe most people felt when interacting with Herobrine. Kay shuffled uncomfortably into a more upright position he considered more General-like.
“I’m not the one you should be thanking, master, I just did what you taught me. Astro expanded the playbook entirely, found a way to make shades from Freak’s nightmares.”
Herobrine’s fingers curled tightly around the Wizard’s shoulder, and his cocked his eye in admiration.
“Did you now?” Herobrine stroked his chin and smiled. “Well, we must chat about this some time, Wizard. You and your Guild have quite impressed me. Such ingenuity should not be spent carrying corpses in Acrisius.”
Astro’s entire mind seemed to explode outwards as he realised the implications. Aaron’s eyes widened until it looked like they might implode under their own weight. Was his exile ending?
“I - I don’t know to say…”
“Thank you, will suffice,” winked the Blind Watcher. He turned away, letting go of Aaron and steadying himself on Fire. “A shame about the corpses we must carry today, however.”
Lucy spoke up with some hesitation: “We were unable to get an accurate count, but more than two thirds of our forces are dead.”
A silence fell across the group.
Tyron raised Kir.
“To the fallen,” he said.
Everyone else raised their weapons and echoed him:
“To the fallen!” they called.
A more reverent silence fell across the group as they began to remember all those who had fallen, seen and unseen. That day and since the beginning of the conflict. Ozzy the Selvan; Moderator Viking; Lieutenant Raphoe; Besta of Arcation; countless Mencur-Besh, all merged for that day but who had all been individuals before it, and so many more… Warnado, the demon-sorcerer who had learned so much, and won so many of their hearts, only to be taken so suddenly and cruelly. From his perch on the awning, Dinnerbone suddenly squinted and began to count the members of the leadership on his fingers with considerable irritation.
“I hope there’s an afterlife here,” said Seth.
“Would that be good, though?” frowned Ozen. “Wouldn’t they, y’know, be in the wrong afterlife?”
“How alienating would that be?” said Steve. “I mean, even beyond the difficulty of potentially not seeing your loved ones, or at least, not the right version of them, you’d be dealing with a whole other conception of paradise or punishment or whatever. Unless, I suppose, there is one universal creator, or the Prophet’s adherents were right about the ‘gods of many worlds’ idea-”
Jennifer patted him affectionately on the head.
“-Getting a little high-concept there, sweetie.”
“Sorry,” Steve chuckled.
“That said,” Jennifer thought. “Can you do anything about that?”
She was looking at Shadow with a slight pleading.
Shadow replied quietly to avoid being heard by her worshippers: “Nexus does not have an afterlife, but all that means is that people’s ‘souls’ or equivalents are floating around somewhere in one of its outer planes. I suspect the Entity’s plan was to absorb them along with everything else, so not even the dead would go to waste.” After a slight pause, she continued: “But I think I can create something like an afterlife, not enough to house the dead forever, but sufficient to let them return to their worlds.”
For a moment Shadow appeared distracted, as if focusing on something that wasn’t there.
“I think I did it, you shouldn’t have felt that unless I did something terribly wrong.”
Jennifer said: “Didn’t feel a thing.”
Voidblade, with unexpected energy pointed to the portal and called out: “Look!”
Small motes of light were gathering in the upper sections, slowly gaining in intensity and once their glow was strong, submerging themselves in the beam. At first there were few, but gradually more and more motes appeared and soon a steady stream of them flowed into the portal. And soon, faces began to appear, visions of ecstasy as they were released from their captivity in Nexus. Humans, endermen, villagers, pigmen, a million peoples no one could name or recognise.
One of the motes ran past Steve, and for brief instant he could have sworn he saw Fristad’s face materialise and wink at him. A tear ran down his cheek and he squeezed Jennifer close to him. Lupe let out a startled, joyous laugh as she saw David swing by, sneering playfully. And for a faint moment, Kay and Fire exchanged a speechless look as a shape resembling the Prophet and his bodyguard stopped to offer them a respectful nod before passing on into the light. Shadow simply looked on in satisfaction, the visuals simply confirming what she already sensed.
They let the motes of light drift by for some time, appreciating them like a long-awaited snowfall. Until…
“I’m telling you, he’s alive!”
“No, no, you’re not doing this to me!”
It was Amanda, struggling against an excited-looking Dinnerbone, who had her by the arm.
“I can sense the Heroes, and he wasn’t there!”
“Then, where is he?”
“...I don’t know. I don’t think Warnado127 is in the dimension anymore. You said he exploded?”
“Yeah! In a cloud of demon-fire!” Amanda snapped. She choked out, “Just like his dad.”
“Okay, yeah, that doesn’t sound great…” Dinnerbone lifted his hat and frantically massaging his skull. “May… maybe it’s you, maybe you’re the real Hero of the Prophecy! I kind of get a Hero-ey vibe off you!”
“I’m not a part of your dumb prophecy!” she screamed. “I was there to help Helix, and now he’s gone!”
“Listen here, kid,” Dinnerbone yanked her by the arm. “You don’t know what that thing showed me!”
At that moment Kay moved in to push Dinnerbone back while Astro and Jennifer swept in to put an arm around the teenager’s shoulder.
“Cool it off, Bone,” called Herobrine.
Kay said, less diplomatically: “I swear I will rattle your bloody skull if you don’t back off right now.”
“I’m not going back with nothing!” Dinnerbone raised a fist emphatically.
Suddenly a dagger stuck into the wall between them. Rose glowered over from the side.
“Then go back with your life, while you still have it,” she warned.
Dinnerbone went very pale, then looked at Amanda and hung his head.
“I’m sorry.”
He backed off into the corner and began to tune his instrument. Herobrine came up and began to massage his shoulder reassuringly. Tyron and Kir also approached with some reluctant comfort.
Kay turned around.
“Amanda, I know I have no right after all I’ve done, but my offer to Helix stands, you are welcome back with me…”
Amanda was staring up at him in disbelief, mouth open and eyes narrowed. Unable to take the force of her reaction, Kay turned his head away.
Fire spoke up: “Kay, I know why you’re extending that offer and I know that at the bottom of it you mean well, but with what happened… and might still happen. It won’t work, not really.”
Kay nodded, then turned his eyes back to Astro. A ring of merciful, pitying wrinkles had formed around the Wizard’s eyes. He couldn’t bear to look at them much more than he could Amanda’s.
“My apologies, you’re absolutely right.”
Kay withdrew and looked up at the crumbling Tower, its branches folding in on themselves as the Void dismantled their dimensional structure. Astro blinked and cast his eyes over to the companionable sadness of the Guild, then looked back down at Amanda.
“You could come back with us,” he said.
She didn’t look up.
“Sure.” She shrugged off Jennifer and Astro. “Whatever.”
She took two steps forward, then turned back to hug Jennifer, crying openly. Rose came in tentatively and found Amanda gripping her even more tightly. Then, finally, she let go and pulled back. Her fingers shot to her face, then scraped the water from her cheeks.
“Okay,” she said. “Thanks, Astro, sounds good.”
She shot him a sincere smile, then walked into the Guild’s number. Secret put a hand on her shoulder and Tass began a tentative conversation that would inevitably cascade into torrential one-sided chatter within a few minutes.
Shadow turned to the rest and said: “We should probably think about going back to our worlds now, won’t be long until this place starts properly collapsing. I’m slowing it down, but Nexus is crumbling under its own weight.”
At that moment, Herobrine spoke up.
“Yes, we probably best. Come on Bone, Guild. Let’s rally the troops and head back home. I imagine the Shelter’s leadership want a few moments alone.” he walked up to Fire, “It has been an honour.” They shook hands.
The Blind Watcher then took his forces and left for another nearby portal. Dinnerbone smiled apologetically. Ozen and Wolfric bid farewell to Steve and Jennifer. Rathina briefly embraced Tyron, then went away with Seth and Glowstar. The Remaining followed with them, though Lupe briefly stopped.
“See you, friends,” she smiled wryly.
Kir trilled happily.
And so, they found themselves left alone. The ones who had found themselves in Nexus, scattered and confused. Who had fought their way through the Tower. Who had escaped their clutches at the village, founded the Shelter and fought a war for the freedom of all worlds. They who, ultimately, had won the day. They stood in silence.
Rose was the first to approach the portal. “Alright, it was nice doing this with you. Let’s see what changed in my world in the meantime. Doubt my old employer is still alive with me gone. Might open up some opportunities for me. Might try the whole cult leader thing myself, Shadow has certainly given me the taste for it. Maybe I’ll become immortal, who knows?”
“Rose,” Tyron groaned. “Please don’t become a cult leader.”
Rose laughed. “It’s a lot more normal in my world, still illegal though, but that never stopped anyone.”
Rose then lightly tossed a knife, which embedded itself in the ground at Amanda’s feet.
“There, I threw a stiletto for you. Satisfied now?” She said playfully, before walking straight ahead into the portal.
A few moments after Rose was gone, Voidblade slowly stepped forward, clearly intending to leave next.
“I think I know what awaits me back home, and I think with what I experienced I might be able to make a difference. There might be a chance at peace, maybe even at reconciliation.”
He patted Urist on the shoulder, then smiled with surprising sincerity at Lucy. He turned to look at Fire, the two simply exchanged a nod and soon after Voidblade disappeared into the portal as well.
It seemed like Urist was the next one to say goodbye. His previous enthusiasm drooped into melancholy as he thought on where he would go back to.
“It’s been an honour fighting with ye. Though I do na want tha return to me world. Shadow, can ye make it so this spits me out anywhere but home? Between before and now, I’ve had enough fighting an’ heartbreak.”
Shadow replied: “Calm, peaceful world it is then.”
“Thank ye.” Urist simply said, then too walked into the bright column of light.
Tyron stepped forward next, holding Kir flat across his palm. However, he didn’t go straight for the portal. Instead, he went up to Astro. A furry green hand landed on the wizard’s shoulder.
“Well, buddy, it’s been a ride.”
“It certainly has. But it looks like you’ve got your happy ending.”
“You don’t seem to have done too bad yourself.”
He squeezed Astro’s shoulder then tilted his head over to Amanda.
“I mean, you’re going back in great company.”
Amanda sniffled and managed a heartfelt smile. She came up and wrapped her arms around Tyron. She rested her hair against his breastplate and looked up into his luminous blue eyes.
“You don’t think I should go with Dinnerbone?”
“Not if you don’t. Do you?”
“No.”
“You owe Dinnerbone nothing,” agreed Kir. “Can’t hold you to Warnado’s duty.”
“Then, I’m going to need you to keep an eye on Astro for me. He’s a little old and silly, he’ll need someone to keep him out of trouble.”
Amanda nodded: “I think I can do that. Keep him away from all that ‘stupid tribal crap’ he keeps complaining about.”
Astro feigned outrage with an open mouth and Tyron laughed. The Dragoknight leaned down and kissed her on the crown of the head.
“Alright, I’ll speed it up a little bit. Steve and Jennifer, you know I love you guys. And you keep that beautiful little enderdragon safe. Lots of head-pats and treats for him!”
“Well, if we have to,” sighed Steve.
“Keep safe, Tyron,” smiled Jennifer. “I hope you and Rathina are very happy together.”
Tyron rounded on Fire, Lucy, and Shadow.
“Shadow, of all the people in the group who could have attained god-like power, I’m glad it was you.”
Shadow replied with a chuckle: “Talita just left me alone Tyron, don’t start with the god talk. But thank you, I’ll try to make the best of it.”
“I’m sure you will,” Tyron reassured her warmly, then approached Fire.
He held out his hand.
“Fire, thanks for everything. You were the second-best commander the Shelter ever had.”
“Was close contest.”
“Not just of the Shelter, but the Tower too, thanks to Claw.” Fire paused, having suddenly realized something. “In hindsight, the Prophet saying that I’d command the forces of life and death makes a lot more sense now.”
“Don’t dwell on it, big guy,” Tyron clapped him on the arm. “You came through when we needed you.”
“Did what heroes do,” Kir chirped supportively.
He turned to Lucy, pointing an accusatory finger.
“And you, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you!”
He reared up, forcing a scowl. Then he shrank back down and chuckled.
“You are the most scarily productive person I’ve ever met. Please, promise me you’ll get some rest once this is all over.”
“It’ll be the first thing I do. I might not have been in combat, but it sure feels like I was. The only reason I am awake right now is because I want to spend some more time with everyone.”
“I forget to mention that you are the sweetest person in the multiverse. Never change that. It’s been a pleasure knowing you.”
He drew her in for a brief hug, then stepped back. He cast his eyes around the group, then finally they came to rest on Kay. The General had his eyes averted, cracking his fingers. He looked timidly up.
“Kay,” said Tyron. “I’m going to miss our heart-to-hearts.”
Tears flooded the General’s eyes, and he ran forward to hug Tyron. There was a loud crash as their breastplates connected and they struggled to stay upright. Tyron cackled in surprise and patted him on the back. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, Kay withdrew, swiftly drying his eyes.
“Thank you being my friend, Tyron.”
Tyron didn’t say anything for a bit.
He ultimately settled on a calm: “Stay safe, Kay.”
“Never stop trying,” elaborated Kir.
Tyron walked up to the pillar of light and reached out a hand to touch it. He cast one look back, and a smile spread across his face one last time.
“I’ll never forget this.”
He closed his eyes and fell forward. The light engulfed him. He was gone.
Kay cleared his throat and stepped out, rubbing his eyes as he did so.
“I’ll try and keep this brief. Steve, Jennifer, Astro, Amanda, Fire, Shadow, and Lucy, I’ve treated you all abominably from start to finish. No apology I can offer will make up for that, so I shall endeavour to prove it by action. Hopefully by the time the next Astro is kidnapped and taken to Nexus, we shall see a better run of things.”
A tear ran down his right cheek and another began to well in his left eye.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
He nodded awkwardly, then turned toward the portal. A shield formed in front of him.
“No,” Astro said. “Not letting you away with that.”
Shadow explained: “You can’t leave through this portal either, you are from a different time, so you need to go through the one you entered Nexus from. I will take you there once it’s time.”
“Ah,” Kay said. “In that case, I suppose I should get a little more specific.”
Shadow closed her eyes and began to scan for the portal matching Kay’s signature in the rapidly crumbling world of Nexus. Kay, meanwhile, shambled up to Steve and Jennifer, gritting his teeth and readjusting his hair.
“I’m sorry I tried to kill you in order to get into the Tower’s good graces.”
“That’s okay,” Jennifer sighed. “You were just as confused as us.”
“And about the failings in my plans that led to Fristad being out in the open, and the infantry being caught off guard by the Tower’s Endlings.”
“You couldn’t have accounted for everything,” Steve forced himself to admit. “Fristad in particular wasn’t your fault, I was just… grief is a funny thing.”
“And about sending poor Raphoe to threaten you.”
“Less excusable,” Jennifer said.
“Yeah, that was pretty messed up.”
“And trying to separate you so as to be able to better control Steve, and for teaming up with the Book, and letting it try to kill you both, and for-”
“-You can stop, Kay,” said Steve.
“Apologies really don’t begin to cover any of that,” Jennifer maintained.
Kay nodded tremulously. The two adventurers before him had shifted from uneasiness into steely determination. This was a bridge he had burned and attempts to ford the river completely would not be looked on kindly.
“I know. What I really want to say is, you were both an asset to the team. I enjoyed shooting the breeze with you in the village, Steve. And Jennifer, you walk a line between practicality and simple kindness that I wish I could replicate. I wish you both the absolute best.”
He hung his head and began to walk away. Steve and Jennifer frowned, then exchanged a look. Their features softened.
“The officer’s lounge was a good idea,” conceded Steve. “A lot of good memories in that place.”
More hesitantly, but no less sincerely, Jennifer added: “And thanks for pulling that dream voodoo on Freak, you got us out of a jam there.”
Kay stopped. He turned his head, meeting Jennifer’s gaze. He then flicked his eyes over to Steve.
“Thanks.”
He went up to Fire. He opened his mouth, but words wouldn’t come. His tongue rolled uselessly around. As he looked into the Mencur-Besh’s red eyes, he realised how wide-ranging it all was. Specific instances, general attitudes, too much and too little to weave together. And yet, he had forgiven him time and time again, ever-patient and ever-worthy of respect. Once more, he threw himself on Fire’s mercy:
“I really am sorry about the door I broke,” he managed. “And of course, the - the reason I broke it.”
“Can’t change much about the fact you tried to kill me, but at least you went about it in a way that didn’t force me to shoot you. If I had, we probably wouldn’t be standing here, you being alive did enable us to get Herobrine on our side after all.”
Kay swallowed and it felt like gravel. He deserved that.
“That is a fair response… I have a knack for dressing up ugly situations with pretty words,” he said. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you and thank you for allowing me to continue to help in what ways I still could. You were a venerable leader, and the most patient man I’ve ever met.”
“For lack of a better word, knowing you has certainly been interesting, Kay. I wish you the best for what’s ahead of you.”
Kay averted his gaze and stifled a desperate smile of gratitude. He brushed past Shadow, toward Lucy.
“Shadow, I’ll say to you on the way out. Lucy, thank you for your diligence. I should have trusted you better, it was entirely pettiness, would have saved Astro a lot of stress as well.”
Lucy replied: “I… might have lost some sleep over the whole situation back then. In a way I’m glad it’s cleared up.”
She fell silent after that.
Kay moved on to the last two, the ones he’d dreaded the most. He came to a stop before Astro and Amanda. He forced himself to look up.
“What I did to Helix was unforgivable. If I hadn’t built him up and then betrayed him like that, he’d still be alive…” He wiped his red, raw cheeks with his scarf. “Thank you for trusting my friends, I assure you they’re much better than me.”
“Sure.”
She said it simply, coldly, and then went back to lean against a nearby wall. She looked at Astro who gave her a pained look which said, ‘whatever you have to say, no one will judge you’. She sighed.
“You’re a parasite, Kay. You choose people because you know they’re better than you, and you leech off their goodness. If you want to change things so much, to be better, just leave them alone. Have a nice life.”
She began to fiddle with her crossbow, and Jennifer came up to put a hand on her shoulder. Kay’s heart felt like it was fit to burst from agony. Agony he knew he had earned. He bowed his head, scrunched up his eyes and turned to Astro. He opened his mouth…
“I’m really going to miss you, Kay.”
His eyes shot open. His breath stopped. Astro’s face was covered in a sad smile. A tear ran down his cheek. His arms spread wide. Kay took him and held him tightly.
“I swear to you, I shall do everything in my power to change things,” Kay promised.
Astro clapped him on the back and broke off the hug. His smile was unbroken. Tears streamed down both of their faces.
“You know how much I want to believe that, Kay.”
Kay put his face in his hand and rubbed intensely. His fringe had separated into strands on his forehead. His cheeks remained redder than ever. He threw his arms wide and turned his eyes to the infinite, black sky.
“Alright, Shadow, I’m ready.”
Nothing happened for several moments. Kay looked at Shadow with a mixture of expectancy and apology.
“We will go once everyone else has departed.” She said.
“Oh,” said Kay. “Alright.”
He drew aside a little deflated, though reminded himself that it had been presumptuous. After all, it would have interfered with Shadow’s ability to say goodbye. He cursed himself that little bit more.
Steve stifled some derisive laughter and approached Fire. Jennifer went up to Amanda.
“Thanks for everything, Fire,” Steve said, offering his hand.
Fire took the hand offered. “Likewise, Steve. I’m glad to have had you and Jennifer at my side.”
“We were glad to be there,” he turned to Lucy. “Sorry we never got to finish our D&E campaign.”
“That’s okay, we had fun with the one session we had. It had a good conclusion if you ask me.”
Lastly, to Shadow: “Hey, thanks for quoting that poem. I really need to start reading more.”
Shadow replied: “Glad it helped, I read it a long time ago, but the concept stuck with me.”
Meanwhile, Jennifer stooped down and clapped Amanda on the shoulder.
“Hey, you’re sure you’re going to be okay out there?”
“I will, Jennifer. Stay safe.”
They hugged, and as Jennifer disengaged, she took Astro by the sleeve.
“And you, be a little less harsh on yourself, okay? You’re a good guy, don’t be afraid to remember that every now and then.”
He beamed like an excited child.
“It’s a deal.”
Jennifer and Steve broke off and approached the Portal. The light glimmered before them, bathing their features, and reducing them to silhouettes. Their hands touched.
“I’m glad I knew you people,” said Steve.
And in a flash, they were gone.
Amanda walked over to the portal, continuing to fiddle with her rockets and crossbow. Astro approached the others, shooting respectful nods to both Fire and Lucy. His wide grin had settled into a satisfied incline of the lips. He stopped before Shadow and stooped down to hug her. She stabilised her form as he did so, looking effectively normal for the time being.
“It’s been really nice talking to a mage on my level,” he said into her white hair. “Well, miles above my level, but you know what I mean.”
“The feeling is mutual, Astro. I just wish that we could have avoided what the whole Coven situation did to our friendship.”
“The Coven certainly made things worse, but I’d already screwed it up with my own stupid bitterness and suspicion. I’m sorry, I should have been there for you when the Entity got Fire.”
He shot an apologetic look at Fire.
“And thank you, Shadow, for letting me back in after all that.”
“I’m glad it worked out in the end, despite everything.”
Astro grunted and drew himself up with difficulty.
“And of course, Fire, thank you for your leadership. Lucy, thank you for your tireless work.”
He looked back over at Amanda expectantly. She raised the crossbow and fired a rocket into the air. Golden sparks rained down. Looking at the falling sparks seemed to re-energise her, and she managed a smile.
“Fire,” she said. “Tell the Lady I say hi.”
“I’m sure I’ll meet her in due time, we have a lot of things to talk about.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do, like, uh, when you’re taking her out for a proper dream-date. You guys would be really cute together.”
Shadow stifled a giggle and nodded in agreement. Fire simply shook his head with a smile, clearly amused by the prospect.
Astro exchanged a final meaningful look with Kay, and then went up to Amanda. He let his hand fall on her shoulder, perhaps to guide her, perhaps asking to be led. He looked and felt dreadfully old.
“Shall we?”
She wordlessly stepped forward. The portal flashed, and they were gone.
Lucy approached Dr. Mercury, who up until now had been watching from the sidelines. “I hear you’re going with Fire and Shadow to their world?”
Dr. Mercury replied: “Seeing as my own world no longer exists, it’s one of the few good options I have left.”
Lucy briefly contemplated, then turned to Fire. “Would it be alright if I came along too? I’m in a similar situation, no world to return to. From what you’ve told me your world would be a lovely place to live.”
Fire barely waited for her to stop speaking, as if he had waited for her to ask. “Of course, you can come with us, it’s the least I can do. After all, I did show up at your door and took you on a grand adventure simply because I had a good feeling about you.”
Lucy’s smile widened. “So, let’s go!”
As they turned towards the portal, Shadow said: “After I take Kay to his time, I’ll stay behind in Nexus to make sure it collapses fully. I won’t be long, time flows quickly here.”
That was all she needed to say, Fire, Lucy and Dr. Mercury fully turned towards the portal and passed into the bright beam of light. Now only Shadow and Kay stood within the Tower’s walls.
“So, just us…,” Kay said, frowning. “Shadow, I would… like to apologise. I used half-legitimate concerns about your abilities to justify antagonising you when we should have been working together. It was motivated by lust for power, habitual paranoia, and what can only be described as a rather pedestrian bitchiness. For what it’s worth, I am deeply sorry.”
Right after Kay finished speaking, the environment around them shifted. They now stood in a great canyon made from red sandstone, their feet almost immediately sunk into the sand as they landed. A waterfall cascaded nearby, though the lake into which it fell had crumbled away into the infinite black. Within touching distance of them was yet another portal, visually identical to all the others, but this one would lead Kay home. Not just to his world, but also to his time.
Shadow replied: “I’ve already said what I thought about your royal escapade, I don’t think there is a need to repeat it now, especially since I’m about to send you off and never see you again. Kay, you have done a lot of bad things in your time here, but also some good ones, and I can’t ignore that. You are a thoroughly complicated person, but I think you know that best yourself.”
Kay scoffed.
“I wish I could say I understand myself much better.”
He sauntered up to the edge of the collapsed lake and looked into the Void.
“Shadow, I’m not going to pretend I’m in a position to advise anyone anymore, but please believe me when I say I’m worried for you.”
“I somehow doubt that, but go on.”
He kicked a stone off the edge and into the pit.
“That level of power… I held only a fraction of what you have now and all it made me want was more. More power meant more control after a long time of feeling like I could control nothing. Now, you seem to have gotten your powers back under control by gaining uncontested control of Nexus... Am I making sense? Probably not. Just, as advice from a man who did it all wrong: let it end here. Please.”
He lifted a hand to his face and Shadow got the impression that he had started crying again.
Shadow thought for a moment. “No, I can see where you are going with this, but this is only the beginning for me. Though, we are similar in one respect, we are both in conflict with fate. My battle has been going on for a long time, though I did not realize that until recently. As for your battle, it begins the moment you step through that portal. Whatever you did and will do, I wish you luck fighting fate.”
Kay exhaled deeply and then turned. He offered his hand to Shadow with an echo of his old pomp.
“I wish you luck as well. Here’s to our eventual victory over fate!”
“We can both hope for that.” Shadow said.
She then took his hand and gently, but firmly pushed Kay towards the portal. He did not resist, and moments later Shadow was alone in the canyon, perhaps alone in Nexus.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!
Arc 8 Epilogue
Epilogue: Kay
Everything was once again a swirl of lights and possibilities, but I saw nothing. I looked back at the shrinking window that led to Nexus, the very winds of creation burned my eyes until they shut. I just shot forward. Faster. Faster! And then…
I dropped and skidded in the grass. My armour tilled the dirt. Native air filled my lungs. I stretched out my fingers. Nothing but verdant blades around me. The portal, vast and brittle, loomed above me. Scorch marks still remained where the explosive had struck it. Beyond that, cave walls climbed up some ways until they formed a ragged frame for the twilight sky. Far above, a gleaming aurora of thousands of colours burned - I had to presume it was a result of Nexus’ collapse.
For some time, nothing could move me, in body or in feeling. My mind was stuck processing one long death march of a thought: could I not just stay there until the grass rose up and swallowed me? It seemed preferable to the uncertain trek ahead of me. The journey to break the fate I had made for myself.
But, eventually, even oblivion loses its appeal, so some part of me forced strength into my limbs. My muscles ached. My eyeline rose, allowing more and more items into my field of view. Corpses of thugs lay unrecovered around the cave.
Slowly, I turned, and a path back up and out became visible. Something crunched as my boot pressed down. A white funeral mask had snapped in two.
“Glibby’s master…” I thought. “Perhaps I should pursue that line of attack. Brit already hates the Ape… but do I tell him who he’s working for?”
I had to be delicate as a harpist. One wrong strum of my fingers and I could set things shuddering into discordance, no better and perhaps a lot worse than they already were. I was a serpent trying to wind around the stem of a delicate flower without strangling it.
“Cossack of course comes to rule this Gaian kingdom. Is this advantageous or a distraction?”
Light crept down from the cave-mouth. The incline became steeper. The walls rockier. Narrower. Sharper.
“And this Brotherhood. Chrone looked at me so strangely. Are they friend or foe? Both? They merit close attention. An early destruction, if necessary.”
A rock split my palm, and a jolt of pain caused me to trip. My armour rattled as I pulled myself back up. The crimson wept from the heart of my right hand, then ran down the diamond plates on my arm. I realised how battered and different my armour would be. How could I explain this?
“I cannot possibly say what has happened to me. They would think me mad. Or could I? Can I not just tell them our new purpose? That our new enemy is fate itself?”
Yes. Yes, I could. My mind was made. I came to the mouth of the cave, burning with purpose. The valley re-entered my sight for the first time in far too long, and immediately my eyes crept over to the cave we used as a camp.
And there, at the cave mouth, I saw Small’s shock of blond hair. The assassin kept guard over our shelter. Smoke rose up past him, and I saw Bokane tending to the campfire as the ever-hulking Mini stooped to turn a spit. The scent of pork enticed me even from there.
A mad grin spread across my face as my stratagem coalesced. I would go down there, and regardless of what they thought at first, I would convince them I spoke the truth. A speech to end all speeches. I would tell Astro what I had done, what I would come to do, and I would convince him to help me stop it all.
We would locate this Silhouette, and we would dismantle his network. Find Chrone and his Brotherhood and enlist them. Seduce the Gaians and have their nation at our disposal. And, at the appointed time, we would venture out to that mine in Acrisius, knock down the doors, and fight our way into Nexus with an army at our backs. The Tower would crumble. The Entity would be slain. And when my own fool self arrived, I would confront him, and inform him of his grand and glorious purpose. To take up the Book. To guard young Helix and all other forlorn. To build the Ashen Kingdom eternal!
I raised my hands in euphoria, imagining the end of this glorious tirade. It all seemed so clear to me, until:
“Where have you been?”
I froze. All my grand schemes imploded.
“You’ve been missing for a week! Aaron’s worried sick. Cossack too, but I think he’s more afraid we’ll kick him out of the group if you’re not around to vouch for him.”
He laughed. Against my wishes, my body turned until, over my shoulder I could see him: Astro, young as the day I left.
“Only a week?” I croaked.
The sun caught in his black hair, causing a strip down the middle to shine white. He had a snarky grin plastered across his face, betraying his relief but also failing to disguise his concern about where I’d actually been. His presence impelled me to turn full, and I almost fell as I did so. Suddenly the drop into the valley looked much steeper, and gravity all the fiercer.
“By the mods, look at you,” he gestured to hole Freak had punched in my breastplate. “What happened to the obsidian stuff? I couldn’t get you out of it last I saw you.”
I swallowed. My lungs tightened as I recalled the Entity’s victory over me. With the Book I had stood no chance. Even as King in Ash I had not been strong enough. Only Shadow had ever been its equal. As the Other Steve had once told me, the Entity had crushed many armies before our arrival. Without Shadow, what chance could any army led by me ever stand?
“I got robbed,” I managed, removing some of the cracks from my voice.
“Oh…” he frowned. “I’m so sorry.”
He came forward and put a hand on my shoulder. In a brief twitch of the fingers, he squeezed the vain delusion from me. The King in Ash had failed. There could be no return for him.
“Don’t be,” I scoffed, “My own stupid fault. I wanted to show people I was still important, and it just made me easily ambushed.”
Crystalline tears ran down my cheeks. I hadn’t even noticed my eyes start to water. I raised a hand to my face and Astro folded me into his grasp. I clung to him desperately.
Some time passed. We broke apart. Astro smiled at me. I forced a smile back.
“Strange this?” he tried.
“Hm?”
He gestured at the symphony of colour overhead.
“The aurora, never heard of those in the Vanilla Craft.”
I deflected: “Well, we’re not quite there yet.”
He lit up a tad.
“Ah, actually!”
He pulled out a stack of papers from his robes.
“Our visas are all sorted. We’ve even got a job offer,” Astro said encouragingly.
“H-have we?”
“The Emperor of the Realm of Seven Kingdoms, a man called Dominus, approached me. He wants you to govern some land he’s come into possession of. Seems like a great opportunity.”
I racked my brains. The Realm had been scarcely mentioned. Dominus even less so. Only brief half-whispers in the Shelter about them which suggested… What, exactly? A disgrace? A fallen friend? A defeated enemy? Secret had let slip something about an attack on the Citadel? Surely not that Citadel? However, all that hardly mattered, really.
“Actually Astro,” I sighed. “Take it if you wish, but I think I’m retiring.”
Astro’s eyes flared with surprise. I recalled the anger, disgust, contempt that would one day fill them when he witnessed my betrayal of Helix. How moved he had been by the slim hope of my success. A meagre parody of closure I had foisted upon him.
“You’re entirely certain?”
I was. The world needed no more of Kay Mandy’s vaulting ambition. Of his attempts to guard his own good reputation long after he had already destroyed it. Instead, I would banish him to some quiet place and tell him to wait until Astro, or Aaron or Cossack or any of them at all truly needed his aid.
“Yes,” I said with finality. “In my absence, I’ve become rather captivated with the idea of farming. So, I shall do that. A necessary tedium after all the excitement I’ve had lately.”
Astro chuckled warily.
“We’ll see how long that lasts. Come on, that pork smells pretty great, but I know just the recipe to make it perfect.”
All of them had gathered around the campfire now, waving and joking. Aaron, Secret, Cossack, Bokane, Mini, Brit and Gracey. The family to whom I would devote my life.
“Don’t you dare ruin another dinner,” I teased.
I punched him on the shoulder, and we set off down the hill. My friends’ laughter seemed to grow dimmer as I got closer, and as the sun inched closer and closer to the horizon, the brilliant, hopeful rays of the aurora became harder and harder to make out. Yet the campfire glowed like a hearth, and there was some reassurance in that.
Epilogue: Shadow
I stood in Nexus alone, everyone had left through the portals I created, even animals had wandered through. Now it was just the terrain, the buildings, the plants, and me. I did not just see Nexus through the eyes on my body. In fact, I had very little need of this manner of observation. The blackness in the sky was nothing but an extension of me, something that I had neglected to tell the others, both to avoid more worship from my Coven and to not delay the departures.
I returned to the Tower, or what was left of it. Now that Nexus was empty, I stopped holding back the collapse of the fabric of reality. The Tower’s arms, twisted as they had become, now bent inwards to one specific point, the Entity’s entry scar. The rest of the building quickly followed, then the ground itself was distorted out of shape and curved upwards. Far off in the distance, the horizon shrunk as matter dissipated into the Void, or rather into me, since I had enveloped Nexus in its entirety.
Mountains rushed by, followed by deserts and jungles. An ocean disappeared into nothingness. An indeterminate amount of time later the terrain began taking truly odd shapes, it looked like Nexus had absorbed the far lands of several worlds.
I watched all of this transpire, standing by as the world died. Then, finally the last atom had disappeared, leaving an empty, directionless space behind that only contained me. The fragment of myself that was still in Nexus disappeared through the entry scar, and behind it the space bubble turned itself inside out and collapsed. Nexus was no more.
I had fully returned to the larger self that I had only properly become aware of when I killed the Book. In the past I had taken glimpses outside of reality, usually to observe the layers of energy, or the Book’s pocket dimension. Now was the first time I truly looked outwards.
At first, I was unable to perceive anything, still unfamiliar with the structure of higher-dimensional space, but gradually I saw that space’s equivalent of colour. Dots appeared in my vision, each representing a world, they were infinitely small, lacking any higher-dimensional extent, but I could still see details if I focused on one. In one of the closer ones, I could observe Herobrine marching his army home, in another the hunters fortified their camp with materials they had taken with them.
But my focus was not on the worlds, because there still was something here in this liminal space that seemingly escaped everyone’s memory. The Entity was here somewhere, it was not dead, and I needed to change that. If I didn’t, everything we did, all our sacrifices would be nothing more than another link in the chain of its cycles.
With each passing moment my perception expanded further, I was able to see more worlds and look into these worlds with greater detail. Then I saw what I was looking for. A tiny speck of grey, rapidly moving away from where Nexus had been.
So that is how it operates, each time it is defeated it shoots away. Eventually it will collide with a world and begin its growth anew.
I began moving towards the Entity, slowly at first, having to get used to moving in this new state. Soon I became fast enough to match the Entity’s speed, then faster to close the distance. As I got closer, the grey speck gradually became bigger and something dawned on me, even in this state the Entity was massive.
Before me was the higher-dimensional equivalent to a tetrahedron, though instead of the ever-repeating static that had covered its form in Nexus, here the Entity’s surface was a single uniform middling sensation, not even a colour in the regular sense. This geometric menace now towered over me, many times larger than I. This bastion of Order that I had to bring down to prevent it from destroying any more worlds.
If I had a human body still, I would have instinctively swallowed at this point. But there was no point in deliberating. It was Order, I was Entropy. All I had to do was make contact and I would eventually erode it into nothingness.
Right?
I pushed my doubts aside and accelerated towards the nearest quasi-grey face. I braced myself as I rapidly approached. I slammed into the Entity… but it refused to give. The small dent my impact created immediately righted itself.
What if Order and Entropy work differently here? What if they cannot interact at all at this level of reality? Was I doomed to fail?
Questions like these began sprouting in my mind like weeds. As vines of doubt climbed higher, the worlds in the distance gradually disappeared, or rather my ability to perceive them did as I slowly slipped into despair. It was just like when I had found out that Claw had taken control. The realisation I had made in the nightmare rang true once again. If I failed here, I could not guarantee that my brother, or anyone, was safe. Feeling slipped away, the only thing I could perceive was my nemesis ahead of me, but even that faded slowly.
Just before my mind went dark, a faint thought appeared.
Why am I so concerned with protecting everyone? It is the right thing to do, but… why does it affect me so much when I fail? Why do I feel so helpless? It is as if I am unable to do something that is expected of me.
I held onto that thought. Back when I had emerged from the laboratory, Fire had that same emotion written all over his face, until I told him that we have a way out.
That was not what my brother would do, I have seen him push through hardship before, and I have done it too, it is what got us to where we are. Something is not right… To kill the Entity, the embodiment of Order, I need to break through its surface, something I cannot do as the embodiment of Entropy-
My thoughts ground to a halt. That was it.
Am I Entropy? The only ones who said so were Kay, who had heard it from the Book, and Freak, who had heard it from Dr. Mercury. None of them were reliable sources of information in this matter.
I thought back to when I entered Nexus. As soon as I did my senses had expanded and I was able to tear holes into reality. I never had the time to question why these changes happened. I had not initiated them, so something else must have.
Just at the moment I finished the previous thought, I suddenly felt constricted. As if bound by countless of strings that dragged me in all directions at once. But my mind felt clearer than ever.
I am a mage, but am not magic, magic is simply a tool for me to use, so why would Entropy and Void be any different? I was asking the wrong question this whole time! Human? Entropy? God? What does it matter what I am? If there is no answer either way, why should I care?
I am myself. I am Shadow.
This thought surged through my mind, pushing away the numbness. Like a warm shower of rain, sensations flooded my mind. Millions and millions of worlds became visible and with every passing moment more joined them. I had changed too, no longer possessing a body of Void, I instead simply was, existing beyond description. Then, finally I saw them. The strings that had bound me so tightly moments earlier, now failing to find purchase on my transcendent body. With a thought I caught each of them, then tore them into shreds so small that they faded from existence entirely.
Back in Nexus I had thought I felt free, that feeling was dull compared to what I felt now. In front of me was still the grey bulk of the Entity, but despite nothing changing about our relative sizes, it no longer seemed to loom over me. It was then that I realized why the Entity feared me, not because of what I had been, even if many incorrectly assumed such. The Entity feared what I could become… have become.
I moved forward once again, speeding towards the geometric abomination ahead of me. Shortly before I collided, I saw myself reflected in its surface. I broke through, now surrounded by grey in every sense, shortly behind me followed a path of darkness as I carved a swathe into the Entity’s formerly perfect being. Halfway between the black and grey, bright bolts of energy bounced like electric discharges as Order failed.
Once I arrived at the centre, I gathered my focus, pulling all that is the Entity into my being. The only way to be certain of its obliteration. Uncountable years of memories and information streamed into my mind, but it all seemed hilariously insignificant compared to what I was now. The embodiment of Order collapsed into me, and as it did a pulse of radiant sensations was sent flying outwards, rolling harmlessly over nearby worlds before dissipating.
But there was still something left where the Entity once was. Another mind, a familiar one. I had found her. I had found Destiny. Little more than a speck of existence, no body to speak of, but she was there. There was not much I could do for her, except for one thing. I carefully moved what remained of her, of the one who kicked off the events that led to our victory. Her world was not far. I made a tiny puncture in the walls of her world and pushed her through, then closed it up once more. I sincerely hoped that that was enough.
Now the only thing that remained for me was to return home. I knew where to go, sensing my world’s resonance. Despite my relatively slow pace, my world approached quickly. But before I could reach it, I encountered something like a transparent barrier. I could see my world, but I was seemingly unable to move any closer.
With a thought, I parted the barrier, and went through the gap. The barrier neatly closed behind me. I immediately felt a difference, it was like after exiting Nexus. At first, I saw very little, then gradually more. Was this another layer of existence? My world was still ahead of me, so I pushed on, only to be stopped again and again. I cut through each barrier, growing more confused with each time. With every passage, reality felt thinner, sparser. When I looked back, I could still see all the worlds like before, but some of them were encapsulated in bubble-like structures. The further I went the more worlds looked enclosed, and after some point even the bubbles themselves appeared to have bigger bubbles around them.
Then, finally I broke through to my world. No matter how far I looked, there was nothing else in the same space, the emptiness was profound. But there was something when I looked at my world. My world consisted of three layers that were so close they almost touched. Two of them made sense to be there, one was the “real” world, the other was the server. The revelation that the server was not just a simulation, but an actual world passed me by almost without a trace, at this point it was barely a leap in logic. The third layer however, contained no matter, instead it was composed entirely of energy, like what I had seen in Nexus.
At this point I had no idea what exactly the implications of this third layer were, but it felt good to know that I could discuss it with my brother in peace once I was fully home. I moved close to the server’s layer, then parted its walls to let a part of me slip through. My larger self would have to remain outside.
It was a peculiar feeling, being back to three-dimensional space after where I had been just before, but there was comfort to returning to such a familiar place. My body formed in the middle of a forest, namely the forest surrounding Rockhaven. The runes on my skin burned brightly for a moment as I returned to existence fully. I was of course not alone, the immediate area teemed with Mencur-Besh and Eye-and-Claws. Straight ahead of me stood Fire, who interrupted his conversation with Lucy and Dr. Mercury to pull me into a hug. As he did so I noticed something with my lingering extradimensional senses. My brother was bound by strings too.
Determination welled up inside of me. I would help him free himself, just like he had done for me.
Epilogue: Steve and Jennifer
Steve and Jennifer stepped out of the portal and stopped to appreciate the yellow sun above. However, their attention was almost immediately drawn away by an explosion of light in the sky. They found themselves staring at an aurora of colours, many of which their world had never seen before. Each shade was more brilliant than the last.
Suddenly, a wind whipped their hair as Drake Junior swooped past. Their eyes followed the young Enderdragon as he swept so low to the ground the shrubs and flowers of the ground began to scratch his exposed belly. Then, purring with satisfaction, he shot back up into the sky and began to bite playfully at the intangible rays of the aurora.
“Be careful up there!” Steve shouted.
The dragon didn’t seem to hear him and continued to swing around still more boldly. Steve gritted his teeth and stood on tiptoe as he tried to follow every turn.
Behind him, a laugh erupted from Jennifer’s throat and Steve turned in exasperation, only for her hand to touch his face and brush the worry out of him.
“Hey,” she smiled.
She had removed her armour, just leaving a t-shirt and jeans. The multi-coloured lights bounced off her shining red hair, an aurora in its own right.
“Hey.”
He reached for her waist and drew her in.
“You know I love you, right?”
She leaned in.
“I got the impression.”
Their lips touched. The sun was warm, and so was she. He held her tight to him. Their eyes drifted shut. The lights of the sun and aurora danced atop their closed eyelids, turning the void of blindness into a radiant glory. They stayed that way for the longest time.
Finally, the aurora dimmed, and they drew apart. Still holding hands, they took in the quaintness of Brine Manor. Atza, Steve’s mother, stood at the door, fussing over a reluctant Ozen. Wolfric sat off on a bench on the porch, drifting off into a peaceful sleep after the exertions of the day. On the top floor of the manor, a light shone in Dad’s room, and Steve could see his silhouette, upright and reading over an old book.
A look across the Manor’s colossal lawn and into the forest revealed a road, and people coming up it. Alex sat astride a horse, her long orange hair flowing in the breeze and her diamond armour looking almost black beneath the shelter of the bows of trees. Behind her, her friends, Dylan and Rana led a donkey laden with supplies.
In the other direction, Steve saw Mark and David of Morbrook riding up a redstone railway of their own design. Behind them trailed a line of minecarts containing villagers and chests, full to bursting with melon and bread and pork and… so much else both wonderful and familiar.
“Now they show up,” Jennifer rolled her eyes wryly. “When it’s time to celebrate.”
Steve laughed.
“Eh, I’ll trap the Alliance members into one hell of a Dungeons and Enderdragons game tomorrow and then we’ll be even.”
They began to walk down toward the crowd, then suddenly they stopped. Steve was frowning, and his shoulders hunched.
“Actually,” he said. “What do we do next?”
“What do you mean?”
“In the nightmare, I saw a world where I had everything. You were there, and we had… a family. And Ozen was there, and I was still adventuring, and Dad had fully recovered, and it still didn’t make me feel complete. So, I…”
He trailed off, shame filling him. He tilted his head and looked at his right hand as though it were stained. Once again, Jennifer’s hand touched his face, this time to straighten out his fretful confusion.
“You know what I saw?”
His eyes locked with hers. There was a trust, profound enough that it superseded words. And it melted away all worry within him.
“No?”
She drew back and pretended to huff.
“Well too bad, because I’m not telling you.”
She winked, and it was like the signing of a sacred covenant.
“Love ya, Steve,” she ordained.
Steve chuckled and cast a glance to the side. Atza and Ozen were building long tables while David, Mark and the villagers carried over their plentiful banquet. Dad was waving from the window in his fragile way. Drake had come to rest on the ground, where Alex threw him a cooked porkchop. The aurora was faded, but its colours lingered like a welcome stranger.
Steve and Jennifer drew each other in for one last kiss, and they set off to enjoy whatever this new future might hold.
Epilogue: Warnado
“Stupid dimensional portals,” thought Warnado, tapping his foot. “Never open when you need them.”
He sat atop a huge pile of rocks beneath which the golems were buried. Crushed. Broken. Whatever word you wanted to use, these guys were out of commission.
At the foot of the rockpile, sat a nether portal, some small stones piled against and spilling into the obsidian ring. Warnado looked expectantly at it for a few second, then sighed. He reminded himself that he didn’t even technically know this portal led to Nexus. He’d just emerged right next to it so… y’know, it had to be this one, right?
His heart kept pounding as he thought about what was happening on the other side. The world hadn’t evaporated into an endless nightmare, so Freak didn’t seem to have won… yet. But he also didn’t know that the others had won. He didn’t know what had happened to Shadow, or Fire, or Lucy or her.
“I didn’t even get to say-”
He stopped his thoughts in their tracks and the spillover emerged as uncontrollable laughter. What a stupid thought? Stupid, dumb, stupid thought. Of course she was okay. She had to be. Just perfect. It was fine. Sure. He believed that.
He distracted himself by throwing a hearty kick at the broken gauntlet. Just before impact an aethereal armoured boot formed around his foot, and he sent the already mangled pile of brass and shattered crystal into the stratosphere.
He felt good for exactly a second before pain shot through his foot and he fell back and found himself sitting on a golem’s head. Suddenly he relived the moments before his expulsion in excruciating detail.
His power surging, the gauntlet shattering. Warnado had heard Tin-throne shrieking in his brain as he disintegrated. The whole time. Not fun. Then, his body freezing, doubling over as he shared the dying demon’s pain. Golems beating and blasting him. His form shattering, surging out in an explosion of demonfire! The roof crumbling…
Somehow, he had summoned another portal, just as inexplicable as the one he had entered Nexus through. And he had come through right there. Well, the golems came through first, then the rocks, then him. Right beside this stupid portal that he couldn’t open. And he had tried pretty hard. Somehow, after all his training and studying, he still couldn’t even identify the general vibe of the spell he had used. When he tried it was like the spell brandished a shotgun and told him to get off its property.
So, his only option now was to wait, and hope they’d won. Or that he could be called back in time to help. His stomach twisted as he thought about them fighting that nightmare. About not being there to help-
Flash! His head snapped toward the portal so hard he was surprised his neck didn’t snap. For a split-second the portal was active, filled with a blinding, solid, golden light. Then, it receded as quickly as it arrived. A lone figure stepped through, silhouetted in the glare.
Half-blinded by the flash, Warnado looked away, and as his eyes cleared, he saw the sky fill with a brilliant aurora. He got the vibe that this was a good sign. Hope filled him, his chest began to hurt, and a smile of impossible intensity began to spread across his face. He turned.
“You’re alive!” cried the hoarse, husky voice of Dinnerbone.
The smile stopped right at its apex, so wide Warnado could have sworn it was about to split his face in half. When he saw that Dinnerbone really did have no one with him, he halfway wanted it to.
“You have no idea how glad I am to see you little guy! I knew I still sensed you, but y’know everyone kept saying you’d exploded and died. I really started freaking out, probably some apology cards to be sending… But you’re here! The Prophecy can still happen! …Hooray!”
Dinnerbone’s speech became more halting as he spoke and Warnado had a few ideas why. The enormity of the moment? Sure. Shame about how he’d behaved while freaking out. Perhaps. However, by far the biggest on the list was probably the fact that, while his glowing red eyes had slowly drained of emotion, he couldn’t get rid of the smile.
They both got very quiet.
“Where’s Amanda?” he asked.
Dinnerbone swallowed.
“She thought you were dead. Got real torn up about it. I, uh, I probably didn’t help. Ended up going back with Astro’s crew, I think.”
Warnado’s smile began to spread again. Further than he’d ever felt it. Past the point of splitting his head in two. And he began to laugh. Loud. Too loud. He staggered forward, jumped, and then slid down the pile of rocks toward Dinnerbone. He recoiled.
“So, she’s okay, huh?” Warnado asked. “She, hahaha, she survived?”
“Yes.”
He felt his vision narrowing. He knew what was coming.
“Cool. That’s great. Amazing… Hah! Amazing-great-cool!” he patted the portal twice with his hand, “So why don’t you just open this bad boy back up? Then, I’ll, haha, step right through and get her.”
Dinnerbone didn’t say anything. Warnado summoned a taco into his hand and took a large, cartoony, almost animalistic bite out of it. He felt his jaw stretch further than he considered natural.
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
He doubled over, and awful pain shooting through his stomach, then his heart, then all of him.
“You should really go, Dinnerbone,” Warnado panted.
Dinnerbone seemed to falter for a moment. Then, with a look of resolve, he straightened his hat stepped forward.
“Come on kid, I can’t leave you like this. Let me take you to Jeb’s Kingdom, get you some food.”
Warnado’s fingers clenched so tight the obsidian began to bend underneath. He realised that he was scorching hot. Boiling even. Sweat cascading off every part of him.
“Don’t worry, I’ll go to stupid Notch Island,” he hissed. “Invite your friends - hah! - we’ll have a potluck! Hahahahaha!”
It all felt pretty funny all of a sudden. The girl he lost, then found again, then loved, stuck in a parallel world until he got his crap together and learned how to do a spell which seemed to actively hate him. And he hadn’t even told her that-
“Warnado127, I understand what you’re going through-”
“My dude, I really need to be alone right now! Don’t you have somewhere you should be busking?”
Warnado snapped his head around. Dinnerbone looked nervous again. He realised that Dinnberbone’s face was bathed in red light. Warnado’s eyes were like suns. Suns streaming with tears. Huh, weird, he hadn’t noticed.
Dinnerbone scrunched up his face and stepped forward again.
“Come on kid, let’s get you somewhere safe.”
Snap! Warnado saw sparks fly from his fingers as he did it. There were scorch marks on his palms. A pillar of lava appeared between he and Dinnerbone. The man with the ukulele jumped back.
“Go!” Warnado pleaded.
And so, he ran back towards the distant peaks of Jeb’s Kingdom.
Warnado held it in as long as he could, shaking with the effort, his teeth gritting, his eyes like spotlights on the ground. Then, the second Dinnerbone was out of sight, he threw his face to the sky. He screamed.
Demonfire erupted from within him, spread across the clearing. The grass, the trees, the flowers, all were destroyed. Under the molten purple flames, they all burned, buckled and fossilised in seconds. The obsidian ring and the pile of rocks and golems both shattered and were blown away. Glowing smears led away from Warnado to the East and West. And all the while, he wailed in grief and agony.
Then, finally, he stopped. His head fell, his throat hoarse from the abyssal screech. He saw that his robes had changed colour. No longer blue and silver, they were red and gold - no! - brass. His robes were highlighted in the colour of the gauntlet he had only just gotten rid of. Great.
Honestly, he felt pretty amazing. Like he’d cleared a blocked nose or popped his ears. His horns even felt a little longer when he reached up to check on them. He supposed he’d finally stabilised his demonic powers and felt pretty proud of himself.
He’d beaten Glibby, helped save the multiverse, and sorted out all his demon weirdness. It was a pretty good day. No! A great day! No! A fantastic one, the good day, the best day of his life! All aside from the part where… He felt the pain and the heat begin to swell up in him again, so he stopped thinking about that. He decided he wouldn’t think about that for a good long while, because, after all, otherwise, he felt completely, utterly amazing!
So, like any person who felt completely, utterly amazing, he sat down on the remains of the portal’s base, stared at the aurora in the sky, and didn’t do anything for a long, long time. The clouds moved. The aurora faded. The sun descended. The stars scattered themselves across the sky. Dawn broke. He didn’t even move his neck.
At some point, he heard the crunch of footsteps on dead forest, but didn’t look at it. It would have interrupted his busy schedule of sky-staring.
A guy stepped into his peripheral vision, marching forward as he intently stared at a cube whose six sides displayed various different images. He wore the robes of a wizard. He stopped, then looked around the clearing until his eyes settled on Warnado.
“Hey!” he called.
Warnado blinked, then looked down.
“Yeah?” he shouted back.
“Are you one of those Heroes of the Prophecy? The Dark Prophecy?”
Warnado rolled his eyes, then remembered he should probably be careful.
“Who wants to know?”
“Just me.”
Warnado shrugged. Carefulness was overrated.
“Yeah, I am.”
“Cool!” he said. “Big fan of your work, or at least, what you’re gonna do!”
“Thanks!”
Neither of them said anything. Warnado looked back up at the sky. Frowning, obviously having expected conversation to come more easily to him, the wizard guy called out again.
“Is there any way I can help you?”
Warnado didn’t respond. His mind kept wandering to the dream of Amanda, and he kept having to drag it back to reality.
The wizard guy huffed, then stooped. He brushed a finger against the ground. He licked the dust off it.
“Hm… demonfire. You know, I have a pretty decent recipe for a demon arm lying around back at the hut.”
Warnado’s eyes lit up. He arose. A wide, energised grin had spread across his face.
“I’m listening.”
Epilogue: Astro
Snow crunches beneath my feet, I cannot see far in front of me, and the winds shriek still, but there is a desperation to it. A finality. This is a dying storm. I clench my fingers and find that I still have a hold of Amanda’s shoulder. She is caught completely off-guard by the cold and hunches over reflexively. I curse, realising I also haven’t properly equipped myself.
With a snap of my fingers a rune appears on the ground, and for a small radius everything becomes tolerably warm. The snow beneath us slowly starts to lose its ice-packed solidity. Amanda stomps and drags her feet as though wiping them on a doormat. I rub my shoulders and crane my head to examine her.
“Where is everyone?” she asks before I can glean anything useful.
I cast my eyes off into the storm. The swirling white flakes and fog
“Not sure,” I mutter.
I enhance my vision and strain further. In the distance I am able to discern a shifting mass which might be a column of marching men. I frown, then check my last storage ring. Capacity is still reasonably high, though it will take much longer to recharge. At the very least, it will stave off the ravages magic has inflicted and will continue to inflict upon my body.
“Out that way,” I point. “I think. We might wait a moment, though, I can feel the storm subsiding.”
“Cool,” she says faintly.
Her eyes are fixed on the stiletto knife Rose threw to her, and her fingers twist it precisely.
“I don’t know if I’m going crazy or not,” she says, “But I think she threw the original knife. Not a duplicate or anything.”
“Hm…” I lean forward, “You might be right.”
I use a simple analysis spell. I learn nothing.
“Sorry,” I grimace.
I crane my head again and try to get a good look at her features. She is sombre. Understandably. Suddenly, she looks up and makes eye contact with me. I feel as though I’ve been caught doing something terrible and look away.
“It’s not your fault,” Amanda says. “I should have been paying more attention. It’s a little late to ask her now.”
I swallow and scan the winds again. I can now see the mass of people more clearly. At their head I see a pair of glowing white eyes. I begin to hear a distant sound: the men are singing. I can’t make
“Nonsense, I’m sorry if all this was a little abrupt. I don’t think any of us planned for this. How are you feeling?”
Amanda rolls her shoulders into a hunch again.
“I miss him already, but that’s not going to change anything.”
I think on Warnado’s constant joking, his playful arrogance, his magically-enabled comfort eating. He never liked me much but…
“I miss him too.”
I back away, and a morsel of the song is carried to me. It arcs along the wind, then caresses my ear like a lost love.
…It’s but the turning of the weather.
The Spring breeze leads me home…
I smile as I remember the tune.
“Oh, that’s a lovely old one,” I chuckle. “We used to sing that in Zine. Gracey of all people gave a great rendition. I still remember one evening-”
I turn to Amanda. She’ smiling politely, but there’s a tear running down her cheek. I kneel down and draw her in. She hugs me back. We don’t say anything for a while. The singing draws nearer, becomes a constant murmur. I can see the Watcher’s white eyes blazing more clearly. I let go of her and stand up.
“Alright,” I say. “A song like that demands better weather.”
I stand up, rubbing my hands together, a grin stampeding across my face. Amanda straightens up and begins to walk off beyond the bounds of the warming spell. I grab stop her.
“Oh, are we not going to join them?”
I scrunch the corners of my mouth downwards. I feel the magic building up inside me.
“In a second. Like I said, we need better weather.”
She squints and for a second my newfound energy infects her too, sending a smile pulsing across her face.
I raise my hands, and there is a release. A pulse goes out, driving the storm away as it goes. The snow is uncovered. It glistens in the sunlight, but also with other colours. The parting of the clouds reveals a brilliant aurora of countless colours.
“Woah,” Amanda says. “Did you do that as well?”
I remember where I first saw the aurora. Back on the border of the Vanilla Craft. Kay had come back, missing his obsidian-plated armour, saying he’d been robbed. The day he announced his intention to retire… I think I understand that choice a little better now. At least he tried. I suppress the pain and maintain a confused frown for Amanda’s benefit.
“No,” I stroke my chin and lean back. “That’s Shadow I think… Nexus had a lot of energy tied up in it. A million magical undercurrents all tied up together. So, when Shadow tore that up, I guess it all just got released.”
“You just made that up.”
“Pretty much.”
We laugh.
I look back to where I’d previously seen the vague mass. Now, it is there, in brilliant detail.
The Vanillans make their long trek back towards the grey walls of the Old Craft. Legionnaires carry shields by straps. Vangaardians hold their heads high. Arcationites and Brotherhood acolytes exchange great boasts of war. And there are Blackshells, and Legionnaires, and Gaians and so many others. Content in their battered glory, returning from war to the distant promise of peace. I see my guild. Aaron begins to jump and wave. Herobrine stops to demurely nod. With him, the procession halts. They await our arrival.
I raise my hand in acknowledgement and take Amanda by the arm. We begin to march towards them.
“What do we do, once we get there?” Amanda asks.
“You know,” I start. “I don’t really know. My banishment is over. Herobrine indicated he might have a use for me at the True Court, though I can’t imagine Jeb will agree. Jeb was not happy about Herobrine joining us, and I don’t imagine he’s happy with me for helping to persuade him. Of course, there’s always Cossack and the Gaians, I should be welcome to any post I want in his government.”
“Oh,” she halfway groans.
I look down at her and smile.
“I agree. Saying it out loud it all sounds a little ‘tribal’ to me. I had also thought of setting out to see the world again. Travelling for a while with the Guild. Would you like to join me?”
I see a distant hope flicker in her eyes. She allows herself to smile.
“I think I would.”
I smile and squeeze her against me. The Guild are approaching us now. Aaron, Tass, Secret, and the others. I remember the relief of our reunion on the Fields. Even in such darkness as the aftermath of the coup, just seeing them again had brought so much joy. I break away from Amanda and suddenly kneel, making a show of adjusting my boot.
“Go on ahead. Best you start meeting our travelling companions properly.”
She smirks as she detects the lie in my tone but heads on with a shake of her head. I spare a glance at the aurora and close my eyes.
I feel the energy coalesce in my hand, then open them once again. A golden ray, identical to the ones from Shadow’s portals rises from my palm. Not enough to make a functional portal, but a starting point from which to reconstruct the spell. The first thread in a tapestry.
I clench my fist shut and vow that, one day, I will have it working again. And then, perhaps, if the universe is willing to grant us one more miracle and preserve Warnado’s life, I can give her that same gift of reunion.
Amanda is already trapped beneath an avalanche of conversation from Tass and Aaron. Mo and Secret are jeering at me to hurry up. I glance over my shoulder, back across the frigid tomb of Acrisius, and I thank the fallen for bringing us this far. The fallen of Nexus, and of my own world. Fristad, Destiny, David, Mini, Bokane… Kay. I thank you all. I forgive what I can.
Then, I move on. A new journey begins, unburdened by the old.
Epilogue: Tyron
Tyron saw the infinite possibilities of creation rattling by. Worlds teaming with life, conveying beauteous abundance forever. Worlds absent of life, sublime in their still, unseen vistas. Worlds with something rather like life but didn’t quite seem to quite qualify in his eyes. He found himself laughing as he passed by a particular nearby world full of moving polyhedrons made of a variety of stone he didn’t recognise.
“So weird,” he thought to Kir.
“So bigoted,” the sword huffed, though he could tell it wasn’t too mad.
And then, finally, they neared his own world. Where Rathina awaited. Where Seth awaited. The dragons. Everything he loved. He saw himself reflected endlessly, as though in a hall of mirrors. The variations were slight at first, then spiralled into unrecognizability. Here, he had red fur. There, he taught in a school for promising heroes. Then, he worked at a coffee shop, still a teacher, somehow. Then, sitting at a laptop in hoodie and sweatpants, scrolling through pages upon pages of stories about a stranger rather like himself. The symphony of creation, ever-spreading, ineffable in its results.
He spun out into his own world, balletically regaining his balance. It was the same range of hills he had emerged into a few weeks prior. Same sharp, blocky features. In other words, the same familiar beauty. Seth came up and he hugged him tightly. The brown-haired builder staggered away in the aftermath of the Dragoknight’s grip.
He laughed out some parting words and a promise to see Tyron again soon as he gathered his things and set out for a temporary shelter he had built on a nearby hill. A temporary shelter which was already transforming into a lavish villa.
The dragons swept by in low, ordered formation: a sign of respect. Glowstar was at their head. Tyron saw him nod and smirk in the split-second he passed near enough to see. And on they went, out toward the horizon. Some destined for the End. Some for the stars. Some for deep caves packed with gold and jewels. Free and fair and fanciful. Just as he had fought for.
He heard the crunch of a furtive footstep on grass behind him but did not turn. He smiled uncontrollably, knowing well who it would be. Rathina, his other half. The best girl he ever could have met. He felt her hand on his shoulder, and she pulled him. He closed his eyes.
As he felt his body swing around, Tyron took a moment to think on his time in Nexus. It had been a time of despair. A time where he had feared that all this world had been destroyed. A time when he had worried what the Entity might achieve. What Freak might achieve. Kay. Shadow. The Book.
And yet it had also been a joyous time. So many friends he would never otherwise have known. Astro with his perpetual snark. Kay’s oscillation between cruel, vapid grandeur and disarming sincerity. Fire’s sturdy, calm leadership. Warnado’s mere existence. Lucy being unreasonably nice all the time. Steve, Jennifer, Destiny, David, Urist, Voidblade, Amanda, Fristad, and so many others.
These names, these faces, these people, would live eternal in his heart. But their time together was done. The spinning stopped. He opened his eyes.
Dark hair. Chestnut eyes. The smirk still unbroken. He kissed her, and after a blissful eternity, they drew apart.
“So,” she said. “How about it, then?”
“Hm?” He pressed, eyes glowing with warmth.
“The plains biome? The little farm? Giving away bread for free? Still down for it, or do you still have that wanderlust?”
Tyron looked back in the direction he knew civilization was in. Seth’s nascent villa, with a minecart track leading back somewhere populous. Then his head involuntarily turned, out toward the cold, stark peaks of a snow-capped mountain range. The sun drifted down towards it, rendering it in less and less detail as it went, but only increasing its mythic allure.
He cast an eye down at Kir, his smile creeping outwards. After a brief communion, he cocked an eyebrow at Rathina.
“Maybe one last adventure, to tide us over?”
She brushed a hand down his arm.
“I’m happy with whatever we do. So long as we do it together.”
She took a firmer grip.
“That okay with you?” She asked.
He leaned in and kissed her again. Soft, sweet, and endless. Then, at the end of endlessness, he took her by the hand, and they set off into infinity.
Epilogue: Fire
The minutes after the return to the server hadn’t been quite as chaotic as one might assume. By far the biggest uncertainty was what would happen to the linked Mencur-Besh, but that resolved itself quickly after their emergence on the forest clearing. At first the bodies of the individuals simply stood there like statues, but one by one they opened their eyes and returned to normality. At least that was what it looked like from the outside. Fire of course knew what was really happening, the collective had to decide which minds to put into bodies and which ones would have to be left to die.
Of course, death had a different meaning to a Mencur-Besh than it did to a human. When a Mencur-Besh died, all knowledge and skill amassed over its lifetime would fuse into the collective, making it available to all other Mencur-Besh. On rare occasions a mind would be kept around to be put into a new body, for example if it held a strategically important position in human society. With over two thirds of the Mencur-Besh population dead, body transfers were the norm instead of the exception.
Fire looked around the clearing, he spotted far fewer of the Eye-and-Claws operatives than what they had begun with, but as opposed to the Mencur-Besh, who were limited by their bodies, most Eye-and-Claws were players who could respawn now that Shadow allowed them to return home.
Off near the edges of the clearing Fire could spot Andras and Brad, who had made it out of the entire ordeal alive. They were in the process of organizing what little resources they had managed to retrieve from Nexus.
Right next to Fire were Lucy and Dr. Mercury, who were in the process of regaining their bearings.
Dr. Mercury spoke first: “So, where are we now?”
Fire explained: “This is my ‘second’ world, the so-called server. It generally operates by rules you are familiar with. Blocks, mobs, things like that. Though I assume this world was not what Shadow had in mind when she offered to take you to our world.”
Dr. Mercury simply nodded, then began fiddling with a handheld scanner, most likely curious whether it would still function.
Lucy pointed off into the distance where shimmering, black city walls were visible. “What’s that over there?”
“That’s Rockhaven, it would be this world’s capital, but this world is too sparsely populated for things like that to make sense.”
Lucy smiled. “Back in my world, I lived in the capital. Would it be possible for me to find a home here too?”
Fire thought for a moment. “If you want to stay on the server instead of the other world, that can be arranged.”
Now it was Lucy’s turn to contemplate.
After a minute of thinking she said: “I think for the time being I prefer this world, it plays by familiar rules at least. Do you think I could cross over later if I wanted to?”
Fire shrugged. “Most likely, but we’ll know that for certain once Shadow is back. But since you’ll be staying here for the time being, mind giving me your hand?”
Lucy’s eyes lit up. “Does that mean I’ll be an Eye-and-Claws member? Andras told me about the mark they have to identify each other.”
“Just hold still, this will sting for a moment.”
Fire knelt down and firmly grasped Lucy’s hand and pointed his index finger at its back. A faint glow began emitting from Fire’s finger, and once it made contact with Lucy’s skin there was a flash of red. Lucy flinched but otherwise didn’t react. On the back of Lucy’s hand was now a stylized red eye with lines like scratch marks behind it. The eye blinked once, then faded into Lucy’s skin.
Lucy giggled with excitement. “That’s quite a cool symbol.”
Dr. Mercury asked: “I assume I don’t need a mark?”
Fire nodded: “Correct, it only works in this world.”
Just as he finished speaking, the fabric of reality ahead of Fire split apart and from the gap, his sister materialized. He wordlessly hugged her, glad that she was here now too. But something was different about her, though in a good way.
Fire asked: “Entity’s dead I assume?”
To Fire’s side Dr. Mercury flinched. “I completely forgot about that. We almost dropped the ball on saving the multiverse.”
Shadow smirked and said: “Dead is an understatement after what I did to it.”
“Glad you made it back, Shadow.” Lucy said and promptly joined the hug.
After they separated, Fire informed his sister: “Things seem to be under control, and it looks like Lucy wants to go to Rockhaven.”
Shadow nodded. “Good choice, safest place on the server. Unless you go into politics that is, then I can’t guarantee for anything.”
Lucy laughed. “No plans of doing that.” She paused. “So, how do I get into the city? I assume I can’t just walk in.”
Shadow said: “That’s easy, just ask around among the Eye-and-Claws, several of them are from Rockhaven, they can get you into the city. From there, just look around and join a guild if one catches your fancy.”
Lucy nodded. “Alright, I’ll do that. Don’t want to keep Veronica waiting on her own departure. And Fire, Shadow, thanks for everything.”
Fire replied: “It was a pleasure having you around, Lucy.”
And with that Lucy walked away, going in the direction of Brad and Andras, the two Eye-and-Claws most familiar to her. Fire looked between Shadow and Dr. Mercury.
“Alright, Shadow. How exactly did you want to go about getting Veronica over to our world?”
Shadow replied: “That’s easy. I already created a body for her in one of our guest rooms-”
Dr. Mercury interrupted: “You can just do that?”
Shadow smiled. “Apparently, I’m still figuring out the limits myself. There is no other good way of getting you there. If I created a portal for you to go through, you’d end up paralysed or dead due to the crystal you put in your spine. No magic in our world to keep it working.”
Dr. Mercury raised a finger to the height of her face. “That’s a good point. But how do I get into that other body?”
“Ideally it should be as simple as opening your menu and logging out. You should know how to do that since the server automatically instils that knowledge.”
Dr. Mercury replied: “So like thi-”
She disappeared before she could finish speaking. That most likely meant it worked.
Fire said: “So, Shadow. It seems you learned a thing or two in the meantime.”
“You could say that. There are somethings we need to talk about, but not here.”
Without further words, both Fire and Shadow logged out as well.
###
Peter opened his eyes, stood up and stretched. The cut on his chin from Kay’s home invasion ached slightly, but the pain faded once he acclimatized to his human body.
He stepped out of his room and was immediately met with his sister. Even here in this world, something was visibly different, though it was very possible that he was the only one able to notice the difference.
Shadow said: “I already checked on Veronica. She’s asleep in the next room over, seems like the new body needs some rest to properly accept her mind.” She added after a small pause: “It also seems like some of my abilities are bleeding over to this world, this body feels far less dull and restrictive than before.”
They began walking down the corridor slowly.
Peter mused: “I’ll have to dig up some old contacts. I think the guy who helped Peter Miller disappear in favour of Peter Graves should still be around. He’ll be able to get her a passport and any other required documents. The doctorate probably won’t make it, but I’m sure she’ll earn another one in no time. Maybe multiple, who knows?”
The Graves siblings continued walking forward wordlessly, eventually reaching the staircase to the entrance hall. They sat down on the steps.
Shadow said: “So, those things I wanted to talk about. Have you ever felt the same way you felt right when I returned from the lab before?”
Peter had expected something along those lines. That particular feeling had struck him as odd as well, in hindsight.
“No, never. I felt hopeless or helpless before, but never quite like that. Never quite that hollow. Have you felt that too at some point?”
Shadow nodded. “When I found out that Claw took over, I almost lost myself to the Void due to that feeling.”
Peter asked: “You think it has something to do with the strings?”
“I feel like that would make sense. You saw them through the Entity’s memory. I saw them when… I ascended again. I suppose that would make me double ascended, but we can find a proper word for it later if we need to. As for my strings, I cut them before I killed the Entity.”
Peter sighed. “While I still have mine. And I have this feeling that the only one capable of cutting them is myself.”
Shadow leaned against his side.
She asked: “Something else. I feel like I want to become better at the whole… people thing. Nexus and the Shelter made me realize just how bad things can get, and if I want to help, I have to be able to understand.” She paused. “We should go across the border at some point soon, I need to see the situation with my own eyes.”
That seemed like a good idea, in fact he had wanted to go himself for quite some time. He was in a position to help, seeing that he was sitting on the Graves family fortune. He now needed to see how and where to put it to use. But as always, there were many steps between then and now, all needing to be meticulously planned out, but fortunately he was good at that.
After a few minutes of silence, Shadow asked: “What was with Claw by the way? He seemed less antagonistic, judging by how he didn’t attack us.”
“I got him to realize that he’s better off working with me than against me. I do plan on getting him out of my head eventually, and if he stands to benefit from that too then it’s all the better.”
Shadow said: “Glad that worked.”
Peter hesitated, he was about to ask something of his sister that she definitely would not like.
He said: “Shadow, I need you to give me a heart attack.”
“What?”
He took a deep breath. “This journey has broadened our horizons significantly, we know about other worlds, and I believe we are beginning to understand our own a bit better. The issue is that we absolutely cannot disclose any of this to my scientist friends, not without seriously stirring something up. During my conversation with Claw, I also realized that he is now developed enough that he could possibly stay in control indefinitely. He probably knows this too, but I don’t think he would want that. Claw wants to be his own person, separate from me. Taking my body would not achieve that.”
Shadow said: “Yes, but what does that have to do with me giving you a heart attack?”
“Claw is brought out by emotions. The scientists can use their technology to suppress my emotions until I find a way to get Claw out of my head. I cannot tell them about Claw’s development without mentioning our trip out of this world. Two thirds of the Mencur-Besh disappearing probably creates enough questions already.”
Shadow buried her face in her hands. “A heart attack allegedly induced by emotional stress would be a good reason for them to listen to your request for emotion suppression. I don’t like this one bit, but… at least you’re not infiltrating the Tower again.”
Of course, Peter did not like the plan either, but it seemed like the best way of guaranteeing the outcome.
He said: “So, we go about it like this…”
###
After explaining the plan to Shadow, they both got into a car and drove out into the night, down the long, winding forest road that connected the Graves Manor to the rest of civilization. Once they had left the mountains behind, they soon reached a larger road, and from there it was just a short drive on the highway until they reached the clinic located in the suburbs. Peter knew this particular clinic to be very reliable. They parked a short distance away in an alley adjacent to the clinic’s parking lot.
Peter undid his seatbelt and opened the door, then took a deep breath. “Alright, ready.”
Shadow looked at him uneasily, then counted down from three. When Shadow’s count hit zero the effects were immediate, a squeezing pain shot through Peter’s chest. He began making his way over the parking lot, about halfway he broke out into a cold sweat. Breathing heavily, he pushed open the clinic’s doors. The receptionist immediately looked at him with alarm.
Peter squeezed out between two breaths: “I think I’m having a heart attack.”
He then did the only bit of acting this plan required and stumbled over his own feet but caught himself before hitting the ground. Through half-closed eyelids watched as he was approached by hastily called nurses before true unconsciousness took him.
###
When Peter opened his eyes again, he was not in the clinic. He instead sat on the familiar wooden bench in the infinite black room. Next to him sat the Lady of Dreams, as she always did. Since Peter had entered the dream as a human instead of a Mencur-Besh, their usual size difference was no more, leaving them at almost the same height. Though as opposed to her usual calm demeanour, her light-grey eyes were overflowing with happiness when she turned to Peter.
“Peter!” She called out.
He chuckled. “Hello, my Lady. Good to see you again.”
The Lady said: “I’m so glad that you’re alive, that everything turned out fine. I don’t know what I would have done if I lost you.”
Peter opened his mind, thoughts flowed freely. He showed the Lady everything he had seen and experienced in the assault on the Tower and what happened afterwards.
The last few memories made the smile fade from the Lady’s face.
“Peter, I’m so sorry. I know it must be hard for you, making such decisions, especially at your own cost.”
Peter simply smiled. “It’s what I’ve always done. My life has been a long string of hard decisions, starting with deciding to keep going for Shadow’s sake after losing all of my friends.”
He thought back to his earlier years, before the server, before the scientists even. Then to the recent events, his initial group in Nexus, their bigger group after the jailbreak, and finally the Shelter.
He said: “I am just glad that you were there for me throughout all those years, my Lady. But with what comes next, we won’t be able to see each other for a long while. No emotions, no dreams.”
The Lady was silent. She knew the implications better than anyone, Peter didn’t have to say it out loud, but for some reason he felt like he needed to. As if by an invisible agreement, they each put an arm around the other. They remained this way until Peter felt himself begin to drift away from his dream and back to consciousness.
The Lady said: “This may not be our last meeting before you relinquish your emotions, but if it is… No matter how long it takes, I will wait for you.”
Just before he awoke, Peter replied: “So will I.”
The serenity of the dream faded, and Peter found himself greeted by a dull pain in his chest. He was in a hospital bed and there were several people standing around him. Two nurses, one doctor, and Anna, one of the scientists. Off to the side he could hear the door swinging closed as another person entered the room.
Peter deferred the question he was asked to the doctor, then turned his focus inwards. He needed to forge a plan, perhaps his riskiest and most uncertain plan yet, a plan that if it succeeded would shake up the foundations of their world.
Epilogue: Destiny
The moon loomed high overhead, casting light everywhere. But as she walked away from the village, and into the dark, heavy-canopied forest, that didn't help Vera a great deal. The only light she had to guide her was the distant glow of redstone torches.
That was all Clarke had said. Follow the redstone trail and she could find out why she had to go out instead of sleeping through the night. Not that she minded too much. The distant groans of zombies, the inviting rattle of skeletons, and the scuttling shrieks of spiders promised the night might hold some fun after all.
She stopped beneath a towering brown mushroom, adjusting her blonde ponytail. and smirked as she equipped her flint-and-steel in one hand, and an ender pearl in the other. It would be nice to have an excuse to use her powers without one of the village elders getting mad at her.
"Stupid Yenthric," she muttered. "You burn one prized bookshelf…"
Vera wound back for a throw of the pearl, close her eyes, then let it loose. She felt the adrenaline rush through her and tried to follow the pearl's flight into the dark. She pulled out her shield, then started to run into the forest at full pelt.
"Three. Two. One…"
Crack! The pearl shattered and she immediately stopped running, instead summoning ice beneath her feet and sliding straight through the forest. Mobs swarmed from every side. Zombies lunged, skeletons fired arrows, creepers turned and began to flash. And she left every single one in her dust as she skidded from one redstone torch to the other.
Avoiding the mobs had become so natural to her that it almost had a weird meditative quality for her. Exactly what she needed after a pretty mundane day of tending crops, helping out at the forge, studying history…
If she had to hear about the war between the Third Legion and the Sovereign one more time, she would actually lose it. If she wanted to learn about that she'd just get the juicy stuff from Kami or Clarke when they visited on patrol. She did not need to know about Martin's disastrous economic policy.
She came too close to a river and had to jump over it. One of the drowned surfaced and hurled a trident at her. She twisted in the air to avoid, then with a strike of the flint and steel sent a fireball flying back. The waterbound zombie perished in a spurt of steam.
She kept moving from redstone torch to redstone torch until, finally, she arrived at the end of the trail. She left the forest and came to desert, where a redstone torch stood atop a sandstone pillar. A boy her age was waiting there, with round-rimmed glasses, curly black hair, and a surprising wide jaw. He grinned as he saw her.
"Hey Vera!" he waved exuberantly.
He noticed a spider crawling towards them over the dunes and drew his trident. He tossed the weapon leisurely into the air and it plummeted sharply onto the spider's head, followed shortly by a bolt of green lightning. He folded his arms and look impressed with himself.
"You've been practicing, Gareth," smirked Vera. "Maybe next time your village will stand a chance at the tournament."
"Oh, please no more!" He clutched his chest. "My poor heart just can't take your cutting sarcasm, Gwynevere."
Vera snorted at the use of her full name, then punched Gareth in the arm. He was from the next village over. Both of them had shown up at the same time. Just appeared out of nowhere about three years prior.
It was hard not to like someone when you shared a similarity that big, but it was also hard not to compete with them, too. And that they had, every year at the tournament of the eight villages.
"So, Clarke called you out too, huh? And here I was starting to think I was his favourite."
"You might still be, Kami invited me."
"She say what this is about?"
"Just that we'll learn our purpose in coming here."
Vera rolled her eyes.
"Why do they always have to be so vague? 'Come out here so we can tell you why we invited you out to the woods.' Yeah, I want a little more than that, Clarke."
Gareth looked at her like she was from the Moon and pushed the glasses down his nose to look over them.
"Vera, he was talking about our purpose. Like why we woke up in the forest."
Vera clasped a hand to her mouth. Even in the light of the redstone, it was clear that her cheeks were going crimson. Gareth started to laugh, and Vera started too.
"Oh my Notch," Vera strained. "I can't believe I didn't get that, I'm so stupid."
Gareth shrugged.
"Happens to us all sometimes."
He grinned again. Suddenly, they didn't have anything to say. Suddenly Gareth's eyes became fixed on the single lock of speckled grey in an otherwise completely blonde head of hair. It had come loose. He reached out and brushed it with his hand. Their eyes locked. Vera realised how close together they'd gotten in the course of the conversation.
"Alright kiddos!" Clarke called, fiddling with his shield.
"Sorry we're late!" Added Kami.
The two friendly Legionaries approached through the woods. But they weren't alone. A third figure. A stern, weapon-covered woman with greying black hair stood between them. Vera immediately realised this was Lupe, the seldom-seen leader of the Remaining. Vera had never met her before, and only rarely heard her name, but she somehow felt as though they had known each other a very long time.
Vera and Gareth bowed to the Legionaries, and Lupe began to speak.
"Right, I'll keep this quick. The world is changing. You've heard the rumours. Stories of cities rising out of the End, of strange manors built in the forests, villagers who lose their minds as their skin turns grey, undead flocking around an ancient desert overlord. Wars are starting, cities are being sacked. It's gotten so bad that some even say the bedrock beneath our feet is shifting deeper to get away from all the chaos up here. So far, we've been able to keep the eight villages safe from Illager raids, but I'm not sure we'll be able to keep that going much longer."
Lupe began to walk. Vera strained her eyes and made out the faint outline of a ruined village. She'd heard the wandering traders talk about it, and seen it mentioned in the history books: Sandshard.
"You see," Lupe continued, "The Illagers now have a leader. Or maybe they always did. We've gotten conflicting reports. Whoever he is, this Arch-Illager is now making moves. And, unfortunately, those moves are in our direction."
There was a clang as Gareth knocked his foot off the head of a dead golem, half-swallowed by sand. Lupe gave him a disapproving look and he limped nervously along. Kami patted him comfortingly on the shoulder, and Vera realised that she and Clarke had begun to flank them, as though they were worried they might run off… or someone might try to get the jump on them.
"And suffice it to say, while they have an army, there are only three of us left. And we're still good, the best probably," Vera shot a sceptical look at Clarke who confirmed it with a smug nod that make her smile, "We fought Herobrine for Carter and Anya, in their memory we helped David and Destiny take out the Second Sovereign, in their memory we helped win the Battle of Nexus… but we're getting old. We need a new Legion. A Fourth Legion."
They stopped outside an old hut, made of wood and mossy cobblestone. Sand had begun to pile up around the door, and part of the roof had caved in. The door was weathered and decayed. Still, in the light of the torch, Vera could make out a symbol: a diamond with the word "Legion" carved into it. She and Gareth stared at it like an old acquaintance whose name they couldn't quite remember until Lupe cut in:
"This is the part where you say, 'Where do we come in?'"
"Where do we-"
"Where do we-"
Vera and Gareth stopped, then after a moment of silent gesturing, Vera asked the question:
"What do you need us to do?"
The Remaining had kept them all safe for years. Of course, they'd help out.
Lupe smiled.
"Go into the hut."
The two stepped forward. Gareth pushed the door open with his trident. He looked in. On the other side, the floor had fallen away, revealing a cave filled with water.
"Looks like a pretty steep drop," he remarked. "Granted, water at the bottom. What's in there?"
"You'll know it when you see it," said Lupe with surprising nostalgia.
With that, Gareth shrugged, spread his arms and flopped forward. Vera laughed and jumped in afterwards.
They landed in the water, and down a tunnel, saw a new line of redstone lights. They swam in slow silence, every gulp of air bouncing off the walls and water a million times.
Finally, they came to a small, circular chamber, with a stone table lit by glowstone. There was a waterfall at the far end. It was pretty clear that something was on the other side, but the table called to them.
They waded up to it and looked at each other as its contents became clear. The table had two piles of objects, one at each end. Weapons, books, articles of clothing. Vera found herself drawn to the one at the far right, and Gareth to the one on the left. Her pile was crowned by a weathered bow. His had a broken gauntlet at the foot of it.
"So, do you reckon this is the thing we're supposed to know when we see it?" he asked.
"Yeah, probably… Do you think they wanted just one item, or the whole pile?"
"Might be good to take the whole pile just to be safe," Gareth muttered. "Hope this isn't a secret armoury, a lot of this stuff looks completely ruined. Shame, that gauntlet probably would have been pretty cool back in its day."
He pulled out a bag from his jacket and began to pile items into it. Vera looked at her pile and couldn't take her eyes off the bow.
"I don't know, this bow still looks pretty good."
She touched a hand to it, hoping to test the string. It quivered reliably as ever.
"It's at times like that, I really wish I was any good with a bow," said Vera.
She slung it over her back and turned around and came face to face with a pale, almost transparent face.
"That can be arranged."
Vera screamed and jumped back, pulling out her flint and steel. Gareth leapt into action, pulling out his trident and grabbing a sword. It had a leather handle and a faded gold centrepiece.
"What is it?" he asked.
Vera scowled at Gareth and gestured to the figure who had now appeared. A pale young woman, only slightly older than herself, wearing her brown hair back in a ponytail, and dressing in a grey tank-top and jeans.
"I don't see it, is it a bat or something?" Gareth asked, clueless.
Vera scoffed.
"No, the intruder girl who just jumpscared me!"
Gareth continued to stare blankly, clearly weighing his words in the hopes of not getting hit.
"Yeah, he can't see me, yet," sighed the girl. "Could you please tell him to pick up that gauntlet."
Vera looked back to the table and saw it glinting in the light of the glowstone.
"You seriously can't see her?"
Another examination of the pale young woman revealed she was slightly see-through. Or was it just a trick of the light. She began to rummage around in her pocket.
"No, sorry Vera," said Gareth, now clearly weirded out. "You didn't hit your head in the fall, did you? I've got a health potion on me if you need it?"
"No," Vera said. "I don't think so."
She pulled out a stone and threw it at the pale woman. It passed right through. The pale clenched her fists and assumed a fighting stance.
"You are so lucky I'm dead," said the pale young woman. "Or I would be beating the ever-loving crap out of you right now."
"Okay," Vera said. "Apparently, I've summoned a ghost. Good to know those exist."
Gareth started stroking his chin.
"A ghost?"
"Yep."
"Nope," interjected the pale woman.
Gareth, not hearing her, continued: "Is that why we're here?"
"Huh?"
"To summon the ghost? Maybe it knows something."
The pale lady groaned.
"I'm not a ghost, I'm you." She pointed straight at Vera. "First, I was Anya, then I was me, now I guess me is you… Vera? Yeah, he definitely said Vera. Pleased to meet myself. Tell your buddy to grab the gauntlet."
Vera's mouth opened but no words came out. Gareth started speaking again but Vera shushed him.
"Sorry, did you say Anya?"
The pale woman clenched her teeth and started to tap her foot. She kept looking at the pile with the gauntlet.
"Yes, yes, the leader of the Liberators, I just-"
"Then, does that make you-"
"-Yes, Destiny, who helped stop Martin and later killed the Entity. I teamed up with Freak, got stuck in the Void and then the Entity possessed me before someone, presumably Shadow, shoved me back into this world. That's why I'm a little more transparent than Anya was, and probably where you got that weird lock of grey hair-"
Vera snarled and jutted her head forward in confrontation.
"I like the grey lock."
"Okay but-"
"Clarke says it makes me look wise."
"In that case I was just joking, but please kid just hear me out!"
Destiny was now pleading, crying out for help. Her eyes were desperate. Suddenly Vera saw herself in the stranger's face. Gareth continued to look back and forth between Vera and the empty air. Vera drew back and nodded.
"The fact that I'm back means there's a new evil to beat. And I'm sorry kid, but it's down to you to help stop it."
Destiny stepped forward and pressed her intangible hands against Vera's shoulders.
"I thought this was a curse at first, but to be perfectly honest, I was in a pretty bad spot emotionally at the time. It's not a curse, it's not a blessing, it's exactly what we make of it. And I know this is a lot of pressure, and that you're confused, and scared, and isolated, but I will help guide you through this. Any question you have, I will answer. Does that sound good?"
Destiny had tears in her eyes. Vera, feeling as though she had been struck by lightning, nodded.
"Then I just need you to do one thing for me. A thing I have been waiting twenty years for. Please, ask your pal to pick up that gauntlet."
Vera walked over to the table. Gareth followed. Their footsteps echoed endlessly. Vera picked up the gauntlet and held the cold piece of broken metal out to Gareth.
"Take it."
"Is it safe?"
They locked eyes.
"Trust me."
He placed a hand on the gauntlet and immediately his eyes widened as he saw the ghostly Destiny. However, the pale apparition wasn't looking at them. She had her head turned to the figure beside her.
A man in a blue trenchcoat and a leather chestplate appeared, much more tangible than Destiny. If she hadn't known he was a ghost, Vera would have mistaken him for a real person. His hair was dark and messy, with stubble speckling his chin. He looked tearfully at Destiny, a smile creeping across his face.
"Hello David," said Destiny.
She wiped her cheek. He reached out and touched her arm.
"Hello Destiny," said David.
She wrapped an arm around his neck. He leaned in. Their lips touched, and they collapsed into one another.
Vera realised she had taken Gareth's hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. She looked at the two lovestruck ghosts and marvelled at how this had come about. A magnetism across lives? An instinct across ages? A scene ever-imitated?
Whatever grand narrative had guided her there, she was happy to be part of it.
Like fantasy? Like Minecraft? Check out a blend of the two here! Fall and a Rise: A Vanillacraft Tale!