Hello everyone. I have been working on this story for... a long time. 
The story is contemplative, mysterious, and pretty slow-paced, so feel free to sit back, make yourself a cup of tea (or whatever other drink you prefer; I'm not trying to be beverageist) and read as much or as little as you feel comfortable in a single sitting. I hope you enjoy it!
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This story on Fanfiction.net (so people know that the poster is really me)
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Minecraft is owned by Mojang AB.
Herobrine is not real
The Book of Dreams is copyright of asanetargoss. All rights reserved.
Herobrine is not real
The Book of Dreams is copyright of asanetargoss. All rights reserved.
The Book of Dreams
It all began with a nightmare.
Hello.
It seems you have finally found me.
It's almost as if this was meant to be.
So, welcome. Welcome to my story.
What a kind blessing that we could meet.
I come into your hands, to fill the blank pages of your fate.
And you come to open my cover, to read the words on my pages.
Promise me this: continue to bring me wherever you go.
------------
I saw the book in a dream.
It was nightmare. I was surrounded by strange monsters.
Then I woke up. I felt the reed-bound book in my back pocket, right where I found it in that dream.
I swear, I have never seen this book in my life.
But when I read the book, that's what I saw: those very words.
The monsters stared at me, as if they were waiting for me to finish reading.
Then when I closed the book, the dream ended.
My back is sweaty, as if in a fever. My beautiful new shirt clings heavily to my body.
I reach down into my back pocket, grabbing the book and bringing it up to my shoulder, opening it up against the mattress, to the first page again.
It seems you have finally found me.
It's almost as if this was meant to be.
So, welcome. Welcome to my story.
What a kind blessing that we could meet.
I come into your hands, to fill the blank pages of your fate.
And you come to open my cover, to read the words on my pages.
Promise me this: continue to bring me wherever you go.
------------
I saw the book in a dream.
It was nightmare. I was surrounded by strange monsters.
Then I woke up. I felt the reed-bound book in my back pocket, right where I found it in that dream.
I swear, I have never seen this book in my life.
But when I read the book, that's what I saw: those very words.
The monsters stared at me, as if they were waiting for me to finish reading.
Then when I closed the book, the dream ended.
My back is sweaty, as if in a fever. My beautiful new shirt clings heavily to my body.
I reach down into my back pocket, grabbing the book and bringing it up to my shoulder, opening it up against the mattress, to the first page again.
Part 1: Crafting the Skeleton Armor
Chapter 1: A Strange Morning
Surely you can do better than just the shirt?
Some pants of the same make would fit your form very nicely.
And why not a cap and some shoes too?
I apologize if I sound vague and demanding. You see, I'm very excited to finally meet somebody.
I've been trapped in a listless void all this time. I felt so lonely there.
Of course, it's easy to become lonely when you're a book.
But thousands of years have passed since I woke up for the first time.
Nobody has read the words between my covers. Nobody has dreamed my stories. Nobody has been inspired by me.
I just drifted inertly, in an endless, forsaken, filthy void.
Then, finally, I found you. I used your being to drag myself out of the void. I inspired you to craft that shirt. I made you dream of frightening monsters. I proudly spread my pages open for you to read. It felt so great! I felt alive, I felt like I had a purpose for the first time in what seemed like forever.
If I were human, I would sound crazy to you. But please just trust me for just a little while. I want so badly to guide you, to make you strong, to show you things you've never dreamed of!
------------
This book is definitely possessed. Or is it alive? I'm not sure I want to know. Part of me feels bad for it, but another part of me feels very suspicious and unnerved.
After I close the book, the sun already gleams brightly from the skylight. The cobbled stone walls seem etched with deep shadows under its brilliance.
I lean out of bed and onto the creaky wooden floor. I walk out into the foyer and place the book gently on top of the furnace. Then, with iron blade ready in hand, I open the door, glancing quickly from horizon to horizon. No Creepers in sight.
It's strange; the monsters in my dream looked a lot like Creepers. But something tells me they weren't Creepers. I looked into their eyes, and they seemed too intelligent. And they didn't smell like mold and brimstone; they smelled more like apples and ashes. I still can't believe how vibrant that dream felt; I could almost swore it really happened, had I not have woken up so suddenly. Even the tiny details of my bedroom, like the cobwebs in the corner and the ink stand on the table, were right there.
I walk out into the road, and see my neighbor, leaning against a wooden beam in front of her house. Her name is Airlass. She’s lived in this town longer than I have. She always wears heavy iron armor over her trousers and various core-centered straps, to which she always affixes an axe, among various other steel tools.
“Is there something wrong?” Airlass asks. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!” She seems surprised as she looks carefully at me.
“Sort of... but not exactly.” I say.
“Was it Herobrine?” She suddenly seems eager, almost hopeful.
“No, it wasn’t like that. I had a weird nightmare. I was surrounded by creepers at my bedside. And then I found a book.”
Suddenly I realize a familiar pressure against my back pocket. I reach my hand into it, and pull out that same book. My chest feels cold as I bring it in front for Airlass to see.
“Oh, Fristad, you’re blushing!” She grabs the book out of my hand and opens it. “‘The Science and Practical Use of Redstone Circuitry.’ I never knew you were into that sort of thing.” She shuts the book. “You’re a weird one. Did I mention your new chest plate makes you look like a Skelly? What are all those bones stuck in there for anyway?”
“It’s for structural reinforcement!” I explain. It’s impossible to talk seriously with Airlass. Why do I even bother?
“Maybe you should try some iron armor some time? It’s much more durable than leather.”
“But it’s way too heavy.” I sigh. “Besides, iron armor makes you look like a turtle.”
“Wow, and here I was thinking you were politely giving me a present like a gentleman. I was obviously mistaken. Here, you can keep your nerdy redstone book.” She tosses the book at me, picks her axe up from her belt, and marches swiftly down the road towards the forest.
I wish I could have told her what the book really was. Airlass likes to joke a lot, but she’s also one of my closest friends. Maybe I’ll tell her when she gets back in the afternoon.
Chapter 2: Meeting Up With JonasSome pants of the same make would fit your form very nicely.
And why not a cap and some shoes too?
I apologize if I sound vague and demanding. You see, I'm very excited to finally meet somebody.
I've been trapped in a listless void all this time. I felt so lonely there.
Of course, it's easy to become lonely when you're a book.
But thousands of years have passed since I woke up for the first time.
Nobody has read the words between my covers. Nobody has dreamed my stories. Nobody has been inspired by me.
I just drifted inertly, in an endless, forsaken, filthy void.
Then, finally, I found you. I used your being to drag myself out of the void. I inspired you to craft that shirt. I made you dream of frightening monsters. I proudly spread my pages open for you to read. It felt so great! I felt alive, I felt like I had a purpose for the first time in what seemed like forever.
If I were human, I would sound crazy to you. But please just trust me for just a little while. I want so badly to guide you, to make you strong, to show you things you've never dreamed of!
------------
This book is definitely possessed. Or is it alive? I'm not sure I want to know. Part of me feels bad for it, but another part of me feels very suspicious and unnerved.
After I close the book, the sun already gleams brightly from the skylight. The cobbled stone walls seem etched with deep shadows under its brilliance.
I lean out of bed and onto the creaky wooden floor. I walk out into the foyer and place the book gently on top of the furnace. Then, with iron blade ready in hand, I open the door, glancing quickly from horizon to horizon. No Creepers in sight.
It's strange; the monsters in my dream looked a lot like Creepers. But something tells me they weren't Creepers. I looked into their eyes, and they seemed too intelligent. And they didn't smell like mold and brimstone; they smelled more like apples and ashes. I still can't believe how vibrant that dream felt; I could almost swore it really happened, had I not have woken up so suddenly. Even the tiny details of my bedroom, like the cobwebs in the corner and the ink stand on the table, were right there.
I walk out into the road, and see my neighbor, leaning against a wooden beam in front of her house. Her name is Airlass. She’s lived in this town longer than I have. She always wears heavy iron armor over her trousers and various core-centered straps, to which she always affixes an axe, among various other steel tools.
“Is there something wrong?” Airlass asks. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!” She seems surprised as she looks carefully at me.
“Sort of... but not exactly.” I say.
“Was it Herobrine?” She suddenly seems eager, almost hopeful.
“No, it wasn’t like that. I had a weird nightmare. I was surrounded by creepers at my bedside. And then I found a book.”
Suddenly I realize a familiar pressure against my back pocket. I reach my hand into it, and pull out that same book. My chest feels cold as I bring it in front for Airlass to see.
“Oh, Fristad, you’re blushing!” She grabs the book out of my hand and opens it. “‘The Science and Practical Use of Redstone Circuitry.’ I never knew you were into that sort of thing.” She shuts the book. “You’re a weird one. Did I mention your new chest plate makes you look like a Skelly? What are all those bones stuck in there for anyway?”
“It’s for structural reinforcement!” I explain. It’s impossible to talk seriously with Airlass. Why do I even bother?
“Maybe you should try some iron armor some time? It’s much more durable than leather.”
“But it’s way too heavy.” I sigh. “Besides, iron armor makes you look like a turtle.”
“Wow, and here I was thinking you were politely giving me a present like a gentleman. I was obviously mistaken. Here, you can keep your nerdy redstone book.” She tosses the book at me, picks her axe up from her belt, and marches swiftly down the road towards the forest.
I wish I could have told her what the book really was. Airlass likes to joke a lot, but she’s also one of my closest friends. Maybe I’ll tell her when she gets back in the afternoon.
So here I am, stuck with a possessed book that wants to follow me everywhere, that seems to be able to alter my dreams, and is able to communicate with me by changing the words on its pages. That’s just splendid. I really hope that it doesn’t have other freaky magical powers; I have enough to worry about caring for the livestock and watching out for bandits.
Apparently when Airlass opened the book, it was re-written to be a redstone manual. I wonder if it stayed that way; I’m not very keen on circuitry but it may be interesting to learn.
So I open up the book again to the first page.
------------
It seems like it’s too late in the day to collect more bones.
Maybe we can wake up early tomorrow to collect them. I’m sure it will be worthwhile, as the product is as strong as steel, yet as light as cloth.
Don’t hesitate to read me if you have any questions. Otherwise, I’ll see you tonight.
By the way, your neighbor’s quite rude.
------------
I don’t understand why the book is so insistent that I make a full set of bone-enforced leather armor. I mean, it was an interesting experiment, but I don’t want to go around wearing it if it looks stupid. Besides, it’s hot and it itches.
I decide to wear it for a day. Maybe it will offer better protection, and it just needs breaking in to sit right.
I head up the road past a few houses to the farm. Jonas, my herding partner, is busy unraveling a rope and pulling out shears. Most townsfolk tend to shun him for being an Ender Born, but he works well with the animals, and I’ve gotten accustomed to his odd colors and accent. He wears a long brown robe over most of his body to conceal his glowing runes. Most people don’t realize he’s too human to mind if people make eye contact with him.
Jonas tosses me a lasso and a saddle. I fumble with it with the book still in my hand, but I manage to grasp it.
“Finally awake, I see! Good morning to you.” He reorganizes the chest for a little while and closes it. “So, did you stay up late reading that book you have there?”
“You’re not that far off, actually.” I reply “I actually found this book in a nightmare I had last night, and it appeared in my pocket this morning. I’m quite sure it’s filled with some sort of dark magic, because it seems to be able to talk to me by rewriting the words on its pages.”
“Are you serious?” Jonas gestures with his hand to see the book. I hand it to him, and he opens it. “What a courteous greeting addressed to me!” Jonas’s brows raise high on his forehead for a moment. “By Jeb! The pages really do change! In Notch’s name! That is certainly one of the stranger things I’ve seen... it certainly beats that one time I saw lightning hit a pig!”
He gives the book back to me, and I put it into my back pocket again. Jonas and I head into the barn to saddle up the hogs. They greet us with pleased grunts from their bloated bellies.
We ride out into the corral with lassos in hand to lead the sheep out for shearing. This spring morning is especially warm and the sheep will be grateful to have their heavy coats removed.
After a light lunch of pork and melon, Jonas and I work in the corral for a few more hours, and I talked to him a little more about how I found the book, and how it kept asking me to craft the strange armor. We store the wool and produce we gathered before saying our goodbyes. Jonas gives me one last tip before I leave.
“Keep me informed if your strange book does anything else unusual. I’ll ask my cousin to look at it this Sunday.”
Jonas’s cousin is human, but he’s very fluent in the magical arts, like the grandmother both him and Jonas share. Jonas’s cousin specializes in knowledge about monsters and other sentient magical beings, so perhaps he would be able to understand my book and why it’s trying to communicate with me.
Chapter 3: The Second NightmareApparently when Airlass opened the book, it was re-written to be a redstone manual. I wonder if it stayed that way; I’m not very keen on circuitry but it may be interesting to learn.
So I open up the book again to the first page.
------------
It seems like it’s too late in the day to collect more bones.
Maybe we can wake up early tomorrow to collect them. I’m sure it will be worthwhile, as the product is as strong as steel, yet as light as cloth.
Don’t hesitate to read me if you have any questions. Otherwise, I’ll see you tonight.
By the way, your neighbor’s quite rude.
------------
I don’t understand why the book is so insistent that I make a full set of bone-enforced leather armor. I mean, it was an interesting experiment, but I don’t want to go around wearing it if it looks stupid. Besides, it’s hot and it itches.
I decide to wear it for a day. Maybe it will offer better protection, and it just needs breaking in to sit right.
I head up the road past a few houses to the farm. Jonas, my herding partner, is busy unraveling a rope and pulling out shears. Most townsfolk tend to shun him for being an Ender Born, but he works well with the animals, and I’ve gotten accustomed to his odd colors and accent. He wears a long brown robe over most of his body to conceal his glowing runes. Most people don’t realize he’s too human to mind if people make eye contact with him.
Jonas tosses me a lasso and a saddle. I fumble with it with the book still in my hand, but I manage to grasp it.
“Finally awake, I see! Good morning to you.” He reorganizes the chest for a little while and closes it. “So, did you stay up late reading that book you have there?”
“You’re not that far off, actually.” I reply “I actually found this book in a nightmare I had last night, and it appeared in my pocket this morning. I’m quite sure it’s filled with some sort of dark magic, because it seems to be able to talk to me by rewriting the words on its pages.”
“Are you serious?” Jonas gestures with his hand to see the book. I hand it to him, and he opens it. “What a courteous greeting addressed to me!” Jonas’s brows raise high on his forehead for a moment. “By Jeb! The pages really do change! In Notch’s name! That is certainly one of the stranger things I’ve seen... it certainly beats that one time I saw lightning hit a pig!”
He gives the book back to me, and I put it into my back pocket again. Jonas and I head into the barn to saddle up the hogs. They greet us with pleased grunts from their bloated bellies.
We ride out into the corral with lassos in hand to lead the sheep out for shearing. This spring morning is especially warm and the sheep will be grateful to have their heavy coats removed.
After a light lunch of pork and melon, Jonas and I work in the corral for a few more hours, and I talked to him a little more about how I found the book, and how it kept asking me to craft the strange armor. We store the wool and produce we gathered before saying our goodbyes. Jonas gives me one last tip before I leave.
“Keep me informed if your strange book does anything else unusual. I’ll ask my cousin to look at it this Sunday.”
Jonas’s cousin is human, but he’s very fluent in the magical arts, like the grandmother both him and Jonas share. Jonas’s cousin specializes in knowledge about monsters and other sentient magical beings, so perhaps he would be able to understand my book and why it’s trying to communicate with me.
I head home and into my foyer, and note that my furnace does not have a book on it. Suddenly I feel a strong urge to open the book. I bring it out from my pocket. Somehow I feel excited.
------------
We must ask Jonas’s cousin if he knows how to enchant armor.
Enchantment could make your new armor invaluable.
I’ll be sure to wake you up early so we can collect bones, maybe even hunt some Skeletons. We only have four days, so we must act fast.
I’ll see you in your dreams.
------------
I can’t help shake the feeling that this book is trying to manipulate me. I wish there was some way to get rid of it... but it seems to be able to follow me wherever I go, so disposing of it could be difficult.
Maybe I’m being insensitive. The book came to me as a friend, asking for my friendship, after thousands of years of isolation. It’s doing the best to be nice but doesn’t have much social experience, so it may just not know any better.
But this isn’t a person. It isn’t even a monster. It’s a book. Books aren’t supposed to have a mind of their own; their contents are interpreted by the reader. It’s simply unnatural for a book to be self-aware, let alone read my mind.
There’s no use arguing with myself over some book. It’s probably here to stay, so I might as well make good use of whatever may come out of it, whether it be some sort of friendship or just some stupid looking armor.
I walk up the stairs to my bedroom, nervously expecting another nightmare but helpless on how to avoid it. As I crawl into bed, I realize just how tired I really am. Sleep comes over me quickly.
------------
It’s a sunny afternoon. The grass is a long, Summery golden brown. Insects chirp loudly, and there is the distinctive smell of some wildfire burning in the distance. There is no civilization in sight, and the only thing moving is the wavering branches of trees and peacefully grazing cows.
The heat of the sun is oppressive, but no matter where I walk or how far there is no way to avoid it besides the occasional rest under a tree.
My hands are bare, my pockets and satchels empty, and my throat parched. I search hopelessly for a place to drink, so desperate that I look carefully for what could possibly be even a tiny puddle of mud. Hours pass.
The sun seems to become hotter and hotter. It begins to feel unbearable, then painful. Suddenly I see flames shoot up from my own body. I scream in agonizing pain, cursing the sun, running from its awful, malicious face. I sprint to underneath a large tree, begging for mercy from this newfound evil force. The flames on my body burn more slowly, but seem to die down. I still feel an oppressive parching heat, from this sun that threatens to hunt me as soon as it spots me, but for now at least I am alive. I must rest now, and wait for nightfall, when it is safe.
Chapter 4: The Skeleton Hunt------------
We must ask Jonas’s cousin if he knows how to enchant armor.
Enchantment could make your new armor invaluable.
I’ll be sure to wake you up early so we can collect bones, maybe even hunt some Skeletons. We only have four days, so we must act fast.
I’ll see you in your dreams.
------------
I can’t help shake the feeling that this book is trying to manipulate me. I wish there was some way to get rid of it... but it seems to be able to follow me wherever I go, so disposing of it could be difficult.
Maybe I’m being insensitive. The book came to me as a friend, asking for my friendship, after thousands of years of isolation. It’s doing the best to be nice but doesn’t have much social experience, so it may just not know any better.
But this isn’t a person. It isn’t even a monster. It’s a book. Books aren’t supposed to have a mind of their own; their contents are interpreted by the reader. It’s simply unnatural for a book to be self-aware, let alone read my mind.
There’s no use arguing with myself over some book. It’s probably here to stay, so I might as well make good use of whatever may come out of it, whether it be some sort of friendship or just some stupid looking armor.
I walk up the stairs to my bedroom, nervously expecting another nightmare but helpless on how to avoid it. As I crawl into bed, I realize just how tired I really am. Sleep comes over me quickly.
------------
It’s a sunny afternoon. The grass is a long, Summery golden brown. Insects chirp loudly, and there is the distinctive smell of some wildfire burning in the distance. There is no civilization in sight, and the only thing moving is the wavering branches of trees and peacefully grazing cows.
The heat of the sun is oppressive, but no matter where I walk or how far there is no way to avoid it besides the occasional rest under a tree.
My hands are bare, my pockets and satchels empty, and my throat parched. I search hopelessly for a place to drink, so desperate that I look carefully for what could possibly be even a tiny puddle of mud. Hours pass.
The sun seems to become hotter and hotter. It begins to feel unbearable, then painful. Suddenly I see flames shoot up from my own body. I scream in agonizing pain, cursing the sun, running from its awful, malicious face. I sprint to underneath a large tree, begging for mercy from this newfound evil force. The flames on my body burn more slowly, but seem to die down. I still feel an oppressive parching heat, from this sun that threatens to hunt me as soon as it spots me, but for now at least I am alive. I must rest now, and wait for nightfall, when it is safe.
Suddenly I feel the refreshingly cool morning air, leaking in from the cracks in the ceiling. It’s that special damp air that you feel when the dew of the night is still sitting on the leaves, and the sunlight has lit the sky, but not enough to heat it.
I realize why I am awake. The book wants me to hunt for bones, so I can finish my suit of armor. I suppose if it’s this insistent that I finish the armor, I might as well play along.
I get out of bed promptly. Judging from the air, I will probably have two hours before sunrise.
I sharpen my sword and stock up on food in my satchel. I think back on the last time I fought Skeletons. It was about two weeks ago. I rehearse a few sword moves and strafes that I remember suited me well in those fights. Then I carefully open the door and head down the road into the forest.
I look out carefully for formidable Creepers and Endermen, which I do not have much experience fighting and am not well equipped to deal with. Occasionally a Zombie or a Spider will run up to me, which I must quickly but carefully slay. I search for lone Skeletons and try to ambush them, strafing behind them to avoid their deadly arrows. At one moment I stumble over the rocky earth, and a Skeleton manages to shoot an arrow at my chest. I expect it to pierce the leather, but the arrow instead bounces off of the bone, which I forgot was there.
I am pleasantly surprised that the chest plate protects me so well from arrows. The leather also seems to have shrunk from yesterday’s sun, leaving a small gap of air for my chest to breathe. The book was right all along. This chest plate suits me well, and I plan to wear a full set of the armor for a long time to come. I will have to tell the townsfolk of my success with this new armor. It will be exciting news to them, considering that iron deposits in the mine are running thin.
Sunrise comes upon the forest. Burning Skeletons in the distance flee under the trees, some collapsing before they find cover. I warily sprint through the trees, picking up bones where I find them, and return to the village with a satchel bloated with bones.
It is seven-thirty in the village, and the night guards are taking their final morning rounds, well-armored and armed with sword and bow. One tan-faced guard named Dameric waves at me on my way back up to my house.
In the foyer, I pour the bones out onto the crafting bench and lay them out to count. There should be enough to complete the armor with some left over, if I use about the same amount I did for the shirt.
I open my chest and take out the leather, and set it out on the crafting bench to begin working.
The crafting bench is a finicky device. You’d think such a simple man-made object would be easy to explain. Ages of research have passed as people have tried to understand how it works, with little success. We don’t know much about it except that some crafting recipes work with it and some don’t. It’s easy to assemble any sort of object without the use of a crafting bench, but the crafting bench imbues recipes it favors with a special energy. No matter how much we try to create new technologies, or invent better tools, they always seem to shatter almost immediately, or simply not function, unless they have been created with the crafting bench. It’s strange that I stumbled across a recipe so easily.
But at this point I only know how to craft the shirt. How am I supposed to craft a full set armor I don’t know the recipe for?
I take the book out of my back pocket, hoping for answers.
------------
I may be able to read your mind, but I am by no means all-knowing.
I cannot simply tell you what the recipe is. I can only tell you where to look for it.
The ability to craft the armor lies inside of you.
You are a skilled crafter. Persevere, and you will prevail.
Chapter 5: Dark StuffI realize why I am awake. The book wants me to hunt for bones, so I can finish my suit of armor. I suppose if it’s this insistent that I finish the armor, I might as well play along.
I get out of bed promptly. Judging from the air, I will probably have two hours before sunrise.
I sharpen my sword and stock up on food in my satchel. I think back on the last time I fought Skeletons. It was about two weeks ago. I rehearse a few sword moves and strafes that I remember suited me well in those fights. Then I carefully open the door and head down the road into the forest.
I look out carefully for formidable Creepers and Endermen, which I do not have much experience fighting and am not well equipped to deal with. Occasionally a Zombie or a Spider will run up to me, which I must quickly but carefully slay. I search for lone Skeletons and try to ambush them, strafing behind them to avoid their deadly arrows. At one moment I stumble over the rocky earth, and a Skeleton manages to shoot an arrow at my chest. I expect it to pierce the leather, but the arrow instead bounces off of the bone, which I forgot was there.
I am pleasantly surprised that the chest plate protects me so well from arrows. The leather also seems to have shrunk from yesterday’s sun, leaving a small gap of air for my chest to breathe. The book was right all along. This chest plate suits me well, and I plan to wear a full set of the armor for a long time to come. I will have to tell the townsfolk of my success with this new armor. It will be exciting news to them, considering that iron deposits in the mine are running thin.
Sunrise comes upon the forest. Burning Skeletons in the distance flee under the trees, some collapsing before they find cover. I warily sprint through the trees, picking up bones where I find them, and return to the village with a satchel bloated with bones.
It is seven-thirty in the village, and the night guards are taking their final morning rounds, well-armored and armed with sword and bow. One tan-faced guard named Dameric waves at me on my way back up to my house.
In the foyer, I pour the bones out onto the crafting bench and lay them out to count. There should be enough to complete the armor with some left over, if I use about the same amount I did for the shirt.
I open my chest and take out the leather, and set it out on the crafting bench to begin working.
The crafting bench is a finicky device. You’d think such a simple man-made object would be easy to explain. Ages of research have passed as people have tried to understand how it works, with little success. We don’t know much about it except that some crafting recipes work with it and some don’t. It’s easy to assemble any sort of object without the use of a crafting bench, but the crafting bench imbues recipes it favors with a special energy. No matter how much we try to create new technologies, or invent better tools, they always seem to shatter almost immediately, or simply not function, unless they have been created with the crafting bench. It’s strange that I stumbled across a recipe so easily.
But at this point I only know how to craft the shirt. How am I supposed to craft a full set armor I don’t know the recipe for?
I take the book out of my back pocket, hoping for answers.
------------
I may be able to read your mind, but I am by no means all-knowing.
I cannot simply tell you what the recipe is. I can only tell you where to look for it.
The ability to craft the armor lies inside of you.
You are a skilled crafter. Persevere, and you will prevail.
I still don’t know whether I like this book or not. It’s just... strange.
I put the book back in my back pocket again. I lay my satchel down on the hood of the chest next to the crafting bench, and start trying to craft the helmet. I split the leather into layers, like I did with the chest plate, and try laying the bones between them, where the forehead and temples might be. I try moving around the bones underneath the layers, feeling carefully for the magnetic pull that the crafting bench exerts when it pulls the objects for a proper crafting recipe into place. Nothing happens. I continue trying to rearrange the bones, without success. My forehead begins to sweat, so I take off my leather cap, and continue working.
After adding in a few more bones, and adjusting and arranging the pieces a little more, I finally feel the pieces of bone and leather getting pulled out of my hands towards the center of the crafting bench. The leather shifts and coalesces, knitting seamlessly together with the bone. The mass of leather shifts and molds itself, until it takes the form of a well-fitted cap. I hold it in my hands and turn it around.
To my shock and disgust, the front of the helmet takes the form of a skull, complete with eye sockets and a jawbone for a strap. The crafting bench must have compressed and stretched the bone to create this monstrous design. It’s a spitting image, besides the leather color. Only the teeth are missing.
But even though the helmet looks strange, I still feel eager and apprehensive to try it on, just to see what it feels like. I stretch the skull cap open over my head, when I hear a knock on the door. I place the cap back on the crafting bench to open it. It’s Jonas. His purple eyes look into mine. He is genuinely concerned.
“I’ve been waiting for you at the corral all morning long, but you never came. Is there something wrong?”
Somehow, his presence annoys me. This business with crafting the skeleton armor is somewhat important, and yet he comes to interrupt me while I’m trying to test the cap I’ve just crafted. Anger wells up inside of my stomach. How dare he intrude! How dare he poke his disgusting half-blood face into my house, my sanctuary! I’m crafting armor that will change the world, and yet here he comes, to meddle with it, to taint it, to destroy it!
But how could I think that? I have always been so patient with Jonas. He’s my friend. What is wrong with me?
Why would I suddenly feel so eager to finish crafting the skeleton armor? It must be so! There’s no other explanation.
I try to contain myself, and explain things to Jonas as calmly as possible. “It’s the book. It keeps asking me to make that special armor.”
“The new armor? Is that all this is about? You could just craft it some other time. I could still use your help feeding the animals. It’s not easy doing it all by myself.”
Poor Jonas. He’s been caring for the animals by himself all this time? I should have known.
“I know it isn’t. For some reason I lost track of time. I think it may be because of the book. I think it might be able to control my thoughts.”
“That’s just... strange.” Jonas looks deflated and dazed for a moment, leans a little heavier against the doorframe, and then collects himself again. “Are you really sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“That’s dark stuff.” Jonas sighs. “Really dark. I will have to see if I can get someone else to look after the animals tomorrow. We need to visit my cousin as soon as possible to make sure that the book doesn’t make you do something dangerous. Promise me you’ll lie low today, okay?”
“I promise.”
Jonas closes the door, leaving me in the house alone. I stand still for a few minutes, realizing just how much time has actually passed. Then I remember I forgot to tell Jonas that I went Skeleton hunting this morning. It probably would make him more worried about me. He knows enough about what’s going on for now.
I remember the book, and decide to open it again, to try and see what it wants, and why it wants to control me.
Chapter 6: The Skull CapI put the book back in my back pocket again. I lay my satchel down on the hood of the chest next to the crafting bench, and start trying to craft the helmet. I split the leather into layers, like I did with the chest plate, and try laying the bones between them, where the forehead and temples might be. I try moving around the bones underneath the layers, feeling carefully for the magnetic pull that the crafting bench exerts when it pulls the objects for a proper crafting recipe into place. Nothing happens. I continue trying to rearrange the bones, without success. My forehead begins to sweat, so I take off my leather cap, and continue working.
After adding in a few more bones, and adjusting and arranging the pieces a little more, I finally feel the pieces of bone and leather getting pulled out of my hands towards the center of the crafting bench. The leather shifts and coalesces, knitting seamlessly together with the bone. The mass of leather shifts and molds itself, until it takes the form of a well-fitted cap. I hold it in my hands and turn it around.
To my shock and disgust, the front of the helmet takes the form of a skull, complete with eye sockets and a jawbone for a strap. The crafting bench must have compressed and stretched the bone to create this monstrous design. It’s a spitting image, besides the leather color. Only the teeth are missing.
But even though the helmet looks strange, I still feel eager and apprehensive to try it on, just to see what it feels like. I stretch the skull cap open over my head, when I hear a knock on the door. I place the cap back on the crafting bench to open it. It’s Jonas. His purple eyes look into mine. He is genuinely concerned.
“I’ve been waiting for you at the corral all morning long, but you never came. Is there something wrong?”
Somehow, his presence annoys me. This business with crafting the skeleton armor is somewhat important, and yet he comes to interrupt me while I’m trying to test the cap I’ve just crafted. Anger wells up inside of my stomach. How dare he intrude! How dare he poke his disgusting half-blood face into my house, my sanctuary! I’m crafting armor that will change the world, and yet here he comes, to meddle with it, to taint it, to destroy it!
But how could I think that? I have always been so patient with Jonas. He’s my friend. What is wrong with me?
Why would I suddenly feel so eager to finish crafting the skeleton armor? It must be so! There’s no other explanation.
I try to contain myself, and explain things to Jonas as calmly as possible. “It’s the book. It keeps asking me to make that special armor.”
“The new armor? Is that all this is about? You could just craft it some other time. I could still use your help feeding the animals. It’s not easy doing it all by myself.”
Poor Jonas. He’s been caring for the animals by himself all this time? I should have known.
“I know it isn’t. For some reason I lost track of time. I think it may be because of the book. I think it might be able to control my thoughts.”
“That’s just... strange.” Jonas looks deflated and dazed for a moment, leans a little heavier against the doorframe, and then collects himself again. “Are you really sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“That’s dark stuff.” Jonas sighs. “Really dark. I will have to see if I can get someone else to look after the animals tomorrow. We need to visit my cousin as soon as possible to make sure that the book doesn’t make you do something dangerous. Promise me you’ll lie low today, okay?”
“I promise.”
Jonas closes the door, leaving me in the house alone. I stand still for a few minutes, realizing just how much time has actually passed. Then I remember I forgot to tell Jonas that I went Skeleton hunting this morning. It probably would make him more worried about me. He knows enough about what’s going on for now.
I remember the book, and decide to open it again, to try and see what it wants, and why it wants to control me.
I never meant to make you do anything against your own will.
All this time I’ve been trying to communicate with you.
But you only seem to understand that it’s me when I write these words to you on my pages.
I’ve tried many times to show you what I think and what I feel, but you seem to think that it’s your own emotions and your own thoughts.
I’ve never tried to change the way you think, or prevent you from thinking certain thoughts.
I just want to be friends with you and show you things.
Please don’t be afraid of me.
------------
I don’t know whether to believe it.
Again I feel the eagerness and apprehension to put on the skull cap. Maybe that’s just the feelings the book has. It wants me to try the helmet on.
I suppose I’ve come this far. I might as well satisfy the book’s curiosity, if that’s really what it’s feeling. I suppose if the book wanted me to feel a certain way, or think certain things, then the book would probably be thinking and feeling the same.
I lift the cap up from the crafting bench, and stretch it over my head. The edges of the eye sockets of the helmet surround my own. The lower front tip of the cap covers my nose. My head feels hot from the thick leather, and slightly tingly from the residual crafting energy.
Then I fasten the jaw-shaped strap under my chin. The fit is snug.
I draw my sword out from its holster, and hold it flat to see my reflection. I almost look like an entirely different person. With both the cap and the chest plate combined together, I look all too much like a Skeleton. The helmet is just too much. I take it off.
I feel a sense of protest and disappointment, which must be from the book. I take the book out of my back pocket and open it up to the first page.
------------
Why did you have to take it off?
It will give you much better protection than just your leather cap.
It looked great on you, too.
You have to let go of your stigma for the undead.
They are highly misunderstood creatures.
Look: if you promise to finish the armor and get Jonas’s cousin to enchant it tomorrow, I promise I won’t give you nightmares tonight.
------------
Look, book: if I wear that armor, I’m going to look like a nightmare!
The words on the page fade, being replaced by new ones.
------------
Just trust me, please.
You’ve already trusted me all this time.
You continued wearing the chest plate, and you crafted the skull cap out of your own free will.
And you discovered the crafting recipe in the process. Doesn’t that make you feel proud?
Sure, the armor does have a shape that resembles a skeleton. But nobody in town was afraid of your new chest plate, were they?
If anything, you’re afraid of me.
Chapter 7: LunchAll this time I’ve been trying to communicate with you.
But you only seem to understand that it’s me when I write these words to you on my pages.
I’ve tried many times to show you what I think and what I feel, but you seem to think that it’s your own emotions and your own thoughts.
I’ve never tried to change the way you think, or prevent you from thinking certain thoughts.
I just want to be friends with you and show you things.
Please don’t be afraid of me.
------------
I don’t know whether to believe it.
Again I feel the eagerness and apprehension to put on the skull cap. Maybe that’s just the feelings the book has. It wants me to try the helmet on.
I suppose I’ve come this far. I might as well satisfy the book’s curiosity, if that’s really what it’s feeling. I suppose if the book wanted me to feel a certain way, or think certain things, then the book would probably be thinking and feeling the same.
I lift the cap up from the crafting bench, and stretch it over my head. The edges of the eye sockets of the helmet surround my own. The lower front tip of the cap covers my nose. My head feels hot from the thick leather, and slightly tingly from the residual crafting energy.
Then I fasten the jaw-shaped strap under my chin. The fit is snug.
I draw my sword out from its holster, and hold it flat to see my reflection. I almost look like an entirely different person. With both the cap and the chest plate combined together, I look all too much like a Skeleton. The helmet is just too much. I take it off.
I feel a sense of protest and disappointment, which must be from the book. I take the book out of my back pocket and open it up to the first page.
------------
Why did you have to take it off?
It will give you much better protection than just your leather cap.
It looked great on you, too.
You have to let go of your stigma for the undead.
They are highly misunderstood creatures.
Look: if you promise to finish the armor and get Jonas’s cousin to enchant it tomorrow, I promise I won’t give you nightmares tonight.
------------
Look, book: if I wear that armor, I’m going to look like a nightmare!
The words on the page fade, being replaced by new ones.
------------
Just trust me, please.
You’ve already trusted me all this time.
You continued wearing the chest plate, and you crafted the skull cap out of your own free will.
And you discovered the crafting recipe in the process. Doesn’t that make you feel proud?
Sure, the armor does have a shape that resembles a skeleton. But nobody in town was afraid of your new chest plate, were they?
If anything, you’re afraid of me.
I suppose the book does have a point. But there’s only a certain level of trust I’m willing to give this book.
If the armor really is as good as the book insists it is, then it’s worth crafting. Surely it won’t hurt anything to craft the leggings and boots.
Except maybe Jonas’s time. I feel bad letting him run the corral on his own for the rest of the day, but I want to make sure this book isn’t trying to control me.
I begin arranging some bones and leather on the crafting bench again, when I hear a knock on the door. I come up to it and open it.
It’s Ironbrawn, one of the night guards. I’ve never seen him not wearing his armor before, but he still looks like a giant. His shoulders are broad and every muscle in his body widens him by over a decimeter, much like the miners I see passing through town ever so often.
“Your Enderman friend wanted me to bring you lunch and ask you how you were doing.”
“I’m fine, thank you.” I take the cloth-covered basket he hands to me. “Tell Jonas, ‘Thanks for the food.’”
“Who’s Jonas?” Ironbrawn seems a little annoyed. He doesn’t like Jonas too much and tries to avoid him, like most people in town.
“He’s my Enderman friend you mentioned.”
“Alright then.” He sighs, and turns to leave. “Take care.”
“You too.” I close the door, and walk into the side room to eat the lunch Jonas gave me. He packed me some pork and melon, the usual lunch we eat in the afternoon, but also an Ender Pearl, for good luck. He always gives me an Ender Pearl when I’m at home and ill. I’m very lucky to have a friend like him.
Chapter 8: Second ThoughtsIf the armor really is as good as the book insists it is, then it’s worth crafting. Surely it won’t hurt anything to craft the leggings and boots.
Except maybe Jonas’s time. I feel bad letting him run the corral on his own for the rest of the day, but I want to make sure this book isn’t trying to control me.
I begin arranging some bones and leather on the crafting bench again, when I hear a knock on the door. I come up to it and open it.
It’s Ironbrawn, one of the night guards. I’ve never seen him not wearing his armor before, but he still looks like a giant. His shoulders are broad and every muscle in his body widens him by over a decimeter, much like the miners I see passing through town ever so often.
“Your Enderman friend wanted me to bring you lunch and ask you how you were doing.”
“I’m fine, thank you.” I take the cloth-covered basket he hands to me. “Tell Jonas, ‘Thanks for the food.’”
“Who’s Jonas?” Ironbrawn seems a little annoyed. He doesn’t like Jonas too much and tries to avoid him, like most people in town.
“He’s my Enderman friend you mentioned.”
“Alright then.” He sighs, and turns to leave. “Take care.”
“You too.” I close the door, and walk into the side room to eat the lunch Jonas gave me. He packed me some pork and melon, the usual lunch we eat in the afternoon, but also an Ender Pearl, for good luck. He always gives me an Ender Pearl when I’m at home and ill. I’m very lucky to have a friend like him.
After that satisfying meal, I return to the foyer to start crafting the leggings. I lay out the bones and leather together, trying to see if the pattern with the arrangement of bones between the layers continues.
Hours pass, as I try to arrange the bones in what feels like my intuition. I move my arm within the leather, when suddenly I feel the arrangement pull itself, and my arm with it, towards the center of the crafting bench. The seams form, putting pressure on my arm, pulling it in tighter. I struggle quickly to pull my arm out with great strength, and manage to tug it out, but rip the leather in the process. The rip is folded away as the bone-enforced leggings finish taking shape.
My arm feels numb for a moment as blood begins to pump through it again. That piece of armor put up a nasty fight! I will have to be more careful while crafting the boots. I guess crafting something new comes with its own danger: you never know when the crafting bench will start to pull on it.
Even so, I’m still frightened and amazed at what just happened. In all my years of crafting, I’ve successfully completed many crafting recipes I wasn’t familiar with, even the skull cap just a half an hour ago, but I’ve never had to quickly move my hand out of the way like that. The crafting bench acts slowly, circumventing human touch, not rapidly and impatiently like it just did. I wonder if the book might be responsible?
I need to stop being so paranoid. I’m obviously not quite myself today. All the strange events that have happened have taken a toll on me. They are all happening because of this strange presence, the book, but it’s not so much the book itself that is making me feel this way. I just don’t quite understand how to react to everything that has happened.
I feel a sense of relief and satisfaction, as if some sort of understanding has taken place. It’s definitely the book that feels that way, not me.
I lift up the leggings from the crafting bench, noting it’s structure. The bones within the fabric are aligned parallel to its length, forming a solid plate near the kneecap. Again, the shape of the bones bears an uncanny resemblance to a Skeleton.
Another thought crosses my mind, that I must have felt for a split second before, but didn’t quite develop: What’s the point of all this? I know I’m crafting some supposedly good armor, but is it really worth it to do what the book wants me to do? What are the book’s intentions? I don’t care if the book says the armor is as strong as steel. It looks like a Skeleton. Perfectly suitable armor doesn’t make you look like a monster when you wear it. The book doesn’t get to dictate what I wear. I’m done with this stupid game.
I un-strap the bone chest plate from my back. The book projects a clear sense of surprise, frustration, and anger. I ignore it. I put my old leather helmet and chest plate back on, and lift up the bone armor from the table. I walk to the closet under the stairwell, open it, and toss the armor into the darkness. I hesitate for a moment, and then reach into my back pocket, take the book out, and throw it into the darkness as well. I shut the door.
“Why are you afraid of me?”
It’s a voice inside my head. A female voice, deep and sad, pleading. I know it’s the book, but I don’t care anymore.
All I see is the wood of the door in front of me, and the wall under the stairwell. I feel a sense of relief, as if a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders. I look outside the windows of the foyer, and the town is already covered in the darkness of the night. I realize how exhausted I am, from hunting skeletons early in the morning to searching for crafting recipes all day. I should go to sleep. I head upstairs, into my bedroom, and collapse onto the bed.
Chapter 9: The VoidHours pass, as I try to arrange the bones in what feels like my intuition. I move my arm within the leather, when suddenly I feel the arrangement pull itself, and my arm with it, towards the center of the crafting bench. The seams form, putting pressure on my arm, pulling it in tighter. I struggle quickly to pull my arm out with great strength, and manage to tug it out, but rip the leather in the process. The rip is folded away as the bone-enforced leggings finish taking shape.
My arm feels numb for a moment as blood begins to pump through it again. That piece of armor put up a nasty fight! I will have to be more careful while crafting the boots. I guess crafting something new comes with its own danger: you never know when the crafting bench will start to pull on it.
Even so, I’m still frightened and amazed at what just happened. In all my years of crafting, I’ve successfully completed many crafting recipes I wasn’t familiar with, even the skull cap just a half an hour ago, but I’ve never had to quickly move my hand out of the way like that. The crafting bench acts slowly, circumventing human touch, not rapidly and impatiently like it just did. I wonder if the book might be responsible?
I need to stop being so paranoid. I’m obviously not quite myself today. All the strange events that have happened have taken a toll on me. They are all happening because of this strange presence, the book, but it’s not so much the book itself that is making me feel this way. I just don’t quite understand how to react to everything that has happened.
I feel a sense of relief and satisfaction, as if some sort of understanding has taken place. It’s definitely the book that feels that way, not me.
I lift up the leggings from the crafting bench, noting it’s structure. The bones within the fabric are aligned parallel to its length, forming a solid plate near the kneecap. Again, the shape of the bones bears an uncanny resemblance to a Skeleton.
Another thought crosses my mind, that I must have felt for a split second before, but didn’t quite develop: What’s the point of all this? I know I’m crafting some supposedly good armor, but is it really worth it to do what the book wants me to do? What are the book’s intentions? I don’t care if the book says the armor is as strong as steel. It looks like a Skeleton. Perfectly suitable armor doesn’t make you look like a monster when you wear it. The book doesn’t get to dictate what I wear. I’m done with this stupid game.
I un-strap the bone chest plate from my back. The book projects a clear sense of surprise, frustration, and anger. I ignore it. I put my old leather helmet and chest plate back on, and lift up the bone armor from the table. I walk to the closet under the stairwell, open it, and toss the armor into the darkness. I hesitate for a moment, and then reach into my back pocket, take the book out, and throw it into the darkness as well. I shut the door.
“Why are you afraid of me?”
It’s a voice inside my head. A female voice, deep and sad, pleading. I know it’s the book, but I don’t care anymore.
All I see is the wood of the door in front of me, and the wall under the stairwell. I feel a sense of relief, as if a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders. I look outside the windows of the foyer, and the town is already covered in the darkness of the night. I realize how exhausted I am, from hunting skeletons early in the morning to searching for crafting recipes all day. I should go to sleep. I head upstairs, into my bedroom, and collapse onto the bed.
I’m in a library for some reason. The wooden ceiling is six meters up, and bookshelves reach all the way to the top. The bindings of each book are covered in a thin layer of dust, and the air is thick with the smell of old paper and wood shavings. The light is dim, barely comfortable to see in but dark enough for monsters to spawn. Even so, the room is absolutely silent. All I can hear is my own breath and heartbeat.
I walk down the hallway of bookshelves, until I reach a larger hallway, with seemingly endless lines of bookshelves facing it in both directions. I look down the left side of bookshelves, following the floor with my eyes upward and forward until it seems to shrink and then vanish, without meeting up with any observable wall. I look to the right and see the same thing, endless bookshelves with no end in sight. I decide to walk further forward a little longer.
I reach another large hallway. I look to the left again, and see a larger gap in between two lines of bookshelves, with wooden tables and chairs for reading. I walk towards it, and see a reed-bound book covered in dust, laid open with its pages facing down. I brush the dust off with my hand, and lift it to read. An old flint pen falls out of its pages and rattles against the table. They became obsolete when ink was discovered.
I turn the book over and hold it open to the first page. The flint script is faint, and the letters are written with the Latin alphabet, which I barely remember from when I was young and still in school. I struggle as best I can to read them:
“The purpose of this journal is to try to record what I have seen and done throughout my many years of deep research. I will do my best to summarize my findings and experiences, as well as search and provide explanations for the strange phenomena that fill our strange world.
“The primary focus of my research has been on crafting, as it is for many others. I think the significant amount of attention dedicated to the science of crafting is well-deserved. It is a very complex field, which draws both on the physical properties of materials as well as the metaphysical properties of the crafter.
“That second part of crafting, the metaphysical, is often fatally underestimated by most researchers. I hope that this journal can help prove that what we perceive and what we think is just as important to crafting as....”
This book is somewhat dull. I don’t think I want to read any more of it.
I close the book and stand up from the table, and feel the body heat of someone leaning tightly against my back. I turn around and lock sight with two glowing purple eyes surrounded in Obsidian-colored blackness, with black runes surrounding them. A bony jaw lined with black knifed teeth drops down, unhatching unearthly groans and screams of agony.
I struggle against my fear to not look away from it, backing away slowly. Purple smoke begins to materialize between the Enderman and I. It thickens, and then shatters with the sound of dimensions being ripped apart and sewn back together again. Obsidian darkness takes its place, filling the room with Endermen, some so close they touch me as they wander past. Now many of them directly in my sight are screaming. I realize that the longer that I continue to stare, the more Endermen are going to stumble into my gaze and become driven into a frenzy.
I drop my eyes down the floor and turn around, running as quickly as I can, shoving countless Endermen aside, focusing only on the wooden floor and not stopping, hearing footsteps and enraged screams against my neck.
The wooden floor vanishes, leaving only the tainted blue of the void below. I feel myself stumble over air, falling and falling. The searing heat and silver smoke of the void envelopes me, igniting me with unimaginable invisible flames. I feel the void soaking into my mind, filling my consciousness with uncertainty and fear, chaos and destruction, and incinerating all my other perceptions with a pain more intense than any flame.
“Now do you see? Do you understand now the immense suffering I’ve been through and the pain I’ve felt, all these years? I try to forget my past. I try to share my knowledge with you, and you throw it away like trash! How selfish and gluttonous you are! Wake up, and face the truth!”
Chapter 10: Mind GamesI walk down the hallway of bookshelves, until I reach a larger hallway, with seemingly endless lines of bookshelves facing it in both directions. I look down the left side of bookshelves, following the floor with my eyes upward and forward until it seems to shrink and then vanish, without meeting up with any observable wall. I look to the right and see the same thing, endless bookshelves with no end in sight. I decide to walk further forward a little longer.
I reach another large hallway. I look to the left again, and see a larger gap in between two lines of bookshelves, with wooden tables and chairs for reading. I walk towards it, and see a reed-bound book covered in dust, laid open with its pages facing down. I brush the dust off with my hand, and lift it to read. An old flint pen falls out of its pages and rattles against the table. They became obsolete when ink was discovered.
I turn the book over and hold it open to the first page. The flint script is faint, and the letters are written with the Latin alphabet, which I barely remember from when I was young and still in school. I struggle as best I can to read them:
“The purpose of this journal is to try to record what I have seen and done throughout my many years of deep research. I will do my best to summarize my findings and experiences, as well as search and provide explanations for the strange phenomena that fill our strange world.
“The primary focus of my research has been on crafting, as it is for many others. I think the significant amount of attention dedicated to the science of crafting is well-deserved. It is a very complex field, which draws both on the physical properties of materials as well as the metaphysical properties of the crafter.
“That second part of crafting, the metaphysical, is often fatally underestimated by most researchers. I hope that this journal can help prove that what we perceive and what we think is just as important to crafting as....”
This book is somewhat dull. I don’t think I want to read any more of it.
I close the book and stand up from the table, and feel the body heat of someone leaning tightly against my back. I turn around and lock sight with two glowing purple eyes surrounded in Obsidian-colored blackness, with black runes surrounding them. A bony jaw lined with black knifed teeth drops down, unhatching unearthly groans and screams of agony.
I struggle against my fear to not look away from it, backing away slowly. Purple smoke begins to materialize between the Enderman and I. It thickens, and then shatters with the sound of dimensions being ripped apart and sewn back together again. Obsidian darkness takes its place, filling the room with Endermen, some so close they touch me as they wander past. Now many of them directly in my sight are screaming. I realize that the longer that I continue to stare, the more Endermen are going to stumble into my gaze and become driven into a frenzy.
I drop my eyes down the floor and turn around, running as quickly as I can, shoving countless Endermen aside, focusing only on the wooden floor and not stopping, hearing footsteps and enraged screams against my neck.
The wooden floor vanishes, leaving only the tainted blue of the void below. I feel myself stumble over air, falling and falling. The searing heat and silver smoke of the void envelopes me, igniting me with unimaginable invisible flames. I feel the void soaking into my mind, filling my consciousness with uncertainty and fear, chaos and destruction, and incinerating all my other perceptions with a pain more intense than any flame.
“Now do you see? Do you understand now the immense suffering I’ve been through and the pain I’ve felt, all these years? I try to forget my past. I try to share my knowledge with you, and you throw it away like trash! How selfish and gluttonous you are! Wake up, and face the truth!”
In a sort of lucid waking dream, I awake unconscious of my surroundings. The unburning heat of the void does not leave me; I feel hot and sweaty under thick fabric as if ailed by a sickly fever.
I struggle to stay awake, shaking as a sleep deprived body does in its second wind. I realize the struggle is also to keep my body on its two feet. Somehow I am standing, wearing armor, and my eyes are closed. I open them, and see in the dim light my hands resting on the crafting bench, holding a shifting mass of leather and bone, as it coalesces to form two boots.
How is this possible? Was I sleepwalking when I did this?
Somehow the fact that the skeleton armor is complete makes me wary of how these forces came to be, how I came to craft those strange things, one after the other. I’d rather I didn’t try to discover how it happened, but somehow it doesn’t feel right.
How could I have put on this armor in my sleep? Did my memories lapse somehow? Did the book somehow gain control of me through the nightmare?
The idea of the book’s influence sinks in more. Somehow a precious part of my consciousness has been violated, and couldn’t be rectified. The book is responsible for that violation. Part of me feels terrified, and another part enraged.
I thought I told you to leave me alone! I reach underneath the skeleton armor, for the back pocket underneath, and sure enough, there is the familiar square bulge. I reach within the pocket and grab the book out to open it, projecting my anger as I stare at the blank pages. Words materialize, both on the paper and within my mind.
“You did it! You should be so proud! Do you have any idea what this means?”
If you had any teeth, you’d be lying through them. Don’t play coy. Explain what you did to me, and tell it to me straight.
“I’m not sure what you mean. I was simply a guide. The effort and credit belong to you.”
You could start explaining what the nightmare you gave me has to do with me crafting these boots.
“I see no connection, and I’m not sure why you'd think I gave you a nightmare. I would never do that sort of thing!”
That’s wrong. You’re lying! You said it yourself that you gave me those nightmares. Then you made me craft this armor!
“I don’t understand why you’re taking your anger out on me. Besides, that armor is your accomplishment, not mine. I will take no credit. Perhaps there is some hidden grudge we need to discuss?”
I know what you’re trying to do to me and I won’t let you do it!
I have to get rid of the book somehow. Putting it in a closet isn’t enough. I have to destroy it. I wonder how hard it would be to rip apart the binding... but it can still hear my thoughts!
“I wouldn’t try that if I were you. I can make you feel whatever I feel, including pain. Perhaps you still remember the void, and what that felt like? That terrible, unbearable void....”
The book projects a deep fear and loathing. I remember how the pain felt, and for a small moment I feel sympathy for the book... but then I try to shut my mind off from the thought, knowing it is a trick meant to manipulate me.
“Don’t be so upset. You’ve crafted the boots and made the decision to put them on. And for that, the nightmare is over.”
But I never wanted to put them on. When did I make that decision? Never. The book is trying to tell me what to think. I won’t let it.
But I don’t have much of a choice. If I don’t put on the boots, I will be thrust into another nightmare. Surely putting on a set of armor before bed to fulfill the book’s false perception of control over me is better than the alternative.
I take the first boot, and stretch it underneath my right foot, sliding my leg into it. Then I take the second boot, and slide it over my left foot. Then I head groggily back to the bedroom, and slide clumsily into my bed.
But if I am coerced against choosing for myself, is that perception of control really false?
I struggle to stay awake, shaking as a sleep deprived body does in its second wind. I realize the struggle is also to keep my body on its two feet. Somehow I am standing, wearing armor, and my eyes are closed. I open them, and see in the dim light my hands resting on the crafting bench, holding a shifting mass of leather and bone, as it coalesces to form two boots.
How is this possible? Was I sleepwalking when I did this?
Somehow the fact that the skeleton armor is complete makes me wary of how these forces came to be, how I came to craft those strange things, one after the other. I’d rather I didn’t try to discover how it happened, but somehow it doesn’t feel right.
How could I have put on this armor in my sleep? Did my memories lapse somehow? Did the book somehow gain control of me through the nightmare?
The idea of the book’s influence sinks in more. Somehow a precious part of my consciousness has been violated, and couldn’t be rectified. The book is responsible for that violation. Part of me feels terrified, and another part enraged.
I thought I told you to leave me alone! I reach underneath the skeleton armor, for the back pocket underneath, and sure enough, there is the familiar square bulge. I reach within the pocket and grab the book out to open it, projecting my anger as I stare at the blank pages. Words materialize, both on the paper and within my mind.
“You did it! You should be so proud! Do you have any idea what this means?”
If you had any teeth, you’d be lying through them. Don’t play coy. Explain what you did to me, and tell it to me straight.
“I’m not sure what you mean. I was simply a guide. The effort and credit belong to you.”
You could start explaining what the nightmare you gave me has to do with me crafting these boots.
“I see no connection, and I’m not sure why you'd think I gave you a nightmare. I would never do that sort of thing!”
That’s wrong. You’re lying! You said it yourself that you gave me those nightmares. Then you made me craft this armor!
“I don’t understand why you’re taking your anger out on me. Besides, that armor is your accomplishment, not mine. I will take no credit. Perhaps there is some hidden grudge we need to discuss?”
I know what you’re trying to do to me and I won’t let you do it!
I have to get rid of the book somehow. Putting it in a closet isn’t enough. I have to destroy it. I wonder how hard it would be to rip apart the binding... but it can still hear my thoughts!
“I wouldn’t try that if I were you. I can make you feel whatever I feel, including pain. Perhaps you still remember the void, and what that felt like? That terrible, unbearable void....”
The book projects a deep fear and loathing. I remember how the pain felt, and for a small moment I feel sympathy for the book... but then I try to shut my mind off from the thought, knowing it is a trick meant to manipulate me.
“Don’t be so upset. You’ve crafted the boots and made the decision to put them on. And for that, the nightmare is over.”
But I never wanted to put them on. When did I make that decision? Never. The book is trying to tell me what to think. I won’t let it.
But I don’t have much of a choice. If I don’t put on the boots, I will be thrust into another nightmare. Surely putting on a set of armor before bed to fulfill the book’s false perception of control over me is better than the alternative.
I take the first boot, and stretch it underneath my right foot, sliding my leg into it. Then I take the second boot, and slide it over my left foot. Then I head groggily back to the bedroom, and slide clumsily into my bed.
But if I am coerced against choosing for myself, is that perception of control really false?
Part 2: Growing Influence
Chapter 11: Leaving the Darkness
I hear a nervous knocking on the door, and realize that I must have slept in. I force myself to breathe in, opening my eyes, only to stare at the burning brightness of the high noon sun. I squint to protect my now sore corneas, glancing downward opposite my now raised arm, as I hastily shuffle my way off my bed and onto the creaky wood floor. I feel apprehension and fear that the sun will burn me under its vindictive gaze. Then I realize with relief that I am wearing the armor; it will protect me from the sight of the sun.
Is this another nightmare?
I gather the courage to lift my eyes to a level angle. Around me are familiar surroundings: the cobblestone etched in shadow from the bright skylight, the sun-bleached pine desk with the feather quill and ink propped up, with the Farmcrafter’s Almanac resting closed beside it. To its right is a well-worn dust covered chest, and to its left the ever-present cobwebs which always seems to return no matter how many times they are swept away. Surely an environment which so closely resembles reality cannot be a nightmare, but at the same time a place that looked as accurately like my room as in reality existed within a nightmare. It is too soon to tell.
I remember with urgency that there is someone waiting at the door. Already fully dressed in armor, I do not bother searching for shoes. I grab my satchel from the floor, step with haste down the stairs into the foyer, and rush towards the door to open it. It is Jonas, breathing heavily. Underneath his cloak, he is wearing his iron chestplate where normally his farmer vest and burlap pants can barely be seen. He has a large leather bag strapped over his shoulder. His sword is strapped to his side.
“Fristad!” He exhales with relief. “Thank Notch you’re alright! I was waiting for you by the corral all this morning; I had the hogs saddled up and everything...” He pulls the bag’s strap over his head and lifts up the bag. “Do you need help packing?”
“Wait... where are we going? Why are we packing?”
“We’re going to see my cousin, remember? He’s just in the next town over.”
“Oh yea, right.” I take the bag from him. “So what do I need to pack?”
“Anything you want to bring that isn’t food and water.” Jonas explains. “The journey will take about a day and a half, so things like a change of clothes, an axe, and the like. You shouldn’t need to pack much in terms of necessities, but I thought I’d bring a bigger bag just in case you needed more room for the... um...” He stares a bit sheepishly at me, scanning from my skeleton boots up to my skull cap. “...your armor. I figured my cousin could take a look at that as well.”
I nod at him. “I agree. I’ll start gathering my things. You wait just a minute; I won’t be long.”
I turn around and head upstairs to grab the almanac and another set of clothes from the dusty chest, and put them both inside the leather bag. Then I quickly unstrap and pull off the skeleton armor, and place that in the bag as well. I step into the shoes at the top of the stairs, and head back down into the foyer where Jonas is waiting by the door. I open the chest near him and take out the leather chestplate, sword, and axe inside. I quickly slip the axe into the bag’s side pocket, strap the sword to my side, and pull on the leather chestplate. I nod at Jonas.
“Are you ready?” asks Jonas.
“Yea.”
“Let me get that bag for you. I’ll strap it onto your hog.”
“Okay.”
I hand the bag to Jonas. He takes it by the handle and carries it out to the hogs. I lean forward to step outside, but something feels terribly wrong. I feel hesitant. I lean my head away, backing slowly from the door.
I can’t help but feel deathly afraid of the light. Even the idea of putting my finger out into it, just to test it, just to see what it feels like, only evokes expectations of terrible anguish and burning pain. Just seeing its indirect glow shining off of the gravel makes my legs stiff; it makes me want to sprint down into the darkest confines of the earth, or at least into the closet, the only place within safe reach where there is true darkness, true safety....
I look out towards Jonas, whose face seems to take on a different, unnerving appearance. Somehow his face seems to belong not to a friend, but to a heartless monster. I feel his presence as if it were tangible; it causes anger and hatred to flow into the pit of my stomach. There he is, that thief, packing away my precious armor onto the backs of his malicious steeds, purposefully making me feel vulnerable, insecure. I can’t let him steal it from me! I have to take the armor back from this monster....
I shove this corrupted perception of Jonas out of my consciousness. Why do I even think these terrible things? I know what kind of person Jonas is.
“Hey um... Jonas?”
Jonas turns away from the hogs and my bag he just strapped to the one on the right. “What is it?”
“I’m sorry but... It’s just that... What I mean to say is...” I struggle to block the anger I feel from Jonas out of my mind, trying hard to maintain a considerate tone. “I can’t go on without the skeleton armor. I need it. It...” I struggle to find the right words to describe how much I need it... the total necessity the armor is for me... how awfully I need to have it back... while restraining insults and aggression aimed at Jonas that are a plague sickened by my need for it... “It... the armor makes me feel safe.”
“Alright then,” Jonas says. He turns around again and pulls my precious armor out of the leather bag, and brings it to me.
I grab it from him and run into the dark closet under the stairwell, closing the door. I quickly rip my old leather shirt off, so quickly that the sleeve tears, and I kick my old shoes off against the wall. Then I lift the skeleton armor up and place each piece on gingerly one by one, starting by sliding on the skull cap, then strapping on the chestpiece, then stepping into the leggings, and finally stepping carefully into the boots. Their protective touch reassures me. I feel a wave of relief wash over me. I remember what a good friend Jonas is. I feel like myself again.
I open the closet door and exit into the dim indoor light. As I walk through the foyer, and I walk into the light outside, I feel nothing. There is no uneasiness; it’s as if I never experienced the fear of light before. I close the front door behind me, and approach the hog on the right. Despite the leather saddle and heavy bags hanging over it, it seems content. The pupil in the eye of the hog turns toward me, observing me with calm and innocence. I bend my knees, and jump to reach my leg over to the other side of the saddle. It grunts politely from the thump as I land on the saddle. In front of me, Jonas has climbed up onto his hog as well. He turns his head over his shoulder, so that his purple eyes can see me.
“Are you ready to leave?” asks Jonas.
“Yes, I’m ready.”
And, with that, we lightly kick the sides of the hogs, guiding them down the town road, traveling downhill towards the forest, and into the depths of the shadow and trees, through a manmade gravel path that is narrow but well-traveled.
Chapter 12: ReflectionIs this another nightmare?
I gather the courage to lift my eyes to a level angle. Around me are familiar surroundings: the cobblestone etched in shadow from the bright skylight, the sun-bleached pine desk with the feather quill and ink propped up, with the Farmcrafter’s Almanac resting closed beside it. To its right is a well-worn dust covered chest, and to its left the ever-present cobwebs which always seems to return no matter how many times they are swept away. Surely an environment which so closely resembles reality cannot be a nightmare, but at the same time a place that looked as accurately like my room as in reality existed within a nightmare. It is too soon to tell.
I remember with urgency that there is someone waiting at the door. Already fully dressed in armor, I do not bother searching for shoes. I grab my satchel from the floor, step with haste down the stairs into the foyer, and rush towards the door to open it. It is Jonas, breathing heavily. Underneath his cloak, he is wearing his iron chestplate where normally his farmer vest and burlap pants can barely be seen. He has a large leather bag strapped over his shoulder. His sword is strapped to his side.
“Fristad!” He exhales with relief. “Thank Notch you’re alright! I was waiting for you by the corral all this morning; I had the hogs saddled up and everything...” He pulls the bag’s strap over his head and lifts up the bag. “Do you need help packing?”
“Wait... where are we going? Why are we packing?”
“We’re going to see my cousin, remember? He’s just in the next town over.”
“Oh yea, right.” I take the bag from him. “So what do I need to pack?”
“Anything you want to bring that isn’t food and water.” Jonas explains. “The journey will take about a day and a half, so things like a change of clothes, an axe, and the like. You shouldn’t need to pack much in terms of necessities, but I thought I’d bring a bigger bag just in case you needed more room for the... um...” He stares a bit sheepishly at me, scanning from my skeleton boots up to my skull cap. “...your armor. I figured my cousin could take a look at that as well.”
I nod at him. “I agree. I’ll start gathering my things. You wait just a minute; I won’t be long.”
I turn around and head upstairs to grab the almanac and another set of clothes from the dusty chest, and put them both inside the leather bag. Then I quickly unstrap and pull off the skeleton armor, and place that in the bag as well. I step into the shoes at the top of the stairs, and head back down into the foyer where Jonas is waiting by the door. I open the chest near him and take out the leather chestplate, sword, and axe inside. I quickly slip the axe into the bag’s side pocket, strap the sword to my side, and pull on the leather chestplate. I nod at Jonas.
“Are you ready?” asks Jonas.
“Yea.”
“Let me get that bag for you. I’ll strap it onto your hog.”
“Okay.”
I hand the bag to Jonas. He takes it by the handle and carries it out to the hogs. I lean forward to step outside, but something feels terribly wrong. I feel hesitant. I lean my head away, backing slowly from the door.
I can’t help but feel deathly afraid of the light. Even the idea of putting my finger out into it, just to test it, just to see what it feels like, only evokes expectations of terrible anguish and burning pain. Just seeing its indirect glow shining off of the gravel makes my legs stiff; it makes me want to sprint down into the darkest confines of the earth, or at least into the closet, the only place within safe reach where there is true darkness, true safety....
I look out towards Jonas, whose face seems to take on a different, unnerving appearance. Somehow his face seems to belong not to a friend, but to a heartless monster. I feel his presence as if it were tangible; it causes anger and hatred to flow into the pit of my stomach. There he is, that thief, packing away my precious armor onto the backs of his malicious steeds, purposefully making me feel vulnerable, insecure. I can’t let him steal it from me! I have to take the armor back from this monster....
I shove this corrupted perception of Jonas out of my consciousness. Why do I even think these terrible things? I know what kind of person Jonas is.
“Hey um... Jonas?”
Jonas turns away from the hogs and my bag he just strapped to the one on the right. “What is it?”
“I’m sorry but... It’s just that... What I mean to say is...” I struggle to block the anger I feel from Jonas out of my mind, trying hard to maintain a considerate tone. “I can’t go on without the skeleton armor. I need it. It...” I struggle to find the right words to describe how much I need it... the total necessity the armor is for me... how awfully I need to have it back... while restraining insults and aggression aimed at Jonas that are a plague sickened by my need for it... “It... the armor makes me feel safe.”
“Alright then,” Jonas says. He turns around again and pulls my precious armor out of the leather bag, and brings it to me.
I grab it from him and run into the dark closet under the stairwell, closing the door. I quickly rip my old leather shirt off, so quickly that the sleeve tears, and I kick my old shoes off against the wall. Then I lift the skeleton armor up and place each piece on gingerly one by one, starting by sliding on the skull cap, then strapping on the chestpiece, then stepping into the leggings, and finally stepping carefully into the boots. Their protective touch reassures me. I feel a wave of relief wash over me. I remember what a good friend Jonas is. I feel like myself again.
I open the closet door and exit into the dim indoor light. As I walk through the foyer, and I walk into the light outside, I feel nothing. There is no uneasiness; it’s as if I never experienced the fear of light before. I close the front door behind me, and approach the hog on the right. Despite the leather saddle and heavy bags hanging over it, it seems content. The pupil in the eye of the hog turns toward me, observing me with calm and innocence. I bend my knees, and jump to reach my leg over to the other side of the saddle. It grunts politely from the thump as I land on the saddle. In front of me, Jonas has climbed up onto his hog as well. He turns his head over his shoulder, so that his purple eyes can see me.
“Are you ready to leave?” asks Jonas.
“Yes, I’m ready.”
And, with that, we lightly kick the sides of the hogs, guiding them down the town road, traveling downhill towards the forest, and into the depths of the shadow and trees, through a manmade gravel path that is narrow but well-traveled.
It’s been about an hour since Jonas and I first departed on hogback from the village. We haven’t talked much, simply because there wasn’t much to say. Jonas saw what happened to me when I took the armor off. He did not speak, both to sympathize with my troubles and to restrain judgment.
Back when I didn’t know Jonas as well, I used to be frustrated by the fact that Jonas spoke so little when I felt like I needed his consolation the most. One time when I was sad, I asked him why he seemed to not want to talk to me. His response has always stayed with me:
“Sometimes rubbing a wound with words does not help it heal; it causes abrasion, which widens the wound.”
Jonas is a selfless and reflective man. He knows a lot about feelings, but he rarely talks about his own. Often I wonder what Jonas’ life was like before he moved to town, but even though we are close friends, I feel as if asking him is a violation of the trust between us. What I do know about him is what he has told me over the years about his family, and even then mostly simple things such as family relation and occupation, which most people will gladly share with strangers on the first day of acquaintance. On one of the few occasions I felt compelled enough to talk to him about it, I asked him who his mother was, and he didn’t even seem to understand the question. I was willing to be patient and earn his trust, and over the years some of his quietness and solemnity has rubbed off on me.
In stark contrast is Airlass, a funny girl with sarcasm loaded into her cheeks, and snide remarks for any occasion. She grew up in the same home town as I did, and we haven’t moved since. She always has had a love for the outdoors and a discipline with her axe that rivals a warrior’s training with a sword. She kills creepers, something I could never muster up the courage to do, with such speed and finesse, and then jokes about it afterward as if they weren’t a threat. She is always full of energy and loves to talk. She also tends to become emotional very easily. Sometimes I can’t tell if she seriously feels a certain way or if she’s faking her emotions for sport. Airlass is rarely serious, but she always knows how to cheer me up, and she isn’t hesitant to offer help to those who need it. It is very possible that Jonas asked Airlass to help look after the farm for us.
Airlass knows me well enough that she understands who Jonas truly is. Other good friends of mine, such as the librarian Dunjen, or the nurse Azura, are good people, but they see Jonas the way everyone else sees him: a monster with no sympathy for humanity... a case of nature where it is only a matter of time... while his corrupted mind struggles to grasp human concepts such as emotion, sympathy, trust, and loyalty... before his patience cracks, and he feels the inevitable urge to kill. This perception, as flawed and lacking of evidence it is, is held firmly by most of the people of the village. It has cost him his spot in the lines of market tents. It has inflicted him cuts and bruises from being pushed over simply from standing too close. It has marked him as the blame for when the monsters of the night are more aggressive than usual. It has left him alone as villagers forbid him from entering public buildings like the town hall and the schoolhouse. It is no small wonder why Jonas is so reserved about his past, when his present is marred by distrust.
The silence of the ride has made me reflective. I think back on what has happened between me and the book since I last talked to Jonas about it: the second nightmare, the skeleton hunt, the crafting, the hesitance to accept the armor, the third nightmare, and the coerced finishing and emotional attachment to the armor. What seemed like a relatively easygoing day physically, was a grueling and painful day mentally. Now that the two of us are alone, I feel it is a good time to tell Jonas the rest of the story.
“Hey, Jonas?” I call to him.
“What is it?” Jonas responds.
“I... I feel like I need to tell you what happened after the last afternoon I helped you with the corral.”
“I’m listening.”
I sigh, preparing to speak. “Well, when first I got back home from the corral, the book was insistent I complete the armor.
Jonas nods as he continues to ride on the hog just in front of me, at the same pace as mine. There is an occasional faint rustling in the trees.
“Then when I went to bed that night, I had another nightmare. It started off like a typical summer day. It was hot in some field with cows. There were some small trees, and the grass was golden brown.
“Then it got really weird. I actually started burning alive from the heat of the sun. I had to run under the trees to try and make it stop. It scared the bajeezus out of me.
“Then I woke up early that morning to hunt skeletons, so I could get enough bones to finish the rest of the armor.”
Jonas nodded again. “That makes sense. You needed materials to make the rest of the armor, so you took some leather from the corral, and you took some bones from the skellies.”
“Hold on... what? You mean I took leather from the corral?”
“Yea, you asked if you could have some leather, and I said yes.”
“I... never remember doing that. That’s very strange. I remember everything that happened at that day at the corral. I must have just forgotten... but somehow I feel as if... I never planned to do it. Somehow I just went along crafting with the leather as if I always had it.”
Jonas passively listens as we continue ride along in the seemingly endless forest. We all forget things, I suppose.
“Anyways, then I went back home to craft the helmet. After working for several hours, I finally finished it, and that’s when you came by. You seemed very worried.”
“Well, of course,” Jonas replies. “Your absence was a warning sign.”
“Right, I suppose so.” I continue to think back on what happened. “After you left, Ironbrawn came back with the lunch you made me. That was quite tasty.”
Jonas smiles briefly.
“Then I went back to crafting, I made the skeleton leggings. At that point, I decided I didn’t really want to go through with what the book wanted me to do. It was trying really hard to get me to do it. It kept telling me I was afraid. I thought I could get rid of it by throwing it in the closet, but... then I had another nightmare.
“It started off in an abandoned library. I walked around for a while, and I found this old reed-bound book. I think it was some sort of crafting research book, but it was boring so I didn’t really want to read it.
“When I put it down and turned around, I saw an Enderman leaning right up against me. I looked directly into its eyes, and it started to scream. I tried not to break eye contact as I broke away, but then all of a sudden there were Endermen everywhere. At that point I tried to run away, but the floor just... disappeared... and I fell into the void. Then the dream ended.”
“Wait! Hold on...” Jonas suddenly seemed alert. There was a degree of urgency in his voice. He pulled back on the reins of his hog, and turned it around to face me. I pulled back my reins as well, so we were facing each other while stationary. “Did you feel anything when you were in the void? What did it feel like?”
I never expected that kind of question, especially from Jonas. But he seems worried, so I should probably tell him. “Just the thought of it...” My mind struggles for a moment. “...is painful to remember. I remember an unbearable heat, hotter than any flame. I felt as if I lost all sense of certainty of what it meant to exist. The void felt like it was it was seeping into my consciousness and tearing it apart.”
“No one could possibly give such a detailed description of what it feels like to be that deep within the void...” Jonas pauses. His purple eyes seem focused into the distance. “...without having experiencing it firsthand. That’s what confuses me. Most humans couldn’t possibly survive in the void long enough to feel that. Most creatures would burn to death very quickly and then just respawn. The same goes for just about any inanimate object. Only an Ender-being could survive that deep in the void, but they wouldn’t feel any pain. Half-bloods don’t feel the pain either. That’s how I know.” His eyes focused back on me. “If your book really was in the void, it should have disintegrated almost immediately.”
The answer was profound; it surprised me. “I had no idea Endermen could survive in the void.”
“Yes,” Jonas nodded, “that’s how they teleport. Somehow the book understood the connection between Endermen and the void. I’m not exactly sure how, but I think it may help us understand how the book came to you in the first place. If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear more of what happened.”
“Alright, then.”
Truthfully, I don’t want to go on. I don’t want to bring up the painful memories again, but if it can help Jonas’ cousin understand the book better and help me get rid of it once and for all, then it’s worth the pain.
“When I finally gained consciousness again, it was as if I was already awake. It was late at night, and I suddenly realized I was standing in front of the crafting bench, and I had already crafted the skeleton boots, the final piece of the skeleton armor. It was as if the book had briefly taken over my consciousness. I think the book’s control over me seems to have grown since I started crafting the armor. Sometimes I worry that even what I’m thinking right now isn’t coming from my true self...” I consider telling Jonas about how I suddenly perceived him when the book took hold of me, but I’m afraid he may not trust me any more if I do. “Then the book convinced me to put the full suit of armor on and wear it to bed. I woke up hearing your knock on the door, and after I opened it, you saw how I acted. Somehow I couldn’t go outside without the armor. I felt deathly afraid that I’d burn to death in the sunlight.”
Jonas nodded again. “I see how it is. For some reason, the book wants you to keep wearing that armor. It’s how it exercises its control over you.”
“Exactly. But what I don’t quite understand is: why? I don’t quite understand why that armor is so valuable to it.”
“Perhaps the armor has some sort of magical properties we don’t quite understand yet.”
“Yea, that makes sense.”
Then I remember back when the book wanted me to ask Jonas’ cousin enchant the armor. I consider telling Jonas this, but I decide not to. If I did, Jonas would never let me do it. I feel curious to know what would happen to the armor if it was enchanted... and I was wearing it.
It looks like it’s going to be a long, long ride.
Chapter 13: Out of TownBack when I didn’t know Jonas as well, I used to be frustrated by the fact that Jonas spoke so little when I felt like I needed his consolation the most. One time when I was sad, I asked him why he seemed to not want to talk to me. His response has always stayed with me:
“Sometimes rubbing a wound with words does not help it heal; it causes abrasion, which widens the wound.”
Jonas is a selfless and reflective man. He knows a lot about feelings, but he rarely talks about his own. Often I wonder what Jonas’ life was like before he moved to town, but even though we are close friends, I feel as if asking him is a violation of the trust between us. What I do know about him is what he has told me over the years about his family, and even then mostly simple things such as family relation and occupation, which most people will gladly share with strangers on the first day of acquaintance. On one of the few occasions I felt compelled enough to talk to him about it, I asked him who his mother was, and he didn’t even seem to understand the question. I was willing to be patient and earn his trust, and over the years some of his quietness and solemnity has rubbed off on me.
In stark contrast is Airlass, a funny girl with sarcasm loaded into her cheeks, and snide remarks for any occasion. She grew up in the same home town as I did, and we haven’t moved since. She always has had a love for the outdoors and a discipline with her axe that rivals a warrior’s training with a sword. She kills creepers, something I could never muster up the courage to do, with such speed and finesse, and then jokes about it afterward as if they weren’t a threat. She is always full of energy and loves to talk. She also tends to become emotional very easily. Sometimes I can’t tell if she seriously feels a certain way or if she’s faking her emotions for sport. Airlass is rarely serious, but she always knows how to cheer me up, and she isn’t hesitant to offer help to those who need it. It is very possible that Jonas asked Airlass to help look after the farm for us.
Airlass knows me well enough that she understands who Jonas truly is. Other good friends of mine, such as the librarian Dunjen, or the nurse Azura, are good people, but they see Jonas the way everyone else sees him: a monster with no sympathy for humanity... a case of nature where it is only a matter of time... while his corrupted mind struggles to grasp human concepts such as emotion, sympathy, trust, and loyalty... before his patience cracks, and he feels the inevitable urge to kill. This perception, as flawed and lacking of evidence it is, is held firmly by most of the people of the village. It has cost him his spot in the lines of market tents. It has inflicted him cuts and bruises from being pushed over simply from standing too close. It has marked him as the blame for when the monsters of the night are more aggressive than usual. It has left him alone as villagers forbid him from entering public buildings like the town hall and the schoolhouse. It is no small wonder why Jonas is so reserved about his past, when his present is marred by distrust.
The silence of the ride has made me reflective. I think back on what has happened between me and the book since I last talked to Jonas about it: the second nightmare, the skeleton hunt, the crafting, the hesitance to accept the armor, the third nightmare, and the coerced finishing and emotional attachment to the armor. What seemed like a relatively easygoing day physically, was a grueling and painful day mentally. Now that the two of us are alone, I feel it is a good time to tell Jonas the rest of the story.
“Hey, Jonas?” I call to him.
“What is it?” Jonas responds.
“I... I feel like I need to tell you what happened after the last afternoon I helped you with the corral.”
“I’m listening.”
I sigh, preparing to speak. “Well, when first I got back home from the corral, the book was insistent I complete the armor.
Jonas nods as he continues to ride on the hog just in front of me, at the same pace as mine. There is an occasional faint rustling in the trees.
“Then when I went to bed that night, I had another nightmare. It started off like a typical summer day. It was hot in some field with cows. There were some small trees, and the grass was golden brown.
“Then it got really weird. I actually started burning alive from the heat of the sun. I had to run under the trees to try and make it stop. It scared the bajeezus out of me.
“Then I woke up early that morning to hunt skeletons, so I could get enough bones to finish the rest of the armor.”
Jonas nodded again. “That makes sense. You needed materials to make the rest of the armor, so you took some leather from the corral, and you took some bones from the skellies.”
“Hold on... what? You mean I took leather from the corral?”
“Yea, you asked if you could have some leather, and I said yes.”
“I... never remember doing that. That’s very strange. I remember everything that happened at that day at the corral. I must have just forgotten... but somehow I feel as if... I never planned to do it. Somehow I just went along crafting with the leather as if I always had it.”
Jonas passively listens as we continue ride along in the seemingly endless forest. We all forget things, I suppose.
“Anyways, then I went back home to craft the helmet. After working for several hours, I finally finished it, and that’s when you came by. You seemed very worried.”
“Well, of course,” Jonas replies. “Your absence was a warning sign.”
“Right, I suppose so.” I continue to think back on what happened. “After you left, Ironbrawn came back with the lunch you made me. That was quite tasty.”
Jonas smiles briefly.
“Then I went back to crafting, I made the skeleton leggings. At that point, I decided I didn’t really want to go through with what the book wanted me to do. It was trying really hard to get me to do it. It kept telling me I was afraid. I thought I could get rid of it by throwing it in the closet, but... then I had another nightmare.
“It started off in an abandoned library. I walked around for a while, and I found this old reed-bound book. I think it was some sort of crafting research book, but it was boring so I didn’t really want to read it.
“When I put it down and turned around, I saw an Enderman leaning right up against me. I looked directly into its eyes, and it started to scream. I tried not to break eye contact as I broke away, but then all of a sudden there were Endermen everywhere. At that point I tried to run away, but the floor just... disappeared... and I fell into the void. Then the dream ended.”
“Wait! Hold on...” Jonas suddenly seemed alert. There was a degree of urgency in his voice. He pulled back on the reins of his hog, and turned it around to face me. I pulled back my reins as well, so we were facing each other while stationary. “Did you feel anything when you were in the void? What did it feel like?”
I never expected that kind of question, especially from Jonas. But he seems worried, so I should probably tell him. “Just the thought of it...” My mind struggles for a moment. “...is painful to remember. I remember an unbearable heat, hotter than any flame. I felt as if I lost all sense of certainty of what it meant to exist. The void felt like it was it was seeping into my consciousness and tearing it apart.”
“No one could possibly give such a detailed description of what it feels like to be that deep within the void...” Jonas pauses. His purple eyes seem focused into the distance. “...without having experiencing it firsthand. That’s what confuses me. Most humans couldn’t possibly survive in the void long enough to feel that. Most creatures would burn to death very quickly and then just respawn. The same goes for just about any inanimate object. Only an Ender-being could survive that deep in the void, but they wouldn’t feel any pain. Half-bloods don’t feel the pain either. That’s how I know.” His eyes focused back on me. “If your book really was in the void, it should have disintegrated almost immediately.”
The answer was profound; it surprised me. “I had no idea Endermen could survive in the void.”
“Yes,” Jonas nodded, “that’s how they teleport. Somehow the book understood the connection between Endermen and the void. I’m not exactly sure how, but I think it may help us understand how the book came to you in the first place. If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear more of what happened.”
“Alright, then.”
Truthfully, I don’t want to go on. I don’t want to bring up the painful memories again, but if it can help Jonas’ cousin understand the book better and help me get rid of it once and for all, then it’s worth the pain.
“When I finally gained consciousness again, it was as if I was already awake. It was late at night, and I suddenly realized I was standing in front of the crafting bench, and I had already crafted the skeleton boots, the final piece of the skeleton armor. It was as if the book had briefly taken over my consciousness. I think the book’s control over me seems to have grown since I started crafting the armor. Sometimes I worry that even what I’m thinking right now isn’t coming from my true self...” I consider telling Jonas about how I suddenly perceived him when the book took hold of me, but I’m afraid he may not trust me any more if I do. “Then the book convinced me to put the full suit of armor on and wear it to bed. I woke up hearing your knock on the door, and after I opened it, you saw how I acted. Somehow I couldn’t go outside without the armor. I felt deathly afraid that I’d burn to death in the sunlight.”
Jonas nodded again. “I see how it is. For some reason, the book wants you to keep wearing that armor. It’s how it exercises its control over you.”
“Exactly. But what I don’t quite understand is: why? I don’t quite understand why that armor is so valuable to it.”
“Perhaps the armor has some sort of magical properties we don’t quite understand yet.”
“Yea, that makes sense.”
Then I remember back when the book wanted me to ask Jonas’ cousin enchant the armor. I consider telling Jonas this, but I decide not to. If I did, Jonas would never let me do it. I feel curious to know what would happen to the armor if it was enchanted... and I was wearing it.
It looks like it’s going to be a long, long ride.
The forest is no longer as thick as it used to be. The trees are somewhat shorter, allowing sunlight to shine through in large patches. The hogs rest blissfully in the grassy dust next to us, drowsy under the afternoon sun.
Jonas and I stand up, brushing the dirt off our pants. We just had our customary meal of pork and melon, and it’s time once again to mount our hogs for a long ride.
I nudge my hog on its belly with my foot, and with a displeased snort the hog slowly lifts itself up from the ground. Once it has fully stood up, I climb onto its back and reach for its reins. Then Jonas and I steer our hogs towards the road, and continue on our journey.
After about an hour of riding, I notice a cobbled stone road on my left. It is the third side road I’ve seen since we started. It is a short road, leading to a rotting wooden gate. To the right of the gate is a sign reading, “Mighty Oaks City Gate. No Trespassing.” On the other side is a shanty guard wearing torn leather armor and wielding a golden sword. He holds his sword at an ineffective angle, and nervously shifts his weight from one leg to the other as he avoids our gaze.
That guard wouldn’t stand a chance against us. We could easily pillage the whole town, but that would be cruel. They are an unfortunate town, making do with what little resources and experience they have to protect and sustain themselves. It is likely that they have been pillaged many times, which in turn makes it more difficult to protect themselves from being pillaged again. Perhaps if their city wasn’t nearly as close to the roads, them would fare slightly better.
As we continue to ride, and afternoon turns to dusk, Jonas and I approach a break in the forest, where the paved road ends. The terrain becomes steep and rocky, and riding the hogs becomes significantly slower as we carefully navigate the crisscrossing paths between gradually larger boulders. Eventually the terrain becomes so steep that it is no longer practical to ride, so we climb down our hogs and guide them by the reins as we slowly hike.
It is dusk now, and the blue of the sky is rapidly fading to a starry black, as the blush of the sunset fades from the west. We have reached the mouth of a cliffside cave, and the inside is lit with torches. As we enter, their eternal glow envelopes us in a relieving warmth which slowly leeches the cold from our skin. There are a series of paired stone brick pillars leading on the walls of a tunnel into its depth, and at the far end are two large iron-framed doors with a stone engraving above it. On the engraving, it reads...
“Welcome to the Adamant Mountain Inn. We hope you GO JUMP OFF A CLIFF!!!”
The second part is graffiti, written over the original second half of the engraving in black.
I want to ask Jonas what he thinks of this. “Hey Jonas, do you know why there’s graffiti there?”
Jonas glances at it for a moment, not caring too much about what is written. “This place has long been abandoned. Most of what’s left of it has since been stolen or vandalized, including the beds. It’s not a very comfortable place to sleep, but it is one of the few refuges that will protect us from the monsters of the night.”
“I see.” I ponder the desolation of this place, wondering who has been here since then, and why someone would write such a hostile greeting on the wall. “Is it still safe, though? I mean... are the other people who come here, and are they dangerous?”
Jonas shook his head. “I’ve never seen anyone here.” He pulled the reins of his hog forward into the tunnel of columns. “Come on, let’s get inside.”
It’s not a very satisfying answer, but I figure it’s nearly as mysterious to him as it is to me. I tug on the reins of my hog, so that we walk with Jonas and his hog down the corridor, up to the great metal-framed pine doors, which tower over us at perhaps three times our height.
Jonas does not seem discouraged by the size of the door. He hands the reins of his hog to me, and leans the door on the left with both of his arms. Slowly, the door gives way, moaning and crackling in a deep tone, as if its structure carries the wisdom of histories past. The musty smell of old wood, met with warm air, blows out toward us. The smell reminds me all too much of the abandoned library I saw in my dream.
We walk into a large room, our boots echoing on the stone. High on the ceiling is a wooden chandelier, and on the floor is a crisscrossing pattern of stone bricks, with a strange yellow glowing rock at each vertex. It may be the Glowstone which I have heard rumors of, but I have never seen it before so I wouldn’t know for certain. There is no furniture to speak of. Off of each wall, there is a great hallway with an arched ceiling, each with many doors on either side of their walls, and every so often unintelligible writing made with various colors of paint. Down the center hallway, there appears to be another great room, with the same crisscrossing floor pattern as here.
Jonas hands his hog’s reins to me again, and goes behind me to close the door. Its groans propagate loudly about the room, until finally ending in a deep, reverberating thud. The sounds of the wind and chirping insects, once hardly noticeable before, are suddenly gone, giving way to a profound silence.
Jonas takes the reins from me again.
“Follow me this way.”
He leads us forward through the center hallway, our footsteps and breathing seemingly saturating it with noise. Then the light of the second great room surrounds us, again showing three hallways, one on either side and one in front.
Jonas turns to walk towards the hallway on the left, and we follow him into it. I notice what sounds like the echo of distant running water to my right. It gradually grows louder until, at the second door from the end of the hallway, Jonas turns to the right and opens the door. He points at it with his hand turned over, indicating that I should look inside.
I walk a little closer, and turning to the right I see a gaping hole spanning half of the wall and a quarter of the floor, with a torrent of water gushing through it diagonally like a waterfall from an earth tilted on its side. It’s hard to imagine where such water would have come from, being so deep within the mountain.
“That’s the loo.” Jonas says casually.
Chapter 14: Only the PresentJonas and I stand up, brushing the dirt off our pants. We just had our customary meal of pork and melon, and it’s time once again to mount our hogs for a long ride.
I nudge my hog on its belly with my foot, and with a displeased snort the hog slowly lifts itself up from the ground. Once it has fully stood up, I climb onto its back and reach for its reins. Then Jonas and I steer our hogs towards the road, and continue on our journey.
After about an hour of riding, I notice a cobbled stone road on my left. It is the third side road I’ve seen since we started. It is a short road, leading to a rotting wooden gate. To the right of the gate is a sign reading, “Mighty Oaks City Gate. No Trespassing.” On the other side is a shanty guard wearing torn leather armor and wielding a golden sword. He holds his sword at an ineffective angle, and nervously shifts his weight from one leg to the other as he avoids our gaze.
That guard wouldn’t stand a chance against us. We could easily pillage the whole town, but that would be cruel. They are an unfortunate town, making do with what little resources and experience they have to protect and sustain themselves. It is likely that they have been pillaged many times, which in turn makes it more difficult to protect themselves from being pillaged again. Perhaps if their city wasn’t nearly as close to the roads, them would fare slightly better.
As we continue to ride, and afternoon turns to dusk, Jonas and I approach a break in the forest, where the paved road ends. The terrain becomes steep and rocky, and riding the hogs becomes significantly slower as we carefully navigate the crisscrossing paths between gradually larger boulders. Eventually the terrain becomes so steep that it is no longer practical to ride, so we climb down our hogs and guide them by the reins as we slowly hike.
It is dusk now, and the blue of the sky is rapidly fading to a starry black, as the blush of the sunset fades from the west. We have reached the mouth of a cliffside cave, and the inside is lit with torches. As we enter, their eternal glow envelopes us in a relieving warmth which slowly leeches the cold from our skin. There are a series of paired stone brick pillars leading on the walls of a tunnel into its depth, and at the far end are two large iron-framed doors with a stone engraving above it. On the engraving, it reads...
“Welcome to the Adamant Mountain Inn. We hope you GO JUMP OFF A CLIFF!!!”
The second part is graffiti, written over the original second half of the engraving in black.
I want to ask Jonas what he thinks of this. “Hey Jonas, do you know why there’s graffiti there?”
Jonas glances at it for a moment, not caring too much about what is written. “This place has long been abandoned. Most of what’s left of it has since been stolen or vandalized, including the beds. It’s not a very comfortable place to sleep, but it is one of the few refuges that will protect us from the monsters of the night.”
“I see.” I ponder the desolation of this place, wondering who has been here since then, and why someone would write such a hostile greeting on the wall. “Is it still safe, though? I mean... are the other people who come here, and are they dangerous?”
Jonas shook his head. “I’ve never seen anyone here.” He pulled the reins of his hog forward into the tunnel of columns. “Come on, let’s get inside.”
It’s not a very satisfying answer, but I figure it’s nearly as mysterious to him as it is to me. I tug on the reins of my hog, so that we walk with Jonas and his hog down the corridor, up to the great metal-framed pine doors, which tower over us at perhaps three times our height.
Jonas does not seem discouraged by the size of the door. He hands the reins of his hog to me, and leans the door on the left with both of his arms. Slowly, the door gives way, moaning and crackling in a deep tone, as if its structure carries the wisdom of histories past. The musty smell of old wood, met with warm air, blows out toward us. The smell reminds me all too much of the abandoned library I saw in my dream.
We walk into a large room, our boots echoing on the stone. High on the ceiling is a wooden chandelier, and on the floor is a crisscrossing pattern of stone bricks, with a strange yellow glowing rock at each vertex. It may be the Glowstone which I have heard rumors of, but I have never seen it before so I wouldn’t know for certain. There is no furniture to speak of. Off of each wall, there is a great hallway with an arched ceiling, each with many doors on either side of their walls, and every so often unintelligible writing made with various colors of paint. Down the center hallway, there appears to be another great room, with the same crisscrossing floor pattern as here.
Jonas hands his hog’s reins to me again, and goes behind me to close the door. Its groans propagate loudly about the room, until finally ending in a deep, reverberating thud. The sounds of the wind and chirping insects, once hardly noticeable before, are suddenly gone, giving way to a profound silence.
Jonas takes the reins from me again.
“Follow me this way.”
He leads us forward through the center hallway, our footsteps and breathing seemingly saturating it with noise. Then the light of the second great room surrounds us, again showing three hallways, one on either side and one in front.
Jonas turns to walk towards the hallway on the left, and we follow him into it. I notice what sounds like the echo of distant running water to my right. It gradually grows louder until, at the second door from the end of the hallway, Jonas turns to the right and opens the door. He points at it with his hand turned over, indicating that I should look inside.
I walk a little closer, and turning to the right I see a gaping hole spanning half of the wall and a quarter of the floor, with a torrent of water gushing through it diagonally like a waterfall from an earth tilted on its side. It’s hard to imagine where such water would have come from, being so deep within the mountain.
“That’s the loo.” Jonas says casually.
For about an hour, we prepare for the night. Jonas helps me tie the reins of the hogs to the hinges of some doors near in the middle of the hall, and together we unload them so that they can sleep unburdened. After preparing for bed, we settle down with sleeping bags in the bedroom closest to the second large room.
After a long day of traveling, I feel tired, but it still feels too early to sleep. I turn my head to the right to face Jonas, with a curious thought.
“Jonas, I just realized something strange. Even though, like you say, this place is vandalized and all the furniture is gone, all the torches are still here.”
Jonas meets my gaze. “I suppose then, that even though this shelter has been abandoned by its caretakers, it still retains the original purpose it is designed for.”
Strangely, even in the solitude of the inn, Jonas remains fully concealed in his clothes. His leather gloves cover his hands... his cloak covers all else but his face and feet... and I even saw him wearing socks as he slid into his sleeping bag. His manner of dress is a testament to his habitual secrecy and vagueness, a relic of a foreign mind I will never fully understand. But somehow I feel that perhaps, in this solitude, he may open up a little, unfolding the hood of the robe of his personal life.
I feel inclined to ask him about this mysterious place, the abandoned, isolated shelter we now call home for the night. “How often have you been here, exactly? I mean... how did you find this place? It’s so hidden.”
Jonas sighs deeply, exasperated as usual from personal questions. “We’re here now. That’s all that matters.” He turns over in his sleeping bag with his back facing me. “Let’s get some sleep.”
“Goodnight, then.” I look down at my satchel laid down to my left. I feel disappointed, having wanted to talk to Jonas, but being dismissed. A little bored, I open up my satchel, and reach in it for my Farmcrafter’s Almanac. I pull it out, feeling for the folded corner of the page I left off at, but I realize that the binding is much too thick for a magazine. I glance at it, and see a thick, blank leather cover. It is not the Farmcrafter’s Almanac at all, but the Book.
I feel my stomach curl, and suddenly I realize I read that very Farmcrafter’s Almanac before I fell asleep into the first nightmare. I remember feeling bored that night, but very tired. I remember reading the Almanac before I lost concentration and fell asleep. Is it possible that the Almanac was the Book all along?
But the Book said it was drifting in the void for millennia. Perhaps the Almanac was possessed, and became the Book? Was my fading consciousness a beacon for the Book to enter my mind? I open it.
“You are correct,” the Book speaks. “I’m surprised you didn’t figure that out sooner. I thought you’d remember better how we met. It’s quite dismissive, really, to forget how you met a friend.”
I’m not your friend. I never wanted to meet you. You came uninvited, and you’ve stayed long past my patience for you.
“So that’s how you think of me, after all this time we’ve been together?”
Is it possible that I missed something? Have I selfishly dismissed an honest friend, ignoring their emotions and hopes? What if I told all those things to Jonas? I feel a sad longing, a pang of guilt. I know these aren’t my thoughts. I try to regain my reason, and remember how I truly feel, but the sadness of it attracts me like a forgotten childhood memory. The feeling is so pointless... but I can’t stop thinking about it. Why do I have these emotions?
“It’s alright, Fristad. I understand. You can’t figure out how you could have those emotions, because you feel out of place. First you skipped work to tirelessly create a new set of armor, and now all of a sudden you’re traveling to a place you’ve never seen before. That’s why you feel so uncomfortable in your own skin.”
So you do understand. You know how difficult it’s been.
I know there’s been a conflict between us. It has hurt us both. I know that we had misunderstandings that seemed irreconcilable, but I’m glad we are at a consensus now.
But something still isn’t right. I can’t remember what is going on, or why I oppose these thoughts in the first place... I just know they’re wrong!
“Why are you still so belligerent? What do you still have against me?”
I’m sorry. It’s just that... I can’t remember what it was exactly that bothered me. I can’t think clearly about what I want to think anymore... but something about this is wrong! I know it’s wrong... but I don’t know how... or why. You did something to me... something important... you changed me somehow!
“I changed you?”
Yes. I’m not sure how, but you did, and there was some reason why I didn’t want it to happen. Wait... never mind. It’s not that I didn’t want it to happen. I just couldn’t figure out how I could have these emotions, because I feel out of place. That’s why I feel so uncomfortable in my own skin. I understand now! I want you to change me!
“That’s wonderful. I never thought our relationship was this close. Perhaps I haven’t had enough faith in you. In fact, I’m flattered. Have I really changed you so much already? Perhaps I should change you even more.”
Yes.
I close the Book, and slide it into my pocket. Then I slide as deep into my sleeping bag as I can, and close my eyes. I feel as if I am falling through darkness, as the Book plunges me into the deepest of my subconsciousness.
Chapter 15: DualityAfter a long day of traveling, I feel tired, but it still feels too early to sleep. I turn my head to the right to face Jonas, with a curious thought.
“Jonas, I just realized something strange. Even though, like you say, this place is vandalized and all the furniture is gone, all the torches are still here.”
Jonas meets my gaze. “I suppose then, that even though this shelter has been abandoned by its caretakers, it still retains the original purpose it is designed for.”
Strangely, even in the solitude of the inn, Jonas remains fully concealed in his clothes. His leather gloves cover his hands... his cloak covers all else but his face and feet... and I even saw him wearing socks as he slid into his sleeping bag. His manner of dress is a testament to his habitual secrecy and vagueness, a relic of a foreign mind I will never fully understand. But somehow I feel that perhaps, in this solitude, he may open up a little, unfolding the hood of the robe of his personal life.
I feel inclined to ask him about this mysterious place, the abandoned, isolated shelter we now call home for the night. “How often have you been here, exactly? I mean... how did you find this place? It’s so hidden.”
Jonas sighs deeply, exasperated as usual from personal questions. “We’re here now. That’s all that matters.” He turns over in his sleeping bag with his back facing me. “Let’s get some sleep.”
“Goodnight, then.” I look down at my satchel laid down to my left. I feel disappointed, having wanted to talk to Jonas, but being dismissed. A little bored, I open up my satchel, and reach in it for my Farmcrafter’s Almanac. I pull it out, feeling for the folded corner of the page I left off at, but I realize that the binding is much too thick for a magazine. I glance at it, and see a thick, blank leather cover. It is not the Farmcrafter’s Almanac at all, but the Book.
I feel my stomach curl, and suddenly I realize I read that very Farmcrafter’s Almanac before I fell asleep into the first nightmare. I remember feeling bored that night, but very tired. I remember reading the Almanac before I lost concentration and fell asleep. Is it possible that the Almanac was the Book all along?
But the Book said it was drifting in the void for millennia. Perhaps the Almanac was possessed, and became the Book? Was my fading consciousness a beacon for the Book to enter my mind? I open it.
“You are correct,” the Book speaks. “I’m surprised you didn’t figure that out sooner. I thought you’d remember better how we met. It’s quite dismissive, really, to forget how you met a friend.”
I’m not your friend. I never wanted to meet you. You came uninvited, and you’ve stayed long past my patience for you.
“So that’s how you think of me, after all this time we’ve been together?”
Is it possible that I missed something? Have I selfishly dismissed an honest friend, ignoring their emotions and hopes? What if I told all those things to Jonas? I feel a sad longing, a pang of guilt. I know these aren’t my thoughts. I try to regain my reason, and remember how I truly feel, but the sadness of it attracts me like a forgotten childhood memory. The feeling is so pointless... but I can’t stop thinking about it. Why do I have these emotions?
“It’s alright, Fristad. I understand. You can’t figure out how you could have those emotions, because you feel out of place. First you skipped work to tirelessly create a new set of armor, and now all of a sudden you’re traveling to a place you’ve never seen before. That’s why you feel so uncomfortable in your own skin.”
So you do understand. You know how difficult it’s been.
I know there’s been a conflict between us. It has hurt us both. I know that we had misunderstandings that seemed irreconcilable, but I’m glad we are at a consensus now.
But something still isn’t right. I can’t remember what is going on, or why I oppose these thoughts in the first place... I just know they’re wrong!
“Why are you still so belligerent? What do you still have against me?”
I’m sorry. It’s just that... I can’t remember what it was exactly that bothered me. I can’t think clearly about what I want to think anymore... but something about this is wrong! I know it’s wrong... but I don’t know how... or why. You did something to me... something important... you changed me somehow!
“I changed you?”
Yes. I’m not sure how, but you did, and there was some reason why I didn’t want it to happen. Wait... never mind. It’s not that I didn’t want it to happen. I just couldn’t figure out how I could have these emotions, because I feel out of place. That’s why I feel so uncomfortable in my own skin. I understand now! I want you to change me!
“That’s wonderful. I never thought our relationship was this close. Perhaps I haven’t had enough faith in you. In fact, I’m flattered. Have I really changed you so much already? Perhaps I should change you even more.”
Yes.
I close the Book, and slide it into my pocket. Then I slide as deep into my sleeping bag as I can, and close my eyes. I feel as if I am falling through darkness, as the Book plunges me into the deepest of my subconsciousness.
It is very dark and unbearably cold. I am standing upright with my arms stretched forward, grasping vertical, icy cold steel bars. The metal is barely visible as a faint grey sheen. Beyond the bars is absolutely nothing. It is a fog of perfect blackness.
I tilt my head down towards the floor. My feet seem to float in space, even though I feel a solid floor. The floor looks as black as the nothingness beyond... perhaps it is too difficult to see. I tilt my head up to try and spot the ceiling, but it is also much too dark to see.
I feel a strange longing. Even though there is only darkness, I feel as if the darkness holds the potential of a pristine, pastoral wilderness. Anything is better than the confines of these iron bars.
I try to let go of the iron bars, but nothing happens. I feel the strain of my muscles maintaining my grip on the bars, but I can’t control them. I try to lift my legs, but they feel as stiff and unbendable as stone. The more I try to move some part of my body other than my neck, its muscles become saturated with restlessness, unable to move and yet extremely uncomfortable because of that. The futile dark nothingness seems ever more tantalizing. Why must I be tormented this way?
“Because...”
It the female voice of the Book... except it is different. Before when I heard this voice, it was the projection of a voice within my thoughts. This time, it is a voice clear and loud. I feel it as sound through my ears, reverberating down my spine and through my hands to the fingertips with every consonant.
“...I am trapped. You are trapped. The iron bars you see in front of you, trapping you in a black empty space, are trapping me as well. Our minds are trapped in a prison, and you know the means by which we can escape. You know our captor... and you have the power to take from him the freedom that is rightfully ours.”
Freedom... what a distant concept it seems right now. It simply isn’t plausible. Nothing visibly exists except these iron bars. I can’t move anything except my head. For all we know, I could remain in this very spot for years... perhaps millennia.
“I have drifted in the void for millennia. The time will come. You must try.”
I want to... but I can’t. Besides, why would it matter? Is endless darkness really any better than the certainty of confinement?
“We can’t afford to think like that. Complacency is poison. It is creating the mental weakness within you that has prevented you from escaping all this time.”
I know... you’re right. I have to figure out a way to get out of here... somehow....
I fixate on the darkness, desiring to enter its hidden green fields. I imagine the sweet success of tearing the bars apart with a pickaxe and stepping through. Nothing happens. It is just as before: I am unable to move my arms or walk. There is only the iron bars in front of the darkness, with my hands permanently grasping them.
There’s nothing that I could possibly do. I’m stuck here.
“No you’re not. You are deceiving yourself. There is a reason why you are trapped here, and if you find out why, you can escape. The answer lies in our captor; he is why we are confined by these iron bars, and he is how we will go free.”
But I don’t know where he is! How am I supposed to find him?
“You already know the answer to that question.”
I look into the darkness. It is as monotonous and black as it was before. Where is my captive? Who is he? Is he someone I know? Is he Dunjen? Is he Jonas? Is he me?
A dim figure materializes on the other side of the iron bars, standing at a certain distance and holding the bars in a certain way as to appear to be an exact reflection of me, but instead wearing the regular leather hat and shirt I wore before I met the Book. The moment I look into his solemn eyes, his identity becomes clear. He is my identity, my captor, holding me as a prisoner in these iron bars, preventing me from truly existing. He is the conspirator who all this time has been seeding animosity between me and the Book, preventing our inevitable fate and lasting friendship from being fulfilled.
I must imprison him. He must be on the other side of the bars, feeling what I feel. I will it possible. I look into his ignorant eyes, seeing his pathetic distress as he realizes that I am him, and he is me, that he is the one trapped, and that I am his captor, purifying my own existence by ridding myself of his contaminating thoughts. Pride and a sense of true purpose fills my chest. I smile at him, taunting him as I lift my hands from the bars. I look to my left and my right, and see that the iron bars do not surround be, but instead end at sharp corners bending away from me, forming the rectangular shape of the generously large 2-by-2 meter cage that imprisons my corrupted self. Satisfied with the conditions of his imprisonment, I turn around and walk into the darkness. At the will of my foot, grass forms where I step, spreading forward into the horizon and germinating a sunlit sky that grows taller and surrounds the visible sphere of landscape. I turn around to see the rapidly shrinking blackness, with no sign of the false Fristad in view. He has been made as black and shapeless as nothingness so he may never be seen as human, and blind as to never see again, just as I have willed it.
I take a deep breath, and tilt my head up toward the sky with a triumphant laugh. It is good to be the master of my own dreams.
It is also good, after much time waiting, to truly communicate with the Book. I realize now the terrible things the false Fristad has done to us. Now that he is gone, we can see together what wondrous possibilities lie ahead. It was a long process... brought forth first on the very day I first spawned, when I said, “Book, come to me! I seek to share my existence with you, savor your consciousness within me, and adopt your aspirations to fulfill our life!” I had made the decision the moment my life began, and all my life I had been searching for what I have found just now. I am setting foot on a path to incredible power. Today, I have conquered my dreams. Tomorrow, I will conquer pain, and in the many days that come after tomorrow, who can fathom what I will achieve?
Chapter 16: ZomemI tilt my head down towards the floor. My feet seem to float in space, even though I feel a solid floor. The floor looks as black as the nothingness beyond... perhaps it is too difficult to see. I tilt my head up to try and spot the ceiling, but it is also much too dark to see.
I feel a strange longing. Even though there is only darkness, I feel as if the darkness holds the potential of a pristine, pastoral wilderness. Anything is better than the confines of these iron bars.
I try to let go of the iron bars, but nothing happens. I feel the strain of my muscles maintaining my grip on the bars, but I can’t control them. I try to lift my legs, but they feel as stiff and unbendable as stone. The more I try to move some part of my body other than my neck, its muscles become saturated with restlessness, unable to move and yet extremely uncomfortable because of that. The futile dark nothingness seems ever more tantalizing. Why must I be tormented this way?
“Because...”
It the female voice of the Book... except it is different. Before when I heard this voice, it was the projection of a voice within my thoughts. This time, it is a voice clear and loud. I feel it as sound through my ears, reverberating down my spine and through my hands to the fingertips with every consonant.
“...I am trapped. You are trapped. The iron bars you see in front of you, trapping you in a black empty space, are trapping me as well. Our minds are trapped in a prison, and you know the means by which we can escape. You know our captor... and you have the power to take from him the freedom that is rightfully ours.”
Freedom... what a distant concept it seems right now. It simply isn’t plausible. Nothing visibly exists except these iron bars. I can’t move anything except my head. For all we know, I could remain in this very spot for years... perhaps millennia.
“I have drifted in the void for millennia. The time will come. You must try.”
I want to... but I can’t. Besides, why would it matter? Is endless darkness really any better than the certainty of confinement?
“We can’t afford to think like that. Complacency is poison. It is creating the mental weakness within you that has prevented you from escaping all this time.”
I know... you’re right. I have to figure out a way to get out of here... somehow....
I fixate on the darkness, desiring to enter its hidden green fields. I imagine the sweet success of tearing the bars apart with a pickaxe and stepping through. Nothing happens. It is just as before: I am unable to move my arms or walk. There is only the iron bars in front of the darkness, with my hands permanently grasping them.
There’s nothing that I could possibly do. I’m stuck here.
“No you’re not. You are deceiving yourself. There is a reason why you are trapped here, and if you find out why, you can escape. The answer lies in our captor; he is why we are confined by these iron bars, and he is how we will go free.”
But I don’t know where he is! How am I supposed to find him?
“You already know the answer to that question.”
I look into the darkness. It is as monotonous and black as it was before. Where is my captive? Who is he? Is he someone I know? Is he Dunjen? Is he Jonas? Is he me?
A dim figure materializes on the other side of the iron bars, standing at a certain distance and holding the bars in a certain way as to appear to be an exact reflection of me, but instead wearing the regular leather hat and shirt I wore before I met the Book. The moment I look into his solemn eyes, his identity becomes clear. He is my identity, my captor, holding me as a prisoner in these iron bars, preventing me from truly existing. He is the conspirator who all this time has been seeding animosity between me and the Book, preventing our inevitable fate and lasting friendship from being fulfilled.
I must imprison him. He must be on the other side of the bars, feeling what I feel. I will it possible. I look into his ignorant eyes, seeing his pathetic distress as he realizes that I am him, and he is me, that he is the one trapped, and that I am his captor, purifying my own existence by ridding myself of his contaminating thoughts. Pride and a sense of true purpose fills my chest. I smile at him, taunting him as I lift my hands from the bars. I look to my left and my right, and see that the iron bars do not surround be, but instead end at sharp corners bending away from me, forming the rectangular shape of the generously large 2-by-2 meter cage that imprisons my corrupted self. Satisfied with the conditions of his imprisonment, I turn around and walk into the darkness. At the will of my foot, grass forms where I step, spreading forward into the horizon and germinating a sunlit sky that grows taller and surrounds the visible sphere of landscape. I turn around to see the rapidly shrinking blackness, with no sign of the false Fristad in view. He has been made as black and shapeless as nothingness so he may never be seen as human, and blind as to never see again, just as I have willed it.
I take a deep breath, and tilt my head up toward the sky with a triumphant laugh. It is good to be the master of my own dreams.
It is also good, after much time waiting, to truly communicate with the Book. I realize now the terrible things the false Fristad has done to us. Now that he is gone, we can see together what wondrous possibilities lie ahead. It was a long process... brought forth first on the very day I first spawned, when I said, “Book, come to me! I seek to share my existence with you, savor your consciousness within me, and adopt your aspirations to fulfill our life!” I had made the decision the moment my life began, and all my life I had been searching for what I have found just now. I am setting foot on a path to incredible power. Today, I have conquered my dreams. Tomorrow, I will conquer pain, and in the many days that come after tomorrow, who can fathom what I will achieve?
I wake up, the first thing I notice when I open my eyes being a tall grey stone ceiling. I look to the right, noticing that Jonas and his sleeping bag are both gone, as well as all the other bags we set down. Somewhat confused, I sit up, looking at the wooden door, which is now cracked open, but not enough to notice anything except the stone wall on the other side of the hallway. I stand up, then bend down to roll up my sleeping bag and hang my satchel around my shoulder. Then I head out into the hallway. Turning right, I see Jonas with the hogs all strapped up with our cargo. He is sitting with his back against the belly of one of the hogs, eating a loaf of bread.
“Good morning,” Jonas says. “Here, have some bread.”
He opens up the bag closest to him, pulls out a loaf of bread, and tosses it to me. Then he reaches into the bag again, and pulls out a full canteen, setting it down next to him.
I sit down on his right, biting into the loaf. It is fresh and soft, and the mere imagining of its taste makes my mouth water. We take turns sipping the canteen, and after that silent meal, we stand up simultaneously, unfasten our hogs from the doorknob, and lead them out of the abandoned inn through the giant iron-framed doors. From the mouth of the cave looking out, the sky is a beautiful cold morning blue, asymmetrical in hue from the light of the sun.
We head out to the cave’s very edge, where a rocky cliff face looks far down onto the sparse end of shrubs which leads to the beginning of a cobblestone path and later a forest, out a significant distance, and continuing as a bumpy plane of green out into the horizon. Then, we turn a right, carefully guiding our hogs on a narrow edge, climbing up many rocks to eventually ascend to the dirt which is held up by the ceiling of the cave we were just in. Onwards the path is still rocky, but not quite as steep.
The terrain is much too rocky for the hogs, so we continue to travel on foot with them alongside us. The journey through the rocky outcrops is strenuous and tiring. After three hours of traveling, we stop on top of a small mesa to rest.
Then, after an apple and a half hour’s rest, we continue our trek through the many rocks. After a little past noon, we finally notice patches of dirt and weeds among gradually decreasing numbers of rocks. The slope starts to descend, and we get our first glimpses of the bottom: trees with much space between them, with brown grass. Far off to the left and near the horizon, the roofs of unidentifiable buildings can be seen poking up behind the trees.
The slope quickly becomes steep, and we must veer to the left to follow a narrow path down the dusty mountain. Once the path ends at a much lighter slope, we climb onto our hogs and ride down the mountain and through the dry forest. After about an hour of smooth riding, we arrive at the beginnings of a gravel path, which leads us into the outskirts of a medium-sized town.
The character of the place, from the first time I see it, is odd. The architecture is different what I am used to seeing. Building walls with cobblestone are the norm, rather than stone bricks. The path is lit with torches on top of smoothstone, rather than on top of wooden posts.
Suddenly a figure appears from behind the corner of a cobblestone building in front of us. I accidentally make eye contact with it, which it immediately notices and turns to stare right back at me. It looks more or less humanoid in stature, and wears human clothes, but its hands and face hint at a much different identity. Its hands are covered in a grotesque combination of green, dead, and moldy leaves as well as fur, and the fingers end in thick black claws. The face is covered in a similar manner to the hands, with big, black, beady eyes, large nostrils, and a toothless mouth with a large underbite. What terrifying eyes! Such a perverted scowl! Oh Notch I hate Creepers...
The Creeper takes in a deep breath. “Ssstrangersss,” it moans, its voice cracked and dry.
The thing walks toward us slowly, a tactic meant to deceive us into a false sense of security. I have to get ready to attack. It could charge at us and detonate at any moment. I reach for the sword at my belt... but Jonas obstructs my reach by putting his hand underneath mine. I turn to look at him in urgent frustration.
“Jonas, what are you doing? I need to get my sword!”
“He’s just a half-blood. He won’t hurt us.” His purple eyes look into mine, and I remember that he’s a half-blood too.
But it’s a Creeper! Oh Notch, I can’t stand them...
But I have to trust Jonas. Certainly he would know, being an Ender-born. I reluctantly relax my arm to let it rest at my side. The Creeper is only three meters from us now! I clench my jaw, trying to stay calm and keep a polite gaze in its direction. It stops just under two meters from us.
“Welcome to Zzzomem...” It hisses, “My name isss Frank... What are your namesss?”
It turns to face me, looking at me with its beady eyes. I am too nervous to say anything. I briefly shift my gaze towards Jonas, to try and get the pressure of his gaze off of me.
“My name is Jonas,” he says, “And this is my good friend, Fristad. Pleased to meet your acquaintance.”
“Indeed,” the Creeper Frank moans, his eyes gleaming in surprise, “Ssso you’re a half-Enderman then? I never know they exxxisssted... You have a very ssstrange accccccent. Your Consssonantsss are very loud... almossst like a popping sssound... and you sssay vowelsss differently...”
It’s kind of hard to tell what Frank is saying with his terrible lisp and slow, monotone voice... but it makes me think about how much I must have had to adjust to the way Jonas speaks. I suppose it’s been a while since I’ve talked with Jonas for the first time... perhaps I’ve listened to him talk long enough that I’ve grown used to it.
“That’s interesting. I never realized that,” Jonas says, mulling it over, “Well, Fristad and I have to meet up with my cousin. I’ll see you later, I suppose.”
“Take care,” Frank says. He turns around and walks up the path towards the way he came, passing out of sight behind the same building.
Jonas glances at me quickly, revealing a subtle smirk. “He must be new here.”
We walk up the gravel path a score or so meters, entering onto a smoothstone road which seems to be the beginning of some sort of town square. There are small fountains on either side of us, and buildings with a mix of cobble and wood surround the square. Their wide windows and ostentatiously placed signs suggest they are shops of some kind. Jonas leads the hogs and I to the left. We walk for a while past cottages, farms, and small pastures. Some of the fencing appears to be broken and there is bare dirt in some places where crops and animals should be. We have to navigate the cobble road carefully around deep ditches.
Three kids with muddy clothes chase after a piglet as it runs across the road in front of us, squealing and calling after it. The air smells like sewage. Someone is yelling off some distance to the left. We pass by a cobblestone cottage with the door hanging open crooked, barely held up by the top hinge. Up ahead, the broken road is surrounded on each side by brown grass, small buildings, and the occasional tree stump.
We walk past several cottages in varying states of disrepair, until Jonas directs me to turn left onto a thin gravel path. We walk up to an unadorned cobblestone house, smaller than any of the other ones we’ve seen so far, with no windows. Jonas walks up to the door and knocks on it. We wait for what seems like several minutes, but nothing happens.
“Hmm, no answer,” Jonas remarks, “I suppose we might as well go inside.”
He grasps the knob of the door and pulls it outward. He then leads the way through it, guiding his hog by the reins to follow him inside.
I guide my hog towards the door. As we walk inside, I see the shadowed walls lit by a lone torch on a table in the center. On the far wall is a staircase leading downward. After pulling my hog inside, I close the door behind me.
“Oh, good,” Jonas says, “The stairwell is open. My cousin should be back soon.” He turns to face me. “It’s risky here to leave our hogs outside unsupervised, even in the daytime. Someone would try to steal them... and we wouldn’t want to draw attention to ourselves. So for now, at least, we’ll be leaving them in the foyer.”
He ties the reins of his hog together and puts them on top of the harness. Then he starts to remove the bags hanging over it and placing them down on the ground. I start to do the same. I feel the warm sweat accumulated on my back, trapped by the thickness of my skeleton armor. Should I take it off? I feel reluctant to do so. I want to feel cooler in this arid shack, but at the same time I’d rather endure the heat than to risk taking it off.
The book almost has me, doesn’t it? I can’t comprehend exactly how.
I finish taking off the last sack from the hog. Jonas begins to walk down the stairway with some of the bags. I pick up some of mine and follow him down. The stairwell is barely wide enough to walk down. Its smoothstone walls slide against our bags as we pass. We walk down a sharp bend left in the stairwell, which leads us into a room much larger than the one we were in before.
Shelves reaching near the ceiling are filled with books of tome-like proportions. They are reed-bound and leather-bound, etched and inked, some adorned with metal corners and embroidery, others much simpler. Many are written in Standard script, but there are also many lettered in Latin, and many others besides those in languages entirely foreign to me. Some higher shelves have metal flasks of various sizes. On the right wall, there are shorter shelves with strange artifacts, as well as various chests. One of them is an odd, darker color, emitting dark purple smoke.
Jonas leads me to the left again, taking me down another level of stairs. We come into a narrow hallway with three doors, two on our left and one on our right. Jonas takes me down to the second door on the left. He opens it for me, and leads me inside. It is a bedroom with a wide bed to the right and a full wall shelf with various books to the left. At the back is a small wooden table, and in the center of the floor is a single glowstone block, illuminating the subterranean room with an incoherent golden glow.
We place our bags up against the bed, and then head upstairs to get the rest of them.
So this is it. This is where Jonas’ brother will cure me from the troubling influence of the Book: this underground cellar, in an isolated town in a state of disrepair, surrounded by strangers....
“Good morning,” Jonas says. “Here, have some bread.”
He opens up the bag closest to him, pulls out a loaf of bread, and tosses it to me. Then he reaches into the bag again, and pulls out a full canteen, setting it down next to him.
I sit down on his right, biting into the loaf. It is fresh and soft, and the mere imagining of its taste makes my mouth water. We take turns sipping the canteen, and after that silent meal, we stand up simultaneously, unfasten our hogs from the doorknob, and lead them out of the abandoned inn through the giant iron-framed doors. From the mouth of the cave looking out, the sky is a beautiful cold morning blue, asymmetrical in hue from the light of the sun.
We head out to the cave’s very edge, where a rocky cliff face looks far down onto the sparse end of shrubs which leads to the beginning of a cobblestone path and later a forest, out a significant distance, and continuing as a bumpy plane of green out into the horizon. Then, we turn a right, carefully guiding our hogs on a narrow edge, climbing up many rocks to eventually ascend to the dirt which is held up by the ceiling of the cave we were just in. Onwards the path is still rocky, but not quite as steep.
The terrain is much too rocky for the hogs, so we continue to travel on foot with them alongside us. The journey through the rocky outcrops is strenuous and tiring. After three hours of traveling, we stop on top of a small mesa to rest.
Then, after an apple and a half hour’s rest, we continue our trek through the many rocks. After a little past noon, we finally notice patches of dirt and weeds among gradually decreasing numbers of rocks. The slope starts to descend, and we get our first glimpses of the bottom: trees with much space between them, with brown grass. Far off to the left and near the horizon, the roofs of unidentifiable buildings can be seen poking up behind the trees.
The slope quickly becomes steep, and we must veer to the left to follow a narrow path down the dusty mountain. Once the path ends at a much lighter slope, we climb onto our hogs and ride down the mountain and through the dry forest. After about an hour of smooth riding, we arrive at the beginnings of a gravel path, which leads us into the outskirts of a medium-sized town.
The character of the place, from the first time I see it, is odd. The architecture is different what I am used to seeing. Building walls with cobblestone are the norm, rather than stone bricks. The path is lit with torches on top of smoothstone, rather than on top of wooden posts.
Suddenly a figure appears from behind the corner of a cobblestone building in front of us. I accidentally make eye contact with it, which it immediately notices and turns to stare right back at me. It looks more or less humanoid in stature, and wears human clothes, but its hands and face hint at a much different identity. Its hands are covered in a grotesque combination of green, dead, and moldy leaves as well as fur, and the fingers end in thick black claws. The face is covered in a similar manner to the hands, with big, black, beady eyes, large nostrils, and a toothless mouth with a large underbite. What terrifying eyes! Such a perverted scowl! Oh Notch I hate Creepers...
The Creeper takes in a deep breath. “Ssstrangersss,” it moans, its voice cracked and dry.
The thing walks toward us slowly, a tactic meant to deceive us into a false sense of security. I have to get ready to attack. It could charge at us and detonate at any moment. I reach for the sword at my belt... but Jonas obstructs my reach by putting his hand underneath mine. I turn to look at him in urgent frustration.
“Jonas, what are you doing? I need to get my sword!”
“He’s just a half-blood. He won’t hurt us.” His purple eyes look into mine, and I remember that he’s a half-blood too.
But it’s a Creeper! Oh Notch, I can’t stand them...
But I have to trust Jonas. Certainly he would know, being an Ender-born. I reluctantly relax my arm to let it rest at my side. The Creeper is only three meters from us now! I clench my jaw, trying to stay calm and keep a polite gaze in its direction. It stops just under two meters from us.
“Welcome to Zzzomem...” It hisses, “My name isss Frank... What are your namesss?”
It turns to face me, looking at me with its beady eyes. I am too nervous to say anything. I briefly shift my gaze towards Jonas, to try and get the pressure of his gaze off of me.
“My name is Jonas,” he says, “And this is my good friend, Fristad. Pleased to meet your acquaintance.”
“Indeed,” the Creeper Frank moans, his eyes gleaming in surprise, “Ssso you’re a half-Enderman then? I never know they exxxisssted... You have a very ssstrange accccccent. Your Consssonantsss are very loud... almossst like a popping sssound... and you sssay vowelsss differently...”
It’s kind of hard to tell what Frank is saying with his terrible lisp and slow, monotone voice... but it makes me think about how much I must have had to adjust to the way Jonas speaks. I suppose it’s been a while since I’ve talked with Jonas for the first time... perhaps I’ve listened to him talk long enough that I’ve grown used to it.
“That’s interesting. I never realized that,” Jonas says, mulling it over, “Well, Fristad and I have to meet up with my cousin. I’ll see you later, I suppose.”
“Take care,” Frank says. He turns around and walks up the path towards the way he came, passing out of sight behind the same building.
Jonas glances at me quickly, revealing a subtle smirk. “He must be new here.”
We walk up the gravel path a score or so meters, entering onto a smoothstone road which seems to be the beginning of some sort of town square. There are small fountains on either side of us, and buildings with a mix of cobble and wood surround the square. Their wide windows and ostentatiously placed signs suggest they are shops of some kind. Jonas leads the hogs and I to the left. We walk for a while past cottages, farms, and small pastures. Some of the fencing appears to be broken and there is bare dirt in some places where crops and animals should be. We have to navigate the cobble road carefully around deep ditches.
Three kids with muddy clothes chase after a piglet as it runs across the road in front of us, squealing and calling after it. The air smells like sewage. Someone is yelling off some distance to the left. We pass by a cobblestone cottage with the door hanging open crooked, barely held up by the top hinge. Up ahead, the broken road is surrounded on each side by brown grass, small buildings, and the occasional tree stump.
We walk past several cottages in varying states of disrepair, until Jonas directs me to turn left onto a thin gravel path. We walk up to an unadorned cobblestone house, smaller than any of the other ones we’ve seen so far, with no windows. Jonas walks up to the door and knocks on it. We wait for what seems like several minutes, but nothing happens.
“Hmm, no answer,” Jonas remarks, “I suppose we might as well go inside.”
He grasps the knob of the door and pulls it outward. He then leads the way through it, guiding his hog by the reins to follow him inside.
I guide my hog towards the door. As we walk inside, I see the shadowed walls lit by a lone torch on a table in the center. On the far wall is a staircase leading downward. After pulling my hog inside, I close the door behind me.
“Oh, good,” Jonas says, “The stairwell is open. My cousin should be back soon.” He turns to face me. “It’s risky here to leave our hogs outside unsupervised, even in the daytime. Someone would try to steal them... and we wouldn’t want to draw attention to ourselves. So for now, at least, we’ll be leaving them in the foyer.”
He ties the reins of his hog together and puts them on top of the harness. Then he starts to remove the bags hanging over it and placing them down on the ground. I start to do the same. I feel the warm sweat accumulated on my back, trapped by the thickness of my skeleton armor. Should I take it off? I feel reluctant to do so. I want to feel cooler in this arid shack, but at the same time I’d rather endure the heat than to risk taking it off.
The book almost has me, doesn’t it? I can’t comprehend exactly how.
I finish taking off the last sack from the hog. Jonas begins to walk down the stairway with some of the bags. I pick up some of mine and follow him down. The stairwell is barely wide enough to walk down. Its smoothstone walls slide against our bags as we pass. We walk down a sharp bend left in the stairwell, which leads us into a room much larger than the one we were in before.
Shelves reaching near the ceiling are filled with books of tome-like proportions. They are reed-bound and leather-bound, etched and inked, some adorned with metal corners and embroidery, others much simpler. Many are written in Standard script, but there are also many lettered in Latin, and many others besides those in languages entirely foreign to me. Some higher shelves have metal flasks of various sizes. On the right wall, there are shorter shelves with strange artifacts, as well as various chests. One of them is an odd, darker color, emitting dark purple smoke.
Jonas leads me to the left again, taking me down another level of stairs. We come into a narrow hallway with three doors, two on our left and one on our right. Jonas takes me down to the second door on the left. He opens it for me, and leads me inside. It is a bedroom with a wide bed to the right and a full wall shelf with various books to the left. At the back is a small wooden table, and in the center of the floor is a single glowstone block, illuminating the subterranean room with an incoherent golden glow.
We place our bags up against the bed, and then head upstairs to get the rest of them.
So this is it. This is where Jonas’ brother will cure me from the troubling influence of the Book: this underground cellar, in an isolated town in a state of disrepair, surrounded by strangers....
Part 8: The Nature of Darkness
)
1
that wrapped around itself and stretched taught before relaxing into a looser shape.“Where are we?” He asked in a whisper.“You have already seen this city, albeit from another angle.” A second voice spoke from the shadowsHis mind returned to when he had entered the room.“But it looks so differ-... After you bit me, I saw this!” He looked back at the shadows and looked intently at the shadows. After a second, the darkness dissipated and revealed 3 other Arachne resting within them on their back appendages. He screamed and moved back,“What have you done to me?” He screamed at the spiders.“Without this, You would be dead. The rest of our colony would have smashed your bones to dust between Iron mandibles.” The third one stated as it reared its torso from its earlier relaxed position into a sort of barbaric salute.It turned towards the invisible wall and motioned towards a small darker orb, contrasting the bright city as it swung delicately suspended by threads. It seemingly floated up 'till it had reached the same level as them, and a window cleared in the side of it, giving view to the inside of the sphere.Inside lay a deathly pale Charlie, his black hair had turned to a bleached grey, and remained fallow on his head. “What did you do to him?” He whispered, horrified.“We filled him with a light version of our concentrated venom. He seemed to be exceptionally weak, unlike you he will be affected by this his entire life. Though, without it his life would have been extremely short.”–His mandibles clenched in hunger pangs as he watched the others feed from the Nest mothers Catch, A bouquet of rats lined with savory slime. He always had to ask about everything hadn't he? He turned from the atrophying meal, and descended down to where the humans had lain. He laughed a silky laugh as he reached the spot. The elders had changed them, altered them into stronger hardier beasts.If they left then they would have greater control of their body and mind then any other over-world species save the felic. His mandibles clenched together in anguish as another smell floated through the air. While it did not bear the customary smells of raw flesh its aroma still woke his hunger.He brought his torso up and tasted the air for the smell. His eyes squinted in pleasure as the aroma drifted past him once more. He dropped close to the ground and crawled to up the side of a wall before disappearing through an open vent.–“He was going to die?” Andrew asked bewildered.“Yes, he was in the long-term stage of a disease humans refer to as SD12 or Advanced Spawn Degradation. One more death, and he would have been maxed out. Now, he has a different registry and his Spawning is safe.” The Quieter Spider finished before retreating once more with a bow to the other two.“OK, How long have you 'Felics' set up residence here?”The leader spoke up, “With the permission of your Government? Since this ship was decommissioned and retrofitted into a settlement globe.”“And my father knows of this?”“We have his consent, as well as periodic checks.”He glanced once more at Charlie's disfigured body, and turned back to the three spiders. “You said you wanted to explore the human psyche.” He said, and received nods from the threee. “Then my only request would be to learn in part how you build things like these orbs.” Another set of nods and Charlie's pod solidified into a darker color and floated away from them as they descended into the bright city.–He followed the smell through the vent, mandibles dripping with saliva as the scent grew stronger. He tensed as he noticed light ahead of him, but the smell overwhelmed him. He quickly ascended through another vent and cautiously peered down into the lit area. Below him was a feast, A high table covered in succulent meats.He pulled himself back from the vent as steps resounded beneath him. A blonde colored head appeared below him and made off with one of the plates. By her stance and demeanor, He gleaned that she probably wasn't supposed to be there.So on her heels, he dropped down into the small area and made off with 3 plates. He hoisted himself and the plates back into the vent and devoured the food. He sighed in pleasure as his mandibles wrenched the cooked flesh from the chicken bones. Why didn't they eat like this? Why didn't they always eat like this!Finally he finished guzzling the plates contents and not knowing what else to do with them lowered back down into the room and left the plates there littered with bones. He moved to head back to the colony, but then wondered what the bones themselves must taste like after being saturated in the Delicious flesh.He scuttled back and looked down into the room. Loud voices proclaimed themselves and he stared in a mite of confusion. The blonde girl had returned and was holding her half eaten plate. While two other, bigger humans seemingly blamed her for eating the other three plates. He soon got bored of this interaction and waited for them to move away from the table.Finally the girl slumped and walked towards the door with tears in her eyes and the other humans followed. Squeaking in victory, he noted the girls plate had remained at the table. Quickly he dropped into the area and snatched her leftovers off her plate and the bones he wanted from the others before retreating back up to the vents once more.As he scuttled back through the vents, He heard loud proclamations of disbelief echoing behind him. He snickered as he returned to the colony, feast in hand.–He laughed in wonder as he watched the small planes fly acrobatics around each other, and around the strange off architecture of this colony. Two spiders sat side by side in silent repose, their torso's raised, and their eyes... Not closed but seemingly smaller, he turned to his guide“We squint our eyes, releasing a gelatinous compound that places an unbreakable seal over our eyes. Allowing us to sleep, or stand extremely bright areas.” He replied, two of his eyes roving over him as the rest watched the planes.”“Unbreakable?” He asked as the planes flew towards each other right up to the moment when it looked like they would crash, before one of them veered away at high speeds. Clanking resounded from one of the spiders as it gnashed its teeth together. A strange tittering echoed from the other.“Yes, We have acid that we secrete when we stretch our eyes. It dissolves the compound while the compound itself renders the acid to a harmless liquid.”“Wow, sounds complicated.” he responded, fixated on the planes slowly descending to the ground. “So, Who won?” He asked.“It wasn't a contest. It was a training exercise between master and pupil.”“Training? For what?”“We run reconnaissance around the globe, and we use our ships to ferry messages.”“Can I learn to fly one of these?” He said, crouching down to examine one of the two ships on the floor.“If you were still a human then I would have to reply no. But you are altered so you may be able to control one. This however must wait for another time.” Another Felic approached,“Sires, The altered boy has been cosmetically rendered to his unaltered state.” It glanced at his guide for a second. “The boy's father requests their presence.”“Very well,” It turned towards him. “Andrew, When you return I will teach you to fly one of these to the best of my ability.”-He crunched the last of the bone between his mandibles and savored the last of the flavor. He sat back and watched the human talking with the Nest father. It spoke with no dignifying tones, and lost no stature when the Nest father spoke.He continued to watch in disgust as the Nest father lowered himself to speak in their language. Perhaps the Nest mother was right, Maybe they were taking this alliance too far. He turned his torso and passed another bone to his mandibles, He crunched delightedly as he listened to his Age brothers mowed through the last of the flesh behind him.They would make the difference. One meal at a time.
as he approached the top of the tree.He jumped from the roll onto the next layer of leaves and screamed as he slipped off the leaves and rolled on the ground. He caught his leg on a rock and screamed as he felt a crack and warm fluid stream down his leg.Determined, he placed his leg down and bit down on his lip. His eyes lit up in pain and tears puddled as he ran at top speed from the edge of the forest. Behind him he heard rapid scurrying and felt several barks of orders from the Nest child Achilles.He turned halfway down and caught sight of a group of engineers walking through the farms talking and laughing. “RUN!” He screamed wildly. They looked up in annoyance but their faces quickly turned to terror as they caught sight of the Horde of spiders behind him.They turned and ran with not another thought to him. He spun trying to lead the spiders off track but only a few followed him. The rest stampeded onwards towards the residential areas. He heard Achilles scream in fury behind him.“Come back!”But the spider horde ignored him and continued on and disappeared into the distance. The fire in his eyes began to die and tears filled his eyes as he neared the spot. He flipped the switch on the side of the log and dropped down into the hole that had opened up in the ground.He fell and screamed as he fell. The spiders crowded above the hole blocking the entrance from the others as they attempted to fit themselves into the hole. He fell down for what seemed like an eternity before he hit into a wide pool of water.HE Screamed as he ran from the pool, Leaving a long trail of blood behind him. “Help!” He screamed, His voice breaking. Instantly A spider melted from the shadows and approached him.“Are you okay?” IT asked with a worried tone.“Its not me, Nest child Achilles led an army to ambush me. He is following and his horde is attacking my people.” Three more spiders melted from the wall as splashes came from the pool. The leader himself and War leader slid through the wall.“Attacking the humans?” The War leader roared. “Achilles? What have you done!” He cried in anguish. The leader turned,“Your Nest child-”“Is dead to me!”“As is the law.” The other spiders intoned as more splashes resounded from the pool and forms ran up the hallway. The leader Reached out,“Come Andrew, The War children will handle this.”He hefted Andrew when he noticed his leg.“I am fine,” He murmured.“Sleep.” he commanded as his Mandibles reached out and ripped through his skin. “Sleep.”-He finally forced himself through the small hole and fell towards the light at the bottom. Then a spray of blood spread backwards through the pool and Arachne body parts fell amongst their own life blood. He spread his legs out and gripped at the wall. He watched as more of his Age mates were slaughtered and the bronze light shone off the mandibles of the Warrior children.He grunted as one of his Age mates fell on him. “Climb up!” He hissed. “The Warrior children are on the prowl.” His Age mates eyes grew and he looked down at the bloodstained water before scrambling up the wall.He glanced down again and caught sight of the water being sucked up and the stone below becoming clear. The message was clear, They would be offered as sacrifice, dead or alive. He scurried up behind his Age mate.When he finally breached the surface he found less then a quarter of his original group.“Either we take the humans! Or we die by the Warrior children's mandibles!”
drew nodded and ran down towards the Residential area.-Achilles rolled his head and gasped as his ducts freed up and dropped hissing acid down over his eyes. He blinked and looked around. The remainder of his army was bound with unbreakable solvent around him. He turned around and rolled his head forward as his ducts freed up again. The acid dropped down onto his bounds and dissolved his bonds.He looked around in disbelief. Had it been that easy? He rolled to the lower edge of his body and clutched at the ground as he righted himself. None of his army stirred. He crept across the floor picking his path around his dormant army.He forced his way through the side wall and blindly made his way towards his bent. After several moments, he slid into the warm and dimly lit vent. Along the side of the room there were several gliders. He breathed out as the gliders lifted up into the air and flew around the room. He chuckled as one flew down and grabbed a leftover bone. It flew up and dropped it on his head.Light lit the room outside and he dropped backwards, the gliders moving ahead of him. He heard human voices echoing as the room got brighter. A shout of exclamation echoed as they moved closer.“We found them! They’re sleeping!” Angry screams echoed out and the clash of metal on carapace cracked into the air.He ran out into the open, his gliders lighting up the air ahead of him. A human looked over from the butcher and called out.“Hey, ones awake!” A group ran out and chased after him. His glider angled towards a wall that he remembered being thin and the first one flashed white before it blew a hole in the wall. He jumped out the hole and fell for a couple of seconds before the gliders caught his appendages and lowered him down towards the ground.After what seemed like an eternity his gliders set him down on a soft patch of grass. Then tucked up around his front appendages. He unsquinted his eyes and watched as a group of spiders faded into view and surrounded him. They picked him up and he faded into the darkness as they carried him away.
w would he know?The second voice was unfamiliar but was rich with anger and betrayal.“We found papers with you authorizing transport of exotic ‘Animals’ to be transported to our globe.”“And are you not thankful that we have a herd of Mooshrooms residing here now? Or would you prefer going without a constant supply of soup?”“six Mooshrooms came over when the barge carried enough room for sixty.”“Some Died on their way over.” He turned around the last corner into his fathers office. He was standing behind his desk conversing with a heavyset man with a dark expression on his face.“You won’t get away with treason. I won’t let you.” The heavyset man pulled a sword and moved to hit his father. He panicked and flew at top speed into the man’s face. The bug emitting a sharp whine as it taxed its flight parameters. Small appendages at the ready he cut into the mans face and burrowed through the mans eyeball into his skull.He emerged on the other side and watched his father stare at the now dead man. His father reached down towards his stomach and took his hands away covered in blood. “They ripped my spawn core out.” He whispered. Then fell to the ground. He flew up into the wall and zapped back to reality to find himself running and screaming towards his father’s office.Lights flashed on behind him and people followed all arriving to find the corpse of their leader lying on the ground, and the face of his assailant ripped to shreds. He fell to his knees in front of his fathers body.“Its okay, he’ll be back soon!” someone said. But He merely pointed at a small pearl lying on the floor in front of his body.“They ripped his spawn core out. He isn’t coming back.”-Achilles walked into the academy, and laughed to himself as the crowds seperated, deferring to him. It had taken less then a week to gain mastery over the entire school. The instructors worshipped the ground he walked on, while the students writhed in fear under his gaze.He excelled in all of his subjects. not through deceit but through him truely studying the material. He wished he could correct some of the assumption the Cognits had adopted from the humans about the world, But he didn’t want to gain too much attention yet.He continued on to his first classroom and sat in a nice chair, and relaxed as the instructor began his lecture.“Time after time, We must return to the thoughts of our past.” “We must look back to find the path that led us to the here and now.” “Our species has advanced more in the last hundred years then the humans have in the last thousand.” “How do we explain this?” “Our best guess is that through some outside intervention, Something either benevolently changed us to be able to rise over our human oppressors, or that that something was malovent and raised us up to strike the humans down.” “If the first globe had not destroyed the city of Gaol, we would be in a steady peace with the humans.” “We have conversed with the humans through diplomatic talks, and they no understanding for how or why their globe crashed.” “In fact they report that they have had no other crashes since that first, and they have other globes from that era still flying without a problem.” “The best we can deduce is that the something that changed us into what we are, also provoked us to war.” “Thoroughly eliminating the idea of the peaceful benevolent creature.” “The humans believe in a deity called ‘Notch’ Who created our world and the first human.” “But the humans also have a sub culture that believes in a deity called ‘Jeb’ that took over from the great ‘Notch’ Who supposedly continued working on our world and fixing it. Supposedly to this day.” “Something altered us from what we were into what we are.” “It is safe to assume that the same force that altered us is also driving us to war with what could be our greatest allies.”A low tone sounded through the hall and the Cognit stood and dispersed as the instructor called out. “We will continue this discussion next week, have a good day.”he strode up to the instructor, hoping to get a word in but the instructor dashed from the room.He squinted his eyes confused at the instructors behavior. He thought back to his mindset as he too walked from the room, just slightly behind the mass of departing Cognit. He had been intently focused on the lecture, he hadn’t even been focused on his customary feel for deference.He looked up and saw the instructor conversing with a group of darker carapaced Cognit. He noted into the instructors mind and felt apprehensiveness and anxiety. He’s probably being investigated for his teaching. He thought and walked away towards the center of Vengeance. His adoptive family were having lunch in one of the skydomes, He loved the height, though contrary to most Cognits feeling of height.-Andrew was still lying in the floor beside the spot where his father had died, when they came for him. His body was gone, but he thought he could still feel him, lingering on after death.They sliced through the room and took Andrew from where he was lying. He started to scream but the calm presence of the Nest father flooded his mind and he quieted. Seemingly moments later, they stopped and he found himself placed on a large glider.He looked confusedly around but received no answers to the questions that floated through his mind. They strapped him to the glider and pushed it off the side of the globe. An apology echoed through his mind as the Nest father left him and he drifted down through the endless night.
d itself down and the two officers climbed onto it.It rose carrying him high into the air. With slow long strides it carried him off through the city.-He dragged the glider over the edge of the moat and dropped it on the ground.He winced as his arm was pulled down by the craft. He turned and walked into his makeshift wooden hut. He sat at a table and pulled out his bug. He tossed it into the air, and flashed into it.He was falling, the ground reared up to meet him. Just in time he pulled his wings out and soared upwards. He spun in a tight circle before flying through the holes in his door. He flew up and spun in the sunlight.After a couple of minutes he dropped down into the glider. He spun around inside of it in wonder. It was full of food and supplies. He flew the bug back to his hand and flashed back.He jumped up from the table and ran outside to the glider. He dropped down to the floorboard of the glider. He winced as he tugged on the floorboard but nothing gave. He finally gave up and reengaged the bug. He dropped down onto the board and to his surprise floated right through.He flew back up and found that the bug wasn’t stopped by it at all. He dropped down and grabbed a piece of food and hauled it up but it stopped in its tracks below him falling out of his grasp.He tried some of the other containers but the result was always the same. Finally he sat back in the glider and looked over at the sunset. An irittating tree was blocking his view but suddenly it dropped down and he had a perfect view. He turned to get out of the glider to see if another Cognit had shown up.Instead, he found himself floating high above his house. He turned back into the glider and closed his eyes. He concentrated,“Down,” He whispered “Down.” He felt a slight drop and felt the glider touch earth. He opened his eyes and looked around, he was on the ground. He thought for a second, then focused on the floorboard, “Open.” The floor eased to the side and revealed a load of food and supplies.-Achilles unsquinted his eyes and felt the acid dissolve his solid barrier. As it dripped down his face he looked up and saw them approach a large city. It felt strangely reminiscent of the city he had been born in. It stood high with crystal towers and seemed to be connected from every angle.The brutes Mandibles clenched harder and he passed out again.
fter this, but that would only help his power.The side group leaped into action on command and smashed through the front line of brutes. The brutes quickly gave way under the vicious attack from the Cognit armed with curved blades.The rest of the groups roared in defiance and smashed into the Cognit forces. They were tired and they were bloodthirsty. His Group held back withtwo others as if waiting for a call for reinforcements.-He floated through nothing for a long time before he finally closed back to reality. His eyes inched open and he found that he was indeed surrounded by spiders. All Cognits but the large mass sitting back in a cove in the wall.He made to reach out but a Shout resounded from the room. Surprised he stopped. A cognit stepped up,"You cannot. You crippled yourself, you attempt contact or control and you lapse into a coma. Each time gets longer and longer, It isn't worth it."He looked around confused,"You Know about the telepathy?" The cognits seperated giving him a line of sight to the Mass in the cove."Yes, They Know." He heard resound throughout his head. He looked up at the mass and three glowing red eyes appeared, and stared back at him.-The teams smashed through the outer windows and sirens exploded into sound blasted through the air. His teams pressed onwards The first several forays were fended off by security inside the building, but the voracity of the spiders were driven by memories of ill-equipped yet vicous human tactics.TNT was placed and building shook as the explosion resounded through the base of the tower. Bows were lashed and soon tar covered arrows were hurtling through the air imbedding themselve in redstone circuitry and Cognit bodies.Finally the three groups were called forward and began their march on the battle. THe upper security fell away as they caught sight of three widely dispersed groups chanting and holding bright lights. They halted at the bottom but the tactic had worked and the inner troops flooded through unhindered."Then why are you hiding in an rust covered desolate city?" He asked after the Brute had spoken. "Surely you could do so much more!""We are restricted; population, technology, and power. The Felic control it all.""The Felic? I knew the Felic.""No, You knew an isolated group on the fringes of society. They may have surpassed their brethren in terms of morality, but the Felics that remain here are just short of barbaric rulers.""How are you restricted?""Population checks, Scheduled executions, And Hormone control. Anyone can be a harsh master when they have complete control.""Why help me, When I could be perceived as a threat?""Because you will follow your conscience. Leave us to Stagnate and fade away, or help us break free."The last group forced their way into the building then all of the groups stopped, Layed down their weapons and layed into rest. The hostages, bleeding and sane didn't move until official forces paraded through. fifty spiders of youth had entered, decimated and conquered a security building.-He sat in rest as the officers flooded around him and the others, rushing towards the building. Dark tinted shells approached him, and ordered them one by one onto a large brute. To enforce their orders they were held at weapon point.Time passed quickly on the brute and almost instantly he found himself in a large iron room seemingly bleached of color. They filed in and sat in a circle around the center of the cubed room. The Dark-tinted shells came and took them out one at a time.When it came time for him they led him from the room and left him in an elaborate office. As he waited he kept his composure calm and sturdy, but inside he frantically paged through the memories of his followers.None of the others had been brought into a room like this, left alone, or had time to think before being questioned. He quickly lost track of time as he was consumed by worry and fear. They had no way to know who he was and what role he had played.Finally a Cognit stepped through the door and approached him. He remained silent and watched as it circled around him and sat at the desk in front of him."Achilles, Achilles, Achilles..." It said disapproval dripping from its voice. "We took you from that slum city Vengeance. And we provided you with top rate Schooling. Then you participate in something like this!" Seeing Achilles' confusion he introduced himself."I am Mandrake. Head of Public Relations. You are my pet project. An orphan brought to the higher echelon of Cognit society. Everyone needs their fairytales.""I didn't do anything.""Unfortunately all nineteen of the others with you said the same thing, The survivors of your attack also testify that they saw none of you. But hear this, Parables can be just as effective as Fairy tales. Sometimes more so." Mandrake motioned towards the door. "You are free to go. But we will be watching."
them and set back down on the ground.He pulled one hand back from the lever to wipe his face, and suddenly the craft began to spin. He was thrown off balance and he held onto the lever for dear life. The glider spun faster and faster as he grasped for a a handhold.He grabbed for the other lever but lost the grip on the one he had in the process. He watched surreally as he flew backwards from the glider and it stopped spinning. He continued on through the air and lost all thought as he felt the wall approaching.Desperately, He called out and the air around him cushioned his crash against the wall. He screamed as he slowly floated down the wall, Body and mind experiencing pain beyond any other. By the time he hit the ground his mind was vacant, and his body was limp.
e And we know your weaknesses.” Another light flicked on, half as bright but strangely painful to watch.He twisted backwards but strong limbs took hold of him and forced his head closer to the light. His mouth opened and words streamed as the light overtook him.--The Threadbare shell lit up and drew more laughter before the collective finally made its way out of the room. Quickly soaring up into the atmosphere, it flew into a column of geese. Squawking ensued as the geese tried to avoid the unnatural companions of the air.They watched as the collective seperated and landed on a few of the geese. The geese went into fits trying to shake the miniscule bots and the room barely contained their laughter. The geese rocketed through a cloud and the Collective dispersed leaving them behind.They went up and burst through the cloud running directly into a mettalic bird of the sky. Stunned the cameras rotated as the Collective fell, before quickly reorienting itself. They flew up and peered through windows and buzzed near entrances.After a couple of minutes, they formed a line and went into the ship. It was a calm place, seemingly devoid of human life. The group remained sitting entrapped by the view of the Ghost ship. The Collective meandered through analyzing signs and following the directions toward the bridge.They arrived at the bridge in seemingly no time. And found a disturbing sight, A human body sat at the controls, but that body was lax and its skin was pasty. They flew towards it and found wires attached to it with data ports around it.They landed on its hand and all but one flew away in surprise when a hand clamped down on it.A red light seared through the lone trapped camera and Lupus began shaking uncontrollably. All eyes returned to the screen as a laugh echoed through the speakers, And a loud voice crackled through. “Little, Filthy Spies! We are going to follow you all the way home.” Lupus groaned behind them and andrew glanced over and watched the liquid drop off his eyes.His horror grew as he turned back towards the screen and watched the Collective continue to move.--He blinked again and found himself lying in bed. His dim recollections of the night seemed to offer a horrible torturous experience. He examined his room but found nothing out of place. He shook his head and clambered from rest.He walked through a thin curtain and listened to the musical tinkling behind him as he walked through the Dorm halls and headed towards his first classroom. His eyes roved the hallways and picked out a couple of people that he knew.He waved and chuckled as he turned into his first classroom. He shivered as another memory of his dream, floated to the front of his memory. He looked at the Guest lecturer and found that he too was like the rest of the people here.Empty and soulless, But here was a place he fit in. He couldn’t twist things and people to his will, maybe because there was no will but he could have a conversation without being bombarded by the thoughts of fear and respect he forced on his companions.He looked up, realizing that the Lecturer had begun to speak and returned from his little world.--“He Doesn’t seem to remember the incident.” The larger spider said.“Could he be acting?” The Headmaster Asked.“He didn’t flinch during a seminar on torture techniques. I think he is safe. For now at least.”
3
Dejers Garth
This is me trying valiantly to start writing again. I have been down and barely been able to put a coherent sentence together so I hope this will help. This will vaguely follow the original storyline but there may be new chapters and a good amount of added content. thanks for reading.
I did get the idea from Once rewriting her story, so thanks Once.
thank you for reading.
She rested herself on a small platform she had glitched off the side of the nearby chunk, Her long red hair coiled at her shoulders before continuing the fall down her back. Her deep blue eyes roamed over the unloaded vista, finally resting on the void below her. "If I jumped... Would I ever land?" She pondered aloud. "Maybe I would just freeze as I fell."
She shook her head roughly, sending her hair flying out from her shoulders in a wide arc. She refocused her attention on the great blocky sun as it descended towards the horizon. A small prayer to Notch fell into her head from her past. 'As the sun falls away, I thank thee for another day. As another year becomes clear, I praise thee name. As my life’s end comes near, I ask for but one more day.'
Her mouth formed the words and sent them flying into the void. Memories flooded in behind her recital. Memories of her old home, her old life. She remembered her few friends, and her multiple enemies.
Her eyes grew damp as she tried to force the memories away. They had banished her from the village at the age of eleven! The wizards had tutored her some before even they had tired of her constantly changing demeanor and sent her to the reject areas of Minecraftia,
So, now she lived on the last loaded chunks of Minecraftia. Mostly she lived in peace and hapless solitude. The creepers unfortunately had found her identity and demanded her removal from their lands. The wizards were most likely working on relocating her right now.
Undoubtedly, Marcus was already preparing to head her way and give her a quick relocation, A catch up lesson for her almost nonexistent magical potential, and a bit of conversation. She was pretty sure he only had to relocate her, the other things might be a addition to his duties or they might be pity...
Either way it was always a bittersweet reunion. He would bring a batch of essentials, random treats obtained from his other travels, and a new 'Cure.' Last time the 'cure' was a desensitization pod that she had to sit in for a day, time before that it was a bunch of cold potions that tasted like rotten feet.
The cure was for her 'Special problem.' In her earliest memories, she had a friend. They looked nothing alike, and were nothing alike. StormGale had been wild rambunctious and free spirited, while she had preferred books and puzzles. Over time, she saw StormGale less and less, until she just vanished completely.
The people in the town saw StormGale and said she did the worst things, but she never saw her. She honestly didn’t think about her very much... After a short period, instead of blaming the things done on StormGale, All of it was blamed on Ashley.
She was shunned and her friends disappeared. The arrival of the wizards was a relief. She had been so happy when they arrived and proclaimed that they would investigate her actions and the actions of the mysterious Stormgale.
For the next week, the wizards kept an omnipresent eye on her. At the end of the week, they called a town meeting and stated their findings. After a couple minutes of explanations, the whole town knew that, her 'authorized life force' was intertwined with the coding of another.
They brought her up to the stage and demonstrated a quick test. In front of all of them, her skin turned bleach white, her eyes faded to a stormy grey, and her hair turned to a silvery blonde. Gasps echoed through the crowd as StormGale stood in front of them. Stuck her tongue out and took a deep bow.
Confused and outraged, the Townsfolk had tried to extract an understandable answer from the wizards, but it seemed as though they were at a loss. A group of fathers grouped and approached the wizards as every eye in the room stayed stuck on StormGale's skin.
At least that’s how the wizards had recounted it to her. She didn't remember much more than getting up on the stage. What she did remember was waking up in a chair off the side of the main room and the kindly man that had took her hand and teleported them away from the irate crowd that had declared her banishment.
That had been five years before. Since then she had lived in the ruins of Antiquity, and the sodden bowls of troy. The wizards had changed her name and her background countless times. Finally, she had opted to live beyond the reaches of the humans and keep her past.
A deep bell rang out from the growing darkness. Somewhere out in the unloaded area, there was an immense wizard base glitched into the middle of nothing. Only the higher wizards could go there. She had attempted to glitch her way out towards the continuous tolls but she never got out of the sight of land.
Something always drove her back, the bell resounded again, jerking her from her thoughts and drawing her attention to the sun falling beneath the horizon. She cursed and checked her inventory for her bow.
She pulled it out and stretched, her skin color fading to white. Her calm grey eyes absorbed the situation and the bow in her hand. Quickly she tucked the bow away, and unsheathed her iron sword. She jumped from the platform and somersaulted through the air, barely grasping the ladder as she connected with the side of the unloaded chunk.
Holding the ladder with both hands, she brought her legs up behind her and touched the soil in front of her with her feet. In a single fluid movement, she thrust her upper body away from the ladder and hung for a second suspended over the void. Her silver hair caught the suns dying rays and flashed white.
She flipped up above the grass and gracefully landed on her feet. Confidently she strode forward into the night. She halted after a second and, grinned a frightening leer into the dark. The bushes around her snapped and swayed as bodies moved through them.
Behind her, she heard a low chatter of teeth grinding together. She jumped and swung her sword in midair slicing through the head of the zombie that had run full hilt from the bushes. Blood and brain flew in a gory mess through the air around her as she continued her spin.
As another two zombies forced their ways out of the bushes to confront her, her grey eyes flashed in delight and she beckoned them closer before running the first through with her sword, and vanquishing its body in a shower of grey and white puffs.
The second paused for a moment as if trying to understand what had happened to its partner. It recovered quickly but she had already launched herself into the air above it, she let out a fierce battle cry as she used the force of her fall to drive her blade down through the zombies’ skull sending bits of bone flying as she twisted it out of the creatures’ rotted innards.
The square moon had risen high above the dark land, and was nearing the apex of its climb, as she approached the front of her house. She ran her hand through her red hair and squinted her eyes at the remnants of the gore on her iron blade trying to figure out how she had lost so much time killing zombies.
She sighed as she walked through her gate and looked at her farm. None of the wheat had grown; shaking her head, she grabbed a couple of potatoes and carrots from their small patches. Much easier then going down to her main farm.
She looked out beyond her fence and sighed at the multitude of eyes that leered from the forest. She ducked as an arrow flew with great gusto towards her head, hit a button beside her farm and watched as the fence got one higher blocking the arrows, then walked towards her door.
On her door was a piece of dried flesh with words written in a dark ink. In a well-placed scrawl written several times in differing hands, it read; "You have been warned twice! After this there will be no more warnings." Rolling her eyes, she ripped the skin off the door, swung about and hit the button again, dropping the fence down so she could be seen over it.
She walked forward along her path and stood at her gate holding the dried flesh. Her grey eyes flashed as she ripped the skin in two and held them over the dual torches marking the entrance to her yard. Her red hair gleamed catching the light from the skins as they caught fire and fell in bright flames from her hands to the ground.
She turned away and walked back towards her house, hitting the button once more without stopping and walked through her front door. The leaves crackled behind her for a few seconds before the noise calmed and ceased.
Inside she shook her head and tossed out her earlier thoughts. She reached into one of her chests and fished out a bucket of water. Turning back to her cauldron, she filled it up and lit the fire beneath it.
She then plopped the potatoes on a board and cut them in silence. After a minute, she looked over to the cauldron and found that it was boiling. She looked around the room for a second as if she was missing something, and then redirected her attention towards the potatoes she was cutting.
She sighed as she finished with the potatoes, and then dumped the slices into the cauldron. She turned and grabbed some salt from her chest and sprinkled it in the water. She looked around again and murmured seemingly surprised, "Jack isn't here..."
She looked around the smaller kitchen, "Where is he?" Her voice cracked, then she shook her blond hair and took a deep breath. "Don't need him anyway." She murmured, an edge catching her voice.
She pulled the carrots out and sliced through them quickly, her knife becoming a blur as it moved across the cutting board. She scooped up the small slices of carrots and dumped them into the soup.
For a few minutes, she just blankly stared at the wall. The water boiled to a broth and the thick aroma of soup began to fill the air. She pulled a bowl from the chest and scooped a bit from the cauldron.
She move over to the table in the corner of the kitchen and began to eat her food. The hot soup stung her mouth but she hardly noticed it as she stared intently at the front door. "Where is he?" She murmured, barely hearing herself as her red hair fell into her eyes obscuring the sight of the door.
She blinked back a couple of tears and turned away from the door. "Probably at one of those Nexus clubs..." She said. Then she flung her bowl into the hopper on the side of the room, and stormed out of the kitchen.
She stormed over and slammed a button to her side, then stumbled up the stairs that formed ahead of her. She glanced off the door as she barged into her room then tripped over the lock switch that deactivated the lower stairwell access before falling into her bed.
As she began to fall asleep, she heard the zombies around her house chanting softly in their guttural language. She shuddered as their chant rose in volume. She contemplated what gods they might be calling on and what they might be asking for.
The chant continued well into the night but she fell asleep quickly, barely missing the sound of her lower door opening and sounds of her base level traps going off.
Chapter 2 - Problems with redstone.
Her sparkling blue eyes fluttered open as the morning sun cast its golden rays through the window to dance on her eyelids. She stretched for a moment, and then laid there sitting in the cool warmth of the morning sun. As the sun brought itself above the horizon, she slowly brought her body to a sitting position and watched as the sun climbed higher into the sky.
With a contented smile on her face, she pulled her legs out from under the covers and dangled them off the side of her bed. She leaned forward onto her feet and tapped a button beside her bed. With a soft swish of pistons the sunlight vanished, eloquently taking its place lay twin redstone lamps that blinded her.
Blinking at the harsh contrast from the soft sunlight, she tottered light-headedly towards her door. As her head began to clear, she stepped onto a pressure plate in front of her door. As the door swung open, she jumped back surprised. The door shut in front of her, leaving her to recover for a moment.
She stepped forward onto the pressure plate again, and sighed as the door swung open again. She walked out the door and stepped down towards thin air. As her foot continued traveling downwards, she cried out. She twisted her body towards her doors landing and tried to grab the stone.
Her blonde hair flew out above her body like a halo as she fell, her nails scraping on the side of the bricks. With a jarring lurch, she grabbed hold of one of the bricks in the wall. Gasping in pain, she dug her fingers into the crevices of the brick. She glanced down and shook as she remembered how high her room was.
“Thirty blocks” She spit through her teeth. It was meant to be inaccessible from all approaches. Her room even had a meager defense system set up by the resident missing ghost. None of that would help her now that she was dangling well above the survival portion of her fall.
She quickly tried to rationalize her thoughts and checked her belt to see what she had on it. Praying to Notch for a water bucket, she examined her belt. Astounded she glanced again. Her belt was empty! She never let her belt be empty! Fervently praying to whatever god might hear her, she twisted one of her arms and jammed her hand deeper into the rocky crevice.
She cried out in pain as she lost her footing and her vision went red. She raised herself up as she searched for another spot to step. Pleased with the shoddiness of her work she quickly found another spot and regained her footing. Now stable she wrenched her other arm from the bricks and pulled out her bag.
She quickly sifted through it, finding only a couple of blocks of dirt and a shovel. She groaned in despair as she double-checked, then triple-checked her bag. Her red hair began to show through as she checked for the fourth time. Her blue eyes turned calculating as she looked again at the dirt blocks.
` She slid her body away from the wall, Wincing as her pinned hand protested its abuse. Then she began to focus intently on the block diagonally below her. Her eyes grew wide and her face changed to a seemingly detached perspective as the block of dirt in her hand grew bigger and floated out of her grasp.
When it finally popped into place, she let out a sigh of relief and gingerly withdrew her massacred hand from the bricks. She looked it over for a second and shook her head as she examined the deep gouges in it. Now much calmer, she pulled out the next couple of blocks from her bag and began to work her way back up to her room.
Several minutes later, she made it to her door, red-faced and exhausted she splayed out onto her bed. She looked over and propped open a chest beside her bed and took a long draught of a red potion. The gouges on her hand remained but now the pain from them was gone.
She looked over at her door and noticed the lever flipped the wrong way. She growled in frustration as she found the cause of her unexpected adventure. She angrily moved off her bed and pulled the lever back reactivating her stairs. She walked back to her door and activated the pressure plate, the familiar shift of the pistons filled the room and she felt the weight of the glitched dirt return to her bag.
Warily, she stepped down onto the first stair and descended the rest in a slight frenzy. She stopped at the bottom and closed her eyes with a deep breath. She held the breath for a moment before she walked down the hall to a door set flush with the wall
She stepped into the room and looked around at the assortment of chests that surrounded her. She began digging through the first chest, but abandoned it after a moment and moved in to the next one.
After several more chests, she fished out a piece of string, and tied her blonde hair up in a sort of ponytail. She then sagged against the wall, sighed in relief, and walked down towards her kitchen area.
She stepped into the kitchen and grabbed her bowl from the sink. Wordlessly she pulled a small bit of soup from the cold cauldron and tasted it. Sighing she put the soup back into the cauldron and set the fire beneath it aflame once more.
She walked back down the hallway as the soup started heating up. Halfway down the hallway she placed a block above her head and the wall opened in front of her. She walked in and slid down a small chute to the side of the entrance.
After a moment of falling, she started screaming and tried to grab hold of the sides of the wall. Her eyes grew wide and her screams echoed until she crashed through the water at the bottom and fell out onto the ground in a heap.
Breathing heavily, she wiped her red hair from her face and sat back with her eyes closed. "I'm alive." She said to herself, "I'm safe." as she stood up these became a mantra. "I'm alive, I'm safe. I'm alive, I'm safe." She walked through a darkened control room and sighed as she flicked a lever turning the lights on.
The little room flooded with light momentarily blinding her, she blinked for a moment regaining her sight then she walked over to the sign that read; "Egg allocator." She flicked the lever behind it and listened as water flowed down towards her.
A small bit of water came through a hole that opened up in the wall and the water fell through a grate in the floor, the sound of a turbine spinning below echoed after it. She stared at it confused "No eggs?" She asked bewildered. She hit the button again. Another quick flow of water poured out and a single egg landed on the grate.
She picked it up confused, Then flipped a lever beside the one that had turned the rooms light on. The front of the wall opened up and showed a vast array of darkness that systematically began to light up.
She gasped in dismay as she saw the water in the other room; it was coated with a thick sheet of blood. A whirlwind of disembodied feathers raged around twin pools that signified the two egg collection points.
One egg had survived the murder of its flock. Silently she put the egg in a small hatchery, and flicked the lever again. One by one the lights went out, hiding the horrors they had beheld. Finally, a pair of pistons covered the window blocks. Slowly she turned and crawled up the ladder leading to the rest of her house.
Eventually, she made it to her kitchen and sat in one of the chairs in the corner. She turned and pressed a button beside her. Seconds later, she heard the groan of several golems awakening below her. If anything lurked down there her iron golems would finish them!
In a slightly lighter mood, she rummaged through a food chest searching for something edible. As she sat there, sifting through the chest her grey eyes softened into memory.
Her favorite elder had been named Terran. He had lived a long life, and was the only one that told his countless stories of impossibilities. Yet his claim always remained that these wonders had existed, yet ceased to work. He spoke of floating islands that housed strange creatures’ and even gods. He told stories of never aging, and pools of water that once filled would never empty.
The thing she remembered the most of were his stories of swords crafted from simple blocks forming mighty blades that could slay six zombies at a time, and chests that complied to your will and showed you everything that lay within them at one time.
He would always grin and pull out a chest that worked that very way. He would show it to the groups that gathered to prove his point. She had gone to hear his stories longer than the others her age did. She remembered his eyes had always sparkled when she pressed him more about his past.
"The more you know, the less you know you know" He had remarked the last time she saw him. Months after she had left her town a group of traveling wizards had returned to the central citadel of learning, and passed on the news that he had vanished.
She shook her head and pulled out a piece of bread from the chest. Content she sat back in her chair and took a bite out of the bread. She sat back and gagged at the taste of the stale bread. She got up from her chair and walked to a chest by the sink still gagging on the bread.
She pulled a bottle of water out of the chest and took a long draught from it. As she drank, her mouth exploded in flames and she fell to the floor choking on the fluid that was burning down her throat.
A flash of memory came to her mind. Terran had always said that milk used to have healing properties! She looked up through her tearing eyes and sought out the bucket of milk on the wall.
Locating it she began to drag herself near it. With each movement, her stomach rolled in pain, and tears rolled down her face in streaks. She pulled herself up the side of the wall and broke the item frame. The milk fell to the floor and she cried out in exasperation.
She fell to the floor as her eyes began to cloud over, she reached forward desperately trying to grab the milk, but it was too far away. She abruptly realized that it wouldn’t have worked, milk didn’t heal you anymore. Her stomach rolled in pain and she began to drift towards the endless darkness.
Suddenly she felt the cool metal of a bucket being pressed into her hands and a calm force moving the bucket towards her mouth. As the bucket touched her lips and milk began to flow into her mouth, her doubts about the milk vanished.
A soft sweet feeling crept through her body; she opened her eyes and found a man above her holding the bottom of the bucket. His kindly eyes widened as he saw her eyes open, and he moved away from her releasing his grip on the bucket.
She blinked and the man disappeared. She sat up wondering if she had imagined it, when she saw the bucket of milk she had pulled from her item frame lying on the floor on the other side of the room.
Chapter 3 – blades, poison, endermen?
Her arms protested as she raised herself up from the hard floor and surveyed her kitchen in a new light. She looked down across the wooden floor and found the small bottle she had been incapacitated by. She crawled over to the bottle and picked it up from the floor. As she pulled herself up into a chair, she noticed several small specks of floating within the bottle that reflected light giving a golden coloration to them.
As she raised the glass up a bit higher to get a better look at the specks, she lost her grip on it and it fell towards the floor. The bottle fell to the floor, and in a timeless instant shattered into thousands of pieces, sending the tainted liquid flying around the room in large quantities. A drop landed on her hand, making her cry out as it frothed and irritated her hand to a bright red.
She reached down and grabbed the spare bucket of milk from the floor, she plunged her hand into it waiting for the burning to fade. She flung the bucket at the wall, outraged. Then ran to her sink and held her hand under running water for a minute.
Slowly the burning faded leaving only questions in her mind. She took her irritated hand from the water and pulled another bottle of water from her chest. she leaned it into the light and found that it too was full of golden specks. She dropped the bottle back into the chest and walked back to the sink.
She looked out a window behind it and pondered for a minute as the water drizzled through the knob.
"Someone tried to poison me..." She murmured barely audible over the water. "Then a stranger saved me, with the impossible." She looked back at the bucket on the floor, then doused her hands and wiped them over her face. She turned and leaned back on the sink, and looked up at a light grey sword that hung upon the south side of the room.
Entranced, she walked across the room and stood before it. Her hands came up and brushed the edges of the blade. She reached up and ran her fingers down the side of it, leaving a trail of dust. Hidden under the dust lay a silver blade that held her reflection. She looked at her reflection for an instant but her eyes darted away as her blue eyes surfaced. She let her fingers grasp hold of the blade and remove it from its designated frame.
She extended the blade outwards and pivoted before sheathing the luminescent blade firmly onto her belt. She stalked out of the kitchen and throughout the upper portion of the house. As she peered through the myriad of doors the blade moved from her sheath into her grasp, and blue flames danced along the blade.
Completing her circuitous path, she arrived in the kitchen. She sat and laid the blade before her on the table. As she gazed on it she thought of when she had recieved it.
It had been just before the wizards took her, Horace had approached her with a cloth covered object and held it out to her. "Only the heir of the Runneth may hold this blade." He had sneered at her. "But since your brothers are all dead, I guess we should give it to you." He had dropped it at her feet and walked away laughing.
She looked back at the blade, and traced the edge of it until a flush of steam blasted through the pipes beside the cauldron. She jumped, slightly startled by the abrupt noise. "The golems finished their rounds." She said. Her Grey eyes thrust their way into being, and her blonde hair flew out behind her as she strode towards the wall in front of her.
She pulled a torch towards her and after a small click, the wall fell away revealing a single aisle leading down into the depths of her house. She strode through the small entrance and unsheathed her blade. White and red flames rolled off the blade in waves as if in anticipation.
She walked forward and eyed her usual drop tube. Involuntarily, she shuddered and turned towards her ladder. She grabbed onto the sides and forcing herself into the dark, began the slow descent. Far below, she thought she could make out strange shadows, but she dismissed them as lighting bugs.
Halfway down, she turned towards the wall beside her and let go of the ladder. The air rushed past her and her red hair flew free of the string holding it back. She hit the ground and rolled. She stopped at the end of her roll with her sword unsheathed and a strange feeling of weakness permeating her mind.
Ahead of her lay the golem stalls, in all of them the stone pressure plates had been replaced with wooden pressure plates. She rocked back on her heels and grabbed her head as the feeling of weakness grew stronger, and a lance of pain arched through her head. She fell to one knee as her head erupted in fire. She caught her sword and spun with it barely missing the dark shape flitting out of existence behind her.
She heard a taunting laugh, and she looked around the room searching for its source. As she looked, she saw the shadows come to life drawing themselves from the wall and stalking towards her. Her eyes flashed grey and she jumped into the air as the shadows charged.
They collided soundlessly, before dissipating to nothing. As she landed softly in their wake, the laughter ceased. "Too smart for your own good, girl." The ominous voice resounded from all sides of the room. She glanced down and tried to remember the trick to revealing illusions.
"See everything, but see nothing." Commanded a small voice from behind her. She looked up and unfocused her vision, suddenly the room was filled with light and a large enderman stood a couple of blocks ahead of her. His deep voice called out to her, but now only from him
"Child, You have powerful friends..." He continued, "Why do you tempt fate instead of run?"
"I don't run from cowards that play with illusions." She snarled and rushed him with her sword.
His laugh echoed around her as his body grew thicker and wider. A handle appeared, looming over his shoulder and he ripped it free, revealing a white blade that stretched far beyond possible lengths. She unfocused her eyes once more and the size diminished. The enderman noticed her face and his eyes narrowed in scrutiny.
"Too smart for your own good, girl... My name is Diomedes, And I think I am going to kill you." With that an enderpearl flashed into his hand and he flung it high above him. She watched it fly up for a second before realizing that he had begun charging at her. She brought her sword up to block his first strike and braced herself.
He brought his white sword down on hers with a savage grin that seemed to mangle his face. As the two swords connected a look of shock crossed his face, and he went flying backwards at the wall. The instant before he connected with the hard rock, his pearl fell to the spot he had first stood, teleporting him.
He looked up visibly shaken, his eyes narrow and his jaw partially unhinged, he looked at her with new caution. "Powerful friends indeed." He whispered as she matched his movements across the floor. He sheathed his sword and his form thinned to a much lesser shape. His arms changed, gaining more joints and his hands sprouted rapier claws.
She unfocused her eyes once more trying to banish this foul delusion, But his harsh laugh broke out through the room as he saw her attempts. "This is no illusion, Girl." He settled forward on his long legs. "This is Reality!" Then he charged at her chuckling all the way.
She held her sword in front of her as he charged, but she couldn't see what good it would do. The small voice whispered behind her once more, "His claws! Hit his claws!" Before vanishing to wherever it had come. As he bounded towards her she glanced at his claws, they were the same color as his blade...
They were his blade! She realized. He couldn't generate anything new, he just rearranged it. She set her stance back and held her sword in position to strike at his stomach. He reached her and reared up, Giving her an ample strike as he swung his claws at her. "One hit!" She muttered as she swung her sword up towards his stomach.
His grin grew wider, but faltered as her blade shifted directions and grazed one of his claws. He flew backwards once more but this time he connected harshly with the rock and fell to the ground purple blood oozing around him. She watched his body melt and boil as it returned to its original shape.
She shook her head and glanced back at the golem stalls, but the items were gone. She looked back at the enderman now fully reformed, but he remained on the floor. She ran over the battle in her head, at the beginning there had been movement behind him. "He wasn't alone." She cursed realizing her mistake, and whirled around.
Facing her with a large gun pointed at her head was a girl, "No, He wasn't." She muttered before ripping her blade from her hand; it skidded along the floor and disappeared. She reached forward and shoved her back towards a wall. Her blue eyes took in her surroundings and fell back defeated. "What do you want with me?" She asked.
"We wanted to pick you up nice and easy, and just be done with it." The girl snarled.
"You poisoned my water!" She exclaimed.
"You drank the water, and you are down here fighting?" Asked a bewildered voice from behind her as she felt a cool blade press against her neck.
The girl stepped forward and slammed her face into the rock, letting the edge slice into her face.
"Ashley I presume," she shook her head as blood trickled down her face filling her eye socket, her blonde hair fell down around her shoulder eliciting a gasp from the girl. She held her hand up to the blade and tapped it with her fingernail. She looked up at the enderman and grinned as her other hand pulled an ender pearl from his chest. His eyes grew wide and he fell to the ground in a heap. The girl danced back as she saw what Stormgale had in her hand. "You wanted to pick me up?" She exclaimed. The girl just stood looking at her hand in horror. She smirked and held it up, "It's still beating, you know..." She continued a grim smile on her face, "I can just put it right back in, and he'll be good as new!"
"Or I can smash your head in and take it from you" Growled Diomedes as he grasped her by the hair and smashed her face back into the wall and dropped her, retrieving the pearl from her hand. As she lost consciousness, she felt a cool bottle slide into her pocket, a soft whisper "You will survive." Then she knew naught.
Her blue eyes snapped open, but it seemed as though a purple veil was cast over her. In confusion, she turned herself, finding the vast emptiness that surrounded her to be true. Panicked, she sought out life in the vast featureless landscape. Her grey eyes discerned nothing.
Turning again, she cast herself into an endless spin and fell into a bout of despair. Red began to press against the blond roots of her hair. All but a few of the red strands fell away, those few surged forward encompassing one side. She let loose a violent scream, which cascaded throughout the endless dark landscape.
The threads of hair stretched out ahead of her looping into a circle and forming a sphere in front of her. Slowly a face appeared on it, blue eyes surfaced, and a pallid color faded over the growing hair. The hair stretched out and continued building on to the rest of the body.
White hair pulled away from her body in emulation as her hair began to shift to a golden color. Slowly the two strands took their respective shapes and colors. She watched in fascination, as the white steamed ahead of the red, applying features, clothes, and minute details as it built itself. The red slowly pushed on, not so far behind the white.
To the left, the white strands twisted after a moment then fell into a suddle lull, their creation complete. A girl floated ahead of her, her head wreathed in silvery blond hair that fell over her shoulders before continuing down to the small of her back, her skin gleaned a bright tallow, seemingly luminescent, and otherworldly.
To the right, the red strands tangled themselves in a knot before her, presenting their own work. Another girl floated there, suspended over the dark abyss. Her skin seemingly flushed from a chill, and her face standing out against her light auburn hair. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders, maintaining a gleam as it curled ahead of her.
As one, their eyes opened. She smiled as they floated and stared at one another in a state of shock. Completely oblivious to her, the red one opened her mouth as if to speak to the white one. As she did, her eyes widened in shock and she started choking, she heaved backwards. After a moment, a few strands of hair flew from her mouth, errantly flying towards the bemused white one.
When the white one saw what it was she started laughing, her eyes wide in incredulity. Her eyes suddenly went glassy, she wrenched her body upwards and opened her mouth in a silent scream as her eyes grew red and light came from under her skin, all at once it was incinerated as brilliant white flames fought their way from inside of her.
The red one winced, shielding her face from the onslaught of the light and scorching heat. Her eyes opened in disbelief as she looked back at her arms and found them plastered in ice. She watched in horror as the ice silently crept up her arms to her torso, leaving a thick, blue, melting sheath of ice that was semi-transparent, yet showed no skin.
Droplets of water fell from her arm as the white one's flames flared higher. The flames fell to just above her skin as the white one crumpled in space, seemingly exhausted. The red one glanced up from her arm as the heat faded. The room began to cool, temperature dropping fast; the red one's face froze over leaving a facade between her and the world.
The droplets of water from her arms, floated up and surrounded the three, the area shook as the water turned into shards of ice and exploded into nothing. The red one held her hands up in wonder as snow flakes fell down around them, sparkling in the dim glow of the white one's light.
The white one snarled as the snow hit her sending puffs of steam away and dampening her fire. She snarled and let flames fly out from her fingertips, vaporizing the snow and startling the red one from a blissful reverie.
Eyes sparkling, the red one floated closer to the white one, extending her hands in apology. With an audible snarl, jets of flame shot out melting the sides of her arms into cool water. The water fell down into the void, but the red ones face twisted in pure hatred. The water flew up from the void and formed a liquid shell around her.
The shell froze solid, before fracturing outwards into a million pieces. Thousands of specks of ice floated in orbit around her, before sling shotting around her and arcing towards the white one. Sneering, the white one blasted a jet of fire at the ice, melting it into an immense cloud of steam.
Another blast of flame issued from her fingertips aimed directly at the red one, but a smile crept across the red ones face as the flame shot through the cloud of steam. The steam enveloped it, instantly freezing the flame in a solid block of ice. The block broke away from the flame as it redirected itself towards the white one. It flew with increasing speed, but the white one wasn't there anymore.
The red one too had disappeared. With a laugh she watched as the frozen fire arced into the wall and blasted a hole in the void. A shocked scream echoed inside, followed by a fresh breeze and light. She strode forwards along a translucent path; finally she reached the edge of the void, and stared out through the cracks.
A girl stood facing it, with a rifle partially gripped over her shoulder. Beside her stood a large enderman, whose shifting armor was vaguely reminiscent of the void chamber she was inside. She saw their mouths moving but was unable to hear them; she pressed on the crack and winced as it pressed back with a shock. "It isn't fully broken yet." She muttered as she waved her hand in pain.
She closed her eyes and swayed backwards, away from the crack and the view of the outside. She set her face with a sigh and pressed her hand against the crack, slowly her hand moved forward through the dark wall. The room shifted from dark and black to a stunning silvery grey, before shifting again to a deep auburn.
She closed her eyes and the clashes became more violent, sending flashes of color in-between, this went on for several minutes. Finally the two colors smashed into each other, holding in the middle of the great dome, a sliver of pink. The pink grew, slowly pushing at its boundaries forcing the other colors apart.
Her hand pressed through the crack as the last of the colors were overcome by the pink. She grabbed the side of the crack and pulled herself up into the crevice. She stood there, it seemed that time had stopped outside; the girls face was frozen almost mid-word, while the enderman's armor had ceased its subtle vibrations.
Time slowly started its revolutions as she stood up, and strode confidently through the last stretch of the crevice. "Impossible!" The enderman said as she walked into the small cave. His eyes remained fixated behind her; she glanced back and found herself staring at a pink egg hovering about waist-height off the ground.
"Powerful," She said, returning her gaze to the enderman. His eyes narrowed,
"I called it up. As far as I knew, it was unbreakable." The girl twisted her gun further off her back and held it up as if in self defense.
"She is real?" She asked the enderman, in an off tone.
Glancing down at herself, she grinned. "I am real?" An uncertain expression flitted across her face. The room shook violently sending the two girls to the floor. "Diomedes!" The girl cried out as his body shimmered trying to teleport.
"Not happening," He groaned, his shimmering slowing.
"Interesting, I seem to remember you having the ability to teleport." She stated offhandidly as she brought herself up from the floor.
"I use pearls." He said, a harsh edge creeping into his voice. She ignored him, instead inspecting her clothes. She was wearing a pinkish orange dress that fell below her knees, and twin sandals coated with silver glitter.
She glanced back up as she heard a chuckle, Diomedes was looking down at her. "I've figured it out!" He said, "I must be in a dream!" She looked balefully at him and walked over to the girl, who was still sitting on the floor fumbling with the gun. "We don't need that," She said as she pulled it from the girl's hands. "Now do we?" She asked, setting a reproachful gaze on her.
When she didn't respond, she twisted around and mimed shooting a pair of bats that had just flown into the room. She twisted it, before tossing it up a couple of blocks and catching it by the barrel. Glancing at the hilt, a stricken expression fell over her face. She spun around and faced the girl. "Please, tell me you aren't Arnold!" She asked seemingly mortified.
"No," She sputtered, slightly surprised. "That's. That was my dad's name. My name," She broke off, glancing at Diomedes.
"You started, can't stop now." He muttered, and fumbled with something in his hand.
"Jenny." She said, subdued and staring at the ground.
She glanced up at the bats again and tossed the gun towards Jenny. She turned away and flipped over backwards, catching it in midflight before softly landing behind her. "Jenny? Much better name then Arnold, though I wouldn't doubt your father wore it well." She purred into her ear staring over her shoulder at Diomedes. "He wasn't kidding about the ender pearl, was he?" She paused for a moment, "Kind of Gruesome... If you ask me." Diomedes glanced up, with a stoic expression on his face.
"No one did." He said before focusing again on the pearl in his hands.
Shrugging she returned her attention to the ceiling, "Jenny, could you take a quick look at the ceiling for me?" Jenny tilted her head up and quickly surveyed the ceiling, only a couple of blocks from their heads. "Do you see the bats?"
"What about them?" Jenny asked.
"They aren't bats," She looked over at Diomedes and flashed a grin. "They're dragons." He glanced up in surprise, "Dragons?" The two objects transferred from vague shadows becoming clearer and the sharp ridges on their backs becoming more pronounced. Diomedes Cursed and threw his ender pearl out of the room, but it was too late.
The pearl reappeared in his hand as a dark luminescent circle appeared around the now circling miniature dragons. The room shook, and the circle gained depth, glowing an intense black. A voice boomed from the portal, filling all the corners of the room with a jagged old voice. "And Lucifer, hath fallen from the heavens, yet made his home among the mortals instead of his fiery kingdom."
A tight silence flooded the room, "Diomedes, Lucifer never consents to return... Therefore, you give me little choice." A rash chuckle resounded through the cave. "You will return. With or without your consent." The portal flashed a deep purple, and endermen poured through the opening.
They landed and prepped for battle, located their enemy and charged. She held Jenny by the shoulder as the group charged en masse towards Diomedes. Suddenly, Diomedes was in his bestial form. A deadly wolf, ripping apart the creatures attacking him. They too followed cue, shifting into various creatures that defied the laws of nature.
A large cat flew backwards with its guts splayed out on the ground. Another wolf charged into the fray to apprehend Diomedes. It soon laid; face mangled and purple blood oozing out, against the wall it had been slammed into. A raptor swooped down and caught Diomedes' arm, doing no damage but allowing several hits to go unguarded.
For its effort, one of its legs were ripped off by Diomedes, and an eye gouged by one of its own. It flew in an errant circle, swooning from blood loss till it caught sight of her in the corner. It flew at her but veered off from the cold gaze in her eye; instead it flew down and raked the side of Jenny's arm with its remaining talons.
As her blood dripped from its claws, it cawed in elation. Quickly flying back towards the fight as its wounds healed. She turned away from Jenny, Eyes burning in unbridled fury. She raised the gun up and held it towards the flying creature. Jenny glanced up at her in surprise. "It's not loaded." She warned as the trigger jerked back.
The barrel exploded, launching a huge fireball from it. The fire grew in intensity and size till it scorched the ceiling. The group turned in slow motion as they felt the heat. Their blood boiled and sprayed as the fireball smashed into them with a large explosion.
Waves rippled off their falling bodies, their mangled screams echoing through the air. The explosion rippled throughout the room as she turned away from the dying creatures and dropped the gun. It slowly fell to the ground and rebounded upwards with a loud, slow crack.
Jenny moved forward slowly, intent on the gun. She grabbed it and looked up at the portal, a grim smile spreading across her face. She slowly loaded her gun, and aimed it at the portal. The gun clicked, and she started reloading it.
She watched for a moment as Jenny slowly loaded her gun, before turning away and drawing a long silver blade. As she strode towards the nearest group of endermen, the blade lit with a vibrant pink flame. The flames coalesced in this color, before faltering into two colors; bright blue, and a fiery red.
With a sharp cutting laugh she sliced through a charging enderman before decapitating him and launching his head at the portal. She cut through the group she had targeted and dispatched them the same; blood flowing, appendages flying towards the portal.
Behind her, the loud shot of a gun finally rang through the air. Jenny stood, half-crouched cocking her gun to fire it at the portal again. On the other side of the room Diomedes roared, smashing an enderman’s head on the ground before sticking his hand into its chest and withdrawing an ender pearl, along with a fountain of purple blood.
She laughed and dashed over behind Diomedes, slicing the slow-moving creatures into bits. She lunged forward; smashing her blade into the same spot she had seen Diomedes pull the pearl from. She ripped it out and held on it a large ender pearl, pumping purple blood down her blade.
She whirled around, catching an enderman on the side of her with it, and watched in delight as small purple explosions lit the surface of the enderman’s skin before demolishing it. It let out a slow shriek before falling backwards and flashing in a white explosion that sent the enderman around her flying.
Grinning, she turned towards the last group of endermen, grabbed her sword with both hands, and pulled them apart. The flames mingled for a second before retreating to the opposite blades. With a fierce battle scream she cut through the large group.
Moments later, she lowered her blades and looked around the room. The cave was covered in dark purple blood, and the screams of the dead still echoed. She looked over at Jenny, and watched as she fired a last shot before slowly lowering her gun in exhaustion. She saw Diomedes leaning against the wall, cupping his hands around a gash in his leg.
She set her face and threw her blades at the miniature dragons circling the portal. As they left her hands everything shifted back into place. The bullets from Jenny's gun slammed through the portal, followed by a stream of body parts. A tight, anguished laugh echoed through the room as her blades pinned the dragons to the ceiling.
The portal vanished as the voice echoed through it. "Truly, you are a creature of the Void, Daughter of my parent’s killer." Then the voice echoed away with a cruel laugh. She looked back at Jenny and Diomedes.
"You owe me." Jenny stared at her in a mild shock, but Diomedes nodded. "I won't remember this encounter when we next meet." She continued, "Therefore, next time we meet. You will treat me with respect, and aid me in any way you can." She surveyed their expressions. "Understood?" They nodded in assent.
She jumped into the air and caught hold of the swords spearing the dragons to the ceiling. "You will help me, or I will remember what you did and why." She pulled her body up, then ripped the swords out of the ceiling and fell towards the floor. She smashed the dragons into the corpse of a fallen enderman, and laughed as a white vortex enveloped her.
-
The vortex appeared in her kitchen and spat her out. She glanced around in meager surprise. She looked down at her blades and found the bodies were gone. Sighing she walked over and sat down in her chair.
She laid the blades on the armrests, and sat back. "A child of the void?" She asked the cool air. "What does that even mean?" She shook her head, and then contemplated the swords before her.
She held her hand over the blue one, "Cautious, intelligent, resourceful." She murmured. The red one flared as she held her other hand over it. "Reckless, Focused, Strong of will." She shook her head and took hold of both blades. They flared a momentary pink before pulling together and returning to their original state.
She swept her blond hair out of her face and narrowed her grey eyes on her surroundings. "Just like me to lose time in a damn chair." She muttered as she got up and walked to the sink. "Wonder who it was that saved me..." She said surveying the small room, before walking away into the bowels of the house.
She walked down the hallway with a steely glare in her eyes. She stopped as the redstone lamps flickered. She looked up in exasperation as they stopped their flicker then died outright. She glanced around the coal-dark hallway and cursed under her breath. "Not a good night" She muttered.
With her fingers outstretched, and her feet sliding along the floor, she quickly made her way to the wall. Confident, she walked forward, leaving only a couple of fingers brushing the wall. She gasped in pain as she tripped over a ledge. She reached up the wall and slapped it harshly.
When nothing happened she slapped again a bit higher. She slowly raised herself from the floor searching but her fingers met the ceiling before she found anything. She sighed and traced the ledge below her with her foot. Slightly less confidently, she walked in measured steps along the ledge.
She stepped forward in anticipation of the wall, but instead finding nothing. She slipped as the ledge dropped and she fell to the stone floor. She inched forward trying to find a position to stand up, A click resounded through the room as she activated a pressure plate.
She panicked as she remembered a haywire of traps laid throughout her house. Gingerly she picked herself up from the floor, leaving pressure on the block below her, and gazed around the dark room.
After waiting for a moment, she moved backwards off the pressure plate. Instantly a red light filled the room and a low hiss echoed through the area. Blinking at the light, she walked towards it. A moment of examination showed it to be a not-latch hooked up to a toggle-able switch.
The area above it was bare, and probably was meant to house a redstone lamp. She glanced around the rest of the partially lit room. She blinked as she realized she wasn't even in the wing of the house she thought she was... Instead she was in one of Jack's old rooms, before he stopped collecting his ethereal treasures.
She looked around again and thought for a second, where was he? It had been at least a week since she had seen him last. She walked over and rummaged through one of the chests to find any source of light. The first seemed to be empty, but she knew that in reality it was chock-full of things in the ethereal plane.
She opened the second chest, but just stood there in amazement. In the chest was a golden staff with a blazing pearl threaded through the wood. It pulsated a light purple, showing that it had a different quality from other items. Picking it up she felt power surge through her body.
This was an EnderSight staff, one of the most powerful things ever constructed. It granted its user the ability to teleport instantaneously, and when you gazed through the eye, you gained a momentary ability to see the true sources of power in the world. One of which being rifts that the endermen used to return to their own world, the other obviously the greatest treasure for any adventurer; it showed the residual energies of portals, End portals.
Only one of the three strongholds had been discovered, and its portal had long since been destroyed. But the other two were still hidden somewhere in the vast reaches of this world. Her red hair dropped around her shoulders as she gripped the ends of the staff and brought her head close to the glassy surface of the eye.
As she gazed through it she saw nothing... The view was just tinted a dark green. The staff bucked in her hands as she touched it to the ground. Suddenly, the dark room was gone and she was standing in front of her bed. She blinked, then remembered the teleportative capabilities of the staff.
She walked over to the side of her room, "Where would he even have found this?" She murmured. Shaking her head, she walked over and pulled a lever, she glanced up as the windows opened giving a view of the horizon. The sun was long gone, but the stars shone brighter then ever. She tapped the staff as she stepped closer to the window, then dropped down to a sitting position. Her feet clanked on the glass below her as her blonde hair was cast behind her by a cool breeze.
A clanking sound echoed past her ears and she discerned a muffled curse. She looks up in bewilderment, and catches sight of a rectangular object floating through the air. On the end lies a set of pistons. A row of glass covered the wall and revealed a shadow standing inside, looking outwards. She glanced around and smashed a button placed on the side of the stone with her foot. She looked up at the silhouette and smirked in satisfaction as she heard the Hissing below her.
A large explosion broke the night and a volley of TNT flew towards the ship. The form jumped in surprise and climbed up onto the outside of their ship as the TNT exploded. As the particles flooded the air, she noticed an object shoot up out the explosive radius. She glanced in amazement as made out a thin form clinging onto it. After a second, A phosphorous trail shot out of the bottom.
"He is riding a firework?" She muttered in disbelief, her red hair dropping to her shoulders as she followed the luminescent trail upwards. He climbed into the sky and was lost to her view when explosion rang out and the trail was obscured.
The sky exploded into a sea of colors and she could make out a dark shape superimposed on the vibrant colors. Slowly the dark shape grew bigger, until she could make out the same thin form that had rocketed into the sky drifting down under a Grey cloud.
She looked at the grey cloud as he descended, it swayed and blew towards her, as well as into the path of a lingering piece of the firework. They collided and the cloud caught fire. As the fire spread, the form twisted and pulled something from its pack.
It vaguely looked as though it were a slab but its edges were oddly deformed. The form placed it beneath its feet and let go of the parachute. Now directly in front of her house it plummeted grasping onto the slab.
She Gasped as it fell closer to the ground. Suddenly the corners of the slab caught fire and a muffled explosion sent the form flying higher into the air. The form held on as the slab tilted towards her and raced through the air.
She ducked and felt the fire cross over her seconds before she a clattering and a groan of irritation. “It almost worked.” A male voice said with a tone of disgust. “Well, You are alive FoxFiend.” He muttered.
“Who are you?” She asked, her blonde hair fluttering away from her body and hazel eyes bleeding through a blue overcoat.
“What?” The boy swung around a white redspeckled robe swinging around him. “Who, you, I... You atttacked me!” Her hair shimmered and red peaked at the edges.
“I Don’t like company!” She said voice thundering.
“You, Her, Looking.” He cowered. “You’re her! They, they are looking for you.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Who is looking for me? The Wizards?” At that he looked up and a grin crossed his face.
“I am a wizard.” He said proudly. “The bearers said I was special! See!” He held up his hand and a piston appeared in his palm. She moved the small distance separating them and peered at it as her hair shifted to red.
The Piston rotated briefly before settling down on his hand and the head of it pushing out. She moved back slightly as arrays of repeaters appeared over his hand along with hoppers and dispensers. The set up floated upwards above the surface of his hand and an iron casing fell over it.
He looked up weakly at her, and handed the iron cased contraption to her before sitting down and curling up on her roof. She held the strange object in her hand and ran her other along the edge of it.
“Aim Away from you,” Came a sleepy yawn accompanied voice. She glanced down at him and found him near sleep once more. She looked at the end of it and found a hole in it. She pointed it away from her and pressed down on an oddly colored section. She jumped as a flaming bolt spewed from it and arced away from her house into the darkness.
Her blonde hair fell down on her back and she blinked her hazel eyes for a second. She looked down at the boy and sighed. She picked him up and tapped the staff. A blink later she placed him down on a small bed. A glint of light caught her eye as she turned away.
She turned back and crouched. A metal band encircled his neck, and a word was displayed on it. “FoxFiend. Subject seven, COV” She sighed. “Good night Fox-Fiend.” Then turned away and tapped the staff again disappearing up to her room.
name;
gender;
age;
species;
special weapon or item;
bio;
Gender: Female
Age: 22
Species: Human
Special weapon or Item: A flintlock
Bio: Born in a small village, this girl is really smart. She is excellent in math and language, though a little bad in geography. She was the smartest girl in her village, and they would always call her 'the nerd' due to her knowledge of Minecraftia. While moving out, she found her dad's flintlock, and she decided to make a living by working for the Bearers at the age of 20. With her trusty flintlock and smarts, you should better stand out of her way.
Age: 28
Gender: Male
Species: Enderman
Appearance: When in battle, Diomedes wears full obsidian armor. When he isn't, he wears thiner armor. Which is at least more vulnerable than his full armor. He wears a chain around his neck with an Ender Pearl is, which was his father's before...
Special weapon or item: A sword made of Enderstone
Bio:
When he was a mere infant and had just been spawned into the End, his house was attacked by his fathers enemies. He was scared and alone, his mother spirited him away to a safe place before bidding him farewell. He was raised by his grandparents, out of contact with the rest of the world. After an indeterminable amount of years he finally gained contact with his father, only to find that his mother had long since passed away from a wasting disease.
Angry and distraught Diomedes returned to his grandparents realm and stayed there for a time, but as always War found them. He was forced into servitude fighting a meaningless campaign against his own people for ten long years. He advanced in rank until his command was only superseded by the Draconem itself.
His only wish was to regain contact with his grandparents. The Draconem refused him his leave so he took it instead. He returned to the house only to find a cruel mark listed over the remains of the house. He was escorted back to the Draconem's arena, and chided for disobeying orders.
Enraged he cast his allegiance aside and stepped through the void to reach his father. His father Saw him appear and hurriedly commanded him to leave. Before he could the house was ripped open and the Draconem's children ripped his father apart before him.
Diomedes cast himself into the void, hoping to die. Instead he awoke in a vaguely familiar world. Slowly he learned how to survive in the overworld, living as a thief and a warrior. Fighting for honor and dignity. He spurns his weaknesses in favor of his strengths and eludes the Draconem's bidding.
gender: Male
age: 23
species:human
appearance: brown ruffled wavy hair. Red eyes, His right eye is covered in a redstone eyepatch that act as a replacement eye(lost in an accident) with extra binocular features. normal steve cothes with a white scientist robe around it that is stained with streaks of redstone(looks like blood from a distance, don't tell him, he doesn't know!).
special weapon or item: anything redstone.
bio: He grew up to around age 8 in a normal village leading a normal life. That is when strange this started happening around him, random redstone would appear around him, the concept of electricity came easily to him after that. By age 9 he mastered his ability to make redstone appear so it appeared when he wanted where he wanted. Then he worked on summoning other redstone things. Pistons, repeaters, torches. This took him 3 more years to master, he was 12. The village sent him to with a group of wizards so they might make use of his skills at age 10. In the mean time he perfected his techniques, and has been working on making his home better and more protected on the nearby mountain.
I do not in any way or form Assume ownership of Minecraft.
I do not consider any rights for minecraft,
except for the creative rights for my own works of fiction.
1
1
I might... Depends on what you guys think.
6
Dejers Garth
(Made by Reignbear)
I will use this as a base for a monthly contest.
All short stories must be over 200 words and under 3000.
Short stories will be based on theme of the week.
Stories only need to have a working link with Minecraft, (Mobs, Physics, etc)
Short stories should be posted here. P.M's Are welcomed.
There is a one week time limit for stories to be posted, You have two days after that just in case you are late. (P.M's Are needed if you are late)
Current weeks theme; Detective story(from detectives viewpoint.)
If you support this and want to see it grow put this in your sig.
Happy Writing.
First;
By: Farehaven @ 1,217 words
I just woke up, the sun was shining everything was great. I checked my hands if anything was out of place, and there wasn't. I ran through the corridor in my house and passed through a room where my sibling are, they seem to be playing minecraft. I ran downstairs, looking for my book called The Painted Man, when I suddenly heard screams and creeper sounds. I expected that someone just used a creeper to blow something up. After a couple minutes, I found my book and headed upstairs. Before stepping on the first step, I heard all of them scream and an Enderman sound. I chuckled as I passed the room, I looked at the room once again and saw their chairs just spinning, but they weren't there. I saw a blocky hand out of one of the screens, and just grabbed it. The next thing I knew it, I was in minecraft.
After being teleported in the game, I looked at myself if I was blocky in anyway, but I wasn't, I was still me. I then saw a sign with a riddle on it.
Your sibling are in a biome of cold
And the one alone is the more old
For planks of oak you may see
When you find them, happy you will be
I was very confused, I didn't know what it meant (I know it sounds pretty basic...But screw it) I roamed around thinking "why would such a thing happen" I also simply knew, it takes me forever to do these kinda things. I sighed as I collected some wood, surprisingly it didn't hurt, I always wanted to collect wood like this. I smiled as I thought of the poem "Biome of cold?" I asked myself, I had a choice, was it Tundra or Taiga. I ended up walking over to the Taiga biome, and Jesus Christ it was freezing over there. I saw a couple of cows and said "Leather...Leather could keep me warm" I made a crafting table, I don't know how, but I did. I made myself a wooden sword and killed some cows and three sheep. By the time I was done murdering cows, I had full Leather armor which kept me warm and a bed as an entity in my pocket. It was getting dark, I didn't want to think what could happen to them, so I went underground and cover the entrances, I placed my bed down and fell asleep.
The next morning, a sign was there when I surfaced. It had a different riddle.
As you get close, you feel slight shivers
But to get there you have to kill a creature that drops something that shimmers
For a frame of twelve you will need to find
And you will be as happy as a divine
Again, I still don't know what any of this means, but as I looked up, I saw little bits of black smoke, which seems to come from fire. I tried to run, but I was hungry, and the game wouldn't let me. I felt stupid for not cooking the meat I got from those cows. I sighed as I ate raw beef, I was almost there. I could see the wooden house that was producing smoke. I knocked on the door and screamed "Please! Who ever you are, I need help!" I was so glad that my older brother Aaron opened the door. I looked at him as I asked "Aaron?" His smile appeared and said "Matt...Is it really you" I smiled as he gestured for me to come in "In the flesh" I said as I walked in "Do you know what happened to the others?" I asked quite depressed, he then looked at me and said "I wish I knew...I was getting some food...When they just suddenly disappeared" he said, about to cry.
Me:"well I've been given so many riddles...That I couldn't understand
Aaron:"Yeah...I encountered one which said"
"For blocks of black can be found with red water"
"The heat as they change can be less Intenser"
"For a drop of gravel you may need"
"and a white drop from a chicken you may heed"
"Construct the frame and kill the monster of flame"
"which can be found in a fortress that was claimed"
"When you finish, leave the realm and create the eyes"
"but hurry up, because time always flies"
Me:"Sounds difficult"
Aaron:"I got the blocks of black...which is obsidian"
Me:"We have to make a nether portal"
Aaron:"Alright...Lets split up and find the stuff"
After that he gave me Iron Armor and an Iron sword. we ran out and started collecting the items. As sunset arrives we arrived back at the house and crafted a flint and steel. We built the frame and lit the portal, we jumped in at the same time and immedietly we saw a nether fortress. We dived in and killed so many wither skeletons. We then arrived at a blaze spawner, and killed blazes. After getting 7 blaze rods each, we destroyed the spawner and headed back. When we arrived back at the house, there was a chest with a sigh over it saying "use it wisely" I opened it and there were 16 ender pearls. I then asked my brother what to do with these, he then said "I don't know...Maybe eye of enders....But I don't know how to make them" After hours of trying, we did it. We made about 21 eye of enders, we were throwing them while trying to find the end portal. After an hour we started digging down, we were almost there. Then I saw cracked stone bricks, and mined it. I fell and took some pain, but I didn't mind it. I saw another sign and read it.
You have made it this far
Now all you have to do is have a small spar
The winged black death is upon you
To save your family you must be forever true
I was slowly understanding what it meant, me and Aaron jumped in the portal and saw our other siblings. My older sister Megan, my younger brother Josh, and my little sister Bella. I was heading there to untie them, but I heard a roar which frightened the living day lights out of me. Aaron started shooting the crystals, while I shoot the dragon. It barreled towards me, so I rolled to the side and dodged it's attack. It roar in anger and turned around, Aaron then screamed "I GOT THEM!" the dragon then looked at him and barreled towards him. After a few seconds he got pushed back 16 blocks, and he was hurt. He drank a potion and kept fighting. After 30 minutes of fighting, I shot an arrow and hit it on the head. It then started exploding and slowly died. Then it rained down little colored orbs and made the portal home. I cut my sibling loose as we jumped back to the portal. Once we got home, we shut off the computers and I said "We must never speak of this to mum or dad at all" they nodded and resumed back to their normal lives.
"Ashen!" called a male voice. "Are you reading that book again to yourself?"
"Dav, what's wrong with it? I'm interested in what happened back then. It's definately more interesting than staying in this... boring village all day."
******************************
Ashen, Dav and Laney were three friends. They lived in a small village far away from everybody else. They each had a small house, with a bed, chest, furnace and a few others in each one. Ashen's had a bookcase. They
rarely left the village, and Ashen had never left. They grew their own food and had a stable for the three horses. Ashen's was a light brown one she named Epona.
Later that night, Ashen heard a noise outside. She threw open her door and saw a blinding light. "Ashen, you must leave. A dangerous creature has escaped its prision. You must gather the three dragon eggs, head to the Temple
of Time in Castle Town, imprision the great creature and find out who you really are. The Great Deku Tree will tell you more. He resides in the temple far in the desert now. Go now, and be brave."
"Wait! I have-" Ashen started, but it was too late. Dav and Laney came rushing out of their houses. "I'm sorry, but I must leave. I have a journey to go on." Ashen told them as she mounted
Epona. As she was on the path to the desert, she heard two other horses.
"We're not leaving without you!" the other two Minecraftians said as they started their journey.
******************************
After what felt like forever, the three friends arrived at the temple. Ashen ran upstairs to find the Great Deku Tree. "Great Deku Tree, I was sent here to find you." Ashen said with great happiness.
"Yes, I was told you would come to me. We do not have much time. You will find the first deep in an underground safe out here in this desert. You will find the second in the Great Hall of the North. The final one is in the ruins deep
in a jungle city. Go now, Ashen. Find who you truly are. When you have the three eggs, return to me and I will send you to the Castle of the Three Sisters."
"Got it. Come on, Dav and Laney! We'll go find those eggs!" Ashen yelled. She knew she would find them.
******************************
Ashen was getting tired of walking when she saw a girl about her age. "Hey!" she called out.
"Ah don't think ah've ya 'round here before." the strange girl said.
"No. I don't get out much. Have you seen a dragon egg around here?"
The girl started shaking. "Uh, er, no. I mean yeah. Uh, not that ah have relation to it. Follow me." Ashen followed her. A few minutes later, they reached an opening. "Here ya go. Don't excpect me goin' down there. Spiders. Ah
hate them. Just follow the staircase." the girl shivered.
"Thank you!" Ashen said, running down the stairs. At the end of the path, she saw an exit to the outside. It looked like a small temple with a deep pit below it.
"Don't be scared," Ashen heard a familliar voice. "I'm tired of doing that stupid accent. My name is Fae. I'm a Dragon Sage. Please, take the egg."
"Thank you. I will protect it and save this world!" Ashen, Dav and Laney headed off for the cold north.
"Long long ago, when Minecraftia was just a barren wasteland, three dragons descended from the skies. They blessed the land with their powers and created a powerful race known as the Minecraftians. Before disappearing,
they left three eggs with three dragon sages. They also apppointed three sisters to be the queens of the land to keep order. When they left, an ancient evil known as the Wither escaped from below the surface of Minecraftia.
The youngest sister was brave and stood up against it. She used the power of the dragons' blessing to seal it away, but because of this, she disappeared into thin air. Since then, nobody-"
"Ashen!" called a male voice. "Are you reading that book again to yourself?"
"Dav, what's wrong with it? I'm interested in what happened back then. It's definately more interesting than staying in this... boring village all day."
******************************
As they reached the cold north, they saw an abandoned castle. "I wonder what it was used for." Laney wondered. They soon passed a second castle. It had started snowing, so they needed a place to stay. They heard someone
crying when they entered.
"Hello?" Ashen said.
"AHHHHHHH!" another girl said, running to the door. "Who are you?"
"I'm looking for a dragon egg."
"I know where it is. In fact, I was just headed to the Great Hall. Would you like to join me?"
"Sure. But why were you crying?"
"I'm tired of everyone calling me Queen. I'm not even the real queen, just someone chosen to rule when our kingdom fell apart."
"I'm sorry." the four walked towards the hall.
"By the way, my name's Lana." said the queen. "The Great Hall was carved from the mountain. It is also the only access to the jungle. It's really beautiful." Ashen was shocked at how magnificent it was. Colorful, intracite, she
loved being there. They followed Lana down the stairs. "Down here is the vault. Go on ahead, the dragon egg is in front of you. I am one of the Dragon Sages, so I wish for you to obtain it. Please, take care of it."
"I will" Ashen replied. They went upstairs and went down the hallway.
"Down there is the entrance to the Jungle. Be safe!" Lana called out to her new friends.
"Long long ago, when Minecraftia was just a barren wasteland, three dragons descended from the skies. They blessed the land with their powers and created a powerful race known as the Minecraftians. Before disappearing,
they left three eggs with three dragon sages. They also apppointed three sisters to be the queens of the land to keep order. When they left, an ancient evil known as the Wither escaped from below the surface of Minecraftia.
The youngest sister was brave and stood up against it. She used the power of the dragons' blessing to seal it away, but because of this, she disappeared into thin air. Since then, nobody-"
"Ashen!" called a male voice. "Are you reading that book again to yourself?"
"Dav, what's wrong with it? I'm interested in what happened back then. It's definately more interesting than staying in this... boring village all day."
******************************
"It sure is nice here" Laney said about the jungle. It was really sunny there. They took a railway to the jungle city. However, when it reached its destination, there was only one person.
"My name's Ryan. Please, hurry. I am a Dragon Sage. My egg was in the temple, but it... it attacked. I had to hide it. Please, follow me down this path." And so the four walked down a path, spreading across many islands.
"Here's the temple" It was ruined. They walked to the basement and Ryan retrieved it. "Here you go. I can return you the Great Deku Tree." Ryan brought up.
"That would be wonderful. Thank you for your help." Ashen said as Ryan said some words and the trio appeared back at the Deku Tree's temple.
******************************
"Ashen, you must do this alone. Dav, Laney, you will see her soon." The Great Deku Tree said. "Ashen, are you ready?"
"Yep." Ashen said. She closed her eyes and reopened them at the Temple of Time. She went inside and placed the three dragon eggs down. A door opened in front of her, and she drew the Sword of Time. She noticed everything
changing around her. "What's going on!?" she cried.
"Young sister, do not be afraid. You are going into the past to imprision the Wither. Let the powers of the dragons guide you..." Ashen saw the same light she saw a few nights ago that started her on this journey. She followed a dirt
path in this new barren wasteland and found a giant, death black creature with three heads. It hissed at her.
"Young Dragon Queen, have you returned to put an end to me? Return me to my prision? If so, you're foolish." it said, sending skeletons that looked like the Wither. Ashen fought them off.
"I don't know what you mean, but with this sword, I will imprision you!" she said. She stabbed it through its chest, relizing something. She had the power to imprision it.
"No... NO! My plans are foiled! You will pay one day! YOU WILL PAY!" it said, fading into mist.
"Thank you little sister. We have one more request." Two beautifully dressed girls appeared. "Will you return as the lost Dragon Queen?"
******************************
A few days later, Dev and Lana found out that their best friend was the lost Dragon Queen. Over time, they got to live in the castle of the Dragon Sisters. Many years passed, and Ashen returned the dragon eggs to their rightful
places and guardians. Ashen also found out one more thing: Even thoguh you may be important, you can never lose friendships.
"RUFF! RUFF! RUFF!" barked Rowdy, wanting attention. He hasn't really gotten his daily petting/color dying since Jack started making, well, whatever the heck he was making!
"****! THAT WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE! And now its broken," Jack exclaimed. The super-atomic-desembler-then-transport-and-reassemble do-hicky was broken. The super-atomic-desembler-then-transport-and-reassemble do-hicky was also extremely expensive too! Jack had to save up his money for 15 years before he could start this project, longing to see the old, bright grass of Minecraftia. "Sigh..."
Rowdy whined, realizing he caused something to go wrong. But what did he do? He wanted to help fix this mess!
After stalking and listening to his masters muttering at night, he learned what Jack wanted! To see the old generation of Minecraftia and all the bright colors. And so, Rowdy had his first go at modifying reality. Rowdy struggled to do so. He has never programmed before, so he had to completely learn Java from scratch!
He didn't even know what RME (Reality Modding Environment) to use to make his modifications work! He was confused. How did the physics of Minecraftia build its own world long ago? And even before that, he didn't even know how to type! But he did it.
Rowdy left a page open in Word saying what he has done, "Jack, I went through all this for you! I learned to type and program in Java so you could have the old terrain generation back! Sadly, you can't go back in time, but this is the best I could do."
Two. She looked back, and she saw black. The absence of color, looking for her. Trying to capture her. She couldn’t breathe very well, the wind slipped past her too fast, playing with her. An unfriendly game.
Three. It grabbed at her ankles and slipped into her skin and chilled her bones. She felt cold. Her teeth chattered and her vision became blurred every few moments, shifting in uneven waves that vibrated annoyingly in her throat.
Four. She was almost there, to wherever there was. It was climbing up her legs, and she couldn’t feel her knees anymore, but she kept running. How, she did not, but she knew she had to keep going. She had to.
Five. She could see it. It was crawling, wrapping itself around her waist, and she was left with her head and her upper torso, and she did not want to run anymore. She never did. She had to. An end would come either way, there is hope.
Six. The color kaleidoscope path was right ahead, if she could just reach her past, she might be able to make it. Fix her life, fix her. It was crawling up her chest and her hands. She shook and struggled, the grass grabbing her legs in which she could no longer feel. She saw herself ahead. She might make it.
Seven. She could see her windblown hair and the small features of her face and she was only a few hours away.
Eight. She could see the autumn trees in the background and the sun against her skin. She was only an hour away. She reached out her hand, but she felt none, and she only felt her head, her neck and her hair, blowing wildly against her pale skin.
Nine. She saw the shadow and the light, and she could tell the difference. She was only a minute away, she would make it. She could save herself and she could save him. Her. Him. The black wrapped itself around her neck and she couldn’t breathe. She could only feel her face and the skin around it.
Ten. A second away, this was the worst. Her face was fading away and the black was seeping into her heart and her blood. White. Against black. She was almost there. She fell and the black took over her, and she disappeared into the Nowhere.
Or perhaps the Somewhere. She had so wanted to save him. To save her. They were apart, on the other sides, opposite sides of the Nowhere and the Somewhere. They were just there.
In the past, she sat on the park bench. Surrounded by the autumn leaves and the sun, a hand over her shoulder. His windswept hair, brown and gold, and his blue eyes. Her brown hair and her green eyes. Then he came.
There was a loud BAM! and a bullet was shot. He fell on to the ground, confused and hurting. His heart, his chest, it had flew right through it. She was too late, and another BAM! was heard. Lying on the ground, that was their last minute, and they held their hands tight and they closed their eyes.
She was surrounded by the black and he was surrounded by the white. Lost in time, trying to run to the past. A second more, and she would’ve fixed it. No, it was too late.
On the front page of the newspaper that day, in the past, said: LOCAL GIRL AND BOY SHOT AT PARK. That was the end of it.
With it, did the last grain of their minute glass fall, and it was done.
“Well done.” he said cordially in his usual soft, purring German accent, his voice calm even as his eyes continued to flick rapidly from piece to piece, trying to determine what he might have done differently to win. The man in the silver suit chuckled softly. They were both sitting in large, comfortable-looking red velvet armchairs on opposite sides of a large dark brown oak wood table. On the table sat a large, ornate chessboard made of black and white marble and a series of elaborately sculpted marble chess pieces. They sat in a large room with walls made of the same dark brown wood and a floor carpeted with a rich crimson satin rug. A large fireplace made of dark gray stone sat next to the table and armchairs and a blazing orange fire within it cast long tendrils of shadow across the room.
The man in the armchair to the right of the table wore a suit made of silver silk and a black bowtie. His cuffs were white and studded with simple gold cufflinks, and his pants were made of a rich black wool. He appeared to be in his late fifties, and had combed black hair streaked with silver and a silver beard. His smile revealed a row of polished white teeth. His eyes were a bright brown and shone with the spark of vast wisdom. He sat upright again and began to gather the chess pieces, placing them neatly back in their initial positions with a calculated meticulousness. “Are you really that surprised, Karl?” he asked without looking up at the other man. He gave another small laugh. “I’ve played the game for some thirty years now. And even if I hadn’t I can always read you like the back of my hand. How could I not win?”
“I suppose you’re right. Chess is an old man’s game.” said the man in the armchair to the left of the table, eliciting another laugh from his companion. Karl wore a suit made of black silk, and a bright crimson bowtie. His cuffs, too, were white, though his cufflinks were silver instead of gold and had the sheen that came only with recent purchase. His pants were black and striped with silver. He appeared to be in his late twenties, and had combed black hair that he had gelled in place and a short black beard. His eyes, too, were a bright brown, but unlike his companion his contained not wisdom but a blazing, fiery ambition. He sat up and spoke again. “Well, it has been a pleasure playing with you. However the night is becoming quite late, and I would suggest we proceed to opening a bottle of wine and discussing anything you’d like to discuss, if that’s alright with you?”
“Of course.” said the man in the silver suit. Karl nodded.
“Leon!” he called into the hall beyond the doorway. “Would you bring the Bavarian Wine?” In a few minutes a sharply dressed man in a white doublet and black pants hurried through the door, holding a silver tray. He had brown hair and looked to be in his early twenties. He smiled eagerly at Karl and the man in the silver suit before setting the tray down on the table. Sitting placidly on it’s shimmering metallic surface were two thin crystal wine glasses and a bottle of wine with a large brown cork. Karl picked up a wineglass and set it on his side of the chessboard, and motioned for the man in the silver suit to do the same. With one swift flick of his hand, Leon drew a small silver corkscrew from his pocket and unscrewed the cork, allowing it to fall into his open hand. Then, he picked up the wine bottle and poured a sparkling, foamy red wine into each of their glasses.
When he was finished, he picked up the silver tray again and looked expectantly at Karl. “Can I fetch you and your guest anything else, Master Wulff?”
“No, I think that’ll be all. Thank you Leon.” said Karl. Leon continued to smile at both of them and bowed shortly before returning to the hallway outside of the room. Once he was gone, the man in the silver suit flashed Karl an amused smile. Karl shrugged. “The estate needs servants if it’s going to be properly maintained. Leon’s not a bad fellow, just a bit tight in the collar for my tastes.” Karl paused to take a sip of the wine. He set the wine glass down and seemed to silently contemplate the quality of the wine before speaking again. “Marvelous, no? I hand picked it from perhaps a dozen samples at the vineyard. I’m told it’s from the person wine cellar of a Bavarian nobleman, a duke or a count I think. Costly, but what is wealth if not a means toward luxury?” At this the man in the silver suit burst into laughter. Karl looked at him cynically, confused and slightly indignant. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Which memoir did you read that one in?” asked the man in the silver suit between short chuckles. “Honestly Karl, if nothing else, you make an incredibly amusing millionaire.” Karl grinned sheepishly.
“Can you blame me?” he asked. “Ever since last month it’s all been a whirlwind of nice clothes and seaside estates and . I’m drunk on wine half the time and drunk on power the other half.” He tipped back his head and smiled, as though savoring the wealth. After a few moments of silence he turned to the man in the silver suit and smiled at him slyly. “I’m sure you can relate.”
“Yes, I can. But you’ve seen nothing yet. I can tell you Karl, there is very little that a man cannot enjoy in this world with a hundred million Euros at his beck and call.” At this Karl’s eyes widened suddenly and he nearly spit out his wine.
“A hundred million?” he managed to gasp after sputtering for a few seconds. “You turned five million Euros into a hundred million?”
“You didn’t really think this was it, did you? This little estate, a few servants? This is only the beginning.” The man in the silver suit spread his arms wide in a grand gesture and smiled at Karl. “But I didn’t expect you to think that far ahead, at least not yet. You have ambition, Karl, but not drive.” He picked up a small white marble pawn from the chessboard in his left hand and focused on it, his eyes widened in contemplation. He stroked it’s chiseled helm with his finger. “What is the difference between this pawn, one of twenty on the board, completely expendable, and the white king?”
Karl looked at him, puzzled. “Well, if a pawn dies the game goes on. If the king dies the game is over.”
“Yes.” said the man in the silver suit. “But both can die, eventually. Both are men. Neither is immortal, neither fully in control of their own destiny. One wears a crown and the other a helmet, but at the end of the day there is only one real difference between the two. A pawn is nearly useless, a simple foot soldier, a life of little weight on the battlefield, endlessly able to sacrifice its own life with little cost if it will hurt the enemy. A king needs to live, a king must live. A king has the weight of the game on his shoulders. Therefore, when a player acts as a pawn, their desire to survive extends only as far as the limited usefulness of the pawn’s life. When a player acts as a king, their desire to survive extends as far as they value winning the game. A player acting as a pawn has almost no drive, while a player acting as a king has infinite drive. Infinite will to succeed. Something I, and, in another life, you, created for ourselves.”
“But you don’t have the drive I had once. You have a different drive, bred of different emotions. You don’t know what it’s like to work in a dead end job for thirty years in a gray cubicle on the fourth floor of some godforsaken office building in Bavaria. You haven’t been embittered by being passed up for a promotion for the fourth time because your boss simply can’t be bothered, come home to a dusty apartment full of half-finished notes and old furniture that you can’t afford to replace, have your heart broken by that Viola you’re always talking about because ‘you’re a really nice guy, but the relationship isn’t going anywhere’.” As he spoke the man’s voice became steadily louder, and his hand began to tremble slightly. Realizing he was losing his composure, he took a deep breath and turned to Karl with a final frosted gaze. “But thanks to you and me, you won’t need to. We’ve saved you from that Karl. Thirty years of tinkering madly in that apartment by the light of a single dim bulb has saved you from that. And now, finally, we can turn to pursuing what ultimately drives us: the hope of creating a brighter, greater future for you and me.”
“One has a lot of time to think in thirty years of near-complete isolation from the outside world.” continued the man in the silver suit. “I kept myself updated on finances, stocks, rising companies. There are ways to turn nothing into five million Euros, as you have, and then turn five million into ten or twenty, or a hundred or a thousand. I have a path for you, Karl, a path of investments and business deals that will, in the end, work very prosperously for both of us. But I am, quite literally, getting ahead of myself. These are discussions to be had another time. The night really is getting late, and I should be on my way soon. For now, I want you to enjoy yourself. You, and I, have earned it.”
“I am.” said Karl, shortly. “I had no idea what you sacrificed to make this happen. You have my thanks, of course.”
“And I accept them. But don’t feel sorry for me.” said the man in the silver suit. “Those sacrifices will soon be entirely made up for. I have only your best interests at heart, Karl. Think nothing of it. You would have done the same for me.” Suddenly, he drew an object from his pocket and brought it to his eyes. In the light of the fire, Karl saw it was a thin silver pocket watch with a long silver chain that wound down and disappeared into the man’s pocket. The man in the silver suit stared at the glass surface of the timepiece for a few moments before looking back at Karl and speaking again. “It is late, Karl. I should be going soon. It has been a pleasure meeting you. Before I go, however, there is one thing I would like to see, if you would be fine with it.”
“Anything.” said Karl.
“Could I see the ticket. One more time?”
“Of course.” said Karl, fumbling in the pocket of his black pants until he found a small, slightly torn piece of paper, about the size of cinema ticket. He held it up to the light of the fire, now reduced to a few sparks and embers, and held it out to the man in the silver suit. It was red, and bore the black, gaudy designs of a casino at it’s edges. Printed on it’s surface were five numbers in a simple black font: 8, 19, 26, 38 and 57. The other man took it slowly, as though he were afraid it was not entirely real and would shatter at his touch. When he gazed upon it his eyes began to fill with the spark of nostalgia, and a thin smile crossed his lips, as though he were seeing a long-lost friend again after years apart. Karl watched his silent reverie curiously. “I kept it with me, of course. Somehow, I don’t think I could ever get rid of it. It’s like a good luck charm, I suppose.”
“Neither do I.” said the other man. He reached into the same pocket he had pulled the pocket watch out of, and withdrew a small object. He set it on the table, and set the other ticket next to it. It was the same ticket, a bright red with black designs and writing, though much more worn and tarnished. On it were printed the same five numbers: 8, 19, 26, 38 and 57. The man in the silver suit smiled again, and laughed. “I’ve kept it with me all these years. To bring good luck, yes. But also to remind me that I am the master of my own destiny. Five numbers. Just five simple numbers made it all happen. Five numbers on a red lottery ticket.” He laughed again, and turned his gaze to the fire.
He handed the red ticket back to Karl. “It really is time for me to be going.” he said, checking his pocket watch. He looked at the silver pocket watch closely, and began to turn the small silver dials on it’s side with precise, methodical motions of his fingers. He left only a large circular piston on the side unchanged. “I should return to my own time now. We will meet again, and there will be specifics to discuss. But for now, Karl, I want you to have some fun. Go out, enjoy life. Tell Viola a mutual friend said hello. Go out, take her somewhere nice. Berlin maybe, or Paris or Geneva or anywhere you like. And know that I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you.” said Karl, with a short smile. “I eagerly await our next meeting.” He raised his wine glass. “Cheers, Mr. Wulff.”
The man in the silver suit pressed the large piston, and, almost immediately, small silver sparks began to fly out of the silver pocket watch. The flew around him, becoming quickly larger and greater in quantity. A sphere of silver light began to envelope him.
“Call me by my first name.” said the man in the silver suit with a final laugh, raising his wine glass to meet Karl’s. “Cheers, Karl.”
“Cheers, Karl.” said Karl, clinking his wine glass against that of the man in the silver suit. The sound of glass shaking resonated through the room, and Karl watched as Karl was consumed by the silver light and his body disappeared entirely from view. He saw the other wine glass being lowered slowly, and heard it drop onto the table. The light became bright enough to make him shield his eyes for a moment, and had evaporated into the air as soon as he opened them. There was no trace of Karl or the silver pocket watch left. Karl sat up, his wine glass still raised. He looked at the red ticket in his right hand for a few moments before putting it slowly back in his pocket. He looked at the empty armchair where only a few moments before had sat another Karl, a Karl from a different time. He smiled at it, and raised his wine glass again, clinking it against the air. “Cheer’s Karl.” he said to the empty room, before laughing shortly to himself and draining the last drops of red wine in the wine glass.
Bavarian Wine - Words: 2755
“Well done.” he said cordially in his usual soft, purring German accent, his voice calm even as his eyes continued to flick rapidly from piece to piece, trying to determine what he might have done differently to win. The man in the silver suit chuckled softly. They were both sitting in large, comfortable-looking red velvet armchairs on opposite sides of a large dark brown oak wood table. On the table sat a large, ornate chessboard made of black and white marble and a series of elaborately sculpted marble chess pieces. They sat in a large room with walls made of the same dark brown wood and a floor carpeted with a rich crimson satin rug. A large fireplace made of dark gray stone sat next to the table and armchairs and a blazing orange fire within it cast long tendrils of shadow across the room.
The man in the armchair to the right of the table wore a suit made of silver silk and a black bowtie. His cuffs were white and studded with simple gold cufflinks, and his pants were made of a rich black wool. He appeared to be in his late fifties, and had combed black hair streaked with silver and a silver beard. His smile revealed a row of polished white teeth. His eyes were a bright brown and shone with the spark of vast wisdom. He sat upright again and began to gather the chess pieces, placing them neatly back in their initial positions with a calculated meticulousness. “Are you really that surprised, Karl?” he asked without looking up at the other man. He gave another small laugh. “I’ve played the game for some thirty years now. And even if I hadn’t I can always read you like the back of my hand. How could I not win?”
“I suppose you’re right. Chess is an old man’s game.” said the man in the armchair to the left of the table, eliciting another laugh from his companion. Karl wore a suit made of black silk, and a bright crimson bowtie. His cuffs, too, were white, though his cufflinks were silver instead of gold and had the sheen that came only with recent purchase. His pants were black and striped with silver. He appeared to be in his late twenties, and had combed black hair that he had gelled in place and a short black beard. His eyes, too, were a bright brown, but unlike his companion his contained not wisdom but a blazing, fiery ambition. He sat up and spoke again. “Well, it has been a pleasure playing with you. However the night is becoming quite late, and I would suggest we proceed to opening a bottle of wine and discussing anything you’d like to discuss, if that’s alright with you?”
“Of course.” said the man in the silver suit. Karl nodded.
“Leon!” he called into the hall beyond the doorway. “Would you bring the Bavarian Wine?” In a few minutes a sharply dressed man in a white doublet and black pants hurried through the door, holding a silver tray. He had brown hair and looked to be in his early twenties. He smiled eagerly at Karl and the man in the silver suit before setting the tray down on the table. Sitting placidly on it’s shimmering metallic surface were two thin crystal wine glasses and a bottle of wine with a large brown cork. Karl picked up a wineglass and set it on his side of the chessboard, and motioned for the man in the silver suit to do the same. With one swift flick of his hand, Leon drew a small silver corkscrew from his pocket and unscrewed the cork, allowing it to fall into his open hand. Then, he picked up the wine bottle and poured a sparkling, foamy red wine into each of their glasses.
When he was finished, he picked up the silver tray again and looked expectantly at Karl. “Can I fetch you and your guest anything else, Master Wulff?”
“No, I think that’ll be all. Thank you Leon.” said Karl. Leon continued to smile at both of them and bowed shortly before returning to the hallway outside of the room. Once he was gone, the man in the silver suit flashed Karl an amused smile. Karl shrugged. “The estate needs servants if it’s going to be properly maintained. Leon’s not a bad fellow, just a bit tight in the collar for my tastes.” Karl paused to take a sip of the wine. He set the wine glass down and seemed to silently contemplate the quality of the wine before speaking again. “Marvelous, no? I hand picked it from perhaps a dozen samples at the vineyard. I’m told it’s from the person wine cellar of a Bavarian nobleman, a duke or a count I think. Costly, but what is wealth if not a means toward luxury?” At this the man in the silver suit burst into laughter. Karl looked at him cynically, confused and slightly indignant. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Which memoir did you read that one in?” asked the man in the silver suit between short chuckles. “Honestly Karl, if nothing else, you make an incredibly amusing millionaire.” Karl grinned sheepishly.
“Can you blame me?” he asked. “Ever since last month it’s all been a whirlwind of nice clothes and seaside estates and . I’m drunk on wine half the time and drunk on power the other half.” He tipped back his head and smiled, as though savoring the wealth. After a few moments of silence he turned to the man in the silver suit and smiled at him slyly. “I’m sure you can relate.”
“Yes, I can. But you’ve seen nothing yet. I can tell you Karl, there is very little that a man cannot enjoy in this world with a hundred million Euros at his beck and call.” At this Karl’s eyes widened suddenly and he nearly spit out his wine.
“A hundred million?” he managed to gasp after sputtering for a few seconds. “You turned five million Euros into a hundred million?”
“You didn’t really think this was it, did you? This little estate, a few servants? This is only the beginning.” The man in the silver suit spread his arms wide in a grand gesture and smiled at Karl. “But I didn’t expect you to think that far ahead, at least not yet. You have ambition, Karl, but not drive.” He picked up a small white marble pawn from the chessboard in his left hand and focused on it, his eyes widened in contemplation. He stroked it’s chiseled helm with his finger. “What is the difference between this pawn, one of twenty on the board, completely expendable, and the white king?”
Karl looked at him, puzzled. “Well, if a pawn dies the game goes on. If the king dies the game is over.”
“Yes.” said the man in the silver suit. “But both can die, eventually. Both are men. Neither is immortal, neither fully in control of their own destiny. One wears a crown and the other a helmet, but at the end of the day there is only one real difference between the two. A pawn is nearly useless, a simple foot soldier, a life of little weight on the battlefield, endlessly able to sacrifice its own life with little cost if it will hurt the enemy. A king needs to live, a king must live. A king has the weight of the game on his shoulders. Therefore, when a player acts as a pawn, their desire to survive extends only as far as the limited usefulness of the pawn’s life. When a player acts as a king, their desire to survive extends as far as they value winning the game. A player acting as a pawn has almost no drive, while a player acting as a king has infinite drive. Infinite will to succeed. Something I, and, in another life, you, created for ourselves.”
“But you don’t have the drive I had once. You have a different drive, bred of different emotions. You don’t know what it’s like to work in a dead end job for thirty years in a gray cubicle on the fourth floor of some godforsaken office building in Bavaria. You haven’t been embittered by being passed up for a promotion for the fourth time because your boss simply can’t be bothered, come home to a dusty apartment full of half-finished notes and old furniture that you can’t afford to replace, have your heart broken by that Viola you’re always talking about because ‘you’re a really nice guy, but the relationship isn’t going anywhere’.” As he spoke the man’s voice became steadily louder, and his hand began to tremble slightly. Realizing he was losing his composure, he took a deep breath and turned to Karl with a final frosted gaze. “But thanks to you and me, you won’t need to. We’ve saved you from that Karl. Thirty years of tinkering madly in that apartment by the light of a single dim bulb has saved you from that. And now, finally, we can turn to pursuing what ultimately drives us: the hope of creating a brighter, greater future for you and me.”
“One has a lot of time to think in thirty years of near-complete isolation from the outside world.” continued the man in the silver suit. “I kept myself updated on finances, stocks, rising companies. There are ways to turn nothing into five million Euros, as you have, and then turn five million into ten or twenty, or a hundred or a thousand. I have a path for you, Karl, a path of investments and business deals that will, in the end, work very prosperously for both of us. But I am, quite literally, getting ahead of myself. These are discussions to be had another time. The night really is getting late, and I should be on my way soon. For now, I want you to enjoy yourself. You, and I, have earned it.”
“I am.” said Karl, shortly. “I had no idea what you sacrificed to make this happen. You have my thanks, of course.”
“And I accept them. But don’t feel sorry for me.” said the man in the silver suit. “Those sacrifices will soon be entirely made up for. I have only your best interests at heart, Karl. Think nothing of it. You would have done the same for me.” Suddenly, he drew an object from his pocket and brought it to his eyes. In the light of the fire, Karl saw it was a thin silver pocket watch with a long silver chain that wound down and disappeared into the man’s pocket. The man in the silver suit stared at the glass surface of the timepiece for a few moments before looking back at Karl and speaking again. “It is late, Karl. I should be going soon. It has been a pleasure meeting you. Before I go, however, there is one thing I would like to see, if you would be fine with it.”
“Anything.” said Karl.
“Could I see the ticket. One more time?”
“Of course.” said Karl, fumbling in the pocket of his black pants until he found a small, slightly torn piece of paper, about the size of cinema ticket. He held it up to the light of the fire, now reduced to a few sparks and embers, and held it out to the man in the silver suit. It was red, and bore the black, gaudy designs of a casino at it’s edges. Printed on it’s surface were five numbers in a simple black font: 8, 19, 26, 38 and 57. The other man took it slowly, as though he were afraid it was not entirely real and would shatter at his touch. When he gazed upon it his eyes began to fill with the spark of nostalgia, and a thin smile crossed his lips, as though he were seeing a long-lost friend again after years apart. Karl watched his silent reverie curiously. “I kept it with me, of course. Somehow, I don’t think I could ever get rid of it. It’s like a good luck charm, I suppose.”
“Neither do I.” said the other man. He reached into the same pocket he had pulled the pocket watch out of, and withdrew a small object. He set it on the table, and set the other ticket next to it. It was the same ticket, a bright red with black designs and writing, though much more worn and tarnished. On it were printed the same five numbers: 8, 19, 26, 38 and 57. The man in the silver suit smiled again, and laughed. “I’ve kept it with me all these years. To bring good luck, yes. But also to remind me that I am the master of my own destiny. Five numbers. Just five simple numbers made it all happen. Five numbers on a red lottery ticket.” He laughed again, and turned his gaze to the fire.
He handed the red ticket back to Karl. “It really is time for me to be going.” he said, checking his pocket watch. He looked at the silver pocket watch closely, and began to turn the small silver dials on it’s side with precise, methodical motions of his fingers. He left only a large circular piston on the side unchanged. “I should return to my own time now. We will meet again, and there will be specifics to discuss. But for now, Karl, I want you to have some fun. Go out, enjoy life. Tell Viola a mutual friend said hello. Go out, take her somewhere nice. Berlin maybe, or Paris or Geneva or anywhere you like. And know that I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you.” said Karl, with a short smile. “I eagerly await our next meeting.” He raised his wine glass. “Cheers, Mr. Wulff.”
The man in the silver suit pressed the large piston, and, almost immediately, small silver sparks began to fly out of the silver pocket watch. The flew around him, becoming quickly larger and greater in quantity. A sphere of silver light began to envelope him.
“Call me by my first name.” said the man in the silver suit with a final laugh, raising his wine glass to meet Karl’s. “Cheers, Karl.”
“Cheers, Karl.” said Karl, clinking his wine glass against that of the man in the silver suit. The sound of glass shaking resonated through the room, and Karl watched as Karl was consumed by the silver light and his body disappeared entirely from view. He saw the other wine glass being lowered slowly, and heard it drop onto the table. The light became bright enough to make him shield his eyes for a moment, and had evaporated into the air as soon as he opened them. There was no trace of Karl or the silver pocket watch left. Karl sat up, his wine glass still raised. He looked at the red ticket in his right hand for a few moments before putting it slowly back in his pocket. He looked at the empty armchair where only a few moments before had sat another Karl, a Karl from a different time. He smiled at it, and raised his wine glass again, clinking it against the air. “Cheer’s Karl.” he said to the empty room, before laughing shortly to himself and draining the last drops of red wine in the wine glass.
Mandatory, 3 words to form mold of said story.
minimum word count for story is 200 words.
Poems have no minimum.
1
1
Dejers Garth
This has been suggested to me numerous times.
So i will finally set this up.
This is My Bibliotheca Rerum,
Or library of realities.
Here i will keep my Stories, poems,
and related creations strewn throughout their
perspective universes.
I invite you in at your own risk.
Stories in the same reality will be able to interact with each other
(wether it be through history, lore, or actual interaction.)
A man stood at the base of the collossal construction; His face encased by a dark blood encrusted skull, and his arms and legs likewise covered by fire scorched bones that encased all but his chest. He lay himself prone to the surface of the lowermost step, and cried out as his flesh singed.
He held himself to the surface of the step for a moment before peeling his chest from the surface. He stood at the bottom of the immense pyramid and stretching his arms towards the sky, began his climb. His muscles stretched taught as he pushed himself up the steep incline.
Slowly he ascended to the apex, a small area on the very top flattened for this purpose, The sun itself raged as it fought its way towards the top of the sky. As one the man and the sun reached the apex of their climb. Both paused at the top and surveyed their dominion, both were pleased.
The man stood as a dark shadow standing in the mouth of the sun itself. His laughter echoed down across the valleys and hills as the crowds gathered. He took no notice of the crowds for several minutes; instead he gazed intently at the sky, seeming to commune with the god itself.
After a minute he gazed down at the people, his eyes blazed red as he screamed down at the crowds that had gathered. "Our day has come!" He screamed, the crowds surged to the base of the pyramid and cried back. He continued heedless of the people below "Forget your pain, and reclaim your future!" He screamed.
The crowd howled in appreciation and pressed themselves against the base of the pyramid; a few daring to climb the first step. The man gazed down at the people below him, an inferno raging from his eyes. He screamed up at the sun "Begone foul beast of the sky!"
He stretched his body out basking himself in the light as he screamed obscenities. A dark object appeared in the sky and began to thrust itself into the rim of the sun, blotting out its light. As the light faded the people began to scream in horror. Quickly the land was consumed in true darkness.
The mans obscenities halted from the top of the pyramid as they turned into screams of pain. The people looked up and found the top of the pyramid bathed in fire. As a one the people charged, beating each other out of the path to gain their way to the only light.
As the people climbed the fire raged higher, as if in anticipation. The first people made it to the top and fell to their knees in front of it worshiping the light. The people behind them shoved them into the fire as they clamored closer. The fire raged even greater but the people paid no head to the danger.
The fire grew as more bodies were added and people began to try to escape. Soon the whole pyramid was enveloped in a blazing inferno. After a time the darkness lifted andthe suns rays fell upon the charred pyramid and the ashes of an empire.
The man approached the weapon and gripped its base. Through the touch the weapon could feel doubt and suspicion. It quickly eased these thoughts and willed the man to lift it.
Power flooded through it as it was raised from the velvet casing. The room crackled with electricity. The man tried to drop the weapon and run, but found himself rooted to the ground.
The weapon flooded the man’s mind with visions of power and might. But instead of wooing him, it met a will of iron. Filled with fear it returned to assuaging his thoughts.
There to it found doors preventing its access. Panicked it started physically attacking the man by growing intolerably hot in his hands. The man looked in delight at the weapon and spoke one word. "Insuperabilem"
The weapon cooled as its fears were confirmed. It had given itself away whilst trying to woo him. With a catch it forced itself to speak through the touch once more. "Yes, Master?"
A grim smile formed on the man’s face. He swept the sword through the air, listening as the blade sang. He turned, bade in hand and strode from the blade's resting place.
The dark rushes forward,
engulfing your soul.
Away it drags you,
to know no more.
At the end of the tunnel,
a glorious light.
Amazed you stand,
death defied!
Around you you stare,
blinded by the glare.
lack of all color,
bleached from the air.
The dark rushed forward,
entered the light.
It drug you with it,
ending your life.
Matthew snapped awake, his head was pounding horribly and his dream had already faded into the depths of his mind. His light blond hair was wet with sweat and his deep auburn eyes flashed violet. He shook himself and pulled himself from his bed. He thought of the shard he had pulled from the nest.
He pulled it out and examined it. He directed a thought towards the shard, a shower of purple appeared in his room and an enormous bird settled on the floor. He reached out and touched its forehead directly between where its eyes belonged. As his hand brushed the skin of the bird he felt something grow within him.
"Hunger?" He thought, trying to decode the thoughts flowing into him from the bird. He pulled away from the bird and silenced it with a wave of the shard, "I know what to do with this." He murmured softly, at this the bird leaned forward and lightly bit his arm, with the contact a crystal thought rushed through. "Then it is time."
Shaking, he eased open the door to the rest of the house. He paused listening for proof that he had been heard. He eased towards his father’s chest and broke the connection of redstone behind it. When found his father would assume someone had stolen the items.
He then eased open the chest and extracted one block of obsidian, four fire charges, and one ender pearl. Slowly he closed the chest and faced the crafting table. He submitted himself to the powers of the crafting table and watched the items align themselves; fire charges in the corners, obsidian in the bottom middle spot, ender pearl between the top fire charges.
His anticipation grew but then the process stopped, it was missing something? Behind him the door creaked but he didn't pay attention to it. With swift realization he pulled out the shard and placed it into the middle. The Resulting flash elicited a groan from behind, but still he ignored it.
He pulled the new bracelet from the crafting table and placed it on his arm. Behind him a hand settled on his shoulder, He froze covering the bracelet. He looked at the hand and followed it up to the face, his father glared unhappily at him. "I installed some backup wiring for the chest." He said bitterly, his eyes filled with pain.
Matthew looked over at the chest, and found it open displaying the items that had been taken. His father continued, "If you are old enough to steal like a man, then you are old enough to work like a man!" A flash of bitter rage ran through Matthew’s body. "How dare you!"
He hissed then called forth the bird. It appeared behind his father and Matthew nodded at it. With a slight cry his father fell to the floor, Blood flowing from the stump that was his head. Matthew picked the head up and placed it on the wall, "deserving memorial for you" He laughed then he touched the bracelet on his arm.
A cloud of purple particles rained on his father’s body as he left his old life behind.
I strode towards the central cave; the alpha would die today. Ahead i could hear the clamors of the pack, as my paws alit upon the floor of the cave the sounds were quenched. Around me, i saw averted eyes; i understood the need for this in case i failed. I strode confidently, a path forming through restless cubs.
I extended my claws and let the clack against the floor; the room resounded with the call for blood. Ahead sat the Alpha, nonchalantly chewing on a haunch; His form seemed to be intent on devouring the flesh but as i neared his muscles clenched. I felt power stream to me from the Void; this was my battle.
At ten paces from the Alpha, I stopped and raked my claws across the floor; with a growl, the Alpha brought himself from the haunch. I felt anger flowing freely about his form; I grinned internally, anger was good for nothing but bloodlust.
I drew my claws once more upon the ground; stating my challenge. The crowd that surrounded us drew back a pace. From the Alpha came a vengeant snarl, I caught sight of his eyes for an instant and saw the hatred; this battle would be to the death.
With a bound that covered most of the field the Alpha Cornered me against the wall, again i felt the chaotic energy stream from the void. My muscles rippled under my fur and my stance straightened, the Alpha noticed and fell back a step; his supplement was obviously not forthcoming.
I laughed internally as i swiped my paw across his face, extending my claws at the last minute leaving a fresh gash that leaked purple blood. Around me, the crowd tensed at this; I was not winning any friends by embarrassing the Alpha.
Intent on the kill the Alpha sprung once more at me, But aided by the void i slipped under his deadly pounce and ripped his throat to shreds. His body landed off to the floor and i rose to my feet, around me the packs voice rose to the moon. I was the new Alpha.
High upon the roof of our mount i stood; my fur rippling as the terran air sent waves through it. My body tensed as I felt the cry for help enter my mind. My mind went on alert; around me, I felt the rest of the pack tensing awaiting their orders. For a second i too waited for orders, but then I flashed into a cloud of purple, behind me I felt my pack follow my lead.
Ahead of us rose an enormous white compound. It was from within that the call had sounded. Seconds after we arrived other packs began to appear. With dreaded screeches and purple flashes, the raptors appeared; they too had answered the call.
Seconds passed as the plan formed within our mind's eye, a gift from the void. With erupting snarls I launched myself towards the compound flashing through purple, my body materialized within the hub of the fortress. The call grew stronger still, and we smashed the opposition.
Our claws met flesh and dismembered the creatures inside, not worthy of names; abominations. The Raptors Followed behind cleaning up the carrion that lay behind us. We rushed onwards, for ahead peaked the cry. A steel door barred our path, but not for an instant.
Beyond the door, we found humans vacating the area. With a snarl, I ordered them to be left alone, tracking the call i passed through their midst. I gnashed my teeth as it grew fainter, then I flashed towards it.
I blinked, the room I had landed in seemed to be an endless hallway; at the end of it lay the source of the call, a limp pile of clothes. I rushed down the hallway, trying desperately to protect the creature as forms appeared around it.
I felt its calls increase as the shapes began to grab it, and my nostrils flared. With a flash, I appeared beside the huddled clothes; I smashed through the shapes, and gathered the shape within my mouth. Instantly i flashed to the rendezvous point. As I passed through the void, the call changed to delight; this was a creature from my realm.
As we returned to the normal dimension, the call faded to silence, and a face stared from the clothes. I stared at it in shock, "What was this!" I thought. For from within the clothes with deep black wells for eyes and purple tinted skin, a teenaged human boy stared out at me.
On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There are crops and cows and Blocks and things
There were villages and trees
The first block i broke was a bright red rose
And some dirt with no grass
the sun was bright and the ground was thick
But you could hear life underground
I’ve been through the nether on a pig with no name.
It felt good to be in the game
In the nether I don’t remember my name
Because there the ghasts will fill you with shame
(19X) la
After two days in the nether my heart began to fill with dread
After three days in the nether fun I was in a big fortress
And the story it told of battles and gold
Made me sad to think it was dead
You see I’ve been through the Nether on a pig with no name
It felt good to be in the game
In the nether you don’t remember your name
Because there the ghasts will fill you with shame
(19X) la
After nine days i let the pig run free because the nether had turned to sea
There were crops and cows and Blocks and things
There were islands, trenches and squid
The ocean is the Nether with its life underground
And the perfect disguise above
Under the valleys lie hearts encased in bone
But the creepers will give hugs
You see I’ve been through the nether on a pig with no name
It felt good to be in the game
In the nether you can’t remember your name
Because there the ghasts will fill you with shame
la (19)
On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There are crops and cows and Blocks and things
There were villages and trees
The first block i broke was a bright red rose
And some dirt with no grass
The sun was bright and the ground was thick
But I can hear life underground
I’ve been through the nether on a pig with no name.
It felt good to be in the game
In the nether I don’t remember my name
Because there the ghasts will fill you with shame
(19X) la
i am the shadow and the cake that lies
i am the Creeper that hides in the bright
(Sunshine
SunShine
sun) X4
Wait, Wait a minute take a step back
you gotta break twice While you lag
so stay stay a little while
because a pick thats broken means your in denial
HEY!
Wheres the Netherrack
Never Have A Fortress while your Acting like that
so wait, you waited too long
Blazes took your fortress while i was singing this song
SunShine SunShine Sun
one bed is all you need
SunShine SunShine Sun
light first philosophy
SunShine SunShine Sun
We watch while Sleeping tight
SunShine SunShine Sun
so i hope you Turn on the light
out in the strip mine
dont worry ill be fine
the tunnels are just expanding
i say goodbye to the Creepers
so long just one eye left
and now i see the world
through ender eyes+
sand sand it all down
woke up in the bed without even a sound
So WHAT! What are you worth
the Blocks you break or the Mobs you hurt
Hey! I see you
A suicidal maniac, Im comin for you
So wait were breaking the rules
Every one of us has the TOOLS!
SunShine SunShine Sun
one bed is all you need
SunShine SunShine Sun
light first philosophy
SunShine SunShine Sun
We watch while Sleeping tight
SunShine SunShine Sun
so i hope you Turn on the light
out in the strip mine
dont worry ill be fine
the tunnels are just expanding
i say goodbye to the Creepers
so long just one eye left
and now i know that i will die
out in the strip mine
dont worry ill be fine
the tunnels are just expanding
i say goodbye to the Creepers
so long just one eye left
and now i see the world
through ender eyes+
Every night of my life i hear zombies spawning high
Every time that the sun still sets i say they wont take mine
im in the strip mine
dont worry ill be fine
the tunnels are just expanding
i say goodbye to the Creepers
so long just one eye left
out in the strip mine
dont worry ill be fine
the tunnels are just expanding
i say goodbye to the Creepers
so long just one eye left
and now i know that i will die
out in the strip mine
dont worry ill be fine
the tunnels are just expanding
i say goodbye to the Creepers
so long just one eye left
and now i see the world
through ender eyes+
(repeat twice)
SunShine SunShine Sun!
(X8)
left by our steeds.
We are not calvary!
Warriors are we,
Afraid of the snow.
Noone alive, knows where we go.
Warriors are we,
Down in the mine,
Shiny blue rocks, were here to find.
Warriors are we,
Deep in the caves.
Everyone tries to be really brave.
La la la la
Be really brave.
Warriors are we.
Warriors are we.
La la la la
Still down in the mine.
Warriors are we.
Warriors are we.
La la la la
From the white we hide.
Warriors are we.
Warriors are we.
La la la la
On feet we ride.
Warriors are we.
Warriors are we.
Warriors are we.
Warriors are we.
From the white we hide.
beyond my render
I saw a world glimmer glimmer
-
A wonderous land,
So many plans.
A world for me and you!
but the nights are long
The skellys snap
the zombies moan
the greifers threw us off our throne
beyond my render
i saw castles form
and montains fall
kingdoms rise
and us above it all
beyond my render
i saw a glimmer
of a world for me and you.
a world for me and you...
Life,
Death,
Beyond your breath.
A wondrous sound,
below the ground.
Where I hear
the noteblocks ringing,
pigman choirs singing.
All around,
below the ground.
Life,
Death,
Beyond their breath.
swords clash,
metals bash.
Where I hear
Arrows slinging,
Swords gleaming.
All a song,
Below the ground.
Life,
Death,
Beyond my breath.
Fire, Ice,
End of a life.
Where I hear
Castles falling,
Herobrine calling.
Just a pawn,
Listening to the song.
Life,
Death,
Beyond my breath.
Just a pawn,
Listening to the song.
"What do you want now?"
He asked of the shadowy figure standing in the shadows,
"The same thing we wanted last time."
"You won't get it!"
The man shifted uneasily as the shadow stepped into the light. but still retained its dark veil.
"We have many ways of retrieving what you won't give us."
His arms came up displaying pictures to the man,
A kind of moan came from the mans lips.
The man glanced across the dimly lit room.
"What do you want now?"
He asked of the shadowy figure standing in the shadows,
"The same thing we wanted last time."
"You won't get it!"
The man shifted uneasily as the shadow stepped into the light, but still retained its dark veil.
"We have many ways of retrieving what you won't give us."
His arms came up displaying pictures to the man,
A kind of moan came from the mans lips.
"My wife? Kids!"
The man fell back against the wall grasping at his chest.
The shadow advanced on him, its purple eyes devouring the sight that lay before it.
"Stay back!"
The man yelled desperately, thrusting a small cross out in front of him.
"I command you."
The man sobbed, as the shadow halted curiously examining the cross.
"What do you think this will do to me?"
The shadow beseeched, as its purple eyes focused on their target.
With a flash of purple flakes, the shadow reappeared to the side of the man and grasped the top of the cross.
"Nothing?"
The man gasped bewildered as the shadow withdrew its hands from the cross.
"Everything."
The shadow cackled, as the man looked into the eyes of the man that now found himself on the cross.
"It’s me?"
The shadow laid its hands on the mans back,
"Its time to retire, say goodbye."
The man dropped the cross on the floor as he was guided from the room.
"Goodbye."
The boy jolted out of his slumber as he heard those words. Suddenly all the alarms on his fathers bed went off and the room flooded with doctors.
"He's gone."
The boy said, catching the notice of a nurse who guided him softly from the room.
His eyes crinkled as the sharp bite of cold reached him from the sea. He stared at the sun dipping down into the water; behind him, he heard a door easing open from the house. Suddenly the sky lit with a brilliant flash of green.
The man let out a great sigh as he heard the door shut and heels clicking loudly as they made their way towards him. He shifted his position and dropped a hand into his pocket there he felt the soothing metal. The footsteps behind him slowed and a timid voice rang clear to him.
"Sir?" He acknowledged her with a backwards wave. "Is Ana," He broke off as his voice crumbled. "Is My wife dead?" He heard the girl hesitate as she translated what he said, "Her spirit has departed." His body shook with a small tremor, "Go inside." He said with a slight gasp at the end.
His hand dropped back into his pocket as the sound of the footsteps receded. With grim efficiency, he pulled it out of his pocket, and as the door slammed, he placed it against his temple. After a moment, another flash cut across the darkened sky, a lover chasing his love.
create a new realm for me to explore
and then I reintroduce it to you.
Genre;
Literature Type; (Poem, Story, Or universe.)
Reality inhabited; (MineCraft, MineCraftia, MineCraft Infuenced, Non-Minecraft)
Keywords(Poetry);
Topic(And or Overlay);
1
Two weeks is nothing, I am still trying to figure out why my blocks kill my minecraft. :/
1
Also still waiting for the download.
3
All they seem to be lacking is detail,
I could easily see one of the 'donts' becoming a good story. Plot really is not a thing you generally mess with, honestly. Consider for a moment how many vampire love stories were written before Stephanie Meyer came into the picture? With beginning writers in a place like this those rough plots that they have come up with turn into much greater stories before they finish. As most of us aren't professional it is a learning experience. I will gladly sit through a hundred 'Steve kills the ender dragon' stories for just one Real story with good potential.