The Complete Elementia Chronicles: Quest for Justice; The New Order; The Dusk of Hope; Herobrine’s Message

Stan was about to reply when Lemon appeared in front of him, followed seconds later by Charlie’s diamond pickaxe punching its way out of the ground. Unlike Kat, though, Charlie wasn’t breathing heavily at all.

“Nice going, Charlie,” spat Kat.

“Yeah, honestly man, of all the places on that wall that you could have hit, why the button that destroyed the place?”

“Nice to see you, too,” Charlie sighed, wiping the excess sand off his clothes. “And you should be thanking me. For one, I probably trapped Mr A down there, too. I don’t think he’ll manage to get out of this one alive. He was already pretty weak from Stan’s shovel attack. And for two, I managed to grab this!”

He pulled out a book from his inventory. The title read The Nether and the End: How to Get There.

Kat’s jaw dropped, and Stan asked in amazement, “Charlie! Where’d you get that?”

“Oh, I saw it on the bookshelf next to that button and thought that it might come in handy,” he said smugly. He stood up. “Now we can figure out our next move.”

They agreed to find some shade from the hot desert sun while they planned this next move. They looked around and saw that they were in the middle of a sinkhole that must have been created when the sand fell down and buried Avery’s base. They walked over and sat against the edge of the sinkhole that provided shade from the sun. Charlie opened the book to the chapter entitled ‘Entering the End’ and read aloud.

“To enter the End, one will, before all else, require twelve Eyes of Ender.” He looked up at his friends. “Does anybody know what those are?”

Neither of them did. Charlie found a glossary of Nether and End items in the back of the book and looked up the Eye of Ender. The picture showed an orb, green-grey in colour, which resembled the eye of a cat. The crafting recipe for it included one Ender Peal and one Blaze Powder. None of them knew what those were either, so Charlie opened the book first to the Ender Pearl.

“An Ender Pearl is most readily obtained by the killing of an Enderman,” Charlie read.

“Wait, an Enderman?” said Kat. “Isn’t that the thing that almost killed you this morning?”

Charlie sighed. “Yeah, it is. And it looks like we’re gonna have to kill twelve of them if we want to get to the End.”

Stan gulped. He remembered the Enderman’s overwhelming power well, and he wasn’t eager to face one again. “What about Blaze Powder?” he asked quickly. “How do we get that?”

Charlie turned the page and found what he was looking for. “Blaze Powder is a substance that is crafted from a Blaze Rod. The Blaze Rod can only be obtained by killing a Blaze, a creature indigenous to … the Nether,” said Charlie, his stomach lurching. After all he had heard about the Nether, he was not eager to go there.

“So, if we want to get to the End,” said Stan, piecing it together, “then we have to kill a bunch of Endermen, and we also have to go to the Nether and find these Blaze things?”

“Oh yeah!” cried Kat, pumping her fist in the air. “Road trip to the Nether!”

“Wait,” said Charlie quickly. “Not so fast. Who says that we have to go the Nether first?”

“Well, do you want to fight the Enderman again?” asked Kat. “Whatever’s in the Nether, it can’t be worse than something that can teleport and tries to kill you if you just look at it.”

“Not to mention,” added Stan, “that the King’s forces are definitely still looking for us, and they’re going to comb the entire Overworld before they start looking in other dimensions.”

Charlie tried to think of another argument of why they should not go to the Nether, but he couldn’t. He did agree with the reasoning of both of his cohorts. “OK,” said Charlie, resigning himself. “I guess our next move is to go to the Nether.”

As Charlie flipped through the book to figure out the way to enter the dimension, Kat kept on doing fist pumps and jumping around like a hyperactive puppy. She was obviously very excited to explore the place. Stan felt nervous, but he too had a growing sense of exhilaration. He was very much anticipating, with potent curiosity, the exploration of the new dimension, whatever it might hold.

“OK, apparently to enter the Nether we’re going to have to build a portal,” said Charlie, referring to the book. “It has to be five blocks high, four blocks wide, hollow in the centre, and made out of obsidian. From what I understand, obsidian is created when running water hits stagnant lava. It’s almost indestructible, and it can only be mined with a diamond pickaxe.”

“We passed an entire lake of lava on the way here, remember?” said Stan.

“Oh yeah, I remember that!” agreed Kat.

“OK, so we have stagnant lava,” said Charlie. “But how are we going to get a flow of running water across it?”

“Are you stupid, Charlie?” said Kat with a laugh. “I found a bucket down in the mine shaft!”

“Oh yeah,” said Charlie, feeling, indeed, a little stupid.

“OK, then!” said Stan, clapping his hands together. “Let’s make camp in this sinkhole overnight, and tomorrow we’ll hike out to the lava lake and make a portal to the Nether!”

And they did just that. Kat walked over to a pond in a grassy oasis nearby and filled her bucket with water, while Charlie and Stan used all the sand and dirt in their three combined inventories to make an inconspicuous sand house against the corner of the sinkhole. They quickly threw together a crafting table, a furnace and three beds with the wool made from the string of the cave Spiders.

They also made preparations for their impending quest. Charlie made torches out of the coal and wood he had found while mining, and he used the remaining coal to smelt the iron ore he found in the furnace. He used the resulting iron ingots to create two new iron chestplates for himself and Stan. Kat still had her leather tunic and cap.

After crafting the chestplates, there were three iron ingots left. Stan wanted a new axe, but Charlie said he needed one of the remaining ingots to combine with flint he had found underground. He had read in the book that the way to activate the Nether portal was to light the inside on fire, and to do that he would need to craft a tool known as flint and steel. After he created this, the two remaining ingots went to a new iron sword for Kat.

They had some leftover string and wood. These Charlie crafted into a chest and a new bow, which he gave to Stan along with twenty arrows that he had collected from Skeletons underground. The chest was filled with the group’s items that they would not be taking to the Nether: some dirt, a lot of cobblestone, the book, the contents of the chest from the mine shaft except for the bucket, and the Ender Chest. With all their necessities on them and all extras safely stored in the chest, the three players, the cat and the dog were all happy to go to bed.

As the wool mattress of the bed beneath him conformed to his body, Stan thought, for the first time, about the Griefer whom he had probably just killed beneath the desert. It was incredibly conflicting. Although Stan was quite happy that they now had a dangerous enemy off their tails, and he knew that they could not all walk away from that fight intact, Stan found his insides squirming with guilt when he remembered the agony of being crushed by the sand himself. Suffocating in that buried room must have been a dreadful way to die. Even if Stan had dismissed Mr A’s story about Avery007 as being completely untrue, Stan still felt as though Mr A did have an underlying reason for his hatred of lower-level players. And now that he was dead, they would never find out what that was.

Regardless of his guilt, Stan was too tired from the events of the day to dwell on it for long. It was only a matter of time before he succumbed to sleep.

It seemed like forever to Stan since they had had a really good night’s sleep, but it was a peaceful night, and Stan woke up to the crowing of a chicken, feeling refreshed and ready to tackle whatever the Nether had to offer.

They wasted no time leaving. They clipped their remaining potions to their belts, along with their weapons and arrows. Stan and Kat slung their bows over their shoulders. Kat and Charlie commanded their pets to sit and hide, as Charlie had read that Rex and Lemon would be unable to enter the Nether.

Before the clock even showed that the night was over, the trio was retracing their steps back towards the lava lake. They passed some burning mobs on the way there, but they were too preoccupied to pick up the materials. They reached the lava before the sun was high in the sky.

Stan was amazed. At a passing glance the body of molten lava had seemed like a lake, but now he could see that it expanded for kilometres, forming what could more appropriately be called a lava sea. Kat was equally amazed. Charlie, on the other hand, wasted no time placing the water from the bucket on the shore of the lava. Initially Stan was confused as to why the water from the bucket seemed to stay confined to one block on the shoreline. Wasn’t water supposed to flow? However, water then began to flow from this single source block, eventually spreading out into the lava and cooling a fair amount of it instantly into the black-as-night obsidian blocks. Ignoring the coal ore and stone rimming the lake, Charlie picked up the source block of water with the bucket. With the source gone, the water flowing from it quickly drained away. Wasting no time, he took his diamond pickaxe to the obsidian.

It was hard work. The sun was soon high in the sky, and the heat from the lava didn’t make it any easier for Charlie to continue hacking away at the black rock that seemed to resist all his efforts to break it. After ten minutes, the obsidian block finally broke, and Charlie snatched it before it could fall into the lava below. Charlie, relieved to have attained his first obsidian block, gritted his teeth and got to work on the second one.

Meanwhile, Kat and Stan stood poised at Charlie’s back, bows raised, ready to shoot down any attackers that ventured too close to them. It was boring, but Stan just kept the image of finally entering the Nether in mind, and he kept his poise, as did Kat.

Charlie was just collecting his ninth obsidian block when, without warning, the ground in front of Stan exploded. Stan was knocked back by the force of the blast, and he skidded along the black obsidian that Charlie had created, stopping just before the edge of the lava sea.

Kat had trained her bow on the cloud of dust and was ready to attack the first thing to rise from it, when a figure burst out of the hole in the ground. Before Kat could react, the figure threw a series of fire charges to the ground, thickening the smoke and setting the ground on fire. Kat tried to stare through the thick smoke to see who was attacking them, when an arrow flew through the smokescreen right at her.

It was too fast for her to dodge, but she ducked her head and the arrow snagged the leather of her cap, damaging the armour but leaving her unharmed. She sent arrows into the general direction of the attacker, and she was drawing another one when another figure ran out of the smoke. This was the first one whose features could clearly be seen. His blond hair was cut to his head, and he wore camo army trousers and a black tank top, with an eye patch covering one of his eyes. He held a diamond sword, and he was rushing straight towards Kat.

His attack was cut off by Stan, who had gotten up by now and swung his shovel at the player’s feet. As the attacker tripped, Stan yelled back to Charlie, who was about to help them, “We can handle this, Charlie! Finish the portal so we can get out of here!” At the same time, he sensed something to his right, and he turned and caught Kat’s eye.

“Stan, here! You need this more than I do!” she yelled, and she dodged an arrow while simultaneously throwing her sword in his direction. He responded by yelling, “Thanks!” and grabbing the sword just as the eye patch guy got back on his feet. Stan drew back and shot a couple of arrows at the player, which were effortlessly deflected, and when arrows became a futile effort he engaged the player with the sword.

Kat, meanwhile, could now see the player she was having a ranged arrow-battle with. He had dark skin and black hair, and he was wearing a leather tunic over Japanese samurai armour. The bow he was using was glowing just like hers – it had been enchanted. She had a feeling that the enchantment on a bow owned by someone who had attacked them without provocation would be considerably more evil than the Infinity enchantment on hers.

Charlie was vaguely aware of Stan’s sword flying out of his hand in his battle with Mr Tank Top, and of more and more arrows catching on Kat’s tunic in her arrow fight with Mr Samurai. He knew he had to finish the portal quickly. Charlie hastily placed the last three obsidian blocks into place atop the black obelisk and then jumped to the ground, pulling out the flint and the steel ring. He was about to light the portal when a figure burst out of the ground right behind him. He whipped around, pickaxe in hand, ready for a fight.

This player was wearing full, glowing iron armour – it was enchanted, too. The blocky black ponytail extending to her waist distinguished her as female. She didn’t attack Charlie. She didn’t even notice him. She pulled something out of her inventory: a handful of redstone dust, and a torch that was glowing electric red. Charlie stared, baffled, as she laid the dust along the ground and then touched the red end of the torch to the dust. Instantly, the dust illuminated and sent off faint red sparks.

“Contact in five!” she bellowed, and she whipped out her iron sword and sunk into a defensive stance. Kat stopped, having bent over to pick up her iron sword, as she wondered what this meant. Stan looked equally as confused, but the effect on the other three was immediate. The eye patch guy and the samurai whipped out shovels and dug holes into the ground. Charlie realized in horror what was about to happen. He ducked behind one of the obsidian pillars of the portal, screaming, “Get down! She’s about to—”

He was cut off when the world exploded.

Stan was knocked back twenty blocks as the sand beneath him exploded in a whirlwind of earth and rock. He was sent flying through the air, and he felt dizzy, becoming aware that he was spinning.

He landed on the ground, dazed, and looked into the dust cloud where the battlefield used to be. He was confused, too paralyzed by fear and injury to do anything but grab and swig one of his healing potions. Instantly, the effect of the potion kicked in. He felt alert and completely healed, and his thoughts immediately turned to the safety of his friends.

Then he saw her. Flying through the air, smoke billowing from her burning leather armour, iron sword miraculously still clasped in her hand, the body of his brave friend, propelled by the amazing force of the explosion, sailed like a graceful kite, disappearing upon plunging into the fiery depths of the lava sea.

Stan’s vision went white. He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t feel the bow in his hand. All of his senses seemed to shut down as he processed the impossible information. His body seemed to be refusing to accept what he knew to be facts. For Kat could not possibly be dead, there was no way that it would be allowed to happen …

Stan’s thoughts were refusing to connect, so his instincts took over. He grabbed his iron shovel from the ground next to him and ran towards the samurai archer who was now aiming an arrow at Charlie’s head. Charlie’s face was white, his eyes wide and his jaw slack, as he stared at the spot where Kat had made contact with the molten liquid, oblivious to his own impending doom. Stan drew back his shovel and slammed it against the archer’s head before he could fire.

The archer was knocked down to the ground, his head twisting at an odd angle. Stan could not tell if he was dead, but if not, he was definitely unconscious. Becoming aware that he was screaming in fury, Stan whipped around to face the other two. He saw the guy with the buzz cut dashing towards him, diamond sword in attack position, with the girl close behind. Both were seething with rage, their veins popping, ready to avenge their fallen friend. But the rage over Kat’s death had elevated Stan’s fighting abilities, even with a shovel. Stan’s anger rose up in him like a pot boiling over, and he was sure that he could easily take these two armoured gorillas. He was about to shoot a preemptive arrow with his bow when something behind them caught his eye.

There was a disturbance in the surface of the lava sea. A ripple, or rather a bubbling, was appearing right next to the shore. What happened next was so unbelievable that, had Stan not been there, he wouldn’t have believed that it had really happened, no matter how many eyewitness accounts he heard.

Out of the lava burst a player, surrounded by a glowing red aura, her iron sword red with the heat it had absorbed from the lava. Kat flew out onto the sand and without hesitation proceeded to thrust her sword into the back of the girl in full iron armour. The sword melted a hole through the back of the chestplate and out the front.

The look on the girl’s face changed from outrage to shock as the sword entered her body. Kat, on the other hand, looked like the embodiment of a demon as she used all her superhuman strength to fling the girl over her head, off her sword. The glowing iron body flew through the air and it entered the lava right near the edge of the stone shore.

Stan didn’t allow himself time to think about how his friend wasn’t burned to death, nor did he allow himself time to be happy. All he knew was that the one remaining fighter with the buzz cut would be upon him soon, and he would be livid that his two companions were down. He ran towards the obsidian frame, where Charlie stood in shock.

“Light the portal!” he bellowed, and he became aware that Kat was running right behind him, deflecting arrows from the buzz cut player with her sword as she did.

Charlie pulled out the flint and the steel ring and struck them together. Sparks flew out upon collision and then fell into the obsidian base. The sparks flew into the air, beginning to glow purple. When they reached the centre of the portal, they grew until the entire inside of the portal was glowing purple. The portal to the Nether was open.

Charlie jumped into the purple glow and disappeared, purple sparks flying through the portal. Stan threw aside all hesitancy he had about entering the new dimension, and he dived through the purple barrier. He suddenly felt like he was buried in the sand above Avery’s base once again, being squeezed from all sides. The very unpleasant sensation lasted for about three seconds, and then Stan tumbled out onto a surface that felt like dirt that was crusted over. He refilled his squeezed-empty lungs with warm, dry air.

On the other side of the portal, Geno was dragging the body of Becca out of the lava. He pulled out two illegally brewed potions from his inventory and poured them into her mouth. The flames that were burning her armour and skin immediately subsided, and she gave a weak cough. Relieved, he quickly whipped around and poured a third potion into the open mouth of Leonidas. There was a faint click, and Leonidas’s head spun around and back into place.

Geno looked up and through the portal. On the other side, he could see that all three players were punching the bottom block of the obsidian portal. Realizing what they were about to do, Geno desperately sprinted towards the portal, trying to dive through before it closed. Just as he was about to fly through, there was a crack, and the bottom obsidian block of the black frame ceased to exist. There was a flash of purple light, and the entrance to the Nether disappeared.

Geno skidded to a stop right before his momentum could carry him through the empty obsidian frame and into the lava sea. He cursed in anger, and he looked back at his companions. Leonidas was sitting up and caressing his neck. Geno knew that he would be all right. Becca, on the other hand, was still lying on the ground, her breathing shallow. Geno was worried about her, but he was sure that there would be at least one medic in the legion of the King’s army awaiting RAT1’s command in the jungle.

It was all for the best, decided Geno, as Leonidas slowly got back to his feet. Geno was confident that under his command, RAT1’s battalion of troops would ensure that Stan and his friends, now stranded in the Nether, would not make it back to the Overworld alive.

CHAPTER 16

THE NETHER

Stan’s knuckles ached from helping Charlie punch through raw obsidian. He wasn’t worried, though. His entire brain was processing two simultaneous emotions. He was breathing hard, amazed and relieved that they had managed to escape those thugs back in the Overworld.

He was also amazed and in shock as he stared at Kat, who was still glowing red from the molten lava. But now, as Stan took a closer look, he could see that the glow wasn’t coming from the residual heat of the lava. Kat seemed to have a red aura surrounding her body. She was sitting on the ground next to Charlie, panting, but other than being winded, she looked completely unharmed.

“So tell me, Kat,” panted Stan, talking for the first time since entering the Nether. “How exactly did you manage to survive swimming in lava?”

Kat looked up at him. She lifted up an empty bottle. “Potion of Fire Resistance,” she huffed, tossing the bottle to the side. “And a healing potion to get rid of the damage from the burns.” She tossed a second bottle to the side. It shattered next to the first one on the red-and-black speckled rocks. The sight of these odd blocks prompted Stan to look around the area.

Beyond the eleven remaining black obsidian blocks of the broken portal, Stan could see the walls of a cave, which they had spawned inside of. The entire cave was made of the black-and-red speckled rocks. Stan guessed that this was a fairly widespread block in the new dimension. The cave was wide open, and he could see that one end was illuminated. The air was arid and very warm. Stan imagined that water was nonexistent here.

Charlie glanced at the broken portal. The obsidian block that they had had to punch out had cracked into three pieces. There was no way to repair the portal with the remaining chunks of the black rock. “We’re gonna have to find some new obsidian if we’re going to fix the portal,” he said with a sigh, chucking the useless obsidian chunks to the side. “Well, let’s not even try to fix it just yet. Whoever that was who just attacked us, I bet that they’re with the King,” said Stan. “And I’ll bet that it’s just a matter of time before they make their way into this dimension and hunt us down. We’ve got to find these Blaze Rods as quick as we can, and even when we do figure out how to fix the portal, we shouldn’t do it until the last possible minute so they can’t follow us.”

Kat and Charlie nodded, and Stan suggested that they make their way out of the cave. They picked up their items and left the broken portal behind them. They walked to the mouth of the cave, and three jaws simultaneously dropped at what they saw.

The entire world seemed to be a colossal cave, made almost entirely of the red-and-black speckled rocks. Flooding the bottom of the cave was a sea of lava that made the one they had just left in the Overworld seem miniscule. A few small, dark red islands dotted the face of the lava. Hanging from the ceiling, which ranged greatly in height, were stalactites made of a glowing type of crystal as well as several giant lava falls that flowed viscously from holes in the ceiling and into the molten basin. It was beautiful in a fiery way, but it was also terrifying. All three players were simultaneously imagining the unknown perils of exploring the scorching land.

The players’ first view of the Nether was soon obscured, however. After about ten seconds of surveying the landscape, a giant white form rose in front of them. Stan stepped back in awe. The giant creature appeared to be a white, levitating jellyfish. Its body was a cube, and there was a mess of tentacles hanging from underneath it. Its eyes were shut, as was its mouth. Stan was amazed. It was by far the largest mob he had ever seen in Minecraft.