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

“Years ago,” said Mella, who had stopped wandering, “when the Sacred One was still with us, the sieges used to befall us every full moon. We were able to survive as a species because in those days Zombies could not break through our doors. However, during every siege a horrible monster would terrorize our village alongside the Zombies: a Skeleton riding upon a Spider.”

“A Spider Jockey,” muttered Charlie. His eyebrows knitted, and his eyes widened in anxiety. “I’ve read about those things. All the range of a Skeleton combined with the agility and rapidity of a Spider. That does not sound like a fun combo to me.”

“Oh, you are right on that, bro,” agreed DZ, looking sober. “Whenever I see a Spider Jockey out in the desert, I avoid it. If it sees me, I run like anything,” he said. He looked at Moganga. “So every time there’s a siege, a Spider Jockey comes and attacks the villagers?”

“That is correct,” replied Moganga. “It would often kill one of us before the Sacred One drove it away, and the Sacred One was never able to kill it, despite his status as an elite archer. As a result, the Spider Jockey will return tonight. If you consider this, and the fact that the Zombies have recently learned how to break through doors, then you will realize that you players staying here will make the village a very dangerous place for our people.”

Stan wanted to add that that wasn’t saying much, seeing as he had seen three villagers almost commit suicide by walking into cactuses, but he kept the thought to himself.

“Therefore, I make this offer to you. You may stay with us in the village while you hunt the mobs called Endermen, and in return you will defend us from the siege and kill the Spider Jockey. Do we have an agreement?”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Stan, and his friends nodded in agreement. Indeed, Kat and DZ both seemed thrilled about the prospect of fighting a horde of evil mobs. Charlie, on the other hand, still had a hint of the old nerves he had shown so often when they had first met. Stan had thought that this nervous tendency would be gone by now, after all they had been through, and he certainly couldn’t have a nervous Charlie in the End. As insurance, and a sort of final test of the power of Charlie’s nerves, Stan spoke up.

“OK, here’s how we should do this. DZ and Kat, you stay back in the village and kill all the Zombies that try to break into the village houses. Charlie and I will go out into the desert around the village, and we’ll kill all the mobs that spawn out there. We’ll also hunt the Spider Jockey.”

Charlie’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth in what Stan was sure would be a protest, but Kat had already said, “That works,” and DZ nodded in agreement. “OK,” she continued, “let’s suit up. The sun is setting, and this is gonna be a long, long night.”

With an apprehensive expression on his face, Charlie followed Stan, Kat and DZ back to Oob’s house, where they had stored their armour and weapons in a chest.

DZ’s arsenal was by far the lightest. With no armour, he held nothing but an iron sword glowing red with the Fire Aspect enchantment in his hand and two diamond swords at his side. One of these swords was glowing with the Knockback enchantment.

Kat, on the other hand, was the most bogged down with gear, being the only one with a full set of armour. She had on an iron helmet, leather tunic, iron leggings and iron boots, and she held an enchanted Infinity bow in her hand. Her arrows and iron sword hung at her hips.

Stan also had quite a bit of paraphernalia on him. He wore his iron chestplate, and he had his axe in his hand and a bow slung over his back, with arrows hanging at his side. Oob had provided him with a sash to strap across his chest, to which he attached the two Potions of Healing and the one Potion of Fire Resistance that he still had from the Apothecary.

Charlie was adorned in an iron chestplate, his diamond pickaxe grasped in his sweaty hand. He had the same sash as Stan, but no bows and arrows. Instead, he took the fire charges that he had taken from the dead soldier at the Nether portal and attached them to his belt and sash.

As the sun sank deeper and deeper towards the desert hills, the sky’s colour shifted from light blue to azure, then to pink, violet and finally, black. Kat, Rex and DZ took their places patrolling the gravel pathways of the village, while Stan, Charlie and Lemon walked down the main street towards the desert. It was like a ghost town. The NPC villagers were all holed up in their houses, preparing for the impending siege. The eerie wind blowing in off the desert hills contributed to the ominous sense of foreboding that now lay around the darkened village as Stan, Charlie and Lemon ventured out into the dune sea.

When they had gone a moderate distance from the village, Charlie looked at Stan. “OK, Stan, clearly you volunteered me to do this for a reason. Spill.”

“I wanted to make sure you were tough enough,” replied Stan, not looking at Charlie as he scanned the hills for any signs of a horde of Zombies. “The End is going to be terrifying whether you like it or not, Charlie, so better to buck up now than when we’re faced with that world.”

Charlie’s mouth opened in outrage, but it soon closed because he realized that Stan was right. Charlie felt that he had become much braver since meeting Stan, but whatever was in the End was sure to be much more dangerous than anything in the Overworld or the Nether. To ensure that he was up to it, Charlie agreed that he should not run from precarious situations when they arose, for the sake of training himself.

The sun eventually fully dipped below the distant sandy knolls, and the full moon was soon at its zenith in the sky above, the stars gleaming like diamonds in the black infinity of the sky. Neither Stan nor Charlie was able to appreciate the natural beauty around them, however. Both were now preoccupied with the very real likelihood of hundreds of Zombies pouring over the hills.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long after the sunset that Stan’s ear became vaguely aware of a rumbling, like the sound of hundreds of feet swarming forwards in unison. The sounds of bones rattling, Spiders clicking, Endermen crying and, most prominently, Zombies giving their empty moans of despair became louder and louder until, finally, the first wave of Zombies appeared.

Stan and Charlie rushed into action. There were hundreds of targets to choose from, so it was not long before the pickaxe and axe, in the hands of the two experienced fighters, had torn, smashed and beaten down dozens of the beasts. However, many more were now thronging towards the village. Stan rushed to engage them. Charlie was about to follow suit when he saw a sight that made his stomach dissolve.

Another wave of monsters had appeared over the horizon, this one composed not just of Zombies but of Skeletons, Spiders, Creepers and Endermen as well. And leading the charge, ordering the attack on the village by gesturing with its hand, was a Skeleton that was sitting, bow in hand, on the back of a Spider: the Spider Jockey.

Charlie knew that this was his fight. He had to be the one to obliterate that Spider Jockey. However, he knew that he could not do that with all the other hostile mobs streaming onwards. Formulating a plan, he pulled out a TNT block and a redstone torch that he had got from the dead soldier, placed it on the ground, and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Hey! Over here, you undead freaks!”

His plan worked. The mobs’ attention turned from the NPC village, and instead the dozens of mobs swarmed towards Charlie. With seconds to spare, he touched the tip of the redstone torch to the TNT block, scooped Lemon up in his hands, and jumped into a ditch a few blocks back. An instant later, just as Charlie saw an Enderman above him, raising its arm to strike, the TNT block exploded with the same force as a Creeper. Charlie was knocked back by the explosion, landing on his rear a few blocks away, but that was nothing compared to what happened to the mobs.

The explosion occurred right as the majority of the mobs were over it, and as Charlie looked down into the crater in the sand, he saw that none of the demons had survived. The crater was littered with bones, arrows, rotten flesh, and, to Charlie’s delight, two Ender Pearls. He picked up the latter and looked back to the horizon to see what remained of Spider Jockey’s henchmen.

Besides the Spider Jockey itself, the only mobs left in the desert were three Creepers, staring at Charlie from behind their leader. One of them began to shake in anger at the death of his comrades, and it began to lumber towards Charlie, but the Spider Jockey raised its hand to signal a halt. Charlie’s eyes locked on the empty eye sockets of the Skeleton. They both knew the same thing to be true: this fight was to be one-on-one.

Realizing this was to be the case, Charlie was sincerely wishing that he had brought a bow with him when, as if by a miracle, he noticed that one of the Skeletons had dropped one in the crater. He scooped this up, along with all the arrows lying alongside it. Though he had never been much of a shot at archery, Charlie was on such an adrenaline high from the massacre of the undead that he was sure that he could shoot just as well as Kat or Stan under the circumstances. Climbing out of the crater, he gave one last defiant look at the Spider Jockey, and he charged.

The Spider Jockey charged at the same time. The Skeleton fired off two quick shots with his bow, which Charlie dodged and knocked aside with his pickaxe. As he came up from his dodge, Charlie threw his pickaxe boomerang-style towards the Skeleton’s head. It seemed to be on a collision course, but at the last second the Spider pounced to the side, saving its rider for the time being.

Charlie was unfazed. He drew his bow and, while still running forwards, fired off three shots as the Skeleton did the same. Charlie dodged two of the shots, while a third deflected off his armour. The Spider Jockey was not so lucky. Though the Spider was able to hop out of the way of the first two arrows, the third one sunk straight into one of its eight red eyes. The Spider spat in pain and began thrashing around, causing the Skeleton to hastily jerk the arrow out of the Spider’s face, restring it in its own bow, and fire it back Charlie’s way.

Charlie ducked the arrow, and then he was upon the monster. The Spider bared its teeth and launched itself at Charlie, but Charlie delivered a quick jab to its face and it keeled over sideways – not dead, but certainly disoriented. Charlie took the opportunity to grab the pickaxe lying nearby on the ground. By the time the Spider Jockey had regained its footing, it was too late. The Skeleton notched an arrow in its bow just as Charlie drove his pickaxe into the Spider’s side. The Spider fell to the ground, twitching reflexively as it bled from the hole in its side. The Skeleton was thrown to the ground, its arrow fired haphazardly into the air, and as it looked up at the impending warrior that was Charlie, it waved its white bone of an arm forwards.

Charlie barely had time to ponder what this meant before he noticed three Creepers moving towards him. He closed his eyes and braced himself for the powerful explosions. Instead, however, he heard a hissing sound distinctly different from that of a Creeper. Charlie opened his eyes to see Lemon chasing the Creepers away, and Charlie pursued them until he reached a ditch in the sand.

Lemon stood at the top of the ditch, still hissing at the three Creepers, all of which were cowering in fear in the corner of the wall of sand. The Creepers were too scared of the cat to even look up as Charlie ended their lives with three quick strokes of the pickaxe. Relieved, Charlie turned, ready to scratch Lemon behind the ears in thanks.

Instead, Charlie looked up just in time to see an arrow pierce his cat through the stomach.

Time ran by in slow motion as Lemon descended in a graceful, almost angelic arc off the sandy ledge and into the ditch, finally coming to rest in Charlie’s waiting arms. Charlie’s stomach felt as though a knot were being tied in his gut as his cat gave one last feeble meow, and Lemon faded out of existence.

Charlie’s mind was white with shock. He stood staring into his empty arms, where his dying pet had just breathed its last breath, unable to comprehend what had happened. He had only had Lemon for a short time, but during that time he had become as fond of the cat as he had of Kat and Stan, knowing that whenever he awakened from this nightmare created by the King, he would have Lemon by his side.

Then, in an instant, the shock and horror within Charlie spontaneously morphed into rage and an insane, animal desire to destroy the one responsible for Lemon’s death. He looked up to the ledge above the ditch, and he saw the Skeleton that had been riding upon the Spider aiming another arrow straight at his head. Charlie’s reflexes, already heightened by battle, increased to the point of becoming superhuman as he caught the flying arrow in midair, inches from his own face. He notched it in his own bow and sent it back to its owner, the flint tip shattering the bone-dry skull into dust.

Charlie pulled himself out of the hole, still seething and bloodthirsty for the destruction of more of the undead. The desert was, however, completely vacant. Charlie had managed to kill all the Spider Jockey’s forces single-handedly. Though Charlie was still enraged that they had got Lemon, he did allow himself to take something that he never had before: credit. From the time the first mobs appeared to now, there was one emotion that he hadn’t felt at all. He had not been afraid.

Pride, sadness and fury swirling within Charlie, he raced back towards the light of the NPC village to combat the mobs he now saw roaming the streets.

Stan could have filled a chest with the rotten flesh of all the Zombies he and his comrades had felled while defending the village. Stan’s axe brought Zombie after Zombie to its second death. Kat was even more effective, her sword able to parry the Zombie’s attack aside, letting her fight them at close range alongside her dog. However, by far the most devastating blows to the undead came from DZ, his red-tinted iron sword needing only to cut a Zombie once while the element of fire did the rest.

Though the moon was still high in the night sky, Stan was just thinking that the siege was dying down when he suddenly felt himself lifted into the air. Though upside-down and very disoriented, he managed to glimpse an Enderman lifting him high in the air and about to smash him into the gravel street. Stan braced himself for impact when he felt a lurch, and he fell gently to the ground, his fall cushioned by the dead corpse of the Enderman. Eager to see who had killed the monster, Stan looked up just in time to see Charlie pulling his diamond pickaxe out of the back of the creature’s head, his expression dark and distant.

“Thanks, Charlie,” said Stan as Charlie helped him to his feet. “How did it go?”

“They’re all dead. The Spider Jockey, too,” said Charlie in a monotonous voice that seemed awfully out of character. Something had obviously gone wrong. Stan was just making the connection of what was out of place when Charlie muttered, “Lemon’s dead.”

It was like a dull blow to the stomach. Stan was filled with sympathy for his best friend. He knew how much joy Lemon had brought to Charlie, and he knew that Charlie would be a much different person now.

“How’ve you guys been holding up here?” Charlie asked, his voice lifting almost imperceptibly, as if he were involuntarily trying to make himself happier.

“I think we’re done,” exclaimed DZ, joining them after sticking one last Zombie. He had a small scratch on his left forearm, and he looked exhausted, but besides that he was fine. “I got the last one over here, and I’m pretty sure that Kat finished those over there.”

At that very moment, Kat’s face peeked out from around the corner of Oob’s house, but she did not look triumphant. Her face was pale and looked horrified.

“I think you guys need to see this,” she whispered, her lips barely moving.

The three players ran to see what she meant. As he was running, Stan heard Oob’s voice coming from inside his house.

“Players? Yoo-hoo! I have something to show you!”

“Not now, Oob,” muttered Stan in response as he rounded the corner of the house and saw what Kat was staring at. His gut contracted painfully at the sight.

Stan had seen many large groups of evil mobs together throughout his time in Minecraft, but never before had he seen one as large as the one now lumbering down the gravel path towards the NPC village. There must have been at least two hundred evil mobs in all. This group was not just made up of Zombies – there were Skeletons, Spiders, Creepers and Endermen, too.

“Players?”

“Not now, Oob!” barked Stan as he raised his axe. He was far too tired to fight any more, and his body was screaming at him to ignore these mobs and just go to sleep.

“But it’s very very very very very important!” came Oob’s exasperated, rushed response.

“Oob, buddy, we’re kind of busy defending your butt right now, so talk to us later, all right,” said DZ, and he did something that Stan had only seen someone do once before. DZ drew out two swords, with his red-iron sword in one hand and his unenhanced diamond sword in the other. Stan supposed that this was an advanced form of sword fighting.

“Oh, come on!” came Oob’s voice, and his face appeared in the window. “Don’t you want to see my new little brother?”

Stan suddenly snapped to attention. “Wait, what did you just say?” he asked.

“Oob, did you just say you have a new brother?” asked Charlie.

Oob’s face disappeared for a few seconds, and when he came back up he was holding up a miniature version of himself. It seemed that he did, indeed, have a new brother. “Mother and Father decided that if we are to remain in the village, we must have new members. Then they stared at each other for a few moments, a heart icon appeared above their heads, and my new brother Stull appeared!” Oob’s smile was so big that it was visible even beneath his colossal nose.

“Wait,” said Charlie, and Stan could tell that he had just realized something. “Oob … how many buildings are there in your village?”

“Including the houses belonging to those killed by evil mobs, there are thirty-one,” replied Oob.

“And, counting your new brother, Stull, how many people live in the village now?”

“I am the tenth resident of this NPC village,” answered Stull in a surprisingly deep voice for an infant.

“But that means that … if there are really ten …” said Charlie, completely ignoring the fact that his question had been answered by a newborn baby, “and thirty-one … then that means that … soon—”

Charlie was cut off by a metallic rumbling sound.

Stan, Charlie, Kat and DZ all whipped around as the figure charged down the road. The beast was enormous. It was metallic, a little taller than the players and about twice their width, and it had long, gangly arms. Vines grew all over its body, and save its gleaming red eyes its face bore a direct resemblance to a sort of grey NPC villager.

As the beast charged forwards, Stan was afraid for an instant that it was going to attack them, but it flew right past them and into the horde of mobs that had now entered the village. The thing raised its great long arms, and swung them side-to-side in rapid and crazy attack patterns, with each new swing knocking mobs apart as if they were life-sized sculptures of gelatin. The victims of this thing truly did end up liquefied under its pure physical strength.

“What is that thing?” asked Stan in awe, his mouth agape at the awesome battle taking place before him as the beast eliminated wave after wave of hostile mobs.

“It’s an Iron Golem,” replied DZ, looking at the beast with admiration. “They spawn in large villages and help defend the people against these sieges.”

“And Stull’s birth gave this village ten people, making the game officially classify it as a large one,” added Charlie as he watched the carnage.

The evil mobs were simply no match for the Iron Golem. The second they came within the range of the iron arm, they had no chance to initiate any attacks before they were crushed.

Stan suddenly remembered something, and he looked at Kat. Her face was solemn, as he had expected it to be. He remembered that she had described a metallic clanging noise that followed her after she pillaged the last NPC village she went to. That village had undoubtedly had an Iron Golem, too, placed there to defend the village from having its citizens taken advantage of. He expected her to look scared or at least a little uncomfortable, but Kat now seemed fully at ease and it appeared that she, finally, had forgiven herself.

For an hour, the four players watched in stunned silence as the Iron Golem laid waste to all evil mobs that entered the NPC village. The last mob to die was a Skeleton. Right before it could shoot, the Iron Golem delivered a roundhouse punch to its head, knocking it dead to the ground.

The Iron Golem then stood still, glancing into the horizon, ready to defend the village at all costs. It looked very impressive, silhouetted against the white square of the rising sun, a sure indication that the siege, at last, was over.

CHAPTER 23

THE TWELVE EYES OF ENDER

As the sun rose over the NPC village, Stan surveyed the village to see the effects of the siege. He was relieved to find that no villagers had been injured during the siege, but he was surprised to see that the villagers seemed truly devastated when they heard of the loss of Lemon. From what Stan understood, they had never seen a cat before Lemon, and they had had great joy in petting him.

“He was so gentle and kind,” said Oob with a frown on his face and a tear trickling down his cheek. “I am so sad that he is no longer with us.” DZ was about to comfort him when the villager started wandering again, making his consoling effort moot.

The villagers also seemed very fond of the Iron Golem, who seemed to showcase a gentler side when he was around them, and especially around the children. As the newborn Stull played a game of tag with another villager child, a girl named Sequi, the Iron Golem joined in, tagging the children with a light, harmless tap on the head, as opposed to the wild, fanatical arm swings he had used to destroy the evil mobs the previous night.

Stan, Kat and DZ were all quite contented that the village was safe, and Kat in particular was noticeably pumped up with anticipation for the Enderman hunt that was now next on their to-do list. Charlie, on the other hand, was taking the loss of his cat very hard. He spent the first day after Lemon’s death sitting on the wood blocks that made up the border of Blerge’s wheat farm, staring out into the desert sky, a pensive look on his face and an occasional tear rolling down his cheek.

As the afternoon rolled around and DZ entertained the villagers with more bad jokes, Stan and Kat caught each other’s eyes for a moment and knew that they had to talk to Charlie. They went around to the back of the house, and they sat down on either side of their friend. He raised his eyes slightly to both sides in acknowledgement of their presence, and then proceeded to look down at the sand below him.

“You doing all right, man?” asked Stan.

Charlie didn’t answer.

“What’s the matter, Charlie?” said Kat.

Charlie still didn’t answer.

“Charlie, I’m really sorry about Lemon,” said Stan, “but we’ve got to keep going. We’ve got a King to take down, remember?”

“What’s the point?” asked Charlie in a dejected voice. Stan was alarmed at how depressed he sounded. “All that’s going to happen is more people dying.” He looked up at Stan. “My cat just got killed, and I feel miserable. What’s going to happen if you get killed? Or you, Kat?” he asked turning his head the other way to face Kat.

“Charlie, there’s no other way,” said Kat, a grim expression on her face. “Believe me, if I thought there was any other way to change the way things run on this server, then I wouldn’t be with you guys right now. But sometimes war is the only option. It’s a horrible option, but it’s the only one we’ve got.”