The Complete Elementia Chronicles: Quest for Justice; The New Order; The Dusk of Hope; Herobrine’s Message. Sean Wolfe Fay
Stan gulped. He sincerely regretted coming this close to the soldier now.
The soldier continued: “And the King needs all available resources to put the assassin out of commission! It is my responsibility to make sure that the town of Blackstone, as Elementia’s primary coal producer, generates more than its share, not less! If there isn’t enough coal, the King gets angry with me, and therefore, I get angry with you! This is your last warning, Mayor. If you fail to produce your quota one more time … well, you can imagine …”
There was a clinking sound and the mayor cried out in terror. Stan jumped up to come to his aid, forgetting that he was under the wooden platform. He hit his head on the underside of the plank above him and he saw stars. When his vision came back into focus, he saw the soldier leaving on his train, and he realized in horror that the block of wood above him had been burned away. The clinking had been a steel ring against flint! And it was a wooden station …
The mayor was doing all he could to punch out the flames, but they were spreading too fast. Throwing caution to the wind, Stan stood up through the hole and helped the mayor put out the flames with his fists. The mayor’s eyes widened in surprise, but he did not question Stan’s sudden appearance. He was simply grateful for the help he had miraculously received, and within a minute all the flames were extinguished.
“Thank you, kind stranger,” said the mayor, bowing his head in respect. “Without your bravery, we might have lost one of the few respectable buildings we have left in this city.”
“No problem,” said Stan. “I’m glad to be of help. So what is this place, exactly?”
“This, my friend, is the humble town of Blackstone, population twenty-three, and Elementia’s chief producer of coal,” replied the mayor. “And may I ask where you come from, my good sir?”
So he doesn’t recognize me, thought Stan. That’s good. Generally attention doesn’t work too well in my favour. “I’ve lived in a lot of places,” Stan said.
“Well, if you are in need of a place to stay for a while, we would be happy to have you here,” said the mayor. “It is rare that anyone shows such kindness to the people of this town, and on the rare occasion that it happens, they deserve to be rewarded.”
“That is very kind of you, sir,” said Stan, “but I have to return to my friends by night-time. Do you by any chance have anything to eat?” Stan had only had an apple since breakfast, and he was very hungry.
The player smiled. There were wrinkles in his blocky cheeks. “Of course, sir. Right this way. He walked out of the station, followed by Stan, and they began walking down the main street of the town.
Stan had never seen such a pathetic-looking excuse for a town in his life. The unpaved main street was the only road, and on either side of it were ten or so small houses, all patched together with sand, dirt, cobblestone and sandstone so that it was impossible to tell what the original material was. Stan noticed that on the sides of a few of these houses were small wheat gardens, which were surrounded with fences. Players leaned against the front of these houses.
There was no way to describe the look of these players except as broken, defeated. Their heads hung, looking towards the ground, with the sun glinting off the metal helmets on their heads. Most of them had iron pickaxes dangling from their hands. They all wore leather armour everywhere except on their heads, which were obscured by the helmets, so it was impossible to tell them apart at a glance. When they sensed Stan walking into the town, a few of them glanced up. Stan could see pain reflected in their faces, which bore all variety of scars, and the players projected a defensive caution at this new player, young and whole, who had the audacity to waltz into their village unannounced.
“Just ignore them,” mumbled the mayor, sensing Stan’s unease. “They’re just tired and upset from all the extra work the soldiers have been forcing them to do lately. They’re looking for a fight. They need to take their anger out on someone. So don’t look anyone directly in the eye.”
Stan took the mayor’s advice and looked straight forwards towards the end of the street, keeping his hand cautiously but subtly close to the wooden handle of the iron axe dangling at his side by his belt. Keen to avoid eye contact with the temperamental miners, Stan forced himself to focus on the building at the end of the street. It was the largest and by far the most well-kept building. It was a rectangular complex made of brick blocks, with no windows and two side-by-side metal doors on the front. Unlike the patchy houses that held the miners, this building seemed to be in a state of good repair. Stan asked the mayor about its purpose.
“That is the government’s storehouse. They come by rail to this village every other day to collect the coal quota, but all other materials, including cobblestone, iron and even buckets of lava from the sources of springs that we encounter, go in there, along with any other ambiguous blocks we find.”
“Do you mean to say that the army controls the flow of materials leaving this village through that storehouse?” asked Stan.
“Yes. And we don’t get to keep any of what we bring up for ourselves. Even if some blocks of our houses are stolen, we have to smuggle cobblestone blocks up from the mines to repair them, an offence punishable by death. Our miners have actually gotten into fights and killed each other over accusations of stealing parts from one another’s houses.”
Stan sighed in disgust at this revelation as they arrived at the house directly adjacent to the warehouse. A sign next to the front door read “Mayor.” This house was a little larger than the other houses, though in an equal state of disrepair. The mayor pushed open the wooden door and they walked inside.
The inside of the house had a wooden floor, walls made of the same materials as the outside – suggesting the walls were one block thick – and windows, some of which still had glass panes. The entire house consisted of one room, which had a crafting table, a furnace, two double chests, two chairs and two beds. The entire room had a defeated air to it, and at each step the floorboards creaked in despair.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Stan lied through his teeth, as the mayor grabbed two steaks from his chest and handed one to Stan. “I notice there are two beds here, and two chairs. Does somebody else live here with you?”
In response to his question, a burst of coughing issued from a hole in one corner of the room that Stan had not noticed before. From the hole emerged the most dishevelled player that Stan had seen so far. He was dressed in a white lab coat with grey trousers, and his grey hair stuck up in all directions. He would have looked like Albert Einstein if he didn’t look so beaten. His face was sallow and sunken in, he had an unearthly stench that Stan could smell from across the room, and he was completely covered in coal dust that was mixed with a shiny, red material that Stan identified as redstone dust. He held two bottles in his hands, one of which was empty and one of which held a liquid of a sickly blue-grey colour. The player gave an almighty belch before addressing the mayor.
“Hey, Turkey, we’re running low on SloPo, when do you think the nomads’ll be back?” his voice was slurred and giddy, reminding Stan of a player who was deep in the stages of delirium. “Are the nomads gonna be back tomorrow? They’ll be back tomorrow, and then I’ll get my SloPo. I do love my SloPo. But, wait, I’m gonna need money! Turkey, remind me to get some money later tonight, OK, old buddy, Turkey old friend?”
At that point, the player stopped his conversation with himself and noticed that he and “Turkey” (who Stan could only assume was the mayor) were not alone in the room. The player turned his dilated pupils to Stan and asked the mayor, “Who’s the new meat, Turkey? He another new miner to come from, from, from the Elementia prisons? Heh-heh, good luck, little buddy, you ain’t gonna last two days down in that ravine!” For some reason, the player seemed to find this extraordinarily funny, and he rolled around on the ground, banging his fist on the floor to the point where one of the wooden planks actually broke off.
The mayor simply walked over to the hysterical player on the floor and calmly said, “Mecha11, you are hereby sentenced to labour in the coal mines of Blackstone, in the Ender Desert, for