The Complete Elementia Chronicles: Quest for Justice; The New Order; The Dusk of Hope; Herobrine’s Message. Sean Wolfe Fay
he said, “As you wish, my King.” Then, without warning, he stood up and shook his head, his face looking confused. Then he appeared as if something was dawning on him, and he looked at the mayor in disgust.
“Why do you have to do that?” he demanded.
“Well,” the mayor replied, “that’s the only way that I can get you out of your trance when you’re SloPoed without a golden apple, and there’s somebody I want you to meet.”
Stan, who was extremely confused as to what was going on, nodded politely and tried to keep the look of confusion and fear off his face as the player was introduced as Mecha11, head of Redstone Mining Pioneering. The name rang a bell in Stan’s memory.
“Wait, you’re Mecha11?” he asked, dumbfounded that this wreck of a player was once in the same tier of people as the Apothecary and the Nether Boys. “I’ve heard of you! My name is Stan2012, and I’ve met the Apothecary and Bill, Ben and Bob!”
A flash of recognition crossed Mecha11’s face, but it soon returned to its uninterested state as he collapsed into one of the wooden chairs. “Well, I’m glad to hear that they’re still chugging. And speaking of chugging,” he said, and he went to drink more of the potion in his hand, but the mayor slapped his hand to the side.
“Mechanist, please, don’t be rude! This young man helped to stop the army from burning our train station to the ground.He deserves your respect.”
“Yeah, great job, kid,” the Mechanist sneered in a sarcastic drawl. “You made it so that we still have a gateway for the army to keep taking advantage of these people who’ve already wasted their lives slaving away in the Blackstone mines. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t thank you by offering you a free muffin.”
“Shut up, Mechanist!” whispered the mayor in urgent tones.
“What? You hate the army and the King, just the same as everybody else!”
“Yes, but there are those who you should not voice that opinion in front of!”
There was a moment of silence, and it lasted until Stan realized that they were referring to him.
“What, me? You think I’m a spy for the King?”
“He’s sent them in before,” said the mayor, still keeping a keen eye on Stan for any sudden movements.
“No, trust me, I am not with the King,” said Stan, and then, a thought occurring to him, he decided to take a huge gamble. “As a matter of fact, I intend to overthrow him myself.”
The Mechanist laughed. “That’s cute,” he said. “You really think that you’re capable of overthrowing the King, do you?”
Stan was taken aback. It was not the first time that his plot had been met with scepticism, but there was something in the Mechanist’s voice that made Stan want to hear what he had to say.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” he replied firmly. “I’ve already raised an army, and as soon as we gather the necessary supplies, which we have access to, we are going to march into Element City, kill the King and his officials, and reform Elementia into a better place.”
The mayor’s eyes had simply widened a little when Stan first mentioned his idea to overthrow the King, but at this latest description, he was actually running around the room from window to window, checking to see that there were no soldiers listening in. The Mechanist, completely unconcerned with being overheard, threw back his head and laughed again.
“You really do think that you can do it! That’s cute.” Stan found the condescension in his voice infuriating. “But let me give you a piece of sound advice, kid: give it up!” He shouted this with such power and volume that Stan actually jumped, and the mayor whipped around with an iron pickaxe drawn, ready for an impending attack. Though none came, the Mechanist continued to talk in an unnecessarily loud voice.
“The King’s forces are spread far and wide, all over this server. All of them are equally as cruel and brutal as he is, and there are hundreds of them. The King is not an operator anymore, but he still has an almost limitless cache of resources from the days when he was! Also—”
“Hey, I already know all that!” interjected Stan. “And let me just point out that I intend to tap into one of those caches in order to gain the supplies for my army!”
“Kid, you have no clue what you’re talking about, because it’s not just the King you have to worry about! You realize that about a third of the population is heavily aligned with the King? He has a double standard for the upper class! My point is, even if you do manage to take down the King, which is an impossible dream itself, you’ll never be able to completely destroy the King’s evil ideals.”
“You don’t understand!” cried Stan. “I’ve met people, I’ve talked to them. You don’t understand just how much people hate the King and want him dead.”
“Ha!” sneered the Mechanist, an ugly look taking over his face. “The irony of you lecturing me on how people hate the King! You think I don’t know that? Listen to me, kid, and I’ll give you the full story of what King Kev has done to me personally! I was the head of Redstone Experiments back in the old kingdom. It was me who designed Element City’s monorail system, me who wired King Kev’s entire castle, and me who designed all the weapon systems that guard the King’s castle from invaders like you. For the love of God, I invented the TNT Cannon for him!
“And how does the King repay me? He banishes me to spend my life in this desert wasteland, just because people who hated him copied my weapons systems and used them against him! If there is anybody who wants the King dead, it’s people like me, like the Apothecary, like the Chiefs of Exploration, who were close to the King, and who he banished from his kingdom!”
“And that doesn’t make you want to want to try to take control of Elementia from him?” asked Stan, his eyes flashing with passionate rage at the King and at the old inventor across from him who was being so difficult. “For the record, the Apothecary and the Chiefs of Exploration have both agreed to join my army.”
“Then they’re bigger fools than you!” said the Mechanist with a joyless shout of laughter. “They ought to know that nothing good comes from rebelling against the King’s supreme authority. If you were wise, you’d do the same thing as me and try to make the best you can out of the world that the King has created. Me, I love making redstone mechanisms, and so I put my skills to use here by making piston machines to make deep-earth mining easier.
“I hate the fact that I’m helping the King by making mining easier for him, and so I don’t feel guilty when I get SloPo from gambling with the nomads that pass through here.” He raised his bottle of blue-grey liquid. “I’ve made myself a life out here. Thanks to the King, it’s not happy or fulfilling, but I can’t change it, so why not make it as nice for myself as possible?”
And with that, the Mechanist took another swig of SloPo. The effect was instantaneous, and his head fell back and rolled to the side as he passed out.
Stan was filled with a new level of infuriation at both the King and the Mechanist. He could never forgive the Mechanist for just giving up on life after it got hard and not even trying to fight back. On the other hand, his new knowledge of the kinds of mistreatment that the King had extended to even his friends, who had trusted and served him, imparted in Stan a furious desire to do something drastic against the King. He looked down at the mayor, who had been sitting in his chair, trying to block out the noise throughout the whole argument.
“Mayor, I need you to gather all the miners in the village in front of the warehouse. I have an announcement to make,” said Stan.
The mayor stood up and looked Stan in the eye. “If I do what you say, will I regret it?”
“I sure hope not,” replied Stan as he walked out the door.
He had noticed that there was a wooden platform in front of the brick wall of the warehouse, which was illuminated by torchlight. It was a perfect