The Complete Elementia Chronicles: Quest for Justice; The New Order; The Dusk of Hope; Herobrine’s Message. Sean Wolfe Fay
a while and we could really use some food. You seem like a nice guy, Oob,” said Charlie, and he gave Oob a friendly punch in the shoulder.
“Follow me then, my friends,” said Oob, and he walked out into the desert. Charlie walked right next to Oob, chatting with him and, judging by the occasional outburst of laughter, telling more stupid jokes. DZ was walking behind them, next to Stan, and he was smiling, but Stan was anxiously keeping an eye on Kat over his shoulder. She was walking behind them all, and the look on her face clearly said that she was dreading going to the NPC village, but Stan still had no idea why. He decided to find out.
He fell back next to Kat and she immediately made a noticeable effort to not meet his eye. “Kat, I don’t think it’s any secret that you don’t want to go to the NPC village,” Stan said.
Kat remained silent.
“When we first met, you told me that you found stuff in the chest of an abandoned NPC village. Judging by the way you’re acting, I’m beginning to think that that might not be completely true.”
Kat was still silent.
“Kat, what happened at that village?”
“I killed him.”
Kat had stopped walking. She had a look of incredible pain on her face. Stan was confused and disturbed by it. She looked like someone repenting for some awful crime. When she next spoke, her voice was detached and distant.
“I went to an NPC village, and all these villagers were being so nice to me. And I took their stuff. I took the sword, and I killed their blacksmith. And they all just stared at me. Then he told me to leave. Their priest stepped out of his church, stared at me, and told me to leave the village, and to never come back. And then … there was this stomping … and it got louder … and louder … and so I ran … I didn’t look back … I didn’t even have the decency to look that priest in the eye …”
Kat was staring down at the ground. She took a deep breath and then sighed. She looked at Stan. “I was a different person back then, Stan. I used force to get what I wanted, and I didn’t care what the consequences were, because I knew I could cancel out those consequences with more force.” Kat paused. “Just like King Kev,” Kat added in a mutter, echoing Stan’s thoughts.
“We’ve got to beat him, Stan,” said Kat. Her voice suddenly became serious, and she looked him straight in the eye. “After I met you guys, everything changed. I’m not the same person I was. You and Charlie are just so great. You get so legitimately upset over injustice, all injustice, even stuff most people just brush off. You’ve changed me. And I know that we’re doing the right thing. We have got to take this lunatic down and bring justice to this place. And you’ve got to lead it, Stan. You’re something special, and you’re the right one to do it.” Kat was now radiating that same power she had when she burst from the lava and attacked Becca at the lava sea. Every word that she said went straight to Stan’s heart. He felt empowered.
Stan had not said one word throughout Kat’s entire monologue, but he knew that she was right. Kat was certainly a very different person than the girl who had ambushed them from the woods with a stone sword, and he knew that it was he and Charlie who had influenced Kat for the better. Furthermore, though he wasn’t sure how he felt about it yet, he knew that he was somehow special. He had been sure that some otherworldly power had possessed him to win his two-on-one fight at the sword fighting dojo, to effortlessly destroy that Snow Golem with the axe, and to shoot that arrow at the King. He had felt it again the previous night as he yelled at DZ. Those actions did not feel like they had come from him, but from some higher level of thinking, as if the universe itself was calling him to act.
Stan remembered how, a million years ago, a million miles away, in an Adorian Village not destroyed by hatred, Sally had asked him if he believed that he was special, and Crazy Steve had given him a calculating look. They knew. They had sensed something about him, some aura. In retrospect, they showed it, too. Sally had made him fight Kat and Charlie two-on-one, and had Crazy Steve not been killed in the midst of their talk, Stan was sure that he would have mentioned something about this sixth sense to him.
Stan had all these thoughts playing around in the back of his mind, but as the silhouettes of buildings appeared on the desert horizon against the rising square that was the sun, the prospect of food convinced Stan to store these thoughts away for later contemplation.
“Oh muhn, I nuvr tawdied misdah tashtah bredsamush,” mumbled Kat through a mouthful of bread. Stan agreed. The bread that the villagers had given to them was indeed a vast improvement over the hunger they had endured for the past day. The sun showed that it was almost noon, and while Lemon and Rex sat outside, Stan, Charlie, Kat, DZ and Oob were all sitting in Oob’s house in the NPC village.
The village itself, Stan found, bore a fond similarity to the Adorian Village. The majority of houses were made out of wooden planks and cobblestone, with glass pane windows and wooden doors. The entire village was centred around a cobblestone well with gravel paths branching out around it. Behind most of the houses were miniature farms that consisted of rings of wood blocks, inside of which were alternating rows of water, and dirt blocks with wheat crops growing from them.
Two buildings stood out from the houses. A tall cobblestone building with multiple stories was the tallest thing in the village. Oob had pointed it out to Stan as the church, where their priest, also their leader, lived. Next to the village was a wide building with the entire left side exposed, revealing two furnaces and a pool of lava. This building was called the forge, Oob said, home of the blacksmith who kept the villagers’ tools in good repair.
“We are very happy to have you here. It has been so long since we have had players act kindly towards us,” said Mella, Oob’s mother, who lived in the house with her husband, Blerge, and Oob.
“What do you mean, Mella? Have other players done stuff to you guys?” asked Kat.
“Oh, yes,” she replied, a grim look taking over her face. “Long ago, before Oob was born, the forces of the one named King Kev forced those in our village to pay a tribute of wheat from our farms. There were often shortages, and many of us starved.” Mella started to wander around the house again. Stan had realized that this was a quality of all NPC villagers – they all had a tendency to wander aimlessly regardless of what they were doing.
“What happened? Why did the King stop bothering you?” asked Kat encouragingly.
“What? Oh, yes,” replied Mella, as though she had momentarily forgotten that they were there. Stan suspected that she actually had. “Not long after Oob was born, a player made a deal with the King that in exchange for that player’s services, the King would no longer collect tribute from our village. We have seen no players since they took that brave player away.” And with that Mella again began to wander.
Seeing that she was obviously out of it, Stan chose to ask Oob, rather than Mella, the name of the player. Oob’s face took on a kind of elation in response.
“Oh, we have vowed to never speak the name of the Sacred One again! We have received a sign from the almighty Notch that in repayment for his sacrifice, we are never to speak the name of the Sacred One again!”
“The almighty Notch? Who is Notch?” asked Charlie, just as the back door opened and Blerge, Oob’s father, walked in from tending the farm.
“He’s the guy who created Minecraft,” hissed DZ under his breath to Charlie, out of the hearing of Blerge, whose face showed utter disbelief.
“You do not know of Notch, the Creator? Without the almighty Notch, life as we know it could not exist! At the beginning of time, Notch created this village, which protects our people from the evil mobs! Notch makes the sun rise and set, and he is the master of all the creatures of this world! Without him, we would all be at the unchecked mercy of Herobrine, master of evil and destruction.”
As Blerge kept on talking about the almighty Notch, Stan found himself intrigued. Did these villagers really worship the guy that created Minecraft? Well, it makes sense, he thought, their entire world is this game. Personally,