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