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