The Complete Elementia Chronicles: Quest for Justice; The New Order; The Dusk of Hope; Herobrine’s Message. Sean Wolfe Fay
instead of crimson.
“I don’t recognize these blocks, do you guys?” asked Charlie.
Kat shook her head, and DZ said, “Negatory, sir.”
But Stan, though initially of the same mind as Kat and DZ, suddenly remembered. “Weren’t those the same blocks that the King’s castle was made out of?” he asked.
The other three players looked confused for a second, but then it dawned on them that Stan was indeed correct. The King’s castle had been made out of these same stone bricks. Kat tossed one of the Eyes of Ender into the air. It started to float towards the stone bricks. Kat snatched the Eye out of the air and grinned.
“The way into the End is through here!” she said excitedly. “Charlie, mine through this wall!”
Charlie pocketed the book he had been holding in his hand and drew his diamond pickaxe. “I just checked the book, and it said that the Eyes of Ender would lead us to what’s called a Stronghold and that the portal to the End will be inside. This must be the outside of the Stronghold. Hey, what the—” said Charlie as he struggled with his pickaxe. He had mined one of the stone brick blocks, but the second one that he had tried to mine into now had his pickaxe wedged in it.
“It’s … not … coming … out …,” grunted Charlie as he tried to pull the pickaxe out of the block. Stan noticed that it was not wedged in the block as much as stuck to it. The block appeared to be made out of some sort of slimy, gelatinous goo that held Charlie’s pickaxe like glue.
“Oh, let me see that, you little wimp,” snapped Kat as she grabbed the handle of Charlie’s pickaxe from him. She was stronger than he was, and in an almighty tug she wrenched the pickaxe from the gooey block and started bearing down into it full force with the diamond tool.
“Why is this block so difficult to mine?” Kat asked no one in particular as she wrenched the pickaxe from the stone block again and again.
Stan watched bewildered. Right as the block was about to break, out of the corner of his eye, Stan noticed a horrified look flicker across DZ’s face. DZ cried out, “No, Kat, stop! I think that block might be—”
But it was too late. As Kat gave the stone block one last strike, it burst apart like a water balloon, dousing everyone in grey slime. But the worst part was that out of the goo sprung something small, fast and grey that latched itself onto Kat’s face. Kat screamed and wildly tried to swat the thing off her, but it was no use. The tiny monster crawled all over her body, moving too fast for Stan’s eyes to track. Nobody tried to get it off for fear that an attack on the monster would hit Kat instead. Every so often Kat would elicit a sound of anguish, indicating that the creature had bit her or stung her.
As he tried to track the monster to get a clean shot at it with his axe, Stan noticed that Kat’s hands were now swatting at various places at her back, suggesting that the monster had crawled down inside her armour. Kat’s fist pounded the back of her chestplate to no avail, as her flailing fists did nothing to penetrate the diamond exterior. However, she gave Stan an idea.
He spun his axe around and with the butt end tapped the back of Kat’s chestplate with moderate force. The diamond armour compressed into Kat’s back, knocking her forwards. Stan heard a hissing and a crunching coupled with Kat’s grunt of pain, and something small and scaly fell out of the back of her armour. It was a small grey insect that looked like some sort of odd armadillo-porcupine-worm crossbreed. The monster made Spiderlike clicking noises for a few seconds while it twitched, and then it was still.
“That was Block 97!” shouted DZ, drawing his sword. “I’ve heard stories about it. It spawns those things. Silverfish! Get ready, there’s gonna be more!”
Stan looked around, bewildered, unsure what DZ was talking about, but sure enough, all around the inside of the room they had just mined into, stone bricks ruptured into sprays of goo, and a swarm of Silverfish was on the move towards the players.
The monsters were not particularly strong in comparison to the bite of a Spider or the arrow of the Skeleton, but they were much smaller and faster, like miniature Spiders. Stan managed to kill each of them with one powerful blow of the axe, but every time one of the monsters fell, more and more Silverfish spawned from the stone brick walls.
Stan was tiring of fighting them quickly, not because of their strength but because of their overwhelming numbers. Stan was about to suggest to the three players fighting beside him that a retreat back out of the mine was in order, when the monsters started appearing in fewer and fewer numbers, and a few moments later they had stopped appearing altogether. The players were breathing heavily. The four of them plus Rex must have killed 250 Silverfish in the space of about two minutes.
Stan wiped the sweat off his brow. He pulled the tail end of a Silverfish off his axe blade and looked at DZ. “What just happened, DZ?”
DZ was breathing heavily. He appeared to have killed the most Silverfish out of everybody, judging by the pile of grey scales a block high at his feet, and he caught his breath before responding. “Those were mobs called Silverfish. They spawn when you break a block called Block 97, which is disguised as a stone-based block found in a type of structure, which I guess is a Stronghold. The annoying part is when you attack them, they’ll spawn other Silverfish from nearby Block 97s.”
DZ sighed, an amazed look coming to his face. “I didn’t know that Silverfish or Block 97 really existed. I thought they were just rumours or upcoming features or something.”
“So,” said Stan, putting two and two together. “We can’t mine any blocks in this Stronghold? The way to the End is in this fortress, and we can’t mine anything in here?”
“Correct-o,” said DZ, nodding. “We can’t mine anywhere around here or we run the risk of spawning another swarm of Silverfish, and frankly, I can’t be the only one who doesn’t want to fight those little grey parasites again.”
“So,” said Kat, her voice heavy as she realized what that meant. “We have to navigate this entire thing by foot?”
DZ nodded, and Stan threw back his head and groaned. Kat hung her head in despair. Charlie on the other hand, looked at them with amusement.
“Oh, come on, guys, don’t be like that! For all we know, the entrance to the End could be just around the corner! Don’t be such a bunch of downers. Let’s at least give it a shot. What’s the worst that can happen?”
Charlie was right about one thing: while they were navigating the Stronghold, the Silverfish continued to remain the worst thing that they had encountered. It was a fairly peaceful walk, save a few Zombies that spawned in dark corners and storage rooms. That being said, navigating the fortress without mining directly through any of the walls was possibly the most frustrating task that Stan had endured. The Eyes of Ender still pointed them towards something, apparently located deep in the heart of the Stronghold, but there were so many stairways, corridors, turns and side rooms that it was near impossible to navigate the maze. After they passed the same book-and-cobweb-filled library for the third time, Stan turned to the others, and, struggling to keep his voice level, inquired as to whether or not they had really passed the library before.
“No,” said DZ, pointing down a hallway they had just passed. “You’re thinking of the library down that way. It had the jail cell next to it, remember?”
“You’re thinking of the storage room,” said Kat. “The one that had all that cobblestone in it. The jail cell is the one with the iron bars.”
“But there were also iron bars in that hall back there next to the side corridor. Are you sure you’re not thinking of those?” asked Charlie.
“No, I’m sure that it was a full wall of iron bars,” said Kat.
“Why don’t you let me see the Eyes, and I’ll show you—” started DZ, but he was cut off by Stan.
“DZ, after all that … ahem … skillful guidance you gave us back when we first met you, don’t think that you’re getting your hands on any kind of navigational