Quest for Justice (23 page)

“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 centered 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 toward 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, he couldn't see himself worshiping the guy, even though Stan thought Notch was pretty awesome for creating such an excellent game.

“That sounds really interesting, Blerge,” said Charlie. “So now I have a question. We're trying to overthrow the King—you know, the guy who used to force you guys to pay him stuff?”

“Oh yes,” said Blerge, with his unibrow knitting over his eyes. “That man caused my people much suffering. I should be most happy if four kind players such as you were to take his place. You treat us very kindly, while the one called King Kev believed us to be inferior.”

Stan opened his mouth to interject, but he quickly caught himself. It was very hard to say that he was equal in any way to this race of NPCs, especially considering that since he had joined the village he had seen two villagers wander straight into cactuses and almost kill themselves. But Stan still had respect for the people, and that, he thought, was the difference between King Kev and himself.

“So,” asked Charlie to Blerge, “would you be willing to let us use your village as a base? We still have to collect six Ender Pearls in order to get to the End, and we could use a place to stay until we've killed enough Endermen.”

Blerge had begun to wander again before Charlie had
finished his request, so it was Mella who answered Charlie, “I am sure that it would be fine for you to stay with us for as long as you need, my friends. However, before we may tell you certainly, we must consult Moganga, the priest and leader of our village. She will tell you whether or not you may stay. Come, I shall take you to her.” And with that, Mella started to the door. Oob followed her while Blerge still wandered around the house.

“Wait,” asked Kat, speaking for the first time in quite a while. “This is your house. Why does this Moganga lady get to decide if we stay or not?”

“Because the almighty Notch commands it,” Mella said, and she exited the house, as if this were a satisfying response. Oob and Blerge left behind her, followed by Charlie and DZ, then Stan and, after a moment, Kat.

A
s the group walked down the gravel street toward the tall stone church, Stan was vaguely aware of Charlie, DZ, and Oob chatting in front of him, while he himself kept a careful eye on Kat.

Ever since Kat had confessed to Stan what had happened to her in the last NPC village she had gone to, she had been very calm and pensive, quite in contrast to her usual self. She had also seemed much more at ease around the villagers after she had gotten her crime against them off her chest. Now, however, Stan did sense a diminished version of her previous tension as she approached the church. Still, she entered, and after Stan explained to yet another villager, this one named Libroru, that walking into a cactus would hurt, he followed Kat inside.

The church was made entirely of cobblestone, with a ladder on the side leading to the upper stories. There were torches on the walls, and a cobblestone altar sat in front. A villager in purple robes stood facing the altar. When the players, led by Mella and Blerge, entered, the priest turned toward them.

“Hello, players,” said Moganga, gesturing to Stan, Kat, Charlie, and DZ. “Oob has told me of your arrival. Welcome.” She turned toward Mella and Blerge. “With what may I help you, my brother and sister?”

“These four players have requested the use of our family's house as an outpost for their hunting of the Endermen,” replied Blerge in a powerful voice. “I appeal to you to ask the almighty Notch as to his judgment on the matter.”

“I see. I will attempt to connect with the almighty Notch, my brother,” replied Moganga. Her eyes closed, and her single eyebrow began twitching. She remained this way for about two minutes, and by the time her eyes reopened, Blerge and Mella had begun to wander around the church. Oob stepped forward.

“What is the word of the almighty Notch, Mother Moganga?” asked Oob with a serious face.

“The almighty Notch has spoken to me,” replied Moganga, and Oob's face lifted. “The almighty Notch has blessed the endeavors of these players and calls us to offer them refuge, provided that we are able to cope with the evil that will befall us beneath the full moon tonight.”

“Oh God,” muttered DZ. “Are you saying that the full moon is
tonight
?”

Moganga nodded, and Oob and DZ looked crestfallen. Charlie asked, “Wait, what's the big deal about the full moon?”

A grim look passed over DZ's face as he replied, “A siege is the big deal. Every full moon, if there are players staying in an NPC village, a giant horde of mobs will attack the village. And I mean
giant
. Makes the ones we killed off back at that
sinkhole look like nothin'. And even though they're mostly Zombies, you get plenty of the other kinds, too.”

“Years ago,” said Mella, who had stopped wandering, “when the Sacred One was still with us, the sieges used to befall us every full moon. We were able to survive as a species because in those days Zombies could not break through our doors. However, during every siege a horrible monster would terrorize our village alongside the Zombies: a Skeleton riding upon a Spider.”

“A Spider Jockey,” muttered Charlie. His eyebrows knitted, and his eyes widened in anxiety. “I've read about those things. All the range of a Skeleton combined with the agility and rapidity of a Spider. That does not sound like a fun combo to me.”

“Oh, you are right on that, bro,” agreed DZ, looking sober. “Whenever I see a Spider Jockey out in the desert, I avoid it. If it sees me, I run like anything,” he said. He looked at Moganga. “So every time there's a siege, a Spider Jockey comes and attacks the villagers?”

“That is correct,” replied Moganga. “It would often kill one of us before the Sacred One drove it away, and the Sacred One was never able to kill it, despite his status as an elite archer. As a result, the Spider Jockey will return tonight. If you consider this, and the fact that the Zombies have recently learned how to break through doors, then you will realize
that you players staying here will make the village a very dangerous place for our people.”

Stan wanted to add that that wasn't saying much, seeing as he had seen three villagers almost commit suicide by walking into cactuses, but he kept the thought to himself.

“Therefore, I make this offer to you. You may stay with us in the village while you hunt the mobs called Endermen, and in return you will defend us from the siege and kill the Spider Jockey. Do we have an agreement?”

“Yes, ma'am,” replied Stan, and his friends nodded in agreement. Indeed, Kat and DZ both seemed thrilled about the prospect of fighting a horde of evil mobs. Charlie, on the other hand, still had a hint of the old nerves he had shown so often when they had first met. Stan had thought that this nervous tendency would be gone by now, after all they had been through, and he certainly couldn't have a nervous Charlie in the End. As insurance, and a sort of final test of the power of Charlie's nerves, Stan spoke up.

“Okay, here's how we should do this. DZ and Kat, you stay back in the village and kill all the Zombies that try to break into the village houses. Charlie and I will go out into the desert around the village, and we'll kill all the mobs that spawn out there. We'll also hunt the Spider Jockey.”

Charlie's eyes widened. He opened his mouth in what Stan was sure would be a protest, but Kat had already said,
“That works,” and DZ nodded in agreement. “Okay,” she continued, “let's suit up. The sun is setting, and this is gonna be a long, long night.”

With an apprehensive expression on his face, Charlie followed Stan, Kat, and DZ back to Oob's house, where they had stored their armor and weapons in a chest.

DZ's arsenal was by far the lightest. With no armor, he held nothing but an iron sword glowing red with the Fire Aspect enchantment in his hand and two diamond swords at his side. One of these swords was glowing with the Knockback enchantment.

Kat, on the other hand, was the most bogged down with gear, being the only one with a full set of armor. 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 toward the desert hills, the sky's color 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 toward 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. “Okay, 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 forward 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 toward 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 onward. Formulating a plan, he pulled out a TNT block and a redstone torch that he had gotten 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 toward 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 toward 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 toward 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 forward, fired off three shots as the Skeleton did the same. Charlie dodged two of the shots, while a third deflected off his armor. 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 forward.

Charlie barely had time to ponder what this meant before he noticed three Creepers moving toward 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.