Quest for Justice (25 page)

“Leo,
run
!” came Becca's cries. DZ had gotten back to his feet now and, his face contorted in rage, had strung an arrow pointed at Leonidas. Then, with one last look at the three of them, Leonidas was gone in a burst of fire charges. DZ's arrow flew into the fire and hit nothing but air.

In a moment, however, Stan realized that this was not true. A figure appeared from nowhere, engulfed in flames: an Enderman, DZ's arrow sticking from its chest. Stan didn't bother drawing a weapon. The monster was on fire, and it would die before it could reach him. Sure enough, the tall,
spindly figure succumbed to death at Stan's feet, leaving the twelfth Ender Pearl on the sand as the body evaporated.

Suddenly, Stan remembered what had happened to Kat. He ran over to her and saw that Geno's sword had cut across her chest, just below her neck. Stan wasted no time in pulling out one of his two remaining Healing Potions and administering it to the wound. The cut instantly sealed, and Kat, though remaining asleep, gave a deep breath that Stan took to mean that she would be all right.

Stan was in deep thought as he sat on the front steps of Oob's house. Mella and Blerge were inside the house caring for Kat, who was now lying unconscious in a bed. Charlie was in the village library, using the crafting table there to turn their Ender Pearls and Blaze Rods into the twelve Eyes of Ender that they would need to locate and enter the End. DZ, Oob, Ohsow the village butcher, Stull, Sequi, and the Iron Golem were congregated around the well, talking and playing together.

Stan was aware that the next day they were to fight a great battle, and as he sat there with nothing to do but wait for the others to finish their tasks, he found it the perfect time to contemplate the thoughts that had become present in his mind over the course of their journey.

After last night, Leonidas was at the front of his mind. Stan wasn't sure what it was, but there was definitely something
off about the way that he had looked at them. He had fought Leonidas twice so far, and both times the player had initiated violence against Stan and his friends for no good reason. Stan had therefore marked him as equal in savagery to Geno, Becca, King Kev, and the lot of them. Still, something about that look from the previous night made Stan feel slightly guilty about classifying him as such.

Then there was Mr. A. They had thankfully not seen Mr. A since their encounter in the abandoned mine shaft, but the Griefer's self-professed motives for his hatred of Stan and his friends seemed awfully misguided. Assuming, that was, if anything he said was true at all, which seemed more unlikely the more Stan thought about it. What Stan had heard about Avery007 from the Apothecary was that he was a kind player, someone who stood up for the rights of those not able to do so for themselves. Stan could not imagine any scenario in which Avery might befriend a dark-hearted Griefer like Mr. A.

He was definitely lying, decided Stan, and he told himself so firmly. Still, Stan believed that Mr. A had fabricated the story based on a real experience. He had seemed too passionate while telling the story for it to not have some basis in fact. That being said, it was still true that Mr. A's hatred was ill advised, and Stan intended to tell him so should they ever meet again.

Stan's thoughts eventually settled on himself. For some
reason, everybody seemed to see something special in him. Crazy Steve had seen it, Sally had seen it, and Kat had seen it, too. Though he couldn't pinpoint what it was, Stan believed that there was something, some force, some otherworldly entity, that influenced him in difficult situations. Despite the fact that he knew nothing of what that power was, how he was able to use it, or whether or not it even existed, he knew that this power of questionable reality would be put to the ultimate test in the End.

There was one more thing that Stan would definitely have liked to think about, dwell on, and consider the possibilities of. However, he refused to let himself think too heavily on it, for it might distract him in the End. No, not until he had conquered the End would he allow himself to think about Sally.

It was just as well, thought Stan as he became aware of Charlie leaving the house. His thinking time was officially over. He stood up and walked over to Charlie, meeting in the middle of the gravel path.

“You've got them?” asked Stan in a whisper, though he was not sure why he spoke in this manner.

“Yeah,” replied Charlie, and he held up one of the Eyes of Ender. It was the same size and shape of the Ender Pearl from which it was crafted, but it looked like a green cat's eye with a constricted pupil. Even as Charlie held it inactive in
his hand, Stan felt a sense of electricity, as if the Eye itself was emitting energy into the air. Upon closer inspection, Stan noticed tiny wisps of purple smoke rising from the eye.

Charlie pulled the other eleven Eyes of Ender from his inventory, and he grinned. “Awesome, aren't they? We are officially all set to go into the End.”

Stan was glad to see Charlie in such a good mood. What with Lemon's death and Kat's injury, their time in the NPC village had seen Charlie grimmer than Stan would have believed possible of him. Besides being worried about the state of his friend, Stan knew that Charlie would need to be confident and in high spirits for their epic foray into the End.

Stan and Charlie were still admiring the Eyes of Ender when DZ walked over to them, Oob and Ohsow in tow.

“So a horse walks into a bar, and the bartender says, ‘why the long face?'” said DZ, and the two villagers burst into hysterical fits of laughter. DZ walked over to talk to Stan and Charlie as Oob and Ohsow inquired as to what horses and bartenders were.

“So, we've got the Eyes, then? Excellent!” he exclaimed as his question was answered by the grins on both of their faces and the green orbs in Charlie's hands. “So we're going to leave tomorrow?”

“I guess so,” replied Stan, “providing that Kat is feeling up to it.”

At that exact moment, the door to Oob's house flew open, and out of the doorway burst Kat. She wasn't wearing any armor, and there was a leather band across her chest where Geno had cut her, but besides that, she seemed back to her normal self. She literally ran out of the house and took a flying leap, landing right next to the boys.

“Hey, Kat! You're awfully energetic for someone who almost got herself cut open,” said Charlie with a smirk.

“Are you kidding? I feel awesome!” she said, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Blerge and Mella made a bunch of bread, and Moganga added some stuff called glowstone dust to it, and that stuff made me feel so much better!” She turned to Stan. “I owe you a huge thanks though, Stan. Without that potion, Moganga said that I would have died.”

“Ah, it's no big deal,” said Stan, shrugging but giving a humble grin all the same. “You would have done the same for me.”

“Very true,” replied Kat.

“So, Kat, I take it by the fact that you're more energetic than we are that you're gonna be able to go into the End tomorrow?” Charlie asked.

“Are you kidding? If you guys weren't tired, I'd be willing to go right now!”

“Well, I just finished a nap earlier. I'm not tired at all,” said Charlie.

“Yeah, same here,” said DZ.

“Me, too,” said Stan, his face lighting up with excitement. “So . . . are you guys ready? You want to go into the End right now?”

There was no hesitation. Kat, Charlie, and DZ all nodded at the same time.

“Okay,” said Stan, his eyes blazing. “Let's get ready.”

The NPC villagers were all disappointed to hear that the players were leaving the village. According to DZ, they had all become very fond of the players, and of DZ and Charlie in particular. Nonetheless, the villagers all rose magnificently to the challenge of supplying the players with the supplies that they would need to conquer the End. While the villagers were usually unwilling to give anything up unless in exchange for emeralds, which they saw as a form of currency, the villagers gave the players everything that they could.

The farmers, including Oob and his family, supplied the villagers with a generous amount of bread so that they would be well fed on their expedition. The players also received a copious restocking of arrows from the farmers, and Charlie was given flint and steel from a villager named Vella. Leol, the village blacksmith who lived in the forge, was probably the most helpful of all. He replaced Stan's and Kat's weapons with a diamond axe and a diamond sword, respectively. He also
gave each player a diamond helmet and chestplate. Moganga helped in her own way. She took the players' diamond gear, and after fifteen minutes, she emerged from the church with the gear glowing with enchantments of Protection for the armor and Sharpness for the swords.

In return for all these commodities, the villagers only asked for them to do anything possible to take down King Kev.

The sun was high in the sky when the four players, suited up and equipped with weapons, lined up facing the villagers. Stan looked out onto the faces of the villagers, particularly those of Stull and Sequi, who were seated on the shoulders of the Iron Golem, and of Blerge and Mella, who were holding hands as tears rolled down their cheeks. Though it would have been normal, none of the villagers were wandering.

Oob stepped forward from the villagers and the Iron Golem. He was speaking for the entirety of the village's population of ten.

“Brave players, we would like to thank you for the services that you have done us personally in killing the Spider Jockey that had plagued our village. We would also like to thank you for the work you are doing to make life on this server the best possible not just for the people of our village but for the citizens of this server as a whole. You are welcome back to our village at any time that you would like, and you will be welcomed with open arms. Goodbye, and good luck.”

The entire village simultaneously nodded in unison. Stan was more touched by this simple gesture from these simple people than he had been from anything he had seen in Minecraft so far. Even if it hadn't been for the Adorian Village or the deaths of Blackraven and Crazy Steve and the like, he would have been very keen to defeat the King for the sole purpose of making life better for these NPCs.

Stan didn't hear what Charlie said in response to this. He was too busy reaffirming the image of King Kev in his mind as public enemy number one for abusing these people and all other people in Elementia. As the four players gave an about-face and headed away from the village, Stan was surer than ever that there was nothing in the End that was unsurpassable if they kept in mind the image of an Elementia free of King Kev.

T
he trek through the desert was long and drawn out, as Stan had expected. He knew that the Ender Desert was large, but he hadn't realized just how expansive the biome really was. Stan had been to forests, plains, and jungles since he had been in Minecraft, but this desert biome was by far the largest biome that he had encountered, and it all looked the same. There were small knolls of sand blocks scattered here and there, and cactus dotted the landscape, punctuated by an occasional pool of lava or water.

Stan didn't understand how Charlie, who was navigating, didn't get lost in the endless dune sea. He walked up to ask him about it at one point, but he didn't need to, because he saw. Charlie had an Eye of Ender in his hand, and every so often he would toss it into the air. In a burst of purple particles, the eye would float forward a few blocks in a certain direction and then fall back into Charlie's outstretched hand. Charlie seemed focused, so he didn't ask, but Stan believed that the Eyes were most likely floating toward the entrance to the End.

Stan fell back next to Kat. “So do you have any ideas, at all, about the End? Like where it is or what's in there?” he asked her.

Kat glanced at him and smirked. “Honestly, man, I
have no idea where the End is. And frankly, whenever I think about what we're actually gonna find there, I end up almost peeing my pants. Whatever it is, though, it is not gonna be easy to get to. I'm willing to put money on the fact that the King was only able to make a stash there because he was able to use his operating powers.”

“What are operating powers?” asked Stan. At Kat's look of disbelief, he said, “Well, I've heard a couple of people mention them before, but I've never actually found out what they are.”

“Well,” said Kat, “operating powers are special powers that you get when you start a server, or you can be given them from somebody else with operating powers. Basically, if you have operating powers, you get to be totally in control. You can create and destroy any blocks you want instantly, you can shoot arrows and fireballs from your fingers, you can create explosions anywhere you want, and you can fly.” Now it was Stan's turn to make a face of disbelief. “Yeah, that's right, fly. Really fast, too. Operating powers make you a Minecraft superhero. Also, you can let people back on the server after they've been banned.”

“Wait, what?” exclaimed Stan. His eyes were glowing now, and a grin was spreading over his face. “With operating powers, you can return people to the server after they've been killed?” Kat nodded. “Is there any way that you can get
operating powers? Can you learn them somehow?”

Kat gave a short laugh, and a dark look crossed her face. “Stan, if there were any way to
learn them
, there would be ridiculous structures popping up all over the place, and people would be returning from the dead all the time! The point of operating powers on servers like this one is to regulate activities on the server, and to prevent Griefing. You can't just learn them.”

Stan felt a little let down at the idea that he couldn't become an operator through training or any type of work or practice. It would have made him practically impossible to stop when he tried to destroy the King. But this thought raised a new, alarming one in his head.

“The King doesn't have operating powers, does he?” asked Stan quickly as he tried not to imagine what fighting someone with operating powers would be like.

Kat rolled her eyes. “Stan, haven't you been paying attention to anything that anyone's told us about the history of this place?”

Stan didn't answer. Truthfully, history was his worst subject in school, and he could never remember the facts in real life, let alone in Minecraft. Kat sighed, and answered his question in a tone of exasperation.

“The King gave up his operating powers a while ago. Trust me, if he still had operating powers, we wouldn't have gotten
out of the gate of the King's castle. The King thought that if he gave them up, then he'd be equal to everybody else, and it would make people stop wanting to revolt against him.”

“Well, that plan kind of blew up in his face,” replied Stan with a smirk. “Look at what we're doing!”

“You say that,” said Kat grimly, “but the King's plan did work for a decent amount of time, seeing as we're the first who have even tried to overthrow him since he gave his powers up, unless you count what Avery did.”

“Yeah, but that's just because most people are too scared of his forces,” retorted Stan. “I can't have been the only one to notice that over half the people back at the castle helped us escape.”

Kat opened her mouth as if to say something, but a pensive look crossed her face and she closed it again. Instead, she reached down and scratched Rex between the ears and continued trekking onward. Stan did notice, however, that her sword was now in the tight grasp of her right hand. Sensing that their conversation was over, Stan amused himself by watching DZ, who was practicing advanced sword-fighting techniques on a wandering sheep that was running for its life.

The sun was sinking when Stan finally spotted tall formations on the distant skyline. As the four players and Rex approached them, Stan saw the welcome sight of mountains towering up
over the desert plains. The setting sun splashed a brilliant array of colors on the sky, and the natural beauty of the masses of land rising from the ground, silhouetted against the sunset, was breathtaking. The group actually stopped walking for a moment because Charlie had dropped the Eyes in his hand, transfixed by the beauty of the landscape. Kat had to literally pull Charlie away from staring into the sunset in order for the journey to continue.

Charlie found himself continuously drawn to the majesty of the mountains, from the herds of wild sheep roaming the steep slopes to the black veins of coal ore speckling the rocky cliff faces to the springs of water and lava that occasionally ran out of the sides of the mountains. Eventually, Kat took over the navigation, as Stan had to keep Charlie from getting distracted and Kat, after the episode in the desert, flat-out refused to let DZ navigate.

Kat could tell from the Eyes of Ender that they were nearing their goal. The trajectory of the Eyes thrown in the air led the group to a cave situated in the side of the cliff. As they headed down to the cave, Stan putting up torches as they went, Charlie suddenly spoke out.

“Hey, guys!”

“We get it, Charlie,” said Kat through gritted teeth as she fumbled with another Eye. “The mountainside grass is more beautiful than the grass in the forest. We get it.”

“No, not that,
that
! Look at those blocks there!”

Stan held a torch up at the point that Charlie had gestured to, and in the light a row of blocks stood out from the natural stone around it. These blocks appeared to be bricks, but they were gray 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 toward 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 again and again wrenched the pickaxe from the stone block.

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 gray slime. But the worst part was that out of the goo burst sprung something small, fast, and gray 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 armor. 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 armor compressed into Kat's back, knocking her forward. 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 armor. It was a small gray 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 toward 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 gray 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 rumors 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 gray 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 toward 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.