Quest for Justice (28 page)

The old player's eyes widened. He looked shocked. “The End? The End dimension? What is it doing there?”

Stan gave the Apothecary the brief summary of what they had found in Avery's underground base, not omitting all the encounters that they had had with Mr. A over the past weeks. The Apothecary seemed quite upset that the Griefer was now dead.

“Well, I'm very sorry to hear that,” replied the Apothecary, looking downcast. “I always find it a shame when one player has to kill another. Mind you, I believe that you did what you had to do. He would have killed you had you not done the same to him, but he seemed like a very confused individual whose death was needless.”

“I agree,” replied Stan, who honestly concurred with everything his old friend had just said. “But at least it's over now.”

“Yes, that is a relief. Though, I still can't believe that you
wound up in the End,” said the Apothecary, putting his hand to his forehead and shaking his head. “I was wondering what was taking you so long to respond. I was hoping that you hadn't been captured or killed.”

“Well, we're all right here, don't worry. The only one who needs medical attention is Charlie. He got scratched by the dragon, but it's not bad, and—”

“Excuse me, did you say dragon? The Ender Dragon? I thought that was just a myth!”

“Tell that to the slash across my chest,” replied Charlie, who had just come over next to Stan and was holding his wound with a weak grin.

“Here, take this,” said the Apothecary, and he proceeded to pluck a bloodred potion off his sash. To Stan's amazement, the Apothecary reached into the mist and placed the potion into it, where it floated as if a message in a bottle lost at sea.

“Go on, take it!” exclaimed the Apothecary. Tentatively, Stan reached into the swirling purple mist and found to his surprise that the potion was quite tangible. Stan grabbed the potion out of the chest and held it up to the torchlight, as if to check that it truly was real. When he realized that it was, he wasted no time applying the potion to the wound on Charlie's chest, which instantly resealed itself.

“If you put something in an Ender Chest, you can then access it from any other Ender Chest on the server,” explained
the Apothecary. “That's why I gave one to you. Now that you've found the stash, I want you to put all the loot into the chest, and I'll take it out and store it here in the village, where we can use it for the war effort.”

“Sounds good,” replied Kat, for she, DZ, and Oob were all listening by that point, too. The four players wasted no time in unloading all the valuable materials contained in all the chests into the single black Ender Chest. Just as quickly, the Apothecary took the items out of the swirling mists and handed them off to places that Stan couldn't see. He assumed that they were being handed to people who would put the items in safe chests in the village.

“Okay, that's the last of it,” said Stan as he placed the last item, a stray Potion of Swiftness, into the chest, and the Apothecary took it out.

“Okay, so, Apothecary, here's my next question: Do you have any idea how to get out of the End?” asked Charlie.

“You mean you don't know?” hissed Stan to Charlie in disbelief as the Apothecary responded.

“I don't know. Are you telling me that you went in there without any knowledge of how to get out?” he asked.

“It would appear so,” said Stan, barely able to contain his rage. He was about to lash out at Charlie when Kat interrupted him.

“The book, guys, remember?” she said with an exasperated sigh.

“Oh yeah,” replied Charlie, blushing as he pulled out the book about the Nether and the End. “Apparently . . . ah yes, here it is, apparently since we've defeated the Ender Dragon, a portal back to the Overworld will have appeared, and when we go through it we'll go through a process called ‘Enlightenment,' whatever that means, and then we'll reappear back at Spawnpoint Hill.”

“What's Enlightenment?” asked Kat. “I am so done with tasks right now . . . I just want to get back to the Village and plan to take down King Kev. I'm sick of tasks!”

“Don't worry. It says here that we don't have to do anything but just listen while we sit there and are teleported back to the spawn point,” Charlie read.

“Okay then, I'll see you at the Village,” replied the Apothecary, and with one last wave, he closed his Ender Chest so that the purple mist now hung in empty black space.

The players climbed out of the King's stash room and saw that, indeed, a portal back to the Overworld had appeared in front of them. It appeared to be a fountain made out of Bedrock, with four torches illuminating some sort of black egg atop a pillar at the center. Wanting desperately to be back in the Overworld, however, the four players rushed up to the portal and one by one, DZ, Oob, Kat, Charlie, and Stan all jumped without hesitation into the black portal that would take them first through the Enlightenment, but then, thankfully, back home.

I see the player you mean.

Stan2012?

Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher
level now. It can read our thoughts.

That doesn't matter.
It thinks we are part of the game.

I like this player. It played well
.
It did not give up . . .

This player dreamed of sunlight and trees,
of fire and water. It dreamed that it created.
And it dreamed that it destroyed. It dreamed
that it hunted, and was hunted.
It dreamed of shelter.

Ha, the original interface.
A million years old, and it still works.
But what true structure did this player create,
in the reality behind the screen?

It worked, with a million others, to sculpt
a true world in a fold of the
and created a
for
,
in the
.

It cannot read that thought.

No. It has not yet achieved the highest level.
That, it must achieve in the long dream of life,
not the short dream of a game.

Take a breath, now. Take another.
Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return.
Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity,
in air. Respawn in the long dream. There you are.
Your body touching the universe again at every point,
as though you were separate things.
As though we were separate things.

Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain.
Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits.
Jinn. Ghosts. The green man.
Then gods, demons. Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens,
extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks.
The words change. We do not change . . .

Sometimes the player thought itself human, on the thin
crust of a spinning globe of molten rock. The ball of molten
rock circled a ball of blazing gas that was three hundred and
thirty thousand times more massive than it. They were so
far apart that light took eight minutes to cross the gap. The
light was information from a star, and it could burn your
skin from one hundred and fifty million kilometers away.

Sometimes the player dreamed it was a miner, on the
surface of a world that was flat and infinite. The sun was a
square of white. The days were short; there was much to do;
and death was a temporary inconvenience . . .

And sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken
to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling
leaves of the summer trees . . .

and the universe said I love you

and the universe said you have played the game well

and the universe said everything you need is within you

and the universe said you are stronger than you know

and the universe said you are the daylight

and the universe said you are the night

and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you

and the universe said the light you seek is within you

and the universe said you are not alone

and the universe said you are not separate
from every other thing

and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself,
talking to itself, reading its own code

and the universe said I love you because you are love.

And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream.
And the player began a new dream.
And the player dreamed again, and dreamed better.
And the player was the universe.
And the player was love.

You are the player.

Wake up.

A
nd Stan did wake up. He found himself standing on the warm, familiar ground of Spawnpoint Hill as gently as his entry into the End had been. He was in a stupor, filled with awe at what the Enlightenment had turned out to be. Perhaps this was what had made him oblivious to the blunt spikes that were attempting to penetrate his diamond armor.

“Get down!” screamed Kat, snapping Stan out of his pensive state, and Stan realized with horror that they were under heavy fire from arrows. He fell to the ground, and he looked up wildly and saw four dispensers surrounding him, firing arrows from all sides. Stan's eyes went from the dispensers to the trails of glowing red dust leading to them, and he realized with a start that he and his four friends were lying atop a stone pressure plate.

Quick as a whip, Charlie drove his pickaxe into the smooth stone plate, which shattered into chunks. Instantly, the bursts of arrows from the machine subsided. The players and Oob awkwardly stood up in the limited space between the arrow dispensers. As they worked their way out of the center of the small maze of machines, Stan realized the purpose behind the arrow machines and was revolted. The machine had been put there by the King to instantly kill anything
that appeared there! Had the players not been wearing diamond armor, they would have been murdered on the spot.

After Charlie had torn down the arrow machine with his pickaxe, the five of them quickly congregated. Stan wasn't really focused on the others, though. He took the opportunity to look around Spawnpoint Hill, which he was standing on for the first time since he had joined the game.

Stan shook his head in incredulity. The serene hill was not changed in the least from the scene that had been Stan's first impression of Minecraft. Actually, that wasn't right, Stan thought as his eyes drifted over to the section of bare dirt blocks where the dispensers had stood minutes before and which had not yet been re-covered with grass. These dispensers demonstrated the change that had taken place within Elementia much more than any large structure ever could. Stan's first moments in Minecraft had been met with the warm, comforting light of torches to ward off the mobs and a chest of food, a tool of defense, and a guide on how to play. Any players that had entered Elementia since then had seen nothing except arrows to the cranium.

Now that they were but a stone's throw from launching their attack on the King, Stan took a moment to think about it. He realized that what had once seemed like a crazy, whimsical desire had manifested itself within his very being and had evolved into a crazy, consuming obsession. Stan
wanted the King dead, and for the first time, a new realization crashed over him as he stared at that simple uncovered dirt: he wanted to do it himself.

Stan wanted to be the one to personally smite the King with a sword, bury an axe into him, end his life with an arrow. By whatever manner the King was destined to die, Stan wanted the blood to stain his hands. Stan's time in Elementia so far had been pockmarked by so much death, destruction, and misery that Stan wanted nothing more than to be the one to end the person responsible, no matter what the cost.

The odd thing was, even though Stan wanted to kill the King with every fiber of his being, he somehow knew that even if he did not seek the confrontation, it would inevitably happen anyway. Stan couldn't tell how he knew this. Maybe it was the higher power of dubious existence contacting him again, but Stan knew that, like it or not, he and King Kev were going to lock sword and axe on the battlefield, and only one of them was leaving that confrontation alive.

Stan was so deep in his thoughts that he hadn't even realized that they had started walking back down the road, still shaded by trees in the same manner as on that first day. He smiled as he recalled in fond retrospect how he and Charlie had panicked and barely managed to keep a lumbering Zombie at bay that first day.
And now look at us
, thought Stan, and his smile widened as he looked at the diamond-clad and
heavily armed Charlie and glanced down at himself and the similarly adorned players traveling alongside him.

Stan found that first Zombie they had encountered, and the way they had handled it, much more amusing than he thought that he ought to. Perhaps it was just how far they had come and gone in such a short time. Perhaps it was nerves that were showing themselves in short bursts. In any case, when Stan noticed a Zombie out in the woods give him a sideways glance, he walked over to it, and as it neared him in the slow manner that Zombies do, he made a point of killing the Zombie with a succession of swift punches to the rotten face, his axe sitting idly in his inventory.

At the fifteenth punch, the Zombie's head snapped to the side, and as Stan picked up the rotten flesh, he became aware that everybody was staring at him (except for Oob, who had managed to wander into a nearby small lake and was looking about as if wondering how he had gotten there). Stan just smiled up at them and tossed the rotten flesh into the air, where it was snagged by Rex before it hit the ground. Stan hadn't noticed exactly when the dog had reappeared, but he was so far past questioning it.

“Ah, nostalgia,” he said with a chuckle as Rex chewed the rotten flesh hungrily, shooting Stan a fond look. “Remember that first day, Charlie? The Zombie, the shelter, the Spiders?”

A reminiscing look came over Charlie's features. “Yeah. It
was a simpler time,” he said longingly. “It's weird to be back, isn't it?”

Stan nodded. “It's like visiting your old elementary school twenty years later.”

Charlie gave a casual “Yep” of agreement, and the four players continued walking the path, with Oob following slowly behind him. They passed an old dirt-and-wood shelter with no top that Stan realized was the same one he and Charlie had built on their first night. They inspected it and found a wooden pressure plate inside, which Stan assumed led to some sort of booby trap. Stan was about to split the wooden pressure plate with his axe, but in his haste he accidentally stepped on it, and he heard a faint click.

His brain registered what was about to happen seconds before it did. “Hit the dirt!” Stan bellowed as he jumped away from the decrepit shack, and the others barely had time to follow before the TNT below the fortress ignited, creating a crater the width of the road where the shelter had just stood.

Stan pulled himself up and looked into the smoldering remains with disgust. What sort of sadistic monster would rig this basic shelter with explosives on the chance that a new player would come back and seek refuge within its humble walls? It made Stan's insides churn to think that King Kev and his followers had actually sunk to the level of killing innocent new players.

Stan looked at the ground as the group continued walking, picturing over and over in his head the image of his arrow penetrating King Kev's forehead or his axe burying itself in the King's chest. It was only when he noticed that the group had stopped walking, and that they had taken on a pronounced silence, that Stan looked up. He wished that he hadn't.

The Adorian Village was in complete and total ruin. This village that had embraced the travel-weary Stan, Kat, and Charlie just weeks earlier was now nothing more than a ghost town, with only the most basic of cobblestone-block house frames having survived the fire. As the group walked down the main street, their faces simultaneously took on expressions of horror. Even Oob, who had never been to the village before, sensed the magnitude of the complete and total razing of the village that had taken place. The only structure in the village that was still in the least bit recognizable was the brick Town Hall where they had first met Adoria. Even that had had significant chunks of it blown apart by TNT explosions.

The feelings of disgust, horror, and consuming fury that had racked Stan's body the last time he had seen this village came back in full force, and Stan felt himself about to vomit again. Before anything could come, however, an arrow whizzed past Stan's left shoulder and Stan heard a clang of flint on diamond followed by DZ's “Oof!” of pain. Stan's eyes found a pickaxe flying past his other shoulder, and when he
turned back, an assailant in full diamond armor was upon him. Before he could react, Stan felt the dull blow of a bow slamming him across the forehead.

Stunned by the blow to the head, Stan looked wildly around and saw two forms in full diamond battle armor, moving too fast for Stan to recognize. Through the blunt pain in his forehead, Stan saw a figure struggling with Kat over a diamond pickaxe, which ended when the figure punched Kat in the face. The figure grabbed the tool back from her and then slammed her over the head with it, knocking her to the ground. Stan also saw DZ engaged in a sniper battle with what appeared to be a Skeleton in full diamond battle armor.

Stan was unsure of whether or not he was hallucinating, but his brain tried to focus on the fact that for one, Skeletons didn't wear armor, and for two, they weren't that fast. Stan stole a glance at the other assailant and saw a glint of yellow in between the light blue of the helmet and the chestplate, and the truth dawned on him in a rush.

“Archie, G, stop attacking! It's us!” he hollered.

There was a moment of silence as the two figures, both of whom had gained the upper hand in their respective fights, looked at Stan, contemplating him. The Skeleton pulled off his helmet to reveal a mop of wild red hair, while the other pulled off his to expose a golden figure identical to Stan.

“Stan?” asked Archie, not daring to believe it. “Is that . . . is that really you?”

“Yeah, or at least I think I'm Stan. That blow to the head shook me pretty good,” Stan muttered, his head still shrouded in fog.

“Oh my God! I'm so sorry!” cried Archie as he rushed over to Stan and handed him a bloodred Potion of Healing, which Stan gratefully downed in a single swallow. Instantly his head cleared up, and he took Archie's outstretched hand to pull himself up.

Kat and Charlie were both on the ground. Stan hadn't realized up to that point just how skilled Archie and G were in player-to-player combat. Charlie was being treated for the arrow wedged in a chink in his armor by a figure in a scarlet jumpsuit whose blond hair distinguished him as Bob, the archer of the Nether Boys.

G was on his knees, cradling Kat's head in his arms. He poured half his potion on the pickaxe wound on her forehead, and the other half went into her mouth. Kat's eyes fluttered, and when they fully opened and she saw who was holding her, she gave an exclamation of joy and embraced G. They stayed in each other's arms for half a minute until they realized everybody else was staring at them, which left them feeling slightly awkward.

The feeling didn't last, though. As soon as everyone was back on their feet, the greetings started.

“Hey, Stan! How're ya doin', buddy?” asked G as he high-fived Stan.

“Not bad, not bad. Killed a Griefer, slayed a dragon, found some diamonds . . . good times, good times,” Stan responded with a grin.

“Sounds like it,” said Archie. “The Apothecary told us all about what you guys did. Sounds like one crazy vacation.”

“Well, we did go all over the place, if that's what you mean,” said Charlie with a chuckle. “So, how many people do you guys have organized?”

“Well,” said G, scratching his head, “the Apothecary came to us soon after you guys left. He said that you were organizing a rebellion against the King and that he wanted to help. Well, seeing as the King had just burned down our village, killed our leader, and slaughtered half the people here, we didn't have to think too hard about believing him.”

“We headed straight back here after you helped us out of the Nether, Stan,” said Bob, who had just helped Oob out of the chimney he had hidden in during the ambush. “Bill, Ben, and I joined up with the militia. Then, a whole gaggle of miners, led by this guy who they all called “Mayor,” showed up, like, a day and a half after we did.”

“Those guys were from Blackstone,” Kat explained.

“You mean the coal-mining town out in the desert?” Archie asked.

“That's the one,” Stan replied. “I ran into them pretty soon after you guys left, Bob, and they all agreed to come and join us. Well, most of them did, anyway,” said Stan bitterly, his thoughts flashing over the Mechanist. “But those who didn't aren't going to join either side anytime soon.”

“Speaking of which,” said Bob, a slight edge to his voice that caught all their attentions, “who is this fine gentleman over here?” He jerked his head in the direction of DZ, who had been staying out of the conversation and practicing complicated attacks with two swords on a nearby lamp post.

“Oh, this is DZ,” said Kat, and DZ, hearing his name, rushed over and hastily added, “But you may know me by my full name, DieZombie97.” And with that, he gave a white, toothy smile.

Archie, G, and Bob's eyes all widened. “Wait,
you're
DieZombie97?” asked Bob in disbelief.

“
The
DieZombie97?” asked G incredulously.

“See?” said DZ pompously, grinning at Stan, Kat, and Charlie, all of whom were amazed that their friends had heard of DZ. “I told you I got around in the Spleef Arena a few updates back.”

“Man, you're awesome!” exclaimed Bob, running up and wringing DZ's hand up and down.

“I thought that King Kev had killed you!” said Archie, a wild happiness on his face.

“Nah, that was just a rumor. Didn't bother staying around to contradict it though 'cause, you know, then it probably wouldn't have been so much a rumor as a fact,” said DZ with a laugh.

“So where've you been all this time? After that last Spleef championship you just kind of disappeared!”

“I've been living out in the desert,” said DZ. “I realized that a world run by government generally ends up pretty corrupt, so I decided I was better off by myself out in the Ender Desert. That is, until I ran into these three.” He jerked his thumb at Stan, Kat, and Charlie.