Quest for Justice (31 page)

Ahead of the main body stood Stan, flanked behind by Archie and Bob, the two best shots of the militia. The archers were there to shoot down, with their enchanted bows, any projectiles such as TNT mortars or fireballs that should threaten the whole group.

Stan ordered the forward march and began leading the Grand Adorian Militia through the Great Wood, across the bridge that had been constructed over the hole created by the TNT tower during the thunderstorm, and through the main gates into Element City.

It was a ghost town. The bustling streets of Element City as Stan remembered them had been deserted. He had not known whether or not the fighting would extend into the streets, or if some kind of citizen militia would combat them, but in fact the only signs of life that he saw were fearful eyes surveying him from within the houses. Clearly, these people were under the impression that the invading militia would pose a threat to them as well as the armed forces. Stan, however, had no intentions of attacking unarmed citizens.

“The signal, Archie,” was the only thing that Stan said, keeping his voice in a careful monotone. Like they had
planned, Archie pulled out his bow, notched an arrow, and pulled back the string. As soon as the flint tip touched the glowing wood of the bow, the tip of the arrow burst into flames. Archie let the arrow fly in an arch high over the city, not aiming at anybody. This was the signal.

Thirty seconds. If Sirus had not responded to the signal within thirty seconds, it would be assumed that he had been captured or killed. About twenty seconds ticked by before Stan noticed two shimmering dots of light flying up over the city. Sirus had managed to disable some of the castle's redstone defenses, but not all of them. Unfazed, for this was what Stan was expecting, he ordered the militia to continue the march forward.

The walk down the main road was uneventful. The militia was psyching itself up for the offensive that was now just minutes away by chanting “Jus-tice! Jus-tice! Jus-tice!” louder than ever before. By the time they had reached the outer wall of the King's castle, the militia was in a frenzy. Stan had to make a quick announcement reminding them that their aim in this battle was to wound if possible, not kill.

As he turned around, he noticed a pleasant surprise: Sirus was running down the length of the wall, a determined smile on his face.

“Hey, Sirus!” Stan exclaimed as the player, who looked the same as Stan but with a lighter color scheme, reached
him. “Fancy seeing you here! I didn't expect to see you until we'd gotten in. You got news for us?”

“Yeah, I managed to deactivate most of the redstone traps and pitfalls, but there are a few still in place, such as arrow and fireball dispensers, although I think I managed to deactivate most of the really deadly ones, you know, your TNT cannons, your automatic lava flows, your tripwires into bottomless pits, but we'd still better be careful, though, 'cause like I said, the arrow and fireball launchers are still online, I couldn't hack into those, they're too well guarded, so—”

“Okay, Sirus, okay, calm down,” said Stan, cutting off Sirus's report, which he had delivered very quickly and in the twitchy manner of a mad scientist.

“Okay, okay, but you'd also probably better know that I rigged a TNT pit under this wall, just hit that button there on the wall and it'll blow up! Heh-heh,” he said, his face wild with excitement.

“Nice touch, Sirus,” said Stan with a grin. He had been planning to have the Blackstone miners simultaneously break through the wall, but this way would be much quicker. He turned to his troops.

“Soldiers of the Grand Adorian Militia! In a few seconds, we will punch the button on this wall, destroying it. When we do, you are at liberty to charge into that courtyard and put out of order anything or anyone that moves in the name of
King Kev. Again, I remind you to aim to wound. We are not like them, and therefore we will not kill like them unless it's absolutely necessary. Good luck to you all, and I will see you again once King Kev has fallen.”

Tumultuous applause followed this. Stan looked back at his leaders, and the same grim determination was reflected on all of their faces. Even Rex, who stood between the stone-faced Kat and Sally, was baring his teeth in anticipation of the fight he knew was to come.

Stan turned around.
This is it. This is happening
, he thought.
I am about to blow my way into King Kev's castle and try to kill him in combat
. Adrenaline coursed through his veins like a powered mine cart down a track, and as the troops looked up at the wall, a pregnant silence fell. Then Stan spoke.

“Sirus, punch it,” he said in tones of steel.

Sirus's fist slammed into the stone button. There was a hissing, and a second later the force of the explosion crashed across the militia like a wave, obliterating the wall and giving them a clear view of the castle. Leaving all pretense of fear behind him, Stan gave a savage yell and charged.

K
ing Kev surveyed the courtyard from atop the same bridge he had stood on when he had given his proclamation that fateful day. Now, however, his head was not unprotected. Quite to the contrary, a diamond helmet covered his head and a diamond chestplate covered his body, two diamond swords equipped with the highest of Sharpness enchantments hung by his side, and a bow with enchantments of Power and Fire was slung across his back. He stood here alone. He knew that the player called Stan2012 would seek him out with the intention of killing him. Stan would be quite happy to find that the initial parts of his invasion would go exactly according to plan. The King respected Stan for his determination, and so he had decided to give Stan the satisfaction of tasting victory. The end results of the battle, however, would fall far short of Stan's plans.

King Kev had known that the impending attack on his castle was inevitable, but it was really mainly due to his spy within the Grand Adorian Militia that he had come to learn the exact day, time, and style of the attack. The King had found the plans incredibly simplistic. Given that the attack was being made in the majority by lower-levels with inferior combat skills, the King had expected the leaders of the militia to come up
with some clever approach.

The King had decided that he would simply play along with Stan's game and send his regular army of 150 men in against their militia of 150 on the castle courtyard. Then, they would see the power and skill behind his men—the power, skill, and loyalty that would be the reason that he would never be ousted from power in Elementia.

Sure enough, the sun was at its apex in the sky when the wall in front of his castle burst open. This unnerved the King a bit, because his spy had informed him that they would be tunneling through the wall. No matter. It was of no concern. The means of their entry was of no importance. The important thing was the backup redstone traps that had been hidden away from their saboteur, which would now weaken them to the point of being sitting ducks for the King's army.

But . . . wait, what was happening? The players were charging forward, and they were surging toward the castle walls in a widespread wave. No traps were going off! What was the meaning of this? He had been aware of every move that their little redstone saboteur had made, and they had only allowed him to find a set of decoy traps. So how was it that they were pushing forward still with no resistance?

Shock and horror overtook the King's features as he snatched up the microphone and bellowed with a reddened face, “Traps are down, I repeat, traps are down! Minotaurus,
charge! Caesar, follow! Charlemagne, follow! RAT1, you know what to do! You are now the only defense against them, so CHARGE!”

As the King looked on with an apprehensive face at his men now charging, very belated, into the swarm of oncoming Adorians, a thought struck the King. He looked down at his pale, blocky hand. It would only be just the once, and the possibility of somebody discovering that he was the one responsible was slim . . . but no, he thought better of it. There was no way that he could use his most powerful, most dangerous weapon of all.

For although the weapon would no doubt obliterate every last one of the Adorian fighters in one fell swoop, it was more dangerous to the King himself than it was to them. No, even when Stan2012 himself was up on the tower battling him, the King would not resort to using his ultimate, most secret weapon.

Stan stood still in the middle of the ongoing charge, waving them forward, and it was only when their men had gotten halfway across the courtyard that the King's forces charged out of the castle. Stan wondered why they had waited so long to come out to meet them. Besides this, the militia had found a complete and total lack of opposition from the automatic redstone traps he had been sure they would encounter. All of
this left Stan thoroughly nonplussed.

He was about to disregard the uneasy feeling and begin teleporting toward his fight with the King when he noticed that the dirt block in front of him was breaking. Stan drew his axe, prepared for an Elementia trooper to burst from the ground, blade drawn and ready for combat. Stan was instead treated to the sight of a stone shovel penetrating the ground, followed by a head that came up in no big hurry.

Stan was shocked. He had seen the head before. He knew this player.

“Howdy-do, Stan,” said the Mechanist with a sly grin as he brushed some dirt particles from his bushy eyebrows.

“You? But what . . . how . . . what are you doing here?” Stan asked in bewilderment, wondering what bizarre chain of events had led this old inventor from his secluded solitude in Blackstone to the dirt beneath the battlefield of the biggest revolt against the King since the time of Avery007.

“Well, it got kinda boring back in Blackstone with nothin' to do, so I figured that, you know, after I ran out of potion, I might as well come here and help you guys. And lemme tell ya, that potion ran out pretty fast . . .”

“So wait . . . you're here to help us?” asked Stan, his heart lifting.

“Already did,” replied the Mechanist with a grin, holding up a redstone torch in his hand. “Ain't you wondering why
you haven't run into any opposition from the redstone contraptions? I'll give you a hint . . . I designed them, and I'm here.”

Stan's eyes widened as he realized what the Mechanist was saying. “Are you saying that you disabled the redstone traps manually?” he asked disbelievingly.

“Better than that,” replied the Mechanist. “See that guy over there?” he asked, referring to a player with an executioner's hood and an iron axe that was locked against the pickaxe of Sirus. “Well, watch this!” The Mechanist went back underground. Stan watched in amazement as a pit opened up beneath the executioner just as he disarmed Sirus, dropping the executioner into the depths below the ground and resealing itself before the Mechanist reappeared.

“I built an entire redstone computer underground here a while back, and I remember how to work it!” said the Mechanist proudly. “Even King Kev never knew about it, and it controls all the redstone circuitry in the city! The thing's my baby. It lets me override any signals given from the castle with the flip of a switch.”

Stan felt as though an enormous weight had been lifted off his chest. The redstone defenses had been a huge variable in their attack plan, and now they were eliminated completely. Stan opened his mouth to give an earnest thanks, but the Mechanist waved him off.

“You can thank me later, Stan. Don't you have a King to kill?”

“Oh yeah!” exclaimed Stan, and feeling more confident than ever, he pulled his first Ender Pearl off his sash.

“Oof,” came the dull thud as the player with devil horns was knocked to the ground. Charlie drew back his pickaxe, his eyes peeled for more attackers. He and his team had had an intense fight through the thickest of the combat, and they were now struggling to maintain their position at the base of the King's drawbridge. The drawbridge was underneath the lava moat now, preventing any troops from entering or exiting the castle. Charlie knew that his team was just a thin membrane separating Stan and the King from a slew of backup support from the King's forces, should King Kev call on them.

Indeed, the King's men did seem very discontented that the Adorian forces had established a foothold so close to the base of the castle, and many of them were now swarming back toward them in retaliation. Charlie was just about to panic at the fresh wave of the King's men thronging toward him when he remembered his special weapon. He hastily pulled four blocks of iron out of his inventory and placed them in a T formation on the ground. The men at the head of the King's charge realized what he was about to do a second
before he did it, and they began to double back, but it was too late.

Charlie threw a pumpkin onto the formation of iron blocks, and in a flash, the stack of blocks had morphed into an Iron Golem. The giant metal beast surged forward into the oncoming legion of soldiers, and even the skilled strikes of the diamond weapons of those foolish enough to challenge the Golem were unable to do much more than aggravate. The Iron Golem actually smashed one of the men's skulls between his flailing iron limbs, and by that point it was exceedingly obvious that the only sane course of action for the other soldiers was flight.

Charlie sang the Iron Golem's praises just like the other fighters in his task force, but secretly, Charlie was just happy that the monster he had created was doing the fighting instead of him. While the majority of the other Adorian fighters had to be constantly reminded by Charlie that they were not to kill unless absolutely necessary (with the exception of the designated leaders), Charlie found this rule to be quite liberating. He had seen so much carnage and mindless slaughter in his few short weeks in Elementia that he found himself despising the day that he would kill somebody. Doing this would lower him to a level from which he would never break free again. He would just be another part of the butchery. In short, the longer that Charlie went
without murder, the happier he would be.

“Plat! You are here, Plat?”

Charlie's brief second of deliverance was shattered when he realized that that voice was horribly, horribly familiar. It was a voice that was out of place, that he had done everything in his power to keep from being here. Dread already knotting his stomach, Charlie whipped around to face the villager who was chasing after the Iron Golem.

“Plat! Plat, it is me, Oob! Do you not recognize me?”

Charlie was about to shout out at Oob in anger, wanting to point out that the Iron Golem was not the same one from the village and then wring Oob to within an inch of his life for coming to the danger of the battle. Charlie suddenly found no need to say such things, however, when Oob's face suddenly took on a look of confusion. The blade of a diamond sword stuck point-first out of his stomach.

Charlie acted without thinking. Oob's body fell to the ground facedown right as Geno pulled the sword out of his back with a short grunt. Charlie's eyes immediately sought out a preexisting crack in the center of Geno's diamond chestplate, into which Charlie thrust forward with his pickaxe. The point struck the exact center of the circular fracture, and the chestplate fell apart, the pickaxe entering deep into Geno. The wound from Charlie pulling his pickaxe out of Geno's chest probably would have been enough to kill him even if
Charlie hadn't then proceeded to swing the pickaxe across Geno's neck, breaking it with a sickly snap and causing Geno's body to fall to the ground, his items bursting out in a ring about him.

Charlie didn't give a second thought to Geno. He was acting entirely on a desperate surge of adrenaline as he poured the first of his three Potions of Healing into the gaping hole in Oob's back, to little effect. Charlie saw the vital organs that had been severed by Geno's sword reconnect themselves, but it was still a dire wound. Charlie poured the second potion into the wound, and it healed further, although it was still far more serious than any wound that Charlie had seen. Charlie rolled Oob onto his back, and the last healing potion came pouring into the hole in Oob's stomach. At last, the wound resealed itself, although it was still heavily red.

Now that Charlie had done all in his power to help Oob, panic slammed into him like a powered mine cart going downhill. His breath raced, his eyes were wide and bloodshot, and he was racked with desperate sobs as he silently begged Oob to stay with him. Then, incredibly, the villager gave a small, strained cough, and Charlie was filled with an elation as one of the men in his legion, seeing the pain on Oob's face, tossed over one of his own Potions of Healing. Nodding his thanks, Charlie generously applied it to the wound. Oob's eyes fluttered for a moment before closing again, but the deep,
heavy, peaceful rising and falling of the villager's chest shone like a beacon to Charlie, and he knew that Oob would survive.

Before he moved Oob's body, however, Charlie caught one last look at Geno before his body faded away. His items were still on the ground, and the sword stuck out of the dirt, the last remnant of the leader of RAT1. Charlie had now committed murder for the first time. Geno would never again be able to return to Elementia. He was gone forever, and this was solely due to the actions of Charlie.

But the worst part was, even though Charlie knew he should be horror-struck that he had just ended another life, he felt nothing. This was war, and they were all marked men. Charlie only now realized that it truly was a dog-eat-dog world, and if it hadn't been Geno then it would have been him.

A massive explosion somewhere in the background returned Charlie to the real world. And so, picking up the sword and strapping it to his belt as a token to remember his deed, Charlie returned to the battle, sickened at the knowledge that he was capable of murder.

“Kat, duck!” shouted DZ in alarm. Kat acted impulsively, ducking the arrow and following it with her eyes as DZ's shot sank into the kneecap of the girl with twin swords and no armor. The girl fell to the
ground and yanked the projectile out. She was making to get up when Kat pinned her to the ground with her foot. Kat grabbed the blade of her sword in her hand and rammed the handle into the girl's head, not killing her but assuredly knocking her out.

“Thanks, DZ,” said Kat as she spun her sword back around and redrew the diamond one at her side, dual wielding the two swords.

“Don't mention it,” he muttered back as he locked combat with a dwarf-skinned player with a glowing iron axe. Kat was about to help him when she noticed something from the corner of her eye that set off alarm bells.

Not far from where they were, Bill had Caesar, one of the King's seconds-in-command, tangled in a line from his fishing rod, while Bob tried to shoot at him with arrows. What Bob couldn't see, and what Bill was too focused on controlling Caesar to see, was that Caesar had slid his sword up his side in such a way that he could break out of the tangle of line whenever he wanted. In fact, instead of trying to go away from the arrows, Caesar seemed to be ducking them to get closer to Bob, and Bill was rapidly failing at his attempt to restrain him.