The Complete Elementia Chronicles: Quest for Justice; The New Order; The Dusk of Hope; Herobrine’s Message

The players’ first view of the Nether was soon obscured, however. After about ten seconds of surveying the landscape, a giant white form rose in front of them. Stan stepped back in awe. The giant creature appeared to be a white, levitating jellyfish. Its body was a cube, and there was a mess of tentacles hanging from underneath it. Its eyes were shut, as was its mouth. Stan was amazed. It was by far the largest mob he had ever seen in Minecraft.

Suddenly, the monster’s eyes and mouth opened, and it gave out a scream. It was a high-pitched, baby-like screech, even shriller than that of the Enderman, which seemed odd in contrast to the blazing fireball that came shooting from its mouth.

“Get down!” Kat screamed, dropping to the ground.

Not needing to be told twice, Charlie and Stan followed suit. Stan’s eyes followed the path of the fireball until it hit the back wall of the cave, at which point it exploded. This explosion was different than a TNT or Creeper explosion. The blast of a Creeper was stronger than this blast, although it emitted a shockwave of heat that scorched Stan’s eyebrows from a distance. The remaining blocks that weren’t destroyed were set alight and began to burn brightly.

Another fireball came flying, and the players rolled to the side just in time to avoid impact, while the section of the ground they had been standing on was blown apart. Stan looked at the hole that had been blasted in the ground and saw that they had been standing on a ledge. One wrong step and they would fall down into the lava sea below.

Stan whipped out his bow and arrows and tried to snipe the next fireball out of the air. He missed. The arrow instead hit the flying monster in the forehead. Its eyes flew open, and the monster gave an animal bellow of pain. The mob levitated upwards and spit three more fireballs that hit the roof of the cave. The entire top of the cave exploded, leaving the three players exposed to an absolute rain of fireballs from the evil mob.

“We’ve got to split up!” cried Charlie as he tumbled sideways to dodge another fireball. “It can’t shoot at all of us at once!”

“But there’s nowhere to split up to!” yelled Kat desperately, and she was right. They were backed up to a cliff, and the ledge had been completely blown apart by fireballs except for the part where the three players were standing. The giant jellyfish opened its mouth, and the fireball that was sure to drop them all into the burning sea below flew out, right on a collision course with the players. Stan held his shovel in front of his face and prepared himself for an explosive death.

Right before the fireball could make contact, a form burst out of the wall behind Stan and flew in front of him. It was a player dressed in a scarlet jumpsuit with olive skin and black hair. He held a diamond sword in his hand, which he hastily swung in front of him in midair, hitting the fireball, and then he landed on the cliff below him. The projectile changed trajectory and headed on a return course to the monster that had shot it. The fireball exploded in the mob’s face, and it tumbled backwards a few feet, screaming.

“Get behind me!” yelled the player, as the monster recovered and blasted another fireball their way. Stan, Kat, and Charlie obliged and watched, amazed, as the player deflected another fireball, this time missing the monster and sending the fireball deep into the cave. Another player burst through the hole in the wall.

This player was dressed the same as the player with the sword, but he had red hair and pale skin, and he held a fishing rod in his hand. Stan watched in astonishment as the player threw the rod back and cast it, the bobber flying towards the jellyfish. The hook entered the monster’s head, and it cried out in pain again. It tried to fly away, but the redheaded player expertly maneuvered the line, dragging the mob back down. All the while the monster was still shooting fireballs, and the swordsman kept deflecting them.

“Nice cast, Bill!” yelled the swordsman as he parried another fireball to the side.

“Thanks, Ben!” the redhead cried in response as he repeatedly changed the power of the cast to keep the monster from flying out of range. “The Ghast is in optimal position! We’re ready, Bob!”

At this, yet another jumpsuit-clad player burst out of the wall, this one pale and blond. He held a glowing bow in his hand, and he fired an arrow at the monster in midair. He landed on the ground and looked back at Stan, Kat, and Charlie.

“If any of you three are archers, now’s the time! Aim for the eyes!” said the blond archer, Bob, with a manic grin on his face. Stan was a little unnerved by the grin at first glance, but he then noticed the same expression on the face of the fishing rod player, Bill, and the swordsman, Ben. They weren’t just fighting off this mob, which he had heard one of them call a Ghast – they were loving it!

Stan and Kat pulled out their bows and began shooting at the Ghast. The monster’s eyes were punctured by the dozens of arrows protruding from them, and its fireballs seemed to be shooting in a more confused pattern. One of the fireballs flew towards Kat, and she whipped out her sword and deflected it, just as Ben had been doing.

“OK you three, let up!” cried Bill, pulling back hard on the fishing pole.

Bob lowered his bow and got back against the wall, but Kat and Stan looked at Bill, confused.

“But it’s still alive!” yelled Stan.

“Yeah, why should we let up?” asked Kat.

“Because Ben loves this part!” bellowed Bill, laughing like a maniac, as he threw his full weight back against the fishing rod. The damaged Ghast lurched back down towards the ledge. It was very close to them now. Stan flinched as he felt the heat of the desperate Ghast spamming out yet another fireball.

Ben, a glint in his eyes, deflected the fireball off into the distance and ran towards the Ghast, which was now almost level with the ledge. He took a flying leap at the Ghast, his sword in his right hand, and he drove his weapon into the forehead of the giant monster. It screamed in anguish as Ben grabbed the Ghast’s face with his left hand while repeatedly thrusting his sword into the Ghast’s head. The giant mob stopped launching fireballs and started to fall apart from the repeated sword slices.

Ben pushed off the monster’s face with a white item in his hand. His sword spiralled down and landed on the ledge. He landed next to the weapon and pocketed the white item. Ben’s companions stood next to him, looking on with satisfaction as the hacked-up corpse of the Ghast fell into the lava sea below. Bob turned around.

“And that, gentlemen and lady, is how we amazing people kill Ghasts.”

And with that, the three fighters bumped their fists together in midair and yelled in unison, “YEAH!”

“OK, that was officially really impressive,” remarked Kat, still sweating from the battle with the Ghast.

“Well, we’ve had practice,” said Bob, slinging his bow over his back. “You kids have got to be more careful. Ghast fighting can be a rather unpleasant experience if you’re not good at it. It’s really easy to get blasted sky-high in this place.”

“You guys seem like you have a lot of experience here,” said Charlie. “How many times have you three been to the Nether?”

“Are you kidding? We live here, man!” Bill laughed. “And that’s not an exaggeration either. We’ve lived here ever since that backstabbing jerk King Kev banished us here.”

“And by the way,” said Ben as Stan opened his mouth in surprise. “We don’t care what you think about the King. If you have a problem with our opinion we’d be more than happy to fight you, too.” Bill and Bob nodded in agreement.

“Oh trust me,” Kat said, smirking, “I’d use a considerably more vile word to describe the King.”

“Yeah,” said Charlie. “I agree with that, and I’m sure Stan does, too. After all, he was the one who tried to kill that terrible King.”

“Wait, what?” Bob did a double take. “You tried to kill the King? Man, you got guts, noob!”

“How could you possibly still be alive?” asked Bill, amazed.

“Did you come to the Nether to hide from the King’s forces? ’Cause there’s no way that you would still be alive if you were in the Overworld,” commented Ben.

Stan looked up. “No. As a matter of fact, we’re trying to overthrow—” but he was cut off when Kat punched him in the arm.

“Shut up, you idiot!” hissed Kat. “Don’t give away too much—”

“You’re overthrowing the King?” interrupted Bob in a hushed, awed voice.

There was a moment of silence. The look on Kat’s and Charlie’s faces confirmed that Stan’s outburst was indeed true. Kat slapped her head, sure that these three players were about to reveal that they were really secret agents of the King. But then—

“Man, that is wicked awesome!” cried Bill. “It’s about time someone stood up to that pile of pig crap.”

“If we weren’t banished to this dimension with no way to get out,” said Ben, “we would have done it sooner or later.”

“Wait a minute … do you guys have a portal out of here?” asked Bob. This got the others’ ears perked up.

“Yeah! It’d be great to finally get out of this awful dimension. We’ve been here for so long …”

“Yeah … maybe the Apothecary is still around …”

“Wait, you know the Apothecary?” said Stan. “We met him back in the jungle! He’s helping us organize a rebellion with the people in the Adorian Village. How do you know him?”

“We used to work with him on the Council of Operators back in Element City,” said Ben. “We were the Chiefs of Exploration before the King associated us with some fake rebellion and threw us into this place.”

“Oh yeah! He mentioned you guys!” said Charlie, remembering their lengthy conversation with the old player. “You guys must be Bill33, Bob33 and Ben33.”

“Testify,” said Bill, raising his fishing rod and then lowering it. “Although nowadays, we go by the title of the Nether Boys.”

“Anyway, do you guys really have a portal out of here?” asked Bob. “We’ve been marooned in this blistering wasteland forever. I’d kill just to see a sheep or a cow or a tree again!”

“Well, we do have a portal,” said Kat. “But it’s broken right now. We need one obsidian block to fix it. We have the means to fix it – I have a water bucket and Charlie has his diamond pickaxe.” Charlie raised it in confirmation. “But we can’t leave here until we get some Blaze Rods. If we’re gonna pull this rebellion off, we’re going to need access to the King’s secret stash of supplies in the End, and we can’t get there without the rods.”

“Also,” added Charlie, “we can’t fix the portal until we’re ready to leave, or else the King’s forces will be able to get in to follow us and we’ll all be screwed.”

“Well, it ain’t gonna matter one way or another,” said Bill. “You’re in the Nether now, kids. Water will evaporate the instant it leaves the bucket, so there’s no way to make obsidian here.”

Stan’s heart sunk. How were they going to get out now?

“Still, I think that we may be able to help you out. It just so happens that we have one block of obsidian back at our house,” said Ben. “We’ll make a deal with you. We’ll give you the obsidian block so you can fix the portal. You let us use your portal to get out of the Nether, and in exchange, we’ll help you get your Blaze Rods.”

“Sounds good,” said Stan, and he looked at Charlie and Kat for confirmation.

Both nodded and smiled, and Kat said, “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

“So where exactly are we supposed to find these … Blazes?” said Charlie, remembering that Blaze Rods were dropped by this type of enemy.

“We’ll talk about getting your Blaze Rods when we get back to our house,” said Ben.

He jumped into the hole that he and the other two had made in the wall, and the six players followed the tunnel. It went down for a good while, and when they came out they were at the level of the lava sea. They began walking across the open plain of red-and-black speckled stone, which Bob told Stan was called Netherrack. At the edge of the plain was a small rise, and before they crossed over it, Bill raised a hand.

“Hold up. We should check to see if there are any monsters on the edge of this rise. Bob, Stan, you two go and check. Shoot down any hostile mobs that you see, and then we’ll go on. The house is just over this plain.”

Stan pulled out his bow and walked with Bob over to the rise. Bob poked his head over and looked at the plain. His eyes widened.

“Whoo-whee! This oughta be fun, right, Stan?” said the blond archer. Stan poked his head over the wall to see what Bob was talking about. What he saw made his stomach fall out.

He had seen these mobs before. On a stormy day, en route to Element City, he had fought a great battle against one of these creatures. Could these possibly be the same mobs as the one that he had fought with his friends in that terrible battle? But there was no mistaking the pink, rotting skin, the brown loincloths, the golden swords …

It had managed to take down Charlie, Kat and Rex, and it was only because of the lightning-charged Creeper that Stan had managed to defeat it. And that was just one.

But now, Stan was staring into a plain, a wide-open stretch of flat land with lava on both sides. And roaming around this wide-open space was an entire herd of about fifty sword-wielding Zombie Pigmen.

CHAPTER 17

THE FORTRESS AND THE BLAZE

Stan drew back the arrow without thinking. All he knew was that he wanted to get this massive fight over with, and with as little sword fighting as possible. He let the arrow fly, right as Bob cried out, “Stan, no!”

The arrow went right through the hollow eye socket of the nearest Pigman, which fell to the ground. The others around it looked down at their fallen comrade, and in one motion all their eyes locked on Stan. The entire herd of Pigmen surged forwards in a swarm towards Stan and Bob.

“Man, those things are neutral!” cried Bob as he downed another one of the Pigmen with an arrow. “If you don’t attack them, they won’t attack you!”

“What do you mean?” asked Stan as he pulled out his shovel and knocked one that had almost reached the top of the rise back down the plain. “In the Overworld one attacked me!”

“Well I don’t know why that was, but right now we’ve got a serious problem on our hands!” He clubbed a Pigman with his bow, and it flew backwards and landed in the middle of the herd that was now climbing the rise. “Get back, get back!” Bob continued to yell as he walked backwards and fired arrows into the throng.

Stan and Bob ran back down towards the others, and Bob yelled, “Zombie Pigmen, incoming!” When the other two Nether Boys looked at Bob in confusion, he said, “Stan shot one of ’em.”

Kat and Charlie looked at Stan in horror. Remembering the one from the Overworld, he said, “There’s, like, fifty of them coming now! Prepare yourselves, this is gonna be one big fight!”

The Zombie Pigmen started to stream over the rise. Stan, Kat, Charlie and Ben raced in to battle the herd. Bill and Bob stayed back and started attacking with their respective weapons.

The fighting was intense. Ben was an expert at disarming the rotting pig-warriors and then cutting them out of existence. Kat, on the other hand, required a lot more effort to defeat the Pigmen than he did, being unfamiliar with the sows’ fighting techniques. Charlie had adopted a unique strategy. He had used his pickaxe to swiftly hack a ditch in the brittle Netherrack ground, and when the Zombie Pigmen stumbled into the ditch in pursuit of him, Charlie drove his pickaxe into the monsters. Stan meanwhile adopted the timeless Zombie-fighting strategy of beating them into submission with a shovel.

By far, the ones doing the most damage were Bill and Bob. Bob’s arrows downed pig after pig after pig, and Bill had adopted an unusual strategy of catching the Pigmen on his fishing hook from afar and casting them deep into the lava sea. They didn’t burn, but instead they just swam around aimlessly in the molten lava, not interested in the fighting anymore.

It took a while, but the seemingly endless supply of Zombie Pigmen finally trickled down and eventually stopped when Kat decapitated the last one. Bob went to check whether the coast was clear. It was, and the six players walked across the plain and soon came to the house of the Nether Boys at the base of a steep Netherrack hill. The house was entirely covered in Netherrack, so it blended into the environment in such a way that you would have to know the house was there to see it. The inside was made entirely of cobblestone, which, for Stan at least, was a sight for sore eyes. It was the first of the familiar block that he had seen since entering the nightmarish Nether.

They saw a crafting table, a furnace and some chests. Other than that the house was completely empty. Stan asked why they had so few possessions after living here so long.

“We were banished here, don’t you remember, kid?” said Bill, slinging his fishing rod over his back. “And besides, if you try to sleep in a bed in the Nether, the bed will explode.”

“OK.” Stan didn’t even bother questioning it. He was so past wondering about the many breaches in the laws of physics in this wonderful, dangerous game called Minecraft.

“So to get your Blaze Rods,” said Bob, sitting on the cobblestone floor and leaning against the wall, “we’re going to have to get to the Blaze spawner in the Nether Fortress.”

“Yeah, the Apothecary mentioned something about the Nether Fortress,” said Kat, chiselling her initials into the cobblestone wall with her sword’s point. “What exactly is the Nether Fortress?”

“It’s a maze made out of dark red brick that’s incredibly dangerous to navigate,” replied Ben. “Luckily, we happened to live right near the closest Nether Fortress, and even luckier is the fact that we’ve done a little exploring and it shouldn’t take too long to get to the Blaze spawner. We’d better be prepared, though. Once we enter that room we’re going to be up against a never-ending swarm of Blazes, and those things are a nightmare to kill.”

“What makes them so hard to kill?” asked Charlie.

“Well, for one, they can fly,” said Bill. “And for two they have the annoying tendency to spam fireballs at you. When the three of us first made it into the Blaze spawner room, we barely made it out alive. Great fun, really, but we didn’t even try to fight them.”

“Mind you,” interjected Bill, “we’ve had a lot more experience fighting Ghasts since then, and we could probably figure out a winning strategy for killing Blazes, but we should still be careful.”

“The Nether Fortress is very close to this location,” said Ben. “We actually chose to build our house here in case we ever wanted to explore it some more. We have a few times. It’s awesome to explore that giant labyrinth. Anyway, it’s right up this hill outside.” He exited the house and started up the hill, followed by the other five.

It was quite a sheer hill – more like a cliff face, really. At one point, another Ghast tried to blast them off the cliff side, but Ben managed to kill it with deflected fireballs, and they kept climbing.

“Oh man, why is it so hot in the Nether?” said Kat, gritting her teeth as she wiped the sweat from her brow. She was closely followed by Charlie and then Stan.

“Well … I’m guessing … the fireballs and … the lava sea may … have something to do … with it,” panted Stan as he dragged his shovel behind him. “And who are you … to complain? You’re … wearing shorts … and a T-shirt!”

“And also you’re … not wearing … one of these wicked heavy … iron chestplates!” gasped Charlie. Kat glanced down quickly at her neon-pink shorts and then again at the light tunic over her orange T-shirt. She blushed in embarrassment and did not speak again for the rest of the climb.

At the top of the Netherrack cliff, there was a monster standing by that tried to attack them. It was a large cube of magma of various shades of dark red, and had glowing yellow eyes that opened up like a spring as it leaped forwards to attack Ben. He calmly identified it as a Magma Cube and sliced it in two with his sword. Stan was totally caught off guard when the two halves of the monster morphed into two smaller Magma Cubes. One of them caught him unaware as it tackled him, and he would have been knocked back down the cliff had Bill not caught the strap of Stan’s chestplate with his fishing rod. Ben kept killing the Magma Cubes, and the pieces of the dead ones kept reanimating. They were easy kills, though, and soon all of them were dead, leaving a pasty orange substance on the ground that Bob pocketed for later use.

“Magma cream,” he pointed out. “You use it to make Potions of Fire Resistance.”

Now that the Magma Cube was good and dead, the players turned their attention to the structure in front of them. It was composed entirely of dark crimson bricks, and there were stairs that led up to a tunnel made out of the bricks, which had torches lining the walls. The tunnel went straight into the side of another Netherrack cliff. There were no distinct architectural features of the building. In fact, Stan was surprised to see that the exterior looked very plain.

“Those torches weren’t put there naturally,” said Ben. “We put those up the last time we visited this place. If we follow them, it should lead us straight to the Blaze spawner room.”

They walked into the corridor. Stan was pleased to realize that it was slightly cooler within these brick halls. He followed the Nether Boys as they took turn after turn, following the torches. Slowly, Stan began to realize just how big the complex was. There were windows in the sides of the corridors, and more often than not there was nothing to see out of them except for Netherrack. However, now and then he could see that they were suspended over the lava sea, and a few times he saw magnificent lava falls flowing from the ceiling of the Nether and into the lava sea. Stan realized that he might well die during the fight with these monsters, so he took the time walking down the corridors to appreciate just how beautiful the landscape of Minecraft was.

After going down endless corridors and through a few rooms with staircases and small farms of some type of seed that Stan guessed was the Nether wart the Apothecary had told him about, they finally arrived at a corridor that was not lit with torches. At the end of this corridor, Stan could see a block with a yellow figure revolving within a black cage, very similar to the block that spawned Cave Spiders in the abandoned mine shaft. He knew that they had reached the Blaze spawner.

“So, what’s our strategy?” asked Charlie eagerly.

“Personally, I say we should just go in there and beat the things to death before they get a chance to attack us,” said Kat, pulling her sword from her waist.

“Not so fast, sister,” said Bill. “Those spawners can set up to three of those things on you at a time. As much fun as it would be to just charge in there and beat the Blaze Rods right out of them, I think we have to think this one through a little more. Anyone have any ideas?”

There was silence for a moment. Then much to Stan’s surprise, Charlie spoke up and said, “How about I drink my Potion of Fire Resistance and draw their fire, while Bob, Kat, and Stan shoot them down?”

“Nice thinking, bro,” said Bob. “Be careful, though. Even if you don’t catch on fire, the Blazes can still do melee attacks and the fireballs still damage you.”

Charlie agreed to be careful, and they got ready to execute their plan. Charlie gave all of his things to Kat to hold, and Ben and Bill hid behind Bob, Kat and Stan, all of whom had their arrows notched, ready to fire.

“Wait, I’m almost out of arrows,” Stan said. “Do you have any extras, Bob?”

“Sure,” he said, and he handed half his arrows to Stan.

With everything ready, Charlie swigged his fire resistance potion, and he charged into the Blaze spawner room.

Charlie could see that the room was jutting out of the side of a Netherrack mountain, and that the walls were completely composed of fences. In the centre of the room, the black cage gave off some fire particles, and the yellow figure within started spinning rapidly. Before Charlie could study the little figure any closer, a full-sized Blaze appeared right above the spawner. Charlie couldn’t help but stare. It was the most bizarre thing he had ever seen.