Herobrine's Message (20 page)

Stan and Leonidas stood with their backs to the wall in the mine, their hearts racing, armed with sword and bow, trying to ready themselves for whatever it was that had just passed them. After a minute, however, nothing happened. The environment had returned to normal, and while Stan could still hear the jet sound, it was getting softer and softer.

“What were those things?” Stan breathed.

“No idea,” replied Leonidas, “but I'm gonna find out.”

And before Stan could stop him, Leonidas jumped up out of the mine and onto the soggy dirt blocks of the swamp ground. He aimed a few well-placed punches into those dirt
blocks, and used them to create a stairway on the side of one of the tall trees they were next to. Leonidas sprinted up the dirt blocks and perched himself on top of the tree.

Above all the rest of the swampland forest, Leonidas could see the landscape stretching out for thousands of blocks. He scanned the darkening pink horizon, and there, far in the distance, he could make out two indistinguishable black forms, flying away. Leonidas glanced at the sun behind him, hardly noticing the gorgeous sunset, and realized that the creatures were headed southeast. As he realized this, Leonidas's heart skipped a beat.

“What did you see?” asked Stan apprehensively as he pulled himself out of the mine.

“I couldn't see what those things were, Stan,” Leonidas replied, distraught. “But whatever they are, they're headed straight toward Element City.”

“Ah, he lives!” snickered Jayden as G walked over to him. “How're you doing, man? And what've you been up to? You're hardly ever around anymore.”

“Well, there's a good reason for that,” G sighed, sitting down on a seat next to Jayden in the only other available seat in the packed rec room. “Tess has been working me nonstop. To be totally honest, I'm exhausted.”

“Wait, seriously?” asked Jayden, his mouth hanging open
in surprise. “You've been doing stuff with her this whole time? Even during training exercises?”

“She says that she needs me training with her more than I need combat training,” G said, reaching into a nearby chest. “What've you guys been doing in combat training, anyway?”

“Well, to be honest, it's actually pretty boring. You should feel glad you're missing it.” Jayden sighed. “It's pretty much a rundown of the same sort of advanced combat lessons we used to give in the Adorian Village . . . nothing too exciting.”

“Sorry. Although I personally would be happy to take a break and be with you guys. I mean, Tess is nice to me and all, but she just has the constant need to keep training me. She never gives me a break, and I'm getting sick of it.”

“Really,” replied Jayden. “Do you think she might be into you or something?”

“I don't think so,” replied G. The thought had crossed his mind, but he was pretty confident that that wasn't the case. “She might as well be, though. The constant work after training is done is really wearing me out, and I've just about had it with her.”

Jayden opened his mouth, one step away from saying something, but he closed it before he could. Now that he finally had a chance to relax, Jayden was sure G wouldn't particularly care to hear what he wanted so badly to say. There'd be time for that later.

“Anyway, I just stopped by to grab my pickaxe,” groaned G, pulling his iron tool out of the chest. He had his diamond pickaxe hidden on hand, but he was saving it for an occasion in which he really needed it. “I have to go see Tess again.”

“Are you serious?” asked Jayden in disbelief.

“Yep,” replied G glumly, standing up and walking away from his friend. “I'll see you later, okay?”

And with a stunned look on his face and an absentminded waving hand, Jayden watched G walk out the door.

G looked up and saw General Tess, her pink face alert and attentive, standing at the same place in the marble hallway where she always was when they met up after hours.

“Good evening, MasterBronze,” Tess greeted him, in the same way that she did every other night.

“Good evening, ma'am,” G responded, as if programmed.

“Tonight, I have a very special job for you, soldier,” Tess commanded, sounding rather important. “As I'm sure you know, in conquest of the lands surrounding Elementia, we were able to capture and occupy the Adorian Village. In doing so, we have taken several members of the village as captives, who will be used as ransom as soon as the glorious Lord Tenebris sees fit.”

“I see, ma'am,” replied G, trying as hard as he could to hide the fact that his heart was racing at the mention of these hostages.

“I feel that in the past few days, you, soldier, have proven yourself competent enough in my leadership exercises that I feel comfortable entrusting you with a task on your own.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” G said, his heart skipping a beat. What exactly did she mean by that?

“Therefore, MasterBronze, I am entrusting you with the checkup on the captives. You will go down into the left chamber of the ground floor, where you will find the Adorian Villagers. You will give them their weekly ration of food, ensure that no escape attempts are in progress, and report back to me.”

“Will do, ma'am,” said G. His response came out a bit happier than it ought to have been, but he was having trouble keeping himself from dancing with joy. Finally, at long last . . . he had a clear shot to free the prisoners. They were almost being gift-wrapped for him.

“Go ahead now, it shouldn't take you long,” Tess commanded lazily, handing G a stack of bread before turning around and walking back down the hallway. “I'll tell the guard to give you clearance.”

Wasting no time, G turned on his heel and made his way down the marble hallway, down a flight of stone-brick stairs, and into the central rotunda of the building, a bounce in his step the entire way. He followed the directions that Tess had given him, finally arriving in front of a player holding a
diamond axe, dressed in full black leather armor and standing before an indentation in an obsidian wall alongside a lever and an iron door.

“Nobody's allowed in there,” the guard grunted.

“My name is MasterBronze,” G replied. “I was sent by General Tess to check on the prisoners.”

With no hesitation, the guard pulled the lever, and the door scraped open.
Wow!
G thought to himself as he walked through the doorway.
This isn't nearly as difficult as I was expecting it to be!

The inside of the room was dim. There were a few torches lighting the walls, but they kept the room just bright enough to keep mobs from spawning, and the little light they did cast seemed to be consumed by the blackness of the obsidian that coated the roof, floor, and walls. Huddling over in the far left hand corner was a mass of players, looking malnourished and miserable.

One of the players turned his head around in a jerky manner, and glanced up at G in an equally twitchy way. All at once, G felt himself stop in his tracks.

G knew this player. His skin was identical to Stan's, though lighter overall. G guessed that this was a common skin, and so he looked into the player's eyes to be positive. It was true. G recognized this player from months ago—he would recognize the skin, eyes, and twitchy, spastic mannerisms anywhere.

The strange thing was, though, G also knew this player was dead.

“Sirus?” G asked, as though he were addressing a ghost.

“Wha . . . how . . . how do you know my name?” the player asked, his face shifting from downcast to paranoid.

“Dude, look into my eyes . . . it's me, G. From the old Adorian Village,” G answered with a smile.

Suddenly, comprehension flashed across Sirus's face for a split second, and then he broke out into a tremendous smile.

“Goldman! Oh boy, am I glad to see you, because, you know, it's so dark in here, and I've been stuck with these people for weeks. You know, I mean, no offense to you guys, but it's so nice to see somebody else, somebody I know, somebody who—”

And then, like the flip of a switch, Sirus ceased to be happy, and instead looked baffled.

“Who would never work for the Noctem Alliance in a million billion years, and so what gives, G? Why're you here? Did you have some sort of change of heart or what?”

“I'm here to rescue you guys,” replied G hastily, more focused on asking the dozens of other questions exploding in his mind as Sirus's face flipped back to ecstasy. “But I'll get to that in a minute. First of all, how are you still alive?”

“Whaddaya mean?” Sirus asked.

“I mean . . . I . . . you got killed!” cried G. “In the Battle
for Elementia! Archie told me that he saw you get killed by one of King Kev's soldiers who was dressed up like a giant zucchini wearing a sombrero! How did you get back into Elementia if you died?”

“Huh . . . oh, yeah, that little thing,” Sirus replied with a chuckle, shifting gears from confusion to laughter. “Well, it's kind of a funny story, 'cause you see, after I helped you guys disarm all those redstone contraptions before the battle started, I went into battle with you, and I managed to stay alive for a pretty long time, 'cause, you know, I can never stay in one place, so it's pretty hard to catch me, but then that thing happened where I took an arrow to the knee, and then the zucchini guy hit me with a potion and then killed me and stuff, and the next thing I know, I'm sitting right back on Spawnpoint Hill, and then I—”

“WHAT?” demanded G, so loudly that the other hostages, who had turned their heads in curiosity, jumped with surprise. “You managed to respawn? How is that possible? Elementia's a Hardcore PVP server. You can't respawn after you die!”

“Well, that's what I thought, too,” continued Sirus, shrugging. “But it still happened, even though I have absolutely no idea what caused it.”

G scratched his head, trying to think of what could possibly have caused this phenomenon. “Well, I guess it could've
just been a glitch in the system or something. A lot of people did die in that battle, maybe the blacklist got overloaded or something . . .”

“Yeah, maybe,” replied Sirus, still extremely jittery. “Anyway, after I respawned, I saw somebody duck into the woods and I figured that the hill probably wasn't safe, so I decided that I wanted to go out into the middle of the Ender Desert because I thought that could be fun, but then I got hungry and tried to eat part of a cactus, and it kind of caused me to hallucinate to the point where I imagined that I was at a wedding between a cantaloupe and a watermelon whose families disapproved of their union due to the parents' deeply rooted prejudices against fruits that were different from themselves, but then I woke up from the hallucination and found myself in the care of a player in a black uniform who was trying to teach me how to use seashells as toilet paper, and then I realized that the Ender Desert was a weird place and I wanted to go home, so I made my way to Element City, and may have gotten a bit lost on the way, but when I stopped in the Adorian Village for a snack break, the Noctem Alliance captured me and brought me here, and weren't you saying something about an escape plan?”

G, who had tuned out the insane redstone mechanic in the midst of his rambling, was still floored that Sirus was somehow alive. As he realized that Sirus had stopped talking,
though, he realized that now was neither the time nor place to question it. He had a rescue to pull off.

“Yeah, I was. Take this,” replied G, reaching into his inventory and pulling out his diamond pickaxe, relinquishing it to the deranged-looking yet brilliant player sitting across from him. “And here's your food for the week, too.

“Now I don't have much time,” continued G as he removed the bread from his inventory and put it on the ground in front of Sirus. “If I'm in here too much longer, they'll start to suspect something. Here's the plan: Tess told me that they check on you guys once a day. So after three days, I want you to tunnel out of here. The pickaxe will be strong enough to break through the obsidian, and you guys can tunnel your way into the tundra and make your way back to Element City from there. Don't do it any earlier than three days from now, or they'll suspect me of helping you. Got it?”

“Sure do,” replied Sirus, glancing down at the diamond pickaxe he was holding in his hand and feeling elated. “I'll be sure to get all these guys back to Element City safely, Goldman, don't worry about nothin', you can count on me to—”

Suddenly, he was cut off by the iron door creaking open. Light flooded the obsidian room, and G heard the guard's voice call out, “Hey, is everything going okay in there?”

Without hesitation, G lunged forward and sunk his fist as hard as he could into Sirus's stomach. Sirus let out a tiny
choking sound and shock flashed across his face, but he concealed the diamond pickaxe in his inventory all the same as he slammed to the floor, wheezing.

“And you'll get far worse than that if you ever mouth off to me again!” G bellowed harshly. Sirus's shocked eyes suddenly showed comprehension as he realized what G was doing.

“Do you understand, you maggot?”

“I do,” croaked Sirus feebly, as he gave G an almost inconspicuous wink. G looked sympathetic for an instant, and mouthed the word “sorry” before turning his back on the prisoners, all of whom were looking at G with bemused expressions.

“Don't worry about it,” G assured the guard, with a confident nod. “He won't be showing any more disrespect to a member of the Noctem Alliance any time soon. I've made sure of that.”

The guard nodded, showing no signs of suspicion whatsoever as he pulled the lever down to close the iron door. As G walked down the hallway and back toward the rec room, he knew that he ought to be thrilled and relieved that their plan had gone off flawlessly, and the hostages would escape from Nocturia within the next few days. However, this was not at the forefront of his mind.