He appeared in the End, his feet a few blocks from the pale grayish-cream smooth stone. He landed with a thud. gasping for air and sinking to his knees. He tore off his toque and hastily shoved it behind his back, just in time. Crowds of Endermen younger than he, his age and older pushed him aside to get to a large mountain of End Stone. A static sky seemed to hum above them, pitch black with grains of blue and green. He skidded to a stop directly in front of the mountain's face, melting snow still dripping off his feet. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of his race, gazed, waiting, at the side of the stone. A scraping sound grated on his ears, and as they watched, the End Stone opened up to reveal a long tunnel, deep and dark as the Endermen entering. He stepped down into the drafty passage, not even noticing the droplets of water oozing through cracks in the ceiling. He was used to it.

The hole opened into a lighted chamber, with floors of obsidian and a faded painting on the ceiling. The painting displayed an Enderman and a human fighter holding swords. The swords were crossed over the center of the room. Around the painting in curly writing, painted by some ancient hand, were the words "WE ARE BROTHERS YET DEADLY ENEMIES." The Enderman didn't need to know who it was referring to. The whole race knew the story.

A tall, strong Enderman appeared on the platform at the back of the room. "Silence!" he roared, and the room, once full of anxious chatter, fell starkly silent. The word hung heavy in the air, and though the leader's voice was strong and intimidating, there was a slight tremble to the word that suggested he was afraid of something, something far more powerful. Yet the speaker began to bellow again, his strange voice echoing off the cavern's walls.

"Show me the takings that you have stolen from the Overworld. Quickly, all of you, or there will be a sure chance of punishment." There was suddenly a great hubbub of Endermen concentrating assorted chunks of Overworld blocks into their outstretched hands. Flurries of purple sparks popped into the air as blocks materialized. Each Enderman suddenly began to stride towards a pair of large ornate doors, made out of obsidian with purple amethyst-coloured accents. When they were all standing in front of the doors, the speaker produced a clipboard and began to check off names. Names. Their names were curious ones; definitely not the names of any humans. But they were interesting names. Some could even be called beautiful.

As their names came out of the mouth of the speaker, Endermen entered the doors and placed their blocks down in the area beyond. At last his name was called, and the Enderman stepped forward, holding up his block to make sure it was seen. A soggy chunk of land, with a few strands of yellow grass hanging off of it. The doors creaked open, just enough for him to stumble in.

The inside was a vast cavern in the mountainside, filled with thousands of different types of blocks. Long wooden planks leaning against a pile of blue-specked dirt the size of a house, beside a veritable lake of water, which glimmered in the light let in by the opening door. Over by the other corner, a lava lake boiled beside a tall stack of slightly melted empty iron buckets. He shakily placed his soaked block beside a huge pile of other grass blocks, and scurried out the door. He didn't want to stay long, as something about this place gave him the creeps. There was an aura of pure fear emanating from the place.

The doors swung open to reveal the smaller cavern. As he walked in, the speaker noticed him. "Tamer!" he barked. "What takes you so immensely long in there, hmm? Speed up or you will be punished, like Cyan here!" He pointed with his free hand to his other, and Tamer, the Enderman, noticed that he was holding the shoulders of a thin Enderman, definitely a child, much younger than he. He must have been around 12,000 years old by his looks. He had deep bruises under his eyes, and his knees were covered with painful-looking scrapes. Tamer himself was slightly older than 14,000. The younger Enderman wore a look of utter terror, and tears threatened to spill down his face. He was obviously trying not to cry out, as the speaker held him in an almost suffocating position. "This," he said sharply, jerking the young Enderman to face the awed audience, "is what could happen to you if you ever forget your blocks!" He shook the bony shoulders of the other to emphasize each cutting word. He threw the boy into the cruel hands of two guards, who dragged him off, pleading and crying, into another door sliding shut with a resounding click. The sound of his screams still reverberated off the curved walls of the cavern.

The speaker smirked grimly. "You must leave now. Go to your dwellings. He will not want us to watch him. Go!" He made a motion with his hand towards the tunnel leading back to the open air. The Endermen hustled out, muttering to each other. A cold draft blew around the cream-coloured stalactites and stalagmites, but Tamer didn't shiver. He was too lost in thought to notice.

Crouched in the dim, dank dwelling, all anyone could talk about was the young Enderman who had forgotten to take a block. Cyan. Tamer himself didn't join the chatter; he had locked himself inside his own mind. Voices could be heard, whispering filling the holes in the stone. A musty smell pervaded the space. Those were the dwellings; simply hollowed-out holes in the End Stone with a few ragged cloths to sleep on. That was all they owned. All they could ever call their own. It was a pathetic situation, yet one that may never be solved. Or so they thought.

"Tamer," said a soft voice. He snapped back to life at the sound of his own name. He spun around. "Tamer, I have finished dinner. Come over," said his mother, a faint smile breaking through her solemn face. He crawled through a tiny tunnel in the rock to what they considered the kitchen. A small fire crackled in one corner, and Tamer's mother pulled a small iron pot off the heat. She poured some of its contents into a collection of small bowls. As his many brothers and sisters scurried into the room, Tamer stared down into the murky depths of his own bowl. As usual, it was a questionable porridge, the colour of the End Stone surrounding them and specked with brown. Wheat porridge; of course. It tasted all right...if you swallowed it immediately and/or held your nose. He took a halfhearted spoonful and forced it down. He grimaced. If only he had a choice...but the only thing ever grown here was wheat, in the superficial farming held on the Great Leader's island. The porridge they had to live on was nothing much, just enough to keep you alive. But Tamer found his stomach to be still growling like a vicious wolf, like the ones he had seen in the Overworld, even after he'd had his allotted bowl. The wheat farms were deep underground, like the dwellings. To the Great Leader, that was all they were. Slaves.