Date: 10181, thirty-fifth day of summer
Taking shelter in a cave, almost at the Temple Mountains.
Continued from yesterday.
Herobrine is a tricky person to try to decipher. When I first met him, he was insane. I mean, the incredibly driven, violent, impatient, and sadistic kind of insane. He fought hard and taunted ruthlessly, using more dirty tricks than I can count.
Now there's another side to him.
The Chronicles described him as a kind, patient, and loving god, always with a clever gleam in his eye and some creative trick at the ready. In other words, nearly the complete opposite to the Herobrine I met. He was said to be soft-spoken unless he was driven from extremely angry to absolute fury, and historically speaking, that only happened once. All in all, he could be mistaken as a very well-meaning human being among his kind, with a very kind and charming nature.
I may have seen a little of that side of him in the Nether, on the last days we were imprisoned there.
Herobrine was very patient with me, relatively speaking, on giving me time to consider his wager. Dragon and I had many, many interesting conversations during that time, and we argued a lot. More than we ever have about anything.
For the first day after Herobrine presented the wager, I was silent about it. Frankly, I was still shocked about it. Why would Herobrine do anything like this? What could he possibly have planned? I could think of a million different ways I could be backstabbed with this, but none of them seemed plausible.
On the second day, I worked up the courage to tell Dragon. He sat silently outside of my cell, waiting until I finished, and then took a deep breath before swearing violently.
"You can't possibly be thinking about accepting!" he exclaimed. I kicked the wall in frustration, and succeeded in stubbing my toe.
"I don't know!" I shouted, cutting off whatever Dragon was about to say next. I had explained and re-explained every detail to him, and I could see no way out of this. "I just don't know." I bowed my head and sat down, cradling my foot with one hand where I curled up. That had hurt more than I expected.
"He's insane," Dragon said, as if that would help. "He can double-cross you at any time!" I mentally smacked Dragon, frustrated.
"He can throw us in lava at any time!" I shot back. "But what would that gain him? What would sitting here gain us?" Think, you blockhead.
"What do you think he could do with us up there?" Dragon reasoned. "This just isn't an honest deal. He could use us for anything up there."
"I know," I said through clenched teeth. "But what choice do we have?"
"It doesn't matter what else!" Dragon cried, "This is making a deal with the devil!"
"I KNOW!" I snapped, facing Dragon through the hole in the wall. "But what else can we do? He will keep us here until we accept!"
"Us?" Dragon snorted. "You mean you. He made this deal with you."
He had a point there.
"I can negotiate," I retorted. "We have to get out of here somehow."
Dragon fell silent.
"Besides," I continued, "What if he's right?"
He didn't reply. We sat in strained silence for several minutes, and I took that time to try to calm down. This was hard for me- a lot of weight was resting on my decision, and this wasn't a decision that would be easy to make.
"The others could help us," Dragon suggested after a while. "They could take him down. We would just have to wait."
I sighed and made a helpless noise, looking back up at Dragon through the hole in the wall. I was near to tears. You see, I had considered this possibility too, but my intuition and my experience this far told me it simply wasn't going to happen.
"How?" I croaked. "They have no way of knowing what they're up against. They don't know where we are. And Dragon, if anything Herobrine has said is true, if anything in the Chronicles is true, that just won't solve the problem. Herobrine will be back, and that won't be anywhere near our biggest worry." I sank back down the wall and rested the side of my face against the bricks. "There is something else out there. Dragon, I've seen it. I want to believe it was a trick, but I can't."
Dragon sighed.
"You want to believe he was faking madness when he chased you across the Nether?" asked Dragon. "You want to believe it was an act when he killed you?" His voice was strained and quiet. I felt a tear of frustration run down my face.
Notch blast it, I can't help it. I almost never cry, but sometimes it just happens. When I've been pushed too far, faced too much frustration and things that are outside my control, it just happens. Angrily, I swiped away the rogue tear and buried my face in my hands, trying to smother the choking sobs before they started. Somehow, I avoided a meltdown.
"What could he gain by lying about that?" I asked, nearly whispering. I didn't trust my voice very much right then. "Dragon, I know when someone's in pain. It just can't be faked to the point that I saw in the ruins. Notch, it was awful. He was still looking bad after we were here and he came to talk to me a few times. What if he hadn't gotten control back yet?"
"You could be right," Dragon conceded, eventually. "But I just don't like it."
"I know."
The tears were coming full force this time, and this time I just let them. Taking a few deep, shuddering breaths, I tried to keep it as quiet as I could as tears ran freely down my face. The stress had to come out somewhere, I reasoned. I couldn't let it break me down completely.
Dragon peeked through the hole in the wall, and immediately saw the mess of my face.
"I just can't trust him," Dragon admitted. "I can't stand the thought of him using us, and especially not you, that's all." My heart clenched. I knew Dragon was trying to be comforting, and I had always suspected him of having feelings for me, and apparently I was right. There's no denying it after saying something like that. But the situation, well, it was just all wrong. I was too deep in survival mode right then, and as legitimate as it was, his caring was clouding his judgement, and it infuriated me.
"Don't make this any harder for me!" I burst out, standing up to look Dragon in the eye, slamming my fists on either side of the hole in the wall. My breathing was speeding up- I fought it back down to avoid going hysterical.
"I'm sorry."
Dragon's voice was too quiet. I had really hurt him this time. He had opened up more than he ever had before with me, in giving the closest thing to a confession of love to me, and I had thrown it back in his face. Closing my eyes, I sank to my knees below the hole, resting my forehead against the wall.
"Dragon..." I began, and realized I didn't know where to start. Gathering my thoughts, I tried again, all the while putting my raging feelings on a tight leash. "Dragon- I didn't mean to snap at you. Listen, I just hate this. I..." Man, it was really hard for me to say this. "I don't like taking responsibility like this. This is why I'm always out on my own- if I get hurt, it's my own fault, and I can live with that. But I just can't do this. This is putting too much at stake on my word. If this goes wrong, I won't be the only one hurt. It'll be everyone, and it won't be their fault. It'll be mine." I stopped as a sob wracked my chest again, and the scar twinged sharply. "I hate making mistakes that hurt other people."
There you have it, my darkest fear laid out in the open as eloquently as it's going to get.
After I said it, I discovered just how much it had been killing me to say it.
I turned so that my back rested against the wall and looked up at the glowstone crystals on the roof, blurry through the tears. Sniffing loudly, I wiped my eyes on the insides of my wrists, trying to scrub them away. More tears wanted out. I squeezed my eyes shut and locked them in.
"So what do I do?" I asked the ceiling, eyes still closed. My voice was husky and rough.
"Hey." Dragon said, reaching down through the hole in the wall to squeeze my shoulder. He slid his hand as far down as he could down my arm, and I let him take my hand and grasp it firmly. What the heck, I didn't care anymore. It made me feel better. A lot of emotion had burst out of me in just a few minutes- months of bottled-up feelings. All my pain from my long string of defeats so far.
I found myself thinking of home right then. My mansion at FireForge, my tiny forge where I worked hard to keep up with the things Lee made with Sky. The village, with all of those families that knew me so well. The priest, with his stern green eyes and more care for me than he would admit. I missed them. I found that what I wanted more than anything right then was to go home.
We didn't talk much for the next few days. I slept as much as I could, and ate when food came. I couldn't bring myself to write in my journal about what had happened so far- I was just to depressed. That was what happened when I got caught between a rock and a hard place with no way out- I just sort of closed in. I didn't give up, but I sure was stuck. I needed help getting unstuck.
Dragon, eventually, came on my side.
"Listen," he said one day. "I still don't like it, but I think you might be right." I looked up, and saw him peering through the hole in the wall. "We really are in a bind here. I've thought about this, and I've hit the same wall you have. There really is no other way out of here, so I think you should take the deal."
"You're serious?"
"Look." He broke off and looked away for a moment. "I-" He sighed. "What if he's right. I can't justify us losing our minds over this any longer than we have to. We never had a choice in the first place."
I got up off the floor and went to the hole in the wall, taking his hand in both of mine.
"Thank you."
A rattling sound emitted from the outside wall of my cell. I watched as the wall went up and the skeleton stood there questioningly, waiting for my direct answer.
"Oh, no you don't," I snapped at it. "I'm not making this deal yet. You go tell Herobrine that I'm still thinking."
The skeleton gave an awkward bow and closed the wall again. I turned to look at Dragon once more. "We have some work to do. I'll take his deal, but I'm not taking it as it stands."
Dragon nodded.
"Okay."
"Well?"
My legs were aching from standing for so long. I was in Herobrine's throne room once more, standing below the dais while Herobrine lounged in his throne. We had discussed the wager back and fourth, hashing out a set of terms we could agree on. He was surprisingly willing to take my alterations, and when he didn't, he explained why. No, I can't give you back all your arms and armor. I'm trying to trick whatever it is out there. It has to look like you escaped. Yes, you can take Dragon with you. He isn't supposed to be down here, anyway. Yes, you can take your sword at least. I won't send you off completely helpless. Oh, so you still need gear? I'll tell you where to find some in the Overworld. I already thought of that, yes.
Now he was waiting on my answer.
"You'll release Dragon with me?" I wanted to confirm the terms, one by one.
"I swear it."
"You'll stay here, and not interfere with us?"
"Yes."
"We are only to explore the End, and look for differences there?"
"That is all I ask."
"And we have thirty days?"
"Yes."
"I want to know where we would find gear in the Overworld." I wasn't letting him go easily on this one. I had to know up front. Herobrine sighed and flicked his hair out of his eyes.
"Inside the Temple of Notch, the new one, you will find a lever on the wall behind the pillar directly across from the altar, to the speaker's right. That would be your left, coming in. It will move the altar itself aside, and there is a ladder leading down to a vault below. You will find diamond arms and armor, all with standard protection and sharpness enchantments. They were put there when the Temple was rebuilt, in the case of an emergency, but the current keepers of the Temple have long since forgotten about it over the centuries."
I stopped to consider it all one last time. The last condition was a gamble- it was anybody's guess whether he was telling the truth. But the rest of the wager was sound, and I had my own reasons to believe Herobrine would stay in the Nether. But there was still one more thing.
"I have one more request for you," I began. Herobrine looked down at me, a flash of impatience in his eyes. "I want one open term: that you will do any one thing I ask of you when I return." Herobrine's brow furrowed slightly.
"Why?"
"That depends on what I find in the End." I had this feeling- the same one I had felt over and over again, at the Temple and in the ruins. Herobrine pondered my request for a few moments, then he seemed to relax.
"That is fair. Very well, then. I accept your terms. Now-" He sat forward on his throne, looking down at me with an unquestionably eager gleam in his eyes. "Will you, or will you not accept my wager?"
I swallowed hard, and kept my voice as steady as it would be, and spoke the two words that would seal my fate.
"I accept."
It's sunrise already. We should be able to make the Temple today. There's a lot I have to do, and a lot I still have to explain, but now I have a little direction again.
I'm still confused, but I sense that answers will come soon enough. I have to figure out what happened those ten thousand years ago. I need to know exactly why Herobrine was imprisoned, from someone other than himself, and I need to know, if he's telling the truth, what drove him to madness.
But first- the Temple.
Then we'll see if he kept his word.
Happy New Year!
Ladies and gentlemen, as you may have seen on my announcements on my profile, I was unable to update as promised on New Year's Eve due to an unexpected change of plans. I.e., I was out of town and away from internet access. So I made the update today, New Year's Day, and I'll update again soon, as in, later this week. Sorry about that.
So- on to the real meat of the author's note. (Man, I've been writing a lot of these lately.) This chapter was one of the big three scenes that I knew needed MASSIVE overhaul editing from the original, so you may have noticed a number of large changes. I had to do a lot of tweaking to get the scene right. Anyway, the story is back on track, and we are finally getting out of the Nether! Hooray! Nice way to start off the year, don't you think?
Anyway, if you enjoyed this new chapter, remember to leave a REVIEW. If you want more where this came from (yadda yadda yadda...I know, I leave this message every time,), remember to leave a FAVORITE or a FOLLOW.
Huntress out.