Chapter Eleven
*Brief Notice: There are still no time-change indicators, and I can't find out why.
In the dream, I was sitting with Steve beneath the apple tree. His arm was around me, and my head rested against his shoulder. Neither of us spoke or even moved, but it was more real than any dream I had ever had.
In fact, it was so real that I actually believed it for a moment.
Until I woke up.
"Morning, sunshine." a voice shattered the quiet. I shrieked and punched its owner in the face.
"Jarom! Get out of my—" I broke off, sitting up and looking around. "Room? Where am I?"
Jarom ignored me and busied himself with stemming off his bloody nose. I was lying on the ground in a dark, stone room. The only light came from redstone torches burning in sconces on the walls.
"Jarom, where did you take me?" I growled, getting to my feet. I was still wearing my pajamas, Steve's shirt pulled over them.
"I'm just following orders, okay?" Jarom replied, shooting a glare at me. It was then that I noticed what he was wearing.
He was dressed in tailored black leather, fashioned into a sort of uniform. A silver skull was embroidered over the breast pocket. He got up, smoothed back his blonde hair, then grabbed my arm and began leading me down a stone hallway.
"Jarom, where am I?" I demanded, tearing my arm out of his grip. He wasn't being theatrical or flamboyant now, and it was beginning to terrify me.
"In the castle of Lord Herobrine." he said. I stopped dead in my tracks.
"How do you know about Herobrine?" I hissed.
"Because I'm his second-in-command." Jarom held out his arms, smirking triumphantly. "How else do you think I got the power to control people? I do it the same way I got you here. With dreams."
I had always thought that it was because of his status and popularity as the mayor's son.
"Then what do you want?" I asked softly.
"To finish my job and go home before everyone wakes up. Then I can start another daring search for the elusive Althea Laughlin." Jarom said, grabbing my wrist and yanking me down the hallway.
"You are a slimy, spineless creeper-spawn." I cursed.
"Thanks, baby, I do my best." Jarom replied snidely. Suddenly, he held his fingers to his ear, as if he were listening to something. "Yes, my lord."
"Excellent." a disturbingly familiar voice said. Jarom stopped and fell to one knee, his head bowed as a white-eyed figure appeared from the shadows.
"Herobrine." I whispered.
"Aw, she remembered me!" he gushed.
"Where is Steve?" I asked.
"Who's to say that he's even here in the first place? Geez, you couples are so needy." Herobrine sighed.
"Answer the question." I growled.
"He's wherever I put him last." he said. "Which could be somewhere dark and horrible, or a comfy bedroom near the gate."
"Take me to him." I said.
"Are you sure about that?" Herobrine raised his eyebrows at me. "You might want to stop and think for a moment."
"You're probably going to kill me anyway. Take me to Steve." I told him defiantly.
"Alright, but you aren't going to like it." Herobrine shrugged. "Jarom, you've done well. Now get out of my sight."
It was then that Herobrine grabbed my wrist in his weirdly soft fingers and teleported away.
We were in a second hallway, this time completely unlit and very, very cold. "Last chance at dying in comfort and dignity." Herobrine said, pausing in front of a thick, steel door.
"Go suck a lemon." I said sharply.
"Ladies first." Herobrine frowned. He pulled the latch of the door, and it creaked open to reveal a dark room. I stepped inside, and Herobrine shut the door.
"Steve!" I cried, running forward. In the dark, he looked up at me as I fell to my knees in his arms.
"Althea, what have you done?" he whispered.
"I-I don't know…I just…woke up here." I explained. "Jarom is one of Herobrine's minions."
"Althea, why didn't you try to escape?" Steve asked me desperately. There was a wild tone in his voice.
"I couldn't. There weren't any—"
"You should have tried!" he shouted. I flinched as if he'd actually hit me and pulled away from him.
"I'm sorry," I said, feeling small. I couldn't see him very well. But I heard the rattle of chains as he drew his knees to his chest.
"What have you done? What have you done…." he whispered to himself. He started to shake.
"Steve…" I murmured. I watched him for a moment, listening to his breath hitch as he cried. "Steve, tell me what's going to happen." I put my arms around his shoulders.
Steve looked up at me, and though I couldn't see his expression, I knew it was filled with pain.
"Herobrine isn't going to just kill you…" he gasped. "He's going to use your body to bring back the Ender Dragon, and then he's going to come after me."
I sucked in a breath.
"Oh, no."
Suddenly, the reality of what was happening came crashing down on me. I had been so caught up in trying to see Steve that I hadn't paid any attention to what exactly I had gotten myself into. My ex-boyfriend had just kidnapped me and now I was going to die bringing back a legendary monster.
"It's going to be okay," I suddenly said. The same sense of clarity that I had felt before I kissed Steve had returned, as if no matter what I did, nothing could go wrong.
"Althea, you don't understand. Herobrine has the Book of the Withers now. If he resurrects the Ender Dragon and summons the leader of the Withers, then he could rip apart the realms that separate the End and the Nether from our world. After I left you, I was going to try and find the Book of the Dragon Riders so that I could stop him, but he…."
I pressed my finger against his lips.
"It'll be fine." I said softly. "Even if we die and the world ends, someone will come along to stop him."
I shifted so that I sat in front of him and circled my arms around his neck. I pretended to ignore the shackles on his wrists and ankles as I pulled him into a hug.
"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." he whispered, burying his face in my neck. I could feel his heart pounding against my chest as I held him, grateful to be here with him, but at the same time terrified of the future.
"It's okay. It isn't your fault." I told him, running my fingers through his dark hair. Part of me wanted to say otherwise. Maybe if I hadn't fallen in love with him, I wouldn't have gotten into this mess.
Steve carefully put his arms around me, maneuvering around the chains clapped around his wrists. We held each other in silence, listening to the quiet drip, drip, drip of water and the sound of one another's breath. It was bitterly cold, but Steve's embrace was like a blanket against the freezing temperature.
Soon, I felt myself drifting off in his arms.
I wasn't sure how long it was until the guards came for us, but I knew it was long enough for me to be very hungry and very thirsty.
A frighteningly tall black skeleton grabbed me and pulled me away from Steve, while its partner unlocked his shackles and jerked him to his feet. They led us out of the dungeon into a less-dim corridor and down several sets of hallways until we came to a circular room.
An altar stood at one side, while the middle was dominated by a shallow pool filled with syrupy black liquid. Stars and comets of blue glittered beneath its surface as if were lit from behind. I noticed two lengths of chain bolted to the floor across from the altar.
The two guards took Steve and snapped one end of each chain around his wrists, binding him in place. They left me unattended.
"That took a bit longer than I thought it would." a voice called, and Herobrine stepped out of my shadow, carrying what looked like a large, purple-and black rock. "This was a little harder to collect than I had first anticipated."
I watched him carry it to the altar and set it down next to a wicked-looking ceremonial knife and a chalice.
"You don't know what you're doing!" Steve cried.
"I'm destroying the human world and bringing back my people." Herobrine said calmly. He held out a hand to me, and once more, all of my muscles locked up. I squeaked as they began to move out of their own accord, bringing me into the pool of black slime, where I stopped at the middle. The goo reached just above my ankles.
"Hold on…I'm forgetting something. Ah, yes! You, fetch my second-in-command." Herobrine pointed at one of the Wither skeletons, then busied himself thumbing through the pages of two black books.
"Please, don't do this! It isn't going to solve anything!" Steve begged.
"I don't care." Herobrine said, deathly serious. "I don't care about solving anything, I just want to see you and the rest of your kind suffer."
I let out a quiet cry of protest, but other than that, my body wouldn't respond to me.
A moment later, Jarom returned with the Wither skeleton.
"Good. You're here." Herobrine smiled at my ex-boyfriend.
"Of course, my lord." Jarom replied. "But I haven't got much time before I have to—"
"This will only take a moment." Herobrine said. "Come here."
I was facing the door, so all I heard was a cry from Jarom, the sound of steel cutting flesh and a strangled sound before his body hit the floor. A few moments later, the slime around my ankles rippled as Herobrine dumped Jarom's carcass into the pool.
"Let's see, we've got the human sacrifice, the Dragon egg, the ghast tears, the witness, the Books, and the host. I think we're ready to get started."
"No!" Steve yelled. He tried to run forward, but the chains at his arms held him back.
Herobrine ignored him and stood directly in front of me, a book in each hand.
"Don't worry. This won't hurt. Probably." he smiled, shooting a glance at Steve. My heart was beginning to pound in terror. Herobrine looked back down at his books, and then began to chant.
"Leth melenai, moran halamar Khszaratachk, lebertok na lormen gilethan bai haadzal…."
I lost track of what he was saying when the gunk around me began to shift and roil of its own accord.
"Althea! Althea, NO!" Steve was shouting.
A bright purple glow came from behind me where the Dragon egg rested, and I heard a sharp splitting sound.
Little veins of glowing violet mixed with the dark brown of blood dribbled across the surface of the black ooze like fingers seeking out a precious substance.
Then, still chanting, Herobrine took the chalice of ghast tears and held them over the pool.
"Mehziik, Lanahath dorian…brezil." He tipped the container's contents into the pool.
I cried out as the blue-speckled slime surged upwards, covering my legs, my chest, my head in a single instant.
"ALTHEA!"
Then everything went black.
Tears blurred Steve's vision for days after that. Herobrine left him in the chamber with the unbroken, incubating chrysalis that had hardened around Althea's body like a shimmering, crystalline shell.
He knew that it was over; inside of that glassy cocoon, Althea was changing, metamorphosing into something else while Jarom's body decayed nearby.
He knew that she was gone.
And it was all his fault.
Suddenly, Steve heard a faint rattling noise. He raised his head wearily, and saw a few white cracks appearing in the surface of the shell.
Instantly, Herobrine warped into the room.
"Look, brother! She's done cooking!" he said, sounding falsely cheerful. Steve only glared at Herobrine in bitter silence. There was nothing left inside of him besides that cold, muted hatred.
The cracks grew wider and wider until a pair of wings burst through the chrysalis, flinging shards of glasslike matter and globs of embryonic mucus in all directions.
Steve felt his already frigid insides go cold.
The rest of the shell began to crumble, and the resurrected Ender Dragon slid to the floor in a heap.
She looked just like Althea, while at the same time, grotesquely different. She was covered in patches of dark, pebbly scales and silver plates, while her hands and feet had morphed into clawed talons. A tail had sprouted from the end of Althea's spine, accompanied by a long row of black spikes and huge, leathery wings. Large, sharp teeth protruded from Althea's lips, and her soft, blonde hair had been bleached white. Steve couldn't see her eyes.
The Ender Dragon let out a shuddering growl, her entire body shaking violently. Then, she looked around, sniffing the air. Her eyes were covered by a translucent film.
Her sightless eyes turned to Steve, and she let out a growl, her long black tongue sliding in and out of her mouth.
"No, don't eat that one. We aren't done with him yet." Herobrine said. He went to the carcass of Althea's ex-boyfriend and dumped it in front of her.
Steve tasted bile in his mouth as the Ender Dragon devoured the entire corpse, bones, organs and all.
"Where…where is the human...that…destroyed me?" the Ender Dragon rasped. Althea's voice mixed with the deep, velvety tone of the Dragon.
"In due time, my dear. For now, you need to recover your strength." Herobrine took her and led her out of the chamber, down several hallways and to a bedroom with an Ender Crystal floating above a short plinth.
He laid the Ender Dragon in bed, where she shut her filmy eyes and began to absorb the power of the Crystal nearby.
Herobrine smiled, watching her for a moment. His plan was coming together beautifully, and there was no one that could stop him once the Realms were dissolved. His people would be free to roam the earth as they used to. All he had to do was summon the leader of the Withers to this world, and their combined power would be enough to obliterate the boundaries that separated the Nether, the End and the Overworld. After hundreds of years…the only Shade to ever force his way through the boundary to the human world was going to complete his ancestor's will.
But that wouldn't be the end of it. His plan to lead the boy to the Book and use his body as a vessel had been a stroke of genius, never before conceived by his kind. For that, his people would hail him as a king, where he had been an exile before. A Shade who had been a criminal, was going to be remembered as the greatest leader their kind had ever seen.
After those thoughts had passed, Herobrine left the new Ender Dragon to rest and went back to the original chamber. The handful of skeletons he'd managed to bring back from the Nether were already preparing to open a different portal. They had taken Steve back to his cell to rot before the real fun began.
Steve was the original threat to the plan, the fly in the ointment. He was too close to Michael, too likely to jar old memories scattered through the boy's broken consciousness.
If Michael somehow regained control of his body…it would be over for Herobrine and his plans.
He shook his head and went down to the dungeon. Better to get this done quickly than risk anything happening.