Chapter twenty-one: Shared destination
Jack closed his eyes, grunting, barely noticing the red lightning strike that hit a nearby building. The flesh on his lower arms was almost completely gone, exposing his bones underneath. He could still move them, despite the absence of muscle tissue. It was a weird experience. At least it didn't hurt.
Even so, he could feel the power ripping at his upper arms. Maybe he wasn't going to survive this. When his upper arms were dead, the corruption would spread to his chest. From there, he'd be doomed to die.
Despite Herobrine's earlier determination to keep him alive, Jack had already lost hope of survival.
He heard Herobrine sigh. "I am unsure as to how much power the crystal's destruction will require," he said, knowing what was going on in Jack's head. "You may be able to survive if we find it in time."
"We'll see," Jack whispered, but he doubted it. He'd already established that using Herobrine's powers accelerated his physical deterioration; if destroying the crystal would demand as much power as he suspected, the process would kill him regardless of how dead his body already was.
Not that it mattered. So long as the crystal was gone, his mission would be successful.
He focused on Raulyn. Using his nonphysical sight, he watched the Hunter go from door to door.
Should Áhýdan realize what the humans were doing, he would interfere to protect the crystal, even if doing so would disadvantage him further in his fight against Herobrine. And he would probably see it if the crystal was being carried around Ironhand, shining like a beacon to distant eyes.
Jack had to do something to counter that, but interfering directly would draw Áhýdan's attention as well; every time he extinguished a flame, he could feel the spirit's red eyes on him from beyond the dark clouds above. If Jack went to Raulyn too soon, Áhýdan would know what he had done and what he was planning; if too late, Áhýdan might kill Raulyn and hide the crystal somewhere else.
No—Jack couldn't intervene directly. He was going to have to send someone in his stead.
Andr. I need your help again.
Raulyn went from house to house, alerting the Hunters that were present there. When there were none, he himself took a look inside. A purple crystal. They were looking for a sharp, luminous purple crystal.
I am trusting a traitor.
His step was still a bit shaky. The effects of the red lightning strike from earlier had not yet fully worn off.
Taking action is as risky as remaining idle.
Ignoring the strange conflict that played in his head, he knocked on Malcolm's door and shouted for him to open. When the farmer obeyed, Raulyn shoved past him to meet William and Zane. "Both of you," Raulyn said. "We are looking for something specific. It might save us from this storm."
And I trust Jack to be telling the truth?
The two Hunters paused. "What do you mean, sir?" William asked. "We suspected the storm was not normal, but what can we possibly do to stop it?" He gestured to a nearby shadow. "Myra almost got hit by lightning; she is alive, but unconscious."
He is a sympathizer, yes, but I doubt he would want to see the Overworld destroyed.
Raulyn looked to the shadow. It was a bed, he realized. Myra's still figure was lying in it, eyes closed. There was a shallow cut in her cheek, likely caused by debris from the lightning's explosive effects.
He would benefit from Ironhand's destruction.
"Do not ask questions," Raulyn said. "Search this house, then the rest of the village. A crystal—sharp, purple, clear. Find it."
If he is commanding that storm, I doubt we can stop him from leveling the village, regardless of whether we have this crystal or not.
The two Hunters still looked confused, but they complied. Raulyn left the house—it was a strange feeling to step into a violent storm but not feel any rain—and jogged towards the next door.
Now I presume to understand what is happening here. I presume to understand whatever force is behind that storm. Jack said the storm was not his.
He knocked on the door. No one answered—so he kicked it open. He searched the house, then left again. Could this thing be anywhere in Ironhand? Was there no way to track it?
If it is not his, what have I to fear from him?
Red light flashed, followed by a loud crack behind him. He felt a mild wind from it as he turned around. One of the two Hunters from before had been hit—Zane was still standing, so the burned corpse on the ground had to be William's. Raulyn cursed. As it turned out, Jack could not protect everyone in the town.
Jack has his own interests to pursue; he may not be on anyone's side but his own. The same may be said about who- or whatever is responsible for the storm.
He flinched as the house he searched mere moments ago was hit with a lightning strike so powerful that it caused the building to collapse. He hoped it was merely coincidence. If whatever forces were at work were watching him, his situation would not improve.
Remaining inactive is no less risky than acting. My thoughts simply do not matter. And fighting Jack directly is not an option; if he has the power to resurrect Tvusn, he certainly has the power to kill me.
Focus. He needed to focus. This crystal was somehow connected to whatever forces were at work at the moment. If it existed before said forces began their activities here, it would already have been found by one of the citizens. Either Jack wanted him to look through every citizen's personal storage, or the crystal only appeared in Ironhand recently.
Perhaps that meant that one—or more—of those forces did not want him to find it, hence why it was hidden. He just needed to take the mindset of such a force into consideration. That was the question—how would a human be able to outthink a power that transcended human understanding?
He growled. There was no correct choice. He had no way to know how these things worked. He could only keep looking.
He ran through the streets, looking out for anything that seemed unusual.
He passed between two houses and reached the center of town. The well stood in the very middle, a distance away from the houses that surrounded it.
It took a moment before he saw the weak light coming from it.
He froze. Was that…?
He approached the well. The dark sky did nothing to illuminate the water, but he could see a faint purple glow at the very bottom. It almost looked like an invitation for him to jump in.
How did he find that? Luck? Supernatural direction?
It did not matter. He had a job to do.
He sighed. I really have gone insane, he thought as he took off his weapon belt and armor. He hopped onto the elevated side of the well.
He slid into the chilly water, waited a moment to prepare, then took a breath and dived.
The sound of the storm outside became muffled as his head descended below the water surface. He fixated his eyes onto the vague glow below him, the only source of light in the well. When he reached it, he grabbed the item, planted his feet onto the bottom and launched himself back up.
He saw the water surface above, the light from nearby streetlights illuminating his goal. He just needed to get there. He just needed—
Something was wrong.
He knew it in the back of his mind, but could not properly think about it. His instincts simply told him to rise. Reach the surface. Get his lost air back. But a part of him knew that something was not right.
Only when he was almost at the surface did he realize what it was.
Ice.
The water surface had frozen.
He raised his arms and hit the transparent wall. It could not be a thick layer; he could clearly see through it. Yet when he punched it, it only cracked slightly.
And the damage began to regenerate itself.
Desperately he grabbed a protruding piece of rock that stuck out of the side of the well, giving him a more stable position. Using his hand that held the crystal, he punched the ice again, and again, and again…
He was running out of air. He was panicking. The ice was cracking, but not nearly fast enough, and each new crack he made started to repair itself immediately after. He had to let go of the crystal if he wanted to have a chance to survive. He had to let go of it. He had to…
But he did not. He clutched the crystal as if it was his life.
The same life he felt slipping away.
He weakly tapped the crystal against the ceiling of ice.
On the other side of the ceiling, a shadow appeared. He saw a pair of glowing eyes looking down at him.
Something punched straight through the ice and grasped Raulyn's wrist. He was roughly lifted out of the well and thrown to the ground, winding him.
He barely heard the screams of agony as he struggled to regain his breath. The hard ground beneath him was a contrast to the omnipresent water, and the storm's ever-present winds chilled him to the bone. He shivered.
The crystal…!
He looked around. It had fallen near him. It was a strange item; the light it radiated seemed to originate from something inside it. Its edges were sharp, its ends looked pointy enough to pierce skin.
Raulyn blinked, realizing that the screams from before had shrunk into light whimpers. He looked.
Next to the well was a crouched humanoid figure in black, clutching its hand.
The mob. The teleporter from before.
With effort, Raulyn rose. The mob noticed him and did the same, still holding its hand with a grimace. The creature looked as frail as Raulyn felt.
"You…" Raulyn whispered.
The mob gritted its teeth. "Jack…" it spoke with effort. "Told me to help you. Save you from…what his enemy might try to do to you. I guess he didn't know there'd be water involved…" It let out a grunt.
"You helped me?" With his Hunter instincts rising, Raulyn inconspicuously stepped sideways as if to circle the mob. In truth, he was walking towards the crystal. He did not want to see it in the mob's hands.
"I…I did it for Jack," it growled, still in pain. Water was its weakness, then…? And it had a loyalty to Jack. Or so it claimed.
And so, the mobs spare my life again. Are they trying to humiliate me? He doubted that was the case, but it did not matter. Their apparent mercy—if it really was that—was one reason why he was alive, and he was thankful for it.
The mob teleported forward with a purple flash of light.
Raulyn dived to the ground.
They both reached the crystal at the same time.
Then he lost consciousness.
The Hunter went limp as Andr teleported him and the crystal to where she knew Jack was. She didn't even mean to bring Raulyn along; it was more or less a reflex she'd gotten from teleporting mob hunters around in order to knock them out. It wasn't any less effective against Raulyn as it was anyone else, it seemed.
Jack stood nearby, still engulfed in the ethereal white glow. It was still odd, seeing Jack like this. He was confident as ever, but something about him was different. He looked a lot more…powerful. And there was something serene about him.
The human hesitated, then stepped forward and reached out to take the crystal.
Andr gasped when she saw his arms. They had lost their flesh, leaving the bones exposed.
Jack took the crystal. He looked her in the eye. "Relax," he said. "I'm not dead. Not yet, at least."
"Your…your…"
"I know," he said, looking at his arms. "My body's going to give out. It already has, actually…" He looked at the crystal. "And I don't think anything can stop it now."
Andr looked at him, shocked. It took her a moment to process what he just said.
No. No, that wasn't fair. After everything that had happened to him, after everything he'd done to help the mobs, and after looking so desperately for a way to return to Earth, he was just going to die?
She opened her mouth to protest.
"It's okay, Andr," Jack said. "This is a small price to pay for what needs to be done. It's just a setback."
"A setback…?" she whispered.
She stopped for a moment.
A setback…
She clenched her jaw.
Then she grabbed Jack by the throat, hoisted him up in the air and slammed him against a nearby house. As expected, he didn't show any signs of pain or discomfort. Only shock. Surprise.
She gave him a glare. "I don't know what Herobrine is," she whispered. "And I don't care."
"Andr, what are you—"
"Shut up! I want to talk to you. YOU! Not them!"
She dropped him. He fell to the ground and landed on his side.
"Do you have any idea what you did to me?!" Andr screamed as she towered over him. "You left us…! Some of us thought you'd betrayed us, or that you're a spy! We had fights in our group about whether we should look for you! And now that we've finally come, you're just going to let them kill you! You left us in uncertainty for all that time, and now you're just shrugging it all off! You're just standing there, calmly telling me you're going to die, expecting me to accept that—but I'm not going to! Not after all of this!"
Jack fell silent, looking up at her.
She squatted down and roughly grabbed his shoulder. "Get. Away. From. Him!"
Finally the white glow around Jack weakened. Andr had seen that before, when she spoke to him earlier. At that time though, it'd only weakened a little bit. Now it was almost completely gone.
And as it dissipated—save for a few swirls of luminescent smoke—something in Jack's eyes changed. His confident, composed yet distant expression made place for tiredness. A kind of tiredness Andr was familiar with—she'd seen it in the eyes of other mobs.
Even now, Jack wasn't the same from what she remembered, but at least it was really him. He was human, again.
She sighed, feeling her emotions settle a bit. She let go of his shoulder.
He slowly sat up with his back against the wall.
"During the other Trials," Jack softly said, his serene voice having turned into a gravelly, tired version of itself. "No—even before the other Trials, I just wanted it all to end. No matter how."
Andr didn't answer immediately. "Why didn't you come back?" she finally asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
"I… I want to say it was them who kept me there. They didn't let me walk away." He looked down. "But when I learned what was at stake, I think a part of me was glad for that. I hate them both, but I was glad for some of the things they did."
Andr remained silent. She didn't understand everything Jack was saying, but she understood enough.
Jack grabbed the crystal from the ground next to him. He'd dropped it when Andr attacked. "And now," Jack whispered, a sliver of determination seeping into his voice, "I know I can't just walk away. No matter what I do now, I'm dead. Better to take Áhýdan down with me."
"There's got to be something we can do for you."
He hesitated, looking at the crystal. "No. The spirits might be able to do something, but even then, I don't know if I'll make it." He looked at her.
Andr hesitated. Then she placed a hand on his shoulder—gently, this time. The human was trembling. He was scared. More scared than she'd ever seen him.
She couldn't stop him from doing this. Every part of her screamed that she should, but she knew she couldn't. She knew she shouldn't. Whatever that crystal was, it had to be dealt with.
She let out a shaky breath, feeling her emotions return again. There was no right choice here.
Jack swallowed. "I'm sorry, Andr…"
She pulled him into a hug.
He weakly hugged back with one arm.
Jack wished he could stay in the hug forever. He didn't want to do this. With the spirits having backed off from him at Andr's demand, he was himself again. The guy who defied the Hunters. The human who accompanied the mobs to the Realm, only to leave them again. The Earthling who passed four of Áhýdan's Trials with no motivation other than the instinctual need that Herobrine had forced upon him.
Gone was the sense of power that the merging process had granted him. Yet even now, he knew he couldn't stop himself from destroying the crystal. This time, it was his own will that set him to do that. This time, Herobrine couldn't trick him, force him, or fool him.
Herobrine couldn't do it. If he averted his attention from his fight against Áhýdan for even a second, Áhýdan would take advantage of that and try to take the crystal as well. If that happened, getting it back would be almost impossible.
Slowly, he let Andr go and grasped the crystal with both hands. Andr tensed a little, but didn't let him go. Even after everything that happened, she wanted to comfort him. He didn't deserve her—not as a friend, not as a lover.
Then he focused Herobrine's power on the crystal.
He immediately realized just how powerful the item was. A weak, broken chuckle escaped his lips; he never stood a chance—this was something he simply couldn't survive, no matter how much he prepared himself. Oddly, that gave him a sort of peace.
White light grew in his hands and drowned out the crystal's faint purple glow. The manifestation of power became stronger and stronger. Jack's body failed under it—the corrupting energy reached his chest, abdomen, legs—and he felt it losing its life. It would soon be over.
Red and white lightning furiously struck the ground nearby, but it was too late—Áhýdan couldn't save himself now. Even if Herobrine would let him hit Jack, the merged human would survive for long enough to finish the job.
The crystal crumbled in his hands. Finally it shattered, bringing forth a tremor that shook the earth. Thanks to his lingering connection to Herobrine and Hera, Jack sensed Áhýdan's remaining power dissipate.
The storm stopped. The merged spirits parted. Their power over Raulyn was severed.
Jack died.
"I told you, Tristan…" Karles said. "The Rule is in our favor, here."
Tristan glanced at him, taking his eyes off Ironhand in the process. The town's atmosphere had gained a major contrast to the Aether's serene calmness.
"You were correct as well," Karles admitted. "We are healers, rather than protectors…but now we can do something. Herobrine's plan worked better than even he expected."
Tristan nodded, turning back to Ironhand.