Author's Notes
Ehh... not sure what to put here.
Thank you Zombiesguy115 for your review! The reason why I don't include much content in the chapters is because they are (usually) 2.5k words long. And I try to upload daily.
On with the story!
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Darkness's POV
"Good afternoon, your highness."
The king did not react in any way to my sudden appearance. Instead, he nodded and stood.
"Darkness. Why have you been slaughtering the Kings and Queen of the nether realm?"
My smile widened, glee coursing through my veins.
"I need your resources, my liege. The one most important resourse in the nether."
He crossed his arms, the red armore he wore clinking softly.
"And What would that be, Darkness?" I made a mental note of the weapons hanging at his sides. They looked like large knives, or small short swords.
"Soul sand, my dear friend. What I need is your soul sand."
"Why do you wish to obtain it?"
"To summon an army and wipe the overworld clans off the map."
He spread his hands, and fireballs appeared in his open palms.
"I'm afraid I cannot allow that, darkness."
I smiled and drew my own sword.
"Try and stop me."
He made motions with his hands, and the fireballs spewed beams of flame from their centers. The royal guard of both the King and the late Ghast Queen attacked as well.
I felt the beams of flame slice my vessel in half, but my ghost shape helped keep it standing. To them, it would look as if my halves were still connected by an invisible force.
I dashed from left to right, feeling my vessel be cut, shot at, and burned. The royal guards kept dropping like flies. The king ceased his beams and began summoning fireballs that exploded upon impact, lighting my vessel on fire.
I cut the last guard down and turned to the king. He stared at me with hatred. Then, he breathed in and a necklace he wore began to glow orange. Suddenly, a flaming tornado erupted from his mouth, sealing me from the outside world and keeping me trapped within it's inferno.
The heat was so extreme that it melted the skin and bones from my vessel's body. An idea made me smile. Once I no longer felt the tug that kept me bound to this earth, my shadow figure sailed forwards. I saw the surprise in the kings eyes, and smiled.
"Peekaboo"
Once the words were out of my ghostly mouth, I breathed in and absorbed the king's soul. His eyes turned from red to glazed and dead grey. The flames stopped, and the king tumbled to the ground, his body turning to ashes before my eyes. I felt his energy and determination run though me. I relished the feeling.
After a few minutes, I felt my vessel reattach itself fully, and turned around. There was a lone servant in the hall, staring at me through terrified eyes. I smiled and motioned for him to come closer.
"I am your new king. Do you understand that?"
He shakily nodded.
"Good. What's your name, servant?"
"T-theridas, m-my lord." I nodded.
"Very well, Theridas. Bring me Queen Anastasia."
The servant gulped and nodded, the ran down the hall. I stopped him before he could turn the corner.
"Take some guards with you."
On each side of the throne were small pools of soul sand. With my black flames, I forged two zombie Pigmen guards geared with iron spears and red armor.
The guards walked over to Tharidas, and he nodded again. I waved my hand, and off he went, followed by my two new monsters. Now all I had to do was wait.
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Thomas' POV
I woke up with a strange tingly feeling. It ran from the top of my head all the way down to the soles of my feet. As if my entire body had gone numb at some point. I sat up, a little dazed and disoriented. I looked out the nearest window and saw Eba with Sarah sitting around a stripped chunk of log. I smiled. They finally got around to carving.
Sitting up, I realized that I was no longer feeling sick. How much time had gone by? Wandering the house, I noticed something odd. The beds were gone. Simon must've moved them into the rooms at last. I walked out the door to find everyone lounging around in the grass.
I trudged over to Eba and Sarah. They were almost done with a carving, it seems, having made a cone on top of a sphere on top of a box. They were smoothing it down with Eba's chisel. I cleared my throat.
"Hey guys."
Sarah looked up at me in shock while Eba jumped out of her skin.
"Thomas! Your awake! What are you doing out here?"
She stood up and hugged me tight as she spoke, her tough side momentarily subdued. I laughed and hugged her back.
"I feel much better. How long was I out for?"
"A few hours. Maybe half a day."
I sighed. At least it wasn't as long as I thought it might be. There was a nagging in the back of my head, something that I couldn't make sense of. By now everybody had noticed my sudden appearance, and they all walked over. I was instantly drowned in a sea of hugs and 'thank the lords you're fine'.
After the sudden love fest, I asked what was new.
"Well", Simon said. "Not much. Eba and I moved the beds into each room. We finished the large window for the penthouse too."
I nodded. The nagging was back, more insisting this time. Then something clicked, and memories flooded my head.
"We need to help her."
Everyone stared at me like I had grown a second head. Simon spoke up.
"Help who?"
"Kaitlin."
Sarah's eyes narrowed a little, suspicion rising in their gorgeous silver depths.
"Who's Kaitlin?"
"The Blaze princess. We need to get her out of the nether."
Sarah blinked and Lila snickered. Simon gave me a sympathetic smile while Iza looked me over.
"Hm... You seem to be hallucinating Thomas, but you don't have any of the symptoms from before. Have you eaten anything suspicious recently?" I shook my head.
"No, I literally just woke up." She nodded and took a step back.
"Well... are you sure you're alright? Sure it wasn't a dream?" Sarah narrowed her eyes again and spoke.
"Yeah, Thomas. Are you sure you didn't dream of the Blaze princess?" There was poison and steel in her words, as well as a dreadful mocking quality.
"We don't have time for this, guys! We need to build up a nether portal, quick." Simon looked at the skies, hands fiddling with some dynamite.
"We should hear him out. Even if it was a dream, I'd love to get my hands on some glowstone for an experiment." Everybody turned to face him, and he shrugged.
"Who's gonna go mining for obsidian?"
Sarah shook her head. "There's no point. We don't have any diamonds for digging it up." Simon smiled at that.
"Who needs diamonds when you have an endergirl?"
Everyone looked over at Eba, who blushed furiously and looked away. I turned back to Simon.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, seeing as endermen are strong enough to move large stone bricks around, I thought that maybe Eba would be able to gather some obsidian for us. With help, obviously."
Eba had her hoodie on, and looked at us with her large magenta eyes from the edge of the black hood.
"I-I'd... I'd be glad to help. I mean, I'll try..." I nodded.
"Thanks, Eba."
"Y-your welcome..."
Sarah stood a few steps away now, looking at the forest. I walked over to her and put my hand on her shoulder. She flinched and took a step back.
"What do you want, Thomas?"
"I want you to come with me. Will you?"
She stared at me for a moment. It felt like ages since I had last seen her poker face, and it hurt to see it in place. After her brief hesitation, she sighed.
"Fine. I'll go."
I smiled at her, and took a step forwards. She took one back, crossing her arms and shaking her head. My smile vanished and I turned to walk into the storage shed. If she wanted to be like that, then fine.
I came back out with two iron pickaxes and a sack full of food. Eba was carrying all the torches. Sarah had her helmet on and took one of the pickaxes from me. Our fingers brushed for a second, but she didn't react. Simon walked over with a metal helmet in his hands.
"Here. I made one with the little torch welded to it. Now that it has a mirror, it's light will be more focused and bright. Should last longer too."
I nodded and took it from him.
"Thanks Simon."
"Your welcome."
He turned around and walked back into the house, muttering to himself. Then he abruptly turned back around.
"I almost forgot! Here." He handed me a large, dark globe. I looked at him.
"An ender pearl? When did you get this?" He smiled and put his hands in his hoodie pockets.
"I've had it for quite a while. Thought it might help." With that, he spun and walked towards the house. I smiled and shook my head, turning back to Sarah and Eba.
"Right. Come on, guys."
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Sarah's POV
We wandered into the woods towards the cave entrance. It was a couple hours past noon. Once inside, we lit the torches as well as my helmet-lamp and we continued the journey. After a few hours and some digging, we found an abandoned mine.
One of the tunnels led us to a massive underground ravine. The bridge from one side to the other looked unsteady, and there was a large pool of lava beneath us.
"Be careful, guys." Eba nodded and I sighed in exasperation.
"We know, Thomas. We didn't need such an obvious suggestion."
He shrugged and we continued walking. Once on the other side, I started hearing the constant trickle of running water. We stopped and listened.
"Do you hear that? There's water nearby." I nodded. Eba kept wringing her hands in worry.
We walked on, the sound of running water getting increasingly louder. We had burned through three of our torches, and were left with only two plus Thomas's helmet-lamp. We arrived at a cave with a pool of running water.
It had a small waterfall feeding it on one side of the cave and through a crack in the wall at the other. We were about to turn back when I noticed something.
"Wait, guys. Look." The light from the lamp cast a bright circle in the water, revealing that what we thought was a deep lake was nothing but a shallow pool with obsidian at the bottom.
"There must've been magma there at some point."
"Yeah. Let's dig it up and get out of here."
Thomas nodded. He took off my boots and gingerly stepped in. The obsidian looked smooth and rocky, but it didn't seem to hurt much. It probably would if we fell, though.
Eba took off her boots and hoodie, then rolled up her jeans. She waded in the water, carefully taking each step. Bending down a little, Tom started swinging his pickaxe at a relatively flat stretch of the material.
"Huh. Not a scratch. Why don't you try, Eba?"
She nodded and took a few tentative steps forward. She bent down and inspected the surface with her hand. Then, she took out her chisel and started tapping the obsidian. After a while, she scratched it until there was a square in the center of the pool.
"How did you do that? My pickaxe did nothing to the obsidian!"
She looked at the tip of her chisel. It looked like any other chisel, iron smelted into a cylinder shape with a flat edge on one side.
"I don't know. Maybe the tip is diamond?"
"Maybe. How did you know what to do?"
She blushed a little.
"M-my school taught us how to take even bricks out of stone surfaces. We need to pick at it with the chisel, setting a dotted outline for the specific size of the brick. T-then we need to connect the dots so it becomes a solid square."
Thomas nodded and looked back at the obsidian pool. I was standing on the stone ground nearby, watching the two of them while holding out a torch.
"Now what?"
Eba went back to her work, carving the obsidian more and more. After a while, she stood back up.
"O-okay. Now try. With the pick."
Thomas nodded again and swung the pick into the center of the square. I heard a crack as the block of obsidian separated itself from the rest. It shocked me how easy it came off.
"Wow. How do we get it out?"
She carefully picked up the cube of obsidian with her long fingers, and lifted it out slowly.
"That was impressive, Eba. How did you make it come out as a perfect cube?"
My words made the endergirl blush again as she placed the block onto the stone floor.
"W-well, I carved as far as I wanted it to go. I can't reach through to the floor, but it only needed to be about a third of the way down. The obsidian isn't very deep, and it loosened from the stone at the bottom from Thomas's pickaxing."
It took a couple of hours, but we had managed to get ten even bricks of the material. We started walking back out the cave.
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Thomas's POV
The whole time, Sarah and I spoke very little. I decided to break the silence, and walked up to her.
"How are you doing?"
"I'm fine."
I sighed and kept prodding at her.
"Why are you acting so distant?"
"Why do you care?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
She stopped and turned around.
"Leave me alone, Thomas."
"What did I do?"
"Nothing."
"Then why are you mad at me?"
"I don't know." There was a warning in her voice, clearly telling me to back off. I did no such thing. Taking a step towards her, I spoke softly.
"Why?"
She stared into my eyes. I took her hand and she didn't pull away.
"I don't know, Tom. It just... made me feel angry that the first thing you worried about was some... some imaginary princess girl. It made me feel terrible." I smiled lightly at her.
"You've never been the jealous kind. Even when Valory lost it way back when, you didn't act like this. Why now?" She shook her head.
"I don't know, I told you. It was just... sudden. I had never felt that way." I let go of Sarah's hand and hugged her.
"You shouldn't. Know that there will never be someone I love the way I love you. Never in a million years, or a million lifetimes." She pulled away a little and looked into my eyes, searching for proof of the fact. I used one of my hands to hold her head in place, cupping her cheeks, and inched closer.
"Um... m-maybe do this somewhere else, guys?"
Sarah and I jumped apart in surprise, turning to look at a very flustered Eba. I smiled sheepishly, and Sarah giggled, finally back to her usual self.
"Right. Let's go."
We continued out the cave until we reached the old bridge from one side of the ravine to the other. I was holding Sarah's hand with one of mine while the other carried out last unlit torch and both pickaxes. Eba was lugging the obsidian bricks in a sack. We stepped onto the bridge, and it groaned.
"Uh... that's probably not good."
Before anyone could reply, the ground that the bridge was built on cracked, and began to crumble.
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Eba's POV
"What's going on?" I was panicking now.
We heard a terrifying laugh resonating from the walls of the ravine. Then I spotted something moving at the top. Many somethings. There were creepers lining the walls near the ravine's ceiling, exploding one by one. Thomas pushed me towards the exit.
"We need to go, now!"
Thomas and I had made it to the other side when we heard a shriek. Turning around, i noticed Sarah had tripped and fell. Thomas had been leading her by the hand, but he couldn't keep her standing, and their hands came apart.
Then, a large chunk of stone fell on top of the bridge. Sarah screamed as she plummeted down towards the sea of lava. I was frozen with fear. Thomas ran up to the edge of the stone outcrop we were on...
And jumped.
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Tired Author's Notes
Oh no! Sarah's in danger! Will I save her and Thomas? Or will I be cruel and kill them both? Only time will tell! Honestly, I'm not exceptionally proud of this one.
Oy vey, writing this was exhausting for some reason. I hope you guys enjoyed it!
Anywho, thank you for your time and support, have a great day!
~ LeMafiaKreb