Chapter Two: Introductions


Alex whistled as she whittled away at a piece of wood.

Now, that was a perfectly normal, non-dangerous thing to do (unless you were seriously stupid), as anyone would agree .

Unless you were, of course, doing it outdoors, in the middle of the night, in a particularly thick patch of forest that was near a cave system. Also a place where no one would hear you scream.

Alex, being Alex, was doing exactly that.

Alex wasn't worried. And she definitely wasn't stupid. She could handle monsters just fine. Plus she had a little bit of fire magic and anyone worth their blocks know that fire and mobs did't mix well, at least in the mob's case.

She stopped whistling for a moment to examine her work in the light of her campfire. It was an intricately carved staff, made with obvious skill.

Apparently she found it unsatisfactory, as she went back to her carving and whistling moments later.

A zombie crept up behind her, hoping to take Alex by surprise.

One step. Two steps. Three steps—

Just as the zombie was about to reach her, the back end of Alex's staff swung around and hit the zombie with enough force to knock its head clean off its shoulders.

Alex sighed in annoyance. The prospect of having to clean zombie muck off her staff did not appeal to her in the slightest.

She resumed her whistling as she scrubbed zombie blood off the stick with a rag.

The mobs gave her a wide berth that night.


I had a terrible sinking feeling about this place. Why? Well, to start with, everyone in sight was smiling. In my experience, nobody out in the streets after 3am in the morning had much of a reason to look happy unless alcohol had been involved.

Suspicious.

I drifted closer to the guard who was escorting me, eliciting a flinch.

"Something happen today?"

"What, sir?"

"A lot of people look very happy, you see."

"Yessir."

""A suspicious amount of people, in fact, because the current time is-" I pulled a clock out of my Inventory. "-seven past three in the morning. The thing is, my friend, I have heard of crowded streets at seven past three in the morning, and I have seen crowded streets at seven past three in the morning, but on the first instance it was a lynch mob and on the second it was because there was a civil war happening, and on both occasions a lot of people got very unhappy, very fast. Until this day I had never seen a crowded street on seven past three in the morning so full of smiling people. Care to explain?"

"It's a very happy city, sir. Full of happy people, sir." The man stared straight on ahead like his life depended on it.

"Hmm."

A grinning butcher scurried by with a large joint of mystery meat. The grin looked like it was the first one that had happened to his face since he was born, and it was making him very uncomfortable indeed. It was like seeing a horse try to do taxes.

Deeply suspicious.

It wasn't long before we reached the palace. For a small city like Sylder, it was hopelessly extravagant. The whole thing was made out of quartz. Here and there were blocks of glowstone, exquisitely carved with pictures obviously designed to inflate the royal pride. It was grand by palace standards, I supposed, but after I'd seen the Aether everything else was a mud shack. It was well lit, and that was all I could find to say about it.

Upon entrance to the throne room, I knew with a terrible certainty that during my entire stay here, I was going to wish I was somewhere else.

The king sat royally upon his royal golden throne, garbed with royal finery. There was nothing to give away the fact that he had been gotten out of bed in a hurry and deposited - possibly quite against his will- in the throne room except for the fluffy white bedroom slippers protruding guiltily from the bottom of his long robe, which - yup, guessed it - was patterned with gold. His smile looked like somebody had stuck it on with discount glue and was oozing a little at the edges.

"His-Majesty-King-Arndel-The-Second-And-His-Esteemed-Son-Prince-Tevon-Sir," the guard intoned, and promptly disappeared without a trace.

The less said about the prince, the better. He was currently doing a spot of lurking some ways behind throne, exuding an aura of mild ill-will that wasn't really directed at anyone in particular. His face bore the suggestion that it knew many bright and happy things, and hated those things with a vengeance. He looked like somebody had forcibly rolled him off the wrong side of the bed and then slapped him in the face with a fish.

"Ah... Forgive the hasty welcome, but we were not informed of the visit until the last minute, sir...?" The king trailed off, looking at me.

"Steve," I said, trying to mirror his smile for the sake of formalities and feeling like somebody was trying to forcibly feed me a sock.

"Steve who?"

It was the prince. I met his eyes, and felt hundreds of years of good breeding and etiquette leering down on me in disdain.

All of a sudden, I wanted to make him really, really angry. I realised that the polite facade everyone was keeping up was fragile and required cooperation, and I also realised that I was not feeling particularly cooperative.

On hindsight, it was an unbelievably stupid thing to do. On hindsight, I was an unbelievably stupid person, which was why I had such a difficult time making friends. On hindsight, everything else that followed after could have been avoided if I was not an unbelievably stupid person, but alas.

"No last name, Your Highness," I said cheerfully. "I'm a bastard, me."

I could feel the air crystallizing around his stare.

"Just a lowly human being, I'm afraid," I said, thoroughly enjoying myself. "Dirt down to the bones, oh yes. Bit different from your usual social circle, eh?"

The king coughed. Loudly.

"This is not the best time for discussions of any sort, I agree." His smile was so strained you could see the light through it. "It would be best for all of us to have a little rest, I think. We can continue in the morning, when our minds are clearer and less prone to, ah, inconsistencies."

He rose. The prince followed after him silently. I didn't see his face, but then again, I didn't think I needed to.

A servant appeared by my side and beckoned for me to follow him to what I assumed would be the bedroom.


The Ender Dragon roared and lunged at the intruder standing on her obsidian spire. The white-eyed demon/god spun away gracefully, well out of slashing range. Then He performed a jump so far that no mortal would have dreamed of doing, and landed softly on the next spire.

Zariah growled in irritation. This had been going on for some time now and all She wanted do was rip somebody's throat out. Maybe torch a small building while She was at it.

She spewed a narrow jet of indigo flames, hot enough to melt bone. This time it was met by a shield of flickering white light. The intruder leapt again to a higher spire and then kicked off it to fly back over Her head. Zariah snapped at him, missing by inches, and spat out another torrent of purple fire.

There was a white flash, followed by the soft hiss of displaced air. The intruder had disappeared.

Zariah blinked.

Vwoop. She disappeared in Her own flash of purple light.

She rematerialized some distance away, diving with her claws outstretched. The intruder flipped mid-air, and Her claws sliced at empty space.

She lacerated the End Stone with fire and frustration.

The intruder simply stared at Her impassively with cool silver eyes.

"Are you done?"

The Dragon let out a guttural growl.

A moment passed.

Finally, in a voice of resignation, She said:"Yes."

Herobrine inclined his head. He vanished in a starburst of white, and reappeared by Her side.

They spent an eternity in silence.

"I trust your Dimension is doing well?"

The Ender Dragon gave the draconic version of a shrug.

"Crafters come, crafters die. Sometimes the occasional human or Testificate." She paused. "And the Endermen are scared of me". Which struck Her as slightly odd. They hadn't been before. Before, well, they'd just accepted the fact that neither was going to be rid of the other anytime soon and got on with existing, albeit a little warily, like bad neighbors with a really good fence. But recently they'd been behaving odd. They'd been avoiding Her favourite pillar more than usual, and when She'd inquired about it, they'd run away. Teleported away. Which was rude, and that hadn't sat well with Her. She looked forward to putting this little problem behind Her.

"Good. Keep it that way. Less chance of them trying to kill you." Herobrine stood, and She knew He was preparing to leave.

"Why go back? You don't rule the mobs anymore".

She tried to gauge his reaction. Which turned out to be difficult, as there wasn't one. Contrary to popular belief, it was beyond difficult to provoke him when he didn't want to be provoked, which was always. It was once said that Herobrine was capable of anger, and other emotions. The Dragon firmly believed that whoever said that was lying their little dishonest hearts out.

"I have other things to attend to".

Zariah sighed. "Well, see you soon, then".

"Perhaps."


For those who are wondering, yes, I did name the Ender Dragon 'Zariah', and yes, I kind of regret it.

Warning: This chapter has been rewritten. The next chapter hasn't. For those who found this one bad, I assure you the next will be truly unbearable.

-Nano