CHRONICLE
BEING THE SECOND BOOK OF THE SERIES OF
A MINECRAFT TALE
PREQUEL TO
HUNTRESS'S TALE
BOOK ONE:
LYDIA
Prologue:
Present Day
The priest stumbled across the ruins, pulling his robe a little tighter around himself as the wind picked up. There was no sign of anything living anywhere- anywhere at all. He had been traveling for hours now, picking through rubble and wreckage for something- anything- that would bring him to someone. It didn't matter who. All he needed was a survivor.
His foot slipped on a stone. The priest fell with a cry, tumbling down a slope he didn't see. He righted himself, flipping onto his back, but kept on sliding down and down the gravel. His feet punched through a burned-away wooden door, and he hit something bodily that stopped his fall. His backpack barely cuishined the blow and his breath fled his lungs on impact.
Coughing and gagging on the dust, the priest carefully rolled onto his hands and feet and painfully stood. It was too dark to see, wherever he landed. The priest used what little light that streamed through the broken door to fish a torch and a flint-and-steel from the recesses of his robe. With a few snaps on the flint, the torch was cheerfully burning and throwing a warm, yellow light about him. Stowing his tool, the priest hefted the torch and looked around, gaining his bearings.
He stood inside a house that was largely intact, but completely buried from the outside. He would have missed it if he hadn't fallen. The priest groaned as he pulled himself fully upright. He feared that he'd thrown something in his back when he fell, and with a slow bend backwards, something cracked and he was able to stand straight again.
The room around him appeared to be made of oak, which would explain why it had been able to withstand the weight of the stone and scree above. There was a bookshelf off on one wall next to a window with a writing desk below it, and a broken table and scattered chairs about the center of the room. A door on the far wall no doubt led to the rest of the house.
A patch of color under the table rent in two caught the priest's eye. He carefully stooped down and lifted the half of the table up, and found a green leather-bound book, open face-down with the pages bent but intact. Pushing the broken table aside, he carefully lifted the book from the ground, blowing dust off of its surface.
Moving to the writing desk, still intact, the priest pulled the old, burnt-out torch from the bracket and replaced it with his own. He pulled the stool out from under the desk and tested it with his weight- it held sturdy. Slowly seating himself, he placed the book on the desk and peeled back the cover, scanning across the first page. He had a hunch about this.
His eyes caught a few words and stopped there. Quickly he fumbled for ink and quill in his pack, and drew out a few rumpled pages. He scanned the first few pages of the book again, and began to scribble down notes.
It was a journal of sorts, or perhaps a diary. The first few pages were in a large, exaggerated script of a child that knew how to write and was not yet confident. Later, the handwriting became smaller and less neat, obviously written much faster. The priest read and wrote late into the night, until his hands began to cramp and he had to stop for a while.
The priest awoke with a start. He had not realized he had dozed off and sat up from the desk, groaning and stiff. He now had several dozen pages of notes written, and had started to write carefully in his great codex journal. He gathered up his tools and notes, a deep sense of excitement rising up in him despite himself. This truly was a glorious find, after all.
Taking up his pack, the priest took the green-bound book and tucked it away in his robes, taking his torch out of the bracket. It had burned almost to nothing while he slept- he wondered how long it had been.
Picking his way back up the slope, the priest found himself blinking in the early dawn sun, just peeking over the horizon. He smiled to himself, realizing how lucky it was that none of the denizens of the night had found him. At last, he reached his donkey, hee-hawing ill-naturadely as it pulled at its lead. The priest chuckled at the impatient animal and untied the lead, heaving himself up onto the saddle and settling himself in. With more than a few firm slaps of the reigns, the donkey started plodding onwards to the east, to a place the priest had read of in the green diary.
What a glorious find, indeed. He thought of the codex in his pack. The Chronicle, I'll call it, he thought. A full history of the world from the beginning, starting with the creation.
And continuing with the wonderful account in the diary, from a woman named Lydia. A woman who had met the creators herself as a child.
A fabulous story, indeed.
The priest couldn't wait to write all of this down. He urged his donkey on to a faster pace, on towards the rising sun.
Years before
Lydia flew into the door of her townhouse and slammed the door behind her, leaning her weight on it as she listened for the sounds of pursuit. The furious screams and grating cries of the Watchers were nearby, but she hoped she would have time. Chest heaving, she turned and backed away from the door, snatching her diary off of the desk by the window.
Fumbling for ink and quill, Lydia opened the book to the last blank page and began to write furiously. It had been a long time since she had written last in her diary, and she wanted it all written down. Someone would find it someday, she hoped desperately. Someone would know her story.
And the truth.
Her mind flew back to the smiling face in her childhood, one framed by long hair and dark, laughing eyes. The one her father had called a friend when no one else would, and built a shrine to on their homestead far to the south. The one, he said, that had created their kind. She thought of those empty, burning white eyes that had taken their place, the last things she had seen before her sister screamed for her to flee. She wrote of the fall of her sister's and brother-in-law's kingdom, and remembered with a stab of guilt her little nephew, Corren. She had fled before she could remember the danger the child was in.
Something hit the door, hard. Tears streaming, she looked over her shoulder and saw a Watcher's piercing lavender eyes through the glass windowpane on the door. She took the time to write one last line in her diary and slammed it shut, casting aside her quill. Turning abruptly, she curled her hand around the hilt of her slender iron blade and drew it slowly. She steadied herself for what was to come, sending one last prayer to Notch.
The Watcher's black claws gleamed through the gaps in the door frame. Lydia watched as those claws smashed through the window on the door, and grabbed a torch from the wall bracket, slamming the fire into those claws. The Watcher screeched and drew back. More claws appeared. Lydia battered them with the torch, but then one grasped her wrist. Lydia dropped the torch with a stifled scream. It rolled on the floor, smoke rising from the wood of the floor and the door. Wrenching free, Lydia backed away, settling into a battle stance.
She had nowhere to run this time.
A Watcher teleported into the room, and Lydia swung her sword.
Welcome, one and all to the official Prequel to Huntress's Tale. I'm making this official: Remember A Minecraft Tale? It's being rewritten. That title is about to become a series title. Book one: Huntress's Tale. Book Two: Chronicle, and so on. How do you like this new work? This is intended to explain a lot of things I glanced over in Huntress's Tale (Or A Minecraft Tale), including the origins of the Shadow, the Fall of Herobrine, WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE HUMANS, and a whole lot of other complicated things.
Remember to review! If there is anything you would like to know about my story, or if there is something you would like to let me know about or critique, leave it in a REVIEW, and I will respond, either in PM or in the story.
Oh, this is going to be fun to write.
Huntress out.