CHRONICLE

BOOK ONE: LYDIA

PART TWO: THE FALL

Chapter Seventeen: And Winter Came

Year 266 F.E. (First Era)

The Feast of Laskig, first day of winter

Notch could feel the presence near, but every time he sent his power after it, it slipped away like oil. He felt his senses warp and bend as he passed through the dimensional barrier, and as he went, he could hear the thing laughing softly at him.

Then... nothing.

He found himself standing on a bare plane of gently glowing stone with the Void looming menacingly above in bleak imitation of a sky. The End. Nothing moved around him, nothing breathed.

The presence was gone.

Clenching his jaw, Notch went back the way he came, trying to trace where the thing had gone. It had been so evil, so horribly, cloyingly evil. Surely its passage would have been tainted with it.

Again, nothing.

He had lost it completely.

Anger building, Notch went back to the Aether and to his seat of power. From there, he would look out across the whole of creation for it. It could lead him to the evil, the very evil they had been trying to track down for years now.

He could end the war at last, and deal with Herobrine later.

But then his eyes passed over something he was not expecting. He stopped, and went over the area again. Yes- it was a small place in the Overworld. The capital of the human world, Luminara, inside Kingshall. Something was very wrong.

And Herobrine-

Wait.

Where was Herobrine?

Notch immediately stopped his search for the presence- he wasn't finding anything anyway- and looked instead for the presence of the mind or power of Herobrine. His massive power stretched across every dimension, searching desperately for his brother. All of it was fruitless.

Then he caught a whiff of Void power.

Stopping, Notch came back into himself and shook his aching head to clear it. He sat back on his shining white throne in his Aether throne room, surrounded by soft white light. Something had just happened that he had not anticipated at all, but he couldn't quite tell what.

He got a sinking feeling, realizing that he may have been greatly deceived.

For a moment, Notch cleared his thoughts and took another perspective on the situation: Assume Herobrine is not the traitor. From there, he could tell that several of the other gods were working against him, trying to turn him against his brother, namely Laskig. Then to drive him to leave Herobrine weak and helpless.

But he hadn't left him helpless. So where was he?

No.

Notch realized in that instant how deep the trap was that he had just fallen for. After he had taken a portion of Herobrine's power away, he had been drawn away...

Void take it!

They had planned this from the beginning! If Herobrine had been even partially weakened, someone else, someone with the power to enter and see deeply into minds, would be able to use the power the Void had given them to take the rest. In addition, Notch had been drawn away and distracted. He'd been led on a wild goose chase just for this purpose- to keep him from saving Herobrine!

Notch leaped to his feet, his breath quickening.

The enemy now had Herobrine.

Oh, what a fool I am.

Laskig watched over Luminara as the sun rose the next day, on the solstice that marked the first day of winter.

It was his holiday, the shortest day of the year, followed by the longest night. It had seemed fitting for a god of dreams, whose power reigned by night.

It seemed doubly so now.

He laughed as the night guard turned in, reporting strange sounds in the forbidden districts over the night, but thanks to Herobrine's own wards, the city hadn't heard most of the fighting. If they had, they would be far more panicked.

He could feel the power thrumming through his veins- a massive amount of power from one of the Creators, no less. He could feel it shaping the way he looked at things- he could see the very structure of the cells in the petals of the roses, and knew just how many hairs were in a horse's mane when he looked. He could see every stitch and hammer blow and swipe of the polishing cloth on every suit of armor and piece of clothing. He could count the beats of a man's heart, and saw, to his wicked pleasure, that he could stop it with just a thought.

Oh, Herobrine. You never did let on that you were this strong...

Herobrine's power went beyond the ability to blow up mountains or summon great storms of destruction. He could create an incredibly complex organism in moments, and unmake it in even less time. It was all in his power.

So why burn a house down if one could merely cause the wood to turn to molten stone? It would yet be destroyed, and everyone inside would be in for a far more creative death.

Laskig laughed aloud to himself. Once he mastered this power, he was sure that even Notch could not stand against him! He closed his eyes and imagined himself for a moment at the end of his campaign, with the Thing behind him under his command and Notch before him, powerless and on his knees.

It was a lovely fantasy.

Opening his eyes again, Laskig lifted himself into the air with his new power and flew for his headquarters in the mountain.

The war wasn't over yet. He still had work to do.

The bans may be lifted, but Drayda's instincts told her that she wasn't out of trouble yet.

The old woman, now gray-haired and sullen, had been living half in hiding in Luminara for years now, unhappily brooding on what would become of everyone who had escaped the city. She lived with her brothers, the ones that still lived, at least, in a small town house near the walls. An area that had been rapidly deteriorating into slums.

The sun rose on the solstice, and Drayda knew something was wrong.

Rolling out of her bunk, she put on her cloak and went outside, blinking in the weak winter sun. She could smell snow coming in the air, and feel it in her bad knee. A real cold spell was coming. The street was quiet, with no one really willing to get up yet. The bans may be lifted, but people weren't quick to lift their hopes as well.

Miserable people preferred to sleep in. That suited Drayda just fine- she liked to be alone in the city, and for at least an hour more, until the sun was all the way up, she would have the city mostly to herself for her usual daily walk. Picking up her walking stick leaning against the outside of the doorway, Drayda set off towards the forbidden district, curious for no particular reason if it would still be guarded, bans or no bans.

Almost to her surprise, they were not.

Walking openly down the main street to the square, Drayda looked between the shrines and felt something wrong again. Kingshall loomed up before her, solemn and quiet.

Feeling daring, she went down the narrow avenue to the palace and tried the door.

Unlocked.

Cracked, too. Recently cracked. Fresh, unweathered wood was showing in the cracks beneath the surface polishing. She looked up, and saw that the thick, stained glass window was also cracked. It was bowed inward slightly, spiderwebbed in barely-noticeable hairline cracks. It looked like it would shatter to pieces with just a breath. There were other markings on the paving stones and the great heavy blocks of stone in the walls, and her old tracker skills came in to play. There was still stone dust on the ground from when the deep scratches were made.

Oh, blast it. Something happened last night here.

Pushing open the door, Drayda went into the palace.

"Halt!"

She stopped and turned, only halfway through the doorway. An out-of-breath man in iron armor was running up to her, hand on the hilt of his sword. Drayda rapped her walking stick on the ground in annoyance.

"You can't go in there," the man said in an authoritative tone. Drayda looked the man up and down. He was a somewhat handsome youth, if not for the flush on his cheeks from exertion. He was a tad pudgy in the cheeks, and likely the armor didn't fit overly well. He seemed confident enough, though, to his credit.

"And why not?" Drayda shot back, letting all of her annoyance go into the question. She enjoyed undisputed authority in her ranger days, as she ruefully remembered. Now she was being stopped by the lowliest city guard on a daily basis. This was no exception, and Drayda was far from intimidated. She leveled her glare at the youth, and his confidence seemed to wane a few degrees.

"This area is strictly limited to figures of city authority, ma'am," the youth answered, his voice just a touch unsteadier.

"But I am," Drayda replied, pulling her badge from her breast pocket. It was still unscored- technically, she still had authority as a ranger. Despite the fact that she hadn't been in the forest in years.

The youth didn't know what to say. He likely hadn't been briefed on how to address a situation like this- right now, he was trying to decide whether to consider the badge valid. Drayda rolled her eyes.

"Listen, sop," Drayda snapped. "If you hadn't noticed, the door is cracked, the window nearly broken, and there are signs of non-human forced entry in several places. Whoever is supposed to be inside this palace could be in immediate danger, so you have two choices. Delay me here, or come with me to investigate. Or," she added, "You could go get help, and then come to investigate."

The youth nodded once, backed away a few paces, and turned and ran.

At least he has a sense of urgency.

Drayda pushed her way through the doorway and entered the palace.

There had been a struggle.

The damage wasn't overly noticeable, at least, but the doors at the end of the front hall had been blown inward, and were just barely hanging on to their hinges. Chunks of stone and scatterings of dust lay here and there, clearly blown off of pillars or statues, or other parts of the building that were not fully part of the main structure.

There was an odd smell in the air. Drayda stopped to sniff the air, and her brow furrowed. She could smell the raw stone and paint, but there was also ozone on the air. That didn't bode well. And an odd, metallic tang. Hot metal? Lava? She couldn't decide.

She continued on, pushing through the broken doors and knocking one off completely onto the floor by mistake. It creaked and disintegrated as it swung aside into a heap of wood dust and splinters.

Now that couldn't be right.

The floor of the corridor was littered with broken glass. Drayda felt the air stirring, and looked up. Wind whistled through the broken-out skylights.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

The stone near Drayda's foot was blackened and warped, its surface resembling frozen bubbles. The image of rapidly boiling water came to mind, and she wondered what power could have boiled and warped the very stone, and then flash-hardened it again. The corridor was noticeably colder than the front hall, and it wasn't just for the missing windows. She knelt down and tapped a small bubble of the blackened stone, and it popped as it broke inward.

Brittle obsidian.

Something... something completely unhuman had been at work here.

With a distinct feeling of dread, Drayda looked to the doors of the throne room. The entire wall around the doors was bowed slightly inward, and the doors themselves looked to be straining against a vacuum force inside. Steeling herself, she opened the doors, and they swung stiffly on their hinges to reveal the true nightmare.

Running footsteps echoed with a hollow sound behind her as the young guard returned with a party. She glanced back at them- many were looking around with open mouths, wondering the same thing she did.

What happened here?

Then she looked to the throne room.

Every window had been broken inward, and broken glass was scattered in long, shining trails across the floor. The throne at the far end of the hall was smashed, pieces of it strewn down the steps to the dais. One of the balconies off to the right had collapsed, leaving the two halves of the balcony between supports resting on the ground in a V with a pile of smashed stone between.

The stone inside the throne room, like the corridor, had been changed. Some was fused to obsidian. Some was turned into a paler rock, a spongy, dusty stone that vaguely resembled the stuff of the End.

And then the blood.

The trail of red-brown began up on the balcony to the left, went down the stairs, and followed a long streak to the center of the room, where it ended in a pool that was still deep red and not quite dry. Drayda walked up and poked a bit of stone into it. It was still sticky.

Looking up at the roof, she tried to put together what she knew.

But nothing she knew could explain this.

The rest of the party of guards was behind her now, and they all started in alarm at the blood on the ground. That was a security matter. On every pair of lips, she heard her own question to the empty air repeated.

"What the Nether happened here?"

Notch watched the party of humans enter Kingshall from his vantage point on the balconies. He was entirely invisible and immaterial, able to pass through matter without touching it. It was the form he always took when he wanted to observe, and be unobserved in return. He often walked the Overworld like this.

The humans below, investigating the scene, were clueless as to what could have happened. To their knowledge, Kingshall had been deserted over the night.

They didn't know.

But Notch did.

He could smell the blood. He could see the black threads caught on edges of stone in the floor and on doorways. He could see the signs of a massive register of power.

Notch knew.

This was the place where Herobrine, the younger Creator and brother to Notch, had been taken by the enemy. For what purpose, Notch could not discern. Herobrine's power was now in the hands of others, and if Herobrine died, there would be little left of him to take. It would not make sense for any Void enemy to kill him now.

But it would be better if they did.

If he were to be kept alive, Notch did not dare imagine what they would do to him. Herobrine held the knowledge of the very beginnings of the world- just as much wisdom and experience as Notch did. He knew the weaknesses and strengths of all things: god, man, animal, and earth. But Herobrine would not relinquish information easily.

Even worse- Herobrine might not have been captured for information. There was more to the Creator than knowledge, even the knowledge of how to unmake that which was made.

Notch closed his eyes, and teleported himself out into the courtyard. He could see the signs of battle everywhere- The courtyard was halfway destroyed and spattered with blood both human and otherwise. Even without his powers, Herobrine had fought with exceptional skill.

Of course. He was fighting for his life, after all. Why wouldn't he?

Notch kicked a fallen skull across the courtyard with a roar of grief, watching it shatter to dust against the far wall, two hundred paces away.

"I am so sorry, Herobrine."

His vision blurred, and Notch did nothing to stop the tear that ran down his dust-caked face.

He was awake again.

He knew because the air smelled dank and moist again, and his limbs were stiff from the chill. The chains attached to his wrists were icy cold and bit into his skin.

Herobrine groaned and wished the senseless darkness would return. His body shuddered with fever chills, and his throat and mouth were aching with thirst.

"Awaken, my little wretched one. "

Herobrine realized he was hanging in the air, his back to a cold, smooth wall. Opening his eyes, he looked around. His vision was blurred, but he could see where he was. His arms were splayed out to either side, and he was hanging by his wrists halfway up a massive obsidian tower. Thunder rolled in the distance, and Herobrine blearily looked towards its source.

A pair of massive violet eyes stared back, and the creature growled thunderously again.

"Yesss, look at me at last. "

Herobrine closed his eyes and turned his head away quickly. His stomach was turning, and threatening to forcibly empty itself. The height and the smell of the damp and his own festering wounds was making him sick and dizzy with nausea. He pressed his cheek against the obsidian behind him, taking a small comfort in its coolness.

The thing made a sound that vaguely resembled laughter.

"My servants... Take him up."

Herobrine felt a sharp pull, and the chains he was suspended on began dragging him upwards, his back scraping against the obsidian behind him. He ran over a few sharp bumps and jagged edges, and felt his shirt and skin tear as he was scraped over them. The air filled with the sharply metallic scent of blood.

He reached the top, and two pairs of clawed hands grabbed on to Herobrine beneath the arms and flipped him up onto the top of the tower. This time, Herobrine lost his battle with the nausea and heaved hard as his stomach protested the sudden dizzying reorientation. His head spun, and he could not keep his balance. The hands had to hold him upright on his knees.

Without warning, he was thrust upright and shoved backwards into a sharp, jagged object that gave a little on impact. Burning heat seared across Herobrine's back, and he struggled to get away, only to discover that he was somehow stuck. The heat continued to build up- he choked back a scream.

Fire erupted around his feet, covering the top of the tower. The huge eyes appeared again, and Herobrine could hear the thing laughing at him as he thrashed uselessly against the agony.

This time, he did scream.

An incredible force slammed into him, and everything burst into blackness. An instant later, Herobrine felt himself falling, and landed hard on the ground with enough force to bruise, but not injure severely.

He rolled and sprang to his feet, and then stumbled back in surprise. He was completely unwounded! Herobrine probed his entire body, and discovered that his clothing was intact and his skin was unblemished. He was entirely unharmed.

But how?

Something chittered and warbled behind him. Herobrine spun, and was faced by an Enderman just a few feet away. A clawed hand shot out, and Herobrine dodged with a cry, ducking under the arm and jabbing his hand low, into where the floating ribs would be. He heard something crack, and the Enderman teleported away with a scream.

More Endermen appeared, and Herobrine crouched, ready to fight. He didn't think about why- his instinct to survive simply told him to stay on his feet and stay alert. So he did.

Something wrapped around one ankle from behind and jerked him off his feet.

Herobrine fell with a gasp and struggled against the thing pulling at his ankle, scrabbling for purchase on the pale stone beneath him.

Something sharp drove through each of his hands and into the stone below. Herobrine's eyes flew wide and his jaw locked against a silent scream. Two twin spikes of black obsidian had him pinned to the ground like an insect, and the thing pulling his ankle was still tugging mercilessly, ripping at his wounded hands.

Learn to be helpless, worm!

He heard the creature's voice in his mind. Something had happened already, that the thing had a foothold in his mind.

A net descended over him, and a hundred clawed hands reached for him, raking at his skin. Herobrine cried out in revulsion, struggling against the spikes and the net, but he couldn't move.

A claw pierced deeply into his back, and white-hot pain exploded there. At the same time, everything below his ribcage went numb. He suddenly found himself unable to breathe in, and thrashed what he could in horrified terror.

Something was lifting him. That much he could see through the bright sparks that danced across his vision. Air whistled past his blood-slicked skin, and he slammed into something hard and unforgiving. He couldn't feel most of his body- couldn't breathe...

Darkness came again, and this time, Herobrine fell truly senseless.

But he knew with a sinking feeling of despair that he would wake again.

Amanda the Huntress here, and this is now an official wrap for "The Fall" arc.

I don't have much to put here. If you enjoyed, let me know in a Review. If you would like to see more where that came from, be sure to leave a Favorite or Follow to keep tabs on what I'm doing.

And don't go away just yet! I've been telling you for several chapters now that a mysterious and long-awaited event known as the Ender Wars was coming.

Now I'm going to tell you that they're here.

That's right, folks. Things are about to get messy. Herobrine is about to come back as something very different than our beloved, kind-hearted creator, and our favorite characters- Jonas, Lydia, Hanna, and the young new king Richard, are about to be in for the fight of their lives.

A new arc is about to start.

Are you prepared?

Huntress out.