CHRONICLE
BOOK ONE: LYDIA
PART THREE: THE ENDER WARS
Chapter Twenty: Empty Graves and Falling Skies
Officially, the Ender Wars began with the disappearance of Herobrine, years before. But the real war did not start until it had boiled to a head among the gods, and everything broke out into the open, just as Herobrine had predicted. The Void did not follow Aether rules of warfare- it struck physically and hard, not bothering with subterfuge. The one who had defeated the Void before was now defeated by his own people and a slave to the side of darkness. The Aether, in the eyes of the Thing, was ripe for the taking. With one of the creators gone and a traitor still among them, the remaining gods did not have much of a chance.
At first light, the Shadow struck.
It was a long-anticipated event, but even so, they were caught off guard by the clever traitor.
Laskig knew that Notch would turn his wrath his way soon, so he planned his exit carefully. It began with summoning the Shadow to the Aether, and then using its puppet to cover his tracks.
Herobrine, after all, as scarred and empty as he was now, could still enter the Aether.
Silence, the sudden silencing of the creatures of the Aether, was their first and only warning.
Laskig walked out of his dwelling, low into a thundercloud, masking his presence as he made his way to the lowest point in the Aether, taking from his breast-pocket a glassy round eye. Filling it with his newfound power, the eye floated out of his hand and shuddered, snapping into twelve copies. Energy coursed between them, and the air in the center of the hoop darkened, filling with the foul chill of the Void. Dim stars filled the empty black, and then shadows began to spill from it. Dense black floating shadows, the simplest form of the Thing itself.
As soon as it was fully into the Aether, Laskig closed the portal and was off, vanishing with a thought into a high tower near the throne room of Notch.
Then he waited.
With Herobrine's old power, he was able to sense the empty shell of the former god pass into the Aether. But no one else noticed until moments later, when a shrill scream pierced the too-silent air.
Terra, goddess of the earth and trees, saw Herobrine and his soulless eyes when she looked up from her careful work scrying through a bowl of water into an Overworld spring. Immediately, she screamed for help as the windows shattered inwards. Wrapping herself in her own power, most of the shards passed by harmlessly, but one caught its edge on her cheek, cutting a thin line. With a shaking hand, Terra reached up and touched the cut, the blood running backwards and the line sealing over seamlessly again. Herobrine strode into the room, glass crunching under his bare, scarred feet. A long black sword materialized in his hand.
The goddess knew that she had little time to escape and warn the others. Summoning her full power, roots crashed through the floor and wrapped around Herobrine, knocking him back and holding him fast. She ran for the door.
Herobrine didn't even blink. With a small gesture, he turned to insubstantial mist and escaped the trap, appearing before Terra on the other side of the door. With a gasp, she slammed it shut again and went for the window. A bird heard her desperate cry and came to help, spreading vast wings and letting the goddess onto its back, flapping away.
Herobrine followed.
Notch saw from his tower, and immediately went outside, summoning lightning to strike between the pursuer and the pursued. Terra escaped cleanly to the courtyard of his palace, but Herobrine was bowled over backwards and sent careening into a grove of bushes.
Notch was no fool. He knew what had become of Herobrine after the End was sealed beyond his reach. He knew what his presence here meant. He had felt the oncoming darkness.
Now it had come to strike.
"All gods of the Aether!" Notch boomed, sending his command out to every corner of the dimension. "Heed me! We are under attack. Rendezvous at my palace to drive the Void from our home."
A hiss behind him distracted him, and Notch turned to see a collection of shadows coalescing into a solid form, like that of a great snake. Summoning his sword to his hand, Notch struck at it, testing it with his magic.
The power that rebounded back at him nearly threw him off his feet.
When his sword touched the scales of the snake, a blast of dark energy exploded out at him, sending him flying back, and making the palace shudder and crack.
Not good, Notch thought. This magic is too volitale. If it reacts like this every time...
He glanced up at the ceiling, where more shadows were seeping through the cracks in the white quartz, widening the rifts. Sparks flew as they encountered enchantments, creating a flurry of smaller explosions. Quickly, Notch drew upon his more ancient powers, trapping the shadows into globes of his own power and destroying them in fire. But there were more coming every moment.
Terra, safe for the moment, scrambled out of the courtyard as rubble began to fall from the palace. One tower, however, was untouched, and she ran for it, taking the stairs two at a time to what she thought was safety.
Laskig waited instead.
Terra stopped when she saw him, her lips framing the beginning of a question: What are you doing here?
Laskig almost smiled with glee. Instead, he formed his face into a mask of horror, and pointed over Terra's shoulder. She turned.
Herobrine stood in the doorway.
Here we go, Laskig thought. Drawing from his sleeve a small dagger, he wrapped one arm around Terra's waist and put the blade to her throat with the other.
"What are you doing?" she gasped, realizing all too late what was going on. The whole Aether knew now that Herobrine wasn't the traitor, but now he was an empty shell of a puppet, a lost cause that would cost them. The real traitor stood behind her, holding her helpless.
Or perhaps not so helpless.
Terra felt for the vines growing around the tower for decoration and fed her power to them, sending them into a frenzy of expansion and growth. Leafy tendrils reached into the window, wrapping around Laskig and pulling him back. His dagger fell from his grasp as he was slammed into the wall, crying out shortly.
"Notch will make you pay, you scum," Terra hissed to Laskig, making the vines pull tighter. Laskig made a choking sound, struggling to speak.
Then he smiled.
Agony exploded in Terra's abdomen, and she looked down to see the shining black sword, glistening with her blood. Herobrine stood behind her, holding the hilt grimly and grinding the blade further into her back. Her hands wrapped around the blade against her will, trying to stop it from hurting her any worse as she coughed. Blood came up with a strangled heave. The sword pulled back, out of her, and she fell to her knees, then onto her side, helpless at Herobrine's feet.
With Terra mortally wounded, the vines around Laskig loosened. Quickly, he used his power to blast the walls and ceiling off the room. The entire Aether was gathered below now, and the explosion caught their attention.
Falling to his knees, he moved as though to protect Terra. Secretly, he used his power to command Herobrine: Throw me off the tower.
Herobrine struck quickly and precisely, grasping Laskig by a handful of his shirt and dragging him off Terra, as Laskig screamed her name all the while. He stabbed him, but Laskig used his power to make immaterial the center of his chest. Anyone looking on would not see the trick. Instead, many gasped in horror as they watched what they thought was Laskig's death.
Laskig fell limp, and Herobrine unceremoniously threw him off the tower. Laskig fell down and down, passing the edge of the island and falling farther, to the boundary of the Aether. There, he disappeared, vanishing into the portal he summoned at the last second and closing it after him. He landed hard on the stone of the End.
Safe, Laskig dusted himself off and laughed uproariously. For all intents and purposes, he was dead. All suspicion about him died with him.
Back in the Aether, the attack came together full force.
The gods were gathered, but were unprepared to see Herobrine alive again, and fighting against them. Many hesitated, and that was their undoing.
From behind, the Thing sent its darkness around and behind them, catching many off guard and knocking them to the ground.
"To me, Aether!" Notch bellowed, rousing the rest of the gods from their stupor. In a rush of brilliant energy, the gods put their power together without hesitation, following Notch's lead in fighting back the shadows. Herobrine was knocked flat, and a stray wisp of power floated down and sank into his skin.
Immediately, he broke out of a stupor of his own.
"Where am I?" Herobrine asked, his words slurred and weak through a dry throat and cracked lips. Pain burst through his head, silencing him.
"Wretch! Do not presume to question your position!"
That voice. That was the voice of pain. Darkness. Burning eyes.
Images rushed through Herobrine's head, and he groaned and rolled onto his side, trying to put together a coherent thought.
Pain again. The pain ravaged through his body, leaving him trembling and gasping, shredding his mind once more. His hand moved without him telling it to, picking up his sword once more, his cursed weapon, and he stood without feeling himself move, plodding forward to strike down the gods.
Power. Magic. He needed what they had, what had been stolen from him. Betrayers.
The words were not his own, but memories he recognized came with them, and he could not sort out truth from fiction. Eventually, Herobrine fell asleep once more, lulled into submission by the pain and growing madness. His body kept moving, guided by the will of the Thing. The gods fell back in fear from the blade, sensing its power, and its terrible purpose.
Notch was there in an instant.
For one moment, even he hesitated at the sight of his brother. This was what he had done. This was the result of his lack of faith. Every scar upon Herobrine's body, every hole in his clothing and bruise upon his skin, was his own fault. But he did not reminisce long.
He saw Herobrine's eyes, and knew there was no other choice. He would have no chance to save Herobrine, not now. The brother he knew was gone.
Though it broke his heart to do so, Notch raised one hand and used his earthshaking power to open the way between dimensions, pushing Herobrine through even as he snarled and resisted, pushing back with surprising force.
"You would throw me back into the fire, brother?" Herobrine spat, and Notch paused. He knew that wasn't really his brother speaking. Herobrine, somewhere in there, was beyond all senses and thought. Too deep to reach. He certainly wasn't capable of speaking on his own. Notch redoubled his efforts.
"You would betray me again! You who ignored my warnings and delivered me to my fall by your own hand!" Herobrine cried, but his voice was cut off abruptly as the dimensional barrier closed around him, locking him back in the End.
"My brother is dead, creature," Notch whispered to the space where Herobrine had stood. "You killed him yourself." Blinking away the tears streaming down his face, Notch turned to face the shadows.
The devastation was near-total already.
The surprise attack had taken its awful toll. Dead animals floated forlornly in the air between islands, suspended by threads of fraying magic. Most structures were in rubble. The shadows created death in their wake, shriveling plants and killing anything that breathed, and their trails were clear swathes through the greenery where the trees and grass had shriveled and blackened where the darkness touched it. The sky had darkened to purple, and was continuing to darken still. Shadows spread from the heart of Notch's palace like a fungus, tendrils reaching out from the central node and coating everything solid in pulsing black cobwebs. The gods barely maintained their position, chanting to keep the darkness away and keep themselves safe in a small bubble of power. Notch joined them quickly, adding his power to the spell, and immediately it swelled, pushing back the shadows as it went.
"Contain the vile thing!" Notch ordered, and the shimmering light spread into a hoop that encircled the palace, cutting off the Thing from the shadows it had spread out across the Aether. Opaque mists snapped apart and fell away, rolling down and falling like drops of oil. They exploded into flame as they hit the dimensional barrier at the bottom of the Aether. Brilliant forks of color streaked across the sky like lightning, yellows and reds. Smoke rose in clouds. A rumble ran through the dimension, and many of the islands shook with it, the power holding them shattering. Unsupported, they fell out of the sky like stones.
The Aether was cracking.
Notch dove into the cloud of darkness in the center of the ruins of his home, fighting back the cloying, acid substance with his sheer power. One tendril smacked him across the abdomen, and he grasped it with both hands, about to rend it in two, when something in the center of it stopped him. A sliver of light, green as a spring leaf and red as blood, pulsed inside, moving along towards the Thing at the heart of the shadow.
Notch swore, sending his power along the tentacle to its source: Terra. She was still alive, barely. The Thing was feeding on her. Shadows were latched onto her terrible wound like worms, siphoning off her life force with her blood and adding it to the Thing's.
With a roar of pure fury, Notch pulled the Thing away from Terra, stopping the flow of her lifeblood and sending the creature out of his palace and up into the sky where he could use his full power.
The other gods added their power to his, eager to drive it out and win the day.
Not one was looking below, to the Overworld where the Thing's shadows were burning through the feeble barrier that protected the human realm from the terrible fury of the war of the gods raging above.
Lydia limped to the door of the temple and pounded with both fists. The door opened, and a monk poked his head out, his expression going from confused to horrified when he saw the ranger standing there, covered in blood and ashes.
"My lady-" the monk began, motioning for the woman to come inside. Lydia strode in brusquely.
"Where is Jonas, the architect?" Lydia demanded, her voice hoarse.
"I do not understand," the monk said. "What has happened?"
"Answer me!" Lydia snapped. The monk bowed fearfully.
"He has retired for the day, in his private study."
"Take me to him," Lydia said.
"Of course," the monk said, bowing again. "But if I might ask, who are you?"
Lydia did not answer for a moment. Then she took a shuddering breath.
"Jonas is my father. My name is Lydia."
The monk gasped. "His... you're that Lydia! Then for heaven's sake, what has happened?"
Lydia's voice was grim, and it made the monk's blood run cold.
"Arrenvale has fallen. The royal family is dead, and their last order sent me here. I am the last survivor, here to warn you of what is to come."
Remund saw the woman ride in from where he stood in the fields, and his heart nearly stopped.
He stood with many of his classmates, putting up tents and clearing away ground for the festival. A garland of flowers fell from his nerveless fingers as he watched, and when someone called his name, he barely heard them.
It was her. It was the woman of his vision, galloping in on a half-dead horse and wearing a tattered green cloak.
Someone's shout startled him back to the present, and Remund fumbled to get back to his work, feeling the ice in his gut grow as the hours passed.
When the sun began to set, rain clouds had already blown overhead but held in their burden in their swollen folds. Only a thin line of the sky was visible around the horizon, showing the brilliant red of the sunset beyond the purple swells of the clouds. The wind began to blow, and a few apprentices shouted in frustration as their decorations ripped free. A penetrating chill came with the wind, biting hands and faces exposed to the air. The instructors, worried about the oncoming storm, began to hurry their classes back inside, and a sullen silence followed as everyone began to trudge back to the temple.
Remund, and Remund alone, noticed the tremor that shuddered through the ground below. He stopped dead in his tracks, watching the skies all of a sudden, and saw the wrongness there. It was something he couldn't quite describe... there were only clouds, and yet, above the temple, they seemed darker. More sinister. Something was wrong.
Then another tremor passed, and everyone stopped when a few rocks began to fall from the peak.
Amanda the Huntress here.
I bet you guys thought I was dead.
Hi and hello again, my ever-loyal readers. It's been a very long time since I've worked on this story. What, like, a year? Year and a half? *checks data*... Not quite a year, but almost there.
You may have noticed some changes. First: I've started the transition from "writer" to "author", that is, I've been writing more serious projects such as a novel that I fully intend to publish in print once I finish it and go to college. So, my writing style has evolved a little, and I'll want you guys to let me know if that's for the better or worse. Mind you, I'm out of practice for these first few chapters, and I'm still getting back into the groove I had before with this story. Don't judge too harshly until it is clear that I suck, or don't suck.
Second, well, I'll be going to college soon. I'm almost done with high school.
So, I thought I was finished with Fanfiction and ready to move on, but when I read back over this story, I decided it wasn't as bad as I thought it was, and it was worth finishing. I'd reached the halfway point, and I might as well complete the story. Besides, it might come in handy for my real novels.
So, here you go, my dear friends. The first update since May 20, 2015.
Thank you so much for reading, and I will see you in the next chapter!