CHRONICLE
BOOK ONE: LYDIA
PART THREE: THE ENDER WARS
Chapter Twenty-Two: Aftermath
Lydia sat where she was, paralyzed.
There was a clock on her left, one that once stood on a post along the path leading into the Temple. She had passed it when she came.
Now it sat forlornly on the ground, its glass covering cracked and choked with dust. The hands still ticked stubbornly on, grinding against the dented works within.
Ten minutes. That's all the time that elapsed between her coming and the Temple's fall.
Ten gods-damned minutes, and the whole world collapsed.
She could still hear the rumbles of aftershocks in the ground and knew she should be up there, digging in the rubble, searching for survivors, but she knew she would not find many. Most likely none at all. All of the main supports had snapped at once, flattening the entire structure in on itself. There would be no space for someone to find shelter, nowhere to brace to get out of the way of the weight of the mountain.
She had sentenced everyone she pushed inside to death.
Lydia looked down at her hands. They had the long-fingered grace of her father's, but were covered in the same callouses from bow and sword that her mother had worn so proudly. They were rough, dusty, and hardened to battle and field work. They were hands trained to the thankless work of saving lives.
All her life, that was what she wanted to do. Be a protector of the people, of the peace, like her mother before her. She could still remember the riot that drove them out of Luminara for the first time when she was just eleven years old. That horror was what drove her to leave with Drayda to join the Rangers so young, so no one else would have to see that sort of destruction. Especially not her sister.
Now her sister was gone.
So was her father, her mother, and her brother in law and nephew.
Lydia looked up to the sky and squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that welled up. She had witnessed all their deaths. She had been there when it happened for every one, and every time had been helpless to save them.
Now she was alone. Orphaned and bitterly alone at long last.
"Ranger Lydia."
The voice snapped her to attention. Lydia stood and turned to see the scar-faced man approaching her with a small crowd of people in tow.
"Yes?" Lydia replied, her voice shaky.
"I don't know if you remember me," the man began, "but we met in Luminara when the bans were put down. I saw you with the rest of the rangers holding up the riot barriers to protect the Kingshall district. My name is Lars." Lars extended his hand and Lydia shook it, nodding in greeting.
"Well met, Lars," Lydia said. "I don't know many people who still remember that riot."
"Nay," Lars replied. "Not many care to. I have found these lads among the ruins, and they will need shelter and medicine. Where should we go?"
Lydia looked around to see more and more people rising out of the dust and rubble, just as shell-shocked as she was. Dozens of pairs of haunted eyes stared back at her. Swallowing hard, Lydia forced herself to get back into habit and turned to Lars.
"Take them to the nearest settlement of Villager folk. Somewhere quiet and out of the way."
"Should we not take them somewhere with better defenses?" Lars asked, surprised.
Lydia started trembling all of a sudden and she let out a bitter laugh.
"No. You saw what happened to the best defended place in the Overworld. They will never be safe with us and our fortresses. The best they can do is hide now."
Lars frowned, taking a small step back. "With all due respect, my lady, I believe we should find a place that can protect them rather than bring in more innocent victims."
"Innocent victims!" Lydia snapped, nearing hysteria with every passing moment. She waved an arm at the sky. "Did you not see what was happening to us? We are in a war of the gods, who can make the very sky fall upon us. Do not think that any fortress of ours can keep their battles out, for they will sweep us over with a thought. We cannot protect these people, Lars of Luminara. We cannot even protect ourselves. Have you not heard what has happened far and wide? Entire kingdoms have been wiped out to the last man in single nights, and now the survivors have been crushed in the only sanctuary we had left in this world! Take these people to their own kind, back to the Villagers and their hamlets, and let them forget us. We are finished."
Tears were streaming down her face by the time she finished, and she stood in silence for several heartbeats, panting raggedly. Lars and the other survivors looked on, frozen.
"Go, man!" Lydia barked, galvanizing Lars into moving, towing along his train of monks and apprentices.
Lydia stayed where she was, wrapping her arms around herself as she watched people trickle out of the ruins, stumbling along in shock, unable to comprehend the desolation that surrounded them.
Remund looked over one shoulder as he followed the tall, scarred man away from the wreckage of his beloved Temple. The woman in the green cloak, no more than a few tatters now, stood, watching them go, tear tracks down her dusty face. She looked so strong in his visions, a thundering hero come to warn everyone of the impending doom and save everyone from the destruction.
Now she trembled on her feet, barely able to stand.
Remund realized with a start what this meant. Even her courage had reached its limit.
Lydia the Ranger was a broken woman under the weight of everything that had happened.
Turning back when Lars called his name, Remund followed him back to his home village to share the news.
When all the innocent survivors had left, Lydia finally sank to her knees and bent low to the ground, dry heaving uncontrollably. When her stomach finally stopped cramping, she rested her forehead on the ground, curling in on herself. She began to weep, sobbing silently into the ashen ground.
It had all happened so fast.
She was there.
She could not save them.
They were gone.
Present Day
The man known as Corren indeed had the marks of a fine warrior, the priest decided. Even if they were both too old for the sort of travel they did.
"I am honored to meet you, Corren," the priest said, offering the white-haired man a seat. Corren bowed in greeting and gratefully accepted the chair, easing himself down slowly.
"As am I to meet you, your holiness," Corren replied. "I am glad to hear of your work. Not many are willing to dig up the ghosts of the Ender Wars."
"Ah," the priest said, shaking his finger, "but you and I are different. I believe in recording the truth before it was forgotten. And as I recall, you were instrumental in bringing an end to the wars."
Corren laughed and nodded reluctantly. "It was my duty. Herobrine took from me all the family I ever knew and destroyed my kingdom. No one would ever be safe unless he was destroyed."
"In that, I'm afraid you were right," the priest said somberly. "I still have yet to discover what exactly happened, but a creator of pure goodness was corrupted into the most vile monster the Overworld has known. What you did was extraordinary, and it saved us all."
"Please," Corren interjected. "I will tell the tale of my own deeds in due time, but first, you told me you found information on my family. I know almost everything there is to know about my parents, but you had information of what became of my aunt Lydia. The captain of the guard who survived what happened in Arrenvale. Did she live through the war?"
The priest shook his head. "No, she did not. But she did leave a diary." The priest leaned over and picked up the thick green leather-bound book from the stack of papers off to the side, setting it down on the desk and turning it so it faced Corren. "This is the entire story of the life of Lydia, daughter of Jonas and Alayne, written by her own hand. She personally knew Herobrine, as you know, before he went bad."
Corren slowly leaned forward and took the diary, folding back the cover and looking at the first few pages. "She was hardly a child when she started this," he breathed.
"Indeed. And she witnessed more than just the descent of the Creator. She saw evidence of total war between the gods, starting when she was only eleven. This diary has given me a wealth of information for my Chronicles of History. I hope it will give you closure for what has become of your family. Now that I am finished with it, I believe it should go to you. You are, after all, her next of kin."
Corren looked up at the priest, a smile crinkling pleats at the corners of his eyes. "Thank you. Thank you for giving me this."
When the sun fell low in the sky, Lydia found her horse rearing and rolling its eyes in fear in a copse of spruce trees, its reigns tangled in the branches.
At noon, she had found the body of her father at last, his hand sticking out of a pile of rock. Now he lay beneath a cairn on the plains before the Temple ruins, marked with a wooden sign: Here lies Jonas, master architect and beloved father.
With her diary packed away with her, Lydia calmed her horse and mounted up, riding back to the Temple. She looked upon the ruins one last time, feeling hollow and cold.
Her world was gone, and yet she remained.
Her mind was made up. She would go to Luminara, the last place she still had hope for. When she arrived at the Temple, Luminara was the only kingdom of the sons and daughters of Steve that had sent no last survivor or newsbringer. That meant either the city was still intact, or it had been truly wiped out, and no one was left alive to flee.
Either way, it was the last kingdom accounted for. The rest were written away in her diary. She had but one destination left.
Turning her back to the sinking sun, Lydia turned to Luminara and rode through the night.
The remainder of the tale of Lydia is by now common knowledge. Mankind made its last stand in the ruins of Luminara, and Lydia fell at the claws of the Thing's enthralled Endermen in her childhood home.
Herobrine descended upon the Golden City, and in a burst of anti-matter, destroyed at the behest of the Thing his own greatest creation: His city, and the last of his children.
When the sun set on the third day of Lydia's last ride, the last entry of her diary was written, and the story of Lydia the Ranger was over.
The time of humanity was finished.
One final hope now could only be found with a small child found among the ruins of Castle Arrenvale, the lone survivor of his entire race, born a prince to a fallen kingdom.
He would carry on his family's legacy.
End of Book One.
Ladies and gentlemen, Huntress here.
The first half of Chronicle is finished at last. One more book to go, and the lost history of Minecraft as I have told it will be complete.
That's a frightening thought.
I will be focusing more on Huntress's Tale after this for a little while, since I need to actually outline Book II.
Apologies for the unusually short chapter, but that's how transitions usually turn out.
Thank you for reading, and I will see you next chapter to start a new book and an entirely new story within Chronicle, with more action, more feels, and more of our beloved Herobrine.
Huntress out.