CHRONICLE
BOOK TWO: CORREN
PART FOUR: REBIRTH
Chapter Twenty-Nine:
Dead of Night
The sun had just spent its last rays over the horizon when it began.
The village was bedding down for the night, shutting their doors against the desert chill and banking their fires. One by one, the candles and torches went out, leaving the village in quiet, serene darkness. Very little moved across the dunes.
A child heard it first- the odd rumbling crackle like some giant creature burrowing in the sands. Throwing off her covers, the little girl ran to the window, hopping up to see over the sill. Something black forced its way out of the ground, shedding pale sand as it rose. The girl thought about running back to wake her parents, but she stood transfixed at the window, unable to look away.
Then the black frame flickered to life, purple light filling the empty space. The light flooded the dark village, streaming in through the window and casting warped shadows across the girl's room. Even still, she could not look away.
But then, a grunting, mutilated pigman stepped through, stepping carefully onto the village main road.
The night was pierced by the girl's terrified scream. That was all the warning the village got.
Corren and the healer had walked most of the day, and after a quick break for their evening meal, walked long after dark. They were determined to make it back home that night. The stars were out, and the sand glowed with their light, giving them enough to see by.
Corren jogged ahead of his master, light on his feet and hardly feeling the weight of his pack. He was nearly home again at last. He wondered if the villagers would recognize him now- fully grown as a man rather than a scraggly boy. He was now half a head taller than the healer, and every inch of him was covered in wiry muscle.
But then he noticed something that gave him pause. A thundering boom rolled through the air- he thought at first it was thunder, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the dry lightning of the desert gave no sound. The healer caught up to him and shook his head.
"Something is wrong," he puffed. "Do you see that?" he asked, pointing at the horizon over the last brace of dunes. Corren looked out, and saw a red stain on the sky.
"The sun went down hours ago..." he murmured. It couldn't be the sunset- but what would cause that light? There weren't any lava pools nearby, either.
That's when a chorus of screams rose in the night.
Corren felt the shock of fear flood his body the instant after he burst into action. Shedding his pack, he sprinted up the dune, slipping on the loose sand, and gazed out on a scene of pure horror.
The village was overrun.
"Master!" he cried, drawing his sword.
The healer was at his side in an instant, all traces of his fatigue gone. Then his expression altered- the air of serenity he always carried was wiped away, replaced by a smoldering rage. His fist met his other hand sharply, prepared to kill.
"Let's go," he said tightly.
The village streets were awash in wreckage and fleeing villagers. But they had nowhere to run but the open desert- and the monsters were hot on their heels. Half-rotten pigmen zombies chased them down, and those they caught, they killed without mercy. At the center of it all was a black frame filled with swirling purple light, and out of that, more and more zombies came. The world slowly warped starting from the portal, with crackling pink rock jutting out of the ground in a spreading design, and the stone of the houses twisting and changing color. It was like watching a drop of blood spread in a pool of water, staining it as it went.
Corren's feet landed on the streets just in time to see an old farmer try to hide behind a pile of netherrock. He was gasping for breath, and there was an arrow embedded in his leg. Corren rushed to help, but he was still too far away when a pigman leaped over the pile and ran the farmer through.
"No!" Corren screamed, crossing the remaining space and cutting the pigman down. The creature gave one surprised squeal, and then fell in two pieces with a rotten splat.
His master was quicker. He attacked two of the creatures at once, snapping bones and kicking the skull off a skeleton within the space of seconds. Then he picked up a sword from one of his fallen enemies and dove into a nearby house. The screams of zombies dying came out the door. Corren tried to follow suit. Guilt slithered about his insides- if he had just been faster, the farmer could have lived. The old man that had held him on his shoulders when he was young, and gave him his horse...
Several arrows whistled towards the air, and Corren only barely deflected the first in time before he regained his focus. The second struck his blade squarely and glanced aside. The two skeletons paused to nock new arrows, and Corren took his chance. Leaping forward, he smashed off their arms and kicked them down. They didn't rise again.
The sound of shattering glass made him look up. A zombie sailed through the window of the house next to him, taking much of the wall out with it. His master landed neatly on the edge of the gap, returning to a fighting stance. Grinning grimly, he winked at Corren.
Corren had no way of telling how time passed as the battle raged. Some of the villagers fought back, striking at the monsters with their staffs or firing from weak hunting bows. Corren and his master chased zombie after zombie through the village, half-deaf from the noise. The crackling of fire, the screams of his village, the ring of metal crashing on metal, the unnatural noise of the portal- it all combined into a continuing din that would echo in Corren's memory for years to come.
He stopped to put his sword through a zombie's collapsing chest, watching the unlife fade from its eyes before it fell to the ground. When he withdrew his sword, he saw two more step forward to face him. Sweat poured down his face, and he spared a moment to wipe it away from his eyes.
The healer was occupied elsewhere. He heard the sound of a bigger creature approaching, and fled into a house for shelter. There, he found the old librarian gathering his things to try and flee. The healer glared at him, watching the man cower on the floor.
That's when the wall fell in. The librarian cried out and stumbled back, shying towards the back entrance. A guttural laugh came from the thing outside.
It was a pigman, but three times the size of any of the others in the village. It wore dense, heavy black armor, and it carried a spiked morningstar on a chain- a weapon nearly the size of a horse. The healer watched it throw its head back to laugh cruelly.
"Go!" he snapped at the librarian. The man nodded and ran, leaping out the open door and vanishing into the night. Then the healer leaped up and aimed a kick at the pigman's head. His foot rang off the metal, but it did nothing to harm the creature. A pity, the healer thought.
That caught its attention.
He may have been old, but his reflexes were still better than any zombie's. He stayed a hair's bredth ahead of that deadly morningstar, hearing it rip into the wall where he was just standing. Escaping out the back door where the librarian went, the healer made it to the other side of the house before the creature literally ran through the wall after him. Then it paused, sniffing the air, wondering where its prey had gone.
Chuckling, the healer flipped a rock up with his foot, weighed it in his hand, and threw it at the back of the creature's head.
Enraged, the pigman let out a roar like a bull's and charged, crashing through the wall. The healer leaped out of harm's way, and then turned back, waiting.
The roof of the house, all sturdy stone, came crashing down on the pigman, knocking it clean off its feat and crushing it to the ground.
The dust began to settle, and it didn't rise again. Brushing off his robes, the healer walked forward, spotting a pack on the creature's back. There was a scroll tucked into it. Kneeling on the wreckage, he carefully shuffled the scroll free and unrolled it, rising and walking away as he read. An arrow flew towards him, and he almost absently bent out of the way.
But then he heard the rocks shifting behind him. Too late, he half-turned in time to see the creature rear up from the ruins of the house. One giant meaty hand grasped him by the torso and lifted him bodily from the ground. The healer cried out and twisted, trying to free himself, but the creature was too strong. It threw him like a rag doll across the village square.
The healer slammed into the side of the portal, seeing stars and a flash of blackness as his head hit the unforgiving obsidian. Blearily, he raised his eyes, watching the creature charge up again, winding up to strike him again. But not with its fist- no, it had its morningstar with it. The huge spiked ball arched through the air and came down.
That was the last thing he ever saw.
Corren heard an awful crash, and turned. He saw the edge of his master's robe, and a huge spiked mace lifting away from the carnage...
The world slowed to a stop.
The mutant sized pigman turned to look at him, smiled gleefully, and turned away to find its next victim. Corren could hear his own heartbeats thundering in his ears as he saw...
He couldn't look away.
Everything narrowed to a single point. Throwing his sword with all the force of his strength, he ran forward. The sword impaled a zombie where it stood up to the hilt. He didn't bother grabbing it as he attacked the next, punching it over and over in the face before it had time to react. A smaller one approached him from behind- his kick sent it flying away.
Then he snatched his sword from the body and leaped up to the portal.
He caught the mutant from behind, and swung it by its armor head-first into the portal. But not all the way. It lost its balance, falling half-in, half-out of the portal. The legs kicked in the air as it tried to push back through.
Corren's scream ripped through the night as he swung his sword into the portal itself, knocking a block loose. The sword shattered on impact. With a terrific peal of thunder, the portal shut, the light collapsing in on itself. Putrid blood exploded across the sands on the other side, and the lower half of the mutant slid lifeless from the portal.
Everything went quiet at last. There were no monsters remaining. They had killed them all.
Glass shattered as Notch collapsed to his knees. The crystal goblet and dishes on the table fell as the table overturned, clattering wrong-side up some distance away.
He felt the pain as if it was his own.
His hand hit the ground as he pitched forward, gasping, his free hand grasping his chest. His whole body shuddered as he felt his disciple die.
Sucking in air, Notch rolled onto his back, running both hands over his face. His jaw locked against the agony.
How many more will be sacrifices in this war? he thought. How much longer before I go Herobrine's way?
Rising unsteadily to his feet, he staggered back to his throne, collapsing heavily down and covering his face.
Succumbing to his grief, Notch wept.
The survivors found Corren crouched over what remained of his master, nearly catatonic. When one of them touched his shoulder, he started violently, and only at the last moment seemed to recognize the villager.
"It's over," they whispered to him. He stared dumbly back at them, and then looked back at his master. He felt sick.
That's when he noticed something. His master was clutching something in his remaining hand. With almost exaggerated care, Corren pried open the fingers and pulled loose a scroll.
On it was a depiction of a fortress, huge and twisted, and a face with glowing, soulless eyes. Corren knew those eyes- and suddenly a memory sprang forward that made his blood run cold.
He remembered his mother's terrified scream to run, and his father's shouts for the guards. A man with glowing eyes chased after them, cornering them in the tower causeway. That's where the monsters caught them. The explosion killed his father outright, and sent him and his mother screaming, a drop of fifty feet.
He came back to himself with a start, his hands trembling. A cold sweat broke out over him.
"Herobrine," he whispered.
Huntress here.
Heh. I promised a chapter "soon" and ended up "four months later" instead. Ahh, college.
But now we're getting to the fun part. I've been eagerly waiting to write these last few chapters ever since I started this darn thing, and now the time is drawing near to finish this. Chronicle will soon draw to a close.
I cannot wait (evil laughter)
Remember to review- let me know what you thought, and I'll see you next chapter.