Chapter 58: Battle in the Bastion
"Steve began to test his ability. He would get himself killed again and again, and no matter where or how it happened, he would always reappear in the spot he last rested. He would have no items on him, but his injuries would completely vanish. Stranger still, I realized, was he seemed younger after that. He remained at the same physical age at which we'd met, even though it had been years since then. Eventually, we found out he could give me the ability to return from death as well. This made our mission all the easier, yet something changed in both of us as more time passed."
The towering Enderman didn't move from the doorway, content for the moment to let its underlings go to work. Alice watched the Piglins cross blades with their undead kin and felt a familiar sense of despair settle in; she had vivid memories of her first time fighting zombies. Rotting, groaning perversions of those who'd once been like her and her friends, how could she not have been horrified to have to cut them down? What if, one day, that was how she would end up?
She shook the thoughts and the memories away; it was no time to be distracted, not while the Piglins needed help. The skeletons were lingering in front of the entrance, those armed with bows taking shots whenever they could get an opening, and Alice knew where she wanted to begin as she rapidly donned her iron boots, leggings, and helmet, and her diamond chestplate. Matthew, armored identically, already had his crossbow loaded.
"I don't think the Piglins would like it if we fought the zombies, so let's take out the skeletons instead!" She turned to Dunera. "Can you fight?"
Clearly not, as the girl looked frozen stiff. Alice wasn't sure exactly how old she was compared to an Overworlder, but she seemed far younger than Salsh, and much less experienced. It may well have been her first time in a battle.
"I can't fight," she admitted, "but… I will help you however I can!"
Alice nodded, a plan already coming to mind. "Okay, you'll stick with me. I need you to get me past the Piglins to the left. Salsh, Matt, you guys head around the right. We'll hit the skeletons from both sides!"
They split up as directed. Dunera grabbed Alice by the shoulder and warped them both around the edge of the battle in two quick jumps. Teleporting didn't faze Alice much anymore, as Salsh had helped her and Matthew get used to it over the past two weeks, so when she was finally in position she was still more than ready to fight. She took stock of the situation: there were around twenty skeletons between them and the bastion, arranged in two lines with sword fighters out front and archers in the back. Further behind them, the Ender giant had taken notice of the four yet still remained where it was, standing guard by the door.
"Get to the archers!" Alice said, bracing herself.
One last teleport was enough to bring her past the line of sword-wielders, right in front of an unsuspecting skeleton with a bow. She took a hard swing and cut off its head, then lashed out at the one beside it. Her blade missed any of its bones, but she at least managed to sever its bowstring before it could draw another arrow. Dunera warped behind the skeleton and shoved it forward into Alice's reach, where another slash was all it took to sever its spine.
"Nice!" Alice said quickly, before spinning to block the incoming strike. The wither skeletons had advanced to protect their ranged cohorts, and one was already bearing down on her. Its brittle stone sword didn't hold up against her iron blade, snapping apart when they collided, but a broken weapon didn't deter the skeleton at all. It dropped the hilt and lunged for her with its toxic, sharp claws outstretched, trying to grab Alice by the face. Dunera came to her rescue, teleporting her out of harm's way and bringing her behind it. Recalling her earlier fight where her sword had gotten stuck, Alice resorted to hacking away at the wither skeleton's limbs until it fell apart altogether from the impacts.
To the right, she saw Salsh had entered the fray as well, rapidly teleporting throughout the line of remaining archers and delivering quick, brutal blows with his claw. Matthew was at a distance, shooting down a trio of wither skeletons as they ran for him.
"Alice!" Dunera cried.
She turned again, but wasn't quick enough to avoid an arrow striking her chestplate. One of the last skeletal archers had taken a shot at her while she was assessing the situation, and while the head didn't break through her armor the impact was startling enough to make her lose focus. A wither skeleton capitalized on her distraction and stabbed at her from the side. The tip of its blade found a seam in her armor just below her left shoulder, and Alice recoiled with a howl. Salsh was at her side in an instant, battering the attacker away for Matthew to finish off with an arrow to the skull.
"I-I'm okay!" she insisted, gritting her teeth through the stinging pain. Salsh didn't look convinced, but there wasn't time to dwell on it, as the giant Enderman had stepped out of the doorway and swept aside all of its remaining skeletal minions with a swing of its enormous arms. The Piglins were still preoccupied fighting their undead counterparts, and Alice realized how quickly they'd be overwhelmed if the giant set upon them.
"We've gotta keep it's attention on us," she declared. "Salsh, what are we dealing with?"
"He is a Sentinel of the Void Walkers. His body has been modified with several enchantments, and he now possesses immense strength at the cost of a lesser range of teleportation."
The sentinel brought down a fist, cracking a fissure in the netherrack which spread toward them. Dunera grabbed Alice to warp her out of the way, and Salsh did likewise with Matthew, but their foe seemed to have caught on to their strategy. He teleported forward when they reappeared, almost winding up right on top of both women with a hand ready to slam down on them. Alice yelped and swung her sword in a wide arc above her, cutting across the giant's palm deep enough to leave a shallow, green gash in its exoskeleton. But that did little more than irritate it, and the sentinel plucked the weapon right out of her hands before she could draw back for another strike. A quick squeeze was enough to snap her iron blade like a twig.
"We're no match for it in the open!" Matthew yelled. He loosed an arrow from his crossbow which embedded in the sentinel's back, to no apparent effect.
"Then we will need to move this battle elsewhere," replied Salsh. Stepping toward the bastion's door, he shouted something in Endish. The only word she recognized was the name of his tribe: Terman'esherad.
"The Violet Gaze is looking for them," she recalled hearing from the Dwellers. "Is he going to…"
He'd clearly gotten its attention, because the sentinel turned away from Alice and Dunera entirely to pursue him. Salsh teleported into the doorway, shouted again, then ran further into the bastion with the giant Enderman right behind him.
Alice found the next best weapon she had, an iron axe, and moved to follow. She had to hide a wince as she gripped the handle; the wither skeleton's blade had done more than just cut her arm, which was beginning to feel more fatigued than the rest of her. If Matthew noticed, he didn't say anything.
"Let's get in there and help Salsh," she said, hoping she sounded braver than she felt.
The bastion was as dilapidated inside as outside, and Salsh wasn't sure which crumbling hallway would lead him to a dead end or to deeper in. He navigated mostly on impulse, listening to his pursuer's booming footsteps get closer and closer as he fled deeper.
"GET BACK HERE AND FIGHT, HALLOWED FILTH!" The Endish roar was loud and deep enough to rustle the brickwork around Salsh.
"So he does know who I am. Geres'anmislar must have told them about my escape…"
The one-armed fugitive of the Hallowed Grounds. Was that to become his name?
He rounded a corner and nearly blundered right into an Acolyte soldier (thankfully one closer to his size) standing by a barred cell, inside which sat a group of battered Piglins, some young and some old. Salsh punched the startled guard across the jaw before he could react and knocked him away from the door.
"Come and fight!" he shouted in Overworldish, hoping the Piglins could at least vaguely understand his tone of voice. Failing that, he pried a brick block free of the wall. The guard had recovered and was advancing on him, so Salsh battered him with the block to make him stumble back again. He tore a second chunk of bricks out, creating a sizable hole in the cell. The Piglins within quickly got to their feet, and the Acolyte's expression turned to one of concern as his former prisoners began to emerge into the hallway.
"You won't get away with this," he snarled, clutching his jaw as he disappeared.
The thunderous footsteps were getting closer, so Salsh frantically waved his hand down the corridor away from it. The Piglins at least got what he meant with the gesture, and they broke into a run in the opposite direction. One adult gave him a grateful nod before leaving.
"If there are more prisoners, we can overwhelm the invaders by freeing them all," Salsh thought. "Now then, where next?"
Anywhere other than there, because one of the sentinel's enormous claws smashed straight through the corner of the hallway. Salsh warped back a few paces, but not far enough to avoid a spray of dust and debris.
"THERE YOU ARE!"
He tried to teleport again, but the sentinel was faster. In the blink of an eye, he had appeared right in front of Salsh and wrapped a giant hand around his chest. He struggled to free himself, only to roar in pain as the sentinel began to squeeze. While his single arm wasn't pinned to him, it alone couldn't force apart his foe's clawed grip.
"I WILL SHATTER YOU, WRETCH!"
"SALSH!"
The sentinel let out a howl and staggered, loosening his grasp barely enough for Salsh to warp free. He landed right in front of the Acolyte, then teleported again before he could be crushed by a wild swing of his fists.
His allies had caught up, with Alice having swung an axe right into the back of the sentinel's knee and then retreated to let Matthew shoot an arrow through the open wound in his exoskeleton. Dunera was right behind them, still looking terrified. Alice landed a strike to his shin, only for the head of her axe to break off of the handle from the impact and imbed itself in his armor.
"Running out of weapons over here," she said as the four of them regrouped, "and I don't think any of my others will do much good."
Salsh pointed up the hall and began to run. "We'll head deeper, then! There may be something we can use further in!"
Everyone followed him, including the sentinel. The bastion's corridors had grown narrower, and his pursuit was slowed as he needed to continually smash apart chunks of the walls and ceiling. That gave Salsh and company time to gain more distance, as well as to free more pockets of captured Piglins. The Acolytes didn't have much of a presence in the fortress beyond a few soldiers who were easily overwhelmed as more and more prisoners escaped. Before long, Piglins were scrambling every which way, arming themselves to overthrow the interlopers.
"Here he comes!" cried Matthew from the end of a hall, after they'd broken out the last group of prisoners. The sentinel's enraged roars and the crumbling of bricks were drawing close, and they were running out of enclosed spaces to flee into as more of the bastion was destroyed.
"Over this way!"
Dunera was standing by an adult Piglin at the foot of a staircase. He gave a series of frantic snorts and made several quick hand motions, then sprinted in the opposite direction. The group assembled by the stairs, at the bottom of which the faint bubbling of lava could be heard.
"He says their leader is down in the treasure chamber," she explained. "We might be able to put a stop to this if we capture them!"
"Surely not the leader of the Acolytes as a whole, but it's a start," Salsh thought as they raced down the stairs. He had to keep his nerves settled; his last run-in with an officer of the Violet Gaze had cost him an arm, and he wasn't keen on losing the other.
They reached what had to have been the bastion's lowest floor, a large, boxy chamber with chains hanging from the ceiling and bridges of black brick suspended over lava pits. A wide platform in the center of the lava appeared to be the Piglins' treasure trove, for it was covered in solid gold blocks and a trio of chests. Sure enough, that was where the robed Void Walker he'd seen earlier was waiting. She stood above a pile of Piglin bones, emptying a bottle of a thick, swirling black and purple vapor onto them. The bones trembled and began to reassemble, with the skulls' eye sockets emitting purple light as the skeletons came together.
Salsh didn't waste a moment. He warped from the stairs to the nearest bridge, then right to her with a hiss. She swung a clawed hand at him, but he was quicker, and a quick punch to the midsection was enough to make her double over. The bottle fell from her hands, but he caught it and threw it aside before any more gas could flow over the bones. It shattered in a corner, where the substance within could safely dissipate. With their assembly incomplete, the Piglin skeletons fell apart again.
"Call off the attack!" he demanded, in their tongue.
"Ghh… Geres'anmislar told me about you," she replied between harsh coughs. "I'm surprised you came here, traitor."
Salsh grabbed her robe and shoved her back against one of the chests. "I don't have time for this. Tell your forces to stand down, dragon-eye!"
She chuckled at his insult. "Oh, they already have. I've obtained all the blacksteel I need from this place, and your little riot has been too late to stop me. We will be pulling out now. Shall I see you again at Dalloreis, sir?"
"You're not getting away that easily," spat Dunera, once she and the others had joined them on the central platform. "You invaders will face justice!"
The ceiling rumbled and cracked, and they had to scatter as bricks rained down into the chamber. Salsh wound up at a ledge on the other side of the room, teetering above the lava. The rest of his allies had fled back across the bridge, but the Acolyte hadn't moved from the island. The sentinel had found them, and beyond that he'd brought armfuls of blackstone with him. Throwing them down to form makeshift covers for the lava pits, he leaped into the treasure room.
"NOWHERE TO RUN NOW!"
With a smug grin, the Acolyte teleported to the edge of the hole he'd come through and issued a command. "I leave this to you, Gralus'bormislar! Bring the Groundskeeper's head back to Dalloreis."
Gralus, as it were, bared his teeth and smashed his fists on the floor to shake the room again. "IT WILL BE DONE, LUREX'SKONASLAR."
"If we let him out of here, he'll tear apart the Piglins!" Matthew shouted.
Salsh glanced at Dunera and saw her resolve visibly shrinking away with the escape of Lurex. If she fought, her odds against Gralus weren't promising.
"Get away from here," he said. "Let us handle this, while you check on the Piglins!"
Dunera looked stunned, but didn't argue. She teleported out of the chamber, leaving the three of them to contend with her lackey. As Salsh and the pair of Overworlders braced themselves for the fight to begin again, he felt a deep dread settle in, the likes of which he hadn't felt since Geres was pursuing him.
"You leave us with no choice… I won't blame you if you don't forgive me for this."
Alice drew her last weapon, the older iron blade she'd used against Geres when she'd met Salsh two weeks prior. It wasn't in good shape, having grown dented and dulled in the time since, but she didn't have much else.
Their odds weren't promising, she thought. Between her shortage of weapons, Matthew's dwindling arrows, and Salsh's single arm, their means of actually harming their towering foe were minimal. They had made an impact with their blows to his knee- there was a noticeable hobble to his stance- but otherwise they would be hard-pressed to break through his exoskeleton.
The sentinel's attention was still mainly on Salsh, who had to dart around the treasure chamber in a series of quick warps to avoid being crushed by heavy swings of his claws. Alice noticed the bricks covering the lava crack apart little by little with each slam, and she realized with a shudder that there was just a single block's worth of floor between them and a fiery demise. If they weren't careful with their footing, one wrong step would spell doom.
"Unless… oh, I've got it!"
She ran toward the sentinel with her blade out, already preparing for the move she would have to make. Alice jabbed at his ankle, and the blade scraped along his tough hide with a hideous screech, leaving behind a thin green line. The giant Enderman growled and spun to bring down both enormous fists on her, but she threw herself into a clumsy roll out of the way. He smashed the bricks where she'd just been standing hard enough to break through, and recoiled with an enraged scream when flecks of lava burst up against his hands.
"I don't like having to do this," she thought, wincing at the sight of him clutching his burned fingers, "but if they won't back down, then neither will I."
Matthew had been circling around to get a better shot, but the sentinel spotted him in his pained thrashing. Alice panicked, realizing he wouldn't be able to defend himself up close, and ran in for another stab. Just like with the axe, her sword didn't hold up on a second strike, and the blade snapped apart upon impact. The sentinel didn't pay her any mind as he stomped toward Matthew.
"No, no…!"
Salsh teleported to the rescue, pulling him out of harm's way just as a giant claw swiped at the air where he'd been. Alice's relief only lasted a moment before the sentinel teleported as well, winding up right in front of Salsh and Matthew and bashing the pair with his forearm. They were flung against a wall of the chamber, both crying out upon impact.
Alice fumbled through her inventory for something to fight with and came up short. Even her sharpest pickaxe had been dulled when they were mining for diamonds and obsidian; it wouldn't do any good. Her eyes landed on the three chests in the middle of the room, surrounded by the gold blocks.
Salsh was on his feet again and grabbed Matthew, warping to dodge another blow from the sentinel. That left Alice free to open the first chest without interruption, and she sifted through piles of gold ingots and quartz chunks as fast as she could. Nothing she could use to fight.
"Alice, look out!"
She glanced up at Matthew's cry to find the sentinel was focused on her again. Frantic, she opened the second chest and found it completely empty. With the heavy footsteps approaching, she flung open the final chest and spotted a handle of something, buried in a pile of gold nuggets. Alice grabbed it and took one long, wild swing of the heavy item just as the Ender sentinel reached for her.
It took her a second to process what she was holding, let alone what it had done. She held a weapon like none she'd seen before: a short, thick handle ending in a large, gilded ball covered in spikes and emitting a brilliant yellow light. Whatever it was, it was as heavy- and therefore impactful- as it looked. The sentinel was clutching one of his hands with a furious grimace, and she could see she'd outright cracked the exoskeleton on his palm.
"Packs a punch," she thought, bewildered at the effect.
She'd earned her enemy's full attention then, and had to swing again as the sentinel slashed at her. Once more, the force of her new weapon outright knocked the giant's hand out of its path, even making him stumble with the momentum. Salsh capitalized, grabbing one of the golden blocks and smashing it bluntly against the sentinel's injured leg. He howled and dropped to one knee, only to recoil again as Matthew took his shot. The arrow found its mark, embedding in a narrow seam of the Enderman's exoskeleton beneath the right shoulder.
Despite the grievous injuries to both hands, burns and blunt impacts alike, he wasn't going down. He stood tall again and began to rapidly teleport about the room, stomping his feet whenever he came even remotely near one of them. It took an equally fast series of warps from Salsh for the group to stay out of his reach, and they nearly stumbled into the exposed lava pools as the sentinel destroyed more of the floor. They would run out of space before long if it kept up.
But as Alice looked at the crumbling bricks, another idea came to mind. She identified a decisive means of ending the battle, one which none of them were tall enough to execute alone.
"Matt, shoot it in the face on my signal," she said, thankful for once that scarcely any Endermen could understand her. "Salsh, go right and be ready to jump in."
The sentinel was too furious with her to pay any mind to either of the boys as they split up. Alice kept her weapon raised and walked toward him, psyching herself up once again. He charged, but rather than strike at him directly she instead brought the spiked ball down with as much force as she could onto the cracked bricks in front of her.
"NOW, MATT!"
He fired just as the sentinel was taking another step. In his haste to cover his head from the arrow, he stumbled onto the damaged floor and broke his foot right through it, into the lava below. Screeching again, he pitched forward and pulled his leg back up.
Alice leaped back and threw her weapon to the right, where Salsh was waiting. He seemed to realize her plan as soon as the sentinel hunched in pain, and teleported forward once he'd caught it. She watched him draw back, then swing with all his might and a fierce roar.
The spiked ball collided directly with the side of the giant's face. A crunch resounded through the chamber, and his head jolted from the impact. A groan, a stumble, then the sentinel teetered and collapsed face-first onto the floor. He shivered where he lay and muttered something in a wheezy gasp before going deathly still.
Almost in unison, the three of them collapsed to their knees. None of them seemed critically injured, but Alice wondered if it was possible to die from sheer exhaustion. The fight with the skeletons, the chase, the heat, the stress, it all caught up to her at once.
"We… we won…?" asked Matthew, sounding shaky but elated. "We did it?"
Salsh slowly got back up, looking downcast. He tossed the spiked weapon back to where Alice was sitting with a brief look of disgust, then approached the fallen Enderman. "Turn around, the both of you. I don't wish for you to see this…"
He'd been some variety of gloomy since they'd first met him- understandably so, given his and his kind's plight- but it was the first time when Alice thought he sounded outright miserable. Salsh's limp, heavy posture and his reluctant observation of the dead sentinel were heartbreaking to witness. She picked up the weapon and tucked it in her inventory, suspecting that merely looking at it was painful for him.
"We did it, but he just had to kill someone…"
"I said turn around!" Salsh barked.
Her eyes met Matthew's, and she could see he'd realized the problem too. They looked away together, flinching as a truly vile, visceral crunching noise came from behind them. Alice felt Salsh's hand on her shoulder not long after, and when she opened her eyes again she found herself back at the foot of the staircase. He returned a second later, this time having teleported Matthew back with him.
Salsh reached into his satchel and produced a dark green pearl, still slimy with the lime blood of the sentinel. If he were human, he might have looked ready to burst into tears.
"We threw ourselves back into the hunt, and after ten years together we stumbled across a stronghold of the Endermen hidden deep underground. Neither of us even felt human by then, not after so many deaths, and as the climax of my quest for revenge approached I still felt nothing."
"Nothing, other than fear of the monster I had created."