Chapter 5- Home
Attila was in a bad mood that night.
Firstly, Selene had to go back to the Skeletal Arms, as the manager had obviously not been very pleased with some cleaning job or other she had done. After reluctantly saying goodbye to the blonde, the five just randomly wandered through town. There was nothing better to do. Attila had nearly died of boredom then.
Terrorvale was a relatively small town, maybe half the size of Ferivell, and everything was the same. Ethan, Hugo and Eris knew some people around, but couldn't seem to find them, which was annoying. Attila did get introduced to Claw, though, and that was pretty much the only good thing of the afternoon.
T_Claw had been a bit creepy at first- who wouldn't have thought she was creepy, as she was half-cat? Attila had avoided talking to her for the first few minutes, then realised that Claw had only been an experiment by the evil guys to destroy the good guys but escaped, and that she was, in fact, very kind. Nobody got scratched, which was okay. And Claw was pretty cool. She could see in the dark and talk to animals.
At midafternoon, there was boredom again. Ethan, Hugo and Eris seemed to not want to leave Terrorvale for a while yet, as they needed to relay a message of some kind to a person who would be arriving at the town shortly, so Will and Attila stomped down the cobble path, angry for the wait. Eventually, having relayed the message over to a contact of theirs, the Minecraftian friends rejoined their group, looking very shifty and pale.
Then Attila had decided to... cheer things up a bit by building a fire. Needless to say, she had forgotten, like Honeydew had centuries ago, that there were wooden houses all around them, but luckily Hugo had buckets of water on him, which he quickly doused the fire with. Luckily, no harm was done, except Claw getting very scared for some reason, and running away. And except burning half the wooden fence around the pig farm down, which led to them having to go around herding the stupid pigs up again with wheat, which took the whole afternoon. Everyone near the quintet had started glaring at them. Not a very nice way to meet some villagers.
Attila, feeling grouchy, had left her room to roam around the, thankfully brightly lit, town. Her feet, however, led her to the bridge to Terrorvale.
Terrorvale was seperated from the Cave of Terror by a large gorge, on top of which a bridge had been built. It looked so old that Tilly had originally been hesitant to cross it, but after Eris literally backflipped all the way to the other side, a smirk visible on her face from even a good hundred metres away, she couldn't back out. Ethan had told Attila that this was the bridge that Xephos and Honeydew had crossed when they had first visited Terrorvale, which was pretty cool.
The Bridge was now in sight, and Attila shuffled towards it, hands in pockets, then sat on the edge of the fence, kicking at the rotting wood moodily. She stared up at the stars, substantially larger than they were back on Earth. Earth...
The thought of home brought tears to Attila's eyes. It had only been a couple of days since she, Will and Spark tumbled through the portal, but she'd forgotten all about her homeworld since then. She'd been so caught up in the Minecraftian action, she'd never even spared a thought for Earth, where there were actually round things besides humans on the planet.
She wondered what her parents were thinking, whether time would go on like it had when Ethan had gone...
She heard gravel crunch behind her and quickly spun around, pointing her (useless) knife at whoever it was.
"Hey," Will said mildly. Tilly lowered her knife, the glint from the torches making her weapon blind her for a moment. "Whatcha doing?"
"Nothing," Attila muttered sulkily.
"Ethan tells you there's more food at the Arms, he thinks you'd want some." Attila grumbled for a moment. "And he tells you to get inside before any mobs spawn."
"Whatever."
"You OK?" asked Will. "You sure don't look OK."
"Just thinking," replied Attila, waving her hands about to show what she was 'thinking' of. Unasked, Will sat down beside her. She shuffled away a bit and hunched her shoulders, not wanting any company.
"Earth?" Attila didn't respond. "Yeah, I've been thinking, about how life's going on, about how everyone thinks I'll have gone missing. I assumed time doesn't stand still, but at least we get to skip school," Will said, attempting to lighten the mood. "I was on holiday anyway. England's a nice place, though I prefer Canada."
Grouchily, Attila said, "Of course you do. You live there." She kicked at the wooden fence surrounding the bridge.
"Hey, lighten up. Anyway, Minecraftia's a nice place. I know we both prefer Earth, but the people here are nicer."
"You're forgetting one person..."
"I know. Eris. She's actually OK, you just don't give her a chance. C'mon, Tilly-" She turned away from him a bit. "Attila- she ran away from home. You've gotta understand that, she's not at all bad. She just feels a bit left out sometimes."
"Not my fault." Throwing around her thoughts, she changed the subject. "Hey, your sword thingy's cool. Where did you get it?"
"A bit of a long story. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great... you get the idea... grandparents came from China, they were, like, one of the best fighters in the Empire and they were best buddies with the Emperor. So anyway, the sword was passed down to my Grandma... well, she, um... departed..."
"Yeah?" Attila shot, not understanding Will's attitude towards death.
"And she left me this. So, yeah, I picked up fencing and stuff. Gotta focus on archery though, I don't get how good you're at it."
Will's story made Attila felt slightly unimportant. "Archery is easy."
"So, what's Ferivell like?"
"Boring... unless you count the thieves around the area."
The children were silent for a moment. Then Will said, "We've gotta be getting back to the inn. Hurry up or the soup will be cold. Race you back."
The race ended in a draw after Attila tired out halfway through- initially, she had been literally flying through the whole thing. Will's stamina turned out to be useful, however, when running half a kilometre. Exhausted and sweaty, Attila stumbled through the door, closely followed by Will, who had slipped through when Attila attempted to jokingly slam the door in his face.
"I won," Attila said triumphantly. "I went through the door first."
"No, you cheated."
"How?" Attila raised an eyebrow.
"You just did, I've got a great big heavy katana and you've got, what? A knife? That's unfair."
"And I can see why you two are really mature for your age," Hugo joked from the stairway. Will whacked him with a bread roll, then gagged. "It's got dandruff!" he shouted.
"Of course it does," Tilly muttered, "there's no shampoo in this world."
"WHAT?" Will shrieked. Heads turned around and he shrunk back, embarrassed.
"Kidding." She ducked before Will could kill her with his bread roll.
Eris appeared, hanging off a walkway. "Who's got dandruff?"
"Oh, hey Eris," Attila sang. Eris blinked. "Having a nice night? Of course, yeah. I am too."
Eris blinked. "Um... hi, kid."
Attila ignored the 'kid' part of the sentence and skipped up to the counter, where Selene was serving a middle-aged couple. "Hey," she giggled when she saw Attila. "You look like you've just ran a mile. Want some soup?" Stomach grumbling, Attila nodded.
"I just ran from the Bridge, Will looks OK. And yeah please, I'm starving. Do you have pumpkin soup?" In response, Selene passed her a large bowl of steaming orange soup, which Attila stuck her nose over, letting all the sweet pumpkin soup smell into her lungs. "Thanks, Selene. Smells great."
"You're welcome. Table Eight's free, you can sit there. That's the dandruff-bread table." Attila carefully carried her soup over to the table, listening to the Minecraftian accents around her.
Will and Ethan plopped down into seats at Table Eight, Will getting his broken piece of bread out from his pocket and dumping all the crumbs over Attila's brown hair. Attila shrieked and wildly brushed the crumbs off, making sure none landed in her soup. She nearly pushed Will out of his chair, but he dodged.
"You've got daaaaaaaaaaandruff," he sang. Ethan chuckled.
"Your hair does look pretty white. Look, I need to talk to you two about something," Ethan muttered.
"What?" Will whispered.
"Earth. I've been gone for so long that I think I've got an accent from here, your two accents sound so weird, and I'll probably never get back. How are you two going to get back though?"
Will and Attila glanced at each other and shrugged.
"Look, Minecraftia isn't safe. Will, you might be okay, because you're great with a sword, but Attila, you've only started archery, and although you're great at it, let's face it, you suck with a knife. There's been rumors going around about the Wall not being to hold up any longer, and if it breaks, all the sand it's been holding back will pretty much kill everyone who can't fight."
"But I can! I can improve, become as good an archer as Selene..."
"But not fast enough. Apparently, Israphel's back, weaker than he was, way weaker, but he's back. I've been trying to hide it from you-" Attila remembered the Minecraftian's pale faces after they had finished conversing with their contacts, "but Minecraftia's simply not safe. We need to get you back somehow."
"But it's impossible!"
"No, it's not. Spark, that assassin, managed it somehow. I don't know how she did it, but she did. There's a portal back somewhere, and we need to find it."
"But- I can help! You need all the people you can get if Israphel's returned. And I can help, I'll practise archery every single day."
Will sighed. "I dunno about this, Ethan. If I die, then I'll never get back to Earth, and I really need to go back. Seriously."
"So one of you wants to go back, and another doesn't. Great. We'll try to look for the portal anyway, we need to plan an escape route in case we're overwhelmed by Israphel, which wil probably happen. I didn't know we would play such a crucial part in the war, but I guess... we are toughened nomads, Hugo, Eris and I. Before, we were just normal people."
"Are you sure Israphel's back?" Attila asked tentatively.
"Pretty sure." With that, Ethan left the table. Attila and Will looked at each other uncertainly.
"We're dead," Will proclaimed.
Just a quick note- I'm going somewhere next week, so I may be slower to update. I normally work on weekends, so it won't matter, but I probably will be a day late or something.
Please let me know how this chapter was! Reviews are appreciated. xD