Hello, this is Pastrinator64 with another chapter from Hourglass!
I'm sure all of you are wondering this: "Why is Pasty back so soon? Doesn't he usually go MIA for a couple months before pulling himself together?"
...well, that kinda hurts if you actually think that, but it IS true! I just felt like working on it a lot more, is all. And I know that I'm posting really late (at least in my timezone), but I care not! So, yeah! How about some replies to reviews!
Oh yeah, and I've decided that any repeat-reviewers will just have everything answered in the one reply rather than me putting their name here over and over. Thanks! :D
Replies to Reviews
Sebastian: Ah, references! Sometimes they're subtle, sometimes they're not! I just like having fun with them. There are a few I've put in my old stories that no one ever got, even! XD And yes, I see what you mean by there being lots of teen romance, but I actually didn't mind. The Miner's Destiny is still an AMAZING story! My personal favorite.
Badgerman: You have no idea how much fun it was to write that battle! I haven't gotten to write a boss battle in forever! Glad you enjoyed it! Also, thanks for that. I mean your comment about how it doesn't matter how many viewers I have. I keep forgetting that it really doesn't. It's still a shame, but it's not the most important factor. By the way, I actually started writing The Glitch before I read The Miner's Destiny, so I did not draw inspiration from it until later.
Nwinds: 1. Hey, I know where I'm going.
2. Personally, the book of Revelations is my favorite. It's the most interesting to think about.
3. I hate to become like all the others. I REFUSE!
TheBarbarianKing: So, did you read the two books before this one? If yes—I hope—which was your favorite? Mine's the original. By far.
And I might as well remind you that I stopped doing QAA. It just wasn't helping my artistic flow at all. In fact, it was a bit obstructing. No offense to any of you, it's just what I need to do.
Now, let the story commence!
Chapter 24: Arcuniris's Magic Seal
Auconi pumped his fist as he gave a holler.
"Oh YEAH! I'm really feeling it!" he quickly turned to the others, who were exchanging high-fives. "What do we get to kill next?!"
Darcy lifted a hand and pat him on the head as if he were a small child.
"Now, now, Auconi! Don't get too romped up, you naughty little ankle-biter!"
Auconi slapped his hand away and tried to hide his reddening face from the others. He hated being treated like a little kid. Bailey sighed out of relief, leaning up against the cold stone wall. She wiped sweat from the crook of her arm.
"I haven't gone ham like that since we fought against the Glitch's army..." she muttered, letting out another breath.
Just as she closed her eyes, Astrid leapt forward and slammed the wall with her foot, startling Bailey.
"Wake up, Creeperwhisperer! Now, what did I tell you about monster fighting being a riot?"
Bailey couldn't help but laugh at Astrid's enthusiasm. She mussed up Astrid's mane of dirty-blonde hair and replied,
"Sure, Astrid! Like I said, it's been a while! 20 years is longer than you've even been alive."
Astrid rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, but I'm getting there! I just turned sixteen last week, so only four more years!"
While everyone was going around in their excitement, Norman was sloshing through the massive puddles of liquid sulfur that covered the floor, moving towards the center of the room. The Arcuniris's glow still emanated, inviting him with its soft hues. Upon reaching it, he stopped above it, expecting it carefully. They'd been tricked by it twice now, so he wasn't about to let his guard down.
He reached back into his Blockpack, struggling to do so with his shorter arms, and eventually got out his diamond pickaxe. The Arcuniris could be harder than obsidian for all he knew. He lifted up the tool and brought it back down with a powerful swing, forming the tiniest of cracks. He grunted, lifting it again and repeating. A minute later, he'd only made a few cracks on its open face.
"Sheesh, this thing is tough! Just like my dad's cooking..."
He laughed at his own joke and kept working away at the magic block. After another few minutes, Kelsey noticed that Norman was missing from the group and took a glance around.
"Mr. Cobweb? Er...Norman?"
She spotted him standing in the center of the Stonehenge foundation and immediately started after him. Norman had made quite a few more cracks in the surface, though his arms ached from the endless swings.
"A few more hits should do it!" he said to himself, lifting his diamond pick into the air once more.
Kelsey came up next to him, making him jump a little.
"Sorry!" she quickly apologized, looking embarrassed. "Didn't mean to startle you."
Norman just shrugged and drove the sharp end of his pick into Arcuniris again, spreading the maze of cracks that now covered it.
"It's alright. I'm just trying to break this thing into item form! I'm hoping that will release Froace the Fourth, but...I'm not sure what other way there is to do this."
Astrid bounded up behind them, skidding to a halt in front of them and joining them in watching Norman break the block bit by bit.
"So, once we get the Spirit to come out, can we keep Arcuniris? Just imagine how much this thing would sell for!"
The moment Astrid had finished speaking, Norman pickaxe connected with Arcuniris for the final time, breaking it in a spray of multicolored particles. A flash of light issued from the falling particles before they despawned into the ground, leaving Arcuniris in its item form. It hovered in the small hole like a normal item, surprisingly. Norman smiled with satisfaction and hopped down into the hole, sucking up the item into his Blockpack and then getting right back out.
"No more tricks, I guess!" Kelsey concluded, looking relieved. "What now, though?"
The others—Bailey, Auconi, Adrian, Darcy, and Kenneth—ran up behind the three of them. Norman turned around to face them and held Arcuniris with both hands, staring at it. Everyone else did the same.
"Sooooo...where is this Froace character?" muttered Auconi, eyebrow raised. "Or is this really just another really rare block that happened to contain a monster from Hell?"
Adrian took a look around in the air, squinting a little.
"Hm. I ain't seeing no Spirit, neither."
Norman shook his head. Now he was totally confused.
"But, what am I supposed to do? We defeated the first Unforgivable Spawn! I thought that Froace was just going to, I don't know, show up!"
And then, their least favorite voice sounded above them, causing all heads to turn to the tallest stone structure.
"Well done, everyone! You nailed it! Bravo! Huzzah!"
Standing on top of the cold, hard stone was Nicholas Wither, his silvery wardrobe still shimmering brilliantly. He tapped his curled cane on the rocks as a substitute for clapping. Auconi lifted a finger to him accusingly and shouted,
"Hey! Nicholas, you jerkwad! Were you watching us this whole time and you didn't do anything?!"
Nicholas waved a hand at him, smile growing instantaneously.
"Please, call me Nick!"
He hopped down off of the ten block-high structure landed lightly, not taking a single heart of fall damage. He stood up with a little bounce and promptly held out his free hand to Norman, who still clutched Arcuniris in his hands.
"I'm so glad you went to the trouble of getting this for me! This is the second time it's been stolen, I mean!"
Norman pulled the magic gem closer to his chest and grimaced at Nick.
"This isn't for you, Nick. You wouldn't understand, but this block is pretty important in the Divination of Dimensions—the prophecy of this dimension. Besides, as far as I understand, winners at casinos get to keep their own prizes."
Nick shook his head with that same smile still glued to his face.
"You obviously aren't very good at recognizing simple character clues, are you? Look at me, kid! What am I wearing?!"
Norman felt a little awkward checking him out, but he did it anyway. Glittering silver suit and tie, pale gray trilby, toting a chrome cane, white hair...
"Wait a sec..." murmured Norman, suddenly piecing things together. "You're not...you couldn't be!"
Nick slapped a hand to his own face, dragging his skin down in frustration.
"I thought I could take a liking to you, Norman Cobweb, but you seem to be a little too clueless." he let go of his face and randomly placed a furnace beside him. "Smelt the Arcuniris, would you? Then you'll see!"
Without waiting for an answer, Nick snatched the block out of Norman's hands and slapped it in the furnace. They all gasped.
"Hey!"
"Ah, be quiet!" snapped Nick as he inserted coal into the furnace's bottom slot, looking much less jovial than he was a minute ago.
Everyone just stared at the glowing fire that crackled visibly from inside the furnace, waiting with bated breath. The arrow filled with white slowly, coming closer and closer to the end of the cycle. Finally, the arrow was completely full and Arcuniris was smelted into a...
"What the heck?" Astrid muttered, staring at the result slot.
Instead of a single rainbow gem, a transparent spawn egg sat in the furnace. As Norman was taking it out, Bailey suddenly cried,
"Woah! Nick just disappeared! Gone! Kaput!"
Norman stared at the egg in his hand, which was still warm from being smelted. A wispy something was swirling around from underneath the translucent shell. Tiny little wings of the blurry figure tapped on the surface rapidly. He could even see angry little eyes glaring up at him. Darcy snickered and tapped the egg a couple times, rattling the Spirit contained inside.
"Ha! That's just ripper, mate! Go on, shake it around a bit!"
Norman took it away from him before he could do it himself.
"This is serious, Darcy. In my hands, I hold a founder of the universe. The creator of all physical elements and controller of quality of all things. You want to anger him more? Don't even think about it."
Before Darcy could insert any more of his snide comments, Norman thrust the egg at the ground and spawned the Spirit. A blinding flash of silver issued from the block that he used it on, and when it faded, Froace the Fourth floated there. He looked just like the other three Spirits In Between, only his body didn't shift around like smoke. Instead, it looked like it was made of rock, two transparent crags jutting from his temples and several more along each edge of his wings. His face held a chipped smile, though his tone was rather sour.
"It's about time I got out of that Minecraftian body! So small! So...tight." he declared, stretching his wings with an earth-rumbling series of cracks.
When he was finished loosening up, he looked down upon the group of eight below him.
"Sorry, I haven't explained, have I? Well, I'm in a better mood now that I'm me again, so I'll humor you for the sake of your, er, quest."
Froace floated over their heads and towards the edge of the room. As he began inspecting a block of emerald embedded in the wall, he started on a monologue.
"You see, after I came here for my vacation, I thought that I could go another twenty years undisturbed after you had sealed the Glitch away. Evidently, the Glitch got smart and found a way to escape the depths of the Void again, so it started terrorizing this world again. Why? I wondered this for a couple months on end, always worried that it would come after me... of course, you know all this already."
A couple of them rolled their eyes, but Froace continued.
"Then the worst surprise of all came to meet me. That numbskull Satan chose to get in on the chaos and sent three of his Unforgiven Spawn into the Minecraft Dimension, one of them coming after me. I had no choice but to return to my Minecraftian form—one of my least favorite out of all the others—so Revelation's Horse wouldn't find me and...well, it probably would've swallowed me whole. I wasn't exactly prepped for battle at the time. I had no idea that the heroes of the Divination of Dimensions would be coming, but BOY was I glad when you did!"
He suddenly turned on all of them, extending a wing in their faces.
"You think that Nick was always that cheerful? Ha! You heroes lit up my day just by showing up! Even if you are all completely oblivious!"
They all groaned. He shook his head in disappointment and replied,
"That's no way to treat a Spirit, boys and girls! You must understand the amount of pressure I've been in, at least. I have an excuse to be a little impatient."
Many of them tried not to groan again as Froace continued. He moved from the emerald to a gold vein just a few blocks above it.
"Anyway, I've got to hand it to my older brother Farixz for applying Minecraftia's rules to Revelation's Horse. If he hadn't, none of your weapons would have done anything to it at all. A creature like that cannot be harmed by anything except a blade from its own plane of existence. Perhaps good ol' Phil could whip out the Logic Sword again, but let's not get into that again. Nasty business with that one...
"Well, after seeing you heroes team together against Revelation's Horse, I was absolutely ecstatic! Now I could get back what was rightfully mine without attracting any *ahem* devilish plans, and be able to free my soul from that gemstone. I was not in the mood for a fight with another one of Satan's pets." he said, and then turned to face Norman, the two of them locking eyes. "I might just be one of the greediest people in the entire universe, but a Spirit must honor the code."
Froace hovered back down to solid ground and settled in front of Norman, standing twice as tall as our protagonist. He seemed to still be enjoying this height advantage as he said his following words.
"How can I ever repay you?" he said with a flourish.
Norman didn't even need to think about that one. He instantly recalled the reason why they had come to fetch the other three Spirits In Between. He pointed a finger up at Froace and declared,
"I want you to return to the Palace of 0. Farixz, Serisdo, and Thorvon are all waiting for you there. We haven't got enough time to explain everything that's going on, so you'll be caught up to speed when you get there. We've got a date with New Pork City." he finished, then quickly added, "Not the Earthbound one. The one here in Minecraftia."
The smile on Froace's face grew upon the mention of New Pork City. He leaned in closer to Norman and said,
"So, you eight are off to annoy my brother Firzon? How delightful!"
He suddenly backed up against the wall and raised both wings into the air, starting to form a luminescent film around them.
"I suppose I could transport you out of the Diggy Diggy Hole and to the surface from whence you came. May I?"
They all nodded to each other in agreement. Of course, Bailey and Norman looked a little skeptical about teleportation in general, but they put their nerves aside and went along with it. Once Froace knew that they were all on the same page, he started to intensify the glowing layer around his wings.
"Excellent! This is where you and I go our separate ways, Norman Cobweb. Good luck to all of you!"
With that, Froace's wings came down at his sides in a blur. The next moment, the eight heroes disappeared in a blinding flash of light.
One Spirit down, two more to go.
NOW we're getting somewhere! I would say that this story has just passed the 1/3 mark, but we're already past that. The chapters before they reached Blocks Vegas made this story look much longer than it really will be, I promise. :)
Well, that's all for now! I hope you enjoyed chapter numbah twenty-four, and I'll see you all LATER!
This is Pastrinator64, your fellow writer and reader, signing out!
*throws sugar bomb and disappears behind its cloud of fine white sugar*
...Goodbye for now...
~Pastrinator64 [~]