Monsters in the Mist Page 2

  “Look, there’s something over there,” Herder shouted, pointing. “A building!”

  Gameknight turned and looked where Herder was pointing. Sure enough, the faint outline of a building was just barely visible through the haze of Minecraft.

  “It’s a library,” the User-that-is-not-a-user exclaimed. “There’s one of those buildings in every world in Mystcraft. That’ll be where Entity303 was heading, I’m sure of it. Come on!”

  Gameknight took off in a sprint across the dark grassy plain, the others following close behind. As they ran, the meteor shower grew in intensity, the ground shaking more violently with every impact. No one looked back; they each knew the eventual fate of those poor kobolds, and none of them wanted to see their destruction.

  Just then, the land undulated beneath them, throwing all of them to the ground. As Gameknight struggled to stand, he saw a huge section of the terrain, the kobold’s tunnel included, shatter into a million blocks and fall into the void. The screams of the poor, doomed creatures were just barely audible over the destruction.

  “Come on,” Hunter growled determinedly. “Let’s keep moving!”

  They stood up and continued the race against the meteor shower. Running as fast as they could, the party quickly closed the distance. As they neared the library, all of the features of the structure became visible. The building was made of cobblestone, with a slanted roof and a pair of tall pillars on either side of the door. The library was actually floating on a small island; the endless void wrapped around its edges. A narrow bridge of cobblestone had been hastily built across the gap, allowing them access to the structure.

  “Entity303 probably made this bridge to get to the library,” Gameknight said, moving up to the edge of the narrow causeway.

  One of the wolves sniffed the single-block pathway, then barked and ran across the span.

  “Yep, they can smell his scent,” Herder said. “Wolves … investigate.”

  The pack of furry white creatures shot across the bridge to check inside and all around the library. The pack leader then emerged from the cobblestone structure and barked once. Herder nodded his head and bolted across the bridge, the rest of the group following.

  They moved quickly into the building, the single room smelling ancient, a thick layer of black dust covering the ground.

  “Destruction approaches, yes, yes,” Empech said. “We must be quick.”

  Gameknight surveyed the room. The walls were lined with bookshelves, the multicolored tomes dusty as if they hadn’t been touched for years. Against one wall was a sloped table with three pieces of paper, complicated runes drawn on each. On the ground beneath the papers sat a book, opened to the first page.

  “Look, another book,” Weaver pointed out.

  Gameknight bent down and picked up the book, then opened it to the first page. He found a large rectangle on the right page, the image dark and foreboding.

  “He went into this Age,” the User-that-is-not-a-user said.

  “What?” Woodcutter asked.

  “I told you all before, this mod, Mystcraft, lets you use these books as gateways to new dimensions within Minecraft,” Gameknight explained. “This book leads to a new world … to a new Age.”

  A huge explosion of rock and dirt filled the air. A distant mountain disintegrated and disappeared from sight.

  “Entity303, he went into this book,” Gameknight repeated. “We must follow him. When we …”

  There was a loud crash outside. Through the doorway, they could all see the ground around the library shake as if terrified of its own mortality, then fall away, leaving only small, isolated islands of black grass floating in the distance.

  “Hurry!” Digger exclaimed.

  “Herder, get the wolves close to me,” Gameknight said. “Everyone else, grab on and hold tight.”

  “Do we need to make one of those linking books you made back in the dungeons of the White Castle?” Crafter asked.

  “I don’t think we’ll be wanting to return here anytime soon,” the User-that-is-not-a-user replied. “If there even still is a here. Everyone ready?”

  “Here we go again,” Stitcher said. “Time for another ride on the trans-dimensional minecart.”

  “I like that name,” Gameknight said.

  Stitcher smiled at her cleverness.

  “Here we go.”

  The User-that-is-not-a-user placed his hand on the book, waited for a second to make sure everyone was touching him, then imagined himself clicking on it with his mouse. The purple-and-silver mist swirled about him like a thick morning fog, then they disappeared from the doomed library and traveled through the book to the next Age.

  Soaring high overhead, a red demon watched the party in the abandoned library. His leathery black wings stretched out and carried him on the gentle breeze as he banked and curved. Suddenly, he felt the strangers disappear from this world.

  “I havvve not felllt such magical enchannntments for a lonnng timmme,” the creature said to the slowly disappearing world, his long, drawn-out words connected together, almost as if he were singing. “They havvve swords and armorrr with enchantments … potionnnns by the scores. I thirrrst for their maaagic.”

  The red monster, named Kahn, dove toward the library, then pulled up just before he slammed into the ground. Landing gracefully on his clawed red feet, Kahn folded in his dark, bat-like wings and entered the library. He had to stoop just a little to keep the straight, white horns on his head from scraping the top of the doorway.

  A book lay on the ground. The demon looked at it and smiled, his white, razor-sharp teeth gleaming in the pale light of the diseased green sunlight that streamed in through a window.

  “I would lllove to devourrr you, book,” the monster said to the dusty tome, “but I mmmust follow the strannngers. Their enchannntments will feed me annnd make mmme stronnnger.”

  Reaching down, the demon touched the book with the tip of a clawed finger, then closed his eyes and followed his newfound prey into the next Age, just as the floor beneath him began to fall away into the void. The bright red demon disappeared in a cloud of purple and silver as the last remnants of the world crumbled to dust, leaving the dying Age forever empty.

  CHAPTER 2

  ENTITY303’S RAGE

  Entity303 ran through the decrepit land with a smile on his face. Everything in this terrain bespoke death: the grass was an ashen gray, the sky was a dirty brown, the blood-red sun hung low in the sky, the rivers that zigzagged across the ground were an oily black, and the trees looked as if they were made from the skeleton of some kind of extinct prehistoric beast. Every tree was devoid of leaves, the central trunk a bleached white column of bone, with square joints positioned up the barren tree, narrower pieces of bone sticking out like skeletal arms, each ending in a thin, parched, calcified protrusion. The forest of bone trees stretched out in all directions but did not cover the entire terrain. Many places had nothing but gaping holes where once the landscape existed, but in this unstable Age, as with the last, the ground was quickly deteriorating.

  Drawing his glowing, infused sword, Entity303 slashed at one of the pale trees in frustration, toppling it to the ground.

  “That idiotic villager, Weaver, should have never escaped from me,” the vile user groaned. “Having him as a hostage gave me an advantage.” He looked down at the pieces of bone that now lay at his feet, the tree just a stump sticking up out of the ground. “It’s no matter. When I find the Age I’m seeking, I’ll have all the allies I need, and then we’ll see if Gameknight and all his pathetic friends can survive my plans.”

  Entity303 laughed an evil, maniacal laugh that filled the air. He loved the sound of his own voice.

  Glancing up from the bone trees, the user stared at the black, twisting structures that clawed their way between the bony branches. The crystals were made of something darker than coal; some block he didn’t recognize. The crystalline structures were jagged shapes that somehow seemed as if they were the embodiment of pai
n and suffering. Entity303 thought they appeared to be made of the same thing that flowed through the rivers, but the liquid was thick and gloopy, like oil, and the crystals were shiny and polished. The entire world conveyed agony and suffering and death … it was fabulous.

  Throughout the land, tiny green hobgoblins moved amidst the pale white trees. Their dark, olive-colored skin stood out in stark contrast to the pale white structures and the gray, lifeless-looking grass. With jagged noses and wide pointy ears, they would have appeared terrifying if it were not for their diminutive size; hobgoblins were only as tall as a village child. They each wore light brown shorts and no shirts, their exposed barrel chests rippling with muscles.

  The creatures spotted Entity303, but ignored the user, as if he were just another part of the terrain; hobgoblins were typically peaceful … unless threatened, when they tended to swarm down upon the threat with sharp nails and pointy teeth.

  Entity303 drank a potion of Leaping and a potion of Swiftness, then approached a group of tiny green monsters with his blazing yellow sword drawn.

  “Come here, little hobgoblins, I have something for you,” the user said with a vicious smile.

  The edge of his weapon glowed bright yellow, as if powered from within. Entity303 suddenly struck at the creatures, destroying the first two quickly, just to let them all know he was serious. Swinging his glowing blade in a wide arc, Entity303 sliced into a large group of monsters, not doing much damage, but causing their rage to seethe and overflow. The monsters hissed like boiling teakettles, then charged at him. Leaping backward, the user put some distance between himself and the monsters, then removed his white yeti chest plate and replaced it with his gray Elytra wings. More hissing came from behind; the creatures were approaching from all sides … good.

  “Come, my little monsters. Try and catch me, if you dare.”

  Sprinting toward a group of green, toothy monsters, Entity303 leapt up into the air just before reaching them. The creatures reached out with their pointed claws, but the user was already much too high, the potion of leaping giving the user extra height. At the apex, he leaned forward and allowed his wings to snap open. The Elytra wings caught the breeze and lifted him into the air, allowing him to soar over the oily rivers and dull gray landscape. The monsters stared up at him with furious red eyes. Reaching into his inventory, he pulled out splash potions of Poison and dropped them on the tiny hobgoblins, just because he could. Entity303 laughed cruelly as the poisoned creatures writhed on the ground in misery.

  From this altitude, the bone trees that covered the land looked more like the spines of animals that had been trying to crawl up out of the ground, but became stuck and finally perished, with their skeletal remains now all that was left. He knew that wasn’t the case, but the thought amused him.

  Banking in a wide arc, Entity303 settled atop one of the inky-black crystalline structures. The tip of the jagged shape was high off the ground, far away from the hobgoblins’ claws. Waiting for more to gather, Entity303 threw another splash potion on the creatures, this time one of Blindness, then jumped high into the air and glided away across the landscape.

  A bolt of lightning suddenly stabbed at the ground from the dusty brown sky, the crooked white fingers of electricity slashing at the landscape and making chunks of land crumble into dust. Large sections of the biome just fell away, leaving gigantic holes through which the utter darkness of the void could be seen. Entity303 eyed the sky nervously as he flew, hoping he would not be the next target.

  “I hope Gameknight999 and his friends enjoy following me,” Entity303 said with a chuckle as he landed on the bleached limb of a bone tree.

  Running across the pale branch, he leapt into the air just as a bolt of lightning struck the ground nearby, causing another rift to form in the ground, the landscape dissolving away.

  Pulling out his bow, he fired at the hobgoblins below as he flew, not seeking to destroy, only to wound and enrage; it was working. The Punch II enchantment on the bow gave him a little speed boost that he didn’t really need; these foolish creatures would never catch him even if he weren’t flying. The green monsters glared up at him, growling and snarling with anger and frustration, all of them scurrying about, looking for a way to reach him as he soared overhead. Banking to the left, he spotted what he was looking for: a square, unadorned cobblestone building.

  “The library!” he exclaimed.

  Every Age had a library, and within each library was a trio of rune-covered pages.

  “If that pathetic Gameknight999 hadn’t rushed me, I’d have had all the pages I needed to get to King Iago’s world,” Entity303 growled, frustrated. “Now, he has the all-important page, and I must travel from Age to Age until I come across that page in one of the libraries.”

  In a fit of anger, he fired an arrow down at one of the hobgoblins. It struck the tiny monster in the shoulder, causing it to screech in pain. Entity303 smiled.

  More lightning stabbed downward from the sky, some of the bolts landing amidst the hobgoblins, causing the puny creatures to plummet into the void, along with the land on which they stood. Entity303 laughed as the hobgoblins fell, screaming.

  Leaning forward, Entity303 traded altitude for speed and streaked toward the abandoned structure. A few hobgoblins stood nearby, but he eliminated them with arrows before he landed; he did not want to be disturbed within the ancient structure. Landing with practiced ease, the evil user removed his wings and quickly replaced them with his white and blue Alpha-Yeti armor.

  He looked up at the cobblestone structure. Stairs led up to the entrance of the library, where tall columns of stone on either side of the doorway reached up to the roof high overhead. With the colored spirals from the potions still circling about in his vision, Entity303 leaped quickly past the stairs and into the building. Instantly, his senses were assaulted by the age of the place. A musty smell permeated the interior, and a thick layer of dust covered everything, adding to the unpleasant aroma. The walls were lined with bookshelves, each brightly colored book marked on its spine with writing that had nearly faded. On one wall was a slanted writing table; he knew it to be a lectern, as it was called in this mod, Mystcraft. On it were three square pieces of parchment, with complex, curvilinear runes drawn on each.

  He glanced at each paper quickly, then growled in frustration.

  “The page I need isn’t here!” Entity303 complained to the empty room. “Now, I must go to another random world, and another and another until I find the page I need. And all because of that annoying Gameknight999!”

  The user took a set of rune-covered pages out of his inventory and laid them out on the ground. He had the Sky Islands, the Tall Forest, and all the other pages he needed; about thirty-seven pages in total, he knew. There was just one missing: the Cave World sheet. With that page, his book would be complete, and Entity303 could use it to get to the world where his allies and supplies waited. But if any detail in the sequence of pages were wrong, or if a page were missing, then the incomplete book would take him to some random Age.

  “If only I’d had to time to grab everything from that chest under the White Castle,” he said, shaking his head.

  He growled in frustration as the image of Gameknight999 and his friends charging at him in the dungeon under the White Castle filled his mind. If he’d had just a few seconds more, then he’d be executing the next phase of his plan right now, instead of wandering around looking for the right page, but that pesky User-that-is-not-a-user had gotten in the way. Eventually, Entity303 would find the Cave World page, and then his plans would resume, but he was impatient; he wanted to get the destruction of Minecraft started … now!

  Thunder boomed outside as flashes of lightning lit the interior of the library … this unstable Age was not going to last long, Entity303 knew.

  Ignoring the three pages on the lectern, Entity303 collected the pages off the ground and stuffed them into his inventory. He then removed his bookbinder from his inventory and placed it on the ground. Gat
hering a group of random pages he didn’t need, he built another book. It didn’t matter what the next world looked like; all that mattered was the library and the three pages contained within.

  Pulling the newly constructed book from the bookbinder, he placed the device back into his inventory, then held the book in one hand.

  Suddenly, the ground shook, causing the land directly around the library to fall into the void. Entity303 moved to the doorway and peered out. He saw that much of the terrain around the library was now gone, leaving a gap between the library and the land around it.

  “I’m not done toying with you yet, Gameknight999. I want you to follow me, so that you can see the destruction of Minecraft firsthand,” Entity303 said.

  Using blocks of stone, he built a bridge from the library to the solid land around it, just as he had in the last world, making it possible for his pursuers to continue their hopeless chase. Sprinting across the bridge, he sped across the dull gray landscape, yelling at the top of his lungs. The hobgoblins heard his voice and came toward him from all directions, their hissing growing louder and louder.

  “Yes, come get me, you pathetic monsters!” yelled the evil user.

  He ran in a circle, leaping high into the air, making sure the monsters saw him, then ran back to the library.

  “Come get me, you fools!” Entity303 yelled at them as they rushed toward him. “But beware, my army is following me and will be here soon. You had best prepare.”

  The hobgoblins began to congregate at the end of his little bridge, then ran across, the sharp claws on their tiny feet making a clicking sound on the cobblestone.

  Entity303 glanced at the open door to the library and saw the creatures forming up, getting ready to charge. He laughed. The green monsters moved up the stairs and burst into the room, their red eyes glowing with rage. When they stepped into the strange library, they skidded to a stop and stared at the trapped user, each of them hissing and growling.

  “My friends will be here soon; please welcome them,” Entity303 said with a laugh, then touched the dark rectangle on the open book. Instantly, he was enveloped in a cloud of purple-and-silver smoke that made the hobgoblins step back, confused. Their demonic green faces then changed from expressions of rage to frustration as Entity303 slowly faded from sight. Watching their disappointment was priceless to Entity303 and made the terrible user laugh a malicious laugh that made the monsters cringe.