Sean Wolfe - The Complete Elementia Chronicles - Quest for Justice; The New Order; The Dusk of Hope; Herobrine’s Message

Kat’s anguished scream reverberated around the walls of the mine shaft, making it seem three times louder than it actually was. Stan sprinted into the darkness towards his friend, weaving through the path Kat had hacked through the Spider webs. Stan heard a pained whimper as he approached where he judged Kat to be. He pulled back his shovel and swung it, baseball style, as it connected to the Spider that was digging its teeth into Kat’s chest as she lay unconscious on the stone floor, with Rex lying lifeless beside her.

As the Spider fell down onto the floor, Stan noticed in the low light that it was small, only about two thirds the size of a normal Spider. It had the same red eyes, but it appeared to be blue. He only noticed it for a moment, though, before another one came barreling out of the darkness, straight towards him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Charlie kneeling down, tending to Kat, so he batted the Spider back with his shovel as he had the first one. This one landed on its feet, and he had to hit it a few more times before it finally succumbed to death.

More Spiders kept coming, and their numbers were increasing. Stan wondered what was happening. Hostile mobs did not attack like this. There were a variety of them, and they didn’t spawn this frequently, even in such low light.

Then, slowly, as he batted down more and more Spiders, with Charlie now fighting at his side, he noticed a faint glow in the distance. He dodged a Spider and stepped close. What he saw was a black cage, one block in size. Every now and then, a small glow of fire would burst from the cage, and Stan could see a miniature Spider, blue like the ones he was fighting, spinning inside. Immediately after each burst of fire, another Spider would appear, which Stan would hastily beat down.

Stan realized that this thing was spawning swarms of Spiders, and if he didn’t destroy it soon, they would have a serious problem on their hands. Then he saw Kat’s stone sword lying on the ground, and he knew what had to be done. Without thinking, he snatched up the sword, cut aside two of the Spiders, and, with all his strength, thrust the sword into the heart of the cage, impaling the miniature arachnid inside.

There was a burst of light. Fire flew from the cage, and there was a loud shrieking noise, like thousands of Spiders being murdered at the same time. Then, the cage was silent. The fire within it had died, and no more monsters were being spawned from it. Stan picked up his shovel, cast aside the remains of the ruined sword, and turned back to Charlie, who was just puncturing the body of the last Spider with his diamond pickaxe.

“Good thinking, man,” heaved Charlie, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“Thanks,” replied Stan, and he looked down at Kat, who now appeared to be shivering in a puddle of her own vomit. “Is she going to be all right?”

“Yeah, but it’ll take a while,” said Charlie gravely. “Those things were Cave Spiders. They didn’t do much damage to her, thanks to you, but they poisoned her. The poison will make her throw up anything in her system. I was stupid and tried to feed her one of her potions, but she just threw it back up. Her system will rid itself of the poison eventually. We just need to give it time. When she wakes up, she’ll be very weak and very hungry.”

“Man, I’m so glad you read that book,” chuckled Stan. Then he had a thought. “Oh God, you didn’t get poisoned, did you?”

“I doubt it,” he replied. “None of those Spiders even touched me. You?”

“I don’t think so,” said Stan in relief. “That’s good. Even with the bread we got from that chest, we only have six loaves left, and I think that at least two of those are going to Kat when she wakes up.”

Indeed, after a while the unconscious Kat woke up, and the first words out of her mouth were incoherent grumbling, asking for food. Charlie gave her two loaves of bread and one of her two remaining healing potions. Even after this, Kat was very weak and had to walk slowly. She was also on edge.

“What do you mean, my sword’s gone?” Kat barked at Stan when he explained what had happened after she was knocked out.

“I told you,” he said, “I used it to destroy the Spider spawner.”

“And you couldn’t save it or something?” Kat spat in disgust. “You’re useless, you know that? Absolutely useless.”

“Shut up! If you hadn’t just barged in like that, we wouldn’t have been ambushed by those Spiders. It’s no one’s fault but yours that your sword is gone. Stop blaming me.”

“To that point,” added Charlie, who had just finished healing Rex with some rotten flesh, “I still have that stone pickaxe. You can use that until you can craft a new sword, Kat.” He pulled it out and gave it to her. She looked at it in disgust.

“I need to get a new weapon,” she said, spinning the pickaxe over in her hand.

“Welcome to the club,” sighed Stan, his shovel still gripped in his hand. “You, at least, have your bow.”

They wandered the mine shaft, taking side tunnels they had never seen before, trying to find some way out or, even better, an entrance to a secret stash room. Before long, they became hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of tunnels. Stan was just about to say that they should tunnel back up to the surface when something caught his eye.

At the end of the corridor to their right was a door. It was made out of metal, and there were torches on either side of it, as well as a button. He could see a ton of light streaming from the window of the door. But what most caught his attention was the sign above the door.

It read Underground Base of Avery007.

“Avery007?” said Charlie when Stan pointed the sign out to him and Kat. “You mean that guy from the Apothecary’s story? Does that mean that he lives down here?”

“Not any more,” said Kat, staring at the sign. “Remember what the Apothecary said? The King killed him. He’s banished from the server forever. This must’ve been where he lived at one point.”

“Didn’t he have operating powers?” remembered Stan.

“Yeah …” said Charlie, an idea striking him. “And if he had operating powers, that means he probably had some pretty good stuff!”

“OK, let’s go in then,” said Stan, shovel at the ready. “But be careful this time. We don’t know what could be in there.”

Charlie nodded, and he raised his diamond pick, ready to defend himself. Kat also drew her pickaxe and held it at the ready. Stan pressed the button on the wall, and the iron door slowly swung open.

He stepped inside, and immediately his foot caught on some string lying across the ground. An arrow flew out of nowhere and snagged his leather cap off his head. Another arrow immediately afterwards glanced off his iron chestplate.

“Hit the dirt!” he screamed, and fell to the ground as arrows continued to whiz over his head. Behind him he heard Charlie and Kat doing the same. He looked up and saw that the arrows were being fired from a machine, the same kind that the Apothecary had trapped him with when they first met. He realized that he had stepped on a tripwire that had activated the machine. He hastily brought the blade of his shovel down on the trip wire, destroying it. The arrows stopped immediately.

Stan got up and looked around. They were in a well-lit room, made mainly of stone. Here and there, sections of the wall had been replaced with brick. There were various crafting tables and furnaces around the room, as well as chests. A bed sat in a corner.

“Well, this is disappointing,” said Kat, examining a painting of a sunset on the wall.

“Yeah, it is,” agreed Charlie, pulling a pair of iron leggings out of the chest. “This is the lair of Avery007?”