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

and the universe said the light you seek is within you

and the universe said you are not alone

and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing

and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself,

talking to itself, reading its own code

and the universe said I love you because you are love.

And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, and dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love.

You are the player.

Wake up.

And Stan did wake up. He found himself standing on the warm, familiar ground of Spawnpoint Hill as gently as his entry into the End had been. He was in a stupor, filled with awe at what the Enlightenment had turned out to be. Perhaps this was what had made him oblivious to the blunt spikes that were attempting to penetrate his diamond armour.

“Get down!” screamed Kat, snapping Stan out of his pensive state, and Stan realized with horror that they were under heavy fire from arrows. He fell to the ground, and he looked up wildly and saw four dispensers surrounding him, firing arrows from all sides. Stan’s eyes went from the dispensers to the trails of glowing red dust leading to them, and he realized with a start that he and his four friends were lying atop a stone pressure plate.

Quick as a whip, Charlie drove his pickaxe into the smooth stone plate, which shattered into chunks. Instantly, the bursts of arrows from the machine subsided. The players and Oob awkwardly stood up in the limited space between the arrow dispensers. As they worked their way out of the centre of the small maze of machines, Stan realized the purpose behind the arrow machines and was revolted. The machine had been put there by the King to instantly kill anything that appeared there! Had the players not been wearing diamond armour, they would have been murdered on the spot.

After Charlie had torn down the arrow machine with his pickaxe, the five of them quickly congregated. Stan wasn’t really focused on the others, though. He took the opportunity to look around Spawnpoint Hill, which he was standing on for the first time since he had joined the game.

Stan shook his head in incredulity. The serene hill was not changed in the least from the scene that had been Stan’s first impression of Minecraft. Actually, that wasn’t right, Stan thought as his eyes drifted over to the section of bare dirt blocks where the dispensers had stood minutes before and which had not yet been re-covered with grass. These dispensers demonstrated the change that had taken place within Elementia much more than any large structure ever could. Stan’s first moments in Minecraft had been met with the warm, comforting light of torches to ward off the mobs and a chest of food, a tool of defence, and a guide on how to play. Any players that had entered Elementia since then had seen nothing except arrows to the cranium.

Now that they were but a stone’s throw from launching their attack on the King, Stan took a moment to think about it. He realized that what had once seemed like a crazy, whimsical desire had manifested itself within his very being and had evolved into a crazy, consuming obsession. Stan wanted the King dead, and for the first time, a new realization crashed over him as he stared at that simple uncovered dirt: he wanted to do it himself.

Stan wanted to be the one to personally smite the King with a sword, bury an axe into him, end his life with an arrow. By whatever manner the King was destined to die, Stan wanted the blood to stain his hands. Stan’s time in Elementia so far had been pockmarked by so much death, destruction and misery that Stan wanted nothing more than to be the one to end the person responsible, no matter what the cost.

The odd thing was, even though Stan wanted to kill the King with every fibre of his being, he somehow knew that even if he did not seek the confrontation, it would inevitably happen anyway. Stan couldn’t tell how he knew this. Maybe it was the higher power of dubious existence contacting him again, but Stan knew that, like it or not, he and King Kev were going to lock sword and axe on the battlefield, and only one of them was leaving that confrontation alive.

Stan was so deep in his thoughts that he hadn’t even realized that they had started walking back down the road, still shaded by trees in the same manner as on that first day. He smiled as he recalled in fond retrospect how he and Charlie had panicked and barely managed to keep a lumbering Zombie at bay that first day. And now look at us , thought Stan, and his smile widened as he looked at the diamond-clad and heavily armed Charlie and glanced down at himself and the similarly adorned players travelling alongside him.

Stan found that first Zombie they had encountered, and the way they had handled it, much more amusing than he thought that he ought to. Perhaps it was just how far they had come and gone in such a short time. Perhaps it was nerves that were showing themselves in short bursts. In any case, when Stan noticed a Zombie out in the woods give him a sideways glance, he walked over to it, and as it neared him in the slow manner that Zombies do, he made a point of killing the Zombie with a succession of swift punches to the rotten face, his axe sitting idly in his inventory.

At the fifteenth punch, the Zombie’s head snapped to the side, and as Stan picked up the rotten flesh, he became aware that everybody was staring at him (except for Oob, who had managed to wander into a nearby small lake and was looking about as if wondering how he had gotten there). Stan just smiled up at them and tossed the rotten flesh into the air, where it was snagged by Rex before it hit the ground. Stan hadn’t noticed exactly when the dog had reappeared, but he was so far past questioning it.

“Ah, nostalgia,” he said with a chuckle as Rex chewed the rotten flesh hungrily, shooting Stan a fond look. “Remember that first day, Charlie? The Zombie, the shelter, the Spiders?”

A reminiscing look came over Charlie’s features. “Yeah. It was a simpler time,” he said longingly. “It’s weird to be back, isn’t it?”

Stan nodded. “It’s like visiting your old primary school twenty years later.”

Charlie gave a casual “Yep” of agreement, and the four players continued walking the path, with Oob following slowly behind him. They passed an old dirt-and-wood shelter with no top that Stan realized was the same one he and Charlie had built on their first night. They inspected it and found a wooden pressure plate inside, which Stan assumed led to some sort of booby trap. Stan was about to split the wooden pressure plate with his axe, but in his haste he accidentally stepped on it, and he heard a faint click.

His brain registered what was about to happen seconds before it did. “Hit the dirt!” Stan bellowed as he jumped away from the decrepit shack, and the others barely had time to follow before the TNT below the fortress ignited, creating a crater the width of the road where the shelter had just stood.

Stan pulled himself up and looked into the smoldering remains with disgust. What sort of sadistic monster would rig this basic shelter with explosives on the chance that a new player would come back and seek refuge within its humble walls? It made Stan’s insides churn to think that King Kev and his followers had actually sunk to the level of killing innocent new players.