Quest for Justice (27 page)

Stan saw DZ taking aim at the obelisk immediately to the left of him, so Stan turned to the right and drew another Ender Pearl from his inventory. He threw it with all his might, and once again he squeezed his eyes shut. Within a few seconds, there was considerable pain in his leg again. When he opened his eyes, he was standing on a different pillar, with yet another crystal ominously revolving before him. And again, with one arrow, the crystal exploded in a burst of fire.

Relieved, Stan gave a quick glance to his left just in time to see DZ's crystal explode, having been struck in the center by a land-to-air arrow. However, out of the corner of his eye, Stan saw something that made his stomach drop out: a flash of purple light, followed by the sound of the rush of beating wings. Stan barely had enough time to whip around and pull out his axe to drive it between the dragon's eyes. The axe only left a slight dent in the dragon's hide, which was quickly repaired by the nearest remaining crystal. Nonetheless, it had the desired effect, and the dragon changed its trajectory and fled.

“Sorry, Stan!” came Charlie's yell from back down on the
ground. “It flew away from us and came at you. I tried to shoot it but I missed.”

“Well, aim better next time!” snapped Stan irritably. They were in the middle of an extremely dangerous fight, and there was no way that he could afford to fight a dragon on these pillars. One head butt and the dragon would knock him down to his death.

Stan busied himself again with destroying the crystals. He saw DZ blow up another of the crystals, so he teleported to the next pillar over, destroying this crystal with another arrow. With DZ shooting from the ground and Stan using his teleport-and-shoot strategy to great effect, it wasn't long before Stan sank one last arrow into the solitary remaining crystal. The accompanying explosion marked the end of the dragon's healing capabilities.

When DZ saw the last burst of fire come from the last obsidian obelisk, he let out a yell of wild excitement. For now, the dragon would be possible to fight. Moments later, Stan appeared next to DZ in a burst of purple smoke.

“That's the last of 'em,” said Stan with a sigh.

“Awesome,” replied DZ. “How'd those Ender Pearls work out for you?”

“Great,” answered Stan. “My knees are killing me, but other than that I'm great. Wanna go kill a dragon now?”

“Let's do this!” cried DZ, and their sense of excitement building, they ran to join Oob and Charlie.

“Hey guys!” exclaimed Charlie as he drew back his pickaxe after striking the now-fleeing dragon. “Are the crystals all gone?”

“Yep, Stan just destroyed the last one,” said DZ. “Have you guys figured out anything about how the dragon attacks?”

“Well, from what I've seen, the only thing that the dragon does is just keep flying toward us and trying to head butt us, but if we keep on hitting it in the face when it gets close enough, we should manage to kill it pretty quickly.”

“Really?” asked Stan, raising an eyebrow. “That's all you guys have been doing? Just hitting it when it gets near you? And that's been hurting it?”

“Yes,” replied Oob. “There has been a surprising lack of difficulty in fighting the dragon. The dragon has not come close to hurting either of us using its current attack pattern.”

“Well,” said Stan, looking around, “I guess the difficulty of this place isn't supposed to be fighting the dragon itself, but destroying the crystals, fighting the dragon, and avoiding the Endermen all at the same time.”

“Yeah,” said DZ, nodding. “That sounds right. I guess we were right to come here as a team. The King seems to have picked this place as a good defense against just one or two people, not five.”

“And I gotta say,” added Charlie as he looked around. “Kat's been doing a really good job fighting off the Endermen. I haven't seen any since we first—Oh my God!”

Stan looked at what had made Charlie scream, and his jaw dropped. For he had been looking at Kat as she pulled her sword out of the back of an Enderman she had just killed, completely oblivious to the dragon as it set its sights on her, swooping down upon her. It never got there, though, for just as Kat sensed the impending force about to slam into her, she spun around in time to see Charlie hurl himself in front of the dragon.

Charlie's pickaxe came down a little too late. Kat didn't see where it hit, but the dragon thrashed around in agony, its front left claw wildly cutting a dent through the center of Charlie's chestplate. As the dragon flew up into the black sky, Charlie tumbled across the white ground for a few blocks. Kat's confusion and fear of the dragon condensed into an immediate desire to help her friend, now lying lifeless near the base of the nearby obsidian pillar.

Kat's heart pounded in her chest as she ran over and knelt down to examine Charlie. She rolled him over and to her immense relief, discovered that he was not dead, though his face was contorted in intense pain.

“Charlie! Thank God. Are you okay?” asked Kat as she pulled off his chestplate to examine his wound.

“Don't worry, I'm fine,” grunted Charlie, wincing as the removal of the chestplate revealed a slash through his shirt and across his chest and stomach. “It's not deep,” he added,
seeing the skeptical look on Kat's face. “I'll be fine. Have you seen my pickaxe, though?”

“Hey, DZ, what's that on the dragon's face?” asked Stan, as he noticed something glinting on the dragon's snout. He was determined not to let the dragon find its way over to Kat and Charlie or to Oob, who was off wandering. Stan stood with his axe at the ready as the dragon swooped in for another attack.

It didn't matter that DZ had not responded. The dragon came into close range, and Stan had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. Charlie's pickaxe was still attached to the dragon's face, lodged deeply into its right nostril. It looked ridiculous, but Stan still waited to bring his axe down into the dragon's nose before he let the laugh out.

“Oh, God, that's great. That is priceless, don't you think, DZ?” Stan got out between laughs, but when he looked to DZ for a response, what he saw made him immediately forget about how the dragon looked. DZ's arm traced an arc through the air, a clear testament to the perfect trajectory of the Ender Pearl he had just thrown directly at the dragon.

“What are you doing?” shouted Stan. DZ turned around and looked Stan in the eye.

“Ending this,” DZ replied simply before disappearing in a burst of purple smoke.

Stan looked around, bewildered, finally realizing that DZ
must have landed on the actual dragon by the way the dragon was now thrashing around in midair. Now sure beyond a doubt that something had been knocked loose in DZ's head, it was all Stan could do to watch the scene in horrific anticipation. He didn't risk sending an arrow up at the dragon for fear that he might hit DZ. Stan looked over at the others and saw that Kat and Charlie were now apprehensively transfixed by the dragon, too. Even Oob had stopped wandering to watch the spectacle unfolding in the air.

Stan thought he could see the unclear form of a figure moving up and down in a rhythmic pattern, and the dragon was thrashing its head side-to-side, spitting in agony. Stan realized that DZ was straddling the dragon's long neck, driving his sword again and again into the thick black hide. Stan then watched in disbelief as the figure atop the dragon ran along its neck and leaped off its head and into the air, spun around, and fired an arrow directly into the dragon's face. The dragon froze in midair, and Stan noticed an Ender Pearl fall down to the ground next to him, followed in a burst of purple smoke by DZ.

Stan's mouth opened to say one of ten thousand things on his mind to DZ, but DZ simply put his hand to Stan's mouth, gestured to the sky, and said, “Just watch.”

And there was something to watch indeed. Rays of white light seemed to be breaking through the black hide of the dragon's skin like sunrays through morning mist. The dragon
seemed to be in suspended animation as it rose higher and higher in the sky, more and more rays of light breaking through the skin until, finally, the dragon exploded in a rapid series of bright starbursts. When the smoke cleared, the sky was a peaceful black once more, and the dragon had ceased to exist.

Kat, Charlie, and Oob had all walked over to DZ by now. Their eyes simultaneously shifted from the place the dragon had been to DZ. All four of them were staring at DZ as if he was some king of the gods, descended from above with the sole purpose of ridding the world of the dragon.

“That,” Kat got out after nearly a full minute of stunned silence, “was literally the single most impressive thing I have ever seen in my life.”

“Very good job, DZ,” Oob added kindly.

“Yeah, no words to describe how awesome that was,” agreed Charlie, while Stan still stood there stunned.

“Thanks, guys,” said DZ, brushing himself off and projecting an air of humility suggesting that what he had just done was about as common and unimpressive as killing a single Zombie. “By the way, I grabbed this for you, Charlie.” DZ pulled an item from his inventory and handed it to him.

“My pickaxe!” exclaimed Charlie as he took his weapon back from DZ. Then he took a closer look, and he shoved the pickaxe away from his body. “Oh God! What is that purple . . . slimy . . . crap-type stuff on the end?”

“Oh, that,” replied DZ. He looked a little sheepish as Charlie examined the noxious purple slime now coating the diamond ends of the pickaxe. “I . . . uh . . . kinda mighta snatched it out of . . . you know . . . the dragon's nose . . .”

There was a moment of silence as they all examined the slime-covered pickaxe. Then, they all burst out laughing. Perhaps the relief of finally defeating the dragon had gone to their heads and made them see the slimy weapon as more amusing than it really was. Perhaps it was that they had all just simultaneously realized that the inevitable next step on their journey was to confront the King. For whatever reason, though, the players laughed for minutes on end, only stopping when DZ sensed a presence behind him and was forced to spin around and decapitate the Enderman lurking there.

The mob seemed to snap the players back to their senses. Charlie looked at the others.

“Okay, so now we've got to find the King's treasure,” he said, wiping his pickaxe on his pant leg, cleaning it of snot. “Everybody spread out and look for anything that seems indicative of a hiding spot. If you find anything, call me over, and I'll mine it out.”

The group spread out in a web, scanning every block of the moon-rock surface of the island that was the End. They took care to not raise their eyes from the ground, the better to not provoke any Endermen. It was quite hard to look around
this way, and so it was not altogether surprising that Oob was the first one to call out.

“Charlie! I think that I may have discovered something!” Within minutes, all four of the players had gathered around a small indent in the ground around the base of one of the obsidian pillars. Charlie took this inconsistency in the otherwise very flat ground to be a clue, and he started mining the area out. As he did, Stan noticed that he seemed to be swinging the diamond tool with a decided effort, and more than once Stan noticed Charlie's hand rush to his stomach for an instant. Charlie might have dismissed the injury the dragon had given him as trivial, but Stan knew that they would be better off hurrying to get Charlie out of the End.

It was about ten blocks underground that Charlie's pickaxe finally broke through a block behind which light shone through. He enlarged the hole enough so that the players could climb through, and they all looked around in awe. The room was medium in size, lit with torches, and there were chests around all the corners. Each player ran to a different chest and threw it open. Stan was seized with elation when he saw that his was full of golden apples and various potions. He looked around and saw that Charlie was pulling sets of enchanted diamond armor out of the chest he had opened, while Kat was pulling out Fire Charges and dozens of blocks of inactive TNT. DZ's arms were spilling over with hundreds
of uncrafted diamonds.

The more chests they opened, the more valuable materials appeared. Stan was beside himself. The King's secret stash had surpassed even his wildest expectations. He was sure beyond any measure of doubt that, provided that the Apothecary had indeed secured the manpower in the Adorian Village, they would have more than enough materials to launch a full-scale invasion of the King's castle.

As he thought this, Stan remembered what the Apothecary had told him to do when he found the secret stash. For the first time in the weeks since he had received it from the Apothecary, Stan pulled the Ender Chest out of his inventory and set it on the ground. Immediately, the Eye of Ender that acted as a lock on the chest glowed purple, and particles of smoke began to rise off the chest. With trembling hands, Stan grasped the black lid of the chest and swung it open. What he saw made him gasp.

Inside the chest was a purple mist, swirling about in the chest's center like a vapor. Through the mist, Stan saw the smiling face of the Apothecary looking back at him. Stan was seized with an immense joy to see that his friend was still alive and well.

“Stan!” cried the Apothecary. “It's so good to see you!”

“Likewise,” replied Stan, who didn't think that he could have stopped grinning if he had tried. “You would not believe
what we've been through in the past few weeks.”

“I'm sure I wouldn't,” replied the Apothecary with a wise smile. “I'm assuming that, because you've activated the chest, you've found the King's secret stash?”

“Yes, we have!” replied Stan, picking up a glowing diamond sword that Charlie had thrown on the ground while looting the chest. “Although,” Stan added, thrilled to see that the Apothecary had given a hearty laugh of joy, “the King's secret stash actually wasn't under the Ender Desert. Believe it or not, we're in the End right now!”