The New Order (3 page)

CHAPTER 2
THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT

S
tan could not deny that he was very happy he had been reelected, but right now, he could not hide his annoyance. He had explicitly told the guards of the castle that he would talk to anybody who needed him the next day, but not tonight. Yet he had still been woken up four times, by DZ, Kat, Charlie, and DZ again. His friends only wanted to congratulate him, but Stan was far too tired to appreciate it. Stan ordered the guard firmly to tell everybody to leave him be for the rest of the night, and slammed the door irritably.

Stan got back into bed, glad that the campaign was over and that he could now get some real sleep for the first time in days. He pulled the covers up, closed his eyes, and was about to fall asleep when a faint voice caught his ear.

“Stan . . . hey, Stan, are you awake?”

“Whoever you are, GO AWAY!” barked Stan, hiding his head under his pillow in his angst.

“Oh, okay then. I thought that you'd be rather happy to hear my voice again, noob, but if you'd rather sleep, I get it . . .”

Suddenly, Stan was wide awake. He glanced wildly around the room, daring to hope that it could really be true, that the voice could really be that of . . .

“Sally?” Stan asked tentatively.

“Yeeeees?” came the sarcastic, smirky voice.

“Oh my God. It's you!” cried Stan, his eyes brightening in delight. “You're alive! But how . . . where are . . .”

“No, you idiot! I'm not
alive
, Minotaurus cut me open with an axe, remember?”

“But . . . wait a second . . . ,” said Stan, his elation suddenly shifting to a sudden-onset headache. “If you're . . . but then . . . Sal, how are you talking to me if you're dead?”

“Well,” came Sally's voice, the source of which Stan still could not distinguish, “ever since I died, I've been trying to find ways to get back onto the server. I've gotta hand it to King Kev, he really did his research. I've tried every method of rejoining, of hacking my way in, of bypassing the blacklist . . . you know, the list of people who have been banned from Elementia. But what you hear now is the closest I've been able to get.”

“So . . . can you see me?” asked Stan.

“Yeah, I see you,” she replied. “It's weird, my view of you keeps shifting around the room, though, and I have to really focus on you to keep my sight there. Frankly, you're not too much to look at, so I think you owe me an apology there.”

Stan chuckled. “Well, death hasn't changed you much, Sally. Is this the first time that you've managed to do this . . . this . . . well, whatever this is?”

“No,” Sally said. “I've been able to do this for about the past week or so, and it's so strange, I really don't have that much control over where I get to see. It's like I see flashes of things that are happening all over Elementia. Sometimes I see trees in the forest, or pigs in the plains, or buildings in the city. Anyway, if I don't focus on what I'm seeing really hard, I lose the connection.”

“That is weird,” said Stan, thinking about what might cause this but drawing a blank. “So, have you talked to anybody else?”

“No, frankly, most people are too boring to focus on,” replied Sally, and Stan could almost see the sarcastic simper on her face. “I just happened to have the luck of teleporting directly into your bedroom. By the way, it was cute when DZ tried to come in twice to congratulate you. And also, congrats, Mr. Two-Term President. Not bad for a noob who can't even flop down onto a pillow correctly.”

“Are you ever going to let that go?” Stan whined, but he was laughing. Even though he couldn't see Sally, this was as close to old times as he could possibly get.

“No,” replied Sally simply, and Stan chuckled some more, but when Sally spoke again, her voice was as serious as Stan had ever heard it. “Actually, there is something important I have to tell you. I saw Caesar and Leonidas.”

Stan's eyebrows shot up. “Wait, you saw those two?
Leonidas is alive?” he asked in shock.

Sally grimly continued. “Yeah. One time, I tried to join, and I went to this place I didn't recognize. It was really dark, and I could barely see anything, but Caesar and Leonidas were there. They were saying something I couldn't hear to a big group of guys that seemed to be listening to them. I tried to focus in, but I lost the connection.”

“So they had people with them? How many, Sally?” asked Stan, panic creeping into his voice as he began to contemplate the possibilities of what this development could mean.

“There were probably about twenty-five, total. I couldn't tell, but it looked like Caesar was giving some sort of speech, and they were cheering for him.”

Stan gulped, sweat breaking out. “So . . . does that mean . . . that Caesar and Leonidas are gathering followers? What about Minotaurus, was he there? Did they have weapons?” Stan was talking very fast now, panic rising in his throat. “What were they doing there, Sally? Can you tell me anything else?”

“I don't . . . oh, wait . . . oh, no . . .” Sally's response was suddenly punctuated by static, like a radio signal was being jammed. “I'm . . . losing the con . . . the connection, Stan . . . I've got . . . got to go . . .”

“No, Sally! Don't go!” Stan was on edge now. With his
fatigue, the knowledge of an organization headed by Caesar, and finding out that Sally could still speak to him, Stan was in a very unstable state. He was desperate to find solace in the now fading voice of Sally.

“Go . . . go to sleep now . . . Stan, you're exhausted . . . be careful . . . I promise, I'll contact . . . contact you again . . . again very soon . . .”

And then there was a static crackle, and the voice ceased. Overwhelmed with exhaustion and despair, Stan gave a moan of dejection and passed out on his bed.

“I'm telling you, it was the weirdest thing!” said Stan, pulling back the ceremonial presidential gold helmet to wipe away the sweat accumulating on his brow. All the councilmen and the president were required to wear them around the town, and they were the only ones by law allowed to do so. They were also each equipped with a golden weapon of their choice, for the sake of ceremony as well as self-defense. Stan had a golden axe strapped across his back, and Charlie, who was walking next to him, had a golden pickaxe latched to his waist.

“Stan, listen, I get that you really miss Sally,” said Charlie. “But there is no way that she telepathically contacted you or something. Trust me, I've read pretty much every book in the library about this game and the stuff in it, and there's no way
that it's possible. I'm sorry, Stan, but Sally's dead.”

Stan sighed, his tolerance wearing thin. “Charlie, I am positive of what I heard. Sally was speaking to me, and she told me that she had seen Caesar and Leonidas talking to a whole group. And personally, I think it's very possible that the remnants of King Kev's army have banded together.”

“Stan, stop!” Charlie butted in. Having lost his cat, Lemon, in the Ender Desert during their quest to take down King Kev, Charlie understood what Stan was going through. However, he felt Stan's grieving had reached a point of crazy obsession. That Stan was having this kind of hallucination three months after the fact made Charlie seriously question Stan's mental state.

“Stan, listen to me very carefully. You were dreaming. Sally is dead and she is not coming back. You miss Sally very much and I get that. But do me a favor, and don't talk until we get to the arena. On the way there, I want you to ask yourself if you really heard Sally talking to you last night, or if you were just hearing things because you were very tired after a long campaign.”

Stan followed his friend's instructions. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized that Charlie was probably right. Stan certainly had done his fair share of grieving over Sally, but he realized that his exhaustion after the campaign may very well have caused him to hear voices. By the
time Stan, Charlie, and the throng of players around them had crossed the grassy courtyard and entered the Element City Spleef Arena, Stan had dismissed his late-night conversation with Sally as nothing more than a delusion.

CHAPTER 3
THE SPLEEF QUARTERFINALS

T
here could be nothing better said about the Element City Spleef Arena than that it was the crown jewel of the metropolis. It was expertly constructed with elegant patterns of blocks of diamond, gold, lapis lazuli, and brick. The large building was ringed by the ornate courtyard, which was more often than not packed with fans, hoping to hear anything to indicate what was happening inside.

When Stan defeated King Kev in battle and became president of the Grand Republic of Elementia, it was less than three days before an enormous petition surfaced, requesting the reinstatement of Spleef in Elementia. After consulting briefly with the Council of Eight, and particularly with DZ (who was an experienced Spleef player from back in the day), Stan had decreed that the sport of Spleef be allowed back into Elementia. He had ordered the construction of a new Spleef arena equidistant from the upper-level and lower-level districts of Element City, so that citizens of all levels could easily come and watch the Spleef matches.

Under the new mandate, a new schedule of Spleef games was carefully set up. There were also variations to the game put in place to make the sport more interesting. All these changes made Stan very excited to see what today's quarterfinal match would hold. He
was even more excited, though, to see how DZ, Kat, and Ben, as the three members of the competing Zombies Spleef team, would handle it.

Kat pulled the green leather helmet onto her head and fastened the strap under her chin. She grumbled to herself, not liking this new feature. Although leather armor had become much more lightweight in the last update of Minecraft, it now also required additional straps. Kat personally would have preferred the heavier but simpler leather cap, tunic, pants, and boots that she was used to.

She was sitting in a cobblestone room with a chest, three chairs, and an iron door on both sides. The two chairs were occupied by Kat's teammates, DZ and Ben (who, alongside his brothers Bill and Bob, was now a chief of police in Element City). The chest contained their gear, which they were now putting on. While one iron door led to the corridor through which they had entered the room, the other led to the Element City Spleef Arena. On this square field, the three players were expected to battle another team of three for the amusement of six hundred spectators.

“I still can't believe that Stan makes us wear this stupid armor,” complained DZ in his heavy New York accent as he struggled into his green leather pants. DZ had played Spleef back before King Kev had banned it, when no armor was
required. He was so used to playing without armor that, to this day, he refused to wear it, even in combat.

“Ah, be quiet, DZ,” retorted Ben, who was already suited up and pulling his diamond shovel out of the chest. “He only added it so that we can whack each other with shovels now!”

“Oh, please, don't you remember the old days? People used to hit each other with shovels all the time! They weren't supposed to, but the refs didn't stop it. The crowd liked it, and it was freaking awesome!” DZ replied as he finally managed to tie the straps of the leather pants.

“As a matter of fact, I never did see any of the old Spleef matches, because my brothers and I—”

“Come on, guys!” exclaimed Kat, standing up. “We've got to focus, okay? We almost lost to the Ghasts during that last round!”

“We did not
almost
lose, I had that match the entire time!” retorted DZ, snatching up his diamond shovel.

“DZ, you taking out one guy while the other guy gets knocked into a pit by a snowball is not ‘having the match!'” said Kat. “I get that you're probably the best Spleef player in the league, but if the dispensers hadn't started to fire snowballs, you would have gotten destroyed by those two!”

“How do you know that?” DZ snapped. “As I recall, you and Ben were floating in a lake twenty blocks below the arena when this happened!”

“Ah, lay off her DZ,” said Ben, reaching into the chest and tossing the last diamond shovel over to Kat. “It doesn't matter, okay, guys? That was the last match. What matters is that we're still the best team, and those Blazes aren't gonna know what hit them!”

“Oh yeah!” cried Kat as she caught the shovel and pumped her fist in the air.

“You're right, Ben! We're gonna win 'cause we're awesome, unstoppable, and, most important, we've got
me
! So let's go!” cried DZ, just as the mechanical door swung open. DZ rushed out, followed quickly by Ben and Kat. All three of them were hyped up, and the crowd greeted them with raucous applause. Kat's eyes adjusted to the bright light of the open-skied Spleef arena, and her jaw dropped.

Inside the fifty-by-fifty-block arena, surrounded on all sides by screaming fans, was a bona fide forest. Trees sprouted from the flat dirt ground, which Kat knew to be only a block thick. The trees covered a good portion of the arena. It would lead to various trapping and ambush techniques by the two teams.

Kat was shocked. It was her third official Spleef match, but this was by far the most complex arena she had seen. In their preliminary match, the arena had been the standard level surface constructed of snow blocks. Kat had liked that arena. Breaking the snow blocks had yielded snowballs,
which Kat had thrown to great effect, knocking two of her opponents into the pit below.

The object of Spleef was pretty simple. In a fifty-by-fifty-block arena, with the floor only one block thick, two teams fought to knock each other into the pit below by destroying the floor and knocking their opponents into the holes using shovels and snowballs. The last team with a player standing won.

Kat, Ben, and DZ, the three members of the Zombie team, had easily managed to take out the Wolves in the qualifying round. However, they had barely notched a victory against the Ghasts on a tundra field in the preliminary round. Now, in their quarterfinal round against the Blazes, they would be fighting in a forest.

Kat heard the telltale creak and click of the iron door swinging shut behind her, indicating that the match had officially begun. As was her pregame strategy, she focused on the environment around her, completely ignoring the open blue skies above and the cheering of the fanatic crowds. She only allowed herself to be aware of the woodland that had been constructed around her and the two players at her side. They were now the only players she could trust until she left the arena.

Suddenly, the sky turned black, and all was silent. She had tapped into some primordial survival instinct, and now
imagined herself standing in a silent forest at night. Somewhere in these woods were evil monsters, all working for a team called the Blazes. The only way for her to escape was to take them down with the help of her friends beside her.

Kat realized that DZ was motioning her and Ben forward. As he was their team leader, Kat followed his order. She trailed DZ into the maze of trees, aware that Ben was watching her back. Kat was confident following DZ into the arena. He was a fantastic leader and had a ton of knowledge about Spleef strategy, built up from playing professionally back before the game was banned. While the other teams used the strategy of spreading out, DZ had explicitly told them that the best strategy was to stick together and watch one another's backs.

Suddenly, Ben cried out in alarm, and Kat spun her head toward the source. A player, clad in bright orange leather armor, had burst around the side of the nearest tree, bringing his shovel down onto the dirt block beneath Kat's feet. She leaped backward as the block broke, revealing a pit of water below. Ben lunged forward and swung his shovel across the assailant's chest.

As Kat regained her footing, she became aware of DZ locking shovels with a second member of the Blazes and quickly overpowering him. Kat turned and saw both Ben and the other Blaze fall to the ground at the same time. Kat stepped forward and drove her shovel into the block beneath
the fallen Blaze, sending him tumbling into the pit below. She quickly turned back to DZ and saw that he had caught the other Blaze off guard, opening a hole in the ground behind him and kicking him into it.

Kat was jubilant. They were up three to one, with only one more Blaze standing between them and the semifinals. As the applause died down, Kat followed DZ's motion for a team huddle.

“All right you guys, good work so far, but I think it's time to switch our strategy. Execute Operation Zombie Swarm.”

“Right,” replied Kat and Ben in unison, and they spread out around the edge of the arena and eventually lost sight of one another. In Operation Zombie Swarm, they would all hunt the remaining Blaze separately. If they found him, they would play defense and call in their teammates for backup.

Kat quietly snuck forward through the trees, her ears perked up, tuning out the roar of the crowd to listen for any unnatural noises that indicated an impending attack. Her eyes scanned the gaps between the trees. Suddenly, she caught a flash of orange behind one of the pillars of wood before it hastily disappeared. Wasting no time, Kat called out to her teammates and sprinted after the orange form. Kat burst into the clearing where she was sure the player had gone, but it was deserted.

Kat only had a moment to consider what to do next
before someone crashed into her side, and she hit the ground tumbling. Dazed, she pulled herself up in time to see the dirt beneath Ben's feet bursting into nothing as he fell into the pit below. An orange figure was standing there, shovel in hand. It was Ben who had knocked Kat out of the way, even though it meant falling into the pit below himself.

Kat hopped up and attacked the remaining Blaze with a shovel, just as DZ burst from behind a tree and did the same. This Blaze was exceptionally skilled, as he dodged both attacks and then swung his shovel into DZ. By the time Kat had recovered from her missed attack, the Blaze had tricked DZ. He took one wrong step and plunged into the same hole that Ben had fallen into.

Kat gritted her teeth, determined not to lose, and rushed at the remaining Blaze. She leaped into the air just as the player destroyed the dirt block beneath her. Kat reached out her left hand and tackled the Blaze to the ground, pinning him beneath her. In his daze, the player was powerless to stop Kat as she brought her diamond shovel up in her right hand, and in two jabs destroyed the dirt below them. Kat kicked off the player's stomach, forcing him downward to join Ben, DZ, and the two other Blazes as Kat landed safely on the soil above.

The match now over, Kat took in the tumultuous applause from the crowd around her. She waved to them all, a huge
grin breaking across her face. From the pit below, she heard the hoots and cheers of Ben and DZ, praising their teammate for her victory.

Oh man
, thought Kat as the glow of victory radiated from her face like sunbeams.
Three matches down, two to go!

Stan was now well below the stands, but he could still hear the sound erupting from the crowd above. Stan and Charlie had to push their way through gaggles of fanatic Zombie fans to get to Kat, DZ, and Ben.

“That was easily one of the most awesome things I've ever seen,” said Stan, images from the match still flashing through his head.

“I know, right?” said Charlie. “I mean, I get that we're busy and all, but was that really the first time you've ever come to one of these matches? Stan, you signed the paper that made the place!”

“Well, I'll tell you this, Charlie, I'm definitely coming to every one of these matches from now on.”

Charlie laughed. “Man, you haven't seen anything yet! You know, last time they played, in the match against the Ghasts . . .” And Charlie and Stan spent the rest of the walk down the corridor talking about the previous matches.

“And right as DZ was about to— Hey, guys!” shouted Charlie as he entered the room and rushed over to greet his
friends. Stan followed closely behind. G and Kat released each other from their hug and beckoned the two new arrivals over to them, while DZ, Ben, and his brother Bill walked over, followed closely by Bob, who sat on the back of a pink pig.

Stan, like all his friends, felt that Bob was very lucky to be alive at all. During the battle in which Stan had defeated King Kev, which was now commonly known as the Battle for Elementia, Bill and Bob had engaged Caesar, who had been King Kev's right-hand man and was an exceptional swordfighter, in combat. They had failed to defeat him, and Caesar would have killed Bob had Kat not intervened. Instead, the sword strike intended to kill Bob destroyed his kneecap and severed his leg from his body.

Luckily, Bill and Ben had used their entire supply of Potions of Regeneration to reattach Bob's leg, and he had regained very limited use of it. However, it had quickly become evident that Bob would never walk again. That didn't stop Bob from serving alongside his brothers as a police chief of Element City, though. He now followed Ben, Bill, and DZ over to Stan, Charlie, Kat, and G on the back of Ivanhoe, his trusty war pig, which had been saddled and was controlled with guidance through carrots.

Although one might think Bob wasn't the same warrior he'd been, nothing could be further from the truth. He could shoot his bow just as well on pigback as he could on foot,
and the pig was swift and adaptable to rough terrains. Bob had quickly gained renown as the fastest and most pliable officer on the force, a nightmare to any criminal who gave them chase.

“Nice match, guys!” said Charlie.

“Yeah, guys, that match was one of the most awesome things I've ever seen,” added Stan.

“Eh, thanks, guys,” said Kat. “Nice of you to finally come down to see one of the matches, Stan,” she added with a smirk.

“Hey, you know I've been up to my neck in work since the campaign began,” said Stan, being playfully defensive. “I tell you, though, from now on I'm making it a priority to come to each and every one of these matches.”

“Good to hear,” said Ben, butting in between them with DZ and the other two police chiefs at his side. “Now is it just me, or did I hear someone say party at the castle courtyard?”