The Friendly Creeper Part 41

By the time we had seen anything resembling human construction (besides the tracks), I had become incredibly sore, mostly due to Gillian sitting on my lap for the duration of the trip. There wasn’t any space left, it seemed, and so she was determined to keep herself as far away from the edges of the cart as possible. The cart was now slowing down, as the wheels had been completely melted by the magma, and the powered rails were just barely dragging the minecart along. The lava had managed to burn a hole in the entire left side of the cart, which was another reason why Gillian was afraid of it so much. This didn’t help me, as I was stuck with a surprisingly heavy teenage girl on top of me.

“Could you move a little more closer to the center of the cart?” she asked.

I groaned, and slid a centimeter to the left.

“Maybe a little more to the right?”

I slid a centimeter to the right.

“Wait, wait... good. You’re good.”

We came to a screeching stop, which threw Gillian off of me and onto the tracks in front.

“OW! What was that for?”

“Hey, I didn’t do that,” I replied, trying to stretch my legs and at the same time figure out what happened to the tracks, without losing balance or falling out into the magma.

Apparently, we had stopped right at the edge of a powered rail. Except that there was no power running to it. The redstone torches, which glowed a dark fluorescent red, had been supplying the energy to push us past all of what we had now figured to be ghasts. Only, now, there were no torches. All of the rails ahead were not glowing, and some entire rails were missing.

“Huh...” Ahead, the tracks connected to another cliff face, and led to some kind of outpost. Perhaps we would be able to make it there and ask for help. That was a better plan than waiting in a beat up cart.

“We should probably get moving.”

A familiar screech made sure to complicate my plans.

“Run!” I yelled to Gillian, and sprinted myself down the unpowered tracks as a fireball whistled towards us. Just barely getting to the cliff face, we turned and watched as the impact of the explosion knocked our cart into the magma, along with most of the track. The ghast squealed again, and fired a second fireball. Gillian scrambled to get her sword, when she realized she had dropped it after deflecting the earlier fireball that had threatened my life. I pulled my own out just in time to slash the fireball into the magma. The result was a blast of lava that shot into the air, covering the ghast in molten rock. The mob didn’t seem to mind it, and hurled another fireball.

“Run?” Gillian asked. I nodded, and we ran for the outpost.

On closer inspection the fort became more filled with holes and lacerations that it was more of a ruins than a fortress by any means. It seemed to be built half out of cobblestone and half out of netherrack, and I had a suspicion that the netherrack was used to temporarily wall off the building. Not that it mattered, since there were still many holes in it, enough to let spiders in. Not that anyone would have to worry about spiders in the nether (hopefully) but still. And as to what was causing the holes... there was no doubt. Another brood of floating monstrosities were firing missile after missile against the walls of the fortress, attempting to break any cover that remained of it. Slightly melted metal doors greeted us at the front.

“Come on,” I tapped my sword on the door, not willing to risk using my hands. The ghast tracking us hovered closer and closer as we waited.

“This is useless,” Gillian sighed. “We should find another way around. There are enough holes in it to begin with.”

“No wait!” A face peered out from one of the slagged windows of the metal door. My ears perked and I turned.

“Hey, it’s you!” the person whispered excitedly. “The chosen one! Hurry on inside!”

With a swoosh, the metal doors opened, and we were pulled inside, just as we heard another fireball coming our way.

“Hey, guys, look! They’ve come to rescue us!” The man shouted, pushing a lever. As the metal doors slammed shut, an explosion occurred right where Gillian and I had been standing.

A few weak cheers rose into the air, and a couple people seemed happy to see us. But only a few. It had been perhaps a day or two that they’d been stuck here, but they already seemed starved and lost. Another explosion went off in the distance.

“You guys are from the 2nd Regiment, I’m guessing?” Gillian pressed. They nodded.

“Yeah,” one of the soldiers on the left. I recognized him as one of the troops who were throwing spells at the fortifications from the earlier fight. A fireball smattered against a tent beside him, and we all stepped away from the burning wreckage without a second thought. “We came across this fort. It was kinda damaged, so we tried to fix it up. Built a few furnaces with cobblestone we scavenged, and someone managed to bring an intact crafting table here... most of them caught fire, like everything is in the nether...”

Another soldier, a creeper-human hybrid, continued: “We’ve been holed up here because of those ghasts. We killed about a dozen of them, but they won’t let up! We’ve don’t want to waste the rest of our arrows... all we have left are those two mages, and they need to conserve their energy-” Another explosion rocked the side of the wall.

“Hey! Stay away from my dog!” I turned, and watched as two people argued next to a tent. “He’s not worth anything anymore, he’s as useless as you!” “Will you keep your dirty hands to yourself, you cold-hearted scumbag!”

The one who instigated the argument pushed the dog owner back. “It will help all of us, and help us survive for a few more days. If you can’t kill him, I will.”

“Merek is not your meal,” the dog owner pushed the other one back. “I don’t know if you’ve ever had a friend before, but friends don’t eat friends.”

“Screw your friend!” A fistfight suddenly broke out, and people gathered to watch, much to my chagrin. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” went the crowd, and I watched as someone tossed a single pickaxe into the ring the soldiers made.

“Hey, hey, hey, what’s going on here?” Gillian yelled. No one paid any attention to her, and everyone continued chanting. A few seconds later, a fiery explosion ripped through the crowd, forcing everyone back a little. The instigator was thrown past the audience into a wall, chest scorched with flame. For a second I thought a ghast had broken past the wall and guard, but on closer inspection, the fire had come from the man himself. The rest of the crowd began murmuring. A few people came to comfort the dog owner, and a few went to pick up the burnt man, who at this point was positively fuming. “Why don’t you fight me like a man, Andrew?!” he jeered. “You cheater!”

A few people even heckled on the two, taking sides. “Fight, fight, fight...fight...” it soon became obvious that no one wanted to fight. The crowd dispersed, people left, someone picked up the pickaxe, and everyone went back to doing whatever they had been doing previously.

“Are you sure you’re ok, Andrew?” A soldier comforted the dog owner, who was now sitting on the wall, holding his arm. He waved her off. “I’m fine, Candy. Thanks for asking. You can go.” As she left, I could see Andrew had been hit in the arm. There was major bruising, and he knew it was bad.

“How bad is it?” I asked him. He replied, “Not too bad...it’ll heal in a few minutes time...” he winced, and turned to me, “...so you’re the chosen one, huh?”

I shrugged. “I guess I am. You’re Andrew?”

He nodded slightly. “Andrew TheRed Aerowinde. I’m an archer, a damn good one, and, as you have witnessed, a spellcaster.” I looked at the other man, who was now coughing up blood. “Yeah, he doesn’t look too good,” I murmured.

“That’s good,” he scoffed a little. “They should respect me. I’m the senior here.  I’m actually one of the only real guards left from Holly’s first regiment. Everyone else is a noob or a wannabe. Except maybe Lethalshrimp. I’ve known him since we were both under the tutelage of the Archmage. But that’s a story for another time...”

Lethalshrimp... who must have been the other spellcaster. I tossed that name around in my head. How do you even have a name like that?

“Hi,” Gillian said, outstretching an arm, “I’m Gillian. I run Luketown, in case you don’t know.”

“Oh, yeah,” Andrew smiled. “I’ve heard stories.” He shook her hand.

“I think you make a great leader,” Gillian said. “That guy was an idiot.”

Andrew chuckled. “Tell me about it.”

“Alrighty then. Can you tell me who else is here?” I asked. He nodded.

“That group of creeper hybrids is Silas, Shay, and Blade. Blade’s half enderman. He’s obsessed with explosives. The other two are half human.” He pointed at the two, and I knew what he meant. Both had a greenish skin with the texture of a creeper, but had mostly human features. One was holding a pickaxe, potentially the one that had been thrown into the fight earlier. The other was talking to the enderman-creeper, who was a tallish dark green figure with purple eyes. I overheard something about slaying endermen, which apparently got a negative reaction from the ender-creeper, and they started to argue...

“Merek, come,” Andrew called to the tent. A full grown huskie crawled out, woofing and wagging its tail happily. I felt pangs of longing as I fingered Courage’s collar, but forced myself to think about something else. Andrew got up, and we walked towards the battered battlements. “That person over there is Candy. She really likes dogs.” He waved over to her, who waved back. “Um, who else... the Enderman-Enderdragon-Human hybrid... he probably has his own destiny to fulfill, with a birthright like that. He’s over there.” He pointed at the man, who looked much more enderman than human.

“I think that’s all the notable folk... all the others are squabbling novices who don’t know what they’re doing. Probably were just lucky to get as far as we have.” I shrugged. “They knew what they were getting into when they charged blindly into the portal to begin with, right?”

He shook his head. “Nobody knew anything about the ghasts. We met up with Alexica’s troops, who told us to follow a path set for us through the tunnels. We were just almost here when the ghasts attacked. Lost a few good men to those mobs...”

“Is this the place where the netherwart is gathered?” Gillian asked. He sighed, and shook his head. “Whoever built this signed a death wish. It’s in a perfect location for the ghasts to hammer away at our walls. Open plains, the only path leading out to a fiery hill... It’s a mystery why they’d let up...”

And since there was no wood to knock on, he had jinxed it. Another explosion ripped through the wall, and an entire section of cobblestone scattered.

“Permission to fire, sir!” Candy screamed from the walkway.

“Permission granted,” Aerowinde ordered.

“So why are we still here?” Gillian pressed.

“Waiting, I guess, for someone to save us.” He turned to us. “Our swords are useless against them, and sooner or later they’ll starve us out.”

Gillian gave me a look of disbelief. I considered this for a second, not because they didn’t know, but because Alexica had not even bothered to tell them... perhaps she hadn’t thought they would have been close enough to ghasts to worry about them... whatever the reason, I was going to tell them now.