Hero's Bane

Chapter 79: What We Make For Ourselves

(Art: I cannot remember who made this)

"Oh my, that is just awfully dreadful my friend." The old explorer shook his head slowly back in forth in dismay. "It's no wonder you wouldn't acknowledge or even look at me back there, you must still be weighed down in distraught and grief." Nigel sipped his tea and gazed at the troubled miner.

Steve didn't look at the elderly gentleman when he spoke but lightly nodded while keeping his eyes on the floor at his feet, he didn't feel comfortable to share all that he had just learned in his last encounter with the white-eyed man.

"Despite this- ... yo-you're going back to that accursed fortress?!" Warren suddenly leaned across his bar countertop with his hands at the edge of the wooden slabs for support, his facial features were twisted into one of shock and sympathy for the miner. "But must you throw your life on the line for this? Surely there must be something else you could so instead?"

Steve looked up at the bartender and nodded. "I have already told you guys, I have to. Not just to keep this village safe from Herobrine in the future; but also to stop the beast from destroying souls and using them to attack us. There's no telling how many innocent people have been twisted into his tools, no telling how many may no longer exist in any shape or form." He replied more sullenly, still leaning against the wall while staring at the aged wood at his heels. He shifted his body weight a little for a better leaning position and sighed by the obviously dangerous and likely futile task he had to try to complete.

"Even if I am literarily walking to my death, I would have to at least try to do something. Herobrine is my friend and he has done everything he could to keep me alive and hidden from Ender in the Nether. I owe him one for that, even if he took 'them' away from me and wanted to pay for it by dying. I've done everything I could to earn his trust and even gained him as a friend in the process, that I could never change nor abandon. It took a stranger to realize that I was making a huge mistake running away and leaving things as it is, it would solve nothing and I would have gained more regrets over time. Everything that I worked for beyond these mountains would have been for nothing, a lot more people will die if I just quit now."

Warren's expression shifted to one of uncertainty and he leaned back from the counter and opened his furnace door to check on some meat he had been cooking; he closed the cooker and looked out the window right next to him. "All of this is so hard to take in you know Steven, if it weren't for the fact that it was you to stop Herobrine from leveling our village then I probably wouldn't believe you right now." The man then lightly laughed with a bit of hysteria in his tone. "And to think that this whole time that I have been fighting mobs and killing the kind I hate the most; possibly destroying 'human' souls?"

"You alright my friend?" Nigel looked over at the bartender but the man had been facing away with only his back presented, the old man furrowed his brows when the other started to laugh a little more. "It's no laughing matter, though I highly believe that you're still processing this information and having a difficult time trying to come to terms with it."

"Why wouldn't I?" Warren replied when his fake laughter died down, his voice grew quite and he swayed his head while messaging his right temple. "I just learned that Herobrine murdered part of this young man's family, then tried to offer up his life like a coward, now there's a ferocious beast beyond our world that can destroy us and wants us all dead? And that I may have been wiping out the essence of humanity almost all of my life out of hatred?" Warren fully turned back around with an expression of dread. "How else am I supposed to take it?! Accept it for what it is and don't act like it's not bothering me?!" He finished more loudly.

"Well, I suppose when you put it that way-" Nigel trailed to a silent stop when he thought over the bartender's words, he wanted to remain sensitive on the subject to keep the man at ease.