MCSM Stories

Son of the End (6)

Okay, to be honest, the tower was incredible visual-wise. Crest just stared wide-eyed at literally everything while I kept on almost dying killing all the Shulkers, as Crest started calling them.I saw some occasional carvings, much neater than the ones in the sand temple, of bizarre illustrations of a large, skinny creature wreaking havoc on what looked like to be villages. I stopped and looked at them for a second, before trying to catch up with Crest who ran off looking for something else.

'Woah, Jack, look at those stairs!" Crest gasped as he ran into a chamber. I brisky followed them, my enchanted iron sword in hand and covered with bruises from the Shulkers.

"That.... Really is a lot of stairs." I stated as I looked up. The chamber was incredibly tall, with small platforms, the stairs, spiraling up to the top somewhere. There were no Shulkers, thank Notch, and weird small glowing poles sticking out at random placed.

"Can we go up? Can we?" Crest begged me like a little kid.

I put my sword away. "Your choice. I mean, I'm just following you."

"YES!" Crest yelled, jumping. In no time at all, he was ascending up the stairs, more carefully than I expected him to. Letting out a heavy sigh, I followed him.

It was pretty difficult climbing the stairs. WIth my left arm unusable and also throwing off my sense of balance, it was hard to keep my balance and jump from one platform to the next. I asked Crest to stop for a minute once, because I was five flights below him. He fell once or twice, somehow managing to catch a platform below the one he was on and scaring me half to death. Once we were up top, Crest took a breather while I pulled out my sword and scouted out the aea to make sure there weren't any Shulkers. There were a few, which I killed quickly after learning their tactics. When I came back, Crest was mining some of the blocks with his pickaxe.

"Are you ready?"

Crest turned quickly, his hair moving almost far enough for me to see his other eye.

"Yep!"

"Okay, then. Maybe we can find some exit to this place."

"Let's go, then!" He ran, and I went after him. After a good three minutes of moving gradually slower and slower, Crest stopped at the entrance to a place altogether. I slowed down, standing next to him. I turned my head to him to see he was staring into space, eye wide and jaw dropped. I waited a second before waving a hand in front of his face. He didn't react.

"Uhhh.... Crest?"

He still didn't reply. He didn't even look like he was breathing. Suddenly, he flinched, letting out a yelp and falling onto his rear. I stepped back. Crest winced, gripping his arm.

"Hey, you okay?" I asked him.

"I..." he looked up, his eye glassy. "I saw something."

I kneeled down. 'What?"

He let go of his arm, his face now looking serious- a drastic change from his usual enthusiastic and excited attitude.

"There was this gigantic weird monster.... And an.... Enderman? I think they were fighting."

I tried not to think about it, keeping my thoughts on Crest. "Roll up your sleeve."

He obeyed, and just as I feared, the black patch on his arm was bigger. It was just like he said, stress caused the black path top spread faster.

"I'm fine, dude." he breathed, standing up.

"Are you sure?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. I'll be flat-out honest, he acted a lot like me when I was injured or sick.

"Yeah." He gave a small forced smile, before turning to the large room. "That's a lot of carvings."

"What?" I asked. Walking up closer to the far wall, I realized there really was a lot of carvings. I had no idea how Crest saw them from so far away, though. They were all of different things, from humans cowering from tall figures to carved portraits of some Ender monster to the landscape of the End realm. That must've been the strange force of happeningness to chime in, because subconsciously, I reached out, with my bad arm surprisingly, to touch a carving of a tall winged creature. I knew the feeling, the feeling of not having any control of your body's actions, no matter how hard you try.

...And that's when all Nether broke loose, at least for me. I immediately felt pain all over my body, and my vision blurred horribly. I stumbled back from the wall, gripping my head, which I swear was pounding harder than a zombie on a door. I felt the burning sensation of the pitch black path, now worse than ever, spread across my body faster than ever before. I let out a scream for help to someone, hoping to Notch this would stop.

Unfortunately, it didn't. I barred over, clawing at the ground. I heard footsteps quickly getting closer, which I knew was Crest, he skidded to a stop,

"J-Jesse!?" one second later, I heard him let out a loud scream, and yet another sound of him falling over.

The last thing I heard was Crest yelling out for somebody before everything faded to black.