Kan’s eyes aren’t like the wide, clear magenta-violet eyes of other endermen.
Kan’s eyes are green.
No one knows why. No one can remember any other enderman who had green eyes, not in all the history of the End.
“What in the name of the Great Chaos?” Fin whispered. He’d gone pale. He flipped faster through the book.
I’m going to call her Loathsome. Isn’t that a nice name for a nice horse who definitely will not eat my brains the minute I’m not looking?
Mo trembled all over. “Skip to the end,” she said, clutching her horse so tightly even the dead skin bruised.
Fin turned to the back of the book. He read aloud.
I am afraid. So much has happened. Kraj is dead by my own hand. Eresha is dead. I have lost my twin. The ender dragon is dead. Poor Loathsome. Poor Grumpo. Poor all of us. The End itself is coming apart. The islands cannot hold. The sky is falling. If I try to forget what I’m looking at, it’s beautiful. Really. So beautiful. The towers of Telos are falling like confetti. It is coming. The great tide of memory will wash over me and I will know nothing about all this grief. And do you know? I think I welcome it.
I have retreated to the ship. Lying on the deck, I can watch the night tear itself apart. When I close my eyes, I can hear Kan playing somewhere far away. Good. He is alive. I’m glad. He’s coming to find me. To be part of my End.
It’s almost here. I can feel it moving through the islands. Completely inevitable. Why fight it?
All hail the Great Chaos. Blessed be the Beginners.
See you on the other side, Ultimo.
Fin flung the book away from him in terror and bewilderment. It skittered across the wood floorboards, through the bars of the Cage, and soared out into the empty night. It looked like a white bird as it plummeted away from them.
“What is that? What is it?” he cried, panicked.
“Okay, okay, calm down. Let’s try another one,” Roary suggested. “Magic is always weird. There’s an element of unpredictability in any enchanted object.”
Roary disenchanted another book with the grindstone and started to pass it round to Fin, then thought better of it and handed it to Mo.
“The Feather Falling enchantment reduces damage from falling and damage from ender pearl teleportations,” Mo read.
Then she turned over the page.
“This is my handwriting,” Mo told them quietly.
She began to read from the other side.
It is always night in the End. There is no sunrise. There is no sunset. There are no clocks ticking away.
But that does not mean there is no such thing as time. Or light. Ring after ring of pale yellow islands glow in the darkness, floating in the endless night. Violet trees and violet towers twist up out of the earth and into the blank sky. Trees full of fruit, towers full of rooms. White crystal rods stand like candles at the corners of the tower roofs and balconies, shining through the shadows. Sprawling, ancient, quiet cities full of these towers glitter all along the archipelago, purple and yellow like everything else in this place. Beside them float great ships with tall masts. Below them yawns a black and bottomless void.
It is a beautiful place. And it is not empty.
“I don’t understand,” Fin said, rubbing his cheeks. Nothing seemed real. What was this, what could it be?
Mo skipped to the end.
I am afraid. So much has happened. Kraj is dead by my own hand. Eresha is dead. I have lost my twin. But I believe he is alive. The ender dragon is dead. Poor Loathsome. Poor Grumpo. Poor all of us. The End itself is coming apart. The islands cannot hold. The sky is falling. If I try to forget what I’m looking at, it’s beautiful. Really. So beautiful. The towers of Telos are falling like confetti. It is coming. The great tide of memory will wash over me and I will know nothing about all this grief. And do you know? I think I welcome it.
I have retreated to the ship. Lying on the deck, I can watch the night tear itself apart. When I close my eyes, I can hear Kan playing somewhere far away. Good. He is alive. I’m glad. The music is getting closer now. He’s coming to find me. To be part of my End.
It’s almost here. I can feel it moving through the islands. Completely inevitable. Why fight it?
All hail the Great Chaos. Blessed be the Beginners.
See you on the other side, El Fin.
Roary disenchanted another. And another. And another. Koal had already stepped back. He wanted no part of it. It was all way too serious. An explorer has to expect a bit of getting sentenced to death by dragon. It was all part of the adventure. But this was too out there.
They took turns looking through the books and reading out loud. But it didn’t matter. Each one was the same, in either Fin or Mo’s steady handwriting.
It is always night in the End. There is no sunrise. There is no sunset.
It is always night in the End. There is no sunrise. There is no sunset.
It is always night in the End. There is no sunrise. There is no sunset.
See you on the other side, El Fin.
See you on the other side, Ultimo.
They weren’t entirely identical. Some names changed. Some events didn’t pan out the same way in every book. They didn’t have time to really read them all. Soon they were numb to it. They checked the beginning and the end and moved on to the next disenchanted enchantment. It was all there. Their whole lives. Everything they’d ever experienced and a few things they hadn’t yet. Over and over and over again in their own handwriting. And how many more of these had they left in the ship in that massive mountain of books?
Mumma, explaaain, thought Loathsome raspily, nuzzling Mo’s hand.
I can’t. I can’t. I don’t know.
Kan ran his hands over the books.
I’m in there, he thought. In all of them. I’m playing my music as the world ends. That’s something, I suppose.
Fin strained for his sister. “Who is Ultimo?” he whispered to her.
“I have no idea,” she answered. “Who’s El Fin?”
“I don’t know!” Fin spluttered.
Mo quirked her mouth to one side. She didn’t want to say in front of everyone. But she didn’t have a choice. “The ender dragon called me Ultimo,” she confessed.
“Uh…” interrupted Koal. “Wait a minute. Go back. Ultimo? The Ultimo? Supreme Brewmaster Ultimo?”
“El Fin the Archmage?” said Roary, and her eyebrows said she was impressed.
I hate them, Grumpo huffed in his box. They sound like losers.
Jesster shook her head. “No way.” She laughed. “We all like playing pretend, but no way. Ultimo and El Fin are legends. Magicians’ magicians. Iconic. And they weren’t twins. They’re also dead. Presumed dead, anyway. Might as well be talking about King Arthur and Dracula. And like, no offense, but I saw you in action in the armory, Fin. I like you a lot. But you’re not exactly iconic.”
Fin tried to ignore that. He’d done his best, hadn’t he?
“Saved you, didn’t I?” he mumbled.
“Yeah, I saved you, too, my friend. Don’t get it mixed up. This is not and never will be a damsel situation.”
Fin couldn’t help himself. In the midst of all that confusion and strangeness, he smiled a little.
Mo raised her hand from Loathsome’s boil-covered back and set it back down again thoughtfully.
“What does it mean?” she asked no one and everyone.
But there was no answer to that, at least not one you could find in a cage hanging in the dark.
There was a commotion down below. A lot of grunting voices and soft thuds. Everyone lurched to one side of the cage to see what was going on down there.
A figure was standing on the sandy earth with its hands on its hips, looking up at them with intense irritation from inside a circle of sev
erely wounded endermen.
“Oh my god, you freaking dorks,” Jax shouted.
“Why’d you run off?” Jax called up to Mo from the ground. He sounded genuinely hurt.
“You were so mad at me. And you were gonna experiment on me.”
“To help you!”
“I don’t need help!” Mo shouted.
Jax laughed. “Cool story, you just hanging out in cages for fun, then?”
“We’re going to be executed, obviously,” Koal rolled his eyes. “Keep up.”
“Dingus over here killed their president or whatever so now it’s this whole thing,” Roary jabbed her thumb over her shoulder at Fin.
“How can you be so casual about this?” Mo said. “They’re going to kill us. You’re acting like it’s a joke.”
Jess shrugged. “Nah. Jax is here now. We’ll just escape. It’s cool. We do it all the time.”
“The ender dragon is out there somewhere, you know that, right? It won’t just let us go.”
“It’s what I came for!” Jax yelled up. “One in the chest, one in the gut, two between the eyes and we’re out of here.”
“I’m not going to let that happen,” Mo said quietly. Her voice was dead iron.
Koal’s head snapped up. He looked out through the bars of the cage nervously. “Do you hear that?”
The ender dragon’s island lay mostly empty. Even of the ender dragon. If the old lizard was here, it was hiding very well. Not like it at all, Mo thought. Jax had made quick work of the gang of enderguards below. The group was, for all they could tell, alone.
But then Mo could hear it, too. Then Roary. Then Jess. Then Fin. Then Kan and Loathsome and Grumpo.
Voices. Voices in the void.
Voices singing Endermas carols in unison, so loud that everyone could hear.
O come ye, Great Chaos,
Lawless and triumphant,
Come ye, O come ye to the End.
Come and reward us,
Born your loyal fragments.
O come let us obey you,
O come let us assist you,
O come let us adore you,
Great Chaos above.
“Shoot us down already, would you?” hissed Jess.
Jax gave a very dramatic sigh. The human boy unholstered the crossbow on his back, took aim, and before Fin and Mo could scream that it was too far to fall, shot out the rope that held the Cage to the obsidian pillar.
They tumbled through empty space. Five kids, an enderman, a zombie horse, and a monster in a box.
Jesster, Roary, and Koal seemed completely unconcerned. Koal even waved at Fin in midair. Roary turned over on her back and made swimming motions with her arms. Jess checked her watch as they fell.
They had their elytra and Feather Falling boots. No fall could do much to them other than jazz up their funny bones. Fin and Mo used to have those things, too. But not anymore. They shot down through the sky with nothing to slow them down.
O sing out, Great Chaos,
Sing of pure anarchy.
O come, O come ye to the End.
Come and exalt us,
Bring ruin to our enemies.
O come, thou holy entropy,
O come, thou blessed discord,
O come, unknown variables,
Chaos is born!
Grumpo hit the ground first. The lid of his box shot open, exposing the shulker to the air. He shrieked in rage and humiliation. Loathsome landed next. Her spine broke in half and her skull split open. But she was already dead, so it didn’t really bother her.
Mo had always thought dying would happen fast. So fast you wouldn’t know what hit you. But now that she was about to die, it all went so slow. A crawl, really. She had so much time while she plummeted toward certain doom. Time enough to see endermen flowing in toward the island from all sides, still singing their carols.
O come let us embrace you,
O come let us nourish you,
O come let us delight you,
Chaos is nigh.
Time enough to reach up toward Fin tumbling after her. Reaching for her hand, not catching it, reaching again. To see his blue eyes accept their fate. Time enough to see Kan, so far from her, teleport to safety without them. What else could he do?
Time enough to look up at the quickly retreating pillar where the Cage hung and see the ender dragon hanging upside-down below it like a vast and horrible bat. Its enormous black wings hugged its body. Its tail tucked up beneath those leathery curtains closed over ED’s glowing face and ultraviolet belly. With its wings shut, you could hardly see it in the dark. Jax certainly didn’t see it. He was standing right in front of it and he had no idea. If he had, he’d never have turned his back on it like that.
ED had been there all along. Waiting. Listening. An inch away from their feet.
As Mo fell, Jax began shooting out the crystal flames at the tops of the pillars. It was starting. The End. Whatever the End was going to be. This was it. One, two, three, the lights went out.
The last thing Mo saw before she hit the ground was Jax taking aim at the last lantern. Behind him, the ender dragon slowly opened its colossal reptilian wings.
Mo landed on Grumpo’s box. Fin landed on top of her. They felt something horrid crack beneath them. Then, it seemed to sag and go soft and they were falling again.
The lid of Grumpo’s box slammed shut over them. Thump-thump, thump, thump-thump.
O come, thou holy entropy,
O come, thou blessed discord,
O come, unknown variables,
Chaos is here!
The twins woke in an enormous purple chamber. The ceiling towered above them. The floor stretched out in all directions. Row after row of elegant columns connected the two. Torches lined the walls. Soft, golden light greeted them.
In the middle of the room they saw a raised platform made of the same purple stone as Grumpo’s box. But it couldn’t be. Grumpo’s box was tiny. Stairs led up to a squat, square cube that looked very much indeed like Grumpo’s box. And on top of that, angrily, resentfully, perched a naked shulker with nothing to protect it. A nub of pale, glowing, yellowish-green flesh. Not much bigger than a softball. Not much tougher than a gob of spit.
“Are you okay?” Mo asked gingerly.
“Is this your box?” Fin marveled.
Grumpo seethed on his podium.
“This isn’t a shulker’s box,” Mo said. “I know shulkers. This isn’t right.”
“It makes a certain sense, you carrots, since I am not a shulker,” Grumpo said. “Anyone with half a brain would have figured that out by now.”
Grumpo said.
Grumpo talked. Out loud. Like a human.
Up above, outside the box, they could hear a riot of sounds. Furious sounds. The sounds of fighting.
“What are you then?” asked Fin. His throat was dry and thick.
The little softball-sized glob of slime rolled his eyes.
Grumpo bowed humbly. “I am the Great Chaos. Ugh, I hate the two of you so much. I really, really want to bite you.”
“Sorry, you’re the what?” Mo said.
“You heard me, Ultimo. You always hear me. I am so tired of having this conversation. I have had it every way it can be had. It was fun at first, but once a thing becomes predictable, I become allergic to it, and the pair of you are giving me hives.”
“You’re the Great Chaos. The god of the endermen.” Fin shook his head. “No, you’re not. You’re Grumpo! You hate everything and you yell at me and sometimes I give you an apple or a bit of cod for a treat at the end of the day.”
“You can stuff your cod,” the shulker growled. “I hate it.”
Fin smiled. “There’s my boy. WHO’S A GOOD BOY?”
“I am neither good no
r bad and I am not your boy!” The shulker thundered. “God is a limiting word. I existed when the universe was new. I will exist when it burns itself out. I knew the Beginners, the builders of the End. I saw them come ashore, and do their work, and embrace their extinction. I am the eternal unpredictable stroke of chance in the cogs of creation.”
Mo scratched the back of her hand. “What about the ender dragon? It talks like that. It said it was the infinite lightning night-lizard at the end of the universe.”
“The ender dragon is my dog,” Grumpo scoffed. “I got lonely a millennium or two ago. I needed someone to snuggle and amuse me with its tricks. Everyone needs someone to snuggle, you know. The development of a self-aware soul was a very good trick. As was fire breath. I am proud of ED.”
“If you’re so great and powerful, why do you look like a lump of snot?”
“—like a shulker,” Mo quickly added at the same time.
“To observe you in this cycle and many others. The sight of my true form would liquefy your livers in an instant. Also everyone leaves me alone and I don’t have to listen to those stupid carols. Once you’re a god it’s bye-bye to privacy. Paparazzi everywhere.”
Fin said, “To observe us? Why?”
“Because I hate you,” the Great Chaos grinned. “I hate you with such passionate intensity I cannot let you out of my sight. You really cannot imagine how much I hate you.”
Mo sat down heavily on the floor. “Why is any of this happening? Why did you call me Ultimo? I don’t understand.”
“Aw, precious,” Grumpo said kindly. “You don’t understand because you’re thick as a cake. That goes for the both of you. But don’t feel bad. That’s partly my fault. My dog ate your homework.”
“Jax is gonna kill your dog if we don’t get back out there,” Mo pointed out.
“And why would I want to stop him? Someone always kills the ender dragon. It is the beginning of the cycle.”
Mo felt as though she almost had it. She could feel the corner of it in her teeth but she couldn’t get it out. The cycle. The enchanted books. The dragon’s egg. Ultimo. All the pieces were there. But she couldn’t make them fit.
The End: An Official Minecraft Novel Page 18
