The Quest: The Snow Labyrinth, Book 7: A Place of Legend

by Mark Mulle



  The Quest: The Snow Labyrinth, Book 7: A Place of Legend

  Copyright 2016 Mark Mulle

  Author’s Note

  This short story is for your reading pleasure. The characters in this "Minecraft Adventure Series" such as Steve, Endermen or Herobrine...etc are based on the Minecraft Game coming from Minecraft ®/TM & © 2009-2013 Mojang / Notch

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  About the Author

  Other books by this Author

  Chapter One

  Steve tossed his things on his bed and yawned. It had been a long week and he was glad it was over. The summer had passed by in a blur and now it was back to business.

  He glanced over at his computer. The fact that things were busy again meant that he hadn’t had any time to play Minecraft. His summer had been full of long days on the game, going on adventures and learning skills from Herobrine.

  Yet school had taken up most of his time, leaving him unable to log in lately. He stared at the computer. It was the weekend, after all. Surely, Steve could spare some time for his game.

  He sat down at his computer and turned it on. As his computer booted up, he found himself remembering the last big adventure he had gone on with Herobrine. Herobrine, once someone Steve had thought was an enemy, had now become his mentor and closest friend in the game. He was part of the game, just like Herobrine was. The two of them were the strongest people in the game.

  That had rubbed some people the wrong way. In fact, it ended up driving one person by the user name Scarlet Hero to try to take over Minecraft completely. He didn’t care about fun or anyone enjoying themselves. He had only cared about becoming the most powerful player in the game.

  Herobrine had vanished shortly after the Scarlet Hero had been taken care of. Steve hadn’t heard from him since. As he logged into Minecraft, he wondered what his friend had been up to.

  His file loaded him into his house. He had rebuilt it after Scarlet Hero had burnt it down. Everything seemed to be in order. There was no sign from Herobrine.

  Steve played for a little while but was tired and soon logged out. As he curled up in to bed, he told himself that he would play more this weekend.

  *

  Steve sat down and loaded up Minecraft. His Saturday had been busy but he had made sure to carve out some time to jump back into the game again. He was anticipating for something exciting. He waited as his game loaded, wondering what he was going to do in the game.

  When the game loaded, he spawned in his house. Gathering his gear from the chests in the main room, he left and looked around his map. Going north would take him into a thick jungle. That could be interesting. Perhaps he would find a jungle temple.

  Deciding to go there, Steve put away his map. He was about to set off when something caught his eye in the distance.

  There was a small pond near his home. It had always been there. There was nothing of interest on the other side of it. Steve had checked many times.

  Yet in the distance, on the other side of the pond, Steve could barely make out the tops of some homes. He squinted, trying to make the image clearer. Was he imagining it? The jungle temple already forgotten, Steve began to walk over to the pond.

  He reached the edge of it. It definitely looked like rooftops out there in the distance. Steve had never seen them before. How did they get there? Had Herobrine put a town up near his own house? He could have. It wasn’t as if Steve had been logging in lately so Herobrine could have asked him.

  He decided he would go there directly and see what was going on. He leapt into the pond and swam the short distance across it. Then he walked out across the plains towards the rooftops.

  Nothing happened the entire walk there. Everything was silent. Almost too quiet, actually. Steve was on alert. He equipped his sword and shield just in case something decided to leap out at him.

  As the rooftops came closer, Steve could make out a few more details. It wasn’t just a regular village like he had been thinking before. It was shimmering underneath the sun. It looked like a jewel. As he got closer, he realized something startling – the entire city was made of what appeared to be diamonds.

  He stopped walking. He was at the entrance of the village but was almost hesitant to go inside. Steve looked at the homes, shining and laced with diamonds. It looked as if there were diamonds in the walls and also ground up to make some sort of crafting material that he had never seen before.

  This had to be Herobrine. Who else would make a diamond city in his backyard?

  Even so, something felt off. There was something unsettling about the village. Just being on the outskirts of it felt foreboding. Steve was still debating what to do when he heard a terrible cry come out of the village.

  Chapter Two

  Directly after the wailing screech that came out of the village, there was a noise of an explosion. The ground shook underneath his feet. In the distance, he saw a puff of smoke waft up into the sky. Then someone screamed.

  It sounded like a human and they were in trouble. Steve took off at a run, entering the strange looking village. The sun was bright and shimmered off the homes. The brightness of the diamond homes hurt his eyes.

  He heard another terrifying screech. This one sounded a bit closer. He had never heard a noise like it before. Was it some new hostile mob? Like last time, right after the shriek, there was an explosion.

  This time, a house one street over practically cracked in half. Steve watched the roof cave in. Diamonds flew off of it and shot through the air, landing everywhere. He ducked his head and let the diamonds bounce off his armor.

  Gripping his sword, he ran to where the explosion had occurred. He rounded the corner, expecting to launch into a fight.

  Yet nothing was there. The house that had been hit by the explosion was half sunken in. Whatever had exploded it must have been incredibly powerful to destroy diamonds like that.

  He was about to take off running again when something about the sunken in house caught his attention. He went over to the wreckage and peered inside the home.

  It was completely empty inside. There was absolutely nothing inside the home. Were they all like this? Perhaps this one was just empty but the rest were filled. Something about a village full of empty diamond homes seemed incredibly strange.

  Steve turned around when he heard another human scream. This time it was so close it felt as if it were practically next to him. Startled, he rounded the corner and collided into something.

  The figure shrieked and shook against him. Small fists slammed against his armor. He pushed the figure off of him only to have a sword pointing directly to his chest. Alarmed, he took a step back.

  “Who are you?!” The figure in front of him shouted.

  Steve looked at the person in front of him. It was clearly another player. It sounded like a girl. She was wearing armor from head to toe and he couldn’t see her face. Her sword was made of iron and was shaking in her hand.

  “Who am I?” Steve asked, confused, “How did you get here? This isn’t a multiplayer server.”

  “We have to get out of here!” She cried at him, muffled through her helmet.

  “Why? What is this place?”

  There was no time for the girl to explain because something came around the corner at the end of the street. Steve had never seen anything like it bef
ore. It looked like a creeper but instead of green, it was a dark red. It had a mouth with fangs and it was wide open as if it was going to eat anyone in its way.

  The girl looked behind her and screamed. She had lowered her sword that had been pointed to Steve. He took this chance to yank on her arm, bringing her towards him.

  “Come on!” He exclaimed.

  The two of them took off at a run. The red creeper behind them was chasing after them at an even faster speed than a regular creeper. Steve turned down the way he had come, thinking if they got to the pond they could try to lose the creeper.

  But there was another red creeper on this street. It was barreling down the diamond pathway towards them. The girl whimpered and broke free of Steve’s grip.

  “Can’t go that way.” She said to him before taking off towards the nearest house.

  Steve looked over his shoulder, “Where are you going?”

  “Boost me!”

  There was no time to argue. He spun around and ran over to the side of the nearest house. He crouched down and stuck out his hands which were now intertwined. He boosted her up to the roof of the house.

  For a split second, he was afraid that the girl was going to run off. The two red creepers were nearing him. Their mouths were wide open. He could see their fangs. The sight was terrifying. He had never, ever seen creepers that looked like this.

  “Hey!” The girl cried.

  Steve looked up. She was stretching out her hand towards him. He grabbed her hand and she yanked him up. As he gripped the side of the roof, he almost slipped right off. The diamonds made things slippery.

  The two red creepers were underneath him. As Steve heaved himself onto the roof with the girl’s help, she let out a loud cry.

  “We were too slow!”

  He was going to ask what she meant by that when the two red creepers let out matching, horrifying shrieks. That was what the noise earlier had been. The screams filled his ear drums. For a second, everything blurred.

  Then, both the red creepers exploded.

  Chapter Three

  The explosions were unlike any other creeper explosions that Steve had felt. The fact that there were two of them probably didn’t help things. One second, he was on the roof with the girl.

  The next second, he was flying through the air. Everything was a blur around him. He had no idea what direction he was going or even if he was looking down or up. The world shimmered around him as the diamonds flickered in the sunlight. It felt as if he was falling into a pool of glitter.

  The wind had been knocked right out of him. His armor was vibrating around him. As he soared through the air, he closed his eyes to try to ward off the motion sickness that was rolling through him. Sometimes there were downsides to being so connected to the Minecraft world.

  When he did land, it wasn’t gently. It felt as if he had been slammed directly into the hardest surface ever. He bounced off of it and landed face down against the ground. He couldn’t feel anything through his armor. Steve rolled onto his back and coughed. His helmet had closed as he had been shot through the sky. He raised it up now to try to collect himself.

  He had landed at the base of one of the diamond houses. The diamonds that were lining the walls of the house twinkled at him, as if they were in on a joke. Steve groaned. Every part of him hurt. If he hadn’t been wearing diamond armor himself, he probably would have run out of health.

  He sat up. The world was slightly off balance. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision. Then he twisted around to try to see where he was.

  Steve was still in the diamond village. Everything was quiet now. There were no signs of the red creepers or of that girl. He thought back to the girl’s armor. It had been made of iron, hadn’t it? Surely, that wasn’t going to be enough to withstand that explosion.

  He had to check. Whatever was going on, this diamond village was new. That girl was new as well and shouldn’t even be here in this world. Not to mention that those red creepers were unlike anything he had ever seen before.

  Steve moved a little slower through the village. He peered in one of the windows to the homes to confirm what he had already knew deep down – all the homes were empty. This was just a strange village made completely out of diamonds. Was Herobrine behind this? Steve doubted it.

  He checked around every corner before he walked down it to try to make sure he wasn’t going to be stumbling into a red creeper. But there was nothing. Perhaps those had been the last two.

  The explosion had knocked him clear across to the other side of the village. By the time Steve found where he had been with the girl before the explosion, twenty minutes had passed.

  The house they had been climbing up was completely destroyed. Half of it had sunken in on itself. Diamonds spilled out in the street as if they had been tossed there casually. Steve bent over and picked one up. He held the diamond up to the sunlight, trying to see if there was anything unusual about it.

  But it looked to be the same as all the other diamonds he had seen throughout his time in Minecraft. Even so, Steve had never seen an entire village with so many diamonds that homes were built out of the stuff. Even the pathways had diamonds in them.

  He looked around for any signs of the girl but she was gone. She could be anywhere in the village. He could go back home before the sun set but he didn’t want to do that. That girl had been in trouble. It would be wrong just to go home now.

  So Steve tried to picture where the explosion could have sent the girl off flying. He hadn’t seen her at all where he had landed. She had been next to him when the creepers had gone off. Perhaps she had been sent off near the exit of the village.

  Steve set off in that direction, hyper alert for anymore noises. He didn’t hear anything and got to the entrance of the village rather quickly. Then he stopped.

  In front of the exit of the village was some sort of magical barrier. It was a pale blue and shimmered. Sometimes waves would roll out across it as if it were water. Steve jogged up to it. He picked up one of the diamonds and threw it at the barrier.

  It bounced off and landed at his feet. Was he trapped? How could that be? He was going to reach out to touch it when –

  “Are you crazy?!” A voice rang out.

  Startled, he turned around to see the girl slouched against one of the homes. Her helmet was off and he could see her face for the first time. She had messy blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail. Her iron armor was dented in places. Her character skin was brand new to him. He found himself looking at her eyes, trying to see if they were white, like the eyes Herobrine and himself had.

  But he could see the animated blue eyes of her character. That only made things more confusing.

  “We’re stuck in here,” She went on, “If you touch the barrier, it’ll just injure you.”

  “This wasn’t here before.” Steve said to her.

  “Must have gone up after the creepers knocked us out.” She replied.

  “Are you okay?” He said, lowering his hand and stepping away from the barrier.

  “No.” She winced and then sunk to the ground with her back pressed against one of the homes.

  Steve went over to her, checking his inventory for a healing potion. Finding one, he held it out to her.

  “Drink this.”

  “Thanks.” She said and took it, uncapping it and swigging it down quickly.

  Steve sat down next to her, brimming with questions, “What is this place? How did you get here? What were those creepers?”

  “Whoa, slow down,” She mumbled, “One question at a time, please. I have a headache.”

  So did Steve, now that she mentioned it. He yanked off his helmet and put it down next to him. The fresh air should help his head.

  Next to him, the girl stiffened in surprise and said, “Your eyes.”

  “What? Oh, yeah.” He had forgotten all about them.

  “Are you Herobrine?”

  “No.”

  She relaxed slightly, “You must be t
he other one then. Steve.”

  “How do you know who I am?” He asked, surprised.

  She shrugged, “Everyone does. Herobrine and Steve are known even among the lowest level of Minecraft players. You two are connected to the game in no other way possible. People aren’t even sure if you two are real. I heard Steve vanished.”

  “No. Just been busy.” He remarked.

  The girl studied him for a moment before going, “I’m Elena.”

  “So, are you going to tell me how you ended up here, Elena?”

  “I will. But you won’t believe it.” She said.

  Chapter Four

  “I don’t really play this game a lot,” Elena said to him, “I’m busy with school and stuff. So I don’t know much about it. But lately, I’ve made more time for it. I like building houses and stuff. I don’t really go off and explore too much.”

  “I did that too back when I first started playing.” Steve replied although it felt like a lifetime ago.

  “Well, I logged in today and everything was different. I mean, wildly different. I could do things in the game that I couldn’t before. It even felt as if I was in the game. As if the outside world didn’t exist. It was just me living in here. Does it feel that way for you?”

  “Yes,” Steve said, “Exactly. Everything feels real in here. I can do things that no one else can. I can feel the attacks and everything too.”

  “Right! Yes, exactly like that.” Elena said, looking happy that he knew what she was talking about, “Anyway, so I logged in and it was just like that. Everything felt very real. But I had no idea where I was. I wasn’t in my house. I was just in some room filled with these glittering gems. I mean, diamonds were in the walls and along the floor. I hadn’t ever seen so many diamonds.”

  “Me either. I’ve never seen a village made completely out of them.”

  “Well, I left the house. And that’s when I saw those two red creepers. There were four of them total, I think. They chased me through the village. And that’s when I ran into you.”

  Steve had been hoping for more information. He had been half hoping that Elena had been stuck in this situation a little bit longer so he would have more information.