The Complete Elementia Chronicles: Quest for Justice; The New Order; The Dusk of Hope; Herobrine’s Message. Sean Wolfe Fay

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      The player smiled. There were wrinkles in his blocky cheeks. “Of course, sir. Right this way. He walked out of the station, followed by Stan, and they began walking down the main street of the town.

      Stan had never seen such a pathetic-looking excuse for a town in his life. The unpaved main street was the only road, and on either side of it were ten or so small houses, all patched together with sand, dirt, cobblestone and sandstone so that it was impossible to tell what the original material was. Stan noticed that on the sides of a few of these houses were small wheat gardens, which were surrounded with fences. Players leaned against the front of these houses.

      There was no way to describe the look of these players except as broken, defeated. Their heads hung, looking towards the ground, with the sun glinting off the metal helmets on their heads. Most of them had iron pickaxes dangling from their hands. They all wore leather armour everywhere except on their heads, which were obscured by the helmets, so it was impossible to tell them apart at a glance. When they sensed Stan walking into the town, a few of them glanced up. Stan could see pain reflected in their faces, which bore all variety of scars, and the players projected a defensive caution at this new player, young and whole, who had the audacity to waltz into their village unannounced.

      “Just ignore them,” mumbled the mayor, sensing Stan’s unease. “They’re just tired and upset from all the extra work the soldiers have been forcing them to do lately. They’re looking for a fight. They need to take their anger out on someone. So don’t look anyone directly in the eye.”

      Stan took the mayor’s advice and looked straight forwards towards the end of the street, keeping his hand cautiously but subtly close to the wooden handle of the iron axe dangling at his side by his belt. Keen to avoid eye contact with the temperamental miners, Stan forced himself to focus on the building at the end of the street. It was the largest and by far the most well-kept building. It was a rectangular complex made of brick blocks, with no windows and two side-by-side metal doors on the front. Unlike the patchy houses that held the miners, this building seemed to be in a state of good repair. Stan asked the mayor about its purpose.

      “That is the government’s storehouse. They come by rail to this village every other day to collect the coal quota, but all other materials, including cobblestone, iron and even buckets of lava from the sources of springs that we encounter, go in there, along with any other ambiguous blocks we find.”

      “Do you mean to say that the army controls the flow of materials leaving this village through that storehouse?” asked Stan.

      “Yes. And we don’t get to keep any of what we bring up for ourselves. Even if some blocks of our houses are stolen, we have to smuggle cobblestone blocks up from the mines to repair them, an offence punishable by death. Our miners have actually gotten into fights and killed each other over accusations of stealing parts from one another’s houses.”

      Stan sighed in disgust at this revelation as they arrived at the house directly adjacent to the warehouse. A sign next to the front door read “Mayor.” This house was a little larger than the other houses, though in an equal state of disrepair. The mayor pushed open the wooden door and they walked inside.

      The inside of the house had a wooden floor, walls made of the same materials as the outside – suggesting the walls were one block thick – and windows, some of which still had glass panes. The entire house consisted of one room, which had a crafting table, a furnace, two double chests, two chairs and two beds. The entire room had a defeated air to it, and at each step the floorboards creaked in despair.

      “Nice place you’ve got here,” Stan lied through his teeth, as the mayor grabbed two steaks from his chest and handed one to Stan. “I notice there are two beds here, and two chairs. Does somebody else live here with you?”

      In response to his question, a burst of coughing issued from a hole in one corner of the room that Stan had not noticed before. From the hole emerged the most dishevelled player that Stan had seen so far. He was dressed in a white lab coat with grey trousers, and his grey hair stuck up in all directions. He would have looked like Albert Einstein if he didn’t look so beaten. His face was sallow and sunken in, he had an unearthly stench that Stan could smell from across the room, and he was completely covered in coal dust that was mixed with a shiny, red material that Stan identified as redstone dust. He held two bottles in his hands, one of which was empty and one of which held a liquid of a sickly blue-grey colour. The player gave an almighty belch before addressing the mayor.

      “Hey, Turkey, we’re running low on SloPo, when do you think the nomads’ll be back?” his voice was slurred and giddy, reminding Stan of a player who was deep in the stages of delirium. “Are the nomads gonna be back tomorrow? They’ll be back tomorrow, and then I’ll get my SloPo. I do love my SloPo. But, wait, I’m gonna need money! Turkey, remind me to get some money later tonight, OK, old buddy, Turkey old friend?”

      At that point, the player stopped his conversation with himself and noticed that he and “Turkey” (who Stan could only assume was the mayor) were not alone in the room. The player turned his dilated pupils to Stan and asked the mayor, “Who’s the new meat, Turkey? He another new miner to come from, from, from the Elementia prisons? Heh-heh, good luck, little buddy, you ain’t gonna last two days down in that ravine!” For some reason, the player seemed to find this extraordinarily funny, and he rolled around on the ground, banging his fist on the floor to the point where one of the wooden planks actually broke off.

      The mayor simply walked over to the hysterical player on the floor and calmly said, “Mecha11, you are hereby sentenced to labour in the coal mines of Blackstone, in the Ender Desert, for as long as you should remain in this server.”

      The effect of these enigmatic words on the player on the floor was instantaneous. He immediately got up and got on his knees and started crying. Through his tears he said, “As you wish, my King.” Then, without warning, he stood up and shook his head, his face looking confused. Then he appeared as if something was dawning on him, and he looked at the mayor in disgust.

      “Why do you have to do that?” he demanded.

      “Well,” the mayor replied, “that’s the only way that I can get you out of your trance when you’re SloPoed without a golden apple, and there’s somebody I want you to meet.”

      Stan, who was extremely confused as to what was going on, nodded politely and tried to keep the look of confusion and fear off his face as the player was introduced as Mecha11, head of Redstone Mining Pioneering. The name rang a bell in Stan’s memory.

      “Wait, you’re Mecha11?” he asked, dumbfounded that this wreck of a player was once in the same tier of people as the Apothecary and the Nether Boys. “I’ve heard of you! My name is Stan2012, and I’ve met the Apothecary and Bill, Ben and Bob!”

      A flash of recognition crossed Mecha11’s face, but it soon returned to its uninterested state as he collapsed into one of the wooden chairs. “Well, I’m glad to hear that they’re still chugging. And speaking of chugging,” he said, and he went to drink more of the potion in his hand, but the mayor slapped his hand to the side.

      “Mechanist, please, don’t be rude! This young man helped to stop the army from burning our train station to the ground.He deserves your respect.”

      “Yeah, great job, kid,” the Mechanist sneered in a sarcastic drawl. “You made it so that we still have a gateway for the army to keep taking advantage of these people who’ve already wasted their lives slaving away in the Blackstone mines. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t thank you by offering you a free muffin.”

      “Shut up, Mechanist!” whispered the mayor in urgent tones.

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