Introduction

Xa-Tul, Feyd, Reaper and Shaivalak were infamous for wreaking havoc on the world of Minecraft. Ever since the day they had been created they had gone out of their way to complete the one goal that mattered in their lives. The goal given to them by Herobrine himself.
Destroy GameKnight999.
They had tried everything, from spying to full-on sieges on Crafter’s village and every little thing in between. But whatever they did, no matter how they did it, the User-that-is-not-a-user always seemed to foil their plans one way or another. It made them furious how no matter what they did, GameKnight always managed to stay one step ahead of them. But what were they supposed to do? They had exhausted their store of ideas, used up every plan they had. They were stuck.
After a few epic won battles, the villagers had faith that whatever the monster kings and queen threw at them,
they would be ready. Even GameKnight felt confident about it. But nothing and no one could’ve prepared them for what happened one normal day. Even the monstrous royalty didn’t see it coming. Not at all.

Chapter 1
Feyd

Feyd was in a cave with five of his subjects. A stream of lava added some slight orange illumination that pushed
away the darkness by a bit. Across for the lava ran a stream of water. The cool, blue liquid met the thick, bubbling magma in the center of the cavern, creating obsidian and cobblestone.
They would’ve been in the End, but one of the endermen had informed Feyd that he had found a new zombie-town
in a location that they had never seen before. Nothing had been happening at the time and he hadn’t heard anything new from the other monster leader about a certain User-who-may-or-may-not-be-an actual-user, so he decide that he might as well check it out.
As it turns out, there was no zombie-town there at all. It was just a convenient placement of lava and water.
Upon discovering this, Feyd had immediately lashed out and killed the enderman who had been foolish enough to bring them here. Not only was he angry, he was slightly embarrassed to have believed the creature in the first place.
Why would I
care about a bunch of stupid zombies? He had thought to himself.
They’re as dumb as a skeleton trying to sunbathe.
Immediately after killing the misleading monster, he had turned to his other subjects and ordered them to get
out of his sight at once. They did as they were told, instantly disappearing without question. Feyd stayed in the cave to think a bit.
His eyes ended up wandering over to the water that flowed out of the cave wall and pooled on the dusty floor.
The endermen had given it a wide girth, due to the fact that it was deadly to them, burning their skin like potent acid. Then he felt something that he never thought he’d feel in a million years.
He wanted to touch it.
He immediately tried to push the ridiculous thought from his head. But he couldn’t stop wondering what would
happen. Maybe he could just quickly touch it. Just for a second. He’d probably be fine. Before ke knew it, he was standing by the water, looking down at it. He was about to kneel down when a screechy voice knocked him back to reality.
“Sire? Are you, um, okay?”
Feyd whipped around and saw an enderman standing a few blocks behind him, an anxious look on it’s face.
“What are you doing here! I thought I told you to leave!” He snapped, avoiding the question.
“I-I was just wondering what you w-wanted us to do, while we were away I mean.” The dark creature stammered.
“I don’t care! Go spy on GameKnight or something! Just follow orders!”
“Y-yes sire.”
The enderman disappeared, leaving Feyd alone in the cave again. He glanced back at the water and shuddered
slightly at what he’d almost done. Then he teleported back to the End.

 

Chapter 2
Xa-Tul

Xa-Tul walked onto the podium in the middle of his zombie-town. He had plans for an attack on a nearby village,
and he was sure it would draw GameKnight out of his rabbit hole and out into the open where he could destroy him. His general, Me-Var, stood beside him as he barked out orders.
“You,” he pointed to a small group of zombies. “Go from the back. Distract them. You,” he pointed to a rather
large group of zombies. “Go from the front. Be quiet but quick. Those pathetic NPC’s will be so distracted with the other zombies that they won’t notice.” He turned and looked at Me-Var. “Me-Var shall lead this attack.” Me-Var nodded. A golden helmet sat atop
his rotting head. “Now GO!” Xa-Tul yelled at the top of his lungs, his deep, growly voice echoing around the chamber that they lived in, making it seem as though it were coming from all sides.
The zombies turned and began to shuffle off, their clawed feet scraping against the stone floor. Xa-Tul watched
as they left, Me-Var in the middle of them. The yellow of his golden helmet stood out against the sea of green and blue.
All of a sudden, Xa-Tul started to feel sick. Not just nervous-sick,
really
sick. He went weak in the knees from the sudden sensation and almost fell over. He quickly regained his composure and looked around to see if anyone was watching. Luckily, no one had seen him. The few zombies left in the village were off in their houses or
just walking around doing whatever. He was about to walk off when the feeling came back, this time several times worse. He clutched his stomach and doubled over with pain, letting out a deep guttural growl. He felt like a teenage girl going through terrible
cramps (not that he actually knew what that felt like, I was just using a fancy simile). He wondered if his HP was getting low, causing the pain. It
had
been a while since he had last fed. He didn’t feel like he was low on health though. He felt like someone had taken his golden broadsword and stabbed it right through his midsection. But he decided he might as well try the HP fountains, just to be sure.
He slowly walked off the platform and stumbled over to one of the springs. It spewed out bright green sparks
that rejuvenated the HP of anyone who touched them. The sparks made a quiet *tink* *tink* *tink* as they hit the floor and added a bit of green light to the cave.
Still holding his stomach with one hand, Xa-Tul moved so that he was underneath the flow of green embers. They
flowed into him and made him feel slightly better, but the pain was still very much there. Not being satisfied with the fact that the pain was still around, he walked into a rarely traveled ally between two buildings and sat down, waiting for it to subside.
After a while his eyelids began to droop, and pretty soon he was snoring, fast asleep.

 

Chapter 3
Shaivalak

Shaivalak watched as another bunch of baby spiders hatched from their eggs. The eggs cracked open, and a small
spider crawled out of each one. The moment they crept out of their shell, Shaivalak reached out to the young mob with her powers and wrapped a mental thread around each one. This allowed her to control all the spiders. Without her, they would just scatter
off into the many biomes, living out solitary lives until they were killed by some pathetic user or villager. All of these baby spiders were sisters, meaning that they would be the first ones to go out and fight when the time came.
She had just finished taking control of the last sister (a spider that was slightly smaller than the rest,
as it had hatched a bit late) when she began to feel a small pain in the back of her head. She shook her head a bit to clear it. The pain subsided slightly, but it was still there. She just brushed it off and went about her business.
By the end of the day, however, her head was pounding. It felt like someone had brought a sledgehammer down
directly upon it and the pain was so intense that she could hardly think straight. She paced back and forth in an empty cave, taking deep breaths, trying to figure out what was going on. She hadn’t taken any damage recently, as she had just spent the entire
day making sure her subjects were in check. She immediately ruled out poisoning, as cave spider poison didn’t affect her anyway, and if it did she would’ve been dead long ago.
Just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, she felt a sharp pain in one of her front arms. She let out
a small spider-like screech and looked at it, just in time to see it begin to change shape. She watched in horror as the limb became thicker, but still remained fairly thin. The tiny hairs on it fell off and the multi-pointed claw on the end of it morphed
into a hand with five long, thin fingers. Each finger had a long, sharp nail on the end of it. Shaivalak let out a sharp gasp just as she felt a pain in the other front arm, and then the next limb, and the next. She was afraid to look. She had a feeling she
knew what she would see. She was terrified beyond rational thought, so she did the only thing she could think of.
She screamed.

 

Chapter 4
Endermen

A group of four endermen stood in the middle of the large white island that is the End. These just so happened
to be the four subjects that hadn’t ended up getting killed on their failed trip to the nonexistent zombie-town. They had unanimously agreed to teleport back to the End after their master had commanded them to get out of his sight, and now they were talking
about whatever endermen talk about on a relatively uneventful day.
They were still talking when one of them looked off into the distance. The others stopped talking and looked
at him strangely.
“What are you looking at?” One of them asked. The staring one pointed at something across the End. They all
looked in the direction he was pointing and saw their king, Feyd, standing on the very edge of the island, staring at something. The strange thing was, there was nothing to look at. The only thing outside of the End was an endless (end-less.
Get it?) void of darkness.
“What’s he doing?” Another one whispered. They didn’t need to whisper, as Feyd was much too far away to hear
anything they were saying, but they did anyway.
“I don’t know.” Said the staring one.
“Should one of us go ask him?”
“No, he told us to leave him alone, remember? I don’t know about you, but
I
don’t want to be the next one to pay for wasting his time.”
“I guess you’re right. But why would he be staring out into the void? There’s nothing out there.”
“Who knows. You know him. Probably just thinking about new ways to destroy the enemy.”
“Yeah.”
They went back to talking about what they had previously been talking about.
What they didn’t know, however, was what they couldn’t see. If they had been closer, and had looked at Feyd’s
face, they would’ve seen that he didn’t have a thoughtful look on his face. His face was blank, his eyelids half closed. His eyes had a slightly glazed-over look to them. This was because Feyd wasn’t thinking about anything at all. He was sleepwalking.

Chapter 5
GameKnight999

GameKnight walked through the Crafter’s village. Recently, an attack on the village had left a big hole in
the cobblestone wall and a building destroyed. They were currently attempting to fix it before nightfall. It was a little more than halfway through the day. They had nearly finished on the wall, and were beginning on the building that had been destroyed. The
User-that-is-not-a-user was confident that they would have repairs finished before the sun set. Villagers had a way of getting things done.
“GameKnight!” someone yelled from a ways away. GameKnight recognized the voice. Young, calm and wise. Crafter.
He looked in the direction of the voice and saw Crafter running towards in, being careful not to bump into any other villagers. When he got to GameKnight he panted a few times, then spoke.
“You might want to come and hear this.”
“What?” GameKnight asked. “Is something wrong?”
“Um, you could say that. The villager who requested your presence did not say why he wanted to speak to you,
only that it was important.”
GameKnight didn’t understand, but followed anyway. He was worried, but he still smiled and waved at Herder
as he passed by, and Herder smiled back.
Crafter led him to the watchtower in the center of the village. Once inside Crafter took out a pickaxe and
removed a piece of cobblestone in the middle of the floor, revealing a tunnel that dove down deep into the flesh of Minecraft, a ladder lining one of the sides and torches added some illumination to the otherwise pitch black passage. It went down so deep that
GameKnight couldn’t see the bottom.
Crafter began to climb down the ladder.
“Come on.” he said as he went down. GameKnight followed close after him.
After a few minutes of climbing, they reached the bottom. The pair turned away from the ladder and walked side
by side down another very dark, very long passage.
Eventually they came to two doors. They pushed them open and walked down a set of stairs to a large chamber,
known as the crafting chamber. As soon as the doors opened a cacophony of noise hit GameKnight’s ears. The sounds of villagers pounding out tools at crafting tables, their hands a blur of activity. Crafter led him to a group of villagers who were standing
in a corner, one of them talking while the others listened intently. They all stopped looked over at Crafter and GameKnight as the pair approached.
“I brought him like you requested.” Crafter said to the one who had been speaking. “Now, what is it you would
like to say?”
“Oh, good.” The villager said as he walked up to GameKnight. He had a spooked look on his face.
“Is something wrong?” The-User-that-is-not-a-user-asked. “Does it have something to do with the monsters?”
It had been pretty calm recently, but GameKnight had been expecting an attack from the kings and queen at any second.
“Um, yes. I think. Maybe. I-I don’t really know to be honest.” The villagers voice wavered. “I was just out
in the forest, not that far from the village. I knew it wasn’t the safest thing to do, stray to far from the walls, but I wanted to revisit an old fishing spot that had provided me with a lot of food in the past. My name’s Fisher by the way.”
“Well, Fisher, did you take something like a wolf with you?”
“No. I’ve never been very good with animals. And I had my enchanted bow and arrows with me, so I figured that
if any monsters attacked I could just fend them off. Anyway, I had sat down and begun to fish when I noticed something moving underneath the water. It was just a flash of movement, and I wasn’t able to see what caused it, but I immediately jumped up, fishing
rod still in my hand.
All of a sudden, I got a tug. Assuming it was a fish, I started to reel it in. It was no problem at first,
the fish hardly put up a fight, but then I got a massive
tug. It felt as though the fish I had been reeling in had suddenly grown 5 times bigger. The sudden force almost pulled me into the water. I stood my ground though, trying to get the fish while also trying to make sure that my line didn’t snap.
We fought for at least five minutes. Every time I pulled harder, the fish pulled put up even more of a fight.
Eventually I was finally able to pull it out of the water. But what I saw wasn’t just a big salmon. I saw two hands grasping onto the fish that had bitten the end of my line, then two long arms. Almost like an enderman’s arms. But that would be impossible.
Endermen can’t even touch water, much less swim in it. In my distraction, I lessened my pull on the line. The creature, whatever it was, pulled one more time on my fish and my rod snapped. Just before The thing disappeared I saw a large black tail crest the
surface of the water, like a giant fish. Then it was gone. I didn’t have any doubt that that was the thing that I saw move down in the depths. I didn’t think any more about it. I turned around and ran all the way back to the village.”
Fisher walked closer to GameKnight, a scared look in his eyes.
“There’s something in that pond. Something unlike anything anyone has ever seen before.” He stepped back again.
“That’s what I saw, and that’s what I wanted to tell you.”
GameKnight thought about what Fisher had told him. What he had described had definitely
sounded
like a fish, but that didn’t make any sense. You weren’t supposed to actually see the fish in Minecraft until you reeled them in. And fish didn’t have arms. That was also pretty weird. Whatever it was definitely didn’t match anything GameKnight had ever seen.
Maybe Fisher’s just exaggerating.
He thought. But he’d never known villagers to exaggerate about things like this before. He turned back to Fisher.
“I’ll go check it out. Where’d you say this pond was again?”
“Follow me.”
Fisher started to lead them out of the crafting chamber, and Crafter and GameKnight followed. The other villagers
who had been listening to Fisher’s tale went back to their work.
Fisher led them out of the watchtower and onto the wall that surrounded the village. He pointed in the direction
of the forest that was a little ways away.
“It’s right over there.” Fisher said. “Right behind those trees.”
GameKnight looked in the direction Fisher was pointing and sure enough, past a couple of trees was a small
pond.
“I guess that’s where I’m going.” GameKnight said and then began to walk down the stairs that led from the
top of the wall to the village.
“Wait.” Crafter said after him. GameKnight turned around “Don’t you think it would be wise to bring a few people
with you? Like Hunter.” GameKnight thought about it.
“I’ll bring a wolf. But it may not be best to bring someone like Hunter. Whatever this thing is, I don’t think
it’s hostile. If it had wanted to attack Fisher than it could have. But all it wanted was the fish. If it is as strong as Fisher said however, I don’t want to threaten it into attacking.”
“Very well.”
GameKnight ran down the rest of the steps and went straight to Herder. Wherever Herder went, wolves were sure
to follow. As he approached Herder smiled and waved.
“Hi GameKnight!”
“Hi Herder. Say, do you think I could borrow one of your wolves for a bit?”
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“Eh, someone said that they saw something strange in a pond outside the village, and they wanted me to go check
it out.”
“Oh. Well okay then!”
He knelt down and whispered something to one of the wolves and the wolf trotted over to GameKnight and stood
rigid by his side. He smiled.
“Thanks Herder.”
“No problem!”
With that, GameKnight mounted his horse, went through the village doors, and rode out towards the forest.