The End: An Official Minecraft Novel

  Minecraft: The End is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Mojang AB and Mojang Synergies AB. All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Published in the United Kingdom by Century, an imprint of Random House UK, London.

  MINECRAFT is a trademark or registered trademark of Mojang Synergies AB.

  Hardback ISBN 9780399180729

  International edition ISBN 9780593156780

  Ebook ISBN 9780399180736

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adapted for ebook

  Cover art and design: M. S. Corley

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Once upon a time, there was a player.

  Chapter One: You and Me and Us and Them

  Chapter Two: The Dome and the Dragon

  Chapter Three: Kan

  Chapter Four: The Endmoot

  Chapter Five: The Spy

  Chapter Six: The Final Battle

  Chapter Seven: Humans

  Chapter Eight: The Six of Us

  Chapter Nine: Monsters

  Sometimes the player dreamed it was lost in a story.

  Chapter Ten: May the Great Chaos Smile Upon You

  Chapter Eleven: The Heart of an Enderman

  Chapter Twelve: The Overworld

  Chapter Thirteen: It’s Complicated

  Chapter Fourteen: In the Army Now

  Chapter Fifteen: A Little Rain

  Chapter Sixteen: Under Cover of Night

  Chapter Seventeen: Welcome to My Ed Talk

  Chapter Eighteen: Telos

  Chapter Nineteen: Remember?

  Chapter Twenty: Unknown Variables

  Chapter Twenty-one: All Hail the Great Chaos

  Chapter Twenty-two: The Final Battle, Again

  Chapter Twenty-three: A Tide of Memory

  The atoms of the player were scattered in the grass, in the rivers, in the air, in the ground.

  Chapter Twenty-four: The End

  Dedication

  By Catherynne M. Valente

  About the Author

  Once upon a time, there was a player.

  The player was you.

  Sometimes it thought itself human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing gas that was three hundred and thirty thousand times more massive than it. They were so far apart that light took eight minutes to cross the gap. The light was information from a star, and it could burn your skin from a hundred and fifty million kilometers away.

  Sometimes the player dreamed it was a miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite. The sun was a square of white. The days were short; there was much to do; and death was a temporary inconvenience.

  —Julian Gough, Minecraft “End Poem”

  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.

  The islands are full of endermen, their long, slender black limbs moving over little yellow hills and little yellow valleys. Their narrow purple-and-pink eyes flash. Their thin black arms swing to the rhythm of a soft, whispering music, plotting their plots and scheming their schemes in the tall, twisted buildings older than even the idea of a clock. They watch everything. They say nothing.

  Shulkers hide in boxes nestled in ships and towers. Little yellow-green slugs hiding from outsiders. Sometimes they peek out. But they snap their boxes safely shut again, like clams in their shells. The gentle thudding sound of their cubes opening and closing is the heartbeat of the End.

  And on the central and largest island, enormous obsidian towers surround a small pillar of grey stone ringed with torches. A brilliant lantern gleams from the top of each tower. A flame in a silver cage, shooting beams of light down from the towers into the grass, across a little grey courtyard, and out into the black sky.

  Above it all, something slowly circles. Something huge. Something with wings. Something that never tires. Round and round it goes, and its purple eyes glow like furious fire.

  * * *

  —

  Fin!

  The word came zinging through the shade off the shore of one of the outer islands. A huge end city loomed over most of the land: Telos. Telos sprouted out of the island highlands like something alive. Great pagodas and pavilions everywhere. White shimmers fell from the glistening end rods. Shulkers clapped in their little boxes. Leashed to Telos like a dog floated a grand purple ship. A pirate ship without an ocean to sail. Most of the end cities had ships attached to them. No one was certain why, any more than they’re certain who built all those big, strange cities in the first place. Not the endermen, though they were happy to name every place after themselves. Not the thing flying in endless circles around a gate to nowhere. Not the shulkers who never came out of hiding long enough to learn anything about anything. The end ships just were, as the cities just were, as the End just was, like clouds or diamonds or Tuesdays.

  Fin! Find anything good?

  A skinny young enderman teleported quickly across the island, in and out of the nooks and crannies of Telos. He blinked off in one place and back on in another until he stood on the deck of the end ship, holding something in his arms. His head was handsome, black and square. His eyes were bright and hungry. His limbs were slim but strong. An enderman leaned against the mast, waiting for him. She crossed her dark arms across her thin chest.

  Naw, the enderman thought loudly. The words just appeared in the other enderman’s mind. Endermen had no need for mouths or ears. No need for sound. Telepathy was so much easier than talking. You just thought at somebody and they understood you.

  Nothing good, Mo. Just a bunch of pearls. We’ve got tons of those. Ugh. You take them. They give me the creeps. I was sure the chestplates we found last week would regen by now but I guess somebody else got there first. I got some redstone ore. That’s about it. You go next time. You always sniff out the good stuff.

  The twin twelve-year-old endermen, brother and sister, Fin and Mo, headed down into the guts of their ship. Fin was technically three minutes older, but he didn’t make a big deal out of it. Things like who was older and who wasn’t smacked of rankings, of structure, of Order—and Order wasn’t welcome in the End
.

  They’d always lived here. They couldn’t remember any other place. They grew up here. It was their home. No different from any of the hundreds of endermen you’d find on any island in the archipelago. They lived on an end ship crammed with junk they’d snatched up from anywhere they could find it. Some of it was very good junk. Diamonds and emeralds, gold ore and lapis lazuli. Enchanted iron leggings, pickaxes of every kind, beetroot seeds and chorus fruits, saddles and horse armor (though they’d never seen a horse). Dozens of sets of marvelous grey wings you could stick right on your back and fly around anywhere you liked. Some of it was just plain old actual junk. Rocks and clay and sand and old books with broken spines. Fin and Mo didn’t care. They were scavengers, and scavengers weren’t picky. You never knew when you could really use some good old-fashioned clay.

  The twin endermen knew there were other worlds out there. It was only logical when you lived in a place called the End. If there was an End, there had to be a Beginning. Somewhere else for this place to be the End of. Somewhere the opposite of here. Green and bright, with blue skies and blue water, full of sheep and pigs and bees and squid. Other endermen went there all the time. They’d heard the stories. But this was their world. They were safe here, with their own things and their own kind.

  Fin and Mo’s treasure piled up to the ceiling of the hold. The twins picked their way through their collection carefully. They’d done it a thousand times. There was a well-worn path through the boots and swords and helmets and dragon heads and ingots. Little spaces hollowed out for sitting and eating and living.

  And pets.

  Hiya, Grumpo, Mo thought cheerfully at the shulker in his box on the far wall. He’d always been there, just like them. They’d never been able to get rid of him, even though they really could have used his spot for more loot. If they whacked on his box until it fell apart, it just came back the next day. Eventually, they’d just given up and accepted him. Gave him a name. Let him guard the junkship some days. You never knew when someone might try to raid your ship. When you had this much loot in one place, you had to stay sharp. Grumpo didn’t really guard it so much as just sat there hating everything, like he always did, but it made them feel safer. He wasn’t just a shulker. He was their shulker.

  If it was a him. They never wanted to pry. They respected the shulker’s personal space.

  Hiya, Grumpo thought back. He peeked out of his box. They caught a glimpse of his yellow-green head. I hate you.

  Okay, shrugged Fin. Good boy.

  I’m not, snapped Grumpo. I want to bite you.

  Are so! thought Mo. WHO’S A GOOD BOY?

  The shulker grumbled to himself and shut his box again. His last thought appeared in their heads, the letters very small and angry. I’m a bad boy. I’ll bite you tomorrow, you’ll see.

  Mo and Fin dug out a basket of chorus fruits from behind a couple of blocks of ore. They divided them equally for lunch. Everything between them was equal. Very carefully, very deliberately, almost militantly equal. The twins worked quietly and happily, side by side, and packed up their meal to take with them.

  Guard the ship, Grumpo, thought Fin and Mo. We’re gonna go visit ED. Don’t let anyone take our stuff.

  I hate the ship, complained Grumpo, without opening his box. I hate you. I hate ED. I hate your stuff.

  Good talk, Grumpo! They laughed inside their great black square heads.

  Fin and Mo teleported out onto the deck of the end ship. The black sky looked so pretty, with the city sparkling nearby. But they weren’t headed to the city. They blinked in and out of sight as they teleported across the island chain. Their ender pearls glowed hot with each jump.

  In a moment or two, they’d reached the central island. Crowds of endermen moved between the obsidian towers. Beams of light from the caged lanterns shot out into the dark.

  Greetings, Hubunit Paa, Fin thought to a tall elderly enderman they often saw out here. All hail the Great Chaos!

  May the Great Chaos smile upon you, juvenile male, Paa replied solemnly. It was the traditional answer. All endermen worshipped the Great Chaos. The universe was divided into Chaos and Order. Overworlders believed in Order, but endermen knew it was a lie. Always and forever a lie. The biggest lie ever told. In the Overworld, people believed you could build a fortress strong enough to keep anything out. That you could actually make something perfect. Something that would last. Only endermen, servants of the Great Chaos, seemed to understand that this was folly. It was their holy duty to prove it. Life was so much better when you understood the truth: Anything could happen, anytime, to anyone and anything. The Great Chaos came for everyone sooner or later. It would come for the whole universe someday. The endermen’s duty was to help it along any way they could. The holiest pilgrimage an enderman could make was to journey to the Overworld, witness the constructions of the Forces of Order, and sabotage them. Remove one block from a cozy house and the Great Chaos’s work could begin. Rain or fire could fall through the roof. Creepers could sneak through a hole in the foundation. Thieves could crawl through and clean you out. Order was so boring. Wasn’t life so much more interesting once you let the Chaos in?

  Greetings, Hubunit Lopp, Mo thought to an enderman who was surrounded by glowing purple sparks, staring out off the edge of the island. All hail the Great Chaos.

  Greetings, Mo, Lopp replied. I await the return of my enderfrags. They departed to the Overworld to hunt Order and destroy it. I am tremendously proud of my fragments. They will bring glory to our End.

  I’m sure they’ll be back soon, Mo thought comfortingly.

  The enderman turned to stare down at them. She was so tall! Something strange flickered in her magenta eyes.

  Are you alone? Are you weakened? Do you require endstack with a hubunit of superior strength and power?

  Mo took a step back. Mature endermen could get very cagey about a juvenile on her own with no guardians around. It disturbed them somewhere deep in their bones. And Mo didn’t like the way the big endermen thought. All stiff and formal and spiky. Long words. And too many of them. Kids didn’t think like that. Fin and Mo didn’t, and neither did any of the other young endermen they’d met. Some enchantment must fall on you when you came of age that turned you into a snob.

  But of course, Lopp thought this way only because there were so many other endermen milling around the ender dragon’s island. Alone, an enderman was angry, primitive, little better than a bear who’s been hit on the head quite a lot. Only in groups did their thoughts grow all those long and interesting spikes. A group of endermen was called an End. That was why their country was called the End. All the endermen together, the biggest End there could be.

  Within an End, there were many different individuals, each in a different cycle of life. Enderfrags were juveniles that fragmented off from a pair of mature hubunits. Nubunits were fully grown endermen who had not yet replicated to start their own Ends. Finally, there were cruxunits, the great, ancient ancestors that had replicated alone and started their Ends out of nothing but themselves. Coming together with other endermen to smarten up and get things done was called endstacking. Of course, it was easiest with the units and fragments of your own End. They’d known you since before you were replicated! But endermen could stack with any other endermen and grow stronger, smarter, safer, sneakier. That was what Lopp was offering: safety. One brick isn’t much, though it can hurt if it falls on you. But a hundred all together are a wall.

  But Mo didn’t want it. She had Fin. That was enough. It had always been enough. When she stacked with endermen who were not Fin (and one other she was trying not to think about just now because it was just so distracting to think about Kan and Mo had things to do today), it made her itch all over until she wanted to claw her skin off. It made her want to cry. It filled her so full of energy she could barely keep from running and jumping and somersaulting in circles like an idiot. Mo might’v
e been smarter endstacking, but she never felt smarter, because she couldn’t concentrate for all the itching and crying and somersaulting. Maybe that would all go away in a few years when she became a nubunit. Mo and Fin were still enderfrags, just barely.

  Or maybe Mo was just a mess. Definitely a possibility.

  No, I’m fine, Mo thought fiercely.

  Are you certain? thought the huge enderman with growing concern. I am available. I am an excellent hubunit. My teleportation and fighting abilities are unequalled.

  I’m fine! Mo shouted in her head, and ran toward Fin. She did not look behind her.

  And the ender dragon flew around and around and around, roaring as it went. It dipped and dove between the towers, coming to rest every so often on the small grey courtyard in the middle of the island. There, it roared some more, then took off again.

  Fin and Mo teleported up to the top of one of the black pillars. They settled down on the dark stone beside the lantern and watched the ender dragon for a while. It was their favorite thing to do. No matter how long you watched ED, as they called the beast, the dragon never got any smaller or less scary or less interesting. All those nubbly scales along its spine. Those amazing wings. Those huge purple eyes. Every time it passed by they shivered with excitement and fear. But mostly excitement.

  Do you ever want to go there? Mo asked, munching on her chorus fruit.

  Where? Fin tracked the ender dragon with his eyes. He wasn’t really listening to his twin. Who could listen to a sibling when there was a dragon around? It was resting on the little stone courtyard way down on the ground.