City of the End: The Underwater City Book 4: An Old Enemy



  City of the End: The Underwater City, Book 4: An Old Enemy

  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

  Day 1

  Day 2

  Day 3

  Day 4

  Day 5

  Day 6

  About the Author

  Other books by this Author

  Day 1

  It is way too early to be awake. I want to crawl back into bed but Josh would be upset if I blew off training this morning. I stayed up too late last night helping Gareth with some things and now I am paying the price.

  Josh has gotten it into his head that morning runs are just the great pre-training trick. I pointed out we live in the End and therefore ‘morning’ doesn’t technically occur but he didn’t want to hear it.

  So, here I am, trying to wake up. I have some time to write in this journal before I have to go. There isn’t enough coffee in the world to wake me up.

  Josh has taken training very seriously since everything unfolded a year ago. I being chosen to go to the Over World, meeting Ellie and her brother, John, dealing with Marketh wanting to take over the Over World – all of it had been crazy. Josh had been in the End City the entire time, holding down the fort. He had fought just as hard as I did, just down below whereas I was up in the Over World.

  Now, Gareth is in control of the End City. Liam still rules the Over World. Gareth hired myself and Josh as part of his advisor team. In our spare time, we train in archery and sword fighting – just in case anything was to happen again.

  There hadn’t been any signs of Ender Men since Marketh had been arrested. I hadn’t even seen him since the arrest. I know Liam has him in the Over World, somewhere in his castle. That’s good enough for me. I could go my entire life and not see him again and be just perfectly happy.

  Even though everyone can come and go as they please now between the End and the Over World, I haven’t really spent much time back in the Over World. I guess it is because even though all sorts of crazy stuff happened here, the End City is still home, you know? Ultimately, my place is here and I want to protect the people living here.

  Even so, I still wish I could go back to bed.

  Later that day

  Josh was wide awake when I met up with him at our usual spot. In the past year, he had gotten really buff. He was fantastic at fencing now and if you gave him a sword, he could beat almost anyone in the city in hand to hand combat. He also had gotten into crafting a lot. He had made a wonderful diamond sword for himself. I kept bothering him to make me a diamond bow.

  “Ready for a jog?” He said to me as he was warming up.

  “No.” I said through a yawn.

  “Come on, Lana,” Josh replied, “It’s good for us to get these jogs in.”

  “I have nothing against running. I just don’t know why we have to do it so early.”

  “Everyone does their runs in the morning.”

  I gestured around us, “There is no morning down here.”

  Our home had gone through a lot of rebuilding in the past year. When Marketh had let the Ender Men roll through our city, it had ruined a lot of sections. Now it was mostly rebuilt. Even so, we were still in the End. That meant everything was mostly grey and gloomy looking. There was no sun shining down on us for our morning run.

  “It is morning even if there isn’t a sun,” Josh said, brushing my whining off.

  Seeing no way out of it, I started to stretch as well. Maybe once I started to run, I wouldn’t be so tired. After a few minutes of warming up, we started our jog. For a little bit, Josh stayed near me. But I finally told him to go on ahead. He was a faster runner than I was and I didn’t want him holding me back because I was too tired to run.

  As Josh took off ahead of me, the rest of the city was slowly starting to wake up. I could see everyone opening their shops and the smell of freshly baked bread filled the air. Now that there was no worry about Ender Men attacking the city, everything was back on schedule.

  As I turned a corner, watching Josh grow smaller and smaller, someone else was jogging up to me. Startled, I stopped and tried to catch my breath. It was a messenger from the Over World.

  After Gareth and King Liam opened the portals so anyone could travel between the two worlds, messengers were frequently seen down here. A lot of people had left for the Over World when the portals were open and liked to send messages to family.

  I got messages sometime. Mostly from John. Sometimes Ellie would scrawl something at the bottom. Even though we got along, Ellie and I still butted heads sometimes.

  I hadn’t actually seen John or Ellie once everything got wrapped up. They returned to their lives and I was so busy down here in the End City that I just hadn’t returned to visit them.

  Even so, for the messenger to come up to me while I was running and not go to my house meant this had to be important.

  “Lana? This message was marked as extremely urgent for you.” The messenger said as he handed me the letter, “I’m supposed to wait here for a response.”

  “Oh, okay…that’s new.” I said in between gasps for air.

  I tore open the letter and read it. To my surprise, it was from Ellie and it read:

  “J is missing. Come to surface ASAP. Need to see you.”

  That was all it said. I re-read it twice as if the words would clear my questions up. Did she mean that John was missing? I looked up at the messenger.

  “This is it? Nothing else?”

  “No, ma’am. What is your reply?”

  I looked back down at the letter. If John was missing or Ellie was in trouble, there was no real decision to be made here. I looked back up at the messenger.

  “Tell her I’ll be there tonight.”

  Day 2

  Josh protested the entire time I was packing a bag for the Over World.

  “You can’t tell me that I can’t come with you.” He was angry with me for leaving.

  I looked over at him, “You know Gareth needs one of us here to help out. We can’t both run to the Over World. I already spoke to Gareth this afternoon and told him I had to go. He needs you here, Josh.”

  “I don’t like this,” Josh was shaking his head, “Going back up to the Over World because John is missing – what if it is a trap?”

  “Ellie wrote the letter. It was her handwriting. This isn’t a trap. Who would be trapping me?”

  “Marketh.”

  “Oh no, not this again.” I sighed.

  Ever since everything had unfolded, Josh was convinced that we hadn’t seen the last of Marketh. Even though he was in a dungeon somewhere, Josh thought he was still plotting and planning.

  “Yes, this again. Have you forgotten that John and Ellie are his kids?”

  “No. As if I could forget that. I know Marketh is their father. So, what? You think that he is going to try to get them back? Wouldn’t matter. Ellie can’t stand Marketh and John feels no connection to him. They were smuggled out of here as babies,” I replied, “Not as adults.”

  “Yeah, but they are still kids to Marketh. Just…be careful, alright? If John is really missing, that means something is going on.”

  I didn’t like to think about John going missing. There was definitely something going on if he had just vanished.

  “I’ll be careful.” I told Josh.

  He walked me to the portal. I
t was in the evening and there was no one else waiting to use it. Ever since the first time I used a portal, where Marketh had messed with it and I went spilling into the ocean, I hated using them.

  “Alright. This is your stop,” Josh said to me as I stepped in front of the portal.

  I looked over my shoulder. I had a bad feeling about this – about all of this – for reasons that I couldn’t fully explain.

  “Hold the fort down here, okay?” I said to him.

  He nodded and waved good-bye at me. Holding my breath, I stepped into the portal. There was a humming that filled my ears and I felt as if I was swooping through the void. I closed my eyes tightly and thought about which portal I wanted to exit through. It was very important to have that in your mind as you went through the portals. Otherwise, it could spit you out in another portal somewhere in the Over World.

  Then I was toppling forward. Most people, like Josh, could come out of a portal graceful as ever. Not me. I was always paranoid I was going to fall into water or