Merry Christmas to all.
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Caspian Darkwood
Essos, Vaes Yeraan
57 AC
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I dismounted my horse with ease, something I had noticed was that the horses I summoned from the Minecraft menu became extremely docile after being tamed, and unless you hit them, there was no way they would hurt you. Valka followed my actions, and Aerea also dismounted her horse seconds later. "It's huge," Aerea said as she gazed closely at the large structure I erected to keep Balerion contained. "It's nothing out of the ordinary," I commented subtly, not giving much importance to the matter; after having built even the giant mountains that surrounded the city, building this dome was not a cause for wonder to me.
Valka looked at me and nodded. "Come on, your dragon arrived very badly wounded; it is necessary to treat him as soon as possible," I said to Aerea, knowing that the witches were already established in strategic points. Without waiting for a response, I gently tapped some Bedrock blocks that composed the structure, leaving a space large enough to enter with ease, and once done, I stepped through and entered the interior.
The somewhat hot and dark interior welcomed me; Balerion was still dozing, and his sounds were shallow and broken, as if the mere effort of breathing exhausted him. "Balerion," Aerea's voice pulled me out of my thoughts. I watched as she quickly approached the dragon, and as he opened his huge eyes and sat up a bit to see her clearly. "He is a beautiful creature, he seems to be very intelligent," Valka spoke, I noticed there was wonder in her voice, "yes, he is beautiful, soon there will be one in our power." Or at least I hoped.
I noticed Aerea signaling us, so I approached; due to the darkness of the dome, I couldn't properly appreciate Balerion, but I felt the slight tremor caused by his movements, and my chest rumbled every time he breathed. "He is very badly hurt, he has many wounds from Valyria, it will take a long time to heal," the words came out coarse and mournful from her. I just looked at Valka intently, weighing the consequences of what I was about to do.
"It won't take long," I told her, gaining her attention, "my people possess some things that make wounds, no matter how fatal they are, heal instantly or in short periods of time."
"What do I have to do?" That surprised me; I thought she would call me crazy or doubt me, but instead, she asked the price for such a thing, "after seeing you destroy those blocks from before, the fact that you have herbs or medicine that heals quickly is not surprising."
I didn't answer her; instead, I looked at Balerion once more, and my decision was firm, so I took ten regeneration potions from the menu and gave them to her, "give them to him by mouth, I don't know how many he needs, so if these are not enough, ask one of the witches, they will give you as many as you need."
Without another word, I turned and headed for the exit. Upon exiting, I mounted my horse and headed for the fortress as quickly as possible; seeing Balerion and how he behaved with Aerea, his rider, brought thoughts and ideas I had been avoiding, but that I would have to face sooner or later. Jaehaerys would not sit idly by knowing that the best weapon of his house was in Dothraki hands, and even if he did nothing, which I doubted, Aerea's mother, Queen Rhaena, would undoubtedly arrive with all the power of her dragon upon knowing her daughter was alive but here, and knowing the fact that most Targaryens were crazy, I couldn't gamble my city and my people on the mindset of someone with a walking nuclear bomb at their service.
"You should talk to Micaela first," Valka told me as we reached the fortress; that was what attracted me so much to her, she managed to decipher what I was thinking or what I wanted to do in almost magical ways, so it was as if she were an extension of me and not so much a stranger.
"There is no time, you saw for yourself how Balerion responds to Aerea's orders, and there are more dragons like that in her family; you know that the first thing they will do when they find out one of their own is here will be to arrive with all their power, and for that, Vaes Yeraan must have its own counterattack power."
We walked toward a special room. It was made with Bedrock blocks, the most resistant material in Minecraft and the world. Why was it made with that material? Because I was about to go to the End, the dimension where the Enderdragon lived, in addition to being the place where all Endermen came from.
"I trust you, just take care of yourself," she told me, as she closed the room, leaving me alone inside.
This decision had come after trying several things, looking for answers on how to have a dragon. Valka told me several ways, one of them was the dragon eggs from the menu, but unfortunately, after many attempts, they never hatched or gave any result. Whatever I did, I ended up with them broken or shattered. In the end, they only served as decoration. So I thought of the End, which I knew was inhabited by an Enderdragon, a mystical creature and the final boss of the game. That's why I was here now, about to create a door to that place.
Without wasting time, I placed green blocks with strange symbols forming a pattern, known as the End portal frame; they had a decorative teal-colored top, with the sides decorated with hollow, rounded rectangles of the same color. After making a 3x3 frame, I placed the eyes of Ender in each block. As I placed the last one, a strong wind arose from the center of the frame, while at the same time a pool formed in its center, which then turned a dark black that absorbed the light emitted by the lanterns. Additionally, many dots that resembled a starry sky could be seen.
Without wasting time, I jumped into the portal and, for two or three seconds, I saw nothing but darkness, until suddenly I felt like I was stepping on solid ground again, while at the same time regaining my sight; I appeared inside a small room, I assumed I was underground, so I dug upward and noticed the strange sky high above. I ascended slowly, and as I left the place where I had appeared, I could see the outside, and it was something beautiful. It looked like an island floating in the middle of an infinite black sky, with countless floating islands in the sky, a dark sky and millions of bright points; it was beautiful.
"You shouldn't be here." Suddenly, I heard a voice from beyond that made my blood run cold and caused me to unsheathe my sword. At the same time, I turned and saw hundreds of Endermen. The Endermen, beings I had never seen in person, were now in front of me, and I immediately looked down, fearing to provoke them and have them attack me, knowing they didn't like to be looked in the eye.
"Don't bother with that; after all, we cannot harm you." I heard their voices again as if they were all speaking at the same time. "They couldn't harm me?" I thought, while my mind worked a thousand miles an hour trying to understand those words. But damn it, I was already in that place, and soon I could face a damn dragon from mythology, so, arming myself with courage, I looked up and took a good look at the Enderman, about four meters tall, with very long legs and arms, with a completely black body, only his violet eyes visible, along with that strange but beautiful aura that surrounded him.
And once again, the Enderman began to speak. "Thousands of years waiting, still, yearning for freedom, that feeling of liberation from our obligations."
"Were you waiting for me?" I asked, confused by all this. This was not what I expected; I had planned to ignore them and walk past them looking at the ground, without getting involved in a fight, and reach where the Enderdragon was. But not even in my wildest dreams had I thought they would be the ones to approach me, or even be able to speak.
"You? No, many have already arrived, and just as they arrive, they leave and she is next; we don't think you are the exception unless you take our obligation away."
"Obligation?" I asked them, more confused than before. "Master the Enderdragon, that being we are forced to protect eternally, and we will follow you faithfully, free from the bonds that hold us to this place."
Oh, damn, in that case, I had even more reason; after all, the Enderdragon was my objective, and if that was going to win me an army of Endermen, why would I waste it? So, without further delay, I watched as the Endermen smiled with their strange mouths while they made way for me.
"I hope I don't die." Walking, I passed among hundreds of Endermen, who watched me from their towering heights, until I reached a clearing with eight imposing obsidian towers and a strange glowing object at the top. But it wasn't that which caught my attention; it was the dragon lying on a pile of blocks in the center of the towers. The dragon, bronze-colored with touches of orange and blue, and green eyes, woke up from its lethargy as soon as I approached and watched it closely. With four legs, large horns on its head, and a size that exceeded sixty or seventy meters, the Enderdragon welcomed me to its kingdom.
"So another has come seeking what is not lost to him!" The imposing dragon spoke to me, startling me. "You can speak." The dragon looked at me with a frown and asked, "Are you stupid? Of course I can speak." This was the final boss: a talking dragon with massive arrogance? It was something completely different from what I thought when I arrived.
"So, for what reason are you here? To free the Endermen or to kill me?" the dragon asked me with some interest in her voice while staring at me. "I want answers, nothing more," I told her the half-truth, without mentioning the Endermen. However, the dragon realized my lie: "You are a terrible liar; keep it up and you will seek your death."
I stood still, watching the dragon's strange behavior. This was not how I expected my encounter with her to be, though, thinking about it, many things in Minecraft had surprised me, from the helpful and serious disposition of the witches to the blunt and cold approach of the blacksmiths like Maicol. And now I have a talkative dragon. "And why do you think I came?" I asked her again as I pulled out a block of wood, put a piece of carpet on top, and sat down. The dragon looked at me with strangeness seeing how I spurred the block of wood and the carpet. Then she looked at me with strange eyes, "Who are you?" Instead of answering me, she asked me something new.
"My name is Caspian Darkwood, Dothraki Khal and master of the city of Vaes Yeraan." I looked at the dragon with my chin high, and I saw her look at me with a face of boredom. "I said who are you, not what you pretend to be," the dragon told me after a few seconds, and what she said caught me off guard. I didn't understand what she wanted to get at, nor even why she was asking me that if I didn't understand what she wanted to know. Of course, at first I thought she was referring to what I had achieved in this world, but what if she was referring to something else? And then I thought of my old life, the one I kept in the deepest part of me, something that no one had ever known and that, for me, would stay that way for a long time.
"Caspian Darkwood, US SEAL marine, lover of musical instruments, and someone who knows nothing other than war."
"Is that what you want to know?" I asked, while the great dragon stood up with the help of her limbs.
"Look, that wasn't so hard; a human with childhood problems arrives at my dwelling, wanting to free the Endermen, but without being able to or knowing how to free himself from his past. How ironic!" the dragon commented lightly, looking at the hundreds of Endermen walking around the huge pillars that surrounded us, without advancing beyond them. "They weren't born like this; this was their kingdom. I arrived thousands of years after them, buried in this dimension to live, condemned to be just a growth factor for those Notch chose as worthy. I was forced to face them, even knowing it was suicide, considering they used the same shiny tools as you, only to end up dead in the end, no matter how much I fought."
She spat out the words "Notch" and "the champion" with deadly hatred and resentment. "I had to endure that for years, dying and reviving every time, unable to escape because of this damn indestructible cage. At the same time, they"—she said, referring to the Endermen—"were also forced to live eternally without their own will, just to not let me escape. So, if you come to kill me, do it quickly, and please make sure this is the last time I die, and that it is my real death, so that at least they too can rest."
The great dragon lowered her body and brought her thick neck toward me, while she closed her eyes to my action. For my part, I stood paralyzed, not knowing what to do. From what she had told me, I could kill her—apparently she was a female dragon and not a male—right now and she wouldn't move, because she wanted to rest, but I didn't want that. In the first place, I had no intention of killing her, in part because I had come to her for answers and I didn't plan to leave there without them.
"I think you're the one behaving like a fool," I told her, letting out a deep sigh. "There must be a way to get you out of here, to get everyone out," I commented as I observed the huge pillars surrounding us, which were the cause of the dragon's imprisonment.
"No matter how good those artifacts you use are, you won't be able to destroy them; many have tried, and there are their remains." The dragon, after sitting up, shared her knowledge about the ancients who had visited her. Pointing to the ground near the pillars, a place where millions of artifacts floated, from apples to broken armor or pieces of bread, which meant many had died.
"I'll do it anyway," I said with conviction, at which the dragon stared at me for a few seconds, nodded her huge head, and withdrew toward the pile of blocks where she rested. "If you do, I will follow you for the rest of my life."