Trapped In A Blocky Wonderland | Dream Team x Reader

Ch. 60: Origins

I stared down at the strange landscape scrawled into the book on the table in front of me in fascination. This is where the Eyes of Ender are leading us? To this place called the End?

"No Villager has ever gone there and come back to tell the tale." Oswald explained, scurrying between bookshelves and putting away old, dusty books we recovered for him from the ruins of Hillshire.

"What is there?" I asked, flipping the page to see hurried scribblings. "If no one has ever come back, how is there a book with drawings of it?"

Oswald seemed to ponder my question, turning to me and stroking a hand over his long, white beard. "That's a good question, child. Perhaps someone has seen the End." The villagers never seem to think about the fact that their books had to be written by someone.

"What's there?" I repeated the original question I had for him as he returned to the table with another book.

"It is the origin of the Endermen we see walk our lands. They are born there, raised there under the watchful eye of their creator." Oswald revealed, flipping a page in the book I had opened to show me what he was parroting back to me.

"Their creator?"

"The ruler of this realm, and ours if he were to ever be set free. The Ender Dragon, known from this book as Gydrur the Shadow King." Oswald flipped another page, to show me a large portrait of a monstrous dragon with purple eyes and purple flames pooling in its open maw.

This is where we have to go in order to go back home to where we belong? To a place ruled by Endermen and a monstrous dragon?

"There have been sects out in our world, occults that worship the Shadow King and his creations. We know little about how they came to his place, or how they returned after. But none of the villagers we've met, or travelling traders, have ever encountered the doorway between his world and ours." Oswald explained as I stared down at the menacing purple eyes on the page.

If this portrait is terrifying on its own, I can only fear what meeting the dragon in person would feel like.

"What happened to the sects that worship him?" I asked, a little afraid to hear about more potential enemies considering the ones we already have.

Looking up, Oswald stared back at me with his head tilted to the side. "You've already met one such. The Pillager leader, Keres is a follower of the Shadow King."

Ice ran through my veins at this revelation. Keres? The man who tormented my friends, who burned and blew up Hillshire with help from a pet? He's a follower of the Ender Dragon?

The pet he mentioned...the Wither we never had to see before we ran...he said it was one of his master's pets. His master...he must have meant the Dragon.

"How do you know so much about Keres if he is your enemy?" I asked, confused since the city in which we were taken to was far from Hillshire.

Oswald sighed, turning away to continue fretting between his bookshelves. "Pillagers weren't always that. They were once normal villagers, just as I am and the rest of my friends."

What?! They were...but how?

"Keres was once a...he was once a citizen of Hillshire. Before we settled on the hill you found our old city on."

...WHAT?!

Oswald turned back to me with an old book, bound in strings of varying colors and dusty with age.

"Here. This is my most treasured book. Witness the origin of our once wondrous city. And the fall of one of her citizens." Oswald opened the book, and my eyes widened when smoke swirled out from the multicolored pages within.