The End Of MINECRAFT (Being the Final Volume Of the Minecraft Trilogy)

The Battle

There would be no battle. Ron grimly let that thought pass through his mind as he surveyed the desert horizon. Almost too far to see were the flares of torchlight. An army was approaching.

They had fortified an ancient temple to use as a fort, deactivating ancient traps and stocking the walls with weapons and men. This makeshift fort was all that stood between the approaching army and Oasnia, the largest city between the Orvaston's northwestern border and the Dreagden Desert. If Herobrine's forces gained a stronghold on the city, the entire Orvaston Desert and its villages would be under the monsters' control, not to mention the thousands that would be killed in sieges.

Hoping to stop this, a small force of villagers had gone out to the temple and prepared a defense. Most were ready to fight and show off their valor, but Ron was less enthusiastic. The reason why they got wind of an invasion force-- the same reason why reinforcements weren't on the way-- was because this army all but obliterated the camp of warriors from up north. The few that had escaped were in no position to fight, and, under the assumption that Oasnia was unlikely to be attacked, other warriors had been divided amongst camps that were much farther away.

Too far away, Ron knew. A message had been sent to the two closest, but there was no time. Most likely, the Oasnia would be under attack before they even learned of the possibility of such an event occurring.

There was little to like about the temple they had camped out in, either. The thing was a squat pyramid constructed from decrepit sandstone and clay bricks. Deep inside lay an ancient treasure chamber. The levels above were mostly bare, with the upper ones being open.

Ron reached for his bow as the torchlight grew nearer. Dear Notch, how many soldiers had Herobrine sent? For the past few months, rumors had begun to pour in about the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in this unholy army. And here they were, dividing their able-bodied warriors into small camps of a couple hundred. That might have worked before Herobrine called his forces together, but now they didn't need heroes; they needed armies.

What they had inside this temple certainly wasn't an army. Three or four hundred men, only half of them trained. Ron would honestly be surprised if they held back their foes at all. There was little hope for their situation.

"How's it look, Ronnie?" asked Captain Ajax, the leader of Ron's "squad."

"Like gravelus," he dryly responded. "We don't stand a chance."

"Don't be such a downer," Ajax argued. "We can hold them off. For the sake of our world, we have to."

"Maybe we shouldn't have divided all our forces, then," Ron fired back. "Shifting great idea to send cut up our army and send them to a corners of the world."

"They were needed," Ajax began.

"Not as much as we need them now! The pigmen, our ancestors, were wiped out by these guys. Our ignorance, our failure to prepare has made us sitting ducks! It took the power of Notch to defeat Herobrine last time, and Nether! Even that battle had horrific casualties. Now, when we start to see the return of these foul beasts, what do we do? Do we prepare for war? No! We give our best warriors to some romantic who thinks we can defeat them with quests! Quests! We aren't in the Dark Ages anymore, for Notch's sake!"

Ajax sighed. "We might have made some mistakes, but Steve may have the right idea. It hasn't all been for nought--"

"People are saying he's from some prophecy written by another one of those hero romantic types. They've given him power because of that, and all it's done is inflate his ego," Ron persisted.