Ender Curse part 11

Lalna spent the entire next morning vomiting up black blood and bits of frozen blood clots.

The Void was spreading, and it was now clearly interfering with his breathing. Between fits of vomiting up poison, he realized that when he inhaled, the entire right half of his chest didn't move. That meant that his right lung was no longer functioning. Not only that, but his stomach had completely shut down too, which was probably the cause for the mess he was making.

The Endermother stayed with him the whole time. She felt so bad that there was nothing she could do. She knew he was dehydrated, but he couldn't keep anything down long enough for it to have an effect. She knew he was in pain, but she couldn't help him.

He was dying, and the only thing she could do was keep him company and let him know that she would be with him until the end.

XXX

Xephos had been working since he found the blueprints, and now it was finally finished. It took him a while to fine tune it, but he managed it with Lalna's notes.

Quickly standing, he ran into the main room where the others were.

“Guys, I finished the Enderman finder!” he exclaimed.

“Good timing,” said Honeydew. “Look what I just finished.”

He held up the pendant, which hung on a thin silver chain. The pendant itself was rectangular with rounded edges, hollow in the center. Xephos stepped closer, and he could see the patterns Rythian had given them engraved in the silver pendant.

“Can this thing really capture one of those crystals?” muttered Xephos.

“I hope so,” said Honeydew. “Otherwise Lalna's going to be fucked.”

At that point, Sjin cleared his throat, and they looked over to where he stood next to Sips. They were both fully armored, and they had weapons.

“You guys should get armor if we're going to go after him,” said Sjin. “We've already got enough food.”

Xephos and Honeydew nodded. They spent the next half hour getting ready and gathering up everything they would need.

Finally, it was time to go.

Xephos stood in Lalna's room, looking around. He knew that once they left, they would never see the house again. Once they found Lalna and cured him, they were going to escape or die trying.

Xephos looked down at Lalna's journal, which he was holding in his hands. He had it memorized, all of Lalna's theories and ideas and ramblings. Even his goodbye note.

With a small sigh, Xephos set the journal down on Lalna's bed. Then he turned and left the room.

They all gather outside the front door. It was getting dark out now – they only had 24 hours to find and cure Lalna.

“Okay,” said Xephos, looking at the device, “the strongest signal of Ender activity seems to be coming from a desert beyond the forest. There's also a signal for other types of Ender energy. And...” He stopped and looked up. “One of them is an Enderbeast.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” asked Sips, glancing over Xephos' shoulder at the device.

“Well... the desert is about twenty miles from here,” said Xephos.

“Do we have enough time to make it there before sunset?” asked Sjin.

Xephos nodded. “We should, as long as we don't get lost or sidetracked.”

“Then in that case we're all doomed...” muttered Honeydew.

A minute later, they set off. Sjin cast one more long glance at the house he and Lalna had built.  And then it was gone from view, never to be seen again.

XXX

Lalna spent the entire day immobilized with pain. He had stopped vomiting a few hours ago, but now he couldn't stop shaking. His head was pounding, and he was barely strong enough to keep his eyes open. The Endermother had been holding him in her arms since noon.

When darkness fell and the Farlands became more active, several other Endermen stopped by to see Lalna. He had never met them before, but according to the Endermother, all of the inhabitants of the Farlands had a sort of connection, like a sixth sense. They could tell when something was wrong. They could all tell he was dying.

The only thing that actually made Lalna smile that day was when another Endermother came to visit, and her baby came with her.

The little Enderling was instantly curious about Lalna, and she crept closer to inspect him. She picked up his clawed hand and inspected it, comparing it with her own claws. She looked at his tired eyes and saw that, even though they were glassy, they were the same color purple as hers.

After a few minutes, she reached the conclusion that he was one of them, then she scampered back to her mother, and they left.

The smile Lalna was left with after that stayed on his face until the moon rose high enough in the sky to start giving the Enderbeast strength.

He knew how to control it, but he didn't know how to stop it, so the Enderbeast began draining away his strength again. He had already been unable to retract his claws, and he could see perfectly in the dark, but now that the moon was in the sky, only a day away from being full, he felt his control slipping away, not enough to trigger a transformation but still enough to possibly kill him.

The Endermother was there to help him though. She healed him as much as she could, and as she did so, she explained to him how she did it. He focused all of his attention on her and listened to what she was saying.

He had never been a big fan of magic, but now that he had no choice, he figured he should learn as much as possible on the off chance he survived. Not to mention it kept his mind off the pain and weakness and cold.

She spent the rest of the night talking to him. If he focused only on her, he could keep it under control.

Whenever he felt his control slipping, he would look at the wound he had left on her arm from his first fit. It had healed, but it left scars.

He didn't want to hurt her. He didn't want to hurt anybody else. So he resigned to hurting himself.

Throughout the night when the Enderbeast almost broke free, he would dig his claws into his leg. The pain would bring him back.

By the time the moon fell below the horizon, Lalna was beyond exhausted. The Enderbeast retreated, leaving him with the burning cold.

It was a good thing it retreated when it did, because Lalna could no longer feel the pain in his leg.

He was too tired to function. The second the sun broke the horizon, he was unconscious.

The Endermother remained where she was, holding him and watching over him, knowing that the rising sun marked his last day alive.

She simply sat and watched him sleep fitfully. And after making sure he really was asleep, she closed her eye and let out a small sob, pulling him closer to her chest.

She was going to lose another son to the mutant.

XXX

The others were on their way. They had stopped for the night, and they woke up as soon as the sun rose.

However, as they were gathering their stuff to leave, Sjin noticed something.

“Uh, guys...” he stammered.

The others came over to see what he was staring at, but what they saw made them gasp.

Sjin had found a small shallow pond. The only thing about it was that the water in it was dark red.

“That... that looks like blood...” stammered Honeydew.

Xephos pulled out his scanner and knelt down next to the bloody pond.

“Uh... it is...” he said. “And-” He froze. “And I know whose blood it is...”

The silence that followed was deafening.

“He's not... still in there, is he...?” asked Sips after a minute.

Xephos pulled out the Enderman finder and stared at it for what felt like hours. Finally, he breathed a sigh of relief and sat back.

“No, he's not...” he said, taking a deep breath. “This says he's still in the desert.”

Everybody let out a sigh and stepped away from the pond.

“We best get moving,” said Xephos, shaking his head. “We don't have much time left.”

They nodded, but then Sjin realized something.

“Hang on... If Lalna fell into the pond and lost this much blood, then how did he even make it more than ten feet?” he asked.

“Maybe something took him,” said Honeydew ominously. They all looked over to see the dwarf pointing at something beyond the trees.

Cautiously, they moved into the small clearing Honeydew was pointing to. In the center, they found a few dried splotches of blood on the ground.

And leading into and out of the clearing were large footprints.

“Let me guess,” said Honeydew dryly. “An Enderman took him?”

Xephos nodded.

“Guys, can't we just follow the footprints?” asked Sjin. “They should lead us to the desert, right?”

Xephos shrugged. “As long as the Enderman didn't teleport when it had Lalna, then I guess we will be able to follow them...”

They all agreed, and a minute later, they were on the trail.

XXX

The Endermother was getting worried now. Half the day had come and gone, and Lalna still hadn't woken up. Four separate times, he had stopped breathing, but she managed to get him breathing again by healing him as much as she could.

However, that stopped working the fourth time, so she had to make a cut on his lower chest to bleed out the freezing blood and divert it away from his working lung. It seemed to work, but the blood he was losing was slowly crystallizing on his abdomen.

The day slowly grew later and later. The black streaks had spread up his neck and across the right side of his face. She could even feel a distinct temperature difference between where the Void was and where it wasn't. Finally, when the sun was close to setting, Lalna suddenly woke up.

He opened his eyes, and the Endermother was shocked to see that his eyes were completely glazed over with a teal blue haze, the same color as Ender pearls.

“What is it?” she asked.

“They're here...”

XXX

They found the edge of the forest around noon. It ended right at the edge of a massive desert. That was when the tracks ran out, having not been preserved in the dry sand.

“Guess we'll have to follow the scanner now,” said Xephos, glancing at the device.

They began the long, exhausting trek through the desert. It was long and arduous, and two separate times, Sjin and Honeydew nearly passed out from the heat.

However, as they walked, they found what looked like the remains of crumpled buildings. They also found several dead Endermen, which they were able to harvest several pearls and Eyes from. They also noticed that these Endermen had claw marks from the mutant Enderman on them. Apparently it was attacking anything it could.

What scared them was that these Endermen had only been dead for an hour. The mutant was close.

It took them longer than they thought, but they found the Farlands.

However, right as they reached the buildings, two enormous shadows appeared behind them. They whipped around and saw two enormous Ender Golems behind them.

Nobody moved for a moment. Then the Ender Golems suddenly sprung forward and picked them up, one of them holding Sjin and Honeydew and the other holding Xephos and Sips. The Golems held them under their arms so they couldn't get to their weapons.

They carried them into the village. As they walked past, all the inhabitants stopped and stared and chattered in their Ender language.

The Ender Golems carried them to a large building in the center of the village. Then they tossed them inside and shut the door.

“What the fuck just happened...?” muttered Xephos, sitting on the ground, confused. He pulled out the scanner, which showed that they were surrounded by Ender activity.

Sjin stood up and went to the door, looking out the small window. “Guys, they're guarding the door,” he said. One of the Ender Golems outside snarled at him, and he quickly scrambled away from the door, back to where the others sat in the center of the room.

“So I guess we're stuck here,” grumbled Honeydew.

“We're never gonna find Lalna in time...” said Sjin quietly.

Suddenly, they heard movement outside, and the door opened. A large Enderman ducked into the room.

Out of habit, they all averted their eyes, not wanting to anger it.

And because they averted their eyes, they didn't realize that the one eyed Enderman that had come into the room was holding Lalna.

“How in the hell did you guys find this place?” he asked.

Everyone jumped as if they had been electrocuted. They whipped around to see the Endermother holding a deathly pale and slightly bloody Lalna. She knelt down and gently set him on the ground, holding him upright as he was too weak to do so himself.

Sjin, Honeydew, and Sips all rushed over to Lalna, but Xephos hung back. He wanted to see how Lalna would react first.

Sjin and Honeydew were already hugging Lalna and asking him what was going on, while Sips, who didn't hug anybody except Sjin, was awkwardly patting him on the shoulder.

“Lalna, what happened to you?” asked Sjin, gesturing to the veins of black streaking across half of his face and the slightly terrifying teal blue glaze over his eyes. He couldn't see the rest of the damage because Lalna had put his lab coat back on.

“Oh yeah...” muttered Lalna. “About that... the uh... the poison is kind of freezing my blood and slowly killing me.”

“Way to sugarcoat it,” said Sips, glancing around, uncomfortable at the fact that the Endermother was sitting two feet away from him.

“But... Lalna, we found a cure!” exclaimed Honeydew. “We know what it is and we know how to get it!”

Lalna's eyes widened a bit, and he shifted over to leaning on Sjin, who didn't fail to notice how cold he was.

“You found a cure?” he asked.

Honeydew nodded and pulled out the amulet. “The thing that'll cure you is one of the crystal things that the Ender dragon uses to heal itself. We can use this to actually capture one!”

Lalna's expression darkened a bit, and the little bit of hope that had been there faded away.

“So you would need to go to the End to get it. That means you would have to get back to the portal, which is all the way back at the mountain. It would take too much time, because as soon as that sun sets, I'm as good as dead.”

They were all quiet for a minute.

“What?”

“How... how do you know the portal is under the mountain?” asked Xephos, finally gathering the courage to chime in.

“I uh... I could hear it... last time I was there...” he said, glancing down at his feet to avoid eye contact.

Suddenly, the Endermother said something. Lalna looked up at her and replied in the Ender language. She said something again, and Lalna's eyes widened. He looked at the others, but was confused when he saw that they didn't look excited.

“What happened this time?” he grumbled, his voice suddenly carrying a heavy Ender undertone.

“We didn't understand what she told you,” said Sjin. “We don't really speak Enderman.”

“Right...” said Lalna, forgetting that he had gained the ability to understand and speak the Ender language. “She said she knows a faster way to get back to the portal.”

They all looked excited after that.

“What's the faster way?” asked Honeydew.

Lalna looked up at the Endermother. She looked down and held out her hand. The others saw that she was holding a small simple Ender pearl.

Suddenly, purple magic began to swirl around it. A moment later, the Ender pearl was transformed into a glowing purple eye of Ender. She reached out and handed it to Honeydew.

“If you throw that on the ground, it'll teleport you to the portal,” said Lalna.

“Then why don't we go now?” exclaimed Xephos, glancing around frantically. He saw outside that the sun was only minutes away from setting, and soon the full moon would rise.

“It can only be used by humans,” said Lalna. “Or pretty much anything that isn't an Enderman. If you guys wanted to get to that portal, you would have to go without me.”

Sjin shook his head. “There has to be another way...”

Lalna glanced up at him. “Yeah, how? Maybe you haven't noticed, but I can't walk because my legs are frozen. The only thing that isn't frozen is my left arm!”

“Then what are we supposed to do...?” asked Honeydew quietly.

Lalna glanced down, avoiding eye contact. “I don't know...” he muttered. “have you tried to leave?”

“We can't,” said Sips. “We're stuck in this world.”

The Endermother spoke up, saying something to Lalna.

“She said it's because of the mutant Enderman,” Lalna translated. “This world is bonded to it, so it controls who leaves and who stays.”

“So does that mean if we kill it... we can leave?” asked Sjin. “We can escape?”

The Endermother nodded. Then she looked at Lalna, who grimaced a bit, remembering something he had figured out earlier.

“What's wrong?” asked Xephos.

“Nothing,” said Lalna. “We just have to kill the mutant Enderman, then you guys can leave.”

“What about you?” asked Sjin. “You didn't include yourself just then...”

Lalna shrugged, trying to avoid eye contact. “Guys, I don't be alive to leave. And even if we killed the mutant before I Change, I still wouldn't be able to leave without being cured first.”

“But... there has to be some way...” muttered Sjin.

Lalna sighed a bit, which turned into a weak cough. A bit of black blood trickled out of his mouth.

“Shit...” he muttered, wiping away the blood. Then he glanced out the window and saw that the sun was setting. They all grew quiet and watched as the sun sank below the horizon.

Lalna's last day was up, and the moon would be rising within minutes.

He was out of time.