No More

Chapter 100: Deicide Part 4

Meanwhile, in the End

Soren's panicked footsteps could be heard throughout the End as he ran away from the bipedal monsters of this dimension. In a hurry, he climbed the dark oak stairs that spiral up to his observatory.

Then came static-like roars that screeched throughout the End; they've spotted him. Climbing up the wooden ladder, Soren looked behind him to see the monsters rapidly crawling up the stairs as some just take great leaps to quickly ascend the structure.

Soren froze as their hungry, purple eyes looked directly at him. They had a bottomless appetite as their black skin clung tightly to their skinny bodies, revealing their skeletal structure; crawling on all four of their long, dark limbs to hunt down the Old Builder before them.

The ginger-bearded male quickly opened the trapdoors above him, closing them behind him as the artificial sun in his wool replica of the Overworld.

"C'mon, c'mon!" Soren rapidly flipped the levers in his artificial world of colored wool, a small replica of the Overworld to keep himself sane. "Why did I make the entrance so complicated?" He whispered in frustration, not afraid that the beasts outside will hear him, but his voice would make them more motivated to kill him.

A series of redstone lamps on the blue wool wall, arranged in the shape of a small cloud, lit up as he flipped the final switch before he pressed the stone button on the same wall.

A large section of the blue wool wall retracted into the ground, revealing a whole other hidden area. "Ah!" Soren leapt back onto the ground in fear, scooting back as a familiar man walked out of the revealed entrance.

He glared at Soren in a cold, calculating wrath with his black eyes. His long, thick hair and beard are the same color as he wore an olive cloak and pants, with a lapis lazuli gem on a belt he wore in addition.

"Y-You?" Soren stuttered; he knew this man, the others did too. Maybe the whole world would have known about this hateful individual too, if Soren and the other members of the Order of the Stone hadn't told the ultimate lie: they tricked the world into thinking this person never existed. "How... why are you still here?"

Soren froze in his tracks as the lights flickered in and out, and was met with shorts flickers of total darkness. His former friend continued to glare with both eyes, as he seemed to disappear at random with the sporadic illumination.

The lights went out. The artificial sun Soren made went dead, but they turned on one final time for Soren to see Ivor leaning down at him from behind. "Hello, old friend."

Soren scrambled to his feet, running away into the hidden area, but Ivor quickly followed up behind to grab him in a headlock before throwing him into the water in the wool world.

Soren coughed as he rose to the surface of the water. "What... what are you doing here?" Soren coughed out more water, trying to get back onto the wool ground, only for Ivor to aggressively grab him by the neck and shove him under the surface.

"I know what you're thinking, 'why are you still alive, Ivor?', right?" Ivor mockingly asked as he held the struggling ginger under the water. Ivor glared at his former friend with his eyes. "To be honest, I would have rather died alone and forgotten, rather than with you in this hell."

Ivor pulled him up to the surface to shove him bellow the water, but it was just enough for Soren to catch his breathe before punching the alchemist in the face. The static-like screams from outside are getting louder, and he had to get inside.

He ran towards the hidden entrance, he felt Ivor grab his foot, causing his soaked body to fall onto the wool.

"Despite the horrors here in the End, I've been through much worse." Ivor explained; a bruise formed on his cheek as he stomped on Soren's back. Pinning him in place as the ginger let out a pained groan. "But now? I have a chance for a mere sliver of satisfaction."