Armageddon, Part II

Sylas groggily came to, dizziness spinning round his head. His face and chest smarted where he'd slammed into the Ender-Dragon's scale armour, and the wound on his shoulder was caked in crusty dried blood. The gauntlet on his right paw-hand was missing. His arms and legs were nicked with small cuts. He didn't need to take off his torso armour to know that his body was covered in bruises from being bounced round in the steel shell.

How long was I out? he wondered, standing up despite the protests from his aching body. Remarkably, his magic wings had suffered no damage from the fight. Every last feather was as flawless as it had been when the wings had first formed. A few metres away, the Ender-Dragon was still lying on her back and struggling to right herself, so he couldn't have been unconscious for more than a handful of minutes.

"Hhh'rrragh!" the Ender-Dragon snarled, finally rolling onto her feet. She growled and hissed from the pain as her broken wings shifted back and forth feebly, stuck at unnatural angles. Sylas's gut twisted to even look at the mangled wings. The Dragon may have been evil, but there was no denying that had to be extremely painful. Her scales stood on end and pure murder flashed in her eyes. She sucked in a throaty gasp and let loose with the biggest jet of flame yet. It blew at Sylas in a wall of fire. He frantically summoned a shield and gritted his teeth as the massive wave of heat washed past him, so hot it started to sear his paws through the shield. It dissipated in a cloud of choking black smoke that curled up to meet the growling storm-clouds in the sky.

The grounded Ender-Dragon leapt at Sylas, who teleported away, and landed with a hard thud where he'd just been standing a second ago. She snapped her jaws and tore at the air in her fury.

"Ender-Dragon!" Sylas cried, taking flight and hovering a few feet off the ground to dodge her cheap shots. "Stop this. Please. This battle is nearing its end."

"Like when I make an end of you?" The Dragon slashed her claws through the air at Sylas, raking one across his shin. "I'll never let the Endermen be free. I will rule the End forever!"

"Look at yourself. You can't win this."

There was a long, tense pause, filled with just the panting of the Ender-Dragon like the puffing of a huge bellows, and the occasional rumble of thunder above. At long last, she spoke.

"Fine!" the Dragon roared. "Fine, fine! Kill me, then! Let the whole End watch as you slay a grounded dragon who can barely defend herself. That'll prove how good and righteous you are!"

There was truth to her words, and it cut to Sylas' heart. He touched down and folded in his wings. "No."

"No?" the Dragon fairly laughed, the sound hoarse and rough. "So after all this, you decide to not kill me after all? That's weakness at its finest."

"I prefer to call it 'mercy.'"

"It won't matter what you call it when you're dead." The Dragon tensed and leapt like a cat from her powerful back legs. Sylas teleported away just in time again. Then, he watched with paw-hands over his mouth as the Dragon collided with the obsidian pillar that he'd just been standing in front of. Her head, neck, and front body smashed into the solid stone. The Ender-Dragon slumped to the ground and lay still. A shudder rumbled through the End.

Curiously, Sylas trotted up to the fallen Dragon. She didn't move, didn't breathe. She, not he, had dealt the final blow to the mighty Ender-Dragon. The Enderman watched silently as shafts of purple light peeked out from between her scales and her giant reptilian form turned white and slowly dissolved, pressing and compacting with a creaking, crackling sound like a sizzling firework. When the light finally faded, all that remained was a three-foot-tall egg. It was as dark as night and speckled with violet spots. Sylas picked it up. It was deathly cold to the touch and yet seemed to carry an angry, murderous heat deep under its shell. It was a manifestation of the Ender-Dragon's evil, collected in the form of an egg.

Sylas, holding the Dragon egg, walked slowly through the battlefield. His geheimsamen magic ebbed away to nothing, now that his greatest responsibility was done. The fighting had ceased, for the Followers had given up once they saw that the Ender-Dragon had died. The sight of the battlefield was still horrifying, however. The corpses of slain warriors from both sides littered the plain, and blood splatters, broken weapons, and arrows were thrown about. Craters from Ghast fireballs pockmarked the land.

Warriors who had survived the battle staggered like zombies through the wreckage, wringing their paws and muttering to themselves. They had shed their battered armour and walked about in just their normal clothes. Neither faction was motivated to fight anymore. In fact, he saw some groups of green-eyes and purple-eyes sitting together and hugging, too grieved in the aftermath of battle to care which side was which.

It pained Sylas to pass through the congregation of broken warriors. There was sorrow everywhere he looked. He didn't even want to carry the foul egg anymore. He tossed it to the ground in disgust and pulled off his armour. He didn't need any dumb trophies. All he cared about was finding Solarae, gathering up his friends, and going home.

But if he didn't find Solarae...The thought made his spine shudder with horror. No...he couldn't think about that. It was too terrible to even bring to mind.

"Solarae?" he called to a group of purple-eyes and two green-eyes. Next to them, Bayata helped injured warriors from both sides, as well as cleaning and bandaging wounds on the Creepers and Ghasts. "Solarae? Where are you?"

"Sylas?" An Enderwoman pushed through the crowd and ran up to him. She, like the others, had taken off her armour and had on just her ordinary clothes, a grey wool sweater and a purple plaid skirt. The silver bracelet on her wrist shone.

They looked at each other for a mere second before they fell into a hug, wrapping their arms round each other and letting their oily tears fall onto each others' shoulders. They stood and cried for minutes on end. There was nothing to say.

Finally, they came out of the hug and Sylas went over to Bayata. "Bayata? Do you know where Kalvin is?"

Bayata halted in the middle of wrapping a bandage round a creeper's injured foreleg. "I was hoping you wouldn't ask."

Sylas' gut turned. "What do you mean?"

Bayata looked as if she was going to cry. She pointed to a group of purple-eyes, who had their backs turned to Bayata and were apparently looking at something. "I couldn't save him."

Sylas gasped and ran towards the group with Solarae right on his heels. The purple-eyes parted to let him through. His heart dropped into his stomach when he saw Kalvin lying on the ground, bleeding from two deep gashes in his side and barely moving. He painfully cracked an eye open to see Sylas and Solarae bending down to his level.

"Kalvin! What happened?"

Kalvin responded with an "Not...important." He choked and coughed. "Not...gonna...make it...sorry, Sylas."

"No, no, no, no, no…"

"Yes...It's okay," he rasped. "We fought...well. We won. You won. The End is...free. And I am...free. I'm...dying free. Thanks." Kalvin smiled, the best and truest he'd ever smiled. His bright violent eyes stayed bright until they shut. His head lolled to the side, and then he went still.

Solarae wrapped her arm round Sylas when they stood back up. "I am so sorry."

He returned the hug, having nothing else to say.

The obsidian portal had been re-activated. But this time, the stars shimmered beautifully in the deep blue goop, now inviting instead of threatening. A small silver plaque dedicated the structure to the memory of Kalvin. Round it, clusters of Farlanders chatted to each other and to their friends from the End, some old and some new, some with purple eyes and some with green.

"I invited anyone who lives in the End to come to the Overworld if they so wished," Bayata explained to Sylas and Solarae. "but most of them wanted to stay here."

"Including you?" Solarae asked, trying not to sound too upset. She didn't like the idea of leaving her new friend (and Sylas' old one) behind.

"Yes, but don't worry," Bayata reassured her. "I can visit, you know. Good luck in the Overworld."

"Good fortune in the End."

A change was coming across the dimension that had been dark and dreary for so long. The menacing purple haze that had hung over the sky for so long had cleared into a light lilac-coloured expanse, and two white suns glowed near the peak of the sky-dome, one larger and one smaller. Pink flower-shaped clouds drifted past. The cold, still air had warmed to a springtime balminess now that the suns were revealed. Clear sunlight bathed the island, the city, the groves of chorus trees, and the towers in light, banishing the shadows.

Sylas smiled at his childhood home, now lively and beautiful, as he and Solarae got ready to jump in the portal. "You know, I don't think it's appropriate to call this place the End anymore."

"I think I know what it should be named instead," said Solarae.

"What would that be?"

"The Beginning."