The End

Our adventure took a catastrophic turn.

Our sworn enemy overcame the boundary between the worlds and came after us. In addition, we had not yet dealt with the Ender Dragon!

Herobrine noticed our stares and smirked. He stepped to the edge of the platform hanging in the air and leapt to our island, landing lightly a few blocks away from us.

"Not a step closer!" Steve cried out, aiming his bow at the White Eyed one.

"That won't even give me a scratch." He said with a cool tone.

"Wait!" I intervened. "Why are you chasing us? Why do you see us as your enemies?"

"Enemies?" Herobrine scoffed. "Do not flatter yourselves. You are just toys in my hands. And it is in my power to decide how long that will last."

"But… WHY? We already have a hard time in this world, just trying to survive. We fight, just so we could live another day-"

"Exactly." The white-eyed being cut off harshly. "This world is cruel and unfair, like me. This world wants to wipe your kind off the face of the earth, like me. And the world has a weapon that can withstand you. Me."

Heart-crushing hopelessness descended, overwhelming. Herobrine was like a natural disaster. You could not hide from it, could not prevent... No! We didn't cross the Sea, starve in the desert, and burn in the Nether to die here! We had the strength to challenge this Enemy. And if it was impossible to reason with Him, then our blades were always ready for battle!

With a warlike cry, I raised my sword and ran at Herobrine.

The white-eyed being reacted instantly. He sharply sunk to one knee and punched the ground with unbelievable force. The loud thump followed, briefly deafening our ears. The entire flying island shuddered beneath the powerful blow and almost split in half – a deep crack shooting across the stone surface. The shaking of the ground knocked me off my feet and threw me back to the obsidian pillar.

It was terrible to image what would have happened if the blow of such power fell on me. Stunned, I shook my head, attempting to gather my wits.

"Are you all right?!" Steve immediately rushed to my rescue. He threw a splash potion of life under his feet, breaking it with ringing against the ground next to me. The magic, released, began to heal my wounds.

Perplexed, Herobrine watched Steve's actions.

"Why do you care so much about him?" He asked Steve. "Aren't you supposed to run away from me in a panic, as you did all those times before?"

"YOU would not understand!" Steve retorted. "Davis has always helped me. By action, by word, by deed. He is my best friend! And for him, I am ready to…"

Steve fell silent, not finishing his words. He straightened up, glaring Herobrine directly in his face, and cast off his helmet.

"...What are you doing?" I asked with worry and tried to get up, but failed. The potion did not work as fast as I would have wished.

Meanwhile, Steve took off his armor and cuffs, got rid of his boots and weapons. In his hands he now only held a bottle with a mysterious potion.

They faced each other on opposite sides. Identical like two drops of water. Even their clothes were the same. The only difference was their eyes. Steve's a sky-blue, in contrast to Herobrine's white, empty orbs.

The stand-off lasted only seconds. And then my friend gulped down the contents of the potion and… disappeared. Dissolved in the air, becoming invisible!

"You say that you are a part of the World…" Came a disembodied voice. Herobrine turned his head, trying to determine the source of the sound.

"You say that the Universe itself opposes us..." Steve continued, making circles so the white-eyed being could not follow him.

"But I must disappoint you… The World is not as bad as it seems."

"It is in our power to change it, to turn it into a blooming garden or a scorched desert! The future of the world does not depend only on you, but on all the people that live within it. The Creator might no longer intervene in the ordinary course of things. He has given the care of our World to us. He gave us the chance to Create. Shared with us that divine privilege. And no matter how much you try to exile the people from this world, you will always fail, Herobrine!"

My friend shouted the last words with all his might. At that moment, an invisible force slammed into the white-eyed being. Steve! He had rushed at our enemy empty-handed.

Herobrine had not expected this. He flew almost to the edge of the Island, but immediately jumped to his feet. For the first time, an expression of confusion appeared on his face.

"/Effect Clear!-" The white-eyed one ordered, but it was too late. Steve rushed at the enemy again, pushing him off the edge. At the last moment, the invisibility dissipated and Herobrine grasped on to Steve's arm, trying to hold on.

"Death is not the answer!... You will NEVER be free!" Herobrine exclaimed.

Steve only smirked. Grasping to the white-eyed one tighter, he let go of the edge and fell together with him into the abyss beyond.

"Steve!" A scream burst from my chest and I ran to the edge of the island, with panic searching the bottomless void below.

"STE-EE-VEE!!"

I searched, disbelieving that my friend had sacrificed himself. Surely, our journey could not end like this!

"… WHAT A STUPID ACT!" An angry voice commented from the emptiness, seemingly coming from all directions at once. It was doubtlessly Herobrine speaking.

"AS IF IT WAS POSSIBLE TO KILL ME THIS WAY…"

"You again? I am not afraid to do the same! You just dare to show yourself!" I warned.

"UNNECESSARY…" The voice reluctantly grumbled. "THE WORLD ITSELF JUST GAVE YOU ANOTHER CHANCE. USE IT."

"What do you mean?!"

"FAREWELL… AND LOOK BEHIND YOU."

I turned around just in time. With a loud rustle of wings, a dragon descended in front of me. He was so huge that he obscured the sky! Compared to him I felt like a speck of dust. The dragon lowered its head toward me, purple eyes seeming to stare straight into my soul…

KLATS!

Powerful jaws snapped closed just above my head as I managed to dodge. And jumped to avoid the spiked tail that tried to sweep me into the abyss.

A jump, roll, hit with the sword. I acted on instinct. My blade cut open the dragon's paw.

The reptile recoiled, making a loud, furious roar. I missed Steve's support just about now, but alas… he died for me to give me this chance and I had no right to make a mistake. Blood boiled in my veins and battle rage pushed me forth. I darted toward the dragon, inflicting violent blows against his scales.

"Take that! And that!" I took out all my anger against the scaly creature.

It was the same as that first day on the Island, when I charged into the battle against zombies.

Since that day, so much had changed. Steve and I both changed. The universe also became different.

The white-eyed one said: "I am the World," but time came to prove him wrong.

WE were the World. Us and everyone who lived within it. Let the creatures of darkness hide in the Night, but the creatures of light deserved to have their chance to live under the sun. And now, for the sake of the living, I will keep fighting!

The reptile spread its wings and soared away, only to return and dive toward me.

All thoughts vanished. My mind cleared. Here it came – a true chance!

"This is the End." I heard my voice say as if through a veil.

Raising my diamond sword to the sky, I stepped forward to meet the oncoming Dragon. It tried to avoid but too late. The enchanted sword ripped open the belly of the great beast. The Lord of the End crushed in a heap against the stones, its form shrouding in smoke and beams of light as it began to crumble. And a bottomless well made of Adminium appeared in its place of death. The same darkness spread within it as did in the Portal to the End, but it led to a completely different place. I knew this.

I stood among the swirling cloud of myriad bits of green light and a new power flowed through my body. Secrets, formerly hidden, revealed to my understanding. I suddenly realized the scale of the universe and my own place in it.

Now I understood that the Island where I found myself at the beginning was called Resp. All those who came to this World began their journey there. So did the more experienced travelers, whose Respawn Points were destroyed for some reason.

I saw confused Steve, resurrected, wandering out from the water to the shore, trying to remember what happened to him. I felt Herobrine, his form dissolved and joined with the universe itself, watching me, impartial and expectant.

I knew that I entered a new level of being. Dragon Slayer. Conqueror of Worlds.

Well, it was time for REAL feats.

"We will meet again. Wait for me, Steve." I declared and stepped into the portal…

…

"... I see the Player you mean."

"Davis?"

"Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read our thoughts."

"That doesn't matter. It thinks we are part of the game."

"I like this player. It played well. It did not give up."

"It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a screen."

"That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a game."

"Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen."

"They used to hear voices. Before players could read. Back in the days when those who did not play called the players witches, and warlocks. And players dreamed they flew through the air, on sticks powered by demons."

"What did this player dream?"

"This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter."

"Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. But what true structure did this player create, in the reality behind the screen?"

"It worked, with a million others, to sculpt a true world in a fold of the [scrambled], and created a [scrambled] for [scrambled], in the [scrambled]."

"It cannot read that thought."

"No. It has not yet achieved the highest level. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a game."

"Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind?"

"Sometimes, through the noise of its thoughts, it hears the universe, yes."

"But there are times it is sad, in the long dream. It creates worlds that have no summer, and it shivers under a black sun, and it takes its sad creation for reality."

"To cure it of sorrow would destroy it. The sorrow is part of its own private task. We cannot interfere."

"Sometimes when they are deep in dreams, I want to tell them, they are building true worlds in reality. Sometimes I want to tell them of their importance to the universe. Sometimes, when they have not made a true connection in a while, I want to help them to speak the word they fear."

"It reads our thoughts."

"Sometimes I do not care. Sometimes I wish to tell them, this world you take for truth is merely [scrambled] and [scrambled], I wish to tell them that they are [scrambled] in the [scrambled]. They see so little of reality, in their long dream."

"And yet they play the game."

"But it would be so easy to tell them..."

"Too strong for this dream. To tell them how to live is to prevent them living."

"I will not tell the player how to live."

"The player is growing restless."

"I will tell the player a story. But not the truth."

"No. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance."

"Give it a body, again."

"Yes. Player..."

"Use its name."

"DAVIS. Player of games."

"Good."

"Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things."

"Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons. Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The words change. We do not change."

"We are the universe. We are everything you think isn't you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story."

"Once upon a time, there was a player."

"The player was you, DAVIS."

"Sometimes it thought itself human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing gas that was three hundred and thirty thousand times more massive than it. They were so far apart that light took eight minutes to cross the gap. The light was information from a star, and it could burn your skin from a hundred and fifty million kilometers away."

"Sometimes the player dreamed it was a miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite. The sun was a square of white. The days were short; there was much to do; and death was a temporary inconvenience."

"Sometimes the player dreamed it was lost in a story."

"Sometimes the player dreamed it was other things, in other places. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing. Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes the player woke from one dream into another, then woke from that into a third."

"Sometimes the player dreamed it watched words on a screen."

"Let's go back."

"The atoms of the player were scattered in the grass, in the rivers, in the air, in the ground. A woman gathered the atoms; she drank and ate and inhaled; and the woman assembled the player, in her body."

"And the player awoke, from the warm, dark world of its mother's body, into the long dream."

"And the player was a new story, never told before, written in letters of DNA. And the player was a new program, never run before, generated by a source code a billion years old. And the player was a new human, never alive before, made from nothing but milk and love."

"You are the player. The story. The program. The human. Made from nothing but milk and love."

"Let's go further back."

"The seven billion billion billion atoms of the player's body were created, long before this game, in the heart of a star. So the player, too, is information from a star. And the player moves through a story, which is a forest of information planted by a man called Julian, on a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus, that exists inside a small, private world created by the player, who inhabits a universe created by..."

"Shush. Sometimes the player created a small, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes hard, and cold, and complicated. Sometimes it built a model of the universe in its head; flecks of energy, moving through vast empty spaces. Sometimes it called those flecks 'electrons' and 'protons'."

"Sometimes it called them 'planets' and 'stars'."

Sometimes it believed it was in a universe that was made of energy that was made of offs and ons; zeros and ones; lines of code. Sometimes it believed it was playing a game. Sometimes it believed it was reading words on a screen."

"You are the player, reading words..."

"Shush... Sometimes the player read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into meaning; decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas, and the player started to breathe faster and deeper and realized it was alive, it was alive, those thousand deaths had not been real, the player was alive."

"You. You. You are alive."

"And sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees."

"And sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of the player's eye might be a star a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma in order to be visible for a moment to the player, walking home at the far side of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again."

"And sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the zeros and ones, through the electricity of the world, through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a dream."

"And the universe said I love you."

"And the universe said you have played the game well."

"And the universe said everything you need is within you."

"And the universe said you are stronger than you know."

"And the universe said you are the daylight."

"And the universe said you are the night."

"And the universe said the darkness you fight is within you."

"And the universe said the light you seek is within you."

"And the universe said you are not alone."

"And the universe said you are not separate from every other thing."

"And the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code."

"And the universe said I love you because you are love."

"And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love."

"You are the Player."

"Wake up."