literature

An Entity, Hero, and the Girl

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Grass rippled in the breeze like an emerald sea with little white chicken ships gliding along the shimmering blades. High above clouds sailed along, tugging shadows along, and glowing under the gently shining sun.
He lifted a hand and looked up at the radiant disk in the sky. It was warm and bright and almost all the way over head. If he closed his eyes he could imagine he was out in the courtyard of his city tower, preparing to meet with another client and take on another case.
The air smelled of smoke and dried blood.
With a reluctant sigh he lowered his hand and turned towards the tattered gathering of huts and farm yards. Linens hung the day before to dry were being tugged around by the breeze, waiting for hands to come and gather them up, fold them neatly, and put them away. He could see no people, no barn animals and no bodies.
For a long moment all he could do was watch the soft snap-tug of the bright cloth.
Maybe they had all turned in the night - become the living, mindless un-dead. Soul corruption tented to take root and come to a head suddenly, making it possible to take whole populations in a matter of hours. Even in those cases there were usually a hand full of survivors; frightened and tormented, but alive.
If there were survivors he would have to reach them soon. Fear might turn quickly to hate, and hate corrupted a soul like nobody’s business.
Hero stuck his hands in his pockets and began to wade through the long grass, towards the first house.
Something rustled nearby. He stopped and held still in the bright sun light. Grass danced around his shins. Chickens clucked softly to them selves in the distance.
A footstep sounded out, muffled by the emerald blades, but unmistakably human.
He twisted a little and looked over his shoulder.
Ratty cloths and a blank stare greeted him. Blond hair hung limp and dirty over a pale, void face. Tightly gripped in small fists was a scythe. It was stained black and red and flies formed a little cloud around it‘s jagged blade.
“R - re..." She took a trembling step forward.
He turned about and pulled his hands free from his pockets. “Easy now.”
Her mouth twisted into an angry sneer. “R-r-re...”
“Hey, settle down!” He held his hands up, showing them empty.
She crushed her eyes shut and howled. Then, on trembling legs, she charged. “Repent and re-spawn!”
She rushed him with amazing speed and swung the filthy tool towards his stomach.
Hero dodged and grabbed the handle of the weapon. He pulled it and the girl forward, yanking her off balance and sending her to the ground in a heap.
She curled in on her self, shivering but silent.
Hero glanced at the makeshift weapon, then tossed it clear of them both.
Repent and re-spawn indeed. If only the corrupt could do that.
He knelt down and carefully set a hand down on her trembling shoulder. He couldn’t feel any taint in her, and that was unsettling. As far as he knew un-tainted children weren’t prone to violence. Especially not with farming tools.
It did not speak favorably towards the fate of the rest of the village.
“Hey, shh, it’s OK.” He rubbed soothing little circles around her back. He stayed there, rubbing her back silently,for what seemed like ages. By moments and inches she started to settle. Then when the sun tilted towards the other horizon she started to cry.
It was a weak sound at first, little more than whispered gasps, but by and by it turned into a ripping sob.
He settled down all the way in the grass and left his hand still on the broad of her back. The team would be there eventually, and they could take her in to quarantine and question her properly.
He wondered how old she was, but had never been good with gauging that sort of thing in children.
She sobbed her self dry just a little before the sun started to settle into the western tree line.
He looked down at her and again started to rub little circles into her back.
“Hero?”
He turned and saw the three members of his away team had finally arrived. Distress and worry etched their faces like jagged cuts in flesh.
“We’ve been trying to reach you for hours!” The tallest started glared, angry-scared. “What happened here? Where is your radio?”
“I left it in the rig.” He turned forward again and watched shadows play serpentine games with the grass. The chickens were scurrying away for the night into bushes and shrubs.
“Are you OK?” Another team member asked. She crept forward, and then stopped feet away from him and the child. “Is... is it dead?”
“No.” Though maybe that would have been easier. “Exhausted.”
He stood then and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I still have some searching to do.” All of the searching left to do actually, but he wasn’t going to admit that. “Take her and that...” he nodded towards the discarded, gory tool, “back to camp and see what information you can...” He did not say ‘glean’.
“...gather.” He finished softly.
The team surrounded around the still girl and slowly, one by one, shifted from trained adventure-explorers to instinctive care-givers. Organic. Human.
They preened and petted her and spoke in soothing tones and gathered her up then took her away in their arms. The scythe was an after thought, dragged behind them loosely. It tore jagged cuts in soil.
He watched them go until they disappeared over the hill. Then, and only then, did he return to his duty to search the village and find out what exactly had happened.
By dawn it was clear enough that an entity, a weak one, had ripped the little town apart. The town’s folk had been slowly swayed by it’s lies and charms, and in one night had fallen pray to the corruption.
Who the entity was, and where they had come from was unclear. How they had duped nearly a whole village, and turned them in one night, was also a mystery. How only one child had managed to resist was beyond unfathomable.
But then again he couldn’t know if they had all been turned. Just because only one girl had been found alive and un-tainted didn’t mean other humans hadn’t escaped. But where the others might have gotten off too, and if they could be found again, was another set of unanswerable questions.
He needed more information, but the village had given up all it could.
He ended the examination just as the sun was breaching the eastern tree line. The female team member was approaching him, a grim look spread over her features.
He leaned against a broken door jam and folded his arms over his chest.
This was not a face of good news.
“Well?”
“She doesn’t remember anything.”
“Nothing...”
“Yet.” The word fell oddly heavy. It was ripe with meaning that he didn’t want to dwell on.
The breeze toyed with the still waiting linens. The snap-tug was a steady beat against the sing-song of the chickens.
“I see.” If he ever found the entity he would be sure to pin it to a tree, mute and invisible, until it dried it the sun.
She shifted and looked away for a moment. “Are you OK?”
He blinked at the question, not at all sure how to answer it. That startled him. More than any of the questions he had encountered in the last twenty-four that took him by surprise.
He closed his eyes.
Humans.
“Hero?”
“Lets head back to camp. I have a report to write.” He shoved off the door jam and stuffed his hands in his pockets. After a moment he heard his team mate following silently.
Even in the warm sunlight he felt cold.
Then a hand landed softly on his back.
He stepped over a ragged cut in the soil where the emerald sea parted unevenly from the blade of a gory farming tool.
Her had rubbed little circles, round and round, and warmed where ever it reached.
Some scrap drivel I wrote while trying to figure out how I would like to portray Herobrine.

As you know I despise the violent, sneering, narc that somany other minecraft writers show him as, so I wanted to go in a totally different direction. Hope you all like it!

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How do YOU see Herobrine? What's your version of his story?
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Agreed, I hate that Herobrine is always depicted as a drunk and angry glitch. I sort of see him as depressed, shy and in an identity crisis, but still willing to help other people.