Chapter 22
The End and the Beginning

I moved silently, or at least as silently as this world would let me. PAT-PAT-PAT went my armored feet, with the occasional POP of a placed signpost. Following the compass needle, I headed in what I thought was the direction of the spiders' hall.

"Sssp!"

"And so it begins," I whispered, rounding the corner into the same passageway where I'd been defeated, the one right above the web spinners. Mindful of being ambushed, I quickly sealed up both ends of the shaft with cobblestone and wooden doors. Next I blocked up the staircase I'd made down to the lower hall. Finally, I snuck right up to that hole in the floor and removed the blocking stone.

Two crimson clusters sparkled up at me, ready to spring. "Bath time," I said, and poured a bucket of lava down the hole. In seconds, the liquid fire burned through my attackers, their webs, and the caged spawn flame beneath them.

I didn't gloat. I didn't even react. I just scooped up the molten cube, watched the residual lava dissipate, and prepared for more arachnid stragglers. None came. I'd won my first tactical engagement swiftly, silently, and without so much as a scratch.

Moving on to the skeletons' spawning chamber, I heard a chorus of clicks well before any of them came into view. Four outside, and no doubt more within. They saw me; I saw them. Their bows went up, but my shield didn't. It was worth taking a few arrows in order to set up my new wonder weapons.

They were called dispensers, and the book described them as a kind of vending machine. They were designed to hold a lot of items, spitting one out when triggered. I guess they were supposed to be labor-saving conveniences, but it was easy to see them as weaponry.

No tools or torches for these dispensers, just loads of deadly arrows. I placed a trip wire of spider silk and iron hooks—thank you, redstone books!—in a line between the dispensers and the skeletons, and stood back to watch the oncoming archers.

"Dispense with this," I said, laughing at my joke as the relentless shafts hammered those boneheads like the machine guns of my world. The barrage didn't kill them right away. It didn't have to. My point was to delay and distract. While the skeletons absorbed an overdose of their own medicine, I tunneled around them and into the back wall of the spawning chamber.

I broke through into the darkened room just in time to see a fresh bonebag emerge from the caged flame.

"Say good night, hotshot," I said with a chuckle, diamond blade flashing.

After smashing the spawning cage, I poked my head through the doorway to watch my dispensers claim their last victim.

I made sure to go back the way I came, because, like fire, booby traps have no loyalty, then set to work disassembling them. The war was far from over, and both arrows and dispensers still had a lot of work to do.

My next trap involved a dispenser and a small, previously unused item called a flint and steel. It was a C-shaped piece of iron and a flint chip that, when struck together, caused a small, temporary blaze. I'd accidentally made one a while back, but couldn't think of a use.

I did now.

When placed in a dispenser and then set next to a pressure plate, it acted as a kind of rearguard land mine. Remember, in addition to spawners, there were still random patches of darkness that created the occasional mob.

Just as I was setting my first trap, the groan of a zombie filled the passageway. I looked up to see the undead attacker lurching from out of the gloom. I backed up a few steps, but not so far that I risked losing contact. The zombie came on, slow and dumb and completely unaware of the danger.

"Don't stop," I encouraged. "Come and get it."

It stepped on the pressure plate, which activated the dispenser, which sparked the flint striker, which set the green ghoul ablaze. Burning like a torch, it growled and gurgled toward me.

"Burn, baby, burn!" I chanted, retreating just as quickly as it advanced. After a few seconds I saw that fire wouldn't finish the ghoul. It weakened it, though. I only needed one strong chop.

Good enough, I thought, placing more striker mines in the passageway behind me. And they did their job splendidly. I could hear the cries of burning ghouls echoing through the tunnels. "I'll put all of you out of your misery soon enough," I called, focusing on my next booby trap.

What this one lacked in imagination, it more than made up for in lethality. A pressure plate, a trapdoor, and a hole filled with lava.

"Hey, Blasty," I shouted to a nearby creeper. "Over here!"

Weirdly, the living bomb turned in the other direction. "No, doofus!" I shouted, and raised my bow. "Here!"

I shot the creeper in the back, hoping, if you can believe it, for a less than lethal kill. The green, silent column turned back, locked on me, and slowly glided forward.

"Right!" I said, backing up past its invisible detonation range. "Here's your target!"

The creeper swept over the pressure plate, then dropped through the trapdoor. Bobbing and burning, it silently surrendered to its fate.

"Shame," I said, watching my foe disintegrate. "I could have used the gunpowder."

I found my way back to the main cavern, specifically to a shaft that opened right up above a lava pond. Just as I was setting up my new horror show, I heard a growing cackle. A jackpot of two witches came around the corner, bottles of who-knows-what in their hands.

"Perfect!" I called to the approaching villains. "You, of all mobs, deserve what's coming."

With the flick of a lever, I sent a minecart racing down a powered rail. This new combination of wood, gold, and, of course, redstone, sent the automated missile crashing into the oncoming witches.

Cackling maniacally, they toppled right off the cliff, and into the liquid fire. "Who's laughing now?" I shouted, realizing a second later that, in fact, they still were. "Yeah, well…I still get the last laugh."

I hopped into a minecart, a stacked collection of tracks in my hand. Leaning forward, just like in a boat, I found I was able to make the cart move on its own. Placing new tracks in front of me, and connecting them to existing rail lines allowed me to zip along the mineshafts like a racecar.

If I hadn't been at war, the ride probably would have been fun.

Soon enough, I thought, racing through endless tunnels. Once this whole maze is cleared, I'll build a roller coaster down here. Wouldn't that be cool!

Laying track as I went, and steering on a specific course, I checked off my list of victories. Spiders: gone. Skeletons: gone. Random patches of darkness: lit. Random passages: booby-trapped.

Just one more, I thought excitedly. One more spawner, and then I've won!

Coming to rest at the base of the zombies' spawning chamber, I leapt out of the cart and ran like a maniac for the door.

"Guhhh," growled a ghoul, poking its head out of the entrance.

"Stay!" I commanded, bashing it back inside with my shield. I wanted it trapped, not dead. Before it could regroup for another strike, I placed two glass blocks in the opening.

Glass? Yep, glass. I not only used it to seal up the doorway, but I also replaced the entire cobblestone wall with clear cubes. I had something very special planned for my slouching friends.

After finishing the first glass wall, I built a second, identical barrier one block behind it, and then filled in the space between them with water.

Why water, you ask? Because it was the only substance that could absorb the blast of TNT.

I hit upon the idea from that first explosive creeper. Remember how it had blown a hole in the bank of the lagoon? Well, I realized that the blast had only hurt the bank itself, while the shallow, underwater blocks were unscathed.

I thought I was being so careful. I'd even tested the water-wall theory in the cooled lava cave. And it had worked.

After filling this water wall, I placed stone steps up to the top of the spawning chamber's ceiling, hollowed out a space above the roof, and filled the space with charges.

I thought I was being so careful.

Running a fuse of redstone dust all the way back to the bottom, I armed the last step with a simple wooden button. How poetically fitting that this button was the first item I'd ever crafted. Things were really coming full circle.

"You were my first threat," I sneered at the zombies, "and now you'll be the last."

A dim hidden memory took shape as I leaned in to push the button, some kind of expression about another button and another great explosion. Strangely enough, the image of a mushroom cloud crystalized in my mind.

"Bing, bang, boom," I said and pressed the small wooden square.

And then the world ended.

Or at least that's what it felt like as the earsplitting concussion blew up the room, the zombies, and the torches that lit my "victory."

"Yeeehaw," I started to yell, but was suddenly smothered in a deluge of water.

The top level of the glass wall must have shattered, I thought, and backed up to get away.

Only I couldn't back up. Something was blocking my escape. I turned to see gravel, an entire wall of the stuff, had fallen in behind me.

I looked up to see how far the barrier reached, and saw where the water was really coming from. My heart froze. I'd made a deadly mistake. I'd had no way of knowing how close the ocean floor was to me. I'd just assumed it was a mountain of rock.

Never assume anything.

The blast had not only ripped that floor wide open, but had also released a massive gravel deposit behind me.

Trapped. Drowning. There was no place to go but up!

So far.

So slow.

Cold. Dark.

CRACK!

Shooting pains through air-starved muscles.

Closer, but still so far away. My body ached, my lungs burned.

Swim!

CRACK!

Mouth open in a choked scream.

Just like before. The beginning and the end.

CRACK!

I reached for the glow, grabbing for breath, for life.

CRACK!

The end is the beginning!

CRACK!

I understand now. I get it!