Chapter Text
Six Months.
That’s how long it had been since The New Order of the Stone had saved the world from the world eating monster they had called The WitherStorm. Six months since six young adults had set off on an adventure that changed their lives.
There was Axel.
A griefer to his core but the biggest softie one is to meet.
Olivia.
The most revolutionary redstone engineer and Ellegaard’s protege.
Lukas.
Architect genius and expert craftsman.
Petra.
Highest skilled swordswoman in the land.
Reuben.
The bravest pig that ever lived, who died saving the world and Jessie’s best friend.
And of course there was Jessie.
Leader of the New Order of the Stone.
The most celebrated heroes since the Old Order of the Stone.
Of course they were.
Given how Gabriel told everyone the truth, word traveled fast throughout the map. A small part of Jessie made her feel bad about allowing Gabriel to reveal the truth to the world, but if there was something she hated was lying. Twenty years of the Order’s falsified lie was more than enough and she believed everyone should know. Her friends thankfully had no protest against her decision.
Now the new heroes ventured into the great unknown, in search of treasures and facing unknown dangers! Well…minus Reuben and Lukas. Lukas was off doing who knows what with his own friends and Reuben’s porkchop was left at their temple along with other treasures they had collected
Thanks to the help of Ivor, the New Order of the Stone had been exploring and finding new treasures all over the world. Never did the friends think they would all have the courage to do stuff like this but here they were.
On one of Ivor’s tales of a mysterious temple in the middle of the jungle. Said to be there for years but no one could pinpoint its location. But, after much searching, the New Order of the Stone had finally tracked its location.
Jessie grinned as she ran, splitting up from her friends, towards the temple. From a distance she could see that the temple was already one if not the largest temple they had encountered. She could also see that between her and the temple stood a large horde of mobs.
Easy . She thought confidently. She quickly ducked behind a tree and pulled out her newly enchanted sword. She grinned hearing the sounds of creepers and zombies approaching from the other side of the tree. Knowing her friends would soon catch up with her, she confidently came out from hiding and attacked the creepers.
Her new sword wasn’t as strong as the command block sword she had a few months ago but it was one of the most powerful swords she owned. She used it to quickly wipe out multiple creepers and zombies with a few easy swoops. If someone had told her a few months ago that she would be this good with her sword someday, she would have thought they were nuts!
“Look out!” She heard a cry. Jessie quickly turned around, spotting Petra leaping off a tree and attacked two skeletons that had their arrows set on Jessie. Petra quickly swiped at the skeletons, one of which flew towards Jessie. Jessie’s eyes widened, quickly swiping at it and taking it out.
Okay. Maybe she wasn’t that good yet.
“Thanks.” She sighed gratefully. Petra grinned in return.
“Hey Jessie!” They heard Axel call out. “Check this out!” The two women turned towards him, seeing he had two zombies currently in a headlock under his arms. “1…2…3…POP!” He squeezed making them pop off in a puff of smoke. Unlike his friends, Axel was never known to like using weapons. He was more of a TNT or using your fists kind of guy. “You could try it too y’know!” He suggests.
“Watch out!” Jessie called out as much she ran to him. Axel glanced behind him, seeing a sneaky zombie coming up behind him. Having no time to react he ducked as Jessie jumped behind him and quickly wiped it out.
“Dude!” Axel looked at her. “You’re getting pretty good at this!” He held his hand up confidently. Jessie grinned back high fiving him.
“You guys are working way too hard!” Olivia called out to them. The group all turned towards her, seeing that she had quickly set up a redstone machine of dispensers as more mobs quickly approached them. Confidently, she hit the machine, sending dozens of flying arrows towards the remaining mobs.
“You’re always looking to one up us, aren’t you?” Jessie grinned, shaking her head. Without looking, Jessie could feel the breath of a zombie behind her. Flipping her sword backwards she stabbed right through it easily. Heck yeah! Point for her.
With a satisfied grin she pocketed her sword back into her inventory and turned to the temple before them. Yup. Definitely the biggest temple they had encountered.
“That is one seriously cool temple.” She admired.
“Yeah. Points for Ivor I guess.” Petra agreed. “This was a good tip.”
“Well Jessie?” Olivia walked up behind her.
“Are we doing this or what?” Axel asked.
“I think Jessie’s just taking it all in.” Olivia grinned. Jessie smiled, glancing back at her friends. They were all so very enthusiastic about getting his adventure going and who could blame them? So was she.
“Order of the Stone? Let’s get some treasure!” Jessie exclaimed running ahead.
“Treasure!” Her friends cheered running after her.
Entering the temple, the group found themselves in what seemed to be a puzzle room. The walls were adorned with stone, quartz, lava and levers. Jessie raised a brow seeing that some pistons kept the lava from flowing down.
“So much for treasure.” She heard Petra complain. “This place is bare!”
“Oh come on.” Jessie rolled her eyes. “You know how these types of places work. Let’s just spread out and try to figure this out okay?”
“Fine.” Petra sighed walking over to a lever in the center.
Jessie raised a brow spotting some pistons beside her and a lever beneath them. Jessie was usually really good at puzzles. Typically able to solve the puzzles on her own when they came across them on their adventures. This one was no different. All three walls were exactly alike with two pistons blocking the lava flow and levers that she assumed were to unblock the lava and they all seemed to be leading to the same place.
“Looks like these all connect to the center of the room.” She pointed out loud. Olivia and Petra were the only ones who paid any mind to her. “There are three levers. Either there’s a pattern or we must flip them at the same time.”
“We could try flipping them all at once.” Petra suggested.
“What if it blows up?” Olivia asked.
“That wouldn’t be a bad thing would it?” Axel grinned, reaching for one of the levers before Olivia swatted his hand away.
“We could.” Jessie pondered. She looked towards the lever closest to her, thinking for a second if she should trigger it or not.
“Are you going to pull it?” Axel asked, making Jessie glance at him for a second before looking back at the wall, spotting a white block. How did she miss that? “Quartz. Of course.”
“Ah, your vital enemy.” Petrajoked.
“I still don’t understand why you don’t like quartz. It's just a block.” Olivia added.
“It’s useless.” Jessie rolled her eyes. “Perhaps they mean something.” Jessie turned to them, looking around.
“There’s more quartz over here.” Axel stood by the third lever. It had four quartz blocks next to the lever. Jessie looked at the first one again seeing only one and the second lever had two.
“Okay we have one, two, and four.” Jessie pondered. “Where’s three?”
“Over here.” Petra pointed to the three blocks on the other side of the same wall as one.
“Looks like we found our pattern.” Jessie grinned before flipping the first lever. Like she thought, flipping the first lever triggered the pistons above them and opened a path for the lava and made it flow to the center of the room. “That’s a start.” She grinned, turning to look at the other levers. Knowing she knew how to handle the puzzle herself, she noticed her friends had gone off to look around the temple…well at least Olivia. Jessie could only assume the thoughts running through the engineer’s mind, trying to figure out how the puzzle worked. Axel only sat by her fiddling with the stone on the ground, enjoying the downtime they had. Petra was sitting by the second lever, polishing her gold sword that she now called “Miss Butter”, also enjoying the quiet time.
“Hey Petra.” Jessie greeted, walking over to her.
“Hey Jessie.” Petra greeted, looking up from her sword. “What’s up?”
“Oh you know, just checking up on you.” Jessie gestured to her arm. “How are you feeling lately?”
“Wither-sickness free.” Petra assured. “At least I think so.” Petra lifted up her sleeve. Despite not feeling sick anymore Petra, along with some other survivors, had earned a scar that ran up their arms. Doctors had taken a look at it and confirmed it was nothing deadly of the sorts. Just an unfortunate physical scar the wither left behind for them. “Now I’m still getting used to having teammates and people who worry about me.” She joked. “It’s nice though.” She shrugged.
“We always worried about you.” Jessie placed her hands on her hips.
“Yeah but no need to fuss over me.” She smiled with a roll of her eyes, making the two women chuckle.
“This is such a cool temple.” Jessie commented looking over to the lever. “I wonder how Ivor knew about it.”
“Well, the old man has read a lot of books. I’m sure he knows more than he lets on.” Petra ran a cloth down her sword. “He probably even knows what’s inside.”
“Oh I’m sure he does.” Jessie looked at her again. “But he didn’t say. ‘It’s part of the adventure’ he claimed.” Jessie sighed, walked over to the lever and flipped it. Just as before the lever being pulled deactivated the pistons above them and allowed the lava to flow to the center. Only this time, the first lever activated again and stopped the first lava flow. “Okay, this one was number two. I’m assuming the three quartz blocks mean that I have to pull the first lever again before I go to number four.”
“Good luck.” Petra grinned. Jessie smiled back before making her way back to the first lever, deactivating it like before.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” She grinned. Deactivating the first lever for the second time had allowed the second lever to stay deactivated and making it so that both levers were now flowing lava into the center. Now she just needed number four, which she quickly rushed over to. Very quickly after lava started flowing, the group felt the ground shake beneath them as a giant trap door tore open the floor and revealed the lava overflow that Jessie activated. Surrounding the lava was a spiral of stairs that led down below, so far they couldn’t see what they were walking into.
“I think I actually would've been disappointed if the floor didn’t open up into a dark, creepy passageway.” Axel commented as Jessie took the lead down the stairs.
“This is kind of when we first discovered the Order’s Temple.” Petra comments as they continue downward. The lava flow being their only source of light. “We were a bunch of scared noobs.”
“Hey I wasn’t scared.” Axel protested.
“Oh yeah?” Petra glanced at him. “Then who was the one screaming like a terrified goat?”
“That wasn’t me.” Axel blushed in embarrassment.
“Hehe, yeah we were all totally unprepared.” Jessie chuckled nervously. “It’s crazy we didn’t die there.”
“And to think, that was just the beginning.” Olivia spoke proudly.
“Yeah! And that was all before we fought Witherstorms, hung out with the Order.” Axel added. Jessie tuned out Axel’s ramblings about the adventures they have had for the past couple of months. She was more focused on finding the end of these stairs and hopefully no surprise mobs came at them as they continued walking down.
“Bingo!” She suddenly exclaimed, interrupting her friends’ conversation behind her. They had finally reached the bottom and wouldn’t you know it, four chests stood before them. The four friends looked at one another with a grin before racing towards a chest and claiming one as their own. “Alright, let’s see what we got!” She grinned, opening her chest. “Hey, it's a cake!” She exclaimed. Man did she love cake!
“Oh man! That reminds of that one time you got cake from the Witch’s hut and I was super jealous of you guys.” Axel looked up from his chest.
“Right? Cake is the best!” Jessie grinned. “Totally my favorite…or top three at least.”
“You have discerning tastes Jessie, I respect that.” Axel nodded. Jessie raised a brow, unsure what her friend meant by that but brushed it off.
“Hmm, a pumpkin. Not bad. Will be useful if we run into some endermen” She commented to herself as she continued digging through. “And looks like we got one more thing in here.” Jessie, as short as she was, had to really lean into the chest to reach the final item at the bottom of the chest. Her friends looked up from their chests, seeing that her chest was leaning down towards her as half her body nearly disappeared into the chest. Finally, after a bit more struggle, the young woman finally got a hold of the final item and it was…flint and steel? Jessie raised a brow, walking away from her chest and towards her curious friends.
“Woah!” Axel exclaimed.
“I’ve never seen flint and steel like that before.” Olivia added. Olivia was right. Jessie didn’t think any of them had ever seen one like this in fact.
“I’ll be honest with you Olivia, I have no idea what this is or what it does.” Jessie stared at the glowing item in her hands. It shined a purple glow back at her face and she could see her own reflection on the steel.
“I do! Burn stuff right?” Axel asked.
“But it must do something besides that right?” Jessie asked. “I’ve seen people put unbreaking but this isn’t unbreaking. It’s different.”
“You could give it a shot and find out?” Petra suggests. Hearing no protest with the suggestion, Jessie took a deep breath and knelt down to the ground.
“Okay, flint and steel. Do your thing.” And with that Jessie struck her flint and steel together, sending a bright light through the large room with a single spark and mini quake. “Well, I have definitely never seen a flint and steel do that before.”
“We got company.” Petra called out. The four friends took a look around seeing that igniting the flint and steel had caught the attention of unwanted mobs below. They should have guessed mobs spawned down there. It was pitch black! The four of them quickly made a run towards the staircase, hoping the mobs hadn’t reached the bottom of them. No such luck.
“Looks like some monsters have a death wish.” Jessie pocketed her new treasure and replaced it with her sword. They knew they had a chance against these monsters but considering they were underground, who knew how far out mobs were coming from.
“So what’s the plan?” Axel asked. “If you ask me, it seems like a good time for a ‘secret handshake’!” He suggested.
“Right!” Olivia agreed. “So let’s use the ‘Redstone Rap’!” She suggests.
“What?! No!” Axel disagreed. “We need the ‘Griefer Grab’!”
“That’s it!” Jessie exclaimed.
“It is?!” Axel and Olivia exclaimed.
“No! Not that!” Jessie looked at Petra. “Petra! Warrior Whip!” Axel and Olivia had never seen Petra’s face light up so fast, nor had they ever heard of the ‘Warrior Whip’ before but what they witnessed next was a move that they were definitely going to steal someday.
“Okay Jessie, just like we practiced!” Petra tried to explain but unfortunately for her Jessie wasn’t hearing her and was quick to grab hold of her hands before spinning her a few times and sending a tornado flipping Petra towards the mobs blocking their path. Petra reacted quickly by slicing through the horde of zombies and the two women struck a pose at the bottom of the now mob free staircase.
“Woah! Way to go you two!” Olivia exclaimed.
“That was awesome!” Axel added with excitement.
“Alright let’s go!” Jessie exclaimed and the four of them quickly made a race up the stairs to escape the mobs behind them. Unfortunately for them, more mobs seemed to be coming from the walls. It was never easy, was it?