Chapter Text
"Intruder!"
I was interrupted from my current task by a Vindicator, as he burst into my office. Prior to the interruption, I was translating an old book the scouts had brought back from an expedition. The book appeared to be a diary, written by a human long ago. This paragraph I was working on detailed work on the trial chambers, buried strongholds designed to train young humans to battle the Wither. Annoyed, I put the ancient manuscript down and turned to the Vindicator, who had a worried expression and an axe in hand.
"*sigh* An intruder? Tell me what happened. And put away that axe." The Vindicator stashed the weapon in his pocket and gestured for me to follow him. As we walked through the dimly lit halls of the mansion, he explained.
"I was tending to the farms when an Enderman teleported in randomly, screaming its black head off, so I ran out into the hall to see what was the matter, and there, at the entrance, I saw a weird… something, and then it saw me and started running at me with a weapon! I- I- I don't know what it is, but it's still here!"
"Well, calm down. The last thing we need is a commotion. Panicked Illagers are inefficient fighters."
We made our way down the stairs, and I found that it was too late. A commotion was already caused, as there were Vindicators, Pillagers, and various monsters running around and yelling, and I had to push my way past a few skeletons and spiders to reach the source of all this shouting. The source appeared to be a baby zombie, at least at first glance. It was moving very fast, approaching a full sprint, trying to get away from the mob. I caught a glimpse of sun-tanned skin, closer to a Villager's than anything that tended to stay at this mansion. It was something strange, all right. For now, I needed to organize the troops.
"Attention!" Nobody listened. Everyone was shoving past me, chasing the creature down the entrance hall. I needed to get their attention. Taking a deep and exasperated breath, I raised my arms and casted a summoning spell. Spirits from the Nether gathered through the earth, and a line of pointed jaws rose from the floor and snapped shut in front of the mob. The leading members of said mob halted, and the rest crashed into them. "Attention!" I shouted once again, and everyone turned to face me. "You three!" I pointed to three Pillagers at the back of the group. "Come with me to neutralize the threat! The rest of you, return to your stations!" The crowd dispersed, with a few Illagers muttering about how they could have dealt with this on their own.
With my selected group, I quietly walked through the hallways, trying to find the intruder again. It was easy to pick up their tracks because whatever this thing was, it left a trail of destruction wherever it went. There were blocks missing from the walls, and dirt blocks from outside placed around here and there. It would be rational to assume that the intruder was merely an Enderman coming to stay a few days, as was a common occurrence around the place. The intruder was obviously too small to be one. Hmm… the size of a baby zombie, the skin tone of a Villager, with the Enderman's habit of messing with blocks. Could it be…? No, it couldn't be a human. They had left us millennia ago, to die to the Wither and be erased from history.
"Look!" One of the Pillagers shook me from my thoughts. He pointed to the intruder, which was rifling through a chest in the storage room.
"Open fire!" I commanded, and the Pillagers began shooting at it with their crossbows. It shut the chest and began running, but not until one of them landed a few hits on it. We ran after it, but it was too fast. I commanded the Pillagers to block off the entryway, and they lined up shoulder to shoulder at the arched doorway. I raised my arms and summoned a number of Vexes, and the winged specters gave chase to the tiny creature with iron swords. Soon, the intruder was cornered, and with a snap of my fingers I dismissed the Vexes and walked towards the creature. Now, I was able to get a good look at it. It was a child, only a block tall, but it wasn't a Villager. My mind flashes back to my notes, the long hours cross-referencing scout reports and findings with ancient tomes and stories passed down by our ancestors. What I was seeing wasn't a monster. It was a human.
The human appeared to be female, as it had long hair, tied back with a piece of string. She was wearing a leather tunic, dyed a faded yellow. She was clutching a small golden device in her left hand and a wooden sword in her right. The arrows, for the most part, were stuck in the leather garment, but there was one in her shoulder that had pierced through the material and her skin, and another in her leg, which had no protection except for woolen trousers. She was struggling to breathe, and it was obvious she was hurt. The human child looked up at me, and I realized that she expected me to kill her. But I couldn't. For generations, the Illagers had awaited the day that the humans would return, and most of them had given up hope. Here was the thing I had spent my entire life learning about, studying, holding out hope that I would see one in my lifetime. I needed to do something. But first, I needed to treat the child's wounds. I was an Evoker. I used magic to summon things. I couldn't heal. That was a job for Villager clerics. And Villagers were our sworn enemies.
I approached the child, who squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation of her demise. I gently picked her up instead. The human looked at me in confusion. She had purple eyes, and in the darkness of the storage room, I could have sworn I saw them glowing for just a second. I turned to the Pillagers at the doorway.
"Inform the Illagers that the humans have returned. And that I will personally be taking responsibility for this child." I then looked to the terrified child in my arms. "What is your name, little one?"
"I-I… I don't know…" Her voice was small and feeble. Barely a whisper in the ambiance of the mansion.
"Is that so? Very well then. Your name shall be…" I thought about it for a moment. What was a fitting name for the little girl? I thought back to an old human legend I read about long ago. About a man who rose from the dead and ascended to a higher plane of existence, promising to return again someday. The Messiah, he was referred to in the tome. In that legend, he had performed miracles and taught the people of that time many things. He had many names. The Lamb. The Son of God. The Bringer of Light.
"Your name shall be Light, and you shall bring hope to the Illager tribe. Now, come along, we will need to treat your wounds."