Hello, everyone!

I forgot to let you guys know sooner, but I publish this story once a week.

I also started another story to attempt to avoid getting burnt out on this one. You can find it on my account or possibly in the search. It's called Herobrine in Highschool, and I will try to update it once a week, but it's not my priority so updates will fluctuate with my inspiration levels.

Enjoy!

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You sit on the endstone floor of your quaint square house, eating dinner with your family. Chorus fruit. That is all that grows on the desolate end islands. Unless someone wants to pay for something from another dimension in the Market, they eat chorus fruit. You don't mind the monotony though, it's all you've ever known. In fact, the concept of having to pick what to eat is confusing. How would you decide?

"Have you heard about Keeper Kralh?" Your mother asks your father, which snaps you out of your thoughts. What's going on with the Keeper?

You father, who is sitting in front of you to your left, nods after taking a bite, "Retired didn't he?"

"Yes," your mother, who was sitting opposite of him, responds with a thoughtful glance at the high ceilings. "Thankfully his term was rather uneventful."

"Indeed, the tournament is in three days, right?"

"I believe so."

Little do your parents know how raptured you are in their conversation. Usually you zone out during meals. But this time their light chatting has your full attention.

The Keeper retired.

The tournament is in three days.

You had just turned seventeen yesterday.

You are eligible.

Your mind reels at this possibility. Could this be it?

Ever since your Becomings Day five years ago, you have been training daily with Inst. Tkeerah. To your surprise, she stuck with her commitment, even years later. She is an amazing teacher and an unexpected friend. She has helped you uncover many new secrets about yourself.

Not only are you pyrokinetic and fire resistant, you also could teleport, albeit short distances. Your average is about the maximum of a blue's range, so about thirty blocks. You definitely don't have the endurance of a Blue though. About five teleportation and you're shot. But hey, it's something.

You have a couple other obscure abilities that go along with your dragon flame. The same way a dragon can charge crystals with their fire, you can do the same on a smaller scale. These crystals act as power reserves that you can use for emergency teleportation after your exhausted, or for healing if you get injured. All in all, pretty cool stuff.

But also not very useful in daily life. You still have to use the relay station which is annoying, and not many people need fire in the End. Overall you feel kind of useless.

But the tournament might change that.

The End Keeper is the only high-ranking position that anyone can be eligible for, as long as they are over seventeen and under one hundred. It is hardly an easy position though. The Keeper handles anything that pertains to Endermen outside of the End. This includes but is not limited to, alliances, negotiations, extra-dimensional laws, extra-dimensional law enforcement, invaders, and if it comes down to it...

...war.

The Keeper becomes the Head General as well during war.

All this isn't what excites you though.

The way the Council decides who is fit for the office is through combat, a bracketed tournament. You have thought before that your abilities are perfectly suited for fighting, but now is a time of peace. Maybe this is a way you can find a use for your strangeness, just like Hkeriih said.

You sadden at the thought of your old friend, who is slowly losing his health. He can barely walk now, and it hurts you to see him like this. It has been about a week since you last visited, and you're itching to go back.

Maybe now you can make him proud. Make your parents proud. Keeper was the highest position you can possibly get into without being born into it, and it could raise your family's honor astronomically.

Your mind is made up.

"Y/N, are you done eating?" your mother's gentle voice jolts you out of your concentration.

You look down at your unfinished dinner, a smile stretching across your face. You were far too hyped to eat more.

"Yes," You answer, gulping a breath of air, "I'm registering."

"What?" Your dad questions in shock.

"I'm registering in the Tournament." You repeat, determination shining through your features.

Your father frowns slightly, blinking several times as if moving his eyelids will help him comprehend information. Your mom clicks her tongue, slowly shaking her head, but a small grin stretches across her face. "You never cease to amaze me Y/N."

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"AGH!!!" a young teen with long brown hair and ash-coated clothes screamed in frustration, throwing yet another half-eaten mushroom into the nearby lava pool. There was always a nearby lava pool, he was forced to get used to that, though he still shuddered as he watched his unfinished dinner sizzle into nothingness.

Too many memories.

'Quiet, or you'll bring the whole of the Nether on yourself. Also, why won't you listen? I told you those wouldn't work.'

The boy growled at the Whispers in his head that had steadily grown louder since his fall. He wasn't disturbed by them any longer, they had become as normal as breathing, not requiring any extra thought. "Shut up." He replied out loud, though in a much quieter voice. "They should work."

'Well they don't. I think after twenty-seven of them that should be obvious, thick-skull.'

"But why?" The boy looked up into the stuffy, burning air. Yes, burning. Burning every time he breathed in. He had gotten used to this also, it was nothing compared to the lava. Tears failed him, though he wanted to cry. He hadn't drank anything except one bowl of mushroom stew since falling into this forbidden place. Falling, yes he refused to consider it otherwise.

His weak, bone-thin body spasmed, nearly causing him to lose his balance. Bone-thin was an understatement, he quite literally blended in with the living skeletons in both body and skin-tone. Surprising the undead had never given him trouble in his weeks here, but the other inhabitants had. The boy spent his time running and hiding from fire-blasting ghasts and razor-tusked hoglins. But now he was to the point he could no longer run, he could barely even stand.

No matter how much he ate his hunger was never satisfied, as though he were swallowing air. The Whispers had told him it would be so, the boy didn't believe him, didn't want to believe him. Hunger and thrist dominated his every breath, he hardly thought of anything else.

Suddenly, a smell drifted through the air. The boy flared his nostrils, white eyes widening and bulging in his skull. It had been so long since he had smelled anything except fire. So, so much fire and smoke and ash....

But this was different. It smelled good.

WHAT WAS IT?!?!?!?

He turned his head to look through the thick stalks of the angry crimson forest behind him. It was infested with hoglins, but he had hoped the different kind of mushroom would end his starvation, but of course it didn't. Red pollen filled the air, making it hard to see very far.

The boy lurched to his feet in one single, unsteady motion, not paying the least attention to his weakened state. His stomach spasmed painfully, and he coughed and gagged at the sudden agony. Yet it didn't stop him. One stumbling step after another, he followed the delicious odor. His joints cracked and popped with each movement, and he truly appeared and sounded like a skeleton, minus the clothes hanging off of him.

He tripped on a small rock, and smashed into the ground with a grunt. The ground here was made of that orangish-red stone, the kind that never stopped burning. So the effect was equivalent to face-planting on broken concrete.

Yet he still kept going. Dragging his pitiful excuse of a body along the rough ground, between tall red mushroom-trees, his long, jagged fingernails clawing at the surface, grabbing onto any small vegetation in reach. After nearly an hour of this, the source of the smell came into sight.

A hoglin.

An arrow stuck out of its bleeding chest, and its mouth gaped open in a silent scream, its sharp, white six-inch tusks pointed upward. Its eyes were wide open and glazed over, staring into the void. It was dead. The first thing this miserable boy felt was envy. This stupid animal's pain was over, but his own never would be. He growled in the back of his throat.

But soon starvation overtook his senses and he had but one goal.

EAT!!!!

'You need to make sure that whatever shot that arrow isn't still around. Hey! Listen to me!'

But the boy was not listening, he could not hear his own thoughts, much less the Whispers. Animalistic instinct and hunger became the entirety of his being.

Suddenly a sharp pain twanged in his chest. He growled and jerked up his much oversized teal t-shirt, eyeing the patch of pure black skin on his chest where his wound used to be.

"Stop doing that!" The boy muttered aloud, it didn't hurt badly, but it was annoying.

It's the only way to get your attention! At least just look around first.

The boy narrowed his eyes, gazing around for a split second, "Satisfied?"

'Hmm, yes. It is rather odd that something would have hunted this down and simply left it...'

But the boy was no longer listening, he dove down onto the fresh corpse with a fervent desperation. It must have stepped in fire at some point, because the skin on its left back leg was burnt, and the flesh underneath it cooked. The boy instinctively went for this first.

But as he tore away a mouthful with his strangely sharp teeth, a horrid scent filled his nostrils and the mouthful tasted disgusting. He immediately spat it out and gagged. Even his extreme hunger couldn't make him eat that.

What had smelled so good then?

The boy turned his gaze, picking up the good smell once again. His eyes fell on the wounded chest of the beast. At last, he understood where it was coming from.

Blood.

He reached out his skeletal hand and swiped a bit of the thick red liquid from around the arrow. As he licked his fingers, his eyes widened.

It was by far the best thing he had ever tasted.

Not wasting a single breath, the boy ripped into the raw tissue just below the rib cage, wolfing it down and making beasties noises of pleasure as the bloody raw meat slid down his throat and into his shriveled gullet.

'Don't eat too quickly. Or you'll...'

But it was too late, the boy's stomach spasmed yet again, and he threw up. It didn't hinder him at all, he kept right on tearing into the corpse. In the span of a few minutes, the body was little more than scraps and bone. The cooked leg was also left intact.

The boy licked the blood from his lips and chin, a huge grin stretching his face, showing the bits of flesh stuck between his teeth. He felt truly alive for the first time in months.

Now it was time to get out of here.

WARNING!!! THIS SKETCH IS VERY GRAPHIC!!!

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Alright, so how are liking the story so far?

I'm not feeling super inspired, so it may be a few days before I get a sketch out.

Nevermind! Just got super inspired, and did... this.

Edgy out!