Diary of a Librarian Book 2: Into the Fray

By Brick Stone

The heroes may have found a cure to the zombie plague, but the mystery runs even deeper. Interdimensional even. Our group of ragtag adventurers will be going to the depths of the Nether to figure out the plague. What will they find there?

Time is against them, as they'll have to survive against the odds... And don't forget about the monste

• Language: English
• Publisher: Waterwoods Fiction
• Release date: Nov 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869016959

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Day 1

It has been longer than I can remember since I last wrote in this old diary. I’m flipping back through the old pages, trying to re-familiarize myself with what was happening to me before. I think I haven’t written in it since Esmerelda’s hut, but so much has happened since then. Well, so much of nothing, really. I’m not sure how long it has been. My mind and my body have both been a little foggy since the incident. I’ll try my best to summarize it for you in a minute. The incident, that is. It’s the last thing I remember very clearly before I was poisoned. But first, I want to tell you where I am now.

Joey, Ed, Wendy, and I have traveled back to the village to care for everyone involved. Esmerelda (we trust her now, but some more than others) gave us a cure for the plague, although she said that new cases will keep appearing until we go to the source. Right now, though, we just want to heal as many people as possible.

I’m still recovering from my illness, with Teddy (my pet ocelot) at my side, while the three youngest of my group help our village recover, so I decided I’d better write as much as possible while I still can. Anyway, that’s what we’re doing now. But you surely must want to know what happened over the past week! Without any more delay, here it goes:

We all suspected Esmerelda was a witch. The plague that turned our fellow villagers into zombies without even seeing a zombie could be traced back to her, and we suspected the worst. Over the last month, or somewhere about as I can’t exactly remember how long, we were looking for a cure to the virus. It’s hard to keep track of time when you’re traveling so much every day, and getting into trouble every hour, so I offer my sincerest apologies for that.

You probably have a better memory than I, but so do my two best friends, Joey, the village blacksmith, and Wendy, the village cartographer. They remember our whole adventure, and most importantly, they remember saving my life.

My diary ended after I had entered Esmerelda’s hut in the swamp. I was hoping that my proficiency for reading every book I could get my hands on would allow me to think of some speech, begging her to stop and coaxing the cure out of her. Instead (and I remember this part well), I bumbled around and made my way to two demands, both of which seemed very unacceptable on her part.

It seemed such a bad deal, even, that she decided to throw a potion of poison in my direction. I was already exhausted: I had been through so much in the last month, including talking monsters, moving forests, and way too many spiders. Not to mention that there was a battle going on just outside between my friends and a hoard of Piglin!

The poison made everything one hundred times worse. She had stood over me with the scariest look on my face while I struggled to breathe and then struggled to stay conscious. It turns out that in my panic, I forgot the most important things about poisons in our world - they can’t kill us! They can take us to within an inch of our lives, leave us feeling terrible, tired and scared, but nothing more. So when I laid there on the ground, thinking my life was over and that I had failed to save the town, actually I had been wrong.

As it turned out later, everything was far, far worse.

Not in that moment, though. Only seconds after Esmerelda threw the poison, Joey and Wendy came to my rescue. Teddy pawed at me, trying to wake me up but to no avail.

Hey! Wendy burst into the room first with her full set of diamond armor, enchanted, her diamond sword, and of course, her trusty wand.

Get away from him! Joey came in second, looking identical to his friend apart from the wand. Instead, he was holding his box of golden apples close to his chest, and he was eating one as he talked. What did you do to him?

Even though I was lying on the ground, clinging to life, the change in Esmerelda when they came into the room was so drastic that I noticed it. She went from the terrifying witch, hell-bent on taking me from this world, to sweet old lady in one second flat.

Esmerelda looked at Wendy and said, Oh, young lady, please help. I don’t know what happened.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell, What!? She was the one who poisoned me, and now she’s pretending that she didn’t just try to kill me!

But I couldn’t. All I could do was lie there and watch as she tried to convince them that she had done nothing of the sort. And finally, while everything was still going on around me, I passed out. I can’t remember anything after that point, but Wendy and Joey have filled me in. At the start, Wendy was out on a mission to avenge whoever brought me harm, and save my life as quickly as possible.

What happened? Wendy said authoritatively. She wasn’t someone who trusted people easily.

"This man burst in and he scared me. I’m a potion brewer, you see. I was carrying a potion of poison that had been specifically requested by one of my favorite customers. He’s an old man from a village right near here. He uses the potions as traps for any Pillagers who might want to attack. He says they get a lot of attacks.

Anyway, I was brewing his monthly batch of potions when your friend here came in. He had his sword drawn and he looked very dangerous. Out of instinct, I just threw the potion in my hand at him. I regretted it instantly, of course. He looks like such a nice man, and he said that he’s only here because his town needs a cure to some virus. I wonder which town he’s from… I hear a lot of towns are struggling with plagues at the moment…"

She was playing the part of an innocent old woman very well. Her eyes looked sad and apologetic, her brow was furrowed, and she kept giving my friends half-smiles which were really disarming. And she was talking so much that Wendy and Joey couldn’t even question what she was saying!

Can you–

Before Wendy could even finish just one sentence, Esmerelda interrupted again: –Wait one second! Wendy? Joey? It’s you! I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you earlier. I’ve missed you two, impressively so.

Hey, Esmerelda, great to see you! Joey was convinced. He went over to the old woman, the witch, and gave her a great big bearhug. Wendy only stood back and watched.

After an embrace that took far too long, Esmerelda looked around at her old friends.

So what are you two doing here? Why are you with this old fart?

Teddy was hissing at Esmerelda territorially, trying to protect me. When Esmerelda insulted me, Teddy lowered her hind legs. Joey said that she looked like she was ready to pounce, and attack everyone in the room.

His name is Arthur. Wendy cut in, and Teddy growled her approval. "But we’ve been looking for you.

Me?

Yes, you, Wendy pointed her sword at her enemy. We know you were the one who created the virus.

Me? Esmerelda repeated. Wendy could’ve sworn a tiny smile crept across her lips, but Joey seemed to believe she was genuinely asking.

"Stop toying with us!" Wendy told me she wanted to yell, but Joey jumped in first.

Yeah, Es. We know you did it, he said.

But you just confronted the real perpetrators right outside. Did they not tell you? She asked. She looked perplexed.

The Piglin? They both asked.

Yes! I’ve been trying to stop them for as long as I’ve lived. They hate the real world. They’re jealous of us, having, as we do, water and trees and diamonds, while they have to live in the Nether.

Huh… Joey trailed off, deep in thought. Let’s help build them a village!

Wendy hissed at him to shut up, so he did.

"I don’t believe you. Look at all of these potions in here. You want us to believe not a single one of these can be used to turn people into zombies?"

"No, none. I swear it. You know what, I’ll go even further. I swear it on your friend’s life over