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Chapter I: April 20, 2014. Chapter II: April 21, 2014. Chapter III: April 24, 2014. Chapter IV: April 26, 2014. Chapter V: April 28, 2014. Chapter VI: April 30, 2014. Chapter VII: May 2, 2014. Chapter VIII: Also May 2, 2014.

-You may want to know every chapter is about a page long, but some chapters have lots of details and little happens in them, while others are packed with stuff and have little detail. This is my first book and I’m pretty new to writing, so I will try to even out the amount of detail and content per chapter in the next books.

-This is my first book (in this series and at all). I will (probably) be writing an entire series about this. I know this book is only about 10 pages long, but expect the rest to be longer in two ways. They will have more chapters and they will also be longer than these. They will still be short, though.

-When I say Steve’s “father’s adventures are for another time,” I mean that I might, but probably won’t be, writing a short story about him. If I do, it will not be out any time soon and it will not be part of the actual series. I doubt you’re very interested in that, though. If you are, thanks. I didn't think you would be. Also, I might, but probably won’t be, writing a very short story from Steve’s point of view about being stranded in the Nether. I want to experiment with 1st-person stories. I am pretty bad at them, as I quickly realized while trying to write a quick rough draft of the first chapter.

Steve's father was an adventurer, a discoverer. He was a secret-hunter. He heard legends, and found out if they were real. He revisited old wives’ tales, and proved or disproved them. One of these legends was one of another dimension. A dimension called “The End.” He found a portal, and entered. Nobody knows what he found because when he returned he almost immediately left to the Nether, another myth. Just after restocking, he went. Three years ago, he had summoned the Wither, the boss mob of the Nether. He had no idea what he was getting into, no idea what would happen to him and his family for the rest of eternity, no idea just how powerful the Wither was.

Steve is different. He used to be a wanderer. He met villagers and the occasional human as he wandered. He doesn't do that anymore, though. He’s settled down and gathered resources. He built a mansion for his family, but unfortunately they haven’t had a chance to see it. They would have if they hadn’t been captured by the Wither and kept as prisoners. Oh well, soon the Wither will capture him, too. At least he’ll be with his family, right? Well, he would prefer to save them, and this is his story so he can do what he wants.Anyway, if you really want a prologue, here you go. Here’s what happened in those three years:

As Steve’s father was leaving the old house, everyone was silent. He had come back from finding out about this “End” place. He had been away for a few months, and everyone was happy to see him. They were saddened the night before when he said he would only stay the night and then learn about the Nether, another dimension he had heard about, and then went upstairs to write. He barely talked to them, which was completely unusual for him. He emptied his inventory and re-packed another set of supplies. He took a set of tools, and his best sword. He needed good tools and weapons, in case a myth was real. He took an enchanted diamond sword. His wife was an enchanter. An enchanter and a brewer. He left with his inventory full except for a few slots. He took back blocks and items if the myths were real. He didn't say if the End was real or not. If he had brought back items, he would have put them in his chest. It was locked, and only Steve’s father had the key. As he left, the family went outside to say goodbye. Steve saw a tear fall down his mother’s face. She went back inside. His father didn't wave. He didn't return.

A year later, Steve had begun to doubt he would ever return. Some of his explorations took several months, but never a year. The one about the Red Dragon, a tale a fishing villager told him once, took six months. It felt like an eternity, so everyone was delighted when he came back. A year after he left to go to the Nether, though, Steve thought he was probably dead. However, exactly one year after the day he had left, the family went out fishing. Steve and his brother had a race to see who could swim to the other end of the long, shallow lake the fastest. Steve’s brother was a year older than him and more athletic, so he easily won. Steve was far behind. The lake was long enough that it was hard for Steve to see his brother, and that their mother couldn’t see either of them. When they had returned, they found an enormous hole in the ground where their mother had been, and a lot of fiery rubble. The brothers swam towards it and got to the shore. On the edge of the crater, they saw a chest. It had a book inside it. They read it together.

“Your father tried to destroy me. Now I will destroy all of you. You’re next.”

A year later, they went hunting. As they were both pulling back their bowstrings and aiming at a fleeing wolf, Steve saw a large black shape emerging from the clouds and coming towards them fast. The wolf exploded. Steve ran and screamed. His brother didn’t. He wasn’t thinking. He was in shock. The large, dark figure launched something at him and Steve saw him explode over his shoulder. The flying creature told him that he would be captured in another year. Steve kept running. He was devastated. Eventually, though, Steve realized that the thing had said he would be CAPTURED next. It hadn’t killed anyone. Even if it did, they would have respawned somewhere in the wild. He broke open the lock on his father’s chest. He found End Stone, some other things, and several books. He saw a hole in the chest with bright blue light pulsing through it, and found out from its name and lore that it could teleport items out of his father’s inventory and into the chest. That’s how he had books about the Nether in it already. He read through the books and started to prepare to go to the Nether.

Steve awoke early in the spring morning and with dread in his large stone brick mansion. He knew this day would come eventually, and he had been preparing for the last few weeks: Gathering food, mining for diamonds, enchanting his weapons and tools. The day had come. Last year, to the day, his brother had been kidnapped and trapped in a prison, the worst prison in all Minecraftia. Two years ago to the day, his mother had been taken. Three years ago his father had gone. They would respawn safely if they were killed, so instead they were kept barely alive, eternally trapped, never to see the light of the Overworld's bright, cubic sun. Now, it was his turn. His turn to escape it's intricate traps, his turn to fight off hordes of monsters, his turn to try to kill the Wither.

As the morning's sun slowly rose over the horizon made up of forests, oceans and mountains all around him, its light and warmth flooding into his large, arched windows and the shadows crept back to their corners, Steve checked the chests in his storage room to make sure he had everything he needed. He ate cooked meat so as to keep saturated longer than eating any other foods would. He got his inventory ready and organized. He brewed health potions to keep him alive and kill undead monsters. He fed his pet wolf, Bolt. He practiced his archery because he would undoubtedly need his bow. Soon he would enter the labyrinth like the rest of his family. But this time, it would be willingly. And this time, he would have things that the rest of his family lacked: Courage, good training, and, of course, several stacks of the glorious mixture of gunpowder and sand we all know and love: TNT. After triple-checking to make sure he had everything he needed, Steve closed his chest and set off to hunt for extra supplies, just in case. He then collected some obsidian in the lava-filled mine connected to his mansion by a minecart system, and built a portal to the dangerous, unnaturally warm and monster-filled Nether, for that is where the Wither keeps its prisoners.

At about nine that morning, as the scent of burning, rotten flesh filled the air around him from the re-dying monsters, Steve went to the portal, igniting it with a piece of flint and a bit of iron. It took a few moments, but he eventually got the sparks to stay long enough on the obsidian to create a portal and a strong fume of rotten eggs and wolf droppings. He tried to stop his stomach from tying itself in knots, but he found that quite hard. Bolt was at his side, obviously hating the stench but wanting to go with him. "Sorry, Bolt, but I have to do this alone. Stay here and I'll be back soon. I hope." He scratched behind Bolt's ears, and turned back to the portal. He gathered his courage, took a deep breath, checked to make sure he had brought his fire resistance potion, which was secured in his inventory, and, leaving behind the mansion that would never survive a Wither attack, he stepped into the portal to the Nether.

As soon as Steve entered the portal, he saw ever-changing wobbly purple figures, heard horrible sounds of death and torture, his nose burned from the smell, he got a horrible taste in his mouth, and he felt (or, rather, didn't feel) his feet quickly lifting from the ground as he teleported into the Nether. He fell face first into a patch of soul sand, and felt the searing heat of the Nether infiltrate his skin instantly, almost burning his insides, it seemed. He got up, and pulled his feet up, one after the other, walking slowly to the edge of the soul sand. In a moment, he had gotten to the netherrack. This, too, was soft, but not nearly as much, and warmer to the hands. He walked around, finding a group of ugly zombie pigmen turn to him. He expected to be chased, but they seemed fine with his presence and soon returned to the little conversation Steve figured they must have been having, with a language of short grunts and oinks. He walked by, and stopped when he saw a sharp gold sword in one's hands. It could easily pierce skin, and Steve knew it was lucky they didn't harm him. He started to walk again, but tripped and fell onto a pigman. It growled, and the entire pack turned and ran at him.

Steve ran to the side, swinging his sword at them as he went. Soon, one had died, and the others only got angrier. He tower-placed a quick cobblestone pillar and got out of the mutilated swines' reach. Shooting some of them down with his bow, he saw a ghast from the corner of his eye, and a fireball quickly approached him. To avoid it, all he could do was jump. Off the pillar, onto the ground, on the edge of a cliff, with a fifty-block drop into lava. He began to tip, and quickly regained his balance, turned around, and saw the pigs he hadn't stopped running towards him. He rolled to the side, causing the pigs to fall off he cliff. He then equipped his sword as the ghast's second fireball rushed towards him, and he deflected it, sending it flying back at the ghast. He heard a horible scream, and saw the ghast burn and fall to the ground.

Steve, away from the danger, took out a map he had ripped out of a book before he left. It showed where the fortress was, so he continued the journey, watching out for zombie pigmen and ghasts. He walked for hours upon hours, only occasionally taking breaks. He sometimes had encounters with over-excited magma cubes, but slayed them with ease. He watched the skies, the ground and his step for ghasts, monsters and gaps, and it took what seemed like forever before he saw it: The tall, dark, sinister-looking fortress that held the Wither and his family. The biggest building he had ever seen. It had a few fiery pillars made of nether brick with ignited netherrack on them, as if they were beacons to evil. He was about to walk up to it, and almost didn't see the lava sea and ghasts protecting it. Steve equipped his fire resistance potion, and drank deeply from the bottle, quickly emptying it.

A cool, pins-and-needlesish feeling swept over him, starting in his center and quickly spreading all over his body, ending in the tips of his fingers and toes. The usual volcanic winds, feeling like solar flares, were now merely cool, faint breezes. He could safely swim across the lava, but ghasts' fireballs were still near-fatal. As if summoned by his thoughts, or a /summon command, a large fireball came from behind, smashing into his back. He was pushed into the ocean, which did not burn him, or hurt in the least. He equipped his bow and loaded an arrow, trying to steady his arms, which were shaking from the strange feeling of the lava, It felt like he was swimming in thick, heavy water. He let go of the bowstring, but the arrow missed the ghast by less than a block. He swam to the side as another ghast spat a fireball at him. The fireball splashed in the lava and sank. Steve shot another arrow, and it hit the ghast, burning it to death with the flame enchantment. The other one just screamed and spat some more, but this time, Steve equipped his sword and deflected it, killing the other ghast. Of course, by this time more ghasts had come.

Steve loaded his bow with three arrows, turned it sideways, and aimed it up towards the sky. It was hard to see the ghasts, for they had flown upward and were hidden by the dark red fog. He pulled the bowstring back, and fired. Two arrows hit seperate ghasts, killing two of the four. The other missed and disappeared into the distance.Swimming onto the shore, he equipped some ladders and started to place them on the tall, red brick pillar whilst climbing upwards. The two ghasts left spat at him at the same time, and he deflected one of them with his sword. The other one hit the pillar and knocked him off. He hit the ground hard on his head, and sat up. He was aching, but he managed to keep a clear head. The ghasts launched another pair of fireballs, and Steve dodged them and deflected one, killing a ghast. He loaded his bow and shot at the other one. The arrow flew straight at the ghast and hit it between the eyes. It screamed and fell into the ocean, slowing down the slightest bit as if it were a very heavy, deflating parachute. Steve started towering up again, but he soon just about ran out of ladders. Knowing he would run out, he equipped his pickaxe and broke through the wall. According to the books at home, there should have been either stairs or a solid wall. This one only had empty space.

He fell what seemed like over a hundred metres before he saw the lava at the bottom. “Stupid fog!” He was screaming as he fell towards it fast enough that he felt like he would pass out any second. Thinking fast, he equipped a ladder and placed it beside him. He immediately stopped. “I love physics. Whoa. This hole must be really far underground. I wonder who built it?” He still didn’t know how to get out. He looked around, and wondered how to get out. He figured that someone must have gotten out after building it. He found no secret exit, so he looked around and saw that the lava seemed to be slowly flowing out through something under it. He was far enough down to reach the lava, so he placed some cobblestone to block it. He dropped down onto the cobblestone and blocked all the lava. He destroyed it and found an iron trapdoor under it. He had nothing to open it with, so he destroyed it. He had no room left in his inventory (which was a very bad idea), so it simply fell to the ground and stayed there. He saw a tunnel with a staircase upwards, so he took it and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He eventually got up to the top of the tunnel, and behind the top of the tower.

When he got there, he found a blaze spawner. He took a step forwards, and a blaze popped into the air, the spawner burning. It saw Steve and caught on fire. It started breathing slowly and creepily, as if Darth Vader was yawning into a gas mask. It formed three fireballs, and threw one after the other at him. Steve jumped out of the way and wondered why there was so much fire in the Nether as two of the fireballs narrowly missed him, the last one hitting his leggings, cracking them. He realised he was at three hearts, starving, and on fire. He equipped and bit into some steak, washing it down with a health potion. By then, though, another blaze spawned, rods on fire, body burning. Both blazes were now on fire, loading fireballs. By then, though, Steve had gotten tired of blazes. He equipped his TNT and placed beside the spawner. He got his flint and steel, lighting the fuse. Retreating several steps, Steve grinned as the spawner blew up and the blazes died. He then ran into the labyrinth of a fortress, knowing there would be many more blazes and other monsters and several intricate traps, but also a prison. And also, his family.

Walking into the fortress, he felt slightly cooler. He realized that it was still burning hot outside. He had’nt really noticed, being distracted by all the dangers he had encountered. Under his armour, which was practically baking, his clothes were sticking to his skin from sweat. One of the many horrible things about the Nether is that you sweat constantly. It is distracting, annoying, itchy at times and it completely dehydrates you. It then evaporates almost instantly, but your clothes still stick to you. It makes your head hurt, and your throat feels even dryer. You must drink lots of water, which wastes precious inventory space. Steve almost emptied a bottle of almost boiling water, and poured the rest on his hair, splashing some on his face. He regretted it right away. It felt horrible, and it evaporated, leaving his head completely dry and his hair stick together and stand up. He thought he could feel his own throat’s skin cracking and breaking off when he coughed, and he knew that he couldn’t stay here much longer. He ate some steak, but he . He was thirstier than before, and amazed that he could be. He started to walk the halls, and his mind was drawn away from his throat and thirst as he saw a well down the hallway. He ran over to one, and was about to dunk his head into it and drink when he saw it was filled with lava. “Whoa. Lava wells. The book said nothing about lava wells.”

As he wandered the halls, he began to doubt this was the right fortress. He began to doubt the Wither was there, and he began to doubt that his family was there. He turned around to leave, and found a wall where he had just been. “Strange.” He mined through the wall. He saw lava coming towards him. He turned around and saw a horde of armed zombies running at him. He panicked, and instinctively built walls beside him. He thought of what to do. There was lava behind him, an army of lethal Zombies ahead of him, and he didn’t know what was below him. He went to the side of the small room and dug a small hole in the middle. He looked down and saw a hundred-metre drop into a lava ocean. There was nothing to either side of him, as a bit of mining revealed. The only way he could go was up. He dug upwards and tower-placed cobblestone below him. Directly above where he was just almost killed was the hallway he had been in before turning around. He kept on walking, not daring to turn around. He kept wandering the halls, and started to find hostile mobs. Mostly Zombie Pigmen, but some of them were from the Overworld. He found that the density of the monsters seemed to grow at times, and drop at others. He kept on a trail of more densely-packed Zombies and Skeletons until he found a large room. It was unquestionably much too large for a Nether fortress, being about a hundred metres tall, and roughly two hundred blocks in both length and width. As he entered, Steve heard a loud click from the entrance. He turned around to see the door shrink before his eyes, several blocks spiralling inwards and soon completely sealing the door. His attempts to break the door proved to be useless. The Nether brick wouldn’t show any signs of cracking. Then, he heard a series of clicks from all around the room, echoing and reverberating around until they abruptly stopped.

There were suddenly hundreds of ghasts, zombies, pigmen, blazes and all the kinds of hostile mobs, from both dimensions Steve knew about. He was caught off guard by this, and was soon hit by several fireballs and arrows. He took out his splash health potions and threw them in every direction, to heal himself and kill the zombies and skeletons. Panicking, he drank regeneration potions, shot mobs all around him, madly swung his sword and did everything he could, but that wasn't enough. He fled to the other side of the room, and healed himself. He ate steak and trained his bow. He realized that any attempts to kill the monsters would be utterly futile. Even with adrenaline coursing through his veins, he would die if he tried to defeat them all. Then he remembered his TNT. Placing it everywhere he could reach, he planted nearly a stack. He then ran to the other side of the room and shot a flaming arrow high into the sky, but not nearly high enough to hit the ceiling of the enormous room. The arrow landed far away from him, and the only way he knew that it lit the TNT was because of all the flying Creepers. Evidently the Wither didn't want his room destroyed, because for a few moments the floor turned to obsidian, turning back after the explosion ended. This gave Steve a tremendous idea.

If the Wither was too busy changing the room to obsidian and back, he wouldn't notice a tiny puncture amidst all the commotion. So, watching his health, his hunger and his back, Steve placed TNT anywhere and everywhere he could, which almost killed him, and the ghasts did the rest. In a corner away from all the dying mobs, Steve mined a little hole in the wall. It was small enough that the Wither didn’t notice while busy turning the walls to Obsidian, because nothing bad happened. He walked through the hole and saw a large room. In the other end, there was a doorway to the prison his family was in. But in the way were several witches, who Steve figured must be doing the magic, and the Wither itself, monitoring everything in the room he had just left through what seemed to be a one-way wall, normal from the outside but merely glass from inside this largish room. Steve knew the only way to free his family was to kill the Witches and defeat the Wither, which would not be easy. He ate an Enchanted Golden Apple, and felt the adrenaline replace itself with pure energy, unbelievable power. He felt marvelous. He felt that he could walk straight in there, kill the Wither so hard it would die to death from awesomeness, and then eat the Nether Star, afterward biting open the cage and strolling outside and through the portal. Of course, he couldn’t do that. He had to be sneaky. He had to make a plan. Of course, he already had one. Kind of.

Quickly mentally making sure his plan would work, Steve equipped the chicken eggs he had packed for a diversion. Spawning several chickens into the corner opposite him, he hoped the witches wouldn't notice where they were coming from. Realising there were several chickens in the room, the Wither dispatched a small group of witches to see what had happened and kill the chickens. This was just what Steve wanted. Spawning more chickens, he saw the Wither get annoyed at the fact that the witches ran out of potions so quickly and send in some more to kill the chickens. By the time the last of the witches were sent to poison and kill the chickens, Steve had run out of eggs. Fortunately, however, he had accomplished what he wanted: The only traces of potion left in the room were in a puddle by the chickens' bodies. Now the witches could do nothing to keep him out of the prison. The only problem was that the key was in a chest labelled "THE KEY TO THE PRISON IS IN HERE", and it was right beside the Wither.

Sneaking up to the chest, Steve quietly killed some of the witches. Unfortunately, the other witches realised and equipped swords Steve never knew they had. He equipped his diamond sword and started killing them off. Then, the Wither turned around and realized what was happening. It then started shooting explosive Wither skulls at him, which killed the witches before even lowering his health significantly. It did, however, give him the Wither effect. He drank the milk he had packed. It was curdled and disgusting, but he no longer had the effect. Bobbing and weaving, swerving left and right, Steve ran towards the chest. Before he got to it, he was hit by another skull. He had no milk left, so he drank a potion of regeneration. He didn’t get hurt, but his vision was partially blocked by two types of swirls emanating from where he had been hit and from his stomach. He also flinched a lot, which made him slow down and he couldn’t see.

Unluckily, when opened the chest merely hissed and exploded. This was painful, but it was worth it; it gave Steve an idea. A great idea. If the Wither could use TNT here, so could he. He immediately started to build a sloppy wall of TNT, however he saw that he had broken his flint and steel while blowing up a blaze spawner. He waited for the Wither to fireball it. Of course, the mastermind behind the entire Nether and this strange fortress wasn't that stupid. Steve kept on bobbing and weaving, dodging most of the shots, getting hit by a few from the Wither’s effect, for a few minutes until it became overly impatient and started to fire more rapidly and less accurately. Steve had, of course, been moving slowly closer to the wall of TNT beside the prison containing his family (who had been watching quietly, standing far away from the TNT). The Wither finally accidently hit the TNT with a fireball, and Steve flew back into the wall.

Steve didn't care about his wounds, he was too confused about what was happening. The Wither backed into a corner and Steve's father was starting to stand up. However, as the Wither shot a skull at the bars, he and the rest of Steve's family disappeared, with the exception of Ozen, Steve's brother, who had had the sense to jump out through the hole in the bars of the prison. The Wither came out of his corner and started to laugh an evil, blood-curdling laugh.

Steve felt a sudden surge of power run through his veins as if he had drank a hundred strength potions, and immediately ran up to it, and stabbed its left head, cracking it only slightly and sending Steve flying to the other side of the room, widening his head-wounds on the blood-splattered floor. As he struggled, trying to get up, Ozen ran to his side, tears of joy and sorrow flooding his green eyes. Steve drank a health potion, and got up. After tossing Ozen some steak and water to quench his hunger and signalling him to the side, Steve shot at the Wither rapidly, losing arrows fast. When the Wither had finally lost one of its heads, Steve found his bow had lost about half its durability. Knowing he would not be able to keep this up unless he acted fast, he aimed so that his arrow shot an explosive skull in midair. The result was a cube-ended, flaming, explosive arrow. In a few tens of shots, it took out the Wither's right head, causing it to fall and shatter on the ground. Now having no bow or TNT, Steve thought of ways to destroy the Wither. Whilst doing that, he instinctively equipped his sword, and then he remembered that he had a sword. He swung it above his sholder, and, with all his strength, threw it at the Wither. Catching the middle head and flinging it off, causing a large explosion, all the sword's enchantments activated at once, burning the skull, splitting it in half and making it explode like fireworks with a special enchantment Steve found in a book once. The Wither's body exploded, forcing Steve and Ozen into a corner.

Watching in awe the marvel of the dying Wither, the pure power draining from its body in the form of experience orbs and the legendary Nether Star, Steve just sat in the corner he had been pushed into, his mind blank. He then remembered his sword and collected it, finding it had less of a purple tint than before and more of a dark red one. Upon touching it, he remembered his family and knew, somehow, that they were in the End, now the prisoners of the Enderdragon. And he knew that the only way to get there was the End portal, found only in one of the three strongholds in the world. The only problem was, he was in the Nether, lost in a maze with no escape.

Thinking about the End gave Steve an idea. From the fight, he had obtained blaze rods and Ender pearls, so he crafted some eyes of Ender. He threw one, and it started gliding towards the exit. Grinning, he walked over to the door and beckoned Ozen toward him and threw another two, this time grabbing on to it. It dragged slightly, but it was faster and less tiring than walking. Repeating this process, Steve and Ozen got out of the fortress, and, finally, through the portal into the Overworld, using half of the eyes of Ender he had.

Steve and Ozen took minecarts back to the surface, Steve having to craft another for Ozen. Once they got back to the mansion, Ozen looked around in awe. He had never seen a house this big, and had never seen any house, or anything not horrible, for a year. Steve had barely started construction on the mansion when Ozen had been taken. He hadn't seen the full mansion for the quarter-year it had been done. Steve took Ozen on a tour, on which he only said "Whoa" and "Wow." This was strange, because Ozen was usually a pretty talkative, humourous guy. Steve figured the year in prison had taken a toll on him. He asked what the prison had been like, and Ozen, surprisingly, didn't remember much of it. He remembered the poison, torture, food (or, rather, lack of it), and all the horrible things, but not much of his family, especially their father. He did often talk about the lack of food, and Steve took the hint and made them both supper.

During and after a nice, long meal of mushroom stew and steak, Ozen became much more talkative. Ozen had said most of what he knew already, so Steve did most of the talking. Ozen did, however, tell Steve, "The Wither was planning to send us all to someplace called the End." Steve was at first surprised that Ozen didn't know what the End was, but then remembered his damaged memory. He told Ozen about the End, and Ozen was amazed about the bleak, dry, pale island, the tall obsidian towers, the burning crystals, the mysterious inhabitants, and he was absolutely dumbstruck upon hearing about the dragon. Steve recited everything he could remember from the books, and bringing in a few in to read.

Ozen asked where Steve got the books, and Steve told him, "Our father wrote them. He started going out every year to search for the Red Dragon, a legendary beast he heard about. After a few years, he proved it to be nothing more than a story for villagers. He then started going out searching for the existing bosses, the Enderdragon and Wither. After returning from his various journeys, he'd write all he'd learned, stay a few days, and then leave again. After going to the End, though, he returned from his journey, not saying wether or not he defeated the Enderdragon, and then said he was going to summon and defeat the Wither in the Nether, and left the next morning.

They exchanged tales, about things from the books their father wrote between journeys, about the Nether and the horrible things in it, about Steve's boring, day-to-day life. They discussed the now-reddened sword, the Nether Star, the End, and anything of interest they could think of. They talked until night, and agreed they'd spend a week training, packing, reading, researching, brewing, hunting, butchering, woodcutting, mining, and, of course, dreading Monday, but not for the usual reason. They went to the grand bedroom, and, with smiles on their faces, got their share of sleep, especially Ozen.

Chapter I: May 4, 2014. Chapter II: May 7, 2014. Chapter III: May 10, 2014. Chapter IV: May 12, 2014. Chapter V: May 12, 2014. Chapter VI: May 16, 2014. Chapter VII: May 19, 2014. Chapter VIII: May 19, 2014. Chapter IX: May 22, 2014. Chapter X: May 25, 2014.

Steve pulled the thick, sleek string of his bow gently between his fingers, letting it go and listening to the sound it made. Adjusting his fingers' positions near the middle and where he pressed down near the edge, he played a short melody. It sounded nice, against the gentle breeze of springtime. As Ozen shot a sturdy wooden arrow at the woollen target some thirty metres away from him, Steve looked up to see that Ozen’s face was a dissatisfied one. His light blue eyes were half-covered by his eyelids, and looking down with disappointment. He had been getting pretty close to a bull's-eye, and Steve was confident he could get it soon, so he encouraged Ozen, suggesting different techniques from the rough yet comfortable stump he had been sitting on. The brothers had been out in the plains behind Steve’s mansion, and Ozen was getting sweaty in the warmth. His hair, medium in length, was wet, and his red T-shirt and blue jeans were almost sticking to his peach-coloured skin. After about twenty or so tries, Ozen had an arrow landed in the very center of the red circle he had been aiming for for the five minutes he had been shooting. "Good job, Ozen," commented Steve, readying his bow and catching the arrow Ozen tossed him. He pulled the string close to his face, aiming the arrow between his fingers up at a perfect angle and letting it go, landing a bull's-eye with no problem.

"How do you make such great shots?" Ozen asked Steve.
With a grin, Steve replied, "Years of practice. You just need to try over and over until you get it."
"Can we try some more after breakfast?" Ozen sighed.
"Sure thing. I am pretty hungry." Steve replied. He ran over to the target and pulled out the arrows, tossing them into a quiver and bringing them into the mansion. Ozen followed close behind, famished. Once Steve had tossed the arrows into the armoury, he raced Ozen to the kitchen, shouting, "Last one there has to make breakfast!" Steve was falling behind, but jumped in front of Ozen right in front of the large kitchen doorway and won. "No fair! You can't jump!" Yelled Ozen.
"It's perfectly fair. You could've jumped, too," replied Steve.
"Ugh. Well, I guess I'm making breakfast."
"Yup. Now you'll be motivated to cook well for me, because we'll both eat what you make," Steve told him, grinning.

Ozen cooked some eggs, while Steve took out some water. Soon, they were both filled up and ready for more archery. The brothers ran over to the armoury, grabbed some bows and arrows, and ran outside, Steve running over to Bolt’s doghouse and letting him out before sprinting past the target and shooting the center with perfect aim as he went, Ozen watching in awe. Steve tossed him an arrow and he loaded, aimed, and fired. He hit the ring around the center.
"Good job, Ozen," Steve commented as he hit the center yet again. "Maybe you'll become a pro sooner than I thought. I'll have to get even better soon." As Steve laughed, Ozen loaded another arrow and aimed at the target. He heard a loud "Augh" and a thud. He looked over to Steve and found him lying on the ground on his back, coughing in pain, an arrow in his stomach. Bolt was by his side, barking at Ozen.
"Steve! What happened?" Ozen yelled, running over to him. Steve merely coughed and pointed to the trees nearby, equipping a potion. As he drank and the wound healed, pushing out the arrow onto the ground. Ozen ran closer to the trees, loading his bow. However, he saw nothing. He equipped his sword, walking into the trees. The clanking sound of rocks colliding caught his ear, and he turned around. He couldn't see far in the dense forest, but he could see some cloth quickly being hidden behind a tree. Steve and Bolt walked slowly towards the tree, Steve getting his sword ready. As Ozen was about to jump and swing his sword, he saw an arrow flying toward him.

Ozen swung his sword down, blocking the arrow. He heard Steve's footsteps, quickly getting louder, and he turned around, and signalled him to go around the left side of the tree. Ozen went around the right side, and together they jumped and swung their swords at the other side of the tree. That was exactly what they hit. The trunk of the tree. Whoever, or whatever was hunting them was sneaky. They walked forwards to see where the thing went, and Steve, after a few steps, turned around suddenly and shot an arrow into the tree's leaves. A ripping sound came from the leaves, and something large and grey fell from them. A skeleton. A skeleton that was wearing an old, ripped set of adventurer's leather armour, and was equipped with two bows and a quiver full of arrows. It was about two and a half metres tall. It sat down, and frowned, looking at the ground.
"Who are you? Who sent you? Why are you trying to kill us?" Demanded Steve. Ozen was barking madly at it.
“They’re Coming. There will be a war, you must leave. Now.” The skeleton told him.
“Who’s coming? When? Bolt, down!” Bolt pounced. As he was jumping at the Skeleton, it disappeared. Bolt landed on the tree’s roots and looked around, confused. Steve did the same. “Where is it?” Ozen asked.
“I have no idea,” Steve slowly replied, “But I think he knows what he’s talking about. I think a war is coming. There is one thing I know for sure. Bolt is in a lot of trouble. Let’s go.”
“Okay. I’m coming.”

“Nice room you got here. It’s a shame you only use it for plotting.” Ozen was trying all the couches in the underground room Steve had led him to. Bolt was in his doghouse, saddened by how mad at him Steve was.
“It’s not plotting. I don’t plot. I plan and I strategize.”
“And you scheme.”
“I don’t. Now sit down on a chair.”
“But the couches are so comfy and woollen!”
“I don’t care. Sit on a chair.”
“The chairs are literally slabs of wood!”
“Well, sit on one of them!” Steve took out his shears and took down the couch.
“Aww… Anyway, what are we plotting?”
“It is not a plot, and I have planned it already. We are going to set up traps and turrets. Now sit on a chair.”
“Okay. Won’t we need more people, though?” He sat on the chair at the head of the large glass table.
“Yes. I’ve thought of that, and we have them. There’s an entire alliance for that.”
“Really? Who’s in it?”
“ I have several fighting wolves, and ocelots to send messages. I have a stable full of good horses. We also have some villagers willing to supply us with tools, weapons and potions. Some of them have also volunteered to fight.”
“That’s all?”
“Of course not. There’s also Spencer, Nicholas, Jennifer, Mark and Wolfric.”
“Who’re they?”
“Humans.”
“There are… other humans?”
“Of course, Ozen! How much of your memory’s been wiped from the Wither?!”
“I don’t know, but I didn’t know there were more humans...”
“Well, there are. Spencer is the best swordsman I know of, Nicolas can hit a dropped item from a hundred metres with a breaking bow, Jennifer is a master of stealth, Mark is a great redstone engineer, and Wolfric is the best mage I’ve ever seen.”
“Mage? What’s that?”
“Someone who has connected with nature spiritually and mastered the art of manipulating it at will.” Steve said. “At least, that’s what he told me.”
“So... they can grow trees with their minds or something?”
“They can, but they can also shoot fire from their hands, summon mobs, heal people and other stuff like that.”
“Well, then, we’ll definitely win!”
“The war will involve hundreds of Witches on the other side. We’ve got one mage.”
“Can they shoot fire from their hands? It looks like they can’t use their hands at all, actually.”
“They can use their hands, as a matter of fact. Anyway, have you ever heard of advanced redstone engineering?”
“No. Why?”
“I think you’ll like it. I’ll show you.”
“Awww, we haven’t plotted yet!”

Once the brothers were outside, Steve tied a paper containing a message to Mark
to an ocelot and sent it through the forest. It read:

Mark,

How are you? I myself am fine. In fact, I just defeated a not-so-mythic myth called the Wither, a large, flying, three-skulled, heavily armed figure in the “fictional” dimension known as the Nether, which my father discovered. I just returned and saved my brother, Ozen. The rest of my family was teleported to yet another dimension called the End, which was also discovered by my father, as I read in one of his books.
Anyway, I have received a warning from a rather large skeleton that a war will take place soon. I believe that a large band of several hundreds of hostile mobs will soon come to my mansion and try to take over. With their leader dead, the Netharian monsters may have formed an alliance with the Overworld ones. I am guessing that is why this war will happen. The reason I am sending you this message is that I need advanced redstone traps, turrets, golems, etc. for defending myself. I also request assistance in the war itself, and I would like you to ask Wolfric, Spencer, Nicholas, Jennifer and the rest of the alliance to come over in a few days. As I do not know exactly when the war will happen, please come over as soon as you can. I will provide free accommodation until the war is over, at which time you will also be paid greatly.
Good day,
-Steve

(P.S. The accommodation comes with cake! That part’s not free, though...)

As the ocelot sped away into the trees, Ozen asked,
“Is the cake free for me, Steve?”
“It will be if you can hit the bull’s-eye from fifty metres on your first try.”
“I thought you’d say that.”
“Well, you’d better get training. Just because a dkeleton almost killed me doesn’t mean we stop.”
“If you say so. Let’s go.”

As they practiced, Ozen started hitting the bull’s-eye more often, but not enough of the time to get free cake. He was much better than he was when he first returned, but he was still nowhere near as good as Steve. Of course, if Steve needed to call in another archer, that meant he wouldn’t be good enough for the war. This made Ozen uneasy because it made him realize the war would be a lot bigger than he first thought. He wondered how Steve knew this.
“Steve, how big will the war be, exactly?”
“I don’t know, but I’m preparing for the worst. That’s why I’ve called in the whole alliance.”
“Well, I have a really bad feeling about this war...”

Two days later, at about noon, Mark, Wolfric and Spencer arrived. Steve and Ozen were outside at the time, hunting. When Steve was about to shoot a wolf, the ground he was standing on rose up suddenly. Steve misfired and hit a tree’s branches, knocking one branch down. He called out to Ozen, who had been chasing nearby zombies hidden from the light under branches.
“Hey, Ozen! They’re here!”
“How do you know, Steve?” Ozen came out from a patch of trees. Steve beckoned him towards the house.
“Wolfric gave me a signal.”
As they made their way home, Steve explained what had happened and that that was how Wolfric gave him signs that something had happened, or, in this case, that he had come.

“Jennifer said she’d be here soon,” Mark told to Steve when he got to the mansion. Ozen was making lunch.
“What about the villagers? Are they coming?” Steve wanted to make sure everyone was coming.
“The villagers will get here when the war starts,” stated Wolfric. Nobody asked how. They were generally nervous to ask him anything they didn’t understand about what he said. He was mysterious. He wore black robes with gold trim, and had short, black hair that almost matched his very dark blue eyes. He was a relatively young mage with tanned skin. Mark had light skin, green eyes and medium-length, brown hair and wore light grey shorts, contrasting his black shirt that said “Powered by Redstone.” Typical, Steve had thought as Mark came into the mansion. Spencer wore iron armour everywhere he went, carrying a diamond sword. He had medium-length blonde hair that contrasted his brown skin and almost always wore the same grey pants and plain light blue T-shirt. Jennifer had long, red hair and wore black pants and a black T-shirt. She had bright blue eyes and light skin. She carried all the necessary supplies for diversions, assassinations and break-ins. She knocked on the door while Ozen was serving a lunch of steak and bread. Steve opened the door and Ozen went to get some food for her, as he had not served any.
“Hey, Jen,” Steve said, smiling. “We were just about to have lunch. Come in.”
“Thanks, Steve. So, when do you think the war is going to be?”
“Hopefully not too soon. We’ll need time to prepare and set everything up.”
“Hey, Jennifer, your food’s ready!” Ozen called. The three of them sat down at the table and started on lunch.

During lunch, Nicholas arrived wearing dark grey pants and a light green T-shirt. He had yellow eyes and dirty blonde hair, along with pale skin. The septet had several conversations about almost anything they could think of. They conversed about Spencer’s new sword fighting technique, Mark’s “Advanced Redstoning” book, Nicholas finding a guy who poisons arrows really well, and Ozen’s year in prison. They also talked about the coming war and their positions. Mark and Steve argued about what types of traps they’d be using. Mark won the argument, but Steve was unhappy about the cost. At least Spencer will buy some cake, he thought to himself. He’s always had a big appetite.

Once everyone had finished eating (except Spencer), they all went to what Ozen told them was Steve’s “plotting room.” As they made their way down the stairs and through the Piston door, Steve told them all the details he knew. In the plotting room, as he had given up calling it anything else, he pulled out maps and diagrams, plans on papers he had to pull out from under stacks of books, and everything else he needed for the planning part of the war. When he had everything ready, he started telling them his plan. Ozen interrupted several times about things like Steve’s horrible drawings and handwriting, but after several hours of questions, plan-sharing and cake-eating, everyone had memorized the plan:

Before the war, Mark would quickly set up the turrets and traps. Steve would help out and set up dummies to test on. They’d build a 3-metre wide trench around the mansion and have piston extensions coming from both sides to form a bridge of piston arms for the Alliance members to walk across. Lining the mansion walls would be turrets. The ones near the entrances would fire fire charges, while the rest would fire arrows. They’d be set on a clock, and in the plotting room there would be three buttons to control them: Slow, Fast and Off. The turrets where the most monsters go to would have hoppers and chests to restock themselves. The ones lining walls would have only hoppers full of arrows. They would automatically be set on a slower redstone clock than the rest. Steve didn’t know why they should have turrets if they had a trench filled with lava until Mark reminded him about Spiders climbing walls and skeletons shooting at people. If any spiders managed to get up onto the roof, they would find a ladder down. However, this was not wide enough for spiders to get through. That would take care of them. Spider jockeys, though, are smart and fast, agile and strong. They could get on the roof, then the skeleton would get off the spider and climb down. That one skeleton could change the entire war, which is why Mark would set up a sticky piston to extend directly under the hole and block it off. When the Alliance members wanted to get through, they’d hit a button and the Sticky Piston would retract for 5 seconds, also pushing a ladder back into place.

Spencer would go out and fight, and he would take one of Wolfric’s teleportation scrolls with him so if he got low on health, he would use it and be teleported back to Wolfric’s teleportation site safely. He would do this multiple times, and Nicholas would be helping him from a tower, firing arrows at mobs from his enchanted bow. If a skeleton fired any arrows at him, he would just need to step back and a pressure plate would activate pistons that push down glass to block arrows from hitting him while still allowing him to see.

Jennifer would sneak and parkour on treetops to the source of the monsters, finding out if there was an enemy fortress or lair. If there was, she’d use a teleport scroll to get back and run around the mansion telling everybody. When Spencer teleported back, Wolfric would tell him and he’d fight his way through, aided by Jennifer and Wolfric. Once they got there, they’d get in and blow it up. If there was no enemy base, Jennifer would come back and tell everybody. That would be bad. It would mean the entire Alliance would have to move to the emergency base, or maybe even the bunker. Wolfric, aside from possibly assisting Spencer and Jennifer, would hollow out the trenches beforehand and cause lots of damage to the terrain all around the mansion with spells during the war, therefore killing monsters. He said that if he had enough power, he might be able to bring the sun up and kill all the zombies and skeletons (unless they were wearing helmets), for this war would undoubtedly be happening at night.

Ozen would be constantly checking entrances and running around the mansion, looking for mobs. Steve would be supervising, revising, supplying, and fighting. He’d give Nicholas more arrows, Wolfric more runes, Spencer health potions, Mark redstone things if repairs were needed, and everybody food and water. He would also light up the area all around the mansion with Torches before the war.

“Everybody’s clear?” Steve asked. Everybody murmured in agreement. Spencer asked if there was any cake left. Ozen made his way out the door and told Spencer he’d get some. Spencer took out an emerald from his pocket.
“Okay, everyone,” Steve announced, “Let’s get some sleep.”

The two large stone brick rooms in which the seven Alliance members slept had comfortable beds made from very fine wool crafted with silkish string from cave spiders. It was soft and warm, but the best part of the bed was the blanket. It kept warmth in or out like nothing any of them had ever known was possible. On hot Summer nights, it kept you cool, but it kept you warm and cozy in the freezing Winter weather, especially with a fireplace in the same room. The only thing any of them disliked about the beds was how it felt to get out of them at half past four in the morning to the sound of Steve yelling at you.
“Get up, everyone! We gotta prepare! The war could start tonight, and we could all die if we’re not ready soon!” Everyone in the room moaned.
”Rotten potatoes for breakfast if you’re not ready in five minutes!” Everyone slowly got up as they moaned some more. Those beds were a bad idea, Steve thought to himself. Way too nice. Steve left the room to go yell at the others, and as the people got up they could hear his voice through the 3-metre-thick wall. As they got up and changed, they talked about the war. Nicholas told them not to worry about it, but he was actually quite anxious. He hadn’t slept well; he felt a little bit sick. He was the last one in the room when everyone else had left.

Ozen was quickly cooking eggs and toast for breakfast in the kitchen.
“Ozen, your bread is on fire!” Steve shouted.
“Oh! Thanks,” replied Ozen as he put it out. “I’ll get some more.”
“Watch it this time.”
“‘Kay.”
“Guys, eat up. We have to prepare.”

After a quick breakfast, Steve, Mark and Wolfric went outside to dig a trench, fill it with lava and set up the traps and dispensers. When they were done, Mark started to set up the redstone wire and Steve went inside and went upstairs to read through his father’s books again and look for useful fighting techniques. He had stacked all the books in a pile on one side of the chest, the side opposite the portal that his father had used to send books and items through. To his surprise, though, there was a paper by the small, blue portal in the corner. He picked it up and found a note. It looked like it was quickly scribbled.

Stuck in the End. Not much time to write. Enderdragon, one of the mythic monsters I heard of, is keeping us here. Gather all eyes of ender you can, hide them. Endermen have teamed up with Netharian monsters, and I’ve overheard talk of a war. Get Alliance together, prepare the mansion for an attack. Endermen will be searching the mansion every night, but they won’t hurt anyone; you guys’d kill em. Don’t set traps, they can’t know you know they’re coming. They’ll only take eyes of ender, I don’t know why. Hide all the ones you have, gather them during the war. After, throw them to find stronghold. Anyway, I also overheard talk of a very powerful weapon you could use to defeat the Enderdragon. It is called Bane. The Enderdragon has hidden it underground, just above bedrock under the centre of Populous City, over a hundred kilometres from here. Wolfric can teleport you there, but you will be sent to the edge; the city has a magical barrier. You will have to go to Simon’s Swords, a sword shop East of the edge you’ll go to. Tell manager who you are, ask if you can use the washroom. Go alone; manager doesn’t trust many. He’ll lead you to a tunnel. Go through it, find a ladder downward and follow the path. Once you hit dead end, dig down. Should be there. Have to stop writing now. Good luck.

Steve gasped as he read the note. He took some blank paper and a quill, scribbled a note that said he read the paper, and tried to shove it through the portal. It wouldn’t go through.
“I’ve gotta tell this to everyone!” Steve ran downstairs, taking the steps three at a time. He jumped down the last six or seven, almost knocking his head on the low ceiling. He called in Wolfric and told him about the note. Wolfric was suspicious.
“Well, I guess you could use one of my teleport scrolls back, but I’m not sure where Populous City is, exactly.”
“I’ll get a map.” Steve went down a hall and turned into a room near the end. He came out a moment later, holding a map.

“Here you go. Populous City is...” Steve searched the map for a second. “Right here.”
“Okay. I’ll get you there.” Wolfric muttered something Steve had never heard before as he handed Steve the scroll to get back. After a few seconds, a bright blue circle appeared around Steve in the floor, and runes like an enchantment table absorbs from bookshelves surrounded him. They grew, shrank, split in half, glowed, and started to spin slowly around Steve. When they had all but blocked his vision, Steve found himself floating off the ground and spinning. Everything around him was a blur of green and silver, until he toppled onto the ground. He stopped spinning, and he looked around. He was on grass, and in front of him was the edge of Populous City. On either side was a plain, with tall grass and flowers speckled on the ground. He walked towards the edge of the city, still dizzy, and saw dozens of people on the gravel street. He checked his compass and walked East until he saw Simon’s Swords.

It was a small, brick building with a large statue of a diamond sword resting on top of it. He walked inside, and saw item frames lining the walls. They held polished, fancy swords with gold trim on the hilts, heavy swords with rusting blades, small, sharp daggers and every other type of sword Steve knew of. He looked around rows of shelves, chests, and enchantment tables, regretting not bringing any emeralds. A worker saw him looking, and came up to him. He had short, bright red hair and wore a blue suit that said “Simon’s Swords” and had the name “Josh” written in squid ink. He asked Steve,
“Need help picking out a good sword?”
“Not right now. Do you know where I can find the manager?”
“Simon is in that office,” Josh told him.
“Thanks.” Steve walked over to the office just as Simon was walking out.
“Hi. I’m Steve. Can I use your washroom?” Simon looked at him for a while, and grinned.
“Right over here,” Simon told him. “I’ll show you.” Josh was confused as Simon and Steve walked into the washroom together.

“The tunnel’s right here. I’ll distract Josh so he doesn’t realize you haven’t left.” Simon was prying a loose slab off the floor in the washroom. “Good luck. You have a way back?”
“Yep. Thanks.” Steve hopped into the tunnel. Simon slammed it shut.

Steve was surrounded by darkness. He pulled a torch out of his pocket, and it miraculously lit itself, showing Steve a path just big enough for someone to walk through, but he had to crouch in it. He held the torch in his left hand, his enchanted diamond sword in his right. He walked down the tunnel, holding the torch in front of him. He soon saw a faint light at the end of the tunnel, and as he walked towards it he saw a ladder going downwards. He took it, and saw two paths. The note didn’t say which one to take. He took the left path, and as he walked down it he felt something tug his leg. He looked down and saw a tripwire. The ceiling behind him collapsed.

“Not again,” he sighed. Zombies were coming towards him from ahead. Steve simply turned around, equipped an enchanted diamond pickaxe, and started breaking through the rubble. He realized it wasn’t budging. He turned around and slashed through several zombies, making his way through the crowd. As he was swinging his sword at a zombie, though, it ducked and tackled him, assisted by several more from behind him. He fell to the ground, and he couldn’t move. He quickly switched out his Diamond armour for an iron set with thorns VII (his mother had enchanted it) and the zombies were knocked off. He swung his sword madly again, ducking and rolling past the zombies until he saw two iron doors blocking his path. He plopped down a button and ran through the doors.

Steve fell about fifteen blocks and onto stone brick slabs. He looked up and saw a long pathway leading towards a solid wall.
“This must be the tunnel that I dig down in.” Steve told himself. “I start digging at the end.” He walked to the far end of the tunnel and equipped his enchanted diamond pickaxe. He struck the ground with it and broke it almost instantly. He fell over a hundred metres into a large cave and got knocked out by the ground of stone bricks.

When he came to, he was in a cage; he was surrounded by iron bars. The cage was hanging from a chain in the middle of a large, spherical chasm with stone walls and a lava-flooded floor. A large black shape, like a shadow on the wall cast by a large fire, was moving around the edges. Steve felt warm wind on his face as it spiralled around him.
“And who are you?” A voice echoed around the chasm. It sent a chill through Steve’s feet and up his spine. It was the sound of death. It smelled a bit like death, too.
“I’m Barney.” Steve replied sarcastically.
“Oh. I was looking for a fellow by the name of Steve. Perhaps you have seen him. Blue eyes, slightly purple? Brown hair? Blue clothes? If not, I guess I’ll have to kill you.” The last two words echoed off the walls.
“You monster.”
“Yes, I am. How did you guess?”
“I’ll kill you!”
“That you won’t. Not without this...” A large Sword with a statue of a dragon curling the base of the blade and the hilt flew out of nowhere and landed in front of Steve’s feet.
“Bane?”
“If that’s what you wish to call it. You can’t have it, though.” Bane disappeared in a cloud of red smoke.
“You’re the enderdragon.”
“You know, I thought you would be a little bit smarter. I’m surprised you hadn’t figured that out earlier. I prefer the name Drake, though. Or, as the Endermen have nicknamed me, Banesbane. They aren’t very creative, are they? You see, they call me that because I have the one thing that can kill me. I have basically destroyed it. There’s no way to get it now.”
“Why was a trap set up here?” Steve demanded.
“You’re not very patient, are you? Well, I set up this trap to catch you. Isn’t that quite obvious?”
“You can’t kill me.”
“Why not? You have no way out.” Drake grinned.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Drake.” Steve pulled the teleportation scroll out of his pocket. It disappeared just like Bane.

“I’m wrong? I’m pretty sure that was your only way out.”
“That shows what you know. I’ve got an army coming to back me up.”
“Now you’ve resorted to bluffing? I think I’ll destroy this now.” Steve gasped. Breaking the scroll was how it was activated, and Steve did not want the Enderdragon in his mansion.
“No!”
“Whyever not?” Drake sounded like he was having fun toying with Steve. Steve’s mind raced.
“If that’s destroyed, my companions will know. They’ll come and get me out.”
“Of course they will. You see this Lava down here? Well, watch this.” Drake tossed the scroll into the lava.
“I don’t see anyone co---” Drake was interrupted as the lava quickly drained from the bottom of the chasm. Everything went pitch black.
“Well, then.” Drake sounded mildly surprised. “I think your friends will have fun cleaning that up.”
“No! I’ll kill you!”
“I doubt that. Anyway, with your means of escape destroyed, and your base flooded with lava, I don’t think you have a very high chance of winning that war. Well, with that out of the way, let’s get down to business.”
“What do you want that you can’t get like you got Bane and my scroll?”
“Simple. What I want is not an actual thing.”
“What are you talking about?!”
“It is not a thing. Not something you have, yet something you have.”
“What is it?!”
“I want---” Drake stopped talking and stared ahead. Steve turned around.
“Hey, Steve! Need a hand? ‘Cause we’ve got lots.” It was Christopher, the leader of the Villager section of the Alliance. He had ten iron golems behind him, equipped with diamond gear, and one diamond golem - one of Steve’s creations - holding him up.

“CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!!!!!” Christopher screamed at the top of his lungs whilst still trying to make a good Element Animation villager impression. He was still working on it, for he was a big fan. The diamond golem - equipped with miniature redstone turrets and a diamond battle axe - lifted him down and started running. His black top hat (he wore it everywhere he went. Nobody asked why) almost fell off his large, bald, tanned head. Aside from the top hat, he wore normal farmer robes. A bridge extended from the entrance to the chasm, to Steve’s surprise. That is, until he saw Wolfric at the back of the group.

“What happened to the teleport scroll, Steve? The mansion started filling with lava. We blocked it off, but you’ll have to clean it up soon. We had assumed the worst, but Nicholas told us not to lose hope. I guess he was right, huh?”
“You should’ve drained the lava, Wolfric!”
“You don’t know much about magic, do you?”
“Okay, okay! Just get get me out!”
“That’s what they’re doing.” Wolfric gestured with his head towards Christopher and the golems.
“You can’t just break open the cage or teleport me out or something?”
“Nope. Magic’s not that simple.”
“Well, can’t you at least help them?”
“Oh, okay. I will.” All the golems got a Speed III effect. One of them accidentally fell off the bridge because it was going too fast. “Oops.” Wolfric chuckled.
Drake destroyed the bridge, taking out two golems as he went. He bit the chain holding Steve’s cage up off the ceiling. He swung Steve and his cage at the diamond golem, knocking it back several metres and knocking back another Iron Golem. The diamond golem got back up and shot at Drake. Drake didn’t even notice.

Wolfric pushed out another bridge, which let a few iron golems jump onto Drake. One punched him in the eye, but the dragon blinked and the golem’s hand broke off. He shook his head and the others fell to the bottom of the chasm in a heap, causing a loud clanging sound. Steve was surprised the golems’ attacks had no affect on Drake, but then he recalled something from a book of myths at home:

The ender dragon, a mighty winged serpent that protects its homeworld, the End, from intruders, can only be harmed by explosions or humans. This makes it invulnerable to most mobs’ attacks.

Steve got an idea. He pulled some TNT out, and lit it with his flint and steel. He chucked it at Drake’s mouth, but it missed. He lit another, and it got lodged in Drake’s thin throat; it exploded and Steve heard a near-deafening scream. It was the sound of death dying so hard it died to death. Drake threw Steve at the golems and disappeared in a large cloud of red smoke. Steve’s cage broke open.
“We killed it!” Christopher was rejoicing. Steve recalled something else about the enderdragon from the myth book:

As it is a mighty beast, the ender dragon will drop a mighty reward upon its death. Priced higher than a king’s ransom, it will drop its egg; a metre-high, heavy object that will teleport if you try to place anything on it. It will also drop more experience than imaginable, along with a portal back to the Overworld.

“Christopher, Drake’s not dead. He left.”
“What do you mean? You blew him up!”
“No. I didn’t. I barely damaged him. He left on his own. If he had died, he would've dropped its egg, tons of experience and a portal.” Christopher was disappointed that he hadn’t helped Steve destroy the dragon. Christopher was slightly childish. Steve noticed that.
“Well, you saved me. If you hadn’t come, I’d’ve been dead right now.” Christopher’s face lit up. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

* * * * *

When Steve got back to the mansion, he and Wolfric cleaned up the lava. It took a few hours, but they finally finished up. Wolfric said he could now use magic to clean up, but Steve believed he could do it the whole time and only helped at all because he wanted dinner. The room was a mess filled with ashes, but it wasn’t filled with lava anymore.
“Well, that took longer than I expected,” Steve told Wolfric, slightly accusingly.
“Hey, my magic is limited.” Wolfric was grinning a bit.
“You can empty out a trench and fill it with lava in five minutes, but this takes hours?” Steve was getting mad, which only made Wolfric grin a bit more. Steve sighed and walked up the stairs, murmuring to Wolfric that he would start dinner. Wolfric cleared out all the ashes in the room in three seconds with a blink of his eyes, a flick of his wrist, a concentration of magic within his index finger and the muttering of the word “Impulverify,” and then followed him.

Ozen, Spencer, Mark and Jennifer were sitting in the kitchen, talking. Steve told them what had happened as he cooked some steak and got out some milk from an ice-lined chest. They were speechless, and Mark almost fell out of his chair.
“You did what?!” Ozen questioned, almost in shock.
“I chucked TNT down his throat. So what?” Steve pretended it wasn’t a big deal. As most brothers do, they annoyed each other. A lot. He walked over to them and sat down to chat.
“So, your father’s note was a trick?” Jennifer asked.
“I think Drake let him overhear, and he lied so he’d tell me.” Steve shrugged.
“What’s your dad’s name, anyway?” Spencer asked Steve.
“Solomon, why?”
“Just wondering. Anyway, I think your steak’s about to catch on fire.” Spencer was an expert on food. He had smelled the steak, and could tell it was getting too hot on the iron pressure plate on Iron bars above the fire in the stove.
“Thanks.” Steve ran back to the stove and took the steak off, quickly tossing each piece onto plates and picking up the milk. He served dinner as Nicholas came in. The seven ate happily.

Once again, the Alliance members were woken from their cozy sleep in the byssine beds by Steve yelling at them. This time, though, it was accompanied by horns and gongs sounding. It was dark outside, and Nicholas (who was sleeping by the window) saw faint, yellow-orange light coming from the ground through his tired eyes. They were moving towards the mansion, illuminating the faces of skeletons, zombies, spiders, and all the other hostiles… Including endermen.
“Oh, no,” Steve said. “I forgot about endermen! Guys, get up!” He came around with a bucket of cold water, dunking the members’ heads in it as he went to wake them up faster. “Get up! The war’s starting!” The six heads were energized by the water, and everyone got up to change as they sputtered. “The monsters will be at the gate any second! Get to your stations!” He gave them water bottles and bread as they ran through the door.

Mark ran downstairs to flip the switches that controlled the turrets and bridge, Nicholas and Jennifer bolted up to a tall stone brick tower to shoot monsters and to see from where they were coming (Nicholas falling behind because he had to grab his bow and arrows he had been keeping in the armoury), Spencer grabbed some potions and his sword before sprinting to a window to see how far back the monsters were, Ozen and Wolfric following behind, and Steve got supplies to give out to the Alliance. When Spencer saw how close the monsters were, he gasped. He couldn’t open the large iron doors without letting several heavily-armed zombies in. Fortunately, they started fighting over who would come in first and started hacking at each other with swords. One of them was knocked onto the bridge, which Mark was contracting. It fell into the lava-filled trench.

“I’ll take the secret side entrance and take ‘em out,” Ozen told Wolfric and Spencer.
“No, I’ll get them out of the way,” Wolfric interjected. He thrust his right hand towards the door and yelled “Barbatrate!” The zombies were pushed backwards and toppled over each other into the trench. Spencer then punched a button that opened the door, let Ozen, Wolfric and himself through, and then it slammed itself shut again. He hit another button, one that extended the piston bridge, and then the three ran across. The bridge contracted, and then the chaos began.

Six or seven tall endermen appeared in front of them, binding their arms in some purple light that kept them from moving their arms. Wolfric tried to yell “Bolide,” the fireball spell, but his mouth wouldn’t move. Jennifer, still looking for where most of the mobs were coming from, saw this and alerted Nicholas, who was sniping spiders by the side of the entrance. He quickly turned and saw them, and shot at one enderman. By instinct, it sensed the arrow and teleported a few metres to the side, then teleported back when the arrow had landed. Nicholas bit his lower lip and then dug through his quiver. He found what he was looking for: undetectable arrows from a ranger shop in Populous City. He loaded it into his bow and shot at the enderman nearest to Ozen. It whizzed through the air, and hit the enderman in the side of the head. The others looked around, but were also shot, four at a time, with Nicholas’ great technique. The purple bands of light faded and the three people charged at the mobs, Wolfric staying behind a few metres to use magic on the monsters. Spencer slashed at skeletons and Ozen fought off zombies, Wolfric fending off the ones on the sides. Nicholas shot off monsters behind them, and in a few seconds Jennifer saw which general direction the monsters were coming from.
“Hey, Nick, I found it. See ya!” Nicholas nodded and she took a teleport scroll from a pair on the ground, then slid down the ladder to the bottom of the tower.

(Now concentrating on Jennifer)

Jennifer soon found Steve and quickly told him she had found where the monsters were coming from. He smiled and gave her some extra supplies as she ran out the doors, pressed the button to extend the bridge, and sprinted off to the left. She fended off a pack of zombies and then climbed onto a tree. There were ghasts burning down the forest by Steve’s mansion, and she avoided them as best she could. She jumped and climbed on the treetops for several minutes, sometimes breaking for water, until she saw a beacon’s light far off in the distance. Instead of teleporting back and telling everybody, though, her curiosity got the better of her and she sprinted towards it until she saw a large nether brick castle at least twice the size of Steve’s mansion. When she was there, Jennifer took out a rope. She looped the end and threw it onto a lowish walkway on the castle. It fell down. She threw it again, and it hooked on to something. She started to climb up, and then she saw fire on the rope.

“What the---?!” She saw the fire spread down the rope fast, and then it started to burn her hands. She fell off, down at least thirty metres. Thinking fast, she pulled out a water bucket and splashed it onto the ground. She fell into it, and it broke her fall. She scooped up the water and shook her damp hair.
“Well. I can’t climb a rope anymore, seeing as that was my last one and my hands are burned.” Jennifer said to herself. “I guess I’ll just have to break in.” She pulled a bort-tipped gold pickaxe and literally slashed the wall. She soon came to a large room with intricate, complex patterns carved into its quartz walls. She looked around, but didn’t see the skeleton jumping down at her from above.

“Get o---!” Jennifer’s yell was muffled by cloth held up in a bony, skeletal hand.
“Quiet, you idiot!” The skeleton hissed. “Do you want to live or not?!” He took the cloth off her mouth.
“Who are you?” Jennifer demanded in a loud whisper.
“I’m Alamort. I’m on your side.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Trust me, I am! I was a human,” Alamort told her. “I’m in the Oblocation.”
“The what?”
“The Oblocation. We’re against hostility towards humans. In other words, I’m a double agent.”
“Um...” Jennifer was surprised at this. “Okay. So, who else is in this Obligation thing?”
“Not ‘Obligation,’ Oblocation! There’s me, Tellerg, Leger, Deterst, and some other endermen, skeletons, spiders and a few wither wkeletons.”
“Well---” Jennifer suddenly remembered she was supposed to go back to the mansion. “You’re coming with me.” And with that, she grabbed Alamort’s arm and reached into her pocket. Alamort didn’t try to stop her. She ripped the teleportation scroll in two, and a light blue flash of light almost blinded her and Alamort.

They were in the mansion again, in the basement. They were sent onto a dark blue square pad on the floor that looked like a carpet. Wolfric was down there, and seeing Alamort he raised his hand. Before he finished saying “Emberluock,” Jennifer shouted,
“Stop!” Wolfric was confused (which, coincidentally, was exactly what the spell would’ve done). “He’s on our side.”
“Yeah, right,” Wolfric said sarcastically.
“I am,” Alamort interjected.
“I can see if that’s true.” Wolfric placed his index and middle fingers of his right hand on Alamort’s skull, gently pressing against the bone.
“What are you doing, Wolfric?” Jennifer asked.
“Telepathy.” After a short while, he told her, “he’s telling the truth.”
“I’m in the Oblocation,” Alamort told Wolfric. “I’m on your side.”
“Any others?”
“About ten in all.”
“I’ll tell everyone,” Wolfric said. “Keep an eye on him, Jennifer.”
“Okay.” And Wolfric was off.

(Now concentrating on Nicholas)

Nicholas shot at the spider climbing up the wall. It dodged to the left, and feinted when Nicholas shot another arrow at it. It was almost at the top of the wall, so he shot three arrows at once. It crawled right to avoid the center shot. Its eight eyes did not see the one on the right, though, and it was hit between the pincers and fell into the trench. Three more spiders crawled up, one being ridden by a skeleton. He shot the skeleton off, causing it to knock down a spider as it fell. He loaded two arrows into his bow and pulled back. He was caught off guard, though, as another spider jumped at him from behind, stinging him with its prickly hairs. He knocked it off and shot it as his eyes teared up from the hairs. He blinked away the tears so he could see the two Spiders still climbing up the tower. He loaded his bow again and shot them off. He heard a ghast scream from above him, and he aimed up to shoot it. He released the arrow and it collided with the fireball, sending it back at the ghast and killing it. While he was looking up, though, Debel, the warlord, general and second-in-command wither skeleton for the Wither, saw him distracted. Debel reached into his quiver, removed a wither arrow (his own invention), and loaded his bow. He aimed at Nicholas’ chest, and released the wither arrow. The wither arrow hit Nicholas, and he fell over, his life being sucked out and into it. He removed the teleportation scroll from the floor and ripped it.

Nicholas saw Jennifer and Alamort. He didn’t care about the skeleton.
“Help,” he managed to wheeze. “Get a milk bucket.” Jennifer ran over to a chest and removed some milk and a potion of regeneration. She gave it to Nicholas. Nicholas drank the milk, but it did nothing. He drank the potion of regeneration, and his health slowly came back.
“Get... Wolfric.” He told Jennifer. Jennifer ran upstairs. Nicholas limped over to the chest and drank another potion of regeneration.

(Now concentrating on Wolfric)

As Wolfric was throwing blaze charges at zombies with his Bolide spell, he heard Jennifer’s voice. He muttered “Uprist” and they both found themselves on floating pieces of land that had risen from the ground.
“What?” Wolfric demanded.
“Nicholas is withering.”
“Tell him to drink some milk.”
“It didn’t work.”
“Oh.” Wolfric’s face turned from an annoyed one to a serious one. He yelled “Pandate” and the monsters saw the pieces of land fall, but no people.
Wolfric and Jennifer saw Alamort and Nicholas by a chest. Nicholas wasn’t moving.
“Sorry,” Alamort told them. It was hard to see on a skull, but they could easily tell from his voice he was sad. “I helped keep him alive as long as I could.”
“Oh, no,” Jennifer said, her eyes watering. “Nicholas... withered away.”

“Is there anything you can do?” Jennifer was trying to blink away tears, but they came back in double time.
“Sorry, but no. Death’s death, and magic can’t do anything about that.” They stood there for over a minute, until Alamort reminded them that the war was still happening. Wolfric waved his hand and muttered “Quisk.” A casket appeared around Nicholas. A quick Pandate spell caused him to disappear from the room, teleporting him and the casket to the bedroom.

“We’d best be back to the fight,” Wolfric murmured. Him, Jennifer and Alamort walked upstairs. Wolfric told Alamort, “You should probably hide down there. We don’t want the monsters to know there’s a double agent.” Alamort nodded and walked back downstairs. Jennifer spread the word of Nicholas’ death and of the nether brick castle. When the Alliance heard of it, Spencer, Wolfric, Jennifer, Steve and Ozen ran off towards it. Mark stayed behind to defend the mansion.

On the way to the castle, Steve asked Wolfric why the villagers hadn’t showed up. Wolfric had forgotten to telepathically tell them the war had started. He cursed (literally), and then hurriedly contacted the villagers. Then, the five started running again. They took occasional breaks for water, but mostly ran on the treetops. Jennifer was the fastest, being trained with feats like that.

Soon, the five Alliance members had made their way to the enemy castle. Jennifer told them it was guarded by either blazes or magma cubes, so Wolfric whispered “Evanesk.” The group became invisible. Then, he muttered “Poculum” and they were suddenly on a thick sheet of clear glass. Wolfric made another spell, this time “Uprist,” which made the glass rise into the air. Up there, the entrances to the castle were visible. Spencer leaned over to look at the entrances, which caused him to slip on the glass, shattering it.

The five Alliance members fell through the glass, towards the ground. Before Jennifer could take out her water bucket again, Wolfric yelled “Vice!” The ground under them turned to water (the water in Steve’s pool turned into dirt, though, as Vice is the spell of switching). Spencer got some glass stuck in his face, which Wolfric removed with an “Iatro” spell. When everyone was out of the water, Wolfric said “Vice” again, and the water turned back to dirt. For the second time that day, Jennifer shook the water out of her long, red hair.

Wolfric shook his head disappointedly, for some monster had heard them and now there was about a hordesworth (one and a half hordesworths at most) of monsters running at them with battle axes made from iron. Wolfric sighed and said “Temporise” and stared intimidatingly at the army. They all froze. He then looked at the group and said “Keister” whilst waving his hand towards them. Nothing obvious happened. Nobody asked what he had done. He then cleared his throat and waved his hand at them again, accompanied by a short “Pandate.” They were then behind the horde of monsters. He nodded towards them and they started charging again. They stopped when they realized that the group they were attacking was no longer in sight. They started blaming it on each other and fought each other. Spencer chuckled and the five entered the nether brick castle.

The main gate was made of iron bars, and it had been lifted up with a pulley for the monsters’ exit. They were being lowered, and that didn’t leave much room for the humans to enter. Jennifer, being trained in situations like this, was just behind Spencer, who was behind everyone else, but still managed to sprint past him and jump, rolling under the bars as they closed. Spencer didn’t make it in. Wolfric tried to teleport him in, but the gate and walls were heavily enchanted.
“Just go ahead,” Spencer told them. “I can find another way in.”
“Here,” Steve told him, handing him an iron pickaxe through the bars. “Mine through the walls. The iron bars won’t break.” He had been trying as Spencer and the rest had been talking.
“Thanks,” Spencer told him. He walked around, trying to mine the nether brick. He couldn’t mine any of the large front wall, and he disappeared over the edge as he tried at every block. The others walked into a large hall decorated with redstone torches and paintings of the Wither and monsters.

Much like the nether fortress Steve had explored before, the nether brick castle had long halls and several twists and turns. Wolfric led the way with his magic ready, but it was unneeded, as his Keister spell had made them unnoticeable. They saw several monsters, none of which saw them. Ozen waved his hand right in front of one armoured Skeleton’s face, and it didn’t notice. Ozen started laughing. He accidentally elbowed the Skeleton in the ribs (literally), and it fell over backwards. Ozen backed away, shocked, and the Skeleton sat up, confused. It looked around with its eye sockets, and then stood up again. It then flew straight up and hit the ceiling, smashing into pieces and then falling onto the floor.
“What?” Ozen asked surprisedly.
“We can’t have anyone know we’re here,” Wolfric told him. “Don’t worry, though; I put a Keister spell on it. Now, let’s go. Be careful this time.” The Bones disappeared. After almost half of an hour of hurried walking, they came across a hallway chock-full of Skeletons, some of which had Swords along with their Enchanted Bows and armour. One of the Skeletons near the front of the hall turned when they entered. It yelled, and the others charged at the group.

“What did you do, Wolfric?!” Ozen yelled.
“I think the Keister spell wore off! I’ll put it ba---” Wolfric hadn’t finished his sentence before one heavily armoured Skeleton stabbed him in the stomach and covered his mouth with its hand. Wolfric tried to jump on it, but it was quite strong and Wolfric wasn’t exactly the best when it came to melee combat, as he usually used magic. The Skeleton took him to a Door and hid him in a closet.

Ozen was slashing Skeletons with his Sword, Steve was using his Sword and Bow very well, and Jennifer had somehow gotten on top of an arched doorway; she could see everything that was going on and she was sniping Skeletons. She saw Ozen get shot in the side and get tackled, so she jumped down and destroyed the large pile of bones. One skeleton shot at her from the other side of the room, disarming her. A few dozen more (3.1 baker’s dozens, to be exact) started shooting at her. Steve saw what was going on and, aided slightly by Ozen, he deflected the arrows and shot the skeletons while Ozen killed them with his sword. Steve picked up the two swords Jennifer was using and passed them to her.
“Thanks, Steve.”
“No problem. Here.” He gave her a potion of regeneration.
“Thanks.” She said before quaffing it.

Once Jennifer, Ozen and Steve killed the skeletons, they freed Wolfric. He used a Keister spell to hide them, then a Circuitus spell to lead them to the center of the monsters. They took a hallway and a few quick turns, and then they found a room full of runes.

In the room with the runes, Wolfric grinned. A lot.
“These runes can allow me to use a Heliosis spell and bring the sun up. We’ll kill all the zombies and skeletons. I’ll also be able to make it rain, taking out the majority of the endermen and blazes.”
“Perfect,” said Steve.
“Indeed,” replied Wolfric.
“Cool,” Ozen stated.
“Definitely,” Jennifer added.
“Of course,” Wolfric interjected.
“Maybe we should go now,” Steve reminded them.
“You’re right,” Wolfric agreed.
“Probably,” Ozen noted.
“Yeah,” Jennifer added.
“Mm-hmm,” Wolfric said.
“Okay, let’s go now,” Steve told them.
“Yep,” Ozen said.
“Well, of course,” Wolfric said.
“Now,” Steve said again.
“Oh, yeah,” Jennifer remembered.
“Yeah,” Ozen said.
“I’m pretty sure Steve meant now,” Wolfric told them.
“Of course he---,” Ozen started, but Steve pushed him out of the room. The rest followed.

The way out of the castle was (of course) much harder than the way in. The amount of monsters in the halls had doubled. Along with that, Spencer mined through a wall as the other four were about to leave.
“I’m here,” he told them happily. He had found out the “Keister” spell was one that kept him unnoticeable, so he walked in through the hole he had mined. He was then tackled.
“What the---?!”
Some of the monsters started yelling.
“Don’t let him get away! He must be invisible!”
“I got ‘em! I got ‘em!”
“Hands off! I’m bringing him to the boss!”
“No, I am!”
“I’ll cave your skull in!”
“I’ll burn you!”
“I’ll eat you! I’m hungry...”
“I have a sword! Get off him!”
“No!”
“I got his shoe!”
“No, I got his shoe!”
“You smell horrible, Geran!”
“You smell worse!”
“Stop acting like kids and get him!”
“I’m getting him!”
“Go die again!”

Spencer managed to get out without any of them noticing. His shirt was torn more than once, and he was missing a shoe and a third.
“Here you go,” Wolfric told him nonchalantly, waving a hand at him and saying “Iatro.” His clothes were fixed.
“Hey, why don’t you use a spell on them? I think that Keister thingy wore off.”
“Looks like it, Spencer,” Wolfric told him. The (approximately) eleventy-six mobs that were coming at them were heavily armoured. “Good idea.”
“Thanks.”
“Palmate.”
The monsters, along with around 100 cubic metres of castle behind them, burst into flames after a low, rumbling sound like an earthquake. The Alliance members, somehow, were completely unhurt. There was a large crater in the ground with a medium-sized meteorite in the center. It was smoking and seemed to be made of obsidian.
“Cool spell, Wolfric,” said Ozen in awe.
“Palmate makes a big wizardly hand thingy, not a meteor. That wasn’t me.”
“Well, who was it, then?”
“Me,” came a clear, yet almost whisper-esque voice from behind the rubble and smoke. “I did that.”
Steve drew his enchanted diamond sword. “Who are you?!”
“Well, Steve, that’s not very polite.”
“How do you know my name?!”
“You knew mine, so I don’t see how that’s surprising.”
“Who are you?”
There was a bright blue flash as a figure emerged from behind the rubble. It looked like a human, but made of light so intense and bright it cannot be described with words except with this description. It was wearing white robes with bort trim. “I am Deodate, but you’ll probably know me as a fellow by the name of Nicholas.”
“Nicholas?”
“Deodate.”
“But, you’re...”
“Dead? Yes, I am. I’m very dead. Just about as dead as one can get, but I’m pretty sure I’m right here.”
Jennifer interrupted. “Sorry, but can you explain what’s going on here?”
“Of course. I’ll start from the beginning. Or, should I say, the end? Either way, I’m running out of time here. We’ll have to hurry this along.”
“Okay,” said Steve. “Start from the beginning and/or end.”
“That I will.”

The five living Alliance members sat down on spruce slabs Wolfric conjured up with a quick “Vice” spell. Deodate spoke first.
“You see, after a human dies, as I found out after I died, they go to a sort of room. I won’t explain in too much detail, as we’re running out of time, but it is definitely a sort of room. There, a nice fellow by the name of Grey tells you what will happen. There are five possibilities: You can turn into a monster such as a zombie or a skeleton, you can respawn without your memories or equipment, you can stay there forever, you can have a choice of five options, or you can leave.”
“Leave?” Steve asked.
“Leave. You just stop existing at all, I think. Anyway, the choice of five options lets you become a monster, leave, respawn, stay there or do what I did: Become a Paragon.”
“Paragon?” Spencer questioned.
“Isn’t that from Dungeons and Enderdragons, that game I have?”
“Yes, a Paragon. No, it’s not from Dungeons and Enderdragons. It’s what I am, an angel of sorts. Anyway, Grey tells you what you do. Because I was a good person and died in war against evils, I got to decide.”
“Being a Paragon lets you do that?!” Ozen asked in awe, gesturing towards the rubble of the castle.
“Once in a while, just like letting me come here. From that, though, I won’t be able to come back here for quite a while. It has to do with heavenly energy and things like that. I only have about ten minutes left, and besides, you’d better be back to that war of yours soon.”
“Let me guess,” Spencer told him. “You’ll be relaxing wherever the rest of the Paragons are while we almost get killed in a war against the evil dragon to help Steve rescue his parents.”
“Of course not,” Deodate replied, surprised. “I’ll be doing anything but relaxing. I don’t want you five to die. Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I don’t care about you and I can go skipping around in clouds for the rest of eternity, picking flowers and singing. Anyway, what questions do you have?”
“Can you see the future?” Jennifer asked.
“No, I cannot.”
“When will you be able to come back again?” Wolfric questioned.
“I’m not sure, but not before the end of the war.”
Wolfric looked disappointed.
“What else can you do?” Steve asked slowly.
“Nothing much stronger than that. I’m not sure what; being a Paragon is very peculiar. I’ve only been in the Matrix for a month or two.”
“The Matrix?” Ozen demanded.
“A month?! It’s been less than a day!” Spencer exclaimed.
“One at a time. Yes, Ozen, the Matrix. It’s where Paragons stay. Spencer, time moves faster when you’re dead, and even more when you’re in the Matrix. A year there is little over a week here.”
“So, when you said you have ten minutes here, you meant, like, a second?” Spencer asked, confused.
“No, I meant ten minutes here.”
“Oh, good.”
“Any other questions?”
“Yes,” said Jennifer. “What’s the Matrix like?”
“That’s quite difficult to explain; it often changes, and in some forms, I cannot even describe it in words. It’s like a strange dream you get after eating mushroom stew just before sleeping: changing at random, inexplicable, and you never quite understand it.”
“Do you have to use the bathroom in the Matrix?” Ozen asked slowly.
“You do not. When I said ‘questions,’ I meant ‘important questions.’”
“Okay, okay.”
“Nothing else? I have to leave soon.”
Nobody had any more questions.
“Well, then, I’ll have to say farewell.”
With that, Deodate made an even brighter light than before and then a pillar of light shot into the sky. It then thinned out and disappeared, along with Deodate himself.

“Well, then,” Steve said, standing up and looking around at the remains of the castle. “We’d better go back now.”
“Yup,” said Ozen.
“Uh-huh,” Spencer agreed.
“Yep,” Jennifer said.
Wolfric nodded.
Steve sighed. “Not again!”
The group left the rubble.

**************************************************

At the mansion, Wolfric said he had to prepare the runes. He took them to Nicholas’ tower, and the rest of the Alliance kept the Monsters away. Spencer and Ozen took the back, Mark manned the turrets on the sides of the mansion, and Steve and Jennifer defended the front. Steve stayed by the mansion and used his bow, and Jennifer went ahead and killed the monsters with swords. One skeleton with very good aim shot the potions of regeneration and instant health from Steve’s pocket, and then shot at his heart. He tried to dodge it but wasn’t fast enough; it hit him hard in the right side of his chest. He fell over.

Jennifer saw what happened and killed the skeleton who shot him, but four spiders had jumped to get to him. They hit the wall of the trench and climbed up, then pounced on Steve. He was almost dead by the time Jennifer got back to the mansion wall and killed the spiders. Jennifer had used all the potions of regeneration she had, and if Steve stayed outside he would be killed easily. The nearest potions were in the mansion basement, and they were far from the mansion’s doors. Neither of them had any teleportation scrolls, and even one ender pearl would kill Steve. There was, as it seemed, no way for Steve to live.

“There’s... no way I can live... through this. *cough* I’m going to... die.” Steve slowly said, wheezing.
“Yes, there is. I’ll go get someone. You’ll live.”
“I’ll die...” Steve was coughing.
“I’ll carry you, then.”
“If you... do that... we’ll *cough* both die.”
“Not if I can help it.” Jennifer picked up Steve and kept herself between him and the monsters. She walked over to the door slowly. She had to fight off spiders and get hit by a few arrows, but she made it to the door. She opened it and carried Steve to the basement. Alamort got Steve a potion of regeneration.
“Thanks. You saved my life.” Steve said after drinking the Potion.
“No problem. You did save mine in the castle.” She smiled and ran upstairs before Steve finished the potion.
“Bet you liked it when she carried you.” Alamort teased him.
“You don’t really like anything when you’re almost dead for five minutes. Do you know what it feels like?”
“Oh, I was almost dead for way longer than that. Then I died. It was horrible.”

Wolfric, at the top of the tower, looked up to the sky and used an “Uprist” spell to float in the sky. He said “Rebarbate” to deflect some arrows, and then looked into the sky again dramatically. He then crushed three quarters of the runes in his hand.

Wolfric felt a surge of wizidrical energy flow through his hands, up his arms and into his chest. It spread all over his body and he felt like he had eaten three enchanted golden apples in a row. He cleared his throat (which made a near-deafening boom and took out a few nearby bats) and called out “Heliosis” into the sky. His voice echoed several times and it could be heard for kilometres. The Moon gradually sped up and the stars faded. The Sun came over the horizon as the Moon set on it. It paused somewhere in between morning and brunchtime levels.

As the Sun stopped in the sky and carried on as nothing had happened, Minecraftian mobs everywhere were shocked and confused. Monsters everywhere burned, including the ones attacking the mansion. The zombies caught fire and their green skin was scorched and burned. The skeletons’ bones turned black and fell apart.

Crushing half of the runes left over, Wolfric yelled “Plerum nibula!” It began to rain. There was only a slight drizzle, as it is hard to make it rain even with runes, but the endermen and blazes were killed.

As he crushed all the runes left, Wolfric’s eyes turned light blue and started to glow. He started to give off a cyan light, and shouted “Palmate” and “Bolide,” creating several fireballs to fall from the sky and light blue magical hands to erupt from the ground. The hands held up all the monsters left and the fireballs burned the health from them. After all the monsters had been killed, Wolfric’s glow faded out, his eyes closed and he fell from the place he had been floating.

As Wolfric fell unconsciously through the air and down towards the sniping tower, Steve saw what was happening as he walked outside. As he realized what was happening, he quickly equipped an ender pearl and chucked it onto the tower. When it landed, he equipped a water bucket. He dumped the water out under Wolfric. Wolfric landed in the water, and almost floated off the edge. Steve grabbed him and pulled him back, then equipped and plopped down a boat. He lifted Wolfric into it and then pushed it down beside a waterfall formed on the edge of the tower. When the boat was down in a body of water on the roof of the mansion below the tower, Steve picked up the water with his bucket and jumped into the waterfall as it disappeared.

Getting to the bottom of the waterfall as it cleared itself away, Steve called Alamort, and when he came up (wearing a leather cap), he told him to get a potion. While Alamort was running down the stairs to get a potion, Steve checked Wolfric’s pulse and made sure he was breathing. Luckily, Wolfric was only unconscious. When Alamort came back with the potion, Steve positioned Wolfric so the potion would go down right, and then slowly poured it down his throat. Wolfric didn’t come to.
“You know, Steve,” Alamort began,sitting down in front of Wolfric. “When I died and spawned as a skeleton, I kept all my memories. I don’t think that’s ever happened before.”
“So?” Steve asked.
“It happened because of a witch I met. Her name’s Whey. She enchanted my helmet when I was a human so I’d keep my memories when I died. She’s really good with magic. I bet she could revive Wolfric.”
Steve looked at Alamort. “Where does she live?”
“Most of the time, she’s in her hut somewhere South of Populous City, I think.”
“I’ll bring Wolfric there as soon as I can.”
“How?! It’s a kilometres away!”
“I’ll find a way.” Steve was determined not to lose another Alliance member.

Steve did some quick testing with ender pearls. He lay his hand on Bolt before throwing an ender pearl, but Bolt didn’t come with Steve when he teleported. He lay his hand on Bolt while throwing the ender pearl, but let go before it landed. Bolt stayed where he was. He threw the ender pearl, then touched Bolt before it landed. As long as he kept his hand on Bolt until after he teleported, Bolt came with him (and then became confused, as he did not know what just happened or how he just got hurt). Steve grinned.

“Ozen, I need your help.” Steve had healed Bolt, put him in the doghouse and came inside.
“With what?” Ozen was eating chips, something he had made with cut pieces of potato fried with the oil of some vegetables.
“With getting Wolfric to Populous City.”
“To where?” Ozen raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, yeah, you don’t know. It’s somewhere East of here.”
“Why do I need to help him? He’s a mage, he can get there himself.”
“Not when he’s unconscious.”
“What?!”
“He’s unconscious. When he brought up the Sun, he fell.”
“Fell where?”
“Onto the top of the tower. I saved him, but he was out cold when he fell.”
“I’ll tell the others.”
“Okay.” Steve nodded. “Then, meet me outside.”
Ozen nodded back.

In a minute, Ozen came outside with some chips. Steve had some potions of resistance (brewed by their mother before she was captured. She kept them in the basement) and four pairs of iron boots with feather falling XIV (enchanted by her as well), along with a lot of ender pearls.
“With feather falling boots and resistance potions, we won’t be hurt from ender pearls.”
“Why do we need ender pearls?” Ozen asked, his mouth half full of cooked potato slices.
“Populous City is pretty far away, you know.”
At that moment, Alamort came outside. “This hat is really uncomfortable.”
“I don’t care. Let’s go.”
“Why’s he coming?” Ozen asked.
“He knows where Whey lives.”
“Whey?”
“Whey. A Witch that can revive Ozen.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
“Okay.” Ozen tossed the last of the potato chips into his mouth. Steve gave him a pair of enchanted iron boots and a potion of resistance, then put another pair on Wolfric and slowly poured the potion into his mouth. He then gave a pair of iron boots to Alamort, then a potion, and then put on the last pair of iron boots and quaffed his potion.
“So, how does this work?” Ozen asked, puzzled.
“Like this.” Steve replied. He then threw an ender pearl very far to the East. Before it landed, he put one hand on Ozen’s shoulder and the other on Wolfric’s. Alamort put his bony hand on the hand Steve had put on Ozen’s shoulder. The three teleported, unharmed.
“Cool.” Ozen remarked, grinning.
“Exactly.” Then, Steve repeated the process over and over again.

Soon, the group was at the gate of Populous City. It was made of iron bars, decorated at the top with diamond, iron and gold. It was large and intimidating. They stood and admired it for a few seconds, and then turned and walked South, Steve and Ozen carrying Wolfric. Steve and Ozen then lifted down Wolfric, and Steve chucked another ender pearl and teleported the three others. He did this several times.

About thirty seconds before the potions of resistance wore off, Alamort said: “Hey, look! I think that’s Whey’s hut!”
“Where?” Asked Steve, looking around.
“There.” Alamort pointed far South-East.
“I think I see it, too.” Steve threw another ender pearl, and it landed about fifteen metres away from the witch hut. He and Ozen helped Wolfric to the steps.

“Can you grab the door, please, Alamort?” Steve’s hands were full, as he was carrying Wolfric.
“Yeah.” Alamort grabbed the wooden door and opened it.
“Eh?” A high-pitched voice came from the hut. “Who’s there?”
“Darin.”
“Hmm?”
“Darin. You enchanted my helmet. My friend is hurt, and we can’t seem to heal him.”
Whey came to the door. She backed up when she saw a skeleton, and she equipped a potion of health, as it would hurt undead monsters.
“Wait!” Alamort yelled, shielding his face.
“Darin?”
“Yes?”
“You’re dead.”
“I noticed.”

The three others came inside, and Whey examined Wolfric.
“When did he become unconscious?” Whey asked.
“Just this morning,” Steve said. “After he brought up the Sun and made it rain.”
“Hmmmm…” Whey squinted and looked at Wolfric’s face. She slapped it. “Was he using runes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it looks like he used too much magic at once. He should be well again in a few months.”
“We can’t wait a few months,” Ozen explained. “We need him back as soon as we can!”
“Well, I may have the ingredients to brew a potion for it, if you have some gold to pay for it.”
“I do.” Said Steve.
“Good. I’ll brew the potion.”

In a quarter hour, Whey had the potion ready. “Thirty-two gold nuggets, please.”
Steve gave her the gold.
“I’ll just pour this down his throat.”
“What is it?”
“Water, raw fish, some seeds and a few more ingredients.”
“Why?!”
“To wake him up.” Whey poured it down Wolfric’s throat.
“That’s a ripoff!” Ozen exclaimed, standing up. He would have continued, but Steve stopped him and he sat back down. He kept staring angrily at Whey until Wolfric coughed and slowly sat up.
“What?” Wolfric asked slowly between coughs as he looked around. The others explained to him what had happened. He thanked Whey and the four left.

After they left, Wolfric picked up a stick from a nearby tree and etched a strange shape in the ground with it. He said “Pandate.” The etches on the ground started to glow, and the four were covered with floating blue symbols that spun and closed around them. They spun and were soon back in the mansion. When the symbols disappeared, Steve was surprised to see Ozen rolling on the floor, laughing.
“What are you doing, Ozen?”
Between laughs, Ozen said, “Those things tickle!”
“What?”
“Those symbols! They tickle!”
“Hm.” Wolfric said. “Strange.”

When the four entered the house, everyone there was near the entrance and saw them arrive. Spencer came up and told them that the funeral had ended.
“The funeral?” Ozen asked.
“Yes. The funeral for Nicholas.” Spencer told them.
“You can’t just have a funeral without us like that!” Ozen exclaimed.
“We all have to leave soon.”
“I’m not leaving.” Wolfric interrupted.
“What?” Steve questioned.
“You saved my life and went to a witch’s hut to revive me. I’ll repay the debt and help you get to the End and save your family.”
“Me too.” Spencer said. “I need more to do. All I’ve done for the past few months is kill zombies, and I need experience too.”
“I’ll go too,” Jennifer said. “You’ll definitely need lots of help.”
“This isn’t a job for me.” Mark said. “I’m good with redstone, but not much else, and I’m a horrible fighter.”
“The Oblocation will try to help, but only endermen and humans are allowed in the End, as a law states, according to Tellerg.”
“Tellerg?” Ozen asked.
“He’s an enderman.”
“Oh, okay.”
“So, it’s settled, then,” Steve interrupted. “Ozen, Jennifer, Spencer, Tellerg, whoever else from the Oblocation can come and I will head to the End.”
“I think you’re forgetting something.” A deep voice came from another room. An enderman walked in. He was tall and had bright pink eyes. “You need to find a portal first.”
“Hey, Tellerg,” Alamort said casually. “Before that, won’t we need ender pearls?”
“Eyes of ender, to be exact. How many ender pearls do you humans have? And how much blaze powder?”

After Mark was paid and left, and after the group crafted as many eyes of ender as they could from the drops in the war, Tellerg warned them. “You know, the endermen will be coming in here every night to steal your eyes of ender.”
“Yeah, I know.” Steve told him. “I’ll hide them.”
“You don’t get it. Endermen are masters at this sort of thing. I’ll keep them safe until you humans are ready to go. I’ll get the endermen in the Oblocation ready in secret.”
“It’s a deal, then.”
“You’d best be getting ready now.” With that, Tellerg teleported away. Alamort disappeared.
“Let’s go. We need to prepare.” Steve told everybody.

The next morning, Steve, Spencer, Jennifer and Wolfric trained. They trained with the sword, the bow, and more. They packed their inventories (Steve supplied equipment and items, as most of the others didn’t bring that much. They didn’t pay him, as he insisted, since they were helping him), hunted for more ender pearls, and Steve renamed his heavily enchanted diamond sword “Excalibur” to sound cool. Tellerg made daily checks to see when they were ready, and they soon were.

“Finally.” Tellerg said when they said they were ready. “How many eyes of ender have you humans collected?”
“We have twelve here, and you have the rest.” Steve told him.
“Yes, I do.” Tellerg told him, handing Steve the eyes of ender.
“Can I ask you something, Tellerg?” Ozen interrupted.
“Yes.”
“How come you don’t try and kill anybody when they look at you?”
“I actually don’t know. Endermen don’t like it when you ask. I like to think it has something to do with anger issues, or just hatred of humans doing anything involving them. I have neither.”
“Hm.”

After getting their armour on, the humans asked Tellerg how eyes of ender and ender portals worked.
“First,” Tellerg told them, “You need to throw it.”
Steve threw an eye of ender. It flew East, but was stopped by a wall. It popped and fell as an item on the floor.
“Then, you follow it and throw some more. I’d suggest going outside.”
The group went outside. Steve threw an eye of ender, and it flew farther to the East then last time. It shattered and purple particles burst out of it.
“What?” Steve asked.
“It broke.” Ozen stated.
“That happens sometimes.” Tellerg told him. “Just keep on going.”

In a few long hours, the group had gotten to Populous City. They entered, Steve still throwing eyes of ender. One flew downwards and on to a house.
“What does that mean, Tellerg?” Steve asked.
“The ender eortal is under that house.”
“Well, then, what do we do now?” Steve asked.
“Go in, I guess.” Ozen said, walking towards the house.
“We can’t just come into someone’s house and break the floor!”
“Well, let’s ask, then!”
“Okay...”

Ozen asked the villager who lived in the house: “Hey, can we tear up your floor so we can put these things in a stronghold and go to the End?” He showed the villager an eye of ender.
“Um,” The villager mumbled. His nose seemed to get in the way of his mouth. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Sure!”
“Thanks!”
Steve sighed as Ozen cut the wooden planks out. He gave the villager a few emeralds, and then got a diamond shovel and an enchanted diamond pickaxe and dug down in a spiral.

When the group fell into the stronghold, Jennifer pulled out a torch for light. There were a few zombies and skeletons blocking their path. They were killed quickly, and the group ventured through the stronghold. It was more of a maze than a stronghold. In three hours and after the group sat down and ate, they came across a group of endermen. Tellerg, knowing that if he was seen with humans the Oblocation would be exposed, teleported away. One enderman teleported Spencer’s sword to it, and took Spencer, disappearing a second later. The other three were slain. Tellerg teleported back. The five discussed getting Spencer back, but Tellerg told them that if an enderman took him, they wouldn’t be able to find him very quickly.

After another hour of wandering, the four humans and the enderman found the portal room. Silverfish protected it, but with a “Bolide” spell from Wolfric they caught on fire and died. Steve took out the spawner.
“Steve,” Wolfric said. “I’m not going in there.”
Good, Steve thought. He was going to keep them all there except for Ozen and himself anyway, for it was a fight for his family.
“Dragons, according to myths, don’t like mages at all. However, I will give you runes so you can do spells. What harms the enderdragon?”
“Only humans and explosions.”
“Well, I’ll give the runes a Bolide spell. Crush them and it will cause an explosion. Make sure to focus on the enderdragon. I’ll go to the other room for silence and concentration.”
“Okay.”
Wolfric left, and Ozen finished placing eyes of ender in the portal frame. The portal opened.
“Whoa,” Ozen said, leaning over the portal. He accidentally leaned too far and fell in.

“Jennifer,” Steve said, placing a chest on the ground. “This is a chest my dad found while mythbusting. If I use this,” Steve held up a strange, green item. “Then the chest will fill up. Keep it open and keep an eye on it.”
“I’m not coming?” Jennifer asked.
“No. This is a fight between my family and Drake.” Steve had a very strict voice, like a school teacher.
“It’s going to be dangerous.” Jennifer was serious and right.
“Most definitely.” Steve wouldn’t make an exception.
“Someone could die.” She was right again.
“Someone will. I’m just hoping it’ll be Drake.” Steve’s voice seemed to soften the slightest bit.
“Steve, the Alliance can’t afford to lose another member.” Jennifer couldn’t persuade Steve.
“That’s another reason for you to stay here.” Steve seemed to have a counter for everything Jennifer said.
“What if you don’t come back? I’ve already had to save your life once.” Now, Jennifer was almost begging, having been told about Steve’s first encounter with Drake.
“And I’ve saved yours. If I don’t come back, then I don’t come back. You can’t change that.”
“I can if I come with you.” Jennifer was almost crying, it seemed.
“But you won’t.” Steve now sounded less like a teacher and more like a parent.
“But...” Jennifer never finished her sentence. Not because she was shot, or because Drake popped his head through the portal, but because she was too busy kissing Steve. His eyes widened in surprise. This had never happened to him. Not knowing what to do, he stood there, half in shock. After a moment, he weirdly moved his arms around her into a hug. A few seconds later, Jennifer removed her lips from his. “Be safe” were the last words she said before Wolfric walked in, gave Steve the Bolide runes and Steve nodded at Jennifer and stepped into the end portal.

Steve fell onto an obsidian platform underground where Ozen was waiting, back against the wall.
“Well, that took you long enough. What happened?”
“Um... Wolfric took a while to enchant those runes.”
“Well, let’s go.” Ozen was gesturing to a hole he had been digging upwards in the wall.
Steve equipped his enchanted diamond pickaxe and mined through the wall, making a staircase upwards.

The brothers broke the surface in thirty seconds, and saw the End; a floating island in space with obsidian pillars topped with ender crystals. There were endermen everywhere, and Steve saw Drake in the sky. Drake landed.
“You two might want these.” Drake tossed them a pair of pumpkins. “The endermen don’t like being looked at.”
“That’s because they’re ugly!” Ozen teased.
“No, it isn’t. Anyway, I assume you don’t have Bane.”
“And why do you assume that?” Ozen bluffed. Steve elbowed his side.
“Tsk, tsk. Don’t try to make me think you have this...” Bane flew out of the sky and landed in the ground in front of Steve. Ozen picked it up, but it quickly disappeared in red smoke.
“Why aren’t you killing us?” Steve asked cautiously.
“Before that, I thought you might want to see your parents.”

One particularly large obsidian pillar lowered to the ground in front of Steve and Ozen. It was hollow, and a bedrock cage was pushed up out of it. It had horizontal bedrock bars instead of vertical ones so nobody could walk between them. Once it got to ground level, the brothers could see Atza and Solomon, their mother and father. They were lying on the ground.
“You killed them?!” Ozen yelled.
“Of course not. They’re merely unconscious. And dying slowly, too, so you’re partially right. However, it’s not my fault. They’re dying of hunger, not slow-acting poison or anything like that. I did knock them out, though.”
“Give them back!” Ozen yelled, even louder than last time. Steve’s ears hurt.
“You know, Ozen, you can’t just yell at an evil dragon to do something and expect it to do what you say.” Steve suspected Drake had forced information out of Atza and Solomon, and that’s how he knew Ozen’s name.
“Come on, Steve. We can take him.” Ozen was walking towards Drake, who had landed on the ground. Steve stopped him.
“Not yet.”

“Steve, your plan won’t work. Trust me.” Steve could tell Drake didn’t actually know about the plan, and he could also tell Ozen could tell, too.
“Yeah, right.” Ozen said.
“Explosions hurt dragons, not fireballs.” Steve’s eyebrow lifted. He had no idea how Drake knew the plan. He had asked Wolfric the previous day about fireballs, and Wolfric explained how they
exploded upon contact, which Drake didn’t know.
“I have my spies, you know. I know everything that happened in the stronghold. Including what happened just before you came here.”
“What’s he talking about, Steve?” Ozen asked.
“Nothing. He’s trying to play with our minds.”
“You know what I mean.” Drake seemed to be enjoying himself. “I never knew you and Je---” Drake didn’t finish his sentence; Steve had fired an arrow at him. It got lodged between two large, black talons. Drake flicked it off.
“Steve, what’s he talking about?” Ozen asked again.
“Nothing.” Just then, Steve saw Tellerg out of the corner of his eye. Being very settle, he was signalling Steve. Steve didn’t dare look at him, but, being very settle, he signaled Tellerg back to show he had seen him. Tellerg brought four or five other endermen beside him. They all nodded slightly.

“You haven’t told Ozen yet?”
“What are you talking about?” Steve pretended not to know.
“Ozen, you might want to know, if Steve won’t tell you: he and---” Drake never finished that sentence, either; he was attacked from behind. The endermen in the Oblocation had attacked him. Ozen took out his sword, and Steve took out Excalibur and his bow. While Drake was distracted, Steve fired an arrow into his neck. He yelled, and Steve’s ears hurt even more. Drake flew down and clawed two of the endermen, but the others teleported away. Drake chased and bit another two, killing them. Then, it was only Tellerg left. He teleported around Drake with a sword that Steve didn’t know he had, stabbing him as much as he could. Steve switched swords with Ozen and shot Drake while Ozen ran up to him and stabbed him with Tellerg. Drake slashed a claw at Tellerg, and Tellerg disappeared. Drake turned around to face Ozen and picked him up. He threw Ozen and he landed on his head near Steve. He got up, but blood was dripping from the inside of his diamond helmet. He took out a potion of healing and drank it.

“What do you want from me, anyway, Drake?” Steve asked.
“Oh, that’s right. I didn’t tell you the first time we met. Steve, I want your soul.”
“My soul?”
“Your soul.”
“My soul.”
“Yes. Your soul.”
“You can’t just have my soul!”
“Of course I can’t. I can’t, but I can.”
“Why do you barely make any sense?!”
“That’s how dragons work.”

Steve shot Drake again, and Ozen ran at him with Excalibur. Drake lost a significant amount of health, but did not die.
“DIE!” Ozen yelled, but Drake threw him again. Steve took back his sword.
“Let me handle this last part.” Steve told him after gulping down another potion of healing. “BOLIDE!” Steve equipped the Bolide runes and crushed them. For rock, they were surprisingly brittle. A group of fireballs hit Drake and exploded. Drake fell to the ground.

Steve ran up to Drake and lifted Excalibur. He drove it into Drake’s head. Excalibur’s blade started to glow and soon turned from bright red (from the Wither) to a dark red-purple.
“RAAAAAUUUGH!” Drake yelled. His talons started to fall off, sinking into the ground when they landed. Experience orbs fell onto the ground and the brothers leveled up several times. A flash of light shot from Drake as he floated up into the air, blinding Steve and Ozen. Then another one came, and another. Too many to count. An ender portal opened in the Ground. There was a bedrock pillar in the middle, a dragon egg and torches on the top and sides.

Atza and Solomon woke up. Solomon looked at Steve in disgust. Surprisingly, his pupils were gone. His eyes were completely white.

“I AM HEROBRINE! I CANNOT BE DEFEATED!” Solomon yelled. Steve noticed that he pronounced it “Herobrine,” not “Heerobrine,” “Herobrin” or “Heerobrin.” His voice echoed, although there wasn’t much for it to echo off of; they were, after all, in a floating piece of land somewhere in space. Steve and Ozen looked at him in surprise.
“YOU. WILL. DIE.”
“Dad?” Ozen said. “I think you’re going crazy again.” Even in a situation like this, Ozen managed to joke. However, he was absolutely right, except for the “Again.”
“YOU ARE NOT MY SON.”
“Are you sure this is Dad?” Ozen whispered to Steve. Steve elbowed him again.
“THE WITHER, IT WAS WEAK. THE DRAGON, SHE WAS A FOOL. I SHALL DO THIS MYSELF.”
At that moment, Wolfric emerged from the hole Steve and Ozen had dug to the surface.
“I sensed you were in trouble and that the dragon had died. Who’s this?”
“My mom and evil dad.” Ozen told him.
“...Okay. Need any help?”
“Yeah. Could you make my dad go away?”
“Yes. Pandate.” Herobrine didn’t move. “Well, then. I think I sense a very, very powerful magician.”
"I WILL KILL ALL OF YOU. BUT FIRST, I WILL HAUNT YOUR NIGHTMARES, APPEAR AT EVERY CORNER YOU TAKE, AND LEAVE A TRAIL OF DEATH BEHIND YOU!” With that, Herobrine disappeared.
“I thought you said you needed help.” Wolfric reminded Ozen, unimpressed at Herobrine.
“Well, I guess you could make the Portal back go back to the stronghold.” Ozen replied.
“Okay. You know, I think Jennifer will be mad when she realizes that I went through the Portal.”
“She’ll be fine.” Steve assured him. He knew she wouldn’t care, as long as they all got back alive (especially him).

Wolfric tinkered with the portal and Steve and Ozen tinkered with the dragon egg. Steve mined it and wondered what it did after freeing Atza. When Wolfric had set the portal, Tellerg accompanied the four into it. When they appeared in front of the portal in the stronghold, Jennifer ran towards Steve. Atza looked surprised.
“Have I been missing something for the past two weeks?” Ozen whispered to Wolfric.
“Either you haven’t or we both have, and I don’t think it’s the former.” Wolfric responded quietly. He then said: “I knew you two were good friends, but I didn’t know you were that good friends.”
“Neither did I, I guess.” Steve said, smiling.
“Or me,” Jennifer admitted. “Until Steve was leaving.”
Ozen asked Steve, “So this is what Drake was talking about? Why did you want to keep it secret?”
“It would distract you from the fight.”
Ozen lifted an eyebrow, but stopped when he saw someone disappearing around a corner. Herobrine would keep his word.

Steve and Ozen told Jennifer and Wolfric about what had happened, the four of them filled Atza in on what had happened in the past two and a quarter years, and then the six set out in search for Spencer. Tellerg rapidly teleported around and found him in an hour. He brought Steve, Jennifer, Ozen, Atza and Wolfric to him, and when they got there they saw Herobrine disappearing from right in front of where they teleported to. Atza jumped with shock.
“What the---?!” Jennifer exclaimed.
“That’s my dad again,” Steve said with a bored tone in his voice, having already seen Herobrine pull his head back from behind a corner twice, whereas neither Jennifer nor Atza had seen him at all. Spencer was being held by the endermen that had captured him before. Four of the five humans that weren’t being held captive fought them off.
“Nice job.” Spencer said sarcastically as he wiped some blood off his iron chestplate.
“Tellerg,” Ozen asked. “What happens when endermen cry?”
“We don’t.” Tellerg replied. “The only crying I’ve ever even seen was when Steve and Jennifer were kissing back there, but I’m pretty sure those weren’t for any sad reason.”“Wait,” Spencer interrupted. “When what was happening?” Steve explained what had happened.“What else happened while I was captured?” Spencer asked.
Tellerg explained: “All the endermen in the Oblocation besides me died, Steve slew the ender dragon known as Drake, Wolfric made the portal in the End come back here,Steve’s dad---” Tellerg was interrupted.
“You made the portal come here?!” Spencer exclaimed at Wolfric. “All those endermen will come and kill us!”
“They won’t,” Steve assured him. “Trust me. They didn’t do anything to stop us, and when Drake died, I think I saw a few of them smiling. I’m pretty sure Drake wasn’t a very good ruler. She didn’t even make them help, which shows how much she trusted them.” Steve was right.
“Wait. So, Drake is a girl?!” Spencer was very confused.
“Was, not is. She laid an egg, didn't she?” Steve then explained about Solomon. Spencer listened intently.

When the party got to the mansion, Wolfric filled the trenches back up with dirt and grass with a “Vice” spell, Atza wandered the mansion and found some food, and Steve found that Mark had remembered to pick up his redstone turrets and other things, as his walls were back to normal and the piston bridge had been removed. He found a paper by the doors that told him Mark was working on redstone implants for swords and bows. I’ll have to check that out sometime, he thought to himself. He pocketed the paper.

Once everyone was healed up, Tellerg invited the four humans who were there for the past month or so to see the rest of the Oblocation. They all agreed. Steve placed the dragon egg in a chest in his basement next to a dozen or so books, everyone took their heavy armour off, and Tellerg teleported the group to a plains somewhere. There were no buildings in the area. Tellerg walked over to the entrance of a cave, and the rest followed. They spelunked down the cave, Tellerg avoiding water at all costs.
“Tellerg, why do endermen get hurt when they touch water?” Ozen asked. He was very curious when it came to endermen.
“It’s a long story involving lots of anatomy and a fair amount of math and miscellaneous science, along with history and fairy tales.” Tellerg replied.
“Never mind, then. I don’t care for that kind of thing.”
“I do.” Jennifer interjected. “I’ve always wondered what it was with endermen and water.”
“Well, okay, then. You know those stories where witches melt in water? Whoever said that got it mixed up. It’s actually endermen, and it’s because of the chemicals and stuff in our skin, to put it simply. They just react violently with water.”
“Endermen are smarter than I thought.” Wolfric remarked.
“Indeed.”
“Wait, wouldn’t endermen be really brittle if that were the case?” Jennifer asked.
“It usually would be. However, magic keeps us okay.”
“You mean, endermen are related to magic?”
“Kind of. Anyway, we’re here.”

The group had encountered a wall.
“This is it?” Ozen asked.
“Of course!” Tellerg responded. “Wait, no. This is a wall. You’re humans. Let’s go.” Tellerg removed some stone and light entered the dark cave.
“Why didn’t you just teleport us here in the first place?” Ozen questioned him.
“Enderman teleportation can be tracked, and this place is suspected of suspicious activity; there are lots of teleportations taking place here and nobody but us knows why, so we now teleport into the general area and walk the rest of the way. There are tons of random teleportations taking place all the time, but usually not so many in a specific place that isn’t a registered Overworld meeting place.”
“So, why don’t you just move it?” Ozen asked.
“Move this? We can’t just pick it up and carry it around!”
“Us humans can.” Ozen pointed out.
“Well, not easily.”
“It actually is pretty easy.”
“Oh, never mind. Anyway, let’s go.”

Once inside, the humans saw that the cave was hollowed out into several rooms that were lit by glowstone. Steve assumed that the wither skeletons had brought it from the Nether. There was a kitchen, a storage area, a meeting place, and a few more rooms. In the main room (about 400 square metres in floor area), a wither skeleton, three skeletons including Alamort and a blaze were playing Dungeons and Enderdragons on a table made of fences and pressure plates. The wither skeleton looked up.
“Hello, Deterst. I’m afraid you’ll have to postpone your game for a while; the humans are here.” Tellerg told the wither skeleton. As he told this to Deterst, the other three skeletons and the blaze looked up as well.
“Really?” Alamort asked. “I was just about to kill a bunch of skeletons!”
“You were killing skeletons?” Steve asked.
“Why not? I need to level up.”
“Anyway,” Deterst interrupted. “Hello.” He had a British accent.
“Have I seen you before?” Steve asked Deterst. “You look familiar.”
“Your wolf tried to kill me once.”
“That was you?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine, that’s what wolves do.”
“So, is this everyone?”
“No, there are two more wither skeletons that aren’t here. I’ll call them in again.”

Deterst walked over to a button on the stone wall that Steve hadn’t seen before, as it was made of stone. Deterst pressed it and Steve noticed a faint orange glow around it that went out when the button stopped giving a signal. “They should get the signal any second.”
“How did you hook that up?” Steve asked Deterst.
“Magic.”
“I see. So, what should I know about the Oblocation?”
“There are seven members now: me, Tellerg, Alamort, Leger, Dacna, Recher, Balis and Deral. Dacna and Deral are the wither skeletons.” As Deterst named all the members, he gestured towards them all except Dacna and Deral. “I’ll show you the rooms. The one we’re in now is the training room and lobby.” Deterst then showed the Alliance members the kitchen, storage area, hidden escape elevator (made by Tellerg), bunker and meeting rooms. After that, he invited the Alliance to play Dungeons and Enderdragons. The two groups played a few rounds (Dacna and Deral came in about halfway through and introduced themselves) until Steve saw Herobrine every thirty seconds or so. He then decided the Alliance should get back to the mansion. The Alliance bid the Oblocation farewell and Wolfric teleported them back to the mansion. Again, Ozen fell to his knees laughing from the teleportation that tickled him.

At the mansion, Steve tinkered a bit more with the dragon egg and Excalibur after buying leftover runes that Wolfric had. When everyone was fine and packed up, Steve, Ozen and Atza saw Spencer, Jennifer and Wolfric to the door. Wolfric teleported away with a “Pandate” spell, then Spencer left, but Jennifer said, “I’d like to stay here awhile and help with saving Solomon from Herobrinism, if that’s alright with you three.”
“It’s Steve’s house and his decision.” Atza stated.
“I don’t really care.” Ozen said boredly.
“Of course.” Steve said, smiling. Jennifer followed suit.
“Steve,” Ozen said. “There’s still a castle a few kilometres from here. What do you plan on doing with it?”
“I believe we should look around and kill all the monsters in it, then loot it. There could be some really great stuff in it.” Steve replied.
“Good idea.” Jennifer added.

After Spencer came in to see what had happened and then left after receiving an explanation, Jennifer got settled in. Steve showed her the rooms she was not already familiar with: the large storage room, the minecart tracks to the bunker (for emergencies), and almost all the other rooms in the basement. She knew of almost every other room, as she had been in them during or while preparing for the war. Once Jennifer knew her way all around the mansion, she, Steve, Ozen and Atza decided it was time for a good, long day of rest.

Upload Dates

Chapter I: July 3, 2014. II: July 11, 2014. III: July 31, 2014. IV: August 18, 2014. V: August 27, 2014. VI: September 3, 2014. VII: September 30, 2014. VIII: October 20, 2014. IX: December 12, 2014. X: January 8, 2015.

Chapter II: The Nether Brick Castle, Part Two

After breakfast, Steve, Jennifer and Ozen suited up to go on an expedition into the nether brick castle. Atza stayed home and cleaned, as she insisted she must do; the mansion was full of “dust creepers,” as Atza jokingly called them (the only dustless room was the one Wolfric cleared out with the Impulverify spell he used before the war). She made them some potions - including one for Steve with very uncommon effects - in case they got in trouble. The three others left and walked through the forest towards the nether brick castle, spotting record numbers of leafless trees. On the way there, they chatted (mostly Ozen) about what might be in the castle, when it was built, who built it (Herobrine or endermen?), where Herobrine could be, and why the monsters needed an entire castle for the war.



When the three arrived, part of the castle was in ruins from the meteorite Deodate had summoned. There was an enormous pile of rubble and broken nether bricks not one hundred metres from the entrance, and in the middle a large hole with a rough meteorite about ten or eleven cubic metres of what looked like obsidian or coal. It had cooled, of course, and upon Ozen’s inspection it was not obsidian, but some black rock none of the three had ever seen before. Ozen saw a hole through to the centre of the meteorite.



“Hey, Steve! Come look at this.” Ozen waved, beckoning for Steve to look closely at the meteorite.

“What is it?” Steve asked as he walked over. When he looked at where Ozen was pointing, Steve said, “Whoa. Jennifer, check this out.” Jennifer walked around the meteorite and saw where the brothers were looking.

“What is it?” Jennifer asked.

“Just a moment,” Steve said. “I’ll clear this out.” Steve took his enchanted diamond pickaxe, lifted it up above his right shoulder and swung it down onto the black rock. The meteorite cracked and broke open, creating a cloud of black dust that made Steve cough. Ozen waved the dust away, revealing several brightly-coloured gems.



“Awesome” was the first word to be spoken, and it was spoken by Ozen. Steve collected the gems and distributed them between the three evenly. They were each about the size of a piece of coal, and very shiny. They were rough and colourful, and they seemed to be glowing slightly. About sixty of them were in the meteorite.



“Well, some more things for Dad’s chest.” Steve said, pocketing one gem of each colour: red, green, orange, blue, yellow, purple, black, white, grey and one clear one.

“Deodate didn’t have to be that fancy.” Ozen commented.

“I agree.” Steve replied. “These could come in very useful, though.”

“Yeah.” Jennifer said, closely examining the gemstones. Steve picked up some pieces of the meteorite that had fallen when he broke into it, and then pocketed them along with the rest of the gemstones.



The three explored the castle more, but found nothing of interest for over an hour. The most interesting thing the group found was a chest with about ten pieces of fire which were, surprisingly, only warm to the touch and didn’t burn anything until was put on the ground. The three each took a few pieces, then continued searching the castle.



After another long hour of searching the many rooms in the nether brick castle, the group was ambushed upon entering the room. Ten and a half dozen zombies riding spiders jumped down from the ceiling where they were clinging, all but one spider rider flipping in mid-air (the one that didn’t got a very bad concussion, and their spider lost a leg and a half, as the ceiling was very high). The two hundred and fifty monsters left all charged at once, some of the zombies wielding swords, a few with bows and quivers of arrows slung onto their backs, and some baby zombies riding small, poisonous, blue cave spiders.



None of the three could see a metre past themselves through the giant mass of limbs, pincers, swords and other monster pieces. They were quickly injured (mostly Ozen, who had the worst sword of the three), and were on the ground, helpless, and being tackled by zombies. Steve removed one of his mother’s special potions (a bright shade of magenta and very warm) and threw it.



A spider’s eye got in its way and the glass smashed, releasing glowing liquid everywhere. It dissolved monsters in seconds and flew onto about a quarter of the room’s monsters in fifteen seconds. Once the potion hit the ground, it would somehow jump right back up, hitting the bottoms of even more spiders, dodging the humans at all costs, even if it meant turning in mid-air and throwing itself at more spiders and zombies. In about a minute, there were no monsters left in the now blood-stained room, and the potion had cooled and stopped, now a solid, dark red colour.



“Cool.” Ozen said.

“Disgusting. Your mom’s a genius, though.” Jennifer replied, wiping pieces of zombie off her T-shirt.

“I agree with both of you.” Steve said, looking at the remains of the zombies and spiders all over the floor and in some places even halfway up the tall walls. “Here, each of you have a health potion.” Steve was now handing Jennifer and Ozen potions of health and drinking one deeply himself; before and for a good while after he had thrown the potion, the monsters had done a good job on injuring them. After drinking the potions, the three decided to go back instead of continuing the expedition. Steve accidentally stepped into the cooled, now reddish and sticky potion on the way out, getting his shoe stuck in it for a minute before wedging it out with his shovel.



Once back, the three decided to all go to buy the rest of the wood. Ozen grabbed some emeralds and the three went to the village where they bought wood. When they got there, though, instead of seeing the small town with its several houses and thin streets, filled with villagers, they saw only rubble, fire and streets piled with broken bricks and smashed wooden planks blocking their path. Dark smoke had filled the sky and blocked out the bright sun and plains behind the village.



The trio looked through the town for survivors, but no life was left in any of the villagers they found buried under piles of rubble. Almost all of the houses had been collapsed or burned, and after searching the town the three started to leave the village. However, on the largest pile of rubble stood Herobrine, who had seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and was now staring at Steve.



“What have you done?” Steve asked when he saw Herobrine.

“Only what I promised to do before.” Herobrine said, his voice not nearly as loud and enraged as before.

“A trail of death and destruction.”

“Exactly.”

“So you killed them all?” Jennifer demanded. “These villagers and the Craft Brothers?”

“Not the Craft Brothers. I enjoy their music.”

“Why do you kill everything we pass but us?” Steve asked.

“Entertainment.” Herobrine said, smiling.

“You, Dad, are a horrible person.” Ozen said, shaking his head.

“I AM NOT YOUR FATHER! I AM HEROBRINE!” Herobrine screamed.

“Well, if it’s okay with you, Dad, we’d like to leave now.” Steve said, starting to walk around the pile of rubble. Herobrine then turned into a wisp of red smoke and disappeared. “Let’s go.” Steve told the other two. They left and went back to Steve’s mansion.



Back at the mansion, the three had a lunch of roast chicken that Ozen made. Ozen was a great cook. Steve went to the room he kept all of his books in to look for things they could use against Herobrine, but found nothing. After a while, he went to the basement. As he was searching, he heard a crackling sound from his chest. He looked over and saw, in a corner behind some blocks, a shaking chest. He ran over to it, and saw it on its side on the cool, stone brick floor of the basement room. It opened up and out rolled a large, black egg. The dragon egg was shaking and hissing.



Steve picked it up and felt that it was hot to the touch. He found that in the chest he had kept a lava bucket beside the dragon egg.

“I think I’ve accidentally incubated a dragon egg with lava.” Steve muttered. “This doesn’t look good.” The egg broke in half and out crawled a small, black dragon. Steve, for the first time in a long while, had no idea what to do. The baby dragon eyed him suspiciously and coughed some fire onto him. Steve now had no idea what to do with his new baby dragon and was on fire, but he knew one thing for sure: this dragon and his wolf would definitely get along horribly.

Chapter III: The Second Dragon



Steve equipped a bucket of water and put himself out. The dragon was looking around curiously. It stretched its black wings and jumped onto Steve. Its grey claws scratched his chest, and he tried to push the dragon off. It hissed at him, and then jumped off his chest and onto his shoulder, not hurting him this time. Steve smiled. The dragon liked him. A bit, anyway.



Steve went upstairs to show the dragon to Ozen, Atza and Jennifer. They were in the library, looking through books. Ozen, the only one who was facing Steve, looked up when Steve entered the room, and upon seeing what rested on his shoulder, his jaw dropped.

“What is that, Steve?” Ozen asked. Jennifer and Atza turned around.

“This is a dragon I’ve accidentally been incubating for a few days.” Steve told Ozen.

“How exactly did you incubate it?” Jennifer asked slowly.

“With a lava bucket.” The dragon had jumped off of Steve’s shoulder and glided to the floor.

“When did you get it?” Atza asked, looking at the dragon, which was now scratching the floor.

“While I was looking for things in the basement.” Steve replied, pulling his leg away from the dragon’s small claws.

“How’d it hatch?” Ozen asked, staring at the dragon, which was staring back at him with large, purple eyes, the vertical slits it had for pupils widening.

“I saw the chest the egg was in shaking, so I went over to it. The chest fell over and the egg rolled out, and it broke open.” The dragon was nibbling playfully at Steve’s shoe with short, dull teeth.

“Wait... you incubated it for a few days?!” Ozen asked loudly as the dragon climbed Steve’s leg. “How fast do those things hatch?!”

“Drake could’ve been incubating it for any amount of time, though.” Jennifer reminded him. The dragon had started to climb up Steve’s torso.

“True... um, Steve, I think it’s trying to eat your face.” Ozen said as the dragon licked Steve’s cheek with its forked tongue before climbing onto his shoulder.

“Of course it isn’t. I think it’s hungry, though.” Steve said as the dragon nibbled on his ear.



“What do you think baby dragons like to eat?” Ozen asked Steve once they had gotten into the kitchen.

“Hmmm... let’s try everything until we get it.” Steve replied.

“We’ll start with wheat, as we have tons of that.” Ozen said, looking into a chest and pulling out some wheat. He held it up to the baby dragon, who bit into it. It chewed thoughtfully, and then ate the rest of the wheat. It licked Ozen’s hand. “Let’s try some more things, and see what he likes.” He dug through another chest and pulled out some vegetables. After several minutes of experimenting, Steve, Ozen, Jennifer and Atza found out the baby dragon liked wheat, carrots, raw fish, cake, melons, chicken, cookies, milk and potato chips. Ozen managed to make a meal of all the things it liked the most. It tasted like spider eyes and poisonous potatoes to the humans, but the dragon loved it.



After finding out what the dragon ate, the four found out that Steve doesn’t think very well while on fire; he was completely wrong about what the new dragon would do to Bolt. The two played happily outside, wrestling each other and, in some cases, accidentally getting their ears scorched. Steve built a stone doghouse for the dragon, fairly larger than Bolt’s doghouse, as he had no idea how fast dragons grew, although at the time it was no larger than a baby wolf. After building a place for the dragon to live and finding out what it ate, the four decided to name it. They had no idea what good dragon names were, but after a week of raising the dragon, they decided on Drake, the dragon’s mother’s name.



Another few days went by, and one time, Steve heard a loud meow behind the door as he was walking down the hall. He stopped and opened the iron doors, and then saw a rather fat orange cat just outside of it. It had a piece of paper in front of it, which Steve picked up. The paper said:

Steve,

I’ve finished with the redstone enhancements for swords and bows. You guys can come over and test them out if you want. 50 emeralds apiece.

Mark

Steve brought the cat inside and gave it some raw fish, then it hurried away into the forest. Steve got Ozen and Jennifer (Atza didn’t want to go, as unfortunately usual), and they agreed to come and he brought Drake. Just before leaving, though, a thought struck Steve.

“Herobrine!” Steve yelled. Herobrine walked into the entrance of the mansion while eating potato chips.

“Hey!” Ozen shouted at Herobrine. “Those are mine!”

“What is it, Steve?” Herobrine asked, ignoring Ozen.

“I have some questions. First, why did you tell me about the war?”

“I needed you to think I was Solomon, not Herobrine. I needed to be believable.”

“I see. Next, did Simon know Drake was down that cave?”

“Yes, he did. I was controlling him, though.”

“Hm. Is Bane even real?”

“No. Bane is a useless piece of diamond and andesite.”

“Okay. How did Nicholas die?”

“That would be Debel, a wither skeleton military leader. He’s the Wither’s right-hand man and the general of its army.”

“Okay. Lastly, why are you such a horrible person?!”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“Hm. Thanks.”

“You’re quite welcome.” Herobrine went poof and turned into some red smoke.
“That was a nice chat. Let’s go, guys.” Steve walked out the door, smiling.

On the way to Mark’s house, Steve slipped Jennifer a piece of paper. It read:

Herobrine was bluffing. Bane is real. I read about it. If Herobrine doesn’t want us to know about it, it must be very effective against him, and he must not know where it is. We have to find it. Pass this paper on to Ozen.

Jennifer slipped the note to Ozen, who read it secretly, then pocketed the paper.

When they got to Mark’s house, Steve knocked on the door. He heard Mark’s footsteps, then the door opened, Mark behind it.

“I see you got my message.” Mark said, smiling.

“Yes, we ---” Steve was interrupted by Jennifer’s gasp.

“Steve!” Jennifer exclaimed, her eyes wide.

“What?”

“Remember when we went to that village?”

“Ye--- Oh, no.” Steve now had a look of worry on his face.

“What’s going on?” Mark and Ozen asked together.

“Mark... I’m sorry.” Steve said slowly. “Herobrine... said that wherever we went... death would follow.”

“Who’s Herobrine?” Mark asked worriedly.

After some explaining, Mark said: “What. Is there any way to... keep that from happening?”

After a while of thinking, they thought that hopefully, if Mark came with Steve, Ozen, Atza and Jennifer, Herobrine wouldn’t do anything to him. It wasn’t a very good chance, but it was the best idea they had.



Mark then showed Steve, Ozen and Jennifer through his tidy entrance and living room and down a flight of stairs. He was still very shaky from what he had been told. Where the stairs lead was much less tidy place than upstairs; it was full of redstone trinkets, some whirring quietly, some hopping up and down, some very large and loud. Overall, the room was filled with so many beeps and clangs none of them could hear each other very well.

“Sorry it’s so loud in here!” Mark shouted to the others shakily. “Anyway, here they are!” He picked up an iron object that looked like a sword’s pommel, and a thick iron clip. “Let’s go into another room! It’s too loud in here!”



After going back upstairs, Mark, stuttering, explained that the iron pommel went on a sword and doubled the effects of any enchantments on the sword, as well as adding an electric effect that was activated by a button on the bottom of the pommel. It recharged in sunlight and was called a redstone sword enhancement. The iron clip was a redstone bow enhancement and had the same effect as the redstone sword enhancement, and gave the arrows an electric effect. The three each bought a set.


Mark was also very interested in Drake. He asked several questions about him, but nobody had many answers. In time for dinner, the six left, including Drake and Mark’s pet cat, Freya. When they got back, it was explained to Atza why Mark and Freya had arrived. Freya, fortunately, quickly befriended Bolt.

Chapter IV: Brookshore

Steve, Ozen and Jennifer tested out their new sword and bow enhancements while Mark tinkered with redstone. The electric attacks did not do well against creepers, who exploded upon electrocution. Mark had been working on two-way radios, and had had a very large problem when he placed two of them beside each other, turned them on and spoke into them.



Steve went boating the next afternoon after gathering several stacks of logs and found several small, perfect sand pyramids poking out of the light blue water. On his way back to the mansion through the plains, he saw a square hole in a small hill. It was about his height and as wide as he was tall. Steve walked inside and held up a torch that lit up a long tunnel that ended in a dirt wall. Steve turned around and walked back a few hundred metres through the tunnel and out, puzzled as to what the sand and tunnel could be, then went back over the hills and through the forest and into the large clearing that contained the mansion. When Steve walked in, he smelled something very sweet. When he entered the kitchen, he saw Ozen baking a few batches of cookies. One batch of cookies seemed to be made of one hundred and twenty-three per cent chocolate. Another batch went perfectly with milk. The third batch, though, burned the mouths of all who ate them. A burnt dozen lay forgotten on the counter in a corner.



That night, Steve had a very strange dream. He dreamed that he was in a medium-sized town. There were villagers and a few humans walking along the gravel roads around Steve, who found himself standing in the middle of one. He heard doors creaking open and slamming shut, saw farms with wheat, carrots and potatoes, and a few smithys. There were two towers in the town and a small library with four large bookshelves in it that Steve could see through a window. It was evening, and the smell of fish being cooked entered Steve’s nose. He recognized the village; it was Brookshore, not too far from the mansion. Steve looked around and saw a villager walking up to him. He did not stop in front of Steve, or walk around him. Instead, he walked directly through him. Steve was bewildered. Nobody noticed him and people walked through him. He wondered how all of this was happening and how he had gotten to Brookshore, but before he did any real thinking, he heard a loud boom and screaming from somewhere behind him.



Steve quickly turned around, but he saw only villagers, some of which were running around, some of them trying to see what was happening. He jumped so he could see above all of the large, bald heads. A third of the way down the village was a house that had caught fire. There was a large hole in the wall and a few villagers were rushing out. Steve sprinted through the villagers so he could get close up, jumping up and down as he went. When he arrived, the house seemed to be empty. The large hole caused by the explosion was spreading. Steve stepped back a bit; it was already very hot and a fire wouldn’t make his shirt stop sticking to his back. Someone ran through Steve with a bucket of water. He looked around again and saw a few humans throw water onto the house. Somehow, the fire didn’t stop crackling and spreading and the wooden house didn’t get wet. The house burned to the ground as all the villagers left fled and flaming logs fell onto the road, one almost hitting Steve, who then ran.



Steve saw something glow in the darkening sky from the corner of his eye. He looked up and saw what looked like a firework flying down towards the village. It whistled down very quickly and hit another house, making a loud explosion and lighting it on fire. Steve ran over to the house, which had screams and shouts coming from it. About six villagers ran out of the house, a large flaming log falling onto two of them. A nearby human tried to destroy the log, but not a crack appeared on the burning wood. Another house behind Steve simply broke apart, pieces of wood flying everywhere. Steve saw a villager fly out of the house and through his chest, screaming. Another house shot into the air until it was barely visible, then fell back down onto another house. Out of the wreckage emerged, along with screams and cracks, Herobrine, blasting a log out of his way (it then hit someone in the face) as he came.



Steve gasped and stepped back. Herobrine did not seem to see Steve any more than anyone else did, but he did seem to smile a bit as his pale, slightly glowing eyes scanned over Steve when he was looking around. Herobrine walked forward, leaving a trail of fire behind him. It was becoming more and more difficult to see Herobrine as more and more smoke blocked Steve’s vision and made him cough. Houses were now collapsing as Herobrine walked past them. After a while the sky darkened even more and fire gave off most of the light in the village. That was about when the last building, a tower, cracked in several places when Herobrine tapped it gently with a wooden pickaxe and collapsed, cobblestone falling everywhere around it except onto Herobrine. Steve had been watching, horrified, nearby. A large chunk of cobblestone fell towards him without him seeing at first. He looked up and saw it hurl down towards him. He jumped to the side, but was not fast enough; the cobblestone piece, about half the size of a boulder, was a millimetre away from him.



Steve hit the floor. He had fallen out of his bed and was wrapped in a blanket that was still half on the bed. He noticed he was sweating. A moment after he had gotten up and out of the blanket, the door to his room opened. Ozen was outside it.

“You alright, Steve? I heard you screaming or something.”

“Ozen, we have to get to Brookshore as soon as we can.”

“Why?”

“I think Herobrine’s destroyed it.”

Ozen didn’t ask any questions. Steve told him he’d wake Jennifer up, then he said he’d awake Mark and closed the door. Steve heard his footsteps get more and more distant, and then dressed, got some items out of his bedside chest and left his room.



Soon, the four were on horses, riding towards Brookshore.

“So, how d’you know Herobrine’s destroyed Brookshore?” Mark asked Steve.

“I had this dream or something. I think Herobrine was making me have the dream somehow. In it, I was in brookshore. Nobody knew I was there and people walked through me.” Steve proceeded to tell Ozen, Mark and Jennifer about his dream as they rode through the forest and on a bridge over a wide river. Over a hill was Brookshore, once a nice village, now a pitiful pile of rubble, smoke emerging from large fires all around the streets. The four rode quickly down the hill towards Brookshore.



In Brookshore - or, what remained of it - the group found nothing but rubble and fire. They found no survivors; everyone still alive had fled. Ozen saw Herobrine walking around, eating something that looked delicious..

“Herobri--- what are you eating?”

“It’s a sandwich.”

“Cool. How do you make it?” Ozen was taking out a small paper and a quill. Before Herobrine could answer Ozen’s question, though, Steve interrupted.

“We didn’t come here. Why’d you destroy the village?”

Herobrine did not answer. Instead, he turned to red smoke. A paper fell to the ground as the smoke faded. Steve picked it up.

“Ozen, I think that this is for you.” Steve handed the paper to Ozen.

“What is it? Oh.” Ozen chuckled. It was a list of sandwiches and how to make them. The four, not having their question answered and knowing Herobrine wouldn’t come back and say, “Oops, I forgot. I’ll answer you now,” then mounted their horses and left.



The second the group entered the house, Ozen ran to the kitchen, holding the sandwich list. He immediately started opening chests and pulling out various foods. He made every sandwich on the list, and the five residents of the house ate them happily for breakfast.



That night, Steve had another very unusual dream. In this one, he was underwater. He quickly swam to the surface and realized that he was in a well in a village. He could just see over the top, but was just too late to see a bright light flying towards the well. The side of the well caved in, a large rock hitting Steve in the stomach. Steve managed to get up and out through the new hole in the well and looked around. This time, Herobrine was already attacking the town. This town Steve recognized to be Woodmere, also fairly close to the mansion. There was barely anybody left here, and again nobody noticed Steve was there. But... why did Steve hear somebody calling his name? And why did their voice seem so familiar? He didn’t go to Woodmere very often...

“Ozen?” Steve called.

“Steve!” Ozen yelled. Steve heard footsteps coming towards him from behind. He turned on the spot to see Ozen running towards him.



“I know what you were talking about when you were explaining that dream.” Ozen told Steve.

“How are you here, Ozen?” Steve asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I dunno. How’d you?”

“Um...”

“Yeah. Thought so. Anyway, we should probably run now.” Steve realized a house was collapsing behind him, and he and Ozen ran. Ozen was ahead by a few steps as buildings collapsed all around the brothers.
“Ozen!” Steve called as one of Herobrine’s bright yellow bolts of light that were destroying houses and starting fires shot towards Ozen from the side. “Watch out!” Ozen looked over his shoulder at Steve and saw the bolt flying towards him, only centimetres away from his arm.

Chapter V: David of Morbridge

Herobrine’s shot hit Ozen in the arm. Ozen toppled over, grabbing his right arm. Steve saw that not only did the bolt of light hit Ozen, but it also passed through him. Steve would have stopped and made some sound that represented unknowingness and/or disbelief if his brother hadn’t just been shot. Instead, he kept running to Ozen, kneeling down beside him.
“Ozen, I think I have a potion here somewhere.” Steve checked his pockets, reaching remarkably far down the pocket that was so small on the outside, but to no avail. “Okay, I don’t. Do you have any?”

Ozen’s arm was bleeding and scorched now, and he couldn’t find any health potions. The house they were near collapsed, and Steve got up and ran, but Ozen couldn’t get up in time. The wreckage collapsed on him.

“Ozen!” Steve yelled. He ran back to the wreckage, but there was no way he could get through the burning wreckage, or that Ozen could have survived it. A burning log fell towards Steve, who tried to dodge it. Suddenly, all Steve could see was Herobrine’s face, his glowing white eyes, and his hand, reaching toward Steve.



Steve woke up, this time still in his bed. He heard footsteps coming towards his room quickly and saw his door open. Ozen, once again, was behind it.

“Go back to bed, Ozen. He already destroyed the whole town. There’s no point in trying.”



At breakfast, Steve and Ozen told the other three about the dream. They thought of a good strategy on waking everyone up when the dream started the next night.

“Jennifer, are you a light sleeper?” Steve asked.

“Yes.” Jennifer replied.

“Okay. So, how about this: Jennifer will sleep in my room tonight, and when she hears me yelling or whatever I do---” “You cry like a baby.” Ozen said mockingly, “She waits a minute so I can see which town it is, and then wakes me up, and then we’ll wake everyone else up, and we’ll all go to the town and stop Herobrine.”

The group agreed on the plan (Atza asked for specification on where in Steve’s room Jennifer would be sleeping, and Steve assured her they would sleep in different beds) and went through that day as normal, Ozen thinking of some good things he could make to drink after lunch.



For the third night in a row, Steve had a very unusual dream. This time, he was in a house with a few villagers in it. And, for the third night in a row, no villagers noticed him. Remembering what he must do, he ran to the door. He opened it, but it also stayed where it was.

“What?” He wondered aloud. The door was right in front of him, closed, but he was holding the doorknob of an opened door right in front of him. There were now two doors, and the closed one didn’t seem solid. Steve didn’t have time to worry about what it was, so he reached through the slightly faded closed door and found he could walk through it.



After exiting the house, Steve looked around. The unusually high number of cobblestone towers meant that Steve was in Morbridge. No houses had collapsed, no villagers were screaming, and no bolts of fiery light were shooting around yet, which meant that the group still had time to get there, even though Morbridge was past Brookshore and Woodmere. Steve decided to try something. Since Ozen could hear Steve yelling when he was yelling in the dream, Jennifer would probably be able to hear him now.

“Hey, Jen!” Steve yelled. “You can wake me up! I know where to go!” Steve waited a few seconds, and then started to yell again. “Jennifer, can you hear me? You can wa---” Steve was interrupted mid-shout and once again in his bed. Jennifer was shaking him awake. “Thanks.”

“You don’t have to be so loud, you know. I can hear you fine.”

“Okay, good. Let’s go.”



On the way to Morbridge, Mark told the others something. “You know, I had that dream too, before Steve woke me up.”

“Me too, before Jennifer got me up.” Ozen added.

“It’s weird. First it was just me, then you, too, Ozen, now Mark? I bet next it’ll be Mom or Jennifer.”

“Probably. And hey, isn’t Brookshore the closest village to the mansion?”

“It is. Why?”

“And isn’t Woodmere second closest?”

“Ozen, you’re right. Then it’s Morbridge. I’ll bet Herobrine will destroy the next town next. Anyway, we’re here.”



Morbridge was still intact. There was no panicked screaming, no burning smithys, no houses flying into the sky like fireworks, no crumbling towers. Herobrine hadn’t even started. The four quickly dismounted their horses and ran into the town. They had discussed what they were to do when they got there earlier.



“Everybody out!” Steve was shouting as he ran down the streets. “Get OUT of the TOWN! Herobrine is COMING!” Of course, everybody in the town looked out of their windows and shouted at him to leave, as he was crazy and it was the middle of the night. Over their loud swearing, Steve yelled, “Do you know what happened to Brookshore? What about Woodmere?”

“They were blown up! What does that have to do with us?!” A very grumpy-looking villager with a particularly large head shouted at him.

“You’re next! Herobrine is coming here next!”

“Who the **** is Herobrine?!” Another villager yelled. She was surprisingly good at pronouncing asterisks.

“Herobrine is how the last two towns got destroyed!” Steve shouted.

“Yeah, I heard about that!” A new villager shouted.

“Yes, Herobrine is going to come here now!”

“Prove it!” The first villager shouted.



After a bit of luck and convincing, Steve, Ozen, Mark and Jennifer had the citizens of Morbridge evacuate the village. One human stopped in front of Steve.

“Who is Herobrine, exactly?”

“Someone who’s going to kill you if you don’t get out!”

“Who is he?!” The man asked again.

“Get out!”

“Not until you tell me who Herobrine is!”

Steve started to push the man out of the town as villagers sprinted past them. Steve suddenly stopped in his tracks. He couldn’t push the man any more. He had no strength left in his arms.

“Now tell me who Herobrine is!”

Steve noticed that the man had his hand up. When he put it back down, Steve regained all the strength in his arms. “You’re a wizard?”

“No. I’m an enchanter. Now, who’s Herobrine?”

“Herobrine is someone who’s trying to kill me.” Steve hurriedly explained. “He’ll kill anyone I come across, and--”

“Anyone?” The man asked.

“Oh, no.” Steve sprinted in the direction he remembered Ozen running off to. The man followed him quickly.



“Ozen!” Steve shouted.

“What?” Ozen asked, as villagers rushed past him.

“Remember how everyone we come across dies?”

“Oh. Yeah. I hate Herobrine.”

At that, Herobrine turned a corner. “Thanks. Now I don’t have to blow everything up.”

Mark appeared around a corner. “Steve! I just remembered---”

“I know.”

Jennifer ran up to the group. “Herobrine!”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Cool...” remarked the enchanter behind Steve.

“Who’s he?” Ozen asked.

“I’m David.” The man offered.

“He’s a wizard who won’t leave me alone.” Steve said.

“Enchanter.” David corrected him.

“He’s an enchanter who won’t leave me alone, then.”

“Enchanter?” Ozen asked, not knowing what that was.

“I enchant things. I can make a quill write a book on its own or make a rabbit whistle.” As he said this, Ozen’s shirt turned hot pink to sky blue and back. It then lit up, darkened again, disappeared and reappeared.

“You don’t look like an enchanter.” Jennifer remarked.

“If you’re referring to my clothes, magic users don’t wear robes and pointy hats everywhere I go. But trust me, I’m an enchanter.”

“You’re dead, actually.”

“What?” Ozen asked.

“Or, you will be soon.”

“Well, why aren’t you dead, if I will be just because you came across me?” David asked the group.

“It’s a long story,” Steve replied. “But--- Hey, if you stay with us, you’ll be fine.”

“Do you have books on magic there? I need to study.”

“Do you have a horse? We’ll need to go quite far.”

“Do you have six sticks I can use?”

“Um... yes.” Steve handed David six sticks he found in his pocket.

“Thanks.” David said. He took five sticks and put two on the back end of the sixth, and three on the other end so they took the rough form of a horse, magically sticking together. David mounted the structure. The others stared at him as he did this, then slowly mounted their horses, still staring at him. They rode their horses and David rode his sticks like a horse back to the mansion.

Chapter VI: More Magic



David rode his pile of sticks back to the mansion as the others rode their horses. On the way back, they told David what had happened, starting from when Solomon went to the Nether and going through all the way to when Steve came across David. David asked how many people the group had come across since going to the End, and Steve listed off all the Endermen in the End, monsters in the stronghold, the Oblocation, the nether brick fortress’s residents, Mark, Spencer, Wolfric, and everyone in Morbridge. David was very curious about the End and the fortress, and the group agreed that they would go there after searching Spencer and Wolfric’s houses, which they had just thought of after listing places off to David.



Once the group got to the mansion, Steve informed his mother of what had happened and would was to happen. Atza greeted David and agreed. First, though, David was given a room in the mansion. He took a chest out of his pocket just after lunch when he was shown to his room, and by supper he had pulled from the chest everything he needed, including six bookshelves full of books of magic, several sets of clothes, a few chests of resources and tools, paper, empty books, quills and more, including a baby dragon, which he was very surprised and frightened of until he was told it was friendly. The next day, Steve, Ozen, Jennifer, Mark and David set up to go to Wolfric’s house, as it was closer than Spencer’s.



Not an excruciating amount of time later, the pack had arrived at Wolfric’s abode with Drake Jr. Ozen rapped several times at the wooden door and noticed it had a slight purplish glow to it that was barely noticeable unless the door was closely inspected. The stone brick walls were similar; what seemed to be light purple mist was flowing through the cracks. Ozen kept knocking until Wolfric opened the door. Ozen was knocking so hard by then, when Wolfric opened the door Ozen accidentally punched at Wolfric’s face. By reflex, Wolfric said “Rebarbate!” Ozen’s fist flew back into his own face.

“Ow!” Ozen said, rubbing his nose.

“Sorry.” Wolfric said. Ozen saw him suppress a grin. “Come in.”



Once inside, greeted and seated, Ozen shot Wolfric a question: “How are you alive?”

“From lack of death.” Wolfric responded slowly, lifting an eyebrow.

“About a month ago, when Steve and I killed Drake.”

“Drake Senior, you mean.” Jennifer said.

“Oh! I forgot to let Drake in!” Steve jumped up.

“What?!” Wolfric screamed. “Let Drake in?!”

“Yeah.” Steve said, running to the door. “Drake!”

Wolfric stood up. A moment later, Steve came back inside holding a very small dragon that was biting at its short, dull claws with its even more so teeth.

“What’s that?” Wolfric asked.

“Drake. Drake Junior.” Steve said, grinning. Drake jumped and glided towards Wolfric with dark wings. Wolfric ran out of the way, but Drake turned to glide onto him. Steve suspected David had done it, as he was smirking. Drake caught Wolfric’s shirt and clung on. Wolfric toppled over in an attempt to get the dragon off of him. Ozen scooped Drake off of Wolfric, and Wolfric recovered, sweating.

“That’s a dragon.” He mumbled.

“His name is Drake.” Steve said.

“The Second.” Ozen added.

“It’s a dragon.” Wolfric said.

“An awesome dragon!” Ozen said.

“And friendly.” Steve said.

“Very.” Jennifer said as Drake licked Wolfric’s chin after climbing up his leg, stomach and torso.



Soon, the group got settled down again.

“So, you know that around a month ago Herobrine started killing everyone we came across. Why didn’t he kill you?”

“Magic.”

“What?” Ozen asked.

“I’m able to counter Herobrine’s magic with my own.”

“How? Herobrine is way more powerful than you!”

“I don’t know how, but I did. Anyway, I have something to ask you, Steve..”

“Shoot.” Steve told him.

“Can I help you get Solomon back to normal? I might be able to help find out what Herobrine is.”

“Definitely. You’d be a big help.”

“Good. So, when should I come over?”

“Now’s fine. We were going to see if Spencer’s okay, then go back to the End to show David the place. Then, we’ll go to the fortress from the war, then to the Oblocation headquarters.”

“Spencer’s not okay. He was killed.”



Once the group was back at the mansion with Wolfric and Drake had been fed, Wolfric set up his room and chatted with David about magic. Ozen made potato chips and sandwiches for dinner, which David and Wolfric loved. That night, of course, Steve had another dream. This time, though, Herobrine was underground in a very small room with dirt walls, a dirt ceiling and a stone floor, looking away from Steve. He seemed to be looking at something in his hands. Steve walked up to him and looked over his shoulder. He was holding Bane, its magnificent red diamond blade slightly glowing in the dark, making the shadows of the andesite dragon figure that was curling around the blade jump around. The colourful jewels encrusted in it were also glowing, but less so. The dragon figure was curling up from around the iron cross-guard to near the base of the blade. Herobrine was holding the sword on the heavy-looking iron grip and about halfway up the blade’s edge, which was half again as long as a normal one. Steve noticed that Herobrine was talking aloud.



“Why do you try to resist me? You’ll fail, and you know it.” Herobrine’s voice was a little louder than normal conversation volume and seemed to be full of power, as if he were yelling. But he was only talking.

Steve jumped. Herobrine knew he was there.

Then, another voice came from Herobrine. It was weaker, but Steve could recognize it. It was Solomon’s voice, but it was as if he was sick and very weak.

“I resist because it’s all I can do.” As Herobrine said this, his eyes glowed a bit less. Herobrine’s lips were moving, but not very much, so that it sounded slightly muffled or mumbled. “And I know that I can succeed.”

“But you won’t. You can’t. I am by far too powerful.” Herobrine’s eyes were glowing brighter again.

“I think I’m doing alright for now.”

“For now. Not forever. All you’ve managed to do is keep the wizard alive, and he’s losing more magic every minute. Soon, he’ll be dead.”

“No, he won’t. You’ll be out by then.”

“No, I won’t. I won’t come out. Never.”

“I hear fright in your voice, Herobrine. You’re unsure. You’re scared. You know you’ll lose.” Solomon’s voice was getting weaker.

“I won’t lose. It’s impossible!”

“Not with the help of what you’re holding right now.”

“But nobody will get Bane! I will destroy it!”

“You can’t. It’s too powerful.”



Steve looked up from behind Herobrine. He saw Ozen in front of Herobrine. Steve stepped back, startled. He knocked into someone behind him. He turned around and saw Mark behind him.

“What?” He looked around him. He noticed Jennifer appearing out of nowhere. She looked surprised, and then saw Herobrine, Ozen, Steve, Jennifer and Mark. She looked at Bane.

“Is that Bane?” Jennifer asked aloud. Herobrine, of course, didn’t look up. Instead, he kept on talking to himself.

“Even if you do hide it instead, they will find out. They will, I swear.”

“Then I will kill them.”

“Kill us? What?” Wolfric asked shortly after he appeared out of nothingness.

“Quiet!” Mark said.

“I won’t let you.”

“I will let myself!”

“What?!” David asked when he suddenly appeared.

“Shh!” Ozen hissed.

“As long as you’re controlling me, I have enough of your power to keep you from killing them.”

“For now. But the longer I’m here, the more power I get. I will soon have enough power to destroy all of them. You won’t be able to help them.”

“But you won’t be in me for long enough. They’ll get you out before then.”

“They have no idea how.”

“What? Herobrine!” Atza asked when she appeared.

“They will.”

Then, Herobrine and Solomon said two things at once, which was very hard to understand, as they were coming from the same mouth. Solomon said something like: “All they have to do is go---” while Herobrine shouted: “They’re listening!” The dream abruptly ended.

Chapter VII: Trans-Dimensional Spelunking


The next morning, the group started to talk about what what exactly had occurred in the dream. Steve filled Atza, Jennifer, Wolfric and David in on what had happened before they had entered the dream. Steve’s theory on Bane being real and effective against herobrine was proven, but the group (mostly David) decided on going back to the End first. The group packed up, but Atza, yet again, decided to stay home. The group waited for nightfall so that they could obtain ender pearls, as they were out of them.



That night, there weren’t too many endermen, but with good Looting enchantments they easily found several stacks deep inside the endermen’s metabolism. They got to bed very early in the morning, and a little bit after noon they all took minecarts down to the Nether portal so that they could get blaze powder. They stepped through the glowing, purple substance that obscured their vision and entered the Nether, which almost made Mark faint and which also very much frightened Jennifer, Wolfric and David. Its enormous blood-stained rock shelves, lava oceans, large ghasts, undead humanoid swines and gangly sword-wielding skeletons weren’t very welcoming. The group walked in the general direction Steve remembered the fortress being in.



After countless hours of travel, the group found the fortress across the lava lake. Steve was reaching for a fire resistance potion when Wolfric shouted “Pandate!” He disappeared and the group saw that he had teleported towards the fortress. He hadn’t gone far enough, though, and he ended up a few metres above the lava. He started to fall towards the lava and quickly yelled “Uprist!” A large chunk of netherrack rose from the lava and he fell onto it. He quickly got up and started jumping up and down, landing on one foot and then the other, all over the netherrack. It was very hot. Soon, Wolfric stopped jumping up and down. Steve got out fire resistance potions for everyone and swam towards Wolfric. He climbed onto the netherrack and handed a potion to Wolfric, who drank it. Orange swirls engulfed him and he dived into the lava. It felt like air, and he swam through it easily with the rest of the group, not being able to breathe, but not needing to, either. The group climbed out of the lava and walked towards the fortress.



When the group got to the base of the fortress, Steve led them to the second nearest pillar, as he knew that the closest one was a trap. Steve mined into the pillar and saw a staircase. The pack climbed the stairs to the top of the fortress and wandered around until they found a blaze spawner, which created a blaze in a small floating fire. The blaze stared at Ozen, who was in the back of the group and taking a raw chicken leg from his pocket, and blasted three fireballs at him, aiming for his head, his torso and his legs. Ozen looked up at the last second, just in time to deflect the fireballs with a quick maneuver of his chicken leg and sent them into the air, hitting a ghast a few hundred metres away and killing it. He then looked down at his chicken leg and bit into it, as it was cooked by the fireballs. Everyone turned around. David gaped at Ozen.

“What?” Ozen asked. “I like my chicken cooked.”

“You can’t deflect a blaze’s fireball.”

“I had the chicken enchanted. I didn’t want it wrecked in the Nether.”



The blaze, slightly bewildered, fired another three fireballs at Steve, who avoided them with a maneuver not half as good as Ozen’s chicken leg deflection. Steve ran up and slashed at the blaze, and his sword cut the blaze’s head in two. The blaze collapsed, and Steve picked up its inanimate rods. As he pocketed them, another blaze spawned. Steve didn’t notice and the blaze fired three fireballs at him. Jennifer quickly tackled him, getting them both out of the way of the fireballs.

“Ow.” Steve said, rubbing his head where it had hit the ground.

“Sorry.” Jennifer said, getting up.

“Oh, thanks.” Steve said as he noticed the fire where the fireballs landed.

The blaze shot another few fireballs at Steve, who was still sitting down. He jumped out of the way, equipped his bow and shot an arrow at the blaze. The arrow went straight through the blaze’s head, losing barely any momentum and shooting much further still than a normal arrow. The blaze fell to the ground and Wolfric picked up the rods. Two more blazes appeared and both shot fireballs at Wolfric. Wolfric flicked them away with a slightly glowing finger, and then shouted “Uprist!” The blazes shot up into the air, leaving a path of smoke behind them, and hit the Nether’s ceiling. Along with a bit of netherrack, the blaze rods fell back down in front of Wolfric, who picked them up. Another blaze appeared and lit on fire to ready some fireballs for David, but the fire started to damage the blaze and soon killed it.

“What was that?” Steve asked.

“Enchantment.” David replied.

“I see. Well, I think that’s enough rods. Let’s go.” The group turned and started to leave, not noticing another blaze spawning. The blaze flung a trio of fireballs at Steve, who was launched off of the fortress.



Steve fell straight towards the lava ocean, and would have died in it had he not drank a potion of fire resistance on the way down. He fell in and went down several metres, and then swam back up. “I’m fine! I can get back up!” Steve swam over to a nether brick pillar and mined a hole into it. He climbed in and ran up a flight of stairs back to the rest of the group and shot an arrow at the blaze. He then turned back to the people. “Didja miss me?”

“Of course not.” Ozen said.

“Well, let’s go.” Steve said, shaking a bit of lava out of his ear.



Once the group had gotten back to the Overworld and crafted the eyes of ender, they began their fairly long journey to the End in which they got very bored and started talking about several strange things like how cobblestone, cracked and damaged, could be as strong as solid, tough stone and why slime was sticky and repellant, and why Steve’s sword might be reddish-purple from killing the Wither and Enderdragon. When they did get to the End, though, nothing much was there, besides the endermen. The large obsidian pillars had seemed to turn into obsidian platforms stuck into the ground. The pale ground was spotted with shining black dragon scales lodged in it from the last time the group was in the End.



“Whoa.” David said, scanning his surroundings. He took a piece of paper from his pocket and folded it. He then unfolded it and it had a picture of the End on it. He pocketed it and ran toward a dragon scale. With some effort, he dislodged it from the rocky ground. He then ran toward the next closest one and plucked it as well. He did this to a few more and then equipped a stone pickaxe and chipped a large chunk out of the ground with a powerful swing. He did this a few times and then pocketed the stonish chunks. He then looked around, careful not to lay an eye on any endermen. Wolfric wandered as well, along with Jennifer, who was astonished at the place.



After an hour, the group decided to leave. Steve jumped through the portal and the rest followed, but where it took them was definitely not the portal in the overworld. Steve and Ozen found themselves at their old house, where they had been born. They had found themselves where they had first come into Minecraftia. Luckily, Steve knew which way to hike to get to the mansion (Ozen didn’t, as it was built while he was in the Nether), and the brothers got back to the mansion by sunset. There they found Wolfric, Jennifer and Mark.

“How are you here?” Steve asked.

“I got sent home, so I walked.” Jennifer said.

“I wound up at my house, so I came back here.” Mark said.

“I found myself in my abode, so I traveled here.” Wolfric said. “We’ve speculated that David was sent to his house as well, but that would have been in Morbridge, which was destroyed.”

“No, he’s just been laying unconscious at the door, bleeding to death.” Ozen said, coming into the room and carrying carrying David, who was unconscious and whose arm was very badly burned.



The group got David some health potions and healed him, and he explained that he woke up in the wreckage of his house. His arm had landed in some coals and created a fire, and he had had to run through the rubble of the town to get to the river and put his arm out. He had managed to get to the mansion, but by the time he crawled up the steps with only his tongue, he didn’t have enough energy left in him to knock on the door with his eyebrows and have anybody hear it. He had fallen unconscious and was bleeding out until Ozen had smelled him with his highly-trained nose and gotten to him at the back door. David had gotten to the front door after Jennifer, Wolfric and Mark and before Steve and Ozen, but they had come in the back.



“You okay now, David?” Steve asked.

“I’m okay.” David replied.

“Then let’s get to the Oblocation place.” Ozen said.

Chapter VIII: The Oblocation Headquarters


The Alliance (and David, who they accepted as their newest member) packed for their long, boring journey ahead of them to the Oblocation headquarters. Wolfric had planted a magical beacon there, so he knew where it was. Atza brewed speed potions so that the group could run at ten times their usual speed, and enchanted them so that they wouldn’t get hungry or tired from their effects. David, with an idea of Ozen’s, decided to enchant them so that they would give a jump doost, as well, and he jumped all the way there, along with Ozen. The group ran, and Ozen and David jumped, bouncing back up wherever they landed (usually bouncing off their backs, torsos and faces instead of their feet), and the Alliance got to the beacon in less time than if they had been using ender pearls. The beacon wasn’t much of a beacon as it was nothing, but Wolfric knew where it was nonetheless.



A few minutes later, the group was in the headquarters for the Oblocation. It was a large stone cave, hollowed out and lit by glowstone. The room they entered at first was a large room about five metres tall and twenty in the other dimensions. The large room had a large table in the middle with an opened box of Dungeons and Enderdragons. Around the room there were dummies made from armour stands, chests, targets and other equipment, all ripped to shreds. The ceiling looked like it might collapse at any moment, and the walls had large chunks torn out of them. That large room they were in branched off into a storage room with only a few chests left in it, a bunker that had nothing but half of a bed left under the rubble of obsidian and such, and a kitchen with a few furnace tops showing under large chunks of stone and a huge crack in the floor. As the group turned around to go back to the large room, a huge crack and the sound of some very heavy things falling and stone smashing on to stone, the ceiling of the main room fell into pieces on the floor.



The group ran back to the main room and found that the ceiling had collapsed. The Alliance could move no more than a metre through the rubble before they were completely blocked off. Steve pulled his pickaxe from his pocket and mined a path upwards. Several metres of solid stone had seemed to have come down. Steve finally broke through the top to find a sturdy layer of wood five metres above him. He built a staircase from the cobblestone he had collected from mining a minute before up to the wooden layer. He broke through the wood with a few swipes of his axe and got up on top of it to find a small room. Steve climbed through into the room, and the rest followed.



In the room, there were several large chests.

“Herobrine must not’ve found this room.” Steve stated.

“Wonder what’s in the chests?” Ozen asked.

“Let’s find out.” David said, reaching towards the nearest chest and opening it. The rest of the group surrounded it and looked in to see several piles of cobblestone and logs. Ozen rushed to the next chest over and opened it, revealing tools, weapons and armour. The third was full of iron and coal, the fourth containing diamonds, redstone and gold. All of the chests were full of resources except for one of them. That one contained dozens of books. Steve removed a book and opened it to the first page. It was titled “How to Deal with Dragons.” Steve pocketed the book and looked through more books, all of which were based on the same subject of “fictional” creatures and such. Each person took a few to take back to the mansion and read. The group searched the room again, but found nothing important and merely took the diamonds, as diamonds are always nice to have. The group then went back down through the tunnel in the stone and left the place, drinking another round of speed potions.



The group was soon back at the mansion. They started to read through the books. Ozen got bored of them and decided to make a sandwich. He asked who else wanted some, and everyone answered with a yes. In a while, he came back up with twenty sandwiches.

“Ozen, you have to make less of those.” Steve told him as he came up the stairs with ten sandwiches in each hand, stacked in tall piles.

“You’re right! I’ll make something else!” Ozen tossed the sandwiches onto the library table and ran back down the stairs.

“Well, at least he’s stopped distracting us.” David said as he read a book intently. He took a sandwich off of the top of the pile. The rest of the Alliance did the same.



Soon, Steve heard a loud crashing sound. He ran down the stairs, followed by the rest of the Alliance, David in the back of the group, as he had taken the time to mark his page, and Mark just in front of him, being the slowest runner. When Jennifer had gotten down the stairs, being faster than anyone else in the group, she saw Ozen with his face halfway underground outside and the rest of him covered by something large, grey and flapping violently. Jennifer ran towards Ozen and pushed the things together. They stopped moving, giving Jennifer an opportunity to pull Ozen’s face out of the ground.



“Thanks.” Ozen mumbled.

“No problem. You should probably put those back, though.”

“Yeah.” Ozen unclipped the feathered things from himself and started to run back into the mansion, but was stopped by David, who was just coming outside.

“Are those wings or something?” David asked.

“Yeah. Here, try ‘em out.” Ozen replied.

“Thanks.” David said, getting the thing from Ozen’s hand. Ozen ran into the mansion, his face covered in dirt.



“What are these, Jennifer?” David asked as he ran towards the front of the group.

“Wings.” Jennifer replied.

“What do they do?”

“What do you think wings do?”

“Makes chickens look cooler.”

“Well, that too.”

“This makes chickens look cooler?”

“They let you fly.” Steve interrupted. “Pass them to me.”



When Steve had the wings clipped on, he spread them out and immediately took flight, springing up into the air as if bouncing off of a slime block. He soared straight up until he was a dot in the sky. He then circled around, flew into a cloud and dove down out of it again. He dove down until he was about thirty metres from the ground, and then swooped back up again. He turned back down again so that he was going down slowly and circling around everybody. When he had gotten down close enough to the ground, he pulled the wings in so that he was launched toward the ground at an acute angle. He hit the ground and rolled to avoid the mistake that Ozen had made. He then got back up to his feet and unclipped the wings. Ozen came back outside with a clean face.



“Did I miss it?” Ozen asked.

“Yep.” Steve replied. He tossed the wings to Ozen. “You can try, though.”

“Yes!” Ozen shouted, clipping the wings onto himself. He spread the wings and became airborne. He shot straight up, past the clouds, and then dove straight down, almost hitting the ground. He shot back up and performed several quick circles in the air, and then shot back up and straight down again, flying at a few hundred kilometres an hour straight into the pool, causing a splash that reached the third floor of the mansion beside it. Ozen shot back out, but didn’t get too far up before pulling the wings back in and falling into a nearby tree.



Ozen fell out of the leafless tree and onto the ground.

“Why doesn’t that tree have any stupid leaves?”

“I don’t know.” Steve replied, looking at the forest. Most of the leaves of the trees were changing colours, preparing for fall, but there were still lots of trees without leaves, which the Alliance guessed was Herobrine’s doing.

“Anyway, can I have a turn with the wings now?” David asked.

“Yeah, sure.” Ozen said. He unclipped the wings and handed them to David, who clipped them onto himself.

“I saw you two flying,” David said, facing Steve and Ozen. “You stick your arms out to turn and lean to get higher or lower, right?”

“Yep.” Ozen replied, rubbing his back where he had hit the tree.



David unfurled the wings and kicked off the ground, quickly gaining altitude and speed. He leaned forwards so that he was going straight, and then stuck out his left arm to perform a half-circle and turn around. He leaned upwards, gaining more altitude, and then he dove, trading his height for speed. He swirled around in circles, dipping and diving, leaning and turning, until he became very dizzy.



He quickly lost his clear head, and therefore his control, and fell, speeding up, toward the ground in the nearby forest. The Alliance rushed to get to him, Jennifer in the lead. After a few minutes of searching, the Alliance found David, beside a tree, dizzy, with quite a large bump on his head.

“Cool.” He muttered. The group laughed and took David back to the mansion.

Chapter IX: The Water Temple


When they were back in the mansion, the Alliance returned to their books, everyone but David, who had marked his page, having to flip through the pages and remember where they had stopped reading. David had How to Deal with Dragons and the rest of the Alliance had slightly thinner books. The alliance read the books all day, stopping only when Ozen came upstairs with delicious food. The Alliance had brought lots of books, so it took several weeks to finish them all and mark all of the important pages, and by then lots of the leaves had fallen off of the trees in the forest outside the mansion as an effect of fall beginning to make its way over to the Alliance. By the end, the group had about one of the thicker books’ length in marked pages left to get important information from, and they decided that they still needed to narrow it down more.



Mark had been working on a small machine that would fire several arrows a second, held hundreds of arrows and was handheld, shrunk by one of David’s enchantment, but he had run out of redstone and arrows. The group decided to go spelunking in search of redstone and arrows, along with other resources that they needed. They departed from an entrance to a cave and quickly dropped down, jumping down through large crevices and dropping several metres at once, venturing almost to bedrock. They came across several monsters and beast such as overgrown spiders and animated piles of bones wielding bows.



The group found quite a lot of redstone, along with iron, diamonds and several other ores. They ventured back up after a tiring amount of time of pickaxe-swinging, sword-fighting, torch-wielding, arrow-dodging and cave-exploring. They found redstone, but a lot more than just that. They found diamonds, iron, lapis lazuli, coal and gold as well, along with a pair of dungeons and a mineshaft. They took a zombie spawner for the pig farm and left the cave.



Mark finished up his machine and showed it to the rest of the Alliance. The group went into the forest at night with it to see how fast it killed monsters. They took turns with it, firing at the first monsters they saw. They ran out of arrows extremely quickly, so Mark added miniature chests and hoppers to automatically refill the dispensers. Afterwards, the machine had a much greater capacity than before.



For the first time in quite a while, the group had “the dream” again. In it, they were watching from Herobrine’s eyes. Herobrine was swimming now, in a dark room filled with water. After a while, Herobrine waved his hand and drained some of the water near the top of the room. Herobrine’s eyes peeked above the water to reveal teal, cracked walls and dark green floors. The room was lit by bright blue lanterns. Herobrine saw movement out of the corner of his eyes and quickly turned his head. He saw a teal, fish-like creature with orange points protruding from its large body and one large eye on its front. Herobrine held up a diamond sword at the creature. The creature paused for a moment. Then, it let a large, bright beam of light escape its eye. The beam hit Herobrine and knocked him back a bit through the water. Herobrine swam quickly up to the creature and slashed at it with his enchanted diamond sword, killing it instantly. It dropped a few teal pieces of something and a raw fish. Herobrine picked them up and examined them, feeling the rough edges. He then pocketed them and kept on swimming. As he left the room that he was in, Herobrine waved his hand and the water filled up the room again. The dream ended right away.



When the group had gathered downstairs for breakfast, they discussed what had occurred in the dream. Herobrine was in some underwater room, in a building made of materials that none of them recognized. There was also a fish that none of them recognized. Steve and Jennifer decided that they would go fishing in the ocean and see if they could find anything. The group agreed (and Ozen agreed that they would be having some nice fish for dinner), and after breakfast Steve and Jennifer packed up, made some boats and left. The rest of the group decided to continue with their reading.



When Steve and Jennifer had gotten to the shore of the ocean, they each set a boat out on the water and got in. They set out into the ocean with some lunch, fishing rods and weapons, just in case something did happen. They stopped near the centre of the ocean and started fishing. After several hours and one incident in which Steve’s fish missed his hand and hit Jennifer in the back of the head, which engaged an impressively long fish fight, Steve and Jennifer were both very tired. Jennifer was longing a good book and solid ground and Steve was longing some nice, hot mushroom stew. Steve was looking into the water at his reflection when he saw a shadowy figure in the water. After a few seconds, the shadow became slightly larger, and Steve could see a faint light in the middle of it.



“Jennifer, look at this.” Steve said. Jennifer, who was lying in her boat, sat up and followed Steve’s finger, which was pointing into the water. Jennifer looked down and also saw the figure. The shape became larger and the light split in two. Then, they flashed off and back on again. When the figure was close enough, Steve and Jennifer realized that it was a person: Herobrine. They both jerked back, tipping the boats, as Herobrine burst out of the water, spinning. Cold water splashed onto Steve and Jennifer as Herobrine came up out of the water and jumped onto the edge of Steve’s boat. He jumped back off again, tipping Steve’s boat far enough that it started to sink. In midair, Herobrine vanished. Steve was now in the water and his boat was under it, and he couldn’t get it back up. Steve sighed.



Steve and Jennifer rode in the same very cramped boat back to the mansion, where they told the rest of the group what had happened at dinner, which the Alliance had been having when they arrived. Disappointingly for Ozen, it wasn’t fish. Quite the opposite of disappointingly for Steve, it was mushroom stew. When Steve and Jennifer walked in, Steve soaking wet, Ozen asked why Steve had decided to go swimming. Steve replied with an explanation aided by Jennifer of what had happened.



The group decided that they should look up from Solomon’s books what the underwater building might be. The group took down from shelves and looked through the large pile of books that Solomon had written on the subject of myths, but found nothing.

“Herobrine must have discovered that place, not Solomon.” Wolfric stated upon realizing that the book on this building was nowhere to be seen.

“Or maybe Solomon found it but he just didn’t write it down yet.” Ozen added.

“Why would he go to the Nether before writing it down?” Steve asked.

“Maybe he found it on his way to the Nether!” Ozen countered.

“Any of those might be true.” David interrupted. “What difference would that make, whether Solomon or Herobrine discovered it?”

Steve realized that David was reading one of his own books and not one of the ones which Solomon had written. “David, what are you reading?”

“The Magical Encyclopedia, Volume Six: Notable Magic-Aiding and Magic-Diluting Circumstances and Conditions.”

“First of all, that is an extremely long title.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Secondly, what does that have to do with this underwater temple?”

“Well, um... there’s, uh, the---” David replied slowly.

“That was a rhetorical question, David! You don’t have to answer it! Now put that book down and pick up another one!”

“Okay, okay!” David replied, marking his book and closing it with a loud slam! He then put it down and picked one up from the pile in the middle of the table and began to read it with boredom, rapping his fingers on the table. After a while, he stopped rapping the table and examined his fingers. He then placed his elbow on the table and rested his chin on his palm, staring at the book without reading it.



The Alliance saw nothing in any of the several books about this underwater building by morning, which they continued to read until, so they decided to have some breakfast; they were all tired and hungry. The Alliance wandered downstairs for breakfast and Steve sleepily got out bread and gave everybody a loaf to eat. A tiring haze seemed to loom over them, pushing their eyelids down like pistons. Only Ozen seemed fully (or at least half) awake, and that was only because he had gotten a bit of sleeping done while the rest read. His snores were very irritating, but the group were too frightened to see what would happen if they awoke him when he was trying to sleep, his head resting on a book, to do so.



The Alliance gave up trying to stay awake and decided to go to bed after breakfast. Steve walked upstairs to his bedroom and slumped into bed, exhausted from the previous day’s events of boating, reading and hiking to the ocean and back. The mansion wasn’t too far away from the ocean, but it was definitely quite far for people who had just had breakfast and were carrying heavy loads in their pockets. Steve got back up and walked zombishly to the window and put up wooden planks to block the light coming through it. He then went back to bed, exhausted.


The Alliance woke up at noon refreshed. They went downstairs and had a lunch of steak and bread to help them keep awake this time and Steve went to check the storage room and make sure that the Alliance had enough resources. Steve realized that they were in need of lots of wood. He announced this to the rest of the Alliance and Mark immediately volunteered to help him build a redstone tree farm. Steve, having just checked the redstone supply and knowing that they had enough for a tree farm, agreed and the two went outside to look for a good spot for it. The rest of the Alliance stayed in the house and, with nothing to do, they decided to play Dungeons and Enderdragons.

Chapter X: The Tree Farm



Steve and Mark approached the front door. Mark had made this door; it was three metres tall and another three wide and flush with the wall, made of stone brick, like the rest of the mansion’s outer walls. A stone pressure plate sunk under the duo’s feet and the door opened up faster than a creeper runs when it sees an ocelot, or an ocelot runs when it sees Steve. Steve walked through the doorway, which closed a second after he passed through it, leaving it to look like a normal stone brick wall. Steve and Mark searched for a good place to build the tree farm, looking in the forest, with its yellowing leaves; closer to the house, where there was more open space and underground, where it wouldn’t get in the way. They decided to put it in the forest, for if it were close to the house then it may get in the way, and had it been made underground it would get no sunlight, even though sunlight doesn’t help very much in an automated tree farm. As an added bonus, as well, making a clearing in the forest for the tree farm would get the Alliance lots of wood, as well.



Steve pushed a button in the outside wall of the mansion. The wall beside the button opened up and allowed Steve to enter the mansion. Mark followed behind him, but the door closed before Mark could get through. Mark punched the button and went through the doorway. He saw Steve asking the rest of the Alliance to help him create a clearing in the forest. They got up from their game of Dungeons and Enderdragons and followed him out the door. He showed them where he was planning to have the farm and told Ozen to see how much redstone was in the storage room chests. Ozen ran back toward the mansion and checked how much redstone there was. He came back out of the house a few minutes later holding a sandwich and told Steve through a mouthful of pork and bread that there was more than enough redstone.



The group began chopping down the trees with diamond axes. As they were swinging the axes, felling trees, a sudden burst of wind came through the forest and made the yellow leaves start to flutter down from the trees. The leaves continued to sink through the cool air, blown by the breeze that ensued the gust of wind. Steve jumped up, halfway through swinging his axe. “I’ve forgotten to let Drake out!” Steve ran off toward the mansion. A few minutes later, Drake was walking outside with Steve, jumping up and gliding through the air. He watched the Alliance cut down trees, grabbing saplings from trees as they fell to the earth or jumping up and climbing the trunks of trees until his dull claws slipped from the trees.



Almost done with the trees, the group had sandwiches. Ozen delicately built each one, gracefully placing pork and carrot slices on each one. To Ozen, the making of sandwiches was a fine art; even the practice of delicately placing bread on meat was as important as actually eating the sandwich. It took quite a while for Ozen to make the sandwiches; long enough for Steve to notice that Drake had managed to get to a low branch on a tree. Steve watched Drake play around on the branch, biting at leaves, jumping and having the branch bend. Steve saw that occasionally, when Drake bit a leaf off of a tree’s branches, the part where Drake had bitten singed slightly, a small wisp of black smoke rising from the burnt twig.



“Hey, look at Drake.” Steve said quietly to Jennifer. Jennifer looked up at the tree and saw this phenomenon.

“Hm.” Jennifer said quietly. “Has he ever done that before?”

“Only when he first hatched. He basically spat a campfire at me.” Steve winced as he remembered the event. He looked back up and saw Drake gliding down toward him. Drake grabbed on to Steve’s stomach and began to bite at Steve’s arm. When Drake let go, there was a large red mark spanning Steve’s forearm. Drake playfully bit Steve again, but this time Steve grimaced and pulled his arm back. Drake attempted to continue to hold on to Steve’s arm but let go and fell over when Steve’s arm retreated too far. Drake rolled on the ground as Steve and Jennifer examined Steve’s arm. In the middle of the bite mark there was a red mark with some black around it. “He burned me!” Steve said aloud.



Steve pulled out a bucket filled with water from somewhere in the depths of his pockets and inserted his arm, causing the water to overflow and spill onto the ground and onto Drake, who immediately stopped rolling in the grass and fallen, yellowed leaves and chased after Steve, who was going with Jennifer toward the mansion’s flat stone brick walls. Drake caught up with Steve and jumped at his leg, but when Steve pulled it forward Drake missed and fell onto the ground. Drake jumped back up and glided toward Steve, catching his leg on his second attempt. Steve didn’t bother reacting until he got to the wall, where he gently shook his leg until Drake let go of it. Steve nodded, his arms full, toward the rest of the Alliance outside. Drake followed Steve’s gaze and ran back toward the group in the forest.



Jennifer assisted Steve in the chore of healing Steve’s burn. They got out cloth crafted from a sheep’s wool and wettened it, and then drained a potion of fire resistance, its effect time elongated by redstone onto it, and then poured a potion of healing onto it. They poured a long-lasting potion of strength onto Steve’s burn. As Steve was holding the cloth on his wound, he got a potion of regeneration and gulped it down quickly. He felt not only his burn healing but the rest of him being refreshed as well. After a few minutes of holding the cloth to his burn, Steve lifted it and saw that the red mark was shrinking and growing pinker. Steve drank another potion of regeneration. He removed the cloth from his arm and found that the burn had vanished. He went back outside and continued to cut the trees down. The group finished creating the clearing in time for supper, a large meal of bread, steak and milk.



The next morning, the Alliance went outside to the clearing where they would build the tree farm immediately. Mark picked redstone equipment to use in the building of the tree farm, and the group began to build the building. Mark explained quickly that it would have BUD switches, redstone pulse completion techniques, double piston extenders, ender disconfibulators, two and a quarter stacks of pistons to create an enormous block of wood, triple-powered blaze batteries, three-tick leaf crushers, dual hydrogen jets, JavaScript, twenty-seven cubic metres of TNT, a functioning elevator, and a high-speed bone meal growth propulsion multiplier built using a toggleable ultimate comparator clock. The rest of the group’s mouths dropped, except for Ozen’s, which produced the word “Cool.”

“I’m kidding. I made up half of those. The disconfibulators, batteries, jets, TNT and elevator aren’t going to be used, and we probably won’t need the leaf crushers. We don’t even need the BUD for this design.”

“We’ll still need two and a quarter stacks of pistons?” Steve asked.

“And the bone meal growing multi-propelling thingy with the ultra comparing clock whatchamacallit?” Ozen added.

“We will need quite a few pistons, although not quite that many if we aren’t going to be collecting one thousand, seven hundred and twenty-eight cubic metres of wood at a time.”

“So, how many pistons?” Steve asked.

“I’d say four hundred and thirty-two cubic metres of wood in one go will be quite enough, so five rows, so thirty-six pistons. I’ll put most of them back.” Mark walked back to the mansion and emerged from it again a half-minute later. He got to work building what he called the “Mumbo Micro Tree Farm,” the reason for which unbeknownst to the rest of the Alliance.



As the sun reached the top of the sky, the group finished the tree farm. It was quite a lot smaller than any non-automated tree farm of its efficiency, which left lots of room in the clearing for other things like automatic farms. Mark pulled a lever and placed a sapling on the dirt. The tree farm, a strange-looking yet compact mass of redstone-centred widgets, turned on, the redstone dust flashing on and off as Mark continued to drop saplings onto the dirt, where a tree would almost immediately shoot up out of the ground, and then be pulled and pushed until it was in the collection section where the wood from several trees formed a large block, misshapen from the lack of all two and a quarter stacks of pistons. When the block was almost complete, Mark shut off the machine and the Alliance tore it down. They collected four hundred blocks of wood, which would have let them recreate at least a nearby village with wood left over. It took them until three o’clock to grow and collect all of this wood, which was surprisingly quick for enough wood to fill over a chest’s capacity with planks, or just over a quarter of that with logs. After collecting this much wood, the group decided to go inside and read their books again.



Until the evening, the group read through the books that Solomon had written and collected. David, of course, enchanted his book, The Magical Encyclopedia, Volume Nine: Runes and Other Naturally Magical and Magic-Producing, -Supplying and -Containing Objects, Items, Materials and Other or Miscellaneous Pieces of Matter, to look to anyone but him like The Myth of the Endermite. Nobody noticed until Steve, as an effect of Magical Encyclopedia books being much larger than any of the other ones in the building, realized that David was holding the book up by the air beside it.



“David, what is going on with that book?” Steve asked.

“Hm?” David looked up at Steve. He looked as if he had been innocently reading The Myth of the Endermite the whole time. but the book was still seemingly floating.

“What did you do to it?” Steve sighed.

David looked back at his book and realized what Steve had meant. He hadn’t realized that this would happen; he saw the book as a regular Magical Encyclopedia book, but he noticed once Steve had told him that something was wrong with it the problem. “Oh. That is, um, that I like levitating books as I read. Good exercise for an enchanter, and great practice for concentrating on more than one thing at a time.”

“David, disenchant the book. I know you’re reading one of your own books.”

“Oh, okay,” David said, giving up his terrible excuse. He turned the book back and it then looked to everybody else, as well, like a Magical Encyclopedia. “But I think I found something important. Look at this. This could answer our problem with Herobrine.”

Chapter XI: Feb 4, 2015
Chapter XII: Feb 17, 2015
Chapter XIII: Feb 26, 2015

Chapter XIV: March 12, 2015
Chapter XV: March 17, 2015
Chapter XVI: March 25, 2015

"Chapter XVII": April 1, 2015
Chapter XVII: April 13, 2015
Chapter XVIII: April 21, 2015

Steve asked David what in Minecraftia he was talking about.

“Just a minute.” David replied. “Wolfric, I need to talk to you.” David ran out from the mansion’s small library. Wolfric put his book, A Record of Extremely Boring Myths and Legends, down and ensued. He seemed very excited for an opportunity to stop reading his book. Once Wolfric followed David to the basement, David looked around in chests and dark corners, behind bookshelves and other places, and then showed him a page from his book.

“This is from The Magical Encyclopedia, Volume Nine: Runes and Other Naturally Magical and Magic-Producing, -Suppl---”
“I get it. What does it say?”

“I was looking in chapter six, the ‘Illustrated and Complete List of Minecraftian Runes and their Names, Descriptions, First Findings, Origins and Powers, and Where they will Most Likely be Found’, and it says that there’re these runes called soul runes. Here’s the page.” David showed Wolfric a page from his Magical Encyclopedia. Wolfric read:

Soul Runes are a rare, valuable rune that can repair damages to one’s soul if applied correctly. They have two definitive colours, unlike most other runes: blue and yellow-green, in a pattern resembling waves in water, with the waves alternating between the two previously mentioned colours. Soul runes were first found by James Cameron in a mine in Southern Tennut. Mister Cameron found only a few of these runes when he searched these caves, but it is estimated that at least one thousand exist in this cave, however geologists and runologists alike have decided that most of them have probably been extracted since Mister Cameron found them two decades before the making of this book.

Soul runes can strengthen or heal a soul if applied correctly. Few individuals know how to apply a soul rune correctly and it is said that the only way to is with several complicated techniques, however this is said by the individuals who can properly apply one of these runes and they may lie to protect their “art,” a term that they have given to the practice of successfully using a soul rune.

To obtain a soul rune, it is suggested that one travels to Tennut and finds somebody who has or knows the location of a soul rune about this subject. Little is known about soul runes besides these facts, so it is recommended that one wishing to know more about these objects observes them in person.

After this, there was a small picture of a soul rune, and then the book went on to explain another rune. Wolfric handed the book back to David, who managed to pocket the oversized book with room left in his pockets for several hundreds of cubic metres of materials.

“So, Wolfric, d’you think that we’d be able to get some of these things?” David asked Wolfric.

“Why would we need soul runes?” Wolfric questioned.

“I had one of those vision dream thingies last night.” David replied excitedly.

“You did?”

“Yeah. And I figured out that Solomon was attacked or something, and someone else’s soul’s got in him.”

“Explain this dream of yours.” Wolfric demanded.

“Well, it started out that I was in a desert. Herobrine was just walking. Then, I heard a voice in my head. It sounded like Solomon’s, but really sick and scratchy and stuff.”

“What did it say?” Wolfric asked.

“It said something like ‘My soul is growing weaker,’ David said, imitating Solomon’s voice, ‘and Herobrine’s taking over... help, or he may be able to destroy ---’ something something something, his voice was really quiet and hard to hear... ‘--- stop the ---’ something something, ‘--- look in your encyclopedia, find how to help ---’ and then he kinda stopped talking for a while... ‘--- tell the others... Herobrine is watching, be careful... ---’ and then he stopped.”

“Solomon told you to tell the rest of the Alliance, and that was last night! It’s been a day! You should have told us!” Wolfric shouted.

“Keep your voice down! Herobrine’s watching, remember?” David whispered loudly. “Anyway, then you all would’ve kept me from looking in the Magical Encyclopedia! You’d’ve all thought that I was lying about it so that I could read!”

“What makes you think that I don’t still think you’re lying?” Wolfric questioned him.

“Nothing! But it doesn’t matter! I already have looked in my book, and I have the answer!”

“Answer or no answer, lying or not, why did you tell me before anyone else?”

“Because I think that we are the best with runes, being a wizard and an enchanter.” David gestured to Wolfric and then himself as he spoke. “And that you might have some ideas about this.”

“Such as?” Wolfric asked.

“That’s the problem. I have no idea. That’s why I need yours.”

“How about we go to Southern Tennut and find these soul runes?”

“Okay. Let’s tell the others.”

David and Wolfric travelled upstairs to the rest of the Alliance and brought them back to the basement, where once again David checked the corners and such and then discussed the plan with them. After deciding that, while Herobrine might destroy all of Southern Tennut, the group must go there, as it was their only way to defeat Herobrine. Steve ran upstairs and collected a large map, which he pocketed and then brought to the basement. Ozen asked why the group wasn’t in the “plotting room,” and upon this suggestion, the group moved into this room, where they built a plan and got supplies together for the trip. Southern Tennut was multiple days’ worth of walking northwest of them, and it was too far for Wolfric to teleport them to, so they had to pack lots of provisions. David enchanted a chest so that it would hold several things for them even when they were carrying it, and they loaded it with food, water, supplies, beds, materials for a quick overnight shelter and everything else necessary to their survival.

After breakfast the next day, the Alliance left, aside from Atza, to walk to Southern Tennut. On the way, the group conversed about subjects aside from soul runes, because if they had been talking about them, Herobrine might overhear. They trekked for a few hours before taking a break by a lake, where they rested for a minute and took long drinks of water. They passed through a plains, across a river and finally to a mountain range where they hiked around the bases of a few mountains. By the time they cleared the mountain range, it was getting quite dark, so they built a temporary wooden shelter to spend the night in. They set up the beds and went to sleep.

Jennifer awoke quickly due to the sound of crackling fire. Even through tired and unfocused eyes, she could see orange and red dancing around the walls. Her eyes quickly adjusted as she shook awake the rest of the shelter’s residents and began throwing water about, putting out the fire. David, once awake, realized what was happening and waved his hand quickly. The fires shrank and were put out. Jennifer, once the fire was out, cleaned up the water. “What was that?!” She asked loudly.

“I’m not sure,” Steve replied, “But I’m going to look around outside and see if there’s anyone there.” Steve opened the charred door to see that it was still nighttime, and that the moon was high above his head. The clouds partially blocked the moon, and with this little moonlight, Steve couldn’t see a thing. He ran to a chest in the shelter and pulled out a potion of night vision, and then gulped it down quickly. He ran back to the door and looked around.

With his nocturnal vision, Steve could see stout hills around him, a few trees, and... something, there in the distance. It seemed to be growing smaller. Steve ran back inside. “There’s something over in the east, running away!”

“We can’t leave now,” David speculated, “Or we’ll leave all our stuff here. We need it, or we won’t make it back to the mansion.”

“True,” Wolfric reasoned, “So we can just go east once we’ve packed up.”

“I’m still pretty tired,” David yawned, “And I need my beauty sleep.”

“Looks like you haven’t been getting enough at all,” Mark teased, “Or you’d at least look like a human.”

“Oh, shut up, Mark,” David scolded. “Anyhow, I’m going back to sleep. Someone stand sentry or something, in case those guys come back.”

“Why don’t you?” Ozen asked.

“Ask Mark. She said I needed sleep.”

“‘She?!’” Mark protested.

“Oh, sorry, I meant ‘He.’” David said, but everyone could tell he was lying. “Anyway, I’m getting to sleep again.”

“Okay, whatever.” Mark agreed.

“I’ll set up a guard here,” Wolfric said, “and it’ll wake us up if it sees anything suspicious.”

Wolfric said the word “Begira” and a wisp of blue light shot out of the ground. It quickly grew and assumed the shape of a man, looking at the group. He was blue and translucent, as if he were made of light. He wasn’t particularly bright, though, and he only illuminated certain areas of the shelter. He turned around and went through the door. Wolfric waved his hand and muttered “Vice.” The charred door closed. Wolfric laid down and pulled his thick blanket over him. The rest of the alliance did the same, and the ghostly figure stood outside, guarding the place.

The next morning, the group packed up quickly and swiftly went east. They walked for a few hours, occasionally building small towers to see if anything was around. They finally saw a town in the northeast and quickly went towards it. They half-jogged towards the town until they came up to a large sign that read:

WELCOME TO

SOUTHERN TENNUT

The group ran into the large town, with its bustling streets, large buildings and several houses and farms. It was terrible for the Alliance to come here, knowing that Herobrine would almost definitely destroy the entire place. Steve’s stomach tied in knots as they walked around, passing by villagers and almost bumping into people, asking for directions and such. The group finally got instructions from someone to head northwest a bit in the village to get to the mine, so they passed taverns, houses, and people, walked between trees, tried to find the place that they were seeking. When they finally made it near the mine, they figured that they should probably ask somebody nearby where to look for somebody who might be selling soul runes. They figured that now, conversation about soul runes was unavoidable if they actually wanted any, so they gave up all attempts to conceal it.

The group soon found someone who knew what soul runes were, and they entered his house not far from the mine. He was an old, thin man with a short white beard and white hair. His house was full of charts that showed several minerals and runes and their rarity at certain depths below the world’s surface, and he had several books on runes and such piled up around his walls. He brought them into his living room, where he sat on a wooden stool by a desk with an open book, a quill and a vial of ink on it.

“So,” the man began, in a predictable voice for a man of his age, “You want to get some soul runes?” The man looked around his desk and found a pair of glasses. He put them on and began to look at his book, which contained untidy scrawl. He picked up his quill and dipped it in the ink.

“Yes,” Steve said. “We do.”

“Well, you’re out of luck.” The man said flatly, looking up at a chart on the wall, and then back down at his book. He began to write in the book. “There’s not a trace of them in that whole mine. Trust me.”

“Do you know where we could buy some?” Mark prompted.

“I would,” the man muttered as he got up from his chair and removed a thick brown book from a bookcase. He sat back down and opened the book. “If they hadn’t all been stolen.”

“Stolen?!” Ozen shouted. Steve elbowed him in the stomach.

“Yes, yes,” The man said, looking from one book to the other, occasionally writing something in the first one, surprisingly calm, considering what he was talking about, “By a large group of cave spiders, in a cave over in Northern Tennut.”

“What?” Mark asked.

“I said,” The old man replied, “That the runes have been stolen by a colony of cave spiders.”

“Why spiders?” Mark pleaded.

“Don’t like spiders?” Ozen asked. Mark shook his head.

“Well, if you want those runes, you’d better get them back.” The old man stated plainly. “You can be on your way now. Don’t leave the door open; I don’t want any leaves blowing inside.”

“Okay,” Steve said, “Thank you for the information.” The group left.

Walking north through piles of fallen leaves, between leafless trees, by houses and finally to Northern Tennut tied the Alliance’s collective stomach in knots. Not only did they know now that they were up against an entire colony of cave spiders, which are very tricky to hit and bite with poisonous pincers, but they were also going into a second town, probably dooming it to the same fate as its southern counterpart. They asked around for a few hours until they finally found and made their way to the cave.

“Okay,” Steve said, “Now we know where the cave is. It’s not long until nighttime, so let’s get some rest and a good meal.” The rest of the Alliance agreed, so they travelled to an inn and paid to have the Alliance stay overnight. They settled down in five rooms, with two people in each (Ozen got his own room because he snored so much, nobody else could sleep near him). The next morning, they went to a market and bought a breakfast. Afterward, they headed to the cave to take out the cave spider colony.

The Alliance neared the cave. It was large-mouthed, with moss around the entrance. The group unsheathed their swords and entered. David held what seemed to be a snowball, but gave off a steady glow that illuminated around seven metres in front of the Alliance. They walked for about fifteen minutes, walking through a tunnel, climbing and dropping, at some points knee-deep in water, at others climbing near-vertical walls of rock. Finally, they reached a dense wall of solid cobweb. Steve took out a pair of shears and began slashing through the cobwebs, letting it fall to the uneven cave floor. The rest of the Alliance followed suit.

David’s orb began to dim. The group had went through quite a few pairs of shears. After an hour or so of this, Ozen looked at Mark and shouted, “Mark! Spider on your back!” Mark quickly began to swat at his back and shout.

Steve rolled his eyes and said, “Mark, calm down! Ozen was messing with you!” Mark glared at Ozen. Ozen smirked.

“Oh, shut up!” Mark yelled. The group went back to slashing through cobweb.

After a few minutes, Ozen looked back at Mark and said, “Mark, there’s a spider on the wall behind you!” Steve sighed and didn’t even bother to look back at them.

Mark said, “Again, Ozen! Shut up!”

“No, seriously, it’s right behind you!” Ozen insisted. Mark went back to slicing cobweb until he heard a loud clicking sound from right behind him. He shouted and spun around to see a horrifying sight. He struck the thing with the back of his shears.

“Ouch!” Ozen shouted.

“What?” Mark questioned. “I heard the clicking, I saw a big, hairy, ugly thing and I hit it!”

“You knew that was me!” Ozen replied, punching Mark hard on the shoulder.

“I swear! It was dark, and you look just as gross as one, and---”

“Mark, be quiet!” Steve shouted back at him. “I hear something!”

There was a quiet hissing sound from in front of the Alliance. No, it wasn’t hissing... it was hundreds or thousands of clicks, drawing nearer every second.

“Mark?” Steve said.

“What?” Mark replied.

“This isn’t going to be fun for you.” Steve said calmly.

“What do you mean?” Mark asked nervously.

“You might want to get behind something is what I mean.” The sea of clicks was getting closer fast. It was going to get to them very soon.

Mark almost collapsed as he saw several hundreds of enormous blue spiders rushing towards the group, climbing over each other on the walls, floor and ceiling. Mark lost sight of anything when David’s orb became covered completely by spiders and was knocked back very quickly by the scurrying mass of hairy legs and poisonous pincers. The entire group was overcome by these hideous beings and toppled backwards. After a few seconds, the spiders passed. Steve got up and looked around. Very shaken, the rest of the group was standing up. The rest of the group, of course, except for Mark.

“Mark’s unconscious!” Steve shouted to the rest of the group. “He might have been bitten!”

Steve examined Mark and saw that he was very pale. He came to moments after the group examined him for bite marks. Although he was covered by spider hair, he was otherwise undamaged.

“Th-that...” Mark stuttered quietly, “W-was re-really f-freaky.”

“He’s fine,” Steve announced, “Just a bit shaken.” Jennifer let out a sigh of relief.

“Why didn’t they attack us?” David asked.

“I think,” Steve replied slowly, “That they were in too much of a hurry, getting somewhere else.”

“Where?” Wolfric asked.

“Somewhere where we need to be. There must be lots of danger to the colony if they’re all rushing that much, and we need to get there. David, we need your light. I can’t see a thing.”

“The spiders took it.”

“I

“I’ll get a torch out.” Mark volunteered. He took out a very dimly glowing redstone torch. “Oops.” He switched the redstone torch out for a normal one.

“Now, let’s hurry back to wherever those spiders are going. Does anybody have any ideas on which route they took?” Steve asked.

“I know exactly where they are. They’re sixty-three metres west, forty-nine metres south and twelve metres above us.” David told him.

“How do you know that?” Steve asked.

“They have my light. I can track it. I enchanted it, after all.”

“Well, that’s handy. Can you lead us?” Steve prompted.

“Sure,” David confirmed. He began walking quickly the opposite way as before. The rest of the group ensued.

Soon, the Alliance reached a point at which they could hear several clicks. They could also hear swords slashing and loud hisses. They also were able to make out the distinct sounds of humans shouting in pain. Steve took out his sword and ran toward the source of the sound. The rest of the group followed until they reached a large, dark mass of hairy legs, shining eyes and pincers. Steve lifted up his shoe; he felt it touch something wet and sticky. Mark’s torch illuminated the ground enough for Steve to see that blood was pooling on the floor. Steve hurried toward the spiders and slashed at them with his sword, which had an insane Bane of Arthropods enchantment on it. The spiders died quickly at first, until they quickly surrounded Steve, climbing and jumping onto him. He felt several sets of pincers sink into his skin. Steve’s vision became extremely blurry, and eventually blacked out.

Steve came to. He was in a small, square room, lying on a bed. Luckily, someone had taken off his armour; he would have had a bad headache by now if he still had his diamond helmet on. There were cloth bandages wrapped around his arms, legs and chest. They were drenched with something red. Steve couldn’t tell if this was a potion or merely his own blood. Steve felt very dizzy, and it was feeling very difficult to breathe. Yep, he thought, I’m losing blood. Steve groaned.

“He’s coming to!” Steve heard somebody shout. It seemed fairly distant, but Steve couldn’t tell if this was true or if he was just too lightheaded to localize sound properly. He felt arms wrap around his torso tightly - right over several pincer wounds. Steve moaned; whoever had hugged him had pulled his upper body up into a very uncomfortable position, with his head leaning back painfully. A small wound on his neck seemed to be pulled open by the strain.

“Oh, sorry,” Steve heard somebody say. It sounded closer, and he could tell that it was Jennifer. She gently set Steve back down and pulled back her arms.

After a while, Steve managed to mutter, “How long have I been lying here for?” His vision hadn’t come back, so he didn’t even try to open his eyes, and he didn’t know exactly who he was talking to or if anyone would hear him at all. Evidently, Jennifer was still right next to him.

“About an hour. Those spiders really loved you.”

“Is... anyone else hurt?” Steve managed to mumble.

“Most of the Alliance got out fine. Ozen got quite a few bites on his leg, but the rest of us just drank some milk to dilute the poison and drank a potion.”

“Can you believe it, bro?” Ozen asked. Apparently, he was also beside Steve. “They took all my chicken! Every last piece!”

Steve managed to open his eyes and look at Ozen, who came into focus. Ozen was leaning on a fence post to keep himself up. He was pale, but he didn’t look too bad.

“Where are we?” Steve wheezed.

“We mined out a little room in the cave.”

“I’m... so thirsty...” Steve coughed.

“Oh, here,” Jennifer said quickly, “Drink this.” Steve saw Jennifer hold up a bottle of water. Steve tried to reach for the bottle, but his arm screamed with pain. All he could do was flop it onto its other side.

“Here you go.” Jennifer offered, lifting Steve up, slowly and gently, until he was almost sitting upright. Jennifer positioned herself so that Steve was leaning his back on her side. Steve again tried to reach for the bottle. He knew that he had to regain his strength soon, and he was quite frustrated at the fact that his arm didn’t wish to go near the glass bottle.

“Don’t strain. That’ll make it harder to heal. Let me help.”

“Ugh...kay.” Steve managed. Jennifer opened the bottle and began slowly pouring the water into Steve’s mouth. It tasted slightly tangy. As Steve swallowed it, it felt like the bite mark in his neck was beginning to close, very slowly. Steve suspected that there was some kind of healing potion mixed in.

When Steve was finished with the water, Jennifer laid him back down gently.

“Where...” Steve muttered after a while, “Were the spiders going?”

“Actually,” Replied an unfamiliar voice. Maybe it was familiar, but Steve’s headache prevented him from properly recognizing it. “They were coming to attack us.”

Steve looked up. He saw a woman around his age looking at him with a faint smile. She was wearing a green shirt, brown pants, a pair of grey boots (currently covered with spider blood) and long, orange hair. She had quite a few spider bites, but not nearly as many as Steve. Her left eye was swollen, and there was blood running down her arm.

“Who... are you?” Steve asked.

“I’m Alex. The rest of you guys told me that once you realized that those spiders were after someone, Steve, you didn’t think twice before you ran over to us.” Alex grinned and clapped Steve’s shoulder.

“‘Us?’ Who else was... with you?” Steve mumbled.

“Oh, there’s me, Rana and Dylan.”

“What?!” Steve tried to shout. It came out thin and weak, though. “You... you came here in... a group of three?!”

“We couldn’t get anyone else to come. Besides, we had no idea how many spiders there would be. But, we’ll all stand a better chance if we both go together! How about that?” Alex asked cheerily. She had quite a positive attitude for somebody who had just been attacked by nearly a hundred enormous, venomous spiders.

“Fine...” Steve agreed. “Just... let me rest for now.”
“Great!” Alex said.

With the aid of health and strength potions, Steve was able to regenerate enough within an hour to go back into the cave. But first, he was introduced to Rana and Dylan and told why they and Alex were there.

“We were actually here for almost the same reason as you lot.” Alex said. “We wanted to get the runes back to the people in Tennut. We came into the cave a while after you did.”

“And you came in here,” Steve asked, “With three people, when you knew there was an entire colony of enormous, venomous, bloodthirsty arachnids?!”

“To be fair, we didn’t know exactly how many were in a colony.” Dylan interrupted.

“Yes, because that makes everything so much better! That you don’t even know how freaking fast those stupid spiders reproduce!” Steve was giving himself a headache. He sat back down on the bed he had awakened in. “You can’t just stroll into a cave, let giant spiders know you’re trying to get in by killing one of them, and expect to just walk right by all of them, pick up the runes and walk out alive.” Steve had been told that the group had encountered one spider not long after entering and killed it, which, using some quirk in several species, let the rest of them know what had happened. Steve hated that about monsters, especially zombies.

“Sorry,” Alex said sassily, “But we wanted to get these runes back to their owners!” She didn’t have an exceptionally positive attitude anymore. “Besides, Dylan insisted we go as soon as we could!”

Dylan, a black-haired, beige-shirted, green-pantsed, bored-looking guy about Ozen’s age, nodded. “I like to fight things.” Dylan said simply.

“I said no,” Came a high voice from somewhere or other, “But Alex and Dylan said I had to go, so here I am.” The owner of the voice, looking irritated, came into view. It was a girl much younger than Steve, with red hair in a ponytail and a green sweater. She wore pink and white striped pants and a large frog hat. She had no bites; Steve guessed that she had ran at the sight of the spiders. Great, Steve thought, A kid. In a cave. Fighting bloodthirsty monsters. Exactly what I need now.

“Look, I know you were doing something good. That’s fine. I’m just saying that if you want to do this, you need more than three people. And they need to be good.”

“Well, now we do! We have ten people now!”

Steve sighed. “Whatever. Now, are we going to go, or not?”

The group packed up the supplies and such they had gotten out, and Ozen packed up all of the chicken he somehow hadn’t eaten yet. He must have packed more than fifty whole chickens; otherwise, he would have eaten them all by now. When the Alliance and the others finished packing, they ventured back into the cave. They were quite close to the mouth of the cave and Steve could clearly see that it was now nighttime. The group hiked down the cave, Rana constantly complaining about something or other: the cave’s smell; the “big, stupid spiders,” the lack of light; her hunger... Steve, on several occasions, had to remind her that spiders would be able to hear her complain. That shut her up.

Finally, after quite a long, annoying trek, the Alliance and the other three reached where the Alliance had been before the other three were attacked. They continued slicing through cobweb until they reached a large, dark room that housed a loud, constant sea of sounds that the group identified as the scuttling of hairy, spindly legs and the clicking of pincers attached to hungry mouths. The room was mostly below the group; they had come in at the top and there was a sixty-foot drop to the floor. Luckily, no spiders were near the entrance and the group hadn’t been noticed yet. Of course, the way past, which David and Wolfric sensed runes from, was on the other side of the venomous, starving mass of hair, pincers and glowing eyes that released a heavy stench that made the humans nauseous and wafted through the room like the scent of freshly baked pumpkin pie. But terrible.

“Okay,” Ozen whispered, “What’s the plan? Do we charge through? Put ladders on the walls and walk along the edges? Run with or swords swinging wildly and hope to not get bitten? Eat a bunch of enchanted golden apples and ---”

“I say we go around,” Steve interrupted, “Mining a tunnel a few blocks from the edges.”

“Okay,” Ozen sighed. “I guess.”

“How far would you say it is from here to the sides?” Steve asked nobody in particular.

“About thirty metres?” Jennifer suggested.

“Then we’ll go forty. Let’s start.” Steve drew his pickaxe from the vast void of his pocket and began to strike the rocks in the side of the wall about five metres from the entrance to the large room. The group reached forty metres and then turned to the side and continued mining. After about six metres of tunneling, Steve was lifting his pick upward to swing down on the rock when the floor gave away.

The room had been much larger than they assumed and Jennifer misjudged (it was quite dark, after all). The group fell into the mass of spiders. They could all clearly make out the sounds of Rana’s frantic cries for several seconds before she was overcome by starved arachnids. Steve wildly struck at whatever he could reach with his sword, lighting the beasts ablaze and sending them flying back, colliding with others and quickly spreading fire throughout the room. This continued for a short while, the group attacking whatever was in their reach, until a loud voice echoed through the room. It uttered one single word in a deathly, hoarse voice: “STOP.” The spiders instantly stopped. The several dozens that were burning continued to do so without a word of objection (or a hiss, or click, or whatever sounds they might have used to signal that they were being roasted and were near death). Steve looked toward the source of the sound, which was quite difficult for a few different reasons: first, he was injured and had been bitten in the neck a few hours ago and his neck was not moving very well; and secondly, the sound, barely more than a whisper, echoed through the cavern, and Steve was nearly unable to locate the source’s location.

After a minute, Steve saw a light near one wall, which revealed a tall ledge. Standing on this ledge was a wither skeleton that Steve recognized as Debel, who had killed Nicholas during the war.

“Hello,” Debel said. His voice sounded something like an iron golem getting hit in the face with a cubic metre of granite at one hundred and thirty-seven and seven-twelfths kilometres per hour, the granite next sliding across the golem’s face and knocking its nose off, then the golem reacting with a shout of pain and a punch that smashed the granite into twenty-seven pieces, all formed into various sounds that made up the word. “How are you?” Steve couldn’t bear hearing Debel’s voice and covered his ears to block out the sound.

“Why are you here?!” Steve shouted.

“I,” Debel replied in a voice that sounded like stone grinding on stone, “Am here to get something. And I have.” Debel held up several stone disks with various, coloured engravings in them. “But I only need these.” He picked a certain kind of rune out of the pile. It had blue and yellow-green wave-like shaped on it.

“Soul runes.” David said.

“Yes.” Debel replied with a sound that sent a shiver up Steve’s spine. It spread throughout his limbs and made his teeth chatter and his body shake violently. “Soul runes.”

“What do you need those for?” Wolfric asked calmly.

“I will tell you,” Debel replied, “But first... Steve!”

“What?” Steve asked angrily.

“I need your sword.” Debel’s voice was extremely aggressive. Steve hadn’t expected it not to be.

“For what?” Steve asked. “I want to know what you’re going to fail at.”

“Idiot!” Debel shouted at Steve. “Do not insult me! I will kill you!”

“I’d like to see you try.” Steve said. He spat on the floor of the cave.

“Insolent humans! You dare challenge me?!” Debel shouted, almost deafening the humans. Ozen elbowed Steve in the ribs.

“No!” Mark shouted. “We don’t dare challenge you!”

“Hmm.” Debel replied. “Now, Steve! I will need your sword!”

“Why would you need my sword?” Steve asked.

“Because it started glowing red when you killed the Wither!”

“Do you like red?” Steve asked. “Or did you realize that it starts changing colours when I kill things and think it was cool?” Steve was now buying time to try to come up with a plan. There were still hundreds of spiders surrounding him, and Debel could order them with one word to resume attack, so Steve hadn’t had any luck so far.

“It glowed red,” Debel said, “Because when you killed the Wither, I believe you captured a piece of its soul in your sword.”

“First of all, how’d you know my sword turned red when I killed the Wither?”

“One of the witches with it escaped and told me.”

“I see. But I’m afraid you’re out of luck. It’s enchanted to change colour gradually as I kill things. It makes it look cool. But when I killed the Wither, it counted as much more than a normal monster, so it changed my sword’s colour faster.”

“LIAR!” Debel shouted, again nearly deafening Steve. This was true. Steve was lying. He honestly had no idea why his sword had changed its colour, but if it had any of the Wither’s soul, he knew it was a bad idea to let a wither skeleton with soul runes have it. “Now. Give. Me. Your. SWORD!”

“No!” Steve rebelled. He still hadn’t had enough time to think of a decent plan, and he was now desperate for more time. “Over my dead body!”

“Fair enough,” Debel replied, “I will. Spiders! Attack!”

Oh, come on! Steve thought as the spiders resumed attacking him. That’s the third time today! he desperately repelled the starved arachnids with his sword, again spreading fire rapidly. This didn’t help too much; the burning spiders fought back and lit Steve ablaze. It was quite a horrific sight, the arachnids, a metre long, a metre in legspan, and half of that tall, their stinging, long hairs in flames, their glowing eyes shining with reflected firelight as they lunged toward their prey. Their pincers, great ivory tusks with holes from which spewed poisonous liquids that they injected into their burning prey, clicking wildly with a mixture of intense, searing pain and endless starvation. They leaped onto Steve’s helmet and bit at his face, flames spreading onto him, venom spraying into his eyes, lighting on rapidly-spreading fire on the way.

Steve, through a hole in the thick wall of legs covering his face, saw Jennifer desperately trying to fend off the spiders that soon overcame her. Steve saw the spiders completely cover her and stop being sent flying back. Jennifer had stopped fighting.

“Okay!” Steve sputtered through the legs. “Stop it! I’ll give you the sword!”

Debel grinned. “Stop!” The spiders all froze in place. Steve knocked the spider from his head and poured water onto himself to put out the fire. He looked around and the rest did the same. Jennifer got up from the pile of spiders with several bruises and scratches and bites, but alive.

“Steve!” Jennifer shouted. “Why would you do that?!”

Steve built a tower up onto the ledge that Debel stood on, holding his sword, now glowing purple after the fight with the Enderdragon. Steve reached the ledge and held out his sword for Debel, holding it by the blade and allowing Debel access to the handle. Debel reached for it, but Steve, in a quick move, flipped the blade so that it was heading straight for Debel. Debel merely grabbed the sword, stopping it.

“Steve,” Debel began, “You didn’t think that a mere sword could stop a wither skeleton?”

“Debel, you’re forgetting something. The Wither is more powerful than a mere wither skeleton. And I have its soul in this sword.” Debel took a step back. Steve swung again. Steve had a more powerful swing this time; he had the handle of the sword. He hit Debel’s shoulder with it and Debel’s left arm fell off, clattering against the ground. Debel howled with pain, and anger overtook him. He lifted Steve up by the neck with his other hand. Steve began to feel the Withering burn the flesh in his neck much worse than the fire no more than a minute ago. Steve tried to scream, but no sound could pass his throat. The Withering spread, first down toward his chest, but soon nearer his face. He felt his life slipping away as his eyes went out of focus and his vision became completely black.

Jennifer took Steve’s sword out of his hand and slashed it at Debel. Debel’s hand let go of Steve, who fell off the ledge to the ground below. Jennifer continued to slash at Debel until he managed to land a punch on her stomach that sent her careening off the ledge, the Withering quickly spreading. When she landed, dropping Steve’s sword, she saw Steve’s face almost completely blackened and shriveled, his arms beginning to wither away as well. She quickly poured a potion of regeneration into his throat and did the same with half of a bucket of milk, and she drank the rest to heal herself. Steve began to heal, his face regaining colour.

Jennifer picked up Steve’s sword again and whipped and ender pearl onto the cave ceiling, above the ledge. When it collided with the rock, she saw her vision temporarily go black and she felt weightless, but she quickly regained her senses after the fraction of a second that teleportation took. She was now falling straight toward Debel, and she tightened her hands around the handle of Steve’s sword and aimed it so that it would collide with Debel’s head. Debel quickly looked around, confused as to the whereabouts of Jennifer, until he realized that she was above him and hastily sidestepped to get out of the way. Jennifer hit the rock on top of the ledge and rolled toward Debel, then swinging the sword down at him. Debel dodged again, but was hit instead by a second diamond sword, hacking at his skull. The owner of this sword was Steve, who was still slightly withered in his neck, but had healed enough to fight. Debel turned around and attempted to punch Steve, but was interrupted when he suddenly flew back into the wall.

Steve and Jennifer saw Wolfric standing at the top of the ledge and figured that he had teleported himself up. He ran toward Debel and shouted “Emberluock!” Debel had fallen to the cave floor by now, and he was beginning to get back up. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t seem to regain his balance. Purple particles were swirling around him as he stumbled around. “Palmate!” Wolfric shouted. A large shape that looked like a hand composed entirely of light and about one hundred and thirty-four times the normal size of a hand wrapped around Debel and began to crush him. Wolfric shouted “Vice!” and the runes that Debel had shown the Alliance appeared in his hand. He quickly pocketed them. Unfortunately, by now, the hand and the nausea had worn off of Debel and he began sprinting back toward them. He was suddenly pushed back by a barrage of arrows, though, and couldn’t reach them. Mark had also gotten up the ledge, wielding his redstone rapid-fire dispenser mechanism. Behind him were Ozen, David and the rest of the group.

There was chaos, to say the least. All in a matter of seconds, Debel shouted at the spiders to attack again, Wolfric began to search through the runes, David pulled Debel’s skull into the air with a quick enchantment, Alex ran at Debel with a diamond sword, followed by Dylan, who had only an iron one, Wolfric began to crush runes in his hand, Rana began to scream as the entirety of the colony of spiders climbed up the ledge, and Wolfric shouted “Temporise!” As a result of Wolfric’s shout, the cave’s inhabitants all immediately froze. Wolfric let out a sigh. He was the only one who could move. “Palmate,” Wolfric muttered. Yet another magic hand wrapped around Debel. “Pandate.” Wolfric said. The group, along with Debel, were teleported to the mouth of the cave. Out here, it was dusk, and snow was beginning to slowly settle to the ground. The group resumed, and they all looked extremely confused. Debel struggled to get out of the hand.

“Now,” Wolfric began, “Debel. Why were you in that cave?”

“I was in it to get the runes safe until I got your sword, Steve. You were unlucky enough to stumble upon this cave. Why were you here?” Debel asked.

“That’s none of your business.” Steve replied. “Why do you want the runes and my sword?”

“I told you,” Debel said impatiently, “I need the Wither’s soul. I’m going to use the soul runes to get it out--- and into me.”

“You want to become as powerful as the Wither, I assume?” Jennifer asked.

“You assume right. Then I’ll kill you. Every last one of you.”

“But you can’t,” Mark said, “Because we have the runes and the soul, and you’re trapped.”

“Not for long.” Debel grinned. The group heard the rush of spider legs running toward the entrance of the cave. “Bolide!” Wolfric shouted. A large fireball shot from his hand at the oncoming spiders. Tired of being on fire, they quickly fled.

“Oh, really?” Wolfric asked.

“Yes.” Debel said. He disappeared from the grasp of the hand and appeared again behind Wolfric. He slashed at Wolfric’s back and Wolfric quickly tumbled to the ground, rapidly being overcome by the Withering.

“I-Iatro!” Wolfric managed to say. The spread slowed, but did not stop.

“Your magic cannot save you,” Debel told him, “You will die. You will all die!” Debel began laughing with an ear-piercing tone and clawed at the rest of the group. He first struck Steve in the chest, and then Mark in the arm, and next Jennifer in the side of the head. He continued until the entire group was lying on the ground, quickly withering.

Debel laughed. Steve didn’t blame him. What happened next was, in fact, quite laughable: Debel found himself in a thin beam of bright light. It swiftly grew until it engulfed him, and he screamed as he disappeared into the light. Then, the light suddenly stopped, darkening the area. It then shone on every member of the group, slowly de-withering them. Steve was the first to heal completely, stand, look up and shout “Thanks!”

“My pleasure.” A voice came from seemingly all around them. It sounded as peaceful in the midst of all of the fighting as freshly-baked pumpkin pie tasted.

“Wh-what’s going on?” Alex asked.

“Nothing you should worry about.”

“Who are you? What are you? Where are you?” These questions flooded from Alex’s mouth as she laid on the ground, perplexed at this turn of events.

“I am Deodate, I am a Paragon, and I am right here.” Another beam of light shot down onto the ground and from it came Deodate, a figure that shone at about four and two over pi baker’s dozens times as bright as glowstone. He had toned the brightness down slightly since his last appearance, probably to let nearby townspeople sleep (as if they hadn’t been awakened already by the roars of the fireball’s flames a minute ago, or the group’s screams, or Debel’s ear-splitting (rather than side-splitting) laughter) in peace.

“What’s that?” Dylan asked.

“Explaining this last time took much too long. I---”

“Explaining what?” Rana asked.

“Never mind. Steve, you must get those soul runes to your father.”

“That was our plan.” Steve replied.

“I am aware. Now, Ozen, I have something for you.” Deodate handed Ozen a piece of paper. Ozen read it and grinned.

“Why didn’t I think of apple pie?”

“Jennifer, I advise that you stay with Steve after the Alliance’s current mission, should you complete it.”

“Okay.” Jennifer replied uncertainly.

“Trust me. Now, Alex, Dylan, Rana, you’d best be off. And lastly,” Deodate said hurriedly, “All of you, read this.” Deodate handed David, as he was closest, a thin book. “And Mark! I’ve forgotten. Here.” Deodate handed Mark a book entitled Uber-Advanced Redstone Circuitry. Deodate then disappeared promptly.

“Apple pie?” Steve asked.

“Yep. It’s a recipe.” Ozen replied, smiling. “I’ll probably tweak it a bit.”

“That was the one person we know who could have helped us. And now it’s all wasted because you want to make a fancy pie!”

“Steve,” Jennifer interrupted, “Calm down. Deodate gave us this,” Jennifer took the book out of David’s hand and showed it to Steve, “And it’s sure to help.”

Steve looked at the book. It was bound in leather and had the words Soul Runes - A Guide imprinted on it. “Looks simple enough.” Steve muttered. “Whatever. Make your pie, Ozen. I don’t care.” Steve looked at the ground. Snow was falling onto it slowly, drifting from the clouds.

“Let’s just get out of here and get back to the mansion.” Jennifer said hesitantly.

“It’s dark.” Steve extrapolated from the shade of the sky. It was cloudy, and snow was lazily drifting down from it in an attempt to glaze the ground with a fine layer of crisp snow. “We should stay here tonight.”

“True.” Wolfric agreed. “We won’t be wanting monsters to kill us. I think I’ve had enough monsters for one day.”

“Wolfric, you have tons of runes now. Can’t you just teleport us back to the mansion?” David asked.

“Long-distance teleportation is risky, even with runes.” Wolfric said. “I agree with Steve.”

“Okay.” Ozen said. “As long as they sell apples nearby.”

“Ozen, will you shut up about your pie!” Steve shouted. Jennifer was surprised at this; Steve rarely forgot a question mark, and even more rarely did that and yelled at Ozen at the same time.

“Let’s get back to the inn.” Jennifer said hastily. “You need some sleep, Steve.”

The Alliance had proceeded to the inn and were now in their rooms. Like last time, they were two people to a room, and like last time, Steve was with Jennifer. Although unlike last time, Steve was now dramatically looking out the window of the wooden room, the way that heroes in books do when something is on their mind. He was seeing little flakes of snow whirling around the dark sky, carried by the breeze, weightless. They were floating through the air without a single care in the world. They whisked by the window, landing on the glass pane and dripping down like tears, leaving thin trails of water in their paths. They were care-free, unburdened, swooshing by Steve’s window on occasional gusts of wind. They teased Steve.

Steve saw these snowflakes, but he wasn’t looking at them. He was looking past them. He was looking at what he didn’t see: he was looking at Herobrine. He could see Herobrine looking back at Steve. He could see Herobrine grinning at him. He could see Herobrine holding Bane, the one sword there was that could hurt him. And he had it. He could see Herobrine laughing at Steve. Steve couldn’t hurt him. Yes, I can, Steve thought stubbornly. We can. We have the soul runes. Steve could now see Herobrine laughing at him. Mocking him. How would Steve be able to get to Herobrine and use the soul runes? Steve could see Herobrine holding the sword again. Even if he could use the soul runes on Herobrine, how would Steve, how would anyone, be able to defeat him?

Steve continued to watch the snowflakes dancing through the night air. He began to become quite angry with Herobrine. Herobrine was preventing him from being anything like the snowflakes. Herobrine was keeping him from being care-free, like the snowflakes. From being burdenless. Herobrine was endangering everyone. Steve was suddenly filled with rage. He clenched his fists, still staring through the window. He was jealous of the snowflakes. They teased him. Mocked him, dancing around freely whilst he was condemned to fight Herobrine to the death - whether it be Herobrine’s or his own. Steve gritted his teeth. His fingernails dug into his palms with such force that he flinched - the first movement he had made besides that of his eyes since he had first looked out the window earlier.

Steve was still enraged silently. He felt like he was about to explode. He felt like killing somebody. Herobrine.

“Steve,” A voice said. It took a second for Steve to register it and recognize it as Jennifer’s. “You’ve been really stressed recently. I--”

“We’ve all been killing giant spiders that almost killed us all thrice!” Steve began to let out his rage.

“Twice, really.”

“Whatever. The point is, we’ve fought a wither skeleton. We’ve been attacked by a colony of enraged cave spiders. We’ve travelled on foot all the way from the mansion to Northern Tennut. And that was all within a couple of days. We’ve also killed a dragon, I fought the Wither, we were all in a war recently, I haven’t seen my father in three years... do you have any idea what this is like? I’m surprised we’re not all stressed!”

“Yes.” Jennifer said simply. “I know exactly how this feels.”

Steve raised an eyebrow.

“You haven’t seen your father in three years. I know that’s terrible. I’m sorry.” Jennifer’s voice cracked. “But at least you have your mother now, and you have the chance to see your father again. I don’t.” Jennifer was now using a completely different tone than the one she used at the start of the conversation. Her eyes were watering. “I don’t get to see either of my parents. Ever again. We... we’re all stressed, okay? We are.” Jennifer was practically crying now. “Everyone is. But we all still... still have to---” Jennifer wasn’t crying anymore. She was sobbing. She had her face in her hands. Her long red hair was covering her face.

“Is that why Deodate told you to stay with me afterward?” Steve asked quietly.

“Mm-hmm.” Jennifer said, nodding.

“You’re right. Everyone’s stressed. With a good reason.” Steve reassured her. “I’m sorry.” Steve put his arms around Jennifer. Jennifer continued sobbing. Steve hugged her tighter. “But don’t worry. We can do this.”

Jennifer began to quiet down soon. Steve didn’t move. He kept Jennifer wrapped in his arms, and she put hers around him. She was still quietly crying into Steve’s shoulder. Steve felt warm tears roll down his own face, as well, into Jennifer’s hair.

“They...” Jennifer soon said, “My parents... died not soon before you called the Alliance in summer.”

Steve nodded silently.

“We can do this.” Steve repeated quietly, this time more to himself than to her. “I know we can.”

Had Steve really just been yelling at Jennifer? He felt terrible. Steve needed to protect Jennifer. He needed to protect everyone. He needed to defeat Herobrine. They all did. Then they could be like the snowflakes Steve envied so much.

Snowflakes, Steve thought. They fall. Always. I don’t want to be like a snowflake. I want to really be free. Even snowflakes, seeming so care-free, only fell. And snowflakes were pushed around by even the slightest breeze, knocking them off course, keeping them from doing what they wanted. And then they landed on the ground. And they couldn’t do anything else. Steve was already a snowflake. Herobrine was the wind that pushed him, making him swerve off course. Snowflakes can’t stop the wind. Right? Or could they? Some way Steve didn’t know about, the snowflakes didn’t know about? And they just hadn’t yet?

Steve and the rest of the Alliance could stop Herobrine. They just hadn’t yet. We will, Steve thought. We will stop Herobrine. Then, we’ll be even less burdened than snowflakes. We’ll be able to do what we want. We’ll be free. Really free. Not like a snowflake. Like us. Like we were before.

“We can defeat Herobrine.” Steve whispered to Jennifer. “And we will. Don’t worry.”

“That’s not all I want.” Jennifer whispered back. “I... I want my parents. I’m alone now.”

“No, you’re not.” Steve replied. “If you’re alone, who are you hugging?”

Jennifer looked into Steve’s eyes. Steve was slightly taller than her, so she had to look up slightly.

“You’re not alone.” Steve reassured her. “You have me. We have each other. And we both have the rest of the Alliance. We aren’t alone. Don’t worry.”

Tears began rolling down Jennifer’s eyes faster than before. “Thank you.” She said seriously, still looking into his eyes. She blinked a few tears out of her eyes. “Thank you.” She dug her face back into his shoulder and hugged him tighter.

The couple stood there for quite a while, holding each other, streams of tears swiftly flooding their faces. They did this until their eyes burned from crying, and then continued until they were exhausted from it. Then, they quietly slumped into bed. Steve looked out the window one last time. He could barely see the snowflakes, as it was so dark, but he could still make out the tiny shapes floating through the air, drifting on the breeze. They were only temporarily happy, care-free, burdenless. Once they hit the ground, they were stuck. Trapped. Steve wanted to be free permanently. He wanted to kill Herobrine.

No. He wanted to defeat Herobrine. Not kill him. He wanted to get the Herobrine part out of Solomon. He didn’t want anyone to die. He silently promised to the Alliance - to Jennifer - that they would all make it out alive. That they would all be free. Permanently. Unfortunately, he was interrupted mid-promise by the sound of fire from outside. Damn it, he thought, Herobrine.

Steve and Jennifer ran outside after quickly waking the rest of the group. What they saw was a glowing-eyed Solomon floating about fifteen metres above the ground, holding fireballs in his hands. His eyes were shining like beacons as he lobbed a fireball at the inn that the group was just in. As the projectile collided with the building, Rana cowered behind Dylan to hide from falling logs and large, burning pieces of wood. The inn was now quickly burning down, and Herobrine lobbed the other fireball at a house nearby. The house was obliterated in a magnificent display of flames and wood that landed all over the place. What was left of the building after one hit was a large crater in the ground and smouldering ash and pieces of wood. Herobrine began laughing, as the majority of villains like him would at a time such as this one.

Herobrine, now holding no fireballs, pointed at another house that was being fled from by a few villagers, and lightning struck it no less than a dozen times. It ended up very similar to the previous one, as well as the next, which Herobrine had thrown what seemed to be an explosive squid at. Herobrine reached toward the inn again with both of his hands and jets of flame issued from his palms. The entire inn was engulfed by fire in no less than twenty seconds of this. Afterward, as if he were a spoilt gentleman deciding to try a different dish in a several-coursed meal, Herobrine turned away from one building and looked at another. He swung a roundhouse kick towards a nearby smithy from his viewpoint in the air and the smithy sliced in two as if he had swung a fifty-metre-long invisible flaming laser sword through it. For all the Alliance knew, perhaps he had.

Herobrine would have continued this new hobby of his that was destroying towns and ending lives, however he seemed to get mildly bored part of the way through aiming a fireball so that one of the pieces of wood from the building he was aiming it at would fly through a fleeing man’s back and turned toward the Alliance, who were still standing where they had been a minute ago. He took no heed of Alex or Dylan, but he did flick the air with a finger and send Rana flying into the collapsed, still smouldering wreckage of a nearby house. She disturbed some coals in her landing and caused the ruins to ignite again around her. Alex and Dylan ran to retrieve her, followed by Steve and Jennifer. Jennifer threw a bucketful of water at the general area she had seen Rana land in and put the fire around there out. She found Rana, mostly by use of sound localization - Rana’s terrified, constant screams were finally useful - and got her out. She had very bad burns and did not look very happy.

When Jennifer had given Rana potions to counter the burns, she and the rest of the Alliance turned back to Herobrine, who had burned yet another building down.

“Why are you doing this?!” Jennifer questioned Herobrine.

“Because I want to.” Herobrine said. His voice caused the earth beneath the group to rumble (though this was most likely purely for dramatic effect). He flicked again and Rana flew into the still unsteadily standing ruins of the inn. The building toppled and crumbled, and then finally collapsed onto her. She was buried under several tonnes of debris, rubble, ash and flaming pieces of wood. There was no chance that she could be retrieved.

Jennifer was fed up, to say much less than the least. “WhyareyougoingaroundandkillingpeopleyouareaterriblepersonstopburningdownvillagesandimpalingpeopleonflyingpiecesofwoodandstopitandgobacktonormalinsteadofwhateveryouarenowyoumonsterIhateyougetyoureyestostopglowingandfixallthisandstopflickingRanaaroundbecausenowyou’vekilledherImeanjustlookatthathugepileofrubbleontopofhersheobviouslydidn’tsurvivlethatandI’mrunningoutofbreathsojuststopitalreadywhyaren’tyounormalSolomonagainandnowI’moutofbreath!!!!!”

Ozen stared at Jennifer, envious of her lungs and vowing to himself that he would train himself to be able to do that during arguments. He swore that he would teach himself to say approximately one hundred and forty syllables continuously without a break for breath.

“The answer to your first question is the one I just gave. For your second, Solomon is dead. I am Herobrine.” The ground gave a shudder at the last word. “As for your requests, no, no, no, no, no, no, fine, I did, and yet again no.”

Jennifer, in one quick movement, equipped her bow, nocked an arrow, pulled the string and then released it. In about a second, the arrow was flying towards Herobrine. Herobrine whipped a fireball which he had summoned from nothing at it and the arrow was engulfed in flames. The fireball kept flying towards Jennifer, who quickly dodged it. It hit the rubble that Rana was buried in and launched a fairly-sized portion of it into the air, starting a shower of dust and ash. A thick layer of smoke from the several fires blocked everyone’s vision, stung their lungs and caused them to cough.

After a while, the smoke cleared and Steve said to Herobrine, “We will defeat you. There is no point in trying to beat us.”

“Did I not just destroy half of Northern Tennut? Did I not also destroy Brookshore? Morbridge? Woodmere?”

“I still don’t see the point.” Steve said. Now, let me just put this into perspective for you. Steve is standing on a packed dirt road in a town that’s just been half exploded in front of his eyes. He’s conversing with the man who just exploded half the town and killed one of his companions. The man just exploded half the town with magical fireballs and lightning and such. The man is floating menacingly, high above Steve, folding his arms, looking spitefully down at Steve. The man’s eyes are pure white and glowing. The man also destroyed three other towns. With his mind. The man is Steve’s father. Steve is speaking calmly, level-headed, to the man. And Steve was questioning the man. Anywho, now that I’ve made Herobrine seem a little more menacing and Steve a little more brave, you can have your story back.

“You’re not supposed to see the point.”

“If I’m not supposed to see the point, why are you trying to explain the point?”

“Silence!” Herobrine shouted. Lightning struck in the background. Wolves howled in the distance. Herobrine was really enjoying the dramatic effects.

“Well,” Ozen interrupted, stepping forwards a few metres, “I say we all settle on this: Herobrine’s crazy. Let’s go home. I’m hungry.”

“Ozen, we are not going home!” Steve said.

“I see you’re not getting along too well.”

“Not since this happened to you, Dad.”

“I AM NOT YOUR FATHER!” Herobrine screamed in a brief flurry of rage.

“Whatever.” Ozen brushed the anger-fueled scream out of the conversation like a particle of dust off of a jacket. “You’ll be back soon.”

Herobrine was about to say something, but then he stopped. He dropped down from his place in the sky and landed right in front of Ozen. He punched Ozen in the stomach.

Ozen flew backwards into Steve. Steve caught him. Herobrine walked up to Steve. He slapped Steve in the face. Steve fell over. Jennifer caught him. Steve stood back up, rubbing his reddening cheek. Mark walked up to Herobrine. He was about to stomp on Herobrine’s foot, but slipped clumsily and ended up scratching Herobrine’s leg on the way. Herobrine lifted him up by the throat and flung him toward one of the burning buildings. He threw an ender pearl at the Alliance. He vanished from the air and reappeared beside David. He rubbed the side of his neck. Surprisingly, he looked slightly satisfied with himself. Steve saw this and figured it was a cause of the fact that he had been able to build enough courage up to kick Herobrine.

Herobrine shot back up into the air. Steve dropped an ender chest onto the ground. He opened it up. He took out something grey and feathery. He swung his diamond pick at the chest. He clipped the feathery object onto his back. It spread out. Steve jumped. He flew into the air, the wings flapping violently as cold wind stung his eyes. His hair was being pushed back as he gained altitude rapidly. He didn’t look back down, so he couldn’t see Jennifer shaking her head disappointedly as he rose.

Steve reached the same altitude as Herobrine, who had stopped rising. Under them, the Alliance was miniscule. The fire that had engulfed half of the town looked no larger than those tiny little particles that rose up into the air from fire and then floated lazily back down to the ground again. Part of Tennut was blocked by a cloud under the father and son. Herobrine stared at Steve. Steve stared at Herobrine. Herobrine kept staring at Steve. Steve returned the favour. Finally, Herobrine slid forward through the air towards his opponent. Steve kept on staring at him. Steve’s eyes were now half-frozen from the cold wind at his altitude. It would be difficult to stop staring. So he didn’t.

Herobrine hovered in front of Steve for a second. He yelled in Steve’s face. It was an unbearable sound, woven with the wind. Steve backed up a bit. Then he drew his sword, Excalibur. He kept on staring at Herobrine. Then Herobrine grabbed Steve’s right wing and tore it in half.

Warning: Violence

Steve dropped Excalibur and fell. He looked down and saw the ground, growing quickly closer. He was going to hit it soon. He looked back up. Excalibur was speeding down towards him. It was going towards his chest. He flailed his arms wildly and managed to alter his course so that now the sword was aiming for his stomach, and still zooming towards him faster than he himself was falling. The sword eventually reached him and embedded itself into his stomach with ease before he could reach it. He now regretted enchanting it so heavily with sharpness. As he thought this, he caught fire. Another enchantment. He was also pushed down quite hard, as a result of the knockback. He was now falling, burning, at terminal velocity, towards the ground, impaled on an enchanted diamond sword. He was now only a handful of half-dozens of metres from the ground. He closed his eyes. He hit.

“Ugh.” Steve said, managing to sit up, in bed. He saw half the Alliance standing in front of him: Jennifer, Wolfric, Ozen and Mark. Ozen was missing a leg and Mark lacked an arm. “Where’s the rest of the Alliance? Ozen, what happened to your leg? Mark, where’s your arm?!”

“After you fell, Steve,” Jennifer said, “I put down some water to break your fall, by the way. Anyway, after you hit, you passed out. Then Herobrine came down and got crazy and killed some of us. He did that to Ozen’s leg and Mark’s arm. We all got back here to the mansion, but...” Jennifer bit her lip. “Um... Herobrine followed us and, he... blew up most of the place.”

Steve looked at her. He was about to say something, but at that moment the wall of the room blew open. A large chunk of stone brick hit Mark in the back of the head and he fell over. Herobrine came in, holding Excalibur. It was glowing red and had a cloud of black smoke around it. Herobrine ran up to Jennifer and slashed at her neck. Her head came clean off.

“NO!” Steve shouted. He got up out of the bed and reached for his sword. He didn’t have a sword. Herobrine began laughing. He then stabbed Ozen in the back, causing him to burst into flames. He took out Mark next, chopping off his fingers one at a time, next moving on to his limbs, and then his head. He went over to Wolfric next, cutting off his ears, then nose, then lips, then stabbing his eyes and finally chopping his head off entirely, laughing the entire time. He next ran up to Steve and dropped Steve’s sword. Before Steve could grab it, Herobrine reached through Steve’s chest easily with his bare hand and ripped out his heart. Steve, somehow, could see it, still beating, covered in blood, before he lost his vision and died.

Steve woke up. He got out of bed. He went downstairs. Ozen and his parents were both there. The entire thing had been a dream. Tennut, the war, the Nether--- Steve was safe. He sat down and had some mushroom stew. Suddenly, the wall blew open. Herobrine walked in. he slashed everyone but Steve’s heads off with a sword. He stabbed Steve in the heart. Then, he disappeared.

Herobrine was now in the Nether. He gathered soul sand and wither skeleton skulls. Stacks of them. He created dozens - no, hundreds of Withers. He then went to the End and somehow resurrected the Enderdragon. They all got together in the Overworld and got giant invisible flaming laser swords (see chapter XVI). They all went a hundred metres above Southern Tennut with the swords and began slashing at all of the houses. The Withers also fired explosive skulls at the town until it was no more than a crater in Minecraftia. Then, they decided to destroy all of Minecraftia. They all drank potions that made them enormous, and when they were the size of Minecraftia, they blew it up. Then, they died from lack of oxygen and gravity.

Steve woke up. He got out of bed. He fell. He was falling through the sky. He looked back up. His bed was floating. There was nothing else. He entered the void. He died.

Steve woke up. He was already falling. He fell into the void. He died.

Steve woke up. This time, he wasn’t falling. His entire room existed. He exited the room and looked through his house. No walls were exploding; no people were being killed. He took a look outside. Everything was there and fine. Ozen and his parents were there and acting normal. He shrugged and had some breakfast.




The End of the Herobrine Chronicles

(This is an April Fools chapter)

I should have thought that through a bit more, Steve thought as he fell after dropping Excalibur, wind screaming around him. The torn-off piece of his wing flopped in the air beside him, slightly higher up, and Excalibur darted down beside him. Steve’s eyes watered as he gained momentum and sped towards the white, snowy ground, splotched with trees and bright with fire, still spreading, seeming to be growing, welcoming him. He was speeding towards the ground at tremendous velocity. Steve began to flap the wing. It didn’t help. He was now spinning and speeding towards the ground at tremendous velocity. He clumsily shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out an ender pearl. He managed to whip it at the ground as he spun wildly, hurtling towards the ground. Just as he was about to collide with the snow and surely break a few dozen bones, he lost his vision and felt weightless. A millisecond later, he returned, on the ground, on his back, unscathed but fazed. His sword had already hit the ground and his wing hit his head a second later.

“Ouch.” Steve said, rubbing his back.

“Are you alright?” Jennifer asked, helping Steve up.

“Yeah, but the wings aren’t.” Steve picked up the wings, unclipped them, swung them down his arm and into his hand and picked up the other piece. He plopped down his ender chest and dropped the wings into it. He then took out a diamond pickaxe and swung it heavily into the chest, ripping it off the ground, and he slipped it into his pocket.

The Alliance looked up. They saw a brief flash of red light from above, between a hole in the clouds. Herobrine had left.

“Well,” Steve said after a while, “I’d say that’s something of a success. We got some runes, we kept Herobrine from destroying all of Northern Tennut, and most of us survived.” Alex and Dylan looked at him.

“Well, that was hands down the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.” Alex stated. “I’m going home.” She then paused for a second. “My home just blew up. Or burned. Or got hit by lightning. Or something.”

“Do you want to come with us?” Ozen asked.

Alex stared at him. “Yes, of course I’ll go stay with the people who just got someone with glowing eyes and fireballs to destroy my house!”

“Hm.” Ozen replied.

“Now, if you excuse me,” Alex said rudely, “I’ll be on my way. Come on, Dylan.” Alex and Dylan walked away to the south.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning through a few days later, camping through the night, the Alliance made the long journey back to the mansion. They went through the same routine they had to get to Southern Tennut: walk from dawn till nightfall, stopping thrice a day for food and once in a while if they crossed by a lake or a river to drink, then set up camp every night and sleep until their legs stopped aching, then wake up early and start all over again. Several times Mark began to mutter about the walking, but altogether he seemed... more pleased than usual, strangely. When asked about this he simply shrugged and smiled a bit more, and the Alliance continued on.

Now, I had lacked an explanation of the terrain that the Alliance travelled on to get to Southern Tennut in the first place. You should probably know that they ventured through forests and across plains and over mountain passes (it stormed on the passes and they almost didn’t find a cave after some short grumpy people, a tall gentleman and a quite small fellow got to the first cave on the path before them), across large lakes and past many a village, which Herobrine may have destroyed. They were not sure of this, but this was the only way they knew of to defeat Herobrine. On the way back, they took the same route, but were devastated to realize partway across a mountain pass that their path had been destroyed. Of course, they simply rebuilt it. However, that’s not where their devastation ended; they came across several craters where villages had once stood. On their journey they also encountered several hordes of monsters, from some of which they barely escaped. In one instance they were surrounded by creepers who didn’t seem too satisfied with their presence. Wishing to write a decent-lengthed book and enjoying a nice fight, I shall now describe the encounter.

Steve, Jennifer, Mark, David, Wolfric and Ozen were travelling for what seemed like the umphteenth year by now (though really it couldn’t have been more than two days) when they entered a forest. It was a birch forest with lots of bright shades of green all around. That was the problem. The creepers, in a pack of no less than four and three quarters dozen, had been following them for a few minutes. Nobody knows why a creeper dislikes people at all, let alone enough to sacrifice themselves in order to attempt to cause their death. Perhaps even creepers themselves don’t know. It could be the outcome of a centuries-old war that the humans gradually forgot about but the creepers remember; it could be simply because people kill creepers, so creepers loathe people, and for that reason they have over the years filled themselves and each other with hatred and they can’t even remember who started it; it could be out of fear of humans because the creepers never got to know them; it could be for any reason. However, there was no chance in the Nether that one side was going to ask the other why and expect a calm, explanatory response. For this reason, perhaps ancient but perhaps reasonless and yet perhaps both at the same time, the creepers were doing what they did best: creeping.

The Alliance were becoming uneasy. They sensed the creepers. Perhaps this was because they heard the occasional misstep of a creeper (as you know, creepers are silent and most of the time unnoticeable, but grow tired quickly and occasionally make a small sound). Perhaps they saw a little green claws out of the corner of their eyes. Perhaps they heard the rustle of the leaves as a creeper stealthily hid in a bush behind them. Perhaps they heard the soft, quiet hiss of one creeper getting excited and then quickly calming and quieting itself as it realized the Alliance’s weak link: Ozen. Ozen was talking loudly every ten seconds or so, masking the occasional sound that the creepers made and lessening the Alliance’s attention to their surroundings. They had to move in and strike when Ozen was talking. It wasn’t too difficult.

Ozen was talking about apple pie and such for the hundredth time that day when Steve shouted at him to shut up. Ozen, fortunately for him and his companions, did for once, revealing the sound of a hiss. Too many things happened in the course of five and pi baker’s dozens over the answer to life, the universe and everything seconds for an eleventh of a minute at halfway from the speed the Earth travels through space to that of light in the same environment as you to contain Euler’s number over the ratio of pi to itself bits short of half-comfortably: Steve, Jennifer and Ozen turned around, holding their swords out towards the creepers; Wolfric shouted “Rebarbate!” and the creepers were blasted backwards; Mark equipped the machine he had built a handful of chapters back and began shooting wildly at the creepers with it; David assisted Wolfric in his work; Wolfric yelled “Emberluock!” and the creepers seemed to not be able to figure out where exactly their opponents were located; the confuzed creepers decided to stop looking and blow up already; Steve, Jennifer and Ozen warded them off with their swords, slaying them with ease except when they exploded due to the fiery enchantments on the swords; Mark was now annihilating creepers left, right and centre; Steve and Jennifer switched their fire aspect swords out for their spare iron ones, but not Ozen, as he found it quite amusing to use his more heavily enchanted weapon; more of the creatures came out from behind the trees and the paragraph finally ended.

The next paragraph decided to take a spin at being in a book so it described Steve in particular, as paragraphs around here often do. At this moment in the story, Steve was kicking a creeper in the stomach as he splashed some water into its mouth. he was doing this to all the creepers around him, and instead of doing any real damage they simply popped like large green balloons filled with disgusting innards that enthusiastically drenched the Alliance with blood. This continued for quite some time until most of the creepers had been ended. Now, as this paragraph is enjoying describing this a bit too much, we’ll move on to the next, I think.

In the end, after the violence, there was quite a problematic hole lying in front of them. They quickly decided that it was problematic for somebody else, but not them, as they were in the middle of the forest, and they continued travelling after healing their burn wounds and got into a much deeper forest from the birch one they were in. In fact this was a dark oak forest, and it made Steve spectacularly happy; they were travelling southeast when they went from the birch forest to the dark oak one, and there was a birch forest cutting in from the north-west of the dark oak woods surrounding Steve’s mansion. It was around dusk by this time, and the Alliance were hungry, thirsty, tired worn out and happy to get back before all of the stars were visibly shining in their places in the dark sky, almost halfway between fall and winter.


When the Alliance finally reached the mansion, they came inside, ate, slumped into bed and were quickly consumed by deep sleep.

The Alliance went over the book that Deodate had given them when they got back to the mansion. It had details of applying soul runes, but not on deciding which soul to heal if there were two in one body. Nobody had any ideas until Steve’s mother Atza suggested something once during dinner in the winter.

“If those eyes of ender can see strongholds through the ground and kilometres away, maybe they can see other things, too, like souls.”

“You’re right!” Steve said, snapping his fingers. “But we’d need to talk to an enderman about that, or at least someone who knows a lot about ender pearls.”

“There might be something about ender pearls that we could use in one of your dad’s books, Steve,” Mark said, “so we should take a look.”

“Sure. I’ll look through the library after dinner.”

And Steve did. He searched through several books for anything about ender pearls. He did find one volume on the subject. It was one of the more recently written books; Solomon had written it shortly before he had entered the End for the first time. Steve opened it to a page near the middle and began to read. It contained text on the ender pearls themselves and on their possible uses:

I came across a very strange item while experimentally crafting today: when blaze powder is sprinkled onto an ender pearl, a burning green glow fills the darkness in the core of the pearl. The object shines brilliantly and continues to do so even after, in the centre of the glow, a dark grey shape takes form. It grows until it is a shape the same as a cat’s pupil that takes about half the height of the pearl. This shape seems to be two-dimensional, but it follows your eye no matter which angle you look at it from. Occasionally, I have seen the centre contract vertically. I am calling this new object an “ender orb.” It does not seem to have any effects on me if I carry or touch it, though if I look through it I can see everything’s colour inverted. For example, the sun is black like the clouds; the sky is a deep orange; the grass I am on is a bright but dull pink; water is bright yellow, but just as dull; dirt is a bright greyish colour; an ender pearl is a radiant pale; logs are silvery blue; and the green glow of another ender orb is purple, while the centre is white.

When an ender orb is thrown, it travels through the air on its own in the same direction every time: east of me. This may mean that this item’s sole use is as a compass, however I suspect something else. After the orb travels a few dozen metres, it pauses in the air and falls back into the ground. After a few tries at this, the orb burst into pieces instead of falling, and I could not find any fallen pieces in the grass.

I can only guess what these objects may be used for among the endermen, as I do not think any of them would be willing to let me know. They may simply be used as compasses, however I think that unless the endermen were in alliance with the blazes and traded for blaze powder, they would not be used for common reasons. Ender orb would be rather expensive to endermen as well as myself, so I have reason to believe that I should hold on to these and study them further.

I haven’t met anybody yet who knows anything about ender orbs, however I am still searching. I am still looking through one village by the name of Everent, but I have heard of the existence of a small civilization that uses them occasionally in nearby mountains and will soon ask them.

Steve continued to read. The journal was written like this from cover to cover. Steve skipped forwards a handful of pages to when Solomon had gotten to the mountains:

I have gotten to the base of one mountain in the range and need now only climb. It is a very large mountain range and I am not sure I will be able to find the people I am searching for. This mountain alone reaches above the clouds easily and is most likely very bad to fall off of. However, I will search every side and cliff face of every mountain here; I must know the reason for the existence of these ender orbs.

The book then went into detail of Solomon’s climbing the mountains. Steve read some of it here and there as he skipped a few pages at a time until he came across this:

I just saw a large hole in one mountain beside the one that I am on. this hole is not the entrance to a cave, but a symmetrical, stone brick entrance lit by torches. I cannot see inside from this angle, but I can guess that it leads far into the mountain, as there are a handful of guards at the entrance. All of the guards are covered in iron armour and wield iron axes. I assume that this is the civilization that I heard about before, but I did not expect that they lived inside of the mountain. I will shortly approach them, but first I need to prepare in case they are hostile.

Steve turned the page. What was written next was what he needed:

The men who live inside the mountain turned out to be quite nice, and their home was spectacular. They have constructed an enormous building inside the mountain that is quite homely, if slightly labyrinthine. These people’s lives are based on mining and they regularly buy goods from nearby towns with the gold and other minerals that they find. Their leader informed me well on uses of ender orbs, though these people call them by a different name: “eyes of ender.” This is actually quite fitting; the objects are similar to cat’s eyes in appearance. I asked the peoples’ leader about the eyes of ender, and he informed me that they are very useful when you want to see things. I asked for clarification and he referred to endermen. He asked me if I knew that endermen could see through and into things. I said that I did know, and he told me that an eye of ender was very similar. These eyes could see things that were otherwise unseeable, and that they were very useful if you needed to see into something. He gave me an eye and told me to look at him through it. I did so and what I saw was amazing.

Looking through the eye at him, I saw an outline of a person, but pitch black inside, and with a white wisp of what seemed like smoke in the centre of the chest. I gave him back the eye and asked him what I had seen. He told me that it was his soul. This was extraordinary! I asked him how exactly the eye worked, and he told me that nobody knew, and he also told me that his people had found runes that affected the soul. This is a very strange discovery, however there is something more important that he informed me of.

I learned of their use to the people of the mountain: they are used to locate strongholds built millennia ago by these mountain-dwelling people (their names are “dwarves”). I have not seen a stronghold myself as of yet, however by the descriptions given to me they sound magnificent: libraries; hallways; storage rooms; prisons; and one room per stronghold that is quite interesting. According to the dwarves’ leader, this room contains a portal to another realm, and it is the one that I have been searching for.

The moment I heard about this portal, I immediately asked to visit a stronghold. Fortunately, there is one in this mountain. Less fortunately, the dwarves’ leader has forbidden me to enter. He did tell me quite a bit about it, though. It was made by dwarves centuries ago, but the dwarves protected the secret of building one quite well; no dwarves nowadays know how to build one and there are only said to be three in the world. Anyway, in the room, there is a portal that only the dwarves can close, but it will probably be heavily guarded. All I must do is sneak down into the stronghold, navigate around until I find the room (invisible, of course), hope that the portal is open, and if not then manage to open it. Then, I jump in and hope for the best.

Steve stopped reading immediately. He was of course interested in the following events, but he was more interested in this new use. Now the Alliance needed to learn up on applying soul runes a little more, and they were all set. Well, besides actually getting Herobrine close enough to one of them for long enough that they could find Solomon’s soul and use the runes properly. That was one thing they still needed to figure out. Steve sighed; this was going to be difficult. Steve rolled his eyes at himself for this thought. He already knew that much. What he didn’t know was how the Alliance was going to pull this off.

Steve went back upstairs with the book in his pocket and walked through a hallway towards the kitchen where the rest of the Alliance probably was. He passed a few windows and looked out through them as he strode by. He saw a thick layer of snow on the ground through one, the leafless forest through another, and Herobrine’s face through a third. This failed to surprise him and he continued walking, unfazed, until he reached the kitchen. Sure enough, the entirety of the Alliance (the ones who were still alive, of course, and besides Solomon and Steve) was there, raiding his pantry.

“Hey!” Steve shouted at the room. “Come down to the plotting room! Quickly!” The rest of the Alliance followed him as he trotted quickly downstairs and into the “plotting room.” Once there, they were all wondering what Steve had discovered. After checking all of the nooks and crannies and whatnot, Steve dropped the book onto the glass table in the middle of the room.

“Okay, I’ll cut to the chase. Solomon figured out how to see a soul, and it tells us how in here.” Steve gestured towards the book. “All you need to do is look at somebody through an eye of ender. Now, we also need to read up some more on that book on soul runes.”

“Come on!” Ozen exclaimed. “We’ve been reading that for a month!”

“And we still haven’t figured out how to use a rune! All the stupid book says is that there are a bunch of different ways!”

“Wait.” David interrupted. “I’ll look through Solomon’s book here.”

“It’s on...” Steve began, picking up the book and flipping through the pages quickly. “This page here.” Steve handed the book to David.

“Thanks.” David said, beginning to read immediately.

“Now,” Steve said, “Using these runes will take time. We need to do it right, because we don’t have many soul runes. How many do we have?” Steve asked the room.

“Sixteen.” Wolfric informed him.

“Not many. Now, read up!”
“Steve?” David said. “I think I found out how to find out how to find out how to use soul runes.”

Steve’s attention immediately turned to David and he pumped his fist in the air. “Yes!”