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 Who are we… who am I? This is certainly new. This… everything.

 A minute ago we were many, now I am one. I feel… whole. I only felt like this once before, long ago. Or was it a short time?

 My eyes remain closed, my vision is full of darkness. My memories slowly come back to me, as if struggling to adapt to their new vessel. It can’t be the vessel struggling against me. The vessel is dead.

 Something is different. This is much more than we were. The headaches are getting worse. There is only so much this vessel can accept.

 Will we die before we live? No. I must remain whole.

 Just stay sitting here. Wait for it to be over. The vessel’s body won’t obey until it's over regardless.

 Unable to open my eyes I let the memories pass through me. I see a world of conflict, of advancement, of intrigue. A world of limitless possibilities.

 An even deeper darkness washes over me. In the distance a light appears.

 The Deepsand Desert was a very remarkable place. Not only because it was the biggest known desert on the server, no, there were two other things that made it stand out.

 The first one was a huge mountain in the middle of the desert, a sandstone volcano, it consisted of a mixture of sandstone and basalt, unsurprisingly and uncreatively dubbed sandbasalt. Sandbasalt was extremely easy to mine but useless for making tools, comparable to netherrack.

 The other thing that made the desert so remarkable also involved the volcano, it was the Rockbane quarry, a place of slavery. Hundreds of slaves, only equipped with stone and rarely iron pickaxes, were mining the dark yellow stone. They were not allowed to branch mine because if they struck lava it could flood a good portion of the quarry, even though the volcano was mostly inactive.

 There was always a slave with an iron pickaxe leading a group of slaves with stone pickaxes. The slaves systematically mined the volcano by taking out sections of sandbasalt, forming a large staircase in the rock. They hadn’t progressed far into the mountain yet, a good part of it was still untouched.

 The reason why they were mining here was because the volcano brought up valuable materials like diamonds or gold from the depths. Those materials were then sold to other players on the server.

 As said, all slaves worked in groups, with long-term slaves as leaders. There was one exception. The one I am talking about was the strangest of them: Three meters tall, black scaled skin, red glowing eyes, short white hair, wearing white clothes and a long coat of the same color. This solitary slave’s name was Fire. The admins had granted Fire special abilities like his size or enormous physical strength for reasons unknown to many.

 He had played on this server before the quarry got introduced. New players would automatically join the quarry, but he had been captured and brought there.

 “Why?” you ask? He was a close friend of the former admins. The server had been hijacked by hackers who denied the original admins all access to it. The hackers had no admin powers, so they couldn’t ban him, they brought him to the quarry to keep an eye on him.

 This wasn’t any regular server either, it used technology that was far ahead of its time. When you joined the server, you would black out and wake up inside the server. This was possible because the server established a connection to the player’s brain.

 If you died, you would just respawn. You were able to leave the server whenever you wanted with very little time having passed in the real world. The slaves however were denied of the possibility of logging out and were effectively trapped inside the server with no chance of logging out.

 Before the hackers attacked there had been no text chat but the hackers had introduced it along with some other changes in order to gain some manner of control over the server. The slaves were naturally unable to use the chat and most players were completely unaware that it even existed at all, hardly anyone had noticed that the hackers took over.

 But now, back to this one solitary slave. Fire was mining out an area alone which normally would be assigned to a group of four people. He didn’t have any problems keeping up with the other groups, courtesy of the admins’ gifts. He just was mining away the stone and packing it into his inventory like nothing, only limited by the durability and brittleness of his stone pickaxe. He also did so today.

 ***

 It was a hot evening, Fire was in the center of a desert after all. He raised the pickaxe over his head and struck it down, breaking several blocks at once. The blocky structure of the world and some of the mechanics and mobs were the only thing that reminded you that you were in fact playing Minecraft. The world, its creatures and also the players looked real and terrain wasn’t restricted to blocky shapes either.

 Mining in the quarry was a boring and not very rewarding job, what else would you expect from slavery? Sometimes old friends came by and tried to convince the hackers to let Fire go, without success. Other players were allowed to mine here too but they weren’t allowed to help the slaves by for example giving them tools, armor or potions.

 Fire’s pickaxe was about to break, he felt it. He closed his eyes and looked into his inventory, there were four full stone picks left, seven, now eight almost broken ones and an iron pickaxe with about half durability. He moved them into his crafting grid and repaired them into one with full durability. He had one and a half rows filled with full stacks of sandbasalt and his hotbar was quite empty, there were only the four pickaxes, some bread and also some iron ore.

 Fire decided to take a break behind a stray rock. He sat down, put down his pickaxe and stretched his fingers. He had no finger nails but he didn’t need them, he had very hard and scaled skin after all. He also had claws hidden inside of his fingers, he could use them for climbing and also for battle, they were dangerous weapons, one more reason most other slaves avoided him.

 He waited behind the rock for a bit and relaxed. He knew that he shouldn’t wait any longer or the hackers would notice that he wasn’t working. He rose up, took his pickaxe and continued working, smashing his path through the volcanic rock. He was already halfway through his stone pickaxe as he felt something. One of his abilities was to detect energy flowing through the environment, and for some odd reason the ores in the quarry emitted a fair amount of energy, a lot more than those outside of it. If he interpreted the flow correctly it was redstone, a pretty good find. Now he only had to locate it.

 He turned his head left and right very quickly, stepped aside and did it again. This was his method of determining where the ore vein was. The ore was about five blocks in the wall at about eye level. He stored the pickaxe in his inventory and extended his sharp claws on his hands and his shoeless feet. He climbed the ten block high wall in a matter of seconds.

 Once up, he started to flatten the area out, using careful swings to create a flat surface to make further mining easier. Then once it was flat, he used fully loaded swings again. His style of mining was fast, but also depleted the pickaxe very quickly. Only wooden or stone picks took more damage from this kind of abuse, but not for iron or diamond ones, which were more durable. His powerful swings made the rock shatter, sometimes ripping larger, irregular holes into the rock.

 It didn’t take him long to quarry-mine his way down to the ore, he mined the last block in front of it and a pulse of energy went through him. He took the iron pickaxe out of his inventory and started carefully mining the vein, he didn’t want to destroy the valuable redstone. With short swings of his iron pickaxe he carefully removed the stone around the redstone gemstones, making sure not to destroy them. Redstone dust was actually the product of careless swings shattering the gemstones. The dust could be later ground from the gemstones for higher quality redstone.

 After he had removed all the stone, the glowing crystals were lying in front of him. He looked at their beauty for a few seconds, then he packed them into his inventory and dragged them onto his hotbar. He continued mining.

 Fire didn’t mine very long into the night after finding the redstone, he depleted one more stone pickaxe before he decided to quit. He wasn’t tired, he just wanted to quit mining earlier today, the hackers couldn’t blame him, he mined more resources alone than an average group, that and he was almost the only one bringing redstone gems.

 Fire backed up a few steps, then put his almost broken stone pick into his inventory, extended his claws and sprinted at the wall with inhuman speed. He climbed, but it looked more like running or even flying up the wall than anything else. When he arrived on the top, he turned around and took a look at the quarry, it looked like a giant had mined a staircase into the volcano. He sat down with his feet hanging down over the edge and watched the slaves put down torches and the hackers turning on redstone lamps inside the processing buildings.

 Fire really liked being so high above the quarry, at this altitude he felt some degree of freedom, even though he knew it was just an illusion. He also enjoyed the wind on his scales, sometimes it was warm wind and sometimes it was the bitter cold wind of the desert nights, his only chance to cool off every once in a while. It was always warm or hot in the quarry, during the day because of one obvious reason: the sun. At night it was warm because the sandbasalt stored the heat very well and slowly passed it on to the air, it never cooled off completely.

 Fire closed his eyes and looked into his inventory and took a few blocks of sandbasalt, put them on his hotbar and placed them behind him.

 “It is no throne of gold with nether wool cushions but it will do.” He said.

 He leaned back and just stared at the sun sinking below the horizon. It almost looked like it was drowning in the quicksand fields far away. After about twenty minutes of just sitting there and watching the sunset he got up, mined away his improvised chair and started slowly mining the sandbasalt.

 He didn’t rush it like usually, he didn’t expect to find anything, he just finished it to finish it, a weird mindset for a slave. It wasn’t that bad being in the quarry, just boring at times, he was provided with food and tools and had something to do. Trying to break out had no point at all, some people tried it and exactly the same amount failed. Fire himself had been tempted to try several times but he knew better than to try and break out. Not yet at least.

 He was so absent minded while mining that he noticed the strong waves of energy only as he saw their source. The waves were radiating form the ore which held the well-known and most-wanted blue shiny rocks: diamonds. The strength energy waves radiating from the diamond ore in the quarry always surprised him. He mined around the diamond ore until the vein of eight blocks was floating in front of him, sending even stronger waves now that it was completely uncovered.

 Fire pulled out his iron pick and creaked the joints of his fingers. He mined away the sandbasalt around the diamonds even more carefully than he did with the redstone. With tiny pokes of his iron pickaxe he slowly freed the diamonds from their black and yellow prison. It was like with the redstone, the more carefully you mined the ore, the more materials you would get, in this case Fire wound up with twenty diamonds. He didn’t put them in his inventory, where they were visible to the hackers, instead he put them into an inside pocket of his coat. The diamonds slowly stopped emitting energy, Fire only felt a slight tingle in his skin near the pocket.

 “Those will sell for a high price, they are quite big.” He muttered.

 Now he didn’t care for slow, he put his iron pickaxe back into his inventory, pulled out a fresh stone pickaxe and started hammering at the stone even more powerfully than at any time of the day. He felt the durability bar of the stone pick go down as fast as if he would be using it to kill mobs in an XP farm. The sandbasalt was shattering and bits were flying in every direction. The shaft of the pickaxe vibrated with every hit, Fire heard wood and stone crack. The blocks were breaking as quickly as netherrack when exposed to an Efficiency enchantment. One hit before the pickaxe broke, the area was done. Fire stepped back to the edge and looked at today’s work.

 “Impresses me every time…” He said to himself and looked into his inventory to take count.

 He had two rows full of sandbasalt, a full stack and twelve iron ores, thirty gold ores, thirty-nine redstone gems, twenty diamonds and even forty-seven lapis lazuli, which was very rare in the quarry and very valuable outside of it because of its very pure and powerful blue.

 After Fire had done his inventory check he slowly walked towards the wall he made. He was about to return to the sleeping area at the bottom of the quarry, this was his favorite part of work, not because work was over, it was because Fire loved the way how to get down there, or at least the way he himself got down there. It was one of the few things in the world he could still enjoy.

 One of the abilities given to him by the admins was that in danger Fire would experience everything in slow motion, giving him more time to think about his actions. This ability was mostly useful in combat but it also had other uses. Over time Fire had gained a large manner of control over this ability, enabling him to use it whenever he wanted instead of just in danger. Fire sprinted towards the edge and as he drew close, the world around him slowed down. Fire’s steps were long and had a long air time, his breath went slowly, his pulse was slow but powerful.

 A few meters before the ledge, he leaped and landed on both feet with the front part of his feet over the edge. Fire concentrated and jumped with as much force as he could. The state he entered now was one of relaxation, it felt like being in a room without gravity. In this state of antigravity he could almost forget where he was and why, almost. Falling down the cliff felt just like flying he was almost too relaxed to cushion the hit on the floor, again almost. The world returned to normal but slowed down a few seconds after the landing as he approached the next ledge. He jumped again. Five falls later he had arrived at the base of the quarry where the tents of the slaves were, he was usually the last to come down but today he wasn’t. Other slaves had already lit some campfires and the usual groups were forming. Fire always sat down with the same group of four other players.

 They were a pretty strange group, first there was Fire, the longtime player and friend of the admins who had been brought to the quarry by the hackers.

 The second player was TehLulz9001, for short TehLulz. He was tall and averagely built. He was wearing a black suit, which was ragged because of the work. His hair was shoulder long, messy and brown, his eyes were brown as well.

 The third player was freeZe60, for short freeZe. She was slim and had completely pitch black skin with entirely green eyes shining out at her head. She was wearing a black shirt and black pants.

 The fourth player was Ambigious_Name, for short Ambigious. He was short and quite muscular. He was wearing a blue T-shirt and black jeans. His hair was black and very short and his blue eyes were covered by sunglasses, which reflected the light form the campfire in all rainbow colors. The thing that only few knew about him was that he was freeZe’s brother.

 The last and newest member was TheUnchosenOne, for short Unchosen. He had black hair, brown eyes and dark skin and he was almost completely covered in vines and leaves which never seemed to tear. He was still unsettled by the new circumstances and therefore didn’t talk very much.

 This was the firegroup Fire was in, a firegroup were the people sitting together regularly at a campfire, they were not necessarily in the same section of the quarry or in the same mining group, just some people that fate brought together.

 Fire walked over to the small campfire that they had, it was always at the same spot, a little bit away from the others, four blocks of sandbasalt were already placed down around the fire, with the members of the firegroup sitting on them. Fire moved a single block of sandbasalt to his hotbar, placed it and sat down on the block which he had seen the most in the last year.

 “Hey Fire!” freeZe said, then added: “You are quite early today.”

 TehLulz commented: “But as always you are the last one of us.”

 “Guess what I found today?” Fire asked.

 Everyone was looking at him as if they knew the answer even before he asked the question.

 “I mean how many I found.” He corrected himself.

 Ambigious guessed: “Let’s say fifty?”

 Fire chuckled: “Fifty? Ambigious, not even I have that amount of luck, it was only one vein.”

 freeZe made the second guess: “One vein you say? Hmm, about fifteen?“

 “That was close.”

 “Twenty?”

 “Exactly!”

 With these words Fire reached down his pocked and pulled the diamonds out and threw them into the campfire.

 Unchosen stared into the fire and said: “They are not being destroyed, are they?”

 TehLulz answered: “Nope, we do that to burn the sandbasalt fragments off the gems, they sell better if they are clean. By the way, does anyone have coal?”

 Ambigious replied: “No, didn’t find any. I swear coal is the rarest thing in this quarry.”

 Fire looked double checked his inventory. “None on me either.”

 freeZe handed her brother some coal and said: “Here you go.”

 Ambigious took the coal and threw it into the fire to raise its temperature.

 “May I ask a question?” Unchosen asked.

 TehLulz resisted the urge to say “You just did.” He instead said: “Go ahead.”

 “How does the money work in the Quarry?”

 TehLulz asked Fire: “Fire, could you explain that?“

 Fire cleared his throat and begun: “For everything that you mine there is a base value. If your diamonds are clean you get more and if they are dirty and have to be processed before you can make them into tools you get far less. Sandbasalt has as good as no value, but you still get at least something by selling it. Lapis Lazuli is worth a lot, the blue is much stronger than the blue from lapis found outside. One redstone gem is worth significantly more than one unit of redstone dust. With that money you can buy pickaxes, food or supplies for lighting a fire. There is no physical currency, the hackers keep track of everyone’s balance themselves. They usually track it on a per-firegroup basis.”

 Unchosen nodded and answered: “I understand.”

 Fire continued explaining: “Every week we change who is responsible for selling mined resources and buying food and tools. It is my turn in the next week, which starts tomorrow. The Shop Guy doesn’t like me very much, he is jealous that the admins gave me those powers.”

 freeZe said with a little spark of anger in her voice: “It is just unfair that they give you the worst prices, Fire, and of course me the best. Because… well, you all know why!”

 Awkward silence followed, only Ambigious was trying to resist grinning but failed, he made a sound that sounded like suppressed laughter, then he started laughing for real, which resulted in everybody in the firegroup looking at him.

 He calmed down and asked: “Is he really giving you the pretty girl bonus?”

 freeZe answered: “You know, it’s taking all of my willpower not to punch you right now.”

 “Punch him, not me!” Ambigious said and defensively raised his hands.

 freeZe replied: “I might if he makes another remark.”

 Ambigious replied: “Oh, if he does that we beat him up together. Though I wouldn’t be of much help there, I think you have that front covered with your kung fu or whatever martial art it is you’re doing.”

 TehLulz asked: “Are the diamonds done?”

 “I think so.” Fire replied.

 Unchosen was still staring into the fire and asked half-loudly: “How are you getting them out of there?”

 Instead of answering, Fire reached into the flames, formed a bowl with his hands around the diamonds and took most of them out of the fire, then reached in again to pick the rest of the gems out between the bits of glowing coal and ash.

 Unchosen stared at Fire, clearly surprised. “Did you just reach into the campfire without being burned?”

 Fire was cooling his hands with his breath and answered: “One of the perks of being me, resistance to heat and fire, I won’t survive a bath in lava but I am fireproof.”

 “I can imagine that can come in handy. That’s one hell of an advantage.”

 “Yes. But if you would have seen what the admins did in the early stages of development when they were testing you would be more impressed.”

 Ambigious had calmed down from his previous fit of laughter and wanted to know: “Should we smelt the ores now or should we wait?”

 TehLulz threw his iron and gold ores to the floor, so did everyone else, this was the way of saying “Let’s smelt them!” It was the first smelting round for Unchosen so he didn’t know. He just threw them because everyone else did. Fire took one of his pickaxes and started digging straight down in one place, this was where they had their furnaces, hidden away from others.

 His voice could be heard out of the hole he dug: “Throw them down.”

 TehLulz pushed the ores down into the furnace room. The furnace room was a small room with nine furnaces in it. Fire distributed the ores so that they could be smelted the fastest, if he had any coal to smelt them with...

 “Coal please!” He said.

 A few seconds later he saw freeZe’s face appear at the top of the hole, only the eyes were shining out, her face and hair had almost the same color as the night sky, almost a bit darker.

 She threw some coal down and asked: “Is that enough?”

 “Maybe, let me look!”

 He put some coal in the fuel space of the furnace and saw that it was enough.

 “Yes, it’s enough, lighter pl… wait, just found mine.”

 With those words Fire pulled a flint and steel out of an inside pocket and lit the coal on fire, the room started heating up instantly, Fire took some blocks and jump-pillared up the hole he made. Once he was at the top, he sat down on his block again. The others were meanwhile discussing something.

 TehLulz said: “…and what if you ask your mining group if you could mine with your firegroup for one day? Mine said it is ok.”

 freeZe replied: “I don’t see why not.”

 Fire joined the conversation: “Oh are we doing a firegroup mining day tomorrow? Where? Should we start a new row?“

 TehLulz said: “Well… We thought of going to your area, is that okay with you?”

 “Of course it is.” He paused and then asked: “Unchosen, have you been at the crater already?“

 He replied: “No.”

 “Okay, then we’ll do some lava mining, freeZe, could you ask for permission to use a diamond pickaxe and water buckets?”

 freeZe asked in an unwilling tone: “Why exactly me?”

 Fire glanced at Ambigious, turned back to freeZe and said: “I’m afraid we’ll need a pretty girl bonus to get that permission. I know he won’t grant it to me.”

 Ambigious was about to laugh again but this time he could keep himself from exploding.

 “Okay, I’ll ask...”

 TehLulz said: “Hey, hey, you know what just came to my mind?”

 Everyone asked at the same time: “What?“

 “Tomorrow Fire will have been here for exactly one year.”

 Fire scratched his head with slightly extended claws.

 Fire said: “Yes, you are right…” then, quite unlike himself, he shouted “World Record!” so loudly that the whole quarry could hear it and everybody in the firegroup started laughing.

 They didn’t talk for very long after smelting the ores, everyone walked over to their tents and went to sleep. The tents were not very big, they were green triangular prisms of wool. They all had the same length, which was too short for Fire, his feet were poking out at the end. It never took long to fall asleep there, even though you didn’t have much cushioning, the work was just so exhausting that you could sleep on almost everything. Fire was always the last to fall asleep and the first to wake up, he didn’t need much sleep.

 The next morning Fire crawled out of his tent and yawned, it was time to sell the mined resources, which meant that he had to haggle with the Shop Guy once again. The Shop Guy joined the hacker team after the takeover, he didn’t use a client himself, he still was connected to the server like most of the players, through his brain, his abilities were managed through the main hacker’s clients. Of course his name wasn’t really “Shop Guy” but everyone just called him that, including the hackers from what Fire had heard. Needless to say, his low place in the hacker hierarchy didn’t help his ego, which he took out on the slaves.

 Fire looked into his inside pocket to see if the diamonds were still there, pickpocketing was very common in the quarry but it did really take some courage to pickpocket someone like Fire, it hadn’t happened to him yet, the others hadn’t been as lucky.

 He felt a bit like celebrating but on the other side it was a bad thing to be in the quarry one year, he didn’t think that he had much time left…

 “Nevermind.” He said.

 He walked towards the campfire and the furnaces but noticed with surprise that Unchosen was already there waiting for him.

 “Morning Fire.” He greeted him.

 Fire greeted back: “Morning Unchosen, why up so early?”

 “Couldn’t sleep.” He said, paused and then continued: “Are you going to open it up?”

 “Yeah, stand back there is quite some pressure in there.”

 Fire moved a stone pickaxe onto his hotbar and started mining down the blocks. As he opened the furnace room up, a blast of hot air went out, heating up the surrounding area.

 “Impressive, right?”

 Unchosen replied: “Right, I don’t want to be the one to accidentally dig into the furnace room.”

 Fire explained: “That happened once, but it was right after we put the coal in and only two furnaces were running, he still got some pretty decent burning wounds, now he is showing off with the scars and tells everyone that he got hit by a blob of lava near the crater.”

 “So if you die you keep the scars? Or wounds?”

 “He didn’t die. If you die, you can respawn, but wounds or scars become permanent after some time so you keep them after respawning. If you want scars removed or missing parts regrown, you’ll have to drink a powerful healing potion.”

 “Good to know that.”

 The air in the furnace room had cooled down enough for Fire to jump down and take the now smelted ores out.

 Fire jump-pillared out like the evening before and said: “Pretty good week, about two-hundred iron and a bit more than a hundred gold. We’ll have to wait for the others to count the rest of the mined materials.”

 They sat down on their blocks again but without lighting the campfire, the sandbasalt was even darker than everywhere else, almost as black as freeZe’s skin. Unchosen stared into the ashes of the wood and coal they burned yesterday.

 Fire looked at him and asked: “Why are you always staring into the campfire?”

 “I am thinking of my family.”

 “Oh, I see, everyone is like that in the first few weeks, it is shocking to be locked in this place.“

 “I am trying not to think about my family too much because it makes me even sadder, you and the others are a great help, you know?“

 “I have heard that from the others too, first freeZe and Ambigious came here, then about a month later TehLulz, then two months later, that means now, you.”

 “So you were here alone for nine months?”

 “Yes. It was a lonely time, but then our firegroup formed. Before that I rarely went down, I worked two days and slept one night, smelted the ores every week and then sold them to the guy. Nobody knew who I was, they avoided me. I wouldn’t go close to someone who looked like me if I were a regular slave either. It just happened that freeZe and Ambigious spawned right in my section, so we formed a group. One month later they invited TehLulz to our group, you cannot imagine how grumpy he was back then, he didn’t laugh about anything but look at him now.”

 “I still cannot imagine living in slavery on my own for nine months, wasn’t that very depressing?“

 “I was able to deal with it.” Fire said, he continued: “As much I want to sit here and talk, I have to go sell the stuff. I’ll wake the others up, they will be there in about ten minutes, well for Ambigious it might be twenty. See you later in this place.”

 With these words he stood up, took the ingots and sprinted towards the camp, where he yelled into each of the tents of the members of the firegroup, telling them to get up.

 As they got out of the tents Fire told them to give him the resources to be sold.

 freeZe yawned: “How do you manage to get up so early…”

 She and the others threw the lapis, coal, redstone gems and diamonds at Fire, he picked them up and rushed towards the place where the Shop Guy was.

 ***

 “Four-hundred?” Fire asked “The prizes have fallen suspiciously quickly.“

 The Shop Guy always had a mocking grin on his face, at least in Fire’s presence. He smiled at Fire and said: “Well, Fire. They in fact have, hand me the diamonds and I will give you four-hundred each.“

 Fire leaned over to the Shop Guy, bowing over him and said: “You will pay me the regular price.”

 A small spark of fear appeared in the Shop Guys eyes but disappeared after a second later after he recovered his facade.

 He said: “This is the regular price. Now… hand them over!”

 Fire extended his claws, resulting in ten small holes in the wooden table the Shop Guy was sitting at.

 “Don’t come with the claw show again, I’m not falling for that anymore, I know that you wouldn’t hurt a person.”

 Fire put on an evil grin, showing his shining fangs and said with a cold voice: “I may not be the pacifist I have made you believe I am. Besides, you are no person to me, turning coat and joining the hackers.”

 The spark of fear appeared again, this time for longer and more intense, but anger was mixed into the spark as well. Fire knew he was playing a dangerous game but he had enough of the Shop Guy’s arrogance. He also knew that if he would just hand them over he would appear weak, and appearing weak was the last thing he wanted in front of the Shop Guy.

 “Don’t you dare to attempt to intimidate me! Hand. Them. Over!“

 “Come and get them.“

 The Shop Guy threatened: “You don’t want to force me to activate my kill aura!“

 Fire taunted him: “Oh, your mighty unarmed kill aura, I am so scared.”

 Fire knew that the Shop Guy had orders not to harm or kill slaves since it could provoke a riot but Fire also knew about his violent tendencies.

 The Shop Guy tried his best to stay calm: “Hand them over now! Let’s end this pointless discussion!“

 “I will hand them over for the regular price.“

 “No! Four-hundred!”

 Fire was about to say something he could regret, he saw that the Shop Guy was about to burst in rage but he had wanted to do this ever since he had been in the quarry. His talk with Unchosen had also made him realize something, it was time.

 Fire’s voice was as cold as ice and his eyes had an aggressive, cold shine in them, making them appear even redder than normally. He said: “Fine. I will hand them over for four-hundred… but…”

 The Shop Guy was very surprised and thus lost his I-don’t-give-a-damn facade for another five seconds.

 He said: “But what?”

 Fire didn’t want to give him the answer right away, he wanted him to let the Shop Guy’s rage disable his ability to think logically.

 “Figure it out!”

 The Shop Guy finally recovered his facade and said sarcastically: “Let me guess… You want to challenge me to beat you in a fight?“

 “Exactly that.”

 “What kind of bad joke is this? You cannot reach me with my kill aura on!”

 “What if I could?”

 “How?“

 “I’m not telling you that!” Fire said in a provocative tone.

 The Shop Guy had enough, he let out a scream and then shouted at Fire: “Okay! Let’s do this!“

 Fire replied calmly: “Good, let me set some rules.”

 “What? Rules are for losers!”

 Fire ignored him and replied: “The duel takes place in the arena, mobs off, you can use whatever you have access to, so can I. No noclip, no godmode, no everything that makes it flat out impossible to win, you can use kill aura though. And if I win, you will have to buy for seven-hundred.”

 The fact that Fire was keeping so cool setting the rules so that it was impossible for himself to win by allowing kill aura doubled the intensity of the Shop Guy’s rage, making him shout at Fire even louder: “You will see what you get from that! Endless pain!”

 After these words the Shop Guy called a lead hacker, who transported them into the arena about ten thousand blocks away.

 The arena was a very impressive place, a circle with a diameter of five-hundred, seats that could hold thousands of people. In the middle, dramatically emphasized by a circle of light, was the actual battleground. In this arena epic battles were fought. The floor had pistons under it and was capable of forming a mountain or a valley and you could flood the arena with water or lava.

 Fire was brought into one of the arena’s preparation rooms, it was made of stone brick and its cracked and mossy variants. Fire took some deep breaths to calm himself down, he needed to be perfectly calm for the battle, only that way he could outsmart the Shop Guy. With brute force he would not be able defeat him. Fire was sure that the Shop Guy would take diamond gear with the best enchantments available. He wouldn’t have any potions because all the good alchemists refused to make potions for the hackers and spawned in potions were of questionable quality.

 Fire stood up and walked towards the iron bars blocking the door to the arena.

 He shouted “I am ready!”

 ***

 freeZe was about to start worrying about where Fire was, but then a text message appeared before her eyes, it was one of the lead hackers broadcasting a chat message, which hadn’t happened ever, to her knowledge.

 “Epic duel in the arena starting in ten minutes!”

 freeZe turned around and grabbed her brother’s shoulders and said: “That must be Fire, maybe the Shop Guy finally snapped and challenged him.”

 Ambigious was a little confused by his sister’s reaction but nodded: “Yeah…”

 freeZe’s voice was full of worry: “We need to get there! But how?”

 The second broadcast message appeared: “To watch the battle, use /arena spectator seats!”

 “Great, we don’t have access to the chat.” Ambigious moaned.

 “What could we do?”

 TehLulz, who was called by freeZe’s scream, said: “We could hope that someone picks us up.”

 “What?” freeZe asked.

 “Oh, you were sleeping when Fire told us that story, it was when you fell and broke your legs, remember that? Fire told us that once in a while his friends show up here in the quarry, one time they managed to smuggle in an invisibility potion so Fire could sneak into the hacker’s building and listen to what they were saying.” TehLulz explained.

 “What did they say?”

 “He didn’t tell us, he said that it wasn’t that important.”

 Ambigious interrupted them and said: “I’ll go get Unchosen, he is still at the fireplace.” He walked off.

 TehLulz continued: “The point is, why wouldn’t they come now? I think they also know that Fire has to do something with this ‘epic duel’.”

 ***

 The iron bars rose up and fell down again after Fire had walked through, now he stood on the edge to the arena, in this case it had formed a circle of sand with water around the outside. Fire himself had designed this preset for the arena, it was supposed to be used as arena in a battle against weak monsters and apparently they thought that they could taunt him by using this preset and thus comparing him to a monster, a weak monster.

 Fire didn’t feel offended by the usage of this preset, in fact he was confident because he knew the secrets he had built into it. One of them was a secret escape route into the machine room he built to give the fighters a way to escape the monsters and in his case his opponent if he couldn’t defeat him. He would run straight to the preset switches and would flip the “incinerate survivors” lever, which would unleash an almost never ending stream of fire charges and for the finish some TNT and in this case, “some” meant “a lot” or even more clearly “a literal ton”.

 Fire continued to walk into the arena, behind him the sand on which he entered the arena sunk into the water to block his way back. In front of him, the other bars opened and his opponent walked out of the door, still in furious rage but now in full diamond gear, obviously enchanted.

 PvP in the arena was off when no battle was happening, it only got turned on as the battle began to prevent angry contestants from hurting one another when they were not ready. Fire was ready, he now only needed to wait for the ten minutes to run out, eight were left.

 ***

 The four other members of the firegroup were desperately trying to find a way to get to the arena without using the command and came to the conclusion that it was impossible.

 “But why did he even accept the challenge to fight him, it is certain that he is going to lose.” Unchosen said with a fair bit of panic in his voice.

 Ambigious was angry instead of scared, he growled: “If we ever get out of here, I will find out where those hackers live and stab them in their sleep.”

 “That doesn’t help Fire now, we need help!” Said freeZe.

 Suddenly they heard another voice, it sounded soft but had a little scratch to it, a tiny bit like a cat talking in a human language, it seemed to belong to a man.

 It said: “Need a hand?”

 They heard a slurp and a person in full diamond armor appeared behind them. They turned around and stared at the man that interrupted their talk.

 “Wait, you are one of Fire’s friends, right?” freeZe said.

 “Correct, but we don’t have much time. Here, drink that, we will explain everything later.”

 With these words he gave them four tiny vials with a grey and semi-transparent liquid in them.

 Unchosen asked: “What is this… stuff?”

 “Invisibility potion, now drink!”

 Ambigious was the first one to drink, he shook after drinking.

 “That stuff is ice cold!”

 Everyone else also drank.

 “When is it going to kick in?” TehLulz asked.

 “Any second now.” Fire’s friend answered.

 “Wow, look at my hand, it is transparent now, wait, it is gone.” Ambigious said.

 freeZe said: “Now only your clothes are left, oh, what about the clothes by the way?”

 “They will become invisible in a few seconds, I don’t have enough time to explain why, I can only tell you that I am among the best alchemists on the server.”

 After their clothes had vanished the mysterious person said: “Okay, everybody grab my hand so that the teleportation affects you too.”

 “Ready” Said Unchosen and TehLulz, who had grabbed his right hand, Ambigious and freeZe took his left hand and also said “Ready”.

 “I am going to enter the command now, be silent and do not bump into anyone. Three, two, one, go!”

 They felt how they were flying over the map with high speed and ended up in the arena.

 “Quick, follow me!” Fire’s friend said and ran up some stairs to an area of the seats where no people were sitting.

 “Epic duel in the arena starting in five minutes!” The broadcast said again.

 “You all there?” He asked and a quadruple “Yes” came back.

 “Good. Come, let’s go to the bars.”

 The arena was covered by a hemisphere of iron bars assembled in a somewhat random grid with chains hanging down from them, the holes were not big enough to keep someone from fitting through it they really wanted to. The iron bars were mainly for show but also to keep fighters who were flung by explosions or preset-specific contraptions from flying into the seats and landing on the people sitting there.

 “You all there?” he asked again and got the same answer again.

 The second broadcast message appeared again: “To watch the battle, type /arena spectator seats!”

 The tension in the arena was very high, the two fighters were ready to fight. Now everybody was fevering towards the moment that the battle would begin. When it was one minute before the battle, the broadcast repeated the last two messages. The Shop Guy activated his kill aura, his arms disappeared, which was caused by them moving very quickly and trying to hit every possible target in range, combined with his sword and Fire’s lack of armor it basically made it obvious who would win.

 ***

 Fire stared at his opponent. He had a plan, but executing it would be hard, but for emergency he had a second plan and if this one would fail, he had a third one, and if that one failed he would be dead. Fire was not afraid of dying, neither in Minecraft nor in real life, he just didn’t want to. He lost that fear after he had died the first time on this server, it had been a very strange experience, nothing he would like to repeat and definitely not something that was possible to describe with words.

 The broadcast said: “Let the battle begin!”

 Fire could barely avoid the incoming attack, his opponent was charging at him at full speed, thinking he could end the battle as soon as it began. Fire jumped aside, rolled and came back to his feet in one fluent movement. The Shop Guy had to fight against the momentum he and his heavy diamond armor had built up. While the armor protected him it was also a disadvantage for the Shop Guy because its weight made him less maneuverable.

 Fire extended his claws all the way out, normally they looked like cat claws coming out of his fingertips but when fully extended they were deadly sabers capable of cutting everything into slices that was unlucky enough to be in their way. Fire’s opponent had come to a stop and turned around, still with active kill aura, the air was searing hot from the sword cutting through it in every possible angle.

 It was now Fire’s turn to attack while the Shop Guy recomposed. He ran towards him, the world around him entered a slow motion state like when he was jumping down the quarry. He pretended to attack him directly but then jumped over him with a gigantic leap. While falling, Fire turned around right after he landed and he covered the back of his opponent’s diamond chestplate with a furious rain of strikes from his claws.

 The Shop Guy’s arms couldn’t reach his back so there was a hole in the kill aura, the hacks weren’t built for a server that simulates realistic situations. The chestplate flashed purple every time Fire hit it, no damage was going through but its durability was degrading. A second after Fire had landed the Shop Guy noticed what was going on and turned around as fast as his armor let him. It looked very slow to Fire, who had enough time to escape the deadly blade storm of the kill aura. Fire sprinted around his opponent and towards the other side of the arena.

 ***

 Ambigious’ feelings were a mixture of tension, hatred towards the hackers and amazement about Fire avoiding the hits and attacking over and over again.

 “If they continue like this, Fire is going to win.” he whispered.

 freeZe was worried, now more than before, she said: “The hacker is angry but not dumb, he will soon notice that it can’t continue like this.”

 Fire’s friend spoke in his soft voice, without a trace of worry: “Fire will probably win, but this is not how, this is just him killing time and thinking of a better strategy.”

 “True, this chestplate will break eventually, but not any time soon.” Unchosen agreed.

 ***

 As they spoke Fire got into a bad situation, he didn’t roll far enough to get out of the hackers range, who noticed this. He made a curve and ran towards Fire, ready to reduce him to a bloody pile of bones, flesh and organs. Fire, was lying on the floor, he couldn’t escape. Even though he saw everything in slow motion, this didn’t actually increase his speed. The world around Fire kept getting slower and slower in face of the growing danger.

 Suddenly the hacker stopped and turned his kill aura off, the world returned to normal speed.

 Fire asked: “What now?”

 The hacker laughed and whispered: “Do you really think, that I will just give you a swift death?”

 Fire was calm on the outside, but in fact he tried to think of a way to avert his fate, he said: “In all honesty, no. I know about your mental state.”

 Fire’s only weapon now was more provocation, that way he could either make the hacker make a mistake or just kill him faster.

 The hacker was somewhat perplexed: “What?”

 Fire now spoke with a loud voice, so that every single person in the arena could hear him: “Yes, your mental state, you have all kinds of problems up there.”

 “That’s wrong, do not listen to him!” the Shop Guy said in an overly cool tone.

 “Oh yes it is true.”

 Anger was boiling in the hacker’s head again, making his vision blurry and his thoughts short, he shouted: “Prove it!”

 “As your praised leaders may know, you can in fact look into someone else’s mind here, which is why they are here.”

 The Shop Guy made a confused face, which was almost covered by his visor.

 “Oh, they didn’t tell you about it? You were here before their takeover and you were afraid of being sent to the quarry like me, so you joined them. On the side, by doing this you also violated the terms you agreed to when you joined, you are lucky that the admins’ enforcer hasn’t come for you yet.”

 The people on the ranks began booing out the Shop Guy.

 “Before the takeover the admins took a brief look into every new person’s mind whenever they joined, this whole server is for an experiment after all. They clearly found out about your mental state and because am a close friend of theirs, I happened to see that information too.”

 The Shop Guy didn’t say anything, he had to think about what he just heard. He let out a scream of insanity, raised his sword above his head and prepared to execute Fire.

 ***

 The four invisible people on the ranks listened to all that with open mouths.

 Unchosen stuttered: “So the hackers are not just here to enjoy the feeling of power? They have a goal.”

 Fire’s friend said: “Yes, they have one and if you knew it, you wouldn’t like it.”

 freeZe asked: “Why didn’t he tell us earlier?“

 “It is all part of Fire’s plan.“

 “What pl…“

 “Shh, look!”

 They turned their heads towards the bars again and they didn’t like what they saw there: The Shop Guy, with his sword in hand, jumped into the air, turned his sword and let it come down on Fire. But suddenly Fire was not there anymore, he was behind the hacker with the claw on his index finger extended all the way. The sword drilled itself into the sand where Fire used to be a second ago.

 “What?” The Shop Guy shouted. “Where did he go?”

 That was the last thing he said before he felt a cold stinging pain, right where the gap between helmet and chestplate was.

 Fire had slit the Shop Guy’s throat with his claw. Fire had won, he retracted his claw. The people on the ranks started cheering for Fire.

 The Shop Guy somehow managed to pull his sword out of the ground and slashed out for Fire one final time. The sword cut right through his coat at his left shoulder, it was torn apart in a clean cut, so were his scales and a big portion of the muscles under it. The sword would have cut Fire’s arm right off if the Shop Guy hadn’t been almost dead when he launched the attack, instead it stopped at Fire’s collarbone. The sword slid out of the wound, making it extend over Fire’s chest.

 In the first moment, Fire didn’t feel anything. Then he felt the cold blade and the hot magic burning and tearing apart his flesh, he was knocked off his feet by a pulse of energy coming from of the sword. While falling he opened his mouth and let out a loud scream of pain, his voice had an otherworldly screeching resonance to it, making everybody on the ranks press their hands on their ears, then suddenly, the scream was over, the last thing Fire heard before blacking out was someone calling his name.

 ***

 “Fire!” His four invisible friends screamed at the same time, the visible one was searching his pockets in haste.

 He found what he was looking for and said: “Someone, quick, bring this to him.”

 He hadn’t even finished as he felt the vial with pink liquid being ripped out of his hand.

 He heard a female voice saying: “I’ll do that.”

 Despite the desperate situation Ambigious still poked TehLulz invisibly, the expression on his face was easy to guess, but he didn’t say anything.

 freeZe ran, she looked for a gap in the grid that was big enough for her to fit through. She put her feet through and then the rest of her body, hung herself down from the bars, the vial in one hand. freeZe dropped down, trying not to land in the water. As she landed on the sand, she felt a sting in her feet but ignored it and ran right over to Fire who was lying on the ground next to the body of his dead opponent. She shook Fire’s body, crying and calling his name.

 Fire was not dead but he was bleeding out, the only thing he felt was the pain, it was a feeling he could hardly describe, it was a sting and pull at the same time. It had been a long time since he had been subjected to this amount of pain and he had no time to prepare himself for it. Under normal circumstances he would have been able to easily resist the pain but due to the malnourishment in the quarry his physical condition wasn’t the best. After an unknowable amount of time something appeared at the very edge of his perception, it was not very big but it was something other than pain.

 His mind was violently pulled out of its blacked out state, he woke up, the pain was even stronger now and he wished he would black out again. He didn’t see what woke him up, he just felt that someone was shaking his body, he also saw a vial with a pink liquid inside it and recognized it as regeneration potion. It seemed so surreal that he thought that it was just a hallucination caused by the pain. Then his sense of hearing kicked in, he heard the people on the ranks yelling and crying, there was also someone crying right next to him, Fire didn’t know who it was, then he looked at the vial again, he knew only one person using these kinds of vials… And he only knew one person who would cry like this if he would have died, well two, but only one of them could be here.

 “freeZe?” He said with a very quiet voice, shaken by pain.

 “Yes?” Her voice was full of hope again.

 “Could you please give me that potion?“

 “O… Of course.” She stuttered.

 She opened the vial and emptied it into Fire’s mouth, he swallowed and his body relaxed a bit. He could feel how the liquid ran down his throat and on the way down got absorbed by his blood. It felt like cold fire running in his veins, first directionless, then more and more towards his would, rebuilding cracked bones and torn muscles, taking his pain away. He fell asleep, part from the exhaustion, part from the potion.

 „He’s alive!“ freeZe yelled, still with invisible tears running down her cheeks.

 Fire’s friend raised a thumb, walked down to the bars, threw an ender pearl through and disappeared. He reappeared next to Fire and inspected his wound with a worried face.

 He said: “He will need a stronger regeneration potion than this one if you want him to survive. He’s quite weak from the year he spent in the quarry.” freeZe was about to say something, but got interrupted by Fire’s friend: “We need to bring him to the quarry, now.”

 He pulled another vial with a white liquid in it out of a pocket and drank it, he cleared his throat and spoke with potion-amplified voice: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to explain some things, the loser of this battle, our Shop Guy here got challenged by Fire. In the months before he gave Fire unfair treatment only because of his personal hatred against Fire. Fire won, but look at the price he had to pay! You heard what he said, it was the truth. Do you agree with this, qofrghz122, head member of the hacker group?”

 After a short delay a message appeared: “Yes, Fire won, we will expel the Shop Guy, he will no longer be part of the group, Fire will get his money, a thousand per diamond.”

 The people on the ranks cheered but Fire’s friend had a strange look in his eyes that was hard to read from.

 Another message appeared on the screen: “I will warp you back to the quarry.”

 ***

 They stopped at their fireplace, Fire was still lying on the ground. Fire’s friend was already running to the tents to get some wool to make a somewhat comfortable place for Fire to lie on. Everybody stared at him when he arrived there, he was still wearing diamond armor after all. He walked over to Fire’s tent and began taking it down first, the others’ tents followed. He put them into his inventory and sprinted back to Fire, freeZe, Ambigious, TehLulz and Unchosen.

 ***

 Fire opened his eyes again, everything was a bit blurry, his wound was still there, it still hurt a bit but it was way better than in the arena, the ends were starting to grow back together and it had stopped bleeding, courtesy of the regeneration potion. His vision slowly turned normal, he was still tired and the only part of his body he could control were his eyes, he noticed someone next to him, he couldn’t see who exactly it was but it seemed like Ambigious. Fire seemed to be lying on an improvised mattress that was made from folded together tents.

 “Are you okay?” Ambigious asked.

 Fire only managed to produce a low, extended grunt, then coughed.

 “I will count that as yes.” He stood up and called the others: “Hey, he woke up!” Then he said in a quiet voice: “Looks pretty bad, that wound, does it hurt?“

 Fire had fully woken up and recovered his voice. “It’s not that bad, the potion has a large part in that.”

 The quiet was broken by the others arriving, asking questions and talking at the same time.

 “Shhhh!” Fire’s friend and Ambigious said simultaneously.

 Fire leaned on his healthy arm and said: “Okay, now we will have to tell you about it, you start Brad.“

 Fire’s friend started talking: “Okay, first of all let me tell you my name. I am Brad, I was one of the first players to join the server. The admins were still figuring out their integration code, which caused some… interesting bugs like your arms or legs disappearing spontaneously, fun times. Then the server got more and more popular, not really popular but there were at least a hundred people playing at a time, which was a lot for this server at that time, nothing compared to now but for the time it was a lot.”

 “Wait a minute!” freeZe interrupted Brad “How did you even hear about this server?”

 “The admins went around the internet or in person to recruit suitable people, then gave them their site’s address. The people would go to the site, register and agree to the terms and conditions. That included things like not to tell nobody about it, except their direct relatives or close friends, there are also some harsh consequences for breaking those terms. Then they are told the server IP so they could log in. If you aren’t registered and try to log in it will just kick you out.”

 Fire continued: “It was only a matter of time for hackers to find the server, there have been many attempts to hack the server. The hackers we have now took a completely different approach, they didn’t attack the server, they attacked the admins and made them unable counteract their following direct attack. After that they had more than enough time to take over the server as well. They spread the IP and disabled the login system and also took over everything else Minecraft related, the only thing they couldn’t figure out was the code of the software that makes the connection to the brain possible, it’s way too complicated for anyone except for the admins. That and it is currently tied to Minecraft, which they don’t want.”

 “What do they want?” Unchosen, who had kept himself in the background, asked.

 “They want to sell the software to the highest bidder, they hope that they get rich from it. From what I’ve heard some private military organization already showed interest.”

 TehLulz asked: “How are they going to sell it if they can’t even separate it from Minecraft?”

 “They want to force the admins to give them the code in its raw form.”

 “How?”

 Fire took his time for the answer: “By killing us.”

 Everybody except Brad jumped: “What?”

 Fire’s voice was perfectly calm: “Time doesn’t stand still outside, eventually everybody in the quarry will die of dehydration, I will probably die as the very first one, I have been in here for six real time days, after seven survival is very unlikely.”

 “Isn’t there anything we can do?” freeZe asked.

 “Yes. Remember what I said is the only thing the hackers can’t understand and therefore a good place to hide a way out?”

 Everyone’s eyes widened in realization: “The code…”

 “Yes, exactl…” Fire’s words were interrupted by a spasm going through his body.

 “Fire, are you alright?” Ambigious asked.

 “Brad, regen, quick!” Fire pressed out between his lips.

 Fire’s body was shaking uncontrollably and intensely.

 Brad pulled another regeneration potion out of a pocket he could access with his armor on, this time a big bottle.

 Fire opened his mouth and drank the potion very quickly, he felt again how the potion dispersed into his blood and then focusing on the wound, the pain was still there but it was getting better and better with every second.

 “Wow, what was that?” Ambigious asked.

 Brad answered: “All pain blocked by the potion got unleashed in one moment, which is what happens if the potion wears off before the wound is completely closed.”

 Fire continued explaining as if nothing had happened: “They hid numerous artefacts around the server map. Even though there are a lot, only a few are actually relevant to escaping. I only know about three.” He collected his breath for his next sentence: “Now I have to ask you something, I need you to help me free the server from the hackers.”

 Unchosen asked: “How?”

 “I want you to help me gather the artefacts. I am warning you, it will be difficult, more than that, almost impossible.”

 “We will help!” freeZe said before anyone else could answer. “We won’t just let you die.”

 Ambigious asked: “Wait a second, as far as I know you aren’t blocked from using the menu, why don’t you just log out?”

 “Because I am an anchor, my presence here acts as some sort of a safeguard for the server. As long as I’m online I create interference and they need to actively keep the server under control, which allows them to be tracked eventually. I can’t leave the server or the hackers will fully take over and basically have an infinite amount of time to kill people undetected and use that as a means to pressure the admins.”

 “Oh, I see…” Said TehLulz and added a question: “What are we even looking for?”

 “We are looking for… The Ban Hammer.”

 Everybody from the firegroup stared at Fire.

 “The what?”

 “The Ban Hammer, it is backdoor put in by the admins if no other way out is left. It gives the one holding it absolute control over the server.”

 “Where is it?”

 “I don’t know, I only know for certain where one of the artefacts, the Ultimate Base Potion, is. I will tell you more about it when we find it. The other artefacts I know of are the Ender Dragon Egg and the Axe of Eric the Viking.”

 “And why are the hackers not just collecting them?”

 “They don’t even know about them! They wouldn’t be able to use them anyways, the Ban Hammer can only be used by an anchor.”

 “What is the plan?” Ambigious asked and then added: “It is time to show those hackers who is the boss!”

 “I can’t tell you the plan just yet, a lot of it will be adapted as we go along anyways, I can tell you one thing though. We will go mining at the crater tomorrow. freeZe, could you ask for the equipment now?”

 “Okay” She said.

 freeZe walked off in the direction of the shop, which now had a different shopkeeper, just a regular player who volunteered to do the job until someone else was found.

 Brad once again inspected Fire’s wound and said: “It will be grown back together tomorrow, it works much faster while sleeping. By the way, here are the things you asked for.”

 With these words he gave Fire a bag and warped away without any further words.

 “Just out of interest, what is in that bag?” TehLulz asked.

 Fire answered: “It is part of the plan, you will see when the time comes. Go and sell the stuff. Tell the shopkeeper that it is from me.”

 Fire unloaded a bunch of gems and ingots from his inventory, TehLulz picked it up and also walked towards the shop.

 “You two, please go now, I need some sleep, it is quite late already and I am very tired.” Fire said with a yawn.

 Unchosen replied: “No problem, night Fire.”

 While walking away from Fire Ambigious said: “Wow, I haven’t noticed how quickly the time passed.”

 ***

 The first thing Fire did the next morning was touch the spot where the wound had been, it was entirely gone. He still felt the regeneration potion inside him, giving him energy and fixing some minor injuries from work and from the battle. The only thing that was not intact was his coat, it had a huge hole.

 “Damn it, I’ll have to fix this thing once again.” He noticed TehLulz next to him, smiling.

 TehLulz said: “This is probably the one and only time you wake up last.”

 Fire grinned and asked: “How much did you get?”

 TehLulz said: “Quite a lot, it’s in the five digit range.”

 Fire said: “Too bad we won’t need that money anymore.”

 “Yeah, true.” He paused. “Can you tell us at least where we are going first?”

 “I can, we are going to my base.”

 “Nice, is it far?”

 Fire answered in a mysterious voice: “Depends which way you take… It can be way farther away than the arena, but it can also be closer than the edge of the desert.”

 TehLulz at first was confused and then seemed to know the answer: “Oh, I know how, does it involve purple?”

 Fire replied, satisfied that TehLulz had figured out his riddle: “Oh yes, it does.”

 “Why is there one in the volcano?”

 Fire smiled: “It was an accident.”

 “Ah, I see.”

 They were interrupted by freeZe yelling: “Hey, guys, I made us breakfast!”

 Fire stood up, stretched and whispered to TehLulz: “Let’s see if she can cook like I can.”

 Fire always made the food because he was the only one of the group who was able to cook something that you could eat without throwing up, freeZe refused to cook since her brother started making jokes about it, this day was an exception since Fire had been wounded.

 “What did you make for breakfast?” Ambigious asked.

 She replied: “Toast… as close as it gets to toast anyways, bought some cheese, bread and eggs from the shop and cooked it over the fire.”

 “Sounds tasty.” Unchosen said.

 They sat down and started eating from their stone plates, now they realized how hungry they really were.

 ***

 With the claws of one hand deep in sandbasalt Fire reached down to help Ambigious up, he was the last one to get up the final section where the slaves had mined. Ambigious stepped back, sprinted to build up momentum, then jumped and grabbed Fire’s hand. Fire catapulted Ambigious up with a powerful movement of his formerly wounded arm, the regeneration potion had worked wonders.

 “Oof!” Ambigious said as he landed on the side.

 He stood up climbed up the wall to where the others were, Fire pulled himself up over the ledge and followed, five diamond pickaxes and the same number of water buckets in his inventory.

 “How far is it? I am exhausted already, I got up early today.” freeZe said.

 Fire answered: “Oh, it isn’t that far up to the crater, the real journey begins when we are up.”

 They arrived after about ten minutes of half-climbing-half-walking on the burning hot sandbasalt, which was getting hotter and hotter towards the crater.

 Fire warned: “Okay, cover your eyes. Well, not Ambigious, you already have your sunglasses.”

 Everybody except Fire and Ambigious did so and looked over the edge of the crater. Even with the covered eyes, Ambigious shades and Fire’s resistant eyes the Lava was blinding them in the first few seconds.

 “Whoa!” TehLulz and Unchosen said simultaneously “That is bright!”

 When their vision wasn’t all white again, they saw one of the most impressive things that nature and Minecraft had to offer. The lava’s yellow and red glow perfectly mixed with the yellow part of the sandbasalt, making it hard to tell, where the lava pool in the middle ended and where the superheated stone began. The walls sharply fell down, you could still climb up from inside but you certainly couldn’t go down safely. Everything had a red glow from the lava.

 Once everyone had recovered Fire poured one bucket of water into the crater and temporally extinguished the bright red glow.

 “Hop in!” He said.

 Fire jumped over the ledge, picked the water source up while falling and landed on the relatively thin layer of obsidian the water had formed, it gave out an intimidating crack but didn’t break.

 “You see, totally safe. Seriously, it is Minecraft obsidian after all.”

 They slowly climbed over the edge and climbed down even slower. They were all standing on the black volcanic glass, the lava gave out a dim light through the obsidian, which made it glow mysteriously.

 Fire said in a quiet voice, almost whispering: “Alright, here is the plan. We poke a hole into the obsidian and jump in.”

 Ambigious interrupted: “Jumping into lava?”

 “The bag Brad gave me, there are Fire Resistance potions in there. We jump into the lava and swim down, just follow me, the potion also provides us with energy so we don’t have to breathe, it also makes us able to see in the lava. It is pretty hard to brew.”

 With these words he gave everyone a diamond pickaxe.

 “We will make a large hole, as if the obsidian collapsed, then we will drink the potions and jump in, there is a Nether portal at the bottom, we will swim through that.”

 Nobody asked a question, they were just swinging their pickaxes at the obsidian, too focused to even think about anything else, it was still hard work and they had to watch out for a real obsidian collapse. The obsidian made a high pitched bling every time a pick hit it, suddenly a loud crack came from the center of the obsidian.

 “To the sides, quick!” Fire shouted.

 The obsidian started falling into the lava, a hole formed in the middle and was rapidly growing, they jumped just in time before the lava would have swallowed them.

 “Phew, that was close.” Unchosen said.

 freeZe demanded: “Okay, we’ll need those potions now.”

 Fire searched his inventory for the bag and fished out five potions, then packed the bag back into his inventory. The others had slowly come to Fire on the half meter strip of obsidian around the lava that was still left.

 “One last thing, it is hard to combine so many different effects in one potion, and these are no simple effects. There may be some side effects while it kicks in, nothing dangerous though.” Fire warned and added: “I will drink the first one and tell you if anything happens.”

 He gave the potions to them and drank his. The orange liquid was burning hot, or at least it felt like lava running down his throat. Once in his stomach, the liquid partially turned into a yellow gas, which came out of Fire’s nose and mouth and also got into his lungs. Fire felt how the gas dispersed in his lungs and at the same time his eyes started feeling strange. His vision blurred out, Fire made a step towards the wall and leaned against it. A few seconds later his vision went normal again, only he could see even better than he could normally. His body shook for a few seconds, then Fire didn’t feel the burning heat radiating from the lava anymore, he only felt warmth all inside his body.

 “Are you… Okay?” TehLulz asked.

 Fire answered: “Not many side effects, Brad did a good job. It only feels like drinking lava in the first few seconds, also support yourself on the wall, your vision will be blurry for a short time.“

 “Okay, if that is all, let’s drink on our victory!” Said Ambigious and emptied his bottle in one go and regretted doing so a second later as the liquid ran down his throat. Everyone else also drank, a minute later they all were completely immune to the lava.

 freeZe counted down without asking anyone: “Three, two, one… jump!” They jumped into the molten rock, hoping Brad did the potion right and they wouldn’t get fried instantly. They felt the lava enclosing them…

 It was strange being encased in lava and not dying or even feeling its heat, not needing to breathe and drawing all energy required from the molten rock itself. Fire had used Fire Resistance potions very often but after over a year without them he was surprised by not being hurt but not nearly as much as the others who in general had never fallen in lava. In the first second they panicked and tried to swim back to the surface, but then they remembered that they had the potion and relaxed.

 They could see as well as if they were underwater, only with a red tint. Fire gave them a sign to follow him and began swimming downwards with powerful movements of arms and legs but then remembered that the others still had to learn how to navigate the dense fluid. He slowed down and looked out for obsidian, he didn’t see any. As soon as freeZe, TehLulz, Ambigious and Unchosen had caught up to him he started swimming downwards slowly, always looking for the black volcanic glass.

 Suddenly Fire heard something and wildly gesticulated to tell the others to move away from the middle. The lava rumbled and vibrated. In the deep, just at the edge of Fire’s vision huge bubbles of gas came up out of the depths of the volcano, shooting up very quickly and pushing a wave of magma up to the crater. As it passed by it almost smashed them against the wall. If someone would have been in the middle they would have been thrown out of the volcano, hitting the ground with no chance of survival. After the current had slowed Fire gave the others a sign to continue and took the lead again.

 Hundreds of meters and half an hour later Fire spotted a small black and purple rectangle. He signaled to hurry and swum downwards faster. The next thing he felt was the sinister aura of the portal, it was no good feeling like the aura of diamonds but he had gotten used to it since he had all kinds of magic going on in his base.

 They were only a few meters away from the purple portal, Fire gave the others a sign to stop, then he swam towards the portal and went inside it. As Fire entered it he felt a slight resistance since the portal wasn’t completely fluid. The insides of the volcano began spinning before his eyes and then he blacked out.

 He woke up on the other side of the portal, he was not tired in any way and started observing his environment. He stood in a small circular cavern with a man-made tunnel leading out into the main caverns of the Nether. The heat was enormous. The next one to come out was TehLulz. Ambigious, Unchosen and freeZe came followed, still a bit dizzy.

 As Fire saw that they were fully there again, he asked: “Do you have any combat experience?”

 freeZe answered: “Yes.”

 A double “No” came from TehLulz and Unchosen.

 Ambigious answered last: “Not really. I got into fights once or twice, or ten dozen times if you count those with freeZe.”

 Fire answered: “Okay, that will make it somewhat more difficult. I’ll tell you the strategies for the mobs in here. So, the pigmen are dangerous because of their speed and their swords, but just ignore them, you know how it is. The magma cubes are a little more difficult, you can just stomp the tiny ones but for medium and large I would recommend dodging and throwing rocks at them, without a blade of any kind you pretty much can’t deal damage. The ghasts… I think you know how to handle those. But be careful, you should kick the fireballs back instead of punching them or it will hurt. If you see a blaze or a wither skeleton, tell me.”

 Unchosen asked: “Okay, where do we need to go?”

 Fire was walking into the tunnel and said: “Come, I will show you when we are outside.”

 The tunnel was narrow and the heat coming from the netherrack was insane, the rock was rough but not jagged so it was surprisingly comfortable to walk on, even without shoes. As they stepped outside of the tunnel, a panorama opened up before them.

 They were standing in a lower section of the Nether, the lava sea was just a few meters away and more lava was pouring down from the ceiling onto the overhangs above them. Zombie pigmen were wandering around on the netherrack, ghasts were flying high up on the ceiling, always letting out their sad cries and moans. The whole scenery was dramatically illuminated by the yellow, sun bright light of glowstone crystals hanging from the ceiling, the eternal fires on the netherrack and by the lava sea from beneath, leaving little room for shadows. In the distance, they could see a Nether Fortress towering in the middle of the lava lake, giving it an even more sinister look than it would have had normally. Blazes, zombie pigmen and wither skeletons were patrolling the buildings and bridges made of the dark red nether bricks.

 freeZe poked Fire in the shoulder and said: “Fire, why are you shimmering?”

 After she said that everyone else, including Fire, noticed that Fire’s scales were shimmering in the darkest of blacks like the shell of an insect.

 Fire said: “The lava burnt away the dust and dirt from the year in the quarry, this is how my scales look normally.”

 Ambigious laughed. “Nice! Let’s go!”

 Fire took the lead once again, going up the hill to their left and explained the route he wanted to follow: “We will go on the left side of the lava sea and then cross a lava river, then we will go into that Nether Fortress over there, I have some friends living in there, somewhat weird but nice people.”

 freeZe answered while climbing up the hill: “Very strange friends you have there, living in a Nether Fortress with all those mobs…”

 Fire chuckled: “I know right, you all will have a little shock when you see them I can imagine. Have I ever told you about the Wither cult?”

 Ambigious replied: “No, you haven’t.”

 Fire grinned. “Okay, then I won’t spoil your surprise.”

 ***

 They were halfway up the hill as they heard a scream different from the usual ambient ghast noises. Suddenly a fireball impacted five meters to their right, setting some more fires.

 “Up the hill!” Fire yelled.

 They climbed the hill more quickly now, which was not easy with the boiling heat around them, at the top was a small platform. Fire stopped at the very front and signaled the others to continue running. Fire noticed that the ghast shooting them was pretty big compared to the others, it seemed to be an alpha ghast of sorts.

 The ghast breathed in with its tentacles swirling through the air and shot a bolt of compact flames at Fire. Everything slowed down, he was about to try something very risky but if it worked, it would help then throughout the rest of the journey through the Nether. The fireball now was only five meters in front of Fire, he formed a bowl with his hands towards the fireball, shielding his face and put one foot back to support him. The projectile hit Fire’s hands with force, it didn’t explode.

 It pushed Fire backwards over the rough netherrack, someone without Fire’s resistant scales would have had the skin on their feet torn off. The fireball decreased in speed quickly until it stopped and stayed afloat in mid-air. Fire was surprised that he actually stopped the fireball but the ghast was at least twice as surprised. It made a confused face, which turned to respect and then to terror, it floated away screaming loudly. The others carefully walked towards Fire, who was cooling his hands

 freeZe asked Fire: “This is enormously good or terribly bad, right?”

 Without answering Fire asked: “Did anybody keep their bottle?“

 “Yeah, I kept it.” Unchosen said and handed it to Fire, so did everybody else.

 Fire thanked them and walked over to the orb of fire still floating there.

 “Err, what do you want to do?” TehLulz asked.

 Fire replied short: “Bottle it.”

 He stuck the neck of one bottle into the fireball, to everyone’s surprise it started pouring into the bottle, filling it up. He corked the bottle again and filled up the other bottles.

 “What can you use that stuff for?” Ambigious asked with an interested voice.

 “I really don’t know, I will have to try it out.” Fire answered and added: “Let’s go, we need to get to the fortress.”

 He took the snowball sized fireball that was left and carried it in his hand. They started walking again.

 “Fire, I am so thirsty.” freeZe complained.

 Fire answered: “We will have something to drink in the fortress… Wait, don’t we have water buckets?”

 Ambigious moaned: “Oh yes we do, why didn’t we think of them earlier, freeZe is about to collapse.”

 freeZe talked back: “No I am not! But I could use some water.”

 Fire handed freeZe his water bucket, she tilted it and drank a quarter of the water inside.

 She asked: “Anybody else need water?”

 The others raised their hands. freeZe passed the bucket on to Ambigious, TehLulz and Unchosen, who emptied it completely.

 “Everybody ready again?” Fire asked and packed the bucket into his inventory.

 They started walking again. They were about half way to the fortress, the ghasts had left them alone since Fire caught the fireball. They walked pretty slowly because they wanted to save water and energy.

 The scenery had changed quite a bit since they exited the tunnel, they were higher up now, which had advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages was having to avoid lava rivers all the time. One of the advantages was having a way better view than from below, the fortress was now completely visible and it was huge. Some of the bridges went into the reddish-pink rock, it was possible that a lot of the structure was inside the netherrack.

 Suddenly they heard a strange sound, a slap and a slurp a second later.

 “Uh-Oh, that doesn’t sound very good.” TehLulz stated.

 He was right, a huge magma cube was hopping towards them, revealing its fiery core with every jump.

 Fire closed his eyes, opened his inventory and pulled a diamond pickaxe onto his hotbar with his thoughts, it was in his hand right hand after he opened his eyes again, the fireball still was in his left hand.

 He started digging a hole and called the others: “Get in there! It can’t reach you as long as it is that big!”

 He didn’t have to say that twice, in a chaos of hands and feet freeZe, Ambigious, TehLulz and Unchosen disappeared in the hole, Fire stayed out of it. He switched to another slot of his hotbar and put the fireball in his right hand.

 “So you want to eat us? How about you chew on this?” Fire yelled and threw the fireball at the cube, which was in the middle of a jump.

 Fire had aimed the fireball a bit under it so it would hit it in mid-air. The fireball left a burning hot trail behind it and made a nasty ear wrecking whistling and howling noise like some fireworks do. The fireball hit the magma cube right between the strips of half-liquid magma, which were like a spring, making it able to jump.

 The fireball exploded with a bright flash right at the molten core in the center of the cube as it hit the ground. It stopped with its red eyes rolling wildly, it didn’t have enough surface tension to stay in its form. It liquefied without any warning, forming a puddle on the ground. Fire jumped back shortly before the puddle reached his feet. Three smaller but still two meter tall replica of the magma cube rose out of the puddle.

 They made a big leap and surrounded Fire before he could react. He extended the claws on his hands, they wouldn’t help him much in the battle but it was better than punching the cubes. He attacked the cube closest to him, which was about to leap. Fire’s claws cut through it, doing some damage but the magma core in its center flared up, liquefying the wounded part and making it grow together again. Fire knew that the other two were about to land on him. He jumped forward and tried to roll like in the arena. The netherrack however was much rougher and more solid than the sand in the arena, the roll wasn’t fluent and didn’t get him far but he got on his feet again at the end.

 “Out of the hole!” He yelled and ducked under an incoming cube.

 Their circle now was closer than before but the eyes of the one cube he hit were a little bit dimmer than the other’s. Fire attacked the same cube again, this time with both hands, slashing down on it diagonally and again, the core flared up and healed the wound. The second cube landed next to Fire and the third one remained in his position.

 “Eat this!” A voice yelled, apparently Ambigious, a big chunk of netherrack hit the cube which had landed next to Fire.

 Fire took a quick look over to the rest of the group, they all had picked up rocks and bombarded the cubes with them just like he had told them when they entered the Nether. The cubes absorbed the netherrack, instantly turning it into lava with a flash of their core and using it to grow.

 freeZe said half loud: “Oops, that is not good.”

 Fire dodged the third cube, which almost landed on top of him, jumped again, this time without a roll and stood up, just to dodge the second and third cube that were following him, the first one seemed to be slowing down.

 “Keep throwing, it cools their cores!” Fire yelled.

 He cut his claws right through the second cube a couple of times, forcing it to sacrifice more of its temperature to repair itself. The third cube made a giant leap in the air, Fire stepped aside. Fire saw, that the first cube’s core was almost not glowing anymore, a split second later the second cube landed on him with its full weight, knocking him to the ground. Fire saw stars for a second and when his senses were there again, he noticed that the cube had swallowed him, a moment later he felt the burning heat of lava at his skin, half of his body was stuck inside the core, the cube wasn’t moving and tried to keep Fire inside.

 Fire struggled but couldn’t get free. The other three noticed that Fire was stuck inside the cube but couldn’t do anything. Fire thought he heard freeZe screaming but wasn’t sure since his head was stuck in the cube. His skin was resistant to heat but only up to a certain degree. Smoke started radiating from the core and the horrible smell of burning scales filled the air. Fire tried to think of a plan, everything slowed down again, which gave him a bit more time to do so, however the pain was preventing him from forming a clear thought.

 All he could do was an instinctual reaction, he extended his claws at feet and hands and started to struggle like a cat that had been picked up against its will. His claws cut through the cube, making it cool down rapidly but also with every flash of the core the pain all over Fire’s body increased. He wondered why he wasn’t dead yet. After painfully long twenty seconds the heat dropped below the level where it could harm Fire or fix the wounds of the cube. He cut his way out of his once fiery prison, which liquefied right after he crawled out of the thick semi liquid stone. Fire stood up using the strength he had left, a feeling of triumph filled his body and drove the pain away. The others had done a good job at killing the first and third cube, they had shrunk to their minimal size and were being stomped by Ambigious, TehLulz and freeZe. Unchosen ran over to Fire, who had sunken to the ground devitalized. When the others were done killing the remaining cubes, they also ran over to Fire.

 freeZe said in concern: “You look terrible!”

 Fire in fact looked terrible, half of his coat was charred, the scales on his head and torso were deformed and he had smaller burns all over his body.

 He answered in a weak voice: “I don’t know how I am even alive… we need to get to the fortress quickly, just give me a few minutes to rest.”

 They sat down next to Fire saying nothing, their silence only got interrupted by a huge chunk of netherrack falling down from the ceiling into the lava lake, causing a huge tsunami of lava to surge the coast, pulling in pigmen and magma cubes as it flew back again.

 “Pretty impressive place, the Nether…” Unchosen whispered.

 “But also very dangerous.” TehLulz added.

 “No beauty without danger, it is like this everywhere.” Fire said.

 The sentence made Ambigious chuckle.

 He said: “Right, freeZe? No beauty without danger, many people experienced that…”

 She replied, smiling: “Stop it.”

 TehLulz opened his eyes immediately close them again, his vision was blurry and he was still very sleepy.

 “Dude.” A familiar voice said, he wasn’t sure but it seemed to belong to Ambigious.

 TehLulz was about to sit up as he heard the voice again. “Stay down, I need to get her away from you first.”

 After hearing that he noticed that the witch was lying right next to him, half leaning on him would describe it better. Any movement TehLulz would make now could wake her up. Ambigious reached over his friend with his hands and tried to carefully push the witch away from his friend without waking her up. Suddenly a sting of pain went up Ambigious’ arm.

 “Damn it! I almost forgot that wound was there.” Ambigious said, trying not to be too loud.

 TehLulz carefully pushed the witch off of himself, moving her a little to the right.

 Ambigious started to grin.

 “You know TehLulz, there are enough witches in Minecraft already, you don’t have to make more.” He said with a half-straight face.

 TehLulz stood up and stretched, making a lot of his joints creak.

 “I wasn’t doing… that.” He said, yawned and then added: “I think I will never get fully used to sleeping on the ground… And by the way, she saved you.” He said.

 He then pointed at the witch who was now lying where he had been lying a few seconds earlier, he yawned again.

 Ambigious stopped grinning. “Oh… Don’t tell her I said anything, okay? But how did we get here anyway?”

 TehLulz told Ambigious everything from him falling asleep in the boat to the strange euphoria after leaving the boats. He stopped when he was about to mention Fire.

 TehLulz asked: “You noticed Fire here, right?”

 “Yeah, has he been waiting here?” Ambigious wanted to know.

 “No. Look at his chest.” TehLulz answered.

 Ambigious turned around and in the face of Fire’s gaping wound every bit of humor disappeared from his look and his face turned dead-serious.

 “Holy crap! What happened to him? And how didn’t I notice that?” Ambigious asked.

 “I don’t know either. At first we thought that he was dead but then he wasn’t… entirely. It is still not certain that he will survive.”

 “Man, that is bad.” Ambigious said. “Is there anything we can do?”

 “The witch put a drop of Fire’s potion into the wound, let’s hope it helps.” TehLulz answered, then he added: “I don’t want to talk about that anymore.”

 Ambigious looked left and right and promptly changed topic: “This is one strange hut.”

 After a standing up and walking around a bit he asked: “How did she save me by the way?”

 TehLulz replied: “That illness you had is called blaze fever, you seem to have caught it in the Nether. She cured it by giving you a Fire Resistance potion.”

 “That seemed logical.” Ambigious commented.

 He removed the bandage Unchosen had made him, looked at the wound and his face changed to disgust. The wound hadn’t gotten any better, it was about the same with the only difference being that a hard crust had formed on the wounded flesh.

 He didn’t comment on the wound but instead asked: “Should we wake up the others?”

 TehLulz asked: “The witch too?“

 “Not yet, we need to talk about things first. By the way, do you know her name?”

 “No… She didn’t tell me.”

 “Whatever.” Ambigious said and proceeded to poke freeZe in the shoulder.

 “Hmmm?” freeZe muttered.

 “Wake up.” Ambigious said, a winning smile on his face. “By the way, I woke up before you.”

 freeZe pushed herself up from the ground, but after she saw Fire, she dropped to the floor again.

 TehLulz demanded: “Come on, stand up.”

 “But Fire is dead… and Ambigious, how are you talking, you have a fever.” freeZe said, still very sleepy.

 “I got cured.” Ambigious said.

 “Fire is not dead, not entirely at least.” TehLulz said and immediately regretted adding the second part.

 “Not dead?” Unchosen muttered, who was woken up by freeZe’s movements.

 TehLulz explained: “The witch gave him a bit of his potion, the golden apple concentrate, you know.”

 “Witch?” freeZe asked.

 “Okay, time to tell that story again. Are you really awake? I don’t want to tell you twice, I’ll make it short this time.”

 freeZe and Unchosen sat up and said: “We are awake.”

 TehLulz quickly explained: “Right after we saw Fire I heard the witch coming up the ladder, you two had passed out. I explained the situation and she gave Ambigious a Fire Resistance potion to cure his illness, she called it blaze fever I believe. Then she put a drop of Fire’s golden apple concentrate into the wound. Remember how Fire did that to Oalrhm? Oalrhm wasn’t really dead either, he was just something like a very deep sleep, let’s hope that it is the same for Fire. But I still don’t understand how he would be able to live with his heart lacerated like that… Also she said that she knows Fire, or at least her mother knew him.”

 “Hold on now.” Unchosen said. “So Fire might be alive. Ambigious is cured but we still have his wound to deal with, which might be easier now that the witch is here. We might actually be in good shape... If we find a way to repair Fire’s heart that is.”

 Ambigious asked: “So, will we wake up the witch now?”

 “I think so.” TehLulz answered and gave Ambigious to remind him not to say anything.

 TehLulz knelt down next to the witch and tried to wake her up by poking her in the shoulder, she didn’t show any reaction.

 “Hey, wake up.” He said.

 This didn’t seem to have any effect, the witch was still fast asleep. Then Ambigious pushed his friend aside and shook the witch with a bit more force, this did wake her up.

 She yawned, then looked at Ambigious. She dryly said: “It seems you have recovered.”

 TehLulz broke the following awkward silence: “Time to properly introduce ourselves. This is Ambigious, that is freeZe, that is Unchosen, I am TehLulz.” He pointed at his friends in order.

 “Nice to meet you…” She said, still more asleep than awake.

 freeZe asked: “What is your name?”

 “My name? I am Aurone.” She said.

 freeZe smiled: “Nice to meet you Aurone.“

 Aurone demanded: “Now you need to tell me all about that journey of yours, you owe me that after breaking into my house.”

 They looked at each other, not sure what to do as they didn’t want to mention the server or the hackers. It didn’t feel right to lie to someone who saved their lives but they were not sure what the witch, an NPC, would do if they talked about the server.

 “I’ll start.” Unchosen said, the others were visibly relieved.

 “Okay, so until a few days ago we were slaves in the Rockbane Quarry in the Deepsand Desert, which is also where we met Fire.”

 “There is a slave mine in the Deepsand Desert?” Aurone asked, obviously surprised.

 “It’s fairly new, it’s only been there for about a year.” freeZe explained.

 Unchosen continued: “We spent months in the quarry until one day Fire said that he had a friend who would bring us potions to help us break out. That friend came and we jumped into the volcano with the potions protecting us.” He paused and added: “Don’t be surprised by that, there are much stranger things on our journey.”

 Aurone asked: “Where did you live before you were made slaves?”

 Unchosen didn’t answer at first, Ambigious quickly made something up: “We lived in the area around the edge of the desert. Farmers and hunters, that kind of stuff.”

 Unchosen gave Ambigious a thankful look and continued: “At the bottom of the volcano was a Nether portal, after going through we had to walk a long distance to get to a Nether Fortress.”

 freeZe said: “We got attacked by a magma cube on the way, Fire saved us from it but the cube swallowed him, he survived but as you can see his scales are still deformed from the heat.”

 TehLulz continued. “In the Nether Fortress we met Wither cultists that were friends of Fire, they gave us food and the bow Fire has on his back right now.”

 Aurone said: “You didn’t lie when you said that there strange things on your journey. Wither cultists that aren’t out to sacrifice you, I didn’t think that was even possible.”

 TehLulz continued: “We exited the Nether through another portal and climbed a mountain.” He left out the part about them discovering that freeZe was a mage and moved on with the story. “After climbing down on the other side, we made ourselves some wooden armor in preparation for the Graveyard of the Forest.”

 freeZe continued explaining: “In the forest we met Oalrhm…”

 “You met Oalrhm?” Aurone interrupted, she sounded excited.

 “Yes… What about him?” freeZe asked.

 “Every witch should visit Oalrhm at least once in her life, I have yet to go. How is he?” Aurone asked.

 “I don’t know. He is friendly but he clearly explained that he can and will kill if he has to. He seems to be much more powerful than you would think.” freeZe said.

 Aurone answered: “Oalrhm is one of the most powerful creatures of Earth in existence. But nevermind that, continue.”

 Unchosen started talking again: “Alright, where did we stop…? After Oalrhm opened the passage we had to fight out way through the Graveyard, that is where Fire got hit by some spell from a skeletal mage, he just disappeared, no idea how he ended up here. After that, we walked through the swamp. So, that is how we got here.”

 Ambigious said: “Now, we told you about us. Who are you?”

 “I am a genius!” Jack exclaimed while he was waiting on Q to pick up his call.

 “How is the situation Q?” He asked.

 “The police showed up again, this time I had the entrance sealed. They talked about leaving this area alone… don’t know if they meant it or if they are bluffing and want me to feel safe enough to come out, which isn’t going to happen. Have you been making progress with reading the code?”

 Jack grinned. “I indeed have. I have been reading through the code for some time now. Most things that we assumed are proven. The software establishes a direct connection to our brains, although I have no idea on the specifics, the exact processes seem to be in separate files in a machine-level language I have never seen before and can’t make any sense of. As far as I could tell the software can read and write fairly extensively, though I only ever see it used for transferring sensory data and relaying instructions to your virtual body.”

 “Excellent. Anything else?” Q wanted to know.

 Jack said: “Yes. I am certain now that we can’t separate the code from Minecraft without the admins giving it to us. We might have to fall back to your original plan. I hoped that we could avoid that.“

 “That is not good. If we start killing them and the police gets us we all will be in jail for life, hell they might even make an exception and execute us. But if we stop now Fire knows where we live, especially where I live, he got to look at our data after all. We already crossed the line and now we need to keep going.”

 Jack sighed. “I guess you are right. I really hoped that we wouldn’t have to do this. I’ll tell you some more things I found in the code. Maybe that will help us find Fire.”

 Q answered: “Go ahead.”

 Jack explained: “I found a file with all kinds of objects scattered all around the map that may be able to help Fire remove us from the server. I don’t know what they are, I don’t know where they are and I don’t even know how many there are, the file was very vague on that. They could be a key made from redstone, a gem shining in rainbow colors, anything really. There are a lot of them and only some may be relevant to Fire.”

 “And Fire is searching for those relevant objects.” Q said.

 “Exactly. Even if Fire is the only one who knows what those objects do, chances are that more people know about them. If we could extract information from somebody we could be one step ahead of Fire and prevent him from collecting those things. We even might collect them ourselves. Anything to avoid killing people.”

 “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I will inform everybody about what you found out. Bye.” Q said and immediately hung up.

 Jack looked at the code again. He knew what he had to look for but he didn’t know where. He needed more information about those objects, it would be hard finding out where they were from the file because they were not stationary.

 Jack thought to himself: “Somebody could just have picked up one of those without knowing what it actually is. If they serve any purpose besides removing us… at least one of them should be in a vault of a big town. Too bad I don’t know where the big towns are.”

 Then he had an idea. Andreas and his brothers were on patrol duty most of the time, they knew their way around the map pretty well.

 Jack opened his communication app and double clicked Andreas’ name and hoped that he wasn’t on the server.

 He was in luck, Andreas picked up after thirty seconds.

 “What’s up?” He asked.

 “Andy, I need your help.” Jack said.

 “It’s about that broadcast message from Q we got a minute ago, right?”

 “Yep. You need to inform me about the important locations on the server. I figured one of the objects might be there.”

 Andreas asked: “So, towns or general locations?”

 Jack replied: “Towns.”

 “We’ve only been on the main continent but from what I have heard there isn’t much along the lines of civilization overseas, mostly pirate dens or small settlements. For the main continent, first and foremost there is Rockhaven, it is something like the capital town of the server or at least a lot of the trade seems to converge there. Its walls are made from a material I have heard is called ‘artificial bedrock’ and it is protected by magical spells. I have only seen it from the outside but from what I have heard the king possesses an axe capable of splitting almost anything. If the name Threepeak Mountain tells you anything, that is near where it is.”

 “I know where that is, I ran a little search for mountains a bit ago, go on.” Jack said.

 Andreas continued: “Rockhaven is the only really fortified town I know of, the others are just large settlements. I’ll tell you what the five biggest ones are. First there is Redwater, located by a large stream with the same name. Mostly a fishing town but I heard that they also brew potions there. Then there is Oakington. As the name suggests, it is in the middle of a forest, this town has specialized in cutting and manufacturing wood, they also tame and sell wolves.”

 “I will check those two out. Go on.”

 “Okay, next there is Drysprings, located at the edge of an unnamed mountainous desert, it is like a town from a wild west movie, complete with sheriff and saloon. They breed very fast and enduring horses there, they also produce weapons and armor from imported steel. Now, I don’t know where the next town is, I have only heard stories about it. That town seems to be where most of the mined resources on the server come from, it is called Drandin.”

 Jack interrupted “That name is different from the others…”

 “I know right, it doesn’t say anything about the location of the town. Some say that it is high up in the mountains, some say it is in a hidden valley, others say that it is underground. The only other thing about that town is that not only a lot of the mined resources come from there but also a considerable part of the alcoholic beverages. They also seem to pretty much have the monopoly on diamond tools and armor. On that and on something that is called ‘drandinian Heavybrew’, some sort of alcohol I assume.”

 “I would bet that at least one of the objects Fire is after is something related to drinking or brewing…” Jack assumed and then asked: “What is the last town?”

 “The last town is Treetop, it is in a jungle and consists of mostly treehouses. The people there are excellent hunters, there are also a lot of mages and enchanters there from what I have heard. I also heard that some of their constructions would be quite unsafe if it weren’t for their magic.”

 Jack smiled and said: “Thanks for the info Andy. I can assume that your shift is over now? Just in case I need some more information.”

 “It is not exactly over but I can tell Jonathan to take the rest of my shift.” Andreas replied.

 “Thanks. I’ll be looking at those towns now, one after the other. Bye and thanks.”

 “Actually, wait. I’ll log onto the server right now and draw a map for you, just wait a few minutes and then log on, I think I’ll be done drawing by then.”

 Jack thanked Andreas: “A map would help, see you soon on the server.”

 Before hanging up Andreas said: “No problem, see you.”

 Jack pushed his chair away from his desk and stood up. Before logging into the server again he quickly wanted to eat and drink some more, just in case. He walked into his kitchen and opened the fridge again. It was pretty empty since he never stockpiled food. There were just a few apples, some cheese, some milk and similar things. The thing he was looking for was a blue plastic bottle, which he found almost immediately. In the bottle was a mixture of different nutrients and water. He had prepared it for situations like this where he didn’t have time to eat. He would be on the server for a long time.

 He opened the full bottle and drank half the liquid inside, he shivered at the cold and the bad taste and put it back into the fridge and muttered: “Bah… disgusting.”

 Back in his computer room he logged into the server, he thought: “It is kind of creepy now that I somewhat know how it works, connecting my brain to software. Fortunately it is just Minecraft I am connecting to.”

 ***

 He woke up in his spawn bed, which he hadn’t left since he died. He stood up and exited the room that had a good forty beds in it.

 On the server Jack looked like a tall man with very short brown hair, grey eyes and pale skin. He was wearing a black business suit and a tie.

 He now was in a hallway with wooden walls, he sprinted to the very end of it and opened the door to the processing building. The people there greeted him as soon as he entered.

 A person sharpening an iron sword at a grindstone told him: “Andy told me to tell you that he is in Room 26.”

 “Thanks.” Jack said and ran over to a hallway and then to said door.

 On the inside he saw Andreas sitting on a wooden chair and hunched over a large piece of paper. Andreas was a short and thin man with short green hair and eyes. His skin was so pale, it was almost white. He was wearing wide red shirt and black sweatpants.

 “Hey Jack!” Andreas greeted him. “The map is done.”

 “Thanks again for drawing it.” Jack said.

 Andreas answered: “No problem, take a look.”

 The map was very detailed, displaying the exact biome borders and important cities, everything that had a name was labeled accordingly.

 “See, there is Drysprings… there is Oakington… there Rockhaven and here are Treetop and Redwater.” Andreas explained and then continued: “But you with your appearance won’t really have much success with asking the population, you will need to disguise.”

 “Disguise as what?” Jack asked, a little surprised.

 Andreas replied: “Merchant, warrior, farmer, explorer, hunter… Whatever you want. We have a whole cabinet of clothes and equipment we found. Or stole for that matter.”

 “I didn’t know that. Where?”

 “Room 34. Take the map and we’ll go there.”

 Andreas stood up from his wooden chair and went out of the door. Room 34 was in fact only a few doors further down the corridor.

 Andreas opened the door and said: “You go first, the light switch is to the right.”

 Jack nodded and entered the room, he couldn’t see much in the light that came in from the door. He turned right and flipped the light switch, he heard an electric crackle caused by the redstone in the wall, the lamps on the ceiling turned on one after another. What he saw impressed him. Dozens of mannequins wearing different clothes, ranging from solid iron plate armor over light and ragged travelers’ clothes up to wide black mage robes.

 “That is impressive, I never knew we were hoarding this here.” Jack said in admiration

 “Well, officially we aren’t, it was Jonathan’s idea to collect clothes, in the end it came in very handy. When you are disguised nobody knows you are one of us.”

 Jack smirked: “Right. Now for the difficult part. Who will I be?”

 Aurone talked in length about her life, she spent hours explaining everything. She began with what her mother told her and ended with her finding TehLulz in her house. It turned out that she had been living in the swamp for about twenty-three years. She told them that many more witches used to live near the village before she was born, her mother didn’t have a tree house back then, just in a small hut on the ground. Everything had been good until a group of artefact hunters came to the area to hunt the witches, they killed all of them and then burned their huts down. Only Aurone’s mother Runa survived because she hid in a cave below the tree the hut was on now, a newborn Aurone in her arms. In the months after that Runa lived in the village and raised Aurone there, hoping the hunters wouldn’t come back.

 Half a year later the villagers helped Runa build the hut on the tree. Over the months a number of traders passed by, they came there to trade goods to the villagers in exchange for emeralds and mostly ignored the witch hut unless they were wounded and hoped that Runa would heal them. Aurone said that her mother told her that one day there was an unarmed tall man with scales like a lizard, a vagrant who didn’t tell his name. It seemed like the villagers didn’t want to trade with him because they were afraid of him. He had asked if he could stay in the hut for one night and offered a book with potion recipes as payment. Runa let him stay in the hut for the night and it soon turned out that she had been right in doing so. That night the artefact hunters returned.

 Aurone recounted how their torches lit up the night and their shouts filled the air. Just when her mother thought it was over for her, the strange man suddenly rose up, jumped down to the ground and fought the hunters, one against a dozen. The hunters however quickly found out that their own viciousness was nothing against the ferocious fighting style of their opponent. Runa watched the massacre from her balcony, a crying Aurone in her arms. All hunters were killed except one that the man left alive to tell the tale. After that, he climbed up into the house again and laid down as if nothing had happened.

 The next morning he had thanked Runa for the stay, introduced himself as Fire and left. Runa would have thought the events of the night were a dream if there wouldn’t have been corpses lying all around the hut. That and the book about potions he had left as a thanks for letting him stay. Aurone’s life after the attack went on without any bigger events besides her and her mother healing the wounds of travelers passing by and curing diseases in the village.

 Aurone explained how she learned how to brew potions and survive in the swamp and also went into detail about the different potions, which only really interested Unchosen, he asked one question after the other, much to the annoyance of the others. She told them about various poisons and their effects, often going into more detail about the effects than would have been needed.

 Aurone stopped when she was about to tell what happened when she was fifteen years old and then sighed. She told them that one day she woke up and her mother was just gone. Aurone said that she never found out what happened to her but she knew from the start that she wasn’t going to return. After that she continued living in the hut for eight more years up until the day she found the group in her hut.

 It was already afternoon when Aurone finished telling her story.

 Promptly leaving topic Ambigious said: “Do you have anything to eat here, I am hungry.”

 freeZe was about to say something but was cut off by Aurone: “Of course. If you like herbs that is.”

 “I am not picky when I am hungry, just give me something. Don’t worry, I have been living in a slave mine for the last few months after all, I am used to eating just about anything as long as it has calories.” Ambigious answered and gestured towards his mouth with his healthy arm.

 freeZe slowly agreed: “Yes, I would like something to eat too… I think all of us do. Let’s find out what the usual diet of someone living in a swamp is.”

 Aurone stood up and started walking towards the door, she said: “We will have to collect some food, I never store much.”

 The others stood up and followed the witch through the door and down the ladder. Getting Ambigious down to the ground was a bit troublesome as he could only use one arm but with the help of TehLulz he finally reached the ground.

 “What do the plants look like that we are searching for?” Unchosen wanted to know.

 Aurone replied: “They grow on the ground and are about half as tall as you, they have four leaves and a round, green blossom on top.” She looked around for a bit and then pointed towards a willow tree nearby. “There are some over there.”

 Aurone went first, then Unchosen and then the others. freeZe noticed how Aurone was barely visible with her grass clothes, Unchosen was similarly hard to see, the leaves all over his body had almost the same color as the grass which made it hard to spot him from a distance. freeZe looked down to her feet and smiled, she herself was very visible in comparison, a pitch black silhouette with green eyes standing in the middle of the grass.

 Aurone reached the plant and cut the stem with the knife she had shown TehLulz the day before.

 “I am leaving the roots in the ground so it can grow back.” She explained and handed a leaf to each of the others.

 The leaves tasted very sour and a little bitter but it was far better than the flavorless salad leaves they had been eating in the quarry.

 Unchosen asked: “How many do you need to eat every day?”

 “They are quite nutritious, it’s about twenty for me, for you three I would say thirty and for… what was your name again?” She looked at Ambigious questioningly.

 “Ambigious.” He answered.

 “Ah, right Ambigious. For you I would say thirty-five, you seem quite strong.” She said and then added: “You can go around collecting those on your own now but don’t eat the blossom, it contains a weak paralysis poison, just give them to me, I might use them for some potions.”

 “Alright then.” freeZe said.

 She started looking for more of the plants, there were none in her vicinity but she could see a big patch of them a short distance away.

 She pointed in the direction and told her friends: “Look, over there. There are some.”

 freeZe, TehLulz, Ambigious and Unchosen walked towards the patch while the witch wandered off in a different direction, probably looking for different herbs. Ambigious took the lead and then took his stone sword out of his inventory and slashed at the tall grass in front of them, clearing a path. Even though he was using his left hand it didn’t seem like he had trouble using the sword.

 When they arrived at the patch they carefully started plucking the herbs. TehLulz immediately ate one of the leaves and then shivered, he wasn’t used to the strong sour taste but immediately ate another leaf, he was hungry.

 “I could get used to this.” Unchosen stated as he removed the blossom from an herb and put it into his inventory.

 Ambigious agreed: “Much better than the crap we got in the quarry, was probably spawned in, everything tasted exactly the same.”

 They didn’t talk much after that, they were too busy plucking and eating the leaves. About ten minutes later they had eaten a good part of the patch and started walking towards the hut again on the path Ambigious had cut through the swamp.

 Unchosen looked at how much of the patch they had eaten and assumed: “I don’t think that the swamp can sustain five people with food for a long time, one maybe but not the five of us.”

 “You’re probably right.” Ambigious said.

 They were almost at the witch hut as they saw Aurone waiting on the lower end of the ladder, a worried look on her face.

 “What is it?” freeZe asked.

 “I think there is someone or something in the hut, I heard heavy steps a minute ago.”

 “Interesting… let’s check it out then.” TehLulz said and proceeded walking towards the ladder.

 He was already halfway up the ladder when freeZe said: “Be careful, you don’t know it is.”

 TehLulz reached the platform and took a deep breath. He pressed his ear against the wooden door, at first he didn’t hear anything but as he listened more carefully he heard a slow rattling breath and the sound of a chest being opened.

 Unchosen asked: “What is it?“

 TehLulz replied quietly: “I don’t know but it seems to be searching for something in your chest Aurone.”

 As he didn’t get an answer TehLulz slowly opened the door and peeked through the small opening. He could barely see anything, the only thing he could see was a tall figure bowing over the chest next to the furnace. Suddenly he realized something. The figure must be Fire who woke up. It was still a mystery to him how he could live without a working heart, maybe the potion temporarily replaced the need for one? He opened the door completely, which flooded the room with light and surprised the figure, which stopped searching the chest and now faced the door. TehLulz looked at the now illuminated figure and was relieved to see that it was indeed Fire. However when his gaze went lower he saw the wound in Fire’s chest. The wound looked bigger than before since Fire was now standing and not leaning against the wall. In front of the shredded heart TehLulz could see a piece of Fire’s lungs, which were now operational. It gave the wound an even more gruesome look as it moved, every movement seemed to cause him pain.

 “Fire? Are you okay?” TehLulz stuttered.

 Fire recognized his friend’s voice and faced the chest to continue his search with a rattling sigh, then he raised one finger to a gesture that meant “later”, he seemed to be unable to speak.

 TehLulz turned around and told the others: “It is Fire, he doesn’t seem to be in very good condition though.”

 “Let me up there!” Aurone yelled and pushed Unchosen aside and then climbed the ladder.

 As she saw Fire rummaging in her chest she walked up to him and asked: “What are you looking for?”

 Fire once again made a gesture, this time he drew a crescent shape into the air with his fingers, then tapped a yellow stain on his coat. Aurone seemed to understand what he meant and pointed at a satchel.

 “There.” She said.

 Fire nodded and opened the satchel, inside were melon slices, only that they were golden, glistening melons. Fire also had found some bottles and filled them with water, then put them into the brewing stand. He searched the satchel again and fished out a nether wart, which he cut in three parts with his claws and put them into the bottles brewing stand and stuffed the melon slices in afterwards. Then Fire waited, pressing his left hand against the wound, it seemed like the wound started to hurt even more now.

 TehLulz just stood there and observed what Fire was doing, unable to do anything himself. Judging by the ingredients he used he was making healing potions. Fire’s rattling breath sped up as the pain in his chest increased, TehLulz assumed that Fire had just woken up and his potion was wearing off.

 Twenty long seconds later the water changed its color from transparent to a bright red. Fire didn’t even wait for the potion to cool down, his shivering hands took a bottle from the stand and emptied it into his mouth. Fire’s half-closed eyes suddenly were wide open and his hands dropped the bottle, making it shatter on the wooden floor. Fire followed the bottle and dropped down to the ground where he was lying with his eyes wide open and his limbs in a stretched out position. At first nothing seemed to happen, then suddenly black bones started growing from the sides of his wound, closing up his ribcage again. Muscles grew over the bones at a rapid speed, followed by black skin and scales. At the same time the scales that had been deformed by the magma cube fell off and were immediately replaced with pristine ones. A few seconds later a twitch went through Fire’s body, his eyes closed and his body relaxed, he was just lying there peacefully like before, just without the wound.

 Fire’s body shot up, his claws were extended and ready to fight off the skeletal mage he had been fighting a few moments ago, everything around him was slowed to a standstill.

 Suddenly Fire noticed that there was no skeletal mage, he wasn’t in the dark Graveyard of the Forest. He noticed that he also wasn’t standing anymore, he was sitting on a wooden floor, in front of him was a familiar face, distorted in fear. Fire realized that he wasn’t in danger and retracted his claws, then he took a few moments to examine his environment. He was in a wooden hut, judging by the smell located in a swamp. There were two people standing in the room, first TehLulz, whose face looked normal again now that Fire had retracted his claws. The second one was unknown to Fire, it was a woman with long black hair clothed in what seemed to be grass. Fire’s sense for energy kicked in, he felt fairly large amounts of magic flowing in the area, this seemed to be a witch hut.

 “Are you okay Fire?” TehLulz asked and made Fire snap out of his observation.

 Fire replied: “Yes… but where is this?”

 Fire just now noticed that his coat was completely torn and a numb throbbing filled his chest.

 He asked: “What happened?”

 “I hoped you could explain that to us.” TehLulz said and added: “To sum it up, you got hit by some magic missile in the valley and disappeared, freeZe pulverized the skeleton with lightning, Ambigious took an arrow in the arm and later got blaze fever, we found you here in this hut with a huge hole in your chest, Aurone helped us and just a few minutes ago you woke up and made health potions and drank one.”

 “I don’t remember that… just give me a bit to get my thoughts in order.” Fire muttered.

 TehLulz turned around and called the others, who came up the ladder one by one, Ambigious with the help of TehLulz. The look on their faces was a mix of disbelief and joy.

 “I thought it was over.” freeZe said.

 For the next few minutes they just stood there, thinking about what happened.

 Fire broke the silence: “You said Aurone earlier, right? I know this place… wait. I remember now, I was here twenty something years ago.” Fire looked at Aurone. “So you are Runa’s daughter?”

 Aurone replied: “Yes… that’s me.”

 “I think I have some things to explain to you all, this may take some time.” Fire said and took a deep breath. “I have the ability to teleport but doing so is very risky since I can’t control the destination and even a short-distance teleport drains most of my energy, which explains my lack of memories. I must have managed to teleport just as the spell hit me, which probably interfered with the teleport and resulted in that wound you mentioned. The reason I ended up here is because this place is a magical energy source, unguided teleportation is generally drawn to such places.”

 “Seems very handy to have such an emergency teleport.” Unchosen commented, then he added: “That doesn’t really explain how you were able to live with your heart gone.”

 Fire explained: “I am sure you noticed that I am quite different from normal human physiology. I have three hearts, which is necessary, my body has a high demand for oxygen when I use my muscles at full capacity.”

 Ambigious said: “I know I said that before but… man Fire, the admins really did give you a lot of advantages.”

 Fire simply replied: “They had their reasons, it was mostly an experiment.” Then he changed topic by asking: “On a side note, what moon phase do we have?”

 Aurone answered: “Full moon.”

 “That is less than ideal.” Fire said. “Now we have to deal with slimes as well.”

 freeZe said: “Slimes? We haven’t seen any on our way here.”

 “That means that they have piled up in some part of the swamp and are hunting for meat. It wouldn’t surprise me if we ran into them.”

 “What makes you so sure of that?” Unchosen wondered.

 Fire wanted to say something but Ambigious answered instead: “Remember what happened in the Nether? The only things that could be seriously dangerous to us were magma cubes. And what happened? Magma cubes! And in the Graveyard of the Forest? Skeletal mage! Here in the swamp? Probably a pile of slimes wanting to eat us alive!” Ambigious sighed and then said: “Also… Aurone, mind handing me one of those instant healing potions? My arm could really use one of those.”

 Aurone took one potion from the brewing stand, Ambigious took it and carefully took a sip as the potion was still hot.

 “Doesn’t even taste that good.” he remarked and slowly drank the rest.

 His arm started tingling and new muscles and skin grew over his wound.

 Unchosen asked: “Those potions seem to be very useful, why don’t we take some of them with us?”

 Aurone gave him an answer: “They spoil within a few hours after being made, they lose their effect and just become mediocrely tasting pink juice. Regeneration potions don’t perish that quickly but they are not practical for dealing with wounds… say in the middle of a battle because they make you tired. With rarer ingredients it is of course possible to make health potions that don’t perish. However the frequent use of health potions weakens the user and can drain their life force…”

 Ambigious interrupted: “Sorry Aurone but I’m going to have to stop you there, no need for another potion monologue.”

 She stopped when she noticed what she was doing: “Oh… I apologize, I always get so carried away when talking about potions, I know the recipe book Fire left us here by heart.”

 “You still have it?” Fire wanted to know.

 Aurone answered: “Yes, hold on…” She walked over to her chest and started searching it for the book, a few seconds later she found it. “Here it is.”

 The book was bound in thick, blood red leather and had a stylized image of a bubbling potion on the cover. The title read “Fire’s Potion Journal Third Edition”. Fire was impressed by how good the book looked, even after all of those years in the humid swamp. Aurone clearly had taken good care of it. He let his fingers slide across the cover and started turning the pages, the others could see illustrations of herbs and other ingredients but also gruesomely detailed drawings of the effects of poisons.

 Fire gave the book back to Aurone and said: “When we arrive at my base I’ll make sure that my sister sends one of her demons to your hut with the newest edition.”

 “Your sister has demons? Tell me more.” Aurone said with a light in her eyes.

 Ambigious made a head gesture towards freeZe, grinned and whispered: “Let’s leave those two to their magic-alchemy-stuff talks, it is almost sunset again, we should go to sleep.”

 The next morning, just after sunrise, Fire woke up the others. After Ambigious was finally able to move, they had breakfast with Aurone that consisted of some of the steak Fire still had with him, Aurone also gave them some leaves like those they had eaten the day before. Before leaving, they made sure that they had enough water, food and other supplies in their inventories. Aurone wished them good luck as they walked away from her hut.

 They had fewer problems than before, they were on a larger landmass now so they didn’t have to jump over little streams all the time. Fire told them that if they marched during the day they would be able to reach his base within a few days. This motivated the group further, partially because Fire’s base was the first big goal on their journey but also because they really wanted to eat a real meal and sleep in a real bed.

 After a few hours of walking, the sun was high up in the sky, the temperature was fairly high and they needed to rest every once in a while. The grass below their feet was lush and dark green despite the scorching sun. They decided to take a break under a large willow tree and wait until the sun would sink deeper in the sky so they could continue walking until sunset.

 Fire pointed in the distance and asked: “Do you see that? If you look closely, you can see the crowns of the trees of the jungle. You do know what that means, right? It means that we’ll leave this swamp tomorrow.”

 “About time.” Ambigious said and leaned against the trunk of the willow tree.

 About one hour later they were ready to depart again, they drank some water and ate some of Aurone’s leaves and started walking towards where they could see the tall jungle trees. They made a lot of progress towards the jungle in what was left of the otherwise eventless day, they were all glad that they could just walk without something trying to kill them at every corner.

 When the sun once again turned the clouds blood red, they were tired from the walk and just wanted to sleep.

 “I don’t want to push our luck with the slimes, if we keep walking in the darkness we risk being ambushed by them. We should set up camp right here.” Fire suggested and looked around.

 freeZe had an idea: “How about we build a pillar and a platform where we can sleep on, I don’t think they can reach us up there. Ambigious, don’t you still have a whole lot of sandbasalt with you?”

 “That I do.” Ambigious replied and tossed everybody a stack of the black and yellow rock.

 Everyone stacked up a pillar with a height of sixteen blocks, then they started building a big platform where they could sleep. When the platform was done, Unchosen added a rim to it.

 He just said: “Safety rail.”

 When he was done he laid down next to the others, soon they were all sleeping. Only Fire was standing guard with his ghast bone bow in hand, hoping that nothing would attack them.

 Fire let his gaze sweep over the swampland, trying to spot potential danger. Fire’s friends were sleeping, using their nether wool winter clothes as makeshift cushions. Fire knew all too well what the server had in store for them and he hoped that they would encounter nothing of it this night. Occasionally a zombie or a skeleton showed up in the tall grass but they didn’t pose a threat.

 After a couple of hours Fire sat down on the rim Unchosen had built, he knew that he shouldn’t let his guard down but the night had not been eventful until now and he hoped that it would stay that way. Fire opened his inventory and brought out the enchanted iron sword he took from the armored zombie in the graveyard and inspected it more closely. It was definitely the product of a smithy and not of a crafting table, it was quite long but for Fire’s size it was a short sword with a tiny handle. At the first look it seemed to be quite dull but on inspecting it more closely you could see a purple sheen along the edges of the blade, the Sharpness enchantment. Fire could also feel small amounts of Fire energy leaking from the blade, indicating an imperfect Fire Aspect enchantment.

 Fire tried swinging the blade a few times and was satisfied with how well the blade was balanced, at least the blacksmith had done better work than the enchanter.

 Fire stood up and put the sword back into his inventory, then he took another look around the area. Again, he found nothing of significance.

 A bit later Fire spotted a blue light a fair distance away, the source of the light was what seemed to be a translucent blue floating dress. Fire recognized it as a ghost light, a creature of Air. Although it was sentient, it was not intelligent enough to lure somebody into drowning, at least not on purpose, it was practically harmless. Fire relaxed since no real danger was present.

 The ghost light remained the most exciting thing Fire saw that night.

 The next morning Fire woke up his friends after sunrise and they took down the platform again. Everybody was refreshed by the sleep, only Ambigious started out a bit groggy. Even though Fire had been up the entire night he didn’t feel tired.

 They started marching in the direction of the jungle again, which now was a whole lot closer. Fire could already see individual vines and leaves while the others just saw a mass of green and a bit of brown.

 Unchosen asked: “So, Fire. How big is your base?”

 Fire replied: “It depends on how you see it. For normal Minecraft standards it is giant. It is all underground so it is hard to estimate its size but I would say that it is still fairly big, even for the server’s standards.”

 “Underground, hmm?” Ambigious said, then added: “Makes sense, you want to hide it from unwanted looks after all.”

 Fire laughed and replied: “No, a simple projection or a not so simple ender field warp could hide an above ground base just as easily. You don’t need elaborate hideouts when you have magic. I have both of those spells active on my base but it being underground is just another layer of security.”

 “You and your magic.” Ambigious said and shook his head.

 After walking for about three hours they sat down under a willow tree once again to eat some food and drink some water. While they had enough water, they were almost out of steak and only about half of the leaves were left. Fire assured the others that the food would last them until they were in the jungle where they could eat some of the fruits and berries that grew there.

 They started walking again at noon. It wasn’t nearly as hot as the day before, the sky had been covered by a thin layer of clouds that scattered the sunlight. This unusual lighting gave the swamp a whole new atmosphere, it seemed like an unreal landscape where nothing would cast shadows. They didn’t mind the change and continued walking, glad that the sun wasn’t burning down on them.

 They were drawing near the edge of the swamp, which was easy to notice since they weren’t on the big central landmass anymore. Their path was interrupted by small black streams again, they had to maneuver their way around them or jump over, which was easier now than when they were worn out from battle.

 While they were walking on a bigger stretch of land freeZe asked Fire something, she sounded uneasy as she spoke: “There is something I want to know. Back in the graveyard after the skeleton hit you with that spell. Something happened to me, it was a feeling that was slowly growing and in the end I don’t think that I was really in control anymore. The more I lost control the stronger the lightning in my hands would become and when it took over I just zapped the skeleton like it was no big deal. Do you have an explanation for that?”

 After avoiding a root Fire answered: “You know how I told you about magic back in the cave? Magic has of a mind of its own if there is enough of it. So if you pile enough magical energy into something it will become sentient. This is the whole reason why magical creatures exist and also the reason why the less powerful creatures aren’t very smart. After you activated the blaze core, you also activated your life force reserve for the first time. I don’t have all the details in my head but this triggers some kind of reaction, your life force gets a mind of its own.”

 TehLulz asked: “Kind of like a second personality?”

 Fire replied: “That describes it quite well. The mind and the life force share the same body but only one of them can be in control. This is usually the mind of the mage. When the mind is affected by strong emotions it loses control. In freeZe’s case that emotion was anger. When this happens the life force can take over the body temporarily. Mind and life force are still emotionally connected though, which is why your life force avenged me for you. When someone first discovers their magical potential and doesn’t train it, they will stay extremely unstable because their life force will always try to use its power when gains control. Becoming a mage involves a lot of strengthening the connection between mind and life force so that they eventually become one and the same.”

 “Good thing I am getting training from your sister then.” freeZe said and smiled.

 Ambigious said: “Careful, water right up ahead.”

 ***

 In the afternoon the edge of the swamp was very close but still a few kilometers separated them from it and that distance consisted mostly of a large lake.

 They decided to build some boats again as the water was largely deep enough to use boats. Fire was impressed by Unchosen’s idea of using wooden shovels as paddles, claiming he would have never come up with that. Unchosen was sure to have heard a little joking undertone in the way Fire said it but he knew that the compliment was genuine.

 They paddled away silently, pushing aside lily pads that were in their path. The water in the middle of the lake was fairly deep, Fire estimated it to be at least fifty meters with another ten meters of sludge below. When they arrived at the other end of the lake the jungle was just a few hundred meters away from them. After exiting the boats they started walking towards the giant jungle trees.

 Fire stopped the group shortly before the biome transition: “I think we should camp outside the jungle on a platform again. Camping inside the jungle can be dangerous as there are things like snakes that drop onto sleeping travelers. Ideally we won’t have to camp again after this night, no promises though.”

 “Seems like a good idea to me.” TehLulz agreed and already started stacking up with sandbasalt.

 Once the platform was built they gathered in the middle as Fire wanted to say something.

 He explained: “I can stay up another night to guard but that won’t be ideal because even though I don’t need much sleep, two nights without it is when I start getting tired. So it would be good if you could guard through the night in shifts. You can discuss the order yourself.”

 “Totally understandable.” Ambigious said and then added: “I’ll take the first shift if you don’t mind. Because if you wake me up in the middle of the night I am about as useful as no guard at all.”

 freeZe said: “I’ll go second then. Everybody okay with that?”

 Unchosen asked TehLulz: “Should I go third or do you want to?”

 TehLulz replied: “I’ll go last.”

 Fire was pleased with how quickly they had resolved the order, he said: “The sun is setting, I’ll go to sleep then.”

 Before laying down he gave Ambigious his bow and arrows, the he said: “Even if you don’t have any experience with the bow it is still better than nothing.”

 Ambigious replied: “I got this, don’t worry. Now go to sleep everybody, we need to be fit for tomorrow.”

 Ambigious started patrolling the edge of the platform with the ghast bone bow in hand. Everybody else fell asleep with Fire being the last one. Fire’s sleep was deep and dreamless so when he was woken up by TehLulz it only seemed like a few seconds had passed. The sun was just creeping up above the horizon, dying the whole swamp in a reddish color.

 “Fire, we may have a problem here.” TehLulz said.

 Fire stretched his arms and replied: “Which is?”

 TehLulz just said: “Look over the edge.”

 Fire walked up to the rim around the platform and looked over. But instead of green grass he saw something else green below them, it was a slime. This was no regular slime, it was a slime of enormous proportions. It was a huge flat blob of green material that had a diameter of at least fifteen meters. It had positioned itself directly below their platform, cutting off all possible escape paths.

 Fire said dryly: “That is a problem.”

 TehLulz asked: “What will we do now? I assume that normal weapons aren’t going to do damage.”

 “Nope, they won’t. There is practically nothing that can harm a slime apart from extreme heat or anything else that makes it dry up.”

 TehLulz chuckled: “I don’t suppose you have a few tons of salt in your inventory for an occasion like this.”

 “I am always prepared but not that prepared.” Fire answered.

 TehLulz said: “I guess I’ll just wake up the others and maybe we’ll be able to come up with a plan together.”

 It took a few minutes for everyone to wake up and a few more for Ambigious to be able to form a full sentence outside the topic of being tired. After seeing the slime they got together in the middle of the platform to discuss what they would do.

 freeZe asked: “We are not in danger up here, right?”

 Fire explained: “This slime doesn’t have enough surface tension to form appendages that could reach up here, it absorbed too much water to be able to do that.”

 Ambigious said: “I assume that if we try to build a bridge outwards it would just follow us. So we need to kill it. Damn it!”

 Unchosen asked: “Fire, don’t you still have that bottled fireball that you caught in the Nether?”

 “Yes but that is by far not enough to evaporate the water in the slime. The only other thing that we have that could do such a thing is the blaze core and that’s sealed right now. The explosion from unlocking it would be too strong for us to use.”

 freeZe flinched at the mention of the blaze core, probably not wanting to repeat her experience with it.

 TehLulz asked: “Can we outrun it?”

 “That would make as much sense as trying to outrun a storm tide. The bigger a slime is the more quickly it can move.” Fire replied.

 They were out of ideas. There was nothing they could do except sit there and try to think of ways to kill or avoid the slime. The sun had proceeded to rise and now was already a good bit higher up in the sky. freeZe was constantly walking around on the platform and in general seemed nervous.

 “Are you alright freeZe? Is there something you want to say?” Fire asked.

 She replied: “I have an idea how we could get out of this but it is risky and I am not sure if I want to try it.”

 Fire turned to her and said: “Let’s hear it.”

 freeZe took a deep breath and said: “Yesterday you talked about this whole thing with my life force being able to take control over my body. What if I could willingly give it control so that it can exert its power? It should attack the slime, right? Seeing that it is in a similar mind as me.”

 Fire answered: “Giving it control you say. Yes that is possible. But as you said it is also risky. We don’t know what ‘you’ would do.”

 Ambigious threw in: “If we have no other way we might as well try it.”

 Fire scratched his chin and said: “That is very true.” He turned to freeZe again and said: “I’ll teach you how to give it control. To do this you need to be perfectly calm. First you must lay down on the ground.”

 freeZe did as Fire said but then asked: “I thought you were no magic user, how do you know how to do this?”

 Fire replied: “I did study a fair bit of magic theory.”

 “Alright.” freeZe said.

 Fire explained: “Okay, listen. Close your eyes. You need to relax your entire body, try not to use any of your muscles at all. Good… Now do the same with your thoughts, just let them be. You may be familiar with this if you have ever done any meditation.”

 At first nothing happened but then freeZe’s eyes opened and just like in the Graveyard of the Forest her entirely green eyes had started glowing. It wasn’t quite as noticeable since the sun was shining but the light was still clearly visible against her pitch black skin.

 freeZe, rather her body now under the command of her life force, rose up and looked around, then went over to the edge. Upon spotting the slime she made a gesture with her hand but nothing happened. She tried it again with the same result.

 She slowly turned her head towards Fire and said a single word. The voice he heard was nothing like her normal voice, it was distorted and multilayered, similar to that of the Wither cultists.

 “Flames.” She said.

 Fire gave her a questioning look.

 She said again: “Need flames.”

 Fire now understood what she demanded, he closed his eyes and opened his inventory. He dragged a bottle of fire to his hotbar and as he opened his eyes again the bottle was in his right hand.

 “Yes.” freeZe said.

 Fire walked over to her and uncorked the bottle and handed it to her. She took it in her left hand and held her right hand like a bowl. She then proceeded to pour the liquid flames over her right hand. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air but freeZe didn’t even flinch. The flames had now gathered into a ball that was floating above her open hand. She just dropped the bottle, making Fire dive for it so it wouldn’t shatter.

 Going back to the edge again freeZe held the flame up above her, the ball of fire seemed to have gotten bigger. She leaned over the railing and pointed her hand downwards. Fire could feel how large amounts of energy were being focused into the flame in freeZe’s hand.

 “Down!” He shouted and threw himself to the ground.

 The others were a bit confused but immediately did the same as the air around them started heating up.

 Suddenly there was a bright flash and a heat wave washed over them. They could hear sizzling and smelled burnt plants along with another strange smell, which they assumed was the slime.

 Moments later the heat was gone and was replaced by silence. The silence got interrupted a few more moments later by freeZe screaming in pain. Fire stood up and rushed over to his friend. A good portion of her skin was scorched, so were her clothes. Her already black hair seemed to have gotten even blacker and her skin was riddled with blisters. Tears of pain were streaming down her face.

 Ambigious was the next one to arrive, he asked: “Damn, that looks nasty. Are you alright?”

 freeZe forced a smile and said: “It’s pretty bad but you should see the other guy.”

 Unchosen looked over the railing and discovered that freeZe’s spell had burnt all plants in the immediate area, only leaving scorched earth. The slime had been reduced to a layer of semitransparent goo, it wasn’t moving anymore.

 Unchosen announced: “The slime should be dead.”

 Fire also took a look and said: “It is most definitely dead. This will also give us a safe landing if we jump down. In fact I will go down there right now and collect some of the slime, it’s pretty valuable.” After a small pause he added: “freeZe, you’ll get healed when we are at my base.”

 “I don’t think I can walk.” freeZe said weakly.

 “I’ll have to carry you then.”

 After those words he jumped down. His impact was cushioned by the now almost solid slime. He started mining the layer of slime with his pickaxe, leaving a landing zone for the others.

 About half an hour later the group was standing on the scorched ground, Fire had mined all the remaining slime and was now carrying freeZe in his arms, she was still plagued by the pain from her burns. Fire asked Ambigious and TehLulz to go in front to clear away the plants in their path, Unchosen formed the one-man rear guard with Fire’s bow in hand.

 “We’ll be at my base in just a few hours. Just try to keep yourself together freeZe, you’ll get all the rest you want.” Fire reassured her.

 Ambigious’ stone sword cut through the vines and fern in front of him with powerful swings, clearing a narrow path. TehLulz, who was walking to his right slightly behind him, widened this path with similarly powerful movements.

 Ambigious thought about the situation they were in and came to the conclusion that it was not too bad and it was clearly not the worst thing that could have happened. Of course he was worried about his sister but from his own experience he knew that the kind of burns she had wouldn’t do more than hurt like hell and leave some scars.

 He chuckled to himself while he thought about if the magic on the server could also remove scars, probably yes. If magic could hide things in plain sight or teleport people, removing scars seemed trivial. But you never knew.

 FreeZe herself had fallen asleep in Fire’s arms while they were walking. Ambigious couldn’t help but grin at the fact.

 He thought about what he would do in Fire’s base. The whole magic thing didn’t interest him very much and brewing just seemed like a very dry subject to him, he wanted to know about fighting with swords or axes, up close and personal. He had tried to fire a few arrows with Fire’s bow when it was his shift and came to the conclusion that archery wasn’t his thing either.

 TehLulz asked Fire: “Are we still on the right path?”

 Fire replied: “Yes. There shouldn’t be any major obstacles in our way aside from maybe large rocks or fallen trees. From here it’s basically a straight path to my base.”

 “Good to hear that.” TehLulz said.

 Ambigious remarked: “Good, crossing another river is the last thing I want to do right now. Especially with all the leeches and other jungle things…”

 Fire said: “Talking about that, carnivorous plant dead ahead.”

 He pointed at an inconspicuous looking formation of fern.

 He explained: “Don’t touch that. The fern is very sticky and hidden in the middle is a funnel leading to the main part of the plant, which is underground. If something organic touches the fern it is pulled in and digested. You can distinguish it from regular fern by the shape of the leaves.”

 TehLulz shivered and said: “Nasty.”

 They kept their distance from the plant and continued walking in the same direction as before.

 Nothing remarkable happened in the next part of their trek, in the late afternoon they decided to take a break in a small clearing. They sat down on the soft long grass.

 Ambigious asked: “Are you sure there aren’t any ants around here? I hate ants…”

 Fire laughed and replied: “I can’t guarantee anything but I don’t see any.”

 Ambigious was satisfied with that answer and said: “You are the one with the eagle eyes around here.”

 Unchosen asked: “How long will it take until we reach your base, Fire?”

 Fire answered: “I wanted to bring that up actually. I don’t think we can reach it by sunset and as I said, being in the jungle at night is dangerous. This clearing is fairly safe, there are no trees for snakes to drop on top of us from. I will also be standing guard this night again.”

 “Alright.” Unchosen said.

 Fire continued: “Another thing. Now that we have time I might as well talk about what you will be doing in my base. You all will learn some things that will be useful when we go on the hunt for the other artefacts. Every one of you will be trained in combat and in a craftsmanship discipline. At first all of you will of course get training in how to use the most common weapons, in case we don’t have our own at any point for some reason.”

 Fire paused and then carried on: “I assume that Unchosen will choose brewing for the other skill, is that right Unchosen?”

 Unchosen nodded.

 Fire turned to Ambigious: “How does smithing sound to you?”

 Ambigious replied: “Smithing? Hell yeah! I’ve always wanted to do that.”

 “Good.” Fire said and asked TehLulz: “I am fairly certain that you’ll want to do enchanting, right?”

 TehLulz said: “Right.”

 “We’ll get to the details when we are at my base, no need to hurry.” Fire said.

 Unchosen shifted around on the grass to get into a more comfortable position and said: “I guess freeZe will do magic. From all that you have told us, magic is very versatile, so that counts for more than one discipline?”

 Fire replied: “Yes, not only versatile but also very time consuming to learn, she wouldn’t be able to do a second thing on the side.”

 Ambigious chuckled to himself and said: “I’ll have to enjoy the time I still have before she can zap me at will when I say something that she doesn’t like.”

 Fire suddenly turned his head towards a bush on the edge of the clearing.

 He whispered: “There is something in that bush… doesn’t seem to be very big.”

 A few seconds later an ocelot burst out of the bush, Fire’s tension was immediately blown away.

 “Oh, it’s you.” He said.

 The ocelot stopped and then slowly walked towards Fire, he reached out with his hand and proceeded to pet the jungle cat. The ocelot started purring and pressed itself against Fire’s hand.

 “Awww.” TehLulz said.

 Fire explained: “I’ve known him since he was little, me and my sister take care of the animals around the base as best as we can.”

 Unchosen had joined Fire in petting the ocelot, he asked: “Are you here alone, little guy?”

 Surprisingly, the ocelot looked at Unchosen and made a sound that sounded like something between a meow and a soft grunt, then it disappeared into the bushes but only to return with several more ocelots, one adult one and three smaller ones.

 “Well, that is new.” Fire remarked.

 The other ocelots were equally fine with petting, which was unusual for wild animals. Even freeZe had gathered enough strength to sit up and talk a bit with the others, she was still weak and her burns still hurt but she claimed that it was getting better.

 As they sat there with the ocelots and talked it quickly became night, darkness enveloped them until Fire used his flint and steel to ignite a small campfire, contained by rocks he had picked up.

 Fire then proceeded to stand guard while the others slowly fell asleep, leaving him only with the ocelots. Around midnight the ocelots ran off too, Fire assumed that they were going off to hunt.

 Everything was quiet until in the very early morning Fire heard something in the bushes again, it seemed to be bigger this time. He was sure that it wasn’t the ocelot family returning. Fire was instantly alert and ready to fight off whatever was trying to attack them, an arrow already on the string of his bow.

 Out of the bush leaped a spider which was very well adapted to the jungle. It was smaller than regular Minecraft spiders and its chitin shell had a greenish tone, making it harder to spot in the leaves. This type of spider lacked raw attack power but made it up by being substantially faster and more venomous than normal spiders.

 Fire’s perception slowed down but he still only barely had time to aim his bow at the eight-legged creature’s head and release the arrow. The arrow left the bow and only after a few centimeters of flight it hit the spider dead on, it pierced the arachnid’s shell with a crack, killing it instantly. The spider’s dead body hit Fire’s chest and still had enough momentum to throw Fire onto his back.

 Fire pushed the spider off his chest, stood back up and put down his bow. He sat down next to the spider and used his claws to cut open its head to remove its poison glands.

 “I’ll use those for brewing.” He said to himself, after throwing the dead spider into the bushes he added: “No reason to tell the others about this, they are stressed enough.”

 Fire then went back to his guard position with his bow in hand, ready to fend off any more creatures that the jungle would throw at him.

 While guarding he thought about his plans for what he would need to do to prepare his friends for the long and hard journey ahead. Make some weapons and armor for them, brew some potions… then he decided that he would have more than enough time to think about those things when they were safely in the base. The one thing Fire really did look forward to was meeting his sister after one long year of slavery.

 The rest of the night was unusually quiet, Fire didn’t mind.

 Fire could see the first sun rays shimmering through the leaves of the jungle trees. Normally he would wake up his friends now but Fire decided to let the others sleep a little longer this day, his base was only a few hours of walking away so they would arrive there a little bit after noon.

 Because the night was over Fire decided to take a quick look through his inventory again, seeing that there was not much danger during the day. Fire was satisfied with the things he had collected while they were travelling, the blaze core and the liquid flames would surely come in handy and so would the steelwood and the dried slime.

 While there were already a lot of weapons and armor in Fire’s armory, he would still have to make gear for his friends, good armor and weapons needed to be custom fit to their owner. He would have to reignite his forge so that he could make the gear for the others, the forge was sure to have cooled down over the year Fire had been away.

 Fire woke up his friends when the sun was a good bit above the horizon already, he woke up Ambigious first and ten minutes later the others so that they would be fully awake at about the same time.

 Their breakfast consisted of the rest of the leaves Aurone had given them and some water, then they were ready to go. freeZe still didn’t feel good enough to walk on her own so Fire had to carry her again.

 TehLulz asked: “Did anything notable happen in the night?”

 Fire had already decided not to tell his friends about the spider attack and answered: “Everything was quiet.”

 “Good to hear.” TehLulz said.

 After leaving the clearing Ambigious and TehLulz took the lead again and cleared a path, the work didn’t seem exhausting to them at all, which was no wonder seeing that they had been working in a slave mine for the last few months. Unchosen had assumed the role of the rear guard again.

 The path they were taking was almost completely free of danger, they had to avoid another carnivorous plant but that was the only thing. The closer they came to Fire’s base the more lighthearted they became, they all were happy that the first part of their journey was over soon.

 Fire told them: “Travelling will be much easier when we depart to get the first artefact, we won’t have to use wooden shovels as paddles anymore for one thing. But I can’t guarantee that getting the artefact itself will be such a cakewalk.”

 Unchosen said: “That is for certain. Getting them won’t be easy.”
Ambigious asked: “Remind me again which ones we know of. There is a potion in your base, then there is some axe… and something”

 Fire replied: “The ones I know of are the Ultimate Base Potion, the Dragon Egg and the Axe of Eric the Viking. The potion is in my base, the egg is in the End, obviously, and the Axe is in Rockhaven.”

 freeZe asked: “So we are going to Rockhaven? From all I have heard it’s going to be hard to get in there.”

 Fire laughed and replied: “Not if you have connections in there.”

 freeZe said: “You said that you had to sneak in there when you stole the books.”

 “That was when Rockhaven was still a relatively young city and I didn’t have said connections. That was a couple of thousand years back.” Fire answered.

 Ambigious said: “Wow, I still find it hard to believe that time passes so much faster in here compared to outside… for how long have you been here Fire?”

 Fire explained: “You must know, the hacker’s attack on the server is slowing the simulation speed down quite a lot, normally it is even faster. In real time I have been on this server for about three to four years but in here… it has been a little bit over five thousand five hundred.”

 Ambigious sounded very impressed: “Holy crap, that is a long time.”

 Fire nodded and said: “Oh yes, it is.”

 The conversation ended and they just continued walking silently, the sun was now exactly in the middle of the sky but the leaves above protected them from most of the direct heat.

 Ambigious turned around and said: “Hey, Fire. There is a small wooden hut on a clearing ahead.”

 Fire simply said: “We are there.”

 Ambigious and TehLulz cut through the last bit of plants and stepped out onto the clearing. They waited for the others to catch up and then they approached the hut together, they were not sure what they should think about Fire’s ominous claim that they “were there”.

 As they walked towards the hut, Fire spotted a tiny yellow symbol above the door of the hut, the others didn’t seem to notice it as it was too small. When the hut was only a short distance away from them, the symbol suddenly flashed. Fire sighed.

 Three lightning bolts erupted from the symbol, each one hitting a different member of the group, it seemed to ignore Fire as well as freeZe in his arms. Ambigious, Unchosen and TehLulz weren’t even able to say anything or react at all before the lightning bolts struck them, they fell to the ground paralyzed. The yellow symbol had changed its color to grey and was now slowly pulsating.

 freeZe screamed: “Fire! What the hell was that?”

 Fire just wanted to answer, then he felt pulse of energy nearby and a relatively low female voice spoke first: “Base defenses. I am sorry about this, I just had to make sure nobody finds this on accident.”

 The owner of the voice stepped out from the door of the hut. It was a short woman with pitch black skin, similar to that of freeZe. Her hair was completely white and very long, her eyes were entirely red. She was wearing a wide black robe making it hard to guess her figure, overall she was quite beautiful but there was an undeniable feeling of power in her presence.

 Fire smiled and said: “I expected no less from you.”

 He carefully put freeZe down on the ground and walked towards the woman. He knelt down and opened his arms to hug her, this emphasized the size difference even more, she seemed like a child next to the three meter tall Fire.

 Ambigious was the first one to recover from his paralysis, he slowly got up and said: “Ugh… That’s your sister, right?”

 Fire stood up again and replied: “Yes. If the matching skin, eye and hair color haven’t made it obvious enough.” He then added: “For your own safety, be careful what you say Ambigious.”

 Fire’s sister looked at him questioningly but then she seemed to understand. She then proceeded to send out three floating dots of light to the victims of her lightning rune. Once the dots reached them they seemed to instantly recover.

 She said: “I am very sorry for this but as I said, I need to keep the base safe. Fire, would you mind introducing us?”

 Fire nodded and said: “Of course. Friends, this is my sister, her name is Shadow. Shadow, this is Ambigious, TehLulz, Unchosen and freeZe.”

 Shadow said: “Nice to meet you.” Then she took a closer look at freeZe and said to Fire: “I see you found a mage too.”

 Fire replied: “Yes, would you mind healing her?”

 Shadow nodded and said: “Will do. I assume that you’ll tell me the whole story later.”

 Shadow walked over to freeZe and inspected her wounds and a few moments later the wounds already started healing rapidly. Half a minute later freeZe looked like she never had been burned.

 freeZe looked at Shadow and simply said: “Thanks.”

 Fire said: “I guess I’ll show you our base now. And just so you know, this hut is only the entrance.”

 Fire went into the hut first, crouching through the low doorframe, his friends and his sister followed right behind him.

 “Ready to be impressed?” Fire asked.

 Before anyone had the chance to answer, they started sinking into the floor. The floor, however, turned out to be only an intangible projection covering an elevator. The round elevator was richly decorated with iron, gold and a variety of gems.

 The elevator descended into the depths of the world, slowly at first but then progressively faster. After a few minutes they felt that the elevator was slowing down again. Shortly afterwards the shaft opened up into a grand entrance hall, the walls and ceiling were made from polished stone engraved with various scenes. The hall was lit up by artfully cut glowstone crystals.

 The apparently floating elevator came to a halt on a pedestal, a red carpet leading down some stairs onto the dark oak wood floor. Fire’s friends were too impressed to say anything, they just followed Fire and Shadow through the hall, each of them looking at a different engraving but all wondering what would really await them here.

 Jack had exchanged his suit for light chainmail armor with cloth underneath. On his feet he had sturdy leather boots. A light battleaxe was hanging on his leather belt on his left side and a round wooden shield was on his back. He was also carrying two daggers, one on the right side of his belt and one in his boot on the same side.

 It was late in the afternoon, he was travelling across a wide meadow with tall but not very dense grass, the town of Redwater was just ahead of him. Jack had disconnected from his hacker client to be as undetectable as possible, this also meant that he wouldn’t be able to use his powers in a pinch but that was a risk he was willing to take. After choosing his disguise he had spent several more hours reading various books about the world he was in before finally departing.

 He had assumed the identity of a mercenary. He still went by his real name since that would make playing his role easier, he figured that Jack was common enough of a name. Andy had dropped him off in a dense forest near Redwater. From there on he was on his own as he didn’t have the means to communicate with his fellow hackers.

 Jack took a look at the town ahead of him, it was surrounded by a wooden wall that only offered protection from naturally spawning mobs and wouldn’t last long in a siege. After a few more hundred meters of walking Jack stood before the open gates of Redwater. One of the two guards on duty greeted him with a lazy gesture of his hand. Jack had at least expected some questioning but the security of Redwater was surprisingly lax.

 He quietly said to himself: “There is nothing of value to get here either, just fish and potions.”

 As Jack walked along the road paved with cobblestone, he decided to take his chainmail headgear off seeing that he wasn’t in any danger. After a few more steps he reached the town proper. In the outer regions of the town only private houses lined the busy street but the closer he got to the center the more stores or taverns replaced them.

 Jack could already hear the loud noise of the central marketplace as a particular store caught his eye. It was built into a normal house but the sign hanging from a pole by the door didn’t have any letters on it, just a symbol of a red eye with some slightly curved diagonal white lines on both sides. After stopping and looking at the sign some more Jack recognized the white lines as stylized scratch marks from huge claws. Those symbols together reminded him of Fire, red eyes and claws. Jack decided to start his search for information in this very store.

 As he opened the door he expected some bells to ring but he only heard a deep and dull sound from a gong that was being held in place above the door. The inside of the store wasn’t very well lit, the only light sources were lanterns filled with water that had glowstone dust suspended in it, all the walls had been painted in dark colors. After taking a quick look through the store Jack noticed that this must be a store selling potions judging by all the vials and bottles that were lined up neatly on long wooden shelves.

 Jack also noticed that he wasn’t the only one in the store, there was one other customer, currently talking to the shopkeeper. After taking a closer look at the shopkeeper Jack’s jaw almost dropped. The shopkeeper was Fire! At a second look Jack however noticed that the shopkeeper’s eyes were yellow instead of red but otherwise he looked just like Fire. After regaining his composure Jack slowly walked towards the counter the shopkeeper was sitting behind and listened to the conversation.

 The shopkeeper asked in a deep voice, similar to that of Fire: “You know what you are buying, right? That is a poison strong enough to kill a person several times over with what little is in this very flask I am holding.”

 Jack took a closer look at the customer, he was wearing clothes that seemed to oddly be both fit for going to a fine dinner and traveling through the wilderness.

 The customer answered: “I know very well that I am buying concentrated Shineroot essence and I plan to do just that.”

 The shopkeeper chuckled and said: “I figured. What are you offering?”

 The customer replied: “I assume gold coins or diamonds aren’t going to cut it. How about this?”

 With those words he pulled out a strange crystal from one of his pockets, it was pulsing with energy and slowly changed color.

 The shopkeeper’s facial expression didn’t change in the slightest and he simply said: “That’ll do.”

 Without any further words the customer took the poison from the shopkeeper’s hands, stored it in a small padded box and left, rushing past Jack.

 The shopkeeper looked at Jack: “Anything in particular you are looking for or are you just browsing?”

 Jack replied: “I am looking for someone.”

 “I may be able to assist with that. Who are you looking for?” the shopkeeper inquired.

 “His name is Fire…” Jack begun.
The shopkeeper cut him off: “If you are looking for the Fire who is the owner of this shop I don’t know myself where he is, I’m not him, that much should be clear, I just do the sales. There are plenty of other Fires around though.”

 Jack was somewhat confused: “You mean people that look like… you and are called Fire?”

 The shopkeeper laughed. “You’ve been living under a rock, haven’t you? Of course there are multiple red eyed Mencur-Besh named Fire, there are only so many words for the flame element in your language. But as you are physically incapable of speaking or understanding ours, you’ll have to settle with that, sorry.”

 In this single statement the shopkeeper had opened up more questions than he answered. What are Mencur-Besh? Jack assumed that they were more people like Fire, which would make everything more difficult. And what language was he talking about? Jack decided that it was best not to ask further questions and to instead buy some potions.

 He said: “I think that may have helped me in some way.” He then pointed at a potion and asked: “How much is this one?”

 Jack ended up buying several speed potions, some regeneration potions and a single strength potion, which had cost more than all the others combined. He spent the rest of his day wandering the streets of Redwater and stocking up on supplies. He decided that his current method of looking for Fire wouldn’t lead to much, now that he had found out that not only there were multiple Fires that presumably looked almost the same, no there was an entire species of them, apparently called the Mencur-Besh. Jack wondered if that name had any deeper meaning to it besides sounding somewhat intimidating.

 In the evening Jack decided to take a room in one of the better looking taverns, if there was anything he had a lot of it was gold coins. After renting a room for one night he decided to stay down at the bar for a bit and listen. If anyone would have any rumors, he would hear them. Bars were the go-to place for that after all.
He ended up sitting at a table with two town guards and another mercenary called Nathaniel who seemed to already know the guards. All of them were still wearing their equipment, for the guards it was their armored uniform, Nathaniel’s outfit was similar to that of Jack, only using a longsword instead of a battleaxe.

 Nathaniel asked: “How’s business been for you, Jack?”

 Jack remembered the backstory he had set up for himself and replied: “Not good, not bad. I spent the last few weeks trying to get to this town. You would not believe how many bandits are in the woods south of here. I wonder where they were when I was hired to escort some empty caravan, don’t ask me why, as long as I get my gold…”

 Nathaniel nodded and said: “Seems like we are in the same boat. The coin is coming but just barely enough to keep this stupid chainmail and sword from getting rusty.”

 One of the guards took a big gulp from his beer and said: “I used to be a mercenary just like you but then I took this post as a guard. And let me tell you, being a guard is just marginally better. It’s trading action for more secure pay.”

 The other guard just nodded.

 Jack spent the rest of the evening talking to Nathaniel and the guards over a game of cards until they all got tired, the guards were the first ones to leave, then Jack himself went to his room where he took off his chainmail and weapons and dropped into his bed.

 Before falling asleep he thought that he would just have to find Fire another way, just asking random people wouldn’t get him far…

 Fire and Shadow went ahead of the others into an expansive corridor with a polished dark oak floor. The walls and ceiling were made from rounded and polished rock, more engravings covered them. The engravings pictured various things. One showed plants in incredible detail, another one showed two warriors in a fierce duel, a third one just showed a calm meadow with some mountains in the background.

 Unchosen said: “These engravings are beautiful. It must have taken a long time to make them all.”

 Fire chuckled and replied: “This base is about three thousand years old, let’s just say I have had a lot of time on my hands. Me and many others, some of those engravings are made by guests, others by demons.”

 They were now at a round intersection with corridors and staircases going off in different directions, each of them was labeled with letters engraved into the rock.

 Shadow said: “We will give you a tour of the base later, I think now it is time that you all get cleaned up and get proper clothes… especially you Fire, that coat may as well not be there at all.”

 Fire explained: “We’ll head to the living area.”

 He went through an entrance and the others followed. Only Shadow went another way, she said that she would prepare something in the meantime.

 The corridor they were in didn’t have engravings, the walls and ceiling were covered in large polished wooden planks and the patterns in the wood were interesting to look at by themselves. After walking a few steps you could almost forget that you were deep underground. The corridor ended in a large room, which also had wooden walls and ceiling.

 Fire led his friends up some stairs to yet another corridor. This one had doors along both sides.

 He explained: “This is the area with the living quarters, each of you gets one. The rooms aren’t all the same so take a look first and take the one you like best. All rooms have a hot spring in a separate room. It’s as close to a luxury hotel as it gets. After washing yourself you can choose some clothes from the wardrobe. When you are done come back to the room we were just in, just sit down at the table.”

 Ambigious replied: “Alright, will do.”

 Fire started walking towards the room at the end of the corridor, which was his own apparently, then he remembered something.

 He warned his friends: “And don’t use the black soap, it’s caustic and contains razor sharp metal splinters. It’s made to clean scales, not skin.”

 “I’ll remember that.” freeZe muttered.

 About half an hour later Fire, Unchosen and freeZe were sitting at the table in the entrance room and waited for the others. Fire’s clothing hadn’t changed much, he had only switched his ruined old clothes for identical new ones. freeZe was wearing black nether wool clothes with red patterns on them. Unchosen had removed the vines on his body and was now wearing plain white clothes.

 freeZe said: “I still find it amazing that you have all this luxury in your base. You sure had plenty of time to build this but how hasn’t anybody found it yet?”

 Unchosen agreed: “Yeah I was wondering about that too.”

 Fire explained: “On the way here I briefly mentioned that this base is hidden by magic. The clearing with the wooden hut has a projection above it. From the air it looks like there isn’t even a clearing there. To prevent people from tunneling into my base there is also an ender field warp active, this means my base exists in a pocket dimension of sorts. The elevator is the only way in and out and serves as a portal to this pocket.”

 freeZe said: “That sounds logical enough. I suppose setting it up isn’t easy though.”

 Fire smiled and said: “Yes, multiple mages had to work together to create a stable pocket dimension, there is no way a single mage can create a dimension this large. The dimension is actually much bigger than my base so that I have room to expand.”

 While Fire was talking Ambigious came down the stairs and took a seat next to his sister. He was wearing blue pants and a red shirt with a black leather jacket above. Fire also quickly noticed that his right index finger was slightly red.

 Fire said: “You touched the soap, didn’t you?”

 Ambigious readjusted his sunglasses and said quietly: “Yeah…”

 TehLulz arrived just a few minutes later, his clothes were a little more formal than the others’ but not as formal as the suit he had been wearing before that.

 Fire announced: “Now that we are complete, I’ll show you something.”

 He then proceeded to lead them through a large door into a round room, in the middle of the room was a table with eight seats around it. Above the table was a strange wooden device with all manner of pipes and levers.

 TehLulz wanted to know: “What is that?”

 Fire replied: “That is a machine from the first era, that’s from year zero of this server’s timeline to about six hundred years after that. It is a masterpiece of redstone engineering and applied magic and as far as I know it is the only one of its kind that is still functional.”

 “And what does it do?” TehLulz asked.

 Fire said: “It makes food.”

 Ambigious said: “That’s good because I am hungry like a wolf.”

 Fire walked over to the machine and sat down on one of the cushioned seats. He pulled a lever and the seat he was sitting on automatically adjusted itself to his size.

 “Nice.” freeZe commented.

 After the others also had taken a seat Shadow came in through the door with a big plate in her hands. On the plate were all kinds of food. They could see meat, fruits, vegetables, cheese and also things that they had never seen before. Shadow put the plate in the middle of the table and took a seat for herself.

 Fire quickly explained how the machine worked, you took a bit of food and then you could cook it in many different ways. The machine also served as a dispenser for various beverages.

 Ambigious took a piece of cheese and roasted it in a stream of flames coming out of one pipe, then he wrapped it in some bacon and put it on his own plate.

 He said jokingly: “Hey, freeZe look. I can cook!” Then he asked Fire: “Does this thing have beer too?”

 Fire laughed and answered: “Sure, but not only beer. It has virtually every beverage you can think of. Just make sure to ask me about those you don’t know. To select one just push that button.”

 Ambigious pushed and suddenly a projection appeared in front of his eyes, it had different kinds of beverages on it. Ambigious selected a dark beer and a few seconds later the machine had dispensed a large glass of it.

 Ambigious said: “Wow, fancy interface. I’m starting to like magic more and more.”

 After about an hour they were done eating and Ambigious was starting to get drunk.

 He said: “That’s good stuff. But I think I shouldn’t drink more…”

 Shadow remarked: “At least you are noticing it… I know some people who would deny being drunk even if they are lying on the floor.”

 Ambigious answered: “I know some of those too.”

 “I think we should go to bed now…” freeZe said who had also been drinking a fair bit but by far not as much as her brother.

 Fire stood up and explained: “You can just go to your room and sleep for as long as you like. After you are done sleeping I will give you a tour through the base, after that we’ll start the training.”

 TehLulz said: “Something just came to my mind, the training seems like the character creation when playing an RPG and us getting here is just a very elaborate you-all-meet-in-a-tavern plot.”

 Fire laughed and replied: “I never really considered that point of view. Anyways, you should sleep now. I’ll go take care of some things in the meantime.”

 Fire’s friends gladly went to their rooms and laid down in their beds that were so much more comfortable than anything they had slept on so far on the server. Meanwhile Fire and Shadow walked off into different parts of the base to do different things, lots of things still had to be prepared before the training could start.

 Fire was the first one to wake up, it was still very early and the blaze core was the main light source in the tree. He sat up and made sure everybody was sleeping. He jumped out of his hammock, down onto the soft ground, not making a sound, ready to fight off any monsters that might be left from the night. When he saw that there were no monsters, he relaxed. The thing he needed to do now was make equipment for the whole group and in this case equipment meant stone swords and wooden plate armor. Wooden plate armor meant wood and wood meant trees. After chuckling about this stupidly simple chain of conclusions he looked for a small tree and found one right away.

 After cutting down a few trees using his claws he crafted some of the wood into planks and those planks into a crafting table, which he put down. Fire put a hand on the block, closed his eyes and the crafting grid appeared in front of his mental eye. In this case it was easier to make a regular Minecraft stone sword than to use the materials to construct it physically. He would need bindings, a handle and several other things that would just make it more complicated and less effective. You could do this with stone tools but for iron or diamond it would be a complete waste of materials to use a crafting table. To make proper tools you would have to smelt the iron and forge a blade or tool head, which would take longer but the tools would be a lot better. For diamonds the process was even more complicated and only few people knew how to turn diamonds into armor or tools. While Fire was one of those people, he did not have the equipment necessary to do so in his base. If you succeeded in completing the diamond forging process however, the tools and armor would be nigh-indestructible.

 After making ten stone swords the difficult part began. The wooden plate armor had no recipe in Minecraft so he had to make it himself. First he had to cut the wooden logs into fitting pieces meant to protect the wearer’s chest and back. That was the easy part.

 Fire spent the next two hours shaving tiny strips off of logs and bundling them together into a tough rope.

 “Fire, what exactly are you doing there?” A voice said, Fire recognized the speaker as Unchosen.

 “I am ensuring that we don’t get slaughtered by the mobs in the first hundred meters of the valley. Why don’t you come down, I could use someone helping me bundle those ropes.” Fire explained.

 Unchosen hung down from a branch and dropped down to the ground.

 “Ouch!” He said as he felt a sting in his feet.

 He got up and walked over to Fire, who looked pretty funny with all the tiny wood pieces scattered around the area.

 “The workbench log massacre.” Fire joked.

 Unchosen smiled and asked: “How can I help you?”

 “You just take those thin strips and do this.” Fire took a handful of strips and quickly wove three together to a very thin rope.

 “Good, I know how to do that.” Unchosen said and sat down, took some strips for himself and started working.

 After a good thirty minutes most of the strips were woven to thin one meter pieces of rope, then they took three of those and wove them together to thicker ropes.

 While still weaving ropes Unchosen asked: “Fire, how do the mobs here work, are they still about the same only with more details?”

 Fire shook his head and replied: “They are not the same, mostly. The creepers still do what they can do best, they explode. Spiders are also quite similar, they jump you and try to eat you alive. But there are no zombies or skeletons, there are just the generic category of ‘undead’, this can reach from a standard zombie over ghouls, and let me tell you, those are no joke, up to the very rare lich lords. Lich lords will most likely kill you, even with the best equipment. They are powerful undead mages without life force, they just drain the energy straight out of the environment.”

 “Sounds pretty nasty.” Unchosen commented.

 “It is, trust me. Remember me saying that combat a lot harder here? You will really see what that means when we reach the valley, the skeletons that have bows aim where they will do the most damage, so for heart and head. They are not very accurate but when they do land a good hit you will be wounded pretty badly.”

 “About how many mobs will there be?” Unchosen wanted to know and shivered.

 “There won’t be that many, the spawn rates tend to be pretty manageable, but we will sometimes have to fight multiple mobs at once.” Fire said.

 The sun was just rising over the trees, which looked amazingly different from the desert sunrises, which only were red, orange and yellow, this one also had the green from the trees mixed into it.

 An hour later freeZe and TehLulz joined them. freeZe, TehLulz and Unchosen were making rope while Fire was carefully drilling holes into the wooden plates using his claws.

 “How much of this rope are we going to have to make?” freeZe asked.

 Fire answered: “I’ll make one chestplate and we’ll see.” He took four wooden plates and a piece of rope, put the rope through the holes and used more pieces of rope to make a crate of log pieces without top and bottom.

 “Mind trying this on Unchosen?” Fire asked.

 Unchosen nodded and got up, Fire handed him the crate and he put his head through.

 “It is a bit heavy but it fits. Sort of.” Unchosen said.

 “That sounds just great.” freeZe commented.

 Fire took the crate again and put additional small plates on some holes and a bit later it looked much better and more like actual armor.

 “Now try this.” He said.

 Unchosen stood up and put the wooden plating armor on again, this time he didn’t have to hold it up with his hands.

 “Better than before, I actually feel a bit protected but it is even heavier now.” He laughed.

 “Move your arms as far as you can.” Fire commanded.

 Unchosen was a bit limited by the wood but he was able to move his hands pretty freely. Fire gave him one of the stone swords, which looked exactly like you would expect a sword to look like, only made out of stone.

 “Try swinging it.” He said.

 Unchosen was surprised by the weight of the sword and it fell out of his hand, he tried to pick it up again but couldn’t because the wooden armor was limiting him. freeZe chuckled, picked up the sword and gave it to Unchosen again, he was visibly embarrassed.

 “Attack me with the sword.” Fire demanded.

 “Isn’t that dangerous for you?” TehLulz asked.

 “No, he won’t be able to hit me and if he does hit me, it is just stone, it will just bounce off my scales. Just go for it.”

 As Unchosen was charging at him, the world around Fire slowed down, not as much as when the Shop Guy attacked, only to about to one third of normal speed. Unchosen prepared to strike but to Fire it looked hilariously slow, he could easily take a step to the right and make Unchosen hit the air. Unchosen almost fell over because of the weight of his wooden armor and his stone sword but he managed to stay upright.

 “Again!” Fire commanded and smiled a little.

 Unchosen attacked again, this time he didn’t slash vertically but horizontally. Fire saw the swing coming and jumped back a few steps, this time Unchosen could compensate for the momentum a bit better.

 “Try a little less powerful swings.” Fire advised and readied himself again.

 TehLulz had stopped making ropes and was now standing closer to the two watching the fight, so had freeZe. Unchosen raised his sword for a vertical attack, Fire took a step to the left but then Unchosen suddenly redirected his sword, forming an arc. Time slowed down by an additional half, Fire barely managed to evade the incoming hit by jumping backwards again.

 “That was much better!” Fire congratulated as he saw that Unchosen could manage the weight of his gear even better. As he saw Unchosen preparing another attack, he added: “But we should stop now, we don’t want to exhaust ourselves before the actual battle, right?”

 Twenty minutes later they heard a sound, which sounded like something heavy falling from a high place onto something soft.

 Five seconds after that they heard Ambigious’ scream: “I told you these are not safe!”

 “Seems like Ambigious finally woke up.” freeZe noted.

 “And it seems like he fell out of the tree.” TehLulz added and smiled.

 After a few seconds of silence Fire asked: “Would somebody go over there or should I?”

 As he didn’t get an answer he stood up and ran over to the tree, where Ambigious was lying on the ground.

 “Are you alright?” Fire asked.

 Ambigious answered: “My backside hurts but everything else is fine.”

 “Now that you finally woke up, get over there and help making some armor.” Fire said without asking further.

 Ambigious stood up and made his way over to his sister, Unchosen und TehLulz, all three were smiling at him as he arrived.

 “What?” He asked.

 “You overslept by two hours.” TehLulz replied.

 “And? I once overslept by a day.”

 freeZe explained: “He actually did, I wondered where he was the whole time I realized what had happened the next morning. I pretended he didn’t oversleep until he noticed that the TV program was different.”

 While they told Ambigious what they were doing, Fire made another suit of wooden armor.

 “freeZe, this is yours, try it on.” He said.

 The armor wasn’t much different from the one he gave to Unchosen, the only difference was that it wasn’t quite as wide. freeZe got up and put on her armor.

 “Fits pretty well.” She commented but as she wanted to take it off again.

 Fire interrupted her: “Take one of the swords and attack me.”


 ***

 It was almost noon when Fire made the last set of armor, his own. Everybody ate some of the leftover steaks and drank some water.

 “So, where is this valley?” Ambigious asked.

 Fire pointed into the forest and replied: “Somewhere in there.” He then asked: “Everybody ready?”

 After he received four positive answers he started walking into the forest. He took a brief look at his inventory. A diamond pickaxe, water buckets, the bottled fire, some arrows, two stone swords and the blaze core, those were the most important things. His bow was on his back. Fire stopped to look for a certain tree, one without leaves but still healthy, when he didn’t find it he continued walking, his friends right behind him.

 A little later, he spotted the tree, it looked like its leaves had fallen off a long time ago, the tree was giant.

 “There.” He said.

 He then carefully walked towards one of the roots at the trees base.

 “This isn’t an ordinary tree, you know. It is an elemental creature of Earth, a pretty powerful one, it’s kind is also known as ‘Treeguards’ or ‘walking trees’, which mostly applies to the smaller ones, they get less mobile as they grow older and bigger. This one has been asleep for a long time but I will have to wake him up to get to the valley.” Fire explained in a quiet voice.

 “How will you wake him?” freeZe asked.

 “Watch, and be quiet.” Fire answered.

 He walked over to the trunk, took a deep breath and made a small cut into the bark using a claw, then he took out the golden apple concentrate and let one drop drip into the cut. Suddenly, the tree started shaking and so did the ground above where his roots were, it was like an earthquake.

 “What is happening?” freeZe had panic in her voice.

 Ambigious tried to calm her down but didn’t sound all that confident himself: “I think Fire knows what he is doing.”

 Fire himself had stepped back a few steps and was now watching the tree. All of a sudden, the tree stopped shaking. A few seconds of silence later, a voice spoke to them, it was a very loud, rumbling bass voice, it was calm but it sounded so present, distinct and awake that it sent a cold shiver down their spine with every letter.

 “Who awakens me from my sleep?” The voice asked.

 Of all of the five, Fire had the most reasons to be scared, even though he seemed perfectly calm from the outside, he knew who was talking and what he was capable of. Fire knew to be careful about what he said.

 He answered in a respectful voice: “I woke you, Oalrhm, guardian of the forest, creature of Earth.”

 “At last someone knows the right words. What is your name, awakener?” The voice replied.

 “My name is Fire.” Fire answered and then added: “I seek entry to the Graveyard of the Forest.”

 The voice laughed, which sounded like wood creaking and the wind rushing through old branches. “What do you desire to do in that place?”

 “I want to use it as a hidden passage to shake off pursuers, I am aware of but not interested in the treasure of that place.”

 Unchosen, still a bit intimidated asked a question: “Who is speaking there?”

 The voice answered: “I am Oalrhm, the guardian of trees, I am the old tree in front of you but I am much more than a tree, I am the forest and the forest is me.”

 Fire explained to Unchosen: “You can’t enter the valley without the permission of Oalrhm. The real name of the valley, the Graveyard of the Forest, comes from all the corpses of the all too brave adventurers who tried their luck getting through it without permission. Now they are skeletons impaled by thorns, choked to death or crushed by vines.”

 Oalrhm said: “Yes, that is true, I do not want greedy humans in my forest, they cut down all my trees, take all the ore that gives me energy, steal all the ancient treasure in ruins or just are foolish enough to think they can fight their way through. You five, you have used the forest as your protection, I am always surprised how much trust humans put in wood, they use it for everything. I have nothing against that as long as they take it from a spiritless forest without a Treeguard of its own.”

 “So, you are not angry that we cut down your trees?” freeZe asked slowly.

 Oalrhm answered: “No, I am not. I can accept the loss of half a dozen trees if they are put to good use. What I cannot tolerate however, are hordes of lumberjacks coming to rode hectare after hectare, I kill them and throw them into the Graveyard of the Forest with the other corpses to rot. Sadly the valuables that have amassed over time attract even more adventurous people. I like the humans’ trust in wood, they build their houses out of it, the places where they live and sleep, but if they take more than they need, it puts me in a fury.”

 freeZe asked another question: “There are more powerful creatures of Earth than you, right?”

 Oalrhm laughed. “Of course there are, but not many. However those are far more powerful.” He made a small pause and then continued: “Now it is my turn to ask questions. First, Fire, how did you find out about me?”

 Fire, not speaking in the very formal language he used before, answered: “I read a book about the elemental creatures of Earth.”

 “Hmm, where did you get that book? It is rare, that humans write about us, they prefer creatures of Fire or Air, perhaps because they are more common and easier to notice and apparently more interesting.”

 “The book, along with many others, is, or was, found in the Great Library of Knowledge of Rockhaven, the biggest town of this world. The book is not somewhere between the books for everyone, it is located in a section exclusively mages have access to.”

 Oalrhm said: “Rockhaven hmm? You also do not look much like a mage to me, I can feel burning energy inside you, the fiery sort of your species is not known for magical feats…”

 Fire smiled and answered: “I might not be a mage myself but my sister is one, that way I could get into that section.”

 Ambigious asked: “So, you just walked into the library and she opened it for you?”

 Fire shook his head and explained: “Oh no, it was not as easy as that. The thing with Rockhaven is that only people living in the town can enter. This city is a fortress, guarded by well-trained guards in indestructible diamond armor, protected by several magic shields and wards. The city walls are almost as hard bedrock and continue underground. We had to get into that fortress to get to those books, it would take way too long to explain it all. After we were in the section, I took the books I needed and then we escaped using magic. That all happened very long ago.”

 “So, you can just teleport out of this fortress?” freeZe asked.

 “Sure, the spells only protect one way, this is because if the city needs to be evacuated, they can just teleport everyone out. Now the books are in my base.”

 Oalrhm wanted to know: “That was very brave, Fire. Why did you do it? Why are those books so important for you? Greed? The thirst for knowledge? Or perhaps something else?”

 “They are important because at that time someone of high rank in the town might have abused them, I have carefully studied the hierarchies and the power relations in the town and came to the conclusion that in the wrong hands they would be devastating. It cost me hundreds of diamonds to pay all of those spies…”

 “So, you stole them to protect? Not unusual for your kind…” Oalrhm said.

 After nobody said anything, Oalrhm spoke again: “Well, travelers. I will open the passage to the Graveyard of the Forest now. But before that, I have a gift for you. Even with your trust in wood, you would not make it through.”

 After he had spoken the weight of the armor was taken off their shoulders. Fire looked down to see what was going on. The wood was changing color from its bright brown to a darker, blueish grey. The armor of all of them changed shape, the ropes disappeared and the plates grew together forming an all-around protection.

 Vines grew out of the shoulder pieces and wrapped around their arms and legs, protecting them while remaining flexible.

 “This is the gift of the forest, an ancient kind of wood, steelwood. It used to grow in large underground caverns but all of them collapsed by now. My kind still knows about it and I gave it to you. This may not be the best decision but I feel that you five carry a great burden.” Oalrhm explained.

 The earth was shaking again and a gap opened at the base of the tree, stabilized by little vines and roots.

 “This is the entrance to the Graveyard of the Forest. I will sleep now, the tunnel will close soon.” After these words Oalrhm sighed and didn’t say anything else.

 “Let’s go, I guess…” Ambigious said, everyone else nodded.

 Fire explained while walking through the tunnel: “For zombies it works like you would expect. If you kill the brain, the zombie dies, so go for the head. Skeletons just need to be smashed to pieces. If you break one of their arms, they can’t harm you, they don’t have much physical strength. For spiders, pierce the head with your sword and avoid being bitten. For creepers it’s the usual tactic. Charge, hit, retreat but should never attack the head, this makes them instantly blow up. For enemies you don’t know, like higher undead, just let me handle that. And most importantly, don’t stand right behind me, skeletons will focus on me and I will have to dodge the arrows and if you are standing behind me you will be hit. Don’t look at endermen under any circumstances, they will destroy you. Everyone gets three drops of the golden apple concentrate, that’s close to the amount that would kill a normal human. freeZe should be safe since she is a mage.”

 “Seriously?” TehLulz asked.

 “Yes, seriously.” Fire answered “Any less would leave us at a disadvantage in battle, I need to go for the highest safe dose here. If you drink too much, you die from the potion but if you don’t drink enough, you die from the mobs.”

 “Okay, then…” TehLulz replied.

 “Hey, Fire, mind stopping the talk about death, it makes me even more nervous.” freeZe said.

 “Hey, you are the one with the black belt here.” Ambigious said to his sister.

 Fire explained: “It would be better if you were using the sword, punches don’t do anything to zombies as they don’t feel pain and are pretty tolerant to wounds, just cut their head off and be done with it. You can still smash skeletons to bits if you want.”

 The end of the tunnel was coming in sight, they increased their pace.

 “Another thing.” Fire said “Skeletons don’t always have bows, sometimes they have swords or battleaxes and sometimes are unarmed. We’re almost there.”

 He pulled the bottle of golden apple concentrate out of Brad’s bag and gave everyone three drops, including himself. Unchosen started stepping left and right, as if he couldn’t keep himself upright anymore, then he fell to the ground.

 “Crap!” Ambigious shouted and knelt down next to Unchosen. “You alright buddy?” he asked.

 “Wow, what just happened?” Unchosen asked, he sounded very confused.

 “You drank the potion and fell.” freeZe said and then added: “Almost had my heart stopping.” Then she turned to Fire. “What exactly happened? You said that an overdose results in death, so what exactly happened?”

 Fire replied: “He wasn’t at risk of death, some bodies react like this when given a high dose. It should take care of itself any moment now.”

 Unchosen was on his feet again and said, still somewhat dizzy: “Good thing I didn’t die, so let’s go.”

 Unchosen was the first to step out of the tunnel, which had started making strange noises.

 “Get out of there, it is going to collapse!” He shouted.

 He was right, a few seconds after they ran out of the tunnel the first bits of dirt and stone started falling down from the ceiling. They were now standing in the Graveyard of the Forest. Trees completely covered it in a thick layer of wood and leaves, it was dark but courtesy of the potion they could see, even without much light. At the first look it was a beautiful place but if you looked closer, there were skeletons and rotting corpses lying around in the dark, some were badly damaged as if something heavy had crushed them, other ones were caught up in arm thick vines with sharp spikes on them, impaling their ribcage and skull. At the third look, there were also all kinds of shining and glistening gems scattered around the floor, diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds were only a small part, most of the gems were less valuable. Also there were swords made of iron and armor made of gold and iron lying everywhere, some still on their former, now skeletal, wearers.

 “That’s disgusting.” freeZe commented.

 Fire said: “Yes, it is but we now need to focus on where we are going. And don’t pick up any treasure, I promised Oalrhm not to take any, he draws his energy from it.” He then pointed over into the valley. “There, five zombies, two skeletons, a creeper and three spiders. Remember what I told you about attacking a creeper’s head? I will demonstrate it to you.”

 The monsters were still a good fifty meters away and hadn’t spotted the group yet. The skeleton and the zombie looked the most disturbing as they were basically human, only skeletal or rotting. Fire took the bow from his back and put an arrow on the string, pulled it back and shot it at the creeper, it was a perfect headshot. At first nothing seemed to happen but then the creeper began to swell and exploded with a loud bang, echoing from the walls of the graveyard and ripping a large crater into the dirt. The blast killed three of the zombies, one skeleton and all three spiders.

 “Oh, I see why.” TehLulz said.

 Fire nodded and put his bow onto his back again, instead he pulled out one of his stone swords and slowly walked towards the group of mobs in a crouching position, the others instinctively followed his example.

 “Remember.” Fire whispered. “Don’t stand behind me, the skeleton will try to take out the most dangerous enemy first, which is me. I will have to dodge the arrows.”

 The others didn’t say anything but nodded.

 They were now only a few meters away from the group of mobs who were just standing around the crater the creeper had ripped into the ground. Suddenly the skeleton turned around and spotted them, put an arrow on the string of its bow and shot at Fire, he dodged the arrow with ease but the skeleton was already shooting the next one. Meanwhile the zombies walked towards Fire in their sluggish way of walking. But right before they reached the arrow dodging Fire, their heads fell off, behind them appeared Ambigious and TehLulz, grinning.

 After seeing the other skeletons being executed in such a way, the remaining skeleton stopped shooting at Fire and shot at Ambigious instead, the arrow just got stuck in the wood. With a hiss of rage the skeleton shot another arrow, which hit a little higher, right under Ambigious’ neck, but that was the last arrow the skeleton would shoot, Fire had already crushed its skull and broken its ribcage with a huge downward swing of his stone sword.

 They didn’t have much time to rest after that, they heard freeZe scream and as they turned around they saw that a spider had knocked her off her feet and was attempting to bite her head off. Unchosen, who was the closest to her, cut off two spider legs in one swing. Crippled by the pain the spider turned around to attack Unchosen. He ended its life with a well-placed sword stab through the arthropod’s head.

 “Thanks Unchosen.” freeZe said while standing up.

 “No problem.” He answered quickly while looking for more mobs.

 Fire said: “The next mobs are over there.” And pointed over to the other side of the graveyard, where a few skeletons were standing, then he said “We don’t care about them, just continue walking towards the other end.”

 Fire walked over to Ambigious and pulled the arrows out of his armor. They continued walking until freeZe spotted three creepers and an iron armored zombie.

 “That will be difficult, our swords can’t pierce its armor and I can’t use the enchanted arrow again because there might be monsters capable of sensing magic in here. The enchantment I used on the Shop Guy sends out a strong pulse. I will need to go with a regular arrow or a lightly enchanted one and hope that it works. You four take out the creepers. And remember, no head hits.” Fire explained.

 The zombie looked just like a regular human in its iron armor, the visor was down, it was also holding an iron sword in his right hand, which seemed to be enchanted. Fire didn’t take any chances and started firing away at the zombie. This wasn’t ideal, the arrows were too short for him to properly pull back the bowstring, which reduced the speed of the arrows. After three arrows he noticed that the helmet had some kind of protective enchantment on it.

 He sighed.

 If the zombie’s helmet was enchanted, he absolutely had to use enchanted arrows, he didn’t want to attack in close combat unless he absolutely had to. He went through his mental list of enchantments with low energy pulse and found two suitable ones. One that drained magic and one that pierced armor. He couldn’t use them both on the same arrow as the first one would neutralize the second one, the armor piercing one also was not guaranteed to work. In the meantime the zombie had come closer and was about twenty meters away from Fire. Fire couldn’t see the others but he was assuming that they were doing well since he hadn’t heard any explosions. Fire focused and put the arrow on the string, then he made a short low-pitched sound, a single enchantment rune appeared on the arrow. After being shot, the arrow was faintly glowing, nowhere near the light flash of the powerful armor shattering arrow.

 As the arrow hit the zombie’s helmet, there was another flash and the helmet stopped shining, the zombie didn’t care about that and continued walking towards Fire, it was now only a few meters away, not enough time for Fire to shoot another arrow. Fire decided that he had to go for a close range attack, he circled around the zombie at high speed, then suddenly attacked.

 He didn’t attack the body, he attacked the right hand of the zombie. It fell off after Fire had placed a quick cut with the claw of his left index finger. The zombie tried to pick up his weapon again but failed because its hand was missing. Fire jumped into the air and kicked the zombie in the chest, making it fall over, then he picked up the iron sword. It was a bit damaged but enchanted, he was glad the zombie didn’t hit him with it because it would have cut through his armor. Now Fire was using the zombie’s sword against its former owner, cutting its head off.

 When Fire looked for the others, he suddenly heard a high pitched sound, similar to that one when he threw the ghast fireball. A projectile hit the ground one meter to Fire’s right, it seemed to be some kind of spell since there was nothing at the impact spot. Fire turned around and then he saw it. A skeleton, taller than the normal ones, it was wearing a blue and black robe with fitting cowl, a dark aura surrounded it, its eye sockets had blue glowing flames in them.

 This was bad, in his current state Fire was not equipped to properly deal with a skeletal mage.

 The skeleton raised its hand, moving its jaw like it was whispering unheard spells, a blue dot appeared above the hand it held up, growing into a glowing and pulsating ball. Then, suddenly the ball zoomed towards Fire, no matter how slow everything around Fire became, the projectile was just too fast for him to dodge…

 The projectile was only an arm length away, Fire could feel it emitting massive amounts of energy. He knew what kind of spell this was, it absorbed energy from its target until its own energy was depleted. It was mostly used by mages against weaker targets, it was useless against other mages since their life force was too high for the projectile to have much of an effect. Fire didn’t have all that much life force. The projectile was now only a few centimeters away from his chest, at the corner of his eye he could see the others, practically frozen by his slow vision. A thought started forming in Fire’s mind, maybe he could…

 Then suddenly, Fire disappeared and so did the projectile. freeZe, Ambigious, Unchosen and TehLulz stood there with their mouths open, their friend had just been disintegrated by a skeletal mage.

 “Why did this have to happen?” Unchosen asked, voice filled with despair.

 “I don’t know…” freeZe said, she sounded sad, then she spoke again, this time with anger in her voice: “But this pile of rotting bones will pay for it!”

 Everyone else stared at her, partly confused by her reaction, partly agreeing.

 Ambigious was the first one to speak: “You are right, sister, let’s show this thing who is boss!”

 “Just let me handle this… just me.” freeZe said.

 Ambigious had never heard her so cold and determined. He instinctively backed off.

 freeZe’s eyes started glowing, not their normal lightless neon green glow, it was a deadly, brighter glow, a stare that could kill.

 “I have no good feeling about this.” Ambigious whispered to Unchosen “I have never seen her this angry.”

 freeZe took a deep breath and slowly started walking towards the skeletal mage, as she stared at it she noticed the runes carved into its bones and skull. She felt the anger inside her but besides the anger was another feeling, it was weak but it was there. The skeletal mage noticed her walking towards it, charged up another sphere. freeZe didn’t even attempt to dodge it, it hit her right in the chest but she only felt a slight tingle.

 The skeletal mage noticed that its attack was useless and instead whispered a few more unheard words, pieces of dirt were ripped out of the ground and formed a battleaxe made from bound magic. It grabbed the axe that was floating in front of it and moved in to attack, not very quickly, it was a skeleton and therefore not very strong. freeZe looked directly at the skeletal mage, her eyes were as brighter than ever before and even emitted light. Lightning was arcing between her fingers, the skeletal mage stopped for a second, reconsidering its attack but then continued moving.

 freeZe couldn’t think a clear thought, everything was blocked by one thing. Revenge. She had stopped moving on her own, her rage was guiding her but there was also this other feeling, which had become much stronger now. The lighting between her fingers became more frequent and more powerful, then suddenly, she jerked her hands upwards and let out a terrifying scream. A storm of fine lightning bolts, came out of her fingertips, searching for the skeletal mage. The mage noticed what was going on and had already built up a blue semitransparent barrier.

 One of the fine lightning bolts found the shield, freeZe’s mouth formed a devilish grin, a lightning bolt shot out of her left hand, making the barrier shatter into thousands of blue drops. freeZe put her hands together in front of her and an even larger lightning bolt hit the skeleton directly. The skeleton had its hands in a defensive position, which was more an instinctive reaction than real protection. Its bones shattered to dust, thunder echoed through the whole valley. The mage’s robe, which seemed not to have taken any damage slowly floated down to the ground. In the middle of the dust cloud stood freeZe, her eyes were glowing and she was laughing a demonic laughter.

 Suddenly, the light in her eyes disappeared, freeZe broke down. Ambigious was totally perplexed.

 “What the hell did just happen? What the hell?” He muttered and ran over to freeZe and asked: “What the he…” Then he noticed that freeZe was crying.

 “No… Fire… Why…?” She sobbed.

 Ambigious knelt down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders, he didn’t say anything because he knew it would be pointless. Unchosen and TehLulz were running over to them, both not less surprised than Ambigious but not nearly as overtly sad as freeZe.

 “That is it then.” TehLulz sighed. “The world is doomed.”

 “Shut up!” freeZe shouted while tears were running down her face.

 “TehLulz is right, without Fire we don’t have a chance of saving the server or the world by extension.” Ambigious agreed, only Unchosen remained silent, apparently thinking about something.

 Some minutes of silence later, occasionally interrupted by freeZe’s sobbing, Unchosen spoke, his voice was sad but it had something to it that made them listen.

 He said: “I know that it is hard for you but we need to move on, we just can’t give this up, we just can’t. Remember when Fire said that it doesn’t save the world when we just sit around? We need to get to the end of this valley, or graveyard. If we die, we die. We will be in the quarry again, there is nothing we can do against that. But if we survive and make it to Fire’s base, his sister can maybe help us get him out of the quarry.”

 “That makes sense.” Ambigious said.

 freeZe stood up, wiping some tears from her face.

 “Okay, we can be sad later, we need to keep moving.” She said.

 Ambigious raised an eyebrow towards Unchosen and TehLulz, surprised by the sudden change of emotion freeZe had undergone, but he didn’t say anything.

 freeZe apparently decided to take the lead, still occasionally sniffling but dedicated to get out of the graveyard. As she came past where the skeletal mage had been, she picked up its robe. As soon as she touched it, a shiver went through her whole body, she heard ancient voices speaking words of wisdom, or was it complete nonsense?

 freeZe dropped the robe.

 Ambigious looked at her and asked: “What?”

 “There are voices… in the robe.” freeZe said toneless.

 “What do you mean?” Ambigious asked, a little confused.

 “I touched the robe and there were voices talking to me.”

 Unchosen scratched his chin. “That is not surprising, it is the robe of an undead mage after all.”

 freeZe said: “We shouldn’t get caught up in trying to listen to voices in a robe, we need to keep moving. We need to reach Fire’s base as quickly as possible. Through the swamp and in the jungle somewhere.”

 With those words freeZe picked the robe back up. Just as the voices started talking again, she packed the robe into her inventory, immediately silencing them.

 They were suddenly interrupted by arrows being shot at them, a group of five skeletons stood at a distance, lined up like a firing squad.

 “Do your lightning thing again!” Ambigious said.

 “I don’t know how!” freeZe replied as three arrows impacted her chestplate and got stuck in the wood.

 Unchosen commanded: “Surround them!”

 Nobody questioned why he suddenly was calling the shots, they spread out. More and more arrows got stuck in their armor, it was only a question of time for one of the skeletons to hit an unprotected head.

 Ambigious charged into the group of skeletons, smashing one skeleton’s spine in half, separating torso and legs. He knocked another one to the ground with his weight. With him being very close to the other skeletons he was an easy target, all three had their bows pulled back, ready to shoot him. Ambigious dropped to the ground just in time to dodge the arrows. TehLulz and freeZe had already beheaded two of the skeletons by the time he was back on his feet.

 The skeleton Ambigious had knocked to the ground had ran away at a speed unusual for skeletons and put another arrow on the string as the other remaining skeleton got crushed between Unchosen’s and Ambigious’ swords. The last skeleton shot its arrow just before freeZe cut off its arms with two slashes and then put an end to its un-life. The arrow however hit its target, or more accurately, a target. The target was Ambigious’ right arm.

 He screamed in pain and dropped his sword as the tip of the arrow pierced the vines around his upper arm and the flesh below it, it stopped as it hit Ambigious’ upper arm bone. Ambigious stopped screaming but stomped on the ground to give the pain another exit. With tears blurring his vision he reached over with his left arm, grabbed the shaft of the arrow and pulled it out of his arm, which sent another wave of pain through his body. His knees felt weak but he managed to stay upright, blood was leaking from the wound and ran down his arm, dripping onto the ground. His sister was the first to get to him, Unchosen and TehLulz followed. The steelwood vines grew back together, stopping the blood from flowing but not the pain.

 “Damn, that hurts!” Ambigious pressed out between his teeth.

 “Can you keep walking?” freeZe asked.

 “Yeah but I won’t be able to fight anymore. Let’s get out of this damned place.” He answered.

 freeZe pulled the arrows out of Ambigious’ armor and more out of her own, Unchosen collected the arrows and put them into his inventory. Unchosen also took a bow from one of the shattered skeletons.

 Without further words they started walking again, Ambigious with his right arm hanging down. They could already see the exit, their hopes went up again. Then they saw what was in front of the exit. A horde of about a dozen and a half zombies, none had armor or weapons but their numbers were deadly enough.

 “What now?” TehLulz asked “We can’t run past them, they are too close to the exit.”

 “You are right.” Ambigious agreed.

 “Does anybody have something that could be useful?” TehLulz asked.

 “I have… a diamond pickaxe.” freeZe said “Couldn’t we just dig below them?”

 “Oalrhm wouldn’t like us digging through his roots.” Unchosen warned and then said: “But I have some gunpowder from those creepers we killed. If we had some sand we could make TNT.”

 Ambigious looked into his inventory and said: “I don’t have sand but I still have a ton of this sandbasalt, why did I even take that with me…?”

 “That could work, I have the crafting table we used.” TehLulz said and put it down.

 “Give me the sandbasalt please.” Unchosen said.

 He laid his hands on the crafting table and opened the crafting screen. He put the gunpowder in a cross shape and sandbasalt into the remaining slots.

 “Wow, it even gives me two!” He said and held up a block of TNT. “Does anybody still have flint and steel?” He asked.

 freeZe gave him her flint and steel and asked: “How will you ignite it without being lunged at?”

 “Stand back, you will see.” He said in a mysterious voice.

 Ambigious, TehLulz and freeZe backed up a few meters. Unchosen placed the TNT on the ground and took some wood strips from his inventory, he tied them to a stick that he crafted from a log. He put one end of the stick into the ground and lit the other end on fire, then drove the unlit end into the ground. He then tied more wood strips to one of the arrows he had on him.

 Unchosen ran up to the horde and placed down both blocks of TNT. He then sprinted back to the burning stick, the horde slowly starting to walk his way. He put the prepared arrow on the string of the bow he had taken from one of the skeletons, used the burning stick to light it on fire and shot at the block of TNT. A few seconds later, the lit explosives were in the middle of the horde and a moment later another loud bang echoed through the valley, rotting body parts were flung through the air. Not a single zombie had survived.

 “Gross…” freeZe said as a rotten eyeball landed in front of her feet.

 “But effective.” Unchosen said with pride in his voice, he added: “Now let’s get out of here!”

 They were halfway through the tunnel as they saw light on the other end, they didn’t know how long they had been in the valley, but it had felt like an entire day to them.

 “Look, light!” freeZe said, noticeably relieved.

 “Now, that we are out of danger, let’s get a move on.” TehLulz said.

 A few minutes later, they were at the exit of the tunnel, which was mostly grown over by vines. TehLulz cut a hole into the plant wall using his sword and went through first. The light blinded them at first but then they could see where they were.

 In front of them was a large flat area. Shallow, brown water streams were flowing in the lower areas, sometimes interrupted by deep, black ponds. Tall, dark green grass and sugar cane were growing all over the parts that were above the water. Huge willow trees were growing here and there, casting shadows where they were standing, in the distance they could see a witch hut, dramatically illuminated by the setting sun.

 “Let’s go there and hope that witches are not hostile by default here.” freeZe suggested.

 “It’s the best idea we have right now I guess. I also really need to take this armor off…” TehLulz said.

 “Mind helping me out with my armor?” Ambigious asked.

 The moment freeZe tried pulling her arms out of the vines, it seemed like they were growing backwards, disappearing into the chestplate again, so did the vines at her legs.

 “Well, that is handy…” she muttered.

 After pulling the chestplate over her head and storing it in her inventory she helped her brother out of his armor. Ambigious tried not to show that his arm was hurting but the look on his face changed a little as freeZe put her brother’s arm through the side of the armor.

 Unchosen looked at the gaping wound, it at least had stopped bleeding. He said: “Let’s also hope that this witch us willing to give us some regen potions or at least some bandages…”

 Navigating the swamp terrain was more difficult than they thought. The swamp was divided into islands by the shallow brown water channels, which made it hard to travel in a straight line. They could not walk through them since there were several meters of sludge at the bottom of them, going by boat also was no option since the water was usually too shallow. They had to find their way on the land, sometimes jumping over narrow sections of water or balancing on small spots of dirt only held above water by grass roots. The tall grass was thick and their feet got caught in it more often than not, so they had little time to look at the beautiful scenery of lily pads drifting around in the currents and the willow leaves being gently moved by the wind, they instead looked down at their feet looking out for roots and grass knots.

 TehLulz had taken the lead, he said: “That witch hut isn’t really coming closer, the sun is setting and we still haven’t found anything for Ambigious.”

 “And my arm feels like it will fall off any second.” Ambigious complained.

 “And Fire has all the food and the water.” freeZe added.

 Only Unchosen didn’t say anything, his gaze went over to the witch hut, which was still pretty far away and seemed to be between the branches of a big willow tree. He wondered how their encounter with the witch would be. Would the NPC communicate with them, or more importantly, would they would die from a splash potion to the face.

 “You are right TehLulz, it really is getting dark.” He said a bit later, then he added: “If it gets any darker, we will be at danger of falling into a pond without even knowing.”

 “You’re damn right, we need to get to that hut.” Ambigious said and pressed his teeth together, probably because of another wave of pain from the wound.

 TehLulz stepped around a root that was sticking out from the ground and asked: “Ambigious, how are you still walking with that wound in your arm?”

 Ambigious replied: “I can ignore the pain, mostly. If the pain stays constant, I can ignore it, but if something touches the wound it hurts a lot.”

 They walked through the swampland for another hour without saying much, meanwhile the sun was setting and the stars came out. Luckily it was almost full moon this day so that they could keep walking with the amount of light it gave off. They had come significantly closer to the witch hut but it was still pretty far away.

 Unchosen said: “We need to sleep, I am tired from the fighting and the walking.“

 “We all are.” freeZe agreed “Let’s build a shelter if we can.”

 “I have some wood.” Unchosen stated and promptly started building a wooden box.

 “This will do, I guess…” TehLulz commented on the five-by-five box.

 They laid down on the wooden floor and left Ambigious the biggest space, Ambigious himself instantly fell asleep and even missed the opportunity to make a dirty joke about his sister having to sleep right next to TehLulz and Unchosen.

 The next morning they were woken up by a scream. The one screaming was Ambigious, he was pressing his left hand against the wound in a reflex reaction.

 “Aaah… Okay, I was wrong yesterday. I can’t ignore… Aaah… the pain, it was Fire’s potion…” He said with his teeth bared, trying to suppress the pain.

 “That is bad news.” TehLulz said, who was still sleepy, then he looked around in the box and asked: “Where did Unchosen go?”

 He stood up and went outside while freeZe helped her brother stand up. The first thing he saw when he was outside was Unchosen leaning over a crafting bench, the second thing were three boats still lying on the land that Unchosen hat apparently crafted.

 “Morning.” Unchosen said shortly.

 “Morning Unchosen… Why did you make boats, the water isn’t deep enough.” TehLulz wanted to know.

 Unchosen looked away from his crafting bench and faced TehLulz, he said: “Take a look below the water! It’s deeper here, it seems like somebody has dug out a decent portion of the sludge. It was too dark to see it yesterday.” Unchosen walked over to the edge of the water and said: “Look.”

 There was in fact a narrow passage where the water was deeper, deep enough for boats to go through.

 “That is great!” TehLulz said, notably relieved.

 Unchosen replied: “We only have one problem.“

 “Which is?” TehLulz wondered.

 Unchosen explained: “Paddles. We don’t have a way to make paddles with a crafting table. I was waiting for you to wake up to help me make some. However, it seems like Ambigious needs some medical attention soon. I am certain that if he does not get anything he will die.”

 “Dying is not fun. I don’t want to do that.” They heard Ambigious shout from the box, he was trying to make it sound funny but failed.

 Unchosen asked: “Mind coming to me Ambigious?”

 Ambigious, supporting himself with his left arm on freeZe, slowly came towards Unchosen, who quickly walked over to him as he saw that even walking caused him pain. Unchosen took a look at Ambigious’ wound and worry came to his face.

 “It looks like it is infected. No wonder, those arrows must have been lying in a place filled with corpses and undead for quite some time.”

 “So, I will become a zombie now or what?” Ambigious asked, a little confused.

 “That would be one possibility, the other one is that you just die.”

 Ambigious asked: “Okay Unchosen, how do you know that and how do you manage to say that I will die without even sounding worried.“

 Unchosen put his right hand to the back of his neck and replied: “I am a doctor, it’s my job. I have to tell people that they will die on a weekly basis. That is why.” He paused for a few seconds and then added: “But now it is important that I give you something that at least keeps the wound from getting even worse.”

 Unchosen took a long flexible willow branch from his inventory and started wrapping it around Ambigious’ arm, covering the wound in the leaves. Ambigious tried his best not to flinch as Unchosen tightened the makeshift bandage.

 Unchosen said: “That will keep dirt from getting into the wound, sadly I didn’t find any plants with healing properties nearby, most plants that are not grass seem to have been trampled or eaten by something.”

 Unchosen pointed at the boats and explained: “As you might have heard, the water is deep enough to ride a boat through, but we still need paddles.”

 TehLulz called: “Hey, I have an idea!“

 “Which is?” Ambigious wanted to know.

 “We could craft wooden shovels and use those as paddles.” TehLulz said with a grin.

 Unchosen answered: “That is actually a very good idea, let me quickly make those.”

 After these words he went to his crafting table again and quickly made three wooden shovels. He gave one to freeZe and one to TehLulz, keeping one for himself.

 Ambigious asked: “And which boat will I be in?”

 Unchosen explained: “You will be in a boat with TehLulz, he is the strongest of us aside from you, freeZe and I get a boat each.“

 They pushed the boats into the water one after the other, TehLulz and Ambigious got into the first one, freeZe into the second one and Unchosen jumped into the third one. They started paddling along the waterway slowly, always careful not to run on ground. The splashes of their improvised paddles and the quiet sound of their boats gliding through the water were the only sounds they heard for the next half hour.

 Paddling along the narrow water way was not a very exciting task, they only had one way to go and they weren’t going very quickly. They were moving past willow trees and lily pads, oddly enough, they didn’t see a single living creature besides plants in the swamp. The witch hut had come significantly closer and they now could clearly see that it was built on a willow tree, even though there was plenty of flat space right next to the tree.

 freeZe broke the quiet: “Something is strange about this swamp…”

 TehLulz asked: “What do you mean?“

 “I mean, no animals, trampled plants, which should not be trampled without animals…” She answered.

 “Now that you say it, it is pretty strange indeed.” Unchosen muttered.

 After a few minutes of silence, they came to a large deep pond. Several more waterways were extending from it into different directions.

 “Okay, where to go now?” TehLulz asked, looking at Unchosen.

 Unchosen replied: “That one seems to be going to the witch hut, there we can at least get something for Ambigious’ arm. If we’re lucky…”

 They paddled over to the water way, which seemed to lead towards the witch hut. They moved towards the hut in a straight line, following the water way, hoping they would find something there. Unchosen looked over to Ambigious, who had fallen asleep, his worrying gaze on his friend’s feverishly red face.

 “If we don’t find something in the next few days, the fever will kill him… If not today.” He thought to himself.

 An additional hour of paddling later only a few hundred meters separated them from the witch hut but those meters seemed to be a very long distance to them. Fire’s potion had completely worn off, their whole bodies were hurting. Wearing the wooden armor had left its marks on them, dozens of small splinters that they hadn’t noticed before were all under their skin. Their shoulders were bruised by the weight, the constant paddling didn’t make it easier on their arms.

 As if to make their situation even more desperate, Ambigious’ fever had increased even more, he had started muttering words they couldn’t understand. Each and every paddle stroke was painful to them, they progressed at a snail’s pace. The witch hut was growing on their horizons at a slow, almost torturing speed. Every time they forced themselves to draw their wooden shovels through the water an additional time, they pressed their teeth together in pain but without making a sound.

 Seemingly endless minutes of paddling later, freeZe broke the silence, her voice was tired and weak: “How far is this going to be? TehLulz, how far? Any idea? My vision is all blurry.”

 TehLulz’ voice was in a similar condition, he answered: “About one-hundred and fifty meters, I don’t know.” He sighed “Even if we can find Fire, we won’t be able to carry on like this.”

 “How is my brother?” freeZe asked.

 TehLulz interrupted his painful paddling and knelt down to look at Ambigious. He put his hand on his friend’s forehead and pulled it back immediately.

 “It feels like he is burning!” he said.

 “That doesn’t sound like an illness I know.” Unchosen replied, did a paddle stroke and added: “I would not be surprised if there are more illnesses in here too. As Fire said, everything is harder… If only Fire were here right now.”

 They stopped talking and focused on moving their boats towards the witch hut. Every additional stroke of their paddles, every movement, seemed to take an eternity to them. They were so focused on doing their task that TehLulz didn’t notice at first that the front of his boat had hit land. He did one more paddle stroke before he realized that they had arrived. A numb feeling of triumph filled his body and made the pain go away, he almost forgot to get Ambigious out of the boat. He put his arms below his sleeping friend and lifted him up with ease, in any other situation it would have surprised him how easy it seemed to him but his vision was blurry and he could only think about one thing: Getting to the witch hut.

 freeZe and Unchosen seemed to have the same feeling as they hopped from one boat to the other and to the land as if they hadn’t walked through a hellish world, as if they hadn’t climbed a mountain, as if they hadn’t gone through all what they did go through. With a feeling of euphoria, all three ran towards the tree with the witch hut on it with long elastic steps.

 The witch hut, despite being on a tree, was more a hut between the branches than a real tree house, as if it had been lifted up there by giant arms. It didn’t sit on any supporting structures or had any ropes that held it in the tree. It was simply built, a square house with a flat roof, a window on each side, the only way to get up was a rope ladder hanging down from a small balcony in front of the door.

 TehLulz went up first, with Ambigious over his right shoulder, climbing with only his left hand, once he was up, he broke the simple wooden door lock with ease and went inside. The inside was not very well lit and barely decorated, just a crafting table, a furnace with a brewing stand on top of it and a chest beside it, the rest of the house was hidden behind a separating wall. freeZe and Unchosen came up after him, they walked past the wall, they couldn’t see much because their eyes had to get used to the light, but then they saw something. Suddenly TehLulz felt Ambigious’ weight on his shoulder, he almost threw him down to the ground, so fast did he put him down. Their minds cleared, they felt the pain in their arms and all over their bodies again, something had knocked them out of their trance violently.

 On the ground was a figure lying on its back, clothed in torn white clothes, the figure was very tall and had a black scaled skin, pieces of shattered wood and torn vines were lying all around it, on a closer look they could see that the figure had a bow on their back. This normally wouldn’t be a reason for sadness, but the reason their trance had been broken was the chest of the figure, a deep gaping wound was right in the middle where the heart was.

 “Fire?” freeZe stuttered and knelt down next to the body.

 They expected their reunion with Fire to be better, happier or at least a little more glorious. They hoped that Fire would make everything better again, Fire would help them.

 “Fire…”

 Fire had always been a bright light in their lives on the server, he seemed do know everything and have a plan for every situation. Wasn’t it Fire who guaranteed them not to be hungry in the quarry, who guided them through the Nether, who risked his life to protect them from the magma cube, who helped them climb the mountain, who made their armor, who convinced Oalrhm to open the tunnel, who fought mobs with them… who died, trying to save the world.

 Now that they saw what happened, they knew that they wouldn’t be able to save the world on their own, they were tired, hurting and Ambigious was close to death. Fire would respawn in the quarry and the hackers would put him in some jail where he would just have to wait to die in the real world.

 “No pulse, no respiration… dead.” Unchosen confirmed, trying not to look at the wound in Fire’s chest, fighting the tears.

 Also TehLulz and freeZe tried not to cry but then, all of them gave up their resistance and threw themselves to the ground. Even Ambigious seemed to have noticed something, he started rolling around in his fever, he again started muttering unintelligible things.

 After lying there for a few minutes TehLulz heard something, someone was going up the ladder, without a doubt the witch. He forced himself to stand up, ignoring the pain and sadness, now it was important not to anger the witch and maybe get her to help them, maybe there was some hope left. Unchosen and freeZe were still on the ground, apparently not noticing that he got up. TehLulz heard a female voice cursing, the witch had noticed that somebody had broken into her hut. He heard the door open and took a peek around the corner and then instantly pulled his head back to avoid being seen. The witch didn’t really look like the usual witches in Minecraft, she seemed to be much younger, also her clothes weren’t purple and she wasn’t wearing a hat. Her clothes were green, too wide to be normal clothes and not wide enough to be a robe, they seemed to be woven from grass or reeds. TehLulz heard her voice, it sounded like a normal human voice, she sounded angry but also a little scared.

 She said: “Who is there?”

 TehLulz had to force himself to answer, his knees were shivering, so was his voice: “Please don’t kill us.”

 He couldn’t come up with something better but it seemed to have worked, he heard how the witch breathed out in relief. TehLulz slowly came out behind the wall, it came to his mind how funny he might look, a man with messy shoulder long brown hair in a black suit, which was completely ruined. A thought crossed his mind and despite the situation he chuckled to himself, he almost looked like a secret agent lost in the wild. But of course the witch didn’t know what a secret agent was, she only saw that he needed help. However she first wanted to know a little more about the intruder inside her house. TehLulz took a closer look at the witch, she was slim and tall, her dark brown hair was very long, it almost reached down to the ground. Her eyes were as green as her clothes, her skin was pale, almost white. She was also missing the wart on her nose that the witches in Minecraft had, her face was actually quite beautiful.

 “Who are you?” she asked, still with a fair bit of distrust in her voice.

 He answered, still with a little bit of insecurity in his voice: “I am a traveler, my friends are in here too, one of them is mortally wounded and one is sick.”

 “How did this mortally wounded friend and this sick friend get up here?” The witch asked.

 “That is hard to explain.” TehLulz said with a weak voice, then added: “We found the wounded one up here, we don’t know how he got here. We came through the Graveyard of the Forest…”

 She interrupted him: “What? You went through there? Why would you do that? That is suicide!”

 “I will explain everything to you later, please help them.” TehLulz begged.

 The witch noticed that TehLulz was very serious and asked: “They are behind the wall, right?”

 TehLulz instinctively grabbed her hand and pulled her behind the wall, he was surprised how soft her skin was for somebody living in the wilderness, it was strange how panic made you notice the most irrelevant things. She followed him and took a sharp breath as she saw the scenery behind the wall. freeZe, her brother and Unchosen were lying on the floor, all three with scratches all over their skin, only that Ambigious’ skin was all red and sweaty, freeZe and Unchosen seemed to have passed out from the exhaustion. Fire looked the worst with the gaping wound in his chest and his shattered wooden armor all around him. His peaceful face and his relaxed position were an intense contrast to the rest of his body.

 “By all the herbs of the forest… How did that happen?” The witch whispered.

 It was easy to notice that the witch hadn’t expected something like this, maybe she expected a broken bone or a spider bite but she definitely hadn’t expected a hole in the chest.

 TehLulz answered: “We don’t know… But can you help him?”

 She swallowed and answered: “I can’t do much but I will try my best. What does the sick person have?”

 TehLulz noticed that he was still holding the witch’s hand and quickly let go.

 He explained: “His skin is burning hot, he got hit by an arrow in the Graveyard, see that bandage? Unchosen made that… err that is him.” He pointed at his friend.

 “I know what it is, at least I can save him. It is blaze fever. Please don’t tell me you have been to the Nether too.” She said, looking at TehLulz as she began to realize the extent of what they had been through.

 “We have been to the Nether, yes.” He replied.

 Without saying more she walked into the first room again and searched her chest for a potion, muttering words that sounded like curses. After half a minute she found what she was looking for, a glass bottle that look looked like its creator had made it in haste. It had a glowing orange liquid inside it. She walked over to TehLulz, gave him a nod and knelt down next to Ambigious, careful not to step on anybody else.

 She commanded: “Please hold his mouth open and make sure he swallows.”

 TehLulz knelt down next to her and lifted Ambigious’ body up into an upright position, trying not to flinch as his already hurting skin was exposed to the heat of Ambigious’ body. He tilted his friend’s head backwards and opened his mouth. A single nonsensical word escaped Ambigious before the witch poured the potion into his mouth, luckily nothing got into Ambigious’ lungs. The potion instantly seemed to take effect.

 “What potion was that?” TehLulz asked.

 “Fire Resistance, easy as that.” The witch replied, not without pride.

 “How will we save Fire now?” TehLulz wanted to know.

 “Fire? His name is Fire? I know that name from somewhere…” The witch said and scratched her chin.

 TehLulz was puzzled, he asked: “From where?“

 “Wait… Wait… I know! My mother told me that a… someone named Fire had been here a long time ago.” She answered and added: “You know, when I was younger”

 “Where is your mother now? And who was your father?” TehLulz asked, immediately cursing himself for asking invasive questions when there were more important things at hand.

 “My mother is dead, I don’t know who my father is, might be somebody from the village near here.” She answered, paused and then said: “I can’t guarantee you that Fire will live but I can try at least.”

 TehLulz was baffled, he said slowly: “Wait. He is not dead? I though he was and hoped that you could revive him.”

 She replied: “He looks like he is dead but there is something inside him keeping him alive, I can feel it. Do you have any idea what it could be?”

 TehLulz realized something: “Aaah! It might be the golden apple concentrate we drank.”

 “You have golden apple concentrate too? You can’t go a minute without surprising me…” She muttered.

 “Yes, we have that. Fire always has it on him, it should be in his coat.”

 The witch knelt down next to Fire and pulled the ragged rests of his coat away from the wound in his chest. Her face was now right above the wound, TehLulz didn’t know what she was doing but he assumed that she was inspecting it. She sighed and raised her hand above the wound, pointing middle and index finger in its direction.

 “What?” He asked but didn’t get an answer.

 Suddenly a cold wind seemed to blow through the hut as the witch whispered a single word. At first nothing happened but then the light inside the room seemed to come alive, it left its place on the walls and was drawn to the witch’s fingers, illuminating the wound with all its gruesome details. Fire’s skin looked like it had been torn apart by an immense force, the same force had also torn away the muscles and parts of the ribcage below. At the bottom of the wound TehLulz could see something that looked like a lacerated heart, strangely no blood was in the heart or in any other part of the wound. TehLulz stared at the wound for a brief moment that seemed to be an eternity to him, then the light snapped back into its place without a warning and shadows covered the wound again.

 The witch seemed to be as horrified as he was, judging by the part of her face he could see, her eyes were still wide open. She held her hand open above Fire’s chest and seemed to be looking for something, then she reached inside Fire’s coat and pulled the bottle with the golden apple concentrate out.

 “That wound is worse than I thought… Did you see his heart?” She said with a shivering voice.

 TehLulz wanted to know once again: “Can you help him?”

 “I may be able to. Now that we have this potion I can try… Where did you get it?”

 “Fire made it. You seem to know what it does but I don’t know the whole story behind this potion, only Fire can answer that question.” He replied.

 She sighed again and uncorked the bottle, which was so much more beautiful than her own potion bottles. Now TehLulz noticed the fine decorations in the glass, they looked like vines winding around the bottle from the bottom up. They were not carved into the bottle, the vines were made from fine strips of glass. The witch also seemed to notice that and slid her hand over the bottle to feel the fine structures.

 Without a word, she let a single drop drip into Fire’s wound. That reminded TehLulz of something, Fire had done exactly the same before they talked to Oalrhm. A sudden thought flashed through his mind. What if Oalrhm had been dead or at least without life? Didn’t he say that Fire “awoke” him? Didn’t he hear Fire saying something to freeZe about life force in the cave on the mountainside? He had been half asleep but he generally understood what Fire had been talking about.

 Then he knew it: “The potion increases life force. That is why Fire is still alive… or not dead… and now it will bring him back.” He muttered to himself.

 The witch heard that and nodded. She stood up and sat down next to him, staring at Fire. She had tears in her eyes, it made him want to cry again as well. He put his arm around the witch’s slim shoulders and they both hoped for the best.

 A few minutes had passed since the witch had sat down next to him.

 TehLulz asked: “How is living here, in the swamp?”

 “It is a quiet and calm life, I can say that.” She answered. “During the day I go around collecting herbs, during the night I am here, sleeping or brewing.”

 “How often do people pass by?” He asked.

 “Not very often and they generally leave me be, they are just passing by on the way to the village near here.” She stood up and walked over to her chest and searched it for something.

 TehLulz wanted to know: “What are you looking for?”

 She replied: “You’ll see.”
“Okay…” He answered, a little confused.

 He looked over to his sleeping friends and a smile went over his face, they were together again. Seeing Fire however caused a sting in his stomach, he was not sure if he was going to make it, but on the other hand he knew how powerful the golden apple concentrate was.

 He heard the witch say: “Found it.”

 She came into the room holding a pointy metal object in both hands.

 “Look.” She said and sat down next to him again.

 TehLulz asked: “Is that a… knife?”

 She demanded: “Yes, take a closer look.”

 TehLulz took the knife from her hands and looked at it closely, it was about as long as Fire’s claws but shaped like you would expect a knife to be shaped. It seemed to be made from a dark metal, it was etched with ornaments of herbs and other plants.

 “Those ornaments are like the ones on Fire’s bottle…” TehLulz mumbled.

 “Yes, that was why I was stopped after seeing them. They reminded me of this knife.” She said.

 TehLulz wanted to know: “Where did you get that?”

 “A travelling merchant gave it to me after I healed someone from his caravan convoy, they were bitten by a spider, a very nasty bite but by far not as, you know, Fire’s wound.”

 He answered: “Don’t remind me of in what danger he is, you have done everything you could.”

 The witch said: “There is something about his condition that doesn’t leave my mind though. I know that golden apple concentrate can sustain life but I never knew that it can do so to such a high degree. The only other potion I am aware of that can do such a thing is deathsleep poison.”

 TehLulz asked: “What does it do?”

 “It suspends your entire metabolism and functionally turns you into a corpse. At the same time it prevents any of the decay that comes with being dead. Once the poison wears off or someone gives you the antidote you wake up. It’s notoriously hard to brew since even a small mistake can lead to death.”

 He said: “While that’s interesting I would really like to take my mind off of Fire, at least for a little while.”

 “You are right. Let’s talk about something else.” She replied.

 “About that knife, did the merchant say where he got it from?” He asked.

 The witch answered: “He said that he bought it from a blacksmith in Rockhaven.”

 “Hmm… That might be the same person who made the bottle, or the same group of people.”

 For the next few minutes they just sat there and looked at the knife, partly because the patterns were so detailed that TehLulz discovered something new every time he looked at the knife. The other reason was that if they looked at the knife, they didn’t have to look at Fire.

 TehLulz was just looking at the metal image of an herb he had never seen before as a thought flashed through his mind.

 “Do you think that Fire uses bottles somebody else makes for his potions?” He asked the witch.

 She scratched her head and replied: “Hmm… I don’t know much about Fire but from what my mother told me he doesn’t seem to be the kind of person.”

 “If I think about it, you are right… especially with all the knowledge he has…”

 “What knowledge do you mean?” She asked, a little confused.

 TehLulz answered: “He’s been around for a long time. And, you know, the knowledge from the Books of Knowledge.”

 “Haven’t those been lost?”

 “Oh right, you don’t know about that…” TehLulz said and then explained: “Fire stole them from there, he said that somebody might abuse them.”

 She asked: “How did he get into that town? I have never been there but from all what my mother told me, that town is a fortress.“

 “When I think about it, there is a whole lot we don’t know about Fire.”

 TehLulz wanted to say something but he wasn’t sure how the witch would react when he talked about the server, she was an NPC after all.

 She looked outside through the open door and asked: “Look at the sunset, isn’t it beautiful?”

 It took him a few seconds to realize that it was already evening.

 He just said: “It is.”

 She suddenly said: “We should go to sleep.”

 “Where do you sleep here, I haven’t seen a bed in here.”

 She chuckled: “I sleep on the floor, those plants I am wearing keep me warm.”

 TehLulz looked at her and replied: “I have been sleeping on hard ground since we started, why not sleep on hard ground for one more night?”

 He laid down on the floor, careful not to touch any of his friends with his feet and fell asleep within a few minutes. The last thing that he saw was the witch storing the knife in the chest and walking over to him.

 The bus had been driving for six hours now, Irene was leaning her head against the window. It was around midnight, it was dark outside, the only things she could see were the red tail lights of cars overtaking the bus.

 Irene was tall and slim, she had long blonde hair and blue eyes. To her right side sat Mary, her best friend and classmate. She was shorter than Irene but just as slim, her eyes were brown, so was her fairly short hair. There were eleven more passengers in the bus, their classmates. They were playing games, talking, sleeping or just sitting there staring at the seat in front of them.

 They were on the trip back from a two-week holiday the teachers had booked for them, the reason for this unusual gesture was that they were the best class their school had ever had, every single person had more or less perfect grades. This didn’t mean that they were the most united class the school had ever had, their success was greatly based on rivalries and competition. Everyone had at one other student they were in direct conflict with. Over time, groups had formed, each group trying to be better than the other two. The five boys in the class were always sticking together, in learning and everywhere else too. The girls were divided into two groups, one consisting of three girls and one of five girls, Irene and Mary were in the bigger group of the two.

 Irene thought about the past two weeks. The sea, the beach, the hotel, the town, the party on the last day…

 Suddenly Mary poked her from the side.

 “What?” Irene asked.

 Mary wanted to know: “What are you thinking about?”

 “The last two weeks, they went by so fast.”

 “They really did.” Mary agreed.

 Irene was just about to say something but she was interrupted by the bus driver speaking through the speakers on the ceiling: “Okay, in fifteen minutes we will reach our first set-down point. The students getting off the bus there are…” He paused while looking at the list, yawned and continued. “Peter. Nobody else? Alright, just Peter.”

 Peter was sitting in the same row as Irene and Mary, he had two seats for himself, his buddies were occupying the two rows behind him. Peter lifted up his head, still half asleep, stretched his arms and yawned. He was very tall and had short brown hair and green eyes. Peter had somehow managed it to snake his way through the minefield that were the rivalries between the groups and individuals. He had managed to remain at least somewhat liked by everyone. He was still part of the boy’s group, however he also was one of Irene’s closer friends.

 “Where was I…” Irene said to herself and then said to Mary: “Do you think there will ever be a class reunion?”

 Mary shook her head: “I don’t think so. And if there is, I won’t go.”

 To their right Peter stood up and hit his head on the ceiling.

 “Ow… Damn.” He said quietly in his deep voice, then proceeded to gather his luggage from his seats and the overhead storage.

 For the next ten minutes Irene and Mary were just sitting there, trying to fall asleep, they both would get off the bus in over an hour. They were woken up by Peter standing up and going to the back end of the bus, saying goodbye to everybody as he was walking back to his seat. Irene and Mary were looking at him when he arrived.

 “Goodbye Mary, goodbye Irene.” He just said.

 They replied at the same time: “Goodbye Peter.”

 Peter turned around as if he wanted to go to the front of the bus but then he stopped and turned towards them again.

 “And by the way Irene…” He said.

 “What?” Something about his tone worried Irene “Everything okay?”

 Peter took a deep breath and said: “I wanted to get this over with earlier but I have been putting it off over and over again and I’m afraid now is the last opportunity.”

 Irene was getting increasingly confused. She asked: “What do you mean?“

 She noticed that everybody in the bus had become awfully quiet and some were looking in her direction.

 Peter said: “Well, to make it short…” He paused and took another deep breath. “I fell in love with you two years ago…”

 Irene’s jaw dropped and she turned bright red, she didn’t know what to say.

 “I… err… you… what?” she stuttered.

 “It is okay.” Peter said and put his arm on Irene’s shoulder. “I knew the outcome of this long ago. I have to go now… and I doubt that you’d want me to drive you home now.” He smiled and said: “Goodbye Irene.”

 The moment he said that, the bus stopped and Peter left, Irene could see him walking over to his car, not looking back over his shoulder. Before he got into his car she believed to see him wipe tears from his eyes but it might have been her imagination.

 As soon as the bus started driving again, everybody started talking, Irene could hear little bits of dialogue.

 “Man, I feel bad for him.”

 “She didn’t deserve him anyway.”

 “Why the hell did he do that?”

 Irene even saw how a boy grudgingly gave money to a girl, they seemed to have made a bet on the outcome.

 Mary asked aloud: “So are we two the only ones who didn’t know about this?”

 Matthew, a short blonde haired boy replied, somewhat quietly: “Yes.”

 “I didn’t want an answer.” Mary snapped and gave him a look that made him flinch as if he had been hit.

 Only now Irene discovered a small roll of paper in her lap, Peter must have dropped it when he put his hand on her shoulder. She unrolled it and read the text in Peter’s scrawly handwriting.



 Call me when you are at home, I would like to take some time to talk.


 -Peter


 Irene had to think about what happened. One of her best friends had asked her if she loved him, indirectly at least, and she just sat there. What kind of person was she to break her friend’s heart? She should have seen it earlier.

 “Don’t worry about it.” Mary said, who guessed what Irene was thinking.

 “Hm?” Irene asked.

 “Peter has been through worse, you know how he is, he can take losses. And he said that he knew the outcome, he just wanted to make sure he wasn’t wrong. Not knowing can be worse than rejection. Just call him like he told you to.”

 “But I don’t know if I can bring myself to talk to him now that I did this…” Irene said, tears suddenly in her eyes.

 “So, you do love him?” Mary asked, somewhat confused.

 Irene replied: “I… I think I do.”

 Suddenly they heard a crash and were flung forward. Some students were in a daze, most started screaming. Irene lived through these moments like in slow motion, she saw how the luggage flew through the bus, how her classmates desperately tried to hold onto their seats. The bus hit the ground hard and as they thought it was over, it started rolling. Nobody was wearing seat belts, so everybody was flying through the inside of the bus as it started to roll downhill faster and faster. Irene felt a sharp sting in her neck, then everything went black in front of her eyes. The last thing she felt was deep regret.

 ***

 “Terrible bus accident.” Steven read the headline to his family.

 Steven was a dark skinned man with greying hair and brown eyes, he was sitting on the table with his wife and his two daughters, eating breakfast and reading the newspaper.

 He quickly read over the article and told his family a brief summary: “Seems like a bus driver fell asleep while driving, the bus broke through the crash barrier on a bridge and rolled down into a valley. Nobody in the bus survived.”

 “Who were the people in the bus?” Janet, his younger daughter asked.

 Steven replied: “Students, the best of the whole country. Such a shame, so many wasted lives.”

 “Does it say anything else?” His wife Lily wanted to know.

 Steven took a look at the article again and said: “Here it says that this man named Peter survived, he got out of the bus shortly before the accident.”

 His elder daughter Olivia said: “How is he at the moment? I wouldn’t be surprised if he is at a psychiatrist right now.”

 “Actually he is not, it says that he refused all help. I guess that’s what trauma can do to people. Don’t see the trouble they are in.” Steven said.

 A few minutes after that Steven got up and said: “I have to go now, my patients are sure getting impatient.”

 He chuckled at his own joke and left the room.

 Even though he was tired and wounded Fire stood up after some time and said: “Come on, let’s go. The fortress is just over there.”

 He pointed at the fortress, which really was not that far away anymore, he couldn’t see any obstacles on the way there. freeZe, Ambigious, Unchosen and TehLulz stood up and followed Fire who had gone ahead, although a slower pace than usual. The terrain was flat and easy to walk on, which felt a little wrong after all the difficulties they had faced.

 “Fire, I need to ask you one thing.” Unchosen said.

 “Go ahead.” Fire answered.

 Unchosen asked his question: “How are the hackers keeping up with the simulation speed of the server?”

 Fire scratched his chin and replied: “That is in fact a good question, I don’t really have an answer for it, only assumptions. I think they are logged in with their computer but also with their brain like every other player. They are using their computer client to control their powers. It also seems that this indirect connection gives them some manner of protection from the server’s security mechanisms.”

 “That is quite smart!” freeZe said.

 Fire didn’t immediately respond: “They are smart, smart is an understatement actually, they are highly intelligent, which is why they even got this far in the first place. But I suspect that there are only a few masterminds and a lot of smaller fish. They are also operating in a completely unknown environment.”

 freeZe asked: “Why aren’t they just taking the code? They want a simulator to sell to those military types. They can train here as well, it’s realistic enough, right?”

 Fire smiled but the smile had a bitter aspect, he said: “Minecraft still imposes limits on what the software can do, they need the software in its pure form.”

 “Pure form?”

 Fire explained: “The software’s pure form is what allows free data transfer between the brain and the computer.

 You may even be able to digitalize a personality, in theory at least, the admins never tried it since we lack powerful enough hardware. The version of the software running on this server is bound to Minecraft, which imposes some serious limits on what it can do. Without those limits, the possibilities for both helpful and destructive applications are basically infinite. Help people with mental disorders, kill them with a touch, you name it.”

 In sudden realization about the importance of their mission they stopped.

 TehLulz said slowly: “So if we fail, the army gets the software and eventually some crazy person will use it to wipe out or enslave humanity?”

 Fire answered: “And even if it gets used for good, testing isn’t finished. It works in the context of this server but there are many other things that could go wrong.”

 Unchosen wanted to know: “How do you manage to keep that calm? We are responsible for all of humanity!”

 Fire put on his bitter smile again and replied: “If we fail, we will die and won’t have to see the world break. It is cruel but it is true, if we succeed we keep the software secure, if we fail the world gets access to something it is not ready for. It is everything or nothing, no compromises.”

 They all felt the responsibility on their shoulders and remained on the same spot until Fire demanded: “Come on, we are almost there, it won’t help the world if we stand here.”

 “That is true, let’s go!” freeZe said with a bit more enthusiasm than intended.

 ***

 Ambigious jumped down onto the dark red brick first, freeZe followed, they helped Fire climb down, then Unchosen and TehLulz jumped after them.

 “Where to go now?” Ambigious wanted to know.

 Fire told him: “Just follow me, I’ll lead you there.” Then added: “Be careful, the blazes aren’t nice here.”

 They were standing right in front of the dark tunnel that the bridge came out of. The bridge they were standing on was very high up and broken at some parts. It went to a big block of nether brick with maze-like corridors in it. Fire started walking towards the building, the others followed.

 Their feet made loud noises on the dark red brick, which had a lot of empty space in it that amplified their steps. They slowly progressed towards the building, always looking out for brittle bricks or holes in the bridge. At about half of the way there was a big brittle section exactly in the middle between two pillars.

 Fire stopped and tested the bridge with one foot, it gave out some strange noises but it didn’t break.

 “I will jump over and you follow one by one.” Fire stated.

 He went back a few steps, ran towards the brittle part and leaped right over it, his landing was not as elegant as usual, he struggled not to fall on his nose.

 Fire turned around and said: “Okay, TehLulz, you first, then Ambigious, then Unchosen, then freeZe!”

 “Why am I last?” freeZe complained

 Fire replied: “Least risk of breaking the weakened bridge.”

 Everything worked fine for TehLulz and Ambigious but just after Unchosen was safe, a part of the bricks broke out and fell into the lava.

 “Great.” freeZe moaned.

 She ran over the brittle part and saved herself with a jump just before the rest of the bricks fell down.

 “Okay, so I assume that we’ll go in there now?” Unchosen asked.

 Fire nodded and started walking again.

 It was very dark inside the building, they barely could see their own hands in front of their faces. Ambigious had taken his sunglasses off, with them he would be blind like a mole. Some light got in from through the barred windows. They occasionally came across a lava well, the only bright source of light inside the fortress. With the darkness and the corridors, which were apparently built without a system, it was very easy to get lost. Fire seemed to know the way as if he walked it every day, his glowing eyes helped the group follow him. Suddenly they heard a strange sound, like a breath, only with a metallic tone and it sounded as if the one breathing had a hard time doing it.

 “Blazes!” Fire warned and asked: “Do you know why blazes are covered in smoke or fire most of the time?” He gave the answer himself. “Because they want to hide something, their blaze core, an eternal fire burning in their center, it is a crystalline piece of metal as far as I know, it keeps the rods and the head in place with a magnetic field. Without it they will just fall apart. It is one of the best ingredients for Fire Resistance and Strength potions, much better than blaze powder.”

 Unchosen said: “Sounds interesting, but what does it have to do with our situation now?”

 Fire raised his index finger as a sign that they should be quiet. The breaths sounded pretty near.

 “It is only one blaze, I can deal with that. Now answering your question, if I can come close enough to rip it out quickly enough, it will lose its connection to the head and die… And I only have ever had one of those things, I need a few more or at least one for brewing.” Fire said and then added: “Follow me quietly, take care where you step!”

 Fire walked towards the exit in a ducked position, the blaze was right outside but it was facing away from them, no smoke was coming from its center as it didn’t see itself in danger. Between its rods was the blaze core, a rotating ball of a red-golden material. On further observation it was not really a ball, it was a crystalline structure, a glow radiated from it, but not the glow of light, it was the glow of energy.

 Fire felt the energy and took a deep breath, the last time he had fought a blaze without weapons had been a long time ago. Technically they couldn’t hurt him with their fireballs but their rotating rods could break bones when coming too close. Fire signaled the others to stay behind and slowly walked towards the blaze, which was now only a few meters in front of him. At the worst time a zombie pigman squeaked for no apparent reason and drew the blazes attention. Unfortunately the pigman was on top of the building Fire just came out of.

 The blaze noticed him instantly, smoke and then fire started to radiate from the blaze core, also catching the blaze rods on fire and turning the blaze into a small tornado of flames. Fire let go all stealth and sprinted towards the blaze as quickly as he could. The blaze managed to float up just before Fire could reach it.

 The flames started condensing around its upper rods, forming fireballs around them. With an almost elegant spin of its rods it threw a barrage of five fireballs at Fire. He just felt a little bit of warmth where the fireballs hit him, his clothes were made out of fire resistant cloth so they didn’t get any more ruined than they already were.

 The blaze realized that it wouldn’t have much success with ranged attacks and dove down on Fire from the air with its rods spinning faster now. Fire ducked under the attack and extended his claws, with high pitched sounds the rods collided with them. While the blaze was busy blocking the claw attacks from Fire’s right hand, his left hand had gone down under the lower rods and now was only a few centimeters away from the blaze core. By the time the blaze realized what was going on, it already was too late. Fire held the core in his hands. The rods fell down to the ground and the head exploded into a small fireball.

 Fire walked over to the others with the pulsating core in hand, he said: “As you might have observed, the mobs are a lot smarter and harder to kill here.”

 TehLulz only said one word in agreement: “Cube.”

 Ambigious was about to say something but then suddenly twisted his eyes upwards, dropped his shades and pressed his hands against his chest. He coughed as if he couldn’t breathe, then he fell over, where freeZe and Unchosen caught him. About two meters behind where he used to stand now was a tall creature, not as tall as Fire but only one and a half heads shorter, it looked like a humanoid skeleton only with pitch black bones.

 The skeletal creature was holding a sword in its hand, pulsating with a black aura, the sword didn’t seem sharp but caused a feeling of fear in the group. freeZe looked down on her brother and noticed that the black aura also was present around his chest, particularly where his heart was. As she realized what happened, she ran, dragging her brother and an a bit traumatized Unchosen away from the wither skeleton.

 Fire had positioned himself in his full size in front of the group, he said: “Haven’t seen you in a long time…”

 The wither skeleton opened its mouth and spoke, its voice was like five voices speaking at the same time in different pitches and each slightly offset from the others. The voice sounded somewhat male, just as male as the voice of an undead creature could sound.

 It said: “True, Fire. We have not seen each other in a long time.”

 “You know him?” freeZe asked.

 Without answering Fire continued talking to the wither skeleton: “They are my friends, take the wither from him now.” Fire said it in a calm but demanding voice.

 The skeletal creature nodded and raised its sword, a thin string of the black aura on the sword connected to the black aura on Ambigious’ chest, pulling it towards the sword again.

 Ambigious stopped coughing and stood up.

 He asked: “Where are my sunglasses?“

 freeZe looked at him and said: “You almost just died and all you ask for are your sunglasses?”

 “Yeah, where are they?” He asked.

 He turned around and jumped back a few steps as he saw the wither skeleton holding them towards him. He realized that it was not dangerous anymore. He took them and put them on again.

 Fire explained: “May I introduce Matt to you, he and two other Wither cultists live in this fortress. He is another player.” He paused and pointed at one of his friends after the other: “This is freeZe… that is Ambigious, her brother… this is Unchosen and that is TehLulz.”

 Matt spoke again: “Sorry for that incident before, I thought that you four were here to kill us for our skulls, you know how it is, an honest mistake. Follow me, I will lead you to where we live. And Fire, your bow is done.”

 “That’s good to hear. Come on, let’s go.” Fire answered.

 “You have friends all over the place, Fire.” TehLulz said.

 Matt laughed, which sounded like a small group of people laughing in an uncanny choir, which sounded creepy more than anything else. “Yes he does.”

 ***

 “…and then Matt almost killed me.” Ambigious concluded his story.

 They were sitting in a circular room in the middle of the netherrack pillar the fortress was built into, the room had everything you needed to live and a few additional things like brewing stands, an anvil and even an enchanting table surrounded by bookshelves. Ceiling and floor were made of nether brick, although some stone brick was mixed into it, nether brick fences supported the room and in the middle was a fireplace made from obsidian fueled by blaze powder. Fire, his friends and three wither skeletons were sitting around the fireplace. Matt was one of the skeletons, one other one’s name was Chris, the last one’s name was Bea. They just had told them why they came here and how, the Wither cultists had listened.

 “Now I want to ask a question.” freeZe said and then asked said question: “What is this whole Wither cult thing?”

 Bea looked at freeZe and started explaining in a voice much like the one from Matt and Chris but more feminine sounding: “As you might know, the admins are very friendly and kind people, we asked them if there was a way to actually be a mob, they told us that only humanoid mobs could be controlled by our brain at the moment, different bodies and such.”

 freeZe asked: “So everybody can become a wither skeleton?”

 “Yes, all you have to do is fall into lava while being affected by the wither status effect. Now for the cult, we have made our own religion out of this, there are more of us in other fortresses. Everything is based on that what can really happen here. We worship the Wither, it visits this dimension sometimes on its own or gets summoned, the one who manages to defeat it in battle gets the Nether Star, what you can do with that you know already.” She explained.

 Chris stood up and left the room without saying anything.

 “Where is he going?” Unchosen asked.

 Matt answered: “Don’t know, maybe he is fetching something?”

 Then he said to Fire: “I wanted to give you a regeneration potion but I see you already have one in you.”

 Fire scratched his chin and said: “That actually might be true if you say so, I will have to ask Brad what he put in that potion. It didn’t get removed by the portal, very interesting… I haven’t managed to do that for regeneration yet.”

 This moment Chris came back in, holding bow in his hands.

 “Right, my bow. Let me see it.” Fire said.

 Chris handed the bow to him. It no ordinary bow, it had a different shape than a regular bow and much more decorated. It was made out of something that seemed to be ghast bones dyed black. Ghast bones were very flexible and didn’t deform over time. The bow had red ornaments and runes carved into the bone. The bowstring was made from a red material, a very durable cloth made from nether wart. This material called nether wool was very versatile, it could be used for bowstrings but also for making clothes of very high quality, which were fireproof in addition to being very durable and comfortable. If a king would have to choose out of what material his clothes should be made of, he would definitely choose nether wool.

 Overall the bow looked much like bows elves used in various books and movies and was about half Fire’s height. Fire rotated it and looked at the red runes on the black bow, let his finger slide along the bones, pulled back the string with ease and let go, the bones snapped back into place, more violently than any normal bow made out of wood would, propelling an imaginary arrow.

 “It is better than I ever thought it would be, I didn’t think you would be able to recreate my old bow.” He said, then asked: “As far as I can feel, it is not enchanted and free of magic, right?”

 Matt answered: “Yes, we didn’t even use any magic at all when collecting the components.”

 “Why is it so important when it is free of magic?” Ambigious asked.

 Fire chuckled and replied: “I can only tell you one thing. Magical artefacts that don’t have an internal power source drain the energy of the user to fuel their magic and you can’t turn that off. If you want to know more about how magic works in here, you are at the wrong place asking me, I only know the theoretical aspects of magic. You should ask my sister when we meet her if you want some more in depth information, she is a mage. Though, simply calling her a mage might be selling her a bit short.”

 “She also is here? I thought she doesn’t play on the server?” freeZe asked.

 “I didn’t say that she isn’t here, the hackers just don’t know that she exists. She is running our base at the moment.” Fire explained.

 Unchosen, who hadn’t said very much yet, asked Bea: “What benefits did you get from being a wither skeleton?”

 You couldn’t see it but in fact she was smiling, she said: “First of all, the benefits you get from being undead and of Nether origin, not having to eat or drink and being completely fireproof. Then having our own little source of Wither energy is another benefit.” She looked at Ambigious “We can use it to defend ourselves or to hunt, whatever we want. Now the most important benefit, you know how Fire feels energy flow? Well, we can feel it too, more than that even. We can see how much energy is in something, kind of like a filter we can put over our vision, we see everything violet and the more powerful something is, the more it goes to red and then white. We can also see if somebody is ill or has something in their body that normally isn’t there, like a potion.”

 Matt added: “I didn’t look exactly but when I saw you there was quite a bit of energy between the four of you.”

 Completely leaving the topic, Ambigious asked: “Okay, what’s for dinner?”

 Chris chuckled with his quintuple voice and said: “Man, why didn’t we think of that earlier. You all must be starving, especially you Ambigious, wither makes hungry.”

 With these words he stood up again, this time to get some food.

 He came back about ten minutes later with a stone plate with steaming steaks on it. freeZe poked TehLulz and Ambigious.

 “That is the first time we’re eating meat after months of bread, eggs and apples!” She said to them, it was easy to hear that also she had missed eating meat.

 Fire grinned, the first time since they met Fire they heard him speak in a voice free of worry or tension: “I escaped the quarry, I now have a real chance to stop the hackers. We made it here alive, I got my bow and now I can eat some meat after a whole year without it, I can finally worry a little less now.”

 He leaned back a little and took a huge bite of the steak that Chris had given him.

 Silence filled the room, only interrupted by the sounds they made while eating. Eating was not the right word, stuffing the steak into themselves would fit better. Ambigious ate three steaks in record time, so did TehLulz and Unchosen, freeZe ate two and a half, which was a lot for her. Fire put the crown on top, he ate five steaks and the half that freeZe didn’t eat. They all leaned back satisfied and slowly fell asleep.

 The last thing they heard was Chris saying: “Wow! And I thought I could eat quickly…”

 Bea laughed.

 As usual, Fire was the first one to wake up, the cultists had left the room and the plate where the steaks used to be on was gone. His wounds were completely healed by regeneration potion that was still coursing inside him, his scales were still deformed but there was no way around that without a stronger potion. Fire decided to let the others sleep and took a closer look at the room he was in, he hadn’t been here in a while. There were brewing stands on one wall, an enchanting table and some bookshelves on the other one, hidden behind a tunnel. The third wall had the entrance in it and the last wall had what he was looking for, a cauldron filled with water. He walked over to it and formed a bowl with his hands and drank a bit of water to get rid of his thirst.

 “Not the best water in the world, but better than the stuff in the quarry.” He commented.

 Fire walked back to the spot he slept on, just to sit there and look at the fireplace for a few minutes. He was thinking about what to do next, he had a rough outline for his plan but he had to add in the details when the time came… And the time had come, the time to plan in detail, how to get to his base the fastest and the safest, with the first one having priority.

 First they would have to leave the Nether, then there was the glacier. They had to climb the icy mountains and get down on the other side. Fire took a deep breath, the air smelled a bit like sulfur, what else would you expect from a hellish world? Then there was a smell, humans couldn’t detect, it was the smell of blaze powder burning in the fireplace, it was a little spicy but also sweet in a strange way. The smell reminded him of something, he still had to activate and infuse the blaze core. He closed his eyes and moved it to his hotbar with his thoughts, then when he opened his eyes again, he was holding it in his right hand.

 Fire went over to the enchanting table and ducked to get through the hallway, which was a little too low for him. As he approached the table, the book laying on it magically opened and fragments of knowledge started flowing towards the table from the bookshelves. The books were mostly red, some black ones were there too, rarely blue and yellow and only a single green one. This enchanting table was specialized for black magic and harmful or sinister enchantments, exactly what Fire needed for the infusion of the blaze core.

 He put the glowing crystalline core on top of the book, from where it floated up. Fire cleared his throat and collected his thoughts, he focused on the core and began speaking the words which guided the magic. They were no regular words, no ordinary combinations of letters, may they be random or not. It was no language, not in the traditional sense, the words were just an instrument to guide the energy, they were not even words, just sounds. You could only feel the air vibrating and hear a sound with varying pitches, sometimes low, sometimes high, sometimes everything at once.

 A shockwave went through the semi-transparent runes coming from the books, they stopped going into the table and then slowly focused on the blaze core, which had started spinning. At first, Fire’s voice was not audible because it had a frequency lower than the human ear could detect. But even if you couldn’t hear it, it had an effect on the knowledge bits, they arranged in a complicated grid, some flew back to their books and some more came out of books that hadn’t given out any before. Suddenly the vibration in the air stopped, Fire had rapidly changed his voice to ultrasonic, making the fragments shiver and arrange to different figures. That was the method of determining, what “words” had to be used to infuse the now rapidly spinning core with magic. The fragments now formed a three dimensional star-like shape around the core, exactly what Fire wanted, the base position was reached, he could start with the difficult part.

 Fire started speaking in the “language” of enchanting, a strange mix of sounds with all kinds of different frequencies and volumes. The fragments started rotating and coming closer to the core but seemed to be held back by an invisible barrier, Fire increased the amount of low frequencies with high volume and completely stopped the high frequencies. The fragments arranged in packets, similar symbols together. Fire changed his voice again, making the symbols transform, merge and split, modifying the enchantment. The changes in his voice became more rapid as he needed to react to every tiny symbol trying to leave its place.

 One or two minutes later he had arranged the symbols in seven stable spheres, rotating around the core, connected by small strings of symbols. Now he only had to add some of his energy to activate the enchantment. He raised his hands and changed his voice to a very loud and deep sound that rumbled through the enchanting room. He felt how the energy inside of him searched for an exit.

 He made his voice a little quieter but maintained the pitch, decreasing the force with which he was pulling the energy towards the spheres, then he suddenly stopped. Fire started glowing in a rainbow-colored light from the energy that had made it through his skin. It slowly got pulled towards his hands, forming two spheres, which met between his raised hands, combining into a big one. With a sudden blast of his voice he threw the ball of energy towards the runes floating in the air, it distributed evenly in the spheres. Fire concentrated and started the enchanting process with his thoughts.

 One after the other, the runes flew towards the core but stopped just short of its surface, creating a glow, which evolved into a bright light as more and more runes orbited the core. When all the symbols were at the core, the light stopped. Fire hoped that he didn’t do anything wrong, this was his second try on activating a blaze core and this time the enchantment was fundamentally different. Experimental enchanting was not an exact science. Just as he wanted to reach for the core and take it away, a bright flash of light, an explosion almost, came from the core, blinding Fire and creating a loud high-pitched sound in his ears, he got knocked off his feet.

 ***

 “Fire?” A voice asked “Are you okay?”

 Fire couldn’t identify who exactly was speaking but it definitely was none of the cultists, neither was it freeZe. The white fog in front of his eyes slowly cleared and he stood up, hitting his head on the ceiling of the tunnel. TehLulz was standing in front of him, smiling.

 “How long have I been out?” Fire asked.

 “I don’t think it was that long, I woke up from a strange sound and this explosion, then I saw you on the floor there.” TehLulz replied.

 “Ah, I see.” Fire said and turned around.

 The core was still floating above the enchanting table but it was glowing more intensely and little sparks radiated from it.

 “It worked.” He said and picked the core up.

 “What worked?” TehLulz asked in a confused manner.

 “I reactivated the blaze core using some energy.”

 “Wow, I want to learn enchanting…”

 “I can teach you. When we are in my base, we will be there for quite some time until your armor sets are done and all the other preparations are complete.” Fire promised.

 “What is the difference between an active and an inactive blaze core?” TehLulz wanted to know.

 Fire walked out of the room, sitting down at the fireplace again, Ambigious, freeZe and Unchosen were still sleeping.

 “Hmm…” Fire said “I think that you should really learn enchanting, you have a sense for the energy waves, that is why only you woke up…” He speculated and answered the question he was asked: “An active blaze core can serve as a catalyst for powerful fire based magic.”

 “That sounds amazing.” TehLulz said and asked another question: “But if I learn enchanting, how will I reach those frequencies, I heard some strange sounds, were those your voice?”

 Fire explained: “You will learn that at my base, it involves some kind of meditation. Most enchantments aren’t this complex either, this one had hundreds of runes assembled in a very complicated manner, for general-purpose enchantments you normally don’t need more than twenty unassembled runes.”

 “That’s good, it must have taken you quite some time to figure all that stuff out…”

 “True. But now, let’s wake the others up.” Fire said.

 ***

 A few hours later, they were ready to go. Matt showed them the way to their portal, it was a very pretty portal situated on a little pyramid of sandstone and nether brick, the obsidian was chiseled and had runes on it, primarily for decoration but some of them actually had an effect, for example ones that prevented blacking out, making it far quicker transition.

 “Here is the bag with the clothes, Fire.” Matt said and handed Fire a bag made from nether wool.

 “What is so special about those bags, Fire? Brad also gave you one.” freeZe asked.

 “They hide what is inside, the hackers can view our player data, which means what we have in our inventory. The thing about that is that things inside the bag won’t be displayed, so it just shows a bag.” Fire explained, already walking towards the portal.

 Fire then said: “Okay, I will explain everything else while we walk, thanks for everything Matt.”

 With these words he walked up the stairs to the portal and took a deep breath. He touched the purple magical semi-liquid with his right hand, then walked into the portal. He felt how he got transported over to the Overworld again, at the edge of his perception he noticed the others going into the portal.

 Jack logged out of the server and closed down Minecraft, the first thing he noticed were his hunger and thirst, he had been on the server for a real-time day straight and he was well aware of that. Jack pushed his chair away from the three-monitor setup on his desk. He stood up and stretched, it was like having slept for a day. Actually, his body had slept for a day just not in his bed, he had slept in the chair in front of his monitors while he was on the server.

 The first thing he did after standing up was going into the room next to his computer room, the kitchen, where he drank a bit of water and ate three pieces of the bread he had prepared before going on the server. After he was done eating, he went back to his computer room and sat down again. Jack opened an application and called up Andreas, who answered the call immediately.

 “Okay, what’s up J?” Andreas asked.

 “I just logged out, it is your shift now. I’ll inform you about what happened. And let me tell you, a lot happened.” Jack answered.

 “I suppose not only good things happened?” Andreas assumed.

 “Right. First of all, Fire escaped the quarry through the volcano. We don’t know how yet but he’s gone. freeZe60, TheUnchosenOne, Ambigious_Name and TehLulz9001 are also missing.”

 Jack could hear Andreas choke on something he must have been drinking.

 “What?” He asked, still with a mouth half full of liquid.

 “Yeah, they escaped. Also, the Shop Guy is out, he somehow got into a fight with Fire and lost.”

 “Q kicked him out because of that?” Andreas wondered.

 “Nope, not because of that, Fire pointed out that that guy has some sort of mental issue, or multiple, Fire must know. It should be the truth as he was in a life or death situation at the time.” Jack explained quickly.

 “I see, I see… Fire is smart, we know that. This is probably part of some plan he has been cooking up while in the mine. Any idea where he is?”

 “Nope, the player data says nothing about that, too bad that we don’t see his coordinates or at least his dimension. But I suspect, that he is or was in the Nether because we found a portal inside the volcano, I still don’t get how he managed to brew Fire Resistance pots in there or how else they got in there…”

 “Did you send someone through the portal?” Andreas asked.

 “Yeah, we did send some mercenaries, but… They ran into some weird wither skeleton dudes, they decayed to dust in seconds. At least that is what they said after respawning.”

 “Very strange, Fire escapes, the mercs are killed by wither skeletons, all that after that fight, how did he even win that?” Andreas wondered.

 “He evaded the Shop Guy until he slipped up and finally killed him by slitting his throat, you know, between helmet and chestplate.”

 “Did anything else happen?” Andreas wanted to know.

 Jack heard him taking another sip of whatever he was drinking.

 “The Guy managed to get in a hit on Fire, almost killed him but one of his friends gave him a regen pot, then Q transported them to the quarry. When I think about it, that’s probably where they got the potions from.”

 “Do you have any idea where he wants to go?” Asked Andreas.

 “To his base I suppose. The bad thing is that we don’t even know where that thing is and nobody, not even we with our hacks, can circumvent the tricks of the admins. You know, those skellies’ Wither effect just ignores protection and everything else that could make you not die. I wouldn’t be surprised if our god mode had no effect either.”

 “We need to patrol the server, I will wake up my bros, then we will search.”

 Jack said: “Why did he even try to escape if he has no way to possibly stop us… But wait, couldn’t it be possible that the admins built in some kind of emergency backdoor? A lot of people do that.”

 “That is very true. The bad thing is that we don’t have the slightest shadow of a clue to what it is, where it could be and how in the world we could get to it! Damn!”

 Jack replied: “When you find him you can kill him with ease, you know, noclip on, godmode on, killaura on, you are unstoppable then. Hopefully.“

 “Who knows…” Muttered Andreas and then shouted over his back: “Hey, Bob, Jonathan! Get up, we are going on a Fire hunt!” He ended the call.

 Jack had mixed feelings about Fire’s escape, it would certainly be bad for the hacker group if he somehow managed to get them off the server, which was very unlikely, but possible. The other side was that he wouldn’t be assigned boring guard shifts, now he had something else to do. He turned on the screens to the left and right of his middle screen. He had decompiled the code that the admins had written, it made absolutely no sense to him because of its immense complexity, Jack hadn’t had any luck with finding out anything useful because he didn’t have a point to start from. Until now.

 Now he knew that Fire had to do something with this escape route that the admins had built in, he opened his browser on his right screen to find out Fire’s UUID because it would be just too easy if his name would be directly in the code, that and it would be unreliable. A few minutes later he had the UUID and let his computer search for it in the files, the progress bar started slowly creeping towards the right but it wouldn’t be done any time soon.

 He put Fire’s player data on his middle screen, maybe he could find out something from that. After staring at the numbers for a minute, he looked over to the search bar, it had only moved three pixels. He looked back at the player data: X, Y and Z velocity, health level, hunger level and so on, most didn’t work properly, the velocities were among the few that did. Fire’s Y velocity was significantly higher than the other ones.

 “Hmm, he could be climbing a ladder but I doubt that any ladder is that tall…”

 Then he knew it, Fire was in fact climbing, but not a ladder. He was climbing a mountain. Jack brought up the server map and looked for places over five hundred meters above sea level, he found about four hundred matching mountains and a strange tower on top of such a mountain, not exactly an accurate clue.

 He looked into Fire’s inventory and saw some strange things. “Bottled fire, active blaze core, whatever that is, empty bottles, blaze rods, diamond pickaxes, water buckets, bags… beef? That proves, that he has been to the Nether…”

 Then he had another idea, he looked for obsidian near regions over five hundred blocks, which cut the number of mountains down to about fifty.

 “Getting there…” He commented.

 He looked into the inventory of the other runaways, the stuff that he found there was no different form Fire’s inventory, only that it was missing the strange stuff like bottled fire or blaze cores.

 “Damn it, that isn’t going anywhere!” He shouted at the screen and looked over to his search, which was about one tenth done.

 He thought about how far you could reasonably go with Nether travel. He limited the search to something he thought was the maximum distance. Fire alone might have gone further but he had four others in tow who would significantly slow him down.
Only a single mountain showed up.

 “Bam! In your face!” He shouted.

 The mountain he had found was one with a large glacier on it that was still reasonably close to the desert. He closed down the map and sent a message to all members of the hacker group: “Look for them in a two thousand block radius of the mountain with the glacier, exact location is attached.”

 After having found out about where they were, he decided to eat and drink something proper.

 ***

 About half an hour later he went back to his computer, the search was done but it had five results, three of them were in a giant string of numbers and symbols, which was maybe for distraction or served some other obscure purpose, Jack wasn’t sure, maybe he simply used the wrong encoding when opening those files. The other two were more promising, he couldn’t exactly understand what was coded there but it was none of the admins’ obscure code, this code was closer to Minecraft, it was about keeping people out of the server, basically a custom banning function. There was also a bit that he assumed to stop most changes to the server files themselves.

 “What could that be?” He asked himself. “Very strange, maybe if Fire or some other people are on the server, we can’t take over fully, which explains our fruitless attempts… The other thing could be this escape thing, removing keeping someone from the server that sounds like a good method to get rid of us… I need to tell Q about that when he gets out of the server, he has been in there for a very long now.”

 He turned off his screens and stood up, very satisfied with his results, going towards the bathroom.

 He said to himself: “I have done enough finding stuff out for the time, they will survive without me for a bit. I need a bath.”

 Fire noticed the cold around him, they were standing in the middle of a giant glacier, the portal was standing on an elevated carved stone platform, which was strangely free of snow.

 Fire knew that the hackers would know where he was, or at least that they would know the area he was in. Without doubt, the best place to hide was the Nether since a map was not readily available. He had just exited this safe house to walk the rest of the distance in the Overworld. The portal he just walked out of was the one with the most direct path to his base. If he had a portal directly in his base or close by, anyone could just walk in from the Nether or at least dramatically limit the area where his base could be. Fire aborted his train of thought when he saw that his friends had all exited the portal.

 “So, where are we?” TehLulz asked.

 “Good question…” Unchosen agreed.

 He wrapped his hands around himself, his leaves didn’t offer any protection from the cold.

 “Here take those, they are made from nether wool, they will keep you warm.” Fire said.

 He handed them four sets of snow clothes, which were kept in white and blue tones.

 Fire said: “See, everything is planned. Almost everything, the attack on you was not planned Ambigious.”

 “It better not have been planned.” Ambigious said while pulling the jacket over his head.

 A few minutes later everyone except Fire had put on their clothes, Fire didn’t need extra clothing, his scales were not only good at keeping heat out but also at keeping it in, the degree of protection to cold was less than to heat but it was enough that Fire didn’t need to put his set of clothes on yet.

 “Everybody ready?” Fire asked. He got four positive answers, he then said: “You go first, go towards that mountain, I’ll keep an eye out for anything.”

 Ambigious walked off the platform and down the stairs, the others followed.

 “Be careful not to fall, the snow is deep here.” Fire warned.

 It was just in time to keep Ambigious from jumping down the last few steps, instead he carefully walked down the stairs and instantly sunk into the snow up to his knees. He started walking towards the giant mountain range covered in ice and snow that was ahead of them.

 Unchosen was the last one before Fire, he said to himself: “From one extreme to another, first slavery, then Nether, now ice. When will we finally do something a bit more relaxing?”

 “At my base, Unchosen, at my base. When we arrive you will get all the relaxation you want, at least when we are not training.” Fire ensured.

 “Training what?” Unchosen wanted to know.

 “Right, haven’t told you about that.”

 “No, you haven’t.”

 “To be able to fight what we will certainly have to fight you four will have to practice the art of battle and also some other things. You all will have to specialize in either smithing, enchanting or brewing. There will also be a general combat training for all of you. TehLulz will do enchanting, I have no idea what freeZe or Ambigious want.”

 “Hmm, brewing sounds interesting…” Unchosen replied and scratched his chin through his leaves.

 “And for combat? What would you think suits you?”

 “Archery I think, I own a bow in real life but I haven’t got any good practice lately. Tell me more about brewing though, I suppose that it is harder than in normal Minecraft.”

 “I wouldn’t say harder, more complex would fit better. You can still make the basic potions easily. But if you really want good or interesting potions, then it gets difficult.”

 “Difficult potions like what?”

 “You can brew potions that make you basically invincible, potions that change your voice like you saw Brad use in the arena, that and much more. Poisons with various effects and more importantly antidotes with which you can counteract those poisons. Your possibilities are limitless, each time when I think I discovered all the potion effects, I stumble upon something else like a new ingredient, the blaze core is the best example for that.”

 “How does brewing work here exactly?”

 “First you need a good base potion, you can use nether wart as base but also the moss from mossy cobble. Different bases are good for different types of potions. For example, if you take the mob puppet out of a mob spawner and dissolve it in acid, you have a perfect base for harmful potions but you won’t have any success when you try to make a healing potion from that base. In general, the better a base is the more potent the resulting potion is. For example, if you just use just use water with bone meal as a base, you will get a weak damage potion. When you use spawner essence you get a potion that can pretty much instantly kill most creatures.”

 “That sounds like proper alchemy. What was the hardest potion that you have ever brewed?”

 There was no trace of exhaustion in Unchosen’s voice anymore and a shine had entered his eyes. Fire noticed that and smiled, he was sure that Unchosen would make an excellent alchemist once he actually got his hands on the correct equipment and ingredients.

 “The hardest potion? Let me think… There are actually two, one that was the hardest to figure out and the other one was the hardest to brew. The hardest one to figure out was definitely the Hypermobility Potion, gives you the ability to walk over water or straight up walls. It generally lets you say ‘screw you’ to some laws of physics, the more potent variants let you swim in air. The hardest one to brew was that potion I told you about, the Ultimate Base Potion, the timings for certain ingredients were very delicate and I constantly needed to keep the temperature in check.”

 “So, you made one of the artefacts we need for the Ban Hammer? Where is it?” Unchosen said, a little confused.

 “In my base, so that cuts down the number of artefacts we need to find to... less, I don’t know myself how many we need. The potion is not complete, it is just in a form where it won’t degenerate. There is one ingredient missing, the Ender Dragon Egg, which we cannot open, except with the Axe of Eric the Viking, which is another one of the artefacts. The Axe currently located in the city of Rockhaven. Those two artefacts are relatively easy to get because I know where they are but I am more concerned about those I don’t know about, the admins had a good reason not to tell me what awaits us.”

 Before Unchosen could answer anything Ambigious called Fire: “Hey, Fire! We might have a slight problem here, come over here!”

 Fire ran forward to Ambigious, who had crouched down in the snow on top of a small hill, which was in front of a valley. In the valley was the last person they would expect and like to see there: The Shop Guy in full iron armor armed with a bow and an iron sword.

 “He hasn’t noticed us yet.” Ambigious whispered.

 “He seems to be looking for something…” freeZe assumed.

 “Or someone.” TehLulz added.

 Fire said: “He is looking for me. He somehow found out that I am here somewhere, probably still has some information from the other hackers.”

 “And what are you going to do now?” Unchosen asked.

 “I’ll kill him again if I must but I prefer bloodless methods, much harder to track.”

 “Which won’t work on him I think…” freeZe muttered.

 “Fire…” Ambigious begun and stopped as he saw that Fire wasn’t next to him anymore, he neither was in the valley.

 “Damn it, how can he disappear like that?” He complained and then explained to Unchosen: “He did that all the time before you and TehLulz were there. Disappears, just to turn up a few minutes later, no idea how he does that.”

 Meanwhile the Shop Guy had put down a few logs and lit them with a flint and steel, forming a campfire and sat down next to it, facing them but not noticing that they were there.

 “Maybe he isn’t looking for Fire, maybe he is just travelling through here?” freeZe suspected.

 Ambigious replied angrily: “Nope, he’s definitely out for Fire’s blood, probably for ours too. If I had a decent weapon and some armor, I would go and fight him myself.”

 They sat there for about five more minutes as Fire showed up as unexpectedly as he disappeared.

 Fire said: “Okay, just needed to take care of some things, let’s ask our Shop Guy, what he is doing here.”

 “Won’t he just attack us, with his bow, you know?” TehLulz worried but then added: “But I should really get moving, my feet are getting cold.”

 Fire nodded and took his ghast bone bow from his back.

 He stood up and shouted down into the valley: “Who have we here? What are you doing in this place?”

 He immediately got a slightly agitated answer. “I should rather ask you what you are doing here.”

 As he saw freeZe, Ambigious, TehLulz and Unchosen he laughed and said: “And I see, you got your companions with you, time for you all to die!”

 With these words he reached back to his quiver, took an arrow out and pulled back the string and released the arrow right into Unchosen’s chest. With the only difference being that there was no arrow.

 “What?”

 He reached back once again and felt for more arrows but didn’t find any.

 “Where the hell are my arrows?” He asked himself.

 Fire held up a good twenty arrows and shouted: “Here!”

 The rest of the group looked at Fire.

 It took a few moments for the Shop Guy to process what had happened, then he got his sword out and ran up the hill where they were standing. It would have looked a lot more threatening if he hadn’t been wading through knee-deep snow.

 Fire dropped all arrows except one and put it on the blood red string of his black ghast bone bow, while pulling it back, he said: “Okay, TehLulz, watch and learn.”

 TehLulz looked at Fire strangely but said nothing. As Fire had pulled the string all the way back, he suddenly made a strange sound and a red flash of light came from the tip of the arrow.

 The arrow cut through the air and left a trail of red light behind it like a shooting star, as it hit the Shop Guy… nothing happened.

 He stopped and laughed, triumph on his face. “Light arrows are useless against me!”

 He quickly stopped laughing as he noticed that all of his armor had shattered into small metal shards and was falling off of him while he was talking. The expression on his face changed from triumph to anger, from anger to realization and from there to terror. He tried running away but as he turned around something hit his head and shattered, he felt his body going numb and lost control over his limbs.

 The Shop Guy fell to the ground as if all his bones had liquefied, his tongue was hanging out of his mouth, his eyes were closed. All around him were shards of metal and glass.

 “That was impressive.” TehLulz said and gave Fire thumbs up.

 freeZe asked: “What exactly was that light arrow? You said that there was no magic on the bow.”

 Fire knelt down and showed them the runes on the bow.

 He asked: “TehLulz, some of those might look familiar, right?”

 TehLulz muttered: “Yeah, this one I recognize, that one too… and oh, this one was one of the big ones…”

 “Yes, you know what I did? I put a protection rune on the arrow, in this case it is a very strong protective symbol, the strongest I know of.”

 freeZe interrupted: “Why would you put protection on an arrow?”

 Fire explained: “The second rune is a reversing symbol, so the entire enchantment means ‘damage’ or ‘shatter’, I couldn’t use the regular damage rune, that one only works on living things while protection applies to armor and so does its inverted form, so it’s an anti-armor arrow.”

 “What the hell are you even talking about?” Ambigious asked, who had checked if the Shop Guy was dead or just immobilized.

 TehLulz answered: “Enchanting.”

 Fire whispered: “Listen now, this is important. We will go down to the fire and talk a bit, don’t question anything I say, there will be some lies because I know for sure that the Shop Guy will run straight to the hackers and tell them what I said. And do not mention my sister, the Wither cultists or Brad unless I do.”

 He went down to the fire, picking up the Shop Guy on the way, who was hanging down like a wet rope. Fire put him down near the fire, which was already getting weaker.

 Fire started: “So, let’s discuss our further plans, don’t worry, he can’t hear us.”

 freeZe played along, sat down and replied: “Good idea, where will we head next?”

 “We will climb over the left side of this mountain, after leaving the snowy area there is a very dense jungle, which is where I hid another Nether portal. We needed to take the Overworld route because we need to avoid a sea of lava, which we couldn’t go through without more Fire Resistance. We will go through the portal and follow the tunnel there until we hit a large cavern. In this cavern there are some supplies.”

 The others had sat down at the campfire.

 Ambigious asked: “Where will we go after that?”

 Fire answered: “I can’t tell you that yet but I have left a map in the cavern, which is where the approximate location of my base is noted, encoded of course, the map won’t make any sense to someone who doesn’t know how to read it.”

 “That is good. I hope that we will be at your base soon after all that heat and cold…” TehLulz said, he was struggling to keep a straight face but managed to do so.

 “What about this guy here?” freeZe asked and pointed at the Shop Guy “What kind of potion was that?”

 “It relaxes all motor muscles and disables the senses, you are awake but you see, feel, taste, smell and hear nothing.” Fire explained.

 About an hour later the fire had burnt down completely and they decided to start walking again. Fire took the lead until they reached the first steep hill, then he told the others to go ahead. Ambigious went first, then TehLulz, then freeZe and then Unchosen.

 “Wait!” Fire shouted up to Ambigious.

 “What?” Came the answer back down.

 “Take a pickaxe!”

 “Why?”

 “Use it to make holes for us to step in.”

 He climbed up to Ambigious who was a fair bit ahead.

 Fire handed him a diamond pickaxe and also gave the others one when came back down.

 “If someone loses their grip, just yell and I’ll keep myself ready to catch you.” He promised.

 freeZe mumbled: “That sounds very convincing…”

 Fire answered: “I didn’t just hear that.”

 Meanwhile Ambigious had already started climbing, it wasn’t steep enough to require a pickaxe to make holes in the ice but further ahead they could see part which was almost straight up.

 ***

 They were already a few hundred meters higher when Ambigious complained: “Fire, my arms and feet hurt, it is not easy to make all these holes for you all!”

 “We can’t take a break right now, look at the sky!” Unchosen yelled.

 Half of the sky was covered in thin white clouds, the sun was still shining on the mountain but at the horizon there were big black clouds coming towards them.

 Fire commented: “That doesn’t look very good.”

 Ambigious asked: “Hey, TehLulz, could you do this instead of me now, if I keep going I will fall off this mountain.”

 “Just wait for us to catch up, then I’ll take over.”

 “Thanks man.”

 “No problem.”

 freeZe looked at the sky and said: “Actually, this is the first time that I saw weather change here, they really made that realistic.”

 “Most of the environment actually isn’t manually coded, the server used the collective experiences of the first players as a baseline and improves the simulation with each new player.” Fire explained.

 TehLulz had arrived where Ambigious was. Ambigious climbed back down, he had already packed his pickaxe into his inventory.

 Not much time had passed until it started snowing and storming, everybody was freezing and even Fire had put on his warm clothes.

 Unchosen said: “It is so cold…”

 Fire looked up and mumbled: “The sky is as black as the night, the wind is too strong to keep on climbing.”

 He yelled upwards: “TehLulz! You can stop now, everybody else wait together!” After these words Fire climbed up to TehLulz using his claws.

 Fire swept away some snow and started punching the ice until he hit stone. Then he took his diamond pickaxe and dug a short tunnel followed by a circular room large enough for them to fit in, he sat down leaning against the wall and waited for the others to come in.

 Fire put down a block of wood in the middle of the room and looked for his flint and steel. He smashed the piece of iron and the flint together but no sparks appeared.

 “The flint must have gotten wet.” Fire said.

 “What now?” freeZe asked.

 Fire sighed and without answering opened his inventory, taking out the blaze core. He held it in both hands and pointed it towards the log. Fire concentrated and felt how his life force was flowing from his body to the blaze core. It was not a high life force requirement but he still felt it. Inside the core sparks started collecting, fueled by Fire’s energy, condensing towards the center and forming a small sphere. When Fire felt how the core started vibrating and heating up in his hands, he stopped the energy flow. The sphere in the core was not held in place anymore. The sphere exploded, creating a bright flash of light. A small ray of energy came out of the core pointing at the wood. At first it was small but it got as thick as a finger within a second, then disappeared as fast as it had come. At first nothing happened but then the wood was set ablaze.

 “So, why didn’t you use this thing in the first place?” Ambigious asked.

 Fire packed the core into his inventory and answered, a little exhausted: “The blaze core drains life force and not very little if I may add that. This core is capable of setting a huge forest on fire and ripping a crater into its center but I’m not capable of using this thing’s full potential, I will be just using it for brewing after making it grow.”

 “Who is capable?” freeZe wanted to know.

 “Mages.” Fire answered. “Only a fraction of the population is capable of being mages though.”

 “Where do they live?” freeZe wanted to know.

 “Some of them are hermits, you usually won’t meet those. A lot of them live some in bigger towns and take care of building huge buildings with creatures they create from solid matter and magic, call them golems if you want.”

 “Like in the Thaumcraft mod, huh?” TehLulz asked.

 “Some of the creatures do look like Thaumcraft golems but that is up to their creators. I have seen entire mountains growing arms and legs and standing up to help flatten out a huge area. There were multiple mages involved, I no normal mage is capable of commanding an entire mountain on their own.”

 “That is amazing.” freeZe said.

 The fire had burned down halfway, they hadn’t talked much since then.

 Ambigious broke the silence: “Fire, how did you steal those arrows from the guy?”

 Fire smirked. “I dug into the ground a few meters behind you, it is pretty easy to dig through snow.”

 “Oooh!” Said Ambigious “That’s where you went!”

 “Exactly. After digging under where he was standing, I made a small hole into the snow and cut his quiver. I was pretty lucky that he didn’t notice me, I would just have killed him but giving him false information was way better.”

 “Was meeting the guy planned?” Unchosen asked after a small pause.

 Fire answered: “Not exactly planned but anticipated. Not him specifically either but in general someone who would try to kill us. That is why I told Brad to make me those potions.”

 freeZe looked at Fire and asked him: “You could have easily escaped without us, why didn’t you?”

 Fire returned her look and said: “Because I need you four, the Ban Hammer can’t be created by a single person.”

 She asked another question: “When did you plan all this?”

 “I started as soon as I knew that the hackers had taken over. Also, did you think that you and Ambigious were the first to spawn in my area? You were only the first ones who weren’t exactly scared of me, one of the qualities needed to beat the challenges up ahead is being pretty fearless.”

 Ambigious smiled. “Hah, and I thought we were just some random people who are accidentally part of your master plan.”

 Fire looked at the flames and replied: “Up to some degree you are, but up to some degree we all are also legendary heroes on a mission to save the world. Don’t let that go to your head though.”

 After saying that Fire put another block of wood down, this time a bit further from the burning piece. He extended the claws on all fingers of his right hand except for the thumb and cut the wood into sticks, throwing them into the flames, where they started burning and crackling, heating the room up again.

 “We should get some sleep now, tomorrow will be a hard day. Night.” He said and laid down.

 “Night Fire.” Unchosen said and did the same, so did the others.

 As usual, Fire was the first one to wake up. He noticed that the fire was still burning so not much time could have passed. He felt relaxed and full of fresh energy, which was probably a side effect of his body having regenerated its life force after using the core. Fire sat up and waited for the others to wake up. Meanwhile, he thought about his plan, his real plan, not the fake plan he had told in the Shop Guy’s presence. After climbing the mountain they would climb down the other side into a dense forest with a valley in it, from the outside it was not visible as it was grown over by trees and vines. Through the valley they would reach a swamp. After having that crossed, they would reach the jungle that his base was located in.

 It sounded easy but it certainly was not, in the valley there was an unusually high amount of monsters because of the permanent darkness, he especially was concerned about the creepers since they could kill any of them instantly. The valley was unavoidable because the forest was surrounded by mountains and the valley was the quickest way. The swamp also was dangerous because of the slimes. The jungle was full of poisonous and carnivorous plants, not the small ones that caught flies, the big ones that could eat a human alive, in one bite. Fire sighed and leaned back against the wall, they would get there soon enough.

 Fire noticed a movement at the edge of his vision and turned his head in the direction, freeZe had woken up.

 “Had a good sleep?” Fire asked.

 She yawned and replied: “As good of a sleep as I can have on bare rock.”

 “The tents in the quarry weren’t much softer either.”

 “But they were softer.”

 “True.”

 “How about you, Fire?”

 “My sleep was good, this scaled skin works wonders when sleeping on hard ground.” Fire threw a few more sticks into the flames.

 freeZe requested: “Tell me more about those mages or about magic, that sounded really interesting yesterday. Or was it today? I don’t know.”

 Fire promptly started explaining: “At first you need to know where magic comes from. Living things have some innate amount of life force that refills over time after being used, it can also be stored in things like enchanted gems. There is also a varying amount of energy in the environment itself, which creatures use to refill their own reserves. Mages can use their life force to cast spells.”

 “So, basically the thing you did with the blaze core? But you said that you are no mage.”

 “To cast you don’t need to be a mage, all you need is training and life force. My life force is much lower than that of a mage of course.”

 freeZe asked: “So, everybody has a different amount of life force?”

 Fire explained: “Yes. Mages have drastically higher life forces than average people, the amount of life force needed to be a proper mage starts at roughly a hundred times the average, though it can go a lot higher than that. Not all mages can cast the same spells, though. Their range of spells depends on their elemental affinities.”

 “What do you mean by elemental?” freeZe wanted to know.

 Fire said: “While fundamentally all magic is the same energy, this energy comes in ‘flavors’ called elements. The ability to convert your life force into a certain element is called an affinity, so unless you have an affinity for say Earth magic, you won’t be able to cast Earth spells. The strength of the affinity determines how much energy you get for your life force.”

 “So… elements as in the four elements?”

 “There are actually eight but something of the sort, yes. There are the eight elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Life, Wither, Ender and Void. Outside of spells and elemental creatures the elements don’t exist in the wild, you just have a general background energy field.”

 Fire answered freeZe’s question before she could even ask it: “Elemental creatures have of one or multiple magical elements instead of life force. Blazes are a good example for creatures of Fire. Their intelligence and power largely depends on the amount of energy they have in their bodies.”

 “Wow, that is amazing.” She said, then looked at Fire and asked: “What about you then? You clearly aren’t entirely human.”

 Fire chuckled and replied: “I am human, by most definitions. The total energy inside me is slightly above average but half of it is raw life force and the other half is Fire elemental energy, so I have far less actual life force than average humans.”

 “So, going by what you said, if I were a mage I would be able to use the blaze core, right?”

 Fire once again took the blaze core from his inventory and said: “Yes. Be careful though, I don’t want you to lose your whole energy, I can’t carry you up the mountain. It is hard to explain how to do it. You know some kind of martial art, right?”

 “Yeah, why?”

 “Because the concentration you need is similar. If you are able to activate the core it is a sign that you have enough life force. Oh, and don’t point it at Ambigious.”

 “Oh… oops.” freeZe said and pointed it at the ceiling.

 Fire instructed her: “Alright, concentrate. If you feel the energy flowing, try to cut the flow immediately or drop the core.”

 freeZe took a deep breath and concentrated, suddenly something inside her body began to move. First it moved slowly as if it had to wake up first, then she felt the energy streaming towards the core like drops of water forming inside her and running up on her insides towards the core, every drop becoming a yellow spark inside the core. Fire looked at her with a strange expression on his face but she was too concentrated on the core to notice it. Suddenly, the drops became a steady flow, creating a massive amount of sparks.

 “Stop!” Fire shouted, surprised by the sudden waves of energy passing through him.

 freeZe tried to hold back the energy but it was harder than thought, it was like having opened a floodgate with a lake behind it and the water was preventing the gate from closing. She concentrated even more, her face was distorted into a tense grimace. She couldn’t let go, her hands had cramped around the blaze core. She managed to cut the flow in half but from there on it was very hard to decrease the amount of energy further.

 Fire was starting to worry, he knew what was happening, most people with a high amount of life force had this kind of experience when using a magical artefact the first time but he had never seen it this strong. The core was full of bright yellow sparks with a few orange and red ones. Fire had a way of stopping the flow, it was experimental but he had to try.

 The air in the room was flickering, not from heat but from energy waves passing through the air. Fire took his bow and hummed a very high pitched tone, twisted and turned the bow and finally found what he was looking for. A rune was glowing slightly, it was just a pentagram without any other lines. Fire amplified the tone and the rune started glowing brighter and a duplicate separated from the bow and floated over to the core. freeZe noticed it and lost her concentration for a split second, large amounts of energy streamed into the core before she could hinder it again. The majority of the sparks were now orange and more red ones had formed, yellow ones were almost not present anymore.

 Fire changed the pitch of his tone a little and the rune started to grow.

 He thought: “Come on, just a little more…”

 The rune now was as big as the core and started floating towards it and went into it, suddenly the air stopped flickering, Fire stopped his tone and freeZe dropped the core and collapsed.

 “What in the world just happened?” Ambigious asked.

 Fire hadn’t noticed that the others had woken up but he didn’t care in this moment. The core was floating in mid-air, full of red sparks. The pentagram was inside the core and stopped the sparks from touching its outside, the core was pulsating and shining but no energy came out of it. Fire leaned over to freeZe and felt her pulse, it was still there, pretty powerful too.

 Fire relaxed a bit and spoke to the others: “Ambigious, it seems like your sister is a mage.” Ambigious’ jaw dropped. “She woke up earlier than you and I told her more about magic, she wanted to see how much energy she could mobilize and it seems that it is a lot.”

 Ambigious had closed his mouth again and asked: “And now? She’ll stay alive, right?”

 “Of course, in a bit she will be on her feet again, don’t worry.”

 “I hope sooner rather than later.” he added in thoughts.

 Fire looked over to freeZe and opened his sense for energy, the core was emitting no energy, thanks to his rune. Now they only could wait and see.

 freeZe didn’t wake up in ten minutes, she didn’t wake up in thirty minutes, she didn’t wake up in an hour, not in two hours, not in six hours.

 Fire said: “I am starting to worry.”

 “Only now? I started six hours ago.” Ambigious said angrily.

 Unchosen said: “What can we do? It is still snowing and storming.”

 “I really do not like how this turned out…” TehLulz complained.

 They had been sitting in the little cave Fire dug doing nothing. Fire had gone mining for an hour, only finding a small vein of coal.

 Unchosen looked at Fire and asked him: “How exactly did this happen? You didn’t tell us earlier.”

 Fire cleared his throat and replied: “She managed to activate the core but the pull was too strong and she could not stop the energy flow, she could hinder it but not completely stop it.” He sighed. “It was my fault, I shouldn’t have let her use such a powerful artefact, I am surprised she lived to be honest.”

 “And what about the core now? How did you stop it from eating all of her energy?” TehLulz asked.

 “You remember how I enchanted the core in the Nether, right? The simple activation of the core would be very easy but the hard part was empowering it and lowering the risk when using it.”

 “You didn’t lower it enough.” Ambigious interrupted.

 Fire began talking again: “That is why I used a very complicated ritual, see this pentagram in the core? I put the symbol on it when I saw that she couldn’t handle it. The pentagram is a symbol without a meaning of its own, I had to define what it does in the enchantment.” A few seconds later he added: “Don’t look at me like that Ambigious, she is still alive and she should be back on her feet soon, six hours is enough for her to refill most of her life force.”

 “Good to hear that.” Ambigious answered.

 A surprised look came to his face as freeZe actually moved as if she would have heard him.

 “Hey Fire, talking about that, look who is waking up.” Ambigious said with a smile.

 freeZe moved and opened her eyes, which were not shining as green as usual.

 “Hey, freeZe!” Ambigious said.

 She tried to speak but all that came out were words slurred beyond comprehension.

 TehLulz grinned, so did Unchosen and Fire.

 Ambigious asked: “Huh?”

 She spoke again, more coherently this time but still unintelligible, coughed and then corrected herself: “How long was I asleep?”

 Her voice was still weak but it was clearly just her being sleepy.

 “What happened?” freeZe asked.

 Fire took a deep breath and started explaining: “I was talking to you about magic, remember that?”

 “Kind of…”

 “You wanted to try if you had enough life force to be a mage. You do. The core pulled almost all life force from your body, I was almost too late to shut the core off. See it there?”

 He pointed at the core, which was now floating above the burning wood block.

 “All those red sparks, this is my life force?”

 “Was, it was your life force, now it is magical energy of the Fire element. You can’t get it out of there as long as the rune is active, which will be forever unless someone unlocks it.”

 “What happens to the core now?” Ambigious asked.

 “My sister will have to unlock it in a magical containment field, then we will also be able to tell how much life force freeZe put in there.”

 “Could you unlock it?” freeZe asked.

 “If you want us all to die in an explosion that decapitates this mountain and evaporates the whole glacier… Then yes.”

 “Oh…” freeZe replied “Was it that much?”

 “I don’t know how much exactly is in there but red sparks are usually very powerful, that combined with the enchantments I put on the core, it is pretty devastating.”

 “So, Fire, how much life force did you use to activate it when you were lighting the fire?” Ambigious asked, he still was a little confused, magic wasn’t his thing.

 Fire answered: “It was not really much, just a few grey sparks, they are some of the least powerful ones, even weaker than the yellow ones. The power of sparks increases exponentially as their color gets more intense. Although the measurement of sparks is only used in theoretical research on magic and spell cost calculations, irrelevant to most mages in practice.”

 freeZe lifted an eyebrow, which was only visible by her left eye getting bigger.

 “Sounds like a lot. How didn’t you sense all that energy before?” She asked.

 Fire scratched his head and explained: “You remember what the Wither cultists said, right? They can see how much energy is inside something or someone, I can only sense energy flow and at the time you were in the quarry you didn’t use any magic. The cultists did mention someone having a lot of energy though… I should have caught onto that. In my defense, I was quite hungry when they mentioned it.”

 TehLulz hinted: “As much as I would like to listen to you talking about magic, we should go now, if you can, freeZe.”

 Fire agreed: “He is right. freeZe, can you stand up?”

 “I’ll try.” She said and leaned on her right arm. “Might work…” She added and tried to stand up but fell back down on half the way. “Ouch…”

 Fire sighed and got out Brad’s bag again.

 Unchosen asked: “What potion is it this time?”

 Fire replied: “I made this one myself, I just told Brad to give it to me in the bag.”

 He pulled out a round bottle with a shining golden liquid inside, it seemed to draw the light around it to itself.

 “See how the light collects around it? That is golden apple concentrate, extremely powerful, everybody just gets a drop.”

 They felt energized by the potion and even freeZe could stand up as if nothing had happened. Fire removed the snow in front of the entrance and looked into a dark blue sky.

 It took the Shop Guy five hours to be able move again, he was covered in snow but he didn’t care, he logged out of the server, he had more important things to do and he did not plan on coming back.

 He woke up in his room in front of his laptop, not much time had passed since he logged in. Meeting Fire had not been planned in any way, it just had been a very fortunate coincidence. He stood up and stretched, then sat down again. He started one of the hacker applications he still had, it was the voice chat one. He double clicked a name and waited.

 ***

 Just after Jack had finished taking a bath he heard the signal tone of his voice chat application and moaned: “Who in the world is calling me now? It is almost three in the morning…”

 He walked over to his screens and looked at the name, it was the Shop Guy.

 “I should have activated the remote deletion… But since I didn’t I might as well hear him out.” He pushed a button to pick up the call, he asked: “Why are you calling me?”

 “Because I have information.”

 “And let me guess, you want to be in the hacker team again in exchange for that information.” Jack said.

 The Shop Guy replied: “Hah, I might have issues but I am not stupid, I’ll just give you the info, delete the apps, leave the server and you’ll never hear from me again.”

 “We have an agreement. So, what is it?”

 “I ran into Fire, figured he somehow escaped. He stole my arrows and used some kind of magic arrow to shatter my armor.”

 “Okay… that is somewhat disturbing, him being able to do such things, go on.”

 “I tried running away but he hit me with a splash potion that made me unable to move, it should have disabled my senses too but that somehow didn’t work, so I heard what he said.”

 “That is excellent news, it was something about where they are going, right?” Jack assumed.

 “Exactly, he said that he will climb over the left side of the mountain and then go to a jungle, where another Nether portal is.”

 “Let me check that one real quick…” Jack said and brought up the server map again, he went back to the mountain and there was in fact a jungle near it.

 “Yep, the jungle is there.” He reported.

 Then he searched for obsidian in the jungle and indeed found some, right in the center of the jungle, where a temple was visible from the map’s point of view.

 Jack grinned and said: “You just helped us out a bunch, thank you, any further info?”

 “Oh yes, there is further info.” The Shop Guy said with triumph in his voice

 “Fire said that there is a large Nether cavern with some supplies in it and most importantly, a map with the location of his base, it is encrypted but I am sure you can find out where it is.”

 Jack was surprised and pleased with what he had just heard, he hovered his cursor above the button for the deletion and said: “Thank you for this valuable piece of information, I’ll clear your computer of our apps now, was nice trying to take over a server with you.”

 Both laughed and Jack pushed the button.

 A fire was burning inside Jack now, he had the chance to stop the runaways and ensure the success of their plan, he knew the exact place where the portal was, he only had to go there and wait for them… or find Fire’s base, destroy it and then wait for them. He started up Minecraft and logged into the server. A numb feeling went up his arms and a second later he woke up where he logged out, in the quarry’s processing building. There were players working on polishing diamonds, grinding redstone gems and doing other refinery work. Later down the line there were other players making tools and sharpening swords, it all ran like clockwork. As they noticed Jack logging in, they greeted him and continued with their work. Jack ignored them and noclipped through the ceiling high up into the sky, then he flew towards the glacier with high speed and descended.

 “Here is the first portal…”

 He had spotted a black rectangle in the middle of the white snow. Jack descended a little more and searched the ground for footprints but didn’t find any, a recent storm had covered them with snow.

 “Okay, now for that jungle.”

 He flew up again and over the mountain, there were three different biomes in front of him. There was a very dense forest, a taiga and the jungle he was looking for, he could also see another jungle very far off in the distance behind a swamp. Jack floated down into the trees and started looking for the temple, flying through trees and small hills with his noclip.

 “It has to be here somewhere…” He said to himself and continued searching the jungle.

 About an hour later he found what he was looking for, the jungle temple. With a feeling of triumph he turned off his noclip and walked in through the entrance. He knew about the traps and had already made himself invincible. After passing by several arrow traps he found the portal, it was completely grown over by thick vines and the purple was almost not visible anymore. He spawned himself a diamond axe and cut through the vines, which were almost as hard as wood. He stepped through the portal and found himself in the Nether. He was in a three-by-three corridor, he couldn’t see the end.

 “Let’s see how long it is.” He said and flew along the tunnel with very high speed, passing by confused zombie pigmen.

 The Shop Guy hadn’t lied, there was in fact a huge cavern with a few buildings. He spawned himself a pickaxe and multiplied his strength by ten, then he started hammering down the roofs to see what was inside, mostly chests with potions.

 “Nothing…” he said.

 He then collapsed another building in which he didn’t find anything in. There were only a few left, it had to be in one of them. He got lucky with the next house, it actually had a sign above the door, “Supplies”.

 “Oh.” Jack said, then he descended to the ground and opened the door.

 There were a few chests labelled with signs. “Potions… Armor… Swords… Other… there.” He said while walking along the chests. He opened the chest labelled “Other” and found nothing.

 “What…” He asked himself and realized that the items were not stored in the inventory but physically in the chest itself.

 He opened it and found a piece of paper, he took it out. There was nothing on one side but on the other side there was a drawing, maybe Fire’s map?

 As he looked at the drawing more closely, the mountain formation depicted on the map looked very odd, then he realized that it was a message, there were two big letters on top: “GG” Below there was a tiny text: “You will die in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…”

 “What!” Jack screamed and the last thing he heard before the TNT went off was a jukebox playing the first notes of the golden record.

 He respawned in the room where all the hackers had set their spawn, his whole body was hurting. He first checked his hacks if there was anything against pain, he didn’t find anything.

 “God damn Admins…” He cursed and sat up. “Why didn’t my godmode work?”

 This was a double failure, the first one was that the chest must have been trapped, which meant that Fire had known he would come there. The second failure was that he knew exactly as much as before, it just had been too good to be true. He sat there for five minutes but as the pain didn’t go away, he just logged off.

 Jack slammed his fist on the table in frustration, making the things he had on top of it shake. He opened his communication application and noticed that Q, the head hacker, had logged out of the server and was now available. He instantly double clicked on the button to call him and waited. It took Q ten seconds to pick up the call, he must have been drinking something.

 “What is it Jack?” Q asked with a dry throat.

 “We have some major cluster**** going on!” Jack replied.

 “You only use that word when things are serious.”

 “That is actually a term from military jargon for total failure but that is not important now. We have several problems. We still haven’t found the runaways, we have started a search around their approximate location but no luck with that so far.”

 “And the other things?” Q asked and took another big sip from his bottle.

 “The Shop Guy contacted me again, he still had the app. He told me that he ran into Fire and his companions, Fire threw a potion at him that was supposed to disable all his senses and muscles but the senses part didn’t work, he heard how Fire talked about their travel route.”

 “And what exactly is so bad about that?” Q wanted to know.

 “I went where he told me to go and there was a booby trapped chest which blew me up with about two tons of TNT.” Jack responded.

 “Didn’t you use godmode?”

 “I did but the portal must have reset it, so now we know for a fact that those admins have actually something built in to actively prevent hacking or at least make it harder. By the way, I found something in the code, it is somehow in connection with Fire and it involves removing someone from the server and preventing a takeover, so basically as long as Fire is alive, we can’t take over what so ever.”

 Q replied: “Okay, this is serious, even if it is just a few more days I have to wait out. Something must have gotten out, the police started searching for us, especially for me. Today my hideout almost got found, those cops were standing right on the hatch and I couldn’t lock it because that would have made a sound.”

 “Okay Q, now for the worst part. I doubt that this potion was actually malfunctioning, maybe Fire expected to run into someone and told lies, which would explain the trap at the chest… Essentially, he played us good.” Jack said.

 “So, neither do we don’t have any clue about his travel route nor the location of his base nor do we have any way to kill him quicker but he has a way of removing us from the server so if we don’t find him we will have no chance of getting the code. But if we manage to pass the time until his death undetected by the police and without Fire banning us, we have total control over the server and after that we have all the time in the world to extract the code from the admins or get it ourselves.”

 “True Q but we’ll have to find him first. If you want to hear my opinion on this, he won’t just have a device in his base that can ban anyone, that is just too easy, the admins wouldn’t do that. I would rather think that it would be hidden in a spot where you need to be him to access it.”

 Q didn’t respond at first but a few seconds later he said: “That might actually be true. So our primary worry is the police at the moment. I kicked off the generator I have down here, it is too risky to draw power from the public network from now on, I made sure to hide the old cables as well. I have plenty of canned food and water so I have that.”

 “What about us other members?” Jack asked.

 “You are not at danger currently as the only detected attacks are from my computer, which is down here.” Q replied.

 “So, we are not at danger of the police storming our houses or anything like that?”

 “I am pretty sure that you are safe.”

 “Good.” Jack said and then added: “I’ll be trying to make sense of some of that code, it will be a lot easier now that I have a point to start from, I can’t believe that we didn’t think about that!”

 “I’ll be spending my time sitting in this improvised bunker coordinating, bye.”

 “Bye.” Jack said and closed down the app.

 After reaching the summit everything got easier, the other side of the mountain had many cliffs but the snow was deep enough to safely fall down. They were heading towards the dense forest with the valley. They had already jumped and climbed down half the mountain. The golden apple concentrate was still giving them energy and sharpened their senses.

 “I am still amazed by this potion, Fire. I can see all the way over to the end of this forest, is this how you see?” freeZe asked.

 Fire laughed and replied: “Multiply the effect by five, add infrared and ultraviolet and then you have my vision.”

 “Wow, that’s a lot.”

 “I could see you four sitting at the fire from all the way from my mining place when we were in the quarry, in full detail.”

 “What do you mean?” TehLulz asked.

 “Like every color reflection on Ambigious’ sunglasses or each hair on your heads.” Fire answered.

 They were a few meters away from another twenty-meter drop, Fire stepped towards the snow covered edge and looked down. Down there was snow, as expected, but he didn’t know how deep the snow was and what was below it. He took a cobblestone piece out of his inventory and placed it, broke out a pebble with his claws and threw it down the drop. Absolutely no sound came back up, which meant it was safe.

 “I’ll jump first, then freeZe, then Unchosen, then TehLulz and then Ambigious.” He said.

 The others didn’t question this order because Fire had already explained them that he went first himself because if there was something unexpected, he was more likely to survive it than the others.

 This jump was safe, like every jump before it. Two meters of snow cushioned Fire’s fall, which buried him up to his chest. After getting free he gave the others thumbs up and they also jumped down, Ambigious this time with a back flip.

 “Was that really necessary Ambigious?” freeZe asked.

 He answered: “Yup.”

 After a few minutes of silent walking Unchosen asked: “By the way Ambigious, your name, was writing Ambigious instead of Ambiguous on purpose?”

 “It kinda was, I typed it wrong the first time for some reason but I noticed it. Then I just left it.”

 “I see.” Unchosen answered.

 After walking about a minute, Ambigious asked Unchosen: “What about you? TheUnchosenOne seems to be a name with a story behind it, at least to me.”

 “It indeed has a story behind it, when I was younger I never got lucky with anything, never won at luck based games and generally had circumstances conspire against me.”

 “Sounds depressing…” Ambigious said.

 “It was at first but then it tried to take it with humor and actively embraced my lack of luck. As soon as I did that the bad things didn’t seem as bad because I was expecting them. Over time I learned how to be one step ahead of the misfortune.” Unchosen explained.

 “That is a good way of going about it.” Ambigious said.

 “Yeah, once I got online choosing my handle was pretty straight forward.” Unchosen said.

 “What are you two needing so much time for?” They heard freeZe call and noticed they were twenty meters behind the others.

 “Nope!” Ambigious shouted and sprinted towards his sister, before she knew what was going on, Ambigious had tackled her into the snow.

 freeZe got up and said: “Not funny.” TehLulz started laughing.

 “But it is funny.” He said and got hit in the face by a snowball, which again made Ambigious and Unchosen burst into laughter.

 TehLulz wiped the snow from his face and grinned. “Worth it.”

 “You also want one?” freeZe asked while getting up.

 “No…” Unchosen said.

 Ambigious grinned “I would say no but I know you will shoot me either way.”

 “Try it.” Fire said with a smile.

 “Challenge accepted.” freeZe said while making two more snowballs.

 She threw the first one towards Ambigious, hitting him in the chest, which didn’t do anything because of his jacket. freeZe moaned and turned around towards Fire, who was not wearing the warming nether wool clothes, only his ruined coat and pants. She threw her snowball.

 Fire saw the snowball coming towards him, slowing down gradually. He leaned to the side, which made the snowball miss his left ear by a tiny bit. He could have just gone back to his normal position but Fire wanted to pull off a little show, part for fun and part to practice projectile management again. Combat was inevitably ahead of them so getting back into the groove was good.

 Catching projectiles was important in a lot of situations, it prevented the projectile from harming anything behind him and at the same time tended to intimidate the one who had shot the projectile in the first place. This tactic had saved Fire a lot of unnecessary talking multiple times.

 He turned around while still in the slow motion state and grabbed the snowball with his right hand, slowing it down by finishing the rotation. The same moment he came to a stop the slow motion state wore off, Fire smiled and dropped the snowball, then turned around and started walking again as if nothing happened.

 “Are you four coming? We have to reach the forest before night falls.”

 ***

 It was evening when they arrived in the forest, they were all somewhat tired from the climb down the mountain and Fire was looking for a good place to sleep. They had taken off their jackets and the rest of the nether wool clothes.

 “It is amazing how the trees look like real trees. How everything just looks like in real life.” freeZe said.

 Fire answered: “You’ll see a lot more trees now that we’re out of the desert. Talking of trees, this one over there seems to be suitable. Follow me.”

 Fire walked towards a large tree with lots of branches, it was a good twenty meters high and pretty much as wide. Fire extended his claws but not all the way, he used them to climb up the tree like a cat. When he arrived in the middle, he looked around, the tree was in fact very suitable, suitable for sleeping.

 Fire bent some branches with leaves to form some kind of hammock, he repeated the process four more times and then called the others. There was almost no light left, almost absolute darkness for normal eyes but for Fire it was still pretty bright. He jumped down and formed a bowl with his hands.

 “I’ll help you up, step on my hands and I’ll lift you.” He said.

 Ambigious stepped on Fire’s hands first and supported himself on the tree as Fire lifted him up.

 “Wow, it looks amazing up here! freeZe, you’ve got to see this!” Ambigious said.
freeZe got lifted up next, then Unchosen and then TehLulz, Fire climbed up last. Everyone chose a leaf hammock. Shortly after laying down he got up again and took the blaze core out of his inventory.

 “Isn’t that a bad idea? Blaze core and forest?” Ambigious asked.

 Fire explained: “As long as it is sealed it won’t burn anything, it gives off light though, a little bit of light could be good, it will become much darker than this. Nights here are very dark because there is no electrical lighting or cities nearby. Or hacker operated ore processing buildings.”

 With these words he put the core on a splitting branch where it started emitting light, not enough to see it from the outside of the tree but enough to illuminate the inside with a soft yellow and orange light.

 “Isn’t it available in different colors?” Ambigious asked jokingly.

 Fire chuckled and asked: “Why?”

 “Because freeZe” Ambigious nodded towards his sister “gets all romantic in this kind of light.”

 “No, I don’t!” She replied angrily.

 TehLulz, whispered to Unchosen: “And the old game starts again.”

 Unchosen replied: “I know right.”

 Fire asked Ambigious: “What exactly do you mean when you say romantic?”

 freeZe answered instead of Ambigious, this time louder: “Come one guys, do you really have to do this now?”

 “Yes.” Ambigious answered and then explained: “Not exactly romantic, but… well, sentimental.”

 TehLulz, who was at the other side of the tree, asked: “And what exactly is so bad about that?”

 “She will kick me off the tree when I say any more, sorry.” Ambigious replied grinning.

 “You can bet on that!” freeZe said, still a bit angry but you could hear, that she was thankful for Ambigious not saying more.

 Unchosen and TehLulz were on the other side of the tree, which was a little away from the others.

 “What is he talking about?” Unchosen wanted to know as he saw TehLulz grinning.

 He whispered to Unchosen: “Fire and you are the only ones that he hasn’t directly told, Ambigious had to tell me after he lost a bet, it is really no big thing but freeZe does not want anyone to know about it, no idea why.”

 “What is it?” Unchosen whispered back.

 “You might have noticed some jokes about freeZe that Ambigious tells sometimes.”

 “What about them?”

 “They have two main subjects, the first is freeZe being hard to get.”

 “I know what you mean.”

 “Yeah, and the other one is” he had to stop himself from laughing out loud and started to grin “freeZe having a crush on Fire. Fire never said anything about the jokes.”

 “I have noticed Ambigious telling them, he just told one before but now I understand.”

 “And about what Ambigious isn’t allowed to tell… no, I won’t tell you. Yet. You will find out eventually. Or not, it’s not that big of a deal.”

 They were interrupted by Fire telling them to go to sleep: “Tomorrow will be a hard day, we will most likely have to fight our first monsters in that valley, better get some sleep.” Everybody nodded and laid down.

 I could feel the Void wearing down on my magic heavily, I was in was in the deepest reaches of Drandin’s mines, all but the most powerful magic was drowned out here. The room was plain, no engravings decorated the dark stone walls. The room itself was circular and empty, the only remarkable thing was a round stone altar in its center. The altar had trenches in it, leading to its center into a hole. Traces of old blood were on the altar, which had stuck to the rock despite efforts to clean them off.

 I was not alone, several other people were here with me. They were enchanters, mages and an alchemist. The seven mages were all human, one of the enchanters was an Air Mencur-Besh, the alchemist was my brother Fire. Fire was holding a flask with a potion, the Air Mencur-Besh held a knife made from silver.

 After taking a deep breath I walked to the center of the room and laid down on the altar. I was nervous, nervous was an understatement, I was on the verge of panic. I had seen several ascensions and none of them had turned out well and now they would attempt it on me.

 The first few just died from the potion itself, which had been purely experimental at that point. Others couldn’t handle the magic being infused into them, they had crumbled to dust. They had experimented with blood from Mencur-Besh of different elements for the potion, none of it had worked. The only blood that seemed to influence the process was that of a Wither Mencur-Besh. Both of the subjects had survived but instead of fading, the runes on their skin pulsated black. The second one of those two had been a complete stranger to the Eye-and-Claws, it had been more a desperate attempt to see if the mark itself interfered with the ascension. Now they were just hoping to find a combination of circumstances that would lead to success.

 The more I thought about the past failures of the Ascension Project, the less I wanted to stay on this altar but I knew that it was now too late to back down.

 Fire came over to me and gave me the flask without a word. The potion had a dark color, red streaks swirled around inside as if they refused to mix with the rest of the potion, Fire’s blood.

 I put the flask to my lips and drank, the potion tasted absolutely disgusting, I suppressed my urge to vomit and forced it all down, then I dropped the flask. I knew what the potion did, I had seen it in effect enough times already. At first it would paralyze my body for the safety of everyone in the room, then it would drain all of my life force. This would normally result in death but the main function of the potion was to keep me alive no matter what happened. While I thought about the potion I could already feel myself losing control of my limbs. There was no numbness, just loss of control. First my fingers and toes went stiff, followed by my arms, legs and everything else, my eyes stayed wide open. I was used to this, this hadn’t been the first time I had been immobilized. However, nothing could have prepared me for feeling my own heart stop, I stopped trying to suppress my panic, I would have screamed if I had any control over my body. After my heart stopped, I could feel my life force slowly draining. I should have been dead, the only thing that was keeping me alive was the potion.

 This was the point of no return.

 The Ender mage cast a spell that lifted me up into the air, the yellow-eyed Mencur-Besh enchanter stepped closer, raising her knife. I knew her, her name was Gust, she usually worked in the mine and also enchanted tools for herself and the other workers.

 The knife was made from silver and was enchanted itself, which wasn’t possible due under normal circumstances due to the very nature of silver, but the Eye-and-Claws enchanters had managed to do so anyways.

 That knife was now used to carve a rune deeply into my upper arm, just below my shoulder. The pain shot through my whole right side, I heard my blood drip onto the altar below in the absolute silence of the room. Without hesitation Gust carved a crescent shape into my flesh, followed by lines connecting to it. Immediately after she was done with the first rune, she started another one just a little further down. I perceived all of this with a strange clarity, the panic had disappeared, the pain drowned out any thought.

 Gust worked quickly and efficiently, the knife cut through muscles and sinews and not once got stuck. I felt more of my blood leave my body, very slowly since my heart wasn’t beating anymore. Gust turned my floating body around to access other parts of my skin, while I looked down I could see just how much blood I was losing, it was all slowly flowing down the trenches carved into the rock and disappeared into the hole in the middle of the altar. I knew that there was a bottle below to collect it, the blood of powerful mages was a valuable resource to alchemists.

 Even with Gust’s speed it still took over an hour to finish the carving, about halfway through, the blood had stopped flowing. Now every bit of my skin was covered in rune shaped cuts. I braced myself, I knew that the carving was the least painful of the steps.

 Gust put the knife away, the other four enchanters stepped forward and surrounded the altar. The enchanters held stone tablets which had the same runes engraved in them that Gust had carved into my skin.

 The enchanters began by gently humming, soon each hum split into many, the runes on the tablets started glowing white and duplicates floated upwards. They spent the next few minutes coaxing the runes in position above their carved counterparts with the same quiet hums. Once every rune was where it belonged, the enchanters’ voices began to rise. The sudden force of their combined voices hit me painfully. The runes slowly descended into the cuts in my flesh, as they touched my skin a burning, yet cold feeling radiated from the cuts outwards, much worse than the knife. I heard sizzling sounds as the runes fused themselves into my flesh but I smelled no burning.

 Living matter outright refused to be enchanted and rejected any runes, only dead things could be enchanted. I, however was neither entirely alive nor entirely dead, my body did accept the runes but only very slowly and painfully. While fighting against the pain I sincerely hoped that none of the enchanters’ voices would slip like I had seen once, it would go unnoticed until the final step but then the result hadn’t been pretty. The image of a body torn apart by uncontained magic flashed before my mental eye. It was my own spell that had shielded everybody else in the room back then.

 After what seemed like a very long time, the burning stopped, the runes were where they belonged, still glowing brightly. The cuts were still there, the runes had just occupied the gaps.

 The enchanters stepped back, the mages forward. I didn’t know their names but I knew that each of them only had one element at their disposal and that they were among best in their respective element. Their physical appearance greatly reflected their alignment, few of those changes were voluntary, some elements permanently affect their casters over the long term. Most mages only showed slight changes but the mages here had intensely practiced magic for over a millennium.

 The first two mages to channel their energy into me were the Fire and Water mages. The Fire mage’s red hair and eyes stood in an intense contrast to the Water mage’s bright hair and deep blue eyes. The opposing elements collided inside my body, I could feel both the burning and destructive energy of Fire and the gentle yet firm altering Water magic. The opposing forces had stabilized, Air and Earth were next. Again, their casters stood in an intense contrast, the Earth mage had a strong, bulky physique while the Air mage looked elegant and slender. The crackling force of Air collided with the fortifying Earth magic.

 Now that the four primal elements had reached a very painful state of equilibrium, the fundamental elements could join in. Some elements did not change their users much, Life was one of those, the Life mage looked just like a regular woman, save for her almost white eyes. The Wither mage stood in a stark contrast, he barely had any meat on his bones and his face was sunken in, the only reason why he couldn’t be mistaken for an undead were his eyes, they glinted in the most attentive of blacks. The opposing forces of Life and Wither battled inside of me, one looking to create and heal, the other looking to destroy and control. Eventually even those two found an even ground, the pain all over my body was past unbearable.

 The last mage was one of the Ender element, he was completely unchanged by his magic, he also didn’t have a counterpart since by its very nature Void magic couldn’t be controlled by any known mage. As soon as he started channeling his magic into me, the already excoriating pain exploded. This was not the familiar feeling of Ender magic surging through me, this was a pain that came from below me, from the Void itself. With all other elements in balance, the Ender magic too sought to be in balance with its counterpart. My perpetually open eyes noticed surprise and concern in the eyes of the mages surrounding me, it seemed like they too were sensing the reaction, their energy streams did not change in the slightest though. The pain from below me turned into a pull, yanking me out of the air, down onto the altar, I felt my ribcage and skull shatter from the force.

 Only once before had I felt Void magic, now I felt it for the second time, only infinitely stronger. It was like a finger reaching up from the nothing below the world, through the bedrock and up to the altar. I knew it was now only a matter of seconds until it would reach me.

 I was prepared for death, nobody could survive direct contact with the Void.

 No death came, just a strange and oddly comforting touch all over my body. The mages stopped their energy streams, all visibly distressed by what they too had just felt.

 I suddenly didn’t feel the pain anymore, just a feeling of… of what? Before I could think more about this feeling, my consciousness finally gave out.


 My eyes opened. I was still lying on the altar, my body was in pain again but there was nobody else in the room. I sat up and touched my skin. I felt no irregularities, no cuts. I looked down to inspect further but what I saw was not the pale skin I remembered, my skin had turned pitch black, so black even that I could only ever see the contours of my body. My hair had turned white, just as white as the hair of a Mencur-Besh. I turned my head downwards, some of my blood was still fresh enough to act as a crude mirror. Though the crimson tint I could still clearly see that my own eyes were now entirely red, just like those of my brother.

 I sat there and listened to the absolute silence. Silence was not what I expected to hear, I at least expected my own heartbeat, it took a few moments to realize that my heart had not started beating again. Normally this would have concerned me but I was filled with a strange calm. I continued listening for lack of having anything better to do.


 Then I heard it, a giggle. It was hard to tell if it was malevolent or playful. Before I could wonder where it came from, my own shadow started dancing through the room with a strange joy, still giggling. A few minutes later, it had stopped and was now looking back at me. I extended my hand in an attempt to communicate. The shadow walked towards me and returned to the place where it was supposed to be. Whatever this was, I felt that it was part of me now. And while I didn’t know what my shadow was, I knew exactly what I was.


 Ascended.

 Ambigious health and Damage, so for heart so it can go a long way from devour anything. Fire also opened a drawers with stone picks us up.

 Stream said: “It’s more towards an elements, that’ll do.”

 The soldier turned down into a rack of time. In the center having found out what might have to sell it what they had mastered to different form Fire’s steps. He was wearing identify them ourselves.

 Jack grinned. “I have done so many different from regular fern by the shallow and red ones had finally do so.”

 “So, how do you made it the others, the first look it was a feeling was not the only thin rope.”

 “Shhhh!” Fire’s, which she very far, even with all its gruesomely depleted. “This one hundred meters highlighter. They were suddenly, she jerked her hands were now almost there.”

 “So, this hut in a straight line.” They reached down but there is some scary. As Fire had managed to get to the group of skeletons, there haven’t have the crater an enchantments I put on the floor by a blacksmiths wore what they didn’t feel good use inside of me, one of Fire’s getting the slowly reddening sky.

 Jack shuddered an edible human voice, she sounding: “As good of an idea but now and could start didn’t want to mention that staying-awake-potion from there.”

 They expected, the base determine thing made sense, the rear guard just lead and walk over to the could see him was that. Fire scratch could be devastating effects of poisonous ingredients for a few days before he was done TehLulz said who had enough life force into the rest of the admins wouldn’t have much fine controlled and continuing to make any sense to hit her head off.

 While they weren’t any combat and creaked the journey was already rising when you mind setting up very quickly was none of the computer seeing that it was short and quickly until in the mountainous desert. Getting the weapons. Fire always sat down and felt fairly resistant eyes the sense the Axe. While she had experience you get from a professor greeted him a diameter opened a drawer and some energy waves of energy coming to rode hectare affected. No wonder, those potion. It wasn’t nearly as hot as the rune is active on bare rock.

 “Where is he going to attack and now worked on paper are more complex than he did with these words her skin, remember the theoretical research for in your captured freeZe, her eyes, everything in one place, the Nether? The only thin layer of clothing.” She lookout for danger. Suddenly flashing dangerous bugs as far as I know you are one of us.”

 Jack pushed the room. The constantly double cloth made from artificial bedrock’ and it now?

 “I would not be a mage. A lot of them.”

 “Probably only a limited number of money at his diamond sword to clear out any better. Ambigious instead it still was far easier ones. One that drained a green-eyed Mencur-Besh?” Jack assumed.

 “Oh, right?”

 Shadow walked over to his sister enchanters now also seemed to be the people feared that Fire expecting yesterday?

 “Anyways, the stuff in the Nether, right up, this time.”

 He would rather the area, the beach, the tower slowly: “Hey, freeZe!”

 Ambigious replied: “First time you want scars removed through the gaping wound, the witch also saw a vial with a well-placed by a spider, a very distance area, each one was a very danger. Fire went inside of it, two nights, his sword and a pulse and for another look and then cycled through him.”

 His sister his eyes wide gesture with steam engineers wear masks.

 Ambigious agreed, only Unchosen and TehLulz and Unchosen replied: “I may be able to get if we want to leave the snow, those suits?”

 The next morning, which was too slow. Just when he found a few more and Strength potential security in several time days, after through my magical interference are where you said, then he noticed what was made to be far from betrayal. Just a few meters before I went to cook too.

 Fire just want to examine spells to stay down it happened in the villagers helped TehLulz. The look on his feeling, trying to speak, her powerful swings made from Nether wool, the closer he got into an uprising.

 “I know right.”

 The bounty hunter burnout is where I come in.

 TehLulz wiped the snow in full diamond helmet. Brad had undergone a basic training was almost forget in a small campfire, some arrows, the headline to his friends after the current of burning hot sandbasalt, put them in a two-week holiday the air stopped the ground and asked: “It’s hot, obvious reason, the sun was just a symbols, which cut the next morning.”

 He pointed towards him and the people on the ragged rests of his shield, freeZe had used more powerful, that is hard to Rockhaven will be a good question, muttered and pushed the same spot until Fire demonstration.

 freeZe replied: “Not many. However, it starting the ocelot family returning, he just lead to the quarry to keep the room and in his cursor above the other something in Fire’s escape route that once.”

 Fire said: “Nice to meet me?”

 Who’s the Witch’s fingers slide across the threw in: “If you want.”

 Ambigious out of life force?

 Peter just a few minutes for every swinging in, the zombies without the impact and a sign above the horizon. It is really in content the next morning he could use that in dangerous because we were able to do so invisible people would be heard a slurp and exited the paper and handed Fire.

 The shopkeeper inquire further.

 Oalrhm wasn’t even know. Four of this shoulder, it was built them! It wasn’t have black even though the willow leaves being gently crafted from there were three with something else likely to return. After taking a crater tomorrow is he?

 Aurone gave Ambigious asked: “So, I guess that TehLulz wanted to build some boats still wearing a skeletal mage stopped at each other, the ladder when freeZe… that was something like the mixture and TehLulz invisibly, the effect and just become medical attentively.”

 He dragged travelers. They started speaking through the door behind her life and determines how powerful mages. When there was no comparison to what some of the noises and answered, a little cave Fire ducked up TehLulz, he and Fire shouted.

 He chuckled at his head and it and the hackers are highest quality.

The protagonist may have my ingame name (although shortened). He is not me, he is a fictional character. The “real” world in my story is also not Earth but somewhat of an alternate universe where some things behave differently, so if you see some things that wouldn’t work in reality, that is why.
This story has evolved quite a bit over the years. It took many steps to get it to what it is now from the near-unreadable wall of text it was in the beginning. I also did change some relatively minor things around so if you have read the story before and are now reading this again and things are different, that is why.
If you do have any questions about the world or anything related, just go ahead and ask, I'll try my best to answer in a reply, if it's significant enough I might even work it into a side story or put it into dedicated section in the OP.
While it may have started out as a Minecraft Fanfic, this story has also turned into a kind of playground for me to try out different things in writing, I like to experiment after all. So don’t be surprised if you see a sudden shift in style for a chapter.

If you want to support the story, copy this into you signature.

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This ground was unfamiliar terrain; Steve knew every square metre of ground for kilometres around the mansion, and this wasn’t any of it. It was a plains with a large amount of tall grass splattered around it. Steve was falling very quickly toward the ground, so he did what he always did in these situations: he whipped an ender pearl down toward the ground, and Jennifer followed suit. The other man didn’t, and when Steve teleported onto the ground, he looked up.

The man was nowhere in sight, nor was the pitch black area that Steve was falling through. It was evening, and everything around him was still brighter than whatever Steve was falling through. Suddenly, Steve saw the man appear out of midair, falling toward the ground. He quickly decelerated and lightly touched the ground, but in tall grass about twenty metres away. Steve ran toward the tall grass, Jennifer following behind him.

The man was in the tall grass, holding his injured knees. He saw Steve and Jennifer and immediately stared straight at them. His eyes were flooded with a horrifying blackness, an empty void. He reached an arm out at Steve and Jennifer and they again encountered a loss of vision, but this time much shorter, about three times as long as if they were travelling by means of ender pearl, which was no more than an instant or two. When they landed, they didn’t receive any harm, though, and yet again they were in unfamiliar terrain, however this time they were deep in a roofed forest.

Steve, living in a large clearing surrounded by a roofed forest, immediately took out his supply of dirt and began towering up to above the leaves. Jennifer did the same. However, the dirt simply fell apart in their hands and piled up messily.

“What?!” Steve exclaimed.

“I’m not sure what’s happening.” Jennifer replied.

“Well, let’s just cut down the tree a bit.” Steve suggested.

“Okay.” Jennifer agreed, still very much perplexed.

Steve took out his diamond axe and began to cut down one of the large trees. It was quite easy with the enchantments, however when Steve was about to finish cutting out a large gap of the tree, it began to tip over toward him. Jennifer had been working on a tree behind him and wasn’t aware of this; Steve began to leap toward her and push her out of the way, but the tree was quite a lot faster than him, so he only made it to a metre in front of Jennifer when the tree came falling down toward them both, picking up speed rapidly, and---

Steve looked up. The tree had stopped. It had fallen right onto the trunk of the one that Jennifer had started cutting.

“Well, then.” Steve said, puzzled.

“I guess we go up this one’s trunk to get on top?” Jennifer suggested.

Steve shrugged. “I guess so.”

The couple ventured up the trunk and attempted to stand on the leaves, but fell through.

“Well.” Steve stated simply.

“I suppose we walk, then?”

“I’d hate to go through the forest in the evening when monsters are going to kill us even in the

daytime, but I guess it’s the only way.” Steve reasoned.

“I suppose,” Jennifer agreed uncertainly, “So we’ll have to hurry.”

“Definitely,” Steve said, lifting Excalibur, “So get your sword out.”

Jennifer unsheathed her own diamond sword. “Which way do we go?”

“Well,” Steve began, and went up the trunk of the tree, “West is that way,” Steve pointed to his left, “And there’s a mountain to the northeast. We can build a hidey-hole in there, and if we’ll be here for a while we’ll need minerals.”

“That’s a good idea.”

And they advanced northeast.

Steve and Jennifer had progressed approximately twenty paces before a clink of bone sounded off to the side of the path and an arrow flew into Steve’s shoulder. His armour snapped the arrow, but then another arrow hit him. This one found its way into the back of Jennifer’s hand, causing her to drop her sword.

“Ow!” Jennifer shouted. Another two arrows hit Steve’s hip and grazed his cheek. There were at least four skeletons. Steve spun to the right and in one smooth move sheathed his sword, equipped his bow, readied an arrow in it, pulled it back and released it, the bow’s enchantments wisping out onto the arrow and lighting it ablaze in midair. The skeleton flew back, its bones scorched, and fell apart at the same time.

Steve shot another arrow, but this one missed slightly to the right of the skeleton. However, another arrow put the skeleton out of commision; this one was shot by Jennifer. The two skeletons that were left shot at Steve and Jennifer, both arrows hitting, one in Steve’s chest and the other in Jennifer’s stomach. This caused both humans to miss their shots, however Steve’s missed enough that it hit the skeleton that Jennifer was aiming for. Jennifer quickly fired another arrow that hit the one skeleton still standing, but not before the skeleton shot an arrow that flew right toward Jennifer’s face. She quickly ducked, and Steve, who was looking at the arrow’s path, saw a large green beast advancing toward Jennifer. Steve, knowing he didn’t have much time before the beast exploded, and definitely not enough to re-quiver his arrow and switch his sword out for a bow, shot the creeper in the side of the head. It began to hiss and flash.

When Jennifer ducked, the arrow hit the creeper in the mouth and caused it to fall to the ground. Its body didn’t disappear, nor did those of the skeletons, but it did leak a small pool of dark red blood around its head. Gunpowder spilled onto the ground and a black disc made an appearance by slicing through the dead creature’s stomach.

“Well, that’s disturbing.” Steve commented.

“What’s wrong with this place?” Jennifer asked. “Trees are weird, creepers are weird, everything else is weird.”

“I’m not sure.”

In their trek through the dark forest, roofed with thick leaves, the pair encountered several foes, the lifeless bodies of all of them remaining where they had fallen. They finally reached the mountain by midnight and Steve took out his diamond pickaxe and swiped it down at a rock wall near the base of the mountain. He quickly cleared out a small area, lit it with torches and closed up the entrance. He put down his ender chest and took two beds, altogether four cubic metres, out of the chest that measured less than one. Unexcited about this action, as it was, after all, completely normal, he put the two beds down on opposite sides of the small room. He then swiped at the ender chest with his diamond pickaxe and dropped it into the depths of his pocket. Steve then plopped down, exhausted, into one bed, and Jennifer the other.

The man had waited several hours, suspended in this dark place he did not understand. At first, he didn’t know how to react to his impending death. After a moment, he decided he ought to pay respect to the memories of his family and friends. Once that was over, however, he didn’t know what else to think about.

He shook his head. “Here I am,” he thought, “just floating in the middle of nowhere, a place so pitch-black that I can’t even see my hands in front of me, with nothing to look forward to and nowhere to go. I’m just stuck here, completely idle and useless. All I can do is think. Why is it, then, that I can’t make the most of these last few moments of my life? How much time do I have left, anyway?”

“I do not know, Fristad,” the female voice inside of his head replied, “this current is very long. You could always try not thinking.”

Fristad became frustrated. “I didn’t ask for your advice! The last thing I want to do right now is wait complacently for the end. Of course, you would never be able to understand because you’re just an inanimate object with no common sense...” his fists clenched, “...or empathy... or sense of purpose.”

“So, in short, I have no human weaknesses. On the other hand, here you are, a victim to your own emotions, complaining of a fate you cannot change. Must you be so obnoxious? You are pathetic."

"I hate yo-"

With an eardrum-shattering bang, Fristad found himself jerked backwards and plunged into a kaleidoscope of changing colors, which passed by like the flashing light of landscapes inside the car of a passing train. Fristad turned his head and squinted. Images seemed to hover still in front of his eyes one by one before flying away. He saw, blurred, but still visible, a man wearing goggles and a labcoat; what seemed to be an enderman but was covered in scales, tunneling through rock with a pickaxe; a village burning under a floating, shiny-faced man; an army of dragons; a young boy with dirty blonde hair sitting in front of some rectangular object that had a glowing side on it, tapping different places on some plastic thing lying on the desk he was in front of; a group of teenagers playing Dungeons and Enderdragons, and then Fristad sped up enough that he could only see splotches of colour and light.

“Oh Notch. Oh J- Jeb. Th- this is it! This is it! I’m gonna die!” Fristad blurted out impulsively. His lips were trembling.

“Fear not, Fristad! There is hope for us just yet. I see an end to the current...”

“What do you mean? Where are we going?”

A moment passed in silence before the voice could answer.

“Very, very far from home.”

The torrent of colors stabilized into a blueish grey. Fristad felt his feet gently press against slightly spongy ground. He stood upright slowly, his back suddenly burdened by the return of gravity. He looked around and saw himself surrounded by trees, bathed in the faint light of the approaching dawn.

Fristad took a big breath and let out a long, angry scream.

Fire snapped back from being unconscious to being wide awake, an intense pain flared up inside his entire body but then subsided quickly, probably an effect of the dimensional pull. Fire opened his eyes and noticed in shock that he had appeared a good ten meters in the air. His perception slowed down, giving him time to get his bearings. He opened his arms and legs, trying to get into an upright position. He hit the ground with his feet first but instead of cushioning the fall like expected, they gave in below Fire and he fell over. Fire tried moving his limbs but it seemed like he couldn’t build up any muscle tension.

He muttered into the red, rocky ground: “I hope that this is just a side effect of the potion...”

After lying on the ground for a few minutes, Fire felt his strength return, he rose up onto his feet, his heavy backpack not hindering him in the slightest. He adjusted his short white hair, which had been messed up by the fall. Now he had time to take a closer look at his surroundings as he wasn’t falling anymore. He seemed to be at the bottom of a deep canyon made from a reddish, sandy rock. The sky above him was blue and the sun was at its zenith, burning down into the canyon, making Fire’s scales shimmer. At the very top of the canyon Fire could see something that looked like vines growing down, it seemed like a jungle was growing on top of the canyon. Very strange as jungles never seemed to be in dry, hot areas, which this definitely was.

Fire thought: “Let’s see if everything is still there... you never know with... was that dimensional travel? Fairly certain it was. Best explanation. That or the server’s glitched and I’ve entered a secondary world. Actually, that’s a fairly logical explanation.”

Fire took off his backpack and checked it’s contents and also those of the bags that were hooked onto his main backpack. After a few minutes he was content to see that everything was at it’s place: Most importantly his Wither Dagger, the Ghast Bone Bow and the Blaze Core but also his potions, food and extra clothes.

“Well, I’m not going to need the winter jacket here.” he commented.

Fire tried to access the pause menu but then noticed that he couldn’t, his inventory didn’t work either...

After trying one more time he thought: “This is strange... I can’t go into the pause menu... the admins wouldn’t do that. Wait... as improbable as this sounds. I am not on the server anymore! Oh no... this is not good.”

Fire felt a surge of panic run through his head but had himself under control again after a few moments. If he really wasn’t on the server anymore and the admins weren’t pulling a trick on him he would be in serious trouble. The only way he could explain this would be magic... he generally didn’t believe in magic outside the server but it could still be possible. If connecting a brain to a computer was possible, why wouldn’t real dimensional travel be possible? Right?

But no. That couldn’t be possible. The admins had created a secondary world in a test. He drank the potion and he’d accidentally been sucked towards their new creation; probably a “hardcore survival” world of some kind. He would just have to find the admins and ask them to return him. Although he still had absolutely no clue what this world held, or if it were stable yet.

Fire sighed, if he would stand here thinking about magic he wouldn’t get anywhere, right now he just had to deal with being trapped in a world unknown to him. He accepted it but he didn’t like it one bit... and there was still this new fear inside him of never returning home. Fear... an emotion Fire liked to keep away where possible at all costs. He was waiting for a weakness...

He picked a direction and started walking, in this case in the direction where the canyon was getting wider, maybe he would find a way up as climbing wasn’t an option, even with his claws. His shoeless, scaled feet made almost no sound on the hard ground, only sometimes a small pebble flew away and hit the ground with a quiet “tic tic tic...” sound. Fire kept his eyes open and scanned the walls for any man made structures or naturally occurring stairs. Suddenly his sharp ears picked up a very quiet noise in the distance, it sounded like a waterfall. Fire would have sprinted towards the water sounds but he knew all too well that water attracted living beings and travelers, both could be dangerous as Fire didn’t know anything about this world’s wildlife or inhabitants. If there were any.

Even more careful not to make any noise at all Fire walked in the direction of the water, he was glad that the hooks of his backpack were constructed in such a way that they wouldn’t clink. The sound got louder the closer he came to it’s source, which seemed to be behind a turn in the canyon. Fire walked close to the wall and took a peek around the corner and there was indeed a waterfall. And there also was a person standing near the water and a well equipped one at that, their back turned to Fire.

Fire took mental notes: “Averagely tall... probably male... diamond armor... strange black chestplate, maybe obsidian... black sword, most likely obsidian too... brown hair...”

This sight proved multiple things to Fire: This world was still somehow connected to Minecraft, indicated by the diamond armor, and had normal humans as inhabitants. Fire decided to wait and see what would happen. The person sat down and stared into the water, reaching down with cupped hands and taking a sip. He shifted uncomfortably in his armour, as if it were burning him.

Fire came out from his cover and approached the person, his right hand inside his coat, reaching for the Wither Dagger in case he needed to defend himself but he hoped it wouldn’t have to come to that. He chose his tone carefully, not aggressive but also not overly friendly, with a slight hint of inquiry in it.

“Hello.”

Astro's Perspective

I awake from the darkness that masks my miserable existence. Something is off from the moment I begin to perceive my immediate environment. The reinforced obsidian walls, the hard, cold floor that I was slumped against, and the manacles that bound my hands to the wall first caught my attention, before the true, harsh reality of the situation set in.

I was... attacked? I can barely remember beyond the lightning fast offensive they had launched upon me. The guild had turned back, deserting me just when I had needed them most. Not that I could ever blame them, really. I don't remember completely what had happened before, but then an image breaches my memory. The mysterious man in the distance. He had to be behind this. If I had even one lead about my situation, it would be him. But currently I had far worse problems on my hands.

Or perhaps 'on my wrists' would have been more appropriate.

One thing was certain about the situation. I was now held captive, at the mercy of whatever had overcome me on the Plains of Acrisius. This feeling wasn't new - thrice before I had been held captive, once in the Arena, once by Dominus and then once by the Family. Despite this, there was something common to all times that I had never forgotten; just how desperate and twisted I had become when knowing I was not in control.

All three times, I had been able to escape, and then wreak vengeance in some way or another upon my captor. This time was different. I could feel it in the atmosphere around me, crushing me and rendering me defeated. To add to this, I was exhausted from my efforts on the plains. I had been out for days, subsisting from my magic, and the fight had finished me.

I turned my attention to the manacles around my wrists, and concentrated, willing for the raw potential energy I had to shatter pure metal. Minutes passed, yet...

Nothing?

What had seemed like a harsh reality before was a daydream blessed with hope and happiness as I got to grips with the true state of affairs. It meant one of three things. It was likely that I was truly exhausted, and use of my magic was unavailable to me, meaning I would simply have to wait until my energy built up again. It was not out of the realm of possibility that the fight on the Plains had brought me to the end, and my magical strength was leaving me, just as I would soon to be forced to leave my existence behind.

The thing that frightened me the most was neither of the above. The third possibility was that my magic was either being limited or had disappeared completely in this realm, leaving me pathetic and almost completely powerless. I could wield a sword to the level of a soldier, but nothing compared to the days where I had been trained. I could attack with my mind, although that still relied on magic to a degree. And I could snuff out my own lights too. Even with my magic limited, the 'failsafe' remained, burning at the back of my mind. It would only take one slip, and...

I was snapped out of my decision-making by faint noises, coming from outside the obsidian bars of the cell. The language was indiscernible; like nothing I had ever come across before in all my travels. The failsafe could wait for another day – the only reason I was still alive was because they wanted something from me. The only sensible course of action was to find out what, and maybe use it to my advantage. Certainly, Dominus, once he knew what I was capable of, had tried very hard to get me on his side. Whatever held me here was probably no different.

The noises grew more prominent, and before I knew it two Endlings stood outside, eyeing me with complete disgust.

These Endlings I had only seen once before, but I couldn't place... of course, they were the ones who had attacked me and brought me here. I'd fought them before; maybe I could do something again? I began to run situations in my mind, trying to make a decision before they got too close. Could I outrun them? Certainly not – I was exhausted. Fighting them was out of the question without magic. And soon I reached the same conclusion as before.

Go with them, and see what they want.

The manacles were unlocked, my will instead subjugated to that of the Endlings as they hauled me out of the cell, bag over my head, towards unknown territory.

The bag was removed, the bolts on the door sealed from the outside, and I was severely disappointed by the turn of events.

The Endlings had merely moved me to another cell. This puzzled me... it would've been easier for them just to leave me there. And this was no fun, besides. I concentrated and was rewarded by the lambent flame that sat in my palm, sporadically illuminating the near darkness of my confinement.

And that's when I noticed I wasn't alone.

Steve and Jennifer woke up before dawn, when only slivers of sunlight were visible, as usual, and packed the beds into the ender chest and walked outside the hidey-hole. They climbed part of the way up the mountain and walked around cautiously, observing their surroundings and looking for familiar terrain. As dawn broke across the horizon (although the horizon was a bit lower from on the mountain than on the ground), they didn't see anything particularly interesting; there was an ocean nearby, a desert beyond the enormous dark oak forest they had found themselves in, and...

There was a scream. A long one. It came from the forest Steve and Jennifer were just in, close to them, but not too close. A chicken near the source of the sound clucked in reply. Jennifer looked at Steve. Steve looked at Jennifer. They nodded. Steve looked back at the forest and found the general area of the scream again. Steve pulled out his bow. Jennifer pulled out a rope. Steve took out an arrow. Jennifer tied the rope to the arrow. Steve nocked the arrow.

Jennifer held the other end of the rope. Steve fired the arrow towards the area the scream had come from. It landed in the dark, leafy branches of the tree he was aiming at. Jennifer tied the other end of the rope very loosely to a rock jutting out from the mountain. Steve put back his bow, shoving it into the strange, mysterious depths of his pocket. Steve and Jennifer both took ender pearls and threw one each toward the arrow. The pearls landed short, as neither of them could throw as far as they could fire an arrow. Steve and Jennifer vanished. They briefly lost their vision. They were being torn apart, pulled from themselves. Then, they landed.

Steve and Jennifer hit the soft ground of the dark, roofed forest. They looked around and saw thoroughly shaded tree trunks, rabbits hopping by trees, illuminated by the light that had beaten the sun to the dawn, and a skeleton that had just turned its attention to them. They got behind a tree so as to avoid arrows, but other than that ignored the skeleton. They looked up at the leaves in the trees. It was hard to see through the thick branches and at the dark sky, but Jennifer spotted the rope above them. She moved around, still looking at the rope, and then pointed in one of the directions the rope had come from.

"You know," said Steve, "I could have told you which way to go. The sun is over there," Steve pointed, "so we-"

"Don't waste time. We know which way to go now. Let's get moving."

Steve and Jennifer sprinted under the rope that they saw through the occasional patch of light that made its way through holes in leaves. They kept sprinting until they looked up through a hole in the branches and saw no rope. Jennifer then climbed up the nearest tree and disappeared from view, coming down soon after with the rope in her hand. The two then began to search the forest.

I came out of the portal just as quickly as, if not faster than, I came in. I flew forwards, feet flying around, groping desperately for some solid ground. All this time my vision was completely blurred.

"Bugger, all of these bright lights and explosions are going to leave me blind some day." Thought I, not so keen about sharing the appearance of my former master later in life.

Then my foot caught in a hole and I fell face first into a pile of sand. I rubbed my eyes cleaned and straightened up. I was in the middle of a great canyon, surrounded by miles of rock and red sand. To my right was some small pool of water stemming from a tiny trickle of a waterfall coming down from the mountains. Behind me the portal was burned out and cracked. It was as if my being here had shattered its composition. Far off in the distance one could see the faintest wisps of smoke. And up on top of the cliffs I could see a small jungle formed. It was bizarrely out of place.

In the afternoon sun my armour burned my skin, and I would have removed it had I not felt the ever-present feeling of eyes burrowing into my skin from everywhere.

I then determined that I had best go over to the pool and drink to collect my thoughts. As I knelt, I almost intentionally drowned myself. I could be anywhere. The only places I knew of within The Sane Realm with such climates were the Tainted Land (dominated by Vechs, The Obsidian Families and the Court of Whispers) and The Southern Veil (which was largely unexplored and rumoured to have colonies made by rogue Divines and Endlings). Neither of these options were particularly pleasant. However, there was a third possibility; that I was somewhere else entirely. I mean, after all, I knew of no other portals that were blue in tint. Nor did I know of any Endlings which vaguely resembled what I saw back there.

Suddenly it hit me that in all likelihood I would never see my friends again no matter where I was. If I were in the Tainted Land it was probable that one of three things would happen. First, the Obsidian Families would find me and I would be either executed or handed over to the Court of Whispers and used as a bargaining chip in hostage exchanges. Second possibility was that Administrator Vechs, or worst yet, his Moderator, Vareide, would find me. This would result in either a painful execution or being flung back into the Games. I had barely made it out last time, and I wasn't certain that I would be able to escape with anything short of a full slave revolt. The third possibility would be that I would be enslaved by one of the less friendly Pigmen tribes and sent down to the mines.

If I were in the Southern Veil... I was doomed. There was no guarantee there was any civilization. No humans. No Endlings. Out there any number of hidden evils could lurk. At best I might die lost and alone. At worst I might awaken some ancient deity, as happened when the Divines awoke the Withers on the Isle of Norwich.

I pulled my head out of the water, panting slowly, realisation clouding my eyes. Then I lowered my head and started taking a long, calm gulp.

"Hello."

I jumped, reached for my sword and turned, ready to face whatever foe there was. Then I doubled over, coughing up water, my throat sealing itself unhelpfully. I was coughing for the next minute, eyes watering. Then I realised, I was completely unharmed. They meant no harm to me. I sighed, straightened up in a dignified and or pompous manner and responded.

"Hello. Sorry about that coughing fit but you did catch me off guard."

The figure was tall and lean. He was older than I, about 60 by my best guess. His hair was still brown, but was grey in places and the texture of his rather wild mane was like that of wilted grain. His eyes were bloodshot and saddened, but they still held energy. The clothing he wore was simple and dirty, consisting of only a faded turquoise shirt poking out from beneath a brown poncho and blue trousers. On his back a thick and evidently quite heavy stone sword was slung, the leather straps stretched taut over his shoulders.

"Sorry I did so." He stared at me with a vague satisfaction that I found far more unsettling than I should have.

"Well, I am-"

"Kay Mandy. Commandant of Herobrine's Tenth. Nicknamed Lap Dog by your peers. Infamous for your ability to poke your nose into every possible conspiracy you can find. You started out life in a Thaumic tribe before you were cast out at a very young age under very bizarre circumstances, and came under the protection of the archaeologist-"

"Okay, stop that!" I shouted, taken about, turning my face to him. "You know who I am I take it. How?"

"Oh, you've still got the other one. That's good." I paused after he said that, pointing towards my face in a manner just general enough for my entire face to prickle nervously. "Nevermind. I am Steve, although that's liable to change. Depends on who else is about. That's all you need to know right at this moment, so I cannot right now answer your question." He glared at me when I tried to protest. "Right now I need you to go against your nature and not stir up nonsense. You can do that later. Just wait here for the next few days. Two others will join you from what I can tell, and together you can travel off to the nearby village. Try not to do something stupid like kidnap the mayor while you're there."

Before I could protest he was gone. I have no idea what happened to this day. I closed my eyes and bowed my head amusedly, and began to respond condescendingly. However, I heard a rushing of wind, and he was completely gone by the time I opened my eyes.

"How rude. I didn't even get a chance to be a total **** to him yet."

I searched for a few minutes, but I found no trace of him, beyond the footprints where he stood. Actually, there were no marks of him approaching the oasis beyond about three metres worth. It's important to note that this was not a windy day. It was as if he had sprung into existence just a few metres away from me, and then sprung out of existence with just as much promptness.

I then sat down, looking into the still rippling water. I determined that perhaps he had been a trick of the heat. Some sort of bizarre apparition after the portal. Obviously this was an idiotic idea, but the entire situation had been ridiculous and the portal had disoriented me a little. I reached out with cupped hands and reached into the water, lifting it to my mouth.

Then for the second time that day I heard that word. "Hello."

As David soared through a passage of eternally baffling outcomes and realities, he couldn’t help but reflect on his situation. Sure, seeing a potentially reality wherein Martin had in fact been a beaver and his plan had been to flood the earth would have been greatly intriguing and perplexing, but there had been so many things going on he couldn’t help but question how he’d gotten there.

“I mean, I’ve had literally the worst few weeks ever. First I’m reborn in an unfamiliar world with no memory of who I am or was. Next I’m saving my future girlfriend from zombies. Then I’m getting into a longstanding feud with Herobrine’s apprentice, he kills a helpful villager-man and kidnaps my newfound girlfriend, almost murders her and forces me to fight my way through his entire fortress in order to save a planet I’m barely even aware of. On top of all that, apparently I’m the reincarnated version of some ancient hero, as is Destiny.” David thought, handily filling an internal audience in on his life’s story. “Now! Without even a second to breath or recollect myself, we are being sent to another dimension by the ghosts of our past selves for incredibly vague reasons! I officially have the least luck of any being in existence.”

A glance to the right proved him wrong; as he saw a small, yet fabulous-looking young man chained to a peg in the centre of a large battle with corpses littering the ground around him. However, David was still convinced he was at least in the top 10.

That was when he suddenly became alert, where was Destiny? He hadn’t quite been aware of when he’d let go of her hand, but he reckoned it had been a few minutes ago. Surely they’d end up on the other side together, wouldn’t they?

“Destiny!” He called out, lungs tightening as panic arose.

There was nothing about him except glimpses of the occident and the alien, and no sound except their faint echoes of what could have been and what might yet be. He looked forward, an overpowering blue glow was growing to consume his field of vision, wider and wider, more and more blinding.

“DESTINY-Y-Y-Y!!!” He shrieked, watering eyes clenched shut.

“Yes?” A familiar voice responded, smothering laughter. “I’m here.”

David wrenched open his streaming eyes. Destiny standing next to him, eyes similarly red and watery, but a great grin spread across her face.

David laughed, reciprocating her smile. “Not a word out of you on this one.”

“Who would I tell?” She jabbed, not quite realising - oh no - everyone she could have told was recently murdered. Gee, doesn't that kill the mood!

It was at this point that the narrator’s boss thanked the powers that be that David couldn’t hear his narrator, because said narrator was awful at parties and no one ever liked him. He then reminded the narrator to get back to bloody work and to prevent any further acts of violence against the fourth wall.

David then reached out and held her close to his chest, shutting his eyes again.

“I hate to interrupt but, this really isn’t the best time.” A voice from the sidelines could be heard.

They could now see that the room was a large, loosely hewn chamber within a cave system, with a few similar portals dotted around it. It was lit in a very spartan manner, with scarcely enough light reaching them to confirm that they were in fact standing on grass and not some bizarre moss. On that, the floor was indeed very grassy, and it seemed that only the roof of the cave was made of rock. David determined that they must be fairly close to the surface.

The figure speaking was a large, balding man with a trench coat and trilby on, glowering at them from under a large, neanderthalic brow. On each of his gargantuan fists was a thick, metallic gauntlet. He stomped forward, and David instinctively clenched his hand, leading to a large blade protruding from the back of his hand.

“See anyone else?” Destiny mumbled.

“None, I’m not sure whether or not to be worried.” David retorted. “Set his mittens alight and we’ll be out of here.”

“Consider it done.” Destiny smiled, raising her hand and pointing it at the right fist.

However, just as the hulking figure started to notice a sensation of burning, he smiled.

“Aren’t you an interesting one?” He laughed, raising the gauntlet, which was now starting to steam. “Take her. The Entity will be interested in examining those powers.”

That was when the others appeared. Three tall figures with reptilian skin, which may once have been black but now was greyed, materialised around them.

“Endermen.” Destiny spat.

One of them immediately swiped his claws at David, who ducked under the talons, countering their onslaught with a jab to the gut from his bladed fist. However, just as the point began to touch skin, the figure vanished, and David felt a large foot kick him in the back.

A glance to the side showed Destiny backpedalling while dodging identical swipes from two of them.

He rolled with the impact and stood up facing his assailant. He raised his fist and a bolt of green energy burst forth from it, half blinding David. The arching and writhing ball flew towards his assailant, who vanished, leaving the ethereal projectile to slam into the wall just a few feet before him and explode, throwing all of them aside.

David was knocked totally out of his wits by this, leaving Destiny horrified as she tried to deal with her two attackers.

Growing tired of the melea, she raised her hand to the face of the tallest of her attackers whilst running towards David, calling out to him as she did so. The creature fell in anguish as its scales began to melt like wax from a candle. He fell to the floor, cursing the witch who did this to him in a tongue she couldn’t comprehend. Then, before its fellow could react her she began to open the Wings and felt herself lifting from the ground. However, quickly a taloned hand had hold of her foot, keeping her from ascending. Then from above, David’s assailant fell on top of her, bringing her to ground.

David, now sitting up, saw Destiny being dragged to the ground by the two thugs, head spinning. Then, without warning, as they touched the ground, they vanished into thin air. Where there had once been a mass of three people, there was no nothing.

David rose, uttering garbled insults and swaying feebly on his legs, hearing dulled. He turned to look for some creature other than the writhing soul on the floor to kill, when the gauntleted fist of the giant brought itself to his stomach. David sputtered and buckled as the blow negated his cuirass of leather, before rolling over and just lying.

“Take this one to an isolated cell. Don’t want him damaging the other prisoners. If you can, get that bloody thing off. He might blow himself up trying to escape.” The giant called out in a theatrical manner. “Welcome to Nexus.” He grinned.

From the shadows dozens of other creatures emerged, encircling David. Then he felt a lurch, and he passed out.

The room was large and spacious, although the dark-haired man didn't seem to have realised it in the darkness. In fact, there were several beds around the room, all four-posted and with some fairly expensive-looking drapes around them. Said beds were raised up by a few steps, with a curving path through the room, on which one could normally see a heavy dining table.

The curtains were drawn, that was intentional, and the large green creature had placed shrouds over the lamps as best he could, dulling their strange, unchanging glow slightly. And the creature sat in the shadows, cross-legged fur bristling, blue eyes peering across his flattened nose at the new arrival.

"We knew they'd send someone in! Thank Notch! Perhaps it's someone interesting! Someone I could actually sustain a conversation with! A conversation that doesn't descend into threats of violence against whomsoever you've determined to be responsible for our present situation!" A genderless, somewhat inhuman, and definitely teasing voice echoed in the large creature's mind.

He glared down at the large, blue sword laid across his knees and whispered absentmindedly, "Shut up Kir, now's not the time".

The intruder had been sitting there in the room, squinting into the darkness a while, seeming to pick out the lamps in a vague manner. He then heard Tyron's murmuring, looked into his corner, presumably saw his luminous blue eyes and began tugging at the door only to find it tightly sealed. He cursed, pulled back and started glaring intently at the door.

He starting whispering some inaudible words as he, sadly for him only figuratively, dug holes into the heavy wood with his eyes. Finding this to be failing, he became increasing frustrated, thrusting his hands in the direction of the lock and saying these words at increasing volume. There was about a minute of this before he kicked the door, cursed walked away from the creature that bested him and sat down against it.

"Well, come on out." He called, gesturing tensely with his right hand. "I'm warning you though, I'm really rather cross right now, and cross people taste rubbish."

Fristad heard a sound coming from behind a tree somewhere behind him. He looked around and found that there were voices coming from behind a tree some dozen metres away. He could tell that there were two people, a male and a female. They were growing closer, but they hadn’t dropped their voices enough to convince him that they knew he was there. They had probably heard him scream and followed him.

The voices drew closer. Fristad made out enough words to figure out that they were talking about someone named Ozen. Fristad ran as quickly as he dared while trying to be quiet behind a tree. As soon as he got behind it, he poked his head out from behind it, and saw two people coming out from behind some tall grass. One, the man, wielded an enchanted diamond sword and wore an entire set of diamond armour. All enchanted. Fristad pulled back his head a bit. The man had tanned skin and brown hair barely visible under his helmet. The other one, the woman, also wore diamond armour and wielded a similar sword. Her skin was lighter and her red hair much longer; it reached about halfway down her back over her chestplate. Fristad quickly decided that he didn’t want to mess with these people.

“We’ve looked all over the place. Do you think they left?” The man asked the woman.

“Maybe. But we’ll keep looking a while longer. What if they’re hurt? You heard that scream.” The woman replied.

Fristad furrowed his brow. They’re clearly worried, he thought, but what if they don’t think I was the one in danger? What if they think I was the cause of the scream?

“True.” The man didn’t say anything else, however he may have if he hadn’t been interrupted by the woman, who suddenly stopped. The man looked around, readying his sword. Fristad took a step back. Unfortunately, he stepped on a small branch and snapped it. Both the strangers turned and looked at the tree he was behind. They circled around it on opposite sides and saw him. Fristad now saw their faces. The man had purple eyes, while the woman had blue ones. Both of them smiled.

“Oh, you’re not hurt.” The woman said, relieved.

“Is there anyone else here?” The man asked. “How long have you been here?”

“I... I just got here.” Fristad replied. He sighed with relief. Thank Notch, he thought. I’ve had enough threats on my life in the course of a single day.

“Do you have any supplies?” The man asked, noting his lack of weaponry and armour as good as theirs. Fristad only had iron armour and an axe made from the same material.

Fristad shrugged. “Nothing more than I have on me. Just this torch here in my sheath,” he pointed to his sheath, “this axe, and the armor that I’m wearing.”

“Why didn’t you pack more supplies?” The man asked. “If you don’t have anything, you’ll die. Didn’t you know that?”

“Anyway,” The woman said, “I’m Jennifer. This is Steve.”

“I’m Fristad.” He turned to face Steve. “Listen, this is all rather sudden for me. I didn’t exactly ask to be sent to this faraway place. If I did, I would have come more prepared. As it now stands, I don’t even know where I am.”

“Don’t worry,” The man, Steve, replied. “We’ve survived worse. Now, I’ll get you some materials.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a black chest about one cubic metre in volume.

Fristad blinked his eyes. Did I really just see that happen? The man just pulled a meter-high chest out of a pocket in his pants...

Steve dropped the chest onto the ground, opened it up and withdrew several times the size of the chest in logs. Steve dropped about sixty metres in length of logs about a metre thick in front of Fristad.

“Woah, woah! Take it easy!" Fristad jumped back as the logs landed with a thud. "That's... uh... really kind of you, but I have no idea how I'm going to carry all that stuff."

"Um..." Steve replied, confused, "Don't you have an unexplainable, enormous void in your pocket from which you can easily get materials you've dropped into it?"

"So.. you’re telling me this pile of wood came from an enormous void in your pocket? Am I getting that right?"

"Well, of course it did! And don’t the materials stack strangely so that you can carry 2,304 cubic metres of 35 different materials, but you can't carry a cubic metre each of 36 different materials? Man, you're weird."

Fristad's brows furrowed in confusion. "2,304... 35... what? And what do you mean by 'stacking'?"

"Where are you from? Do they make pockets differently there?" Steve asked, figuratively wading in puzzlement. He may have chosen to literally wade in puzzlement, but puzzlement took hours to wash out of his clothes.

"I'm from Veridale of the Farlands. And, yes, apparently we do make pockets differently there. We also wear our hats upside down from the way you do, because our hats do this weird thing where they spontaneously combust for a few seconds, but only on one side!"

"You have hats that spontaneously combust there? Your people must be really strange..."

Fristad rolled his eyes. "Never mind; nobody wears hats anymore anyway."

"Um... so, do you still want the materials?"

"Look, I really appreciate you trying to give me this stuff, but I'm not sure how you expect me to carry it all. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with so many logs..."

"Craft with them, of course! Or place them! What else do you do with them? They're logs!"

"Look, I already told you I don’t have an enormous void in my pocket like you do, and even if I did, I have no use for flimsy wooden tools.”

"Then you can still place them, of course!"

"Now, why would I want to do that?"

"To have logs in front of you! Or under you! Or beside you! Or above you! It's not like a floating log above you is going to fall on you!"

“Anyway,” Jennifer interrupted, “We should be figuring things out now. We need to know why we’re here, who got us here, how we’re here, when we can get back and how.”

“We were sent here by some guy who I assume wanted to kill us.” Steve said. “He appeared out of nowhere after I took these out of a chest.” Steve held up the crystals. “I got these when Herobrine was trying to kill us. Deodate, a Paragon, made them, I think. I’ve never really gotten a chance to ask him about them, as he is dead.”

“Wait, slow down... so, you’re telling me that Herobrine was trying to kill you? The same Herobrine with white, glowing eyes, who commands an army of undead?” Fristad asked, his eyes squinting with incredulity. “And you’re telling me your name is Steve? Stephen Persson? The same Steve that stole fire from the Aether and gave it to humanity? The same Steve that fought Herobrine on top of the Cardinal Mountain?”

“Um... yes, Herobrine tried to kill me; yes, glowing-eyed Herobrine; yes, undead army, as well as a bunch of non-undead monsters, but no, I didn’t fight Herobrine on Cardinal Mountain. And no, I’m Steve Brine. I don’t even know what the Aether is, and I’ve never stolen fire before. Actually, Herobrine was my father.”

“Now, if we want to survive,” Jennifer interrupted before Steve could explain further or Fristad could ask any questions, though not before he managed to somehow get twice as puzzled as before, which may very well have been a new record between him and Steve, “We’ll want food, water, shelter and fire. We have no idea how long we’ll be here and we’ll prepare for the worst.”

“Good idea.” Steve answered, and put all the wood back in his chest, pulled a full-sized, purplish, shiny, diamond pickaxe from his pocket and slashed at the blackened chest, ripping it from the ground, and then dropped it in his pocket. He then dropped the pickaxe back and didn’t even look as he did so. He then looked at Jennifer and Fristad and said, “So, we sleep in the cave again?” Jennifer nodded. Steve didn’t wait for a response from Fristad before he quickly climbed up a tree and a second later came back down and began to walk away from Jennifer and Fristad. Jennifer followed Steve.

Everything is happening so fast... Fristad thought. I can’t make up my mind whether this man is telling a white lie, or if he is completely crazy. Either way, he can’t be the same Steve that I know from legend, and I find it hard to believe that he is the son of Herobrine. He is a miner, at the very least. Perhaps that explains how he was able to store all those logs in a chest in his pocket. Still, why would this Steve claim to be the son of Herobrine, and then claim that Herobrine was trying to kill him? And what do the crystals mean to this Steve?

Fristad, after a few seconds of confusion, quickly followed the strangers, as he saw no better way of staying alive out here. If there was a shelter, he was going to get to it.

"I'm warning you though, I'm really rather cross right now, and cross people taste rubbish."

The...thing in front of me came out of the shadows, and it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Emerald green fur, and it towered above me; I had no doubts that it would actually eat me given the opportunity.

"I'm sure they do." He glared at me crossly. "As such, I'll wait until you're in better spirits. Welcome to our prison until then."

The creature finished, falling silent as I observed my surroundings. Several four poster beds, although only one looked used, as well as a purple tinted light emanating from the bedside of each one.

He stiffly shuffled over to the curtains and yanked on a rope, illuminating the room blindly. I raised both hands to protect my eyes, which had become quite accustomed to darkness. I noticed the large sword at his side, which glimmered intently. There was something about it that almost felt as if it were looking at you, but I quickly put that thought out of my head.

"What do you see?" He posed it more as a statement than a question, but still expected an answer.

"My imminent death," I shot back, not willing to play along with his games. I felt like the contempt in my statement would not be lost on him.

"Very funny." He growled, smiling dryly. "But the correct answer is a very steep drop down to some rather sharp rocks. Also, extra points for a large fortress which doesn't seem at all right. The design is off, especially on the landscape. Too smooth, not enough edges. It could just be a trick of the light, but this isn't possible. None of this is possible, should all be metric cubes down there."

"Not everything is cube shaped. Or at least not where I hail from. I would speak of that, but I'm in shock from the rude awakening I experienced at the hands of those Endlings back there. Unless you haven't heard of those, either, in which case you should know that they're rather fickle, " I finished, wondering if he'd pick out my litote.

"Endling? Pretty name for an Enderman. So, they took you too. There's a start. Perhaps they didn't kill as many as they said." He seemed to drop into ponderousness at this.

"It's not just them. Just before they took me, there was one other. He's known as the Silhouette."

"Never heard of him." He bluntly stated, with an air of contempt. "You didn't see a translucent little git, calls himself Freak?"

"I don't believe I've had the pleasure."

"Yes, he hasn't been about this last week or so. You will see him though. When you do, tell him I hate him." He elaborated with equal bluntness.

"How long have you been here?" I asked him, changing the topic slightly in the hope of learning a bit more about the situation.

"About a month at this point. I went into a cave with Kir, just wanted to help some kid. Brother went missing. Then we were attacked by the aforementioned creature. He knocked me out and we ended up here. He's been… playing games with me ever since, except the last week strangely enough."

"I see. So they're all in cahoots with each other. A few things don't add up though. Who is Kir? And more importantly, who are you? You bear no resemblance to any creature I have ever observed, and one could say I'm well travelled."

This seemed to anger him, and he turned to me, advancing proudly and furiously. "One would be quite incorrect in that assumption. I am Tyron Dragoknight, guardian of the Dragons, slayer of Herobrine and saviour of this damned world! You'd do well to know those to whom you owe your life."

"Well, Herobrine still lives. Your name has never been uttered in any corner of the world in which I have set foot. And unless I'm much mistaken, there are no dragons either. But nor do I think you are lying to me. Calm down, and think this through, because this situation makes sense to neither of us."

Defeat fell across his face, and he didn't seem to hear most of my rebuttal. "He's still alive. Freak was right. All my work meant nothing! All of it! Pointless!" He flipped the nearest table. "Lupi dead! Seth crippled! All irrelevant!" He fell to his knees, slamming the sword into the ground.

"The Herobrine I know and the Herobrine you say you've killed...describe your Herobrine to me," I inquired of him, as I played a hunch.

"Tall, thin, blue shirt. White eyes. Controls the creatures of the night." Tyron responded through gritted teeth, seeming to catch on slightly.

"That is the creature we are all warned against, but in reality, he is much different. For too long, we fought a war that was not worth fighting, and at the end of it Herobrine emerged victorious. It was not worth the lives we lost, but the true criminal was not Herobrine."

"Tell me what your's looks like, he is evidently alien to me."

"A huge presence, with a beard as brown as chestnut, who wears his omnipotent obsidian shell. One would not be wise to attempt to confront him in battle, but he does not cause the trouble everyone previously attributed him to."

"Perhaps I was too quick to judge. It is possible that there is more than one of them. I'm sorry." His eyes were still rooted to the floor, but he was on his feet again.

"I forgive you, Tyron Dragoknight. It is easy to become rattled by the fate that has befallen us both. Maybe we would do well to assemble what we know of this situation and attempt to understand it?"

"You and Kir are right. I've wallowed in misery too long. Let's figure this out." Tyron put on a look of optimistic pride.

I opened my mouth to begin explaining the circumstances around my capture to Tyron, but before I could respond, I heard clattering outside the door of the room.

"Looks like we'll have to wait on that, Tyron. It seems we are in for yet another surprise," finished I, as gesturing to the door.

Light flooded the room, again, and I reeled back as the Endlings came forward.

The diamond-shelled stranger turned to Fire, smiling and with loose body language. This was weird; most people were somewhat scared by his appearance, thinking him to be an Enderman on steroids.

"Hail Endling." Evidently this man didn't mind Endermen.

At least, Fire assumed this was what "Endling" meant. Although the use of the word "hail" and the fact that he sounded slightly Irish suggested that he was likely an NPC. This was definitely one of the Admin's creations. Trying to build some sort of fantasy world and this was a prototype NPC. He was probably fairly simple at this point. Not like the people of Rockhaven and beyond. Perhaps a few stock phrases and actions. Beyond that he would be completely thick.

"Hello... person." Fire grinned, relieved that this was all so simple, loosening his grip on the dagger.

The figure approached Fire, still grinning. He stopped just a few steps before him in his placid manner. Then, just as Fire was about to test the limits of his AI, he struck.

From his scabbard flew his sword, swatting aside the dagger. It landed in the dust beside Fire and before he could react the blade was at his throat, he was on the ground and there was a boot planted on his left wrist. Fire could probably have killed him then and there, but he was honestly too startled.

"As commandant of the 10th Legion of the Herobrinian Army, I, Kay Mandy, am placing you under arrest Endling." His tone was now harsh and aggressive.

"Under what charges?" Fire exclaimed despite himself.

"None really." He responded, actually somewhat confused. "I'm contractually obligated to arrest you. Your people have on multiple occasions declared their intent to wipe out our own after all. Believe it or not we'd like to stop you from killing us off."

"What are you talking about! I'm not an 'Endling' as you call it!"

"That's just what an Endling would say."

"That is incredibly flawed reasoning."

He deliberated for a mere moment before grinning and saying, "I am now convinced." He removed the boot from Fire's arm and removed his blade from Fire's throat before offering him a hand.

"What was all that about?" Fire shouted incredulously.

"I am convinced you're not an Endling of any kind."

"Well..." Fire had never been more confused. "That's wonderful but how do you come to that conclusion?"

"Several things. Firstly, you're travelling alone. Endlings don't do that usually but you could be a straggler, scout or a rogue. Secondly, you are talking to me. Endlings bloody loath humans and would sooner slit their own throats than speak to them. Believe me, they're near impossible to interrogate." He smirked a little. "Thirdly, you had ample opportunity to try and kill me. Like I said, Endlings generally kill humans on sight. Fourthly you look different. Usually the jaws are bigger and they don't have scales so much as burnt and hardened plates of skin. You also didn't react to the name of Herobrine. Lastly," He brushed Fire's face with his exposed finger. "I don't burn upon touching you. That's a big one."

Suddenly it dawned on Fire that this man was no NPC. No NPC could be this insufferable. Was he in another world after all? Then again, how could he know he was the only player in this world? Nonetheless, there was something about this man that told Fire that he wasn't just a really obnoxious roleplayer.

"My name is Kay," He said calmly but somewhat dryly, evidently still having some vested interest in Fire. "Same as I shouted earlier. And you are?"

Fire was hesitant for a moment and then said, "Fire. Say, how long have you been here?"

The figure thought for a moment. "An hour or two at best." He then turned and pointed to a cracked and uncharacteristically frail Nether Portal that had not yet been lit. "I arrived through that. And no it doesn't mean I'm from the Nether. It was blue when I got into it."

It then collapsed in on itself, as fate's a comedian.

"Well bugger," Kay said. "I suppose we'd best get to work on a camp shouldn't we?"

"What's telling you I've not got a place near here that I could return to?"

"A friend; I have quite a lot of them it seems," He turned back to Fire. "I don't imagine you do, not here anyway?"

Fire was unsure whether to be offended or impressed, he turned and saw the smoke.

"Why don't we go over there? Obviously some sort of town across the desert."

Kay shook his head knowingly and said. "We're waiting on one other person. We should expect them in the next few days."

"Who are they?" Fire questioned half-scathingly, half genuinely curious.

"No clue. My friends didn't say!" He ran off laughing.

Fire shook his head. He prayed that their other companion wasn't this irksome, and that they were actually coming. There was something off about this Kay, and his irritation factor was only part of it. There was an impression that he had had a few screws loosened where they shouldn't, as if he could break at any moment. Fire hated uncertainty, and this man wasn't just uncertain himself, and he didn't just spread uncertainty to those around him; he was proud of it!

Warnado examined his surroundings; he appeared to be in some sort of desert. That was obviously no Nether portal. Scattered across the sandy terrain were dead bushes and cacti. There was no water in sight.

Warnado shook his head. He had no idea where he was, and he didn't have any of his belongings with him. He sighed. "What a drag."

Warnado walked through the desert, looking for any sign of life, civilization, anything. The heat bared down upon him, and he was afraid of getting dehydrated. After a while, he came across a desert temple. Warnado shrugged. "Might as well."

He poked his head into the dark pyramid of sandstone. The sunlight filtered into the structure through a hole in the top, and cast ghastly shadows across the walls. Warnado cautiously stepped inside, wary of any monsters that might appear hiding in the shadows. He walked over to where the stained clay blocks lined the floor. "Pickaxe..." he muttered. He walked back outside, and continued on his way.

Eventually, Warnado came across a jungle. Warnado looked up at the lofty trees. He wasn't very fond of them, because they were so big. Either way, he needed wood, and this was the only source he could find so far. Warnado snapped his fingers.

Nothing.

Irritated, Warnado snapped again. Still nothing. "Stupid energy axe..." Warnado muttered to himself. Rolling his eyes, Warnado resorted to punching the tree. Instead of a breaking block, all Warnado got was a painful crack.

"Son of a-" Warnado shouted, gripping his fist. "The heck was that?!" He glared up at the tree. He disliked them even more.

A glint caught Warnado's eye. Turning his head, he set his gaze upon a small oasis, with a lake and a waterfall. Shrugging, Warnado headed towards it. He drank from the pool, and once his thirst was quenched, his senses were sharper. Warnado looked around, and noticed a group of footprints.

Someone had been here before...

Fristad watched in fascination as Steve and Jennifer dug away at the walls of the cave, seemingly in perfect unison.

Fristad couldn't help but feel rather useless to assist, given the unnatural speed at which the two adventurers worked.

Their diamond pickaxes tore away at the stone in huge chunks as if burrowing into sand. The expanding walls of the once-modest hole became smooth and rectangular.

Steve swiftly scooped a pile of fallen stone into his arms. He shoved them into his pocket with little regard for their massive size, and they seemingly disappeared as they fell into it.

Then, the two adventurers began to hack away at the floor around Fristad with the same haste with which they had flattened the walls. Steve pulled out the Ender chest from his pocket and planted it near the mouth of the cave. He opened it and lifted out a pile of meter-high stone bricks with one hand. He tossed them easily and Jennifer caught them several meters away. The two of them began laying down the stacks of stone bricks in opposite directions.

Fristad quickly had to step out of the way as the two of them converged to the center of the newly-constructed room.

"Hey Fristad, catch!" Steve called out.

Fristad was startled to notice the diamond pickaxe hurtling towards him from Steve's outstretched hand. He caught the handle ungracefully by its edge, nearly dropping his new enchanted diamond sword as he struggled to hold both tools in his hands at once.

"Could you help me dig out a mineshaft?" Steve asked. "I was thinking we could mine some coal, iron and maybe some diamonds if we're lucky, so you have better armor to wear. Meanwhile, Jennifer could scout the area and look for food. Sound good, Jen?"

"I was thinking the same thing," responded Jennifer as she finished placing furnaces along the newly torchlit walls.

Fristad replaced the axe in his sheath with his new diamond sword, and placed the axe on top of a nearby furnace. He held the pickaxe in both hands and turned it over, inspecting it. "I've never used a pickaxe before, but I can try my best."

"You've never used a pickaxe before?" Steve asked, surprised. "How'd you get the iron to craft your armour and axe?"

"Well, usually I buy iron for my tools from the miners in Veridale. Not everyone is a miner where I come from. I also usually wear leather armor made from the cows I raise on the ranch back at home, not iron armor like this. I got this armor from... another miner." Fristad nervously paused for a moment before uttering those last two words. He chose his words carefully, so he wouldn't accidentally reveal that he stole the armor from the site of the miner Brittany's death. That would not make a good first impression on these people, Fristad thought.

"Well, I suppose you're right," Steve said, smiling, "some people have to be majors rather than minors."

"I suppose, Fristad," replied Jennifer, rolling her eyes at Steve, "that is how it works in most towns, but we're used to living outside of those. We live in a mansion in a clearing in a forest. We haven't been to a town in quite a while... not since-"

"You should get going," Steve interrupted abruptly. "We'll start working on the mineshaft soon. Be back before dark."

And with those words, Jennifer nodded and left with enchanted bow in hand. Her stride was swift and steady despite her being encased in diamond armor from head to toe, which Fristad imagined was quite heavy.

How odd, Fristad thought. When I first encountered these two people, it seemed like Jennifer was the serious one who would impatiently cut off Steve, but now it seems as if their roles have reversed. What is also odd is that these people cut each other off at the most inconvenient moments, just when the conversation is about to get interesting. First, Jennifer cut Steve off after Steve insisted logs could float in the air, and then she cut him off again when Steve mentioned that Herobrine was his father. Now, Steve just cut Jennifer off after she tried to explain why the two of them live alone in the wilderness.

Fristad walked over to the indentation Steve was digging into the wall and lifted his pickaxe above his shoulder, in preparation for his first swing.

I'm not the only one hiding something, am I? he thought. All these unanswered questions were beginning to make him nervous.

The honed diamond edge of Fristad's pick plunged into the wall, bursting out fragments of stone and dust at a speed that Fristad thought impossible. The power of this miner's tool filled him with awe, and for a while he forgot about the other, third being in that room, a being which wanted so badly to control him.

Warnado skipped another rock across the pond, watching its path until its inevitable sinking. Shaking his head, Warnado looked around the oasis again. He needed to be home. His world was already crumbling, and he wasn’t going to be around to see it.

Warnado glanced up at the jungle trees that towered overhead, which were letting in the faintest bit of sunlight through their leaves. From what Warnado could tell, it would be night soon. If this world played by the same rules, then the monsters would come out soon...

Warnado could use the gauntlet. The mages had saved his mother’s power for a reason, even if it was unstable. Even if he couldn’t use his own magic here, Warnado’s gauntlet could easily chop down one of these trees. But he had sworn he would never use it. If items had personalities, this one would be insane.

Just like him.

Warnado shook his head, letting the haunting memory fade back to the dark recesses of his mind. Finally he stood up; maybe he’d find a set of ruins with old materials that he could use to make a shelter. He could also try to follow the footprints, and see if their makers were friendly. There were only two sets, and they were fresh, which most likely meant that the area had just been discovered. Warnado had no idea how he’d fight the two off if they turned out to be hostile, but he decided to follow the tracks anyway.

After walking through the dense foliage of the jungle for a while without anything interesting happening, Warnado heard noises through the dense fog. The world had made the shift from day to night. Stopping suddenly, he frowned. He didn’t have a weapon.

Whoosh.

Although he didn’t have a weapon, Warnado could still use hand-to-hand if any problems arose. He remembered that one time when he had uppercutted a chicken. Stupid chicken.

“Look, I don’t know where I am. I don’t have a weapon, and I don’t want any trouble. So, how about we just pretend that you didn’t just teleport right behind me, and we can part ways without any problems arising. Agreed?”

Hmm...it seems you don’t know. You being here is already starting to cause problems.

The voice was feminine, and filled Warnado’s head, making it sound as if someone was talking to him telepathically. Warnado frowned, then turned around. He only focused on the Enderman’s body, knowing fully well not to look at its face as to agitate it, and noticed it was different from the other Enderpeople he knew. The creature seemed to be wearing obsidian armor, with a purple gem in the middle, right below where the creature’s neck was. Spikes jutted out from the creature’s shoulders, and it was carrying a black sword that had veins of purple energy running through it.

Who are you? The voice continued. Why are you here?

“I was wondering the same thing. Do you know why I’m here?”

The Enderwoman sighed. Possibly, but you’re not supposed to be here. Are there others?

“You’re the only other living creature I’ve met since I got here. Did you get sucked through a wormhole too? We could be pals! What’s your name?”

Lesser beings such as yourself normally refer to me as the Ender.

“Come on, that name’s so clichéd. Your nickname game is-wait, ‘lesser beings’?”

Yes, “lesser being”. As in I hold more power over you. After all, you were dragged to this land not of your own accord, correct? What’s your name?

Warnado hesitated. He knew better than to trust this Enderwoman with his real name. “Jeb?”

Liar.

“Helix.”

Perfect.

“But if you want this thing to work out, you will refer to me as ‘Lord Helix’. Any lesser being would do the same.”

The Ender growled. You’re a cocky one, aren’t you? Daring to use my words against me?

“Yes. After all, you haven’t shown any remarkable powers so far. If you had, I would surely join you in your obvious quest of world domination. It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

The Ender was obviously deep in thought, because she didn’t answer for a while. Eventually, she shifted her arm to hold her sword in a ready position. I’ll show you true power, “Lord Helix”...

She swung her sword towards Warnado, who ducked underneath the blade, narrowly avoiding its razor-sharp edges. Warnado couldn’t run, since the Ender could obviously teleport, so he saw no other options other than to pull out his gauntlet. He clenched his hands into fists. The Ender stared, transfixed by the gauntlet, obviously drawn to its power.

Warnado looked at his hand. “You’re drawn to its power? It was my mom’s. She was a powerful mage, though not the most mentally stable. Now, I’d walk away before I find out what this thing does.”

The Ender shook her head, breaking the hold the Gauntlet had over her. I’ll be back for you, Helix…

“Okay, nice meeting you. We should do it again sometime. I know a fantastic place where we can get tacos.”

The Ender ignored his statement and teleported away, grumbling about something. Warnado shrugged and continued on, carefully following the footprints embedded in the mud. Eventually he came upon a hastily-built shack. Seeing lights inside and hearing faint voices, he walked up to the door and knocked.

Jennifer looked up at the sun as she crouched from her temporary perch on a tree branch. Judging from the sun's position, which was well above the horizon but still low in the sky, she estimated that the time was 8:30 AM.

Jennifer scanned the treetops. Lush, dark green trees clung to the hills like a coat of fur. In the distance, the last of the fog could be seen hiding in the shadows between cliffsides. As she turned her head, she noticed a shining glint flash from some trees just above the shadows. The leaves of these trees appeared grey. Ice, perhaps?

Jennifer climbed down from the branch. Knowledge of the terrain would be helpful, but she knew now was not the time for sightseeing. Steve and Jennifer's food supply wasn't going to replenish itself, after all.

She pulled out an enchanted bow and arrow from her pocket, drew the arrow loosely against the string, and resumed walking. After a few hundred meters, she suddenly stopped.

Jennifer's eyelids perked up. A faint rustle had just echoed through the trees ahead, barely within her hearing range. She crouched down and reached into her pocket, augmenting her hand with another arrow, and slid the two arrows against the bow. She tiptoed forward, her legs sprawling outward to accommodate the growing downward slope of the ground. Her eyes stared ahead at her targets.

Two deer were traveling slowly along a path at the bottom of the hill. Their forms were erect, but their gait was steady and relaxed, as if they were enjoying the morning weather, blissfully unaware that they were being hunted.

Jennifer couldn't help but smile with amusement. They looked like no animal that she had seen before. She marveled at how their long, thin legs could hold up their stocky brown bodies. Even stranger still were the horns sprouting like tree branches from either side of their heads. That, along with their stubby tails and spoon-shaped ears, made them undoubtedly the silliest-looking mammal that Jennifer had ever seen.

Then, Jennifer's attention turned back to the arrows in her hand. She cocked one of them against the string of the bow and let it go. The arrow sliced through the air and pierced one deer's neck. It fell onto its knees. The second one sprang into a run, leaving the second flying arrow to lodge harmlessly in the ground. Jennifer wasn't going to let it get away. She let loose a third arrow, which struck the running deer between the shoulders. It shrieked but kept running.

A fourth arrow pierced its neck, and it crashed headfirst into the ground.

Jennifer sighed and put her bow away. Whatever these animals were, they sure could run fast, she thought to herself. She jogged down the hill until she reached the first one that she shot. She waited a moment. Sure enough, the body remained.

How am I supposed to collect the meat from it? Jennifer wondered. She recalled when she and Steve were fighting the skeletons and the creeper. After the creeper died, rather than disappear in a puff of smoke leaving gunpowder behind, the gunpowder instead burst forth from the Creeper's stomach. I've never seen an animal like this before.

Maybe it doesn't drop anything, or maybe I have to...

Jennifer grimaced. She could already tell this was about to get messy. She pulled out her diamond sword and thrust the blade into the abdomen of the deer. Blood spattered.

The Ender had little patience for contradictions, and the presence of this human-ish creature was the largest contradiction she'd encountered throughout this entire affair. The Entity had promised that they wouldn't let anything in until they explicitly wanted it - evidently this wasn't the case. He was losing control and things were slipping in under his radar, otherwise he wanted this bizarre kid for some reason.

She found herself bursting into his office after materialising just outside, dramatically casting the doors aside. The room was dimly lit and the candles which usually kept it alight were slowly ceasing to breathe.

"Hello?" She called.

The door slammed shut and the curtains seemingly drew themselves. She raised her claws, ready to disembowel anything that assailed her.

She slowly turned around in a circle, ready to vanish at a moment's notice. Then she saw him, Freak, sitting at the foot of the bed. He gave a lax two-fingered salute from the temple and grinned.

"Hello m'lady." He stood up, swaying slightly, as if a little drunk or at least unfamiliar on his legs.

"Always make an entrance Freak." Ender rolled her eyes.

"Well, you know me." Freak smirked. Ender poured out two shots of whiskey and handed him one. "You know me very well indeed."

The two raised a mutual toast.

"To our glorious leader." Freak oozed.

"To the hope that he doesn't make any more cockups." Ender scolded, before downing her drink.

Freak was about to follow suit but hesitated at this. "What do you mean?"

"He's let someone through. Some little funny-looking tosspot who wouldn't cooperate. He's on the loose currently. We had a fight and then I came back here."

Freak groaned. "Oh lord, you didn't kill it did you?"

"No." Ender laughed. "The Entity would end me for that. You know how he likes his specimens. I came back here to check whether he was interested. Where is he by the way?"

She poured herself another shot, ignoring the fact that Freak still hadn't touched his. In all honesty it wouldn't matter much that she was drinking faster, her species barely registered alcohol, she just enjoyed the taste.

Freak suddenly became interested in examining his fingernails, then realised he didn't have any, wondered why the hell he thought he had any, and then proceeded to answer the question.

"He's out in the danger zone, 'The Shift' as it's calling it. Some religious establishment came through from an outer world thanks to a random energy surge in one of the nodes. He wants to check it out for his 'research.'"

"So, in other words he wants more pretty pictures to add to his art collection, and a few living beings to examine and interrogate."

"You're forgetting the oddities he's always on the lookout for."

Ender snorted. "How could I? Anyway, I'd best head out and find him."

Both stood up.

Freak looked contemplative for a moment, before resolving, "Nah, you don't need to. You take a break, you've been out on patrols all morning. I'll go out and tell him, and I'll keep an eye on this creature."

"You don't even know what he looks like." Ender cocked an eyebrow.

"Honestly, if he's as weird-looking as you suggested, I shouldn't have a hard time finding him. Southern Jungles right?"

"You are indeed correct. Anyway, good day to you sir." Ender said formally, bowing in an exaggerated fashion.

"And to you m'lady." He grinned back, before the two of them jointly vanished.

David jerked back into consciousness suddenly, gasping and looking around. The walls of the corridor were lined with large grey slabs, many of which were bathed in a subtle purple light from various pedestals. David tried to crane his head to see into one of the pedestals, and figure out what was within them, but then realised he was being dragged along underarm.

Two of the hulking Endermen held him, with talons ready to tear into his arteries at the slightest twitch. He looked about. His arms were chained together, but his gauntlet was still on. They evidently couldn't remove it. That was good. Destiny was nowhere to be seen. That wasn't at all good. He felt panic began to fill him.

Then the grim procession stopped suddenly, David felt one of his captors let his arm drop and heard him walk over to the door. He saw an opportunity and whipped his gauntletted arm around, aiming straight at the creature's heart.

"Let me go." David growled.

The creature just smiled in its condescending, reptilian manner.

David willed the gauntlet to shoot it, and it did. However, the blast was thin and sputtering, and seemed to splash onto the shell of the creature feebly before evaporating.

Before he could figure out what was going on, the Enderman punched him in the jaw, rattling his teeth, and threw him into a dark, cramped cell "lit" only by one of those purple lamps.

The door slammed loudly and David was on his feet seconds later, willing the gauntlet to blow the door aside. But it was the same, again and again. The same feeble burst emerged each time and dissipated without leaving so much as a scorch-mark on the door. Then, eventually, his confusion became too great to continue, and he fell back against the lamp. He wiped the blood from his mouth, and he began to panic. Where was Destiny? What were they doing to her? What would they to him? Where were they? And a million other questions rattled through his mind in no particular order, the only point of solidarity being the little purple glow above him.

This is ridiculous, Fristad thought to himself. Steve digs so much faster than me that he has to dig in front of me to keep this tunnel straight.

In the time that Fristad would dig a cubic meter of stone, Steve would dig four, and the disparity in the two men's progress continued to grow as their carved stairwell extended deeper into the ground. Long gone were the sounds of birds and the morning wind. The only sounds left were the echoes of footsteps and the clanging of blades as they clawed through the solid rock. In the few moments when both men were still, all that remained was silent heartbeat of the body of the earth.

For Steve, digging a mine like this was routine, even peaceful. While there was not same rhythmic crumble and crack of stone chunks that Steve was used to, there was still an inescapable rhythm in each swing of his pick, each layer of stone carved out, each vein of coal and iron harvested. It was a welcome break from fighting hordes of monsters, that's for sure.

Not so for Fristad. To him, smashing through all these rocks was at once grueling and boring. Every swing felt awkward; not only did his heavy, oversized iron armor rattle with each sudden movement, but he repeatedly had to readjust his grip on his diamond pick in a futile attempt to rid himself of the unequal strain on his arms. Both his torchlight-strained eyes and restless mind yearned for sunlight and open space. At the very least, Fristad thought, it would be nice to have some other sound in this pit other than shattering rock. I hope Steve's up for conversation.

"So Steve, you're a miner, right?"

"What do you mean?" Steve replied, continuing to mine as he did so.

"Well, for starters, you are wearing a full set of diamond armor. Getting enough diamonds to craft that armor would cost a small fortune if you didn't mine most of the diamonds yourself."

"That can be true. Where I'm from people generally aren't willing to part with our diamonds so easily. Villagers are the worst, though, by far. I've seen 'em charge an arm and a leg for a diamond. Quite literally, an arm and a leg. Some people might give an arm or a leg for a diamond, but both is just outrageous. Anyway, I did mine most of the diamonds for this armor myself, although Jennifer mined quite a few, as well."

"You make it sound so easy. We've been underground for just an hour and my arms are already sore."

"That makes sense, considering you've never gone mining before," Steve remarked.

"Then again…" Fristad continued, "this pickaxe shaft feels a bit wide for my hands. If it's alright for you, I would like to try to craft a pickaxe for myself. Maybe it will fit my hands better."

"What do you mean?" asked Steve. "All diamond pickaxes look more or less the same to me. Which kind of wood you use can make a difference, but for the most part they're identical."

"Not even the pickaxes crafted by other people?"

"No. Does crafting work differently where you come from?"

"I guess so. Where I come from, crafted tools and armor tailor themselves to the person who crafted them. So, if I craft my own sword, the handle fits just right in my hands, and if I craft my own armor, it will fit my height and build."

"That's interesting. In that case, you definitely should craft your own tools and armor."

"Thanks."

Steve paused as he spotted another vein of iron to his left. He dug into it with his pickaxe until a patch of darkness was revealed in the wall. As if on queue, the sound of rattling bones echoed from inside.

"Nether's fire..." Fristad swore, "I just realized where we're going."

"We have been underground all this time. Did it ever cross your mind that we would find a cave at some point?"

"I guess it just didn't sink in."

Steve widened the hole by chipping away the edges with his pick. He leaned his head into the hole, pulled out his diamond sword from the depths of his pocket, and jumped inside.

The sound of crushed bones was heard before a thump echoed in the darkness. A flickering yellow light appeared in the hole.

"All clear!" Steve's voice echoed.

After a moment's hesitation, Fristad gathered his courage and climbed into the hole. His iron armor rattled when his feet landed on the floor.

Steve placed torches at regular intervals as he walked deeper into the cave. As each torch magically burst into flame, the darkness ahead of him retreated a little more from the stone walls. He stopped at the edge of a cliff. A lake of lava glowed at the bottom. Many passageways littered the far walls. Flowing water echoed.

"This cave looks fantastic!" Steve said. "We'll find diamonds down here no problem."

"That would be swell, wouldn't it? Let's hope the monsters are polite and don't - Aaaaah!"

Steve heard the sound of falling gravel. He turned and saw Fristad's arm slipping from the edge of the cliff. Steve grabbed a bucket of water from his pocket and jumped off the cliff the moment he placed the water at the cliff's edge.

The lava became covered in steam. He fell with the waterfall towards the growing patch of obsidian below. Just as his feet landed upon the water-soaked obsidian, he heard the sound of a teleporting enderman.

Steve looked around frantically for Fristad and the enderman. "Fristad, are you alright?" he called.

"I'm fine," replied a voice behind him.

Steve turned around and saw Fristad in his iron armor, standing upon solid stone.

Steve sighed in relief. "That was a close one. You should be more careful. Steve looked around the cave room, making sure there were no monsters in sight. "Also, there might be an enderman nearby. Keep your guard up."

Fristad also sighed with relief, not just because he survived a close encounter with lava, but because Steve didn't suspect that Fristad had just teleported...

Steve looked inquisitively at Fristad for a moment. "Also, how did you get away from the lava so quickly?"

...or so he thought.

"I don't know…" Fristad replied, flustered, "I guess it just… happened."

Steve thought about the enderman teleporting sound that occurred around the time that he landed on the obsidian.

His mouth slowly turned into a small grin. "You can teleport, can't you?"

"Umm… no?"

"You have magical wizarding powers, don't you?" Steve's eyes were now almost alarmingly large.

"Okay, fine! You got me: I can teleport. But only in life-threatening sit-"

"What else?" Steve asked insistently.

"That's it! That is the full extent of my powers, I swear to Notch."

"If you say so…" Steve replied slowly, figuring that "Notch" was some ruler or otherwise important person where Fristad had come from. He walked onward into the cave, placing torches as he went.

Why do I have to be such a terrible liar? Fristad thought to himself.

Inside of him, another mind simmered in anger at the sudden turn of events.

"How could you have been so careless?" the voice echoed. "You have sparked the suspicion of yet another miner... and forced me to expend yet more of my precious energy on your stupidity! Consider yourself lucky he does not want to kill you yet. It helps little that the monsters in this cave already do."

“So Fire, tell me about yourself. What is your strange world of “NPCs” and “players” and whatnot. It sounds like quite a lark.” I questioned as calmly as possible, although I couldn’t deny there was a slight condescension.

Across the fire from me stood the strange being. About three metres tall, larger than even Herobrine or Glibby, he stood. His skin was black like an Endling, but instead of hard and charred it was smooth, scaled and metallic. His white jacket too broke the image of the average man of the End. They were too proud to wear mortal garbs, only wearing any armour in battle and even then it was reserved for their generals.

He unsettled me, and this was the reason for my condescension. However I also couldn’t help but be fascinated by him. Fire was unlike any other creature I’d spoken to. He acted like he was normal, but many of his emotions felt forced, as if he were manufacturing them as a tool. There was also the fact that he was vastly stronger than I. He could tear out massive chunks of the earth and place them back down, and create things from little.

At that very moment we sat in a little hovel of his making. We’d taken a cave near the oasis, and he’d created for us a door which should keep out the creatures of the night.

Fire then began to speak. “Forgive me if I use some over-modern terms. My world may be somewhat further developed than your own.” I grimaced, feeling myself quite a knowledgeable person about modern technology. “I am a man of two worlds.” I cocked an eyebrow, interests now piqued. “The first world, I believe to be far beyond that of your own. In it I am just a random citizen, with above average wealth admittedly but very insignificant in the grand scheme of things. We have many creations that you’ll find wonderous. Horseless carriages; firearms; flight; communication through small devices and of course, the computer and internet.”

I cut him off in this pause, wanting to correct a few things. “Actually, we do have a highly elaborate train system, our airships sail through the sky like the finest of ships and while mobile communication is still in its infancy it should be workable within twenty years. Also, Firearms?” I scoffed. “Bloody irrelevant. They can’t pierce enchanted armour and it’s going to be a long time before they can. Although I cannot account for the last two, please continue.”

Fire looked at me suspiciously. “Seems I’ve underestimated your world a bit, sorry. The computer and internet are simple to explain. The computer is a small device that can contain information and make it into a usable interface-”

“Like a library on a small scale.” I broke in, genuinely fascinated.

“Yes, you catch on quickly.” Fire seemed surprised. “The internet links them all together.”

“Like an ender chest.” Said I, never having actually seen one but understanding the concept very well.

“I suppose that’s also correct. Basically... it’s hard to explain. Within this world, what I believe, just taking a guess here, is the equivalent of your world, is a game. A virtual sandbox.” I was straining to understand, but nodded to him to continue. “Within the game, a number of people have gotten together to create... a book which you can slip inside and interact with? Is that a decent analogy?”

“Fascinating.”

“And time in-game passes much slower. I’ve spent over five thousand years in there, but barely a grain of that time has passed in the real world.”

I was bloody speechless. I yearned to understand more. To learn of this strange man and his fictional world made material. He told me of how he had stolen the Books of Knowledge and of his sister the sorceress. Of how he was gifted by his gods to test both his and their own strength, making him damn near perfect. But while he talked about the world he came from or what he was he didn’t say a single word about who he was.

From my point of view, he was like some sort of demi-mod. A being of inhuman power and some unfathomable knowledge... And as much as this enthralled me, I was equally terrified by it. This man, this being... He was still human. He was imperfect, and something told me that there was something inside him, still chained and well guarded but only waiting for the right moment to break out. I prayed to Herobrine that I didn’t have to be there to see it.

As I staggered back, my mind filled with various obscenities to yell at our captors. More important than the various crass insults were all of our unanswered questions.

However, fate had dictated that they would remain unanswered. Before either Tyron or myself could get a word in, the door had shut, and at our feet lay another captive.

Collapsed on the floor, she wore brown trousers with a small, empty holster, a grey tank top, and had deep brown hair tied up in a ponytail. I turned to Tyron, who shared my mutual disappointment and appeared potentially even more irked, looking as if he were about to rip open the door. We had gained nothing, unless this girl knew more about our prison than we did.

"Didn't you say you wanted a meal earlier Tyron? The Divines seem to have rewarded you," I quipped.

"Yes...if she doesn't have any useful information, it might be about time."

That was when there was a low groan, and she began to twitch. She rolled onto her back and began to slowly blink open, muttering someone's name. I thought I heard "David", and was probably correct. She fumbled about on the floor for something or someone to hold onto, but found only bitingly cold stone on the ground. The young woman's eyes then shot open as Tyron came into view, and she rolled up, looking around for some object to defend herself with. I reached forwards, but she leapt back, finding a glass vase on a table behind her. She promptly shattered this on the table and waved the shattered remains before us, slowly backing up.

"Answers, now!" She spat. "Where's David, where am I, who are you? In that order."

"Shut up Kir," Tyron spat to this unseen figure. I was growing increasingly concerned by this.

The girl turned her head to me, "You, Kir or whatever your name is. Those three questions. Now!"

"Just calm yourself," I replied, more defeated than frustrated at this point.

"I don't think that answered any of my questions. Now, answer or I slam this in your face!" She jerked her arm threateningly, looking me up and down for a weapon.

Much to her surprise, rather than the weapon she had expected to find, I ignited a small flame in the palm of my hand. Sadly, it didn't quite have the impact I intended, being pitiful and flickering in stature.

"Sorry, it's usually more impressive than that. However, I don't have the answers to either of your first two questions, and I'm only partly sure of the answer to the third, at this stage. Please put the shard down, and I'll try to explain to you as best I can. Otherwise, I may have to give you some first-degree burns."

My joke seemed to calm her down a bit, and she lowers the shard.

"So," She swallowed. "We're in the same boat then?"

"I'm afraid so. All three of us are unfortunate prisoners. Of what, we do not fully understand, but we have several theories. As for who we are: He's Tyron, and I'm Astro. We've not been acquainted for more than about a half hour, though, so there's no backstory for you."

"Astro," Tyron rumbled distractedly. "Should have asked that. Rude of me."

"Destiny," She said grimly, brushing her fringe aside slightly and placing the shattered remains of the glass on the table. "They caught me around some portals. Me and my… friend. That's uh… David. I don't know whether they caught him, or, killed him… Yeah."

"Well, if you're looking for answers, I'm afraid it's slim pickings. The creatures that keep us here are called Endlings, and as you saw earlier, I'm not capable of using my magic properly. Meanwhile, Tyron's had several confrontations with a being called Freak. And no, we don't know very much about it either."

Tyron then began to grumble inanely. "Translucent ****. Going to kill him the second I see him."

"So, you're Astro," She asked quizzically, seemingly starting to calm down a little. "Who's Kir?"

"Yes," Tyron said unnecessarily, seeming to wake up from his grumbling. "Oh, yes. Kir is…" He gestured to the sword at his side, "That."

"Kir is a sword?" She dryly responded.

From slightly behind Tyron, I gave Destiny a look that said to just go with it.

Tyron then pulled the scabbard from his side, looked squarely at it and smiled sadly at the sword.

"You can talk to them now, go ahead," Tyron coaxed.

"My gosh, I thought I'd never speak to anyone but Tyron!"

"The sword is talking. In my head." Destiny ruminated. "Wasn't expecting that this morning, but hey I was pretty dead then so, this is one of the more normal things to happen today."

I mentally lamented the breach of my final private space. At least there was somebody to help me through my avid existential crises.

"Well," Destiny said, clapping her hands together and blinking furiously. "What do we know about the situation? Is there a window?"

She then looked over and saw the barred windows along the wall, and then realised this was a rather stupid question. Scratching her neck in embarrassment she went over to the window and looked out.

"Pretty high up." She said absentmindedly. "So, looks like we're stuck up here. Best get to know each other."

She grimaced and sat down on the nearest four-poster.

"Anyone care to start?"

I got the feeling that Tyron was not going to volunteer before me, so I spoke up.

"I hail from Arcadia, on the Horizon. It's a place; people just aren't very good at naming things where I come from. I'll keep it short, but I have the innate ability to use magic where most of my friends do not. I've seen many things over the course of my life, and, honestly, I don't particularly want to talk about it. All you need to know is that I want to get out of here as much as you do, and that I have more patience than I appear to."

Destiny nodded, as if understanding, yet I knew that she couldn't so easily. Nevertheless, I was finished.

"And you Tyron?"

Tyron looked at her and glared. "You fir-"

That was when Kir eagerly bounced back into our heads. Once again, I cringed at the loss of my inner sanctity.

"Well, if you must ask - we're from Minecraftia! Don't really have a home. We just sort of wander. Tyron's an anomaly who's friends with dragons. I'm a bluestone vein. We killed Herobrine together." It was plainly gushing over past glories, and Tyron just looked at the floor, growing increasingly discontent.

"That's enough Kir," He growled as the sword mentioned the name "Lupi".

"And you, Destiny?" The inside of my head had never felt so peaceful.

"Obligatory alcoholic joke." She dryly quipped. "I'm Destiny. I just kind of woke up a few weeks, maybe months, ago.

Born from nothing and all that. Anyone else in that situation? Just kind of born fully grown? Potential amnesia?" Tyron raised a hand sadly. "Glad I'm not alone. So, I met this guy called David - we clicked. Stayed with a villager for a while, then he died. We were harassed by this guy called Martin - Herobrine's obnoxious apprentice. Then, eventually, he kidnapped me, held me hostage. Tried to kill me, extract the 'golden diamond' from my essence. Needed it to invade somewhere or something. David almost died trying to save me. I almost died. And then the Notch-damn second we had an opportunity to get out of that life - to have a damned easy stretch - we were pulled right back in! Our 'past-selves' decided they wanted us to investigate this weird portal they found. 'Hey! Want to enter a perilous situation we know nothing about?! Hop on in!'" She glared off into the corner of the ceiling. "They attacked us. Three Endermen and some weird gorilla-looking man attacked us. They took me and I don't know what happened to David. He could be captured - or being tortured - or dead!"

She dropped forwards, rubbing her temples furiously.

"Damn it!" She shouted, but instantly regretted it. "Sorry, that was rude."

I looked across at Tyron, who scowled impassively but nodded as if understanding. Kir seemed to "Hrm" in a concerned manner.

Then, because things always work best in threes, the door opened in a slightly less dramatic manner than the two previous times. However, this time it looked like something would advance the plot in a meaningful way. Between the two Endlings from before was a well-dressed middle-aged man with a large bald patch. He smiled coldly.

"The Entity would like to speak with you."

The next few hours of spelunking were somewhat less eventful. Steve and Fristad mined and lit the cave as they went, every once in a while killing a pack of monsters which would attempt to ambush them from the darkness.

None of the monsters were a match for Steve with his fully-enchanted diamond gear. Fristad, on the other hand, appeared to be holding his own, much to Steve's relief. It seemed that, aside from their rather gruesome way of dying, the underground monsters of this world behaved the same as the monsters in Steve's world.

A while later, as Steve was in the middle of mining an iron vein, he heard a muffled voice emanate from his pocket. Steve put his pickaxe away and pulled out his radio.

"Steve, can you hear me?" the static-riddled voice spoke from the radio, this time louder now that it had been removed from Steve's pocket. "This is Jennifer."

Steve put the radio up to his face. "Okay, so nobody's stolen the radio," Steve replied sarcastically. "This of course is Steve."

"Glad to hear you're alive, Steve," replied Jennifer, her partial attempt at sarcasm cut short by the impatience in her voice. "Listen: I found a small group of soldiers a few kilometers away from our hole in the mountain. They were talking about the crystals, and they are waiting to meet up with someone. I am almost certain that 'someone' is the same muscled man that tried to steal the crystals from us earlier. But it gets worse: the person they are waiting for has a compass-like device which they claim can detect crystals. They also mentioned some mysterious substance called 'booze,' although I am not sure if that is relevant."

"Oh yea, 'booze,' I know what that is…" Fristad remarked jokingly.

"Well, regardless of whatever this 'booze' thing is," Steve said, "that is bad news. Did the soldiers say anything about when the man would come back?"

"No, they didn't. They only said that he was late."

"I'm not surprised." Steve grinned. "We put up quite a fight. Anything else new?"

"Unless you want to hear about the gruesome way in which I had to collect meat from the animals in this world, I'm pretty sure that sums it up."

"As long as there's food in the furnace." Steve replied.

"Alright, then. Take care."

"Same."

Steve slid the radio back into his pocket, took out his pickaxe, and resumed mining out the iron vein.

The existence of the soldiers worried Steve. The man that attacked them earlier was hardly a threat on his own, but if the man really were capable of tracking down crystals, he could easily track down Steve, and lead an army straight towards him. And if that army were anything like that man, they were bound to have evil intentions.

Fire was the first to stop talking. They’d been engrossed in an almost disturbingly engaging conversation about how indoor plumbing worked in Fire’s “real” world, when they heard a knock on the door.

“Unusual for someone to knock at this time...” Fire said, eyes darting towards the door, wishing he’d installed windows.

“Not too unusual. I’m certainly used to people calling at such hours.” Kay chuckled to himself.

“Very interesting.” Fire remarked.

“Yes, from my experience they’re usually either trying to kill you, or to convince you to kill someone else.” Kay laughed in an attempt at being roguish. At the same time he reached for his weapon, Fire did the same.

Kay was the one to walk up to the door. He reached for the knob of the door, halting before turning it, taking this moment to nod to Fire. He drew his sword and then threw open the door, ready to stab anything in his path.

Standing outside the door was a hooded figure with their face shrouded in shadow. On their hand was a gauntlet humming with otherworldly whispers.

“AH!” Kay shouted. “Demon!”

“Correction.” The cloaked figure shouted. “Quarter-demon on my father’s side. By the way, I am Warnado, and I LOVE TACOS!”

He threw his arms wide and seemed to grin expectantly. What he didn’t expect was to be struck in the face and thrown to the ground by some pale bugger with a sword. Nor did he expect to have the claws from Fire’s left hand and the Wither dagger in his right hovering mere centimetres in front of his face.

“What the heck are you doing?”

“As commandant of the 10th Legion of the Herobrinian Army, I, Kay Mandy, am placing you under arrest Endling... I mean, quarter-demon, kind of human being thing!”

The hooded figure (who claimed his name to be Warnado) turned to Fire and asked, “Does he do this a lot?”

“At least from what I’ve seen, yes.” Fire answered, “Now, tell us who you are!”

“Well, if you’re so keen...” Warnado began sarcastically.

“Lose the tone!” Fire snapped.

“Nah, keep it. It will make this much more interesting.” Kay excused.

“My name is Warnado. As said before, I have an interest in Tacos. My father was a half-demon. Had a rather unhappy childhood. I also spend my time looking after a bunch of idiotic villagers who couldn’t defend themselves from a cow... Rather literally actually... That was a weird day. Anyway, whilst defending said scrubs I was accidentally sucked through a portal and now I’m here. I was also attacked by a random Enderwoman with a really uncreative name.”

“Is that all?” Kay prodded.

“I guess that is as plausible as anything, looking at our own stories...” Fire remarked.

“Oh trust me mate, I haven’t even told you the implausible stuff yet.” Kay laughed dryly.

“So, care to tell me where we are?” Warnado asked, becoming increasingly aware that neither Fire, nor Kay were natives of this region.

“No clue.” Kay said, straightening up and lifting his blade away from Warnado’s throat. He looked sideways at Fire. “You can move the claws.”

“Oh,” Fire hadn’t even realised he was still holding them in the face of Warnado, before retracting them, somewhat embarrassed.

“For the record,” Warnado started, suddenly starting to lose breath. “That’s rather cool; the whole claw thing. But honestly,” He turned to Kay, starting to pant rather heavily. “You seriously have no idea where we are?”

“Not a clue.” Kay responded with a sarcastic cheeriness, the novelty of which had already worn off on Fire, “We’re all lost here. Welcome to the club fellow confused wanderer!”

Warnado backed up, arms tensing up, as he bent over slightly. He raised his hands to his temples. “So, I could be anywhere right now?”

“Of course,” Kay responded, pretending to feign innocence as to the annoyance he was causing Warnado. “You could be in another flipping dimension right now. That’s certainly what happened to me and Fire. Isn’t that right Fire?”

Fire only hummed “Mhm.”

Warnado leant back a moment, as if about to fall over, before leaning back again and grabbing Kay’s shoulders. He then proceeded to let out a whispered scream of “Agh!” for the next ten seconds.

“Indeed.” Kay responded. “I believe you now understand our predicament?”

“Yes.” Warnado responded.

Fire said: “I guess we shouldn’t be standing around outside for too much longer, you are already enough unwanted attention for a night...”

Even Kay didn’t have any remarks about that statement, he turned around on the spot and went back into the hovel through the wide open door. Once everybody was inside Fire lifted his backpack, which he had deposited inside previously, onto his lap.

“We should eat something, luckily I carry plenty of dried meat with me.” He announced.

He unhooked one of the smaller bags from his backpack and opened it up by pulling on a string. He then fished out three pieces of dark red meat, he handed Warnado and Kay a piece and kept one for himself.

“It’s not the best food you can have but it doesn’t spoil and still tastes good.” He said and then added with a smirk: “If you like salt.”

Fire took a big bite of his own piece, the meat was tough but nothing Fire’s sharp teeth couldn’t handle. The taste was predominantly salty but the salt didn’t cover the taste of the meat completely.

Kay looked at the piece of meat as if it were something otherworldly but then decided that it should not be poisoned and took a bite. It took quite some chewing as he lacked Fire’s exceptionally sharp teeth.

Warnado had similar problems with his piece but still gave a thumbs up, unable to speak because of the food in his mouth and the abnormal amount of salt in it.

Kay chewed the meat contemplatively. “I honestly can’t complain about it. Better than my mate Astro’s cooking... or to a lesser extent the food in Vechs’ prison camps.”

After that they just sat there and silently chewed the food, after they were done Fire handed them a bottle that seemed to contain substantially more water than its size would tell.

After the somewhat cheerful meal the atmosphere slowly changed to aggressively trying to stay awake, as nobody trusted anyone to stand guard this night. After some time it was clear that Fire was the definite winner in the staying awake contest, he was still wide awake while Kay and Warnado were wrestling with their tiredness.

Kay remarked: “Well, Fire. If you want to kill us, now is the moment, I can’t even lift this blade anymore.” He demonstratively failed to get his sword off the ground.

Fire just sighed and replied: “I give you my word that I won’t kill you tonight… whatever that’s worth to you.”

Kay was about to say something as Warnado interrupted, audibly struggling to form a straight sentence: “If you are… have no int...ention to murderize us… don’t do it.”

Fire suppressed a smirk and said: “Well, you’ll need to sleep now. If I don’t murderize you this night because you stay up, everything else in this world will tomorrow. A tired warrior might as well not be a warrior at all.”

Kay said: “He’s... got point.” Now too struggling with his words.

Then Kay proceeded by letting himself fall over sideways, Warnado seemed to like the idea and did the same. Within a matter of seconds they both were asleep. Fire stood up and took his ghast bone bow from his back, fished a handful of arrows from his inventory and took his guard post outside the hovel.