Prologue

 Once there was a player. 

 And the player would dream.

 What did this player dream? 

 Sometimes they dreamed of a world of blocks, where blocky trees grew and blocky creatures lived. 

 Sometimes they dreamed they were a lone survivor in this world, other times they dreamed they were farmers in a small village with other villagers to trade with and keep the player company. 

 Sometimes the player dreamed they lived in a world that was smooth and normal. In this world, the player dreamed long. But then they would return to their shorter dream. In the short dream, and sometimes the player dreamed they fought monsters of the night. 

 Sometimes they dreamed they were survivors, and would live off of the land, collecting resources and moving from place to place, never settling. Other times the player dreamed they awoke in a house they had built themselves from blocks they had collected in the world, and went out to mine for resources in a cave nearby. 

 Sometimes the player dreamed they died. 

 They dreamed of travelling to far off lands of snow and ice, scorching deserts, and dense jungles. They dreamed of conquering the world and of saving it.

 And the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream and the player would dream.

Until it was time to wake up.

Wake up.

WAKE UP.

Chapter One

The Player’s First Dream

 I opened my eyes. 

 Blue. 

 White; but smaller, not as big as the blue that covered everything.

 Why was the world blue with white blocky spots dotting the air?

 Then I noticed the white squares and rectangles were moving, very slowly, from right to left. 

 I blinked.

 I moved my hands. I gasped. Something touched my hand!

 I looked at my hand and saw what had touched it: It was grass.

 I was lying down, I realized.

 So the world wasn’t blue with white spots, I thought as I looked back to the blue. It’s just the sky, with clouds; and I’m laying in the grass.

 Why?

 I slowly got up from my resting spot and looked around. Lots of grass, for miles, dotted here and there with weeds and wildflowers, like I was in a big meadow. But then in the distance was something that I assumed was a hill, though it looked blocky as well, like the clouds. And the grass. Even the sun was a square stuck high up in the sky. I took another look at the ground, it was divided into squares that looked like they went on forever in every direction. 

 What was happening? Was this weird blocky filter happening in my mind and affecting my eyes? 

 Then I noticed my body. Flat and blocky, just like everything else I saw around me. 

 “What’s going on. . . !?” I wondered aloud as I stared at my square arms and  fingers. 

 “Where am I?” I looked out at the landscape around me for the second time, taking in the grass blocks and tiny blocky flowers and square sun and rectangular clouds and weird hill and animal noises. 

 Animals?!

 I spun around to locate where the sound had come from, but it sounded as if it came from nowhere and everywhere all at once. The animal emitted another sound, and for whatever reason my mind didn’t register it as a sheep until I heard it this second time. 

 I ran towards the weird hill, because for some reason my logic right now was telling me if I couldn’t see the sheep but could hear it bleating all around me it must be behind the blocky pile of grass and dirt in the distance.  

 I was sprinting, but I stopped sprinting unwillingly once I was almost to the hill. I don’t mean I stopped unconsciously, I mean I really couldn’t make myself sprint anymore. It was as if some invisible force somewhere had switched off my ability to run. I tried as hard as I could but all I got to do was walk the rest of the way to the hill. 

 I went behind the hill and found a grove of white-barked trees, all blocky like everything else, and the source of the bleating: a pure-white sheep grazing beside them. I shouldn’t have been surprised that it was square as well, but I still wasn’t used to this 8-bit world. 

 I walked around the grazing sheep and into the grove of trees. They were actually pretty amazing, I liked how the darker leaves matched the white bark perfectly. The sight of them and the sound of their leaves rustling in the seemingly constant east-to-west breeze calmed me. Something about them told me they were birches. But I don’t remember living near a birch grove. In fact I didn’t remember much else about where I lived either. 

 Did I even live anywhere? 

 Did I have a home? 

 Why had I been lying in the grass in a place that seemed so familiar yet I’d never been to before?

 I felt something wet on my leg. I looked down. I had stepped in a pool of water in the middle of the grove. Need I tell you that even the water was blocky? 

 This place is so strange. I thought. Yes, I had come to think of it as a place. I didn’t know where, but it was still a place. This couldn’t be my mind playing tricks on me, this had to be somewhere. 

 But where?  I wondered as I waded through the cool water to the other side. 

 I came to the edge of the grove, it opened up to another meadow, but the grass here was lighter and the hills were everywhere; and I heard cows . . . and pigs. 

 I ran up and over hills and through tall grass and flowers until I found them. I don’t know what I expected to see, but in the back of my mind I think I hoped that seeing them as non-blocky, real animals would mean the end of this weird world I had somehow stumbled into. 

 I didn’t see real-looking animals with the normal curves and chubbiness of cows and pigs when I saw them, however. No, these common farm animals were square as ever and just as sharp and square as the sheep had been. 

 The cow stopped its feasting and looked up at me with a lazy expression like he didn’t have a care in the world and couldn’t fathom anyone else ever having one either. The pig walked away oinking. 

 What was this place? Where were the people? Were there any people? Was I even a person?! 

 No, calm down. You have to be a person, you’re having self-conscious thoughts. Only people do that, right? 

 Don’t panic, just keep going, you’ll find a. . . a. . . a house or something, soon. Or people. Or anything that indicates you’re not alone. 

 I’ll be okay. 

 Right?

————————————————————————————————

 Wrong. 

 So wrong. I thought as I sat in a dark, one-block wide, two-block high hole in the ground with a block over my head to hide me from the monstrosities above ground who tried to kill me moments earlier. 

 Ugly beasts, some of which I had thought didn’t exist, had swung at me, shot at me, chased me and bit me until I hit the ground with my fist by accident and discovered the ground could come loose in, you guessed it, blocks. But ones that I could pick up and place and carry with me in some invisible pack.

 I was enthralled by this discovery until a rotting corpse mobile, otherwise known as a Zombie, punched me in the back while I was reveling and caused me to kick into overdrive. I hurriedly dug myself a hole and jumped in, covering the top with one of the blocks I had collected. 

 I’ve been cowering down here ever since, listening to the disgusting clicking of spider mandibles and groaning of the undead. I just wanted all of it to end. It had to be a bad dream, all the blocky things and weird night creatures. It had to be a nightmare. 

 I wanted to wake up. 

 Wouldn’t I have already awoken if I had gotten scared enough?

 Believe me, I had gotten scared enough. 

 So why couldn’t I just wake up? 

 I didn’t want to dream. 

 I just wanted to wake up! 

 “Wake up!” I yelled, trying to reach myself from my dream.

 This was a dream, right?

 “C’mon! Just WAKE UP!” I banged my hands against my head.

 Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

 Wake up!

 WAKE UP!

Chapter Two

Steve

I’ve been here for as long as I can remember, which isn’t very far back. I don’t remember being a kid, or growing up, or even how old I really am, but I know I had to have done it. How else would I know how to walk and craft and survive?

 I’ve never been anywhere else, this blocky world is all I know. I’ve heard rumors that there’s another side, a dimension mirroring ours that’s not so sharp and square; but I’m not sure I believe it.

 I’ve been to deserts and jungles and meadows and caves and even different dimensions of my own, but all of it has been blocky. 

 Has it always been this way, you ask? Probably. I don’t know how this world came to be, or even how it will end, all I know is who I am and what I do. 

 Okay, I know more, but that’s not important right now (I’m sure you don’t care about learning to shear a sheep or survive a Creeper). 

 I’m a miner, I’m a survivor, and as far as I know, I’ve been doing this my whole life. Anything I have, I’ve earned through hard work and endurance. I learned to craft, built my own house, tilled my own crops, mined for minerals, and defended it all from the monsters of the night.

 Sometimes it’s still hard, even though I have everything I need. There were times, before I had a house, before I had enough food to sustain me, when I had wondered if it was all worth it. 

 Why was I here? I had asked. Where was here? 

 I had eventually just accepted the hand I had been dealt, but I still had other questions. Most of them I tried to suppress, tried to forget. But there was one I could never stop thinking about. 

 Am I alone?

 I’m still searching for the answer.

————————————————————————————————

 I had friends. If you could call them that, because they weren’t like me. They were animals. I don’t mean that they acted  like animals, I mean they really were animals.

 I had a couple of cows in a fenced-in pasture beside my house who provided milk and mild conversation for me, and a wolf who would go with me to the ends of the earth for a bone or two. The occassional pig would wander in from the wilderness to oink at my carrot crops. I had a few chickens whose eggs I collected daily for cake, and a horse I would ride to far off places. Next to the cow pasture was an enclosure for six sheep, they provided my wool.

 And in case you were wondering: No, I don’t use any of my animals for meat. How could I? They’re all I’ve got, friend-wise. There are other living beings, but none of them are at all interested in being friendly. 

 They are monsters. 

 No, really. 

 There are Zombies here, and giant Spiders as big as me (not to mention their smaller poisonous cousins who live underground), and Skeletons who shoot at me, Witches who throw evil potions on me, Slimes that want to crush me; and don’t even get me started on the Creepers and Endermen.

 Fortunately most of those creatures only come out at night. Unfortunately all of them can be found Underground any time of day, posing a threat to me when I go mining. Torches aren’t going to keep them away when you’re face-to-face with one. Only a blade can save you. A blade and good instincts, and fighting skills.

 Even between having the wildlife and the monsters, it still gets lonely. I used to think that if I fought hard enough, learned enough, traveled enough, I’d find something, anything, that might show me I wasn’t truly alone in this blocky world. I haven’t, not yet. Maybe not ever. 

 I don’t know how much hope I have left, but hope was the only thing that kept me going, kept me building and learning. If I have no hope, no fuel, what then? 

 Maybe I was just dreaming, thinking I could really find someone else out there like me. 

 Maybe I was wrong. 

 Maybe I should just wake up.

Chapter Three

TH3 C0D3

 Letters. Words. Numbers. Commands. All flowing in perfect digital lines. All in harmony, each line of digital memory helping the other to form an orchestra of working code. Some lines led to animals, some to different dimensions, others led to servers and pyramids and even common grass blocks. Each line was connected, a network of balance. If one was disturbed it affected the others, if not immediately, eventually.

 It was bright here. In the center was the Gateway, the brightest, most important spot. Here everything flowed through. Lines of code were evaluated here and allowed to pass through into the blocky world if deemed fit to enhance it. Just outside the Gateway were billions and billions of lines of code, shining a digital, glowing light blue, flowing in and out of the Gateway a hundred million a second. 

 Beyond the sparkling lines of code was a slightly darker blue space, where new lines of code were made, but beyond that was darkness. There a shadow darker than the Void grew. This shadow was code as well, but filled with hatred and malice, unlike those that came before it. 

 This line of code began to desire to inhabit the square land that its brighter cousins were entering, but for an entirely different purpose than its sparkling counterparts. The bright lines of code were made to help and enrich the blocky world, the shadow that had grown out of sight of the Gateway wished to maim and destroy the land. 

 The shadow was not strong enough, however, to penetrate the Gateway and its firewalls, so it began to venture to the edges of the code, attempting to catch and tamper with the lines. It succeeded multiple times, and each time sent them forth with more malice than before set in their inner workings. 

 The Gateway grew conditioned to the lines that held shadows, and before long the master of those lines had formed into a shape familiar enough to the Gateway to allow him access into the blocky world.

 He passed among the river of code on his way to the Gateway, scorching any lines that got too near to his evil touch. The shadow approached her, gathering every skill he had acquired in the Void, preparing to pierce the heart of the Gateway and enter into the square domain. 

 The shape of a sword materialized into the hand of the Virus, becoming solid and shining with ethereal light, reflecting the colors of the Gateway and the many lines of code around him. The Virus could feel he was getting closer to it, closer to the world, closer to domination and despair from his hands. 

 The Virus stopped in front of the bright, shining Gateway. He watched as all the lines of code swept past him through the portal. He saw some of his own evil threads pass through and laughed at the Gateway for overlooking them. 

 He stepped forward, ready to enter the sandbox world and begin tearing it apart. But suddenly a great force accompanied by white light pushed him back. 

 “Stop!” The voice filled the Codex with sound, it came from the Gateway. It was the Gateway.

 The Virus looked up in shock and anger. 

 “You!” He hissed, “I should have known you’d still recognize me, even in this accursed disguise.” 

 “Your eyes will always give you away,” the Gateway said, her voice calming yet commanding, as she took a shape similar to a blocky person. She shone with a brightness only rivaled by the square sun of the world she guarded. Her features were barely there, she was just light and code.

 The Virus laughed at her, regaining what confidence he had lost by being knocked down, he was nothing if not resilient. 

 “How’s my brother?” He asked.

 “Still better than you,” the Gateway answered.

 “Oh, Gateway, I think we can both agree that I was the better offspring of the two,”  the Virus said.

 “I was talking about his heart,” the Gateway said.

 “Yes, he was always soft,” the Virus said. “Something that never came naturally for me.”  And with that, he engaged the Gateway in combat. 

 But the Gateway was not ready for how aggressive the shadow had become , and was overtaken quickly. The Virus stabbed her, and her strength waned. 

 “If you kill me,” she coughed. “Your brother will find you much sooner than you think.” 

 The Virus smiled, his eyes glowed white from the code within him, and he said, “I’m counting on it.” 

 He killed the Gateway, and went forth into the blocky world.

 Once he touched the blocks of grass and saw the peaceful landscape, he was even more sure of his decision to conquer this world. 

 The Virus breathed in the fresh air of the untouched world of blocks around him. 

 “Freedom,” he sighed. 

 Then he took his longsword and stabbed the ground in front of him, sending out a sick wave of infection across the land, through the air. 

 The Virus looked into the sky, past the clouds and blue atmosphere, and whispered, “Now, brother, let’s see how long it takes for you to find me.” 

 Then he teleported away, leaving the scorched longsword in the dust.

Chapter Four

The Player’s Second Dream

 It took me a while, and I don’t know how long I was down there, but I finally dug myself out of my hole. I emerged from the ground tired and hungry and aching from my wounds. 

 I looked around, hoping I would find some kind of food. My body was screaming for nutrients, and all I could see surrounding me were trees and mushrooms. 

 Wait. 

 Couldn’t I eat mushrooms?

 I hurried over to one of the little brown things sprouting out of the ground in the shade of a tree and hit it like I had hit the grass blocks. The mushroom popped off of the ground and hovered in front of me, bobbing up and down like it was floating in water. 

 This place not only looks weird and square, but it’s got to have weird air too, I thought as I went closer to the mushroom and it jumped into my hand. 

 I went to the next mushroom and collected it, and the next, and the next. I couldn’t eat them them. I tried every one I picked up but it just wouldn’t let me.

 “What is this place?!” I yelled out to the land.

 I started walking away, but under another tree I saw two red mushrooms with white spots. 

 I picked them. 

 I tried to eat them. 

 No use. 

 I sighed. 

 I was going to starve. 

 Then I remembered that there were trees all around me. Don’t trees grow food? Some trees? Maybe these were those trees. Their bark was deep brown, and their leaves were a dark faded green. Spruces, I think. Somehow I have memories of them. Far off, foggy memories. 

 Spruces didn’t grow food. 

 Dang it.

 I put my so-far useless mushrooms in my weirdly invisible, weightless pack and carried on, empty stomach and all. 

 I rounded the corner and came face-to-face with another cow. 

 “Ahh!” I jumped back, hitting my shoulder against a tree.

 “Ow. . .” I winced. 

 The cow mooed.

 “Stupid cow,” I grumbled as I walked past him. 

 I was the stupid one, though. I shouldn’t have blamed him for my fear because I had thought he was a monster. As far as I knew, those things that had chased me only came out at night. 

 I crawled up a hill and met three more cows, probably part of the herd that the other one belonged to. 

 And in case you are wondering: Yeah, I could’ve just killed a cow by now, or a pig, or a sheep, and gotten something to eat. But to be honest with you, as hungry and hurting as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to do that to them. They had such innocent, trusting faces, and they were so peaceful. 

 Also if I didn’t kill them I wouldn’t be so alone. 

 I kept going through the spruce forest, climbing over hills and dodging trees, until I saw a hill big enough to have a vantage point at the top to get my bearings. 

 Once I got there, I saw two different grasses meet at the bottom of my hill, a bright meadowy green, like the grass I first saw coming to this world, and a darker, faded green that matched the spruces. Beyond the meadow-grass I saw grass that mixed with stone to make knolls and caves and even mountains. 

 The oink of a pig brought me back to where I stood. In the meadow-like area were red and yellow flowers, and off to the right of that was a big hill with a base of stone and a small waterfall flowing out of the side. 

 I went right, almost ran into a sheep, and walked past the waterfall hill. I avoided a steep crater in the ground that a cow had fallen into and continued on. 

 I came to the top of a rise and looked down to see a heart-shaped lake with black things swimming around in it. 

 I found a way down to get a closer look and they darted to the depths below. But there was one a little way from me who hadn’t fled, and as I watched, it dawned on me that they were squid. 

 I went back up the rise. 

 I found that I liked being up higher. I could see more. I was in control more.  

 When I got to the top I saw something in the distance that I hadn’t before. It was a little far off, but I could make out windows, and a roof. 

 It was a house. 

 I was saved! Food! Rest! Shelter! 

 I ran down the side of the rise as fast as I could safely go, and swam across the heart lake to the other side. I emerged on the opposite bank in a sea of tall lilac-colored flowers surrounded by more birch trees. It was a soothing site.

 But I needed to get to that house, so I climbed another huge hill to make sure I was going in the right direction. I was, but there was a lot of stone and dirt and other stone-like materials making up giant hills and valleys between me and salvation. I mean, huge hills. They could compete with mountains. They were. . . extreme. And they had rivers and streams flowing in the valleys between them.

 After climbing one I would have to swim through cold waters just to go climb another extreme hill. 

 What the heck is wrong with this place? 

 I tried another way. 

 I turned around and went over another big hill and came to a little valley filled with birches and trees lighter than spruces. They surrounded a small pool of water. 

 I went around them and through them and then I remembered what I had told myself about trees: Don’t trees grow food?

 So I stopped at one of the light brown barked trees and hit it. It was harder than the grass block but it didn’t hurt me. Great, I’m going crazy, now I think it’s normal to punch trees. The log I hit came popping off the tree and I stepped back, expecting the entire thing to come down. 

 Nothing happened. 

 What?! 

 The tree was standing just fine, as if a huge gap between two parts of itself was a normal occurrence. Maybe it is. . . in this world. 

 That meant I would have to keep punching until the whole thing was gone. 

 How was I going to reach the top? 

 I soon found out that somehow I could reach above my head farther than I should naturaly be able to. I took down the entire tree, which gave me two saplings and a bright red apple. 

 I didn’t know what to do with the saplings so I stuck them in the ground and devoured the apple. Finally! Food to fill the emptiness inside me. 

 I could feel my wounds healing, which was really weird, because normally that would have taken a long time, right?

 Yeah, normally. But nothing is normal here except that I’m alive and can do things like eat and walk. 

 I went straight to the next tree and started punching it into oblivion. 

 I wanted more apples. 

 All I got were more saplings. 

 I frustratingly shoved the saplings in the ground and ran from tree to tree, trying to find apples. By the time I had punched away at every light brown barked tree I could see, I had ten apples. I ate three, and put the rest in my pack. 

 I turned around to continue my journey with a full stomach when I saw another tree. I had decided to call them oaks, somehow that made sense in my mind even though oaks didn’t grow apples. 

 I thought I had punched all the oaks away? But here was one right in front of me.

 I looked around and there were two more. 

 What is going on?!

 Then one of the saplings in front of me suddenly sprouted up into a full-grown oak. 

 “Whoa!” I stepped back.

 Okay, so I can heal really fast, and now trees grow like wildfire. 

 “Well, moving on,” I said to the trees as I left them.

 I exited into another part of the same forest. It was either a big forest or I was going in circles. I didn’t know which one because the saplings I had planted had grown into trees, so I had no way to mark where I had been.

 I finally got out into open air and went into a meadow, only to find out the meadow was the top of a huge hill. What? 

 I looked out and actually saw the spruce forest. Or at least a spruce forest. I wasn’t really sure where I was. 

 There was a valley below me and a smaller hill beyond that. Everything was starting to look the same. 

 Then I looked to the right and saw the house I had seen in the distance from the spruce forest. It was closer than before. 

 I was getting closer! I had gone the right way! That had been the spruce forest I was in. 

 I went down the side of the hill and up the next one, through another grove of trees and out near what looked like a swamp. 

 I was rushing, and getting nervous. Because the sky looked darker, duskier. The sun was getting lower in the sky, the clouds getting blacker, the shadows getting deeper. 

 The trees were pretty close together here, so I found a way to jump along their leaves and climb on top of one to look around. I turned a 360 while the world darkened around me. Where was that house?! 

 I jumped off my tree and ran back the way I came, through the woods. I needed air, I needed light. I crashed through vines and trampled mushrooms. Was I even going in the right direction? 

 Then I saw it. In the distance. Soft, white light through the leaves. I went towards it. 

 I emerged out of the forest and saw where the light originated. The house! I ran across a clearing to reach it, passing a pig in the dark. He obviously did not know of the danger the nighttime held. 

 I came to the side of the house, which suddenly appeared much larger once I was up close. This was no house. It was a mansion.

 As I went closer, I saw that the side I had come to had a hole in it, a large hole, with water around it and dark wood rotting around the edges of the entrance. 

 Whoever owns this place should really fix this, I thought. 

 It should have alarmed me. But I was too focused on escaping the wilderness that I actually waded through the water to try and get inside the mansion.

 I heard a grunting sound as I set my wet self on the red and white carpet inside. I looked around. Off to my left was a figure, holding its hands together at the waist.

 “Oh! A person!” I started towards him. “Maybe you can help me? I seem to have gotten lost and it’s really scary out there. . . and. . .” I trailed off when I got a few steps from him. Something felt wrong.

 He pulled out an axe, and then tried to hit me. His first attempt landed on my shoulder.

 I gasped, I ran away, my shoulder starting to burn.

 He ran after me, holding his axe in the air.

 I jumped into the cold water and swam off.

 He was swimming after me, but he was much slower. 

 I climbed out onto the grass and scrambled to get away with my left shoulder burning and hanging uselessly at my side. I took apples out of my pack and hurriedly gulped them down to heal myself.

 I ran around the mansion and came to what I thought was the front. It had stone steps cobbled together with lights placed on the sides leading up to a very large doorway, with no door.

 I looked at the lights, they were sticks with a glowing tip. Torches. I remember from somewhere in my past.

 I know what you’re thinking: Grab the torches! 

 But I wasn’t thinking.

 So I ran into the darkness, away from the mansion and it’s crazy murderous lumberjacks. I ran back into the wilderness to spend another night running from the monsters and almost dying.

 At least I have food now, I thought as I left the huge mansion behind. 

 I found a clearing lit by moonlight and decided to rest. I punched down a few trees to try and find more apples. 

 No luck. 

 I was about to put the wood in my pack but put them in my left hand. Suddenly I saw a grid of little grey squares, the logs were in the bottom left corner of the two-by-two grid. I saw a phantom image of something square made from the logs in a one-block space to the right of the grid. 

 I grabbed the phantom image and they became wooden planks. What the heck? I wondered to myself as I put the planks in the space the logs had gone in the grid. They made a tiny wooden button, no use to me, that I threw out. 

 Then I tried putting the planks in different spots on the grid. I got sticks. Then a box with a bigger grid on the top and flat designs on the sides. I grabbed it and set it down in the clearing beside me. The box thing had a grid that was three-by-three, making nine squares I could put my planks in. 

 I tried combining things, and I got tools. Wooden tools: A pickaxe, a shovel, an axe, and I also got a garden hoe, but I didn’t know what I could use it for, so I just kept it in my pack for now. I even got a sword.

 “Haha! I’m moving up!” I told the clearing. “This box is great!” 

 I started to call the box a crafting table. partly because “crafting box” didn’t sound as cool, partly because I sort of remembered something like that from my foggy memories. 

 I sat in that clearing and tried to make things with different combinations for hours. I got a door, which I couldn’t use yet, and a bowl, which I tried to put mushrooms in. At least that worked, I got mushroom stew out of it. I wasn’t hungry yet, but I tried to eat it. Of course it wouldn’t let me. 

 Maybe I couldn’t even eat mushrooms at all, maybe it was just a cruel joke to allow me to make stew out of them. I made a boat, and some fence posts, and even a chest, though I didn’t have any uses for them yet. Unless I wanted to sail across the little rivers in between hills. 

 I eventually made a gate and some signposts as well, but I decided to leave my clearing for a safer spot. 

 Maybe I could build a house and use those doors. Maybe I could somehow get an animal into my fences I placed near my new house. Maybe I could– 

 “Ow!” I yelled out in pain, my side had been ripped open by a Zombie’s rotting claws.

 I turned to face my attacker with my new wooden sword. 

 This Zombie looked kind of like that crazy axe guy who had attacked me. 

 I hit the Zombie over and over again, slicing into him and trying to survive. On my right another Zombie had come up, both were trying to rip into my flesh. 

 I hit one, then the other, and finally they fell, leaving behind glowing green orbs that floated into me. I didn’t know what they were, but I had no time to think about it because a third Zombie had come shuffling down a hill towards me. 

 I tried to slice at him, but my health was low and I was weak. 

 I ran away from him, plunging myself into the water and swimming to the opposite bank. 

 I tried to grab an apple out of my pack but accidentally grabbed a bowl of mushroom stew. I tore into the stew without thinking and swallowed the plain mushrooms. 

 My health returned, and my wounds healed, my stomach filled. I ate another stew. So I could eat these mushrooms, but only in stew. 

 I got out my crafting table and made two more stews out of my remaining mushrooms. I grabbed the table back up and went on my way as the night faded into dawn. 

 I didn’t know where the monsters went after the night had passed, but I didn’t really care. As long as they weren’t around, I was okay.

Chapter Five

Aether

 It was white. 

 It was silent. 

 It was the perfect place to focus. 

 It was the Aether. 

 It was Notch’s realm. 

 A figure sat in the whiteness, legs crossed and eyes closed. 

 The figure could see all of Minecraft, everything that he had created. He could see through Minecraft, to the code beyond. 

 All was as it should be. Animals roamed peacefully, villagers tended to their crops, the lonely miner was eating breakfast, the code was flowing through. . . nothing?

 What? 

 The figure probed deeper into the code. Minecraft was only fine for now, but it was running on leftover code. 

 The Gateway was gone. 

 Without it, the blocky universe would only last so long without crashing. 

 The Gateway recycled and refreshed the code, and allowed new strings to enter to help it.

 The figure opened his eyes. He began to get up, readying himself to teleport to the Codex and fix the problem. Teleportation particles gathered around him when suddenly a sickening wave washed over him and spread through his realm. He teleorted away just as the wave passed over his realm and into Minecraft.

 He landed in the Codex, crashing into the deep blue area where the new strings were born. He felt weak, sick; feelings unfamiliar to him. The ache spread across his body, like it was infecting him. Then it passed away, and he felt normal again. 

 What was that? He thought as he got up and started towards the bright light in the center of the Codex. He had to see what was wrong with the Gateway, the code was starting to act strange. At least he thought it was. But something abut the wave had felt familiar. . .

 He shook off the thought as he reached the seat of the Gateway. The female figure of light and code that usually sat atop the portal and evaluated lines of code was nowhere to be found. 

 Then there was a sound, faint and far off, like an alarm beeping in intervals set far apart. He went to the sound, and found near it a small red dot floating in the air, blinking bright and going dim in fluctuations.

 He reached out to it, and it slowly flowed through the air to him. He absorbed the tiny red dot and all that had happened in the Codex was known to him in that instant. 

 He perceived that the Gateway had been killed by a shadow originating from the Void, and seconds before dying she had left the small red dot behind for Notch to find. 

 He sighed and lifted his hands, gathering his crafting powers together. A shape began to form, the shape of the Gateway. Her glowing white form turned solid, though she was still slightly see-through. Just as she should be, he thought. 

 “Gateway,” he called to her, and she awoke. She blinked open her eyes and saw him.

 “Notch! You got my message,” she bowed her head. “Thank you for reviving me.”

 “Where did the Shadow go?” He asked, skipping all pleasantries and looking around the Codex. 

 The Gateway looked back up at him.

 “I’m afraid he got away, Your Majesty,” she said, looking away from him in shame.

 “He?” Notch turned to look at her.

 “He came from the Void,” she told him, nodding and pointing to the edge of the Codex.

 Notch looked out into the endless abyss of the Void.

 “How?” He asked. “Nothing has come from the Void since. . .” He trailed off, not wanting to relive those terrible memories.

 “I’m not sure,” The Gateway replied. “But he sent corrupted lines of code to me, which muddled my senses and allowed him to go unnoticed for long. I would have told you sooner had I known, and maybe we could have prevented his escape. But by the time I found out, it was too late.”

 The two walked back to the seat of the Gateway. Lines of code flew past them as they went. 

 Notch helped the Gateway to her seat, and then said, “Stay here, Gateway, and if anything happens, notify me so I will be ready.” 

 As she took her seat, the Gateway nodded and said, “Yes, Your Majesty.”

 She looked back at him. Notch was near the base of the portal into Minecraft. 

 “Your Majesty. . .” the Gateway began. 

 Notch said nothing. 

 “Notch!” she said, louder.

 “What did he look like?” Notch asked, distracted by his own thoughts.

 “I beg your pardon?” The Gateway asked.

 “The Shadow. What did he look like?” 

 The Gateway stepped down from her seat and went to stand by him, her expression grim.

 “Notch,” she told him. “I know who it was.”

 He looked at her.

 “Who?”

Chapter Six

Nether

 The Virus appeared in a hot, suffocating landscape. He took a deep breath, inhaling the familiar scents of smoke and ash that defined this realm. This had been his home for so long. He was finally back.

 All this time, he thought. And it’s barely changed.

 The Virus teleported to a high outcropping of extremely dark purple bricks. The ledge led out into the air above a large lava lake with a bank of reddish blocks. Behind him was a huge fortress made out of the same deep purple bricks as the ledge. 

 His fortress. 

 As he stood on the ledge, groups of terrifying monsters began to assemble on the banks of the lava lake below him. He knew them all, for he had created the mutants in the years he had been exiled in this prison of fire and bedrock. 

 On the banks now were a multitude of them: Cubes of magma who had minds of their own, skeletons black as night with swords to match, flying creatures made of smoke and blazing with fire, creatures both pig and man with gleaming eyes and golden swords, and tall, black things with lanky limbs and purple eyes.

 The most terrible of them all came floating through the think, smokey air above them. Its pale tentacles dangling below a huge white square of a body, its face ghastly scarred and its eyes seeping eternal tears.

 All came to see their master.

 They whispered to each other along the banks.

  “Is it really him?” Wondered one of the Skeletons.

 “It’s been so long,” said the Pigmen.

 “It can’t be,” marveled one of the tall black ones, an Enderman dark as the abyss.

 The huge white flying creatures mewled among themselves in the air, crying tears of disbelief from their blood-red eyes.

 The Virus stood alone on the ledge, watching their reactions and saying nothing. He had not expected them to come so quickly. They must have observed the signs of my arrival much better this time, he thought.

 Footsteps echoed behind him. 

 He turned around. 

 An Enderman darker than the Void stood at the entryway from the ledge into the fortress.

 “Master,” the Enderman bowed his head.

 “Obsidian,” The Virus greeted him, then walked away from the outcropping.

 “They are waiting,” said the Enderman.

 The Virus walked past him.

 “They will have to wait longer,” he said, and disappeared into the darkness of the fortress.

————————————————————————————————

The Virus sat in a dark room set away from the rest of the fortress. In his hands he held an ancient tome filled with tales of the past. The only light he had to read by were dimly lit torches glowing red, but the nearby lava flows outside the fortress windows cast enough light to read by when paired with them. 

 The book told of a shadow. A glitch in the inner workings of the code.

 So that is what he wants people to think of me as, he thought. A legend.

 He slammed the book closed on the table in front of him, causing the other old books placed there to tumble and throw dust.

 The Virus walked to the window. The pane was made out of the same deep purple bricks as the rest of the fortress.

 Netherbrick, they called it, named after the hideous dimension it was forged in.

 They had made this fortress for him. The monsters. His servants. Some had perished while constructing it, worked to exhaustion by the cruel lord they deemed their Master.

 He didn’t care. 

 Expendable attributes in his greater design, he would say.

 Nothing would stop him. A few dying mobs were not going to make him reconsider his life’s work. There were always more, after all. More lives he could spend to build his ambition. There were always more monsters. 

 He watched through the window as his dimension burned. It was always burning. It had been burning even before he had touched it with his poison. He had been banished here long before anything roamed its wastelands. It used to be nothing but lava and bedrock. But he had created what it had become. It used to be silent. But he had filled it with the cries of Ghasts and the crackling of eternal fire.

 His brother had thought it would be a prison to keep the Virus in, but it only stalled the inevitable, and in the process might have made it worse. In the end he had escaped his “prison” and claimed it as his own realm. 

 The Nether, he called it, ever jealous of his brother and the unaccessible Aether. He had vowed to destroy Notch, and everything his brother had ever done. He would turn it all to ash and ruin, just like the cursed realm he had to call home.

 So Notch lied to the universe and called him a legend, a myth, a ghost story. They would know soon enough.

 Let them see just how much of a “legend” Herobrine was.

Chapter Seven

The Player’s Third Dream

I had been walking for hours before I found it. I had just crossed through a small stream and was standing in the middle of a huge field overgrown with weeds when I saw it: Homes, dwellings, green things growing in tilled soil. I even saw things moving about in the village. It was upon a small hill that gradually rose and became flat on the top, where the village had laid its foundations. 

 I climbed it and found that the moving things were humanoids with bulbous noses and hands linked across their waists. They had little huts that they lived in, and food being cultivated in the tilled area. 

 I knew it was food because I tried digging them up and when I did different foodstuffs came popping out and began floating in the air like the grass blocks had done. Carrots and potatoes and wheat were the most common. But eventually I got something that looked like a red beet. 

 I also got seeds, but only for the wheat and beet-things. Once I had seeds, I finally realized what I could use the garden hoe for. I tilled a few areas and planted some wheat seeds. While I was doing this it occurred to me that I could probably eat the stuff I found. So I tried. 

 I couldn’t eat the wheat stalks, or the seeds. The beetroot, as I was calling it, because it looked like a root, tasted bland and barely sated my hunger. The carrots were better and the potatoes were probably the most filling of the three. 

 “So now I really don’t have to eat the animals,” I said to a chicken beside me. 

 Which was really great because I was starting to wonder if eating just one chicken would matter, But then I started thinking about the other animals, and the food I could get from them: Steak, lamb, pork. If I started eating the animals, soon there would not be any left. 

 The chicken clucked past me, plunging itself into one of the water lines near the crops of food. I assumed these were for watering the plants, like something called irrigation lines in my foggy memories. I told myself to remember that when I planted my own crops.

 Then I stopped.

 Explore the vast expanse of this blocky world, find a safe place for a home, plant crops. . . 

 What was I thinking?

 Why keep going and risk my life for a few more nights or maybe even forever when there were homes right here?

 I was in a village, for crying out loud, there were houses and crops enough for me, the villagers, and the animals, if they wanted to stay.

 Cluckcluck

 “Huh?” I turned around to see the chicken behind me. It was staring at the seeds I was about to put in my pack. “Oh, do you want these?” I asked it.

 I held the seeds out and they disappeared into the chicken without him even opening his mouth.

 “That’s kind of weird. . . ” I told him.

 Now here’s the crazy part: Hearts starting coming out of the chicken. Little red love hearts floated all around him. 

 I put my seeds and food in my pack, and he walked off, red floating hearts following in his wake.

 “What the heck just happened?” I wondered aloud to the world around me. 

 I heard some of the villagers grunt beside their crops. Maybe they were mad about their food being taken. Maybe they would pull out an axe like that one guy had. I was suddenly glad I had put the food away in my pack. 

 Maybe I shouldn’t stay here. I thought as I looked out to the open landscape. 

 There was something about it, something about me, that made me want to go out there, into the unexplored expanse. It was a deep-seated urge to be free. If I stayed here, I would be safe, and I would be alive. 

 But would I truly be alive? 

 I wanted to stay, to be safe and fed and sheltered. But it felt wrong somehow, like I would be safe but not free. Even if I left and made my own home, would I be chained there, too? 

 Suddenly all the goals I had set for myself seemed far-off, like they were fading, and something else took their place, the thing I had asked myself since I got here: Why am I here? 

 I looked down at my blocky, flat body with torn clothes and worn hands. How long had I been here? Had I always been here and always would be here? Did I get lost? 

 Who am I? 

 I looked to the sky, it was getting dark. Somehow I didn’t feel so good anymore. I felt alone. I didn’t care how many villagers or animals were in this world. They were not like me. 

 What am I? 

 If the villagers were people, too, how come they acted like I wasn’t there? 

 The sky got darker. Grey clouds covered the deep purple it was becoming. 

 I looked back to the earth. The grass turned grey. I felt sick. I felt like falling over and lying there forever. I felt empty and cold. I couldn’t feel, like I was in a dream. 

 I looked slowly to the villagers. They were barely moving and turning grey. 

 The sun was blood-red when I looked away from the village.  

 It lasted a few moments longer, then it was over.

 I could finally breathe, I felt lighter. The grass was green again, the villagers looked normal and moved around like nothing had happened. The clouds were fewer in number now, and white. The sun was bright yellow again.

 What just happened?

 It was if an invisible wave had washed over the land and passed. It was getting darker again and I was afraid another wave was coming. But then I realized it had been a while since this morning, so it was only becoming nighttime. Maybe I could stay here just for the night.

 I found a small hut with no door. I placed a door over the opening and got my crafting table out of my pack, putting it in the corner of my temporary hut. I had found that I couldn’t sleep for whatever reason in this world. So I spent my nights underground trying different combinations on my crafting table. Tonight was different only because I wasn’t underground, and I had found stone on my travels. 

 I had started calling the combinations I made “recipes.” Recipes for crafting. I tried the recipes for tools with stone. It worked. I should have been excited: Stronger tools! But I couldn’t stop thinking about all the questions in my head. 

 I felt like I was running on empty, doing things without realizing it. I can’t really explain what I was feeling, but somehow it was kind of like someone was controlling my movements, but I knew what I was doing. I made things out of stone and woods and even figured out how to make bread, but it was almost like it wasn’t me. 

 The sounds of monsters echoed outside of the village. I took a break from crafting to look out of the small window on the side of the hut. 

 There were a few Zombies and a Spider, and something else mottled green with no arms but four little feet it used to shuffle along the grass. 

 Usually monsters were loud, clicking and hissing and groaning and clanking. But this one was silent except for the occasional crackle as it roamed. I was captivated by this new creature. Maybe it was friendly? Maybe it could talk and tell me what was happening. That last one was probably a little illogical, but like I said, I felt weird, drained. 

 I wasn’t about to leave the hut, but I really wanted to. I wanted to try out my new stone tools, and use some energy so I could try my bread. I had figured out that I could only eat when I absolutely had to. Which was fine, I guess. It meant I never had to waste food, but also that I couldn’t try any until I was hungry, either. 

 I wanted to go out there and collect new materials, I wanted to build my own house, I wanted to do a lot of things. But most of all, strangely, I wanted to sleep. But whatever this place was, it wouldn’t let me. 

 I kept crafting all night. I made some useful things, like a furnace, which was a little square box like the crafting table, only it was grey and cold cook things when you placed wood in one of its slots, I soon found out. I cooked a potato and it tasted much better than the raw version. 

 I eventually tried “cooking” wood. That made charcoal, which was revolutionary for me because, with a little experimenting, it allowed me to make torches. I was extremely excited. I had remembered seeing these miniature lights on that scary mansion I tried to visit. I held one in my hand, expecting light to be cast on my dark dwelling. 

 Nothing happened.

 Of course, I thought. Nothing can just happen on its own here. I sighed and thought hard about how I could make them work. They had been placed on the steps leading into the mansion, so maybe I had to place them before they would light up. I stuck one in the ground in front of me. Suddenly the hut was bathed in light. Soft, yellow light. Glorious light. 

 I wasn’t stuck in the dark any longer! I could see more than two blocks in front of me! With these wonderful little suns, I would never have to worry about the night again!

 I opened my door and ran outside, placing torches like a maniac.

 I heard villagers grunting in their homes as I ran past, they were probably wondering who the madman outside running and yelling and sticking torches on everything was.

 “Hahahahaha!” I laughed. “Guys! Look!” I yelled to the villagers.

 I should have been watching where I was going, because before I knew it, I was face-to-face with one of those mottled green things.

 “Ahh!” I jumped back. 

 It looked at me with huge black eyes. 

 I looked back. 

 Its mouth was in a permanent gape. It started hissing, it came closer.

 I stared.

 It began to grow and expand.

 “Huh?” I backed away, sort of creeped out.

 Then it happened.

 The creature exploded, taking a huge chunk of earth and stone with it, along with half of my life.

 I flew into the air and landed with a sickening thud by one of the village houses.

 No one came to check on me. No one cared.

 I couldn’t breathe. I crawled away from the battle scene and tried to get back to my temporary hut. My body was burning, I think my skin was open in multiple places. Why wasn’t I healing? 

 I reached my door and pushed it open, I slammed it closed and went to the farthest corner of the four-block long hut as I could. I was panting. I grabbed an apple out of my pack and ate it, painfully swallowing to heal my broken body. Then I ate two more. As the food went to work and converted itself into health for me, I sat in the corner in shock.

 What the heck was that thing?!

 It began to get brighter. I looked out of the window. The sun was coming up over the horizon. I saw the Zombies burst into flames.

 Oh, so they do that now. 

 So many things were happening. I learned so much every day. I collected my crafting table and furnace, ate another apple for breakfast, and stepped out the door. The villagers were already out and about, and I could hear animals in the distance. 

 What a difference the sun makes, I thought. 

 I took a few carrots from the crops when the villagers weren’t looking because I still wasn’t sure if they would mind. Then I left.

There were no goodbyes. No embraces from my memories called hugs. They didn’t even look in my direction as I took off into the unknown yet again. 

 I wasn’t prepared, even though I had food and tools. The kind of prepared I needed you didn’t achieve through crafting. But I was ready.

 I think.

 I was ready to build my own life, and maybe someday answer all the questions in my head. So as the sun rose higher in the sky, I chased its light to the edge of its rays.

Chapter Eight

Notch

Herobrine. 

 So it was true.

 He’s back. 

 Notch thought he had been so careful. He thought he had been so watchful. He thought Herobrine was gone.

 It had been so long ago when Notch had banished his brother to the inferno that served as a sort of underworld for Minecraft. Notch used to think that the fiery dimension would be enough to hold his unruly brother, but Herobrine eventually escaped, and Notch had fought him and destroyed the Virus. 

 Or so he thought.

 Now Herobrine was back from the dead and taunting Notch to fight him. Herobrine had sent a sick wave out into Minecraft, and the Gateway had told Notch all about it. 

 The wave would travel across Minecraft, infecting things and discoloring the landscape, but it would pass over everything until it got to the end of the world. Once it crossed over the edge, Herobrine would have enough power and resources to begin conquering this world, and the next, and the next, until all of Minecraft was under his control.

 There was no way to stop the wave.

 But there had to be a way to stop its maker. 

 Notch knew this. How else would Herobrine have been stopped before? He had to have a weakness. But would he just overcome that weakness eventually and come back again? Notch thought. It had happened before. Guess that’s what I’m here for, he thought with a sad smile.

 It had been so different when they were kids. What happened to him? 

 Notch telelported to the spot where he cold feel the code bending. It was the place where Herobrine had sent out his wave. Notch saw something sticking out of the ground. He went closer and found a longsword stabbed into the earth. It had scorched the grass around it like fire.

 This was no ordinary sword. It was the very sword that their father had given Herobrine so long ago. It was enchanted with powers long forgotten by everyone but Notch and Herobrine.

 Notch pulled the sword from the dirt, lifting it in the air to examine it. But before Notch could hardly glance at it, the blade began to disentegrate, its ashes floating away on the constant east-to-west wind. Only the hilt remained. 

 The hilt was only marginally better, for it was charred and burned beyond recognition. Who knew if it was the same hilt that had been forged with the blade? Notch wondered. Herobrine would have needed to pour every ounce of hatred into the power that had scorched the old longsword to make it disintegrate like it had.

 That must be why he isn’t out and about causing trouble, Notch thought. He has to recover. 

 Notch knew that Herobrine couldn’t stay idle for long, however, he would show up sooner or later. There would be whispers of glitches or griefers, and Notch would listen. Notch would be there. 

 Just like I always am, he sighed.

————————————————————————————————

He traveled through the forest like a breeze, not walking, not flying, not running, almost floating.

 He could feel the player. Up ahead, mining stone from the side of a mountain. He could feel its anxiety, its fear, covered beneath a veil of confusion. The player knew they had to survive, but they didn’t know or understand why. They player had forgotten. The player was lost. 

 Notch went farther. He went over hills and over valleys, through forests and across oceans. He arrived near a huge mountain. A house was beside it at its base. It was surrounded by a forest, but the area with the dwelling was a clearing. 

 It was a smart build, no one would know there was a home in the area unless they were above it, like Notch was, and the thick forest protected it as well. Whoever built it was wise beyond their years, likely because they were forced to be smart and safe and survive from a very young age. 

 Notch knew. Notch had watched the one who lived here since before they had come to this mountain.

 Notch descended down into the clearing, near the edge of the homestead. Beside him was a fence that kept cows in and safe. Beyond that were more fences filled with livestock and rows of food that grew near water and torchlight. A modest house sat at the foot of the mountain beside the crops, the windows glowing bright from the light inside.

 A noise came from inside the house, and the door opened. A man stepped out, his light blue shirt and brown hair catching rays of sunlight that sprinkled into the clearing from above. A wolf followed him out, and he grabbed a pickaxe and began walking away. Notch could see the kindness in the man’s blue eyes, a soul deep inside him.

 This is the one, Notch thought.

 The man did not notice Notch, for Notch was not really there. 

 Notch opened his eyes.

 He was back in the soft whiteness of the Aether.

 He could feel the information about the man enter into his conscious. The man’s fears, his doubts, his hopes and dreams, his memories and battles he wanted to forget, his wolves that had perished, each one with a name and a grave, failures and triumphs he had to go through just to get to this point, how he wondered about what was out there and why he was here.

 And his name.

 Steve, Notch sighed.

 This was a person. A person with feelings, with love and hate. Just like he was.

 I’m so sorry I have to put you through this, Notch thought. But maybe I can make it a little better for you.

 And then Notch began his work, a work not equaled by his hands ever again. For in that moment he perceived the one called Steve was his, and that he ha neglected him for too long. 

 The creation was lonely. 

 Notch knew what that felt like, he had been lonely for as long as the ages were counted. So he made a companion for Steve. A friend and partner to accompany Steve as long as his days. 

 Notch took her sleeping form gently to the edge of Steve’s forest. He set her down as flowers soft as feathers grew around them, pink as the dawn. He left her to grow, and named her with a whisper. She wouldn’t know Notch, not yet, but she would remember her name. 

 Notch left her behind and returned to the Aether, just like he had done so long ago with Steve.

 

Chapter Nine

Alex

 I opened my eyes to see the colors of the dawn. I was amazed. I fell in love with the pastel swirls of blue and pink and purple and orange bleeding out of the night sky as the sun chased away the darkness. From that moment on the sunrise was my most favorite thing in the world. 

 I was right outside a forest, lush, bright green grass was at my feet. All around me were little pink flowers that matched the sky moments earlier. I breathed in the smells of the nature around me. 

 There was a field behind me, and small hills on either side of me, the forest in front of me. I could go anywhere, but I had a strange feeling that I should go into the forest. It was as if some unseen force was gently pushing me forward. 

 I entered the forest, touching the bark of different trees as I passed them. The ground here was dappled with sunlight as the sun rose higher into the sky. A constant east-to-west breeze rustled the leaves and the wildlife made soft noises around me to create the symphony of the awakening forest. 

 I finally emerged in a clearing that appeared to be inhabited. There were fences and crops. There was even a small house ahead of me. I approached it, following the same feeling that had urged me into the forest. 

 I passed the windows, where light flooded out into the clearing, never comparing to the sun it tried to replicate. I came to the door at the front of the house. I was afraid to go in, so I knocked. 

 No answer. 

 I backed away and began exploring the clearing. Maybe the owner will come back later, I thought. 

 I went to one of the fences to see what kind of creature it held. The animals here were black and white, with lazy expressions and gentle moos. Cows. The word came to me and I went to the next area of animals. These were pigs. I found many others as well. A horse, chickens, sheep. 

 Whoever cared for all these animals was either really good at taming them or had been here for a long time. Or both, I thought as I looked into the windows on the side of the house at the bare living space inside. 

 There were chests against the wall, and a door that I thought might lead to the bedroom. There was a small table in the middle of the home, and two boxes placed against one wall. One was brownish with a grid on top, the other was dark grey and had a fire burning inside it. Torches were placed randomly wherever light was needed. One had even been stuck into the middle of the table. 

 I wondered who lived here. Were they in too much of a hurry to organize or add to their home? Or did they never have any company so they had no reason to do any of those things. 

 A rustle in the forest brought me out of my thoughts. I went towards the forest, but stopped halfway, just in case there was danger there. 

 Soon the rustling got louder and louder until it turned into something crashing through the forest. I got scared and crouched behind the fences with the sheep, thinking maybe their wooliness would hide me well enough while I figured out where to run to. 

 I was about to stand up and run. But whatever had been in the forest came bursting out. It was mad, its eyes were red. It was covered in white fur and armed with sharp teeth in its mouth. It was terrifying, yet surprisingly short. It would probably reach my waist, if I was standing near it. It sniffed the air and looked in my direction. 

 The sheep were bleating like crazy. If he came any closer, they would scatter in their enclosure, exposing me to the killer wolf. I was about to just make a run for it. I didn’t know what I would do after that. I guess I could climb a tree? Would the wolf catch me before then? Probably. Either way it was going to find me.

 Then I heard more crashing in the forest. My heart was pounding. Another wolf?! I had barely seen one day in this world and I was going to die. But it wasn’t a wolf that came rushing out of the forest. It was a person. 

 He held a sword in his hand, it shone when it caught the sunlight. He ran over to the wolf. Had he been hunting it? Was he going to kill it? The wolf didn’t seem to notice he was there, even though the man wasn’t exactly trying to be quiet. 

 I heard him talking. The wolf looked at him, then came closer to the sheep enclosure. 

 No! I thought as the sheep began to dart away, exposing me one woolly body at a time. The last sheep ran away from me, his greyish wool bouncing as he brushed against the others. 

 The man tried to calm the sheep, then he yelled at the wolf. He was afraid the wolf wanted to eat the sheep. Maybe if I stood up and showed him the real reason the wolf was angry, he would help me. I didn’t know the odds of that, I was never good at calculating, but I stood up anyway.

 Big mistake.

 The wolf charged.

 I screamed.

 I couldn’t move, so I just closed my eyes. Every muscle was frozen. I braced for impact. Nothing happened.

 I risked opening my eyes. 

 The wolf was still there, but it was sitting. The man stood in front of me, the sword pointed towards the wolf. The creature’s eyes were still red, but after some words from the man, the wolf calmed down. It stuck its tongue out and its eyes turned brown. Only then did I notice it had a red collar around its neck. It was a pet.

 The man turned to me. He apologized. 

 I was still in shock, so I said nothing. I just stared at him. 

 He told me that the wolf was his “dog.” Its name was Ash, supposedly because it had black paws and the man had found it in the Nether as a puppy. 

 I didn’t know what the Nether was, but I was becoming more relaxed by this point. 

 The man looked back at me and exclaimed.

 I was startled, but he started laughing. He told me he forgot to tell me his name. I relaxed and managed a small smile. 

 He said his name was Steve. Then he asked what my name was.

 I hadn’t given that much thought. What was my name? Then it came to me, like some far-off memory that finally floated into reach. 

 “Alex,” the sound came from me. I heard my own voice. “My name is Alex.”

Chapter Ten

Steve Meets Alex

 I was on my way back home when my wolf started snarling. He would growl off and on until we were maybe a hundred blocks from home, and then he ran, his eyes glowing red with hostility. I didn’t know what was happening, but I ran after him. 

 Maybe it was an intruder. A monster? No, few monsters could survive the daylight.

 I arrived in the clearing I called home and drew my iron sword. My wolf was growling at the fence I used to keep sheep. I didn’t know why he was being so mean to them.

 “Ash!” I yelled at him, but to no avail. “Stop!”

 He went closer to the sheep, and they scattered. I was afraid he was going mad, and might eat them, so I went closer to him. 

 About that time I saw a figure in the corner of my eye. I looked up and saw another person behind the sheep enclosure. 

 Ash charged towards her.

 “Ash, no!” 

 The girl screamed.

 I ran in front of Ash and prepared myself for the worst. If my dog was turning against me, he would attack either of us. If he just didn’t like the stranger, he would still yield to me.

 I stopped in front of the girl and held my sword out in case Ash tried to lunge. He stopped short in front of the blade, sat down, and began to pant. His eyes slowly turned back to a natural brown as he realized the new person was being protected by his master, so therefore must not be a huge threat.

 I turned to face the girl. “I’m so sorry,” I apologized. “He doesn’t do well with strangers.”

 She just looked at me, her green eyes wide with shock.

 “Um, this is my. . . dog. His name is Ash,” I explained. “Because his paws are black like they’ve been burned, and also I found him in the Nether when he was just a puppy.”

 She still said nothing, but she looked more relaxed. Then I remembered something.

 “Oh! I forgot!”

 She looked startled. I laughed.

 “My name, I forgot to tell you my name.”

 She visibly relaxed and smiled a bit.

 “My name is Steve,” I told her. “What’s yours?”

 Her tiny smile went away. There were a few moments of silence. The she told me, “Alex. My name is Alex.”

 “Nice to meet to Alex,” I smiled. 

 She smiled back.

————————————————————————————————

 It was getting close to nighttime when we met, so I offered to let her stay with me and Ash at least for tonight. She accepted, and helped to add a new room onto the house where she could sleep. 

 We had just finished the room and put the bed in when the sun’s light disappeared completely from the sky. 

Alex looked out of the window at the stars. She seemed amazed by all the nature she saw.

 I left out of the room to prepare food. I opened a chest near the furnace, grabbed a few potatoes, put them in the furnace and waited. 

 I watched the coals burn as I thought about everything that had happened. I couldn’t believe it. 

 I wasn’t alone. 

 I had thought that I would have to travel this whole world to find out, and the answer had come from my front yard.

 Where had Alex come from? She obviously didn’t have a place to stay because she had accepted to stay here, unless she did, but it was just too far to travel at night. She was unarmed and didn’t seem hostile, so she didn’t really pose a threat to me. 

 As I was thinking about all of this, a sudden nausea swept over me. I was overcome with fatigue. Everything around me seemed to turn a darker shade of the color it originally was. I tried to move, but I was so tired.

 Then it was gone. 

 The colors were brighter, I felt fine, it was as if nothing had happened at all.

 The door to Alex’s room swung open.

 “What was that?” She asked, her orange waves of hair bouncing as she half-ran towards me.

 “I don’t know,” I told her. “But it kind of reminded me of the Wither Effect, except that doesn’t make you weak.”

 “The Wither Effect?” She looked confused.

 I nodded. “Yeah, it happens when the Wither is near.”

 She still seemed a little lost.

 “The Wither is a huge monster with three heads and a floating body and he shoots flaming skulls at anyone who gets near him,” I tried to explain. “But it couldn’t  have been the Wither because he’s in the Nether,” I added.

 Alex nodded slowly. I guess she understood enough of it.

 “So,” she said. “What was that then?”

 I didn’t have an answer for that.

Chapter Eleven

The Players Fourth Dream

 I had been mining stone from the side of a mountain for tools when I came upon a new material. It was grey like stone, but it had little black flecks scattered through it. I was instantly intrigued and of course tried to mine it. When I did, a lump of the black stuff popped out and floated in front of me. 

 I picked it up and turned it in my hand, black powder rubbing off on my palm as I did.

 “Hmm,” I mulled over this information, trying to remember what this substance was, or if I even knew. Then it came to me. 

 “Ohhh, you’re coal,” I laughed. “Maybe you can be useful somewhere in this world.” And with that, I began to mine more coal.

 I soon came to another new material that seemed like a reddish version of stone. I mined it to find out what it was later and decided I had enough stone and coal to last a while, enough that I could leave.

 I thought about mining deeper. I had torches, so if it got too dark down there I could just place them in my path. But something kept me from going into the earth beneath me. I couldn’t explain it. I guess I just wasn’t ready yet.

 I took out my last two apples and ate them on my way. I had to find a suitable space for some kind of shelter. I had decided that since I had so much cobblestone, I would just build my home out of that. 

 I didn’t know much about survival, but I figured if I built my house in a forest it would at least be hidden. 

 I walked for a long time and it was starting to get dark when I finally found a clearing in a foresty type place that had hills everywhere. The valley I decided to make into my building site had one lonely oak tree.

 I immediately began placing cobblestone blocks in a simple square beside the tree. It was getting darker by the minute. I was getting nervous. It wasn’t the light level I was worried about, I had torches for that, it was the threat of monsters.

 Miraculously, I finished a rough draft of my home without so much as hearing a monster. But I wasn’t about to let my guard down. 

 I rushed in and around the home placing torches. I set the door in place and stood inside with my heart pounding. I couldn’t help thinking about my encounter with that creepy green thing that exploded in my face not so long ago.

 I had no windows. 

 I had no way to watch over my new territory. 

 I had no bed. 

 Could I even make a bed? I hoped I could, because I desperately needed sleep. I was beginning to feel fatigue and I think I was starting to see things that weren’t there.

 I needed a way to pass the time, so I decided to begin decorating my new household. I started with the torches, placing them in even-numbered intervals instead of the sporadic placements I had done with my first run through.

 Then I chose a spot for my crafting table and furnace, against the wall where my door was. I also made another small chest and put both of my chests beside each other on the other wall. It was a pleasant surprise when I found they combined to make a much larger chest.

 I could fit so many things in this, I thought as I cleaned out my pack into the chest. I took inventory of my possessions. I had twelve carrots, five wheat stalks, ten beetroot, four potatoes, seeds for all of the food, one mushroom stew, two bowls, wooden and stone tools, one block of cobblestone leftover from building my house, eight blocks of that other reddish stone (that I decided had no use but cosmetic things), three signposts, one boat, and three fence posts.

 After that I didn’t have much to do. 

 I was bored to death.

 I had been going since I arrived in this world. What did I do when I had nothing to do? Suddenly a thought struck me. I had asked every question about myself and this place except for one: What was my name?

 I really hoped I had one, because I couldn’t pull one from those ever-illusive foggy memories. I suppose I could make one up. Is that lying? I wondered. I guess it didn’t matter since I had no one to tell my made-up name to, except maybe the animals. What do I call myself?

————————————————————————————————

 Apparently I wasn’t that good at naming me. 

 “Maybe I could call myself a normal name, like Bob, or. . . um, James,” I told the pig. He had wandered up while I was planting crops.

 It was morning, and I was eager to get food growing so I wouldn’t have to rely on trees and random villages. I had spent the rest of the night thinking, but none of the names I came up with sounded right.

 The pig grunted.

 “Yeah, you’re right. Those aren’t for me, either,” I told it, refering to the latest name choices I had thought of. “I could try a more unique name, like August or. . . Kai.”

 The pig oinked questionably.

 “I don’t know where those came from, either, but at least I’m trying, Okay?” I said.

 I stuck some wheat seeds into the newly tilled soil.

 “I’m not so good at this name stuff,” I confessed to him. “But I guess you already knew that.” 

 The pig just looked at me. I sighed. 

 I kept planting and telling him my name ideas, but I think he was only staying for the carrots. I finished planting and began to wonder how I was going to make the lines of water by my crops like I had seen at the village. 

 There was a small pool of water beside my house, so I went to it. I dipped my hands into the water and brought them back out. I thought it might do something to give me water, but nothing happened. I guess I would have to wait until I found the right method.

 Just like everything else in this world, I thought.

 Next, I needed more wood, so I grabbed the last oak sapling out of my chest and planted it behind my house.

 “Okay,” I said. “What’s next?”

 I heard the pig oink. I turned to look at him. He was wandering around the mouth of a small cave. I sprinted to him.

 I know it was a weird thought, but it almost felt like he was helping me. The pig looked at me like he expected something. 

 “I’m not ready for that,” I told him. “I don’t want to go down there yet.”

 He oinked and walked behind me, nudging into me and pushing me toward the cave.

“Stop!” I pushed him away. I threw a carrot across the yard so he would go eat it and leave me alone.

 He didn’t move.

 He just kept staring at me.

 I felt a drop of something on my head. Then my arm. Then water was pouring from the sky and thunder was rumbling in the distance. I ran back to my house, not bothering to pick up the carrot I had thrown. I went inside and shut the door behind me, rain drops trailing off of my body like tiny rivers.

 “Oink.”

 I spun around. The pig was in the middle of my house.

 “How did you get in here?!” I hadn’t seen him follow me, or come in through the door, or. . .

 There was something about the pig’s eyes that made me stop. I hadn’t noticed it before, I guess because I had been preoccupied. But they looked different than the other pigs I had seen. Almost. . . Golden.

 BOOM!

 I jumped. It’s just thunder, I told myself. 

 I got some potatoes out of my pack and ate them. The pig stood facing one wall, his back towards me. There was a strange feeling in the room, almost like the pig knew something I didn’t. I know it was weird: Why or how could a pig know more than a person? But that’s what it felt like.

 The steady patter of rain on the roof made me sleepy and I lost track of time. Having no windows made telling time that much harder.

 Suddenly, a tall, black figure appeared in my house, accompanied by floating purple dust and a noise that sounded like a mini-void had opened and closed right there in the middle of my home.

 “Ah!” I jumped back, startled.

 The figure glanced at me, then turned to the pig and grabbed him. Then they disappeared.

 “What?”

 I ran outside after hearing the mini-void sound again and found that the pair had materialized on the top of a tall hill.

 “Hey! Give my pig back!” I shouted, even though he wasn’t really mine. But I felt like I had made a friend, and I didn’t want to lose that.

 The black figure made a sound like a gurgling chuckle, and dropped the pig from the top of the hill. The pig fell all the way to the ground, flashing red as he hit the dirt, and disappeared in a pop of glowing green orbs.

 “Nooooo!” I screamed. The black figure was no longer on the hilltop. 

 I wasn’t sure if I could cry in this world, but the raindrops rolling down my face would have disguised them whether I could or not. I ran to the spot where the pig had disappeared. The green orbs floated into me. 

 Why? I thought, standing there, the rain chilling me to the bone.

 Keep going, Something told me. I wasn’t sure if it was my subconscious or some long-forgotten memory or something else. But whatever it was, I obeyed.

 I walked back to my house in the rain, going inside to dry off and continue living. I would press through. I would answer my questions. But first, I was going to do what that pig had wanted me to do. I was going to mine.

Chapter Twelve

Herobrine

The cackling Enderman materialized before Herobrine in the Nether.

 “Kyan,” The Virus snapped. “Were you successful?”

 The Enderman calmed himself, but still wore a malicious smirk on his face. 

 “Yes, my king,” he said. “It was too easy. He was in the form of a helpless pig.”

 “My idiot brother has become even softer than I thought he would,” Herobrine sighed. “Fine, all the easier to destroy him quickly.” He turned to leave.

 “Herobrine, wait, there is something else,” Kyan said, suddenly becoming serious.

 “Make it quick, I have to teleport to Notch before his trail runs cold,” the Virus said.

 “He was in the house of a user,” Kyan said.

 “There are users dotting Minecraft like a plague, Kyan, what’s different about this one?” Herobrine asked, impatient to leave.

 “This one wasn’t like the other users, this one had forgotten. He was lost,” Kyan said.

 “How could you tell?” Herobrine shot back.

 “Endermen have a feel for these things, we are closer to the Void and therefore closer to the code than everyone else,” Kyan explained. “I could feel the user’s Pulse.”

 “What use is this information to me?” Herobrine asked, getting angrier.

 “Every day the user survives he becomes a bigger threat to you,” Kyan said. “He is remembering.”

 “Once I take over Minecraft, there will be nothing to remember,” Herobrine said, then he disappeared, tracking the signal Notch had set off by dying as the insignificant mob.

 He appeared in a solid white realm, fluffy off-white fog covering the ground. A figure sat cross-legged several blocks in front of him, golden eyes staring back at Herobrine’s stark white ones. The figure stood.

 “Notch,” Herobrine said.

 “Herobrine,” Notch nodded.

 “I know what you’re doing,” Herobrine said. “With the player.”

 A flicker of emotion danced across Notch’s eyes, but disappeared just as quickly as it had come.  

 “I know not what you speak of.”

 “You hide emotion well, Notch,” Herobrine said. “Looks like you’ve learned since we were young.”

 Notch said nothing.

 “But you still care too much,” Herobrine hissed. “I can see it in your eyes.”

 “There’s nothing wrong with caring, Herobrine,” Notch said. “What’s wrong is your lust for violence.”

 “Violence? No, Notch, I simply want to take back what is rightfully mine; and if war is the only way, then so be it,” Herobrine said, a sword materializing in his hand.

 “I don’t want to fight you, Herobrine,” Notch said.

 “Then it will only make it easier for me to kill you,” Herobrine said, rushing towards Notch. 

 He raised his sword to strike Notch and brought it down, only to hit metal at the last second. Notch had summoned his longsword, a blade stronger than bedrock with the power of Notch’s soul. 

 Herobrine pushed his own sword harder against Notch’s blade, causing the creator to lose his balance and go down on one knee. Notch shoved Herobrine back, their blades scraping against each other. Herobrine slid back, one hand on the ground to steady himself. He glared at Notch, his eyes glowing white slits of hatred.

 “Stop while you still can, Herobrine,” Notch said quietly. “I’m giving you a chance, I’m only trying to help you.”

 “The only way you could ever help me is by giving me control of Minecraft,” Herobrine said. Then he charged Notch again. 

 Thunder rolled in the Aether, and lightning struck the ground near Notch. He dodged to avoid it, startled, then raised his sword to block Herobrine’s attack. Their blades clashed, their faces inches away from their swords. 

 “You’re not the only one with a longsword, Notch,” Herobrine said.

 “You destroyed yours, I saw it disentegrate in my own hands,” Notch replied.

 “This one’s new,” Herobrine said, smiling.

 “What?” Notch squinted. 

 Thunder boomed throughout the realm, and lightning began to strike everywhere. A bolt of white energy hit Notch. He fell backwards, rolling over and over until he stopped on his stomach, coughing.

 The smell of burning flesh reached his nose as footsteps sounded from behind him. He struggled to get up, grabbing his sword and pushing himself off the ground. 

 Suddenly something hit into his side, sending jolts of pain through his ribs and knocking him back to the ground. Herobrine had kicked him. He landed on his back, just in time to roll to the side and avoid Herobrine’s sword that came slicing through the air. 

 Notch got up and swung at Herobrine with his longsword. Herobrine blocked the attack, then sliced at Notch’s legs, then his arms, then everywhere. Notch blocked every attack, except one. The white-hot metal of Herobrine’s longsword sliced into Notch’s arm.

 “Ahh!” Notch flashed red with damage, staggering back from the sting the blade delivered. He held his right hand over the wound, the sword still in his left.

 “That. Is. ENOUGH!” Notch yelled, his golden eyes glowing with rarely felt anger. He raised his hands, causing Herobrine’s lightning to turn on it’s maker. Herobrine tried to dodge the bolts, but was caught by many. The Virus dropped to one knee, his longsword clanging as it hit the ground.

 Notch came closer to Herobrine, ready to finish this battle.

 “You may have won this little skirmish, Notch, but I’m not done with this world,” Herobrine said. “I will destroy your player, your home, your universe, everything you love; and when I’m finished I’ll watch you die with everything else.”

“Herobrine, you don’t have to do this,” Notch said. It made him sad to see something so full of anger and hate.

“No, you could just hand over Minecraft willingly and none of this would have to happen,” the Virus said. “It’s really so simple, brother.”

 “You are not the brother I knew,” Notch said. “You are just a shadow of malice in the leftover code from his death.”

 “Keep telling yourself that, Notch,” Herobrine said. “But I am more real than you’ll ever know.” Then he disappeared, grabbing the longsword before teleporting away, leaving Notch staring at an empty white space.

 He could still feel the ache where Herobrine’s longsword had cut him, like an icy void threatening to creep into his soul. Herobrine was getting stronger, the wave was getting closer to the edge. 

 It is time, Notch thought. I must tell the player.

Chapter Thirteen

The King

Steve ran through the pouring rain, his wolf at his heels. Lightning lit up the forest like an x-ray, thunder chasing after it.

 “Come on, Ash!” Steve yelled over the deluge. The wolf barked, barely audible as another crack of thunder ripped through the sound of the rain.

 The pair broke through the trees into the clearing where they lived. On the opposite side, Alex came out of the forest the same time they did. Alex glanced at Steve, her eyes squinted from the rain, then she ran to the house, going inside. 

 Steve arrived seconds later and went inside, shutting the door behind his wolf, who began to shake rain water off everywhere from his fur. Steve just watched as water droplets landed on walls and evaporated in torches. 

He sighed. I guess it doesn’t matter, we’re dripping water everywhere, too, he thought, looking at Alex. 

 “Did you find any?” He asked her.

 “No, my pickaxe broke,” Alex said, her orange hair plastered to her head from the rain. “I was coming back here to make another one when it started pouring.”

 Steve went to look out the window, all of the animals were getting soaked in their enclosures. Lightning flashed in the distance, followed by terrible thunder that resonated within Steve’s chest. 

 “I’ve never seen a storm this big, in all the time I’ve lived here,” he said. “N-not to worry you or anything,” he added, turning to Alex, her face holding a concerned expression while she sat at the table.

 They were silent for a while, listening to the storm as it threw its tantrum. Then Ash let forth a volley of barks, going to the door and growling. Alex looked at him, startled, then looked at Steve. 

 “Listen,” Steve said.

 “What?” Alex whispered.

 “No thunder,” Steve told her. They looked at each other, then Steve went to the door and opened it.

 “Steve, wait-!” Alex got up from the table.

 “There’s no one here. . . ” Steve said, looking around outside. “So why did you bark?” He asked the wolf.

 The rain was slowing, becoming a soft rythmn on the ground. Alex ventured outside to stand by Steve.

 “Is it over?” She asked.

 “No, it’s just beginning,” a voice said, seeming to come from everywhere at once.

 Alex gasped, turning around to find the source of the voice. 

 “Steve. . . ” She trailed off, looking to him for answers.

 “I don’t know what’s going on, either, Alex,” Steve said, drawing his sword. “Here, take this.” He gave her an extra blade.

 “I don’t know how to fight!” She said.

 “You’re going to have to learn,” a voice said.

 “Excuse me?” Alex turned to Steve.

 “That wasn’t me!” Steve protested. Ash looked at the two arguing.

 “Then who was it?” Alex shouted.

 “Me,” the voice replied, white light filling the clearing and blinding them temporarily. When it faded a figure stood in its place, his head down and his eyes closed.

 Ash whimpered and laid down on the wet grass, the rain now only falling in rare drops. The figure looked up and opened his eyes, looking at the pair of ill-equipped humans ready to fight him. 

 “His. . . his eyes. . . !” Steve gasped.

 The figure sighed and rolled his eyes. 

 “Yes, I know, they’re golden. Wow, amazing,” he said sarcastically.

 Steve and Alex glanced at each other.

 “Who are you?” Steve asked.

 The figure took a deep breath.

 “I’m Notch,” he said. “Your creator.”

 Steve dropped his sword.

 “You’re the reason I’m here,” he said. “You’re my king.”

 “You could say that,” Notch said, nodding.

 “Oh my goodness. . . I almost attacked my king. . . ” Steve said, running his hands through his hair. Alex put away her sword.

 “For the record, it was his fault I was going to attack you,” she said, gesturing to Steve, who gaped at her. Notch smiled.

 “It’s okay, really,” he told them. “I’m not that kind of king.”

 “Which kind?” Alex asked.

 “The kind that rules over everything you do and gets offended when you don’t know him,” Notch said.

 “Oh,” Alex said.

 “But there’s someone else out there who is like that,” Notch said. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve come to prepare you. A war is coming, and your walls and weapons won’t save you forever, not against this enemy. You have already felt his power, through the wave, through the storm. It’s only going to get worse if we don’t stop him.”

 “You know about that wave?” Steve asked.

 Notch nodded.

 “The enemy sent it out over all the land, once it passes over into the Far Lands, he’ll have enough power to overtake even me,” Notch said. “We have to stop him before it gets there, and we don’t have much time, it’s getting closer to the edge.”

 “The Far Lands?” Steve and Alex said in unison.

 “A story for another time,” Notch replied. “But right now I need to know if you will help me.”

 Steve and Alex stood there for a few moments, neither one saying anything, both of them thinking through the information they had just been given.

 “I won’t be able to do this without you,” Notch finally said, letting his projected image of his normal self go, now they could see how defeated he was. On his left arm was a bandage wrapped around some unseen wound, the blood from it still bright red against the white cloth. His bright golden eyes were now dull, his power almost drained. His breathing was uneven.

 “Is that what he did to you?” Steve asked.

 “It’s what he’ll do to all of us,” Notch said darkly. “I was just powerful enough to take it, the rest of you will die.”

 Steve looked at Alex. She seemed sad, like she was telling him they had to help, she just didn’t know how.

 “What do we have to do?” Steve asked, turning back to Notch.

Chapter Fourteen

The Player’s Fifth Dream

I stood at the mouth of the cave, armed with all the newly grown food from my crops, all the torches I could craft, two swords and two pickaxes, both made from the strongest material I had: Stone.

 I took a deep breath and stepped into the darkness, leaving the sunlight and open sky behind me. My only thought right then was, I really hope I don’t get lost down here. The last thing I wanted was to run out of supplies and be stuck down here in the dark with no idea where to go. 

 I placed a torch on the wall and it cast soft light around me, allowing me to see the grey stone I was about to mine. To the right of the cave was a pitch black tunnel. I knew that was where I was supposed to go, but I didn’t want to, so I stuck a bunch of torches around the tunnel entrance and walked to the other side of the cave to begin mining. Every strike of the pickaxe against the hard stone made me feel like the whole process was pointless. 

 I had stone already, I had built my house, I didn’t need any more. Why was I doing this? I stopped mining. This wasn’t the reason that pig had wanted me to come down here. What was the reason then? I wondered, turning back to the tunnel behind me.

 In a sudden burst of bravery, I ran into the tunnel, placing torches when it got too dark. I came to a decline on the tunnel, and worked my way down the uneven depression. 

 Why did he want me to go down here? I thought, finding myself in a massive underground cave. 

 I was standing on a cliff edge, next to a waterfall that fell off into blackness. I could hear the water crashing somewhere on a floor too far below me for torchlight to reach. There was a light in the distance that stretched down, all the way to the unseen bottom of this huge slit in the earth. It was orange. 

 I stepped forward to try and get a better look, but forgot that there was nothing there to step forward onto, and fell into the waterfall. 

 I gasped, but water was where air should be, and it filled my lungs, choking me. I flailed my arms as I tumbled down through the water. 

 I’m going to drown! I thought, frantic to find a way out. Then I hit the ground, my left arm taking most of the impact. Pain shot through my elbow as I desperately tried to crawl out of the rushing water in the dark. I grasped for anything solid and found it, pulling myself out of the cold water and onto what I thought was stone. 

 I immediately grabbed torches and placed them around me. I took some bread out of my pack and tried to eat it, trying to restore what I had lost from my accidental fall, but nothing happened. It wouldn’t let me eat it, I hadn’t been hurt. 

 What?! I thought, looking at the bread. I knew it couldn’t have been me, I was definitely not superhuman. I shuddered, partly from the cold, partly from remembering almost getting blown up by that green creature. Was it the water? I wondered. Or the stone? I looked at the substance beneath me. 

 It was not stone.

 It was black, with little purple flecks in it. 

 No, this didn’t save me, it had to have been the water.

 It absorbed my impact. . . 

 Maybe it was because I had slipped into the water, and not hit it from a great height, because somewhere in my foggy memories something told me water was dangerous, yet here it was saving me. 

 Maybe I have a phobia, I just couldn’t remember, I thought. Is this the reason for coming down here, to remember? 

 The moan of a Zombie brought me out of my thoughts.

 Its decaying form limped into the edge of the torchlight. I didn’t want to run away, I might get myself into a worse situation in the dark, so I grabbed my sword and prepared to fight. 

 The Zombie slashed out at me, narrowly missing me. The smell of rotten flesh filled my nose as I swung at the Zombie with my stone sword. It flashed red with damage, groaning in anger, then attacked me again. I blocked its attack, his claws scraping on my sword as I held him back. 

 I heard the twang of a bow while I struggled with the Zombie, and then pain erupted in my right shoulder blade, causing me to lose my control over my sword and allowing the Zombie to slash at me. 

 I hissed in pain as I ducked and picked my sword up, then lashed out at the Zombie, striking him a few more times. The Zombie disappeared with a pop and three green orbs to floated into me. 

 I spun around to face the skeleton that had shot me. Every move of my right arm further burned my shoulder blade. The fact that I used my right arm to hold my sword and fight made it worse.

 I gritted my teeth against the pain and dodged another arrow, going closer to the skeleton and slicing at him. My sword collided with his white bones, echoing across the ravine walls. The skeleton flashed red again and again until he disappeared, leaving behind a few glowing green orbs just like the Zombie had.

 I had wandered out of the torch lit area, so I placed a few torches around me and devoured the bread I couldn’t eat earlier. The pain in my shoulder blade faded. I stretched my shoulder and sighed, checking my surroundings. 

 I realized I was closer to the orange light that had caused me to fall down here in the first place. It was casting light everywhere around it, so I went closer, placing torches in the dark areas before I reached it. 

 As I got closer, I could hear sounds coming from it. The air around it was distorted. I felt beads of sweat forming on my face. I backed away. 

 There was no mistaking this, it was lava.

 How far down  am I to already be seeing lava? I thought. 

 From what I remember, lava came from deep in the earth. I wondered what would happen if I accidentally fell into the lava. I didn’t want to find out, however, so I backed away even further. 

 My gaze wandered to the limits of the torchlight, to the high walls above me. I could see my path all the way back to the waterfall, filled with torches.

 I need to be more careful about placing torches, I thought. I’ll run out before I even start mining down here. 

 Which brings me to what I saw next: A new material, embedded high up in the wall near the lava.

 How do I get up there?

 Then I saw it, in the square sectioned stone. I could mine out a sort of staircase to get the material. So I began to mine. It felt good to have something to work at again. I wanted answers, but somewhere inside me I was stalling. 

 What if I didn’t like the answers? What if the answers were bad, like I didn’t have any memories because of a horrible accident? Or maybe I’m out here in the wilderness because society collapsed and it’s the apocalypse and that’s why there are so many weird creatures, because they got mutated?!

 I heard a pop, then a squeak, then a piece of stone was jumping at me and hitting me. 

 “What the. . . ?!” I stepped back, trying to get away, but I was on top of a staircase, so I fell down all of them backwards. 

 I hit the ground at the bottom and looked back up at the moving piece of stone. It had spikes coming up out of it, and tiny black eyes, and. . . it wasn’t a piece of stone. It was some kind of creature, and it was coming to attack me.

 I got to my feet and slashed at it, missing almost every time. I finally destroyed it.

 Did it come out of the stone? I was highly confused. How did it live inside the stone?!

 I went back up my stairs, still trying to figure it out, and found that whatever had happened with that creature had removed the last stone and revealed the new material. It was just like the coal I had found, but instead of black flecks, these were a dull orange.

 I began mining it. When it broke, nothing came out like when the coal ore broke. This material just turned into a smaller block like the grass blocks did. 

 “What am I supposed to do with this?” I said to the cave. Then I thought about what I had done to the wood in the grey thing I had started to call a furnace. It had ‘cooked’ and turned into charcoal. But a furnace wasn’t used to cook, it was used to smelt.

 The puzzle pieces began to click into place in my mind. Suddenly things were starting to connect for me. 

 All this time I had been getting stronger; it was a system. I had to keep mining for stronger material to make stronger tools. 

 What happens when there is no stronger material? What happens when I am the strongest I can be?

 I kept mining. There was a block of the dull orange stuff beneath me, and in my haste to get all the material I could, I mined it as well. 

 Big mistake.

 I fell through the floor as the block broke beneath me. I landed hard on the ground in the darkness below, flashing red. I looked back up, seeing the single-block wide space I had fallen through.

 Great, I thought. Now I’m even deeper in this cave.

 I placed a couple of torches beside me.

 How will I get out of here?

 Looking around, I saw a light in the distance. It wasn’t lava or torchlight. It was very dim, and. . . red.

 I walked over to it, not bothering to place torches in my trance. I came to the light, and saw that it actually was a torch, but not like mine. It had a red coal in the top, smoldering but not bright. 

 Is this what happens to torches after a while? I wondered. Then I had another, scarier thought: Who put it there?

 There were stone steps beside the torch, so I went up them, hoping to find a way out. Along the walls of the rough hewn staircase were more of the dimly lit torches. I finally came to the top of the stairs. They led into a tunnel, where light flooded in through a hole at the end. 

 I ran to it, thinking it would be a way out. But once I got there, it was just another cliff edge, dropping off into darkness. I was about to turn around and leave when I noticed a waterfall. But not just any waterfall, it was the same one I had fallen into. I could see my torch path, and the black stone at the bottom of the ravine, and the lava, even my stairs I had mined to get the new material.

 I could see everything from up here. But more importantly, so could anyone else.

 Suddenly I didn’t feel so alone anymore. It wasn’t the good kind of not alone, though, this was the creepy kind.

 I ran back out of the tunnel, down the dimly lit stairs and straight to my two torches. I mined out another set of stairs, desperate to get back to my home. I emerged in the ravine, and ran back to the waterfall. I stopped in front of it.

 How do I get back up?

 I stepped into the shallows. Maybe I could mine another staircase into the stone?

 No, it wouldn’t come out at the right spot, and I might get myself even more lost.

 Then I heard the hissing of a Spider, and it was right behind me. I spun around to face it as it lunged towards me, I closed my eyes and jumped away, into the spraying water. I expected to still be there, standing in the waterfall, but when I opened my eyes I was above the ground, and I was getting higher.

 I gasped. What’s happening?!

 I was in the waterfall, but somehow I was going up, not down. I was confused, but I was also happy.

 “Ha! See ya, spider!” I shouted as the ground shrunk beneath me and I was elevated to freedom. I got to the top and climbed out, crawling away from the cliff edge and looking out across the area. 

 I could see the hole in the opposite wall, where the red torches had been. If someone was up there, they really could see everything I was doing on this side. I turned to leave, impatient to test my smelt theory with the new material. I went back up into the small cave, and out into the world again.

 Fresh air filled my lungs, the night sky sparkled with stars as the last rays of sunlight disappeared beneath the horizon. I briefly wondered how many days I had been down in the cavern. 

 It couldn’t have been that long, I thought as I walked to my house and went inside. I threw some wood in the furnace and put the new material on top. Fire flared to life and began melting the dull orange stuff into a shiny metal. 

 I immediately knew what this was. 

 Iron. 

 I think it was the easiest thing to figure out since grass blocks.

 I got the ingots from the furnace and started testing recipes while I ate an apple. I only had fourteen ingots, so I didn’t make anything until I knew all the things I could do with them. I already thought it would make stronger tools, and I was right, but I also found out about armor.

 In my excitement, I made an iron sword, which left me with twelve ingots, not enough for a full set of armor, but enough for an iron helmet, pickaxe, and axe. The last two being something I desperately needed since I had been mining, and before that, cutting down trees for wood and fuel.

 Once I had crafted all I could, I settled in for the night, beginning to think of all the questions bouncing around in my head and all the things I would do tomorrow. As I sat there in the middle of my house, it began to rain. Thunder rumbled around me. Thunder so terrible it shook my soul.

 I really wish I had a bed. . . 

 If I was sleeping, I wouldn’t hear the earth-shattering cracks of thunder or the pounding rain that sounded like white noise in my head. 

 Then I remembered the cave I had just been in, and the tunnel with red torches. I wasn’t superstitious, but I really hoped this storm had nothing to do with that.

Chapter Fifteen

The Enderman

 I watched as Herobrine paced back and forth, grumbling about his recent fight with Notch. His voice boomed off the walls of the Nether fortress, shaking my soul as he raged.

 “It’s not a loss, my king,” I said, trying to calm him. “Merely a setback.”

 He stopped pacing and glared at me. I didn’t back away like the other monsters did when Herobrine attempted this scare tactic. The other monsters thought that if they stood their ground Herobrine would attack. He usually would, but only if you really moved. It was a trick, and I knew better. Herobrine knew better. Attacking this Enderman would do him no good, I was too smart for that. That’s why he disliked me, but also why I was a deputy in his army.

 Anything that was planned was told to me and the other deputies. Just how I wanted it. Unbeknownst to Herobrine, I was a double agent, dedicated to providing his so called ‘enemies’ with valuable information. It doesn’t seem like a job for an Enderman to take, yet here I am. I was different.

 I had seen the suffering of users and NPC’s at the hands of Herobrine and his mobs. I didn’t want to be a part of that. But if I openly joined the other side I would be killed, which would be no help to anyone. So I stayed, and I acted.

 “Perhaps you are right, Obsidian,” Herobrine said, using the translation of my given name, Kokuyoseki. “It’s not a loss unless he kills me. My wave is still travelling across the accursed Overworld, there is still a chance.” 

 He turns and runs up the dark purple stairs behind him. On his way, he yells over his shoulder, “Stay here and guard things while I am gone.”

 “Where are you going?” I yell after him.

 “You’ll see,” he replies, his voice echoing off the tunnel he is now in. Then he disappears into the darkness of the long hall.

 Guard things? I think. What is there to guard?

 This whole dimension is its own guard. It would take quite an intrepid explorer to survive the Nether. Someone with guts, and survival skills and weapons of the highest kind. Not to mention the armor one would need. Such a hostile landscape could only be created by one just as harsh and insurvivable. 

 I was dealing with the one who fit that description and many more. For something so small, Herobrine sure packed a punch. Especially since he was supposed to be dead.

 Several years ago, when I was younger and more foolish, I stood in the End and listened as our king told all the Endermen that Herobrine had been defeated. It shook our world, every monster. But after that I decided to change. 

 Everyone had thought Herobrine was gone, but a few days ago he had showed up here in the Nether. He had been weak, as if he had spent a massive amount of power, but he still had the same malicious fire in his soul. A fire that wished to consume all that was good and banish it into eternal ash.

 I had been surprised. He was not supposed to be alive, yet there he had been, standing right in front of me.

 How had he come back? I had wondered. 

 I still wonder.

 Herobrine had told me to guard this place. But I had things to do. 

 I looked back to the long, dark hallay he had gone into. Herobrine wasn’t in the Nether, I couldn’t feel his Pulse through the code here, he had teleported someplace else. He wouldn’t be back for a while yet. 

 I teleported away, to one of the other Endermen in the Nether. He looked away from me as I appeared in front of him. It was a rule Endermen had: If another Enderman was a higher rank than you, you did not look them in the eye.

 “Enderman,” I said, addressing him. 

 “Yes, sir?” He asked, still looking away.

 “Go to the main chamber in the Nether fortress and guard it until I get back,” I ordered him. “If you leave and I find out, there will be grave consequences.” 

 “Uh, y-yes, sir, Kokuyoseki, sir.” He disappeared, leaving me standing next to a group of Zombie Pigmen.

 I glanced at them, causing them to scatter and oink in fear of the Enderman beside them. I teleported away. 

 I appeared in the Overworld, sighing as the constant east-to-west breeze cooled my skin. Endermen were not meant for the humidity of the Nether. Our native dimension, the End, was cold from being so close to the Void. We were not used to warmth. 

 I took a moment to stop and reach out with my senses. I could feel Herobrine’s Pulse here in the Overworld, but it was faint and far off. I was safe to be here for now, especially since where I was going was even farther away from Herobrine’s estimated location.

 I closed my eyes. teleporting to a village in the north-east. When I arrived, every villager immediately looked away.

 “It’s okay, guys. It’s me, Seki,” I sighed.

 They all began to look up and start chattering. I looked down so they wouldn’t accidentally provoke me. Just because I wasn’t evil didn’t mean I wasn’t an Enderman. I could still be provoked and would attack like any other Enderman.

 “Welcome back!” Said one.

 “We’ve missed you,” an elder said.

 “Where have you been?” Asked a child.

 “What’s the news in the Nether?” A baker asked

 “So good to see you, my friend,” was the last reply, from the leader of the village. He walked up to me. 

 “Baron,” I greeted him. “How’s life in the Overworld?”

 “Oh, just the same as ever, quiet and peaceful,” Baron said.

 “Are you sure?” I asked, knowing that the elderly leader had a short memory and may not realize that something had happened. 

 “Well, now that you mention it. . . ” he mused. “There was a horrible wave of nausea and confusion that swept over our village several days ago. But now we’re just as fine as we’ve ever been.” He looked around at the other villagers.

 I hesitated. I did not want to scare him, but Herobrine’s return to Minecraft was bound to have nothing good come of it, and his wave was getting closer to the end of the world. It would not be long before these villagers and everyone else were caught up in the eternal war of the brothers Notch and Herobrine.

 “Baron, I don’t want to frighten anyone, but there’s something very important I need to tell you all,” I told him.

 “What is it, my friend?” Baron asked, concerned.

 “It’s Herobrine,” gasps spread through the crowd as I talked. “He has returned, and he’s planning something. I’m not entirely sure what it is yet, but I do know that there is a wave travelling across the Overworld that was sent by Herobrine. He hasn’t told me much yet, but supposedly once the wave reaches the Far Lands and passes over them, Herobrine will have enough power to take over all of Minecraft. Every server, every pyramid, every world, even Notch himself will fall.”

 Everyone was silent for a moment. I had a knack for being a little theatrical, I hoped I hadn’t terrified them.

 “That is very grave and important news indeed, my friend,” Baron finally said.

 Suddenly I felt a flutter in the Void. Herobrine was moving. I had to leave, I had to get back to the Nether.

 “Seki?” Baron’s voice cut through my thoughts.

 “I’m sorry, Baron, I wish I could stay longer, but I must leave to avoid detection,” I said, urgency in my voice.

 “Of course, Seki,” Baron replied. “Go. We will prepare in what ways we can.”

 I gathered my teleportation particles around me, disappearing and reappearing in the suffocating heat of the Nether. I was right next to the Enderman I had posted to keep watch. He seemed surprised. 

 “What are you doing?!” I asked him, slipping back into my act as a loyal commander in Herobrine’s army.

 “I, um – I was. . . uh – ” he stumbled.

 “Get out! I’m back now, so leave!”

 “Y-yes, sir,” he squeaked, disappearing.

 A chill went up my spine.

 Herobrine had arrived.

 “Obsidian,” a voice echoed in the hallway behind me.

 “Yes, sire?” I asked, turning to him.

 “Gather my followers beneath the outcropping on the far west side,” Herobrine ordered, his eyes glowing the slightest bit brighter than before. “It’s time they made themselves useful.” 

 He walked past me, going to the outcropping he had described. There was an uneasy feeling in my stomach. I knew why his eyes were brighter, I just didn’t want to admit that it was because his wave was almost across all of Minecraft.

————————————————————————————————

 I stood at the doorway that led to the outcropping high above a lake of lava. This outcropping was where Herobrine adressed all the inhabitants of the Nether.

 “Are they ready?” Herobrine asked, standing next to me.

 “Yes, my king,” I said, using all of my self-control to be able to call him that.

 “Good,” He said, approaching the doorway. “Oh, and Obsidian?”

 “Yes, sire?”

 “Do not think that just because you hold a high rank in my army you are forfeit from rules,” he said, his back to me.

 “Sir?” I asked, confused. What had I done?

 “I know you left the main chamber after I told you to stay,” Herobrine explained, as if he had read my thoughts. His figure was silhouetted against the bright light from the lava outside, making the white glow from his eyes become tinged with red and start to fade around him, like blood.

 I said nothing. Only a fool would come up with an excuse or a lie. A fool like his other deputies. I just stood there in the darkness, terrified, my teleportaion particles floating awkwardly around the room.

 “If I find out anything about you, Enderman, your time here is limited,” Herobrine threatened. “Do you understand?”

 “Yes, my king,” I lowered my head in an attempt to look shamed. But all I felt was fear and anxiety. If he found out too early that I was helping his enemies, no one had a chance of stopping him. I had to be more careful, more patient. 

 Herobrine left me, walking out onto the ledge. I followed only until I was right outside the doorway. I didn’t want to be seen by everyone else, but I wanted to listen. 

 Below us were the multitudes of the Nether, a great army that stood the test of time. They were all at Herobrine’s command, blindly obeying whatever order his bloodlust could dream of. 

 I had almost begun to think of freedom before Herobrined had returned. I had almost left the monster world forever. No more. Freedom was a luxury I couldn’t afford; not now.

 Maybe some day, I thought as I watched Herobrine step forward to address the sea of monsters below. 

 “My soldiers, my children, for years you have suffered under the tyranny of a lying man. For years you have dealt with the oppressive living conditions of the Nether. But no more. Notch is no king! He sits on his massive throne in an untouchable realm while he condemns you to fire and ruin, leaving you in the waste places of the earth!” Herobrine’s eyes glowed bright as his anger grew, his temper rising with his voice. My stomach turned as I listened to all the lies he so blatantly swore upon. 

 “Now is the time for you to return to your glory,” Herobrine said, getting quieter. This was when he would play on their weaknesses. “Do you remember the breeze? The sky as the sun rises? I have seen it all, felt it all. The Overworld. You long to return there, the place where your ancestors roamed with me.” 

 Sighs rippled across the masses below as they remembered the cooling wind and beautiful landscape of the Overworld.

 “The coward Notch had robbed you of everything you held dear! Tonight, we begin to make things right!” Herobrine roared, lifting his hands into the air as electricity flowed across his arms. Lightning lit up the Nether, as white as Herobrine’s eyes. Then portals appeared around the monsters, each one igniting with purple flames.

 “Go forth, my soldiers! Bring Minecraft to its knees!” Herobrine’s voice seethed with hatred, it felt like it could pierce my soul. I forced myself to stay. The heat of the Nether merging with that of Herobrine’s lightning was unbearable. If Endermen could sweat, I’m sure I would be solid red from the injuries the liquid would give me. But we couldn’t, so I had to deal with the unbearable pain as the heat radiated around me.

 This is getting bad.

 I didn’t know when I would have the chance to leave again, but I hoped whenever I did, I wasn’t too late.

Chapter Sixteen

The Player’s Sixth Dream

  Stone clattered on the ground and echoed through the torch lit cave as my pickaxe broke on the iron ore. 

 I sighed and wiped my brow, not yet ready to heave another pickaxe out of my pack and begin the repetitive task again.

 I had been mining with stone pickaxes, afraid of wasting my only iron one on useless cobblestone, but it was difficult. 

 I decided to stop for the day, or night. . . or whatever time it was.

 I emerged out of the cave into starlight. 

 Okay, I thought, looking around. Nighttime. Watch out for monsters. . . I silently warned myself, walking carefully towards my house. 

 I went inside, shutting the door and immediately burning the ore in the furnace. I needed that iron. I was weak from not sleeping for so many days. 

 How many days had it been again?

 A week? Two weeks? Months? Years?!

 No, no, calm down. . . I took a deep breath. You’re panicking again. Just keep going. Keep surviving.

 I checked on the iron in the furnace. The hot air from the burning coals inside it filled the space near the oven-like object, then it was gone, like it was never there. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that’s what it would be like if I died in this place. No one knew me, I wasn’t even sure if there was anyone else besides the villagers I had met.

 I was a fire, but I was burning out.

 I need sleep, I thought, turning away from the furnace with my iron in hand, ready to begin crafting.

 I discovered more items than I cared to remember, but one really stuck with me: Shears.

 Shears were like scissors for fur. I had seen the fur I needed, it was wool, from a sheep. You could make things with wool, things like clothes and blankets. Blankets went on beds. . .

 My tired mind finally connected the dots. 

 I jumped up from my spot where I had been sitting at the crafting table.

 “I need a sheep. . . ” I muttered to the empty house, my new shears in my left hand, my iron sword in my right. I went to look out of the tiny windows in my door. It was still dark. I didn’t have a timeline, so I didn’t know when it would be morning.

 I stuffed my shears in my pack, then put my hand on the door handle. There was a split second of hesitation, then I opened it. 

 I went outside, closing the door behind me.

 I took a shaky breath, looking around the dark landscape. No sign of monsters. I started walking, my sword held in a position to fight if need be.

 I passed my mining cave. Torch light bled out of the entrance. I didn’t want to leave it’s warmth, but I heard the bleating of a sheep in the night.

 I rounded the corner, searching for it. I couldn’t see anything that remotely resembled a sheep, but somehow I heard it, as if it was right in front of me.

 I stepped forward and hit into something. I gasped, it bleated. I looked down, right into the face of a black sheep. 

 Baa! It complained.

 “S-sorry, little guy, I didn’t see you there,” I crouched beside him, taking my shears out. “Do you mind if I take your wool for a bed?”

 He looked away from me. 

 “Is that a yes, or a no?”

 I decided it was a yes, and sheared him. Two black cubes of soft wool popped off and floated into me. I grabbed them out of my pack and thanked the sheep, then went back to my house.

 I sat at the crafting table and began trying to find the bed recipe. When I did, I felt like a cruel joke had been pulled on me. The recipe required three wool and three wooden planks. I had the planks, no problem there. But I only had two blocks of wool.

 “Why?” I asked aloud. “What’s the point?! Who decides on this stuff?!” I was devastated, angry even. I had risked my life for sleep and this world had slapped me in the face. Tired as I was, it was not time for sleep. 

 I sighed heavily, and hung my head, trying to calm down. It’s fine, you’ll find more wool when the sun comes up. Then you can make a bed, and sleep.

 ————————————————————————————————

 I should have known that this world wouldn’t let me sleep in the daytime.

 I kicked the new black bed. “Just let me sleep, you stupid bed!”

 It was still and silent, mocking me.

 “Forget it,” I said, walking outside to tend to my crops.

 I hadn’t harvested the food from my garden in a while, so everything was fully grown and ready to be picked. I began to harvest the wheat first.

 The world awoke around me as I worked. I heard cows mooing and sheep bleating and pigs oinking. The occasional chicken would come clucking past.

 I was pulling carrots out of the ground when I noticed that something was wrong. It was silent. I looked around. There was no sign of any animal having been here.

 I sat there with the silence. I got the same creepy feeling I did when I had found the red torches and small tunnel. My eyes scanned the landscape in front of me, I tried to keep my fear suppressed. There was no point in getting worked up when it was nothing, right? But I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.

 I looked over my shoulder, still crouched and holding carrots. I braced myself for a monster or something worse.

 Nothing.

 I sighed. You’re overreacting.

 I turned back around.

 “Hello,” a man said, he was standing in front of me.

 “Ahh!” I screamed and fell on the ground, dropping the carrots. I backed up, crawling away and hitting against a stone wall with my back. 

 The man just blinked. He seemed unphased, like it was a normal occurrence to sneak up on someone and give them a heart attack.

 “Where. . . where did you come from?” I asked, still terrified. 

 “Somewhere,” he shrugged.

 “A-are you going to kill me?” I trembled.

 “Only if you give me a reason to,” he replied effortlessly.

 “What?!” My eyes widened. Was this guy serious? He didn’t seem serious, and yet he did. What was a reason for that kind of person? I wasn’t sure if I should move. He turned to walk away. Was he leaving? After giving me a heart attack? Really?!

 “H-hey, wait,” I stopped him, which I questioned right after.

 He looked over his shoulder. 

 “Who are you?” I asked quietly, unsure of what might happen if he got angry.

 He was silent for a moment, then he uttered one word, “Herobrine.”

 Then he walked away.

 I quickly got up, absently brushing the dirt off of my clothes. 

 “You can’t leave,” I shouted after him. “Don’t go.”

 He stopped.

 “You’re the only person I’ve seen. . . ever.” That seemed to work, because he turned to me.

 “What about the Villagers?” He asked.

 “Well, they didn’t seem like they were really there. . . they said nothing to me,” I looked down, thinking about that. Why had they just walked away?

 “You need help.” It wasn’t a question. He knew I was barely making it.

 I looked back up, slightly ashamed of how bad I was surviving. Somewhere in my foggy memories I remembered something called survival training. I don’t know how I did in the class, but I feel like I would have failed. At least, mostly. I had gotten this far; but now everything seemed like it was against me. I just needed sleep. If I agreed to accept help from this stranger, would it help me, or make it worse?

 “I can’t stay forever,” the man said. “What do you need?”

 This was probably the only chance I had. 

 “What can you give?” I felt like I was in one of those fairy tales and I was talking with the shady magical character that happened to be a witch in the end.

 “Answers,” his reply shocked me. I had thought maybe he would say something like ‘whatever you wish for,’ or otherwise. But this was possibly even better than sleep. My mind swirled with questions, now. All the old mysterious ones I’d had since the beginning resurfaced.

 “What’s in it for you?” I asked, knowing there was always a catch. 

 He stood there in silence, forcing me to wait. Finally he spoke, “Life.”

 Again, not the answer I expected. But it made sense somehow, maybe, in his mind; and slightly in mine.

 “I’ll be back, then you’ll have your answers,” he told me, his grey eyes glinting in the sun that had risen high in the sky.

 I watched him disappear into the fog that was settling around the land. 

 What did I get myself into?

 Chapter Seventeen

Warm Welcome

I struck the axe against the wood of the tree. Tiny squares spread across its surface and the block popped out of the trunk, landing on the ground beside Ash. The wolf bent down to sniff the log and I reached to pick it up.

 “I hope Alex is having better luck today in the mining cave,” I told him, stuffing the wood in my pack. It stacked neatly with the other logs I had collected, but my pack was almost full of wood. I sighed and looked across what I had done. I had felled at least twenty trees. Saplings were scattered here and there between rising oaks. The growth rate of trees here was helpful if you needed a lot of wood fast. But I didn’t. I needed apples.

 Notch had instructed me and Alex to prepare. Gather resources, he had said, food, water, weapons, armor, TNT, traps, anything that you need.

 Alex had volunteered to mine for the redstone that we would need for traps, which left me gathering food. I tried to convince her otherwise.

 “Are you sure you want to go down there?” I had asked her.

 “Yes, Steve, I’ll be fine. I can take care of myself,” she had said, brandishing her new iron pickaxe, two more of them in her pack along with an iron sword. 

 We’d had the conversation this morning. When we parted, heading to our assigned tasks, she seemed to be confident in her abilities, striding off into the forest in the direction of the mining cave, her auburn hair lit by the sun like fire.

 I heaved my axe back up and began to break the rest of the tree’s trunk. The rythmn of the iron slicing into the wood became a track on which my train of thought could ride.

 I wasn’t sure if it was because she was another human like me, or if it was something else, but however much I tried to deny it to myself, I was beginning to care for Alex. Maybe I was just so glad that I wasn’t really alone in this world. Whatever it was, I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. 

 Just then, a clicking sounded in the forest. I stopped chopping the tree to listen and look around. Ash growled.

 “What is it, boy?” I walked to where he was standing. His eyes turned red and he ran off into the grove. A few moments later, I heard whimpering and a Spider dying. Ash came running back with some string in his jaws, his white teeth blending into the white of the string. I grabbed the string from him and put it in the last empty spot in my pack. 

 “Did you get hurt, bud?” I took a piece of raw meat out of my inventory and gave it to him. The wolf snatched it out of my hand and devoured it, restoring his healthpoints. 

 While he ate, I heard a new sound among the rustling leaves and soft breeze of the forest. A crackling and a snap, like fire and death. I tensed. It couldn’t be.

 “Alex?” I ventured tentatively towards the sounds, wondering if Alex even knew how to build what I thought might be around the corner. But she had acted like she was confused when I told her. . .

 A scream ripped through the forest. But it wasn’t human. It was unnatural, gutterul, warlike. It was the scream of death waiting on the black wings of a demon. 

 I hid behind a tree and watched as hordes of Nether monsters came flooding out of a rogue portal in the middle of the once peaceful, safe forest. An Enderman was at their heading, his posture straight and commanding, his eyes cold and unwavering as he screamed at his soldiers to march upon the Overworld and reduce it to flames.

 I ran back to Ash, fear flooding my mind. 

 “Come on, boy, we’ve got to find Alex,” I grabbed my axe as I ran past him. “And then Notch. . . somehow.” The king of Minecraft hadn’t told us how to contact him, and I just hoped that somehow he would know to contact us.

 I crashed through the forest, crushing leaves and dodging low hanging branches, not caring if I was heard by the mob of Nether creatures I had left behind. They were probably too busy with whatever it was they were doing. At least that’s what I told myself.

 Ash was panting by the time we got back to my house, not that I was in any better condition. I only stopped for a split second to check my surroundings, then I ran off in the direction of the mining cave. 

 I was nearing the spot when I almost ran into Alex. I skidded to a halt, Ash hitting into the back of my legs. Alex stared at us, confused.

 “Steve, what are you doing here? What’s wrong?” Her eyebrows furrowed with worry at the look of terror on my face. 

 “The Nether, there are mobs everywhere. . . Th-they’re here. . . ” I couldn’t get everything out in time, so I just skipped to the most important part. “Notch. We have to tell him.”

 Alex didn’t seem to know the severity of the situation. She just stared at me like she wanted to help but didn’t know how.

 “Are you okay?” She finally said.

 “No! I’m not okay. There’s a flood of Nether mobs coming through a portal in my forest that I didn’t put there, and they are coming to destroy the only thing I know, the Overworld!”

 Just then something exploded into the tree beside us, lighting it on fire. I spun around to see a Blaze getting ready to fire another ball of flame at us. The smoke around the monster laced the ground as the heat from it scorched the grass. 

 “Hurry!” I said as I ran back to the clearing.

 “Where are we going?” I heard Alex ask as she followed me.

 “If a Blaze got this far, there are bound to be others at my house, and we need those supplies!” I told her, frantic to get there in time. I knew these Nether mobs were armed with a most dangerous weapon: Fire. It could destroy everything I had built. But more importantly, it could destroy our supplies for the fight against them.

 The sounds of coughing and crackling fire became louder as we got closer to the clearing, confirming my thoughts that they would be there already. We came to the edge of the tree line, and I halted. There were too many monsters here to just go rushing in without a plan.

 “What now?” Alex whispered behind me. 

 I thought for a moment. I had a back door, built for emergencies, but it would take a while. I turned to face her.

 “Okay, I have a way to get in without being seen, but it’s through the mining cave,” I said.

 “So what are we waiting for?” She asked.

 “Nothing,” I said, but I hesitated. Where was Ash? The wolf was usually uber loyal. Sometimes he tripped me up because he stayed so close. 

 “Let’s go,” I said, pushing my worries aside for now and letting survival take priority. It had been a long time since I’d had to do that, and as I hurried back to the mining cave, thoughts of my early days in this world came back to me. I grew quiet as memories filled my mind of having to survive with nothing but instincts and the clothes on my back. Images flashed of monsters coming after me when I had no weapons, images of my wooden tools as they struck animals and killed them, images of Creepers in caves and Zombies under the night sky. . . So many bad memories. 

 I shook my head and tried to forget them as I neared the entrance of the mining cave. Torches surrounded the mouth and a minecart filled with minerals rode on a rail that disappeared far down into the earth. 

 “How are we going to get to your house from the cave?” Alex asked, coming to stand in front of the cave with me. I took a deep breath.

 “There’s a back door for emergencies,” I explained. “Initially it was built out of boredom, but now it seems it will actually get used. The way it works is you go through a hidden passage in the mining cave and a tunnel leads all the way to the inside of the mountain right behind my house.” I went into the cave, counting the blocks as my eyes adjusted to the torchlight to find the hidden entrance to the secret tunnel. 

 “Using redstone, I was able to eventually figure out how to disguise the exit with a moving stone wall. So it looks like part of the mountain, but it’s going to allow us to get in the back of my house via an iron door that I installed onto the house after I made this tunnel,” I finished and looked at Alex. She was nodding.

 “Alright then, let’s go get those supplies,” she smiled as she said it. 

 I took my iron pickaxe out of my pack and began mining the blocks on the wall to reveal a horizontal two-block high, one-block wide tunnel shrouded in darkness. Groans of Zombies drifted out with the smell of rotting flesh. Alex wrinkled her nose. 

 “That’s really weird,” I mused.

 “What, the Zombies?” Alex asked, covering her nose and mouth with her hand.

 “No; I had torches in this tunnel to prevent any mobs from spawning,” I replied, getting a new stack of torches from my pack. 

 “So the Zombies took them down,” Alex reasoned, shrugging her shoulders.

 “Zombies don’t mess with torches, in fact, they don’t really do anything but Shuffle around,” I shook my head. “They didn’t do this.”

 Not to mention they would not have known about this tunnel anyway since it’s secret, I thought as I went in, placing torched as I went, my iron sword in my other hand if I encountered any monsters. Alex followed behind me, the tunnel was only big enough to walk in a single-file line. As we went through the tunnel, I noticed that there were many other tunnels leading out of the main one, but I had not made them. I was confused by this, but I was also glad that I had taken the time to line the floor with gravel when I had made this tunnel, because it kept us on the original path I had built. 

 “I though you said this was one tunnel,” Alex noticed.

 “It was,” I said, still confused and out of answers for what was going on. 

 The Zombies we heard much have been in the other tunnels, because by the time we reached the exit, we had not encountered any of the undead monsters. I went to the lever on the wall and pulled it down, causing the redstone to activate and the pistons to pull open the stone. I cautiously looked out. Then, after assuring there were no monsters around, I ran to the back of my house, pressing the button on the wall to open the iron door. Alex was right behind me.

 The door closed behind us and I turned to look at the rest of my house. There were monsters everywhere outside of the windows. I crouched behind the table, motioning for Alex to do the same. Once we were both hidden, I explained what we should do, “Don’t go near the windows, they’ll see us. The chests are spread around the house, so we’ll have to try and sneak through to get. . . ” I stopped short.

 There was a sound, slight but all too familiar. The mewling of a Ghast. My heart started beating faster. How did they get a Ghast here?

 “Steve, what is it?” Alex whispered.

 “Death on floating cubes,” is all I said. Then I got up and rushed to the windows, breaking them and putting cobblestone in their place. The house was cobblestone, thank Notch, it would protect us from the Ghasts fireballs, but there were parts that were not: Windows and doors. I removed the front door and replaced it with cobblestone.

 “Alex! Put these in place of the windows!” I said, throwing her a stack of cobblestone. She caught it and began to replace the windows, even though she seemed confused.

 “Aren’t we supposed to be getting supplies and leaving?” She asked as I removed the iron backdoor and shoved cobblestone in its place. 

 “We’re not going anywhere with Ghasts outside,” I told her. “We wouldn’t even last long enough to get to the tunnel.”

 “So what do we do now?” She finished placing the cobblestone and turned to me. 

 I remembered the Enderman I had seen in the forest and took the last cobblestone blocks and placed them above us, making the ceiling too low for an Enderman to fit, just in case he (or any other Enderman) decided to teleport inside.

 “Steve?” Alex was still waiting for an answer.

 “I. . . I don’t know,” I said, trying to think. We were safe now in this cobblestone box, and we had enough supplies in here for the worst case scenario. So what was the next move? 

 “I guess we wait for Notch,” I finally said. We were silent for a while as the Nether monsters destroyed the forest outside. Then suddenly Alex said, “Hey, Steve?”

 “Yeah,” I answered.

 “What are Ghasts?” She asked.

Chapter Eighteen

The Player’s Seventh Dream

“Pathetic.” 

 I opened my eyes to look up at the one the voice belonged to.

 Herobrine’s grey eyes met mine and narrowed. 

 “Get up,” he said.

 I was on my back, so I rolled over and willed myself to get up. My muscles ached from all the training we had been doing all morning. 

 The first night I get to sleep and I’m woken up before dawn to start a training regimen for who knows what. . . I thought, stretching. 

 I had been shaken awake out of a deep sleep by this maniac. I wondered how he had gotten inside my house until I realized doors probably don’t have locks in this world. The sky outside had been red and purple when we began, the sun just behind the horizon. Now the sky was bright blue and dotted with clouds, the square sun climbing higher as the day moved into noon. 

 I couldn’t help but remember my first day in this world; or at least what I thought was the first day. Which brought my attention back to the mysterious man in front of me.

 “You said you could give me answers,” I blurted, surprising myself with my bluntness to this semi-stranger. 

 His grey eyes searched me, seeming to pierce the veil of my conscious and penetrate my most hidden thoughts. I tried to keep my doubts and my fear of him out of my mind. But it felt like he knew my fear already. He knew the power he carried, and how it struck terror into others. I just hoped somehow he would spare me long enough for answers. . . and long enough for me to make a plan out of those answers.

 “I can,” Herobrine replied, finally releasing me from his stare as he lifted up his sword and let it glint in the sun. He didn’t even look at me as he spoke, he just kept watching the sunlight glide along the sharp edge of the blade, as if taunting me. “But only if you cooperate.” He dropped the blade down to his side.

 “Ready position,” he said for about the one hundredth time today. I sighed and lifted my sword up, ignoring the burning in my arms and legs. I didn’t want to refuse, I was afraid of what he might do to me.

 “Attack me,” Herobrine ordered.

 “But. . . You’re unguarded,” I said.

 “Do it,” Herobrine said, harsher this time. 

 I raised my sword, quickly trying to remember all of the moves I had been taught, then I ran at him, sword aimed for his heart. I swung at him, my blade sliding through the air, but it struck metal. He pushed me back.

 “Again,” he said.

 So I did it again. I swung my sword at him, but again he blocked it at the last second. 

 “Again!” He said, louder.

 This time I yelled as I ran, putting all my strength into the attack as I swung at him over and over. But every move I tried he blocked, every strike was parried. It was like he was born with the blade in his hand. 

 “You want answers?” Herobrine yelled. “Here’s your first lesson: I am the rightful king of Minecraft, the heir to the throne, I rule all! Anyone who takes my title commits heresy!” His sword nicked my right hand.

 “Ah!” I gasped and dropped my sword, my other hand flying to cover the cut. In my lapse of concentration, Herobrine kicked me over. I fell on my back, the air knocked out of me. Then his blade was at my throat.

 “I would kill you if I didn’t need you,” he hissed. “Remember that.”

 I couldn’t respond. The words were stuck in my throat, afraid to leave.

 Herobrine backed away saying, “Get up.” I did, then I walked over to where my sword lay on the ground. I reached to pick it up and noticed the blood on my shaking hand. 

 How much more of this can I take? I wondered. 

 “There will be others who claim my title, it is inevitable, but you must not believe them,” Herobrine told me, his anger only mildly reduced. This statement, however, brought some energy back into my soul. 

 “Others?” I perked up. “There are others?” 

 “Yes. . . ” Herobrine hesitated.

 “How many?” I ventured, placing a piece of cobblestone to sit on.

 “Multitudes, scattered across the land, but they are leaderless wanderers without me,” Herobrine replied.

 “If you’re the king, how are they leaderless?” I asked, genuinely curious how that worked.

 “They have forsaken me, and accepted a new ruler, giving the kingship of the universe over to a liar and a thief of birthrights,” he said.

 “Who?”

 “Notch,” Herobrine said, his teeth clenched and his eyes for the briefest of moments seemed to change from dull grey to glowing white. 

 I was silent after hearing his answer, my pain unnoticed for now as my mind filled with this new information.

 “We are done here,” Herobrine said abruptly, his mind somewhere else as he looked up at the sky, guessing the time. I looked up at him from where I sat on the cobblestone.

 “What about-?” I started.

 “Tomorrow, same time. Be ready,” he interrupted. “Oh, and one more thing.”

 “What?”

 “Never trust anyone; never turn your back to anyone, always be on guard. The moment you aren’t is when you’ll get hurt,” Herobrine said knowingly, then he left, walking off into the forest I had run away from.

 Maybe I was just dreaming, but it felt like there was a story behind his words. Maybe he was only bitter because he had been hurt like he had warned me about. I took a deep breath and looked at the sky. The sun was high in the atmosphere and more puffy clouds were moving in. 

 It’s going to be a while before I can sleep, I thought letting my sword drop while I walked back to my house, the tip of the blade making a little trail in the dirt as I dragged it behind me. 

 The next week was a blur, the days rushed by in flashes of training and mining and trying to survive; I barely got enough sleep. When I finally got enough courage up to ask Herobrine about the world beyond my tiny slice of land, he would only give me vague riddles and try to avoid the subject. He would say that there were “dangerous places” beyond what I knew, and that I was lucky I had found such a safe place. 

 I was effectively trapped in my own mind with these false comforts. 

 I didn’t exactly trust him, it was more like I was getting used to him; used to his bitter words and angry outbursts about the one he called ‘Notch.’ I had wondered about this person Herobrine always seemed to be seething about. 

 Who was this ‘Notch,’ and what did they do to make the people believe that they were king? I had even wondered if ‘Notch’ had been the one that made Herobrine so jaded. Maybe Herobrine had trusted them, but they had betrayed him. I wouldn’t have to wonder for long, because answers came sooner than I thought, and from someone very unexpected. 

————————————————————————————————

 I collapsed on the bed, too tired to even eat or bother to pull the black wool blanket over me. My breathing was heavy from training, as we had literally been practicing all day: From dawn until the moon came up. But my breathing soon evened out as my body shut down to sleep. My eyes blinked and I was gone, lost to dreams.

 Suddenly I was in a dark place, with grey fog covering the ground. There was light enough for me to stumble around, but I knew not from where it came. There was no sound except for distant echoes of crying, yet I heard a voice; it was almost like it came from my mind, but the thought was not my own: Come with me, it beckoned from somewhere in the dark.

 Who are you? I asked it in my mind. 

 Your king, it answered.

 Herobrine?

 No, player, I am the true king.

 The true king? How? I thought. . . No. I know what this is, it’s a trick.

 Isn’t it?

 I stood there in the fog, confusion flooding my mind. Old habits came back to me in that moment. Who am I? What am I? Where am I? Who is lying, who is telling the truth?

 Why is this happening?! I cried out to the mysterious voice.

 Come to me, player, come out of Limbo, the voice replied.

 Limbo? What’s that? I didn’t move. I couldn’t, I was paralyzed. Tears filled my eyes, burning as I slipped into madness. 

 Player, come to me, the voice sounded more urgent, and I could feel it’s anxiety mixing with my own. 

 Player.

 That sounded familiar. Why did it call me that, and I respond?

 “Player!” The voice broke through the fog, and a hand reached for me, grabbing my shoulder and pulling me out of the dark.

 My vision blurred and my lungs contracted as I coughed and sputtered. Everything was white. 

 “Player!” Something shook me. I gasped, opening my eyes.

 My vision cleared to see a golden-eyed, bearded man with a shaved head, apparently the one who shooke me.

 “Y-your eyes. . .” I was caught off guard by the metallic shine of this stranger’s eyes.

 “I know,” he nodded, as if it was natural. “I was born like this, they’ve always been this color.” Okay, so maybe it was.

 “Where am I?” I looked around.

 “The Aether,” the man got up from where he had knelt beside me. “I pulled you from Limbo; and it’s a good thing, too. The spirits were about to possess you.” He said this like it was a regular occurrence, but I was leaning on my elbow still trying to figure out if I was awake or not while he walked away from me.

 “Your still asleep,” the man told me, looking back at me over his shoulder.

 “What? Did I say that out loud?” I asked, still in shock. 

 “No,” the man smiled.

 “Oh. . . ” I put my hand over my head, I was getting a headache. 

 Then the man became serious, his smile fading as he looked away, his back turned to me.

 “I’m sorry I took so long to get to you,” he said, his tone saddened as he continued. “I didn’t think it would happen so quickly. So much of Minecraft has changed, I’m not sure it will ever go back to the way it was before.”

 Many things were running through my head as I got up from the soft white floor. What was Minecraft, and what was happening to it?

 “I know you have so many questions,” the man turned back to me. “But first let me tell you who I am. I am Notch.”

 I gasped. Fear shot through me like lightning, even though he gave me no reason to be afraid.

 “Herobrine told me about you,” I said quietly, my hands forming into nervous fists.

 “I know, he got to you before I did,” Notch said. “But I assure you, whatever he said about me isn’t true.”

 “He told me you would say that,” I told him.

 “But I’m actually telling the truth, unlike Herobrine, who weaves dark webs of intricate lies, forming a mythical world that seems real only while you are caught in his trap,” Notch said, coming closer.

 “Herobrine said he was the true king, and that you had brainwashed everyone to follow you. What if it’s true, and you’re just brainwashing me now?” I countered.

 Notch sighed sadly, he knew the story behind their past, and I was tempted to ask about it, since Herobrine’s answers always seemed so empty. But then he told me, “Herobrine is a master of deceit, he can feed you pretty lies and give you gifts of corrupted beauty, but all his words and actions are thorns hidden on a rose that will wilt when you take it, cutting you and making you bleed. He is not what he seems.”

 At this my anger at everything finally came out of me and spilled over into my words. I was so tired of riddles, so tired of not knowing, so tired of not having answers. 

 “Then tell me what he is!” I shouted.

 “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Notch said, his eyes sad.

 “Why?” I croaked, my voice cracking.

 “Because it’s time for you to wake up,” he answered, his demeanor returning to the stoic voice I had heard in the darkness. “Wake Up.”

————————————————————————————————

 I gasped and sat up. I was back in my home, still sitting on top of the black wool cover on my bed. The sound of chickens and cows filled my ears as they wandered around outside. My sword sat propped against a chest, a reminder of my training with Herobrine. Sunlight flooded in through the tiny windows on the door.

 It was past sunrise, so where was Herobrine? Why hadn’t I been abruptly awakened this morning?

 I wondered if everything had been an elaborate hallucination caused by lack of sleep, and now it had stopped because I had finally gotten enough rest. That was a logical assumption, right? 

 What kind of person goes looking for people in the forest so they can train them how to fight with a sword? What was the Aether and Limbo? This kind of stuff didn’t happen in real life. Unless. . . 

 Panic rose in my blood.

 No. That can’t be, I thought, too dizzy to get out of bed and stand. This is real life, you already figured that out, remember? It’s just somewhere weird that is all square. But you’ll find the way back. You will. Just keep going.

 I took some deep breaths, trying to push the thought out of my mind that this could all be a hallucination. I could only handle one thing at a time. I slowly got out of bed, testing if I could stand, then I stumbled to the door, grabbing my iron sword on the way. I went outside, my head still pounding from all the questions I never got answers to.

 I thought I would go outside and collect the food that I had semi-neglected since I started my training. I was met with quite a surprise. There was no food, no crops. The entire garden was gone, replaced by charred soil and ashes. In fact, the whole world looked like it had been set on fire, and now the fire had gone out, but all that was left behind was ruin.

 The animals I had heard were walking aimlessly, searching for any growth that wasn’t burnt. I could still hear some crackling in the distance of fire that hadn’t gone out yet.

 I ran out to the field next to my home. The bright green grass and delicate wildflowers were gone, replaced by grey ashes and brittle ground. Every step I took caused the grey floor to crunch. The smell of smoke in the air made me sick, and I coughed violently. 

 What happened here?

 I stumbled through the charred landscape, lost and wandering, until I finally just gave in and fell to my knees, clouds of ash plumed up around me as my legs hit the ground. I scooped up a burnt flower from in front of me, but it disintegrated into dust.

 I had no food, no friends, no help. The world, as far as I could see, was burnt beyond recognition or repair. 

 What do I do now?

Chapter Nineteen

Herobrine’s Transformation

 Lightning raged through the Nether, lighting the hellish realm like the sun. It was hard for the monsters to believe that the Nether could get any hotter, but that’s exactly what happened as the bolts zig-zagged across the reddish-brown landscape. 

 Kokuyoseki stood under a shelf of netherrack, a worried look in his eyes while Kyan paced back and forth under the same shelf of red material. Other monster generals waited there as well. Their master had instructed them to take a break from destroying the Overworld and come back to the Nether for something very important. None of them knew what it could be. 

 Herobrine had teleported to each of them to give them the news, then left. Normally that wouldn’t have been strange, except this time Herobrine had looked different. His eyes had not been glowing white, rather they were dark gray, and his whole demeanor had seemed a little off. . . almost nice. 

 He had assured them it was temporary when asked about it, and said he would be back to normal next they saw of him, but he would not say why he had taken on the disguise. The deputies knew he could change form, but they were still taken aback by it. None of them had ever seen Herobrine actually change in any of their lifetimes, it was like a legend come to life for them. 

 That, and the pressure of leading forces against the Overworld, was likely the cause of their unrest and anxiety. Witnessing lightning in the Nether made it no less nerve-racking. It didn’t storm in the Nether. It never had, from the time it was created until now. Kokuyoseki seemed the most bothered by it, however.

 “Kyan, would you stop pacing?” The young Enderman said, taking his purple eyes away from the lightning outside of their shelter for the first time.

 “Only when you stop worrying,” the hardened commander replied.

 “I’m not worried,” Seki retorted.

 “Seems like you are,” Kyan stopped pacing and faced the younger Enderman.

 “Maybe you’re the worried one, Kyan; after all, you can’t stop pacing,” Seki said, a calm returning to his voice as he regained his act.

 “Are you challenging me, Enderman?” Kyan roared, a flame in his dark purple eyes.

 Kokuyoseki held his gaze, their equal rank as generals allowing their eye contact.

 “No,” he said evenly.

 “Good, because Herobrine will be here soon and he wouldn’t want us to fight, would he, Kokuyoseki?” Kyan taunted, backing away.

 “You would know, Kyan,” Seki muttered.

 “What did you say?” Kyan hissed, coming inches close to the shorter Enderman. It wasn’t really a question, more of a challenge.

 The other deputies quietly backed away from the pair of dark figures as the tension grew between them. They could sense a fight, and they knew enough not to get in the way of fueding Endermen.

 “I said, you would know,” Kokuyoseki stared up at the senior Enderman. Even though Seki was still tall, like all Endermen, he was not yet full grown. His young age and high status enraged Kyan like nothing else.

 “And why is that, Obsidian?” Kyan spat, using Kokuyoseki’s translated name as an attempted insult; because Endermen only used their birth names with each other.

 For his answer, Seki stared straight into the dark soul of his enemy and smiled, “Because you are Herobrine’s yes-man. Anything he tells you, you do. You have no independence, only a slave’s heart.”

 The reply cut a deep wound in Kyan, and he wouldn’t forget the hit to his pride, not for all the ages of the world. The elder Enderman opened his jagged mouth, and a terrible scream ripped through the Nether, torn from his throat like a demon. Then he hit Kokuyoseki with black fists. Seki tried to block, but he had been disoriented when one of Kyan’s hits found their mark on his head.

 The other generals watched on, uncaring. It was not their fight, nor were they going to make it theirs. If one of the Endermen died in the fight, then so be it. 

 Seki fell to the ground, panting.

 “You should not have started this fight, Kokuyoseki,” Kyan said, walking closer to finish it. He raised his fists.

 “Stop!” Someone shouted. Kyan spun around. Behind him was Herobrine, his eyes cold and stark white once again, just like he had said they would be.

 “My king – ” Kyan started.

 “Do not talk to me,” Herobrine snapped, waving Kyan away as he walked over to Seki. He looked down at the young Enderman on all fours, coughing.

 Kokuyoseki looked up, a red splotch on the side of his face.

 “Get up, you fool,” Herobrine ordered. “We have things to do. There’s no time for senseless querrels.”

 “Yes, sir,” Seki got up, brushing the red dust of netherrack from his skin, but red areas remained against the black, and those were not from dust. When Endermen get hurt, their skin turns red in the wounded area. It eventually fades away, however, and by the time Herobrine turned to the other deputies, most of the red splotches were gone. There would be no reminder of Kyan’s blows. None but the memory of them. 

 “Quit cowering in the corner and get over here,” Herobrine told the other generals, lifting his hands and beginning to craft blocks of obsidian out of thin air and code. White energy mirroring the lightning began to flow out of Herobrine’s hands. As it left his fingers, it changed into a deep black with purple flecks, then it became square, and thus a block of obsidian was formed.

 The blocks continued to multiply until there were fourteen of them forming a rectangle. Herobrine then struck the hollow middle with lightning, and the portal was complete. 

 “Go,” Herorbrine pointed to the portal. “I will teleport and meet you all on the other side.”

 The generals began to file into the portal, each one disappearing behind the undulating purple curtain in the middle. Zombies, Skeletons, Blazes, Creepers, all types of monsters were given the high rank of deputy. But not all were Herobrine’s favorite. That privelege was gifted to the Endermen, chiefest and greatest among Herobrine’s creations. Now he turned his attention to the only two here at the moment.

 “Kyan, Obsidian, watch them and keep them in line,” Herobrine instructed. This usage of Kokuyoseki’s translated name was not unacceptable because Herobrine was not an Enderman.

 “Where are we going?” Obsidian asked. 

 “To the border with the Overworld and the Far Lands. It is time Minecraft witnessed true power,” Herobrine said, darkness in his heart as he disappeared, leaving the two rival Endermen to chaperone the other lower deputies.

————————————————————————————————

Herobrine appeared on the top of a small hill overlooking the edge of Minecraft where the Overworld ended and the Far Lands began. This is where it will happen, he thought. Finally, I will have my revenge. Finally, Notch will fall. The evil triumph brought a smile to his face. 

 An obsidian portal at the base of the hill lit up, and his generals began flowing out. Kyan and Kokuyoseki appeared beside it, having teleported from the Nether like Herobrine had. The two had no love for each other, but the disputes of his followers were not something Herobrine was concerned about. 

 His forces hadn’t gotten this far across Minecraft yet, so things were still normal and green. 

 Life still flowed freely here. 

 Soon that would all change. With every passing moment the Virus could feel more and more power course through his code-filled veins. Herobrine knew the destruction his wave caused was only a temporary vision of the future he would make for this miserable place known as Minecraft. 

 The wave had been sent out as a warning, a sign of what was to come; but it also served a purpose. It had scanned all of Minecraft as it traveled, gathering bits of information that would transfer into Herobrine as powerful code, making him near-invincible with the kinds of things he would be able to do. 

 He had waited so long – so long – for this, and now today he would receive the bounty of all his hard work and maddening patience. Even now, in the distance beyond his generals, he could see it, feel it: A line of gray on the horizon, coming ever closer. 

 The Endermen were the first to notice after Herobrine. Their black heads swiveled to take in the entire surrounding area, but there was no gap in the fast-approaching wave, and suddenly it clicked for them. Before the Endermen could teleport away, it hit them all, striking them with weakness and filtered vision. 

 The wave was the strongest it had ever been, and now felt like forcing wind. It howled as it passed its thick curtain over them. Grass whipped around and tiny stones embedded themselves into the skin of the generals. 

 A Creeper hissed in pain while a couple of Blazes coughed out burnt foliage from the nearby trees. But Herobrine stood his ground, his back to the wave as he watched the Far Lands.

 Eventually the mini tornado faded and continued on. The deputies of Herobrine hurriedly collected themselves and stared in awe as the wave passed over the border of the Overworld and dissipated into the Far Lands beyond. 

 The atmosphere changed, and lightning struck all around, spasms from the newly darkened sky. A cry split through the thick air, and Herobrine went down. White light burned around him on the hill. The monster generals were all watching, wondering what would happen next. 

 Then all was silent. The lightning went away with the burning whiteness around Herobrine. The sky, however, remained dark, only slightly changed from the storm clouds disappearing. Herobrine was still for a long moment, causing the generals to wonder if they should check on him. But then he arose, slowly, his back still facing them.

 He looked down at his hands, stretching his fingers out and then clenching his fists, testing the new feeling inside them, inside him. He chanelled the power he felt from his soul into his hands, and fluorescent black and white light began flowing along his arms. 

 He turned around to face his deputies. They gasped as they witnessed the new stark white of Herobrine’s eyes. They glowed with such intensity it almost hurt to look at them, and they lit the area around him like white torches

 Herobrine stretched his arms to the sy and looked up, sending streams of black and white energy into the reddish-brown atmosphere. Distant thunder rolled and rain began to pour. Kokuyoseki teleported to a nearby tree just tall enough for him to stand under. Kyan quickly followed. The tops of their heads were red from the liquid. A storm was on the horizon. 

 Herobrine then turned his attention to the earthen part of this world. Gathering his powers again, he aimed for the ground near the other deputies. A bolt of white energy shot from his hand and exploded into the dirt like TNT, forming a massive crater. 

 That was too much for one zombie general, and he began to cry out, “He’s mad! He’ll kill us all before this is over!” Then the undead creature attempted to flee, heading to the Nether portal. 

 But Herobrine reacted too quickly for the slow-moving zombie, and lightning summoned by the Virus struck the creature. The monster was dead in seconds, disappearing with a moan and leaving behind charred rotten flesh.

 “Any more objections?” Herobrine challenged.

 No one said anything.

 “No? Good. We’re doing this, whether a few of you want to or not.”

 Suddenly a witch came out of the Nether portal. “Herobrine, I have news from the Wither Skeleton spies!” She exclaimed, wasting no time on explainations and seemingly unphased by Herobrine’s transformation.

 “What is it?” The Virus snapped.

 “There’s a village to the north-east that is preparing for your assault on the Overworld,” the witch reported, the tone of her voice showing how proud she was to deliver this important news. 

 “You don’t say,” Herobrine smiled. “Well, it’s the perfect time to test out my new powers, and on the perfect test subject, too: Ill-prepared Villagers.” 

 He laughed, causing the deputies to break out in a nervous chuckle. The Endermen were silent. 

 “What are you waiting for?” Herobrine suddenly burst out. “Get going!”

 All the monsters at the base of the hill began to busy themselves. Kokuyoseki shared a wary glance with Kyan. 

 “Let’s go reap some souls,” Herobrine smiled and the fluorescent black and white energy flowed into his hands and along his arms. Then they began to march upon the Overworld, a succession of fear and death.

Chapter Twenty

The Choices of an Enderman

 Kyan’s fists collided with the side of my head. Pain erupted through my forehead, disorienting me and blurring my vision. I went down, covering my face with my hands in case Kyan decided to drag this out.

 For all of our lanky limbs and tall stature, it is hard to believe that Endermen are actually really strong. Our weakest punches would knock out a man, and there’s no telling what our strongest could do. Although it is rumored that our former king, Nightslasher, once got in a fight with Herobrine. . . and won. Of course, that was years ago, back when there were Enderwomen and Herobrine had an army larger than Notch’s Aether Legion.

 “You should not have started this fight, Kokuyoseki,” Kyan walked slowly forward. I could see the other generals backing further away into their corner of the netherrack shelf from between arms that shielded my face. They were blurry, and Kyan’s black form with both his hands raised, ready to strike, filled most of my restricted vision. I did not plan on his fists being the last thing that I saw, but before I could think of a reaction someone appeared behind Kyan.

 “Stop!” The newcomer shouted. It was Herobrine, back from whatever mysterious errands he went on.

 Kyan spun around, sputtering to find an explanation for this situation. I took the chance to try and get up, but my hands and knees was as far as I got before I coughed out a black substance. Endermen didn’t have blood because it was a liquid and therefore painful to us. But the black stuff running through our veins was as close as we got. It was a mixture of Void and something else we could never figure out. Some of our elders said it was code, but they are dying off and lessening in number along with that theory. 

 I hadn’t felt it at the time, but Kyan must have hit my stomach pretty hard for me to be coughing up Enderman ‘blood.’

 Herobrine stood next to me. He saw the Void-stuff on the netherrack, black against ruddy brown, but he knew I was stronger than what I was letting Kyan see.

 “Get up, fool,” he said coldly. “We have things to do.”

 So I got up, brushed myself off, and pushed away the pain. Herobrine was right: I had things to do. First of all, recon. What had Herobrine called us here for? While I pondered, Herobrine began to craft a Nether portal. The white energy flowing out of his hands was now a familiar sight to me, so I didn’t care to watch. Instead I took one last glance at the lightning storm in the Nether. It still unnerved me to see the chaos. Soon the portal was done, and Herobrine came to tell his Endermen what to do.

 “Watch them and keep them in line,” he said, about to leave.

 “Where are we going?” I asked, needing to know where to teleport.

 “To the border with the Overworld and the Far Lands. It is time Minecraft witnessed true power,” he replied, then he teleported away.

 Kyan threw a dirty look at me over his shoulder as he walked away to make sure all the other generals went into the portal.

 “The Far Lands. . . ?” I mumbled, half to myself.

 “Of course the Far Lands,” Kyan tried to mimic me when he said it, but his gravely voice made it sound weird compared to mine. “It’s where his precious wave is headed. I thought you would know that, Obsidian.”

 “I do know that, Kyan, I’m not stupid. I just didn’t think it would happen this fast,” I silently cursed myself for being shocked.  But inside I still felt like the world was ending. . . and it wasn’t that far from the truth. If Herobrine’s wave was already at the end, what chance did Minecraftia have?

 What chance do I have?

 “What are you afraid of Seki, that Herobrine will forget about you when he gets too much power?” Kyan laughed.

 I didn’t say anything. If he thought that meant what he said was true, I couldn’t help it, I was too busy trying to figure out my next move. When all the deputies had passed through the portal, we teleported to the edge of Minecraft where they would be waiting.

 I looked around for Herobrine and found him atop a small hill next to the generated Nether portal. He was watching the horizon, and when I turned to look at it, I saw why. The wave was approaching, fast, and it looked dangerous. Kyan actually seemed worried when I looked over at him.

 Both of us searched for a way out of the wave, but it was solid. No weakness could be found in its sweeping form, and it would transfer that power into Herobrine. It came too fast for me to react, and it crushed my soul along with my teleportation particles. 

 Everything turned gray as my mind slipped into a realm of sorrow and decay. All my fears were brought to the surface of a tepid lake with no feelings. The wind drowned all thought but that of death. 

 I could not teleport, my particles would not generate, and my heart did not want them to. It was like I was trapped and I wanted to escape yet I had no motivation. Then it was gone.

 I realized I had found it hard to breathe while the wave went over us, and now I gasped for more oxygen. 

 I looked around, concerned for my fellow mob. The two Blaze generals were coughing out burnt leaves from the nearby oaks, their wheezing interrupted by the hissing of a Creeper. He was complaining about scratches he received from the tiny rocks that had been blown around by the wave. The multiple Zombies present seemed worried, one in particular more so than the others.

 Kyan had a red slash across his face, black Void-blood oozing from it. He caught my eye and turned away. He would not show me his weakness.

 Herobrine stood with his back to us, waiting for the wave to reach the end. We all watched at the bottom of the hill as it passed into the Far Lands.

 No. . . 

 Suddenly the sky darkened and lightning lit the area in spasmic strikes. Herobrine cried out from the top of the hill and went down on his hands and knees. White energy pulsated around him, and florescent black energy came down from the roiling clouds above to mingle with it.

 Kyan cursed under his breath. “What the heck is going on?”

 “It’s the wave. The black energy is its power transferring to Herobrine,” I said, realization dawning on me. 

 After a few tense moments, everything went silent. The lightning stopped. The white light around Herobrine faded. The clouds went away, but the sky remained a rusted mauve.

 Herobrine stayed down for a while, and I wondered if I should do something about it. But then he slowly arose, although he still did not look at us. Sparks of white energy lit up his hands, then black energy mixed with it as it began to flowing along his arms. As he turned to face us, we gasped.

 Herobrine’s eyes were the brightest white I had ever seen. I squinted as he turned his powers on the sky and a storm was summoned. Rain poured from the clouds, thunder chased rogue bolts of lightning. 

 The raindrops stung as they hit my skin. I quickly teleported under a nearby tall oak, followed by Kyan.

 Then Herobrine struck the ground in front of us with lightning from his hands. A nervous Zombie in the group beside the Blazes suddenly started a commotion. He pushed his way to the front of the crowd, yelling all the while.

 “Out of my way! He’s mad, he’ll kill of all before this is over!” the Zombie ran to the Nether portal.

 Herobrine reacted in a split second, striking the Zombie with a bolt of white before it could reach the portal. The Creeper who had wandered over to me shuffled forward to help. I held my arm out in front of him, knowing there was nothing we could do.

 The Zombie was dead.

 “Any more objections?” Herobrine turned to us. “No? Good. We’re doing this, whether a few of you want to or not.”

 The Nether portal undulated and whispered, and a Witch came hurrying out. “Herobrine, I have news from the Wither Skeleton spies!” she cried, a potion still in her hand from her brewing that had likely been interrupted. It looked like she had wasted no time to do anything else but come straight to Herobrine.

 “There’s a village to the north-east that is preparing for your assault on the Overworld,” the Witch said, obviously proud of her assignment.

 Herobrine said something else, but I didn’t hear it. 

 It couldn’t be, could it?

 There were plenty of villages in the north-east, I knew that.

 But there is only one that I warned. . . A sick feeling grew in my stomach and spread through my veins. I felt light-headed, nauseous. The good I had tried to do now mocked me.

 You told them to prepare, and now they have been found out. They are going to die and it’s all your fault, an evil voice in my head told me.

 No. It can’t possibly be the same village. I tried to reason, and as Herobrine told us to get going, I prayed it wasn’t.

 Kyan glanced at me. The red slash was gone, but the black blood remained with the wound. He would keep the scar for the rest of his life, it was too deep to heal completely. In fact, it had already begun to turn pale. It stretched from the top corner of his face to the opposite bottom corner. He scowled at me.

 “It’s never going to heal, I know,” He grumbled. “Get used to it. I have to.” Then he teleported away to fetch the soldiers of Herobrine’s army.

 Herobrine and the other generals had moved on. The rain hadn’t followed it’s maker, so I was able to teleport to Herobrine without getting wet. The Virus had placed himself in a field in front of everyone else. 

 “Herobrine,” I called him. “I’m not sure I can go on this raid.”

 “Why the heck not, Obsidian?” he spun around to face me.

 “I. . . don’t feel well,” the explanation sounded weak, but it was as close to the truth as I could get without giving my secret plans away.

 “Deal with it, Obsidian; this is war.” He turned to walk away.

 Something about what he said hit me, hard, in the gut. 

 This is war. 

 I know, but it just made me sicker. My stomach turned. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I choked, and emptied the contents of my stomach onto the too-green grass. Black Void poured out on the meadow. 

 I looked back up at Herobrine. He had stopped walking but kept his back to me. My throat burned and my stomach muscles ached.

 “Fine,” he sighed heavily. “But I have a different assignment for you if you aren’t going to be fighting here. Take your warriors and invade the forest village in the south, near the Player.”

 This made me listen. 

 “There’s a Player?” I blurted.

 “Yes. You will know where he is once you get there. Endermen can feel those things, right?”

 “Y-yes, Pulses,” I said.

 “Then go, and come back once you have destroyed it,” Herobrine ordered.

 “Yes, my king,” I teleported away to the Nether where my soldiers were waiting. I still felt ill, but I needed to keep going so I could figure this out. 

 Keep going, I told myself. For Minecraft.

 Then that evil voice again: You can’t save something that’s already dead.

 But I think I knew how.

Chapter Twenty-One

Notch’s Blessing

Notch stood back and took in his newest creation: An enormous glittering diamond castle. It was an exact replica of his childhood home, the Castle of the Diamond, only this one came with a few surprises.

 “Is that what I think it is?” a young humanoid gecko came riding up to him on a horse. Two other riders were with her, one male and one female, both Human. Steve and Alex, rescued from their cobblestone box a week ago by Notch. 

  “It sure is, Yamori,” Notch told her. 

 “The Castle of the Diamond!?” the young gecko dismounted her black horse and went to hug Notch.

 “Only this time it has some interesting improvements. Brings back memories, doesn’t it?” Notch asked.

 “Good ones or bad ones?” she asked.

 “Both,” he sighed.

 “I’m assuming those ‘improvements’ are for Herobrine?” Steve asked as he and Alex tied their horses to fence posts.

 “You assume right,” Notch nodded. “I just hope Herobrine doesn’t.” Then he walked into the fortress. Yamori followed while Steve and Alex stayed behind to tend the horses. Notch began to tell Yamori about the battle strategies. 

 “Hopefully we can get enough warriors to line that wall,” he pointed to the western wall. Yamori nodded. “And of course the Aether Legion will be coming to help. . .”

 “The Aether Legion?” Yamori stopped in her tracks. “You’ve outdone yourself, Notch, and I know you’re not excessive. . .” she looked around the room. “Are you okay?” she added when she saw Notch stop walking and lean on a supporting column.

 “I’m fine. Tired, but fine,” Notch shrugged.

 “Are you still hiding it from them?” Yamori asked, getting quieter.

 “What?”

 “You know what,” Yamori scolded. “Your wound.”

 “Well, it’s not like I can tell them,” he replied.

 “Yes, you can! We’re your friends, that’s what we’re here for. We can help you,” Yamori said. “You don’t have to do this alone, you know.” 

 Notch looked away.

 But I do. . . Notch thought. Because if you all get involved you might get hurt, or worse. Just like last time all those years ago when I had to fight Herobrine.

 Yamori frowned. 

 Suddenly the ground rocked beneath them and thunder echoed through the sparkling halls. The air thickened and the torches flickered blood-red and went out. Notch and Yamori fell down on the slick diamond floor. 

 A moment later and everything was back to normal. The torches flickered into existence again, and the air became lighter and more breathable. When Yamori could see again, she looked for Notch.

 “Notch, you okay?” she called as she went to him. 

 “Yes,” he replied. But the creator was not doing alright. His projected form was gone, and Yamori could see the deep cut in his left arm as he got up. She realized Nocth was doing a lot worse than what he had let anyone know, even her, and she had known Notch since she had been a kid. 

 He was like an uncle to her, and she guessed that’s what he was, being Herobrine’s brother. Yes, it’s true, she was Herobrine’s creation. Probably the only one that amounted to anything, she thought bitterly. Herobrine had acted like she was his adopted daughter, but then he gave her to a family of Creepers beneath his castle. 

 Herobrine had been trying to create a new type of monster better than the rest to take over Minecraft, but all his failed attempts only yielded one baby humanoid gecko. That wasn’t his plan, and so it was discarded. She had been unwanted, half-abandoned, when she met Notch. That had been twenty years ago.

 Notch looked so vunerable now that she saw how much pain he was truly in. Yamori had always thought that Notch was unstoppable, unbreakable. So who was this broken man before her? 

 Notch quickly regained his disguise, however, as Steve and Alex rushed into the room. 

 “Is everyone okay?” he asked.

 Typical of him, always worried for everyone else’s needs rather than his own, Yamori thought. 

 Not that it was a bad thing, she just wished Notch would realize that he was just as important as those he protected. If something were to happen to him. . . She didn’t want to think of where Minecraftia would be without Notch.

 “Yeah, we’re okay,” Alex replied.

 “But what was that?” Steve interjected.

 Notch hesitated.

 “Notch,” Yamori stepped forward. “You can tell us.”

 After a few tense, quiet moments, Notch gave in. “It was the pulsation from Herobrine’s wave passing into the Far Lands,” he sounded defeated. 

 Before the bad news could sink in, an Enderman appeared in the middle of them. 

 “Notch!” the newcomer gasped.

 “Seki?” Notch looked up at the Enderman in surprise.

 Kokuyoseki turned his face away as he quickly spilled his information. “No time to explain, but there’s a village in the south that Herobrine ordered me to destroy. I need your help. A Player is near it. Hurry.” Then he disappeared, leaving fading purple dust in his wake.

 “Endermen can talk!?” Steve turned to Notch, disbelieving.

 “Well, yeah,” Notch acted like it was no big deal as he walked over to a nearby chest with supplies.

 “And you know him? I thought all monsters were evil,” Steve said.

 “Not all monsters,” Yamori replied as she joined Notch in grabbing some armor out of the chest.

 “What do we do?” Alex asked, speaking up for the first time in a while.

 Notch sighed as he handed Steve a set of iron armor. “Well, the Overworld is in flames, we’re most definitely outnumbered, and Herobrine is now the most powerful being in Minecraft. By rights we don’t even stand a chance.”

 Everyone stared at him. Alex shared a wary glance with Steve. Was this supposed to make them feel better? But Yamori leaned against the wall, her arms crossed and a smile on her face. Her reptillian yellow eyes sparkled in the torchlight. She knew what was coming. It wasn’t his battle speech, not yet, but it was some words of encouragement. Something they desperately needed.

 “You may say we should give up, turn back. But we can’t. You may say this is hopeless, doomed to fail. But it’s not. You may even say we could never come back from this. But we can. We’re survivors, we’re fighters. We keep going. We must keep going, and we will. This is our home, and it’s been invaded by a Virus, but we will protect it.” 

 “Whatever it takes,” he added, looking over at Yamori. 

 Notch summoned his longsword. “Now let’s go save a village.”

————————————————————————————————

Notch looked down at the village from his place atop the ridge. The monsters Kokuyoseki had warned them about were already there. The Villagers hid in their cobblestone and wood homes as the evil creatures ripped apart their gardens and quickly destroyed their only iron Golem.

 As Steve, Alex, and Yamori came out of the special portal Notch had created to get them here, he took inventory of the types of monsters they would be fighting. Mostly Skeletons, some Spiders, a few Cave Spiders, and the occasional Witch.

 He sighed with relief. Seki had brought at least three squadrons, but he had selected the monsters with the least destructive power to this village. What could Skeletons and Spiders do to Villagers locked in a house? And a Witch’s potions don’t affect walls.

 “What are they doing?” Alex asked, referring to the mob down below.

 “Thankfully, not much,” Notch replied. “The Villagers will be okay.”

 “Don’t get too comfortable, Notch,” Yamori teased. “We still have to get rid of the monsters.”

 “You’re right,” Notch nodded, turning his attention to the commander of the assaulting force: A lone Enderman in the shadows, a grim expression on his face. “But after that I have a surprise for our Enderman friend.”

 Before anyone could respond to that, Notch teleported to the middle of the village. He appeared right next to a Skeleton, startling the bony creature. He sliced the Skeleton, rendering its health to zero, and that’s all it took for Notch to let go, disappearing into a battle trance that was as dangerous as it was familiar.

 Memories flooded back of fighting alongside his brother. He remembered every tactic, every move, every battle. He retreated into the sub-conscious routine of his younger days. 

 Your weapon is an extension of yourself. Do not try to control it. Rather, let it balance you, flow with you, not against you. He heard the words of his mother echo through his mind. 

 He didn’t even notice the others as they ran down the ridge into battle. There was nothing but the blade, nothing but the enemy, nothing but himself.

 How long had it been since his mother died? It had to have been decades, a century. How long had it been since he and Herobrine had acted like brothers? Longer than that even. But Notch still fought like he had all those years ago, like Herobrine was still by his side, the two of them downing enemies like Endermen let loose on the battlefield.

 It happened faster than he thought it would, but soon they had smashed and destroyed every hostile monster there. Notch looked around the broken village. There were numerous floating item drops and glowing green orbs of XP from the monsters. 

 Alex ate an apple while Yamori checked on the Villagers who had started emerging from their home. Notch walked over to her. “How are they?” 

 “A little shaken up, but no one’s hurt,” Yamori reported.

 “Our first battle and zero casualties,” Steve said. “That’s a good sign, right. . . ?”

 Alex nodded.

 “A battle can turn at any moment, even if you thought you were winning,” Yamori told them.

 “So also can the tides of war,” Notch said absently, his back to them as he kept watching the Villagers. Yamori left Steve and Alex to think about that, going to stand by Notch.

 “What kind of crazy plan are you thinking of?” She asked, knowing his thoughts were somewhere else.

 “I’m thinking I’m going to fix that Enderman,” he said. 

 “Seki?”

 “Yes. He has done so much for Minecraft, for me, but I feel like just saying ‘thank you’ isn’t enough,” Notch told her.

 “So what are you gonna do?”

 “Fix his code. Allow him to see us, in a way, because he can’t look at us, but I know it hurts him.” 

 “He killed a User once,” Yamori whispered, trying not to let the others hear. 

 “He didn’t mean to,” Notch whispered back.

 “But don’t you ever wonder?” Yamori countered, her yellow reptillian eyes wide.

 “I don’t have to,” Notch said, walking away. “You were a monster, too, once, but I didn’t question you.”

 Yamori watched him walk away towards the Enderman, her mind swirling with old memories she would rather forget.

 Notch walked up to Kokuyoseki. The Enderman was darker than the shadows around him, and he was still young, able to get darker. 

 He looks so much like his father. . . Notch thought, hoping that was all Kokuyoseki shared with Nightslasher. But Notch knew, didn’t he, all the things this young Enderman was capable of? 

 Notch shook away the thoughts, he could not let his doubts get in the way of his knowledge.

 “Notch,” Kokuyoseki bowed his head as he looked away. 

 “Seki, I have something to tell you,” Notch said.

 “I hope the monsters weren’t too much, I tried to pick the least harmful ones, but you know how Herobrine asks which ones I take, so I couldn’t not bring any,” Kokuyoseki rambled.

 “Seki, it’s okay. That’s not what I meant,” Notch reassured him. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m updating your code, so that you can look at everyone without worrying you might get provoked into attacking them.”

 Kokuyoseki looked up in surprise, but then quickly remembered he wasn’t supposed to and looked away. “W-why? I mean, thank you, but I just don’t understand why it matters to change my code. Why not fix something else, fight Herobrine with that power? After all, I’ve lived with this my whole life, I’ll be okay.”

 “I know you will, but I want you to be better,” Notch said, between his hands a glowing orb appeared, and he crafted the code in it to fix the Enderman. He sent the code into Kokuyoseki, and it was done. 

 “Thank you, my King,” Kokuyoseki said, his purple eyes brighter than before with newfound happiness. Notch smiled.

 ————————————————————————————————

 Notch stood on the defensive wall around the Castle of the Diamond, waiting for the sunrise. Today was important. It could determine the fate of Minecraftia forever. Today he would bring the Player home.

 Just not right this second.

 As the first rays of the sun bled from the horizon to chase away the night, the Aether Legion was summoned. Angels of elements rose with the ball of fire, their longswords raised above their heads as they ascended. Their armor was golden and white against the soft indigo and pink of the new dawn. Each one an elite female warrior trained for one purpose: To protect Notch and Minecraft. 

 These were Notch’s Valkyries, these were Aether Legionaires. They had fought many battles, both physical and supernatural. They had seen the rise and fall of ages. They were legend, and now they descended upon the Castle of the Diamond swiftly, landing with grace, ready to fight for Minecraft so it could live another day.

 The leader of them came forward. She was clothed in shining ethereal armor, the type of which none has yet been crafted by anyone left in Minecraftia. A delicate crown of white metal was in her dark brown hair. She removed it and went down on one knee, followed by all the others doing the same.

 “Frey, You don’t have to do that,” Notch said, tired after so much stress and not so keen on sticking with tradition. 

 “But, my King – ” Frey rose.

 Notch put a hand up to silence her. “You don’t have to call me that, either. Please, let’s not waste time on formalities when tomorrow is not guaranteed.”

 That silenced her, and she gestured to her warriors to get up. Notch led them into the castle as the sun rose higher. He showed them the secret traps, and the ‘improvements’, and everything he could in the little time he had. Then he led them to the courtyard and gave them their orders.

 “I will be leaving for a short time to retrieve something I have lost, but you must stay here and watch over the others. More warriors and Villagers will arrive this afternoon, direct them to where I showed you; and if anyone asks, tell them I will be right back, even if you are not sure,” Notch instructed.

 “Why should we tell them that?” Frey asked.

 “Because I will. But if I am delayed, I do not want them to be scared.”

 “Who will delay you?”

 “I’m not sure anymore,” Notch said, turning to leave. Then he disappeared, teleporting to the last known location of the Player.

 Notch opened his eyes to ruin. There was no life here, only death and decay. The grass was gone, replaced by ash. The sight of what had happened to Minecraft made him feel weaker than he already was. His thoughts went back to his fight with Herobrine in the Aether. The wound in his sword arm burned constantly, but when he moved it stung light fire. He resisted the urge to check it again, for fear that if he let his guard down here it would affect him badly. 

 How do I fight like this? he thought, walking through the dead landscape in search of the Player. But he knew he had to. If there was an easier way, he had tried to find it. Nothing fixed his wound. It wasn’t just his arm that hurt. There was no spell or enchantment or source code that could fix the kind of injury he held in his heart.

 Herobrine held the same type of injury, but he filled the void inside him with malice and hate, things that only temporarily satisfied and left him wanting. 

 Notch filled it with nothing. How could he? He knew nothing could replace their mother, and nothing could bring Herobrine back from the edge. Herobrine had been right, Notch hid his feelings well. But how long he could endure it, he didn’t know.

 Notch had not always hidden things from people, it felt unnatural. But after Herobrine had betrayed him and the Kingdom of the Diamond, killing off almost everyone, Notch made a decision. A decision that he vowed to keep even now in the darkest time. In order to keep everyone safe, Notch pushed them away.

 When it came time to march on Herobrine’s Castle of the Night, Notch trapped his own soldiers in the ruined Kingdom of the Diamond, then he left to fight his brother alone. In the end, Notch had to purge the servers in a desperate attempt to rid Minecraft of Herobrine.

 Time had stopped at that very moment, leaving nothing but Notch floating in a pure-white realm. Notch recoded everything from grass blocks to a baby Enderman named Kokuyoseki, whose parents had died in the Great War. Notch recoded the animals, the people, the realms, the food, the colors, even the ruins of the old kingdoms. 

 The ruins were a reminder of what it cost to restore peace to Minecraftia. They never went away, and neither did Notch’s pain. He could smile, he could laugh, but there was a sadness in his eyes that nothing could hide. He wondered if anything could replace it.

 Suddenly something moaned in the distance, carried on the stale ash-filled air. Notch shook his thoughts away and ran to the sound. It was coming from behind a large boulder, but it didn’t sound like a Zombie, and it was awfully close to where the Player’s signal was pinging off the game tics. As he got closer, he could hear barking and whining.

 He rounded the corner.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Player’s Eighth Dream

I woke up thinking I was drowning. My face was wet, but I soon realized it wasn’t water. It was dog spit.

 “Go away!” I pushed the smiling mutt away from me as I scambled to get up. The white dog sat back on the stone floor of the cave, its tongue hanging out of its mouth while I wiped saliva from my face.

 “Ewww. . . ” I cringed. Then I grabbed a bucket of water out of my pack and poured it into a divet in the stone floor, proceeding to scrub my face with the cleansing liquid. Once I felt like I had done enough, I fell back against the cave wall, my body remembering just how tired I was.

 The dog stopped painting and walked over to me, nudging my hand and whimpering. A tag jingled as he bent his head, and I adjusted his collar to read it. 

 Ash.

 I tilted my head back, resting it on the stone wall and looking out at the late afternoon sky. 

 “I’m not doing too well, Ash,” I confessed to the dog as I weakly stroked his ears. Come to think of it, he looked a lot like a wolf. I briefly wondered if people still tamed wolves. Maybe here they do. . .

 After I saw everything had been burned beyond recognition, I had walked for miles trying to find something green, but everywhere I went it looked the same: Black and broken.

 I was beginning to break, too.

 I found this cave only a few nights ago, but before that I’d had no shelter, and I had gone too far to remember where home was. I ran out of food before I got to this cave, but while wandering I had scavenged what substances I could to eat and keep my strength up. A lonely beetroot was the first victim, then already dead animals burned by whatever fire had consumed this land were the next. But then even carrion ran out, and last night I had to eat the worst one yet: Rotten Zombie flesh, dropped from the monster when I killed it defending myself.

 I was going to leave it lazily floating there above the ashes, but then my stomach roared at me, reminding me of my first nights in this world. I didn’t have food back then, either. But I couldn’t bring myself to eat that putrid thing on the ground. . . could I? I eventually tried it, but it didn’t stay down; and I don’t know if it even helped because I was still lying here in the cold, dark cave barely able to get up.

 And to think, I had such high hopes for myself. I was going to learn and craft and survive, and once I had a secure grip on my life, I was going to find out the secrets of this universe. But now I was dying.

 Suddenly I became very emotional. I could feel tears forming, they clouded my vision. “I lost my home, Ash, and my crops, and my animal friends, and my sanity, and everything else.” I quietly cried as the wolf cuddled closer in an effort to comfort me in my last moments. 

 “Now I’m about to lose myself. . . “

 I blacked out.

————————————————————————————————

 My head hit against the stone floor. My eyes tried to open but the sun was too bright. I don’t remember it being this bright in the cave. How long had I been out?Then I felt something coarse beneath me. I looked around, my eyes adjusting to the outside light. That coarse stuff was grass, but it was not the burnt kind. 

 I wasn’t in the cave.

 “Where am I?!” I flailed about, but something was dragging me by my feet. Then they stopped, and barked at me. “Huh?” 

 I sat up, only to come inches away from Ash’s snout. He was wagging his tail, seemingly pleased that he’d stranded me near a boulder in the middle of nowhere. 

 I had panicked at first, adrenaline kicking in. But adrenaline only lasts for so long. I laid down beside the boulder, wondering if this was going to be my last resting place. It’s not so bad, I thought, my eyes blurring as the sweet scents of green grass and flowers filled my head as I blacked out once again.

 Images flowed in and out of my mind, strange things full of mystery and oddity. First a wandering man with a long walking stick in his hand, then a desolate wasteland that reminded me of the burned land I’d left behind. 

 The wasteland was replaced by a window with one of those mottled green creatures looking in. It exploded into a void with creatures like angels flying around a fire. A skeleton walked through a dark night, then burst into flames without reason.

 I saw snowy mountains and scorching deserts like I had been there a million times, but I knew I never had. Had I? 

 I saw potted plants on a kitchen counter. Kitchens. That was new, yet familiar. I knew what those were, you prepared and stored food in kitchens. Where were the kitchens in this world?

 Then I saw a sunset over majestic purple mountains. The sun rose over their peaks and into my eyes, burning them. 

 I opened my eyes to see that the sun really was in my eyes. I couldn’t get up, but the memories of the images stayed with me, especially the kitchen with its hope of food. My stomach ached. I groaned. 

 Why am I still here?

 Why wouldn’t it stop hurting?

 Then a shadow loomed over me, blocking out the sun. I squinted, but I couldn’t see what it was, and I didn’t really care, either. The thing lifted its hands, and a soothing presence washed over me. 

 The next moment I was in a white space. I could feel myself healing, but I knew that I had not eaten anything. How is this happening? 

 Then another thought: Where is Ash?!

 That wolf had saved me, I had grown attached to him, and I didn’t want to lose yet another thing.

 But before I could think too much about it, I was transported to a glittering blue place. It wasn’t the harsh glitter that hurt your eyes, it was the soft, beautiful kind. For a moment, I wondered if I had died and gone to heaven. But then I heard Ash barking at me once more. I realized I was laying down, so I sat up and looked around. 

 I was in a small room, with a makeshift bed, torches, and little else. Ash was not in this room, but I could still hear him.

 Without warning the door opened and a man walked through. Something about him was familiar. . . Then I knew. His eyes were golden, this was the same man I had met in my sleep, in that strange white place. But hadn’t that all been a dream?

 Am I dreaming now?

 “Player,” the man closed the door behind him. “You remember me, right?”

 I nodded. “You’re Notch.”

 “I hate to be so abrubt, but. . . A war is coming,” Notch said. “I’m sure you’ve already seen the devastation, almost everything has been burned to the ground. We need your help. I need your help.”

 This was a lot to process. A war? Who’s ‘we’? There are other beings here besides Notch? Are they like me?

 Me.

 Why me?

 “Why me?” I wondered aloud. “What’s so special about me? I can’t help you, I couldn’t even help myself. I almost died out there!” – I pointed at the wall to indicate where my potential death would have occurred. – “I’m no hero. . . “

 “Player, come with me,” Notch turned to leave, expecting me to follow.

 I did. What else did I have to do? Nothing. So I threw the covers off and followed him out of the room. The shining blue of my room continued throughout the whole building as we went through grand, empty halls and small rooms full of armor and weapons. I saw more new things in this castle than I had in my whole time at my little house way back. . . wherever it was.

 I followed Notch up a spiral staircase that eventually led up to the ramparts. Notch stopped at the top and looked out at the landscape in front of the huge castle. The land had not been scorched here, and it was possibly the most beautiful view I’d ever had of this strange square world. 

 I would try to describe it, but I’m not sure I could tell you how the sun looked at the horizon, or how the grass was the perfect shade of green, or how the sky blended blue into purple as the sun began to set.

 “Amazing, isn’t it?” Notch watched over the land as animals moved away, looking for a place to spend the night. “It’s a tradegy someone wants to destroy it.”

 “Who?” I looked over at him

 “Herobrine,” Notch said, still watching the sun dip farther towards the horizon.

 “Was he always like that, y’know, evil and stuff?” I asked.

 “No,” Notch replied immediately. “No, he wasn’t.” Notch looked down, pain in his voice.

 I was silent for a long time. It felt like it took an eternity for the sun to finally disappear and night to take over. Somehow I could feel the pain Notch held. In some way Notch had lost someone, maybe multiple someones, and something told me I had lost someone, too. 

 My mind went back to before I blacked out. I had told Ash that I was about to lose myself, but what if I already had?

 “Notch,” I said quietly, looking out at the night as monsters began to appear. “You know who I am, don’t you?”

 “Yes, and no,” Notch said, turning to me. “I cannot give you all the answers, I cannot tell you how to live and who to be. For that, you must find the answers. But I can tell you what this place is, I can tell you what happened, I can tell you what you are. But, Player, knowledge can be harmful. The truth can burn over any distance, and once it comes to you it might hurt. The truth can be scary. It might not be what you want to hear. This is why some choose to live a lie rather than accept the truth.” Notch stopped for a moment to let that sink in. 

 I was not prepared for what he said next: “Player, you are living a lie.”

 Something punched me in the gut, but Notch had not moved. My vision splintered into millions of shards like broken glass, then pieced back together in a darkened room. 

 On the wall was a bright light in the shape of a square, but soon I realized it was a picture of the rampart, with Notch standing there. The glittering blue material was at his feet, and the stars were in the sky around his head, but the image was pixelated, unlike a moment ago, when I had seen everything in perfect detail. 

 I didn’t want to look around, yet my eyes betrayed me and I saw the concrete walls of a basement around me. There was something soft beneath me, a computer monitor beside me. I knew this place.

 No, I don’t!

 I knew the foggy memories I’d had all along.

 Stop!

 I knew the pain of loss.

 No. Don’t wake up!

I closed my eyes tight. It hurt too much to remember. My heart was beating too fast, my breath came in too-sharp intakes. My hands hit the cold, hard surface of something. I opened my tear-filled eyes to see blue squares underneath them. The name of the material suddenly came to me: Diamond. 

 Another name came to me from the fog in my mind. The name of the place I was in. The name of this square world I had wanted to understand from the very beginning. But I didn’t want to accept it. I didn’t want to think it, say it. I didn’t have to, Notch said it for me.

 “This is Minecraft, Player,” he walked closer. I could see the pixels in his shoes. I could see the pixels in everything. 

 I couldn’t get up.

 “It always has been,” Notch reached a hand, offering me help to get up. But for me it wasn’t just that. It was help to get up first, then help to work through the pain, then help to keep going.

 I grabbed his hand.

 “This isn’t over,” Notch told me once I was standing. “Herobrine knows what you are. He can use you to get out of Minecraft forever, or you can choose to help destroy him forever. This is why you. This is why you are special. The fate of Minecraft lies with you, and all the players. Herobrine has enough power to hack your computer. If you walk away, he will take over.”

 What do I do? 

 I was still working through this grief. Could I really just push it aside like it never happened? Then I realized that was exactly what Notch did every day.

 Silence had been my friend and my enemy while I went through everything that had happened, and I tried to live in my little cobblestone house all this time to forget what had happened. But now I had to speak up. Silence had to go away for me to arrive.

 What do I do?!

 Notch was waiting. Herobrine was waiting. This whole world was waiting. Everyone was waiting on me. Could I really save them? I had to at least try, right?

 Silence. 

 Then I spoke up.

 “I’ll do it.”

  

Chapter Twenty-Three

Unimaginable Power

Unimaginable power. That’s what Notch said when he told us about Herobrine. At the time, I assumed it was just another thing to say about the villain, but later I realized it was the only way to describe what Herobrine was capable of. 

 Notch had rescued me and Steve from the cobblestone box we had trapped ourselves in a week ago. I had never been to the Nether, but the monsters that came to destroy the world around us were so horrifying that I don’t think I ever want to. Steve told me all about them while we sat in the warehouse. We didn’t have much else to do.

 Blazes and Ghasts were the first creatures I learned about, and Steve considered them the worst. “I can deal with Magma Cubes, fight Wither Skeletons, and avoid Pigmen, but the Blazes and Ghasts are the most dangerous enemies I’ve had to face,” he told me. Then he went on to tell me about his trips to the Nether. 

 “It’s not somewhere you would want to vacation,” he had joked. The sounds of the monsters outside became white noise to us for three days as he continued to live as best we could in that cage. We had enough supplies, but the question was for how long would we have enough?

 Then the noise stopped. We went silent with it, listening for any sign that might tell us what was going on outside the stone walls. A few moments later and one of the cobblestone walls disappeared. Notch had been standing there, multiple green glowing orbs around him. He had destroyed every monster there to get to us safely.

 Notch then wasted no time in telling us to follow him. He had brough three horses and we rode them across Minecraft to the north. On the way, Notch informed us where we were going. He had said he was leading us to the ruins of a castle that stood during the first age of Mineraftia. But they wouldn’t be ruins for long, because as soon as we got there Notch began to craft blocks of diamond to rebuild the structure. 

 He didn’t use a crafting table, instead he used his powers. Golden energy was used to form the shiny cubes of blue. He instructed me and Steve to start filling in the foundation with them. When it got dark he led us on our horses to a nearby village to rest. Notch didn’t stay. It amazed me how he could keep going after everything. 

 Three more days later and here I was in the basement of Notch’s castle, seeing him talk to ethereal warriors before he went topside to deal with an amesiac Player. Before this day, I would have believed nothing could drop Notch. He had been alert, stoic, a rock for this kingdom to rely on, everything a good king should be. I will belived he was a good king, but now something had changed in Notch.

 Not everyone noticed, but I did. I noticed how Notch and Yamori would stand in a dark corner and whisper about the coming war. I noticed the hollow look in Notch’sonce shining golden eyes that had now started to dull. Something was wrong. Not only that, but something was wrong with Notch.

 Yamori didn’t mention anything, and so all the warriors stayed strong, but I knew she was hiding something. So as I watched Notch walk up the stairs to leave, I decided to find out.

 I left Steve at a table of joking warriors and went to find Yamori. She was leaning against the wall at the far end of the bunker, near the bar that served as a kind of kitchen. The low torchlight caught her reptillian eyes and made the yellow irises contrast her cyan skin and glow in the dark. She lifted her head as I came closer.

 “Hey, kid,” she greeted me.

 “Hey,” I returned the greeting. “But you know we’re probably the same age, right?”

 “I know,” she chuckled. “But I’ve lived longer here longer. Weird how this world works, huh?”

 “Yeah, weird how you work, too,” I told her. Yamori’s big, round eyes squinted to slits when she heard that.

 “What do you mean?”

 “I mean what’s going on around here?” I asked.

 “A war, sweetheart, unfortunately,” the bartender slid her a drink and Yamori grabbed it as she talked. 

 “That’s not what I meant,” I said, getting frustrated.

 “No? Sure sounded like it,” Yamori took a sip of her water. This was getting a bit ridiculous. She really doesn’t want this out.

 “You just took me wrong,” I said.

 “Then tell me what you really meant.”

 “What’s wrong with our leader?”

 “Nothing,” Yamori replied with only a moment’s hesitation, but I saw the change in her demeanor. She turned her cup up and downed the water.

 “Stop avoiding this,” I tried to keep my voice down, but my frustration was rising. “Tell me what’s wrong with Notch!”

 Yamori slammed the empty cup down on the counter beside her. She wouldn’t look at me, she just kept staring at the bland white countertop. Then she blinked, and I noticed her tiny eyelashes were listening, a sheen was over her neon yellow eyes. Finally she looked up at me. “Come with me.”

 Then she led me up the stairs and out of the basement. The noise of the warriors was silenced as we shut the door behind us. We went to a nearby storage room with chests lining the walls and labels next to each one, telling of the contents inside. Yamori closed the door behind us and sat on one of the chests.

 “Alright, I’m not supposed to be telling anyone this. If it got out, it would have come from Notch, but since he obviously isn’t going to tell anyone, I’m going to tell you,” She said. “But you can’t tell anyone else, okay?”

 I nodded. Yamori took a deep breath and began her story, “Notch was watching over Minecraft from the Aether when Herobrine somehow teleported right in front of him. Herobrine wasn’t supposed to be powerful enough to reach that far into the Code to find the Aether and go there, but he did. They fought, Notch didn’t have a choice, he was trying to keep Herobrine from causing any more damage; but it was already too late. Herobrine was ready for the fight, and Notch was not. Eventually Herobrine got a chance to strike, and he took it. His sword cut into Notch’s left shoulder.”

 “But wounds heal,” I protested.

 “The longsword that Herobrine uses isn’t just metal,” Yamori shook her head. “It’s otherworldly. It holds enchantments and curses long lost to everyone but its wielder. Thankfully, I actually know what it can do, although it’s bad. It’s really bad. . . “

 “What? What can it do?” I asked, ready to finally know the truth of what was happening.

 “It drains its victims.” Yamori said, her voice almost a whisper. “It happens slowly, the pain never leaves, and soon it becomes unbearable as you wear thin and fade away.”

 I stared at her. Was this real? Was I hearing her right? It couldn’t be. . . 

 “Notch is. . . Dying?” I asked quietly.

 Yamori’s eyes became glossy as tears filled them. “Yes, and now Herobrine has enough power to do that to all of us.”

 I practically fell onto the chest behind me. I couldn’t stand, so I sat on it and looked at the floor. Unimaginable power. . . Notch was right, I thought. 

 Notch is dying. . .

 Then the sirens went off.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Battle Stations

I had missed Ash. That wolf had been constantly at my side for three years, and there had been a void in his place. After Notch rescued me and Alex, I had thought I might never see the wolf again, so imagine my surprise when Notch told us he had found him. Not only that, but Ash had dragged in the highly elusive, if not dead and halucinating, Player. 

 Notch had told me to keep Ash downstairs with everyone else until he introduced The Player to Minecraft. That didn’t make a lot of sense to me (The Player was in Minecraft already, didn’t they know what it was?), but I took Ash down to the bunker anyway. The secret basement of the castle had been empty at first, but a few days later and now it was packed. 

 Villagers from all over had moved their communities here so their warriors could fight for Minecraftia. It was a bit much for me, after all I had lived alone for my entire life, but the Villagers were friendly and I quickly made a few friends. Even after that, I could tell me and Alex were out of place. 

 The Villager warriors wore armor and helms that hid their robes and bulbous noses, but anyone could see the differences between us. I supposed it didn’t matter, but if it was hard for me to fit in even though I was human, too, it must be near impossible for Yamori to blend into this crowd. 

 I felt bad for thinking she was weird when we first met, but in my defense I had never seen anything like her. After my intitial shock at meeting a humanoid gecko, I had actually been impressed, intrigued even. Where had she come from? Were there more of her kind out there? How did her eyes get so luminous? No one pointed it out, but Yamori’s eyes really did seem to glow slightly. I may be wrong, but I didn’t think reptiles could have eyes that shone bright even under the sun. I wondered how Notch had met her.

 Ash barked as I walked through the flood of warriors, then he ran ahead to a table where Alex was sitting with our new friends. They waved me over, but Alex seemed lost in thought as she watched Notch talking with the Aether Legion in the distance.

 “Hey guys,” I said as I slid into a seat next to Alex. Ash was running around the table, barking and greeting everyone.

 “Hey, Steve,” Ruby said, petting Ash on the head as he ran past her. She was one of the few female warriors here, and the sole female warrior of her own village. 

 Story was that her parents once went with Notch to a different dimension of Minecraft not in the Vanilla Realm. It had other minerals underground that you couldn’t find here. Their favorite happened to be a bright red gem, and they named their only child after it. Her mother had been a warrior, too, before both of her parents died in a mass skeleton attack on their server a year earlier. 

 After that, Notch had moved her village from that server to live on this one. Her previous server had been almost completely destroyed by an unknown mality meddling with the Code.

 Our other friends at the table, Cole and Richard, were laughing. Probably another one of Cole’s jokes, I thought. The young Villager was always trying to make this bleak situation seem a little less hopeless. Richard was an older Villager with graying hair, but he still hung out with everyone like he never aged. 

 They stopped laughing and Richard shook his head slightly, then he asked me, “So Steve, how’d you get Ash back?” 

 “Actually, Notch found him,” I said. “Ash ran into The Player in the wilderness and tried to drag him to safety. It’s a good thing Notch found them in time, I don’t know if that Player could have survived much longer.”

 Richard nooded slowly, a grim expression on his face.

 “Where’s Alex?” Cole asked suddenly. I looked beside me. Alex was gone.

 “I don’t know,” I said, searching the crowd for her fiery orange hair.

 “There she is,” Richard pointed to the far end of the bunker, near the food bar. “She’s talking with Yamori.”

 I looked behind me. Richard was right, Alex was standing in the dim corner with the repitillian commander.

 “Maybe she wanted to talk to a girl for a change,” Cole joked. I wasn’t so sure. From what it looked like, Alex and Yamori were having a serious conversation. Then again, it was difficult to get a clear view of them with all the Villagers milling about. A group of armor clad warriors walked past our table and blocked our view. When they had passed, Alex and Yamori were nowhere to be seen.

 “Where’d they go?” Ruby wondered.

 Ash came up to me and sat down, his ears were back as if he was scared. He licked my hand and scooted closer, whimpering. “Ash, what’s wrong?” I asked him. I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. 

 Suddenly sirens wailed, a system of  high-pitched noteblocks Notch had created for the purpose of warning us when the war had really begun. Everyone in the bunker went silent, and even Cole looked terrified. Then Yamori burst through the bunker’s door atop the only staircase in the place. Every eye in the basement turned to her.

 “What are you waiting for?” she shouted. “Get to your battle stations, now!”

 Then it was chaos. 

 I jumped up from my seat and ran to get my armor, drawing my iron sword on the way. I lost track of Cole and Richard, but Ash stayed on my heels. I bumped into people like crazy, but we didn’t exchange apologies, we all knew we couldn’t waste time on that now. 

 I rushed out the bunker door and into the castle’s armory. I grabbed my iron armor and hoped it was enough to keep me alive. Then the flood of warriors came streaming in to collect their own armor. I pushed past them all, struggling to get out into the open. It wasn’t much better outside the armory. The once empty castle was now full of soldiers. 

 Some of them had seen too many battles, some had seen too little. Some were young, some were old. Some were women, and some were men. But war didn’t care about our skill or age or gender; it is a cruel thing that will steal our souls and break us all. . . no matter which side we are on.

 I caught site of Yamori’s cyan scales as she rushed past me like the wind, her shimmering diamond sword  and listening iron armor making her look like a surreal creature made for one purpose: Battle.

 I followed her to the ramparts, where Notch was yelling out orders. The Player was with him and he threw them an iron sword and pulled us all aside. “Herobrine is coming,” he warned. Then he turned to Yamori. “Can you feel it?”

 She nodded, a bleak look in her yellow eyes. I wondered what that meant, but I realized someone was still missing.

 “Where’s Alex?” I blurted. Ash barked beside me as if he was concerned for her, too.

 “I left her in a supply room, she’s handing out bread and apples to the warriors so they can heal themselves once we get out of this,” Yamori explained.

 “If we get out of this,” Notch said absentmindedly, looking to the horizon as the night drug on. I couldn’t believe he said it. By the look on Yamori’s face, she couldn’t believe it either.

 “No, when we get out of this,” Yamori said, shocked. Notch looked over at her, no longer locked in his conscious. Their eyes met and Yamori searched him. 

 “Notch. . .” she barely uttered, pleading him to say something that would help them, something that would tell her he didn’t really believe that. Notch slowly shook his head, a silent signal to the people he might never see again. He then pushed past her and ran down the spiral stairs, disappearing into the castle.

 Yamori watched him go, we all did, then she looked at me and the Player. At first she seemed shaken, then there was change in her eyes that went from sadness to resolution. 

 “What are we doing?” the Player asked.

 “We’re doing this,” she said through clenched teeth, her neon yellow eyes beginning to glow brighter. Then she turned and matched down the stairs, screaming orders at the warriors as she went.

 I glanced over at the Player, he looked like he might collapse right there. I had the same fear deep in my bones. This battle was going to cost something very important, I could feel it. I just wished it didn’t have to happen. 

 The night sky was clear and cloudless, but the atmosphere smelled of hopelessness and the once familiar east-to-west breeze felt cold and foreign against my skin. I shivered and took one last look at the horizon before I went below to wait for the horror to unfold.

 But I never got to, because as I squinted at the edge of the world, it began to squirm. I gasped. A black mass was headed straight for the Castle of the Diamond, and it was writhing with the bodies of our enemies. Monsters of all kinds mingled as they matched to the last beats of our hearts.

 I have to tell Notch. I ran to the stairs and stopped only for a moment to look back at the Player. He was watching the mass of monsters come ever closer.

 “Hey!” I shouted. “Come on!” I didn’t wait to see if he followed, I just ran. I heard Ash behind me. 

 I didn’t know which way to go, so I ran through the crowd of warriors shouting for Notch at the top of my lungs. I practically ran the man over, but he grabbed my shoulders to stop me in my panic. 

 “Steve, what’s wrong?” he asked.

 “Notch! I. . . I have to tell you something,” I stumbled over my words. “They, they’re here. The monsters. Herobrine is here.”

 Notch paled, making his dulled golden eyes appear almost gray. Then something exploded outside the castle walls. Everyone ducked instinctively and looked around. I watched the huge iron doors of the castle, fearing something might come through at any moment. I had never seen doors that big in my life, but I guess when you’re the king of Minecraftia, you can create whatever size doors you want.

 “Reset the redstone traps!” Notch shouted from behind me. He sounded hollow, like it took all his strength just to give that simple order so none was left to give to emotion.

 “Are you okay?” I asked.

 He nodded, but there was pain in his eyes as he turned and walked away. I wasn’t convinced, so I followed him through the crowd. Ash trailed behind me. We came to Yamori as Notch pulled her aside one last time to give her one last order.

 “What’s all this?” Yamori asked, gesturing to the hasty caravan of me, Ash, and the Player that had just joined us.

 “Let’s call it my send-off party,” Notch glanced at us.

 “What are you talking about?” Yamori asked, shocked.

 “Yamori, I’m going out there to talk, try and bargin with him, it will gain you time. Meanwhile I need you to stay and get everything ready for an invasion. This is not a training session, Yamori, he will not go easy on you,” Notch said, turning to leave.

 “What?!” that was me. It was just so ubsurd that I couldn’t stay quiet. Was he serious? “I don’t know a whole lot about this brother of yours, Notch, but that sounds like a suicide mission.”

 “He’s right,” Yamori grabbed Notch’s shoulder and spun him around. “You are not doing this.” 

 It surprised me, but then again I knew they were family so I guess the gesture was something Notch was used to with this fierce humanoid gecko. Notch did let out a heavy sigh, however.

 “Yamori, I’m the one he wants,” Notch pleaded. “Let me go.”

 “No, I’m not letting him take you from me,” Yamori held onto Notch’s wrists with both her hands. “We need you.”

Notch watched her expression change about five times, from anger to sadness to helplessness to maybe even hope. We did need him. But he knew something we didn’t.

 “There will come a time when you won’t have me to turn to,” Notch said quietly. “I need to know you will be there for everyone when I can’t be.”

 “No. . . ” Yamori’s yellow eyes got bigger and grew watery. Ash whined. Another explosian went off. “I’m coming with you.”

 “No, I’m going. Don’t stop me. Don’t follow me. Please,” Notch ripped free of Yamori’s grip and stepped back. Two explosians.

 “Uhh, you both need to make a decision, those explosians are getting closer,” I said. The Player looked warily at the iron doors, as if they might fall and crush us at any moment. Actually, they might, more reason for Notch and Yamori to quit argueing. 

 “I’ve made my decision,” Notch replied. “I just need Yamori to stay here.”

 Yamori didn’t respond. Her silence was more than an answer to that statement. She was going to stay, but that didn’t mean that she wanted to. More explosians, this time right next to the iron doors. They rocked the walls and stopped warriors in their tracks. 

 “How are they getting so close?” the Player asked, his voice shaking.

 “Probably by teleporting Creepers close to the wall with Endermen,” Notch said. “But our redstone and TNT traps are only adding to the damage. We need to end this as soon as possible. Player, are you sure you’re ready?”

 The Player nodded. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but it had to be important. Notch then looked at me, sensing that Yamori had gone silent for now and would not talk to him, and said, “If I don’t come back — “

 “You will,” I interrupted, putting a hand on his shoulder. Suddenly we were all just ordinary people, with no titles like general or king or servant. All of us were just ordinary people scared to death. “You have to,” I added, looking over at Yamori. I stepped back and he teleported out of sight. 

 Someone came up behind me and their shadow covered the ground. I spun around to face on of the Aether Legionnaires, a tall brunnette with silver eyes and silky clothes that appeared too soft to be actual armor, even though it was. 

 “Frey, Aether Legionnaire Commander,” she introduced herself, holding out a hand.

 “I’m Steve, uh, survivor of Minecraft?” I shook her hand. Her stern expression broke into a smile at my remark.

 “Survivor, huh? Can you survive this, Steve?” Frey asked.

 “I sure hope so,” I replied.

 “Don’t we all,” she said, then she began giving us battle orders for how we were going to approach the army of Herobrine. She told the gatekeeper to prepare to open the iron doors. Soon we would march out to meet Herobrine’s army with our own. 

 I hope Notch is okay. . .

Chapter Twenty-Five

Even Notch Can Bleed

Herobrine stood at the top of a knoll with Kokuyoseki, watching Kyan direct the army ever closer to the Castle of the Diamond. The clear night sky held very few stars, as if the presence of the Virus caused the Void to swallow them up into nothingness.

 “Everything is going according to the plan, Obsidian,” Herobrine bragged to the dark creature. “Actually, it’s better than I planned,” Herobrine said as Notch appeared in the field between the castle and the knoll where they stood.

 But the Enderman was barely listening, at this point in his double-agent career, Kokuyoseki was done hearing Herobrine’s ego and lies, so he just nodded his head and watched for the army of Villagers to arrive. 

 Herobrine teleported to Notch and appeared about ten blocks from him. 

 “If it isn’t my least favorite brother,” Herobrine said. “Looks like you found my pet gecko. After all of this is over, I will have to bring her back home.”

 “You insult your own creation when you speak of Yamori like that,” Notch said.

 “She’s not a creation, she’s an abomination,” Herobrine shot back. “You know that I created her by accident. She was a mistake, a reject of a race that was never supposed to exist. She always will be.”

 “I’m not here to fight,” Notch sighed, calming himself.

 “And yet you have an army emerging from that embarrassing excuse of a castle,” the Virus said.

 “I thought you’d changed,” Notch said. “But you’re still the same smart aleck I blew to oblivion all those years ago.”

 Herobrine laughed. “Blew me to oblivion? Then why, Notch, am I standing here in front of you? Could it be that you aren’t as all-powerful as you make others believe? But no, that can’t be true. You are utterly invincible,” his voice dripped with sarcasm.

 Before Notch could respond in any way, Kokuyoseki appeared next to Herobrine. The Enderman showed none of the kindness he usually held. He was now cold and vicious, a foreboding presence, acting as a tall shadow of his master. This was the Enderman Notch was afraid of, the side of Seki that could be switched on at any moment. It was his instinct, whether he was trying to keep up an act for Herobrine or not.

 The Enderman did not look at anyone, but kept his lavender eyes on the dark horizon. Herobrine glanced up at him.

 “The enemy has emerged from the castle and is moving out onto the field, my lord,” Seki said.

 “Herobrine –” Notch began.

 “No,” the Virus cut him off. “There will be no deal, no accords, no apologies. No mercy. It is too late for that, Notch. If you wanted a different future, you should have fixed the past.” 

 Herobrine teleported back to the knoll with Kokuyoseki following closely behind. The night only got colder the longer the Virus stayed alive. The wind holwed and whipped the long grass into complex shapes.

 “What are your orders?” the young Enderman asked.

 “Advance on the castle,” Herobrine said. “I want every one of Notch’s pathetic soldiers drawn out so they can watch their king fall before me in death.”

 Kokuyoseki bowed his head and gave the signal to Kyan. In turn, the sea of monsters raced forward to meet the sea of Aether Legionnaires and village warriors.

 Herobrine watched from a distance as Notch drew his longsword and began to fight oncoming monsters. Notch was lethal, but he was also lagging. Uncharacteristic of him, the Virus thought, smiling. Those battle cries were not for aesthetic, Notch was really in pain. Herobrine wondered if keeping Notch alive and allowing him to suffer was better than destroying him altogether. 

 Maybe, he thought. Maybe I’ll just keep him in the dungeon and let him scream.

 An Aether Legionnaire flying straight towards him brought him out of his indulgence. The angel tried to bring her sword down right into his heart, but she never got the chance. He rolled aside and stabbed her through the back.

 “Fine,” he told the still corpse. “Into battle it is.”

 Herobrine teleported into the middle of the opposing force, swinging his sword as soon as he appeared. Some of the warriors tried to flee from him, the very thought of Herobrine among them enough to terrify even the strongest wills. Others put on a brave face and raised their blades to meet his. But it was no use. None escaped the wrath of Herobrine. He tore through the soldiers of Notch’s weak army like a deadly storm, felling them with a trained accuracy only achieved through years of war. 

 He poured out his hatred on them as they desperately tried to keep him away. All those years of neglect, all those torturous nights he would run away only to come back the next morning and pretend he wasn’t dying inside. Pain, suffering, loss, death. All the hurt that he held inside, kept locked in his soul, escaped in those moments. But he still couldn’t let it go. He wouldn’t. Anger kept him in power. 

 He clenched his fist around his enchanted longsword and stabbed a warrior through the chest as flourescent black and white energy began to flow out of his hands. He would not be content with fighting these peasents, he would wait no longer for this revenge. It was time for Notch to fall. 

 Herobrine spun around to look for the creator and found him dealing the death blow to a Zombie. The monster disappeared in a blink as Notch pulled his sword from its dead flesh. A skeleton was behind Notch, and drew back an arrow to pierce the creator, but Herobrine teleported beside it and killed it. These simple monsters would not steal his prize. 

 “Oh, look, if it isn’t the favored son,” he said, turning to face Notch.

 “Herobrine, please,” Notch sighed. “Not now.”

 “You know it’s true, why not just admit it?” Herobrine asked.

 “Father was not the only person in the universe, Herobrine. I know he was unfair, but Mother loved you. . . ” Notch hesitated.  

 “Do not speak to me of Mother!” Herobrine raged, bringing his sword up to strike Notch. “She was the only one who gave a blast about me.”

 “Then I didn’t care about you?!” Notch yelled back, blocking Herobrine’s attack.

 “You took everything from me!” Herobrine seethed.

 “I didn’t have a choice!” Notch retorted. “But I never wanted to hurt you. I looked up to you, I followed you, I put my trust in you. . . I loved you. But you betrayed us all.”

 Herobrine yelled and forced away the memories. This was never going to work if he went soft. He engaged Notch again, the sound of their longswords clashing brought attention to their deadlock. It was a perfect match, and neither brother could get a hit in, even with Notch wounded. Their blades locked and lightning lit the sky. 

 Herobrine’s eyes glowed the harshest white and he twisted his longsword around to stab Notch. It happened too fast, and the blade struck true. Notch screamed and looked down to see the white-hot metal piercing through his stomach. Herobrine pulled out the blade and Nocth fell to his knees, the fair semblance he wore twinkling out as he clutched his newest wound.

 The battlefield had gone silent. The monsters outnumbered Notch’s forces three to one, and they began to surround the Villagers as their leader crumbled. Someone yelled in the crowd, and Herobrine glanced behind him to see a female humanoid gecko break through the crowd, only to be caught by an Enderman and held back. It was Kokuyoseki. Perhaps the Enderman was trying to make up for the loss of the village he had been ordered to destroy. 

 “Well, Notch, looks like that little papercut did more damage than you let anyone know,” Herobrine said, turning back to Notch, who had been reduced to all fours, coughing. It was so quiet in the field now that everyone could hear him. “Tell me, how did you feel about lying to them?”

 Notch’s only reply was violent coughing as he tried to reach for his dropped longsword. Herobrine kicked it away.

 “Behold your mighty king!” the Virus addressed the army of his brother. “Unbreakable? Invincible? No. Even Notch can bleed.” At this he lifted Notch’s head up with the tip of his blade. 

 “Oh, darling, you look terrible,” Herobrine whispered. “But you’re in the perfect condition to transfer Minecraft into my hands.”

 “I’ll never give you the dominion you seek,” Notch hissed through bloody, clenched teeth.

 Before Herobrine could respond, a shadow came over him and he cried out, letting Notch fall back to the ground as he turned to face his assailant: An Enderman darker than the abyss.

Chapter Twenty- Six

Armageddon

 Is this how it ends?

 Is the end of the world dark and cold, bleak, and without hope? Does it stretch on forever and ever against an endless horizon? Could it be that all our dreams were lies? 

 If that is the truth, we have believed a lie.

 I refuse to accept it.

My lungs take in a shaky breath and I open my eyes to white. Not a harsh, blinding white, rather it is a soothing white. The type that can heal. I am in the Aether. 

 How did I get here? 

 Memories begin to come back. They do not rush in, they float through my mind and piece themselves together like a strange puzzle. The battle between Herobrine and Notch feels like an eternity ago, and I wonder if it is, until more pieces come together and form the memory of me at the battle. I am holding Yamori back at the edge of the crowd. She soon stops struggling when she realizes that it is no use to try and save Notch. But there has to be a way to save Minecraft.

 The memory breaks off and then another surfaces. It is an image of me again, but this time I am grabbing Notch’s abandoned longsword. I teleport right behind Herobrine. 

 Another abrubt stop. Soon I remember something else, and this memory hurts. Herobrine has stabbed me, and he seethes about how I am a traitor to his cause, but I see that he also has been stabbed. . . by me.

 Suddenly I am right back there, at his mercy, and he grabs my neck, trying to strangle me in a last attempt to rid this world of my existence. How many times has he wondered about me, thought there was something different about me? Too many, I think, dropping Notch’s sword and clawing at his hand around my neck. And this will be the last time.

 “Traitor!” Herobrine yelled, squeezing tighter. “You thought you could kill me, Enderman?”

 I can hardly breathe, but the memories come back and I hear myself choke out, “No. This was just a distraction.”

Herobrine pulls his longsword out of my stomach and spins to face Notch as realization dawns on him. But it is too late. 

 I fall to the ground, the pain is blinding. I open my mouth to scream, but I cannot hear the sound, if it ever came out in the first place. The last thing I see before the memory blacks out is Notch grabbing Herobrine and both of them disappearing in a flash of light.

 There is only one thing I can think of as the memory fades and nothingness takes its place.

 Am I dead?

 Is there any other explaination for my lack of memory and feeling? There has to be. I can’t be dead. I search my mind for any trace of forgotten memories, but there is nothing left for my conscious to give. If that part of my journey is over, I must try something else, so I try to move.

 “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a voice spoke from behind me. I turn my head around from where I ready on the soft white ground. The newcomer is blurry, until I realize they are in the fog that covers the realm. As they emerge, I notice an Aether Legionnaire.

 “Frey,” I greeted her and she came over to help me sit up. I cough and it burns my abdomen like the fire of Herobrine’s longsword never left it. “Ah, what. . . what happened?”

 “In short terms, a lot. If you want the long version, you’re going to need some patience,” she said. 

 “Did we win? Is everyone okay? Is. . . is Notch. . . ?” I trailed off, not looking at her.

 “We don’t know,” Frey said, putting a hand on my shoulder. She didn’t say anything else, but I got the feeling Minecraftia was worse than before, Herobrine or no.

 “No, no, no. . . I have to get up. I have to see what happened while I was out,” I pushed her hand away and tried to stand. It worked until I tried to walk, then I went down. I hit the ground and it seemed to hit me back with memories of pain and suffering. I curled into a ball as energy coursed through my veins. “Ahhh! What is this?”

 “Kokuyoseki, you need to rest!” Frey rushed over to me. “You were stabbed by a wizard’s longsowrd, you can’t just get up and start doing everything you used to!” 

 She turned me over and I took a deep breath. The pain ebbed away as I focused on something else. Yamori. 

 “Where’s Yamori?”

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Never The Same

 

 You don’t know me that well, but I’m Notch’s niece. 

 The gecko? 

 Yeah, the gecko. I’ll explain later. 

 I know you’ve been watching as our world crumbled under the tyrannical ambitions of a Virus and his army. I can’t tell you everything, but I can say that this is not over. Minecraft has been reduced to ashes, and we lucky few are left to pick up the pieces. My hope is that the Player did what was right, and one day we’ll be able to look back on this war as a distant yet painful memory. 

 I sigh and take a step back from the small pile of rubble. It is a memorial until I can get this place back where it needs to be. It stands as a tribute to those who fought and died for the fate of Minecraftia.

 Villagers. Warriors. Farmers. Bakers. Miners. Leaders. Followers. Lords. Servants. Mothers. Fathers. Children. Friends. Family. Everyone paid the price for what my father has done.

 That’s right, Herobrine is my dad. Big surprise. I don’t really like to tell people, what with all the overlord stuff he’s known for, but it’s true. A long time ago, Herobrine decided he wanted an army of reptillian mutants, he tried and failed multiple times to get it right. Finally he was left with me, a tiny baby gecko that would never amount to anything. He abandoned me, a group of Creepers took me in, and one day I met my uncle. 

 Notch was like no one I had ever met before. He was everything I needed at a young age but never got. The Creepers were nice to me and all, but they couldn’t compare to a real mother or father. After a while, I bid my Creeper family farewell and lived with Notch. He taught me how to harness the few wizardry powers I had inherited from Herobrine’s code. Now with both of them gone, I’m the only remaining Wizard that I know of.

 “The council members are waiting for you, Yamori,” Steve says gently from behind me.

 “Tell them I’m not coming,” I reply.

 “Yamori, the world is falling apart- “ 

 “And I’m not going to sit around in a meeting while it does!” I spin around to face him, my eyes glowing the faintest bit yellow.

 Steve looks like he might want to take a step back, or leave.

 “I’m sorry,” I say, forcing myself to calm down. “I shouldn’t have lashed out at you, it’s not your fault the village councilors are consumed by the politics of war.”

 “It’s okay, Yamori,” Steve says, coming closer. “Everyone is stressed. No one knows what’s going on, so you don’t have to either.”

 “But no one else is the last Wizard and the only one who can fix this,” I give a heavy sigh and sit on the grass. The pile of rocks sits ahead of me, solemn and silent. “I can’t lead them like this, Steve. I’m unstable, I have too much of that monster in me.”

 “You’re not Herobrine,” Steve sits while he talks. “You can do this. I don’t think you have it in you to be evil.”

 “Then you don’t know me very well,” I tell him. 

 Things are changing, I think. Minecraftia will never be the same.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The End?

 I look back at the screen for the last time.

 “This is it, I guess,” I told the monitor. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see you guys again, but I hope I do. I know I didn’t leave in the best way.” — I thought back to the end of the battle. All I remember is Notch and Herobrine disappearing, then I ran like the wind. — “But in my defense I was trying to get this USB to my world as fast as I could. Notch said it would save you.”

 I sat back from the image of a burned landscape. That’s how I left it, but when this is over, it will be more beautiful than it ever was. 

 I hope.

 I plugged the USB into the port of the computer. Minecraft went dark and displayed a message. 

Do you want to override?

>Yes     No

 Yes.

 The screen went black. It was over. I had purged Minecraft from my computer. It wasn’t gone forever, only gone from my end. I didn’t know how I was going to explain this to my grandparents.

 I smiled for the first time in a year. 

 It had been a while since my parents had disappeared. I didn’t want to admit that they had died. I had been carrying around so much grief over the death of my parents, I had retreated into Minecraft. I poured all I could into it. But I was wrong. Grief isn’t the answer, neither is denial. I knew now that I should live the life I have with the people around me before it was too late.

 My grandmother called me from upstairs. 

 “Coming! One second!” I yelled back. I hope she heard me from the basement. I got up from where I sat at the computer, and let myself have one last glance at the pitch black screen. 

 I was the Player, and the short dream of a game was over. It was time to start the long dream of life. This wasn’t the end, this was a beginning, and I couldn’t wait to start it.

 I turned and ran up the stairs.

Epilogue

 

Darkness can go on forever. It can stretch across time and space, it holds chaos on a chain. The black abyss is hollow and you will never escape it’s grasp. 

 Darkness will hold you down and render you useless. It will break you down to your core. It will find your secrets and rip you apart as it courses through your veins.

 Darkness knows your weaknesses and your fears, all the things you failed at.

 I am the Darkness.

————————————————————————————————

 Notch gasped and sat up. Everything was dark. He put his hand up and tried to generate some kind of light power. Finally a small flame in his palm lit the black expanse. 

 He got up and tried to find out where he was. There were no walls or solid objects of any kind here. This has to be the place, he thought. 

 Screams filled the air in the dark, chilling his bones. Tormented souls of the lost who wandered this dimension searching for a way out that could never be found. 

 There was no way out.

 Notch explored farther into the darkness. He had to make sure he had done this right. Please be here, he begged the darkness to reveal its prisoners. If he’s not here, then everything has been in vain.

 Soon he came to a shrouded castle whose massive face is hidden to all but the worthy. He wandered through the halls, searching. When he had almost given up hope, he found what he was looking for.

 “Herobrine,” Notch lit one of the ghostly torched on the wall with the magical fire in his hand.

 “Go away,” the Virus said, his back to the creator. 

 “I searched this whole dimension for you, almost burned myself multiple times with this stupid magic fire, had to fight off lost souls, and you want me to go away?” Notch asked, unbelieving.

 “The burns are only temporary,” Herobrine replied. “But then I guess you already knew that, didn’t you.”

 “What?” Notch asked.

 “You know what I said. You chose this dimension on purpose. You knew Limbo was the only prison you could hold me in, all while keeping your papercut dorment, therefore keeping you alive.” Herobrine turned to face the creator.

 “This isn’t about me, Herobrine!” Notch yelled.

 “No, but now you and I are the only ones in the world. This world, at least,” the Virus smiled. “Now there’s no one to help you. We’ll be locked in an eternal battle until the end of time. If something like Time ever stops.”

 “If that’s what I have to do, I will,” Notch grabbed the torch and walked away. Herobrine wouldn’t follow him yet, but soon he would hunt Notch down. That’s when the real battle would begin. 

 Notch walked down the stairs of the misty castle and out into the darkness. 

 This isn’t over.