Chapter 2: The Nether

 

The moment Aza vanished into the portal, the purple force-field that had previously surrounded her flickered and vanished.

Just then, Amber–Amber–ran over to Jack. Jack was too stunned to say hello or ask her about the healer.

“She knew the Nether spell,” Amber said hollowly, probably knowing it was rather obvious.

Jack could only nod in response. In school the children had learned that cross-dimensional travel was extremely difficult for most people. Each portal required its own specific combination of building materials. The hardest part, though, was the spell–a long incantation, each only known by few, that usually had to be said in order for the portal to activate.

Apparently Aza was one of the few, at least when it came to the Nether. “We have to follow her!” Jack cried.

“Jack, are you insane?”

“Maybe!”

Before Amber could stop him, Jack went running. “If you go, I’m going with you!” she blurted out. Neither of them could see the portal crumble away to dust behind them.

 

Jack’s shoulder hit the ground, sending a painful jolt through his body. Instinctively he rolled and raised his head.

He seemed to be inside a vast cavern of red stone–it was so large he couldn’t see the ceiling, but glowstone hung down like stalactites. Or fangs. A few yards in front of him was a large, glowing pool of lava.

But Jack didn’t notice all this as much as he felt the heat. It was like he was being cooked in a furnace, sweat slicking his body already.

“Ouch!” He cried as another human body–Amber–fell on top of him. “Where’s Aza?” Amber demanded.

Jack looked and saw a black-clothed figure ahead of them. “There! We need to catch up!”

Amber and Jack scrambled to their feet and began to pursue the figure.

When they got close enough, Jack cupped his hands around his mouth to form a megaphone shape. “Aza!”

The princess spun around, purple eyes widening with shock. “Jack?

Amber?”

 

“Why did you do that!” Jack cried. “What were you thinking?”

“I need to find the truth.” Aza replied stubbornly. “You either follow me or you don’t.”

Jack and Amber looked at each other, then at the place where they’d fallen into this dimension. The portal was gone; there was no visible way back to the Overworld. They were both thinking the same thing.

“Yes, I’ll come,” Jack replied. “And you, Amber?”

Amber took a deep breath. “Count me in.”

 

The pattern of day and night was absent in the Nether, so the three travelers had no way of telling the time or how long they’d been gone. The thought of that worried Jack, and he wondered how his father was doing. Did he see Jack jump through the portal? Did the neighbors tell him? Or was he still wondering what happened to his seventeen-year-old son?

Only Aza seemed to know where they were heading. “I can feel it,” she’d say. “It’s in that direction.”

“What is?” Jack asked.

Aza shrugged. “Whatever it is I’ll get the truth from.”

“Doesn’t this sound like we’re making an awful lot of assumptions?” Amber worried. “We’re going deeper and deeper into a completely unfamiliar dimension based on a hunch.”

“It’s not just a hunch,” Aza insisted.

Neither Amber nor Jack replied. They were both confused, tired and hungry, their Overworld circadian rhythms completely messed up. Aza, used to life in The End without a sun or a moon, had adjusted her system far faster.

Just as Jack was contemplating this unfairness, a fireball slammed into the ground beside him, setting the netherrack alight. Aza looked up and screamed.

A huge floating creature was drifting toward them, what looked like tears in its eyes. It growled, opened its mouth, and another fireball came shooting at them. It then began to screech–the sound was very much like what Jack imagined a cat in pain would sound like.

“It’s a ghast! Take cover!” Aza cried. The three friends scattered in three different directions, panicking. Aza felt the blasting heat on her heels and almost looked back, but didn’t.

 

“What do we do, what do we do!” Aza yelled. She hated this dimension.

She didn’t think she had ever missed End stone so much.

Just then an arrow whizzed past her head. Aza heard a piercing scream behind her, a scream that resonated through her very bones. She turned around and saw the massive creature dropping out of the air. That same arrow was now sticking out of its side.

Then Jack’s voice: “Who are you?”

Aza turned toward his voice and jumped. Standing next to her friend was a boy who looked to be a little younger than them. His brown hair was messed up, and his dark red clothing was tattered, dirty, and even burnt in places. His eyes widened with fear when he saw Aza.

“Don’t report me. Please. I beg you.” “Report you?”

“I saved your life!”

“We’re not going to report you,” Amber said, walking out from her hiding place behind a stalagmite. This scared the boy half to death. “Just tell us who you are and where this is.”

The boy frowned. “You don’t know where you are?”

“Not really. We know we’re in the Nether, but nothing more specific than

 

that.”

“How did you get here?”

Aza and Jack exchanged a look. Should they trust him? “Tell us who you are first.” Jack said finally.

The boy stared at the ground. “Promise me. Promise you won’t report me.

 

You don’t look like you’re from these parts, but really, one never knows.” Amber sighed. “We’re not spies, and we’re not here to catch you.” “Fine. I’m Ahren. And…. I ran away.”

“Ran away? Where did you come from?” Amber wondered.

“I used to live in a village far away. My mother and father are soldiers.

My sister Hestia and I heard their plans… They want to kill me now… And they got Hestia a while back…”

“Wait, your parents are soldiers? You lived in a village? But… The Nether has no society, no structure.” Since the collapse of the Nethrian Empire four thousand years ago, the population has been made up of wandering nomads, Jack remembered reading from his textbook. There is no government. The Nether is a primitive, harsh, and lawless dimension.

 

“The way the other dimensions describe us–we used to be like that, but things changed a few years ago. People started coming together. Forming a ruling system. And… They’re not happy.”

“Not happy with what?” Aza asked, dreading the answer.

“Their domain,” Ahren sighed. “They want to expand it. Conquer other dimensions.”

Aza was so pale she could have been a ghost.

Amber frowned. “And what might the first target be?”

“This is one of the things we heard– ‘On our path to power, we will claim the dimensions of the universe… Beginning with The End.’ ”

Aza made a small, strangled sound. “It’s true,” she whispered. “It’s all true…”

“Aza…” Jack started helplessly.

“From what I gathered, they want to kill the Ender Dragon, take the land and make the Enders their slaves… all for some Master. When they found out Hestia and I heard, they said it was top-secret info. That even overhearing it was punishable by death. So we ran. But… They caught Hestia. I didn’t know until I was far away and I heard her scream behind me. By that time, I was too late,” Ahren remembered. He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice Aza’s ordeal.

“Are you sure?” Aza demanded, snapping him out of his trance.

Ahren nodded. “Yes, I’m sure. Why are you…” Then his eyes widened, and he looked Aza up and down, taking it all in, really noticing for the first time without fear or painful memories clouding his mind. The wings strapped to Aza’s back. Her black armored outfit. The emblem on her shirt: a black dragon with its tail curled around an obsidian pillar, shooting amethyst flames upward from its opened mouth. Underneath were small words in Aza’s native language. Erebus en Aeterna, which translated to The End is Eternal, better known as The End’s motto, End Everlasting.

Ahren took a step back. “You… Oh.” He gasped then bowed low, his hand brushing the reddish stone ground. “Your Highness.”

“Just call me Aza,” Aza replied. “What must I do to help you, Aza?”

“Is there a way to reach The End from here, Ahren?” Aza asked, desperation creeping into her tone.

 

Ahren frowned. “There is–sort of. I know the location of a portal that’ll take us near the Sky Lands palace. I heard there’s a stronghold in the Sky Lands we’ll be able to reach–that’s where the others plan to enter The End.”

Jack’s mouth dropped open. If they took that route, they’d be cutting through another dimension. In total, two. Two. Three, if The End counted.

“How far?” Asked Aza.

Ahren shrugged. “About a week’s travel, Overworld time, if I’m right.”

“If?”

“It’s my only chance to get home,” Aza pointed out. “Besides, I need to save my people.”

“How do we know we can trust Ahren?” Amber asked suspiciously.

Ahren sighed. “Look, I’m not planning to kill you or sell you out or anything. That stuff about the soldiers and Hestia–you think I was making that up? You think I’d make up my sister’s death?”

Aza turned to Amber and Jack.

“I think we’d better believe him,” she murmured. “Right now, it’s our only chance.”

 

On what Jack estimated was day six, the three of them came upon a huge structure. It was built from dark brown brick, and loomed out of the ever- present red fog. The scorching lava ocean below didn’t seem to affect its supporting columns.

Jack stared in awe at the Nether fortress. He’d learned about those in school, of course, but had never expected to see one in real life. Nevertheless, there it stood before him: a four-thousand-year-old monument to the Nethrian Empire and what the people of this dimension had achieved. Its makers had been dead for millennia, their dynasty long over, yet this building had stood strong up until the present day. With a shudder, Jack realized it’d probably also outlast the Ender civilization if they didn’t get Aza back to her home quickly enough to warn the rest of the populace.

“The portal’s in there,” Ahren announced.

Aza frowned at him, skeptical. “Are you sure? You only heard the plans

once, I assume.”

“They said it was at the fortress. This is the only one within nine thousand miles of the village.”

 

“Nine thousand miles,” Amber looked amazed. “You’ve traveled really far away from your home, Ahren.”

Ahren just shrugged. “When someone is a fugitive, they have exactly one direction they can run: away.” There was some sadness in his eyes, and Jack guessed he still missed his home.

“If the portal is in the fortress, it’s going to be heavily guarded, isn’t it?” Aza pointed out, changing the topic back to the mission at hand.

“No,” Ahren explained. “The portal is a secret, as are many other things the soldiers discussed. Sending guards to this place would make it stick out like a sore thumb. You might as well put up a beacon.”

“So… there’s going to be no resistance?” Jack asked, incredulous. No way. That’s too good to be true.

“Well, there’ll still be wither skeletons and blazes, like in every other fortress. It blends in, but it’s still guarded.”

Aza muttered a curse under her breath. “How do we get through, then?” She demanded.

“The people of the Nethrian Empire built this thousands of years ago to be a military base. Just in case enemies got in, they added emergency escape tunnels deep inside the foundation of the fortress, which have entrances in all the rooms and also lead outside… Every entrance and exit is only large enough for a human crawling on hands and knees. Blazes definitely won’t be able to fit through, let alone skeletons.”

“You’re a genius, Ahren!” Amber cried.

“Thank the Creator you heard those plans,” Aza said, before realizing what that implied. She covered her mouth with her hands. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Ahren just shrugged. “S’okay. Let’s go. The nearest tunnel entrance is most likely there.” He pointed at a place on the fortress where it had crumbled away, leaving a pile of broken bricks covering the broken end. The four of them ran to the place he pointed and immediately started to dig.

“There is a tunnel here,” Jack exclaimed. Ahren, Aza and Amber looked and it was true–he’d unearthed the beginning of a passageway. With all of them working together, they quickly cleared the remaining rubble away.

“Are you sure we want to do this?” Amber questioned. “I mean, there could be any number of nasties in there. It’s been sitting there for four thousand years, untouched…”

 

“They’ll all have died out by now. Any creatures small enough to breed and thrive in those tunnels probably won’t be a problem.”

“You said probably,” Aza noted.

Ahren shook his head. “We’re going to have to risk it. Think about it: which route would you rather take, one that might have some rats or one that’s patrolled by blazes?”

Aza shrugged. “Good point.”

“Then we take the tunnels,” Ahren concluded. He pulled a torch out of his Inventory and stepped into the dank passageway, instantly flooding it with warm light. Nervously, the others followed him and they started walking. They did, indeed, encounter a few rats, but they squeaked in alarm and scampered away as the humans approached.

“What do those rats even eat in here?” Jack wondered, not sure if he really wanted to know the answer.

“Dead blaze remains,” Ahren replied. Jack stared at him, but the look on the Nethrian boy’s face said that he wasn’t joking.

“Ooh-kay,” Amber laughed a little. “Maybe a little too much info there… hey, a chest!”

Ahren rushed to it, making his torchlight waver. “Stand back,” he warned. “Ancient dust isn’t something you want on your clothes, trust me.” He bent over and lifted the lid, which made a creaking sound so loud Jack stuck his fingers in his ears.

“Weapons and armor,” Ahren reported, a little giddy. “Come see.”

Jack peered into the chest. He could see a chainmail chestplate draped over a pair of gleaming knives and an iron helmet. All the loot was covered by a thin layer of dust.

“I’ll take the knives,” said Ahren. Then he looked around. “If none of you guys need them…?”

The group raised no objections, so Ahren picked up the wicked-looking blades and slid them into the invisible storage space of his Inventory.

“How about the armor?”

“Aza, you can have the chain mail,” Ahren said. “Jack or Amber… oh wait… that’ll leave one of you with nothing… then I’ll give a knife to someone else….”

Aza shook her head. “Keep it all for now, Ahren,” she told him. “We’re wasting time–we can distribute the stuff later.”

 

Again, no objections. Seeming a little guilty, Ahren took the rest of their findings. Wordlessly they continued on their path.

Soon, a strange sound became audible from above ground: a wheezing, rasping noise.

“What is that, Ahren?” Jack asked, more than a little scared. “Probably blazes breathing. They’re not exactly the quiet type of

creature.”

“What if they sense us?” Imagining a blaze blast through the tunnel roof with a fireball, Jack looked up.

Ahren shook his head. “They won’t. Normally they’d be able to detect our heat signatures, but they shouldn’t be able to considering how far below them we are.”

“Right…” That didn’t make Jack feel any better.

Before long, they reached what seemed like a dead end. However, Ahren murmured, “This is the way. It has to be. I can feel it.”

Placing one of his hands on the wall, he waited. Jack and Amber were exchanging dubious looks when suddenly, out of nowhere, pistons clanked and a secret door opened, revealing a portal of polished quartz. No incantation was required–a blue vortex already shimmered in the frame, like a magical painting. Together, the four of them stepped through the Sky portal.