Emily blows the dust off a book decorated with cartoon mermaids.
“What’s that?” Jake asks.
“Someone’s old sketch pad. Or journal?” Emily gingerly turns the page, showing it to Tank. Crayon illustrations of mermaids holding tridents, and fish and dolphins swimming in the ocean fill the pages, each of them lettered carefully in childish handwriting.
“There once was a mermaid princess named Bella,” Emily reads from the first page. “Kingdom of Kelp, that’s original.”
Tank chuckles as he points to the name scrawled on the inside of the front cover.
“Bella, age seven,” Tank reads. The large letters and awkwardly formed E’s and L’s make him think of Viv’s early drawings and things.
He feels a little guilty; he hasn’t told her he’s been playing Minecraft with Jake and Emily. Part of him wants to have something that’s just his, but he knows—he knows Viv would love the mystery of the world. She’d probably be great at all the puzzles.
He flips the page. A group of mermaids drawn in crayon swim in front of a clumsily decorated underwater village. Scales meticulously drawn one by one decorate each mermaid’s tail. On the next page, a massive sea monster with monstrous teeth crashes into a fortified wall as terrified mermaids swim away.
The whole morning has been spent deciding what to clean and keep, and what should be trashed, but no one asks the question “Trash or keep?” about this.
Tank stares at the hand-drawn book one more time before saying softly, “We can put it in the box with the photos and stuff.”
Jake nods. “Good idea. Eventually Mrs. J will want this stuff.”
Emily gingerly places Bella’s storybook inside the box with the mementos, and Tank shuts the box.
Tank hangs back, watching Jake and Emily methodically sort through their inventory. There’s no more putting it off, it’s time to go.
“Are you sure we need to go to the Nether?” Tank asks. He’s seen Viv with her friends—he’s never gone himself, and Viv’s never asked him to. She knows the music alone is enough to creep him out.
Tank doesn’t like to admit to many things, but everything about the Nether—how you can die at any minute, whether from lava or the terrifying mobs of monsters and those things that shoot fire, and how it’s an endless expanse of fire and that deep, dark red of his nightmares—terrifies him.
“Yeah. We need nether wart to brew the potions,” Jake says.
“Torches, we’ll need a ton of torches,” Emily’s muttering to herself. “How are our weapons? I’m going to go enchant more—which armor set are you bringing?”
“Diamond. I don’t have enough for—do we have more diamonds?”
Jake and Emily are working away. Emily’s already disappeared into the house, humming to herself, “Gonna go to the Ne-ther…”
Jake looks up from the crafting table. “Tank, do you want some more armor?”
“Do we have to go?” His voice sounds small and scared. Weak. Tank regrets saying it immediately because he’s not, he’s strong and tough and—
“Hey, are you okay?”
“I’ve just never gone to the Nether before.”
“Yeah, it’s scary. We’re probably going to die. But in order to find the treasure, we gotta do it. The first time I went, I had no idea what I was doing and died immediately, but I’ve learned a lot. Emily’s a super strong fighter, and we’re gonna stick together.”
Jake’s words are so sure that Tank finds himself nodding. He’s not ready, but he picks up the diamond armor Jake crafts for him and puts it on. His enchanted pickaxe glimmers in his hand, and he follows Jake inside the house where Emily’s pacing back and forth in the library in front of the enchanting table.
“What are you doing?” Jake asks.
“C’mon, don’t tell me you don’t have a ritual,” Emily retorts.
“It’s random!”
“Don’t question my process!” Emily groans. “Now I gotta start over. One, two, three—and enchant!”
Emily whoops. “Yes, Looting III and Breaking III!” She turns to Tank. “You got a bow?”
Tank hands over his bow.
“We gotta go, Em,” Jake says.
“Lemme make sure Tank’s got all the best equipment first,” Emily says, continuing her pacing as she enchants the bow. “All right, now we’re ready. Let’s do this.”
The portal is in one of Emily’s mining shafts, and they get lost a few times but eventually find the level where she keeps it.
It looks just like an arch, albeit made of obsidian, but Tank swears he can feel the evil energy emanating from the blocks even though it’s just a structure. He hangs back, watching Jake activate it with flint and steel. The purple portal blooms within the obsidian frame, churning with a dizzying speed.
Emily stands next to him. “You got this,” she says. “We can do it.”
“If any of us die—you have to get our stuff and get home,” Jake says.
“Me?” Tank takes another look at his inventory. Even with the last-minute equipment and the new enchantments, he doesn’t feel ready.
“Well, any of us, but I think you’re most likely to survive.” Jake stands in front of the portal and turns back to regard Tank. “You ready?”
Tank bites back the comment about how both Emily and Jake are way stronger than he is, a pleased comfort settling in over his shoulders. It’s steadying, his friends’ confidence in him. It feels good, in an entirely new way. Shark and the guys have always been second-guessing him or offering ideas on what kind of shoes he needs, how his hair should be, what kind of jackets he needs to wear.
“Yeah, let’s go,” Tank says, surprising himself with his own boldness.
“YEAAAARGH!!!” Emily roars, charging into the portal. She disappears into the purple swirling void.
Jake pauses, like he’s waiting for Tank to step through.
Tank takes a deep breath and approaches the portal. For a second, nothing happens, but then the whole world seems to spin, clouds of purple swirling forth.
Everything goes dark.
The world is red and fire. Lava streams down from tall, dark cliffs, the monoliths casting shadow over everything. Emily is already running ahead, disappearing over the dark horizon.
“Wait up!” Jake calls as he exits the portal. “We gotta stick together.”
“We gotta find these warts is what we gotta do,” Emily retorts. “Let’s go!”
Tank wields his sword at the ready, nervous. “We’re surrounded!” He yelps as he notices strange creatures advancing on them. He’s never seen these mobs up close before—they’re pig-headed people, covered in moss and heavily armed, and they’re everywhere.
“No, no, don’t attack!” Jake calls out suddenly. “The zombified piglin will leave us alone, but if you attack one then they’re all going to go after us and we’re goners.”
Tank shudders but follows Jake’s lead as they carefully pick their way through the lava and ruin to catch up to Emily.
She’s hacking away at the ground. “Nether quartz. Get some if you see it, but let’s keep moving. Maybe we’ll find a fortress.”
Tank can barely handle a stronghold in the Overworld. He takes a deep breath to calm his nerves. Time seems to pass by slower than normal, and the foreboding music rising all around them doesn’t help, either.
They wander for what seems like forever, but according to the computer’s clock, it has only been ten minutes. There’s endless mottled dark red rock, some mushrooms that Tank starts to gather until Emily informs him that they should keep their inventory for essentials only, and they can find red and brown mushrooms anywhere.
“Up there! Do you see it?”
Tank can’t see anything. He tucks mushrooms into his inventory. Just in case.
“It does look like some sort of building with columns,” Emily says, bouncing up and down.
Tank follows her gaze to the top of a tall, skinny rock outcrop. “How do we get up there?”
“Carefully,” Jake says. “One fall and that’s it.” He picks at the outcrop, hacking stairs into the blocks, and slowly makes his way up. Tank follows with trepidation up the switchback stairs in the narrow one-block-wide hallway that appears, hanging back so Jake has enough room to keep working.
RoxXStarRedStone has made the achievement [A Terrible Fortress].
MCExplorerJake has made the achievement [A Terrible Fortress].
They must have made it inside already. Tank’s still a few switchbacks behind, so he hurries ahead, trying to catch up.
“Okay, it looks like this bridge here leads inside—”
“AAAGH!”
Tank turns the corner and takes the last step up just in time to see a bright red-hot fireball careening right at his face.
TankFarms has made the achievement [A Terrible Fortress].