I chanted to myself as I crawled up and away from the cavern. I pulled Lonnie slowly along. The light dimmed the farther away I got from the torches on lower levels, but I still moved upward, hoping with every strike that we would come to the surface. But cut after cut into the stone and dirt of the hill brought us no closer to escape.

“What now?” I asked Lonnie, expecting no response.

He obliged.

“Keep going? Wait for someone to rescue us?” I waited, thinking in the dim light. “There’s no rescue, is there? We either get out of here on our own, or…” I paused to take a deep breath, then continued, “I’ll get us out. I promise.” I started moving again. “Prepare, plan, and power through, right?” I waited a moment to see if he would remember his motto, and then I started cutting up through the hill again. After what seemed like a few minutes, we burst through the surface and I pulled Lonnie out at the top of the hill. The light in the game was brightening. It was morning. While we had been underground, another day and night came and went.

This was a different hill entirely than the one near where I had spawned in the game. It was higher up, for one thing, and at the base of it was a large pool of water with green vegetation growing in patches all over it.

“It’s a swamp,” a voice to my left said.

I turned to see Anton putting his sword away. He had upgraded to iron. Esme came up next to him. She’d changed out her leather armor for iron, and she had new arrows.

“I know,” I said. “I see you’ve had some time to make some improvements.”

Esme initiated a trade and let me have an iron sword as well.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Not that you were any help,” Esme said.

“What?” I asked, taken aback.

“You abandoned us!” she said. “You left and you never even bothered to look back.”

“You told me to go. You said you’d find me!”

“Forget it, Es,” Anton said. Esme rolled her eyes and seemed anything but fine, though it was hard to tell with the avatar faces.

“Whatever,” Esme said. “The fact is, we’ve been fighting while you’ve been hiding out inside the hill. We need to regroup.”

“I haven’t—” I began, but Esme had already moved away, and Anton followed her. They weren’t listening. I followed grudgingly, tailing them at a distance until Anton turned around and gave me a look, then jerked his head forward like he wanted me to hurry up. I picked up speed, and a moment later Anton shouted with surprise. I looked up just in time to see a witch’s potion sail past my face. It burst behind me, and I ran. Anton called to Esme. She skidded to a stop and pulled up a bow and arrows, which she launched down the hill at three witches, each coming at us fast. There was little vegetation on this side of the hill that I could use as cover, and Lonnie was slowing me down, but I kept tugging him forward, moving as fast as I could.

“Leave him!” Anton yelled.

A potion hit me and exploded. My movements instantly became slower. The health bar over my head dipped.

Anton ran toward me and whacked at the witch with his sword. I moved between Lonnie and the mob so that any attack would find me first. I tried to get hold of my own sword, but it was hard. It must have been a strong potion. Anton kept on hitting until the witch died. Then he picked up the fire-resistant potion and the gunpowder the mob dropped, and moved off to the next one.

Esme looked back at me, shook her head slightly as if I was some kind of disappointment, then turned back to her own witch fight. She had also changed to a sword, and had gotten in close. I watched helplessly as both Esme and Anton attacked the two remaining witches. I didn’t see the fourth one spawn and head out of the swamp straight toward me.

Another potion erupted against my avatar’s skin. I fell to the ground. Above me was Lonnie, vulnerable to attack without me shielding him, and my health bar was vibrating. I was down to a mere four hearts. My food bar wasn’t much help. I had forgotten to eat anything since back before we’d taken Lonnie from the village, so there wasn’t anything there to help me heal.

I pulled up the few supplies I had and ate a little. It did nothing to help my health bar. I was still low on food.

A moment later, Anton was over me, pulling me to my feet. He snatched the rope away from me and screamed “Move!” right in my face. Then he took off again, taking Lonnie with him. I followed as closely as I could, but I was slow and weak from the witches’ potions. Another one hit me in the shoulder. My right arm went limp, as if it had been paralyzed. I couldn’t pick up my sword if I tried. I did it with my left hand, but it was hard to wield, and clumsy. I heard a witch nearby, and turned as fast as I could, swinging the sword around with me. It caught the witch in the side.

“Esme, you need to get your emotions under control!” Anton yelled. “We can’t just keep thwacking at mobs forever! We need to log off!”

“Not in mid-combat we can’t,” Esme called back.

“What happens if we die in-game?” I asked.

“When you hit zero life, you normally respawn. But if you’ve been playing for too long, instead of respawning, you get kicked out of the game and back to the menu until a doctor comes to check in on you and make sure you’re okay,” Anton said. “Considering you’re not even supposed to be in here yet, they might just confiscate your goggles.”

“I’m not going to get killed,” I said in a low voice, then louder, “I’m not going to get killed!” as I swung the sword around a second time, catching the witch in the other side. It still wasn’t dead. It aimed another potion at me. This time, I used all the energy I had left for one last mighty blow. That one did it.

The witch disappeared in a haze of fire and smoke, dropping goodies.

There was some redstone, lots of sticks, more spider eyes—we definitely did not need more of those—and string, but not one useful potion in the lot.

“How’d that work out for you?” Esme called back.

That girl was getting on my last nerve.

Another volley of potions came sailing over my head. They rained down a little too close to me, which told me that a) there were more witches, b) Esme must’ve still been angry at me, and c) I had a few more chances to stock up on supplies. Annoying as they were, finding a mob of witches was like going to the Minecraft general store. I moved just a little bit faster this time, but both Anton and Esme were way ahead, cutting into witches with abandon. Then I had that same feeling again that someone was watching me. Anton had left Lonnie by himself. He was away from the witches and the fighting, but he was looking at me. And I could feel it.

I grabbed him and pulled him into a small cavern just at the base of the hill before the swamp started. Most of the witches were trying to attack Esme, which—I’m not proud of this—made me the tiniest bit happy. But with the two of them fighting, it was my chance to recoup some of the energy I’d lost in the fight. I pulled up my supplies and had something to eat. Mutton. As I watched my food and health bars go back up, I thought about whether I could just wish for things to show up in the game, like an unlimited supply of mutton.

Every game has cheat codes. And A.J. had said something about verbal commands, right? If I figured out the secret to this version of Minecraft, could I fix Lonnie just by wishing hard enough?

Out at the swamp, Esme and Anton were taking down witches and picking up supplies. I honestly wasn’t sure if I could trust everything they said. Something told me they were holding back. Plus, if they were so great at keeping their issues in control or whatever, why were they still having to deal with Esme’s mobs, and why’d they keep building Anton’s booby-traps?

As soon as my health bar stopped vibrating, and my food points were up to nine, I left Lonnie in the cavern and stepped back out onto the bank of the swamp. I dove right into the middle of the fighting, picking up another health potion that a witch—one that Anton had killed—had just dropped.

“Sorry,” I said. “I need that more than you do.”

“Be my guest,” Anton said, as he slashed through another witch.

The three of us mowed through the remaining witches quickly, but on this difficulty level, there were way more of them than even all of us at full strength could handle. I had the sinking feeling that we weren’t going to make it. My throat started to close up just thinking about what that would mean. That everything would stop, fading out to black.

I shook my head. There’s no time to think like that, I thought as I launched myself back into the battle. We were working so furiously, none of us had a chance to speak. This wasn’t like regular gameplay, when you’re on the outside and looking at a screen. Having witches press in on you from all sides triggers the same kind of sensations as when you’re in a crowd and everyone’s too close and all you can do is swallow your anxiety and try to find a way out. Only this crowd was trying to maim us, and it looked like they were going to succeed. I really wished we had some help.

Then there was snarling to my right, and one of the witches went down. More growling as I killed another witch and gathered the supplies. And then a bark as I pushed through to the last cluster of witches and saw Howl, who must’ve survived the attack.

“Hey girl!” I cried out. I couldn’t believe that she’d made it, and that she’d managed to find her way back to me. I wanted to throw my arms around her, but a witch darting into my line of sight pulled my attention back to the battle.

Esme and Anton looked back. Howl took on the same witch I was attacking, and together we killed it. There were only two more, and Esme and Anton were taking care of those.

“I’d high-five you if you had hands, or we could even touch hands, but this’ll have to do,” I told Howl, giving her a bone. “How’d you make it out, girl?”

She licked herself.

“Well okay then.”

Esme and Anton came back over, putting their swords away, and breathing heavily, as if it was real muscle work they were doing, and not just thinking about moving. But I got it. It was mostly the adrenaline that had us out of breath in here.

“You okay?” I asked tentatively.

“Yeah. Sorry about that, guys,” Esme said sheepishly. “I thought I’d gotten over most of this stuff.”

“Let’s just get out of here,” Anton said, “before they all respawn and we have to start over again.”