I wasn’t expecting the heat to feel like a blast to my face. I raised my arm to shield myself, and hit Lonnie in the process, pushing him forward down a slope of deep brown soil and toward a lake of bubbling lava. I reached out and grabbed him back as I calculated the risk of leaving him there for the length of time it would take me to return to the Overworld, grab the shulker box, and get back to the Nether. Anything could happen in a few seconds. But without the flint, there was no way to relight the portal if it went out. I’d have to risk it.
I let go of Lonnie and turned back to the portal. Above us, a ghast came screaming down, tentacles waving, cutting off my path. I pulled out my bow and took a few shots, missing terribly, but at least the ghast flew away for the moment. But a stray shot from the mob blew out the portal fire in the process.
It took me a couple of seconds of staring at the empty portal for the following to sink in: we were stuck in the Nether.
The ghast came around again, flying upward in an arc and then diving down toward us. I could see it huffing, getting ready to blow. I knocked down Lonnie and held him there as the ghast sent a fireball straight at us. I wondered if this could ignite the portal, but realized it could also fry us in the process. I pressed us both flat against the ground. It whizzed over our bodies, and I felt the singe of it whisk past my skin. I got up, pulled Lonnie along with me, and ran down the slope toward the lava.
“Where’s that potion of Fire Protection when you need it?” I asked aloud. “Oh right, it’s back in the shulker box that I didn’t bring with us.”
The ghast dipped and turned and came around again, faster this time, its gray face like the cold, hard mask of death.
“When I tell you to jump, you’re going to have to jump, Lonnie.” My heart beat hard in my chest and my legs trembled as I pulled out my sword. “Ready?” I asked as the ghast bore down on us. I waited until it was within striking distance, then shouted, “Now!” I jumped backward over the rivulet of lava while wildly swinging my sword, landing a few good blows while pulling Lonnie backward with me, hoping I wasn’t dragging him, because if he didn’t jump on his own I would be pulling him to his death by liquid fire. But he landed just a microsecond after me on the other side, as the ghast died, plowing face first into the lava and becoming nothing more than motes of smoke. I yanked Lonnie out of the way as its crash landing sent some lava our way, but not quite fast enough to save myself. My leg burned as if someone had slashed it with hot iron. There was no time to worry about it. It would heal. Everything in the game healed eventually. And we had to move on.
Why exactly didn’t I use the potion on myself before I lit the portal to the Nether? My armor had fire resistance, sure, but it wasn’t enough. For that matter, why didn’t I wait to get Anton and Esme before I lit it up? I braced myself for the fact that they would nail me on that later. There was no excuse.
“Hindsight, right?” I said to Lonnie.
He looked confused, of course. He didn’t know what was in my head. I kept moving.
We were on a slope now, with heat on all sides and the ghostly puffs of ghasts on the periphery of my vision.
“We’re going to have to move faster, Lonnie,” I said, but Lonnie was already picking up the pace.
A mob of ghasts swirled high above, pale against the orange-black sky. They looked like they were conferring, planning their next move against us. Up ahead was a rock formation that looked like a portal—curved up and over in an arch—which might provide cover. I steered Lonnie in that direction, keeping him at my side except for in those narrow passageways through the rock, or over thin paths with lava on either side that forced me to go ahead of him.
We made it to a long, knife-thin ledge. Just before us was the rock formation and a slight refuge.
The ghasts turned as one, and barreled toward us.
We ran. It looked like a straight stretch to the arch, so I went full-out with Lonnie following close. But what looked like a direct path, wasn’t. I saw the edge of the cliff nearly too late, and we skidded to a stop. Well, I skidded to a stop. Lonnie lurched over. Somehow I managed to get my arm out, grabbing his hand as I dropped to the ground. He dangled over some burning rocks as the ghasts did a flyby with a couple of fireballs strafing us for good measure. Luckily, none of them hit us. I pulled Lonnie back to safe-ish ground and we got to our feet. We immediately got to work building a bridge that we could use to cross the chasm.
We moved as I lay the stones across, going as fast as we could with the ghasts coming around for another pass. We weren’t going to make it. Instead of continuing with the bridge, I stopped and moved behind Lonnie, facing the oncoming ghasts, and put up a quick wall between us and them. Then I pulled Lonnie against the wall and waited. I heard the explosion of fireballs against my back. But they didn’t break our shelter. We were okay for the moment. I continued with the bridge and got us both across to the ready-made refuge of the arch. I quickly built some walls around us for more cover. This time when the ghasts came around again, there was no target to hit.
I waited awhile until I was sure they had moved off, and then I broke down the walls and looked out.
“Welcome to the Nether,” I said.
I checked my inventory for what supplies I did manage to bring in with me. I had my armor, which would be some protection. I put it on Lonnie. If I got hurt, I wasn’t sure that Esme or Anton could do anything to help us out. All of this should have been thought out before you even got here, I scolded myself.
We needed a base. I moved us into a nest of rocky protrusions, and past lava pouring down the side of a cliff like the most unpleasant waterfall you could imagine. I started to dig into the rocks, looking for a way to carve out a home base that would withstand anything the Nether had to offer.
I discovered a small cave of intertwined passageways, and went with Lonnie inside. We had to duck to move through, and I had enough torches to keep the path lit ahead of us, but it wasn’t ideal. I mined upward, and the space opened up, exposing us to the same three ghasts that had come for us minutes before. I pushed Lonnie down a different path as the ghasts came lower. One of their tentacles waved inside the hole, but it was too small for them to get any closer.
“We need a plan,” I whispered.
“Bianca making a plan. That will be a first,” someone said from the darkness.
I spun around and set a torch near where I’d heard the voice. It was Anton.
“How did we guess that you would try to sneak off and come into the Nether on your own,” he said. He was wearing glowing blue armor that shone purplish or greenish depending on which way he turned.
“I was going to come back for you two after I’d made the portal, but we fell through and then the portal went out. It was all an accident, I swear! I wasn’t going to leave you two behind.”
Anton paused, considering me for a moment, before he nodded. “It’s okay, I believe you.”
“Thanks.” I smiled at him, and then asked, “Where did you get that wicked-looking armor?”
“You mean this enchanted diamond armor with Fire Protection?” he said smugly. “I’m a master enchanter.”
“What?” I asked. “When did you even have time to get supplies, let alone do some serious enchanting?”
“I’m pretty awesome when people just give me a little time to work my magic,” he said smugly. Then he paused and frowned at me. “Did you seriously come in here with nothing?”
“I told you I didn’t plan it this way,” I said.
“No, you never do,” Anton said.
I felt heat rising in my chest that was some combination of embarrassment and disappointment in my inability to think things through. “I’m sure I can craft some iron armor,” I said.
“And put some enchantments on it,” he added.
“Well, no,” I said. “Those got left behind too.”
“How?” he asked.
“In the shulker box.”
Anton shook his head.
“And I only have enough supplies for one suit of armor,” I added.
Anton laughed in disbelief. “Okay, well,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Maybe today is your lucky day.”
He had an inventory of enough supplies that both Lonnie and I could get enchantments and protections placed on our armor. Anton even dropped a projectile enchantment that I could use on mine.
“Thanks for helping me,” I said, feeling like a first-class idiot.
“What about him?” Anton asked.
“He’s responding to me more now,” I said. “It’s definitely him. And he’s nothing like your friend Andrea.”
“Except he doesn’t talk,” Anton said.
“Well, yeah, right,” I said. “But he communicates.”
“By grunting?”
“There are a lot of nonverbal ways of communicating,” I said.
Anton frowned.
“You understand everything that’s going on, don’t you?” I asked Lonnie. But he was staring off ahead into a section of cave wall, and didn’t respond.
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” Anton said, slapping Lonnie on the shoulder. “Nonverbal.”
I didn’t have time to argue, and I wasn’t sure why Lonnie had suddenly gone comatose again. What mattered was getting the supplies we needed to get to the End.
“Look, I know Esme and I have been giving you a hard time about everything, but trust me, you really deserve it sometimes,” he said as I finished up with the armor.
“I know,” I mumbled. “Why’d you come find us here? You can exit anytime you want.”
Anton shrugged. “We said we’d stick together, remember?” he said. “We’re back to the original plan: get through this part of the game and get the stuff we need to get to the End.”
“I’m hoping you managed to make more than this armor?”
Anton smiled. He put his hands on his waist in what can only be called a Wonder Woman pose.
“So what you’re saying is, you have a ton more stuff,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows twice. “Yep. And it’s all in a shulker box that Esme brought with her.”
“Where is she now?”
“Fighting. Like usual,” he said.
“And you’re…” I prodded.
“I was providing a distraction. This is not me hiding or anything. I am executing a well-timed plan that she—” Anton dove past me and ran, shouting, “Argh! I forgot!”
Lonnie and I followed closely in Anton’s steps as he moved through the maze with a speed that told me he’d probably created it himself. We barely managed to keep up.
“Fun, right?” I said to Lonnie.
He looked at me, and then ahead at Anton again, keeping up better than I was. How could Anton not see that he was different now, better?
Anton made a sharp right that nearly doubled back in the other direction, but as soon as Lonnie and I made it around the bend, he screamed and turned back. Anton practically trampled us trying to get past. Behind him was a mob of zombie pigmen. They weren’t quick, but they were close.
“This way!” Anton shouted. He made another zigzag turn into an even lower passageway. We were pretty much crawling at this point. But this time none of us lit any torches, so we were feeling our way through in the dark. I listened for the gentle scraping of Anton’s body against the sides of the rock, and for Lonnie following behind me.
Rock scratched against my body and snagged my skin as we continued to move through. I resisted the urge to cry out. My leg was still in pain from the lava burn, and I still hadn’t recovered all my energy from the witch attacks on the island. Moving was uncomfortable to say the least, and extremely painful to say the most. Craning my neck back to make sure that Lonnie was following along wasn’t exactly helpful either.
At some point Anton stopped, and I bumped into his armor, which also hurt.
“Shhh!” he hissed.
“What?” I asked.
“Hear that?” he said.
I caught a glint of light from his armor, and saw that he was pointing up. I looked where he was gesturing even though there was nothing to look at, just rock above us. Then I heard what he was talking about. There were feet moving on the rocks over our heads. And they were moving hard and fast enough to send out little puffs of smoky dirt whenever they stomped the ground.
“Zombie pigmen?” I whispered.
Anton nodded.
The footsteps halted, and sounded like they were milling around, probably looking to find us.
“Are they always that organized?” I whispered.
“They are now,” Anton said. After a few moments, he whispered, “They’re moving off.”
“Shuffling, more like.”
“Whatever. Let’s go. Esme is going to be pissed.”
“When is she not pissed?” I asked.
“Correction,” he said. “Esme is going to be more pissed than usual, which means we’re in a lot of trouble.”
“Not me,” I said. “I just got here.”
“Bianca, when are you not in trouble with Esme?” Anton asked.
I didn’t have a response to that, and Anton wasn’t waiting for one. He led us out where I was happy to not be breaking my back, neck, and legs from constant crouching, and down to a narrow bridge. On the other side of it, Esme was battling huge magma cubes. Several of them were springing up around her, hopping and attacking, with a horde of zombie pigmen around them. Esme was surrounded. But she was well-equipped, wearing diamond armor like Anton’s and attacking them with a diamond sword.
She chopped one magma cube in two, then turned the other way and pierced straight through a zombie pigman all in one stroke.
“The passageways come up on the other side of where she’s standing,” Anton explained. “If it had worked, we would have been able to take them from both sides.”
Instead, Esme looked like she was struggling. She grimaced with every swing of her sword. I ran ahead across the bridge, leaving Lonnie with Anton, and slid into the fray, positioning myself on the other side of Esme so we could take on the magma cubes from two sides. She hacked at a large one and it broke into two smaller pieces that moved off in opposite directions. Esme left me to the smaller ones while she took on another large magma cube.
With my enemies dispatched, I collected the magma cream, and turned toward a zombie pigman.
Esme moved toward me and spun around so we were back-to-back. By then, Anton had come up to supply reinforcements.
“What happened?” Esme shouted at him.
“Best-laid plans,” he said with a shrug. That seemed to be enough for Esme, who ran at a magma cube and jumped over it, slashing at the same time. It split into four smaller pieces instantly as she landed on the other side of it, breathing heavily, with her diamond armor glinting.
Anton came up after her, cutting each of the four cubes down and taking the cream into his inventory.
They were a well-oiled machine.
In moments, all the zombie pigmen had shuffled off, and the magma cubes had bounded away. Maybe they decided they needed less dangerous prey. Esme and Anton high-fived and laughed. For a moment, I forgot why we were there. I was just thrilled to have gotten past this hurdle. But then I spotted Lonnie stuck between some blocks that Anton had probably used to trap him so he couldn’t get away, and I went to free him.
“He’s not like he was,” I said. “It’s really him. He’s in there. He can help us.”
“He’s slowing us down,” Esme said. “You should have left him in the Overworld.”
“That wasn’t an option,” I said. “He fell through.”
“There is always an option,” said Esme. She shook her head. “You just won’t listen. You’re too stubborn.”
“And who exactly do you listen to?” I asked.
Esme walked away in a huff, and the rest of us fell in line behind her.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“We made a base. It’s not far from here,” Anton said in a low voice.
I shuffled behind, sticking close to Lonnie and putting a little distance between us and the others.
“Look who’s excited to share our supplies again,” Esme said snarkily over her shoulder.
“Don’t mind Esme,” Anton said. “When you took off the last time, she actually was worried about you. Thought the scarred enderman might have gotten you.”
“She saw the scar too?” I asked. Until now, I thought maybe I had imagined it. The image of the jagged line across the enderman’s face resurfaced like a terrible nightmare.
“Yeah, we all did,” Anton said. “Why, do you know something about it?”
“No, nothing, I thought it was just weird-looking too, that’s all,” I deflected. I wasn’t ready to talk about the resemblance to the guy in the other car. It would bring up questions, ones I wasn’t ready to answer. I put up all the mental barriers that I could around those memories.
Lonnie and I moved faster toward Esme, leaving Anton to catch up behind us.