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JOURNAL ENTRY: HOPEFUL ESCAPE

Day 3: Crumbling Wall

As we worked on knocking down the wall, Sean suddenly went still and whispered, “Stop. I hear something.”

A head looked through the hole. “What are you doing?” a voice growled.

We were frozen in fear. Before we could respond, three blazes spawned in the center of the room and blew fireballs in our direction.

Molly threw a snowball at one of the blazes, destroying the yellow beast. But I did nothing. I tried to escape the flames, but I couldn’t. I was destroyed. Again.

I respawned in the prison cell and awoke to Sean defeating the final blaze. Can you blame me for fearing fire? It had destroyed me so many times. I sprinted toward the wall and peeked through the hole. “There’s nobody out there.”

“They must have spawned blazes in the cell to punish us,” said Molly. She started collecting the blaze rods. “But these will come in handy.”

Before we could even catch our breaths, a group of magma cubes spawned in the cell and bounced toward us. Sean took out his sword and lunged at the cubes. “You’re right,” he said, “I bet they’re going to keep summoning hostile mobs.”

I used the pickaxe to help battle the bouncy creatures. “How are we going to go on like this? I don’t want to be destroyed twice in one day. This is worse than just being trapped in here. What if they don’t stop?”

“Then we’re in trouble!” shouted Molly as she destroyed a magma cube.

“What are we going to do?” Sean asked, fighting to destroy the smaller cubes as they spread out.

“Watch out!” I called to Sean. He was getting close to the hole in the ground. I didn’t want him to fall in and be destroyed by the lava.

“Thanks!” he replied breathlessly, still battling the fiery mobs.

“This is awful.” Molly was exhausted, battling the remaining cube. “What’s our plan?”

“We’re going to escape,” I said. I wanted to convince myself that this was possible. I had my doubts, but I knew it was the only way we could survive. I also wanted to find Thao. Now that he was Charles’s enemy, he might be a helpful ally.

The battle was intense, but we destroyed the final magma cube. I held on to my pickaxe and began to chip at the wall again.

“We can’t do that!” Molly warned me. “It will draw attention to us and they will just have more hostile mobs spawn here. We need to do something that they can’t hear or see. We have to appear to be model prisoners and when they aren’t looking we can plan an escape.”

Molly was right. Her idea sounded smart, but I didn’t know how we could escape without bringing attention to ourselves.

“What should we do?” I asked her.

“I think we should go back into my room and try digging a hole in the ground. We don’t know that there is a stream of lava running beneath my room too,” she said. With that, she crawled through the hole back into her cell.

We followed Molly and began to dig.

“I don’t see any lava yet, do you?” I asked.

“Nope,” replied Sean.

We dug for awhile, and we still hadn’t hit any lava. Sean crawled through the hole and began to search for a way out.

“I see light!” he called out.

“Should we climb in?” I asked.

“Yes,” Sean replied. “We can dig from below.”

Molly and I climbed into the hole, and together we dug a tunnel to the outside. We emerged by a lava stream. Molly held her bucket in one hand. She had filled it and was ready to throw lava on any enemy.

I took my first steps outside of the prison. Although I disliked the Nether, I was so happy to be free.

“I can’t believe we did it. We escaped!” Molly was filled with glee.

“I know. The plan worked.” The minute those words fell from my lips, a group of ghasts flew through the sky, aiming their fireballs at us.

“What are we going to do?” Sean asked nervously.

“Does anyone have a bow and arrow?” I asked them.

“No,” Molly and Sean responded together.

“We can hit the fireballs with our fists and send them back to the ghasts,” I said. We were running low on resources and we had no weapons to fight back with. We were going to have to make do.

Molly took out the potion of invisibility and splashed us. “This might be easier.”

“That sounds like an even better plan,” I said.

Although we couldn’t see each other, we tried to stick together as we sprinted away from the ghasts.

“I see a Nether fortress,” Molly called out to us.

“Me too!”

We ran toward the fortress. Once we were inside, the potion wore off and we were visible again.

“Let’s hunt for treasure,” Sean said.

We should have been crafting a portal back to the Overworld, but when Sean suggested that we search for treasure, we all agreed with him. It was too tempting to resist in a Nether fortress.

We entered the room where the treasure was stored and began to unearth the chests. Sean opened the first chest.

“Diamonds!” he called out.

“What a find!” Molly doled out the diamonds to each of us and we placed them in our inventories.

I opened the second chest. “It’s filled with enchanted books.”

We quickly added the enchanted books to our inventories too. Then Molly searched the fortress for other resources. She found Nether wart, which she gathered up carefully. “This will help me brew potions.”

I looked over at her. “Where’s your bucket?”

Molly checked her inventory. “I must have dropped it by the lava stream.”

“Should we go back and get it?” I asked.

Sean and Molly paused and I could see that they weren’t sure if that was a good idea. Sean replied, “I think we should craft a portal to the Overworld. Forget the bucket.”

We all agreed that was a good plan. We left the Nether fortress and began to craft a portal. As we finished building it, an arrow struck me. I looked up in surprise. A voice called out, “Where do you think you’re going?”