Bartimaeus here, apologizing for the unfortunate lack of footnotes (It seems this site doesn't support them for some reason). I've been told that this tale might be necessary for, well, reasons my most recent master wouldn't say. In fact, all she (yes, yes, it's actually a girl this time and the full tale will be told) did say was that I can probably piece together everything by myself, and that she's using this site to fob off a true tale as fiction. Which makes sense.

Yes, yes, I'm getting to it, cool your jets Author (that's what I'm allowed to call her, surprise surprise).

Er. Where would I start? The summons?

The summoner was maybe fourteen, with a slightly lazy smile on her face. Average height, blueish eyes, brown hair, freckles, boyish face, humming and tapping a pencil against her leg. American, too.

You know the type, the pretty nerd (I happen to know that they're possibly the most dangerous masters).

I used Ptolemy's form, partly out of habit and partly because I might be able to annoy her out of the circle.

The girl wasn't fazed. At all. In fact, the only thing she said was "First order: Stay looking exactly like that for the rest of my commands."

Well, that smashed my plan to go naked and scare her. Pity, that.

I looked down at the pentacle. It was a standard Adelbrand's, but with some extra markings around the outside. I had no idea what they meant, and I was fairly sure I didn't want to find out.

"Come on, do you even know who I am!?" I bellowed in a demony (low, deep, resounding, lots of echoes, and very sinister) voice that, well, one would not expect to hear coming from a guy like Ptolemy.

The girl rolled her eyes. "Hm, let's see. I summoned you out of all the other demons in the world, tailored two pentacles specifically to my mission's needs for the two of us, and am now speaking to you like an ordinary human being, which likely annoys you a bit. Hi, Bartimaeus."

She had my number all right. But the extra lines thing, that confused me. It's standard form to use different pentacles on demons, but you're not supposed to use them on yourself. It'd be a bit like trying out an unbreakable cage on yourself and a prisoner at the same time (that is to say, over the top, weird, and likely to get you in trouble if nobody else was around).

"So what's the story with the lines then?" I asked, dropping the demony voice (I mean, I was actually more curious than anything now).

"You'll figure it out. Second order: What do you know about an afrit by the name of Herobrine?"

Now that was a name I hadn't heard in a while. In fact, I hadn't even run into him (in both the Other Place and Earth) for a long time running.

"Oh, you do not want to summon him. He's got a nasty temper, a mean streak, unusual deftness with lightning, and a talent for misinterpreting orders." I responded. All of this was true, quite obviously.

"I hadn't planned on it. Third order: Tell me what you know about Minecraft."

Now that was a tough one, and more importantly really weird. This girl obviously knew what Minecraft was, there was a foam "iron sword" from the game on her bookshelf (which, interestingly enough, held the first volume of yours truly's adventures).

But orders were orders.

"Um, Minecraft. Sandbox video game originally developed for the computer. Creator goes by Notch. Default player avatar name is Steve with a question mark at the end. Basic unit of the game is the block, which would be a 3 foot by 3 foot cube in real life." I took a deep breath to continue, but the girl cut me off.

"Okay, and the legends surrounding the game?"

I responded without thinking. "Well, there's this one story about a guy named Herobrine that stalks the player and- oh. Ohhhh. No way. Nope. Sorry. Find another demon. I am not doing anything to do with him. Pick another guy, ever heard of Farqarl? Yeah, pick him."

The girl smiled slightly. "I take it the dots are sufficiently connected? Fourth order: Tell me what you think the plan is."

Oddly nice of her to give me that chance.

"Well, Herobrine must have got trapped in Minecraft somehow, I'm guessing Indefinite Confinement, and you want to stop him in the game, bring him out, and then send him back to the Other Place. You invented a brand new type of pentacle to do so, and are going into the game with nothing but a pencil, notebook, and me. All of which begs the question: are you mentally insane!?"

"Possibly. I'm also an author."

"An author by the name of...?" Hey, it was worth a try. If I could get this girl's name, maybe I could refuse these crazy orders and do something more minor for her. Like, say, get her a new video game. I wasn't picky, I just didn't want to do this.

She grinned. "Yeah, not happening. Just call me Author."

Well, that shot my chances.

Author cocked her head to the side and smiled warmly. "Ready to go?"

"Nope. Not now and not ever and...I don't have a choice, do I?"

Freaking magicians and their pentacles. This was possibly the most insane thing I'd ever done in my life (and remember, I worked with Nathaniel, Ptolemy, and Solomon).

"No. Fifth order: Take us into Minecraft."

Thing about Minecraft? It's actually quite gorgeous if you're going to pay attention to the scenery, especially if you've been actually sucked into the game. Normally everything would appear as blocks, but to undo that Indefinite Confinement spell, we were basically in the idea of Minecraft instead. So no blocks or anything of that kind. Honestly, it reminded me of the Other Place in a majorly more ordered way. It even felt pretty nice - I couldn't really feel the summoning pain. It was still there, mind you, but I could barely feel it.

Herobrine had got lucky, if you asked me. Compared to that dreadful tiny tin of rosemary Nathaniel would've put me in, our target was rolling in it.

I tapped Author on the shoulder. "Not going to bother with the usual 'here's how you're not allowed to hurt me' commands, then?"

She shrugged. "I have other defenses. Namely, the fact that only I know how to get us out of here."

I grumbled under my breath. For those of you wondering what I grumbled, the answer is "something profane".

She grinned at me. "Now start punching trees." With a wave of her hand, she turned and unleashed a few fierce karate moves on a tree trunk, causing a chunk of it to pop out and form as a tiny block in her hand. She threw the chunk into the air, where it hovered weirdly, and I sat down to watch as she grabbed four planks from the block, then pulled a table-type object away from them and set it down.

"Well, what are you looking at? Please get back to work, Barty." I winced at the added jab to my name, then turned to my tree, grew a few tentacles, slashed it to pieces, and dusted off my hands.

"What work? That was the entire tree. Look, I'll do yours too-" SHKUNK "-See? Done. Let's start crafting."

She rolled her eyes, turned the tree trunks into wood planks, turned some of the planks into sticks, then held up a brand-new axe and got to work on another tree. I turned back to my side of the forest and began slashing trees.

I was really getting into the whole forest-killing rhythm when Author tapped me on the shoulder with a stick.

"Hey Forrest Stump, time to start building a house pronto. It's getting dark."

I ignored the new nickname and tried the whole wood-block-into-wood-planks thing, and it worked pretty well. In no time at all, I had enough wood to build a mansion. I mentioned this to my new master, but she shook her head impatiently.

"No mansions; monsters will spawn inside it and then I'm dead and you're, as I mentioned before, stuck in Minecraft forever.. Something simple and fairly small will do. Five by five wood room."

I obliged and made the room, then blinked as she carved something out of the wall.

"Wait a second, stop, what are you doing? It was perfect as i- oh, a door. Right."

She pointed up to the sky. "We need a roof too, bud. Get to it."

I grumbled and fixed the roof. "Does that suit her highness - OKAY, WHAT WAS THAT!?"

There was a moaning noise and I turned to find several grey rotting things banging on the door of our house. "Author. Author. There are zombies outside."

"Of course there are." She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Grab a sword, buddy. If they get in, we've gotta kill them." She tossed me what was essentially a glorified wooden stake, and I sighed back.

"We'll be lucky if we even make it to daybreak."

The door broke and I began hacking apart zombies like there was no tomorrow, frantically protecting - yes, protecting - Author.

A green thing came up to me and hissed. I can speak Snake (even though I'm rather rusty), and it sounded like it had said "Hi there, I'm sorry, I have to kill you." Funnily enough, that's around when it exploded.

My new master said a word synonymous with "feces" typical but unbecoming for her age. "[Aforementioned word], creepers. Fix the wall and ground, and this time don't leave a door."

I obliged as quickly as I possibly could, smashing away zombies, stray arrows, and hissing creepers like a maniac, then laying down the wall at ultraspeed. It took me a minute at the most.

Did I say Minecraft was pretty and good-looking? Well, I take it back. it was a small margin, but I think I probably would've preferred the tin of rosemary.

Probably.

Morning eventually came, and when it did I was about as ready for it as any demon could ever be. Neither of us had been able to sleep that night, since we were too busy being kept awake by creepers hissing, zombies moaning, and sounds that resembled bones clacking and giant spider mandibles.

"You may exit first," she said with a smile that I really didn't like. I found out why when I left the house - there were still creepers outside, and giant spiders.

"Nope!" I slammed the door. "Let's do something else, please. Anything else."

She held up two pairs of glorified wooden stakes that looked a tiny bit like scythes. "Up for some mining, o Mobslayer?"

"How many ironic nicknames do you have!?"

She shrugged. "Probably a lot. Now come on, we're going mining."

Author tossed the pickaxe (at least, I think that's what it was supposed to be) in her left hand at me, then dug up some dirt from the ground and gestured at the stone underneath.

"Remember, don't dig straight down or straight up. If you hear any noises that sound even faintly like lava, move away from them and proceed with caution in general. Any questions?"

"Yeah, I do have one. Why aren't we going after Herobrine?"

"We are. I want him to come to us."

I gulped for what seemed like the hundredth time. "You realize he's incredibly powerful, right?"

All I got was another shrug. "This is Minecraft, Captain Obvious. There's only so much you can do within the confines of the game. Now dig."

You can probably guess what I did next.