Chapter 11

"Are we about there yet?" Ham complained, holding his torch higher in the air. "I know we've just started, but how far is it? I want to kill something."

"The last thing we need is you to kill anyone," Ruben started, hastily adding, "or anything. We don't know what's going to be out this far. It's much further than our old home, and you know what Oblivion said. Things change the further out you get." He pulled up his clock. "Eight in the morning. Jesus, I never thought I'd ever be up this early."

I tripped and fallen on the ice. The group paused, a few paces ahead. "Tired?" York asked. There was something about the way that he said it that made the burning in my knees cease. I smiled at him.

"Yeah, I guess so." I stood up, but something was caught on my leg. I tugged again, thinking my socks had caught on the ice. It wasn't.

It was the bloody hand of the Legion's leader, Herobrine. He was coming out from under the ice with a smile on his face wide enough to make the Cheshire Cat proud. As he rose, free from his prison, he grabbed onto my other foot. I kicked at him but he refused to release me. His smile only intensified as he held me in place.

"Marshy?"

I turned back to the others. All five of them were suddenly bound by their hands and feet, held in place by five other Herobrines. These Herobrine's were riddles with scars and open wounds. As I watched, the ice below them began to change color. One moment it was white and pure, the next it had turned black and all five of them were dropped down into it, their captors squealing in laughter as they cried out my name over and over. I heard York the most, screaming my name over and over. I was crying and the Herobrines were laughing. I felt Herobrine's warm hands grab my shoulders and squeeze. I cried out this time, tears rushing down my face.

"MARIA!"

The world stopped. Everything was black. Herobrine was gone, the screams had ceased, and my cheeks: they were no longer drenched in tears. I opened my eyes slowly.

I was in the house. The house that we had all built on that snowy wasteland of a biome. There was no Herobrine in sight, there was no one shouting, just York holding me by the shoulders as it appeared he had shaken me awake. He was the only one in the house, the others had to have been outside. The look on his face was worried.

"Marshy, you had a nightmare." He put a hand on my forehead. "Are you alright? Can you hear me?"

"I can hear you." I leaned away from his hand. "Did… you call me Maria?"

"You weren't responding to Marshy," he explained, releasing me and standing up. "I've never had to wake you up before because, well, you don't really fall asleep on your computer. I thought your family would use your real name to get you to come to, so I did the same thing." His shoulders relaxed. "Sorry, I know you hate it, but I was running out of options."

"Right, I don't blame you." I rubbed my face. "How long has everyone been awake?"

"Not that long," he said. "We just started taking the house apart. You didn't show any sign of struggle until everyone else was outside." He looked to his left. "I had a hard time getting up myself, so I'm the only one that noticed you." The wood block to my left vanished and Ham stuck his head through.

"Hey, why ain't you two workin?"

"Just woke up." I stood. "We'll start now." Ham rolled his eyes.

"Sure, ya bunch of slackers." He pulled his head free and started punching away at blocks next to it. Before I turned away to start helping him, I noticed an expression pass over York's face. It was something between concern and regret. He must've been unused to having people see him, because he didn't wipe it away until after I saw it.

The house came down without trouble. Eventually we were back on the road without torches high and our meters low. This time, we were only silent for about five minutes.

"So I know we made that pact back when we were in elementary school," Ham started, "but I think it'd be sorta cool to hear where everyone is from." The pact that we made in elementary school? I remembered that. We were all raised being told that sharing online information was bad, but the six of us had already shared our names. So we promised each other not to share any more info. That included things like facebook or any other real social media. We talked through Skype and Skype alone. No one knew what each other looked like, where they lived, how old they were, or any of the sort. Just names. Scarlet and Ruben exchanged surprised glances. York blinked in surprise. Annabelle raised her hand in the air, waving her torch around.

"Ooo! Ooo! Me first!" She put a hand on her chest and nodded her head. "I'm Annabelle Muller, and I live in Detroit Michigan, USA."

"Pretty sure we all live in the US," Ruben chuckled. Then, raising his torch in the air briefly, he sighed. "I'm Ruben Stende, and I live in Brooklyn, New York." Annabelle applauded him, a wide smile on her face.

"I'm Hamshire Antonio, and I live in Dallas, Texas." He laughed nervously. What? A shy Ham? What in the world was this sorcery?

"Scarlet Rutter," she whispered, "Denver, Colorado." She whipped her hair to the side and started paying attention to her nails. Was that a sign of nervousness as well?

"York McCormick." York ran a hand through his hair. "San Francisco, California."

"W-what?" I asked, looking to him. "You like in San Fran, too?" Ham's sudden nervousness turned to utter amazement.

"Oh my god! You guys both live in the same city and never knew it! What if you were like, best friends in real life or something?" Annabelle laughed.

"That'd be funny, but I think they would've known if they saw each other in person."

"Plus," Scarlet whispered, "San Francisco is a huge city, the chances of finding each other is unbelievably small." The whole while, York was staring at me like he had seen a ghost. I'm sure I looked basically the same.

"What's your last name?" he asked me.

"It's… Yana."

"Yana?"

"Yana," I confirmed. He paused, running the name over in his brain.

"I've… heard it before." Scarlet's eyes widened slightly. Ruben put a hand to his chin in thought. Annabelle and Ham looked to each other, mirroring each other's excitement "But, I can't figure it out. Is your family famous for something?" I paused.

"I don't have a…" York saw the expression on my face and raised a hand.

"Ah, we'll figure it out later." I took a breath outwards at his words. The others hadn't noticed it, but York had. He had opened up a subject that I didn't want to touch with anyone, even my best friends. I didn't have a family.

We walked for a while longer, Annabelle and Ham gushing about each other's houses and cities. Annabelle had just been explaining about her dog Baxter when Ruben came to a stop.

"My meter is going down," he announced. The others came to a halt and checked their own meters.

"You're right." I tapped it with my finger, thinking it had bugged. It ticked two bars down in response. "Wow, it's going down fast."

"It's getting a little much to hold these torches," Annabelle agreed, putting hers away. The other's followed suit. "I'm… getting hot."

"Me, too." Scarlet replied softly, tugging at the rim of her jeans.

"You don't think we got so cold we're hallucinating this heat right, York?" Ruben glanced his way. "York?" The tall Californian was stuck in place without a menu to stare at, eyes wide. Something in those blue depths frightened me. Something that told me something was terribly wrong. Then, with a scream, York jumped in my direction and pushed me to the ground.

"GET OUT OF THE WAY!"

One moment I was flying through the air, York above me, the next he was being grabbed and thrust into the air by a black, crispy hand that rose from the ice where I had been standing. The others, so shocked by the display that that they nearly dropped their weapons as they fumbled for them out of the inventories, took action. Ham was the first, stabbing two amethyst blades into the arm of the hand, drawing dark black blood that splattered on the ice.

Ruben cursed. "You idiot! Get York down first!" Ham looked to him, eyes frantic. Then, without really thinking, the young boy pulled his swords free. The ground quaked as the hand showed wordless signs of stress, shaking York in his fist. I heard York scream, but it wasn't the type of "GET ME DOWN I'M SCARED OF HEIGHTS!" scream. It was a scream that he was in pain. And I could see why. Ham's blades were melting. My heat meter was rising.

This hand was basically a hand that had risen out of hot, fiery hell.

"Scarlet, ice on York, now!" I shouted.

"On it!" she shouted, standing straight and pointing all her fingers up at the hand. A mist of thick snow started streaming from her fingers. The cloud rose until it surrounded him, harmless to the hand. York's screams turned into gasps. If the hand couldn't burn him, it would sure as hell squeeze him.

Annabelle grabbed a stack of dirt and started stacking her way up the arm. Sensing this, the hand swept through the center of the stack when she was about a quarter of the way up. She landed, a little heavy on her feet, but the damage was hardly noticeable. I pulled out a stack of dirt and did the same, but I was much quicker than Annabelle. I could stack and jump in twos at a time. By the time the hand had turned away from Ham and Ruben distracting it, I was already jumping on from my stack and onto the hand. It darted to the left, expecting me to miss the grab and land on my stomach. Instead I grabbed onto it and stabbed a knife into the side of the palm. My heat meter started rising out of control as the black blood started seeping into my clothes and my skin. I felt it burning away at my flesh, the pain almost uncontrollable. There was a part of me that wanted to release and land on the ice to be cooled, but I felt it.

I felt York's hand reach for mine and take a strong hold of it. His eyes met mine. He was calm, completely calm now. I could see blisters and burns blossoming around the places where the hand was keeping him prisoner. Regardless of the mist around us, it was still hot. But even if it was hot and we were burning, did he think we were going to die? Is that why he was calm?

"Quit it," I snapped, squeezing his hand. "We're not going anywhere." He blinked at me as if he had been suddenly woken up. He opened his mouth to say something, but I looked away. Using my burning hands and the knife, I stabbed my way all the way up until I was basically lying on top of York, the fingers separating us. I took that knife and cut off the pinky with little difficulty, watching with satisfaction as it dropped to the ice and vanished in a plume of poorly animated pixel dust. I did the same with the ring finger until the hand started shaking back and forth quickly. I was thrown into the air briefly before York pulled me back. I forgot that he had never let go of me, and even though he could've taken out his own knife and freed him, he was choosing to keep me in place with it. "Th-thank you." He smiled briefly.

"We're going to cut it down!" I heard Ruben call. "Prepare yourselves!"

"Alright, alright!" I called back, cutting off the middle finger. Now the hand only kept York in place by the chest, thumb pressed painfully against his sternum. I slipped the knife under it and tugged upwards. The hand pushed upwards then back down and the knife came right up through both fingers. I didn't stop the pull against it when they had been severed and found the knife flying right up towards my face. I leaned to the right and watched as it soared past me. At the same time, Annabelle cut the remainder of the arm and my sudden lean to the right sent it flying that direction. York and I were falling right towards them. Ham, Ruben, and Annabelle moved out of the way right as Scarlet dropped a truck full of white, fluffy snow in our path. We hit it right after the hand dusted, leaving the snow greyish and mildly warm. After a few seconds, that heat vanished into sweet, sweet cold.

"York! Marshy!" Annabelle ran up to us and cleared away the snow. York was on one side of it, I was on the other, our hands joined. She paused when she unearthed this, surprised. "You… guys?" I sat up slowly, oblivious to her. When I felt York's hand go limp, everything came rushing back. Suddenly I was over him, both hands on his shoulders.

"York." My words didn't reach him. "York. York!" I shook him. "York, you better wake up!"

"Marshy, Marshy." Ruben took ahold of my arm. "Breathe. Look." He gestured to a pixelated sign above York's head. It read in big red letters 'UNCONSCIOUS.' "It'd let us know if he had died. Plus." He pointed at his health bar. Two red hearts left, both pulsing strongly. As I watched, his third heart started filling.

I put a hand on my chest. The swell of tears had been gathering behind my eyes ever since he had been grabbed by that hand, but now it was receding. My heart was visibly beating. It was so loud the others were looking my way like an attack was on its way.

"We have to leave immediately," I told them. "If there's one of those here, there's most likely others." I grabbed York and held him up princess style in my hands. Thank God this game hadn't incorporated weight in it, or else I might've been in trouble. This guy was over six foot, after all. The others watched with raised eyebrows as I turned from them and started back on the path. They did a little jog to keep up. The whole while we crossed the wasteland to the instant we all saw the swamp approaching, none of us talked. And that's alright, because I wouldn't have been able to respond.

York had given himself up for me. I wasn't ok with that. I wasn't ok with this game. And I sure as hell wasn't ok with the fact that he would've died if we had been any slower. As I held him in my arms and listened to his soft breathing, I began to realize that this was serious. People died in this game, died in real life. This wasn't fun and games anymore. Maybe the Legion was granting that wish the six of us had wanted years back: a Minecraft game that was harder than what they had given us. I squeezed my fingers softly.

I didn't have a family. I had the five players by my side right then and there.

And one of them had nearly died for me.

Enemy Analysis: Charred Limb

Frequency Of Spawn: Uncommon/Rare

Level Of Difficulty: 2/10

Biome: Ice Flats

Experience Gained From Kill: One Level.

Drops: Charred Fingers.