Apologies for taking awhile. I hit severe writer's block. I'm not very happy with this chapter (I just couldn't get it right).

Chapter 11: New World

Ayol slept fitfully for days in the desert house. Strange thoughts and nightmares intruded, and she fought them as best as she could.

After the fourth day, she woke, screaming.

And somehow, while she was sleeping, the room had become bigger. There was an area for the Enchanting Table, quite a few new chests that looked gutted, and little projects and crafting spots everywhere. There was also a large iron object in the corner.

Ayol got out of bed and winced. A lot of her wounds were bandaged as well as the gap where her finger was missing. She stood up and walked towards a chest and opened it. Inside were some strange conical orange… fruit?

Suddenly ravenous, she grabbed one and bit into it. What a really strange flavor. She spat it out.

An aroma wafted to her, that of a pumpkin. For some reason, pumpkin smelled delicious, and it was coming from… Some sort of dessert? She grabbed it and ate the entire thing.

Where was her boy? She looked around; oddly enough, she didn't see him. Where was he, and what was he doing with all of these items everywhere? Come to think of it, where was the door?

There was a noise of pistons retracting, and a thin portion of the wall opened up. He ran quickly through and dove just as a glass bottle sailed over his head. It broke on a wooden block and melted it into nothing as the wall closed again.

She was instantly alert. "Huh? You! What was that? What's going on?"

His head shot up. "Ayol! Awake! Good. Good! Uh… well, the short answer is that everything is kind of… screwed up."

She looked at where the wooden block used to be. "I'll say."

He pointed over his shoulder. "Witches."

"What."

"Witches. You know, pointy hats, warts on their nose… and throws potions of doom."

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. "There are no such thing."

He point left, then right. "But… but… potion!" he spluttered.

She shook her head. "No such things as potions, either."

He pointed at where the block had melted. "Potion! You saw it!"

She nodded, weirded out by the apparent new enemy. "Okay, then. What else?"

He sighed. "There's… blazes. Tons of blazes. Don't know where they all came from. Armored zombies with weapons sometimes. A spare skeleton or two… and some weird ticking green cubes."

She blinked. "Slimes?"

He shrugged. "Whatever they're called. They're everywhere."

She thought about it. "I've only found those near the bedrock, way underground."

"Well, as I said, everything is screwed up."

"I'll say. So what have you been doing?"

"I've been fighting to feed and defend us. Do you know just how many monsters are out there? The zombies and skeletons have each found a way around being burned in the sun."

Her eyes widened. "What? How?"

"The zombies wear hats. The skeletons have all become big and blackened."

She held up a hand. "The zombies… wear hats?"

He nodded in confirmation. "They don't burn when they wear hats. Weird physics stuff again."

Ayol sighed and pointed at the little projects. "And what about these?"

He smiled, causing her to smile as well. "As I've said, I've been fighting to defend us. I have everything in the immediate vicinity trapped so that any thing that gets close will just die… or at least be so injured so that it has to retreat."

She paused. "But blazes are airborne and shoot fireballs."

He held up his arms. "Well, I admit that it's not perfect and that I need to adjust things for redstone tweaks and other problems. I've noticed, though, that they have a hard time blowing up brick. It's practically trench warfare the instant you step out of this house."

She picked up the orange fruit. "And the new fruit?"

He laughed tiredly and sat down on the bed. "That's a vegetable. It's a carrot. I've been growing them since I've first found them."

She then pointed at the large iron object. "And what the Nether is that? It looks wasteful."

He started taking his armor off. "It sort of is, but it's very useful. It's an anvil, and magic, at least as far as I could figure from your book, has changed enough that I can enchant books and use the anvil to fold the magic into weapons and tools."

She blinked. "What? No way. That could make something ridiculously powerful. This world has never been that nice before."

"It's never been this mean before either."

Ayol took that in. "Well…"

He stared. "Well what?"

She grinned. "You know what we should do?"

He hesitated, scared of what the answer might be. He had been using his cleverness with redstone for three days in order to just barely survive. If Ayol decided she wanted to go out and kill things, one or both of them might die. "What?"

"We should find out what changed. I mean, come on, sudden earthquake, tons of monsters in daylight, and rules changing? Do you really think this is one big coincidence?"

He shook his head. "No, but I'm not sure I want to go after the source of so many monsters. It sounds suicidal. We can hole up in here forever, so why should we go out of our way?"

She crossed her arms. "You know, I was beginning to think that you were getting more adventurous. I'm certainly not going to stay in here forever, and you are going with me, whether you like it or not."

He gave her a skeptical look. "Oh really? There are no cows out here, Ayol. All of our food comes from plants, so you can't ask me to get meat. And because of that, you have no way of convincing me to go with you."

Her smile grew wider, unnerving him. "Silly boy. I've been living with you for how long, now? I know all your weaknesses. I know what you like and what you don't like, and I can make you do anything I want you to with hardly any effort at all."

"Go ahead, I dare you."

She got up and moved closer, using slow, sure steps. The fact that she moved so slowly made him suddenly apprehensive. "What are you… doing?" She ignored him and continued to walk closer, stepping over a gutted chest and smiling even wider.

He retreated, but backed into the corner where the bed met the wall. "Ayol, stop!" She continued walking until she was only a couple inches from him. She paused for a few seconds, which freaked him out even more.

She quickly leaned forwards, grabbed her arms, and brought her face close to his. "Really, silly boy? Do I really scare you that much?"

He didn't quite know how to answer. An answer of 'yes' may give Ayol the wrong impression. An answer of 'no' would make her go out of her way to scare him. Of that, he was sure. "You… make me confused. And nervous."

She laughed. "I would say the same of one of your little devices." She looked thoughtful and stepped away from him. "Still, I can work with that. I'm sorry, but you're not that hard to bully."

He sighed. "I guess."

She pulled out a map of the desert area. "Map_3. Let's see… Which direction would you say the blazes are coming from?"

"The South, definitely."

She traced her finger down the paper. "I never went that far. The desert just keeps going. Maybe the blazes did something down there. Something magical."

He frowned. "Or something powerful."

Ayol raised an eyebrow. "What's the difference?"

He shrugged. "The difference between enchanting and redstone."

"You think all of this was done by redstone?"

"No, that's crazy."

The room in the sand was proving far too difficult to attack.

Makateon, son of the blaze prophet Yamataq and personal servant and general of the great creator of blazes, growled in frustration. The witches, said to be under command of the Father, were proving to be quite worthless allies. Their potions were quite costly to create, their tactics were cowardly and not befitting of daughters of the Father, their throwing range was negligible, and if they got even a paper cut, they would waste five minutes drinking a potion of healing.

And not one of their potions of acid could melt brick!

Why does our creator want to kill these humans so bad? It made no sense. Their resources could be better spent fighting the New Skeleton Empire and Great Zombie Hoard that had risen to the Northeast and North, respectively. Both groups fought each other because zombies were stupid and skeletons were territorial. Both groups fought the blazes for the same reasons. Makateon was tempted to burn down the zombies' jungle and the skeletons' new great city simply to get rid of the nuisances.

But instead, their holy creator had insisted on scrubbing out two humans who would likely have been content to leave them alone. It just wasn't worth it.

Not that he would try to convince the creator otherwise. He had already learned that it was not in his best interest to disagree with her. But perhaps if he subtly lead her to believe that—

No. Screw subtle. Subtle was something those conniving silverfish did. He was the general of the Holy Blaze Theocracy. It was hard to think the creator may be wrong, but if he had problems with her orders, he was not going to be subtle about it.

The creator of blazes opened an eye behind him. My child, the male human is coming out. And the female is with him this time. I can smell them…

Ayol cocked an arrow and drew the string of her magic bow back. She carefully tiptoed through the piston doorway and glanced around quickly. A bunch of people with large, warted noses wearing pointy hats were sitting around about fifty feet away, sipping pink potions. She supposed they were the witches. Blazes flew in circles behind them.

Between the enemies and her desert house was a maze of brick, red blocks, dispensers, pistons, and tripwires.

She didn't see the greenhouse her boy spoke of making. That was a good thing. If she couldn't easily spot it, the monsters couldn't, either.

She stepped back into the house and took a moment to think before saying something that he already knew. "We're not going to be able to get out through the front door."

"I know. So what do you suggest?"

She set her bow down and began packing food. "We go through the side."

"What?"

"We dig down to the sandstone level and out for about one hundred blocks or so, and then we dig up and out."

He frowned. "Isn't the sand a problem?"

She smiled. "Not when you're under the sandstone."

"Why does it even work that way?"

"Whoever made this world made it that way."

He blinked. "But who…?"

"I don't know who created this world. Take it up with her, if she even exists."

"Her?"

She shrugged. "Or him. Or it. Does it really matter? Whoever made this place was clearly deranged. What kind of person makes a world that floods with monsters every night?"

They tunneled through the sandstone for hours after that. Ayol stopped him when he pulled out his last pickaxe. "This should be far enough."

She dug upwards, letting the sand fall down, and then used her shovel to make stairs upwards. For all the trouble he had had with sand before, he realized that she was very good at shaping the desert how she wanted it. It was probably all the practice she had gotten from building the desert home.

She poked her head out. "Clear."

He climbed up after her and pointed at the sun. "We'll be able to go a little ways until it's dark again."

A deep growling sound came from behind them. He turned around, stumbled backwards, and yelped. "Or not…"

Ayol made a sound close to "meep," while stumbling back as well.

Before them sat a giant tiger, almost as long as Ayol's tree was tall. She grinned, showing many sharp teeth. A blaze with an elaborate helmet floated near her shoulder.

Ayol slowly pulled an arrow out while he pulled out a sword.

The tigress tilted her head, then made a couple of short, snuffling sounds. He realized that the giant creature was laughing at them. "Ayol…?"

Ayol did not respond. She seemed to shrink under the creature's immense size.

He glanced at his sword, then put it away. It wouldn't do much good in this situation. He pulled out a redstone torch instead. It wouldn't take much time to set something up now that he'd had a few days' practice.

Ayol continued to stare at it for a good three seconds until it pounced.

Makateon cheered, glad that the hunt was at last over. Except…

There was no death-smog, the substance that he had seen all monsters give off when they melted. Perhaps humans did not melt? It didn't seem very satisfying after the creator had tracked them all the way out here.

The creator growled. Get over here, general. They've gone down.

He hurried at her impatience. There was a single hole downwards where the humans must have dug to escape. He hesitated. Why couldn't she just use her eternal fire? Did she just want to see their faces as she snuffed them out? At a glare from her, he lowered himself down.

A thought occurred to him: if he could do this, then he could get the Blazes to move on to other, more important things.

He grinned. "BLAZE! BLAZE! BLA-"

What in the Nether? What's this stone thing? Why is there a hole in it? Why is it clicking? What's all this flashing red stuff shooting upwards?

Makateon didn't have much time to question at all. He was dead—and more than dead—in the next instant.

A titanic explosion rocked the space that the two had been in just seconds before. Dazed, he leaned up against the wall, looking up at the brick and down at the water that had saved them from his own weapon.

Ayol looked worse for wear, and had a face like she wanted to either hit him, thank him, or both.

The tiger had leapt just slow enough for him to grab Ayol and dig straight down. But that wouldn't have taken care of the problem, so he quickly rigged a dispenser with enough TNT to have destroyed a large portion of the fortress in the Nether.

He flicked his ears. "Testing, testing." How odd. He should be deafened by the explosion, but his ears worked fine.

Ayol pointed upwards. "Boom." It seemed like a pretty intelligible thing to say for what had happened.

He nodded. "You had a lot of gunpowder and I was bored."

She suddenly grinned dazedly and hugged him. "That… was… awesome! Let's do that again!"

He shuddered to imagine what circumstances would ever require that much TNT ever again. The only reason he used it in the first place was because of the huge tiger. They were doomed if there was any more of those. "Of course, it's probably left a huge crater and alerted every monster in the area to our position."

She laughed maniacally. "When you were doing crazy things with arrows I was surprised, but didn't really pay attention. I think that's why I missed out that you were completely badass."

He burst out laughing. "I… I am not! I almost killed us with that!"

"That's practically the definition!"

The creator of spiders roared, ramming herself against the bedrock again and again. She gasped and shuddered as she felt the life of her dear sister fade and vanish.

Her children were above, her sisters were above, and all that was in here was emptiness and dust!

She rammed herself once more against the bedrock in futility. Nothing could break this cage that she had been sealed in. Even at its weakest point, bedrock could not be destroyed.

She roared again in dismay. So soon from the awakening one of her sisters had already fallen!

She placed a claw against the bedrock and vibrated a message through the ground for her children. Perhaps they would know the way out. Even if they didn't, they would still be pleased to hear from their mother.