Around the corner he could see a faint purple glow. Light. The first light he had seen in what felt like days.

The chute had dropped him far below the city, and he had fallen for so long that he thought the pool he had landed in was at the bottom of the world. Daggeff had been waiting for Shul and him, and once they climbed out of the five block deep water hole, the king began leading them down a dark tunnel.

Parner could barely see the king's back in front of him, but it was enough and he followed Daggeff through what he quickly realized was a tight spiral. Every few blocks the walls would turn in and around, and he felt like they were walking in circles, but the eccentricity of the walls continually shrunk so he knew that they were not. After a day or so of marching through the dark, curving tunnel, it began to curve upwards as well as around, and Parner had guessed that wherever Daggeff was leading them was somewhere on the surface of the city. He had been wrong, and as soon as he could hear the sounds of players above him the spiral turned down again and lead them back to the bottom of the world.

Thinking back to it, there had been four voices he had heard before turning back down. Three of the voices had been definite male voices, and one had been higher, possibly a young boy or a girl. Though they had only been whispers, one of the male voices had reminded him of someone he knew. He knew it was unlikely, as there were thousands of players in the city, but it had sounded like Morned. He couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of the sheep farmer searching all over Lazuline for him, possibly worried that he had gotten lost, or worse, but in reality he was with the king on some secret special mission.

Once back on the bottom of the world, they walked for another two days. They finally stopped when they turned around a corner to find the faint glow of a nether portal. Two soldiers were standing on each of the obsidian structure's sides, both wearing all blue armor. But instead of carrying pure blue shields, only the bottom half was blue whilst the upper half was red. "This is why we've been walking in silence for three or whatever days? A stupid nether portal?" said Parner.

"It's not a 'stupid nether portal, Parner. It's the king's nether portal, obviously. And the king has brought us here for a reason, haven't you, Your Highness?" said Shul, his nasally voice sucking the life out of Parner. If he had to hear Shul talk through whatever this mission was, he hoped they would go back to silence.

"Well, obviously. We followed him down an endless hole, then through an endless spiralling tunnel. Of course there is a reason behind it, ya dingus," said Parner. In the short time he had known Shul, he had quickly learned that the king's advisor was more of a suck up than Kivlore had been. Poor Kivlore.

"What I mean is, this portal is probably very important. Is the book on the other side of this portal, Your Highness? Or is there perhaps something else waiting on the other side?"

"The nether is on the other side of it, Shul," said King Daggeff, and Parner had to stifle a "ha". "But I guess the book is too, in a manner of speaking. Caulrin's book is hidden somewhere in the nether, somewhere very deep. From this portal, or rather it's sister in the other dimension, it should be located to the north. Well, what we'll call north. It's difficult to give you a decent direction due to the nature of the nether, since you won't be able to rely on compasses," the king said and tossed a book at Shul's feet.

"Directions," Shul said, reading the title of the book. "These are the directions to the book? 'Leave the portal and head straight until you discover the Blue Flame village. In the village, turn towards the netherrack structure shaped like a wolf and continue until you come to an upside down 'V' in a wall.' Are you sure we can use this to find it?"

"No, I'm not sure of anything," said the king. "The directions in that book can be incredibly vague, despite telling you exactly what to do." Parner scratched his head, not understanding how something can be exact and vague. "The first thing it tells you to do is find the village, sounds easy enough. But the Blue Flame are meant to be a secret, remember? It's true that it's illegal to enter the nether-side boundaries of Lazuline, but illegality does not stop everyone. For that reason the village is hidden, and is barely a village at all. It's more like several netherrack hills on a netherrack plain, easy to hide from players passing through. That's all I can really do to describe it. It's the nether, everything looks the same in there."

"So we're supposed to be on the lookout for something that looks exactly like everything else. Gee, that sounds swell," said Parner, rolling his eyes behind his monitor.

"Look, this is all I can do. But I need that book. Sedweest needs that book. If Holkross comes back from the dead, he's going to raise the nether in the overworld, if you get my meaning. You two are the last hope of Sedweest," said the king.

"Last hope of Sedweest? Right. So, when we find this book, should I just chuck it in lava? I mean, lava will probably be pretty hard to find in there, but I'm sure I can manage," said Parner.

"No! You must bring the book back to me. It belongs to me, to Sedweest. If the book is destroyed then, well..."

"Well what? You yourself said that it was dangerous. Something about mortality being the foundation of the world. We can't have people running around and dying, knowing that they can be brought back to life without any consequences," said Parner. He didn't really want to destroy the book anyway. If anything, it would make a nice gift to give the countess.

"That's true, it would be terrible if the public learned how to do the ritual. But for… certain people it could be put to good use. People like counts and lords and… kings," said the king.

"Oh, so people like you then?"

"Parner! You shouldn't go and make accusations like that! This is King Daggeff you're speaking too, not your lowly countess!" Shul said and Parner growled at him. Carsi was not lowly.

"Well he has a point, Shul. I do want the book for myself. No point in hiding that. I'm the king. I am the master and chief of Sedweest," said King Daggeff, backing up from the portal. "People know my name, and they respect it. They do what I ask them, because they know it's for the greater good. With this war coming, which is inevitable I fear, I will more than likely die. I have this armor, and it is very good armor, but my fighting skills will not make up for it. I'm not the best at video games.

"So if, and when, I am killed, the realm will go into chaos. Most likely the counties will break apart, and not only will we have Holkross' army to deal with, but civil war between the counts. But, if I am returned to life, well, I can quell all of that, and our people can stand together under my name, and maybe stand a chance against Holkross."

Parner thought about that for a moment. When he had first stepped into King Daggeff's throne room, he had thought the player was just some lucky guy that had somehow tricked everyone into listening to him. But he was right, people did respect him. Carsi respected him, and whenever she would return from councils in Lazuline, she would talk about how brilliant he was, or how generous he was, and go on and on about how good of a leader he was. Parner could not see that for himself, and for all he knew it could be all false. But people believed it. And if their belief in him could unite them under a banner, then maybe it was better if he was alive.

"Right, then I guess I'll bring the book back to you. If we end up finding it, that is."

"It really is an honor that you chose us, Your Majesty," nosed Shul.

"I know you will do me well, Shul," said King Daggeff before looking to Parner. "I don't know you as well Captain Parner, but if Countess Carsi chose you to lead her soldiers, then I have faith in you. Just don't make me regret choosing you."

"I'll try not to, I guess," said Parner and King Daggeff took his leave, vanishing behind the curving wall. "Okay then, you first mate," he said once the king was out of earshot.

"But of course," Shul said as he stepped into the swirling purple magic that filled the obsidian frame. "As the leader of this mission it is my duty to take the first steps," he said just before popping out of existence in the overworld dimension.

"Wait, what?" Parner ran into the portal and stood in the swirls. His screen became a nauseating mess of purple shades mixed with the dark black of the tunnel. After a quick loading screen the black was replaced with the burgundy red of the nether. Shul was standing just on the other side. "What do you mean 'you're the leader'? Daggeff never said either of us was in charge!"

Shul held out the book that Daggeff had given him and Parner knew exactly what the king's worm was going to say. "He may not have said it with his voice, but he gave me the directions. You can't lead us to Caulrin's book without the directions, and if you can't lead then you can't be the leader!"

"Well maybe I should get the directions. I'm a born leader, you know. Carsi picked me to be captain over some very tough competition. This one guy, Beyos was his name, was like insanely good at combat and stuff like that. I was sure she was gonna give him the job. But no, she gave it to me," said Parner, leaving out the part where Carsi had a crush on him. He didn't want Shul to think that had influenced her decision. Well, it probably did, but he still believed he was more capable than Beyos.

"I'm the King's advisor, he trusts me with the important documents and irreplaceable items. King Daggeff meant for me to have the book, and so the book will stay with me," said Shul as he stared at the book.

Parner sighed and the two soldiers that had been standing on the overworld side appeared on the other side. "Oh great are these guys coming with us too? Great, more people for Shul to boss around!"

"No, we are staying here," said one of the soldiers. He approached Parner and tossed him a half stack of cooked fish and then gave Shul a full stack of apples. "The king wanted us to make sure you were well prepared for your quest, and to get rid of this thing," he said and began punching the obsidian portal with his fist. The other Blue Flame, as that was what Parner assumed they were due to their shields and their relation to nether portals, began to punch the other side of the portal as well, and Parner realized that they meant to destroy the portal with nothing but their fists.

"Why are you guys doing that? It's going to take a year without proper tools," said Parner.

"They need to hide it so no traveller accidentally stumbles across it and finds the secret tunnels," said Shul. "They are the Blue Flame, if you were wondering. Sworn to defend the nether-side of Lazuline City," he said, confirming what he already thought. But that did not answer why they weren't using pickaxes. Surely Daggeff had materials to give his secret soldiers, especially for something like this.

"Well, it's going to take them forever, so let's get going. If you're going to lead the way, then get to leading," Parner told Shul.

"Fine, fine. We'll need to find the Blue Flame village first, that's what the book said. This way," said Shul and he started off in the same direction they had exited the portal from.

The area the portal had spawned in was a low ceilinged netherrack cavern with two exits, both lined up with the portal. The walls were also very close to the portal, making it a tight room. Both exits were small holes in the cavern wall, only big enough for a player to squeeze through, making it an easy place to keep secret.

Shul lead them out their exit onto a wide netherrack plain. Patches of fire dotted the landscape and lava fell from the high ceiling to spread across the floor. Parner could hear a ghast crying in the distance, but he could not see it anywhere. He stayed as far from the fires and pooling lava as he could, just in case the ghast decided to stop lurking in the gloomy red mist of the unrendered nether and blast him into them.

Travelling across the nether was much different than in Sedweest. Not only because of the fire and lava and the fear of giant flying ghost monsters, but also because it was much more diverse than the overworld-side plains. Everything looked very similar here, that was true, but the similar things varied.

The overworld had been created, rather than generated, by the server owner. He had made the majority of Sedweest a dull plain only broken up by occasional rivers and peppered trees. This nether plain had lava falls, gravel hills and wide soulsand stretches, colored with mushrooms and the shiny golden swords of zombie pigmen.

He had never been to the nether on the server before. The dimension looked much the same as a regular nether in a regular Minecraft world. He guessed that the server owner had gotten tired of terraforming after making the overworld and let the nether generate on its own.

As they crossed the plain he could not help but count the pigmen they passed. Ten, thirty, sixty-five. He thought about the sword King Daggeff had given him, and about how well the enchantment would do against the snorting zombies. There had once been gold farmers in Melon that would go into the nether and kill pigmen for their nuggets. But once Carsi came to power in the county she had banned it due to too many of the farmers being killed on the job. If Parner attacked them here and now, wearing only leather armor, he would surely die. He decided against it and kept on with Shul.

His trip to Lazuline with Morned had been incredibly dull. The unchanging scenery had played a part in that, though it was mostly due to his travelling partner. The times the sheep farmer hadn't been silent, which had been few, he had tried to tell Parner about his sheep, and about how he raised them, separated them, and how he decided which color to shear and slaughter. His talk had been duller than the plains, and when Parner had tried to talk about things he wanted to discuss, like innovative goods transportation, Morned had shushed him. But now Parner longed for those shushes and for Morned's sheepish speeches, the King's worm was even duller than all of that.

"There, do you see that?" asked Shul after they had been walking for nearly half an overworld day. Ahead of them was more netherrack, but instead of a flat expanse like they had been seeing, there were several medium sized bumps. They were barely noticeable and looked normal in their surroundings. If they had not been looking for something like it, they would not have noticed it. "The village, do you think?"

"Duh, what else could it be?" said Parner and he ran off towards the bumps, leaving Shul to chase after him. He came to the side of one of the netherrack bumps. There was no door that he could find, or anything to indicate it was a house or something normally found in a village. Shul went to another bump on the other side the grouping.

When he began to punch a block at the top to make his own entrance, Shul called to him from another one of the bumps. "Parner, come here! It looks like this one was hit by a ghast or something!" he said and Parner ventured over, leaving his bump intact.

A large hole was taken out of the side of Shul's bump, irregular and obviously made by some sort of explosion rather than by tool or fist. The bump was hollow on the inside and decorated like a house with all the furniture, minus a real bed, which was replaced with two pieces of red wool and one white for the pillow.

It was most certainly a house, meaning that they were most certainly in the Blue Flame village. "Hello? Any Blue Flamers around?" called Parner. No one answered, not that he had expected them to anyway. "Well, did they all log off or what?"

They decided to check another one of the bumps, and when they broke inside they found it much the same as the house with the hole blown out of it. "There's no one in this one either," said Shul. "If they would have just logged off, their characters would be standing still. They must've left this place, maybe to sleep in the overworld or something like that." Without real beds, as beds exploded when slept on in the nether, the Blue Flame would need to return to the other dimension to rest. For now it seemed the village was abandoned.

But if they had all gone back to the overworld to rest, why was one of the houses broken into? A ghast would have no reason to attack netherrack blocks unless they were shooting their fireballs at a player. And was it really smart for everyone in the town to leave it at once? He had counted twelve bumps at arrival, surely at least half of the Blue Flame should have stayed behind to keep watch.

"This is the village. So where's the statue?"

"Statue?" Asked Parner, nearly forgetting the reason they were in the village in the first place. He had returned to the opened house and was searching through the chest, which did not yield much more than a bit of food and two gold nuggets.

"Are you stealing from the Blue Flame?" asked Shul and Parner put the gold back. They wouldn't miss the food. "Whatever. We're looking for a netherrack structure in the shape of a wolf. Whether it looks like a wolf from the game or a real wolf, I do not know. But hopefully it'll stand out to us."

"It'll be easy to spot a generic netherrack thing in the middle of a bunch of netherrack things, I'm sure," said Parner. But despite his sarcasm, it was not difficult at all, and within a few minutes they found a rather large structure in the shape of a wolf's head with an open jaw. They carried on past it and soon it vanished behind them in the red gloom of the fiery dimension.

And then five players popped out of the gloom, all wearing grey armor.