Breathing heavily, Lykle had frantically awoken from his seemingly dead state. He calmed himself when he saw his sword lying on the ground and no one else there except for his brother.

Having remembered what had happened and with newfound adrenaline, Lykle rushed over to his brother quickly, fearing that his brother's life may have ended, but after some violent shaking, Rai woke up as well.

As Rai sat up, looking around for any signs of the enemy, he wasn't in as much of a panic as Lykle was. Rai was only processing what had just happened.

After much thought on the outcome of the battle, Rai came to the conclusion that the two brothers had just overpowered death for the first time, and assumed that it might not be the last.

Lykle helped his brother off the ground and they grabbed their sword and proceeded to climb out of the abandoned base. They walked back to Lykle's house and were met by the surprised faces of their allies. Juno and Stardrain rushed over to the two of them. "You're alive!", Juno said as he rushed up to the two and wrapped his arms around their necks. Just as quickly as he came, he pushed back from his hug and began to ask question after question.

"What the hell happened? Why were you gone so long?", Juno said before taking a quick look at star drain and turning back before explaining, "When Star' got back to base, he told me that he went to get potions for a minute and when he came back you guys weren't there and that there was a hole in the ceiling."

"Wagon and his goons crashed through the ceiling when star left, thanks for that by the way." Lykle said, glaring at Star for a second before continuing, "We were fighting off Wagon but there were three of them and they overpowered us. Memories are a bit funny after that but I think I remember seeing someone stabbing Rai in the chest and I felt something impale me from behind." He rubbed his chest where he thought there was a hole but couldn't feel anything there other than the feeling of being stabbed.

Rai stared off into space as the sound around him began to get drowned from Stardrain's attempts to apologize to his brother and a fight breaking out. 'I died', Rai thought. 'I DIED. I was fighting my hardest and we lost and I got stabbed- We got stabbed.' He mentally corrected himself.

Rai looked down at his hands and rubbed the spot where he thought he saw the sword sticking through his chest. 'We got stabbed, and we almost died,' he thought as he tried to concentrate on the feeling of something on the skin of his chest, 'We probably did die, it's not unlikely. Hell, it's probable. You don't just shake off a sword through the chest.' He thought as he tried to figure out what the hell happened.

Rai was broken out of his thoughts as the fight calmed down and Star decided to stare at a conveniently interesting wall next to him. "Well, we can't stay here at my house. We went to that base and we called Wagon there as we were on our way and somehow they were there before us." Lykle said, trying to put pieces together. "They knew where we were going before we told them, meaning someone is watching us, possibly even right now."

Juno looked around through the windows trying to see if he could spot anyone before saying, "Yea, but they didn't stick around when they got you guys right? You said you were alone when you woke up meaning they probably expected you to be dead."

He turned around before speaking again, "It's possible they think they won and don't have anyone spying on us. I think if we're gonna move, we should do it now before they decide to come and raid your house."

Everyone nodded in agreement and began to pack their things, but something was off. Rai didn't know what it was but something was off and he knew Lykle felt it too, judging by the look in his eyes.

Once the team was done packing, they decided to try and plan where they wanted to go. "Well maybe we could go in that direction", Stardrain said before pointing somewhere West.

Lykle was about to agree before Juno spoke up, "Wait, I think we might be able to get where we're going faster." He said as he walked towards the nether portal that Lykle had near his house before explaining, "There was something I learned when I was walking using the nether to walk from your base to mine."

"When I noticed that it was taking a shorter amount of time to walk from my base to your base through the nether, I tried to test it and I found out that, somehow, using the nether makes us walk a shorter distance for 8 times the length. Simply put, 8 blocks in the Overworld is 1 block in the Nether." Juno finished with an excited tone.

Star, Lykle, and Rai looked at each other before looking at Juno and the portal. "Well I don't know about you guys," Lykle said as he walked towards the portal's glowing purple rift, "but I'd rather get as far away from Wagon and his sphere of influence as quickly as possible. Plus, a journey through fire and brimstone sounds quite appealing at the moment"

Rai shrugged and stepped through the portal after his brother. Once they were in the Nether, they made sure they had enough obsidian and some sort of light to get back to the overworld. Star pointed in the same direction as before and the team set out to find a new home.

It had been several hours walking and climbing through the harsh environments of the Nether, but nowhere near as long as it would have taken when traveling in the Overworld and when they emerged from their newly-built exit portal, they had found themselves within a cave deep underground.

Looking at his brother, Rai found some sort of expression on his face. He couldn't tell whether he was mad, happy, or just thinking, but it felt off and the emerald glow in his eyes did not bring Rai any confidence.

Attempting to focus on another task, Rai and the team began to mine and build their new home using the stone around them to create what they called "The Stronghold ''. The Stronghold was built deep underground for better protection, but also to avoid detection from Wagon's faction.

For many months, the war was thought to be over by Wagon and his allies. With the "death" of Lykle and Rai, Wagon thought that there was no one else left that could oppose him.

On the other hand, for Lykle and Rai, they were only preparing and collecting more allies. Lykle, wanting to recruit more people who were skilled in building and engineering, had collected some other, more intelligent, allies, one of which being a very intelligent engineer named Spook.

During this "build-up" period, Juno had found some sort of underground city that looked in ruin and overgrown. When Juno got back to The Stronghold, he immediately informed Lykle of its location and existence. Lykle told Rai about the city and they set out to find the stronghold.

After many days of searching, digging, and mining, they arrived at the stronghold. The duo was met by Juno and he told them that the stronghold's portal blocks had holes that perfectly fit special items named "Eyes of Ender''. Juno told them that the Eyes of Ender were crafted using the pearls of the Enderman and the dust of Blaze Rods. They believed this portal could be a gateway to some unknown land that could provide them with the means to beat Wagon's faction.

They managed to activate the portal and Juno was sent through, prepared with armor and weapons which were imbued with strong enchantments. When Juno returned, he told Lykle and Rai that when he stepped foot into the world, he was standing on some platform made of obsidian and when he turned around, the portal had disappeared.

He had built a bridge over to the large island next to him. He noticed the towering obsidian pillars, only being able to tell the difference between the towers and the black void of the sky by noticing the light surrounding the tops of the pillars. He had climbed up these towers and found large crystals, when all of a sudden, a loud roaring could be heard.

He had looked up and seen a dragon with glowing purple eyes. The dragon had begun to fly at Juno, so he jumped from one of the towers to another. The dragon had hit the crystal and it exploded upon contact, damaging the dragon. Juno took note of this as he proceeded to get the dragon's attention whilst standing on the tops of the pillars in front of the crystals.

One by one the crystals would explode as the dragon flew at them, unknowingly damaging itself. When all of the crystals had been destroyed, the dragon was too weak to fly and settled down on an altar-like structure. From there it attacked Juno whenever he attempted to rush toward it.

While distracting the dragon, Juno hadn't noticed the large amount of tall lanky shadow men roaming the island. He looked up at one of the endermen, in the eyes, and then the creature attacked him. He managed to kill it but it dropped a ball-like substance.

Juno, once reviewing the ball in his hand, knew that these were endermen and that what he was holding was an ender pearl. He threw the pearl at the dragon, teleported above it, and dug his sword deep into its skull, defeating it.

He told the two brothers that the dragon began to glow a blinding white light as it exploded. After everything seemingly calmed down, Juno began to feel a strong gust of wind as the Dragon's Egg formed itself upon the top of the altar. Juno picked up the egg, as a trophy, and proceeded to walk into the exit portal that had formed within the altar.

Juno left the two boys to decide what they wanted to do with the active portal. Lykle rushed forward towards the edge of the end portal with a wide grin. Upon gaining the knowledge that there might be dragons he could control to defeat Wagon, Lykle swiftly turned to Rai and said, "Brother, this could be exactly what we need to win the war! We could take control of those dragons and decimate his entire faction. Leave nothing left!"

Rai, knowing that his brother was not acting like himself, or more accurately was acting more like himself than ever before, argued with his brother. "Brother, I too wish to win this war, but I don't think what you want to do is the right thing," he said before walking up to Lykle, "It was Wagon who wronged us, not his allies."

Lykle, with a sneer on his face, yelled, "Wagon's allies, sided with him. They are as guilty as HIM!" Rai, feeling deep down that completely decimating the Populus would only make things worse, tried to pull Lykle back from his ever-growing hunger for power. "Lykle," Rai said, "Wagon may be at fault, hell his allies may be at fault, but don't forget how many people who currently submit to him, who were wronged by him just like us. Do you really want to stoop that low, to commit genocide on people just like us?"

Lykle stared at Rai for what felt like a long time. The judgmental silence in the room was suffocating to both of them. "Fine," Lykle said, "You're right. We'll do it your way," he walked up to Rai and placed his hand on the other's shoulder with a more relaxed smile, "together."

Rai nodded his head, feeling confident at his success in managing to calm Lykle down from his seemingly insane state. The two brothers walked towards the edge of the vortex before they went into the end portal together.