The wither skeleton opened its mouth and spoke, its voice was like five voices speaking at the same time in different pitches and each slightly offset from the others. The voice sounded somewhat male, just as male as the voice of an undead creature could sound.
It said: "True, Fire. We have not seen each other in a long time."
"You know him?" freeZe asked.
Without answering Fire continued talking to the wither skeleton: "They are my friends, take the wither from him now." Fire said it in a calm but demanding voice.
The skeletal creature nodded and raised its sword, a thin string of the black aura on the sword connected to the black aura on Ambigious' chest, pulling it towards the sword again.
Ambigious stopped coughing and stood up.
He asked: "Where are my sunglasses?"
freeZe looked at him and said: "You almost just died and all you ask for are your sunglasses?"
"Yeah, where are they?" He asked.
He turned around and jumped back a few steps as he saw the wither skeleton holding them towards him. He realized that it was not dangerous anymore. He took them and put them on again.
Fire explained: "May I introduce Matt to you, he and two other Wither cultists live in this fortress. He is another player." He paused and pointed at one of his friends after the other: "This is freeZe… that is Ambigious, her brother… this is Unchosen and that is TehLulz."
Matt spoke again: "Sorry for that incident before, I thought that you four were here to kill us for our skulls, you know how it is, an honest mistake. Follow me, I will lead you to where we live. And Fire, your bow is done."
"That's good to hear. Come on, let's go." Fire answered.
"You have friends all over the place, Fire." TehLulz said.
Matt laughed, which sounded like a small group of people laughing in an uncanny choir, which sounded creepy more than anything else. "Yes he does."
"…and then Matt almost killed me." Ambigious concluded his story.
They were sitting in a circular room in the middle of the netherrack pillar the fortress was built into, the room had everything you needed to live and a few additional things like brewing stands, an anvil and even an enchanting table surrounded by bookshelves. Ceiling and floor were made of nether brick, although some stone brick was mixed into it, nether brick fences supported the room and in the middle was a fireplace made from obsidian fueled by blaze powder. Fire, his friends and three wither skeletons were sitting around the fireplace. Matt was one of the skeletons, one other one's name was Chris, the last one's name was Bea. They just had told them why they came here and how, the Wither cultists had listened.
"Now I want to ask a question." freeZe said and then asked said question: "What is this whole Wither cult thing?"
Bea looked at freeZe and started explaining in a voice much like the one from Matt and Chris but more feminine sounding: "As you might know, the admins are very friendly and kind people, we asked them if there was a way to actually be a mob, they told us that only humanoid mobs could be controlled by our brain at the moment, different bodies and such."
freeZe asked: "So everybody can become a wither skeleton?"
"Yes, all you have to do is fall into lava while being affected by the wither status effect. Now for the cult, we have made our own religion out of this, there are more of us in other fortresses. Everything is based on that what can really happen here. We worship the Wither, it visits this dimension sometimes on its own or gets summoned, the one who manages to defeat it in battle gets the Nether Star, what you can do with that you know already." She explained.
Chris stood up and left the room without saying anything.
"Where is he going?" Unchosen asked.
Matt answered: "Don't know, maybe he is fetching something?"
Then he said to Fire: "I wanted to give you a regeneration potion but I see you already have one in you."
Fire scratched his chin and said: "That actually might be true if you say so, I will have to ask Brad what he put in that potion. It didn't get removed by the portal, very interesting… I haven't managed to do that for regeneration yet."
This moment Chris came back in, holding bow in his hands.
"Right, my bow. Let me see it." Fire said.
Chris handed the bow to him. It no ordinary bow, it had a different shape than a regular bow and much more decorated. It was made out of something that seemed to be ghast bones dyed black. Ghast bones were very flexible and didn't deform over time. The bow had red ornaments and runes carved into the bone. The bowstring was made from a red material, a very durable cloth made from nether wart. This material called nether wool was very versatile, it could be used for bowstrings but also for making clothes of very high quality, which were fireproof in addition to being very durable and comfortable. If a king would have to choose out of what material his clothes should be made of, he would definitely choose nether wool.
Overall the bow looked much like bows elves used in various books and movies and was about half Fire's height. Fire rotated it and looked at the red runes on the black bow, let his finger slide along the bones, pulled back the string with ease and let go, the bones snapped back into place, more violently than any normal bow made out of wood would, propelling an imaginary arrow.
"It is better than I ever thought it would be, I didn't think you would be able to recreate my old bow." He said, then asked: "As far as I can feel, it is not enchanted and free of magic, right?"
Matt answered: "Yes, we didn't even use any magic at all when collecting the components."
"Why is it so important when it is free of magic?" Ambigious asked.
Fire chuckled and replied: "I can only tell you one thing. Magical artefacts that don't have an internal power source drain the energy of the user to fuel their magic and you can't turn that off. If you want to know more about how magic works in here, you are at the wrong place asking me, I only know the theoretical aspects of magic. You should ask my sister when we meet her if you want some more in depth information, she is a mage. Though, simply calling her a mage might be selling her a bit short."
"She also is here? I thought she doesn't play on the server?" freeZe asked.
"I didn't say that she isn't here, the hackers just don't know that she exists. She is running our base at the moment." Fire explained.
Unchosen, who hadn't said very much yet, asked Bea: "What benefits did you get from being a wither skeleton?"
You couldn't see it but in fact she was smiling, she said: "First of all, the benefits you get from being undead and of Nether origin, not having to eat or drink and being completely fireproof. Then having our own little source of Wither energy is another benefit." She looked at Ambigious "We can use it to defend ourselves or to hunt, whatever we want. Now the most important benefit, you know how Fire feels energy flow? Well, we can feel it too, more than that even. We can see how much energy is in something, kind of like a filter we can put over our vision, we see everything violet and the more powerful something is, the more it goes to red and then white. We can also see if somebody is ill or has something in their body that normally isn't there, like a potion."
Matt added: "I didn't look exactly but when I saw you there was quite a bit of energy between the four of you."
Completely leaving the topic, Ambigious asked: "Okay, what's for dinner?"
Chris chuckled with his quintuple voice and said: "Man, why didn't we think of that earlier. You all must be starving, especially you Ambigious, wither makes hungry."
With these words he stood up again, this time to get some food.
He came back about ten minutes later with a stone plate with steaming steaks on it. freeZe poked TehLulz and Ambigious.
"That is the first time we're eating meat after months of bread, eggs and apples!" She said to them, it was easy to hear that also she had missed eating meat.
Fire grinned, the first time since they met Fire they heard him speak in a voice free of worry or tension: "I escaped the quarry, I now have a real chance to stop the hackers. We made it here alive, I got my bow and now I can eat some meat after a whole year without it, I can finally worry a little less now."
He leaned back a little and took a huge bite of the steak that Chris had given him.
Silence filled the room, only interrupted by the sounds they made while eating. Eating was not the right word, stuffing the steak into themselves would fit better. Ambigious ate three steaks in record time, so did TehLulz and Unchosen, freeZe ate two and a half, which was a lot for her. Fire put the crown on top, he ate five steaks and the half that freeZe didn't eat. They all leaned back satisfied and slowly fell asleep.
The last thing they heard was Chris saying: "Wow! And I thought I could eat quickly…"
Bea laughed.