Fire's body shot up, his claws were extended and ready to fight off the skeletal mage he had been fighting a few moments ago, everything around him was slowed to a standstill.
Suddenly Fire noticed that there was no skeletal mage, he wasn't in the dark Graveyard of the Forest. He noticed that he also wasn't standing anymore, he was sitting on a wooden floor, in front of him was a familiar face, distorted in fear. Fire realized that he wasn't in danger and retracted his claws, then he took a few moments to examine his environment. He was in a wooden hut, judging by the smell located in a swamp. There were two people standing in the room, first TehLulz, whose face looked normal again now that Fire had retracted his claws. The second one was unknown to Fire, it was a woman with long black hair clothed in what seemed to be grass. Fire's sense for energy kicked in, he felt fairly large amounts of magic flowing in the area, this seemed to be a witch hut.
"Are you okay Fire?" TehLulz asked and made Fire snap out of his observation.
Fire replied: "Yes… but where is this?"
Fire just now noticed that his coat was completely torn and a numb throbbing filled his chest.
He asked: "What happened?"
"I hoped you could explain that to us." TehLulz said and added: "To sum it up, you got hit by some magic missile in the valley and disappeared, freeZe pulverized the skeleton with lightning, Ambigious took an arrow in the arm and later got blaze fever, we found you here in this hut with a huge hole in your chest, Aurone helped us and just a few minutes ago you woke up and made health potions and drank one."
"I don't remember that… just give me a bit to get my thoughts in order." Fire muttered.
TehLulz turned around and called the others, who came up the ladder one by one, Ambigious with the help of TehLulz. The look on their faces was a mix of disbelief and joy.
"I thought it was over." freeZe said.
For the next few minutes they just stood there, thinking about what happened.
Fire broke the silence: "You said Aurone earlier, right? I know this place… wait. I remember now, I was here twenty something years ago." Fire looked at Aurone. "So you are Runa's daughter?"
Aurone replied: "Yes… that's me."
"I think I have some things to explain to you all, this may take some time." Fire said and took a deep breath. "I have the ability to teleport but doing so is very risky since I can't control the destination and even a short-distance teleport drains most of my energy, which explains my lack of memories. I must have managed to teleport just as the spell hit me, which probably interfered with the teleport and resulted in that wound you mentioned. The reason I ended up here is because this place is a magical energy source, unguided teleportation is generally drawn to such places."
"Seems very handy to have such an emergency teleport." Unchosen commented, then he added: "That doesn't really explain how you were able to live with your heart gone."
Fire explained: "I am sure you noticed that I am quite different from normal human physiology. I have three hearts, which is necessary, my body has a high demand for oxygen when I use my muscles at full capacity."
Ambigious said: "I know I said that before but… man Fire, the admins really did give you a lot of advantages."
Fire simply replied: "They had their reasons, it was mostly an experiment." Then he changed topic by asking: "On a side note, what moon phase do we have?"
Aurone answered: "Full moon."
"That is less than ideal." Fire said. "Now we have to deal with slimes as well."
freeZe said: "Slimes? We haven't seen any on our way here."
"That means that they have piled up in some part of the swamp and are hunting for meat. It wouldn't surprise me if we ran into them."
"What makes you so sure of that?" Unchosen wondered.
Fire wanted to say something but Ambigious answered instead: "Remember what happened in the Nether? The only things that could be seriously dangerous to us were magma cubes. And what happened? Magma cubes! And in the Graveyard of the Forest? Skeletal mage! Here in the swamp? Probably a pile of slimes wanting to eat us alive!" Ambigious sighed and then said: "Also… Aurone, mind handing me one of those instant healing potions? My arm could really use one of those."
Aurone took one potion from the brewing stand, Ambigious took it and carefully took a sip as the potion was still hot.
"Doesn't even taste that good." he remarked and slowly drank the rest.
His arm started tingling and new muscles and skin grew over his wound.
Unchosen asked: "Those potions seem to be very useful, why don't we take some of them with us?"
Aurone gave him an answer: "They spoil within a few hours after being made, they lose their effect and just become mediocrely tasting pink juice. Regeneration potions don't perish that quickly but they are not practical for dealing with wounds… say in the middle of a battle because they make you tired. With rarer ingredients it is of course possible to make health potions that don't perish. However the frequent use of health potions weakens the user and can drain their life force…"
Ambigious interrupted: "Sorry Aurone but I'm going to have to stop you there, no need for another potion monologue."
She stopped when she noticed what she was doing: "Oh… I apologize, I always get so carried away when talking about potions, I know the recipe book Fire left us here by heart."
"You still have it?" Fire wanted to know.
Aurone answered: "Yes, hold on…" She walked over to her chest and started searching it for the book, a few seconds later she found it. "Here it is."
The book was bound in thick, blood red leather and had a stylized image of a bubbling potion on the cover. The title read "Fire's Potion Journal Third Edition". Fire was impressed by how good the book looked, even after all of those years in the humid swamp. Aurone clearly had taken good care of it. He let his fingers slide across the cover and started turning the pages, the others could see illustrations of herbs and other ingredients but also gruesomely detailed drawings of the effects of poisons.
Fire gave the book back to Aurone and said: "When we arrive at my base I'll make sure that my sister sends one of her demons to your hut with the newest edition."
"Your sister has demons? Tell me more." Aurone said with a light in her eyes.
Ambigious made a head gesture towards freeZe, grinned and whispered: "Let's leave those two to their magic-alchemy-stuff talks, it is almost sunset again, we should go to sleep."
The next morning, just after sunrise, Fire woke up the others. After Ambigious was finally able to move, they had breakfast with Aurone that consisted of some of the steak Fire still had with him, Aurone also gave them some leaves like those they had eaten the day before. Before leaving, they made sure that they had enough water, food and other supplies in their inventories. Aurone wished them good luck as they walked away from her hut.
They had fewer problems than before, they were on a larger landmass now so they didn't have to jump over little streams all the time. Fire told them that if they marched during the day they would be able to reach his base within a few days. This motivated the group further, partially because Fire's base was the first big goal on their journey but also because they really wanted to eat a real meal and sleep in a real bed.
After a few hours of walking, the sun was high up in the sky, the temperature was fairly high and they needed to rest every once in a while. The grass below their feet was lush and dark green despite the scorching sun. They decided to take a break under a large willow tree and wait until the sun would sink deeper in the sky so they could continue walking until sunset.
Fire pointed in the distance and asked: "Do you see that? If you look closely, you can see the crowns of the trees of the jungle. You do know what that means, right? It means that we'll leave this swamp tomorrow."
"About time." Ambigious said and leaned against the trunk of the willow tree.
About one hour later they were ready to depart again, they drank some water and ate some of Aurone's leaves and started walking towards where they could see the tall jungle trees. They made a lot of progress towards the jungle in what was left of the otherwise eventless day, they were all glad that they could just walk without something trying to kill them at every corner.
When the sun once again turned the clouds blood red, they were tired from the walk and just wanted to sleep.
"I don't want to push our luck with the slimes, if we keep walking in the darkness we risk being ambushed by them. We should set up camp right here." Fire suggested and looked around.
freeZe had an idea: "How about we build a pillar and a platform where we can sleep on, I don't think they can reach us up there. Ambigious, don't you still have a whole lot of sandbasalt with you?"
"That I do." Ambigious replied and tossed everybody a stack of the black and yellow rock.
Everyone stacked up a pillar with a height of sixteen blocks, then they started building a big platform where they could sleep. When the platform was done, Unchosen added a rim to it.
He just said: "Safety rail."
When he was done he laid down next to the others, soon they were all sleeping. Only Fire was standing guard with his ghast bone bow in hand, hoping that nothing would attack them.