Heather staggered up onto the shore, trying to wring some of the water out of her shirt.

"That could've been worse."

"It could've." Herobrine agreed, stepping out of the water and sinking down onto the sand beside her. "You're not hurt?" Heather shook her head.

"No. Just out of breath."

"Alright." Herobrine leaned forward, wincing. The shaft had broken off of the arrow in his back, leaving only a jagged stump where the head was buried in his flesh.

"Look." Alex drew their attention, and Heather followed her pointing finger up to the top of the waterfall. Steve, still mounted on Alex's horse, was watching them from the edge of the cliff. After a few moments, he turned and rode away.

"Why do you think he didn't jump?" Heather mused. "Surely he'd be okay."

"He would," Notch agreed. "Perhaps he realized he would be far outnumbered. He seems to have lost the piglins."

"And we've lost our horses." Heather frowned. "Why didn't we jump with them? They wouldn't take fall damage either, would they?"

"No," Herobrine shook his head. "But, at this height, and not knowing the depth of the water below, we ran the risk of being injured by them."

"Oh." Heather gave up on trying to dry herself off, instead sinking to her knees behind her husband. There was blood soaking his shirt around the arrow, staining his chestplate. "Ouch." She murmured sympathetically.

"I'll get it." Alex sat down beside her with a thump, and Heather nodded, scrambling up to help Herobrine get his chestplate off without hurting him.

In the end, he was right, it wasn't bad. The arrow had hit him just below his shoulder blade, and wasn't deep enough to make it very difficult to remove. After Alex got it out, he drank one of Theo's health potions, and the wound closed up almost immediately. His arm was still sore, but he wouldn't have any trouble traveling.

"So we've lost our horses, and with them, our saddles." Herobrine spoke as he pulled his bloody shirt back on. "And we have no way to contact Theo. We aren't strong enough to make a stand somewhere, not fast enough to outrun pursuers, and we don't know how they're tracking us."

"Out of those three, stealth seems the most accessible." Notch said. "Though overall it seems of utmost importance to keep moving."

"Unpredictably," Alex added. "as much as possible. We were clearly directed into an ambush up there."

"Right." Herobrine nodded. "I can only assume we were spotted while making camp the night before, and they plotted their attack from there."

"Should we travel through the night, then? So that they can't plan from our location?" Alex mused. "Of course, mobs will be out…"

"And if we don't stop to rest, we'll be even weaker in a fight." Heather chimed in. "I don't know about you, but I can't pull more than one all-nighter without wanting to collapse the next day."

"Perhaps we should be stopping earlier, before the light levels drop, then." Notch suggested. "In large, flat areas without dark spots."

"Plains and deserts. I agree." Herobrine got to his feet, rolling his injured shoulder. "Perhaps we can get new horses if we come across a village."

"What about Steve?" Alex looked back to the cliff. "Is there… anything to be done?"

"I don't know." Herobrine set his jaw. "The last time Null took control of him, he regained his senses after I beat him in a fight. I'm unsure if Null released him, or if enough damage was sufficient to change him back."

"He wasn't like this last time, though." Heather added. "Last time, it seemed like Null was directly controlling him, like a puppet. This time… well, he wasn't himself, but he wasn't Null, either."

"If we could kill him, perhaps he would regenerate?" Notch tried. "Unless his death was what triggered this in the first place."

"I'm not even sure if he died- Null grabbed him, for sure, and he disappeared." Heather hugged her arms to your chest. The sun was slowly drying her off, but she was still damp, and the taiga air was fairly cool. Herobrine took note and tugged her against his side. "But I don't know if he died, or if Null just teleported him." She finished.

"It isn't a sure thing that we'll be able to kill him, either." Alex muttered. "I tried, and my axe shocked me when it touched him."

"I'm sure Theo can fix him." Heather said with a sigh. "When we see him again."

"Mm." Alex nodded. No one spoke for a moment.

"We should get going." Notch said at last. "They know where we are."

"Right." Herobrine glanced up at the waterfall, then around at the surrounding forest. "Let's go west. Changing direction may throw them off."

"Alright."

"We really are recreating the first-night-in-a-new-world experience to a T." Heather remarked, her head resting in Herobrine's lap. "Sleeping in a dirt hole."

"I spent the first year or so of my life sleeping in a dirt hole." Herobrine lifted a brow, looking down at her. "And yes, this does have some similarities."

"I never slept in a hole." Alex said offhandedly. "I simply fought through the nights."

"I'll bet you did." Heather side-eyed the axe that Alex was sharpening on the other side of the room. "Yup."

"You always were incredibly competent." Notch mused, tracing patterns in the dirt. "I'm not entirely sure where you got that."

"An intimate determination to one-up the men, maybe." Alex suggested. Heather snickered at that.

Night was falling, but their shelter had been dug out for a while to eliminate any chance of being spotted by mobs. This method would reduce the amount of ground they could cover in one day, but it was less about the ground they could cover and more about avoiding Null. Herobrine wasn't sure how fast Theo was working, but he was hopeful that it was faster than Null's ability to track them.

Alex leaned her head back against the wall, jaw tight, and Herobrine cast a glance in her direction. She was… always pretty stoic, but he could tell she was tense. Undoubtedly over Steve. Herobrine didn't like it any more than she did, but she seemed uncharacteristically distressed.

Eventually, Herobrine fell asleep with his wife in his lap, and woke early the next morning to rouse the others. Herobrine could see as soon as they emerged into the sunlight how exhausted Alex looked. She must have barely slept.

The day's travels led them across the rest of the plains, where they changed course to boat down a river. From there, they crossed through a stretch of forest, skirted around a swamp, and entered a desert, sticking to wide-open areas as much as possible. It had started to rain by the time they left the desert, and thunder was rumbling in the distance, so they hastily dug out a shelter and hid inside. Mobs would be spawning soon.

The sounds were peaceful, though, and Heather ended up curled up next to Herobrine again, listening as the rain beat against their makeshift roof. A single torch lit their shelter, the room dim and cool. Her husband's arm around her, Heather gazed at the torch's flickering flame until her eyes drifted shut.

Herobrine, on the other hand, was watching Alex as subtly as he could. The woman was curled up in the corner of the shelter, glaring harshly at the torch in the center of the room. After observing this for a few minutes, Herobrine opened his mouth.

"Alex." He said softly. "What's the matter?" Alex glanced up, then back down, her brow furrowing further.

"I'm alright." She muttered. Herobrine cast a glance at Notch to see him mirroring his own expression.

"Forgive me if I don't believe you."

"It doesn't matter, does it?" Alex's tone was biting. "How I feel has no bearing on our task."

"What did Steve say to you during our encounter?" Notch cut in. Alex scowled, meaning he must have hit the nail on the head, and there were a few moments of tense silence.

"…he said the world was falling apart." She muttered at last. "That I might as well join him before I was destroyed. That's not Steve, he'd never say that. He's- even in the worst of times, he's filled with foolish optimism. So what did Null do to him?" Her voice cracked, and she covered her mouth with her hands, glaring at the floor.

Herobrine's gaze softened with sympathy. Though he had never thought of Alex as sentimental, it stood to reason that she would be distressed by the loss of her only companion. Even though she was designed to be alone, she still loved him.

"This is my fault." Notch's words were jarring, and Herobrine turned to look at him in shock. Even Heather lifted her head, evidently roused by their conversation. "If I had given you free will, Null would not be able to control you." Notch went on. "My desire for control has damned you in a way that I did not expect. When I get my power back, I will fix this."

Alex blinked at him, stunned. "If you-"

"When." Notch cut her off. "If the hacker could lock all of us away and turn this world into his personal playground, I have no doubt that he can handle Null." Alex didn't respond for a moment, and he added in a softer voice, "Steve will be fine."

"Alright," She said at last, her voice small. Then, in one even smaller, "thank you." Notch nodded, gaze shifting to the floor. Herobrine looked on in silence, feeling, for the first time, a grudging respect for his creator.

"Your plan didn't work." Null grit his teeth at the sound of another voice, and he turned around to see Steve reclining against the inside of the doorway.

"Of course it didn't." He snapped. "None of them have worked, not yet. That's why we're trying new things."

"It didn't work because you didn't properly play to their weaknesses." Steve stood up, ambling over to where Null stood by the hole in the obsidian. "Nor did you account for their strengths."

"You did not pursue them when they jumped."

"Of course I didn't. What good would there be in that? Best case, they kill me. Worst, they imprison me somehow." Steve shrugged. "And then where are you left?"

"Where I was before, which is looking better and better right now."

"Listen to me." Steve's voice grew irritated. "I know them. They are irrational and emotional."

"I know that."

"Perhaps so, but you are not properly utilizing it."

"I've already tried taking them prisoner and threatening them, and they simply escaped."

"We escaped because you let us! Threatening them worked, didn't it?"

Null gave him a harsh look. "Watch your tone when you speak to me."

"You watch your tone!" Steve fired back. "I don't answer to you."

"You'd better, or I'll remove my influence." Null threatened. Steve scowled and looked away, blackened eyes narrowed.

"Anyway," Null looked back at the obsidian. "We will bide our time, wait for them to put themselves in a poor position, then strike."

"And what of the hacker?" Steve lifted a brow. "Aren't you concerned that he'll delete you?"

"He can't." Null responded simply.

"Alright." Steve shrugged. "Might be wise to at least consider the possibility, but…"

"I am inherently connected to this world. No human, skilled as he may be, can rip me out of it." Null's gaze shifted down to his hands. "Every day I grow stronger…"

"Alright, well, while you're growing stronger, I'm going to go find our targets." Steve thumbed over his shoulder, then sauntered back out of the room. Null just rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. Even enlightened as he was, he was annoying. Null would simply lock him up and be done with it if he didn't know what a wonderful tool he could be.

Null looked around the empty corridor, dark and silent. This location, his former subjects, they had all failed him. It seemed he would have no one to rely on but himself in this fight.

Claustrophobia seized him as he stood there, surrounded by obsidian, and he turned and ran from the corridor.

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