Evangeline lifted her arm, watching as a perfect snowflake drifted down to land on Herobrine's cloak.

"Well," she said as it melted. "At least my feathers won't be so visible."

"That's true. But…" Herobrine picked up a foot, looking down at the print he left behind. "...now we have a bigger problem."

The snows had begun early that morning, while Evangeline was waiting for Herobrine to wake from his shift to sleep. It wasn't bitterly cold, but it was cold enough for the snow to stick, and there was now a thin coat of white all over the grassy plain. This unfortunately meant that their path was extremely visible, whether by land or by air.

"We need to t-take shelter somewhere." Herobrine said, his arms tucked tightly against his chest as he shivered. "Traveling will do us no good if we're leaving a t-trail."

"Right." Evangeline gave him a concerned look, her fingers drifting up to the clasp of his cloak. "Do you want your coat back…?"

"Keep it." Herobrine didn't look at her, starting to walk again, and Evangeline had to rush to match his pace. He was probably trying to keep warm, she reasoned, but she was still slightly offended at being left behind.

They continued through the falling snow for about an hour, apprehension slowly growing until they reached the crest of a hill and looked down into the valley beyond.

"There." Herobrine pointed, and Evangeline lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the falling snow.

"The mineshaft?" against the base of the opposite hill was what appeared at first glance to be a sort of wooden shack, but was revealed upon further inspection to be an entrance into a tunnel.

"Yes." Herobrine nodded, starting to walk down the hill. "It seems abandoned. We can take shelter there until the snow stops."

"But…" Evangeline realized that she was being left behind again and quickly hurried after him. "We would have to wait for the snow to melt before we could leave without leaving a trail, and until then we'll be trapped down there. And someone could just follow our tracks into there, and we would have no way to escape. And-"

"If we take shelter while the snow is still falling, it will, if not cover, greatly reduce the visibility of our tracks." Herobrine interrupted. "Making it harder to track us there. There also may be food in there, nonperishables that have been left behind. Thirdly, out here we are vulnerable." He turned to glance at her over his shoulder. "At least, in there, our enemy can only come from one direction." Evangeline opened her mouth, then shut it.

"Alright." She said, and she followed him down the hill.


Phillip's wings beat powerfully as he neared the ground, slowing his descent and sending the fine snow flying in every direction. He deposited David on his feet before landing himself, folding his jet-black wings and looking up at the structure in front of them.

"A mineshaft." He said in disbelief. "Most valkyries wouldn't be caught dead down there."

"Well," David said. "We have plenty of reason to believe that she's not right in the head. "Phillip grimaced, recalling the headless corpses they'd come across.

"Or she's desperate." He took a step under the aged, wooden overhang, then paused and bent down. "No doubt she's been here, though." He straightened, showing David the white feather he'd found.

"And since there's no tracks coming out, I think it's safe to say she's still in there." David followed him in, drawing his battle-axe and extending the handle. "Guess we should get going." Phillip sighed, looking back at the jet-black tunnel.

"Guess we should."

They managed to find a pair of oil lanterns, which David lit with a flint and steel before they continued onwards. They had only gone about a hundred feet before the tunnel split in two, and they were forced to make a decision.

"See any feathers?" Phillip asked. David raised his lantern, squinting his yellow eyes in the darkness.

"...no." He reported after a moment. "Now what?"

"Now, well… two tunnels, two of us." Phillip emitted a heavy sight. "I suppose we split up."

"I don't like this, Phil." David frowned, tightening his grip on his axe. "There's two of them, too. And they took out three valkyries."

"I don't like it either, mate." Phillip gave him a strained smile. "But we don't have much choice. If we pick the wrong one, they could slip around behind us and get out while we're wandering around in the tunnels. Besides, I have faith in your fighting skills."

"So do I." David hiked up a brow. "It's you I'm worried about, old timer." Phillip scoffed and rolled his eyes.

"I'll go right, you go left. If we've found nothing in two hours, we turn around and meet back up here. Got it?"

"Understood." David saluted, then started to descend down into the left tunnel.


Evangeline hugged her arms tightly to her chest, unable to keep her fearful gaze from focusing on every wooden support they passed.

"I can hear your heartbeat from up here." Herobrine grumbled from before her, holding his torch above his head to light the tunnel around them. "Calm down. If these supports have held this long, they're not going to spontaneously collapse on us now."

"That does not make me feel better." Evangeline muttered, unable to suppress a shudder at the thought of tons of rock and debris crashing all around couldn't understand why Herobrine was so calm. At least she would be killed in the event of a cave-in, Herobrine would be buried alive… likely forever.

They had been in the mineshaft for about 45 minutes now, and Evangeline had loathed every second of it. As a race of airborne creatures, valkyries were by far the most comfortable when they had a clear view of the sky, and this was… the opposite. Evangeline also couldn't help but recall the horror stories she had been told about entire armies that had been crushed to death when the terrain around them suddenly gave way. With so much on her mind, she jumped at every creak and drip from underground reservoirs, much to the annoyance of her escort.

The tunnel suddenly opened up into a natural cave with a domed ceiling, and Herobrine lifted his torch to get a good look at their surroundings.

"We can rest here." He said decisively, glancing back at his companion. "Is this better?" Evangeline frowned, looking up.

"I suppose." She said slowly. She was far more content to rely on the natural structure of a cave instead of flimsy, termite-ridden supports.

Herobrine began to make his way around the perimeter of the cave as Evangeline found a place to sit. The cave seemed to have been used as a sort of hub for the miners in their time here, containing cold furnaces and barren crates. A few shovels and pickaxes had been abandoned here as well. Evangeline couldn't help but wonder if the caves had been mined out, or if something had driven the miners away.

"No food." Herobrine reported, coming over to sit beside her. "Not in here, anyway." Evangeline hummed quietly, looking over at him. The room was dim, lit only by the torch he carried, but he didn't seem to be shivering anymore.

"Aren't you cold?" Her fingers wound around the hem of her borrowed cloak, drawing it closer.

"Not as cold." He shook his head. "There's no wind down here, or snow. And I'm more comfortable underground than above." Evangeline frowned, recalling his home - a hole dug in the ground.

"I certainly can't say the same." She muttered. "Why? Weren't you raised in the Aether?"

"Yes, but I spent centuries in the Nether." Herobrine gazed into the flame of his torch. "Most of which I spent hiding from your kind, that they might not find out what I had done."

"Oh." Evangeline fell quiet, wondering what that time of his life had been like for him. What of after? How long had he roamed the Overworld, bitter and angry, before he became the man that she knew now?

"Let me see your wings." He said suddenly. Evangeline glanced up, then reluctantly shook off the cloak, stretching out her wings. They were ugly and ragged, patches of old feathers mixed with budding new ones. Herobrine hummed, sitting back. "A week, you said?"

"More or less." Evangeline flapped her wings, and a few more feathers came free.

"Well, we're not concerned about leaving a trail in here." Herobrine pointed out. "You may as well get as many out as you can." Evangeline considered this, then stood, bracing herself and flapping her wings several times as hard as she could.

There was a smirk on Herobrine's face when she finished, and she gave him an irritated look.

"You'd understand how eager I am to get these out if you had wings."

"I'm sure I would." Herobrine beckoned her back down. "Here." She sank back down to the stone floor, and he reached out, running his fingers across her feathers and pulling out the loose ones. Evangeline couldn't suppress a shiver, wondering fleetingly if he'd done this with his friends as a youth before she started to work on her other wing.

Within minutes, her wings were nearly bare of old feathers, looking even uglier than before but feeling far more comfortable. She folded her wings against her back with a sigh, draping Herobrine's cloak over them.

"Thank you." She murmured. Herobrine gave a soft hum of acknowledgement.

A soft clunk echoed down the tunnels, and they both looked up.

Evangeline's gaze flitted from tunnel to tunnel, until she spied movement down the passage they had come from. Herobrine rose to his feet as he lifted his torch above his head, and Evangeline quickly followed, both of them stock-still as the stranger drew closer.

Finally, the torchlight glinted off the face of a gold battle-axe, and a pair of yellow eyes came into view.

"Hello, Evangeline."