Eyo, guys. I have something to say at the very end of the chapter. Just so y'all know.

Up there at the top is an art of, from right to left, Ruby, Kai, William, and Sammy, made by the wonderous @FayeofThunder !

<Jesse's POV>
The sound of pickaxe breaking obsidian slams my ears, and Magnus whisper-shouts, "We're out!" I turn to look towards him, expecting to be blinded by bright light, but instead I'm greeted with the faint indigo glow of night.

"That's a relief. They won't be able to see us," Lukas begins, but Ruby cuts him off.

"They'll have Night Vision and Sharpshot potions, and their mutant wolves can sense body heat. We'll be hard-pressed to escape alive."

"That's grim."

"That's the truth. Anyone have any ice blocks?"

We stare at her, confused. Ice blocks in a lava prison? They would have melted!

Ruby groans and pulls out a bucket of water. She then dumps it on the roof, and the water spreads quickly, until it's completely covering our feet. Jess is clearly attempting not to make a sound, and Magnus whispers, "Holy Guardian, this water is cold!"

"It's also the only way we'll get out of here alive." She blinks, seeming to be holding back a thought, and continues, passing out a few potion bottles. I look at the one she gives me with suspicion. What if it's another attempt to murder me? "These are three-minute Invisibility potions. We'll have to be careful with the particle effects, though; that'll be the most visible part of us to the humans." She downs the potion without another word, and everyone else, myself included, follows suit. We're instantly invisible. It's then I realize that she mentioned a potion we hadn't heard of before.

"You said a Sharpshot potion?" I ask.

"Do you not - oh. Right. You don't have Sharpshots or Acids or anything of that sort here. The Sharpshot potion strengthens your accuracy and ranged projectile damage, so a talented archer with Sharpshot, possibly Swiftness, and a bow could wreak havoc on an entire army without breaking a sweat. Very dangerous in the right hands," Ruby explains.

I frown, but secretly I'm impressed. What else do she and her world have up their sleeves?

"We should get going. Everyone, under the water, and stay there for as long as possible," Kai interrupts. "We should be here as little as possible."

Dripping wet, invisible, and shivering with cold, I walk out of the hallway and out against the wall. Glancing upwards, I can see heads - both human and mutant wolf - peering through the battlements. They haven't noticed us yet.

Something bumps my arm and a finger scrawls a g and half of an o on the point of impact. I understand the message; we need to keep moving. Every moment we spend our here is another moment we could be spotted.

On the other side of the entry, I can see a pale amber potion flowing through its bottle, and that bottle vanishing into someone's inventory as they begin moving forward. I'm already some ways across the bridge when someone shouts, "Escapees on the bridge!" Calls of "Raise the bridge!" emanate from inside the walls, and the bridge we're standing on splits in half.

I take a deep breath and begin sprinting, calculating the distance between the two halves silently. My chances of making the jump are getting slimmer and slimmer, and then-

My chest rams into the other end of the bridge, and I grab hold of the wood with all the strength left in my arms, which isn't much. I can feel my grip slipping, slipping, until I'm hanging on by my fingertips. Something's grabbing my feet and pulling me toward the lava, and something takes hold of my wrists and pulls me upward. I chance a glance at my potential savior, to see that it's Lukas.

Wait. Why can I see him? What happened to the potions? It hasn't been three minutes already, has it?

I can't hold on much longer. Arrows are landing on the bridge, getting closer and closer to us, and one hits Lukas in the shoulder. He gasps in pain and falls forward, sending us both tumbling into the lava.

{Le Timeskip}

My gaze is dark. I can't see a thing. Am I dead? No, I can't be. I'm having these thoughts. Plus, this isn't very painful. Pain. What happened when we fell in the lava? Why didn't we burn to death? And where's Lukas? I know he fell in, too. But I can't sense his thoughtstream. I'm completely alone. Wait, no. There's something else here. They're thinking about...fire spirits? And healing. Cauterization, mainly. Wait, my eyes are shut. Duh.

I slowly open one eye, and then the other. I'm in a chamber. It's glowing kinda dull red, and there's lava flowing from the roof into small holes in the ground. There's a few simple decorations; flowers, paintings, and the like. But what catches my attention is the lone red-and-orange banner on my left. It's a gradient pattern, red on the bottom and orange on the top, and a yellow picture similar to a sun is in the center; the image caused by an oxeye daisy. My mind flashes back to Cassie Rose's mansion death trap. There could be someone back there, just waiting for a chance to step out and murder me.

"I wouldn't go through there yet, if I were you," a warm, lilting voice says. "You and the boy haven't quite recovered from imprisonment yet."

The speaker is sitting just beneath the banner. She's reading a strange book, wrapped in red leather and embossed with golden characters. Her curly amber hair falls around the outside of her book, just covering her face.

She looks up at me with a kind smile. Her skin is a kind of warm cocoa-bean type color, and her orange eyes, though gentle, seem almost filled with flickering fire. "Plus, you fell in the lava. It's only with my protection that you survived."

"Wait. Who are you? And where's Lukas?" This is going too quickly. And if Lukas doesn't survive...

"Your friend? He's in the other room. I was waiting for you to awaken before healing him; I will need help. I hope you don't mind." Her thought stream is surprisingly quiet, as though she truly believes in what she's doing, and nothing else exists in her mind. As though... she is at peace with life.

I shake off the thoughts and join her in front of a painting with the image of a bonfire against a night sky. She passes right through, but I hesitate before following her. On the other side, Lukas lies on his stomach on a table. Next to him are simple things like cloth bandages and water bottles. There's no trace of any potions, which worries me, and I say so.

She laughs and looks over at me. "I have my ways. As do my kin." As she turns back to Lukas, I can see a reflective orange wavy mark on her neck. It disappears under her hair before I can see any more of it. "I'll tell you more when your friend is awake. I need to teach you something, first. The healing won't work otherwise. Take your armor off."

"What exactly is this thing you want to teach me?" I ask. "And who are you?"

"Sholeh. And I will teach you a song." She stands up and extends her hand to help me up. I hesitate before accepting, and once I'm on my feet with my armor removed, she begins to sing.

Aurendelia, Aurendelia,
I call for you, I call for you,
Aurendelia, Aurendelia,
I am in need, I am in need

Aurendelia, Aurendelia,
We need your aid, we need your aid,
Aurendelia, Aurendelia,
So join me, come join me

This friend of ours needs healing,
Aurendelia, Aurendelia,
So grant me the healing fires,
Aurendelia, Aurendelia.

Sholeh looks over at me with a faint smile. "We'll need to repeat it several times, and in tune. Can you sing?"

My mouth opens and closes like a fish's. "I've... uh... I've never tried," I finally answer. "There's never been a reason to."

"There is always a reason to call to the fires of the heart." She reaches out her hand and lightly grasps mine. Her hand is oddly warm, as though there's a blaze beneath. "Now let us begin."

I'm slowly learning the words to the song, and how to sing them in tune. Sholeh seems to think that I would make a fine singer if I practiced, but right now all I want is to heal Lukas and get out of here, preferably alive.

But there's an issue with that. I don't even know where we are, or if we're surrounded by fifteen bajillion chunks of water on every side or floating in the sky or anything. And with Lukas recovering, we'll be hard-pressed to find the others without the Hunters murdering us in our sleep or being attacked by monsters. And in this world, there's no such thing as respawns.

After a while, Sholeh says we're finished practicing, and we gather back around Lukas. "Hold him down," she instructs, and once I do so, she pulls the arrow out of his shoulder. He twitches and shouts, but his eyes remain closed. With gentle fingers, she removes his upper-body armor and Ocelots jacket, and pulls back the sleeve of his shirt. The wound is bleeding crimson, and I fight back the urge to turn away.

"Seems like a deep shot," Sholeh remarks, probing the area around the injury with her fingers. She then turns to me. "Ready?"

I nod, and we both begin the song, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. As we sing, the arrow wound grows smaller and smaller, healing from the inside out. I almost falter when I realize this, but the success of the song, Sholeh told me, depends on our keeping tune. After perhaps five minutes, my voice is beginning to fail. Sholeh waves me off, signaling that she can keep the rest of the song, and I gladly close my mouth. After a few more minutes, Sholeh passes her hand over the wound and whispers something, and Lukas shudders and wakes up.

"Hello, child," Sholeh says, helping him sit upright.

"I'm hardly a child-" Lukas begins, then stops himself. "Where's Jesse? Who are you?"

"Compared to me, you are both children," she responds as I quickly head over and join Lukas.

"Glad to see you survived," he says quietly.

"You too," I reply.

"My name is Sholeh. You fell into the lava around the giant building two days ago, and I brought you here to recover." Sholeh says simply.

"You brought us here... out of the lava?" Lukas asks.

She laughs slightly and sits on the ground. After a moment of hesitation, we relocate as well. "No, you're still under the lava. They won't be able to find you here, and they haven't found me yet."

We share a look. "How... how long have you lived in here?" I ask, turning back to Sholeh. "And why would you want to live in lava?"

She sighs, the smile fading from her face. "Because I can't survive otherwise," she murmurs, her eyes downcast. "My kin and I, we depend on the fires to survive."

"Your kin?" Lukas wonders.

"I am not human," she replies. "I am a fire spirit. My kin, other fire spirits, must live within or near fire or lava. We cannot travel further than the eye can see from a home-fire, which is why many choose to live in the Nether. There is fire and lava everywhere, perfect for one of us."

"What happens if you leave?"

"We weaken steadily until we return to the fires of the stars, where all things were created, and watch over those who carry on."

"That seems simultaneously sad and beautiful," Lukas says quietly. I nod in agreement.

We have a quiet moment. None of us seem to be able to think of anything to say.

"So, uh. What now?"

---

Ehah. There's that.

Now, what was I gonna say?

Oh, right! I'm thinking about accepting OCs for this book, partly because I'm hoping for some person or another to spark my inspiration for how to get from here to *SPOILERS*. However, I'm not sure how I'll be able to include anyone, since I don't really know what I'm doing lol. So what do you guys say? OCs or no?

--Nadder