Before I start:
I am really sorry I haven't updated this in ages. But here's a chapter, as an apology.

{Ruby's POV}
Jesse's not well, that much is obvious. She seems to think that Lukas is Aiden, and her thoughts are shooting at us, coupled with intense pain. The only reason I'm still halfway in control of myself is because of my transfer powers, is my guess. I'm still holding Kai and Lukas, but I can't tell if the others are still connected. I'll have to hope they are.

Another wave of thoughts floods towards us. I tighten my grip on Kai's hand as I feel him start to fall. He pulls himself back up and squeezes my hand in thanks. I start to whisper a chant from Inheritance, trying to regain control over my brain.

I repeat it several times, until I can muster the strength to banish the darkness. I force my eyes open slightly, just enough to see. The blackness, seemingly an infection, has spread further across Jesse's body, and she's growing taller. One of her eyes has turned completely purple, and the other is nearly there. She almost seems to be turning into an Enderman with mind powers. But that isn't possible, unless-

I freeze, almost releasing both boys next to me. The potion the Chief's people had made! Jesse had still been fully human by that time, I'm sure. And it had the same color scheme as a traditional Enderman. Ohh, this... This changes everything, I think. If this was a potion, there must be a cure. And we're going to have to find it to get out of here alive and free.

I chance a look behind me. Everyone is still connected, and Magnus is holding onto Lukas's other shoulder. Everyone else still seems trapped by Jesse's powers.

Suddenly, what I'm seeing disappears and I'm standing in the middle of a huge crowd. Someone knocks into me and I fall back a step, just to run into someone else. The normal bubble of space around me is gone, completely gone. I can't see two feet in front of me, the place is so packed. I can feel my brain shutting down, and I start repeating my chant, hoping to drive the people away. But the biggest reaction I get is a quick stare from a little kid with cat ears. But she is gone before I could blink.

I clench my fists and bodyslam someone onto the ground. They go down, and the crowd around me clears a bit. Now, over in the distance, I can see Jesse, almost fully turned into an Enderman. As I watch, her left shoulder's armor cracks and falls off, revealing a swirling, twisting dark mark. It's a fade from a pink to an oak brown. Her marking, I realize. But she's being taken over by the Enderman potion, even now. One of her feet turn completely black, and then I realize...she's floating. Levitating about three block above a platform.

"I can see your fears, as you remember," she shouts, but her mouth stays shut. "You are trapped within your greatest nightmares. May they-" she silences and clutches her chest. A bright light shines from between her fingers.

I take the distraction and close my eyes, trying to black out the crowd while she's focused away. I wish I had at least a dagger of some sort, and if I'm going to be dramatic, maybe a battalion or two of my friends. Suddenly something starts weighing down my right hand. My eyes pop open, and I see a small, detailed steel knife in my hand. It's perfectly weighted, incredibly crafted, and honed to the precise sharpness to impale someone through the heart.

I know why I have this blade now.

I can't reveal it, in case Jesse finds a way to take it away from me. So I quickly hide it in the deepest pocket of my pants. Some of the blade, patterned like dragonfire, is still poking out of the top of the pocket, but hopefully it's little enough to not tip her off. Now my top priority is to get out of this star-damned crowd alive.

Jesse's back again now. She doesn't seem to have noticed my dagger yet, but it's only a matter of time. Just as it is before I go insane from this crowd.

I knock several more people down, build a small heap out of their unconscious bodies, and stand on top of them. Squish, squish. From my new vantage point, I can see Lukas, Magnus, and Jess trapped in their own nightmares. Lukas is chained to a block of bricks and screaming as a giant Enderman slowly shambles toward him. Jess is standing at the very, very top of a tall spire of stone, with at least twenty-block drops on any side. And Magnus is standing in the center of a giant obsidian maze littered with traps.

Human bodies are squishy.

I jump off of the pile of bodies and land squarely on the ground, and take off running without sparing a glance back. Now to get to the ringleader of this monstrous circus.

<Jesse's POV>
I watch with delight as Aiden's Enderman slowly stalks toward him. His screams are terribly entertaining. But I don't remember him being blonde. That's new, but oh well. Perhaps he's like... like...

Who's Dan? His name pops up into my head, and it sounds vaguely familiar. Something about diamonds? Nothing important, surely. So I dismiss the thought and return my focus to the land before me.

"Absolutely thrilling, I must say! Wonderful entertainment!" I say, clapping. Is my mouth supposed to stay shut? My head says it is, but it doesn't feel quite right.

My gaze wanders to Gill, standing in the center of his maze. He takes a step to the east, and a small earthquake rumbles the ground, making him jump back as a long, thin crevice opens beneath his feet. He just barely clears it.

And there's Dustin on the spire, the evil brown-haired, green-eyed man who brewed potions for Aiden, along with Maya.

Speaking of whom, where is she? I know she was standing in that crowd of people, but now there's only a heap of bodies in the center of the milling masses. Perhaps she's lost. No matter, though; she is no threat to me.

A small thought tingles at the back of my head at that, but it's impossible for her to have any weaponry or backup. Everyone else is still within sight of me, and terrified for their lives. So I give a small, small smile and close my purple eye. The other one, unnaturally green, refuses to obey my commands.

That's no problem of mine.

A small sound behind me of pebbles falling, and I turn slowly. Maya is standing there on the edge of the platform, her arms at her sides and her eyes on me. And then she opens her mouth and speaks.

"In El-Harim, there lived a man."

She reaches into one of her pockets and draws a small dagger. Its hilt is shaped like a roaring dragon's head, its blade patterned with dragonfire.

"A man with yellow eyes."

She walks toward me, slowly, and with purpose. I can't move. And the world is silent.

"He said to me, beware the shadows."

She raises the blade above her head. There is no pity in her eyes, no mercy, no anger.

"For they whisper lies!"

And she drives the dagger into my chest.

At first, I feel nothing. And then the pain hits.

{Ruby's POV}
I watch as half-Jesse lands clumsily and falls to her knees, clutching her chest. I took the dagger back before she fell, and now I draw my finger along the edge and replace it in my pocket.

It is a good weapon, this dagger.

The world is still silent for a few more beats, until things start disappearing. Lukas's chains snap and disappear with the bricks they were attached to. He rolls his wrists and pulls out his sword, beginning to dispatch the giant Enderman. The spire topples beneath Jess and he lands squarely, shuddering as he stands. The maze disappears around Magnus, and he falls backward with relief. And- there's Kai! The snakes around him vanish into smoke, and he looks around carefully.

The world starts to warp. Twisting and whirling around me, and then-

Silence. Absolute, perfect silence. It's a beautiful thing, you know. The calm, blissful quiet after the crowds of idiots every day, when you feel like everything's going to be perfect and you don't need to worry about a thing. Everything is as it should be.

But it never lasts. There's always a little sister coming to annoy you, a machine activating, a thought, and then the stillness is ruined. And then it's gone, and everything is back to the normal chaos of life.

And as always, something starts pulling me out of the beauty of silence. Something shaking my shoulder? What, am I unconscious or something?

Squishy squishy human bodies. Also slightly bony. Do not eat without proper cooking methods, which include curing with salt, deboning, and roasting over fire for twelve hours. Human blood also makes very good mead.

Can I go back to the silence? I miss it.

~Lukas's POV~
I can't believe Ruby. She just... stabbed Jesse with some weapon, freeing us all, but now she's unconscious, barely breathing, and Kai seems to be panicking. But then again, his reaction makes sense. He just found someone from his world after searching for several years and being tossed into dungeons after some crazy rescue mission, and now she's near death after saving him along with the rest of us.

I have to admit, she was pretty heroic. I mean, stabbing the creator of some mystery nightmare land with a magically created weapon while calmly, but loudly, saying some strange piece of poetry or some such, with no worries about her own safety. Or the safety of the rest of us, for that matter. But she managed to save us from Jesse.

Speaking of whom... she's staring at Ruby. And not insane anymore, which I'm thankful for. A lot of her armor is missing, and her clothes are torn. Underneath, there's no clear cause of the more recent tears, or the missing armor. But there's a lot of bruising and half-healed cuts across her body, and she looks as though she was beaten repeatedly. And there's her mark - an irregular, swirling, dark pattern across the right side of her body.

"She...stabbed me," she says, blinking. "She stabbed me."

"And saved you at the same time," I reply, putting a hand on her marked shoulder.

"She was trying to kill me. She stabbed me."

Magnus kneels down next to Ruby, wraps a thin piece of cloth - a sock, maybe? - around his hand, and rests it on her neck. After a few seconds, he begins muttering and takes the sock off, this time using his bare hand. Kai hovers next to him, clearly stressing over Ruby's state. While they're doing whatever they're doing, I take out my pickaxe and start building a wall of sorts around the area outside of Jesse's cell, where we came back into this world - if we ever left.

After a few minutes, Magnus makes a strange noise and begins to stand. Kai's on him immediately. "What happened? Why are you standing up?"

"There's nothing I can do. Her heartbeat's slowing down too much; she's not going to survive." Magnus seems defeated, and there's a peculiar sadness in his eyes.

"No. No, that's not true. She won't die. She can't die."

"She won't."

All of us jump and turn to look at Jess, kneeling down where Magnus had just been. "I have a bit of a healing ability, I think. I managed to heal Kai, right before you all showed up." Without further ado, he closed his eyes and places one of his hands over Ruby's chest, and the other on her forehead.

I'm willing to believe in magic, don't get me wrong, but healing someone from the brink of death? That seems completely impossible.

Several near-silent minutes pass, and then coughing ensues. Ruby begins to almost vibrate, and as she jolts to a sitting position, a bit of blood trails out with the next cough. Jess loudly tells her to stay still and firmly grips her shoulders. After another minute or so, Ruby has finally stopped coughing for the most part, and she begins to stand.

"Are you about to die?" Magnus asks. "Because you almost died. And now you're awake. So now you're going to die, right?"

Jess collapses onto the ground, breathing heavily and red-faced. "Notch...above," he pants. "That was the hardest thing I've ever done."

"No, I'm not about to die," Ruby says in response to Magnus. "Unless you're all figments of my imagination, in which case I'm already dead."

"Well, that's a relief."

She pats at one of her pockets and pulls out a dagger. The pommel is shaped like a roaring dragon's head, except much more intricately designed and stylized. The blade is patterned in v's pointing toward the tip, giving an impression similar to fire. But all along the iron blade are black streaks, seeming almost to glow purple.

"So that wasn't a dream."