by Mark Mulle
“How did you know about the magical barrier?”
“Oh, that. When I left the house, there was one around the house I was in. I stuck my hand it and it completely ruined my gloves.” She wiggled her fingers at him. He hadn’t noticed one of her hands were bare before.
“What happened to the barrier?”
“As soon as I saw the first creeper, the barrier broke. It was almost as if it was containing me or something for the first creeper. Isn’t that weird?” She shuddered.
“Yeah. I’ve never heard of anything like that before. Or any of this, really.”
“Hey!” Elena exclaimed, leaning forward, “Why don’t you reach out to Herobrine? He would know what was going on, right?”
“It isn’t as if I have a direct line to him. Herobrine sort of just does his own thing.” Steve replied.
“Well, there has to be a way out of this village. I really don’t like sitting around here, waiting for us to get attacked by creepers or something worse.”
Steve nodded and then had an idea, “Wait here.”
Elena nodded. He got to his feet and went a little bit away from her, near the barrier. Then he closed his eyes and tried to reach out to Herobrine. He hadn’t tried doing this in a long time. When everything had been going on with the Scarlet Hero, the ability to feel Herobrine in the game had been incredibly useful – when it wasn’t blocked.
Steve felt nothing. Either Herobrine was also in trouble and was somewhere where the two of them couldn’t feel each other or he wasn’t in the mood to chat. He opened his eyes and looked at the barrier. It went up very high but…
“I have an idea,” He said, turning back to Elena, “But it is risky.”
Elena got to her feet, “All of this is pretty crazy. I’m ready.”
Steve pointed to the home they were closest to, “The barrier doesn’t go all the way up. It ends up there, see?”
Elena followed where he was pointing and nodded. The barrier did end at a certain height. It was enough that they were stuck – if they stayed on the ground.
She seemed to understand this because she asked, “So, you want us to climb to the roof of this house and try to leap over the barrier?”
“That’s right.”
“Will that even work?”
“Any other ideas?” He asked her.
“No. I guess this is the best one. Come on.” She replied, going towards the house.
Steve boosted her so she could jump up and reach the roof. Then she lowered her hand down and helped tug him onto it. The roof was difficult to walk in because his armor would slide across it. Elena steadied him and then the two of them looked at the barrier.
They were closer to it now. It ended low enough that if they took a running leap, they could make it. Elena was removing her armor.
“You should take yours off too. That armor will just weigh you down.” She pointed out.
Steve nodded and equipped regular clothing. Together, they stared at the barrier. Neither one of them moved. He wasn’t sure what Elena was thinking about but he was thinking about what would happen if he struck the barrier. Would he respawn in the village? It probably would keep them trapped in here no matter how many times they respawned. Honestly, Steve didn’t feel like respawning. The more connected he grew with the game, the more he felt everything as if it were really happening.
“Okay. Am I going first? Are you going first?” Elena asked him.
“I’ll go first. That way if it doesn’t work, you can try to think of something else while I respawn.”
She nodded and Steve backed up to the edge of the roof. He was trying to figure out how he was going to jump this distance, swallowing any fear he had. Elena wished him luck and then he took off at a run.
He had taken off his shoes because they had been sliding across the diamonds. Barefoot, Steve could feel the diamonds against the bottoms of his feet. The edge of the roof came upon him faster than he was expecting. He pushed off the diamond roof and lunged through the air.
For a few terrifying seconds, Steve was worried he was going to slam face first into the magical barrier. But instead, he soared through the air. The barrier was underneath him. As he jumped over it, his foot brushed against the very top of it. There was a quick stab of pain and then he was toppling down to the ground.
He landed with a solid thud. For the second time that day, the wind was knocked out of his lungs. Steve wheezed and rolled on his back. His foot was throbbing from where it had hit the barrier.
He sat up and looked at the village. The barrier remained intact. Elena was shouting something through it – it looked as if she was asking him if he was alright. But no sound came through. He mimicked that he couldn’t hear her and she stopped speaking.
Steve got to his feet and limped away from the barrier. He would deal with his foot injury once Elena made it safely across. For some reason, he was more nervous about her making the jump than himself. Maybe it was because she was a new player and Steve wasn’t even sure how she could handle herself in this world yet.
He found himself holding his breath as Elena darted across the roof. She was faster than he was. Nimbler too. She soared over the top of the barrier with ease before landing down on the ground on her bottom.
“Ow.” He heard her mumble as he jogged over to her.
“Wow, you didn’t slam your foot in the wall like I did.” He replied.
“That was so scary!” She shook her head, “I was scared I was going to topple face first into the barrier.”
Steve sat down next to her, wincing, “I have to patch up my foot before we go anywhere.”
“Where are we going to go?”
“My house is near here. We’ll head there and try to go over everything. See if we can come up with an idea as to what is going on and why you’re so connected to the game.” He said as he brought out a health potion.
Elena stared at the barrier which was rippling in front of them, “I miss just building houses.”
Steve laughed.
Chapter Five
Steve was anxious to get back to the house. The diamond village, the barrier and Elena were all strange things to suddenly appear in his world of Minecraft. It would be good to go back home and regroup.
But when they crossed the pond, Steve stopped walking. Elena, who didn’t realize anything was wrong, kept going. She finally noticed he wasn’t next to her anymore and turned around.
“What is it?”
“My house.” He said after a moment.
She looked confused, “What about it?”
“It’s gone.”
It was true. The place where his house should be was completely empty as if it never existed. The plains stretched out before him. For a split second, he felt dizzy. Then he thought that maybe he they had somehow gotten lost.
But as he stumbled towards where his house should be, Steve knew that he was in the right place. The garden was still here, marking the place where the house was supposed to be next to it. He stood in the garden now, completely confused.
“The house is gone.” Steve repeated.
Elena frowned and looked around, as if the house might suddenly appear out of thin air.
Steve was shaking his head, “Something is really wrong. Someone is messing with the game and us.”
“What? How?”
“I don’t know. Stay here.”
He wandered off a little bit to where the house would have started. He crouched down and ran his hands over the dirt. The ground was unchanged as if nothing had ever been here. Steve closed his eyes again and tried to reach out to Herobrine.
There was something this time – a soft flicker in the darkness. It felt as if their connection touched briefly. Something darted across his mind. It was an image. It was there and gone in under a second. Steve frowned.
He knew what he had seen yet it didn’t make any sense. None of this did. Something must have shown on his face because Elena came over.
“What is it? You
look like you ate something funny.”
“I managed to reach out to Herobrine. Briefly.”
“Wow!” Her eyes widened, “You can reach out to him just like that? That’s amazing.”
“He showed me a place but…”
“But what?”
“The place doesn’t exist. It’s just some old Minecraft legend some people made up ages ago.”
Elena shrugged, “I don’t know anything about Minecraft legends. Fill me in?”
“There’s a rumor there’s this small island that was put into the game that no one can get to.”
“The End?”
“No. No, people can get to that, Elena.”
“They can?” She asked curiously.
“Wow, you are new to this game.” He shook his head, “Anyway, no. It wasn’t ever put in the game. It’s just rumored to be this sort of island that is basically a mountain. It’s covered in snow. It has creatures that aren’t in the regular game.”
“And Herobrine showed you it?”
“Yeah. But does that mean he is there? And what does that mean for what is going on in here?”
“You’re asking the wrong person. I have no idea. What do I have to do with any of it?”
“I don’t know.” Steve admitted.
“So, now what?” She asked him.
“I guess we figure out how to go the Snow Labyrinth.”
*
Elena and Steve agreed to log out where they were. There was no way to make sure their characters would be safe where his house was supposed to be but it was better than being stuck in that diamond village.
Once Steve logged out, he decided that he was going to try to do some research on the Snow Labyrinth. Honestly, he didn’t know much about it. Herobrine had mentioned it only in passing with no confirmation that it was even real. People on the forums would mention in once and a while – usually while saying Herobrine wasn’t real. It was just another urban legend in the world of Minecraft.
Yet if Herobrine had showed him an image of it, then there had to be some sort of truth to it. The first thing Steve did was look it up online to see if there were any articles about it. Sometimes people would write entire pages dedicated to strange things in Minecraft.
He found a few things about it but nothing new. Steve went to the forums then and did a search. But that only pulled up the usual legends about the Snow Labyrinth. He leaned back in his chair. He had to be missing something.
Steve thought about the diamond village and the red creepers. Those had been some scary things. He remembered how they looked chasing after Elena and himself. Their red skin had glinted in the diamonds and turned everything a dark red as they had run towards them.
On a whim, he did a search for red creepers. Almost nothing popped up…except for a bad drawing of one of the creatures. Steve clicked on the page to open up the website up. It was an older site and hadn’t been updated in quite some time.
Even so, the bad drawing of the red creeper stared Steve in the face. Underneath the drawing was the headline: Red Creepers in the SL?
Steve kept reading.
Chapter Six
When Steve logged in the next day, Elena was already there. She was near the pond, leaning over it. He went over to her.
“What are you doing?” He asked curiously.
She jumped, startled and turned around quickly, “You scared me!”
“Have you been logged in long?”
“No, maybe about ten minutes,” She replied, “I would have logged in later but I got into a fight with my sister.”
“Older or younger?”
“Younger by two years. We’re always bickering.” Elena grumbled.
Steve pointed to the pond, “What were you doing?”
“Oh! Well, I tried to do some research about that snow mountain place.”
“Snow Labyrinth.” Steve corrected.
“Right.”And I found this really weird website that said the Snow Labyrinth is located up and down, west and east, under and over all at the same time.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Well, I know it makes no sense, silly. But I had a theory I was trying to test out. Why, what did you find out?”
“Mostly came out like gibberish. Just legends of what could be on the island – what sort of creatures. A lot of theories about if Herobrine could be behind it or if that is where he lives. But, now that you mention it…I read something similar to yours. At the time, I just brushed it off but…”
“What was it?”
“Something like up is down, down is up. That was all it said. It didn’t mean anything to me but if you found something similar, maybe it means something. Why were you looking at the pond?”
“Oh, well, I was thinking about mirrors. Up is down – down is up, that sort of thing. The opposite. Sort of like when you look at a mirror and things are flipped.” Elena replied.
Steve crouched down next to the pond and touched it. The pond rippled and he watched it before going, “Looks like regular water to me.”
“Well, this isn’t going to be a real mirror,” Elena replied, “I was thinking about the bottom.”
“The bottom?”
“What if the pond has an entrance way at the bottom that we can swim through?”
Steve held up a hand, “Wait up. We are sort of just jumping to conclusions, aren’t we? I get your theory that about mirrors and up is down but just swimming to the bottom of the pond…”
“You ever swim to the bottom of your pond before?”
“No. Why would I have done that?”
“Well, you don’t know then, do you?” She crossed her arms, “I think that the Snow Labyrinth is in some sort of mirrored world. Ponds reflect things. Water reflects things. So what if this pond is a portal? All I’m asking is for us to swim to the bottom of it. If there isn’t anything there, then we’re done. We can figure something else. But if you won’t try it with me, I’ll try it myself.” She said stubbornly.
Somehow, he knew Elena would jump in there and try it out even if he said no. And seeing that she didn’t even know players could get to the End, he knew he would have to come with her to make sure she didn’t do anything to get herself hurt.
“Fine, fine. You’re right. We will try it out just to see.”
“What if the pond does have some sort of entrance? Maybe it is…I don’t know, leaking things through it? Like that diamond village. Or even myself!”
“You think it sucked my house through or something?”
“Maybe. We won’t know until we try.”
They both turned to look at the pond. Elena glanced at him and shrugged before jumping into the pond.
“Wait.” Steve called out to her.
She stopped before she dove under and said, “What?”
Steve tried to focus on the game. He wanted to connect to it. Normally, Herobrine was here to help. But he was on his own this time. He tried to imagine the game as a real thing, not lines of code, and thought of the water as real. He imagined Elena’s lungs and filled them with air. Then he imagined the same thing for himself.
“I tried to give us extra air to carry us to the bottom,” He explained when he was done, “No idea how much extra but hopefully it will be enough to have us touch down to the bottom. Not sure how deep it is.”
“Wow,” Elena’s eyes were wide, “You can do that?”
“I can modify the game like that, yes. It depends on the situation.” He replied as he hopped into the pond.
“Well, let’s hope it works. Ready?”
“Let’s go.”
Chapter Seven
Down the two of them went, swimming towards the bottom of the pond. Steve wasn’t expecting much. Elena’s theory was a good one but would there really be some sort of opening or portal at the bottom of the pond?
The water was murky and was sluggish to swim through. There were no fish or anything else swimming around in the pond. Steve hoped that there wasn’t going to be an elder gua
rdian or something at the bottom of the pond. Knowing his luck, there would be some sort of water dragon at the bottom.
Yet, they kept swimming. The pond was going a lot deeper than he thought it would. Next to him, Elena kept swimming. At one point she looked at him. Steve worried she was running out of air. But she just shrugged as if to remark on how long they had been going for.
The sun could no longer hit the water down this far. Everything was growing darker. Still, they kept going. Steve was starting to grow concerned. How deep was this pond?
After another five minutes of swimming and just as Steve was starting to feel a little prick in his lungs meaning that his air was running low, Elena grabbed his hand and pointed. He saw it. There was light at the bottom.
They picked up their speed. The light grew brighter. Steve wasn’t sure what it was but there was definitely something down there. Had Elena been right? Then he realized what the light was – it was the sun.
The sun was reflecting through the top of the pond. Elena had been right! They were going to break through the surface of the water on the opposite side of the pond. He kicked his feet to swim faster towards the bottom.
Yet behind him Elena was swimming slower. He turned to look at her and watched as she pointed to her chest. Steve knew what she was trying to tell him – she was running out of air and fast.
He reached out and grabbed her hand, yanking her forward. Maybe she couldn’t hold as much air as he could because he was more in tune with the game. Steve didn’t know. In any case, it didn’t matter. They needed to get through to the surface quickly.
Elena was trying to swim to keep up with him but she was feeling the effects of no air. Steve held onto her firmly and yanked her forward. The surface of the water was closer now – she just had to hold on for a few more seconds and they would burst through the surface. Steve pushed forward with all his strength and –
Chapter Eight
They burst through the surface of the pond, on the opposite side of whatever world they were now in. Next to Steve, Elena was coughing up water and gasping for air. He hit her on the back, trying to get the water out of her.
She spluttered out a ‘thank you’ before taking in a deep breath of air, “That was close.”
“Way too close. Are you alright?”
“I’m okay now. Thank you for helping me.”
“No problem.” Steve looked around to see where they had ended up.