Wither

Chapter 12-Discovery

I arrived at the Nether fortress a few minutes after Ember, warily keeping my distance. Sora and Poof looked up from the game of illusion-cards they were playing and gaped. They looked at Ember with a wide-eyed expression and jerked their heads towards me. She nodded and shrugged. Jet got up from where he was napping on a comfy looking pile of blankets and saw me. He rubbed his eyes, astonished. River and Dusty stopped joking around for a minute and looked wildly around. Their eyes landed on me incredulously and they stared. Lauren looked up from where she was hovering and abruptly fell with a grunt. She gawked in my direction. Romani looked up from the big, pillow laden air mattress he was laying on and peered at me curiously, oddly calm.

"Everyone," I heard Ember sigh, "apparently Seto isn't dead. He somehow ended up here." I thought I heard her mutter something about it being unsurprising, but I chose to ignore it.

"Hi, Seto," Poof said awkwardly.

"Been a while, eh, Poof?" I said, equally as awkward.

"Yeah," Sora mumbled, still awkwardly.

"So he can just stay here until we figure out what to do to get Toboe," Ember interrupted, melting the ice (see what I did there). "Then he can leave."

"Aw, man, does he have to? He could just stay for the entire trip...I mean, he could probably make us a new portal," Dusty sighed.

"You guys broke the portal?!" I gasped. Romani nodded, a bit sheepishly. "Wow. And I thought at least you, Romani, would be able to prevent something like that happening."

Romani's yellow, normally sunny and cheerful face darkened to a sunset orange. Upon seeing my broad grin, he realized that I was joking and grabbed me by the head, giving my hair a hard ruffle. This made my hair even more out of place than it already was. I shook my head vigorously and slipped my hood over my head, not obscuring my face. Ember huffed and went off to find Peterson, as Romani told me. I sat down by River and Dusty and chatted with them.

***

I could sense that it was nighttime in the overworld, since my body, still accustomed to the traits even though it had been almost a year since I had been stuck here, was aching and my eyes drooped. I stole some of Jet's pillows, much to his annoyance, and promptly fell asleep.

***

*Peterson's POV*

I flew through the air, keeping my eyes open for a Nether fortress. I had seen many, as I'd lived in the Nether my whole life, and spotted one in the far distance. I accelerated for a small span of time and reached it. I saw a huge mass of zombie pigmen at the supposed entrance. I opened my mouth, a fire charge heating up, and chirped. I flung it at the mass, and most of the pigmen died at the intense pressure and impact of the explosive. The rest were killed by the heat. (And they all turned into metamorphic hamrocks.)

I flew through the hole in the fort that I had created. Being a rather diminutive ghast, I fit easily. I swept through the halls silently. There was a hallway leading down that I almost missed. I squeezed through, almost not fitting. I heard whimpers and yells of anger. "You helped him escape! Where is he? WHERE DID YOU LEAD HIM?!" The distinctively male voice snarled. "I thought he went into the portal! That's where I told him to go!" This voice, a female, yelled.

"I know he didn't go through there. I saw him leave. He's in the Nether somewhere. You need to find him!" The man snapped. I peeked through and saw him with brown hair, a blue shirt, and jeans. The most distinctive feature was his blinding white headlights covering his eyes. At least, that's what I hoped it was.

"I have no way to track him! That isn't my power!" The girl replied heatedly, with just as much acid in her tone. I could tell she was lying about not being able to track whoever, though. She had long, ragged brown hair and cold chocolate eyes. She had a thin white scar across her cheekbone, going onto one lip and leaving a small, pearly mark. It stopped there, then resumed just below her mouth and crossed down into her shirt. She had an array other scars bordering her face and arms and presumably her back and legs. They were, from what I could tell, from flogging and other torture related activities. She looked about seventeen or eighteen, and the man four or five years older.

Headlight-Man snarled and pulled a whip out of his pocket. The girl shrunk back and growled. He unfurled the tight, coiled rope and cracked it, the unspeakably hard end hitting and denting the seemingly unbreakable iron bars. He hurled it at the girl with uncanny accuracy and she cried out, cutting it off sharply. He cracked it three more times, shouting at her to tell him. She finally broke into a strangled mix of screams and sobs. I saw blood spatter Headlight-Man and he continued whipping her, unflinching. I couldn't stand by any longer. I quietly crooned, charging the explosive in my mouth. The near-silent noise was muffled by the cries of the girl.

I flung the fire charge at the man. A direct hit. He slammed into the wall and a crowd of rocks smashed onto his head. The bloody whip was torn from his hands. The iron bars melted under the heat of the fire. The girl was whimpering to herself in the cell. I flew forward, making sure the man was unconscious before turning to look at the girl. She held up a tiny dagger as means of defense. Blood was flowing freely from a gash in her side. Her shoulder oozed the red liquid, and her eye was shut with a fair amount of blood around it. Her back, though I couldn't see it, was cut in multiple places.
"Don't touch me!" She spat at me.

I backed away, tears springing to my eyes. "B-but I wasn't going to hurt you...my name's Peterson, by the way..."

"Toboe," she said, crossing her arms. The gesture must have been painful, and she grimaced slightly before glaring at me. She wasn't remotely surprised that I could talk. I, however, was astonished at my luck.

"Toboe Wolffe? Come with me!!"