A Final Stand

Chapter 1: Home Again?

(WARNING: LUKESSE AND OCCASIONALLY WEIRDLY CRAMPED WRITING. I AM SORRY.)

<Jesse's POV>
We stumble out of the portal and appear near a familiar-looking fortress. It was covered in vines and several of the blocks were chipped and cracked, but it is still recognizable.

"The Order's temple!" Ivor exclaims, hopping from foot to foot. "It seems so long since I was here last!"

"The Order? Of what?" Harper asks. She seemed distinctly uncomfortable. Of course, most of her life that we knew of was in the Mesa biome world, with no trees, grass, simple hills, water, anything. Oh, and trying to escape an insane computer she built. Did I mention that?

"The temple of the Order of the Stone!" Ivor replies.

"It wasn't this broken down earlier," Lukas says, gesturing toward the temple. I follow his gaze. When we had been here last, trying to escape the Witherstorm, we had taken refuge here and rebuilt the temple's defenses. Now it looks like a giant had thrown a mountain at the roof and stomped on the rest. Except more broken.

"Yeah, Lukas is right," Petra agrees. "You guys made it a lot safer. Now it's...worn down. A lot."

I nod. "This doesn't seem right." I look around, surveying our surroundings. Several of the trees had been taken down, and there were more caves in the mountains than before.

"It's getting dark. We should head inside," Lukas says, shaking his head. "Before the monsters come out."

Almost as one, we head down the hill and into the temple.

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The inside of the temple wasn't much better off. Several cobwebs had sprung up in the passageways, and the ceiling had caved in in some places, making it difficult to get to the stairs up top. But we make it.

I look across the landscape, my heart pounding in my chest. It's all so different. A small town had sprung up nearby, but the buildings are nearly destroyed and clearly abandoned. The dirt hut we had built at the beginning of our adventures seems mostly intact, the fire from the Netherrack still burning. I close my eyes and hear someone come up next to me.

"We've been gone a long time," Lukas says, and I feel him touch my shoulder. The light touch surprises me slightly. I nod, opening my eyes again. The setting sun against the horizon turned the sky orange and pink, the colors reflecting off the clouds, as if trying to prevent the dark night from taking over.

"Yeah. Longer than it felt, apparently," I respond quietly, and we watch as the day fades to night, the stars beginning to appear. I listen to the other three come up behind us, and turn to hear what they say.

"How could time have passed so quickly? We spent about a month portal jumping, max." Petra was saying. "And it looks like it's been years since we last were here."

"Yeah. That was a problem in the Portal Hallway, and the reason the Old Builders have been around for so long. I really don't like that name," Harper mutters. "Time is sort of... faster... outside the hallway than inside. We never could figure out why."

"So, if that's the case, how long would we have been away from home?" Lukas asks, fear hidden in the undertones of his voice.

"My guess would be...about twenty years or so. Of course, I could be wrong, and it would depend on how much time you spent in other worlds, and which ones, but that would be about how long."

Lukas looks at me, and I look back. "But then...what's happened to Axel and Olivia?" I ask.

"We need to find them. Soon." Petra says. "They must have worried about us being gone for so long."