The Nether (Merome) *Short story*

Chapter 4

Warnings: None

     ~Mitch's P.O.V.~

Sighing I wipe the sweat off my soot stained face. How am I gonna get back up? Starting to wander away in search for something to aid me I'm more that surprised to hear a heavy thud and a yelp of pain following suit. I whirl around instantly, my eyes resting upon Jerome who's sitting on the ground and clutching at his knee. His eyes flash to me, filled with a mixture of emotions such as fear, pain, and apology.

"Jerome, what are you doing?!" I seethe, shaking my head in disbelief.
"Mitch you know me well enough by now that you should know I wasn't just gonna leave you like that." Jerome defends, wincing when he shifts his leg every so slightly.
"But now we're both stuck down here! And you obviously fractured your knee landing, if not broke it."
"It doesn't matter, there's no way you'd make it up alive by yourself."
"Ugh fine, we can't change it now anyways."

I step over to Jerome and offer him my hand, pulling him up with a grunt. He drifts away from my side and tries to hide the fact he's badly hurt, but fails miserably by his obvious limp. He looks over at me, the exact same way a child would look at their mother if they refused to bring a coat and then got cold afterwards. I roll my eyes, lifting his arm over my shoulder and pull him along the rigid terrain. We wander around the area aimlessly, trying to stay relatively close to the area we fell down at. But after what seems like an eternity of searching we finally give up, slumping down in defeat against a hill of netherrack. We don't have anything to mine our way up with, and nothing to pile up on. So what's left to do?

I rub my temples in deep thought, my brain swarming with ideas. But after a few minutes of drawing a blank slate and left with a throbbing headache I simply growl in frustration, kicking a pebble.

"Well it's clear we aren't gonna find a way up if we stay around here. Let's try going somewhere else." Jerome suggests.
"Yeah I guess that our only option..." I sigh defeat, unenthusiastically pushing myself to my feet and pulling Jerome up with me.

Yet again we spend a large amount of time searching the area before finally moving out. While walking to who knows where, we pass multiple pigmen, this time making sure not to pass within a meter of one. The occasional echo of a ghasts cry will ring throughout the cavern, sometimes the call being returned from another direction. In the distance the eerie call of a ghast bounds of the walls and I shiver uncomfortably, not wanting another run in with a ghast. To try and distract myself from the unnerving sounds I instead focus on our current standpoint resource wise. Let's see... We don't have any sort of pickaxe left, my bow is still probably sitting on the ground where we fell, but I do have a sword in decent condition... Jerome has Benny but he doesn't have a pickaxe either. Food wise we should be good for a while... Water is another story though. Unless Jerome brought some in a bottle we're pretty much doomed if we don't get out of here soon. I note bitterly.

"Mitch, I have an idea!" Jerome declares, snapping me out of my thoughts.
"Shoot."
"I didn't clear out my bag entirely when I was getting ready for the nether and I think I had a lead in there! If it's still in there then maybe we could rope a ghast or blaze and ride it back up!"

If I was drinking... The drink would be everywhere right now. I snort, looking over at him.

"Alright haha, very funny. Now what's the real plan?"
Jerome frowns, "I'm not kidding Mitch."

I jerk to a stop, halting Jerome beside me.

"Are you crazy? How are we gonna get close enough to something like that and tame it without dying?! Not to mention your knee is broken!"
"I dunno Mitch but we have to try... It might be our only chance to get out of here alive. I only have one bottle of water left... That's not going to last us very long."

I regard him for a minute, thinking over his plan thoroughly. He does have a point. There's no way we can pile up... Our pickaxes are still in the side of a cliff and our other ones broke... And there isn't any staircase around here obviously... So I guess that his plan is probably our best way of escaping.

"Alright let's try it. But if we die don't say I didn't tell you so."
"Good! Okay let's go..."

Jerome reaches into his backpack of wonders and pulls out a long sturdy lead. Gripping if tightly we start off again, keeping our eyes peeled for a nether fortress or a ghast. Preferably with its back turned to us or even better... Asleep. We pad silently over the blood red ground, searching for something that can kill us within a minute. Then my eyes catches the bulky white figure of a ghast about 200 meters away, nestled against the ground. It's sleeping...

"Jerome look... Over there." I whisper, pointing in its direction.

Jerome who was recently looking at his feet glances up, quickly scanning the area before deciphering the unmistakable white figure. Silently creeping forward, or at least as quiet as we can with our armour on, we approach it. It's face is towards us, which needless to say is extremely unnerving. Although as soon as we pass the 50 meter point it's eyes snap open and we freeze. It only takes a second to float into the air, its eyes zeroing in on us. With an angry cry, it's appendages flailing, it launches a fireball directly towards us. I push Jerome out of the way and throw myself to the ground, just barley escaping the explosion.

"Jerome, throw me the lead!" I shout, picking myself up and diving away from another fireball.

He chucks it to me before just barley rolling away from another fireball, the ground exploding beside him. I quickly tie it into a lasso shape while I dash nimbly towards its strafing figure. It shoots yet another fireball at me and I swiftly pull out my sword, deflecting the projectile up into the netherrack roof above us. With a loud crack pieces of red rock tumble from above, dust surrounding the ghast and clouding it's vision. It screeches in confusion. I charge into the floating debris, hopping onto a ledge behind the ghast who is shooting fireballs rapidly in random directions. Tossing the lead I loop it around its large head, pulling back tightly as it shrieks in protest.

Then... I launch onto its head.

~~~