The Mark Of the Nether (A Minecraft fanfiction)

The Calm

Piper's POV:

"I win!" I stood at the entrance to the treehouse, smiling down at the other two.

"Ah Piper, took you long enough." I turned around to see Sav grinning at me while relaxing on a beanbag in the corner of the treehouse. I froze, my jaw dropping.

"Wha-H-how?" I stared at her and she giggled.

"Beat t'cha!" Micha cheered while climbing onto the wooden floor of the treehouse, stepping on Remeer's head in the process.

"Ow! Watch it," He complained, pulling himself up off the rope ladder. Remeer noticed me staring at Savannah and chuckled. "She was already here when you got up, wasn't she?" I nodded. "Little fact about Sav, she's got the agility of a cat." He ruffled hair.

"Hey!" She swatted his hand away.

"She's been climbing trees since she was two."

"You know," Sav smiled and got up, looking out of a square hole in the side of the wall that acted as a window while leaning her arms against it. "We used to have a treehouse in our garden back at my old village. I think it's still there." Remeer went up to Sav and they started talking about their old village while Micha ran down a rope bridge to explore. The treehouse we were in was made with spruce wood. The wooden planks were roughly hammered together, as expected from any kid building a treehouse, yet none of the nails were sticking out and it looked pretty sturdy considering this place looked like a kid's secret hideout. There was a bookshelf that went up to my knee with two rows packed with books. All of them were atlas', or crafting recipes, or mob guides. But no matter which book I opened, I noticed all sorts of maps hidden between the pages. Some of this region, the 'golden region' as it's been called since Notch's castle is here, some of other regions and one of the Nether.

I grabbed all of the torn bits and pieces of maps and studied them closer. They were clearly not printed, but instead hand-drawn. The coordinates and symbols were scribbled on scruffily. Yep a kid definitely made this. I looked around before taking the maps and shoving them in my pocket. 'No one will know if I just-'

'No stealing, Piper.' 

I huffed. 'But Ghastly, this could come in handy. Besides, it doesn't look like anybody's been here in decades.'

'Do you even know how to read a map?' 

I rolled my eyes. 'I was raised by skeletons who taught me survival skills my whole life. I graduated my map-reading class when I was seven.' Once again in the back of my head I heard laughter. It was muffled and I could mainly sense it rather than hear it but I knew he was laughing. I figured he was doing it in real life instead of his head and because of the whole connection thing I could still feel it.

'Alright, take it. But don't tell the spirits that I'm encouraging stealing, I don't want to lose my job.'

'What job?' I got up and began looking around a bit more. I noticed an armor stand right next to the doorway, It was the same size as me. It had dusty diamond armor hung up on it with an old diamond sword on the ground next to it. While the armor looked like it had a good few uses left the sword looked like it could break just by picking it up.

'My job as the guardian. Your guardian. In other word's, the creature who's supposed to make sure you're safe and doing the right thing.'

'Creature?'  I raised an eyebrow.

'Yeah. What, did you really think I was human? I mean, look, we're talking to each other in our head's for Notch's sake! No person can do that.'