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Chapter 1: The Nether

Heat rippling off the ground in illusions of waves, Philza knew he was desperate.

Philza had gone on his "expeditions" before, but he had always avoided the Nether. The dreary landscape of unforgiving cliff drops and lava pools had made the Nether notorious for being a place that people only went to if they had a death wish. In fact, the most popular idea was that the nether was a leakage point of hell. So most sane people kept away from it.

Maybe Philza wasn't sane anymore.

He had walked so far. His feet ached, sand was everywhere in his clothes. He had walked through biomes he had never seen before, fought mobs that he had never killed before, and followed paths that he had never followed before. But despite this, the Nether was still the Nether. All of it was hot, all of it was torturous, and eventually all Philza's individual memories of where each new scratch and each new injury came from all starting to blur together in one dreamlike memory of pure suffering.

Philza was currently taking a detour carefully through a Nether fortress, before he finally stopped and decided that anymore walking and he would overheat and pass out.

Finding a little room off to the side, he snuck in and sealed the door off behind him, grateful that even though every movement and everything he touched was instantly covered in a layer of sweat, he still was not getting his butt kicked by any withers. So far, he had been able to avoid them.

Taking off all the clothes he could spare, only leaving shorts and a tank top on, he threw his stuff into a corner along with his scalding hot and discarded metal armor. No way he could handle armor right now. He couldn't even bear the leather strap of the bag he was carrying. The depressingly quickly emptying bag of worrying food rations.

Granted, when he first came into the Nether, he didn't think he would be in here for more than one day, his food supply being a sure teller of how he's pushing his limits, but Philza had found something that had gotten him excited for the first time in a long time, something that warranted an extra few days in the Nether.

He had found signs of life.

He slid down the walls of the little room he had sealed himself in, letting himself try to cool down in the dark. It was dangerous closing your eyes while overheating, for on account of just simply not waking up again. But Philza needed to spread his resources thin. Dangerously thin. So despite dripping in sweat and his throat burning like he had just swallowed coals, he sat down to take a nap for the first time in the last 24 hours. I'll be fine. He thought. I have to be.

Wrapping his black wings around him to stop the gravely dirt from irritating his skin, he shifted until his body didn't feel like it was going to explode at any second. Everything down here was designed to be deadly, even the sand could suck out your soul if you stayed on it too long. Luckily his wings, courtesy of his fae blood, was a good barrier between him and whatever forces were snatching people's souls.

While his eyes drifted closed, his head was still running. It had been a full day of searching for any clues, any ideas to where she had gone, and he was about to call it another failed expedition. It was a long shot anyways, no pillagers in their right minds would have a base down here. The only reason he was down here anyways was because he had heard that as of recently the pillagers had started using the nether as a shortcut between their bases in the overworld. But that was only as of recently, and, if she was in here, that means she would have had to escape while they were traveling the path in between two portals. A long shot, he knew. But Philza was that desperate.

He had flew so far in the overworld, talked to so many people, destroyed so many pilligare bases. He had killed, interrogated, done favors, bargened, and was just short of selling his soul to get any information of where she had gone. His heart ached, the deep shadow of emptiness and sorrow threatening to close in on him again. It had been a year. Why has it not gotten better?