Young Writers Society

Briar silently took out her gun. Someone was here, or something. Something with eyes.

She climbed carefully through the broken window, making hardly a sound even as she landed on the broken glass. There was something she wasn't seeing. She was beginning to think it couldn't be seen. She used her other senses, trying to hear, to feel, whatever it was.

For a long, tense minute, Nubes felt the fur on the back of his neck stand up. The leopard inched towards the broken door, while Lasan went for the locked one. Nubes could've sworn that they'd left the broken door a little less ajar than it was. Not that he could see anything through the gap, or that he would quite trust himself - his heart pounded, and his ears were trying to make enemies out of every noise.

Then, as quickly as the feeling had settled over him, it disappeared. Nubes poked the broken door with the tip of his sword, gradually pulling it back. There was nothing on the other side.

"I think it's gone?" Lasan said from the other end of the hallway.

Not exactly the words Nubes wanted to hear - the universe always liked surprises - but nothing happened.

"Maybe," Nubes finally said. "We should get moving, though."

His grip on the knife's handle tightened so much it hurt.

"That sounds like a good idea," he agreed.

They were his creations. Would Notch have jurisdiction over them here like he did back on Minecraftia? He could have easily killed the plants. And he knew how Notch worked in ways that Ryder Salvai wasn't supposed to know - that he liked cloaking himself in his light in ways that hid him to appear more powerful. It added to the intrigue and mystery of an all powerful god. Notch didn't need to be there to enact his will and powers; he just had to think and it would happen.

He took a deep, shaky breath.

This wasn't how he wanted things to go. There was supposed to be an element of surprise. If it was really Notch, he had the upper hand - he knew where they were and what had happened.

He bit his lip.

But he didn't know who Ryder was. He had made sure of it. He had never slipped up before - Notch had no way of knowing.

He would be alright.

...Hopefully.

Briar took a deep breath. This was unfamiliar territory. Something magical was at play here, and the gun in her hand might not be useful. Still, she held it at the ready, her finger resting along the barrel, ready to move to the trigger the moment the situation got actively dangerous.

She nodded her agreement.

"We should return to the others," she suggested. Safty in numbers and all that, especially considering their abilities.

Nubes paused. "I'm not sure about that," he said slowly. "We don't know where it is - it could already be there, or could be waiting for us to meet up with the others so it can get all of us at once."

"We might need to go deeper," Lasan said, a little hesitation in his voice. "Figure out what else is here, catch it off guard, maybe find out what it is and how to stop it."

His grip on the knife tightened even more. The pressure wasn't just hurting his hand anymore - it was beginning to crack the hilt of the knife. He needed to hold it less tightly, but he was too afraid.

"We should return to the others," Ryder said. His voice was shaking a little. He was trying to keep it strong. He really was. But he couldn't help but see them in his head as he tried to make the right choice, and couldn't help but imagine how horribly wrong things could go if it really was Notch. Lust and Gluttony were variables Notch couldn't prepare for. "There's...There's strength in numbers-"

The knife hilt broke in his hand.

He stared down at the broken weapon with a look of despair on his face.

Briar started at Ryder.

It took a great deal of pressure to break one of her knives. She knew. She'd tested it. Far more pressure than a human could produce in their hands.

She frowned. It was her first instinct to aim her gun at him, but she convinced herself that was unfair. He had done odd things before, and she'd confronted him on it, but she realized now he hadn't really answered the question of what he was.

"How did you do that?" she asked him calmly.

He looked up at her for a moment before his gaze returned to the broken knife - blood was beginning to well up from tiny cuts caused by the broken hilt, but he ignored the pain.

"I don't know," he said. It was a lie, but he couldn't come up with anything better.

She continued to stare.

"I told you not to lie to me," her words were careful, precise. There was nothing to suggest malice except, perhaps, the words themselves, "How did you do that?" when she repeated her question she did it with no change in tone from the first time she'd asked it.

Lasan and Nubes walked towards the others as they stared at the broken hilt, watching blood start to well up in Ryder's hand. As Ryder fumbled around and refused to give explanations, Nubes could almost smell the worry that washed over him (and the leopard probably would've, if not for the metal walls). The same with Lasan, who clearly didn't feel too comfortable about the tone of Briar's voice. Ugh, it looked like Nubes had to take charge of things.

The lizard reached out a scaly hand, probably to heal Ryder's cuts, but the leopard gently pushed it aside.

"That is a rather remarkable amount of strength for a human," Nubes said calmly, while Lasan took a step back. "I am not quite sure even Lasan could muster that much force. There is strength without numbers here, it appears."

Ryder was silent for a minute.

There was no use in denying that he was lying anymore; all of the people present agreed that he was too strong to be a regular human. Briar knew the secret that he was the leader of the resistance - the others still thought he was the mayor of a town. But neither one of those stories explained why he was able to break the hilt of a blade.

He opened up his hand and let the little pieces of the hilt fall to the ground.

"I'm not obligated to tell you anything," he finally said. His words weren't harsh or rude - they were just quiet. "I can't explain why I broke that hilt without giving away a secret that could ruin everything for me. If what - who - I think we saw is responsible for what saw is really here, then I run the risk of destroying what I've spent so long working for. I can't start over again."

Briar didn't like this. She hated being lied to. She hated secrets.

The irony of her entire life being a secret wasn't lost on her.

Still, she understood. If she went spilling all of her secrets to just anyone she could get herself, Queenie, and gods knew who else hurt.

"Alright," she said flatly, "Your secret is yours." She then turned back to the broken window and climbed back through to await the others' decision of what to do next.

Well, Ryder wasn't keen on being honest. Nubes doubted Ryder's concerns were well-founded, since Ryder seemed particularly paranoid about something unrelated to this world, but the leopard wasn't about to question the person who had just shattered a dagger.

"Fine, keep your secrets. If you don't want to head any deeper, you can join the others back in the bunker," Nubes said. "But I believe there is something worth finding down here, and so does Lasan. That decision is ours - you can't convince us into going with you."

Nubes looked back at Lasan, who blinked and then nodded quickly. Not the best way to show that they weren't scared of him, but Ryder looked a little too stressed to notice.

He faltered.

Going back to the bunker would give him the upper hand, and he knew that was what they all expected him to do. But if Notch really was the one responsible for bringing them here and killing the plants, then there wasn't a question of where he had to go.

Ryder or himself, he couldn't leave people to get hurt by Notch - he wasn't going to let there be a repeat of Steve and Alex.

He gave the pieces of the hilt one last glance.

"I'll go with you," he said.

"Which direction?" Briar asked from the other side of the shattered window where she stood with her back to them, her gun still in her hand, and her senses alert. She didn't have a preference herself, save perhaps the thought that they may want to go deeper before they entered any of the rooms they passed on the way here, but that was negotiable.