Chapter One

Tommy snores. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Thump, thump, thump. Tommy rolls over. And puts his pillow on his head. And then, right in his ear, there’s a SCREAM!!!
“AHHHH!” He yells. “All right, all right, I’m up!” He swats at his ear, but the fly buzzes away at the last second and he ends up slapping himself. “Ouch!” He yells, but he’s still kind of glad he didn’t actually squash it. It’s bad enough to wake up to a slap in the face, but if Jenny caught him washing bug guts out of his ear at- he checks his alarm clock, 7 am, there’s be no stopping the embarrassment wave. The fly, now sure it’s job is done, goes back to head butting itself into the window. Thump, thump, thump. Tommy reaches his hand to end the annoyance, but stops. No matter how stupid and annoying, this thing still has a life, no matter how pathetic. Instead, he opened the window and moved his hands, so the fly could go without fear. But the fly stayed where it was, still trying to give itself an concussion. Tommy rolled his eyes, scooped up the terrified bug, and tossed it out the window. It flew away as fast as it’s papery wings could go. “Leave,” he called after it. “I’m giving you probably only two more days. But the next one won’t be so lucky, so tell your friend’s!”
Then he closes the window and tries to get back to sleep. But no luck. He keeps thinking about last night, when he had gone on a wild adventure through Minecraft with his friends. They had gone to all sorts of mods, like the Twilight Forest. But the excitement finally ended up in space, where Entity303 finally was defeated. His dad had gotten him out and told him not to do it to much, but he just couldn’t stop. His eyes travel down his covers to where his book his dad had gotten him was. It was all about a Watcher NPC in the Far Lands, where ever that was. He had stayed up to almost midnight reading. Eventually, he must have fallen asleep because the book was laying open in front of his face. Even as he watched, his very, very dim still-on flashlight blinked out as the battery gave up its struggle and died. “Great! Just great!” He said. Last night he had needed to ask his dad for fresh batteries, so if he asked for more now his dad would totally get suspicious. They were supposed to go to sleep, even when it was Friday night. Friday night. Wait that meant it was Saturday. And he knew for a fact his parents would be in bed until ten am. So if he could jut try and sneak into Minecraft for a little while…
No! NO! He yelled at himself. Don’t do it! DON’T! But he couldn’t get the thought out of his head. Quietly, he snuck out of bed. He grabbed a post-it note and a pen and tip-toed into the hall. He went to his sisters door and opened it slowly so it wouldn’t creak.
Jenny was sleeping peacefully in her purple bed. The walls were covered with paintings and sketches. One of the wall had a mural Jenny and there mom had painted. It was their whole family standing in a grassy field, with a forest on one side and a mountain on the other. A waterfall flowed down from the mountain and pooled in a cavern underneath the flow. In the distance, the tops of wooden houses and a stone tower could just be seen over a cobble stone wall, the edges peppered with archer towers. Next to the village was a big purple castle. Tommy smiled. Despite its 2d flatness, he could hear the water rushing, smell the faint sent of smoke, feel the soft grass under his feet. It was a Minecraft scene, where Tommy always spawned when he first got into Minecraft. The city in the distance was Crafters village, standing right next to his obsidian castle. But he didn’t have time for a art studio tour. He hastily went to Jennys desk. On the post-it note he wrote “Jenny, I’m going into Minecraft. When you wake up wait until nine thirty and come and get me. Don’t tell mom and dad. Do it right and I’ll give you a dollar. Thanks!” Then he stuck it onto her rainbow lamp with the paintbrush base and snuck back out of the room. He went down the basement stairs and sat down in the desk chair. Then he fired up the game on the computer. He positioned the Didgitizer at himself and hit the button. The usual angry wasp swarm sound filled the room. This time, though, he thought about how much it sounded like a bunch of flies.
But as the light enveloped him, he thought about his book. And as he felt his spirt being sucked into Minecraft, he kept thinking Far Lands, Far Lands, Far Lands.

Chapter Two

Lost Stories

GameKnight999 landed on the ground with a thud. He closed his eyes and smiled, listening for the usual sound of roaring water from the waterfall. But he didn’t hear anything. He gave it a moment, in case his body was warming up to being digital again. But after a moment, he frowned and sat up.
To his shock and horror, he wasn’t next to a waterfall roaring down a mountain at all. He was lying on damp ground, with huge spruce trees soaring into the air around him. Tiny clumps of mossy cobblestone were strewn randomly around s if tossed aside by a huge giant. The area around him was absolutely covered in both types of mushrooms, like decorations on a Christmas tree.  This wasn’t where he usually spawned! He jumped up, and started to panic. This was not good. Thoughts started zooming through his mind.
“What if he had logged onto the wrong server? What if the spawn point had changed? What if something had happened and screwed up the biomes?”
Somehow, he got his thoughts under control. Don’t focus on the what ifs, focus on the now. He took a deep, shaky breath. All right. First things first. Step number one in Minecraft- get wood. He took one step forward… and plunged into ice cold water. Gameknight struggled to the surface, gasping for breath. Already his fingers and toes were starting to tingle. He looked around him and saw stone and andisite walls. He had plunged right into a natural pool. He kicked as hard as he could- if he lost control of his limbs he would surely drown.  Gameknight gritted his teeth. “I refuse to give up!” He thought. Gameknight999 started paddling around the pool, looking for a way out.  But there were no blocks to jump onto- the walls were steep. There was only one thing left to do. A piece of dirt hung just over the water, and a fern had found it nice and full of moisture and had decided it was a good place to grow. It’s roots just extended into the water. Gameknight stuck his hand deep into the soil and grabbed the roots. With this extra strength holding him up, he turned  to dig up a piece of dirt holding him captive. But to his shock, the block he was facing was solid stone. Confused, he turned. Then he realized all the blocks wee stone. “I can’t get out,” he thought. His heart sunk to the tips of his quickly freezing toes as it sunk in.
“NO!” He screamed. “I’m going to die here!” Flashed through his mind. “NO! NO! NO!“ “PLEASE!!” He yelled. “Someone get me out of here!”
Suddenly, he heard a shout of to his right in the woods. Joy started to flame in him, but instantly was put out when he heard the words. “Hey! Guys! We got something in the pool trap!” He heard footsteps, and suddenly the faces of three NPCs filled his vision. “I’ll get it!” A female called. She grabbed an iron pick and hacked away at a piece of stone. Gameknight999 saw his chance, and when the block broke he pushed off the wall and shot forward as fast as he could. It surprised the villagers, and by the time they came to their senses he was already up and sprinting, moving as fast as his numb muscles could go. He shot to the edge of the biome faster than he expected. It opened into a sliver of plains, where to his surprise  a NPC army was on the march. He dived behind a tree, but no before a woman saw him. She screamed and pointed. As one, the whole army turned their heads. Gameknight was starting to feel woozy. He almost screamed himself when he thought he saw all his friends at the front, but stopped himself when he realized it wasn’t. He was still moving, and all he was able to see was a villager wearing black armor and a boy with a shimmering iron sword. He kept running, but after only a few minutes he collapsed next to a tree, exhausted. He heard footsteps coming closer, but felt to sick to care. He felt like he was about to throw up, and tried to lean over, but instead slumped to the ground unconscious.
GameKnight999 groaned and rolled over. He opened his eyes a crack and saw that someone was standing over him. “Dad?” He croaked. “Crafter?”
“He’s up!” He heard somebody hiss. He opened his eyes a little wider and tried to force his vision to clear up. At first it looked like Hunter standing above him, holding a bucket of water above his head. “No! Don’t!” He yelled, sitting up and shielding his head with his arms. He heard a yell. “What are you, allergic to water or something?” Someone snapped. It definitely wasn’t Hunter. Instead, it was a brown haired girl with dark blue eyes. He could see a water bottle in her hand. “Sorry,” he mumbled, turning red. “Who are you?”
The girl eyed him up and down. “The better question is, who are you?”
Gameknight looked down at himself. “Isn’t it obvious?” He asked. The girl squinted at him. “Yes, that your some kind of weird deformed villager with no unibrow and a horrible taste in clothing. But nothing else.”
“What?” He yelled. “No! Haven’t you seen a user before?”
She gave him a strange look, as if she could tell she had some memory of this but couldn’t remember where she put it. “Nope,” she said finally. “No idea.”
Gameknight face palmed. He opened his mouth to say more, but at that moment another female villager stuck her head in the doorway. “Did someone say user?” She asked. But when she looked at Gameknight, her face lit up. “This is the guy that wandered into the trap pool?” She asked. The first girl gave a deep dramatic sigh. “Yes, Harvester.”  Harvester frowned. “But, Fletcher, you and Smithy didn’t tell me you caught someone special!”
Fletcher snorted. “Special? This guy couldn’t see a death trap literally a block in front of him!” Gameknight turned a bright shade of pink. “Excuse me?” He snapped. “If you only knew half of my story-“
The girls ignored him. “Don’t you remember the old stories?” Harvester squealed, jumping on the balls of her feet. “About monsters that can’t even step in the sunlight? Places with no relics or warlocks even in their history, but with worse powers than we have here? Villagers that can’t even use their arms except for in crafting? People that come from other worlds that play in our world like its a game?  The Overworld?”
Fletcher rolled her eyes. “You seriously believe all that kid stuff?”
“Kid stuff?!” Gameknight yelped, jumping out of the bed. “Are you kidding me?”
Harvester beamed. “See?” She boasted. “He believes me.”
Fletcher scowled at the User-that-is-not-a-user. “Did you hit your head in the pool, or have you always been crazy? Everyone knows that the Far Lands is the only world out there.“ Harvester scowls and stamps her foot. “Then why is it the FAR Lands? What is it Far from?”
Gameknight nodded his head hard. “Yes! Listen to her! The Overworld is real! Thats where I’m from!” Harvester looked so happy, Gameknight was surprised she didn’t swell up like a ghast. “From- from the Overworld?” She stuttered. Her eyes were shining, and it looked to Gameknight like she was crying.
Fletcher just stared at him, opened mouthed. “Okay, you really are insane.”
“Fletcher!” Harvester scolded. She punched the seemingly older girl in the arm. Gameknight hit the floor laughing. He couldn’t help it. The girls were acting exactly like Hunter and Sticher. “What?” Fletcher snapped in the exact replica of Hunter’s annoyed voice. He laughed even harder. Maybe everyone has a double in the Far Lands-
He suddenly gasped so suddenly that Fletcher and Harvester jumped. “The- the Far Lands?” He stuttered. “But- but- I thought-“ he suddenly became very aware of the fact that he had no weapons, no armor, and he was in a very vulnerable position in a unknown location with two strangers. He whimpered and shrunk against the wall. Fletcher frowned and opened her mouth to say something when another villager appeared in the doorway. “Did the weirdo finally wake up?” he said in a deep, gruff voice. “Seriously, what have you people been saying about me?” Gameknight yelled. “What are you doing?” The man asked, ignoring Gameknight999’s question. He suddenly realized he was holding up his arms in a poorly thought out ninja pose,  a last resort of defense.
“What do you mean Far Lands?” The three NPCs looked at each other. “Um, the Far Lands?” Fletcher said. “You know, the REAL world that everything lives in?” “Oh, would you just calm down and give him a break?” Harvester suddenly snapped more ferociously than Gameknight thought she could. “He’s just woke up from being unconscious for three days!”
Gameknights blood went cold. “Three DAY’S!” He echoed. “I’ve been out for THREE DAY’S?!?!?!”
“Yep,” Fletcher says before anyone can stop her. “You definitely have been, sleep talker. By the way, whose Crafter?”  “Ah…” Gameknight stuttered. He was reminded of Herder, and his heart filled with sadness as he missed his friend. Then he thought about the fact that the Far Lands had WARLOCKS, and he jumped up. “How did I get here?” He yelled. “The Far Lands aren’t real! There just from books! This isn’t one of those stories when kids get sucked into books,  right?” He must have looked kind of scary, wide eyed and yelling, because the villagers all took a step back. “It’s okay!” Harvester yelped, leaping forward and putting her hand on his shoulder. “Just tell us how you got here.”
So he did. He didn’t skip anything, either. He told them everything, starting with how he had first accidentally turned on his dads digitizer and met his friends. He told them about Erebus, the enderman king, and Malacoda the king of the Nether. He told them about the Last Battle at the Source and how his sister had gone into Minecraft and he had gone with her and battled Herobrine. He told them how Herobrine had come back but had finally been destroyed. He told them about fighting the skeleton king Reaper and second spider queen Shalivak and the the blaze king Charibydis and finally, with the help of Feyd the second enderman king, defeated Xa-Tul and saved the server from crashing. How he had gone back in time and then went back to find that Entity303 had come and wrecked Minecraft by stealing Weaver and releasing hundreds of mods.
When he was finally finished, stars were appearing in the sky outside the window. Every one of their mouths were hanging open. Smithy and Fletchers jaws had dropped and their eyes were squinted. Harvester, though, had her eyes WIDE open and looked like she was going to pass out with excitement. Gameknight collapsed onto the bed, exhausted. He had just talked the whole day straight and hadn’t left out anything. Except…
         What he didn’t tell was how he was the real Smithy (of the two swords). He wasn’t sure what the NPCs would do if they heard he had pretended to be a villager for weeks.
 Well, a lot happened after that. There were TONS of questions, most of them from Harvester. “So, you played it like a game? How did that work? And you were friends with people? And one was a Crafter? And one was a Hunter? And one was a Digger? And one was a Herder? And-“
   “Harvester!” Gameknight blurted out. She stopped, her mouth still wide open. “How about you guys tell me your story?” He said, much calmer.
  “Oh,” she said, as if she had never realized such a thing was possible.
      The villagers looked at each other. Smithy took a deep breath.
Finally, he started talking. “Our village was peaceful,” he explained.
Gameknight was confused. “What do you mean, peaceful?” He asked. “It didn’t believe in violence,” Smithy said. “Weapons were not allowed, and no one ever fought. Everyone was a Pacifist.” He stopped to take a breath. “You said was,” Gameknight said. “Did it- did it burn down? Or get attacked?”
    Fletcher snorted. “Nope, it’s still standing, and I wish it wasn’t.”
Smithy ignored her and kept talking. “We were the only hold outs,” he sighed, rubbing his hands together. Gameknight blinked. “You mean, you like violence?” He asked. “What? No!” Smithy said. “We just thought it was better to have a way to protect us. And most of us,” he said, glaring at Fletcher, “Didn’t try to shove our Crafter into changing our ways. But then, they came, and everything changed.”
       “Who?” Gameknight asked. “It was this big NPC army. They needed a place to stay. And they were not Pacifists. They had fought off a bunch of Warlocks. And they were… awesome. The day it happened, a little girl named Saddler fell in a cave and the leader went down and saved her.”
   “The day what happened?” Gameknight asked. “I’m getting to that,” Smithy said, frustrated. “That night, our Crafter decided he had had enough of us. He was worried the army would find out about us and it would look like he couldn’t control his own village.”
    “What did he do? Lock you up for a while?” Suddenly, Fletcher jumped up. Her eyes were blazing, but he could see the faintest sparkle of tears in her eyes. “I wish,” she snapped. “Now tell me, User-that-is-not-a-user, what is the worst thing that could ever happen to a villager? What happens when the very root of their foundation gets yanked out from under them and leaves them to die alone? When they have to leave their old home and just pray, just pray that somehow they’ll find somewhere else? When they can’t stay together and a whole village just has to look at each other and say goodbye?” She was shaking now but plowed through full steam ahead. “That’s what we are, a bunch of wanders, of loners, who can’t find their way back.”
  By now tears we’re streaming down her face. “We’re nothing. We’re gone. We’re lonely. We’re Lost.” And she collapsed back into her seat sobbing.
  Harvester tried to comfort the older girl, holding her small blocky arms around her. Gameknight just sat on the bed, shocked at what he was processing.
       Smithy sighed. “Yes. They came in the middle of the night and tied us up and gagged us. They put us on horses and rode far away into a plains biome. They left us there, and took our tools, food, stone and iron…”  
     “Not even in a forest,” Fletcher sobbed. “Not even wood…”
“All of our friends! They woke up the next morning and we were just gone!” She wailed.
   “We’ll go,” Harvester said, helping her grieving friend stand up. “You should get some sleep.
    That night, Gameknight tossed and turned. He couldn’t believe it. The NPCs story was so horrible. Who would do that to their own citizens?”
  Finally, he got up and went to the window. It was a trapdoor, and he opened it very quietly so the others wouldn’t wake up. Instantly, a freezing blast of icy wind hit him full force. He didn’t mind. His brain was still swirling with a whirlpool of thoughts. He stuck his head out and stared at the bright shining stars. He wondered if, right now, his friends back in the Overworld were watching the very same stars.
   Very softly, he called out to the otherwise silent night,
  “Oh, everyone, what have I gotten myself into now?”

Check back soon to read the next chapter!

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