(Illustrations don't belong to me)

Just as abruptly, everything came to a halt. They were standing, not in a tunnel, but a simple room, or rather, a cave. Under their feet were glowstones, shining brightly and casting a chilling, fresh gust of wind to their tired faces. Looking around, they saw wild vegetation grown wildly inside this circular cave: their feet were brushing against tall grass of a fresh lime colour; their head were greeted with the courteous tickle of overgrown vines; dandelions, poppies and even lilies of the valley were sprouting here and there, and just behind their back was a healthy oak tree, dropping ripe apples.

Most astonishingly, though, was the thing that lied at the centre. Floating dreamily above a quart pillar foundation was a cube, unlike any other blocks Steve had ever seen. It was radiating a pure, transparent blue light like his magical sphere; and inside it, tiny sparks bounced around. The cube itself was slowly rotating, and the air above it was disrupted with streams of radiant blooming glitter.

Could it be...?

They advanced forward. The cubes neither exploded nor disappeared, but it shone even more brightly. Slowly, with Steve's sharp blue eyes looking at Lily's brilliant green's, they touched the cube.

The cube floated upward, hanging in the mid-air, then bloomed out with its blue light. They both disappeared, their hands still touching the magical source of power.

And with that, the cave collapsed, the glowstones emitted the last golden sparkles before joining in with the plants to become the remains of an object of legend.

***

The villages Steve visited prior to his mountain excavation, like countless others, did not escape the brutality of a raging war. What was once a tight-knitted community of harmonious villagers and welcoming huts for tiring wandering traders had been exterminated, all of its dwellers eliminated from existence. Now, cold and chilling layers of snow fell upon bombarded rooftops and broken window panes; frozen water took the place of the wheat and carrots on the field nearby; on the whole, it was deserted. The village was left to collapse on its own, its occupants had either been evacuated or killed. For several days, nothing happened.

Then came Steve and Lily, spinning and reappearing from mid-air, their hands still clinging onto the beacon shard, the cube of power. They landed on the thick snow carpet with their whole bodies, face down into the frost. Nevertheless, the trembling cold made Steve much more delighted than ever.

He had survived, he had escaped from the terror of the Abandoned Mineshaft and returned with the beacon fragment without sacrificing himself to the mercy of spiders. Beside him, Lily had already stood up, took a big gulp of fresh air, and beamed.

"Steve... Let's find a temporary shelter. We'll need a place to rest."

"Agree."

They stumbled to a nearby half-wrecked cottage, got inside, tried unsuccessfully to ignite a flame in the fireplace, and lied down. Having left the stuffy danger of the Mineshaft, Steve found the blowing wind of an ever-lasting winter much more enjoyable and healthier. Despite his hunger bar being close to empty, Steve found that scavenging for food was not his top-notch priority. Before he could suffocate from consuming rotten flesh as a substitute for baked potatoes (the food supplies he got from the Residence was stuck somewhere up the mountains), he would die of curiosity.

"Lily," he started, conversationally, as if they hadn't almost got themselves killed, "how do you know that the spiders, the open ground, and even the lava pool were products of our imagination? I know that cave with the open ceiling was a fraud from eating the berries, but how did you figure out the rest?"

Pausing tempting fruitlessly to roast a salmon that she had somehow managed to scoop up at a frozen pond, Lily looked up.

"The spiders, Steve. Can you still remember when the enlarged, invisible spiders attacked you? I was running to your place then. But then... I notice, from afar, your shape I could see clearly, yet the faintest trace of a spider I could not. Only when I approached you could I see the spiders. I even tried to punch them with my bare hands. That's when I realized that all was an illusion, played by our own minds. 

"We feared being attacked by the spiders again – so it was. We yearned for food, and so the berries appeared. And lastly, Steve, moving around in a circle would be impossible. I made sure that we were moving in a zigzag pattern. That's why I didn't hesitate to step into the lava.

"Perhaps that was a trick played by the magical cube – yes, the one floating above your hands right now – to guard itself against invaders."

Lily gave a faint smile.

"But we saw through that. Smart, wasn't it?"

***

They had roasted salmon, baked potatoes and wild berries for supper that evening, real berries that tasted, although not as sweet and fulfilling, real. Lily, as it turned out, was much more courageous and skilful than their first encounter. Steve blushed a bit at the fact that he couldn't do anything to help – he was exhausted, for a fact – but Lily put him at ease.

Dinner, proved by Minecraft logic, was a time of conversations. They knew nothing about each other, and, with the skilled guidance of an earthy fire and a full hunger bar, got to know better. Steve remembered his old life at the farmhouse (half of his life's investments) with the pastures and his fellow villagers – at that time, he was carefree, knowing and caring nothing about the great matters of the world, and his only worry was how to get a bargain price from the always-overpriced blacksmith. Through great tides did he change, and into a Steve, still knowing nothing yet constantly risking his neck, going on dangerous explorations to collect the shards of the beacon.

"So that is a beacon shard. I see...that's what he told me. Oh well, you won't know," said Lily, her voice rhymed with the crackle of the snugly fireplace.

"I lived in a village just like this, but I think it was at the other side of this mountain. It was my dearest home. There, I, just like you, farmed, raised animals, lived with villagers and enjoyed roasted beef. Then she came, and she taught me everything she knew about magic, and the beacon light, and the stories of legend."

"Who is she?"

"She was a witch. Her hut was in the middle of a swamp, thick with trees and vines and lily pads, and it just happened that I was wandering near there, trying to catch a salmon for supper when I bumped into her. Later on, she said that she was picking mushrooms at that time.

"The villagers didn't exactly like witches, you see. They always gossiped rumours about witches attempting to turn their bodies into ash for a concoction, zap them with lightning and transfigure them into chickens. I had lived with the villagers for as long as I could remember, and did not have any reliable evidence to confirm those. Nevertheless, I was extremely tense to ever encounter one. Looking back, it was a miracle that I met her.

"She didn't turn me into a lily pad. She just looked at me, then slowly turned away and came back to her hut. The next day, when my curiosity won my fear for being struck, I came back to the swamp, not bringing my fishing rod. She saw me, and once again, she turned back. This time she gestured for me to follow her."

"Then she was not close to resembling the witches I read about in books," said Steve, deeply immersed in Lily's story (which harmonized so well with the sound of the burnt wood that he could hardly tell the difference). Lily smiled and went to throw more oak planks into the fireplace, her green eyes twinkled dreamily.

"I went into her hut, and was given half a cake to eat, balancing on my hands while sitting on the floor. The hut itself was made of oak, and was perching on top of the muddy water. It was extremely small: the space inside was just enough to fill a crafting table, a brewing standing on top of it, and a cauldron half-full of blue liquid. That left several blocks for standing and moving around.

"She sat down next to me. We said nothing for a while. She was the first one to talk.

"Emma," she said, "is my name. What's yours?"

"My name is Lily."

"Coincidentally, your name is the same as a plant sprouting near here. Lily of the valley is a flower, put the person carrying it at ease, sweet and fulfilling when consumed, and is an essential ingredient to concocting a powerful instant-healing potion."

"I've never seen its uses in books. The books I read described them as a pretty flower, belonging to a pot, and nothing more."

"Those are all true. The things I just told you have not yet been written, not in any books that I know of."

"Must be amazing of you, then, to be able to know that much."

"Not really. It's more of a burden, to the villagers, even to know of anyone with such knowledge and power over them."

"Then you don't transfigure anyone into chickens?"

"I know magic to use it wisely, to utilize it, not to play around with it. They [the villagers] have done me no harm."

"But they told each other lies about you. Aren't you mad, or at least annoyed by that?"

"Not particularly. That's natural to them, and even if I'm mad, I can't force them to stop gossiping. The sun has gone down. You'd better come back before it is late."

"The next day, I came back. That time around, I wanted to learn from her.

"Why do you want to be my apprentice?"

"I'm curious."

"So are the villagers. They write books and weave fairy tales about me; they created legends about witches literally pulling their legs. Yet they never come to seek me."

"But I am different. I live among them, but I am not one of them."

"Ah. How is that so?"

"I read books. Books, written by villagers, for villagers. Those books are of wonderful tales, heroic quests and an eternal establishment of a village, unchanged by space and time; are of stating that a the whole Realms of Minecraft revolve around the village. But I know that's not true. Travellers from the far, they brought me fragmented perspectives and hints of the real world, a world different from one the villagers are comfortable with. That is the world I want to see: The truth, as it really is. And also, I'd love to be able to concoct a Healing Potion, and transform a Zombie villager back to his/her natural form."

"That's how I became her apprentice.

"I studied magic, cracked the code of the Ancient Runes carved on the Enchanting table, learnt how to brew a simple Potion of Luck, studied herbs and their magical properties, and of course, just like you, learnt to awaken my ability to do magic. And through her books, hidden underneath the rotten wooden floor planks, simply because her hut was too small, I gasped the vast wide world we lived in. She taught me everything the villagers couldn't, and wouldn't. She was the first, and best teacher I've ever met."

The fire had gone out, and darkness drew around them like a thin veil curtain.