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In hindsight, mining glowstone above an endless pool of lava wasn’t a good idea.
In his defense, they had been careful.
The four of them, Him, Mumbo, Grian, and Scar had made sure to keep a lookout.
But it had been nearing the end of their expedition, and it had gone great so far, they weren’t as focused as they had been.
And despite Grian’s abilities, as stated before, no one had been paying attention.
Grian still blamed himself for the mess they got into.
The ghast came out of nowhere, one moment, Etho was mining glowstone, the next, there was a searing heat around him and there was an explosion that left his ears ringing, and his vision went black.
The first thing he felt when he came too was the feeling of wind rushing past him, with a start, he realized he was falling. Panicked he tried to look for any place to teleport to, he saw nothing but lava.
His mask, which he’d taken off due to the heat of the nether had flown out of his hand, long gone.
Luckily, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of sunset colored feathers. Grian swooped down toward him and he twisted in the air, reaching out toward the avian and grasping his hand.
He felt Grian swoop backwards, swinging through the air as he dove towards Scar who was flailing around in a futile attempt to slow his fall, Grian grabbed him by the arm, and dove toward Mumbo, his speed seemed to double as Mumbo caught sight of them and forced his firework launchers to work even though Grian couldn’t activate it himself
“One of you’ll have to grab Mumbo.” Grian said, sounding strained.
They swooped toward him and Scar was able to grasp his hand.
For a terrifying moment, it seemed like Grian wouldn’t be able to hold them.
Then a strong gust of wind blew past them and they were flying up again.
Etho glanced up to see Grian’s wings spread to their fullest length, the way they were when he was focused on gliding and slowing his descent. Not the way they were when he was trying to fly up.
Etho realized with a start that Grian was more focused on making big flaps to gain a lot of height at once rather than focusing on getting up quickly.
Grian wouldn’t be able to hold them forever, he was just making sure he’d hold them for as long as possible.
Shit.
“How long can you hold us for Gri?” Mumbo asked, thinly concealed panic in his voice.
Grian didn’t respond for a moment, instead, he flapped his wings again and they shot up. “As long as I need to.” He gritted, determined.
Etho desperately looked for anything that he could teleport to, but just like before, he found nothing but lava.
Okay, he couldn’t panic, he had to think. Only one of his hands was free right now, so if he could change that that would be good.
Shifting around a little bit, Etho managed to grab a rope from his pack (he always carried rope, it was very useful).
Grian flapped his wings once more, gaining a little more height, he could see Mumbo shifting around as well, trying to grab something with one hand, he seemed to be having trouble.
Etho decided that he’d help him in a second, turning his focus to the rope, and then he looked up to Grian, “I’m gonna tie my leg to your arm!” He shouted to the other.
He received a strained, “okay!” In response.
He focused on the rope in his hand, seeing as he only had one, he opted to put part of the rope in his mouth and then rapped the other part around Grian’s forearm and with some difficulty, he managed to tie it around his arm, he hoped it wasn’t too tight, though he figured that was the least of their problems right now.
Then came the difficult part of tying the rope to his leg. He shifted the rope in his mouth and moved his hand so that there was a small gap between the two parts where he was holding the rope. His plan was to kick his leg up and catch it in spot on the rope.
Taking a deep breath, he swung back and kicked his leg up, and he missed. He swung again and luckily, this time, he managed to catch his leg in the rope. He carefully tied his leg into the rope.
Just as he finally managed to tie himself to the rope, Grian suddenly jerked violently to the side, and he felt a sudden heat skim past him, he looked up and bit back a curse, the ghast that had shot them down was firing at them.
Grian was breathing very heavily now, it was evident that he was tiring out quickly. Mumbo stopped shuffling around for a moment and Etho saw his eyes glow red and heard the sound of Grian’s rocket extensions activating and they shot up a little.
Just as suddenly, they stopped, and Mumbo startled, confused, he tried again to set it off, and it didn’t work.
“Shit,” Grian hissed, “They’re dead,”
Mumbo went back to rummaging around, trying to grab something, Etho, who now had both his hands free said to Mumbo, “what are you trying to get?”
“My grappling hook,” was his response. Etho swung toward him, grabbing his bag and slipping the grappling hook out, Mumbo took it and aimed it toward the ceiling.
“Do you think it will reach?” Scar asked.
“I sure hope so,” Mumbo said, shooting it up toward the nether roof. It went up into the thick fog around the roof, and then it fell back down.
“Well shit,” Scar mumbled.
Yep, that about summed their situation up.
Etho wished he could teleport in the nether, unfortunately, the weird traveling mechanics in the nether messed with his powers so he really only teleported to places that he could see while in the nether, unfortunately all he could see was lava.
Suddenly, Grian jerked to the side again, and Etho just barely managed to grab the rope he was tied to so that he didn’t go swinging, he once again felt that burning heat and his ears rang a little.
“Stupid ghast,” Scar hissed, "I wish I could use my bow and shoot it.”
“Maybe you could throw one of your knives at it,” Mumbo suggested to Etho, but he seemed pretty unsure about the idea.
The ghast was too far up and away from them for a knife to even have a chance of reaching the ghast, and he didn’t have his knife-shooter on him.
Suddenly, Etho had a crazy idea, but it might just work.
The ghast was something he could see, and therefore something he could teleport to.
“Mumbo grab my hand,” Etho said, swinging toward the other man before realizing that he was still holding the grapple. He quickly took it and put it back in Mumbo’s bag, “okay now grab my hand”
Mumbo took his hand, and Etho used his other one to undo the rope that connected him to Grian.
“What’re you doing E?” Grian asked, sounding concerned
Etho didn’t respond, instead focusing on undoing the knot, he’d need all the rope he could get for this.
After some difficulty he managed to finally free himself from the rope and Mumbo let out a yell as he was now the only one carrying Etho’s weight
Etho winced, “sorry Mumbo!”
Grian tilted dangerously, weight all on one side of him. Etho looked back at the ghast, to his relief, it hadn’t moved too much.
Etho swung back gaining momentum and swung forward grabbing Scar’s arm so that he was holding both Mumbo and Scar, and in a flash of silver, they teleported to the top of the ghast.
He saw Grian frantically look around before setting for a moment and shooting around to look straight at them, he gave Etho a look that screamed are you crazy.
If Grian thought he was crazy, he probably was.
No time to dwell on that now though, he turned to Mumbo and Scar saying, “I need your rope!”
The two handed their rope over, though very confused.
Etho stilled, he had to focus and figure out how he was gonna do this, Grian had flown over to them, landing carefully on the back of the ghast so that it would stop shooting fireballs at him, surprisingly the ghast didn’t seem to care that there were people currently riding it.
“You,” Grian said as he landed on the ghast, “are a madman.”
Despite the circumstances, Etho couldn’t help but laugh, “probably.”
Grian rolled his eyes, but grew serious pretty quickly, “what’s your plan?”
“I’m gonna use the rope to make a harness so that I can steer the ghast.”
“Are we gonna have enough rope for that?” Mumbo asked, concerned.
“I sure hope so.” Etho said.
Scar frowned as started rummaging through his pack, Mumbo did the same. Grian got his own rope and handed it to Etho.
“Here,” Mumbo said, And in his hand, he held a length of string, “it's from the grappling hook.”
Etho frowned, “are you sure?”
He shrugged, “I can replace it.”
Etho took it and tied it to his rope. “Okay.”
“Oh!” Scar said excitedly, “I got spare bow strings,” he said, quickly handing it over.
Etho took all the rope and string and tied it together.
He then looked down toward the tentacles of the ghast, preparing himself to teleport underneath it and grab onto one of the tentacles to keep from falling while he worked.
However, before he could do that, Grian lightly grabbed his shoulder and gave him the most deadpan stare, holding his hand out for the rope.
Oh yeah, he had wings. Etho sheepishly explained to Grian what he planned to do and the Avian dove down to create the harness.
After some trouble, and a lot of shouting back and forth to explain (and a very tense moment right near the end where they worried about whether they had enough rope), they managed to create a harness.
Etho took the harness/ rope in his hands, as Grian landed back on top of the ghast and pretty much collapsed, it was only then that he noticed that part of Grian’s wing was singed.
Carefully, he steered the ghast toward their nether portal.
As they started, Scar piped up, chuckling softly as he said, “this is gonna be a great story to tell.”
The got a laugh out of the rest of them, and various sounds of agreement were made in return.
Because, yeah, it would be one hell of a story.
The trip was a long one back, at some point, Grian tried to get up saying something about pushing from the back to speed up the journey, and as he moved to fly, he swayed and fell backwards.
Mumbo very quickly shot that idea down, and Scar grabbed his pack to do some quick first-aid on his wing, scolding him for not saying anything about the burn.
Eventually they made it to their nether portal, and Etho called everyone to him and grabbed a hold of all of them, focusing hard on the spot that he wanted to teleport to before they all disappeared and landed in a heap in front of the portal.
Quickly they clambered through and appeared in the overworld in front of a very worried BigB and Cleo.
They were mothered and babied for an entire week after that trip, and Grian was given strict instructions not to fly until his wing was fully healed, Mumbo even took his rocket extensions away.
He also wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without “parent” supervision.
Mumbo was also banned from redstone until his burns healed, as he had been hit the hardest by the first ghast fireball (the one that had knocked them off of the glowstone and got them into the mess to begin with)
It became a great story to tell once everyone was healed, Mumbo and Scar would always start it with, “have I ever told you about that time Etho rode a ghast?”
And eventually, after he got over his guilt, Grian would chime in as well, and tell people about what an absolute madman Etho was.
Eventually, Etho chimed in as well, exaggerating the story and making it seem like they managed to live against impossible odds.
Despite everything, it had been a great trip and had become a great story to tell.
Just as Scar had said.