When I first awake up, two realities are instantly understood. Either the Wither Storm's dead but that didn't get rid of this sickness. Or I failed and the bomb didn't kill that stupid storm at all. I prefer the first.

Before I can even think about cracking my eyes open, an entire world of freezing misery radiates from my arm. No longer does it burn and bristle, only that every cell is now ice and can still emit all the pain. The bone now is just some soft flesh with millions of frozen daggers tearing into it.

A shrill of panic bursts my eyes open though when I realize the whole arm feels this bitter agony. Not just elbow and forearm, but all the way up to the shoulder. So close to my chest, so close to reaching my lungs. Lungs that already wheeze and struggle enough as it is, my coughs breaking the silence every few moments.

My face bristles at me, the enderman mask charring on my skin. My right arm, muscles waking up after what has to be a hibernation, twitching up to take it off. My gloved fingers delicately grabbing at it, staggering gasps wheezing out as the cloth peels off of my flesh. Tears welling up in my dull eyes as the skin melted with it comes off too.

Throwing that thing to the side, not sure whether to be grateful I had it to protect from the blast or not, I try to make sense of my surroundings. A pretty difficult task when my eyes don't really work, my entire body is bruised and exhausted way past than it has ever been pushed to before, and my left arm is in its own personal dimension of an ice lake.

I strain my ears to search for a noise other than the pounding pulse in my skull, the faint crackles of a fire not too far. Yet other than that, it's barren. My eyes can tell it's day time at the every least, but I hear nothing. No animals, no wandering spiders from last night, not even wind.

And where are my friends?

That one gets me to lift my head, which has tripled in weight since last time I had to lift it. But even with squinting my eyes as much as I can, the only thing I can tell is that I'm in a forest. Well, the remains of a forest.

My nose flares, since sight won't be working in the foreseeable future, dying scents piercing into my head. Magnus's armor certainly did its job. I can smell the leather burned along with strong ash heavy in the air. Not too mention all the flowery scents have wilted and reek of a disaster.

The Wither Storm, to my absolute horror, did not die. I failed, oh I failed big time.

My heart, my heart that has been beating through it all, twists and contorts. Crying out to my friends that could be dead or alive or alive but accepting death. I let them down, I let all of them down, and I'm not even there to try and fix it.

Coughing, groaning and wheezing to get myself up. Magnus's armor crunches, charred leather rubbing together as I move. I manage to lurch onto my feet for a solid three seconds until the balance that has been shredded to pieces gives up, a flood of dizziness taking over me. My legs wobbling and collapsing despite my friends fresh on my mind. I just can't stand anymore.

Growling, phlegm distorting it into something like gravel cascading, helpless fury screams within a body way too fatigued to support it. I have to help my friends, but can I even help myself?

Huffing, my lungs only giving me a wheeze, I force my right arm back to life. Pulling out my sword that definitely feels heavier than stone. Plunging the tip to the ground and using it as some sort of cane to hoist me back up to my feet.

I cradle the frozen and suffering left arm to my body as I make meager distance forward. It's hard to believe I ran at all last time I was awake, my body is having hard enough just trying to shamble forward with the help of a cane.

Thankfully, I went in the right direction, breaking from the forest and into the plains. My eyes still giving me a mess of greens and not much else, particularly a great big black blob part of me was still hoping I would see.

Panting from just that short walk, I try to make sense of anything. Where are my friends? Where is the Wither Storm? Why is it still alive? How did the bomb? Did everyone make it?

But I just can't figure out the answer to any of those questions! I can't even-

A roar, a whisper of a numerous roars together, drifts into my ears. The silence now broken, my heart shattering as it throbs inside. The rest of my body as frozen as my arm, unwilling to accept that it is still alive after everything we've done to try and kill it. It is still not dead.

Slowly, not even acknowledging the mad trembles shaking my body, I turn to the faint roars of that death storm. My almost completely useless eyes still able to give me the fright of my life. Of what still lives, what is stronger than ever, and what my friends have been trying to survive from for so long now.

The blob of black almost appears to come out of the sky it is that big. The blue that I see everywhere else totally swallowed up by the black. The utter black just everywhere in that area, it is so massive now. If the Formidi-Bomb couldn't even kill it when it was a mere third of that size, then what the heck can kill that thing?

The tremors exploding throughout my body take my legs, and I collapse onto my knees. Tears falling from my eyes as grief grips me. That's it, it's over. There's nothing left. This world will slowly cease to exist, and if my friends are still alive, they too will slowly die out. I did everything I could and it still wasn't enough, I still failed. I still let everyone down. Why couldn't I have done something to stop this? Even if it meant jumping on that stage from the every beginning and ripping that skull from Ivor's hands. I could have stopped this.

My thoughts cease and even the pain gets dulled out under this weighted fog. I flex the grip on my sword. I'm going to die in this world that's already a goner. There's nothing left, the only thing I have are these damned parasites slowly killing me. Should I really just wait for them to kill me off?

Twitches fly through my arm, the muscles preparing themselves for their last act. I'm so sorry I failed all of you. I'm sorry Olivia you'll never build the redstone marvels of your dreams. I'm sorry Axel that you'll never be able to light up the night with your explosions. I'm sorry Reuben that I couldn't give you the long happy life you deserved. I'm sorry Petra for not being tough enough and cutting your life shorter. I'm even sorry Lukas that you won't get to build any wonders.

I close my eyes, a cough and a sob springing out from me. But even then, I can feel my dull heart throbbing constantly within me. Despite the frozen agony in my left arm, despite the bone crushing fatigue inflicted on my body, despite the knifes of grief and failure and despair lodged inside it, it beats.

It beats and I look up at the void in the sky, the dull pulse strengthening as I look at the blurred storm of death. My heart that has been thrashed to keep beating on this wilting body, still urges me forth. Somehow it knows, I know, that my friends aren't going down without a fight. Not after everything they went through, they're going to kill that thing. And if they are still going, then so am I.

Staggering back to my feet, using the sword as a cane again, I hobble over to the storm. I know I won't be of any help, but my heart still lurches in my chest. As if it could burst out and help drag me along.

Just because my heart is determined to go, my arm still crumples and dies in its wasteland of torture. The urge to look at the parasites as I'm just dragging myself along growing ever stronger.

To steer myself away from that, to just focus on getting to my friends step after step, I try to move my arm. Expecting a flash of horrendous pain and then I'll do everything in my power to ignore it and keep fighting to my friends.

But my elbow doesn't follow my command, my fingers don't twitch, and the only thing my shoulder does is send just a quick bleep of pain to accompany the icy agony when I move it a meager distance side to side.

That gets me curious, although I still talk myself out of it. Magnus's armor, the enderman costume, and my normal shirt cover that limb. There's no way I'm stopping just to look, I have to keep going. So I'm not looking, I just have to keep going.

Besides, it doesn't take too long for my headache to make itself known again. Thoughts quickly deciding that it's not worth it to try and give up on getting through that thing. I have to keep all my focus on just pushing forward, that's all that matters.

For every meager step, my legs wobble and beg me to stop. The muscles in my arm clenching, burning, sigh in relief when I plunge the sword tip into the ground, only to start over the process. Over and over and over again, making such measly distance yet my heart pounding ferociously, and painfully, to keep me going. 

At some point though, when my aching body instantly informs me that I'm on the slightest of hills, I realize the Wither Storm is smack-dab right over Soren's fortress. Which basically has a wall of mountains surrounding it, impossible for me to climb over.

So I veer to the right, my only reason being my gut thinks that's going to bring me to the entrance. Hopefully I'm right, because I can't get to my friends if I have to climb anymore than that distance. And I just have to get to my friends.

While I still hobble and drag myself across the ground, my thoughts drift around through the headache. Weak to changes, almost dreamy as most my focus goes to hauling my sword up and down while I limp. Ideas of what's happened to my friends flickering, firing my heart to keep throbbing.

Are they hurt? I couldn't tell at all when I was in that beam. Do they know how to kill it? I hope someone's taking care of Reuben. Olivia might be having a real hard time, maybe Axel's helping her. Did they-

My foot catches on something, the jolt dull through my body. My lungs wheezing and coughing once I hit the ground. My body shriveling up, my heart throbbing but my icy arm and exhausted body just plea for me to stop.

I glance back at what I tripped on, not expecting to actually see anything. Yet I blink at the dot of orange, my memory fluttering to figure out what it is. It takes a few moments, but finally the thought of a carrot sputters out into my thoughts. 

When was the last time I ate? The question doesn't really get an answer, but my stomach gurgles at me. Not in hunger, but as a warning. My gut clenching and almost bristling at the thought of food. Is this why I haven't ever felt hungry before?

Despite my stomach's warnings, I grab the carrot. It's been ages since I've eaten, and surely I need all the energy I can get. As long as I'm careful about it, this should be a good thing.

I nibble on the carrot, my teeth a bit sore from lack of use over the past week. Although since I can't eat and walk at the same time, and I can't eat very fast, maybe now I could look at my arm? Better to do something rather than stew in this misery as I wait for my stomach to accept every small bite.

My elbow and fingers didn't respond to my command earlier, so perhaps I'll just take of the glove instead of taking off all my layers which must be impossible for me anyway. What's the worst that can happen anyway? It's not like by seeing it with my dying eyes is going to change anything.

Taking another bite from the carrot, I keep the half eaten vegetable in my hand as I grab hold of the glove. Slowly peeling it off as the bitterly frozen fingers only gives pain and doesn't respond to opening up at all.

My lungs clench and gasp at the sight of my hand, my head refusing to believe it at first. That I really cannot trust my eyes anymore, and combined with this headache, I'm simply hallucinating.

Dumbly swallowing before the half chewed carrots falls out of my mouth, I blink. Even bending down closer to my hand as a last ditch effort to convince myself I truly am seeing things.

No, it doesn't change. My hand, if I can call it that anymore, is black. Just a blob of black. I don't know if my fingers are even fused together through this thing or are just so dead and paralyzed that I just cannot move them. Those purple roots really are killing me, they've already taken my hand. Those roots are withering me. 

Terror squeezes at my heart, causing me to wheeze and cough through it. Only to draw attention to my lungs which sends although jolt of terror through me. My entire arm is in that icy hell, freezing daggers working their way onto my shoulder. How long will it take for the parasite to get to my lung? Is this how I'm going to die?

All at once, I shove the carrot in my mouth, my other limbs suddenly not feeling so dead and spurring to life. My right grasping onto my sword again, hauling me back on my feet again. Weary blood pulsing dull but determined to get a move on. I don't even care about my headache anymore.

Hobbling forth again, my mind is so stuck on death. It isn't something far away, it isn't something I can dodge like a zombie or run from like the Wither Storm. It is right here. Death has latched onto my arm, prying the life right out of me every minute. Killing me from the inside out.

Swallowing the rest of the carrot, I cough. I cough and cough but don't slow down a bit. If I truly am going to die, then I'm getting to my friends. I never said goodbye, and maybe I can do one last thing for them before I waste away. If I'm going to die, then I have to do everything I can to make sure they live. I can't slow down now, I can't give up on them.

I ignore, as much as I can, how much my legs wobble and the pained beating in my chest. I ignore the gurgling of my stomach and my arm always screaming in its frozen torture. I ignore the throb in my head and my arm shaking as it lugs the sword over the ground only to then take part of my weight.

Instead I focus on the roars of the Wither Storm, using it to keep me moving. My friends are actually still fighting that thing and I'm just walking. I can't let this sickness stop me from helping them, I just have to keep moving. I have to help them. For their sakes', and heck, the entire world's sake.

Over and over and over again do those same thoughts loop in my head. My shield against my body screaming at me in all of its torturous different ways to get me to stop. That and the Wither Storm's roars.

I do notice a few things in the background. How the day heated up, my poor little heart still beating though, and has become cool again. How the roars have become louder, and I definitely notice that the ground is getting steeper and steeper.

By the time I feel the first cold breeze, my body so exhausted that it can't even shiver, even the sword is barely holding me up. The parasites have taken over my shoulder, that part of my body now dead and shrieking at me the cold wasteland of hell it's been sent to.

For a moment, I cave. At the root of the mountain, which I think is where Soren's entrance is but my eyes simply can't tell anymore. I pant and wheeze and cough and just exist for a moment. Trying to exist, some part of me desperate to recover even though no matter how long I sit here I'm never going to get better.

The Wither Storm roars, so loud, and I know I'm so close. That I've come so close, that if my friends really are up there killing this thing then I'm so close to helping them.

And the Storm roars again, even louder as it grows larger from eating the mountains, and I still don't get up.