"Now all my teachers are dead except silence."
~W.S. Merwin

ooo

Iron is my job, my life's calling, and my only means of survival. Why? Because I'm a poor Crafter in a big world. Welcome to my life.

I work for HPhos mining corporation, a large mining enterprise that is responsible for all the iron coming out of the ground of this continent, called Derpton.

Paid for every ton of iron I shovel from the big, black hole that is the mineshaft, I wait to hear my supervisor say "That'll do, boy." Those are the moments I live for. Only because, when you get down to it, there really isn't much I can live for. Sure, people on the other side of the continent get way more gold bars than I do monthly. But even if that weren't true, I'd still be in the lowest-paying job on the cube.

I have big dreams that mainly involve finding the biggest iron deposit in the land. But I have to work up to that dream, dig a little deeper every day, do some really tedious shit, all so I can get down at least ten meters per day. Before the monsters come out. Mines are dangerous places at night. Because of their dark, things spawn inside, things I've only heard about. Some say there are zombies in there that are so strong they can kill people in one shot, but only in the deeper levels.

Being killed, needless to say, would sort of spoil these dreams.

So I'm trying to achieve my goal while sticking to the time constraints and the tools' confounded fragility. Even your fist was stronger than a pickaxe.

While trying to achieve it one day, one fateful day, I found myself, without any warning...

Well, let me explain first. It's kind of useless to the general flow of a story if I don't explain what went wrong and why. You see, I had somewhat exceeded my expectations and discovered what looked to be a large, hollow area underground that looked like the inside of a sphere. On the walls were coal, iron, and gold. The floor was also speckled with emeralds, since our mine was in a mountainous zone. I called up to the supervisor that I'd found the motherlode, and he came down to investigate. I swear that his mouth opened wide enough to swallow a pig.

"Holy shit," he breathed in amazement.

We set about mining, the crew, my supervisor, and I. Supervisor used TNT to blow out new hollows that we could stand in and collect minerals and coal from. The dust became thick, almost a solid substance, a wall of stagnant black and gray in front, to the sides, and behind. When Supervisor finally placed a torch on the wall, and lit it, we found that the surface was a tiny dot of bright light above. Some of the other miners began to get scared.

"We can't just stop here!," exclaimed Supervisor. "There's gold, iron... come on, guys! Pull together!"

"You heard the man," I said. "I think we should act on what he's sayin'. We just might, after all, get a little better pay for this."

Digging a tunnel, in dead silence except for the noises our picks made on stone, and the occasional rattle as a few pieces of coal fell out of a smashed block, was eerie. The dust obscured my vision and muffled sound. We had to breathe sparingly, taking in only the breaths we deemed fit for consumption. At least, the ones that Supervisor, with his primitive gas monitor, deemed fit for consumption. And every once in a while, we'd see, to our right and left, entrances to other, more dark tunnels uprooted by our activity.

All of a sudden, Supervisor's torch fell on a pile of tiny pebbles.

"Gravel," he exclaimed. "That's a bad sign. C'mon, let's move faster."

Now with the gravel to think about, the rush to mine became, in a word, terrifying. Supervisor used TNT to mine less frequently, and away from gravel at all costs.

As we entered a room, we had a feeling we'd come to a dead end, and that if we mined just one little bit more down we'd hit bedrock. Down here as opposed to at the mineshaft, there was redstone, giving the air a bloody color. The TNT was stowed safely away.

"Don't drag your pickaxes on the floor," Supervisor warned. "There's redstone dust there, too."

Carefully we filed into the room. For it was a room, we realized. It was hollowed out, and was rectangular. Pistons lined the walls, hidden in alchoves and dips in the stone.

I wondered what the pistons were for.

Then I didn't need to wonder, because at that moment the pistons thrust upward. The ground shook as the pistons retracted, bringing down a ring of blocks. The ceiling gave way and fell down. On closer inspection I realized it was all gravel, held by some strange force, now released. The gravel fell, two thick layers of it. I tried moving my arms, but to no avail.

An explosion sounded overhead. The gravel layer compressing my head and shoulders was blasted apart. I saw a massive, bright, glowing circular hole in the darkness. Fire flew downwards. Supervisor was screaming, and already a few miners were dead. Lava churned within the circle. The mysterious object then dimmed for a moment. And subsequently turned the world white. A roar like death was all I could hear. When the light dimmed, I noticed a hole in the ceiling, stretching to the surface, a hole that had to be at least a hundred meters in diameter. Against the sky was a small, cylindrical shape, rapidly getting more tiny and out of reach until it vanished through a blocky cloud.

I ran to where Supervisor lay in a pool of pixelated blood. As I looked into his closed eyes and checked his pulse, the man's mouth opened. And he said one word.

"SPIRED."

He then went limp and his pulse stopped. I let him drop from where I'd been propping him up.

There was no explanation for this, this... thing that had erupted from the pit. Nothing except some still-flaming piles of gravel, a dead man and the word "SPIRED".

I huddled into myself and waited for the rescue party to come.