AUTHOR'S NOTE: Welcome, Minecraft players and fanfiction readers. This is my first submission for this site, and I wrote it specifically to be the first. The Shadow Tunnel's concept is, hopefully, quite original, and Ihope you will enjoy it. I apologize for the often insubstantial or 'chunky' text of the first few chapters. Please keep in mind that this is a project that is often worked off and on for months, so it may be slightly inconsistent between different chapters (which may be written weeks and weeks apart). I may not remember everything correctly, but I will try my best.

Be sure to leave a comment or review, I gladly appreciate them and it keeps my writing spirit up. I'd love to hear what you like or don't like. Though I'd appreciate if you'd mince your words, I wouldn't mind if you gave me a honest (and somewhat scathing) critique. As usual, no flaming or insulting other reviewers, please. We all have different ways of seeing things, and we should respect that.

Anyways, enjoy. - Beacker1160


The night was cold and still. A chilly wind blew amongst the snowy, alpine heights, and the full moon cast a bright glow on the silent stone brick walls of a massive fortress. Beyond the walls, the twinkling torches of a mountain town were visible, their warm glow competing with the square moon and the distant stars.

Though all seemed peaceful, the two shadowy figures who stood like statues on one of the stone towers of the fortress wall knew better. They knew that any second now, it would happen, like it had for many months. They both carried enchanted bows and a stack of arrows each, lone sentries stationed at their post.

Suddenly, without warning, the moans of hordes of zombies were heard, and the clinking of dozens of skeletons filled the air. Spiders, with their eerie slurping noises and clacking insect legs, reached the fortress before the other mobs. They tried to scale the walls, but the overhangs made it impossible for them to. But soon, the creepers would silently come to their aid, bombarding the wall with explosions and booms heard miles away.

The two archers snapped to life and started to fire volley after volley of arrows. Many a mob went down, an expertly aimed arrow to their joints, or heads, or some other vulnerable part of their rotten bodies. All around the stone fortress, other archers on similar platforms could be seen doing the same. The air was filled with the sounds of dying mobs and soft whooshes as the bows launched their deadly projectiles at their doomed targets.

Soon, though, the mobs broke through to the fort walls. Rather than panicking, the two archers were completely calm, their shadowed faces underneath their black cowls showing no emotion. They continued to pick off zombies and skeletons, unaffected by the slurping spiders only a few blocks under them. The creepers, no matter how much they tried, could not blow the walls apart, for a strong layer of obsidian lay underneath the stone bricks. Groups of swordsmen and knights swept among the undead armies, laying waste to many zombies. It seemed as if the Minecraftians were winning.

Suddenly, there were the sounds of many dozens of endermen teleporting. The archers were genuinely worried, now. Their arrows could do no damage to these tall, dark creatures of another land. In fact, their job was over. Now, all around the fort, the many arches ceased to fire and instead dived for cover in their two-block high endershelters, where they would wait out the rest of the battle, safe from the endermen assault.

The knights did not fare well without the support of the arrows, striking down many of their opponents. In an organized fashion, they begin to retreat to the walls. The endermen would, indeed, attack them, but they didn't care. Instead, with worried looks on their faces, they left the walls unattended and ran towards the village. They knew what would happen there. The unarmed Minecraftian citizens, with no way to defend themselves, would be massacred by endermen if they didn't get there in time.

Fortunately, though, they dispersed through the village and fought off the brunt of the endermen. Many a swordsman fell, his iron blade flung to the ground as he died at the hands of an enderman, but many more of the midnight black, purple-eyed mobs met their end as well. Soon, the surviving ones sensed the deaths of their brethren, too many to continue the assault, and teleported away from the fort. Again, the Minecraftians had defended their town. Again, they had avoided death and destruction. But it was no triumph, for they had been doing so for more nights then they could remember.

Believing the fight over, the archers cautiously crawled out of their shelters, scanning the ground outside of the fort alertly for any hiding mobs that would need to be picked off. The knights, too, lay down their swords, relieved that they had survived another night. Some mourned their fallen comrades, victims of yet another attack by the mobs. Others removed their helmets, revealing messy, disheveled hair, brows slick with sweat, and tired faces.

But the head knight, who had an impressive history of battle and victories and who was a veteran at combat, sensed that something was off. Something about this particular night didn't feel right. There had to be something more, something horrible, sent by whoever made all those crazed mobs attack the town over and over, every midnight. He felt that this night had been a bit too easy. There had to be something else.

Though he wanted to call off the knights and let them get their precious sleep, to prepare for the next day, his instincts told him to keep them on guard. The archers, too, would continue their duties. It was always better to be safe than to be sorry. If he could deprive his fighting men of a few hours of sleep in order to save the town from some unspeakable horror that would creep up on them when they had all gone to bed, then he would do that. And so the head knight hefted his diamond armor and sword, instructed his aide to tell all of his knights and archers to remain alert, and began his patrol of the walls, ready to respond to whatever would happen.

It came some time later. A moan so deep the dirt blocks rumbled was heard, and some of the archers started yelling to each other in disbelief. The head knight looked up, too, disbelievingly. Did they just say they spotted a giant? Those powerful, massive zombies that had gone extinct many hundreds of years ago? Well, the archers had no reason to lie. And if what they said was true, then the town was in deep trouble.

It would be lucky to even survive the rampage of such an ancient, horrible monster.


My name is RowanTheTurtle, but nobody calls me that. They all refer to me as 'Rowan'. I live in a town called Kingsville, which a nice, pleasant place, with fifteen or so players, situated in the forest, with tall mountains in the distance. I lived in the north-east corner of the town, and my job was to craft things.

Our lives were pretty routine. In the morning, we'd get up and eat some bread, or apples, or meat. We'd get to work with whatever our jobs were. For me, it was making tools and items. This usually meant I would travel down to the blacksmith shop and pick up iron and gold ingots, or occasionally the rare diamond. Then, I would spend the day hammering away at my crafting table, making pickaxes, shovels, axes, and swords of various materials.

But it wasn't always that way.

Occasionally, I would be called upon to make other items. Usually it would be something like a bookshelf or some signs or beds. It was mostly things that some other people didn't know how to make. Other times, it would be huge orders of stairs or stone bricks, or things that were very tedious to produce. Sometimes it would be rare items like golden blocks or enchanting tables. You name it, I could probably make it.
Even though I was usually in my two-story house crafting things, that didn't mean I was friendless. Sometimes, I would go out with my close friends for a roast chicken or steak and pork chop at a restaurant. Or I would come over to their homes and we would spend the evening sipping milk and discussing things. I also loved to mine, although it was scary and irritating to deal with the mobs that hid in the dark and tried to kill you while you were busy.

My closest friend was a person named xXOnionboy246Xx, or just Onionboy for short. He was a nice fellow who always seemed to be wearing some sort of jacket with a creeper design on it, and he was a guard, which meant he spent his nights patrolling along the wall, dealing with any mobs that managed to climb over or get through. He also loved to mine things, though he often got distracted by dungeons and would spend hours eagerly hacking away at the zombies, skeletons, and spiders that continuously spawned. Otherwise, if we weren't in the mood of swinging our picks at gold ores or running around, swinging our swords at hordes of zombies, we loved to explore the sunny forests around Kingsville, looking for apples or mushrooms to eat.

I also had another friend known as LyraKin6671 (we often just called her Lyra). She was almost the opposite of Onionboy, and hated caves and ravines. She was very good with books and kept a daily diary (which, of course, she never let us read), and her job was to keep records of all of the expenses, debts, trade offers, and money that the town had. Lyra was also very popular, due to her prettiness, but she tended to stay away from parties (which Onionboy couldn't get enough of) and restaurants.

Between my job, Onionboy and Lyra, my life was pretty busy. Occasionally, someone would forget to pay me or give me too much money, so I would have to sprint to their house to notify them. Other times, there might have been a fire at one of the homes, so I would have to help the other players put it out. Sometimes, there would be a town meeting, where we would come together to listen to Noble140 (the ruler of Kingsville) decree new laws or give speeches.

But mostly I lived alone, in my own house, spending my days crafting various objects and having fun with Onionboy and Lyra.
Anyway, enough with my life. I'm not here to tell you about myself, I'm here to tell the story, the incredible story of what happened to me sometime ago. The story I would never forget for my whole life.

The story of the Shadow Tunnel.