Dark: Hello everyone, Dark here!
WB: So you really are returning, then?
Dark: Indeed I am, with a new story!
WB: Well, let's hope this actually is your resurface, and not just your last desperate breath for air as you slowly sink to the ocean floor.
Dark: I'll try to stay buoyant. This is supposed to be a somewhat short story, so a proper conclusion should be reached this time. Anyways, without further ado, enjoy!
Chaos. Fire everywhere. Everything disintegrating. Panicked screeches from mobs of all types. The sky itself seemed to be crumbling, and an insufferable screeching noise rang throughout the air. There was a brilliant flash of light, a shadowy figure grabbed me, then everything faded to black.
I suddenly jolted awake from my nightmare. Trying to fall back asleep was pointless, so I yawned and gave my arms a good stretch. As I woke up this morning, something seemed off on what should've been a perfectly normal day. I couldn't place the feeling, but somewhere in my mind, something was warning me that things were going horribly wrong. These feelings persisted in their urgency, even as I put on my iron armor and sorted my inventory.
My first thought was that the cobblestone generator I constructed yesterday was burning my house down, and I cursed myself for placing lava anywhere near wood, though I was sure I had completely protected the wood with obsidian surroundings. However, my house was perfectly fine around the generator area when I went down to check, with no visible burn marks to be seen on any of the walls or the ceiling. The obsidian seemed normal aside from a small crack, which wasn't enough damage to require repairs. My most immediate concern was dismissed, but the feeling persisted, so I kept considering the other possibilities.
I checked outside my windows, watching for potentially dangerous mobs hiding behind the trees. No stray skeletons, no creeping creepers, and none of those cursed witches in sight. My horse was just where I had left it as well, lassoed to a tree. I let out a sigh, then promptly felt sick. It took me a second to realize that I had a new cave spider bite on my right leg, and poison was running through my veins which would drain my energy. A tiny cave spider crawled onto the windowsill just then, and I promptly killed it before it could do more harm. Another slightly larger cave spider crawled above my head, and I killed that one too. I then realized my house might be infested with cave spiders, which was a thought which almost made me hurl.
Quickly, I ate one of my Golden Apples to recover my strength, then I assessed my current situation. The only possible reason I could think of for this invasion was that the cave tunnel I'd opened last night after building the generator somehow connected to an abandoned mine shaft, and my new roommates had infiltrated through the open entrance tunnel and into my house while I had slept. My theory was confirmed when I went in to check the tunnel, finding stray webs lining the walls and floor of the path. A cave spider crawled through the tunnel just then, and I barely had enough time to react before it started attacking me. As soon as I stepped out of the tunnel to give myself more room to fight, it pushed itself past me and crawled away. I found this weird, since hostile mobs usually tried to finish me off. Come to think of it, why didn't that other spider try to finish me in my sleep? I was clearly vulnerable, it would've had little trouble finishing me off. It's almost like the cave spiders were trying to get away from something in the cave, and I was just happening to get in their way.
I shrugged, and blocked off the cave so the cave spiders couldn't get out. If they were running from something, hopefully whatever was bothering them would kill them so I wouldn't have to do it myself. I hated fighting cave spiders, since their poison was not exactly a fun thing to experience. As I turned to go back home, the closed hole I had just sealed suddenly exploded behind me, and I was thrown onto my face. It took me a few seconds to regain my senses, but when I looked back at the entrance, a larger hole had opened up, and I could faintly smell gunpowder in the air. The cave spiders continued leaving, followed now by larger spiders who were able to fit through the enlarged hole. Something was very clearly happening inside that cave, and it wasn't just the cave spiders who were affected, as the explosion proved. Spiders typically don't explode, nor do they have the hands or intelligence necessary to create or detonate TNT.
I was curious to find out what the mobs were so afraid of, so I dug an alternate tunnel through the stone into the cave. It seemed slightly easier to cut through the stone than usual, but I didn't take much notice of this fact. As soon as I popped out through the other side, I was greeted by a zombie who shoved me out of the way and shuffled out the new exit without even bothering to attack me, followed by a skeleton who didn't even lift its bow in my direction. They started burning in the sunlight, but neither came back into the tunnel for protection, and instead kept going towards the forest. I didn't expect much from the zombie, but it was strange that the skeleton kept going as well, which suggested to me that something was seriously wrong inside the cave.
Against my best judgment, I kept going through the cave, and passed several more normally hostile mobs who didn't care about my presence. The only one who even looked at me was a witch, who just stared briefly at me like I was crazy, then she kept moving as well. When I turned the corner, I found the mine shaft which had now truly been abandoned, but nothing seemed particularly off about it. I walked around for a while and couldn't find anything dangerous besides the occasional mobs who were still trying to get out. An hour later with no progress, I decided to give up. A lava pit was nearby, and I had my water bucket with me, so I decided to get some more obsidian, maybe to build a portal with it or to reinforce my generator.
As I poured the water onto the lava, something strange happened with it. The surface lava cooled into obsidian, but unlike the solid chunks I was expecting, I only got a fine dust, which the remaining lava in the pool began to seep through. Adding more water to it kept giving me the same result, until I had a pool of obsidian dust. I tried pressing the dust together, I mixed it with water, and I even tried spitting on it, but I couldn't get solid building obsidian. As far as I knew, obsidian wasn't supposed to form as dust. Another pool of lava was nearby, so I tried doing it there, but with the same result. I pulled a piece of my obsidian out of my pocket and set it down on the mine floor. It looked completely normal, and I wondered why the obsidian I was trying to make wasn't turning out the way I wanted it to turn out.
As I tried to pick up my obsidian, it suddenly collapsed into the same obsidian dust as the dust I had just created. In my annoyance, I threw the dust at the wall. The part of the wall I had thrown the dust at promptly collapsed, and the dust made me start coughing. This was soon followed by an ominous groaning, and I decided that I had overstayed my welcome in this cave. This might have been what the mobs had been so afraid of, but I didn't have time to think about it due to the highly likely possibility of an imminent cave-in. I broke into a run, right as the ceiling above where my head just was collapsed in on itself. Yep, definitely time to go.
Stone all around me began to crumble, and I had to run as fast as I could just to avoid meeting my death by way of suffocation or blunt trauma. I tripped over an exposed rock, and fell flat on my face for the second time that day. I rolled to the side just as a sharp piece of flint came crashing down, barely dodging a flint shard to the knee that would've ended my days as an adventurer. I picked myself up and continued running. I turned the corner to the tunnel's exit, just as the roof of the tunnel collapsed, trapping me inside the collapsing cave. I reached for my pickaxe, but couldn't find it in my inventory. I looked around and saw it on the ground back where I had tripped, but a falling part of the roof buried my pickaxe before I could reach it. I pulled out my shovel and started trying to move the rocks which buried it out of the way, but then felt an excruciating pain, followed almost immediately by a loss of consciousness.
WB: You're really going to complete this, right?
Dark: Yes, I swear I will finish this.
WB: I'm going to kill you if you don't.
Dark: I know, I know.
WB: Good.
Dark: So, this was the first chapter of Collapse. I hope you enjoyed, and I hope to see you next chapter!