Chapter 13
(warning contains Herobrine swearing)
Steve turned towards the demi-god as the snarls became more aggressive. At first the miner wondered if maybe they had been followed through the tunnel; but upon seeing the demi-god viciously swing his sword at the ground, the miner knew that wasn't the case. Looking closer, Steve noticed a tiny cave spider leaping towards demi-god intent on attacking. Despite the fact that Herobrine cursed and swore at the tiny creature, (sometime switching to another language to find better words to fit his wrath) the miner had a feeling that the attacks were more of an annoyance then anything. After a few minutes of watching Herobrine try and attack the spider only for him to miss, Steve stepped in.
"Having problems in the ranks?" The miner tried to hide his chuckled as he carefully walked up to the enraged Demi-god.
Herobrine turned and glared at the miner. "This spider could be working with…" he was interrupted by the spider jumping at his face again. "Fucking Neither! Stop that!" The demi-god swung his blade again, only for it clang on the hard ground. Hearing the chuckle of the miner behind him only caused him sigh out of frustration. "I am glad you find this humorous Steve. Now help me kill it."
Steve forced a cough to try and cover up his laughing fit. Though the scene in front of him was in fact quite funny something didn't seem right. What he had first thought was simply rage delaying the demi-god's swings, he thought it seemed odd. The miner knew rage and pride could slow someone's reaction time down, it didn't seem right with the demi-god. Herobrine was a warrior of the gods; his movements in a fight were always precise when he wished something dead, even when enraged. Steve's laughter died down as he thought more on this, 'maybe his arms are not as good as he said they were.' "Are you sure your okay?"
"I will be fine once this spider as met its end." Herobrine didn't even look up. Having giving up on using his sword, the demi-god brought his leg up before stomping downwards, crushing the cave spider with his shoe. He dragged it around to add even more damage, just incase it wasn't dead. Being quite satisfied with the crunching noises, Herobrine removed his foot from the corpse and scrapped the spider's remains on to a near by rock.
Steve shook his head at the demi-god and went back to his search, this time spotting a ledge that was only two blocks higher then they were. With this new discovery the miner began looking for some way to get up there. Some of the lager stone blocks caught his eye and he quickly took out his pickaxe, starting to chip away at them. Once he managed to break two free he looked back over towards the demi-god. "I could use a hand moving these." Herobrine looked back at the miner and jogged over, helping to move the stone blocks under the ledge. Steve climbed up first looking over his shoulder at the demi-god. "I'll go up first encase there's anything that needs mining."
On top of the ledge was another tunnel, luckily this one was big enough for them to walk through instead of crawling. This was a great relief to Herobrine. Steve was first to enter and the sound of the footsteps behind him told him the demi-god was right behind him. Though the tunnel was bigger; large boulders still jutted out from the walls slowing their path, worst yet the tunnel was much more maze-like, then the last one. The miner was tempted to remove the large rocks with his pick but knew they didn't have that much time.
Steve growled as he came to yet another dead end and was forced to turn back, knocking the torch off the wall. Before getting too far he noticed that Herobrine did not fall into step behind him, and the echo of a yelp caught his ear. Thinking that it was simply another tiny cave spider, Steve sighed and turned around, what he seen would have been funny if it wasn't a little horrifying. "What the Nether?!"
Herobrine glared at Steve as he struggled to get unstuck from a large rock. "I seem to be stuck in the geography of this cave." The demi-god grunted as he tried to pull himself free.
As Steve got close he understood exactly what the demi-god meant. He wasn't simply stuck on or under a boulder; part of his lower body had some how fused with the rock. "How did that even happen?" Steve rubbed the back of his neck, trying to figure out of he would fix this.
"I tripped."
"And fused to the rocks!" Steve had a hard time believing that.
"My body went into a non-corporeal state" Herobrine sighed, "and once I was through the rock it went Corporeal again, fusing me to this cursed rock." The demi-god's eyes moved to the miner's face that was controlled in confusion. "I tripped and for some reason my body went into a ghost form, then once I was through the rock it reverted." Herobrine hated repeating himself just as much as he hated dumping down his speech; but if it meant the miner could understand what was happening, he would do so.
Steve nodded and walked closer to the demi-god, grabbing a hold of the others arms and started to pull. "How did this happen?"
Herobrine felt ill, as Steve pulled his body apart with his strong arms from the rock that was unmoving. "I am sensing a power I did not before; it must be playing havoc with my powers." Herobrine's voice was as strained as his body was, he could have sworn he heard his back pop.
"So we must be getting close." Steve pulled harder closing his eyes; he could hear his friend's body groaning in protest to the treatment but he didn't give up.
"Maybe…Gah!" the demi-god groaned in pain looking up at the mortal with a pleading look "Steve stop! Your going to rip my arms from their sockets, before I am free!" Just as he felt he couldn't take anymore Herobrine felt his body loss physical substance and he slipped through Steve's grasp. With a bit of focus the demi-god was able to pull him self free of the rock as well as keep himself from slipping through the ground. Slowly, he felt himself regain physical mass and his joints slowly clicked back into place.
The miner had landed on his backside when the demi-god slipped through his grip. He panted and looked over at his friend who was taking on a more solid form. He panted as he watched his friend rub his no doubt sore body. "Feeling any better?"
The demi-god nodded with a sigh. "If you mean a lot less like I'm being ripped in half" he closed his eyes, "then yes, I am feeling better."
Steve chuckled lightly. "Sorry about that." He stood and looked down at the demi-god. "We should hurry up and get moving before it happens again." Herobrine sighed and stood up as well, following the miner out into the main tunnel.
Finally, after many dead ends, they found the tunnel opened up into another large cavern. Wooden bridges and stairs or at least what was left of them; lead across and down into a large canyon. Wishing to continue downwards, they walked towards the stairs only to find that the top part had been rotted away.
"Can you get us over there?" Steve asked looking down, wondering if this simply looked too easy.
"No" the white-eyed man stated, pointing to the what was left of the stairs. "Not with out risk of further collapse." He then looked at Steve bring his arm down. "And with my powers in such disarray it would be to dangerous to simply just jump down."
The miner growled in frustration and looked around. "Stay here, I'm going to check the other side for some building materials." Herobrine simply looked at him then looked back at the darkened pit. Steve jogged over to what was left of the bridge leading to the other side, which was nothing but a thin bit of wood. Placing his hands out to his side for balance, the miner inched his way across the wooden plank. It creaked and groaned with every step he took, but he soon made it to the other side. He looked around for anything that he could break to make something that would be useful but most of the wood was damp from the moister in the air. With a sigh he started breaking parts of the floor, it wouldn't last but would get them across.
Once he had gathered enough, he turned back towards the thin beam of wood. With his hands now full, he was unable to place them out for balance, this forced him to move even slower. The wood creaked even more under the extra weight of the wood and the miner, giving small lurches downward as he went. He started to sway as the beam became more unstable, he was quickly loosing his footing and could help but yell out.
A hand shot out and caught his wrist pulling him the rest of the way across. Steve fell to the floor, dropping the wood that he gathered to the floor. He looked up at Herobrine with a sigh and his blue eyes traveled downward to stare at the floor.
"What is wrong? Were you injured from hitting the floor?" The demi-god kneeled down looked for any sign of injury or bleeding.
"No" the mortal shook his head, he had been trying to ignore the feeling but it seemed to keep coming up since the water creature's attack. "I just feel like I'm a burden to you, is all."
The demi-god raised an eyebrow at the human's words. He tried to find words that would be a comfort to the mortal only to find that he could come up with nothing. Closing his glowing eyes he tried hard to put his words together; he was willing to damage his own pride for this mortal to feel better, something that didn't really make sense in his mind. "If not for you. I could not have made it this far." The next part of this 'make Steve stop whining ' plan was something he had never really done before. Clamping his armed tightly around the miner Herobrine did his best to mimic his brother's 'hugging technique.'
Steve eyes were wide as all this happened; the demi-gods words had been surprise enough, but this. Steve's mind rushed to try and figure out if this was a way to kill him or simply the most awkward hug that ever was to exist. He really believed that it was simply a really awkward hug but the quickly draining air from his lungs was turning it into the first. "Herobrine…. Hero…" gasp "I need to…to breath…" his words were quiet from lack of proper air.
The demi-god released the miner and stood, crossing his arms over his chest. "Feeling better?" he looked down at the demi-god; if the human wasn't he was going to throw his brother's feel better technique out the window, and just smack the mortal until he felt better about himself. The last two on his brother's list were say something funny and kiss his head, neither planned on doing.
Steve gasped for breath, coughing the whole time. He looked up at Herobrine to see the glowing eyes staring down at him. He nodded quickly, fearing another hug or worse. "I'm…" Cough, "fine... No more self pity." The miner stood and started checking for any cracked ribs, luckily there where none. He gathered the wood he had dropped and quickly went over to the broken stairway, starting to work on a path for them to get to the next flight of stairs. In record time the path was done and the two crossed, wood protesting the whole way.
The rest of the stairs were perfectly fine, but still creaked at every chance. At the bottom was a small clearing with another large tunnel to the right. Choosing to explore the tunnels first, the two soon came to another dead end, but this one both Steve and Herobrine noticed was different. The gravel that was blocking the path looked more like it had been placed there to keep someone from getting further in.
"I could mine it" Steve stated walking up to the gravel pile, "but it would take quite a bit of time, gravel is easier to move with a shovel." He heard a sigh from the demi-god behind him. The miner ran a hand over the wall and looked closely at it. "Shame we don't have any TNT, the sides of this are bedrock. If we had some, we could just blow the gravel away."
"But explosives are something we are short on." Herobrine grunted glaring at the gravel as if that alone could clear the path. "And I have left my pet creeper at home."
Steve wondered briefly if that was a joke, but brushed it off as he turned around. "Maybe that clearing under the stairs has something." The miner shrugged. "If it doesn't I'll need your help clearing this gravel."
Herobrine turned around with a grunt and started walking out. "Fine."
A/n: new chapter. sorry if this one isn't as good as the the others, I hit a wall of writers block right in the next chapter will be better. promise. hopefully I got the majority of the mistake, I went over it twice like I did the last chapter.
sorry forgot to slap a warning on there for Herbrine's mouth in this chapter. now proof read by AngelWingz66