Needless to say, Ogrim was quite surprised waking up to the vessel looking down at him.
"Oh, hello there friend, you quite startled me." he stated, slightly embarrassed at being briefly scared of a child.
Then they started tugging on his arm, trying to drag him to… somewhere? Clearly somewhere they wanted him to see.
After fully waking up, Ogrim followed them to the edge of the valley and was incredulous when he saw a massive hole in the ground, clearly dug out by hand. He only became more baffled when he noticed the large, deep purple rectangular frame within it.
"Did you… did you dig all of this?" he asked, trying to think if he recognized the stone the frame was made from.
They simply nodded in response, and pointed to a piece of the structure still embedded in the sand.
"I suppose it is rather strange, I assume you want me to help uncover the rest of it?" the great knight asked, noting that along with the frame itself, he could see some gray bricks near its base.
Wander replied once more with a simple nod before Ogrim spoke again, "Say, there are bricks near the bottom, don't you think there could be other things around here in the sands? Why don't you dig a bit more around the area?"
As the great knight uncovered the remainder of the main structure, he couldn't help but wonder what its purpose was, an odd frame made of unknown black and purple rock, long ago buried within the sands.
He felt something hit his side and looked down to see the vessel holding a cleanly shaped chunk of metal, somewhat similar in appearance to pale ore and attached with a chain to a sharpened piece of flint.
"So you found this amongst the sands I presume?" Ogrim questioned, Wander confirming his theory.
"You've stumbled across something quite odd, we shall go inform his majesty. Perhaps he will know what to make of it." Ogrim explained, strolling back into the valley.
"I do not believe I have heard of such a variety of rock." informed the king as he neared the newly uncovered structure.
The king suddenly seemed to freeze up as soon as he saw the frame.
"I assume you know I can… sense magic much more easier than others? Even dormant magic." questioned the king as he climbing down the hole, prodding at invisible spells that wrapped around the bizarre sight.
"Yes your majesty, do you sense a lot of it here? Anything worrying?" asked Ogrim as he looked back to the artifact Wander held.
"Yes, it appears to be a dormant portal." answered the wyrm king.
"A what?" Ogrim asked without a clue as to what his highness spoke of.
"A gateway to another dimension, although I can feel that this one most certainly does not connect to either dreams nor nightmares. I have been trying to make one of these things to research the Radiance for decades, and then we just stumble upon a mostly undamaged one in the middle of the wastelands!" shouted the Pale King, letting out the frustration of a dozen failed attempts.
"Do you know what the artifact the vessel found is meant for?" questioned Ogrim.
"First of all, their name is Wander." stated the king, frustration still clear in his tone, "But let me see, it appears to be one of the devices meant for starting a fire. Considering that I can vaguely feel infernal magic from this portal frame, I believe it is meant to activate it. Although of course we shouldn—" the Pale King was cut off by a roaring burst of purple light as Wander immediately did exactly that.
"What in the name of the gods is happening over there?" screeched Herrah, running towards the edge of the valley as a blindingly bright light erupted from the pit.
"Wander activated a gateway to some other dimension and I can't break it!" shouted the king as he threw spell after spell at the frame without even a single crack in its surface.
"Everyone, calm down." shouted Monomon, rushing to stare down at the swirling purple of the gateway as the king finally ran his magic reserves dry.
"Alright? Now, where does it lead to?" the scholar asked.
"It does not lead to dreams nor nightmares, meaning that I know nothing about it." responded the king, trying to see the other side through the foggy blur of purple.
"Has anything come through? Did you detect the presence of any other higher beings on the other side?" she questioned.
"No, and I cannot detect any higher beings in a dimension unless I enter it." responded the king whose eyes darted between Monomon and the portal.
"So why don't you enter it?" she asked in vague amusement.
The king simply stared at her for a moment before screeching "I'M NOT GOING THROUGH A PORTAL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WASTELANDS THAT WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT."
Monomon floated, privately admitting that she may have been too relaxed about an entirely different dimension and a bit taken aback at his graces reaction.
"I suppose we could send a tiktik or something of the like on a rope and see what happens." she said sheepishly.
"That is an alright idea…" he replied.
"Your majesty, what is happening?" shouted a city guard flying among others, trying to steer clear of the still present beast queen.
"A portal to an unknown dimension was uncovered and someone activated it. And now I cannot deactivate it." stated the king.
"Now, you there. Would you mind getting a rope and a small animal so that we may test the properties of this other dimension?" Monomon asked one of the sentries.
"Sure, Madame." he stated as he handed her a crawlid.
Monomon wrapped a rope around the creature as she gently tossed it through the gateway, hearing a slight squeak as it hit the ground. Judging by the thud it made, it sounded like some sort of stone, possibly the same stone bricks at the base of the structure.
She heard it skitter around the area for a short time, producing more thuds of stone and what sounded like feet smacking against crystal.
She dragged the crawlid back through, examining it to find it was free of any abnormalities.
"Well the crawlid is fine, and considering the temperature of the portal, it seems like wherever it leads isn't that much different temperature wise from here. Or the immediate area is insulated well." Monomon stated, pondering what the next test would be.
"Well then, I assume your next test is jumping straight to throwing a thinking being in?" the king sighed.
"Yep, would anyone like to volunteer?" the scholar asked.
"I would, considering that others might fall to whatever the dimensions equivalent of tiktiks is." Herrah stated with a slight sneer.
"Well then, go on through and report back I suppose." Monomon said, have nearly forgotten the queen standing at the top of the pit.
"Do you also want a ro—" Monomon inquired, Herrah quickly responding, "No."
After about a minute of anxious waiting, the queen of Deepnest stepped back through.
"It leads onto a large, roofed bridge made of various foreign bricks, clearly set long ago. The particular room possesses a large door and several windows, through which I can see other bridges and a sea of molten rock below, along with a very alien landscape a few hundred feet from the room."
"Define 'alien.'" the king asked.
"It is composed of several layers of red rock, dotted with specks of yellow. Upon the tops of the layers are what appear to be large red fungi, along with several animals."
"What about the door, is there a way to unlock it?" the king asked.
"There is a chain across the front, but otherwise it appears to be unlocked." she responded.
"Well, my opinion has changed, I will enter and try to gather more information about the area."
As the Pale King stepped through, he first checked to see just how physical this dimension was, and found its balance of magic and physicality was just the same as that of the dimension Hallownest resided within, far different from that of dreams.
Stepping across the bright red brick, he looked through the windows, finding himself high above a blazing sea below.
Then he turned his attention to the door. He found it odd that it could be unlatched from this side, but he opened the large, ancient gates regardless, finding himself face to face with an intersection of more doors.
What truly caught his eye however, was the tablet next to the one directly in front of him, glowing in the familiar language shared between higher beings.
First, upon seeing it, he expanded his senses, searching as much as he could around himself, and found only an afterglow of a higher being, but without one truly present.
An 'afterglow' could mean two things, either the being responsible once had great influence over the area, but has since left, or… the being is no more.
Turning his attention back to the tablet, he read.
Higher beings, these words are for you alone.
If this tablet holds, then the kingdom of Minecraftia has fallen.
If it now lays barren of higher thought, then I welcome you to claim the lands far ahead as your own.
However, you must be warned, my creations influence already corrupts and chokes the kingdoms life, with my own end closing in, it could only have grown stronger since.
He had never felt both so reassured and so uneasy at the same time, both an invitation to out right take the former land of a higher being, and a ominous warning of something they feared.
Looking ahead, he noticed the next door was closed from the other side, unlike the rest.
Just as he started trying to manually separate the halves of the door, he noticed the area around him, previously dark, was now starting to spark with dots of blue.
Then he saw lines of cyan, crossing in straight angles across the walls and ceiling as lantern after lantern above—previously inactive—started to flicker to life with an eerie blue.
As he turned around to bring others to explore this place, his eyes darted to the rods littering the ground that he had previously paid no mind to, as flames began to engulf them.