Chapter 1: What happened to my spawn?

Steve was in his cave. To be more precise, he was deep inside the cave that lied a short distance from his house in the oak forest mining for ores and lava.

"Aw man!" Groaned Steve. His iron pickaxe had just broke, and he had no iron left. That was because he had wasted it all on an iron chestplate and cap the previous day, only to accidentally fall into a hidden lava pit in the Nether while mining netherrack later that afternoon.

"Good thing I have a spare," exclaimed Steve as he pulled out a not-as-useful but adequate stone pick from his inventory.

Steve continued to travel through the passage. Now, one might assume that Steve was poorly prepared for cave exploration after his Nether death, but that was not true. When he perished the preceding day, he was only carrying a full stack of cobblestone, a couple torches, a stone sword (he was afraid that Ghasts would kill him before he even got to retaliate with his iron sword), a stone pick, some porkchops, and his iron chestplate and cap. Plus, in this exploration, Steve had a stack of torches, dirt, sticks, cobblestone, wood, plenty of food and an iron sword in addition to the ores he mined and a variety of other stuff.

"Oh come on!" Steve growled as he walked up to a vein of coal and began to mine it. "At least give me iron. I already have over five stacks of coal in my chest."

Sighing as he finished the collection strolled away, Steve pondered to himself "Coal ore is better than no ore. Why am I complaining?" Dismissing the thought with a shake of his head, Steve had other matters to attend to. He had come to a fork in the passage, and he had to decide which way to go. Down the right passage he heard the moans of zombies and rattling of skeletons, but gazing down the left passage he noticed a much needed ore at this point: iron.

"Yipee!" Steve exclaimed as he placed a few torches and began to mine the ore. One, two, three, four, five. This was already a large vein, and he wasn't even finished mining it. Six, seven, eight, nine. Wow, this was the largest iron vein Steve had ever found! Ten, eleven. Eleven blocks! Steve was overjoyed with his luck. He jumped eleven times to celebrate the victory. However, as he placed the ore in his inventory, an arrow whizzed by his shoulder. Skeleton.

"Ugggh!" Steve groaned as he spun around to find two zombies approaching with a skeleton providing ranged cover. Whipping out his iron sword, he quickly beheaded one of the attackers, his sword smashing into the other zombie's shoulder in the same swing. The mob staggered backwards and ran into a wall. Steve took a second swing, jabbing the iron blade into the monster's chest, killing it. Just then, another arrow narrowly missed him, with Steve promptly lunging forward and smashing the sword into the skeleton's abdomen.

The mob shrieked and fell over lifeless, dropping a bone and an arrow. But when its corpse disappeared, it revealed that it had fallen on a rare and valuable ore: diamonds.

Steve nearly screamed with joy, but instead just gasped and stared, memorized. The hiss of a spider in another nearby cave broke him from his trance several seconds later, and he promptly placed a furnace and a crafting table, smelted his iron, and crafted an iron pickaxe. He then collected the four block vein of ore and glanced at his clock.

"Whup!" said Steve as he put his clock back in his inventory. "I'd better get back to my house. The sun will be setting soon" He mined up the crafting table and furnace and began to travel back up to the exit.

After traversing the passages through the elaborate cave system, he finally reached the surface only to find out that the sun had already set and a creeper was waiting for him. It began to advance toward him, causing him to wish that he had crafted a new bow after his old one had broken several days ago. He took a slash at the mob but missed, and instinctively backed off as it hissed louder and louder until boom!

"Phew, close call," Steve said. He had been just out of the blast range and was unharmed.

"Aw, darn," he quickly followed as he noticed that the explosion had partly destroyed his cave entrance and had left a large, ugly crater. "Oh well, it's not safe to fix it out here in the dead of night," he thought as another creeper began to approach. Rounding the crater, he rapidly jogged back to his house before it could mess up his creations too.

Upon arriving at his house, Steve ate a cooked porkchop and then got in bed, and soon he began to drift off to sleep.

...

The next morning soon arrived. As Steve began to open his eyes, he noticed that it was much brighter than most mornings. As he slowly contracted his eyelids, he realized that he was standing. Had he been sleep walking, and walked outside?

He completely opened his eyes. Where was he? Where was his house, his farm, his mine, the cave. There was sand and cacti all around, leading him to conclude that he was in a desert. But why? Maybe he did sleepwalk from his house, somehow avoiding the hostile mobs, and he came here. But wait... How could he walk this far. And then he noticed that all of his stuff was gone. His food, his torches, sword, his stone pick, his clock, UGGH, all eight remaining iron ingots, DOUBLE UGGH, and wait, THE DIAMONDS! He'd forgot to store them in his ore chest last night.

But this couldn't be. He must be dreaming. He shook himself and jumped to try to awaken himself, but to no avail. Maybe a slight loss of health would get him up. He walked over to a cactus and touched it.

"Ouch!" Steve shrieked. "What happened to my spawn!" This wasn't a dream. This was real.