I wake up, the first thing I notice when I open my eyes being a tall grey stone ceiling. I look to the right, noticing that Jonas and his sleeping bag are both gone, as well as all the other bags we set down. Somewhat confused, I sit up, looking at the wooden door, which is now cracked open, but not enough to notice anything except the stone wall on the other side of the hallway. I stand up, then bend down to roll up my sleeping bag and hang my satchel around my shoulder. Then I head out into the hallway. Turning right, I see Jonas with the hogs all strapped up with our cargo. He is sitting with his back against the belly of one of the hogs, eating a loaf of bread.
"Good morning," Jonas says. "Here, have some bread."
He opens up the bag closest to him, pulls out a loaf of bread, and tosses it to me. Then he reaches into the bag again, and pulls out a full canteen, setting it down next to him.
I sit down on his right, biting into the loaf. It is fresh and soft, and the mere imagining of its taste makes my mouth water. We take turns sipping the canteen, and after that silent meal, we stand up simultaneously, unfasten our hogs from the doorknob, and lead them out of the abandoned inn through the giant iron-framed doors. From the mouth of the cave looking out, the sky is a beautiful cold morning blue, asymmetrical in hue from the light of the sun.
We head out to the cave's very edge, where a rocky cliff face looks far down onto the sparse end of shrubs which leads to the beginning of a cobblestone path and later a forest, out a significant distance, and continuing as a bumpy plane of green out into the horizon. Then, we turn a right, carefully guiding our hogs on a narrow edge, climbing up many rocks to eventually ascend to the dirt which is held up by the ceiling of the cave we were just in. Onwards the path is still rocky, but not quite as steep.
The terrain is much too rocky for the hogs, so we continue to travel on foot with them alongside us. The journey through the rocky outcrops is strenuous and tiring. After three hours of traveling, we stop on top of a small mesa to rest.
Then, after an apple and a half hour's rest, we continue our trek through the many rocks. After a little past noon, we finally notice patches of dirt and weeds among gradually decreasing numbers of rocks. The slope starts to descend, and we get our first glimpses of the bottom: trees with much space between them, with brown grass. Far off to the left and near the horizon, the roofs of unidentifiable buildings can be seen poking up behind the trees.
The slope quickly becomes steep, and we must veer to the left to follow a narrow path down the dusty mountain. Once the path ends at a much lighter slope, we climb onto our hogs and ride down the mountain and through the dry forest. After about an hour of smooth riding, we arrive at the beginnings of a gravel path, which leads us into the outskirts of a medium-sized town.
The character of the place, from the first time I see it, is odd. The architecture is different what I am used to seeing. Building walls with cobblestone are the norm, rather than stone bricks. The path is lit with torches on top of smoothstone, rather than on top of wooden posts.
Suddenly a figure appears from behind the corner of a cobblestone building in front of us. I accidentally make eye contact with it, which it immediately notices and turns to stare right back at me. It looks more or less humanoid in stature, and wears human clothes, but its hands and face hint at a much different identity. Its hands are covered in a grotesque combination of green, dead, and moldy leaves as well as fur, and the fingers end in thick black claws. The face is covered in a similar manner to the hands, with big, black, beady eyes, large nostrils, and a toothless mouth with a large underbite. What terrifying eyes! Such a perverted scowl! Oh Notch I hate Creepers...
The Creeper takes in a deep breath. "Ssstrangersss," it moans, its voice cracked and dry.
The thing walks toward us slowly, a tactic meant to deceive us into a false sense of security. I have to get ready to attack. It could charge at us and detonate at any moment. I reach for the sword at my belt... but Jonas obstructs my reach by putting his hand underneath mine. I turn to look at him in urgent frustration.
"Jonas, what are you doing? I need to get my sword!"
"He's just a half-blood. He won't hurt us." His purple eyes look into mine, and I remember that he's a half-blood too.
But it's a Creeper! Oh Notch, I can't stand them...
But I have to trust Jonas. Certainly he would know, being an Ender-born. I reluctantly relax my arm to let it rest at my side. The Creeper is only three meters from us now! I clench my jaw, trying to stay calm and keep a polite gaze in its direction. It stops just under two meters from us.
"Welcome to Zzzomem..." It hisses, "My name isss Frank... What are your namesss?"
It turns to face me, looking at me with its beady eyes. I am too nervous to say anything. I briefly shift my gaze towards Jonas, to try and get the pressure of his gaze off of me.
"My name is Jonas," he says, "And this is my good friend, Fristad. Pleased to meet your acquaintance."
"Indeed," the Creeper Frank moans, his eyes gleaming in surprise, "Ssso you're a half-Enderman then? I never know they exxxisssted... You have a very ssstrange accccccent. Your Consssonantsss are very loud... almossst like a popping sssound... and you sssay vowelsss differently..."
It's kind of hard to tell what Frank is saying with his terrible lisp and slow, monotone voice... but it makes me think about how much I must have had to adjust to the way Jonas speaks. I suppose it's been a while since I've talked with Jonas for the first time... perhaps I've listened to him talk long enough that I've grown used to it.
"That's interesting. I never realized that," Jonas says, mulling it over, "Well, Fristad and I have to meet up with my cousin. I'll see you later, I suppose."
"Take care," Frank says. He turns around and walks up the path towards the way he came, passing out of sight behind the same building.
Jonas glances at me quickly, revealing a subtle smirk. "He must be new here."
We walk up the gravel path a score or so meters, entering onto a smoothstone road which seems to be the beginning of some sort of town square. There are small fountains on either side of us, and buildings with a mix of cobble and wood surround the square. Their wide windows and ostentatiously placed signs suggest they are shops of some kind. Jonas leads the hogs and I to the left. We walk for a while past cottages, farms, and small pastures. Some of the fencing appears to be broken and there is bare dirt in some places where crops and animals should be. We have to navigate the cobble road carefully around deep ditches.
Three kids with muddy clothes chase after a piglet as it runs across the road in front of us, squealing and calling after it. The air smells like sewage. Someone is yelling off some distance to the left. We pass by a cobblestone cottage with the door hanging open crooked, barely held up by the top hinge. Up ahead, the broken road is surrounded on each side by brown grass, small buildings, and the occasional tree stump.
We walk past several cottages in varying states of disrepair, until Jonas directs me to turn left onto a thin gravel path. We walk up to an unadorned cobblestone house, smaller than any of the other ones we've seen so far, with no windows. Jonas walks up to the door and knocks on it. We wait for what seems like several minutes, but nothing happens.
"Hmm, no answer," Jonas remarks, "I suppose we might as well go inside."
He grasps the knob of the door and pulls it outward. He then leads the way through it, guiding his hog by the reins to follow him inside.
I guide my hog towards the door. As we walk inside, I see the shadowed walls lit by a lone torch on a table in the center. On the far wall is a staircase leading downward. After pulling my hog inside, I close the door behind me.
"Oh, good," Jonas says, "The stairwell is open. My cousin should be back soon." He turns to face me. "It's risky here to leave our hogs outside unsupervised, even in the daytime. Someone would try to steal them... and we wouldn't want to draw attention to ourselves. So for now, at least, we'll be leaving them in the foyer."
He ties the reins of his hog together and puts them on top of the harness. Then he starts to remove the bags hanging over it and placing them down on the ground. I start to do the same. I feel the warm sweat accumulated on my back, trapped by the thickness of my skeleton armor. Should I take it off? I feel reluctant to do so. I want to feel cooler in this arid shack, but at the same time I'd rather endure the heat than to risk taking it off.
The book almost has me, doesn't it? I can't comprehend exactly how.
I finish taking off the last sack from the hog. Jonas begins to walk down the stairway with some of the bags. I pick up some of mine and follow him down. The stairwell is barely wide enough to walk down. Its smoothstone walls slide against our bags as we pass. We walk down a sharp bend left in the stairwell, which leads us into a room much larger than the one we were in before.
Shelves reaching near the ceiling are filled with books of tome-like proportions. They are reed-bound and leather-bound, etched and inked, some adorned with metal corners and embroidery, others much simpler. Many are written in Standard script, but there are also many lettered in Latin, and many others besides those in languages entirely foreign to me. Some higher shelves have metal flasks of various sizes. On the right wall, there are shorter shelves with strange artifacts, as well as various chests. One of them is an odd, darker color, emitting dark purple smoke.
Jonas leads me to the left again, taking me down another level of stairs. We come into a narrow hallway with three doors, two on our left and one on our right. Jonas takes me down to the second door on the left. He opens it for me, and leads me inside. It is a bedroom with a wide bed to the right and a full wall shelf with various books to the left. At the back is a small wooden table, and in the center of the floor is a single glowstone block, illuminating the subterranean room with an incoherent golden glow.
We place our bags up against the bed, and then head upstairs to get the rest of them.
So this is it. This is where Jonas' brother will cure me from the troubling influence of the Book: this underground cellar, in an isolated town in a state of disrepair, surrounded by strangers...