HermioneJG
Notable Member
- Apr 12, 2017
- 2,217
- 41,771
After some walking, the ground began to slope down and the shore curved to the east, so we could no longer see the ocean. The stone was replaced by dirt and grass once again, and the trees became more dense. It had begun to drizzle, and I had my cloak pulled tightly about myself with the hood up.
"Woah, is that a mushroom?" Dark said suddenly, pointing.
We were standing on a hill, overlooking a forest of dark oak trees so dense and close together that the ground under them couldn't be seen, except for around the small ponds. Here and there the tops of what looked like, yes, giant mushrooms appeared between the treetops. Some had rounded red caps with white spots, while others were flat and brown.
"Cool," Cheesy said, grinning. "And weird. Giant mushrooms."
What interested me, though, was what seemed to be a mansion, far in the distance. It was hard to see clearly, with the light rain making the air a bit misty. The mansion was tall, its flat roof high above the treetops. The others were peering at it, too.
"Might be worth checking that out," Stre decided.
We resumed walking. Under the thick canopy of leaves, it was dark and shadowy. After a little bit, we came to a strange tree. The trunk was white and looked oddly soft, unlike the hard, dark wood of the other trees, and it was much thinner. Max sniffed at it curiously. Then I realised this was the stem of one of the giant mushrooms and felt a bit stupid for thinking it had been a tree. I looked up to see the pale underside of one of the broad flat caps.
Next to me, Ang said, "That's pretty cool."
Later, when we came to another one, a weird cow was standing beneath it. Max growled at the creature. It was bright red with white splotches, and its eyes were fully black, but the oddest part was a group of mushrooms growing on its back and head.
"What the Nether is this," I muttered. The thing seemed peaceful, mooing like a normal cow and watching us without bothering to come close or go away, but the black eyes were... off-putting. They made me think of zombies.
Cheesy frowned. "I didn't think mooshrooms lived here," she said.
It had stopped drizzling when we finally reached the mansion. It was three storeys tall, with the top floor about half as big as the lower too, and it was made mainly of dark oak wood. There was a small cobblestone porch in front of the arched doorway, which had no door in it. On each side of the doorway was a tall glass window framed by short dark as logs perpendicular to the wall. Thomas and Cool each lit a torch; it was dark and shadowy inside. We tied off the horses and went in.
The foyer had a red carpet with white edges leading off down a corridor to each side, and there was a flight of wide cobblestone stairs directly in front of us. The floor was birchwood, and the interior walls were dark oak wood like the exterior, and they had patterns made of logs positioned like in the window frames.
"Which way should we go?" Thomas asked. "Left, right, or up?"
"First floor first," I said. "We can work our way up."
"Okay... so left or right?" he asked,
"Um... right," Ang decided, so we set off that way, checking some of the rooms that we passed.
Boy, was this place creepy.
The first room we looked into was a long, empty room, with a tapestry of a villager's face on the far wall. It was strange though; the tapestry showed the villager with pale, grey skin. I shuddered. It looked like it was staring at me, and the flickering torchlight didn't help.
Another room had a weird little shrine made of cobblestone, with a flowerpot holding a white tulip in the center. A third had rings of cobblestone around the walls, with ladders to nowhere between them. A pumpkin with a face carved into it sat on top the higher cobblestone ring, facing the door.
Some of the rooms weren't quite so creepy, but were still odd. One was filled with piles of wool in varying shades of blue. Another one, which was blocked off, had a small dark oak tree growing in a garden bed of sorts. There was a small chest in the room, containing an iron axe that had a faint purplish sheen to the blade.
"Enchanted," Ang murmured when she picked it up. "Efficiency, a low level enchantment."
The corridors had so many random turns and side passages, the mansion was a labyrinth. I wondered if any of the others knew the way back out, because I knew I didn't. Eventually, we came to another flight of cobblestone steps and went up. When we turned to follow the corridor at the top, I noticed another tapestry of the strange grey villager. It was hanging above the base of the steps, facing the top.
It felt like we should have been finding monsters in here, but so far the place was abandoned - no people, no villagers, no monsters, no life of any kind except for plants. I was glad for that, but it made me uneasy, like whatever we did find would be ten times worse than anything we expected.
The second level was just as strange as the first.
One room contained a giant wool statue of the odd villager, his head and hands rising out of the floor. In one hand it held a giant torch. Another room's walls were lined with shelves, holding two rows of dark oak saplings. A small chest in that room held more unplanted saplings.
There was a fairly large library, containing three rows of bookshelves and a row of couches and tables at the back. A library seemed too pleasant a thing to exist in the creepy mansion. I went to the shelves and pulled out a book at random. The cover read An Age of Great Monsters. Looking at the spines of other books in this section, I saw titles like Enchantments and Powers and Legends of Spirits and Powerful Beings. That last one was bookmarked, so I replaced An Age of Great Monsters on the shelf and picked up Legends, opening to the marked page. I hardly got a chance to look at it - something about the Void and summoning - before Ang called, "Hermy, we're going," and I made a quick choice: I took the book and tucked it into my pack to look at it later.
I reasoned that nobody would miss the book, since there didn't seem to be anybody living here.
The weirdest room we got to had its entrance blocked off, like the tree room downstairs. However, this room had no tree. Instead, there was a small set of cobblestone steps leading to a square outline of green wool suspended in the air above a thick carpet of orange wool. In the corners of the room there were bits of cobblestone, which Max sniffed and growled at. Resting on the ring of green wool was a chest, with TNT on each side of it. The latch on the chest had a ring of red around it. It was trapped, probably rigged to set off the TNT.
Why would anybody put explosives in a mansion?
"It looks like an End portal," Cheesy said, frowning, like in a stronghold."
It was on the third floor that I realised the mansion wasn't abandoned.
We found another flight of steps with the strange villager tapestry above them, and at the top of them Max began growling again. Thomas grabbed the wolf and tried to shush him. I wondered what it was this time.
We proceeded cautiously, and near the next door I heard voices. Ang leaned around the doorway to look, then looked back at us and shook her head. "Creepy villagers," she whispered.
Dark crept forward to look, and - against my better judgement - so did I, just for a moment. There were bookshelves against the far wall, which had a window looking out onto the flat roof of the second floor. A chandelier hung over a round table in the center of the room, with a huge map spread on it and an axe lying on top. Around the table stood three creepy villagers, as Ang had said. They had the typical long head and bulbous nose, but they had huge, bushy individual eyebrows instead of monobrows, and their skin was grey like the tapestries hanging everywhere. Two of them wore blue pants and brown jackets, and the third wore a black robe with gold trim. One of the jacketed ones was casually tossing an axe and catching it.
"Get back!" Thomas hissed. "Before they see you!"
We both did, and stood there listening to the conversation inside.
"Remind me why we sent all the monsters out," said one of the weird villagers.
In an eerily calm tone, a second said, "So they can kill all the people, of course."
"Praise the Being of the Void!" cried the third, in a gruff voice.
"Put the axe away before you kill yourself," said the one with the creepy calm voice, then chuckled. I decided this was the one in the robe.
The first guy said, "Praise the one who woke the the Being, and started a new age!" They cheered.
The calm robed guy said, "Besides, not all of them are gone. I can summon my vexes at any time necessary."
I didn't understand what in the Nether any of this meant, and from the looks of confusion on their faces, neither did anybody else.
"What's a vex?" I asked, as quietly as possible.
"No idea," said Stre. "What's the Being of the Void?"
The book in my bag suddenly seemed to weigh more, demanding my attention. Hadn't it said something about summoning a being from the Void?
"Let's go," Cool said., "before those guys see us."
We all began to turn around as silently as we could manage, when the axe-wielding guy said, "What's that? I hear something."
Oh, Notch. Everybody looked about in alarm, but before we could even move he was standing in the doorway in front of us with a smile.
"Hello there," the creepy villager said, and swung his axe.
-----
"Woah, is that a mushroom?" Dark said suddenly, pointing.
We were standing on a hill, overlooking a forest of dark oak trees so dense and close together that the ground under them couldn't be seen, except for around the small ponds. Here and there the tops of what looked like, yes, giant mushrooms appeared between the treetops. Some had rounded red caps with white spots, while others were flat and brown.
"Cool," Cheesy said, grinning. "And weird. Giant mushrooms."
What interested me, though, was what seemed to be a mansion, far in the distance. It was hard to see clearly, with the light rain making the air a bit misty. The mansion was tall, its flat roof high above the treetops. The others were peering at it, too.
"Might be worth checking that out," Stre decided.
We resumed walking. Under the thick canopy of leaves, it was dark and shadowy. After a little bit, we came to a strange tree. The trunk was white and looked oddly soft, unlike the hard, dark wood of the other trees, and it was much thinner. Max sniffed at it curiously. Then I realised this was the stem of one of the giant mushrooms and felt a bit stupid for thinking it had been a tree. I looked up to see the pale underside of one of the broad flat caps.
Next to me, Ang said, "That's pretty cool."
Later, when we came to another one, a weird cow was standing beneath it. Max growled at the creature. It was bright red with white splotches, and its eyes were fully black, but the oddest part was a group of mushrooms growing on its back and head.
"What the Nether is this," I muttered. The thing seemed peaceful, mooing like a normal cow and watching us without bothering to come close or go away, but the black eyes were... off-putting. They made me think of zombies.
Cheesy frowned. "I didn't think mooshrooms lived here," she said.
It had stopped drizzling when we finally reached the mansion. It was three storeys tall, with the top floor about half as big as the lower too, and it was made mainly of dark oak wood. There was a small cobblestone porch in front of the arched doorway, which had no door in it. On each side of the doorway was a tall glass window framed by short dark as logs perpendicular to the wall. Thomas and Cool each lit a torch; it was dark and shadowy inside. We tied off the horses and went in.
The foyer had a red carpet with white edges leading off down a corridor to each side, and there was a flight of wide cobblestone stairs directly in front of us. The floor was birchwood, and the interior walls were dark oak wood like the exterior, and they had patterns made of logs positioned like in the window frames.
"Which way should we go?" Thomas asked. "Left, right, or up?"
"First floor first," I said. "We can work our way up."
"Okay... so left or right?" he asked,
"Um... right," Ang decided, so we set off that way, checking some of the rooms that we passed.
Boy, was this place creepy.
The first room we looked into was a long, empty room, with a tapestry of a villager's face on the far wall. It was strange though; the tapestry showed the villager with pale, grey skin. I shuddered. It looked like it was staring at me, and the flickering torchlight didn't help.
Another room had a weird little shrine made of cobblestone, with a flowerpot holding a white tulip in the center. A third had rings of cobblestone around the walls, with ladders to nowhere between them. A pumpkin with a face carved into it sat on top the higher cobblestone ring, facing the door.
Some of the rooms weren't quite so creepy, but were still odd. One was filled with piles of wool in varying shades of blue. Another one, which was blocked off, had a small dark oak tree growing in a garden bed of sorts. There was a small chest in the room, containing an iron axe that had a faint purplish sheen to the blade.
"Enchanted," Ang murmured when she picked it up. "Efficiency, a low level enchantment."
The corridors had so many random turns and side passages, the mansion was a labyrinth. I wondered if any of the others knew the way back out, because I knew I didn't. Eventually, we came to another flight of cobblestone steps and went up. When we turned to follow the corridor at the top, I noticed another tapestry of the strange grey villager. It was hanging above the base of the steps, facing the top.
It felt like we should have been finding monsters in here, but so far the place was abandoned - no people, no villagers, no monsters, no life of any kind except for plants. I was glad for that, but it made me uneasy, like whatever we did find would be ten times worse than anything we expected.
The second level was just as strange as the first.
One room contained a giant wool statue of the odd villager, his head and hands rising out of the floor. In one hand it held a giant torch. Another room's walls were lined with shelves, holding two rows of dark oak saplings. A small chest in that room held more unplanted saplings.
There was a fairly large library, containing three rows of bookshelves and a row of couches and tables at the back. A library seemed too pleasant a thing to exist in the creepy mansion. I went to the shelves and pulled out a book at random. The cover read An Age of Great Monsters. Looking at the spines of other books in this section, I saw titles like Enchantments and Powers and Legends of Spirits and Powerful Beings. That last one was bookmarked, so I replaced An Age of Great Monsters on the shelf and picked up Legends, opening to the marked page. I hardly got a chance to look at it - something about the Void and summoning - before Ang called, "Hermy, we're going," and I made a quick choice: I took the book and tucked it into my pack to look at it later.
I reasoned that nobody would miss the book, since there didn't seem to be anybody living here.
The weirdest room we got to had its entrance blocked off, like the tree room downstairs. However, this room had no tree. Instead, there was a small set of cobblestone steps leading to a square outline of green wool suspended in the air above a thick carpet of orange wool. In the corners of the room there were bits of cobblestone, which Max sniffed and growled at. Resting on the ring of green wool was a chest, with TNT on each side of it. The latch on the chest had a ring of red around it. It was trapped, probably rigged to set off the TNT.
Why would anybody put explosives in a mansion?
"It looks like an End portal," Cheesy said, frowning, like in a stronghold."
It was on the third floor that I realised the mansion wasn't abandoned.
We found another flight of steps with the strange villager tapestry above them, and at the top of them Max began growling again. Thomas grabbed the wolf and tried to shush him. I wondered what it was this time.
We proceeded cautiously, and near the next door I heard voices. Ang leaned around the doorway to look, then looked back at us and shook her head. "Creepy villagers," she whispered.
Dark crept forward to look, and - against my better judgement - so did I, just for a moment. There were bookshelves against the far wall, which had a window looking out onto the flat roof of the second floor. A chandelier hung over a round table in the center of the room, with a huge map spread on it and an axe lying on top. Around the table stood three creepy villagers, as Ang had said. They had the typical long head and bulbous nose, but they had huge, bushy individual eyebrows instead of monobrows, and their skin was grey like the tapestries hanging everywhere. Two of them wore blue pants and brown jackets, and the third wore a black robe with gold trim. One of the jacketed ones was casually tossing an axe and catching it.
"Get back!" Thomas hissed. "Before they see you!"
We both did, and stood there listening to the conversation inside.
"Remind me why we sent all the monsters out," said one of the weird villagers.
In an eerily calm tone, a second said, "So they can kill all the people, of course."
"Praise the Being of the Void!" cried the third, in a gruff voice.
"Put the axe away before you kill yourself," said the one with the creepy calm voice, then chuckled. I decided this was the one in the robe.
The first guy said, "Praise the one who woke the the Being, and started a new age!" They cheered.
The calm robed guy said, "Besides, not all of them are gone. I can summon my vexes at any time necessary."
I didn't understand what in the Nether any of this meant, and from the looks of confusion on their faces, neither did anybody else.
"What's a vex?" I asked, as quietly as possible.
"No idea," said Stre. "What's the Being of the Void?"
The book in my bag suddenly seemed to weigh more, demanding my attention. Hadn't it said something about summoning a being from the Void?
"Let's go," Cool said., "before those guys see us."
We all began to turn around as silently as we could manage, when the axe-wielding guy said, "What's that? I hear something."
Oh, Notch. Everybody looked about in alarm, but before we could even move he was standing in the doorway in front of us with a smile.
"Hello there," the creepy villager said, and swung his axe.
-----
