If my square eyes could have widened, you bet they would have at that moment. Climbing up next to Summer, I gawked at what had to be a hallucination from sleep deprivation, or maybe a trick of the half-light. But I could have sworn we were staring at an entirely new environment.
Large pillars rising into crimson canopies, some of which held hanging, vinelike ropes or glowing cubes that were definitely not glowstone. And the air around it glowed, too—or rather, something in the air. Fireflies?
My first thought was Forest, but it couldn’t be. Could it?
“What are we seeing?” I asked both Summer and myself. “What is that?”
“Breh” came a familiar cry from behind us.
“We’ll know soon enough!” Summer took off at a run, and I joined her. Hurrying across the final expanse of open ground, we soon found ourselves in and among the trees. And grass! At least, it looked similar to grass. Crimson color aside, the little clumps grew in the same patterns as their verdant cousins up above.
There were even mushrooms! Not the brown or red-white varieties, and close to—but not quite—nether wart. These were tall as my shin, with grayish rusty stems and reddish caps that lightened at the top. And oh, the smell! As I picked one up, the sharp, rotten cheese aroma practically socked me in the sinuses.
“I wouldn’t try to eat those,” warned Summer, “not till we have some milk or healing potions on hand.”
“You’ve never seen this?” I asked. “Any of this?”
“Not till now,” she answered thoughtfully, “and if I was going to venture a guess, it would be that this whole biome just popped into existence along with the swinelings.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” I answered, packing the stink-shroom away, “but the bigger question is, does this red forest or swamp or whatever you want to call it connect back to where we need to go?”
“Only one way to…find out,” declared my fearless partner, coughing on the last two words. What I’d thought might be fireflies actually turned out to be burning cinders. More evidence that these topped poles around us were alive.
But what were those luminous cubes embedded in them? Glowfruit? I was about to reach up for one when the sound of a snort turned both our heads.
“Did you…” I started.
“Heard it,” she finished.
At first we thought it was a piggite, and we readied our weapons for battle. We couldn’t see anything, the vined columns and uneven terrain cutting visibility nearly down to zero.
“Hrrh” came another snort, closer this time and, frustratingly, from all directions.
“Up there!” I saw Summer looking up the incline. Beyond the vines, something was moving. Four legs. An animal, and about half the size of a sheep.
“A pig?” I asked.
Summer nodded. “Or maybe a wild boar?” And as it descended the slope, I saw why she might be right. Small white tusks protruded from either side of its stubby, angular snout.
Wondering how much damage those tusks might do, I retreated a few steps and started looking for the quickest escape route.
“Don’t be so skittish,” chuckled Summer as the boar trotted up to her. “This little chap doesn’t look—”
“Hrrhhuh!” it snorted, as the tusks bashed her in the knee.
“Oi!” she roared, axe swinging.
The boar flashed red, gave a high, pained “Hrrah!” then bounded back up the slope.
“Well, we saw him off easily enough,” Summer chuckled, “although it would have been nice to see how he might taste.”
I didn’t share her levity. Something about the creature gave me an uneasy feeling. The size, the reaction. It reminded me too much of the baby piglite I’d first seen down here, and how if there were small ones…
“I think we better get out of here,” I said, turning too late to Summer.
I saw the mama boar just as it hit her from behind. She flew, catapulted by the tusks, toward the lava!
Pivoting to me, the cow-sized, fur-backed tank of an animal gave an angry snort, as if to say, “You’re next.”
There wasn’t time to turn to see if Summer was okay. I raised my shield, lashed out with my sword, and, in anticipation of the coming attack, turned my back to the land.
“Hrraarrrhh!” Mama-boar snorted, and charged at me like a runaway minecart. And it sure felt like I was hit by one. Even with my raised shield and swinging sword, she managed to toss me right up onto the hillside above her…
…and right into my “trap,” so to speak.
Wisdom under pressure.
I figured the only way to counteract her raw power was to fight from higher ground. And I also figured that the only way to reach that higher ground in time was to let her give me a “boost.”
It hurt, no mistake about that. But it was well worth the wound for this advantage.
“C’mon!” I taunted. “C’mon and get me!”
She snorted, shook her battering-ram head, and barreled up into my waiting sword.
“This little piggy went to MARKET!” I snarled, slicing and waiting for her to fall.
Only she didn’t. I’d been wrong about that part. But when she’d struck, the blow only lifted me one block higher.
“And this little piggy stayed HOME!”
You can guess how the rest of it went. A battle royale between tusk and blade. Of all the creatures I’d faced in melee battles, nothing had been as tough as this little piggy. I’d never seen anything take this much punishment and dole out much more than her share. The tears in my armor, in my flesh. On the third blow I felt my ribs crack. I coughed hard and finished my battle chant. “And this little piggy cried weeweewee!”
The third “wee” did it. The porcine juggernaut squealed into smoke, hovering hide, and…
“Pork!” called Summer, pulling my eyes up to a tree. “Small price to pay for being hit by a speeding lorry.”
“Summer!” I cried, then wheezed in pain for a moment. “You’re okay!”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said, gesturing to her pillared prison. “I broke my axe trying to chop my way down, and I fear my poor old bones won’t take the slightest bounce.”
“It’s okay!” I called, reaching for my own battered axe. “Don’t sweat it. I’ll get you down.”
“Perhaps you can think up another nursery rhyme battle chant while you do it,” she taunted. “That was quite an entertaining show from up here.”
“Keep it up,” I said between chops, “and I’ll keep you up there.”
Chopping through the tree’s purplish wood, I managed to slowly lower the trunk for Summer to get safely grounded. She was in pretty bad shape, stepping down the last block with an audible groan. “Ain’t we a…pair,” I coughed, wincing at the pain in my ribs.
“Ready to eat meat now?” she asked, reaching for what I guessed were the slabs of boar.
“Maybe,” I nodded, inhaling sharply at the pain I felt, “but not until we’ve cooked it. Last thing we need is food poisoning.”
“Can’t argue with that.” She looked around and said, “But since we don’t have any cobblestone for a furnace, we may just have to give it a go and hope for the best.”
“It may not come to that,” I said, examining the purple logs in my hand. “We’ve got wood now, which means basic tools, which means maybe”—I’d noticed that some of the land around us looked like earth—“these grasses produce seeds.” I started punching up the crimson clumps, my mind racing with ideas.
“You really think we have time for farming?” challenged Summer, no doubt wishing this world would let her put her hands on her hips.
“Maybe not,” I said, after the tenth clump produced no seeds, “but…” I saw another mushroom growing nearby. This one was green rather than rusty, with a red-speckled cap. I picked it up, raised it to my nose, and gagged.
To be polite, it didn’t exactly smell like the sulfurous netherrack, but it was definitely in the same family. Kinda like what we get from cows, and I’m pretty sure I know this because I’m pretty sure I remember smelling it on people’s lawns.
Figures.
I can’t remember who I am or where I’m from or any other important fact about my old world. But I can tell you what folks in that world use for fertilizer.
“Whiffy?” asked Summer.
“Whiffy,” I responded. “But possibly useful, if the two mushroom theory works down here. We got wood for bowls now. And if we gather enough for a stew—”
Another boarlike snort sounded nearby, closing in.
“Which will have to wait,” said Summer, looking over my shoulder. I turned just in time to see a whole herd—yes, herd—of those mammoth killer boars, three adults and two boarlets, bounding down the slope toward us.
“This way!” I shouted, sprinting through a curtain of crimson vines. “Stay along the coast!”
They didn’t let up, those snorting, cavorting beasts. They stayed right on our tail, so close I imagined I could feel their hot, wet breath on my back.
“Just super,” huffed Summer sarcastically. “The speed of spiders and the patience of zombies.”
“We’ll lose ’em!” I panted, with all the faked positivity I could muster. “You’ll see.”
I was wrong, of course. They didn’t lose interest in us. But we did manage to gain some distance, which, thankfully, bought us time at the next obstacle.
We were running among the trees, trying to keep the lava on our right, when suddenly the ground came up right in front of us, forming a solid cliff.
Think fast!
“Gotta dig!” I tossed Summer my sword and tore into the netherrack with bare hands.
We were three blocks in and two blocks high when the first little boar brat showed up.
“Go on,” Summer shouted with flailing sword, “sling your hook!”
I didn’t see any of this. I was too busy scratching our way to safety. I heard the impact of the blade, the squeal of the retreating tusker, then the deeper, angrier snort of its parent.
“Hang on,” mused Summer, as I finished tearing out two more blocks, “I think they’re too big to squeeze through.”
I turned to see the garbage-can-sized head sniffing just outside our tunnel. “I think you’re right,” I said, then turned back to work. “They can’t get in but we can’t get out.”
Back to burrowing like a mole, if the mole in question could feel the sting of every scrape.
Please don’t be lava, I prayed to the netherrack wall before me. Please don’t be lava.
It wasn’t, but at one point I opened up the lower block right above a sizzling magma block. “Ee-ow!” I yipped, bouncing back into Summer.
“Maybe now’s the time for those crude tools,” she suggested. “Don’t you still have three iron ingots?”
“I do,” I sighed, hollowing out a space for a crafting table, “but I don’t want to use up the only metal we’ve got.”
The wooden pickaxe worked great, or, at least, spared my poor raw fingers more torment. I tunneled around the crafting table, then over the magma blocks and forward into sweltering darkness.
For a minute or so, everything went smoothly: netherrack falling before us and biting boars echoing behind us. Until, that is, we hit a deposit of black stone.
“Obsidian?” asked Summer, to my back.
I shook my head. “Not as dark,” I observed, “and it gives way easier to my pick, but not enough to come free right away. It must have come with the change. And”—suddenly my heart beat faster—“if it’s anything like the regular gray stone, we can upgrade our tools, make new weapons, and craft—”
“When we have time!” Summer reminded, with the snorts of our jailers for backup. “For now, please just go around.”
I couldn’t disagree, and picked a sideways detour. But the discovery alone was enough to lift my spirits, and as the next netherrack cube fell away, I practically jumped for joy.
“Gold!”
“Seriously?” Summer tried to see in the narrow space. “Here?”
“Again, with the change!” I exclaimed, examining the glimmering, netherrack-embedded flakes. “We now have a source of metal!”
My mind started spinning on possibilities: tools, weapons, armor. But suddenly another pained “Hrrrarrrh!” pulled me back.
“The boars,” said Summer, looking back down the tunnel. “Are they fighting each other?”
“Or something else?” I wondered. We should have kept going, and maybe if we’d been better fed and rested, we wouldn’t have let curiosity get the better of us.
“They could be fighting amongst themselves,” I thought, out loud, as we stepped cautiously back down our escape tunnel. “You know, like when skeletons have those arrow duels.”
“Or”—Summer picked up the pace, excitement rising with each word—“someone is killing them to save us!”
“Another castaway!” I blurted out, practically bumping into her. “Another human!”
Turning at the black stone deposit, we could now see down the length of the burrow.
“Someone might already be living down here,” Summer continued, “in their own comfy, safe fortress!”
Close now. Almost at the edge. We still couldn’t see anything, but the squeals and grunts rang loudly in our ears.
“Or someone just got here! Spawned here!” I swapped my wooden pickaxe for my worn iron axe. “They might be in trouble! We might have to save—”
Ourselves!
Because just as we were about to peek out to meet our “savior,” the gold-helmeted head of a piggite poked in.
“Bad idea!” I shouted, turning to run as Summer muttered a weird, rooster-based profanity.
“Block them off!” I shouted over my shoulder, as the sounds of multiple piggites filled the hole.
“Can’t!” shouted Summer. “You have all the netherrack!”
I grunted, repeated her bird expletive, and hurriedly switched from axe back to pickaxe.
Thank whatever higher power created this world that luck was finally on our side. It took only a few swipes before we broke on through to the other side.
This forest was similar to the first, at least in the shape and size of the trees. But their color, the color of everything around us, was bluish green: trees, ground, the ash floating in the air. After so many shades of red for so long, the stark contrast took a moment to get used to.
“Block it up!” shouted Summer as the piggite horde closed in. I threw down the first netherrack block, felt the hot, displaced air of a crossbow arrow whistling past my cheek, then fixed the second one in place.
“Right then,” Summer sighed. “Now let’s see if we can find our way to—”
“Hrrrurrrh!”
More snorts. Too loud and close.
“Up there!” I shouted, pointing at the hill behind us. Another boar herd.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Summer hissed, as we tore blindly through the woods. “Just a moment, will you?! Just a moment to breathe!”
I don’t know who she was talking to. Herself? The fates? Or, similarly, the invisible creators of this world? In any case, whoever she was pleading with wasn’t answering, as we squeezed through a couple of purple-veined trees and skidded to a stop within mere blocks of lava!
We were on a peninsula. A slim finger pointing out into the boiling sea!
“Hrrrurrh!” The boars, seconds behind us.
“Well, that’s it then.” Summer turned with raised sword. “Never thought I’d die in a last stand.”
“And you won’t!” I sprang forward with an idea in my head and netherrack in my hand. “We are NOT gonna die today!”