The Obsidian Cube, Book 1: An Unknown Past

by Mark Mulle

of torches, and jumped down into the gloom.

  The hard stone floor hurt a little on impact, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He threw down a few more torches to get a better sense of his surroundings. The cave turned out to run in an undulating line from left to right, receding on both sides into absolute blackness.

  Left or right? He thought for a moment, then headed off down the left tunnel, dropping torches to light the way as he went.

  The cave twisted and curved, burrowing ever deeper into the earth. Steve found lots of veins of coal along the walls, but after the first couple, he began to ignore them; he could always come back later, and right now he wanted to explore.

  After a little while, the tunnel forked into two branches. Steve went left again. Not far down this tunnel, he noticed something glinting in the wall: two blocks of a kind he’d never seen before. They were marbled, like the coal blocks, but these were shot-through with orange rather that black, and they glittered slightly in the torchlight, as if they were metallic.

  Deciding that Alex or Remin would be able to tell him what they were, he got out his pick and started to carve them out of the wall. There were more behind these, and Steve took a good chunk out of the wall as he worked, collecting blocks of stone in the process.

  He had just cleared the first row of blocks when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Turning, he saw a green, stalk-like creature with an angry, frozen face moving swiftly and silently toward him. Indeed, it was barely three blocks away when he saw it, and before he could react, it closed in and, with a low hiss, began to glow and swell as if it were being inflated.

  Steve sprang backwards as fast as he could go. The hissing stopped and the creature deflated, but scurried after him. This, no doubt, was the Creeper that Alex had warned him about, and if he gave it the chance, it would blow him to pieces.

  Drawing his sword, Steve tried to back away from the Creeper, but quickly realized that this was a mistake. The tunnel behind was pitch black; for all he knew, he might be backing off of a cliff, or into the arms of a zombie. There was nothing to do but try to kill the creature before it could detonate.

  He charged and hacked at the Creeper’s stalk. The blunt stone sword left a crack, but couldn’t pierce the tough hide. The Creeper hissed menacingly and began to swell. Steve shoved it back against the wall and hacked at it as fast as he could, feeling its rough, hard body expanding beneath his hand as he struck it again and again. He shut his eyes, bracing himself for the shattering explosion…

  It didn’t come. Instead, his sword finally pierced the Creeper’s hide, releasing a burst of hot steam as it shrank to nothingness, leaving only a small pile of gray dust.

  Steve leaned back against the cave wall, breathing hard. That had been too close. A stone sword was obviously not the right weapon for dealing with these Mobs. He wondered whether he should make a bow like Alex.

  The battle with the Creeper made Steve wonder whether Alex had been right to avoid these tunnels. What would happen if he ran into another one? Or even more than one? What about a hoard of zombies?

  This, he knew, was a turning point in his adventures; his decision now would either lead to his survival or his undoing. At first glance, it seemed obvious which was which; stay here in the black, monster-infested tunnels underground, or return to the surface and the safety of his hut. And yet…and yet, he found that, the longer he considered it, the more he thought he ought to explore further. After all, he had his sword, and a half-stack of cobblestone. If he ever did run into a mass of Mobs that was too big for him to handle, he could run and wall off the tunnel behind him.

  But it wasn’t the thought of what he could do to keep himself safe that made him want to keep going. It was the fact that he simply had to know where all these tunnels led, and what fabulous treasures they might hold.

  Mining. He was mining, and somehow that seemed very right to him.

  Trading his sword for his pick, Steve carved out the rest of the strange orange material and set off further down the tunnel.

  He quickly found that he had been very smart not to try to escape the Creeper into that pitch blackness, for only about a dozen blocks on, the tunnel suddenly ended in a black void. The light from his torches couldn’t reach either the bottom or the top of this vast cavern, and the only indication he had of its size was a bright, fiery glow far off to his left. Squinting in that direction, he perceived that it was a pillar of lava falling into a vast underground chasm, dozens of blocks deep. When he listened, Steve also thought he heard the sound of running water.

  With no way down, and wary of what he might find if he did dare to descend into that pit, Steve turned back and decided to follow the other path in the fork, the one the Creeper had come up from. This was another twisting and undulating tunnel boring through the earth. There were more veins of coal, and a few of the strange new ore.

  The tunnel terminated at a huge pile of gravel that partly blocked the way forward, which forked into twin black holes.

  Steve briefly considered digging his way through the gravel, but decided against it. He’d lost track of how long he had been underground, and had collected two whole stacks apiece of coal and cobblestone, plus about two dozen blocks of the new ore and a pile of dust from the Creeper. That was enough to occupy him for a while.

  Back in the village, Steve had to ask Remin to repeat his diagnosis of the strange ore twice before he understood it.

  “Iron?”

  “Hmm haven’t seen iron in hmm long time.”

  “It was sitting practically right under your village.”

  “Hmm you went hmm, underground?”

  “Well, yeah. I did a little mining.”

  “Hmm.”

  “And what about this? The Creeper dropped it.”

  He tossed him the pile of dust.

  “Hmm. Gunpowder,” said Remin.

  “Hmm,” said Steve.

  As he made his way back from the elder’s house to his own little hut, Steve thought over all he had learned. The iron would be useful, if he could get it into a craftable form. He might try cooking it. And the gunpowder, though a dishearteningly small amount, would no doubt be very useful.

  He was also beginning to have new ideas of how he could improve the village; make it a little easier to defend next time Draugr’s crew came around. More than that, though; all of a sudden, his mind seemed to be bursting with possibilities. He didn’t have to just living in this little old hut; he could do…well, just about anything. There was an infinite amount of stone right under his feet, and coal and iron, and who knew what else?

  First, he’d figure out how to craft with the iron and make himself some more suitable tools. Then he’d start planning for the village’s defense, but after that…

  Steve suddenly stopped abruptly, just outside his front door. While he’d been thinking, he had been gazing idly at the hill under which he had discovered the cave that morning, thinking about the sudden revelations that it had brought him. But now, suddenly, all those thoughts were wiped from his mind by what he saw there.

  The light of the setting sun revealed a figure silhouetted against the evening sky, standing on top of one of the oak trees. For a moment, Steve thought it might be Alex or one of the villagers, but its form was too stocky for either of them. Moreover, something about the way it stood, stock still, arms at its sides, seemed to him to be…off somehow. It was hard to tell at this distance, and with the sun at its back, but Steve thought the figure was looking down at something. This was confirmed when it looked up and straight at him.

  Steve could tell that it was looking at him because the figure’s eyes glowed a start blank white.

  He couldn’t move. He could hardly breathe. He could only stare back as though hypnotized by the sight as the darkness grew and the eyes seemed to brighten. The figure itself was consumed by the night, but the eyes remained steady, like a pair of stars that did not travel across the heavens but stayed fixed and glaring
right at Steve.

  He didn’t know how long he stood like that, hypnotized, nor what finally caused him to snap out of it, but all at once, he broke free of the trance, fumbled for the door handle, and threw himself inside, slamming the door behind him.

  He had no windows looking westward, so he couldn’t tell if the man with the glowing eyes was still watching him. Instead, he piled cobblestone in front of his doorway to bar anyone’s entering, and began throwing torches anywhere that he saw the slightest shadow.

  Steve got no sleep that night, but spent it huddled in a corner, contemplating the fact that his house was made of wood and therefore immensely flammable. Though why the man with the glowing eyes would have any interest in burning his house down remained in question. Steve couldn’t say; but he knew instinctively that man – or whatever he was – was dangerous in a way that Draugr could only dream of being.

  Then, after what felt like an eternity, he heard what he had been most dreading; something clawing and hacking at his wall, trying to get in.

  “Go away!” Steve shouted, brandishing his pathetic stone sword. “Leave me alone!”

  “It’s me, idiot,” Alex called. “You blocked up your door; how else am I supposed to get in?”

  She tore out a one-by-two entrance, put her ax away, and stood staring at him in confusion and a little concern.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she said. “Remin