by Mark Mulle
Chapter 6: He Knows Where You Are
I sneak up behind my target, slowly.
I'm within the depths of the jungle foliage. I hold on to my tool, knowing that I'll only have one shot at this. The leaves around me are hard to push through, and my target definitely owns the advantage.
However, I also have an advantage: my target is exceptionally stupid.
My chance is soon upon me, as the target falls into a dip between two trees. I jump up from my hiding place, and pounce.
I land on a block of leaves just behind it. My target turns around, startled, and in one brief moment, I've sheared the woolly coat from its body.
The naked sheep stares at me in surprise, before bleating and jumping away through the undergrowth. I add the wool to my inventory, and head back to base.
Once inside the small shelter, I craft two beds and set them up on opposite sides of the room. I haven't seen Tess for days, but I figure that if she does come back, she might like to sleep through the nights, instead of staying awake and alert all the time. Right now, my username is the only name that comes up on the list of online players, and I'm not about to call out to Tess, just in case she is online and thinks I'm a loner.
I jump into my freshly-made bed, and wait for the world to go dark around me.
The next morning, something doesn't seem right. It appears to be day time out the front door, but it's still a little dark around the windows. Outside, I can hear strange noises. It sounds like a tip-tap sound.
I equip my sword, preparing for the worst, and tentatively open the door. I take a small step outside. I glance about quickly - nothing wrong here.
I sprint out a few meters towards the lake, then turn around to survey the shelter. My mouth falls open in shock.
Behind my shelter is a fortress. Tess is putting the finishing touches on the roof, and the tip-tap sound I could hear is the sound of her placing the wood blocks. I can't see an end to the stone wall in front of me.
Tess stops what she's doing and looks down at me. "Hello," she says, casually.
"... Hello," I reply.
"Sorry I haven't been around for so long. I had a lot of mining to do." She places a ladder down the side of the wall, and shimmies down it carefully.
"I can see that..." I'm in awe of this structure. "Wow."
"I hope you like it. I figured we could do with a bigger home base." Tess comes to stand beside me, and she looks over her work appreciatively.
"It's fantastic. I can't believe you constructed this in such a short period of time."
"Well, I've had a lot of practice. Anyway, I need your help! I've run out of materials, we need to go mining."
"Sounds good." I rummage inside my inventory and hand Tess a new pickaxe.
She picks it up and looks it over. "It's a diamond pickaxe," she says, swinging it through the air. "You only received a few diamonds from the last mining expedition. Thank you."
"Don't mention it," I say, withdrawing my own diamond sword. It sparkles in the sunlight. "With your pickaxe, try to save it for mining obsidian only. Only diamond can crack it."
"Got it," Tess says, storing her new tool away into her inventory. "Right. I'm ready. Shall we go?"
The cave hasn't changed at all since our last experience here. My heart races at the thought of finding Herobrine. Soon, I'm going to start a proper mission to hunt him down.
Tess and I stand in the entrance of the cave. I can see the flickering lights of far-off torches in the distance, but apart from their specks of light, the cavern is full of darkness.
"I think we should do some tunneling downwards," I say. I place a torch against the stone wall, and start to hack away at the stone before me. Slowly but surely, I tunnel my way downwards.
We gradually go lower and lower underground. Tess places torches along the way, and collects the falling cobblestone. I'm not sure how many levels underground we're at now, but we definitely haven't encountered any bedrock yet.
I chip away at a particularly stubborn piece of stone, then jump backwards as it explodes into dust, and a scaly gray creature leaps out at me.
"SILVERFISH!" I warn Tess, before leaping back up the tunnel, the creature snapping at my ankles. Tess reaches the start of the tunnel before I do. As soon as I've reached the top step, I grab my diamond sword and get ready to defend myself, but the creature has disappeared into the rock.
"Well, that's messed up that tunnel," I look back down our tunnel, sadly.
"What was that?!" Tess hesitates a few steps behind.
"You don't know?" I start, then remember that Tess has little knowledge about mobs and certain aspects of Minecraft. "That was a Silverfish. They live in swarms underground, and live in the rock. They're like large, silver, burrowing insects. If you don't kill one with one blow from a sword, the whole pack will attack you"
"That's scary..." Tess glances at the tunnel, uncertainly.
"I'm determined to finish this tunnel," I say. "Here. Wear this."
I hand Tess an iron helmet, and she immediately puts it on.
"They will all come out at once. Be prepared."
"Okay." She grabs her iron sword.
We dive back down the tunnel. As soon as we reach the bottom, I take hold of my pickaxe and hack away at the stone. Sure enough, three silverfish leap out to attack me. My sword isn't strong enough to kill them with one blow, and soon enough, a cloud of silverfish are swarming around me and Tess. I blindly swipe my sword in front of me, and slowly the cloud grows smaller, as my health grows lower.
Tess is forced back up the tunnel by some stray silverfish that attacked from the sides. I deal the last blow to the last small creature, and it explodes, leaving behind a few glowing experience points, which I quickly absorb.
Once the dust settles, I equip my pickaxe to continue, but I stop and freeze.
"Uh. Tess? Did you put this here?" I turn around but Tess is further back up the tunnel, dealing with one last silverfish.
I slowly turn back to the wooden sign. This sign must have been buried here by someone else - it's impossible that Tess could have fought off the silverfish, and hurriedly placed a sign here; or that she could have predicted this exact point and location that we would be channeling a tunnel through the rock.
The last silverfish disintegrates into a cloud of dust, and Tess jumps back down to join me. She stares at the sign for a long time.
"... I am definitely sure that wasn't me." She answers.
The sign has been placed within a four-by-four empty block space. It's surrounded by stone and granite. If I had dug just two spaces to the right or left, I would've missed it.
Tess turns to me. "Are you playing a trick on me?"
I look at her and tilt my head to one side, skeptically. "Really? Do you really think that I could have smelted all that stone, spawned some silverfish and created the most elaborate hoax without you noticing from your fortress?"
"... Hmm..." She shakes her head, slowly.
"... Well..." My heart starts to race again. I place a torch above the sign. "It's pretty creepy, whatever it is."
I can't take my eyes off the sign. The more I look at it, the more freaked out I feel. It's only a few words, but they could mean anything.
"He knows where you are."
"Yes, it's creepy alright." Tess nods. "Do you think it could have been made by a hacker? I mean, there must be an opening in the system somehow, if we both managed to end up in the same world."
"Maybe." There are many possibilities. "I mean, if it's as the sign says... "He knows where you are," Then he could be watching us right now." I quickly check the list of online players, and realize that if it really is a hacker, they would naturally conceal their identity.
"If it is a hacker, then we shouldn't really worry about it," Tess says. "He's only having a bit of fun. Of course, if his intentions become more griefer-like, then I guess it would be something to be very worried about..."
"Yeah. Well, I'm not abandoning this tunnel - not
after all the hassle we've been through," I say. "Let’s dig around the sign. There shouldn't be any more silverfish."