"At the rate I was managing to dig this tunnel, I didn't think I was ever going to get here!"
"How did you know it was even here though? How did you know we weren't wasting our time with this?"
"Like I said; I gained access to the records that HoN Co. stores and found some information about the Endermen. A few searches later, and I get coordinates for a location close to your base. Knowing the risks that would pose if I spent all of time there, both to me and you, I could only manage a few hours each week there..."
"So you've slowly been excavating this tunnel out a bit at a time? And Syeonyx does it just under three days...?"
"Well I didn't spend my entire time here digging out the tunnel. Those books don't write and decode themselves. I knew I was close enough to your base for it to be possible that you'd find it sooner or later, but I didn't want just anyone knowing what I wrote. I used a cipher that I knew would be understandable..."
That got me thinking about the book I found months ago back when I first arrived. It too was written in Latin and seemed to detail some experiment to make Creepers immune to sunlight. I asked SERVERE if he had anything to do with that; possibly a little more accusational than initially intended... He looked at me odd and shook his head.
"Nothing to do with me... I know HoN Co. have had their fingers in a lot of experimental pies but I had no part in it..."
"Well, back to the more pressing matter of this! Now what do we do? The bridge across seems to be partly destroyed, so we're not going to be crossing that without at least making temporary repairs... We'd need wood..."
Or we could tunnel our way around to the other side... SERVERE explained that this would be a futile act as the obsidian would likely be embedded deep into the wall... In the time I could mine through it to the other side, the others would be able to go back to the base, convince the others that wood was needed, construct a crossing and already begin investigating the other side... Not an efficient use of the limited time we had. It wouldn't be long before COLUS and the others begun to wonder where we had got to...
"Actually, how would we get away with that...? We need strong wood to be able to build a platform to bridge the gap between the two ends... We'd need to head back up to the base anyway even if we wanted to sneak out and get our own wood..."
"Use the wood that lines the shack...?"
"That wouldn't work. The wood is too thin and not cut properly. Besides, we'd need tools to make it safe anyway... No, we need to go back to the base..."
We were literally a few feet away from finding out what HoN Co. had really found, and we were stumped by a small gap in an obsidian bridge. Looking down into the gap where a large portion of obsidian should be, I felt slightly sick at the drop. At the bottom, with lava and water pooling around it was the missing piece of the bridge, oddly twisted and broken in places, likely from the fall... Heading back to the entrance, I followed UOPETA and SERVERE back to the wooden shack. So close... But it meant tomorrow was going to be a day of mystery and intrigue!
----
After much discussion with the others, we've decided that it would be better to inform the others about what we've found tomorrow. We'd need to have one hell of a good story to somehow convince COLUS we needed to bring wood down here, especially when the initial line was something about translating more books... Plus, now that we've actually found what HoN Co. supposedly found some time ago, it'd be dangerous to leave them in the dark about it. If something happened to us, it may be days, weeks, possibly longer until they realise what's happened to us. It might even do to have some help from them. Providing the base was locked up securely from all ends, I think it would definitely be safer for all of us to be set up in the wooden shack. However, I think UOPETA would insist on finding something first.
"None of us have any idea what we'll find in there... If the records are true, then it's likely to be an abandoned building full of cobwebs, creepy crawlies and darkness... If no-one has been in there for some time, what are meant to find...?"
"Well the records suggest that HoN Co. found a "veritable bounty" of information when they went there, and are still attempting to decode it. They had to be careful about exploring it as well as they said it was like a literal maze!"
"Did they find anything else though? Like objects or items of value or use?"
"Not that I can remember, although there was a large portion of the file I didn't have permission to access... They did find something, which now that I think of it, it's kind of odd; they found already lit torches burning happily on the walls, as though someone had been through recently..."
I shuddered as a chill ran down my spine; I thought back to that single torch we found, and those purple particles... They looked like eyes... The glowing purple eyes of an Enderman... But that was impossible... I asked SERVERE if he thought there was any link between the burning torch we found and the ones in the report.
"It's possible, but that would suggest that they're close by right now... There was no hint of malice or anything mentioned in the report, and there were no lost men or odd sightings... It was almost too easy, as though there was literally nothing there but that information..."
"What, so HoN Co. were expecting to find something creepy and sinister?"
"Put it this way; if you've managed to decode a sliver of information pertaining to a location that you can find, and then uncover the ruins of an abandoned building showing ageing signs stretching into millennia, then yes, I would definitely say a few of them would have thought they would fins something creepy..."
"On that basis we're unlikely to find anything more than them then... But if HoN Co. had been there before, how come the passageway wasn't clear for us? How come we had to excavate a massive tunnel to get to it?"
"Because HoN Co. went in through a different way, and are still guarding that entrance to this day. They occasionally send a team of investigators down if they find out anything substantial, but over the last few months, no-one's been down there... It's massively unlikely that we'll run into anyone down there..."
We continued talking long into the night, knowing full well that none of us would be getting any sleep. But that didn't matter. Tomorrow we would tell the others about our find, have them join us and spend the entire day exploring the abandoned ruins of a building, fuelled on our intrigue and curiosity alone! It was odd for SERVERE to still be with us, but I had the idea that if we ever got to sleep, he'd be gone by morning...
Syeonyx signing off
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