Day 148: Keeping our distance

     I had that same dream again, and I'm beginning to wonder whether there is any element of truth behind it... The first time I had it, the portal was activated; the rift was a brilliant purple, and after rising out from the base of the tower, a massive creature emerged. I woke up immediately after that... The last time I had the dream, it ended a little differently; the portal was battered and crumbling, the rift flashing rather than remaining the usual purple colour, and after it had risen from the tower, the rift dimmed and the entire master portal shattered. Well this dream was different again! Well, it was exactly the same up until the same point as the previous two, where in then took on a whole new ending of its own. When the portal rose out from the base of the tower, it looked how it had in the first dream; it was stable, and the rift remained the iconic startling purple colour. But before anything else could happen, a single Enderman began to rise out from the sand, like a ghost. It continued to rise until it was level with the portal, before stopping and looking down at us. Slowing closing it's eyes, it began to raise it's arms above it's head. Then more Endermen began to rise out from the sands, arms outstretched to the sky until they were all level with the first. There were about fifty in total, and they began to huddle together.

In amongst the huddle, a bright light emerged, streaking across the air around us in all directions, before bursting out into a massive column into the sky. The pale violet light faded, and the Endermen slowly retreated from the huddle, to reveal a large stone-like object that sat hovering in mid-air, slowly spinning like a top... The first Enderman picked it up and threw it quite forcefully into the rift of the master portal, causing both to shatter into millions of tiny pieces. The Endermen slowly faded from view, and then I woke up... I really need to tell someone about these dreams, but I can't tell if there's meaning to them, or it's just my imagination playing with the thoughts going around in my head...

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     I woke up with a start; leaving the dream had this startling effect on me, causing me to wake up suddenly each time. I wasn't able to tell if it was morning, or how long I had been asleep at all, but I could see THEROS was already awake and preparing what I assumed was breakfast... He seemed a little freaked out when I woke up so suddenly, but I decided to keep the details of my experience to myself, only telling him that I'd just had a nightmare.

"It's not surprising at all in this place. If you haven't got your wits about you, it could likely turn a sane man mad... Wake THEXIS up; we've got a long day of exploring ahead of us..."

I turned and nudged THEXIS who woke up surprisingly easy, before beginning our breakfast. Once again we sat in silence, as though appreciating our surroundings, or just appreciating the one time where we might not experience quiet again for some time... After we were done, we packed up out sleeping gear and headed down the stairs to the base of the tower. As we emerged from the entrance, we found ourselves at a four-way crossroads once more, however it was much easier to determine which direction to head in; straight ahead of us was back the way we had come last night, to our left was a very short section of broken bridge which seemed to end rather abruptly, and behind us took us back up to the tower. That left only the right path, so we took that. Heading across it, we soon came to another crossroads, with the left path out automatically as it too had crumbled into the lava below. The path straight ahead seemed to head towards a larger collection of interlinked structures, whilst the right path headed up to a small enclosure which we could immediately recognise.

"If we take the right path first, we can come back and check out those up ahead..."

We headed off to the right towards the enclosure, where we suddenly saw a large amount of smoke emerge from. The familiar sound of heavy breathing was audible now, and from out of the smoke emerged two Guardians! We stopped dead still, a few metres away from the base of the stairs, hoping they wouldn't consider us a threat at this distance. Remembering what COLUS had said, I watched the Guardians intently, noticing that they didn't seem all that bothered about us, so they were likely guarding the cage that spawned them...

We continued to watch them for a few minutes; on a couple of occasions they seemed to look straight at us, but whether they could see us or whether they didn't consider us a big enough threat to attack was left unknown. Eventually THEROS indicated to head back across the bridge to the crossroads where we could then head towards the huddle of structures. We still had a massive way to go to find the Ender Eye that was meant to be sealed away here. That was if there was one here at all...

     On the other side of the bridge, we found another entrance that mimicked the first we had encountered exactly; a large archway spanned each open bridge section, with a large hole cut from the centre. This led inside to an area that was surprisingly well lit considering the intensity of the darkness in the rest of this place. As we moved closer inside, we found the source of the light to belong to a small lava pool that stood dead centre in the room, bubbling and roiling away. There had also been one of these in the entranceway of the first structure we had headed into. Maybe there were patterns to the design of these places. Maybe these pools of lava indicated the start of the main structure; ahead of us we could see a series of pitch-black corridors and tunnels, so we had finally found the main structure where the Eye of Ender was supposed to be...

"We'll take each corridor in turn, starting from the left working our way to the right. We should remain on the same level as well, taking any stairs heading up or down later after we've cleared this level first..."

Heading in from the main entrance, we noticed that both the left and right paths led to sets of stairs leading either up or down. That left only the path ahead of us, which remained on the same level. Much like before, we followed the twists and turns of the passages that wound their way through the structure. Our method of lighting the passages up as we went was also a very effective method of ensuring we didn't get lost. It had worked remarkably well before so it was definitely a tracking method not to be sniffed at. We continued to make our way through each of the passages, finding that they each split off into their own forks, causing us to take each on logically. Some ended rather abruptly with eye-watering drops to the lava below, whilst others ended with a blank stone wall... We were beginning to think we weren't getting anywhere, as we had passed a number of small sets of stairs leading up which only led to small towers that overlooked larger portions of the building. We had yet to find anything of value, or any indication of which direction to head in. On a number of occasions we had heard the heavy breathing, suggesting Guardians were close by, so we had to ensure we didn't accidentally threaten them with our presence. On a number of occasions we had actually seen a few, their strange light-emitting bodies visible through small cracks in the stone, and between fence posts. On a number of occasions we thought we had found good places to stop and rest, but we found that Guardians had already taken them, causing us to move on. We'd have to stop again soon.

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     We had been on the move for hours! We were unable to find any place to rest at all, nor had we found the location of the Eye of Ender we were looking for either. We had managed to work our way around probably miles of tunnels without getting anywhere! In the end we had decided to call it a day; we were exhausted and we had recently stumbled across a large tower that was void of any Guardians or other creatures. Taking this opportunity while we had it, we set up a small camp. We would have to wake up slightly earlier to make sure we had a good chance of exploring more of the structure tomorrow. For now though, we were just going to rest up.

Let's hope I don't have the same nightmare... Otherwise I'm probably going to have to tell someone about it...

Syeonyx signing off