----
From the tower, we set off down towards the main structure, hoping to make this one a lot easier than the others before. After this one we would have thee Ender Eyes in our possession, and only two more to go. That would hopefully please THEXIS as that would be three times the leverage we would have had if we had wasted time returning to base camp. The long night's rest seemed to do us all good; despite the monotony of the task before us, travelling the labyrinthine passages and tunnels in search of that one room, we all seemed to act and move with a more fluid, relaxed nature about us. It was difficult to do that at the best of times, let alone in the heart of a millennia-aged structure suspended way above a lava lake in the depths of hellish dimension! Even THEXIS seemed to be getting into the rhythm of things, despite my intervention of his intended plan... THEROS also seemed to act as though he was more at home with the idea of scouring the structures for the Eye of Ender we were looking for, and moved with purpose and direction. If I didn't know better, I could have sworn he knew where he was going!
"Right, we've been in this situation before, and in both instances, the direction we needed to head in was straight ahead. Let's go that way first and see if we save some time..."
We had been met with a four-way split, with stairs leading down to the right, and small passages instantly leading around a corner to the left and straight ahead. Following THEROS straight ahead, we continued along the path until we reached the corner. We stopped... That wasn't right... Up ahead we could see torches all along the walls, and a large light source up ahead... Had we been here before...? Continuing down, we maintained focus on the end of the corridor; as we drew closer we realised that we had found the room like we had twice previously, but it was different... Up ahead was the same shaped room we had encountered before, with a small enclosed basin sunk into the floor, flanked by Affinitas cages. Much like before there were torches still burning, placed all along the perimeter wall. But two things didn't add up: why were there already a series of torches lining the wall to the room, and why were there two Guardians spawned within the room before we reached it...?
"What the... Why have they spawned already...? I thought they only appeared when someone or something took the Eye...?"
As we moved closer, the Guardians became aware of us, but did not attack. Just in case, THEROS and THEXIS drew their blowpipes and readied a dart. The Guardians did not react in the manner we had assumed; they floated there, breathing heavily, just staring at us... For a while, no-one moved, no-one said or did anything... Then THEXIS began to move forward, slowly approaching the basin in the centre of the room. The Guardians both watched him as he moved towards it, as though waiting for the moment he would take the Eye, but even when getting there THEXIS never bent down... He stopped and looked down, before turning and looking back at us. THEXIS then noticed that the two Guardians were still watching him, before he slowly made his way back over to us.
"Why didn't you pick it up? We could have covered you or drawn their attention..."
"It's not there..."
"What...? The Eye?"
"Yeah... The basin's empty... There's nothing there... Someone's already taken it..."
"Damn! Well... That would explain why the Guardians are already here..."
The Guardians still hadn't moved or attempted to attack us. Maybe it was because they knew we didn't have the Eye of Ender, and as they no longer had anything to protect, there was no sense in attacking...
"There's no sense in staying here... We should head to the next location... We can only hope we get there first this time..."
We turned to leave, keeping an eye on the Guardians up until the last moment, before turning around to leave them behind. The Eye of Ender had been taken? Of course! The HoN Co. guards! They were probably a recovery team searching for the Eyes as well! HoN Co. would likely have a backup copy of both the map and coordinates! We continued to head back towards the entrance, back towards the East where we could continue the search for the next Eye of Ender. We would have to deal with the one in HoN Co.'s possession at a later date. It seemed now we had reached a stalemate...
----
We decided that we needed a rest for an hour or so; from the last structure we had already walked a good distance, and we still had a long way to go. The next structure was a little further South than we had initially anticipated and THEXIS thought it might be a good idea to skip the rest and continue on. He listened to reason when THEROS pointed out that we needed energy in the form of food, and forgoing that could put is at a disadvantage, especially if we ended up running into the same HoN Co. guard team... Since this morning however, the mood between us had plummeted immensely; no-one was talking at all, we just sat in silence around the fire waiting for the food to be cooked through. We all knew that we weren't defeated. Far from it in fact; we still had two of the Eyes of Ender which meant HoN Co. couldn't activate the portal without ours. Admittedly that meant we couldn't activate it either without theirs, and I doubt they would be up for a friendly meeting to activate the portal together...
"At the most it's a stalemate. If we manage to recover the remaining two then we should still be able to hold up a slightly greater chance of activating the portal first. If we do what THEXIS said and hide them in separate places, then we massively increase our chances of at least maintaining this stalemate. At least until we figure out what we need to do..."
"We had better get going soon then. We've only got two at the moment, and if that guard team is off to the next location, they've got quite a lead on us, unless they went back to their base..."
We packed up and destroyed all trace of our presence before continuing along to the next location, still heading due South. Let's hope we got there first.
Syeonyx signing off
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