"It looks like... It looks like it's aggressive, but only... Only if we get too close... It's not bothered about us as a threat, so it's... Phew... It's obviously guarding something..."
"I don't know about you two, but that pretty much shouts to me Ender Eye...? Where else could it be in this place?"
We continued panting breathlessly, bent double trying to get our lungs working properly again. I hope I never had to go through that again, although with the way THEROS was talking, we had no choice... Standing up straight, pushing his back out with his hands and inhaling deeply, THEXIS held that breath for a few seconds, before exhaling slowly...
"What do we do now then?"
"I think we should rest up here for the time being and try to think of way to get back into that enclosure... Maybe if we camp out on top of that tower we could monitor those creatures and see if they have a weakness... Maybe we can exploit a specific opportunity and search that area..."
"Why do it that way? Can't we just... Kill them?"
"I want to leave that as the absolute last resort. There's no need to turn to violence against an unknown sentient species... Besides, if we did we couldn't guarantee we would win..."
THEROS led the way back into the structure, following the torches we had left behind back up to the tower where we were going to watch the creatures from an elevated position. There was obviously something within that enclosure they were protecting, but whether it was worth risking our lives to get to it, and whether it was anything we were actually looking for remained to be seen...
----
Despite the fact that we had decided to call it a day and rest up for the night, I was far from relaxed. We were sitting down around a small, contained fire on top of a strange tower in a hellish dimension watching the activities of an unknown creature that had attacked us a few hours ago... We had many theories about what it was, and what is was doing, although none were what you would call "logical"... The whole idea of Occum's Razor had pretty much been thrown out of the window within the first hour of watching it, and some of the theories were too elaborate to even follow, let alone believe...
"Well it's obviously guarding something. Otherwise it would have followed us and continued to attack... But it didn't. That's technically a good thing, but it still doesn't tell us what it is guarding..."
"How do we know it's guarding anything? It could just be highly territorial... In which case we could be risking our lives for nothing!"
"Well there's only one way to find out. It seemed to be okay with us at a certain distance, so maybe we can use that to our advantage. Wait until we're close enough to it and then use the blowpipe on it!"
"I don't know whether it was the distance or not. We weren't moving and it wasn't registering our presence as far as I could tell until you spoke..."
"Either way we could use that to our advantage! We've watched them long enough now to know what they are doing and how they act. They've very thorough and almost militaristic in their movements."
"So tomorrow then? We're going to search that place properly tomorrow? I hope we're all agreed? There's no backing out once we've decided..."
We nodded, agreeing that tomorrow we would further investigate the enclosure that they were protecting and we would use the blowpipes to hopefully remove them as a threat. A massive amount of emphasis was put on the word "hopefully" as we were assuming a lot that the darts would work on them. We had no reason to believe otherwise, but it was one of those niggling doubts that refused to go away...
"What do you think they are though? And why are they here?"
"I couldn't begin to answer that, even if I had a hundred years to try..."
"No, I mean why are they still here... All the other creatures in the Nether have literally vanished... Why are they still remaining?"
"I don't know... Either they weren't driven off or lured to the same place the others were... They still pose a risk, wherever they are. Those pig-men we encountered seemed peaceful enough, but I know enough about animal instincts to know that every species has their tolerances. Even an individual has its own unique tolerance."
"Yeah, but I'm more worried about the Creepers and those floating squid things. We never determined whether they were naturally hostile or not..."
"The way I see, don't provoke the unknown... We don't need to go to the extent of antagonising one to find out. Luckily for us they're not here for some reason. Let's hope it stays that way. Drastically reduces the complexity of the situation..."
We continued talking amongst ourselves about the Nether and everything we had encountered long into the night. I assumed it was night as my body clock was definitely telling me it was time to sleep! The last thing I remember was the slowly dying fire finally go out...
Syeonyx signing off
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