Close encounter... Part: 2

     UOPETA stopped... The piercing shriek continued to assault my ears, as I slowly turned around. A bead of sweat appeared on my forehead, and trickled down the side of my face, leaving a cold wet streak down to the base of my neck. I was terrified! The hair on the back of my neck was the most erect it had ever stood, and my hands shook uncontrollably. Turning fully around, I saw the odd white, jelly appendages dangling metres from my face, and looking up, the rest of the creature came into view. It simply hovered there, not moving aside from the slight bobbing, making shrill shrieks every now and again. It knew I was there, and all I could do was stand there. Then it began to open its eyes! The white slits covering the eyeballs embedded within the translucent flesh slowly parted, and the familiar, almost human-like eyes looked down, directly at me! I was paralysed... I couldn't move, but the tension building up was likely to kill me more than this creature! In the end, despite every part of my brain screaming out to me not to, I spoke. A single word. A word of greeting; an outstretched attempt at communication. "Hello?" It still did nothing but bob in the air and stare at me... I repeated myself a few times, and even eventually added slight hand gestures, but it continued to simply stare. After awhile, I heard UOPETA move on the platform behind me, and its eyes moved over to where he was standing. They were odd eyes; very human-like, without any hint of aggression or malice... If this creature was going to attack us, it would have done so by now. After a long while, the creature closed its eyes, turned around and hovered off into the distance. I exhaled for so long it defied belief I could hold that much air in my lungs! I was still shaking...

"Well... That was... Exhilarating... Come on, let's try and get back to the base. The others will want to know about this."

Indeed they would...

----

     COLUS was furious with us... Not surprising considering what we had essentially done. We had gone against his will, finished the rigging, despite the apparent danger, and were almost attacked by an unknown creature! We explained our reasoning, and the fact that we had finished the scaffolding and the creature hadn't attacked us, but that was "beyond the point"...

"You were told to remain here until we could be sure it was safe to go back. By going out there, not only did you endanger your own lives, but potentially the lives of everyone here! It was a simple instruction: stay here! I'm disappointed in you two... We can't have breakdowns in communication and discipline. All hell would break loose if everyone was allowed to do what they wanted, when they wanted. There are rules and orders for a reason. Try to follow them a little more rigidly in the future..."

He was right I suppose. We had been foolish to attempt such a plan. We could have brought an aggressive creature to the entrance to our base, and no-one would have stood a chance. For all we knew, that creature may have been merely a scout; it may have gone back to the others within its group and informed them of our presence... I REALLY wish I hadn't thought about that... Well it's not too much of a worry at the moment. The creature disappeared before we made headway back to the base, so it was doubtful it knew where we were. What's more, we're not going back for some time until COLUS has calmed down, and everyone is ready to help. We're hoping to make a big team thing out of it, ensuring it's done correctly, and safely. Some will help mine it, others will collect and store it, whilst the rest remain on lookout. If we can collect a decent amount of it, then we may even be able to allow more than one of us a stone, and we can split up to cover more ground! The more I think about it, the more I realise coming to the Nether probably worked way more to our advantage than I had initially given thought to!

     With COLUS planning everything, he's already allocated everyone a position in terms of collecting the glowing stone. THEROS and THEXIS will be mining it, OROTHO and Amie will be collecting and storing it, provided they can keep their intellectual musings to themselves and do the job, and me, UOPETA and COLUS are staying on guard. I can only assume this is punishment for disobeying a direct order, but to be honest, I would have been happy with any of the jobs. I think UOPETA would agree that remaining on guard plays to his skill set, despite the obvious intention to punish us, so who is actually being punished here? AMPHIS will remain at the base to ensure no pig-men become too curious and start poking around. We'll be heading out in a few hours; I get the feeling that COLUS is anxious to leave the Nether, and I can't blame him, especially after the little episode we caused... We'll collect the glowing stone, make a plan for getting back - it's literally faster to do so then to make it back through the portal - and then head back to the base in Minecraftia. We're hoping to destroy some more portals, but a trip to the conducting tower might be in order. And the best thing is, we may have only spent the equivalent of a day or so in this Nether, and yet it would have barely been a third of a day in Minecraftia! We had to make some use of this temporal distortion somehow. It would be foolish otherwise. One thing we have made sure of is that this portal will not be destroyed! It is currently the closest one to our base, and there is a plan to connect the main base up to it. However, if we find any reports back at the tower, we can determine if there are any others even closer. Let's hope so. We can then seal it off from the rest of the world, connect a tunnel up to it and make use of it as and when we need to. However, we will need to establish a strong gate or checkpoint to prevent creatures getting from the Nether directly into our base... Having said that... We hadn't seen a single Creeper in this place since we arrived... I wonder why that is...

Syeonyx signing off