"You ready to go? What about Chiron and Hermes? Aren't they coming?"
I doubted it. They had quite excitable yesterday, so they probably felt a lot like me, only they had the option of remaining in bed... We set off towards the cliff mine through the hatch entrance, ensuring that no-one was nearby to spot us first, before making our way up to the entrance. I bent down and flicked the lever hidden in the rock, and the stone wall before us parted, revealing our perfectly hidden cliff mine! Heading inside, I closed the entrance, and collected my pickaxe, and joined UOPETA and THEROS descending the stairs into our own separate shafts. At the bottom of the stairs, I went right, THEROS went left, whilst UOPETA continued straight ahead, and down. We all had made some excellent progress yesterday, and if the increasing amount of iron ore we were finding was anything to go by, today could be even better!
"I'll see you guys in a few hours then?"
"Haha! Indeed!"
I jokingly replied to THEROS and UOPETA's shouts, as I descended to the bottom of my shaft, and continued from where I left off yesterday. The ache in my muscles had almost entirely dissipated. Then again, I hadn't started working yet...
We had been mining for quite a few hours now, and I had begun to sweat a little. Not only that, but I had found absolutely no iron whatsoever! I couldn't speak on behalf of UOPETA or THEROS though, so I could only hope they were having more luck than me. However, my resolve was not broken, and I continued with a renewed energy, in the hopes I would tap into a large source of ore at some point today! Trying to get back into the job in hand, I was thrown off when I heard UOPETA calling me and THEROS... What did he want? Was he in trouble? As soon as that thought entered my head, I stopped mining instantly, and dashed back up the shaft towards UOPETA's! Bounding down the steps two at a time, I reached UOPETA a little before THEROS, and found he hadn't hurt himself, nor was he in trouble. In fact, quite the opposite!
"It's not iron, but it's still a find!"
UOPETA had broken through a wall which revealed a small water pool with a low ceiling, and small deposits of iron and coal located around it. With a bit of help, I managed to get UOPETA into a position where he could begin extracting the ore.
"Careful UOPETA! You'll flood your shaft if you break this partition here!"
"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing!"
We watched as UOPETA cautiously extracted the deposits of coal and iron, and threw them to us to take up for storage. After he managed to reach all that he could, he crawled back towards us.
"I think that's about all I'm going to get from there... Back to going down I suppose..."
I told THEROS to give me the coal that UOPETA had dug up, and carried them up the stairs. Going all the way, as though going back to the entrance, I deposited the ores in one of the empty chests. I couldn't believe that in the few days we had started this cliff mine, we had already filled an entire chest full of iron ore! Looking at the mass of glinting unprocessed metal hidden between large chunks of stone, it was hard to imagine how this could form that massive tower that sat atop the greatest threat to everything that existed on the planet! Closing the lid slowly, I went back to my mineshaft, hoping that I could add some iron to the ever growing pile...
It seems that today is a great day for distractions! We're meant to be mining as much iron as possible to enable us to support the intended tunnels and security doors that will hopefully span the subterranean parts of Minecraftia, but not only were we distracted by UOPETA's underground pool, but now I found something else to distract me! Well, distract is probably not a good word to use... What I found actually chilled me to my core, and for reasons I couldn't quite understand or explain, until it sank in... I was mining away, when I noticed the distinctive chink noise of pick head hitting stone change to a dull thud... From past experiences, I knew this meant there was a hollow spot ahead of me, so I was carefully not to fracture any of the stone beneath me in case I fall to my death... Or worse... Eventually, I broke through into a small cavern that seemed to be mainly positioned beneath me... After negotiating over it, I continued down a little further to enable me to explore it. But as I chipped more and more stone from the wall, I began to notice small amounts of cobblestone... Mossy cobblestone... Intrigued, and slightly worried, I concentrated my energy on hacking at the cobblestone, to see if there was anything beyond it, and then the same dull thud reverberated around the shaft, and a small hole appeared. Through that hole, a cold, musty wind blew straight past me, making every hair on the back of my neck stand erect! Still confident, I knocked through the wall some more, until it was bigger enough to see through, and the nearby torches were able to illuminate the inside a little...
What was this? Was this... Another chamber... I instantly thought back to the mossy chamber I found a few days after establishing my house. It was behind it, close to the large cliff system where I had seen the strange figures and shapes. I carefully made my way down into the chamber, and with pickaxe held in defence, I entered the chamber. Satisfied that there was nothing in the chamber, I took out a few torches, lit them and placed them around the room. It was empty, all except for two small chests sitting against two of the walls. I smelt a trap! I don't know why, but it was odd that such a place existed... There was no entrance of other hole to suggest someone was able to enter and use it as shelter, and it was odd that the chests didn't look particularly old. The only sign of the chambers age was the mass amount of moss all over the walls. Not sure what to do next, I did the only thing I could think of, and climbed from the chamber to fetch UOPETA and THEROS.
We all stood there, in the centre of the room wondering what the purpose of this place was... Why was it here? Who had constructed it? Who made use of it, and how did they access it?
"And you say this is similar to something you've seen before? We need to tell COLUS about this... This could be the work of HoN Co. ..."
"I don't think so... There's nothing here that would suggest that, and what would they gain from doing so...? What's in the chests?"
I shrugged... Fearing that they may be trapped, I hadn't opened them. I remember being equally cautious about the chests I found in the other chamber, and nothing had happened... I had found a book... The... Erm... Codex Solis... "Book of the Sun"... It proved an interesting read... To OROTHO anyway... Maybe there was another book in here too!
"There's only one way to find out..."
UOPETA moved over to one of the chests, and placed his hand upon the lid. Standing at least a foot away, he slowly lifted the lid, and peered inside... Stopping halfway, he bent closer to it, squinting to examine the contents, before standing up straight and lifting the lid completely...
"Iron..."
"What...?"
"There's just iron in here... Iron ingots... A lot of them..."
Moving to UOPETA's side, I looked into the chest, and saw to my surprised that he was telling the truth! Inside the chest, stacked to the top, was a layer of iron ingots! Judging from the way it was stacked, there was a lot more below it! Picking a few up, I confirmed that, going dow to the base of the chest, and finding more iron ingots!
"Well OROTHO and COLUS are going to be happy! Most of the work is done for them! All they need to do with this is shape it... What's in the other chest? More iron ingots I bet..."
THEROS lifted the lid of the other chest, and paused...
"Well...? What's in there?"
"A book... One book... Nothing else..."
THEROS bent down and picked up the object from the chest, revealing it to be a book, with a similar design to the one I found months ago!
Syeonyx signing off
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