Chapter 7: Terror from the Deep.
Minecraft was one of those rare few games where the grind for resources doesn't make someone want to bash their head into their keyboard. At least, that's how I feel about it.
Having to run back and forth between the diorite vein in the savanna and the north eastern tip of the continent I was wanting to call home was exhilarating, rather than tedious. Two and a half stacks wound up being enough to finish my outer wall, once I cut back into it to leave myself some nice windows.
I made myself a nice archway into the mini garden/lawn thing my house wrapped around out of stripped birch logs, and further bottlenecked it with some bricks. Next I trotted in the front door and banked left. At the end of this part of the U sat my furnaces, all three cooking away at either iron or sand. Retrieving thirty blocks of the freshly baked transparent cubes in my magic, I took it to the crafting table to the right of the entrance. Glass blocks became a great many more panes, which I was quick to install in the holes in my walls. I took a few strides back to examine my build.
It… wasn't the prettiest thing in the world. There was no… pop, to the structure, everything was flush. Even the roof was sheer, a mismatch of birch and oak slabs that met with the walls rather than sit atop them. It looked like a major part of the structure was missing, and it was, I had planned to add on a second story, but the longer I looked at the thing, the more I felt like I could do better.
"Maybe a tower isn't the way to go. Hmm… it's also too dang small. Welp, off to the quarry again!" I shrugged, kicking open the door and rummaging through far to many chests for where I had left my meager supply of cobblestone. It was interesting to watch the blocks of rough stone melt into each other atop the crafting table, while a pair of sticks thickened into a proper tool rod. The shaft grew through a slot in the pick head and a nice, easy grippable handle of... something bubbled up through the wood to surround the handle.
In the end I was left with a slightly oversized, somewhat blockier version of a pickaxe made of solid gray rock. I made two more of the digging tools and set off westward again, following the coast back to the hole in the ground I sourced my materials from.
What once began as a prime example of minecraft physics applied to a slightly less than minecraft world -- with topsoil floating effortlessly and inexplicably over a hole that went to the stone beneath -- I had since expanded with similar care for gravity, dirt blocks stuck to the wall in an awkward staircase that got me in and out of my OSHA nightmare of a quarry.
I got another two broken pickaxes worth of diorite, and a bit of Iron before I decided to call it good and head back.
^
< ☾ >
v
As the filly left her somewhat terrifying mine, Luna breathed a sigh of relief. She was beginning to worry for the ground's stability at this point, a sinkhole was imminent in its future appearance if somepony didn't teach her the proper way to retrieve her stone.
Or perhaps it was just another rule of the game? She really didn't know, and she was regretting not getting the instructions when she had the chance.
Before the Princess of the Night could get too lost in regrets, she followed after the young pony, watching as she would periodically zap the tall grass with magical blasts from her unique horn as she lackadaisically meandered back to her buildsite. One of the disintegrated bits of plantlife dropped a hoof-full of seeds, and the filly's ears perked adorably before they were scooped up in a gentle blue glow and deposited in a set of saddlebags.
Once more, the crystal-horned unicorn set about building a wall of polished stone, around her current one. The new boundary measured the same in height, but was seven paces farther out than the original. The wall ate into the hill, and so she spent quite a bit of time dancing atop the grass and dirt before they would break, which made no sense at all.
Finally the filly finished her new outer wall, and set about deforesting the already diminished northern woods. As the floating leaves decayed, some dropped sticks, or apples, a few even dropped whole miniature trees! Which the filly replanted responsibly.
'What a relief, it seems not all of thy practices are unsustainable, we were beginning to worry.' Luna breathed a silent sigh of relief. The sky was beginning to burn orange as the square sun neared the horizon. As the cuboid moon began to rise, Luna put her hoof down. 'Enough of this dilatory behavior! We came to this dream with the intention to meet the dreamer, not to creep about the shadows and spy on them!'
While the filly set about building a roof over her new layer of house, this time utilizing the gray barked logs of the dryer environment to the south as support beams, Luna set her plan into action. She would introduce herself in disguise, because even as she stood in miniature of her true height as it was, she was still taller than the average mare.
Likewise, it would be prudent to not appear as an alicorn, lest that also intimidate the young pony. In a flash of light, Luna appeared hovering over the ocean, standing in a boat. With her horn still glowing she adjusted her avatar's appearance in the dream, shrinking down to equal height with the little dream conductor. With a final flare of her horn, a few elements were added to disguise her cutie mark, and the arcane spiral faded from sight.
Her pegasus disguise in place, Luna took up the oars in her wings and began the slow voyage to the northern shore. As the faux filly beached her vessel, she began thinking about just how she would introduce herself.
With a hop and a jump, and awkwardly clambering up since she failed to account for her shorter legs, Luna crested the hill. "What shallt we call ourselves?" She wondered. Before she could come up with a proper pseudonym, a sloshing splat preceded a deep, wet gurgle behind her as something heaved itself onto the sand.
^
< ◇ >
v
I was sitting in a hole. It wasn't a very deep hole, but it was still a little more than I was able to jump out of, thanks to the slabs surrounding it. I had decided to lower the floor half a block at the base of the U-shape, and so I had spent some time clearing the planks and dirt below. This way when I found enough wool or string to make a bed, it wouldn't be hovering or flush with the floor.
'...Or I could just tell the game to let me place blocks on top of slabs.' I facepalmed, which I'm immensely grateful I tried to do while in dreamland, because it probably would have really hurt in the waking world.
As I finished laying my new, carpetable floor, an ear splitting scream of absolute horror rent the air. I jumped in surprise, and my eyes were drawn to the brightly glowing pixelated moon. "When did the sun set!? Wait, more importantly, who was that!?" I had been under the reasonable assumption that I would be more or less alone in my dreams, barring the random creation of characters to fit some dream narrative, but I had also figured that with minecraft running, dictating its own rules over my subconscious, I wouldn't be sucked into any kind of weird plot.
A second, quieter but still cripplingly terrified scream told me that my puzzling over my faulty application wasn't really the thing to be doing right then.
Jumping through the hole next to the window in what used to be the outer wall of my house, I charged toward the furnaces, pulled out the long finished iron, and slammed down a pair of ingots on a fresh crafting table with a stick. The materials were still shifting around into a single item within my magic as I galloped out the door.
I spun on my hooves, skidding through the grass, and nearly slipping into the cove, as I got a bead on the direction I should be headed. The fresh iron sword trailed behind me in a shimmering periwinkle aura as I scrambled north as fast as possible.
As I wove through the trees I ran face first into the source of the shrieks. I was immensely glad I wasn't actually holding the sword as the light blue pegasus filly and I went down in a tangle of limbs. She squealed and struggled away while I tried to get to my own hooves and figure out what had her so freaked out.
It turned out that I really didn't need to bother, as one of the most horrifying things I'd never wanted to see shambled up the hill.
Rotten, bulbous blue-green flesh, covered in a permanently soggy, oily, patchy coat. Its cracked hooves squelched in unnatural ways, like soggy shoes after a rainstorm. Tears in its hide only served to frame the ghostly blue light that crept out of it, pulsing like a heartbeat. Sea life seemed encrusted into it, crab's claws replacing missing chunks of hoof, fish scales stretched thin over larger holes in its skin, some seaweed seemed to be rooted into its scalp to replace the mane, the kind of healthy, vibrant green certain plants only got when they were breaking down corpses. Dead gray coral grew out of the left side of its broken skull. Half of its face was missing entirely, letting out more of that blue light, perfectly illuminating the half rotten eel that sat in its mouth, seemingly melded with its tongue.
The thing blinked it's one eyelid -- the other eye had been replaced by a barnacle that bobbled back and forth -- opened its mouth of mismatched teeth like a boa unhinging its jaw, and screamed. The chilling light the creature gave off brightened to cast the small clearing in an unearthly monochrome hue. Claws clicked, fish squirmed, and the seaweed whipped about as it emptied its sodden lungs for what felt like an eternity. It was a horrible, discordant noise that threatened to haunt me until I could binge some happy show to drown it out.
I screamed right back, though in terror rather than... challenge? Haunting delight? Whatever reason the animated flesh meld had for screaming, it was different to mine, that was for sure. I scuttled backward, right up until I bumped into a tree. "Y-you're so much worse than you should be, thanks for the nightmare fuel brain!"
The shambling, oily dead thing took another step towards me. "Kindly screw off forever!" I screamed, my horn thrummed with magic and I sent the lagging sword zipping forward in a blur. A few good swings and the unholy abomination that is a high definition ponified drowned comically fell over and vanished with a chilling gurgle and poof of pixelated stars and smoke.
The sword zipped back into a sheath on my hip that definitely didn't exist a moment ago, and I bodily dragged the filly out of the hole she cowered in. It wasn't hard to get her running under her own power, and soon enough we were back in the torch lit relative safety of my cove.
But, since assured safety is better than relative, I dragged her into my house, specifically the smaller version that I planned on tearing down to enlarge the garden place once my new layer of house was done. All three doors slammed shut in a flash of blue, and I leaned on the wall, panting.
"Well." I gasped. "That was terrifying."
Small blue and mysterious shivered her agreement from her position sideways on the floor. She was looking frantically around, but the door quickly stopped being of interest to her when the skittering hiss of a giant spider sounded from the window.
In my haste to see what was going on, I had forgotten about how I left some holes next to the windows for myself to squeeze through. The massive arthropods beady red eyes stared unblinkingly at us as it crawled up the window, three of its right legs flailing in a probing manner through the one block wide hole.
The fact that the spider was on the wall in a vertical manner told me that things were a bit more realistic than I wanted, and so a magically propelled sword flew out the window, stabbing the eight legged freak in its center of mass, right between the legs. A block of cobble half patched the gap while the blade arced up into the sky, magical glow trailing in its wake.
One side patched, I ran to the other side and started filling it in also. The sword disconnected from its passenger, leaving the oversized crawly to fall to its death, the flying blade curved around to zip back inside through the one-block hole and clattered across the floor. I finished blocking things up and slumped against the nice solid diorite with a sigh.
"Hooookay, now we're safe." I breathed, turning back to my guest. She was still looking at the windows fearfully. I slowly came up beside her, making sure I wasn't stealthy about it but also wasn't stomping. Regardless, she still didn't seem to notice my approach, so I laid down across from her. "Hey, it's okay now. Nothing can get in here." She glanced down at me for just a moment, before resuming her trembling vigil.
Looking back behind me, I magiced open a chest and retrieved a couple of apples. One of the fruits plonked itself between the stranger's forelegs, the other pulled itself apart into slices in my magic, and I consumed them one at a time. 'Really wish'n I had a bed or two right now…'
I sighed, knowing that my conscience wouldn't let me just cheat in a couple wool for the sake of another, but also not allow me to abandon the filly for the sake of gaming. A swipe of my hoof brought up the options menu, and I logged off.
The world fell away from us in cuboids of varying size, revealing the regular dreamscape. The pegasus girl still hadn't moved, or even touched the apple that apparently came out of the game with us. Slowly, I managed to coax her off the balcony and inside. I set her up on the second floor, in my best recliner, sized so that we could have sat on together and still had plenty of room.
Realizing I was no longer in the game, I felt no compunctions about dreaming up some nice relaxing music, two mugs of cocoa, and a fluffy blanket. With a wave of my hoof, the chimney embedded in the wall shifted, the mouth of the fireplace migrating up from the first floor brick by brick, and a couple of floating fireballs hovered at the appropriate level to add another bit of comfort to the atmosphere.
"Alright, the game's off for the time being, doors are locked, and we are well and truly safe." I assured her, wafting the mug under her muzzle. Finally, she calmed down a smidge, reaching out to take the offered drink in her hooves after a moment of staring at it. 'Well, she didn't fall away with the rest of the minecraft world, so she probably isn't some ponified villager, which means I utterly failed in keeping out dream plots, darn, I'll have to tweak the game settings.'
The dark blue furred filly took a sip from the mug, her ears and entire demeanor perking up. I stifled my giggles at her upending the beverage greedily, and the ill matching mustache that she wore with a smile as she set her empty cup.
I knocked on the table, and the mug refilled, with marshmallows bobbing up from the chocolatey depths. "So, now that you're feeling better, you got a name?" I asked, taking a sip from the peppermint straw in my own drink.
"W-we art Known as L- Night Strider." She stammered.
"Well, I'm Argent Accord. Nice to meet you." I offered her a hoof, which she tentatively met with her own.
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Well, that was an utterly terrifying and gross description of a Drowned.
I love it.
Lackadaisically.
You definitely succeeded at making that monster sound scary.
Is that an X-Com reference?
Well that is a disturbing description of a ponified Drowned, I love it!
*Tssssss...*
Two things I did not expect:
1. An utterly adorable Night Strider. A surprise to be sure, but a pleasant one. Friendship ahoy!
2. The most gloriously disturbing description of a Drowned I have ever seen. The decayed nature of an undead monstrosity mixed with the kind of oceanic corruption one only finds in the locker of Davy Jones himself. Horrific. Disgusting. More, please!
Love the story so far though I personally skip over most of the minecraft stuff as it's not something I bother with. Can't wait to see what happens though 😊
Great work on the details thank u
Ex-Nightmare Moon vs Minecraft monster, round 1. Monster 1, ex-Nightmare 0.
Snrk, biggest question is whether Strider was totally faking or if she was truly so flat-footed from the shock.
Hi new friend!
Really have to wonder how things would have gone with a creeper.
11148214
She knows it's a dream but that just means she's scared of Argent.
11150700
Or she's just totally taken aback by the literal zombie horror she just witnessed. Equestria isn't exactly flush with horror-movie tropes, all of their villains are of the 'dramatic evil organization/supervillain' vibe with appropriately corny-evil plots. Superman doesn't face zombie apocalypses because it's not something he can punch away with sufficient force, similarly, Equestria doesn't have zombies because they're not something sufficient love and friendship can fix. Changlings (another horror-movie trope) only happened in MLP because they were people who could be fixed with sufficient application of friendship. Sombra is at the far end of what is possible for Equestria to have, and even that is only because it was him, alone, who was irredeemable.
Hi don’t know if you’re reading this book please don’t give up on the story
Oh well Lulu, you haven't even seen nether yet. Bet Argent will scare remnants of Nightmare Moon out of you with that.
Seriously, it would be hilarious to see NM survive that explosion (after all criteria of that spell was to summon something that let her survive) and end up separated from Luna from sheer horror of the imagery and end up as a harmless resident in Argent's dreamscape for a while until she learn friendship.
Is quite adorable to see Luna scared of "zombies".
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I want nightmare moon remnants now
11147837
Yeah, so far it's genuinely starting to feel like the Minecraft crossover bits take up more of the story than the actual story. Honestly at this point I'm not sure why this isn't just an outright crossover story since that seems to be what the author wants to focus on.