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She woke up in the midst of a meadow. Blocky hills rolled away to the horizon, an occasional tree rising high above the grass. The sun was high in the sky. She wasn't sure where she was, or where she had been before.
But she was here now, and she had to make the best of it. Marching over to one of the hills, she hopped up the slope and suddenly became aware of a sort of feeling of… emptiness. It wasn't too strong yet, but she got a vague feeling that if the problem was left unaddressed, it would only grow worse with time.
Another question presented itself when she reached the top of the hill: what was that structure creeping across the next hill over? She hadn't been able to see it from her perspective in the valley, but now she could see a long, straight structure made of rough, cobbled stone. There was something natural about the broad-stretching plains, something that made the structure feel like an invasive presence.
Most of it that she could see was a sort of hallway, with occasional slits to look through. It practically split the valley in two, although she believed she would able to climb over that portion, should things come to that. But that wasn't the interesting portion: on the crest of its own hill was a boxy little house. Well, everything was boxy, but the structure was a perfect square of stone that towered far above the plains, the only break from its regularity being barred windows and rough outcroppings of wood near the top of the wall. There was one entrance that she could see, but to get in you would have to jump from a stairwell to the doorway carved into the wall.
There was another obstacle to getting inside, one that could also be circumvented by a clever jump – a moat cut two blocks deep with a slope on the exterior side. She supposed it might stop some of the roaming cattle from approaching the entrance, but that seemed a strange thing to plan around… the scrap of land on the other side of the moat was also lit by torches.
She climbed the stairwell and almost made to jump to the door when she saw something shocking through its windows. A face. Not one like the cow's or the pig's, but something that made her think that this one was like her. She tumbled off the stairwell in shock.
The door swung open, and she was face to face to with someone else. Someone who seemed to feel just as shocked as she felt right now. He held up his empty hands, as some sort of peaceful gesture, and after a moment she copied it. He stared at her for a few moments longer before stepping back from the door and looking back at the room.
Was he… suggesting she jump inside? She thought it was what he was trying to imply, so she leapt inside the doorway and walked inside.
The first thing she noted was the number of exits. The one directly behind her, two stairwells sinking into the ground that would attach to the walkways, ladders in the corners, and a door like the one she had just entered on the far side of the room. An armor stand, a chest, and a table sat in the middle of the room, with no other decoration than torches.
He gave her another look, before walking over to the chest and pulling out some bread. She received about half before he gestured for her to follow up the ladder. Looking down, she saw the ladder shrink away into intense darkness… but they went up. In contrast, the ladder ended after just one floor going up. There was a minuscule landing and a door of metal which opened with a button. However, when the iron door opened, she got to see a genuinely pleasant-looking room.
The floor was some dark-colored wood covered in rich red carpets. A furnace sat against a wall, while a bed sat against another. The other made some strange gesture with his hands before a little bed appeared, which expanded into a full-sized one when he placed it down. He paused in front of the bed and then looked to her.
Hers, then. But it wasn't that late yet, so when he kept on climbing she followed him. A stairwell went up this time, leading to a strange little room. A shovel sat in a frame on one wall, but that seemed to have no connection with the pen of chickens held in the room's center. He continued up the stairwell to reach another tiny room.
This time, when he opened the door there was fresh air and fading sunlight. A sort of hut sat on top of the building, but there was nothing else on top, not even fencing to prevent a fall.
He led her around and sat down near the edge that faced the setting sun. She followed and watched as the sun set, little hints of gold and orange glinting on small ponds that broke up the plains.
But things rose from the ground alongside the rising moon. Shambling corpses and skeletons in tattered garb, shambling green creatures and tremendous spiders. They marched to the tower and most all of them were stopped by the moat. The only exception were the spiders, who crept up the moat's side and made to attack the two of them at the top of the tower. They were stopped by the wooden obstructions, but she wasn't particularly interested in staying overlong. Her host had proved his point: the world outside the tower was deadly.
When morning came, they departed to… wherever he was going. She wasn't sure where else to go and wouldn't particularly want to part with him if she did. They shared the same feeling, even if his was made more intense by the isolation: I cannot abandon this one like me. So different from the shambling corpses… one of the few blessed with real agency in this world.
She had received equipment from him, on top of the bread. A pick and an axe, blocks she could place and break. That confirmed their shared mastery over the world and simultaneously set them against it. The monsters of the night abhorred their sort.
They marched down a long pathway that moved with the landscape, rising with hills and bridging over gaps. Rarely, there was a metal door to the outside near some feature of note. A seething pool of lava or a deep pit that ladders vanished into. However, their destination was at the end of the line, a castle structure that seemed a little larger than the first.
The reason for that greater size was explained when they entered to find a sort of dock. A boat sat in a pool of water, and a low-hanging row of wooden fencing kept anything nasty from creeping out of the water. Otherwise, it was very similar to the first she saw. He went to the workbench and produced a second boat, throwing it into the water and giving her a look. Cautiously, she climbed in, following him as he unlatched a gate and moved into the open sea.
The gate was closed behind them and they made for a buoy sitting on the horizon. A spur of wood jutted from the sea like some parody of the trees of land, a few torches near its top and a ladder to climb it. Passing it by, she realized they were now in range to see another one.
So they hopped from one to the next, following some well-traveled path that brought them over deathly quiet shallows and coral reefs aflush with life and colors. Sometimes, she thought she caught some hint of a structure amid the muck, but the buoys veered wide around those foggy suggestions.
A little after noon, they found themselves taking refuge under a house raised above the sea. It sat above a shallow reef, kelp thick around its foundations. In the shade of the roof they had a brief lunch of bread and then kept sailing on, not even bothering with the fishing rod hung on a rack. From what little she could tell, much of his life rotated around timing. Waystations and strong points linked together, carefully spaced to minimize risk. The great cave they passed by was probably marked with torches as waypoints leading to a satellite base for longer expeditions. At least, that seemed logical to her.
When they made landfall, it was in a land of vivid color. The dock was similar in design to the one they had departed, down to the fence gates as a safety measure, but this structure was built entirely of some pale, peach-toned rock. She didn't know what a peach was, but the rock was that color. It had probably been harvested natively; she could see great seams of similarly colored rock in the sides of the warm-colored mountains.
They disembark from their boats and walk around a very differently designed base. Oh, the practical defensive design features were there, like heavy metallic doors, but there were open windows grand enough to stand in that could be closed with wooden trapdoors and even a courtyard with a stable. There was a pair of them, but one needed to be saddled before they could depart – he looked and the horizon and squinted, like judging their time.
She took the roan and they left through a gate. (No small number of horses lingered outside. Native, or the result of some breeding programme?) Her mount felt just a touch slower than his, but they ate up the terrain much faster than walking through covered ways. Still, there were markers and paths cut into the rock, plus swathes of fences.
Their ride led to a tremendous fortification, wooden palisades stretching between stone towers that formed corners. The moat was deep and filled with glowing lava. Quite some complex, she thought. Was this his home? Whatever it was, it had undergone renovation. There were scraps of wood and stone standing outside the complex, plus the occasional stretch of beaten path. That didn't seem like a design choice her austere companion would make.
Traveling inside involved two pairs of gates separated by a trapdoor supported crossing over lava. Immediately inside there was a stable where they could dismount before exiting… to find a village.
A village. Strange figures in heavy cloaks walked on beaten paths, passing between brightly colored houses and carefully demarcated fields. A few great, lumbering figures of iron walked between the houses, dipping their great heads and stepping aside as villagers passed by. The villagers seemed a bit surprised by her presence, but got to negotiating with him pretty quick. He handed over paper by the ream and bushes of wheat, receiving aged books and various gemstones. (Pearls the size of his fist, chunks of blue rock, and blocks that glowed in his hand.)
Some of the buildings seemed new, built in that simple, blocky style her traveling companion was so fond of, but some were different. She thought they looked a bit like the ruins outside the wall… as if he had burned down or destroyed some structures outside the wall so they could fit inside a more defensible position. Curious.
The villagers seemed content enough, she supposed. She earned herself a few of their emeralds for harvesting some of their crop for them and handing it over to a farmer, before they both retired for the night. He stayed up later than her, reading books that seemed to glow ever so faintly in the dimming light…
Their business in the village was concluded early the next morning, and they went on the long way back. She noticed figures that looked concerningly like villagers among the rambling dead, their flesh falling apart under harsh sunlight.
They sailed across the sea again, marched to the complex she first met him at, and then continued, going further and further away from that village. It gave her time to think about it, at least. Those villagers had some minuscule fraction of the powers she and he shared, enough to harvest crops, but they lived in a village they couldn't change. They had protectors, but no means to make a more defensible position.
Again, they were alien. Separate from he and she, blessed with their own language and culture and yet simultaneously crippled. Strange as her awakening here might have been, she felt blessed that she could roam so broadly. While there was a certain risk to just wandering around, she wasn't sure she could bear the thought of some restricted village life. Those orange mountains, the coral sea, the great forests that stretched as far as her eye could see…
There was a tremendous beauty to it all, enough to counterbalance the danger.
(She liked to think she would have been aware enough to survive the night if she had arrived here first, but she imagined it would have been a very close thing.)
Admittedly, his structures were not always a perfect complement to the beauty of nature, but they were a refuge from its dangers, and had their own sort of brutal appeal. There was a practicality to them. Not completely efficient and soulless, but built with a purpose that was a harsh contrast against the stretching wild.
His main base was perhaps the best example of that, a great fortress of stone brick that loomed above a flat, sheet-like lake. The only approach to it was a tunnel, 3 blocks high and 3 blocks wide. He took the lead when he went inside and immediately, he looked down at the ground and held his arm out to stop her from advancing. He trembled a bit. She followed his lead.
They crept forward, until she eventually caught a pair of long, thin, black legs at the edge of her vision. She felt curiosity, but quickly tamped it down. There was some reason that he wouldn't look at it, and it was probably a good one. A logical one. They circled around it, and she noticed that it was carrying a block of grass with long, thin arms.
It let out a garbled croak. It crept toward them on long, spindly legs, the grass held in front of them like some strange tribute. It plopped the block down on the ground, gathered a mist of purple particles around itself, and disappeared. He removed the block with his spade, and when she looked at him questioningly, he gestured towards his eyes and shook his head no. Don't… look at them? Well, she saw the arms and legs safely, so perhaps it was the creature's eyes?
It occurred to her that a 2 block-high roof might be sufficient to keep the creature from entering, but that felt like a bit… much. She appreciated open space, and the thought of being able to jump around at night was probably worth more than occasionally having to work around a mysterious interloper. Well, phrasing it like that sounded really bad, actually, but it didn't seem actively harmful.
The hallway would occasionally branch off into little farms, glass ceilings letting in filtered light from the lakebed, and one room even had a collection of zombies with an unusual resemblance to villagers. Maybe he hoped they might be cured? He went out of the way to leave a few books there alongside a sort of stand with a glowing yellow rod… but considering the way he left, it probably wasn't a productive project.
Even if they managed a cure, the end result would only be villagers.
The two of them were the only ones of their own kind.