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“Dude, can you hurry up?! Did you get splashed with a slowness potion?” Avery laughed, his avatar wheeling around to face the knight trudging behind him. D3rlord’s voice rang out as a chuckle through his mic. “Sorry, sorry. Just trying not to take any more fall damage.”
“Did you not drink the regen potions I gave you?” Avery asked, walking through the cave as D3rlord managed to catch up to him. D3rlord’s armor clanked softly as they walked, and his mic gave the slightest crackle of interference. “I’m saving them for the Nether when we reach it.”
“Pff, we’re never gonna get there if you keep dying!” Avery laughed.
Avery and D3rlord were friends. Currently, they were on a Discord call, venturing down a mineshaft the two of them had built to look for diamonds or perhaps a stronghold. Though as they continued forward, they found something out of place: A stiff tree.
Avery cocked his head to the side curiously. “Now how did THAT get here?” He asked, walking towards it and mining the wood. It was definitely real. D3rlord shrugged. “Did you invite anyone else here, Aves? Maybe they planted this to prank us.”
Avery shook his head. “No, it’s only been us this whole time. Weird.” Avery briefly tabbed out of the game to look something up before D3rlord’s voice snapped him back. “Whatever, let’s keep moving.” Avery nodded and ran after him.
As they stumbled through the cave, they seemed to pass more trees. They all looked the same, too; No outward branches, no hanging leaves or wavy trunks. They were all stiff, straight and occasionally freakishly tall. D3rlord’s mic crackled, “This is getting weird. Did you download a horror mod, Aves?”
“No! You know I can’t handle that stuff!” Avery protested, making some more steps forward before D3rlord paused. He was looking at moss. Moss didn’t grow in caves unless it was a lush cave, and this tunnel certainly was NOT a lush cave. Avery’s brow furrowed. “Um... Is that supposed to be there?”
“No. It’s not.” D3rlord replied. Avery took a deep breath. “Okay, uh... I’m gonna tab out for a sec and see if the internet has answers. Don’t let a zom kill me.” Avery muttered, and he heard D3rlord’s faint grunt of agreement before he slipped off his headphones and reached for his phone. His skin, dark with lighter patches thanks to vitiligo, glistened with sweat from the heat of his room. Grabbing his phone and flicking to a browser, he typed into the search bar: Tree and moss found in non-lush cave minecraft. As he scrolled through the results, he found nothing useful, only forums and how-to articles on how to find lush caves, but nothing about this peculiar experience. With a sigh, he took a photo of his screen and sent it to a forum, explaining what he found before setting his phone down and putting his headphones back on.
“Alright, I’m back.” He called, unmuting himself. “You find anything?” D3rlord asked.
“Nope. Just forums about lush caves. I put our situation on a forum though, I’ll check if we got an answer in a couple minutes.”
“Alright. Do we keep going?”
“Sure, why not?”
So, they kept going forward. Slipping through the cave and sliding down the cliff edges, they found themselves encountering more and more of the same, stiff trees. Additionally, the cave walls were beginning to narrow, until it opened up into a wide, open space, flourishing with trees, with a sandstone tunnel on the other side. Avery and D3rlord looked on in shock.
“Who built this..?” D3rlord mumbled, his voice barely picked up by his mic. Avery scrambled to grab his phone, taking a frantic, blurry photo of the cave before a sharp headache struck him. “Augh..!”
“You okay, man?” D3rlord asked. Avery breathed heavily, before taking a deep breath and sighing as he nodded. “Yeah, I’m alright. I think the bright screen is getting to me, heh.”
“Dude, are you gaming in the dark right now??”
“... No.” Avery muttered, discreetly turning on his bedroom lights as he closed the window curtain. He heard D3rlord groan. “Whatever, let’s keep moving. Maybe we’ll find some diamonds.”
“Hell yeah!”
Both of them took a leap of faith off of the cliff, with Avery managing to nail a water clutch while D3rlord used a honey block to break his fall. Avery snickered. “You should really learn how to do a water clutch.”
“Bite me.” D3rlord huffed, continuing forward. Avery sprinted to catch up, smirking as he muttered into his mic, “Is that an invitation?”
“I will kick you from this call.” D3rlord threatened sharply, and Avery cackled out loud.
As they continued to walk forward, Avery better processed their surroundings. The trees looked stacked on top of each other, looking like bubbles of leaves and sticks of wood. Just up ahead, between two taller trees that stretched to the cave ceiling, was a tunnel lined with sandstone and torches. Both of them paused at the tunnel entrance.
“... This is so strange.” D3rlord muttered. Avery nodded in agreement. “Yeah, agreed. Let me get another photo...”
“Have you been taking photos of this?” D3rlord asked, his tone perplexed. Avery set his phone down. “Yeah. I’ve been uploading them to a forum as we went along. Maybe someone on the internet has answers?”
“Hm. I guess that would be smart, but the chances of us coming up with nothing are decently high, Aves.”
“It’s still worth a shot! Let’s keep going.”
Their boots seemed to echo through the tunnel endlessly, their tools clinking in their inventory as they traversed. About halfway through, Avery glanced behind him and froze.
“Hey, D3r?” He called out, and D3rlord paused. “Yeah?”
“Did you take any of the torches at the start of the tunnel?”
D3rlord glanced back, seeing the same thing Avery was: The two torches at the tunnel entrance were gone. D3rlord’s grip on his controller tightened. “No, I didn’t. Did you?”
“Nope.”
They both flinched when they noticed that another row of torches was gone. Then another. And then another. Avery practically screamed, wheeling around to run as far as he could from the disappearing torches while D3rlord managed to catch up. They ran, but the torches blew out before they could get out, and in their panic—
Both of them suddenly fell through a pit in the floor, and Avery yelped, scrabbling through his inventory before the both of them hit the water with a splash, and they sunk about 11 feet before they swam back up to the surface.
Avery looked around the dark surroundings. “Okay, I hated that, should we log off for the day?” He asked, checking the forum on his phone for replies. Nothing. He heard D3rlord reply, “I mean, we could, but this is a pretty bad place to leave the game. We should wait until we get back to base to log off.”
“And how will we get back without dying and losing our stuff??” Avery asked, and he could swear he saw D3rlord shrug judging by the shuffle he heard from the mic. “I guess we just continue forward. I can see some tunnels under the water, maybe if we follow them, we’ll end up back at the mineshaft?”
Avery checked his inventory. “I have a spare door from the building, we can use it for air... Alright, let’s go.” Both of them ducked under the water to swim, and Avery managed a chuckle out of D3rlord when he faked holding his breath. As they swam through the tunnels— Occasionally pausing to place a door for the pocket of air— Avery paused his swimming, his avatar looking around as he heard... Whispers. In his headphones.
“Do you hear that?” Avery asked, and D3rlord gestured for him to place down the door before stopping. D3rlord took a moment to listen before he shook his head. “No. What are you hearing?”
“... Whispers.” Avery muttered softly. “It could just be cave sounds but I thought I turned those off...”
“You can turn off cave sounds?” D3rlord inquired, and Avery shrugged before remembering he wasn’t in a video call. “Uh— I think so? I don’t know, but I thought I lowered the ambience. Either way, that’s weird.”
“Yikes. You should probably turn off the ambience if you’re worried enough.”
“Nah, it’s fine. Maybe it’s a new update and they changed the cave sounds.” Avery hummed, “Let’s keep going.” D3rlord simply grunted in reply.
Eventually, after what felt like ages of swimming, they finally surfaced from the water, ending up in an oasis, surrounded by trees on all sides. The both of them managed to swim to the edge, surfacing from the water and walking away from the edge as they both looked around.
Avery watched as D3rlord picked out a stack of sand from his inventory, “I’ll build a tower, just to scope our surroundings.” He hummed, starting to build upwards. Avery nodded, pulling some stone and dirt from his inventory. “I’ll block off that tunnel! Just in case we’re being followed.”
D3rlord gave a confused hum, and Avery explained, “What? There could’ve been some Drowned in that lake, I don’t want them following us to the surface!”
“Isn’t this world set to peaceful?”
“... Uh. Fuck.”
“Pussy.”
“Oh go fuck yourself!” Avery huffed, diving into the water as he deafened D3rlord’s cackle. As he set down the stone and dirt into the tunnel entrance, blocking it off, he heard the same whispers from before, the sounds passing through his ears like the source was walking past behind him. Avery surfaced from the water, just in time to see D3rlord getting rid of the tower. “Nothing. It’s trees for chunks in every direction.”
“Fun! Where should we go then?” Avery asked, checking his phone again. Nothing. He then received a message from D3rlord; A photo of the space from D3rlord’s POV. “For the forum. I’m assuming you’re grabbing as many photos as you can, so I figured I’d help.”
Avery smiled. “Thanks, man. Where to now?” He asked, posting the photo to the forum before he turned back to his laptop. D3rlord muttered, “Should we log off here? We’re out of the water.” Avery thought for a moment.
“... If you want to! But I might stay to look around a bit more. This is really interesting. I can DM you any more findings I get.”
D3rlord was silent before he spoke again. “... Actually, I’ll stay. I don’t have any exams this week, anyway.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot you were in college. How’s your classes?”
“Boring. How’s Starbucks?”
“Awful.”
“As expected.” Both of them chuckled as they started for the woods.
As they walked, they found nothing but trees. Tall trees, short trees, trees laid on their side, it was a bizarre sight to pass. As they walked, D3rlord happened to notice signs. Blank planks of wood held up on sticks, carrying no message, yet angled strangely in one direction. D3rlord took a look at these signs and tilted his head, and Avery lingered behind him. “See anything interesting?” He asked, and D3rlord looked at where the sign was angled. “They’re all pointing in one direction. Maybe if we follow their lead, it’ll lead us to something?”
“You sure? How do I know you’re not pulling that theory out of your ass?”
“Because, unlike you, I’ve been paying attention to our surroundings, and so far, this is the third sign I’ve seen.”
“Third?!” Avery wheeled his avatar around to face D3rlord in shock. “Where did you see the other 2?!”
“A ways behind us. They're making an arrow of sorts. Directing us.”
“Oh.” Avery glanced back over his shoulder, and sure enough, he could faintly see the silhouettes of the other signs through the fog of his render distance. He looked back at D3rlord with an amazed expression. “Your attention to detail still shocks me sometimes, D3r.”
“That's what college does to you.” D3rlord hummed, moving forward. Avery, however, lagged behind, another headache striking him as he leaned back in his chair and held his forehead. “Ugh... Hold on, D3r, I gotta get some tylenol.”
“Oh, alright.” D3rlord replied, walking back to Avery's now still avatar as the man got up from his desk and walked out of his room, wandering the small, dingy apartment before he found the cabinet filled with various medications and grabbed a bottle of pills, dropping a couple into his palm and swallowing them with water. With a gasp, he turned back and walked back to his room, sitting back down in his chair and sliding his headphones back on. “Alright, I'm back.”
“Feel any better?”
“Yup! Let's go.”
As they kept going, they found where the arrows were pointing: A singular clay block in the glass, inviting them to mine through it. Before D3rlord could think to protest against it, Avery had already whipped out his pickaxe, mining the block and falling through the hole. D3rlord groaned and followed after him. When they landed, they found themselves in another open tunnel. The ceiling was higher than the last, and Avery’s mouth gaped. “Just how deep does this cave go..? Surely we’re below bedrock, right?” Avery muttered, flicking through his settings to turn on coordinates. D3rlord glanced at him. “No way… Our cords are glitched out.”
“Glitched?” D3rlord asked. “What do you mean glitched?”
“I mean they’re glitched! They’re doing that weird S thing— Hang on, let me send a pic—”
Avery reached for his phone, lifting it and tapping his screen before it suddenly shut off. “Damn it! My phone died.” He groaned, setting it down and scrambling for his charger. D3rlord shuffled awkwardly. “Maybe it’s just a glitch with your computer? We can log off and back on again to see if that fixes it.”
“No, no, it’s fine. We came all this way, and I’m not a coward!” Avery declared confidently, but D3rlord swiftly replied, “You don’t have to play if you’re scared. We can continue this tomorrow morning.” His voice was soft, barely audible through the static of his mic. Avery felt his face heat up, but he shook his head. “No. We’re going to get out of this cave, loot be damned. And once we’re back at base, then we can log off.”
There was silence on D3rlord’s end for a minute. Then, with a reluctant sigh, “Okay. But if anything else happens, you have to tell me. Got it?”
“Got it. Now let’s see what’s on the other side of this tunnel.” Avery huffed, turning off his coordinates as they strolled forward. The tunnel was the same as the last: Sandstone and clay arranged in columns reaching higher than should be possible. Avery felt something crawl up his back, like spiderlegs or fingers. He whipped his head around to look behind him, only to be met with a wall covered in posters and his bed on the other side of the room. Avery swallowed, turning his head back to the game.
They were both standing at the end of the tunnel, gazing upon a village with a large, golden angel statue looming over them. D3rlord felt a shiver run down his spine. “That is creepy. Who the hell built all this?” He asked, jumping down from the tunnel entrance. Avery followed soon after. “Not me, that’s for sure. You know my building skills are junk.”
“Yeah, I started believing it wasn’t you at the first tunnel.” D3rlord replied, and they both started for the village.
It was abandoned. Empty. Roofs were open and crumbling, cobwebs infested every corner and the fountain itself, acting as the pedestal for the grand statue, was larger than their avatars. The longer Avery stared at it, the more he felt like he was being swallowed. D3rlord looked around. “This feels straight out of Silent Hill, there’s no way this could be naturally generated.”
“Yeah…” Avery replied, his voice higher than normal. He cleared his throat. “Should we climb the statue? Maybe it can give us a good vantage point to see if there’s anything else to explore.”
“You sure?” D3rlord asked, catching Avery off guard. “You’ve been acting weird. Are you sure we should keep going?” Avery scoffed, adjusting his headphones. “It’s fine! I’m fine. Everything is fine! We’re gonna get to the bottom of this, we’re gonna get back to our base, and everything will be FINE!!”
Avery heard a ringing in his headphones at his shout, and he meekly added, “Sorry. I- I think I’m just freaked out.”
“That’s okay.” D3rlord assured, building another tower beside the fountain as he looked around. Simultaneously, he spoke, “If it gets too overwhelming, we’ll log off. We can talk about this more on that forum you made earlier, and hopefully we’ll get more answers.”
“Yeah.” Avery muttered, glancing at his phone again. The screen was still off. He sighed and looked back at his laptop. “Alright. I-I’ll let you know when I’m ready to log off.”
“You better.” D3rlord huffed, and Avery snorted. “Don’t threaten me, man. I’m in Toronto, and you don’t have the money to fly out here.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“... Maybe.” Avery wouldn’t admit it, but the idea of D3rlord actually seeing him in person was comforting. They’d already seen each other’s faces while texting each other drunkenly, so he wasn’t too worried about meeting an old guy instead of a handsome college student in his 20s. Avery blushed at the thought, but quickly brushed it off as D3rlord lowered himself from the tower.
“See anything?”
“A church house. It’s in the far corner of this area, isolated from the village.” D3rlord explained, pointing in the direction of the church. “And, just behind it, I saw another cave. It looked like it was ascending, too, so that might be our best shot at getting back to our mineshaft.”
“Sweet!” Avery exclaimed, gripping the edge of his desk tightly. “Finally, we can get out of here! I’ve been getting shivers.”
“You should probably turn on your heater then.” D3rlord commented, and Avery laughed. They both started running for the church.
The church was in a worse state than the village itself. The roof appeared to have collapsed entirely, the doors were missing, and the carpet, colored a surprisingly bright yellow despite the dust, was ripped up and in pieces. D3rlord wandered around, opening trapdoors and doors, but he found nothing but cobwebs and plank blocks. Avery noticed a lectern with a journal propped upon it and briefly read through the words, processing something about a king and worshippers, before his avatar was pulled to the bookshelf against the far wall. His fingers weren’t even on the WASD keys as he moved, and suddenly he was breaking the shelf, revealing a set of double doors. D3rlord looked at him in shock. “Whoa, how’d you know that was behind there?” He asked, and Avery stammered. “I-I don’t know… Lucky guess?”
D3rlord sighed. “Well, let’s keep moving. I’d really like to get out of here.” He huffed, walking through the door. Avery reluctantly followed him.
They were met with another long clay tunnel, and at the end of it was darkness. As the torchlight faded into the distance, Avery’s avatar drifted closer to D3rlord’s, and D3rlord hummed softly. “You got any torches, Aves?” He asked, and Avery shook his head. “Nope. Should’ve grabbed them back at the tunnel…”
“Hm. Unfortunately, we’re gonna have to keep going without the light.” D3rlord muttered. Avery felt another crawl travel up his back, and his head whipped around again, his locs falling over his eyes. Again, nothing there. A poster was peeling off the wall, the tape having finally given up. Avery turned back to his laptop.
The cave turned darker and darker. Avery seemed to notice that the stone blocks were turning black, until they were completely engulfed, and suddenly— His inventory was gone. But his attention was more drawn to the large, looming gold gates at the end of the tunnel.
D3rlord’s mic crackled with interference. “What the fuck… That is definitely not naturally generated.” He cursed, and Avery’s hands shook as he walked forward. D3rlord’s eyes widened. “Avery, what are you doing?”
“... Checking for hostile mobs.” He replied dully, another shiver running up his spine. D3rlord barked back, “This world is on peaceful!”
“Traps, then.”
“Do you think there’s traps back there? I have a shield, Aves, get back here!” D3rlord shouted, sprinting towards Avery before his controller slipped out of his hand and onto the floor, shattering. “Fuck! My controller fell— Avery! Avery, stop moving!!”
Avery’s ears were ringing. He wanted to rip his hands away from his keyboard, wanted to slam his laptop shut and run out of his house, but his fingers felt glued to the keys, his head was pounding, his eyes wide, his body was trembling—
He looked past the gate. A bright flash of yellow filled his gaze.
Avery screamed.
Damian heard Avery’s scream in his headphones, detecting the piercing sound through the sudden static of his mic. “Avery? Avery?! What happened, are you okay?!” He yelled, but just as quickly as Avery’s scream shot through his ears, he was met with silence. He looked to his TV screen again and saw Avery’s avatar emerging from behind the gates. The skin was altered, looking slightly more yellow while the face looked mortified.
[TheMostMayo:] Log off. Log off, now.
Damian blinked. “Avery? Can you hear me?! Why are you typing in the chat?” He called into his mic again, but was met with silence again. He saw another message pop onto the screen.
[TheMostMayo:] I can hear you. But I can’t talk anymore. Please log off.
“Avery, what the hell happened? Come on man, talk!”
[TheMostMayo:] Log off. Please. Please. Please.
The word repeated over and over in the chat, and Damian started to notice that Avery’s username was starting to flicker and glitch. His eyes widened. “Avery, just tell me what you saw! Or at least tell me why I have to log off! We came this far, don’t tell me you’re pussying out!”
The chat stopped flowing for a full 2 minutes. Damian immediately regretted what he said, fearing he’d misinterpreted some prank or had hurt Avery’s feelings, but the last message in chat silenced those thoughts.
[TheMostMayo:] see you later, Damian.
Damian heard the sound of disconnection in his headphones. Immediately afterwards, his game screen was replaced with Minecraft’s main menu, with a pop-up that read Error: Server owner left the world or disconnected. Damian stared at this pop-up for a long, quiet moment. His controller laid broken on the ground as he pulled his headphones off and lifted his phone, checking Discord. Avery’s profile was offline. Damian was the only one in the call. With shaking fingers, he pressed the disconnect button, and texted Avery.
[d3rlord3:] Avery? You good, man?
No reply. Damian tried again.
[d3rlord3:] How did you guess my name? I never told you?
No reply again. Damian spent the next 5 minutes texting Avery, asking various questions before he finally gave up, hanging his head forward.
“What the hell did he see..?”
Slime dripped onto the stone floor. His breathing was labored, almost froggy. Avery felt gooey tears pool on the ground under him, paired with vomit of the same color. He coughed.
“W-What are you doing to me?” He asked hoarsely, not daring to glance over his shoulder at the cloaked figure looming over him. A hand traced patterns on his back, spiders crawling on his skin.
“Making you better. Stronger.”
“I don’t want that.” Avery remarked. His vision swam, blending with cloudy sights of Damian, dead on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Avery sobbed. “Don’t hurt him— I swear to God if you hurt him-!!”
“I will not lay a hand on your gladiator. But only if you follow my every command.”
“You are under my wing now, Avery. You should be thankful.”
A spindly finger traced the line of Avery's jaw. “I am doing this for you. Do not be bratty.”
Avery hissed, but it held no threat. He couldn't do anything about his situation anymore.
He should've just logged off.