Part 33: Eeeek

In the early dawn light, I hauled myself out of the vast, terrifying ocean, with just over one heart of health left.  It was blinking red - I was in bad shape.  If I so much as bumped my head against the ceiling, I would die.  I withdrew my emergency ration of mushroom soup, which I had against all odds kept safe in my pockets while boating, swimming, and battling sharks throughout the night.  My hunger meter finally restored to full, my health meter started slowly to regenerate.  I huddled there by the beach while my health meter slowly inched back upwards, sword at the ready, waiting for a creeper or giant green scorpion or, I don't know, a tyrannosaurus or something, to surge over the hill and attack.

But the morning was quiet.  My health finally restored, I cautiously crested the hill in search of breakfast.

I found a lion instead.  After the night I'd just had, I didn't feel up to dealing with lions.  I decided to try a different side of the hill.

Gonna pass on this one.

Here, I found a - oh, look, a goat!  Complete with little stubby horns and a beard.  But my mind was on my kebab breakfast, and I brandished my sword.  Turned out the goat was ready for me, and I was pretty surprised when I found myself butted high into the air, taking considerable falling damage.  Determined, I waded back into battle.  I eventually won, but the goat had reduced my health by half.  And there was no meat, only two leathers.

Hey, a goat!

Kebab-less, I headed on my way again, as my health slowly regenerated.  I saw a bee, but after the threat a mere goat had proved to be, there was no way I was going to mess with the bee.  There probably wouldn't have been that much meat on it anyways.

Also, I think there is a fox hiding somewhere in the background.  But I already know those aren't edible.

I continued along a steep and tree-thick coast, sort of glad for the moment that I didn't have to try to navigate a horse along this.

And if there WAS a pegasus, it would probably have spawned on that floating block, just to make things difficult for me.

I heard a horrendous noise, like the war cry of a thousand rubber bands, coming from the hill up ahead. I readied my sword - well, these days, my sword is always readied - and edged forward.  It turned out to be a pair of deer, standing majestically on the hillside.  Making very loud rubber band noises, for reasons known only to themselves.  My thoughts leapt instantly to venison, and I approached with my sword.  At the hill's crest, I hesitated - they were rather large, and one of them had an impressive pair of fractal antlers.

Rubber band crossed with wookie, in fact.

But when one of them made the gesture shown below, my hesitation ended.  They turned out not to be too dangerous.  They also turned out to be, apparently, inedible.  No venison, just a bit of leather.

All right, buckko.

Scarcely had I dispatched the deer, when something bumped into me and started biting me.  It was small and stripey and vicious - a cute little baby boar.  But it apparently was dangerous, so I quickly dispatched it, and looked around for the bigger one that I knew must be nearby.

With a strangely spherical shadow

There it was.  Also pretty cool-looking... an improvement over the ones in the old world.  But I wasn't going to mess around with these guys.  I killed the boar, eagerly awaiting the boar meat.  There was none.  Huh.  Fine.

Next up was a duck - those are good to eat, right?  Turns out they weren't.

In fact, I didn't even get a single feather from the duck.  They must have been painted on.

So far I've killed an entire menu's worth of wild game - rabbit, boar, venison, and duck - and none of them were good to eat.  And I couldn't remember ever seeing a cow, pig, or chicken.  Apparently in this world only rats are edible.

And the landscape in this new world is difficult - it's either rugged winding coastlines with steep cliffs:

Also, that is one eerie shadow.

Or forest so impenetrable that even I couldn't fit between the trees, and had to hop from treetop to treetop, taking damage each time I fell out of a tree.

By early evening, I had arrived at more promising territory, but I decided to stop for the night, and roast my delicious bounty of two dead rats.

I came across a modestly high hill, and dug myself a shelter in its side.

Looks a lot better, except for the treacherous hidden hole

The entrance safely bricked up with meter-thick glass, I roasted my rats and gnawed on them as the night's eerie noises began.  There was definitely some growling going on out there already, and some distant steady groan that I didn't like very much.  I yearned for the familiar clink of a skeleton or moan of a zombie.

Interior shot of Fort Necessity

There were things out there already - some sort of creature went by in the dark (looks like a zombie in a tutu?) and it was flashing red, meaning that it was being attacked by something even worse than it.  And that low steady groan was getting louder, coming distinctly from the north, accompanied by pounding sounds.

I don't even want to know.

Now I was getting nervous, and I tunneled through the hill toward the south, trying to put some more hill between myself and whatever was coming from the north.  I quickly ran out of hill, and returned to the main room - that sound was definitely getting louder - so that I might be able to see danger coming through the windows, and maybe have enough maneuvering room to defend myself.  In the face of the overwhelming scariness of the noises from whatever was coming, I had completely lost faith in the meters and meters of dirt, rock, and glass that protected me from outside.  I leapt on top of the furnace, seeking the high ground.  Something hurt me - I jumped back off the furnace.  What had happened?  Was the furnace still hot?  Was the ground shaking?  It was very loud now.  Something hurt me again.  I couldn't see anything.  What was going on?

I had just turned around for another look at the furnace, when...

What.

In a split second of chaos I drew my sword, slashed blindly once, and somehow took a screenshot.  Then...

If you look just right, you can see two of them over to the left with their fists raised in a victory dance, evil eyes and fangs showing.

What was that?  It looked like three giant green guys with barrels around their middles.  Did they smash their way in?  And why did the screen say I exploded?  Are they somehow explosive too, or did they blast me into the clutches of a waiting creeper?

Huh.

I hate this world.

Part 32: Still terrifying.

Morning dawned, and the wolf was still there, along with a host of other alarming sounds.  Chief among them was the hair-raising sound of a human voice.  "Hey, stop it, cut it out, you're hurting me!" In a sort of quick nasal whine.  What was that?  The antics of the wolf were suddenly the least of my worries.

Hello, wolf.

And then I saw him, a distinctly human figure with long reddish hair and ragged clothes.  Wandering around just outside my door.  This was... alarming.

Whuh?

And then he turned and - Gah!  That's his face?  Vacant grin, red marks on the cheeks that might have been some sort of odd impression of rosy cheeks.  He was probably not going to be anything good - he had appeared in the night, creeper-style.  The wolf seemed to smile with satisfaction at my totally-freaked-out reaction.

Or are those diagonal sideburns or... what?

If I was going to deal with all this, I was going to need full health.  That meant a full stomach, since in this world apparently you only regenerate lost health if you're not hungry.  I roasted up last night's rats, and ate them.  Crunchy, but not very filling.  I was already almost out of food.  And that meant I would have to leave my shelter sooner or later, and continue on my quest northward.  While looking for a horse to replace the one I'd left behind in the last world.  I was sort of glad I didn't have a horse to worry about, just at the moment.

I put in a well-placed block of gravel, and broke the top pane of glass so I had a window through which to bat at the wolf.  It seemed to work - the wolf couldn't reach me through the window, but I could get to him.

Even dying, the wolf looks pretty satisfied.

With the wolf gone, I waited for the green scorpion, or the freaky man, or whatever the heck else was lurking outside my door.  Nothing showed up, so I cautiously cleared the last block of gravel away and left the house, looking wildly around, hoping that nothing was waiting to jump on me.  There wasn't a lot of distance in which to run screaming out of the way.

I heard the freaky green man again - I assume the nasal whine was his voice.  "Cut it out!  Hey!  You're hurting me!  Stop it!"  I edged forward to see what was going on.

He appeared to be talking to a cactus.  Against which he was bashing himself repeatedly.

The cactus won.

Well, at least this guy, whoever he was, hadn't been too bright.  And probably hadn't been capable of breaking glass or opening doors.  I hoped.

Killing the wolf had left me no meat, but there were a couple of furs left behind.  Furs?  I didn't know what to do with them, but I put them in my pockets.  Then I headed northward again, edging around the water-girt sandy cliffs of the coastline.

This would be tricky territory to drive a horse on as well.

I stopped to investigate more snakes - one raised a cobra head and hissed at me, but didn't seem to head in my direction.  Emboldened, I later right-clicked on one to see what would happen.  Nothing.  I edged away again, vaguely disappointed.

I don't know what I was hoping for... snake hat?  Or the ability to whip it around by the tail and fling it at things?

I spotted a cave-dwelling explorer snake at the bottom of a deep sandy shaft, which was definitely an excellent formula for just letting it be.

And how it's going to get out of the cave is its own business.

There were a lot of snakes around, even when the landscape turned grassy again.  I approached a red snake, and this time it lunged at me, biting me sharply.  I killed it, and was rewarded with two round eggs.  My inventory labeled them as "red snake eggs".  Maybe they would be good to eat, or something.

Never mind that the diameter of each egg is easily several times the diameter of the snake.

The landscape turned cliffy and snowy, and I spotted a rabbit, this one snow-colored, apparently an arctic hare.  Since I wasn't on horseback, and was feeling a bit right-clicky, I right-clicked on the rabbit.

Bunny!

As had happened, incomprehensibly, with the rabbits of the old world, this one ended up on my head.  I wandered around a little with its toes twitching over my eyes before I let it go again.

Bunny hat!

It ricocheted around the woods for awhile, apparently in some confusion, before leaving hurriedly.

Bunny skedaddling

Upon seeing the next rabbit, I remembered that I should be replenishing my food supply.  So, this rabbit I killed with my sword.  But apparently rabbits aren't good to eat, or this was an empty rabbit fur hopping around with no actual rabbit inside.  It yielded no food, only a couple of green experience orbs that I felt sort of lousy for taking.

Black bunny with adorable grey fluffy tail

And soon I came to a northern coastline.  As I had done before upon encountering coasts, I stood at the water's edge for a moment, waiting for the opposite shore to render and give me a hint as to where they connected.  Nothing appeared - nothing at all.

This would take a long time to construct a bridge across.

I followed the coast to the east and west, but in both directions the shore veered sharply away from north, and revealed no land on the other side of the water.

Well, perhaps it was fortunate that I didn't have a horse with me, just at the moment.  It seemed like I would have to build a boat to get across this bit.

No sooner had I built the boat than, seemingly in reaction, I looked up to find the water teeming with creatures.  Many of them looked shark-shaped.

Well, maybe I would just move down the coast a little before I put my boat in.  I edged my way along the coastline, and then launched.

I think I see some manta rays over at the left! Either that or underwater paragliders.

Boats aren't too easy to steer, but they're no harder than horses on ice, and at least there weren't any obstacles to hit.  I accelerated for the horizon.

Northward!

And kept going.

Northward!

And going.

I looked back behind me to find that the shore I had come from was merely a distant mote on the horizon.  And there was still nothing ahead of me but open water.  I passed the occasional pod of what looked and sounded like dolphins, and some groups of what were definitely sharks.

....yes, this would take a very long time to build a bridge across.

The sun began to set, and still I sailed.  Or rowed.  Or something... I'm not quite sure how this boat is propelled.

Must have been something tasty over there.

The seas were thick with millions of creatures.  Still no opposite coastline.

Still lots of creatures.  I think I saw a little striped fish out there too.

And now I was sailing in the dark.  This wasn't going to be too bad - I'd traveled by boat in the dark before, and it's safe as long as you don't get too close to any coastlines, from which skeletons can take shots at you, or creepers swim out to greet you.

Hmm, a fin next to my boat.  What could this mean?

Then something started attacking me.  I couldn't see anything, of course, but it was packing a wallop.  I struck with my sword and then somehow I was outside the boat and in the water.  Had something knocked me out of the boat?  Had I taken too enthusiastic a swipe with my sword?  Were swords and boats somehow incompatible, and upon using the one, the other disappeared?  Pirates wouldn't have done well in Minecraft.

Splashing in the water, trying to swim while at the same time see what direction I was getting hit from, I struck out madly with the sword.

I lost all track of the boat.

It was then that the night started to get bad.

Uh-oh.

I couldn't tell what direction to swim to safety, or what was even attacking me.  I tried to swim fixedly in one direction, but the attacks kept coming - was whatever it was swimming faster than me, or was there more than one of them?  I turned and began swiping with my sword again.  This time I managed to hit the creature that was attacking me - it lit up red, in the shape of a shark.  But then I lost track of it again, or there was another one.  Finally I adopted a strategy that was a frantic combination of the run-blindly-away and the randomly-flail strategies... I began to swim backward through the water, aiming downward with my sword and swiping it behind me like some sort of crazy propeller.  Eventually the attacks stopped, but I had no idea why.  My health meter began to slowly recover.

All of my screenshots from the rest of the night are shots of dark water, where the only visible action was my health meter going up and down.  Something would attack me, and then maybe I would get a few swipes at it, or maybe I would never find it, or maybe I would manage to escape or maybe the friendly dolphins were fighting off the sharks, or maybe the dolphins were the ones eating me.  I don't know.  I became terrified of the sound of my own swimming, since I couldn't tell the difference between my own splashing and that of something coming to get me.

Catching my breath

Aaaaa!  Aaaa!  splish splash

Eventually my hunger meter dipped to the level below which regeneration stops.  From this point forward, my health meter would go only down.  Unless I could manage to eat a bowl of mushroom soup while swimming.  I know you can't even eat while walking, and eating takes a few seconds now.  So it seemed unlikely.

Somewhere in the night, I spotted land for the first time, a small blip of an island.  I had drawn my shovel, prepared to dig an emergency shelter, when I noticed that the island already had two creepers on it.  While I debated whether I could shoot them from the water with a bow, one of them jumped in the water and started swimming for me.

One well-placed creeper hit might do me in - I decided instead to keep swimming, because nothing was attacking me this very moment.

Creeper island.

Goodbye, Creeper Island

The sun began finally to rise, revealing the eerie sight of many jellyfish rising into the sky as well.  In my state at the time, I couldn't quite remember the details of jellyfish biology, but I was pretty sure they didn't usually do this sort of thing.  It probably wasn't good news.

It wasn't.  Something invisible began to hurt me, and my health meter turned yellow and started going down of its own accord, a sure sign that I'd been poisoned.  Had I been stung?  Had a jellyfish landed on my head?  Had I accidentally swallowed one?

This is probably bad.

Very perilously low on health now, I spotted land again and made desperately for the shore.  I was ready to not be in the ocean anymore.

Never have I mashed the "swim" button and the "forward" button harder.

Part 31: New universe is terrifying.

Zwingittty.

I felt a strange pulling sensation, and there I stood again in the glass portal, looking out at the desert.  But things were subtly different.  The light, for one - the shadows were sharper and deeper.  The horizon was farther... as I looked, a distant mesa-topped mountain began to resolve itself.

And there was no sign of Boxter.  I'd left him behind.

Welp.  Time to go find another horse.

I looked back toward the mountain where I'd built last night's shelter-cave.  It was still there, a slot three blocks high and two blocks wide through which I'd ridden Boxter the horse just moments ago.  But that was in a different, parallel universe.  And hopefully this one held pegasus.

OoooOOOooo.... crisp shadows!

 I had barely left the portal when I noticed another thing that was different: snakes!  There were snakes in this new universe!  All of different colors, red, black, and green.  I approached them carefully, sword ready.  From close up, they appeared not to be single creatures, but sequences of cubes that followed closely behind one another like some strange colonial organism.  Occasionally the curve of the snake would twist, and whiplash would send the end cubes hurrying to catch up with the rest of the animal.  When I approached even closer, the snake-creature reared up to meet me.  I backed off.

Will they hurt me?  I think they might hurt me.

 And there was something in the air, swooping and hovering: brightly-colored dragonflies!  They seemed to offer no harm, but buzzed the landscape in a prismatic sort of way.

Lucky action shot.

Not far away were two more new sights: some fat black flies, and a tortoise.  The flies scattered lazily when I approached, and I inspected the tortoise, which didn't look too scary.  It wasn't doing much of anything, and only looked up at me in a quizzical manner.

Tortoise!

On an impulse, I right-clicked on the tortoise.  Apparently right-clicking is the tortoise inversion operation.  The tortoise ended up on its back, frowning distinctly, with its little cubic legs in the air.  I'm not a mean person - I right-clicked again to set the tortoise back upright.  (But I did flip the second tortoise over briefly as well, chiefly because I found it strangely amusing)  I wonder what purpose tortoise inversion serves.  Can you do this to any animal?  I've only ever tried right-clicking bunnies, and they end up on your head with their little bunny paws hanging down over your eyes.  What happens if you right-click a lion?  I must say I've never tried it.

Tee-hee!

 During my northward progress I kept my eye out for another horse to tame, so I could continue my journey as I had originally intended.  The closest thing I saw was a horsefly.  I should have tried to put the saddle on it, just to see.

I would love to see a screenshot of someone saddling and riding one of these.

 By the time night drew near, I hadn't found any sign of a horse, so I decided to dig a shelter for the night, and continue my search in the morning.  I found a stone mountainside and dug a hidey hole.

I blocked it up with glass, and to pass the time, began to shuffle through the gravel in my pockets, looking for more flints.  The night began to fill with sounds.  Unusual sounds.  Creepy sounds.  Terrifying sounds.  Not only were there growls that sounded like lions, but there were strange squeals, and howls, and at one point a chorus of what I can only describe as human voices shouting something like "Hey, cut it out!  Cut it out!"  (What the heck?  What the heck?)  And then something very nearby started making a guttural, back-of-the-throat "a-a-a-a-a" sound.

I'm not sure if a bigger window would have been more or less scary.  And gravel looks odd now.

I began to dig a mine, but since I was high up on a hill, there was very little chance of me finding something useful like iron, and I realized my main purpose was to get away from all those scary sounds.

Drawn by morbid curiosity, I returned to the window.  There was something there.  I brandished my specially sharpened rock and edged forward.

I have a rock.

 It was a rat.  Small.  Cute.  I had just begun to relax when another one joined it, black with creepy red eyes, and then another one fell from somewhere above and transformed itself into a dead rat.  An actual dead rat item.  And strangely, I was starting to feel a little hungry, and dead rat sounded kinda tasty.

A jumble of whisker, rat, and dead rat.

I busted out the bottom panel of glass so I could get at the dead rat.  The rat with the creepy red eyes rushed in and started biting me.

 I whacked it with my sword until it also transformed into a dead rat.  Apparently one-block holes are no longer safe, for shelters.  At least, not at ground level.

By the look of this screenshot, I'd climbed partway up the wall to get away from it.

 I wondered if the brown rats, with their normal black eyes, might be all right, and maybe it was just the red-eyed ones that were evil.  Then the brown rat made a rush for my ankles, answering that question.  Shoot.  All cute little rats are dangerous.

That wasn't all.  None of my screenshots show it, but during the night away on the far shore, I saw a large lumpy broad-shouldered human form moving slowly.  It was large.  Very large.  I don't think a human on horseback is the largest thing in Minecraft anymore.

As night drew to a close, the terrifying noises continued, now chiefly hair-raising howls, and something periodically going a-a-a-a-a.

And then as the sun rose, something arrived at my very front door.  It seemed to be a wolf.  And it wasn't interested in the juicy dead rat that bobbed enticingly beneath its nose.  It wanted me.  Maybe it wanted to be friends?

 Somehow, I didn't think so.

N...n....nice doggy?

 And just as I had resigned myself to an early-morning wolf battle, I saw a flash of something green in the background.  Something BIG and green.  Was... was that a scorpion?  An enormous green scorpion?  It moved into position beside the wolf before I could get a good look at it.

And ominously, neither wolf nor possible scorpion fought each other, as I had been used to Mo'Creatures predators doing.  They were focused intently on me instead.  Maybe they weren't of the same murderous ilk as the constantly-battling lions, bears, and foxes.  Maybe they would be my friends.

Somehow, I didn't think so.

This is going to be interesting.

And something was still going a-a-a-a-a-a-a....