Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand the spook-fest begins! (Or so I hope. I'm not good with scary stories, but I did my best!) Now, onward!

Chapter 2: What are THEEEEEEEEEY?!

            Jesse and Nikki followed the map carefully. Luckily it wasn’t too far off from outside Oak Valley. Nikki partly felt ashamed of her jealousy-controlled act to have her brother to herself. She just wanted to spend some time with him alone, for he hadn’t really been coming up for air lately. She just hoped he wasn’t mad.

    The siblings walked in an uncomfortable silence for a short while. Zephyr, Nikki’s pet ender bat, squeaked in her ear on her shoulder rather gruffly, as if he wasn’t pleased with Nikki’s action back at the Order’s house.

    “Don’t look at me like that,” she sighed to him. “I did what I had to do.”

    “*Squeak-squeak! Squeak-squeak!*”

    “But I’m practically invisible to him now that he and Petra are together! I thought I would be ready for this when it happened, but…I guess I misjudged myself,”

    “*Squeak! Squeak-squeak-squeak!*”

    “I just want him to be happy…even if it costs me my own. But I can’t help being selfish when it comes to the last bit of family I have left,”

    “*Squeak?!*”

    “No, of course you’re like family to me now! But Jesse’s my big brother, so you should know how important he is to me…”

    Zephyr shrugged his tiny shoulders and flapped ahead, as if their little conversation was over, not leaving Nikki feeling any better than she was before.

    “Woah! Look at that!” Jesse said suddenly. He was staring at a huge woodland mansion built entirely out of cobblestone and dark oak wood. It was ginormous, despite its simple building materials. Whoever built this place certainly put what they had to use…whoever built this.

    “We’re gonna enjoy this place!” Nikki said enthusiastically.

    “We’d enjoy it even more if the others were here…” Jesse mumbled.

    “What’d you say?”

    “Nothing! Nothing…”

    Jesse didn’t want to antagonize his sister for anything, but he felt a little sour about having to leave Petra and the others behind for this solo mission. He liked Nikki’s company a lot and all, but it seemed a bit invading now that he was in a relationship.

    “Let’s just search it, and be prepared for anything bad,” he said. “It’s already getting dark, and I don’t want anything worse than a creeper to deal with.” With a nod of acknowledgement, Nikki trailed next to her brother as they went inside.

     

* * *

     

    The mansion was dark, hardly any torches hanging on the wall. But these two were experienced treasure hunters now, and they brought tons of torches in case things got too hard to see. When Jesse placed the first torch, he killed two nearby creepers with ease. One of them dropped two pieces of gunpowder, which would come in handy for splash potion-making later. Deeper in, they found a chest that held mostly leather, horse armor, and two saddles.

    “Sheesh, did a horse die in this chest or something?” Nikki joked. Jesse didn’t laugh, but cracked a good-natured chuckle. Exploring further, they didn’t find much. The interior was definitely interesting, though. There was a library, some sort of fighting ring, a dining room, even a room reserved for…wool?!

    Then, as it got dark, Jesse and Nikki came across some sort of grave behind iron doors. Zephyr flew through one of the windows, came back with a button in his mouth, and opened the doors for them. Next to the grave was a large chest, which Jesse cheered up to see. They hardly found any of these on their adventures. “Oh, here we go. Jackpot!” he grinned. “All the treasure you can find, kiddo.”

    Finding the large chest made Jesse feel better. He started digging around in it, hoping to find something good.

    “What’s in there?” Nikki asked curiously as Zephyr re-perched on her shoulder.

    “Well…we got a lot of bones,”

    “Bones are fine. We can ship the meal to Farmer Gloria in Redstonia,”

    “What about all the gunpowder in here?”

    “Let’s take half of it; it might come in handy, and give the rest to Nohr in Boom Town. Any rare ores?”

    “Just some redstone. Maybe there’s more in the back,”

    As Jesse went digging deeper into the chest, Nikki heard a whoosh, and felt a wind down her neck. The torches lighting the grave room went out.

    “Jesse? Did you hear that?” she whispered as thunder rumbled in the distance.

    “Yeah…I think I did…The storm’s coming in. We better find this stuff fast,” Jesse went back to digging. Nikki heard the whoosh again, and this time, the iron doors shut with a rough clank. The button was no longer there. Nikki was starting to feel a bit scared now.

    “J-Jesse?”

    “Hang on, gimme a sec…”

    As Nikki strained to listen for sound, her senses froze when she heard a voice that wasn’t Jesse’s whisper out in a singsong tone:

    “Hello in there…”

    “Jesse, I’m serious!”

    “Hold up, I’m nearly at the bottom,”

    “Someone’s inside her mansion…we should escort them out…”

    The whispers were getting louder and closer. And now Nikki could hear the scraping of a sword against a wall. She was getting extremely nervous by this point, and Jesse hadn’t noticed squat.

            “Jesse, for Notch’s sake!” she was yelling now.

            “Just a moment! I’ll let you know when I’ve found something good,”

            “Just how deaf is he?!” Nikki thought furiously, a little more annoyed than frightened now. “Like, damn!”

            Nikki turned away from her brother—and came face-to-face with a creature! It was horrifying to look at. There were two of them. They were grey with humanlike bodies, leathery wings, and glowing red cracks spreading through their bodies. They held iron swords. Now, for someone as brave as Nikki, this usually doesn’t happen. But even a brave person will scream if taken by surprise. Especially if it’s by something so scary-looking. As Zephyr squealed alarm, one lunged at her, which she leapt clear of, bumping into her brother’s back.

            “Okay! Geez!” Jesse finally pulled his head out of the large chest. “Can’t a guy look for treasure without getting--” he stopped mid-sentence when he saw the mobs, which were grinning maliciously. They charged at the siblings, who ducked in unison to avoid them.

            “RUN!” shouted Nikki, taking off, Jesse trailing her. He had never seen something so horrid in his life. But enough about them; what mattered now was escaping those things! He and Nikki rattled the iron doors, but they didn’t open, and the creatures were getting closer! Then, out of desperation, Nikki whipped out an iron pick and hacked at the cobblestone wall until it broke, leaving a getaway for them both. She quickly blocked the hole so they couldn’t follow. For a moment, they thought they were safe. But then, the monsters floated through the wall, freed.

    “They can float through walls?!” he gasped, making a hairpin turn and heading in an opposite direction.

    “Whatever they can do, they can’t follow us outside! Let’s bail!” suggested Nikki. Nowhere near objection to that plan, Jesse and Nikki ran for the exit, the flying mobs keeping up the chase. The storm was really rough out there, but it was their only way out. Jesse heard the unsheathing of an iron sword behind him, and the whistle of wind getting closer. Realizing that the sword had been thrown, he grabbed Nikki and tackled her down. The two landed roughly on the ground, narrowly missing a thrown sword, which burrowed itself in the exit’s door frame.

    “Ha! You missed!” Jesse taunted in triumph. He spoke too soon. Black vines started to grow rapidly where the sword had impacted, blocking the exit entirely. Zephyr flew out just as the vines grew behind him, but the siblings were trapped! Jesse tried to move them, but they were as solid as stone! And hard as obsidian as well, because Nikki’s iron pick couldn’t break through! Now they really WERE in trouble.

    “Zephyr! Go get the rest of the Order!” Nikki told her pet. The ender bat hesitated, worried sick about his owner. “We’ll be fine!” Nikki promised him. “GO!” Zephyr flapped viciously off into the night for help. Jesse prayed to Notch that he could brave the storm to get their friends.

    “Quick! Out the window!” Nikki cried. She didn’t even stop to pull out her pick; she just left it there to head for the window with Jesse, so they could break the glass and flee, but the second creature threw its sword, digging deep into the nearest window’s sill. The black vines grew again, and spread way faster, covering all the other windows. Now, aside from two lone torches in the middle of the long hall, they were being chased in total darkness.

    Jesse and Nikki went on running. The things would be delayed by pulling their swords out of the walls for a while, but they both knew they would lose ground all too soon if those mobs could fly and float through walls. This chase would be over all too soon. Just then, as they neared their only source of light, Nikki tripped over something hard on the carpet. In slight pain, but also curious, she punched through it, and found a wooden trapdoor underneath the carpet!

    “That could be our ticket out!” she realized. “Jesse! Wait! Down here! Hurry!” Jesse turned his head, and saw Nikki kneeling down in the middle of the hall.

    “Have you forgotten about the two disturbing things pursuing us?!” he snapped.

    “Look down here! It could be a secret passageway out!”

    Jesse turned his head downward to see a trapdoor. He didn’t like it, but it was their only hope at the moment. He clicked it open, and they dropped down just as the flying creatures rounded the corner. They didn’t see them drop down.

    Jesse landed face-first into a pool of water surrounded by mossy stone bricks. Nikki had already climbed out and entered through a doorway. Inside the room it led to, there was a portal unlike anything Jesse had ever seen. It was like a vertical End portal, but made of bone blocks, like the one you’d find in fossils. There were unmoving skeletons around it. There was a protruding bone block on the top, and the design chiseled on the top had a winged mob that looked like the same ones chasing them. The wall above the portal had a sign which read “V.E.X.”

    Jesse instantly recognized that name. It was the name Jenny had tried to remember back in their house. “A cartographer from Village Country gave it to me. I got it for free. He seemed like he had a bit of PTSD, though. He was screaming about the horrors it held. Something about a…’lex?’” It wasn’t a lex the cartographer was petrified of. It was these flying creatures, a vex!

    For all of awhile, both siblings were in awe. Then, they heard the flapping of wings. The vexes knew they were down here!

    “Run, or fight?” Nikki asked Jesse, waiting for his command. But Jesse had to think over this very carefully. He either had to fight the vexes, without even completely knowing what they could do, or run off into a dimension they had never seen before.

    The vexes were in sight now, and they were charging fast, their red cracks glowing an angry red color. They passed through the doorway with no trouble at all.

    “Jesse! Run or fight?!” Nikki shouted. When the vexes were right on top of them, Jesse made his decision.

    “RUN!” he yelled, grabbing his sister’s hand and hauling her into the portal. The last thing he caught in his field of vision was their twisted faces of fury, and his own pale face reflected in their empty black eyes. 

And major choice #2 makes its debut! What horrors await our sibling superheroes on the other side of that portal? Well, I won't know, 'cuz I gotta write the chapter first! Bon voyage, my friendz!