Chapter 5 - An Unexpected Night

Ett and Mom dug down with one iron pickaxe and a few stone pickaxes, looking for diamonds.

"Make sure to only use the iron pickaxe when you have to," said Mom. Ett nodded and kept mining.

Soon they reached a cavern. Ett saw a bat flying acrobatically, and Mom told her to stop getting distracted.

"It's all clea-"

"Creeper!" shouted Ett, and when Mom was taking a while to turn around, built a wall on the one-block-wide natural bridge above the cavern that they were standing on.

Then, someone jumped into their mine. Ett turned back instantaneously, and saw Ry (a.k.a. Riley).

"Geez!" said Ett. "I, I..."

"Didn't know it was gonna be me coming?" said Ry, saying each syllable every second.

"Yeah, dude..." said Ett, talking just as slowly, pausing one second for the comma and three for the ellipsis.

But then another person jumped into their mine. And when Ett and Riley looked, it was not someone they recognized.

"What are you doing around here?" said Ry.

"I'm your neighbor. You're Deena, right?" they said.

"Yup, Deena Sharrow," said Mom.

"And what's my full name?" they asked.

"Daren Pearson? You look like Daren Pearson," she said.

"Yup," said Daren, "so we're neighbors."

"Of course," said Mom. "Would you please lead us to your house?"

"Come with me," said Daren.

So, they followed him.

"Who are these people?" asked someone from inside the house.

"That's the owner," he whispered.

"Our neighbors?" he said.

"And what are you doing with them?"

"I'm 24! They're going mining right now! I'm going with them!"

And so, they went back to mining.

"I'd like to get rid of that creeper," said Ett.

"What creeper?" asked Daren.

"The one behind that wall," said Ett.

"Daren, can you tell us how to kill that creeper?" asked Ry.

"Please?" he added.

"I prefer Dapper," he said, "but anyway, you should mine the wall and hit the creeper off the edge with a side-swing."

"Good job, Dapper!" said Ry. "The name's" - he looked at Mom, which was still not his mom, but she still gave her the OK - "Ry."

"The name's Ett."

"The name's-"

Ett covered Mom's mouth, chuckling and saying, "Mom, you told him your name first!" and chuckled some more.

So now Ry mined the wall, then swung... and missed. The creeper started to flash and fuse.

Everyone gasped.

"Ry!" shouted Ett as she swung and hit. The creeper had exploded a split second after Ett had hit it, so she felt it a little bit and the bridge was missing a few blocks.

"How... could you... MISS THAT?"

Then she guckled (giggle-chuckled). She couldn't help it. Ry missed a swing?

"Remarkable!" commented Ett in perfect unison with the thought as they walked to and on the opposite ledge of the bridge to the left.

Ett spotted a sweet spot: water, no mobs, and an exposed, infinitely enormous cave just below it!

"I found what we're looking for," said Ett, drawing everyone's attention.

"Or at least where we'll find it," she corrected herself.

They all jumped down from the first span of water to the next into the infinitely enormous cave.

Ry mined a weird, wavy black stone on the wall, then...

...

found six diamonds!

"GUYS!" shouted Ry. "I GOT THE DIAMONDS!"

He held them up triumphantly.

Ett chuckled and ran to take the diamonds from him.

"Rawr!" said Ry like a dragon, pinning Ett down.

Ett giggled and said, "Maybe mythology isn't so bad after all."

Then they remembered church, looked at each other, and nodded, knowing telepathically that the beast of the End was definitely a dragon. I mean, c'mon, what's not scary about a **dragon**?

"Riley, Daren," said Ett, "we were going to go to the Nether."

"What's the Nether?" asked Ry very inquisitively.

Before Dapper could give a long explanation, Ett explained, "The world is ending. It's the way to save it." Dapper gave her a gesture that he knew more, so Ett let him talk.

"There is more that I know Ett doesn't know," he claimed, and Ett nodded before he said, "The Nether is more lively now. But, I've heard, when my Great-Grandpa had Grandpa, the Nether was empty and ominous, like the End. The fortress you must find contains almost-black brick."

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