Arrival to the Mainland

At first we ran after the setting sun, but it proved faster. By the time the last vestiges of light waned, giving way before the inexorably growing darkness, which soon enveloped the entire horizon, we ran out of strength. We could barely move our feet. Twilight descended upon sand hills and dunes, and shadows thickened on the ground. Luckily, the desert terrain lay flat and open to view, so no random ambush could surprise us. Still, the darker it became, the more figures began to appear in the distance. Dim, vague silhouettes seemed to randomly appear and vanish a few moments later, sometimes grouping together and sometimes standing alone. We were definitely not alone anymore.

We tried to avoid approaching any of these figures. Exhausted by hunger, we did not have a chance to make it through even a light skirmish. When these nightly creatures loomed right in our path, Steve quietly directed our path widely around them. They didn't seem to react to us much, so I began to hope that we would pass by them unnoticed. A couple of times we stopped completely and Steve would shoot from his bow at more figures moving in the darkness.

It seemed that this forsaken desert would never end.

To my relief, my fears did not come to pass. We climbed to the top of another high sandy hill and stopped, taking in a beautiful view. A valley opened before us, illuminated by flowing moonlight, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Small ponds rested among endless fields of tall grass. Huge mountains with snow-capped peaks rose in the distance.

"Look. Trees..." Steve pointed somewhere up ahead. "That will be a good place to settle..."

Taking a closer look, I noticed a narrow strip of the forest near the foot of the mountains. Steve must have really sharp eyes, I admired to myself. He could see that place this far in the dark?

We descended from the sandy hill right into the sea of green. The barren desert retreated behind us. Still, this was not the time to relax our guard quite yet.

"We should be careful. These thickets are so dense that they could hide an army of creepers." I mentioned to Steve and immediately walked into something soft, which stirred against my feet. While I still gasped for breath, it made a loud sigh almost in my ear and stomped away through tall grass.

"Aaaaaah!" I yelled in panic.

"Wow! Yes!" Steve exclaimed with pure delight. "These are cows, my friend! A whole herd of them!... And not just cows. There is a pig, napping right there, do you see? And there are probably birds here, too."

Thick clouds gathered overheard, rapidly blotting out the moonlight, plunging the entire world around us into inky blackness. Far in the East, a tiny strip of sky tinged with faint shades of red. Morning was approaching.

"Dawn at last. I thought this night would never end." I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I turned to Steve and noticed that he was tensely staring at something under his feet. There was a sound, a sort of whurp. And something dark appeared to my left. Before I could turn to it fully, it simply vanished. A whurp, this time coming from my right, and it reappeared there, black as if a piece of the night night had condensed together in the air and took solid form.

"Don't... look at it," Steve warned, sharply grasping my sleeve. "If your eyes meet, we are dead."

I obediently froze, turning my gaze to the ground. With peripheral vision, I could still vaguely distinguish this creature looming next to us. It was incredibly tall and inhumanly thin. Coal black, with its hands grotesquely stretched so its knuckles almost brushed the ground. It made strange noises, like a low growl deep in its chest.

"What is this thing?" I whispered sideways.

"An Enderman. A traveler from the End. Be careful. It can feel if someone looks at it. Then, it will attack..."

"Where did it come from? From the far lands of the world?" I began to slowly back away from the enderman, careful to not look up at it.

"No. I thought that at first, too. But, then, I read that they come from another world..." Steve followed my example, also backing away.

"As far as I know, it was humans themselves, who had opened the first portals to the End. For which they later paid a price." Steve continued.

I was about to ask if this had anything to do with the mysterious disappearance of all humans, when a quiet whurp sounded and the enderman appeared right in my path. I froze in surprise, instinctively looking up.

Purple, luminous eyes stared straight into my soul. And then the huge, toothy mouth stretched wide open and a screech burst into my ears, the sound increasing until it rang in my head, disorienting, appearing to come from all sides at once. A mix between a growl, a groan, and buzzing, which made the air physically vibrate.

"What have you done..." Steve muttered. Immediately, he threw up his bow, aimed at the creature and fired. The Enderman disappeared, dodging an arrow almost at point blank range. At once, it reappeared behind Steve, reaching its long, clawed hands for him.

"Look out!" I lunged and thrust at it with my sword, only for the steel to pierce empty air as the Enderman teleported away again.

"You look out!" Steve shouted, drawing out his sword and rushing past me to attack the Enderman, who had apparently reappeared behind me. I glimpsed its clawed fingers just when Steve nicked it and it vanished yet again.

This was the end, I realized. This creature could kill us in two swipes of its claws, one for the each of us.

Setting our swords before us, we moved to stand back to back, resolved to die in battle.

Drop... Drop...

First raindrops splattered on the ground around us. Thunder rang out, rolling above us across the cloudy sky, briefly lighting the edges. The drops fell faster, turning into a steady outpouring of rain.

The Enderman froze. It cringed beneath the drops, as if suddenly overwhelmed with pain. It vanished, to reappear closer in another attempted lunge for us. I slashed at it with my sword and... the Enderman crumpled, hissing in despair. Its body fell into the grass and vanished in clouds of steam. My trembling hands lowered the sword.

"... Saved." Steve rasped. He bent down and picked up an item left behind in place of the Enderman's vanished form. A small, translucent, darkly green pearl.

"Water burns Enders." My friend explained. "Next time you decide to fight one, let's do it by the river... Or lake... So we can jump in the water if we have to."

Getting drenched by the pouring rain we reached the edge of the forest without further incidents. Here, we still had to build a small, wooden cabin so we could rest for a while. We might even settle here for a while. At least, until Herobrine showed up.