Dont read this, this is just for stories i want read

crush

The first rule of mining is simple. Never mine straight down. Everyone learns it as a kid; barely anyone follows it. Rules were meant to be bent, even broken.

So George is mining straight down right now. He needs diamonds; he needs to go low; he’s mining straight down. He has feather falling boots and a fire res potion, so he’ll be fine even if he falls.

Which he does.

One moment he’s standing on solid ground, chipping away at the deepslate block, the next he’s falling through the air with a shriek, stomach twisting sickeningly, the next he’s landing with a thud, on his feet like a cat but immediately face planting with another thump.

He groans, in pain and annoyance and inconvenience.

The ground groans back.

It’s a deep thundering roar, shuddering through his bones, sending a primal fear through his brain.

Get up, get out, get away from here.

He scrambles to his feet, rips his sword from its sheath.

The rumbling has stopped, but the silence is even more chilling, deep rooted and cold, like the absence of breath in a dead man’s lungs.

George takes a second to take in his surroundings, becomes more bewildered and awed and afraid with every second.

It’s some kind of fortress, or something, hewn from dark rock, strange blocks decorated with what look like claws and tentacles littered around the place, which is imposing and convoluted and drenched in darkness. The ground is abyssal, looking almost infected, void blue-black and studded with green dots that flicker and blink like toxic stars. Or like eyes, silently watching.

George’s skin crawls and he spins around, holding out his torch in an attempt to press back the darkness —

A figure. Talk and broad and hulking, some kind of beast —

It breathes in. Heavy. A softer version of the rumbling noise that rattled through George before, though this is not a soft noise at all —

It lumbers forward, a hesitant step, like a zombie, ungainly and slow, and George is relieved because it seems like something he’ll be able to outrun, but the movement still startles him into dropping his sword, which clatters to the ground like a clanging bell.

Silence. George flinches, breath tucked tightly into his stomach.

The darkness drops like a curtain, suffocating and velvety and pitch-black, drenching every flicker of light into nothingness, the red glow of his torch barely passing beyond the reach of its flame.

The creature rushes towards him, body wheezing and crackling like it’s some monstrous machine and George tries to flail for his sword and stumble backwards at the same time, ends up falling flat on his back, torch snuffed out, head spinning after thudding against the strange surface of the floor — it’s sort of sticky, like it’s trying to suck him in or spread itself over him and George lets out a wretched sob, tries to get up and run but the beast is on him, looming over him, beetle-blue and midnight-black, a cyan haze billowing in the hollow between the spiked cage of its ribs, like something is trapped inside trying to escape, flinging itself fruitlessly against the glass —

The creature’s hand grabs at George’s chest, covers it completely and fuck George is about to die, he’s about to be crushed to death by a hand the size of his whole fucking chest, the fingers curling around him, gripping him tight like he’s just a toy, inanimate and inconsequential and he’s thrashing to get free but it makes no difference, makes no dent, the creature just pins him down steady and still and watches him and —