Choose Themselves (Songs of War Fanfiction)

Chapter Twelve Nether Encounter

Elraien stepped onto the obsidian Nether Portal gateway, allowing the violet magenta hue to twirl around him, and brought him into another dimension. The violet portal light swirled before Elraien, and for a moment he felt light, weightless, as if he was floating in a void of emptiness blanketed by magenta light. Elraien disliked being off ground, for he could not control himself once he was in midair. Then the purple light faded, and Elraien found himself back onto solid ground.

A roar and a tremor sounded behind Elraien as he exited the portal. A wave of heat blew toward Elraien, and he blinked. The Nether Realms he was in, a place with rivers, lakes, fountains, and seas of lava. Ashes fell around him, everywhere was dark red, even the distant dome looked as if it was blocked by a barrier of red fog. Netherrack was everywhere, dimly lit by popping lava and patches of glow stones hanging from the dome high above.

Elraien drew his blade and took a few steps forward. Turning around, he admired the Nether Portal that stood tall and mysterious against the red background. Elraien left the Nether Portal and went deeper into the Nether, his focus kept on the surroundings. Elraien roamed the nether wastes, and stopped on a hill overlooking a river of lava, sluggishly flowing off to the distance. By sluggish, Elraien meant by comparison to water, but the lava in the Nether was at least two times faster than in the Overworld, which Elraien admits. Elraien was breath-taken. Not as if Nether was some safe haven he discovered, but he could not imagine a place like this until seeing it.

Screech. A cry sounded somewhere above him.

Elraien looked up, and saw a gigantic, pale, whitish gray creature with tentacles like a squid floating towards him. It opened its eyes, which were blood red, and shot a fireball at Elraien with a piercing cry that sounded like a corrupted ocelot. Elraien sprang to the side, the fireball narrowly missing him. As the fireball hit, it exploded with a boom. The ground was lit with burning flames in the small crater caused by the fireball.

Anger flared up inside him, a nameless wrath that rose out of nowhere. Normally Elraien would enjoy the moment of a fight, but this time he was angered. He dodged the second fireball and threw his blade as if it was a spear. The creature screeched once more, before falling out of the sky and hitting the ground with a muffled thump.

The anger faded, and Elraien stopped in place. What caused him to be outraged within seconds? The unwarned ambush from a Nether creature? Why would a Nether creature cause him to be furious? Maybe because he was attacked by something he never saw or heard of? Elraien pulled his sword out and sat down, cleaning the smudged surface of the blade. Then he stood up and climbed down the pillar. Where the huge creature had fallen, lay a white shaped crystal like object and two scoops of gunpowder. A ghast tear, Elraien realized. That creature must have been a ghast.

The death cry the ghast made right before its death sounded in Elraien's mind as he inspected the cold ghast tear in his hand, not hot, not pointy, but smooth and cold as if solidified moonlight. The shrieks of the ghast sounded menacing and angry, but also sad and pleading. Maybe Elraien was imagining all this, but a cry of the ghast sounds eerily alike to a word, 'help', being cried out from a pained owner. Was that the reason the ghast was crying? Was the ghast forced to attack him? Elraien went off wondering, his imagination working its way into him. In his trail of thoughts, Elraien decided that it was fire that provoked him. If there was an element that Elraien dreaded, it was flame.

The deep grunt of a pig sounded behind Elraien as he navigated down a netherrack slope. Turning around, Elraien saw an undead- No, a zombified piglin going after him with a golden sword in hand. Behind the first zombified piglin, three more followed idly, their swords held in a not-very-menacing way. Not knowing the rules of the Nether, Elraien attacked the one nearest to him. The zombified piglin grunted in pain and fell dead. The other three zombified piglin turned to Elraien, their leisure steps becoming quick, and their bored grunt became angry snorts. Another group of four zombified piglins appeared on the top of the slope where Elraien came from, summoned by the group that got attacked. With golden swords in hand, they charged downwards to Elraien.