Skonathan the Skeleton Swordsman, a fan favorite, is a red-eyed warrior dedicated to the Skeleton King from the Sleeping City. During Skeleton Steve and UltimateSword5’s dangerous journey underground in Noob Years Season Three, Skonathan guarded over his previous master until their escape to the surface world. He lost an arm, held off a hoard of swarming arachnids, and fell to his death from the upper spider minds into a lava fall … but he did not die.
Keep an eye on Skeleton Steve Club emails and this website for a new series following the wandering adventures of the grim, one-armed skeletal swordsman as he tries to find his way back to his master.
Diary of Skonathan the Skeleton Swordsman – Book 1 (Season 1, Episode 1)
**Coming Soon**
This high-quality fan fiction fantasy diary book is for kids, teens, and nerdy grown-ups who love to read epic stories about their favorite game!
Skonathan SURVIVED.
The fans demanded it!
Skonathan is a master swordsman, a dedicated soldier loyal to the Skeleton King. Created by dark artifact magic, befriended by Skeleton Steve in the Sleeping City at the bottom of the world, and lost to the spider swarm and a fiery demise by lava during Season 3 of the Noob Years. But he survived! Too lucky or too tough to die, Skonathan the skeleton finds himself in the most dire of circumstances, separated from his master and near death.
But when he is suddenly bound to a mysterious and powerful artifact, the intelligent Silver Sword known as Akari Luna, then is pulled through a portal into another world–somewhere entirely outside of Minecraft–his difficult journey to return to his king is only just beginning! Skonathan finds himself completely out of his depth in a completely alien and hostile environment. With his new magical sword, will he survive this strange, new realm?
Love Minecraft Adventure??
Read Book 1 of Skonathan the Swordsman SOON!
— Will be Available on Kindle and in Paperback
Book One Preview
Chapter 1 – A Fiery Demise
My lord, Skeleton Steve, I hope that this journal finds you across space and time.
Combat is all I have ever known ever since my birth at your hands in the Sleeping City, since being separated from you in the spider mines, and the many strange lands I have traveled since then.
My honor is my legacy, and always, I have sought to return to you, my Skeleton King. Know that I have not stayed away from serving you by my choice. Instead, by the power of the magnificent Akari Luna, the Silver Sword artifact that is bound to me, I have been trapped on one bizarre world after another, defending the innocent and making my way back to your Diamodia.
I am your invincible swordsman, the warrior created by your hand, and I will find you again.
I am Skonathan, the skeleton swordsman.
And with this journal, I will document my travels ever since my fiery demise that saw me reborn as the world walker that I am now. One day, I hope that you will find this journal and the journals that follow. I hope that I find my way back to you, my lord, but I have learned not to depend on hope.
Instead, I depend on myself, the clarity of my actions, and my blade.
One day, I will find you and serve you again. But in the meantime, I will tell my story and release my tale into the winds of the void.
Perhaps the wind will blow your way…
It feels like so long ago now, the time when I stood with you and the Minecraftian UltimateSword5 on the rickety old wooden bridges of the spider mines, back when we struggled to escape to the surface of your world. But I can remember every moment:
The underground ravine was deep and dark, and the old, wooden structures of the mines reached across the yawning expanse back and forth, connecting multiple tunnels full of rusty rail tracks and ruined crates that used to be full of ores but now held only cobwebs.
The entire area was infested with hundreds of vicious, green-eyed spiders with leg-spans as long as my iron sword and fangs full of venom. The foul creatures chittered and chirped, scrambling after us on a thousand scratchy legs and chitinous claws.
We were an enemy of the swam, and though I and you, my lord, had no flesh to poison and wither, the horde of vermin would have torn us bone from bone. Your Minecraftian friend, UltimateSword5, was indeed a living creature of flesh and blood, and was even more vulnerable than you or me, and he ran with wide eyes and a clear panic that showed his fear.
It had been Ulti’s idea to continue higher into the mines, even though it would be a dead-end. The Minecraftian wanted to harvest what little good wood we could find on this shoddy, old structure, because with wood, he could make tools that you and he could use to lead us out of this dreadful place.
It was our most desperate moment, and the swarm swelled behind us like a chittering wave of darkness full of tiny glowing green eyes…
“Get ahead to the waterfall!” you commanded the Minecraftian as we ran across a creaky old bridge that passed a blistering, fiery lavafall. “I’ll keep the ones up there busy while you get wood, Ulti!” You looked then back at me, and I admired your decisiveness. “Skonathan, watch our backs!” you said.
“Yes, my lord!” I replied, looking ahead at Ulti’s destination and searching for the best place I could find to create a bottleneck and face off against endless enemies.
“Okay!” UltimateSword5 called back. “There are spiders up here, too!”
Up ahead, there was a decent, defendable area of the bridge near the bright, hot lavafall. The wooden planks had collapsed on one side, narrowing the passage just enough that it might make a difference.
You and Ulti ran through the area, continuing on.
“I’ve got them!” you said to the Minecraftian, catching up to Ulti and passing him when he paused to start chopping at a column of wood with his old stone axe.
I stopped at the narrow part of the bridge next to the lavafall, feeling its intense heat crisp my bones.
Then I turned to face the slithering horde.
Planting my bony feet on the hot wooden planks, I felt the entire structure quake under me, weakened over time by age and being so close to the constant flow of burning magma flowing down from somewhere above us to the ravine floor, far below. I took a defensive stance, and raised my worn iron sword…
In that moment, as the swarm flowed toward me, scratching at the old wooden bridge with a rising sound like a raspy wind, I wished that I still had my other arm; my other sword.
Two swords would have been much better than one.
But wishing was pointless, and I was now a warrior with only one arm. My one blade would have to work as hard as two. My detached left arm swayed in my pack behind me. My old left skeletal hand clattered against my back. And my second sword was now in your hands, helping to protect you in its own way.
I would buy time for my king. I would sacrifice myself for you if I needed to.
The dry heat of the lavafall made me focus. The loud hissing and sputtering of the flowing magma helped to drown out everything outside of the battle about to clash right before me…
When the wave of arachnids hit me, I released all thoughts of escape and desire. I let my mind empty and my blade become my consciousness.
When the first spider leapt at me, claws spread wide and fangs ready, I caught it on the end of my sword, skewering the beast before letting my blade flow with the movement, allowing the dying thing to fall free, off and away from the bridge.
The second that came at me was cut into two pieces by a precise swing as I brought the sword back to middle guard. I thrust my blade into a third, spearing it through the thorax and withdrawing just as quickly as a fourth flew at me. I lopped off several of its bristly legs, and the creature squealed and tumbled off to my side, curling up into a painful death.
Two more came at me, and I stepped to the side as I skewered one, allowing the other to miss its pounce and land on the bridge behind me. Before it righted itself, I spun around as minimally as I could and stabbed it through its apple-sized abdomen.
As I turned to continue fighting the horde, I heard you and the Minecraftian working behind me, barely audible over the loud sputtering of the lavafall next to me and the chittering noise of the arachnid wave:
“Get as much wood as you can, Ulti!” you called.
“I’ll try!”
A quick glance back as I fought showed that the two of you were doing okay for the moment. I saw you fighting a few spiders of your own. The Minecraftian was working quickly at a wooden column with his axe.
Several small spiders attacked me at once; another pulse of the wave. A burgeoning mass of dark arachnid bodies grew on the bridge behind them, more and more spiders waiting in line to attack. I felt their spindly claws scrape at the bones of my legs and the metal of my chain mail.
Focusing on nothing more than the fight, I held the narrow area of the bridge, slicing and chopping through one spider body after another, stabbing through chunky body parts covered in chitin carapace and bristly hairs, skewering small, glossy arachnid heads between clusters of many glowing green eyes. I lopped off countless hard, clawed limbs that were like curved, black sticks ripping at my armor. I dodged subtly from side to side as arachnids lunged for my face with their fangs, making my chain mail coif swish back and forth.
Before long, a pile of spider corpses began stacking up around me on the narrow bridge, forcing the swarm to climb the bodies of their brethren to get to me.
With my right arm and my single blade, I dodged and danced and cut through all of the beasts that jumped at me and tried to climb my legs and armored body. The horde of arachnids pulsed and moved like monstrous, living thing. Several spiders spilled over the edges of the bridge and fell down into the ravine below.
I didn’t even bother counting. There was no telling how many I’d killed, and I was prepared to slay hundreds more…
“Come on, Skonathan!” you shouted suddenly from higher up the structure. “Time to go!”
My goopy blade cut through body after body. I kicked a spider off of my leg. One spider came flying at my face out of the horde, and I ducked, letting it sail past me. Two of its claws scraped along the chain mail that covered my skull and draped down over either side of my bony face. Another jumped at me and I caught it in the air with a perfect slice, cutting it into two halves midair as its green guts splattered all over me.
I tried to start backing away. Turning to run would be impossible—I would be swallowed up by the swarm immediately. Almost stumbling over a pile of hard, curled-up arachnid bodies, I continued fighting, carefully trying to disengage from the horde, but … they kept coming, flowing over the dead, skittering and leaping and clawing at me.
My sword chopped through one after another. I skewered one—stuck to my blade for an instant—then swung my sword vigorously at another, dislodging the dead spider and knocking another arachnid off of the bridge with its flying body.
“Skonathan, come on!”
I turned, facing you and UltimateSword5 for a moment as I killed another little beast with one sword swipe, then sliced another with the backswing…
It was just for a moment…
I saw both of you higher up the bridge. Ulti held several chunks of wood. You stood over the body of a small spider holding my other sword, also covered in foul spider fluids.
And your expressions turned into horror as yet another arachnid collided with my body, knocking into my shoulder and side with just enough force to throw me off balance.
I watched you watch me fall.
And in the next instant, as the roar of the lava rushed up to meet me, I became engulfed in extreme heat and light and fire.
I knew only burning and dazzling light.
There was nothing else. Only the lava.
I realized immediately what had happened: the spider had hit me, flying through the air, in just the right way to knock me off of the bridge and into the lava fall. I knew, with a calmness in my blazing skull, that this was the end, and I was going to perish in the burning magma.
But I didn’t perish.
Instead, my senses engulfed in fiery, blinding burning and a strange sensation of falling, I was lost in time for several seconds then felt a heavy crunch as my entire body hit something.
The burning continued, and I felt my legs and one arm flailing in blindness, and then there was an intense hissing sound, and I was cast into darkness.
Pitch-black, fully void darkness.
Then, there was nothing. No movement, no feeling, no burning or spiders. I couldn’t feel anything; arm, legs, movement, pain…
And time passed.
I was stuck like that for a while, but I had no sensation and no idea what was going on. I couldn’t feel anything, or see anything but darkness.
Dead? I thought.
No.
I could still think. My mind was in a haze and I could barely think of anything—the scene of your face and Ulti’s regarding me with naked terror replayed in my skull again and again, lit by the orange glow of the lava fall—but I could not organize a real, solid thought for…
Seconds? Minutes? Days?
Blackness and cold—I actually felt cold—and a strange whooshing sensation that I now know was the feeling of being spirited away in the wet darkness at the bottom of the world … until it all broke and I was thrust painfully into reality once again.
There was a crunching, shattering sound, and I could suddenly feel the rush of icy water against a part of my body. One of my legs was exposed to … something.
But I was almost nothing. I could barely focus, and that leg that I felt almost didn’t obey my mind when I screamed for it to move. There was no pain—one of the benefits of being undead—but I could feel that my freed leg was very damaged, and it hardly moved at all. Freezing water continued flowing over and around it, pushing into cracks and revealing more and more of my lower body with the chill of contact.
Eventually, I forced my leg to move, and as I did, I felt more crunching and cracking around me. There were moments of more water flooding in around me, as if I was breaking out of something and exposing more and more of my body to a flowing stream…
Then a piece fell away from my skull.
I could see, even if it was just from one eye!
I was, indeed, in an underground river of some sort, and my whole skeletal body—except for one leg and a few areas now—was encased in an inky black stone body cast that was gradually cracking and crumbling away in the flow of water. This river had apparently pushed me along—how far I had no idea—until my body had been caught by some stray jutting rocks, and the force of the water was breaking apart my stone prison.
How was I still alive??
I’d fallen into the lava fall! And then what? Out of it again, down to the ravine floor, and then, somewhere in between crashing onto the rocky bottom and here, I’d fallen into water, which hardened the lava around me, and I ended up … here…?
Or did I fall directly into water with my bony body completely covered in burning magma…?
And I still lived…
Barely.
Renewed, I fought against the stone encasing, feeling all of my broken and splintered bones struggle and complain and threaten to break into pieces. I felt shattered all over, burned and charred, fractured and ready to burst, but somehow had survived.
Obsidian. I was covered in obsidian.
Little by little, I freed myself as the heavy current of the river flowed over me and pinned me to the rocks. Chunks of my brittle stone cast fell away into the water, disappearing downriver. Eventually, my good arm was free—my iron sword was long gone—and I pried at the strange shell of obsidian around my armored torso, my neck, and the rest of my skull…
In time, my limbs were free enough that I was able to pull on the rocks at the river’s edge until I could release myself from the flow.
I landed on two fractured knees and one hand on solid ground—stone mixed with bedrock—and shook off the rest of the obsidian chunks while my entire injured form creaked and complained.
My lord…
There was no telling where I was, or how long I’d been out of it, but I knew that I had to find you; get back to you and Ulti to help you escape to the surface.
But I had no idea where I was, save for somewhere at the very bottom of Diamodia, and I was terribly, grievously wounded.
Several minutes later, I had freed myself entirely from the obsidian shell, and I stood in the darkness next to a sweeping river of black water, looking at chunks of stone all around me that had perhaps helped to save me from being broken into smithereens.
I stared at the river. With any less luck, I would have been shattered into many charred pieces of bones to be scattered in these waters and lost to the darkness. Righting my soggy boots and armor, I fixed my chainmail coif, and noticed with a stab of sadness that my dismembered left arm—carried in my pack until now—was also gone.
I was still amazed that I had survived.
But the relief I felt at somehow being alive came too soon…
Standing at the edge of the rushing river in a natural corridor of deep stone, I examined the tunnel extending in two separate directions from the water. The weight that you feel, being at the bottom of the world, was familiar to me. I’d been down here my entire life, even though the Sleeping City was many miles away from me now. I was very familiar with the way that stone mingled with bedrock at the bottom of the world. The tunnels where I’d help you, my lord, and Ulti contain the Glitch mobs and that sick, crimson portal were literally at the bottom of the world, just like this, slightly deeper than the Sleeping City. And I was also familiar with the various mobs and other life that existed down here.
So, when I saw several silverfish slither into sight at one end of this tunnel, I didn’t think much of it at first. But as they approached then stopped, holding eerily still, and I saw a crimson glow coming from their tiny, bug-like silverfish eyes, and I knew that something was wrong.
I opened my mouth to greet the creatures—more and more were piling up, creating a swarm—but my charred and brittle jawbone just popped and stuck when I tried to speak.
My voice came out only as a weird, raspy sound when I meant to say hello.
The many silverfish all perked up as one, and with a merged, high-pitched hissing voice, all together, they responded in unison:
“We are the Glitch…”
Then they started slithering my way as quick as the spiders I’d just finished fighting.
Chapter 2 – Akari Luna the Silver Sword
Not good.
No sword.
Doesn’t matter. They’re Glitch mobs. I wouldn’t be able to kill them anyway!
Without a second thought, I turned and ran down the tunnel in the other direction. Or, at least, I tried to run. My broken body lurched into a shambling, off-balance trot, and I clattered and crunched my way into the unknown. My boots made squishing sounds against the stone, still full of water.
The creatures were on me in a second, swarming around my ankles, biting at my leg bones. And there were many! It seemed that I was destined to become an expert at being attacked by swarms of small monsters. I felt the damage above the tops of my boots. It wasn’t much, but my bones were already badly burned and splintering.
I ran blindly with those little creeps nipping at my legs and trying to swarm me, climbing over each other with their tiny little legs and up my charred shins. Down the tunnel, I found a fork in the path to two other tunnels. Stomping and clattering down the left path, I felt myself accidentally step on a Glitch silverfish here and there.
Looking down as I half-squashed one under my boot heel, I saw the thing glitch, duplicating into two under my foot, increasing their numbers.
Don’t hurt them, I thought, struggling to keep calm and not panic as I failed to outrun the swarm of little monsters.
There were Glitch silverfish, too?? Where did they come from? How far did these Glitch creatures extend into the underground labyrinth of Diamodia’s caves? And how on Diamodia would my lord and his Order of the Warping Fist manage to contain and defeat the Glitch if they were spread out all over beneath the surface of this world?
The creatures hissed and surged after me, trying to bite me and climb up my legs. I ran, clattering and stumbling, shaking them off of me whenever I had to, searching for somewhere I could—
There!
I found a hole in the tunnel wall that was just big enough for me to fit through, just high enough that those little beasts hopefully could not reach. Summoning whatever was left of my strength, I pushed myself to move even faster, leaving the swarm behind for just a moment, then used my battered and burned arm to reach up and pull myself into the hole.
My chain mail made a metallic shrieking sound as it scraped against the rock, but I somehow pulled my upper body into the hole, leaving my legs hanging out in the tunnel behind me. Two silverfish clutched at them with their little legs, and I kicked twice like a flopping fish, knocking them free.
All of my body complained and threatened to just fall apart if I kept pushing myself.
Pulling my legs into the hole, I turned and looked back at many angry, little red eyes glaring up at me from a slithering, grey mass of silverfish, writhing and squirming down below in the tunnel, unable to follow.
I let out a sigh of relief.
Then, the silverfish all moved as a single big blob of silver bodies and legs, continuing down the tunnel out of sight, and I was struck with a fearful idea that they knew another way and would catch up to me from a different direction in a few seconds.
I looked around.
The hole I’d crawled into was a small space—a pocket in the raw stone—that seemed to be … a dead end. Just a hole, nothing more.
Disappointment flushed over me. I’d eventually have to head back out the same way I came in, and risk being attacked by the Glitch silverfish swarm again.
Then I saw that the wall on the other side of my little pocket of stone had some pretty serious fissure cracks in the normally smooth stone…
“What is this…?” I croaked. My voice was raspy and didn’t sound like myself.
Turning, I crawled toward the cracks. I felt them with my one charred, splintered hand; felt that the cracks were real and went deep into the stone. One broken section was actually pretty easy to move and wriggle around. Exploring with my injured skeletal fingers, I found all of the loose pieces and pried them away, revealing another hole that led into a black void on the other side.
I looked back through the hole leading to the tunnel and listened for the silverfish.
Nothing.
Well, it was either back to that tunnel or … try to break through this to a new place…
Bracing myself in the small space with my one good hand, I raised my right leg and kicked at the broken wall.
Thud, thud, thud.
Each kick reminded me of how wounded my entire body was. Each kick also made the cracked area of stone shudder, releasing rock dust and knocking more pieces loose.
Eventually, through kicking and pulling on loose chunks, I managed to make a hole big enough to fit through with my pack and armor on, and I found myself in a much larger cavern that was also a dead end. There were no tunnels leading away, no holes; no way out. It was another random pocket in the stone, but much bigger than the last one.
And more interesting.
On the far wall, I spotted something large and strange that I had never seen before.
I had enough room to stand, so I did. And I approached the far wall, examining what appeared to be an ancient dead body … or statue … seemingly made from stone.
It wasn’t like any statue I’d ever imagined, though. If it was carved from stone, then the artist must have had a very strange imagination. The body—or statue—lay on the slope of the wall. It was a bipedal creature—two arms and two legs—with an odd form, wearing stone armor that appeared blended with its body. It wore a stone helmet too, that completely obscured the creature’s face. And I say ‘blended with its body’ and ‘face’ because it looked more like a petrified dead body than a statue created on purpose. By all means, it looked like a warrior of some strange race had died there, and its body lay for unknown years, lost to time within this hidden cave.
It was definitely not a Minecraftian, or any kind of Ender creature, though it was as tall as an Enderman. Long and lean, but more muscular than any other race I’d known. And I say ‘warrior’ because it held a very real sword in its stone right hand, gripped tightly in death…
The sword a little longer than my lost iron blade, covered in dust. It was unlike any weapon I’d ever seen before in my existence. Despite being covered in decay, its blade was elegant and double-edged, and the hilt was short, designed for one-handed use. Its guard was the most interesting, showing an elaborate design that was hard to identify while covered in grime. The center-line of the blade, the fuller, was embedded with … multiple small gemstones…? It was hard to see more, held in the dead stone creature’s grip and covered with ancient spiderwebs and dust and whatever else…
I approached, my damaged bones clunking and making splintering, cracking sounds.
Reaching down with my one blackened, creaky hand, I touched the dead warrior’s broad, stone hand where he gripped the sword in death.
Definitely stone.
And when I touched the hilt of the sword, I gasped when the stone hand suddenly popped open, releasing it! The sound shocked me. Dust sprang out from the stone hand and made a cloud around the blade, which fell to the cave floor with a clang.
After a quick glance back up at the helmeted face of the dead warrior—still unchanged—I reached down and grasped the weapon’s hilt with my bony fingers.
I lifted the sword from the ground. It was light and perfectly balanced.
And then I jolted in surprise when the blade seemed to explode in a burst of light in my hand! All of the dust and decay that had built up around it fell away, revealing a beautiful and obviously magical blade of shining silver, clean and gleaming, with a curved cross guard that held an intricate design of five runes arranged in a circle. I could clearly see eight tiny black gemstones running up the blood groove of the blade like little, black eyes.
It was blinding, and amazingly beautiful. I stood shocked, holding the shining blade, dazzled and staring.
And then the sword spoke.
A WORTHY WARRIOR!
It was a female voice. I wasn’t sure if I heard it resounding in this small cavern, or if it was only inside my skull. I stared at the gleaming weapon, letting my crackling jawbone fall open.
Was this real? Was I actually in shattered pieces at the bottom of the ravine, dreaming all of this nonsense while dying…?
“What…?” I replied, my voice barely more than a hiss.
I could feel a power radiating from the shining sword in my hand. I hadn’t felt anything even close to this level of magic since back when you, my lord Skeleton King, created me, back when I was in the presence of your mighty golems coming to life. This was electric. It made my bones buzz. The small cavern was filled with … purpose … and for a moment, I forgot entirely where I’d been and what I’d gone through since falling from the bridge.
Whatever this sword was, it was something great. Something not of this world. And I had survived the impossible only to find this blade in my hand now…
A MASTER OF THE BLADE, the voice said into my skull. THANK YOU FOR WIELDING ME.
“What’s going on?” I croaked, my words pathetic and small next to the sound of the sword spirit in my mind. “What are you…?”
I AM AKARI LUNA, THE SPIRIT OF MUSASHI, AND YOU ARE NOW BOUND TO ME.
Bound…?!
“What?! Bound? What are you—?!”
I was interrupted by a blinding white light and a feeling that hit me like a heavy wave of warm ocean water. Reeling, keeping hold of the sword in my hand, I felt an itching, scratchy mending all over my entire body. I felt pieces weaving back together on a level smaller than I’d be able to see with my eyes. And within moments, the light that consumed me had died down, and I was left standing in the dark cavern again.
The area was illuminated by a silvery-white glow coming from the sword’s blade.
And I was healed. From the top of my skull to the tips of my bony toes in my boots, all of the damage from the spiders, the lava, the fall, the silverfish, and everything in between … was healed. With a spark of hope that I rarely ever felt, I tried to flex my missing left arm, but found that it was still missing.
My body was completely healed, even though I was still missing my arm.
I stared down at the sword. The sword had done this!
I found that a leather scabbard that I hadn’t seen before was mysteriously attached to my back by a new leather strap.
Opening my mouth, I was suddenly filled with many, many questions, but instead, I stared silently at the guard of Akari Luna, at the circle of five runs. And as I did, the bottommost of the eight black gems extending up the fuller in the middle of the blade started to glow white…
It glowed brighter and brighter as I watched—the other seven remained black and unremarkable—until it was suddenly radiating way more white light than a tiny gem like that should have been able to make…
And before I could react or say anything else, I felt a sensation of falling. I felt the chainmail draped around the sides of my face rise away from my jawbones. My feet suddenly had nothing under them, and the entire cavern was engulfed once again in bright, white light.
I was falling.
Again.
But … not really.
An instant later, I felt the ground under my boots again, but it wasn’t hard, cold stone. It was soft. I felt leaves and grass around the bones of my legs.
The white light blinding me dimmed, and as my vision adjusted, I was shocked to see the dark, grey stone cavern around me replaced with a brilliant blue sky full of clouds and a vast, complicated green landscape of towering, thick trees and bushes as tall as I was with huge, fronds of leaves and vines. Pools of deep blue water were all over, and as I took in the new world around me, I felt the warmth, and then the heat of a blazing sun overhead and the hot, humid air of a jungle.
I had never been to the jungles of Diamodia, or even up on the surface, but I still had a knowledge of them—for some reason, probably because of your magic, my lord—and I knew, almost immediately, that there was something very different about this place.
This was not a jungle from my world.
The trees were … different. They were tall, with very long, sparse trunks, and the foliage was thick and … too much … compared to what should be. And everything was … so smooth.
Rounded.
Looking down at my boots, I moved one foot and saw that I’d left an imprint in … mud.
Mud…?
MUD…
I didn’t know how I knew what that was, but I saw … felt … an image of things in my head. I heard the word. It came from … the sword.
Looking down, I stared at the gleaming silver weapon in my now-intact and healed hand.
The sword was in my mind, helping me understand.
I didn’t even know how I managed to comprehend that. The sword gave me understanding…
Bound.
I felt a jolt of panic, and looked around me.
“Where am I…?” I asked, finally hearing my voice normally again. Then I realized that my voice was one sound in an ocean of sounds. The jungle buzzed around me. I heard birds tweeting and making noises in the trees.
Birds?! What are birds…?
There were sounds of rushing water and trees moving and creaking, and things squishing in the distance. Reaching to a nearby bush-thing with the blade of the sword, I moved the large, green leaves as if to make sure that it was all real…
The big, frond-covered leaf moved. Real. It moved very differently somehow from how it should have…
Gravity was different. This world was different.
Whatever this place was, I had a strong feeling like I wasn’t on Diamodia anymore…
As I stared around me, looking at pools of water, and up at the tall trees, I caught sight of some flying creatures. They were red and just about as big as the cave spiders I’d been fighting in the mines, flapping big leathery wings and … heading my way.
Large, red bats.
Then I felt something hit me hard, stabbing partly through my chainmail and striking me in the ribs on my left side. Looking down, I saw a greenish-yellow spike sticking out of my armor.
“What…?!”
It dropped from my chainmail down into the mud. I saw that the point that had been in me was coated with a green sludge.
My reflexes finally kicked in when another spike flew at me. I dodged out of the way as the projectile sailed past., Looking for its origin, I saw a spherical green blob of some kind with the same spikes sticking out of it like a crown of spines. The slime creature jiggled and shook and hopped toward me.
Shooting spikes, I thought.
And then I saw two more of those creatures behind it.
Then the bats reached me. I’d seen many little black bats back in the Sleeping City, but these were different. Big. Dangerous. They looked at me like I was a meal and circled around me…
I had to move. I had no idea where I had to go, but I couldn’t just stand still taking in the sights!
As I looked up at the bats, I was hit again by a spike from one of those slimes. It pierced my chainmail a little, damaging my left shoulder blade before dropping down into the mud, revealing that it was coated in the same green ooze.
Those blob creatures were good shots.
Looking back, I saw many more slimes on the way, all different shades of green and yellow, all bristling with spikes.
A bat swooped down at me, half-heartedly, as if testing me. I waved my blade at it and it squeaked and circled again, preparing for another dive. There were three bats up around me now.
What world was this? Whatever it was, it wasn’t Diamodia, and even though I was a mob back on my old world, it looked like here, I was on the menu.
Gripping Akari the silver sword, I began to run…
Think your Minecraft buddies would like my books?
