(Illustrations don't belong to me)

The Abandoned Mineshaft was a mysterious and scary place, hidden in the deep mountain ranges, buried under layers of dirt and stone, infested with terrible undead monsters. Rumors was that the Mineshaft was once a flourishing destination, even a one-of-the-kind tourist attraction. Many Minecrafters, now probably ashes, traveled hundreds of blocks to see others mine out precious minerals, blow up patches of tunnels with TNT, and experience for themselves the shaft's maze-like structure. 

However, over times bits of tunnels collapsed, others flocked with lava, and exanimate mobs lured around the corner; all of that made the Mineshaft no longer fitting for mineral extraction and sightseeing. Thus, it was closed down, its known entrances were barred with obsidian and stone outside. This was before the first Conflict, before the time of wizards and the light of the beacon. After that, its existence remained only in tales and legends. The shaft itself had merged into the mountain and remained underground for good, and no Minecrafters had gone to see it and returned to tell the tale.

Steve could be the first person in his own time to risk his life in such a fashion.

He traveled for several days, finding a temporary place to rest at day and walk at night (comparing to the blazing arrows and TNT traps everywhere in the daytime, facing mobs of the undead was by far less dangerous), wandering down the South. The further he went, the more deserted it was. Even when walking in the woods, it was noticeable: cramping towns of refuges and villagers got replaced with an empty field, where the poison traces of arrows still lingered and the grass was burning to ashes; here and there a few deserted villages, either taken over by zombies or slowly swallowed in fire. 

Before long Steve reached a spruce wood forest, hiding inside it the only village where its citizens were alive and well, far from the conflict, with a mountain range loomed over the horizon. Exhausted from the restless journey, he rented a hut in the village for several days, for sleep, safeguard, and to acquire knowledge about where he ought to go next.

He was in the right place. A thorough search in the local library revealed tales about an Abandoned Mineshaft nearby, possibly his destination. The only trouble was that he didn't know much about the area, let alone risking his life starving up the top of the mountains, so he was trying to hire a local to be his guide. Of course, no one in their right mind agreed. Nevertheless, he was satisfied with the information about the shaft. At least he had a clear destination in mind. Steve rested fora few more days, until a fire charge, which exploded at a nearby wheat field,told him that the war had spread even to this mountainous region. Soon after that, he departed.

Steve spent several days exploring the staggering height of the mountains. At the end of each day,he found a new small patch of somewhat even ground to camp out, partly waiting for the daylight (in the nighttime, steep terrains proved to be disastrous for adventurers, as they risked breaking their neck falling down, or mobs falling down from above), partly waiting for the terrible snow to wind down a bit. He did find a chuck of a steep valley,submerged into the mountain (and thus could not be seen unless he stood really close to the edge); a small ravine, no lava fountains, nothing special; and several caves (they were so shallow they could be rabbit holes for all he knew).In short, the Abandoned Mineshaft was nowhere to be found.

In the end, Steve managed to find his way into it. Err, just in a bit of a bizarre fashion.

***

Steve was climbing towards the top of the lowest mountain along the range as daylight fell, trying to find a reasonably flat snow patch to lay down at night, when suddenly a soft"plop" sound came to his ears. It was unlike any sound the hostile mobs might make(the Enderman had a shriek cry, the zombies grunted, the skeleton creaked, and the creeper usually hissed before exploding), and the soft tune of his feet constantly stomping on snow, Steve was familiar with. This was different.

Another "plop" came,and then what sounded like air passing, and something like a block of sand or gravel had touched the stone floor. Steve finally realized what had happened,and he ran for his life's sake. Too late. The ground underneath his feet collapsed, taking him with it into the deep and twisted tunnels of the Abandoned Mineshaft.

Unlike the fate of countless others, Steve didn't break his neck. The charms and spell Tom taught him back at the Residence did pay off: he hovered above the ground for several seconds, managing to push himself on the stone floor nearby, panting. The power-consuming charm he just conjured had saved him, not only from falling to his doom, but also from landing straight into a lava pool, which he was now lying right next to.Perhaps his walking had triggered the floating blocks of sand and gravel,causing the ground to collapse into this lava pool.

Summoning his blue sphere as the main source of light, Steve took a look around. He had fallen into a cave... a cavern. He spotted something in the distance.

"Are those...wood? Oak wood planks, made into four-cornered pillars..."

That was the signature sign of a Mineshaft. Well, the sight of them didn't cheer Steve up any. 

"Dark tunnels, twisted corridors and collapsed rail tracks had turned the once popular Mineshaft into the home for infernal mobs, and the grave of any person foolish enough to discover it." He remembered that line clearly, from the book he borrowed at the village. Nevertheless, he  pressed on.

With the dim glint from the sphere as his only light source, Steve ventured deep into the tunnels of the shaft. Here and there, there were pockets of lava, an obstacle in his course; the wooden gates had either burned down or collapsed,only a few of them retained their original support-column structure. Every thirty blocks or so, he faced an intersection, heading at least two different ways,each one look exactly identical. 

Not only that, but on several occasions a skeleton sneaked up behind him, attempting to make their shoots on the intruder. They failed, of course, due to the creaking sound of their bones; Steve could hear them from quite a distance, and thus could send a simple spell to make them vanish (Fighting with the undead was among one of the first lessons Tom taught him, maybe just after the episode with the Mundane Potions). It was not an exaggeration for the locals to never venture in this place.

Steve went in deeper and further, until he couldn't remember the path he took. Left, right,the central path, left, left... Too much to memorize, and in the end he gave up, just always taking the pathway which seemed less dark. He was also hungry now, more starving then when he had ventured towards the Residence. His food supply was above ground, which might as well be miles from where he stood; Steve could try to summon them, but that would involve guiding all those heavy packages through the countless corners and tunnels exactly to his place. Without saying, that would exhaust him even more than his hunger did. So he continued walking, taking an awful chance to become a corpse inside the Abandoned Mineshaft.

And then Steve noticed something... abnormal. His sphere was reflecting something different. Its light had consistently shone on the cold and flat stone wall (sometimes they had mold, but that didn't change their color much), but now it had hit something white, perhaps fragmented, as the lights were shattered into small beams. Whatever it was, Steve had never seen it before, and that peculiar something... appeared to be several blocks from his, just around the corner.

Steve approached carefully, holding the magical sphere in his hand, its light shone ever brighter, ready to launch at any enemy. He crouched to the corner, and moved just a fraction of an inch to get a view.

Steve breathed out, relieved. It was not a terrifying foe after all - just some cobwebs. It was probably created from a a spider spawner nearby – common it was, said the book about the Mineshaft that he borrowed, for miners to find a naturally-generated monster spawner in several branches of the tunnel. Nothing special, he just had to punch the webs for them to break, send a lock curse at the spawner block to stop them from generating more cave spiders - their poisonous bites could be troublesome. 

He was doing just that, breaking the annoyingly sticky cobwebs, when something came into view.

Something was running towards him. Not a normal undead mobs (to reach such a speed, only a baby zombie is possible to run like so). More like... Was that a villager? A person! 

She was clearly running from something – and sure enough, behind her were at least ten poisonous spiders, their eyes glinting like dark marbles, their legs moving swiftly on the ground and above her head, desperately hungry to suck their teeth into their prey...

Steve hesitated no more. With a swift move,all the cobwebs were destroyed, and he launched himself forward. Steve summoned a sphere, blindingly blue, brighter and more powerful than any spells he had ever conducted, threw them past the girl's head and right to the poisonous spiders. The sphere seemed to create a thin blue shield at his side, then exploded, a white light flooded the cave, and their poisonous fangs shattered into dust alongside with their bodies.

Steve collapsed –never had he been so exhausting, as if all of his energy had been plunged into the spiders. Falling into the cold stone wall, he sat there for several minutes. When his breath was finally even again, he asked the girl beside him, who was still crouching herself, clearly in terror:

"Hey. Are you okay?"

The girl lifted up her hand, looked around, and saw another Minecrafter, just as tired as she was, but by no means as terrified as she had been. No spiders were chasing after her anymore. Tears trickled down her face.

"Thank you... for saving me... They, those spiders... were hungry. They thought I would be delicious..."Still hiccupping, she said, with difficulty. "Thank you..."

A moment of silence,for both of them to catch their breath. Steve was the first to stand up.

"I am Steve. What's your name?"

"I am Lily. Thank you, Steve. You've saved my life." Lily, though still trembling, had stood up, and ready to walk again.

"The least I could do." Steve himself was a farmer and not a nobleman. However... He continued again as they started to stumble forward, their legs still too weak for a swift run:

"Thinking about it... Lily, how did you find out about this place? I fell through the ceiling on the mountain, but did you find a way in or something? And also, the cave spiders..."

"I'm really sorry, Steve," said Lily, in a soft voice, with a faint trace of musical tone in it, "but honestly, I can't recall anything. The last thing I could remember is when I was picking berries in bushes... You know, the sweet, red berries that the foxes love so much. And then I blacked out, and when I woke up I suddenly found myself here, in these countless tunnels, with the cave spiders surrounding me, their fangs cluck against each other... I ran for my life. And then... you appeared."

"Ah, I see," said Steve. He didn't see anything, but one thing was for sure: this girl, Lily, was just as clueless as he was about the Mineshaft, if not more. It seemed like she was the same kind of farmer Steve used to be, before getting caught up in all this mess of a quest by Tom.

They walked along the tunnels together, silent most of the way. Having encountered the poisonous spiders, much more hostile than he thought, and having spent a large portion of his magical power to create the blue sphere way back, Steve was tired. Even the air between the tunnels were tight, dense, as if it hadn't been circulated for such a long time. All of that didn't ease the fact that they were in the Abandoned Mineshaft, a gigantic maze and a huge grave for any Minecrafter.

Steve and Lily trotted for what felt like a day and night, before laying down, midway of a corridor, to rest.

"Lily, sorry to bother you this way... but I'm feeling a bit dizzy. Let's rest here a bit."

She smiled weakly. "Of course. Please lie down. I'll watch."

***

After that, they continued. Walking again for days on end, in the endless maze, waiting for their hunger bar to be empty, for their corpses to be ashes of the Mineshaft...

Suddenly Lily stopped. Steve bumped into her. Her eyes were big, wide and alert, her limbs stiffened.

"Steve, can you feel something?"

"Feel..." Steve knew what she was talking about. A breath of air. A cold gust of wind, contradicting with the stuffy, condensed air of the shaft. 

That would be really strange. Steve had spent several days exploring around the mountain range, and except the hole that he fell through, no other place was hollow enough to let the wind blow in. Not even a crack to let air circulate. And they were in an Abandoned Mineshaft - its tunnels were supposedly miles underground. To say that there was fresh air coming in would be quite abnormal. He turned to Lily, and gave her a nod.

 "Fresh, cold air. Mountain wind – I am used to it."

"Should we go ahead and see what it is? Maybe there could be a way for you to get out."

"A way for both of us to get out, you mean." Steve was silent. "Let's go and see."

They cautiously moved forward. What they found, though, was not merely mountain air.