Spider webs spread across the sky. No, white limbs of barren trees. Clattering bones. Rods of lightning.

Then I focused, and made out glowing purple facial features, long, slender bodies, tapering tails, and snouts, with wicked, pointy teeth.

The thin white tapering lines were parts of wings, hundreds of them, soaring over the sky, carving loops and shapes and signs into the air.

These creatures were familiar to me. I'm not sure why, but I recognized them. They incited a feeling of awe and insignificance in me.

But there were hundreds of them.

An endless void, a glowing land, a blackened spire, more of them. I noticed long, slender bodies dotting the bright landscape. Were they…?

One of them appeared in front of me. I expected it to say something, but it just stared at me with enlarging eyes, and a slowly dropping jaw.

And suddenly we were on one of the spires.

"You have tortured countless of my kind," It spoke to me in a hollow, rasping tone. "You have trapped us in the Void, without release."

"I've done nothing!" A voice that came from me yelled, though I was sure I hadn't said anything. "I simply came to see!"

"No," it rasped. "You have come to die."

A crushing force swept me from behind into the air high above the ground. As I fell, I caught a glimpse of my arms trailing above me.

They were human.

And then I hit the ground.

I jolted awake to a searing pain in my leg. Jerking it towards me, I saw the wound, revealing dark red flesh beneath, slowly turning black, with flecks of brilliant orange. The shadow had moved, and the sun had changed position, falling on my leg, and burning it. It was now setting, and the shadow of the large tree above me was rapidly receding. I crawled, being careful to put little weight on my leg, to the other side of the tree, where most of the shadow was, now. I looked back and saw the pearls glinting in the sun. I had set them out, hoping and wondering that they would burn in the sun. They did not.

I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes as the burn continued to eat away at the flesh in my leg. I had no idea what to do about it. My kind knew nothing of burns, since we avoided lava and the sun. We knew that water put out fire but we did not try that on account of the legend that we melted in water.

I had to do something, or else it would burn clean off. A weak and recovering leg was better than a short and permanent leg. Thinking on a whim, knowing leaves had a small amount of moisture in them, I tore a large, glossy one off the tree above me and wrapped it around my thin leg. It put out the fire, but did not make it feel any better.

I resolved I'd worry about it later, my goal was in destroying the pearls for now. I awkwardly pulled myself up, using the trunk of the tree, and leaned against it, keeping my leg off the ground. I reached up and , promising to only do this once in my whole life, snapped a long branch off the tree. I winced at the sound, and patted the trunk, as if apologizing to it. Then I tested the branch. It was sturdy enough. I used it as a cane, trying to ignore the flaring of pain if my leg even grazed the ground. Almost half the flesh was eaten through, and if my kind had normal blood, I would have bled myself dead by now.

I turned my mind away from the injury as I gathered up the pearls and hobbled further into the trees, the sun having set safely, and the moon now rising, a gleaming water-pearl in the sky. I wasn't sure how I could destroy the ender pearls. I didn't know where to find lava. I knew it was mainly in caves, but I didn't know where to find a cave. Sometimes, I knew, there were lava pools on the surface, bubbling up from underneath. So I walked through the forest, scanning all around for a gleam of light.

I tripped.

I hit the ground an inch or two away from a gaping chasm in the forest floor, the opening small but the chasm huge. A few of the pearls slipped out of my arms. I frantically tried to grab them but that caused more to slip out and topple down into the deep chasm. Each one, as it hit the bottom, made an ugly smashing sound that made me wince.

I could not get down there. The only way was to jump, and that was suicide.

I would have to leave them.

I closed my eyes for a second, then got up, keeping a careful grip on the remaining five pearls. I carefully walked around the opening, sending my prayers up to the sky for the poor souls smashed into some other realm.

I was walking, still searching for light, when I felt a burning pain in my arm. There was no sun. I felt the spot where it burned, and my hand came away burning, too. Another sharp pain came to the top of my head, and then to my shoulder. Then, I saw what it was.

Rain.

I ducked inside the shelter of a tree right before the downpour started. Droplets still leaked through the leaves, splattering me in searing pain. I didn't know if water would melt me, but it sure burned.

I looked around for something, anything, that would better shield me. I saw a faint light far off. I ran towards it, not thinking, just moving, bracing myself for the pain.

It was worse than the sun.

But less damaging, thank goodness, and as I got closer to the light, I saw what it was: a torch, underneath a leather canopy, jutting out from a cliff side. Shelter from the rain.

I quickly slid under it. It provided not enough room for me to stand but I could sit. My legs would hang out the other end, so I pulled them close to my chest. A thought came to me. Would the pearls dissolve in the rain? I looked at them, scooped up in one arm, and saw that there was no visible damage. I considered putting them out in the rain, but then wondered if they could feel pain, and, if they could, if the rain would dissolve them at all, and not just burn?

So I kept them close. And I slept, exhausted, my only sleep in three days having been the nap under the tree.

I woke to night, and, looking at the moon, I knew it was the next night. The rain had stopped, and the ground was mysteriously dry. I shuffled to get the pearls back in an easier position to hold, grabbed my cane, and slid out of the shelter, then stood, and looked back at it.

It was small. Small enough for a human, but… still. It was obviously abandoned. I had been there for a day and nothing had disturbed me. I could not think of an explanation for it, so I moved on.

And I walked. And I walked.

And I rounded a tree, and found myself face-to-face with a human.