"We've mined all the way down to this stronghold, and we've crafted our final preparations! I guess you could call us... Minecrafters!"
Every member of the cohort responded very differently to Daniel's poor attempt at comedy, and they all blurted out their reactions at the same time.
A young woman with green eyes and light orange hair clad in an ornate golden armor— although it was far too damaged to make out the engravings now— and wielding an axe of similar quality heckled him playfully, while simultaenously being very rude.
"Agh, shut the hell up, Danny!"
An older, rough-faced bald man with brown eyes and a noticeably large nose wearing the outfit of a blacksmith obscured by a simple but very robust iron armor lightly chuckled, then muttered to himself,
"What'll I do with you, kid..."
A stoic-looking young man with darker skin, dark blue, almost purple eyes, and short brown hair wearing a light blue set of armor— that despite the blood and damage covering it, still gleamed as though it were made of diamonds, which it was— didn't react to the joke much. He just looked at Daniel for a moment, grunted with an unknown emotion, then returned back to his small workstation.
Lying on the workstation was a simplistic but beautiful sword with a blade made of diamonds, which looked like it had been recently repaired back to peak condition after sustaining some damages. The stoic young man put the leather pack that was slung over his shoulders onto the ground and pulled a book shining with a dim purple radiance out.
He held the book in his left hand and picked up the diamond sword with his right, then he held them both up. He lowered the flat end of the sword until it was resting on the glowing book, then strained. It wasn't strain like he was tensing his muscles— or any body part, for that matter— instead, it was as if his very soul itself was being put under stress.
After a few moments of struggle, he achieved the desired effect. The dim purple glow had transferred from the book to the blade, giving it enhancements that were logically unrecognizable, yet somehow were obvious and easy to tell. The blade looked like it could set fire to any living thing it slashes, and it also appeared to gain the ability to repair itself when it gets damaged. Aside from those two mystical abilities, the sword also seemed sharper. Much sharper.
Daniel reacted by closing his eyes and scratching the back of his head, laughing. He was a little younger than the stoic man and the ginger woman, with soft brown hair and a pretty face. He was wearing armor similar to the rough-faced man's, although it looked considerably lighter, partially because of his smaller frame but mostly because he wasn't physically strong enough to handle such a heavy armor. He was wielding a well-made wooden bow, with a quiver at his waist.
These four armored individuals were currently in a room within an ancient stronghold. The floor, roof, and walls made of stone bricks were slightly overgrown with moss. The walls of the room had many iron bar 'windows' lining it, although the windows were only able to peer directly onto stone. The room had no torches or other artificial light sources in it, instead it was illuminated purely by the construction in the middle of the room.
At the center of the room, a stone brick staircase led to an elevated cornerless square made of twelve cubic frames. The frames were each almost a meter tall, and they all seemed to be carved out of an otherworldy and twisted white stone. Each frame had an elegant green metal lining that connected seamlessly with the lining of the next. On top of each frame was an empty hole, and inside seven of those holes were strange things resembling eyes.
The eyes only had two parts— an eerily pale green iris and a vertically slit pupil like that of a cat. The eyes were also faintly pulsating to a steady, heartbeat-like rhythm.
Directly beneath the frames was a vat of lava. It bubbled and crackled as it seemed to have done for many, many years. Exactly how the rock had managed to stay molten for so long, or how it wasn't melting the room around it, was unknown to the cohort. But they weren't complaining.
The stoic young man placed his book and sword down onto the workstation, then picked up his leather pack from the ground. Something within the bag was pulsating to the same 'heartbeat' as the eyes. He reached his hand into the bag and pulled out six large, faintly pulsating eyes, the same kind as the ones held in the frames. He held the eyes in one hand and grabbed his sword with the other.
The three other members of the cohort all laid their eyes on the young man as he walked up the stairs and began to place the eyes into the sockets, taking care in not falling to the lava below.
Every time he held an eye near to one of the sockets, a stringy pale green mandible emerged from the darkness of the hole. The mandible latched onto the back of the eye then pulled it down, locking the eye into place on the frame. This repeated for each of the five empty frames, until only one eye was left, which he placed into a small storage compartment on the inside of his chestplate.
Once the last eye was placed in the twelfth frame, purple partictles began to form, solidify, and darken in the empty area between the twisted stone frames. The particles quickly materialized into a dark void between the frames. The void would have been pitch-black if not for the distant purple and pale green particles deep within it. It looked like an eerie night sky from another world. And in a way, it was.
After all, the void was a gateway to the End.
The rest of the cohort had walked up the stairs while the young man was placing the eyes in their frames, and all four of them were now staring into the void, the young man opposite to the rest.
The ginger woman looked up and pointed her axe at the young man, then declared,
"You get the honors, Stevey!"
Steven nodded, then said in a low and quiet voice,
"OK."
He moved his leg to make the first step into the starry void, then slowly dipped his boot down, as if he were getting into a pool. However, he didn't slowly submerge himself into the void, adjust to the cooler temperature, and take a leisurely swim. Instead, the moment his boot made contact with the void, he vanished. There were no particles or anything signifying his disappearance. He was just gone.
"Come on, let's not keep him waiting!" Daniel was the second to make his way to the void, jumping towards the middle of the panels.
But before he was able to make contact, a lanky, lean, and somewhat humanoid pitch-black arm emerged from the void. It looked similar to the limbs of the Endermen, if they were less vaguely eerie and more outright vile and horrific. Its fingers twisted unnaturally, popping the knuckles. Then it grabbed onto one of the eyes, and forcefully ripped it from the socket, causing the pale green mandible to retreat back into the frame. The arm was able to pull itself and the eye back into the void before it dissipated.
But Daniel wasn't so lucky. The void had dissipated into particles by the time he reached it. So, he plunged down into the lava beneath feetfirst, his body quickly submerging almost entirely. The only part of his body left above the molten rock was his head, and it was only barely above. The moment he dove into the pool, his arms desperately and swung themselves around in an attempt to wade through the liquid.
His attempts were futile, since his arms instantly began to burn, char, then melt alongside the rest of his body. He tried his hardest to scream in agony, but the lava filling his mouth stopped him.
The ginger woman and rough-faced man watched helplessly as his soft brown hair caught flame, the skin of his face burnt away, and the muscles beneath soon followed. Eventually— no, within a second or two— all that was left of Daniel was a jawless, black skull wearing a melting iron helmet. The ginger woman had managed to fish the skull out of the vat of lava before it melted away, but her efforts were largely pointless.
Despite the skull's immense heat, the rough-faced man instantly picked it up and held it to his chest. If his attire wasn't made for sustaining heat he would've gotten serious burns. Tears flowed down his face as he wailed and one unconciously streamed down the ginger woman's.
The cohort's attempt to enter the End and stand off against the oppressive evil within had turned out to be an utter failure.