The Dragon: An Official Minecraft Novel

by Nicky Drayden

“I don’t need this stress,” Rayne said. “We’ve got enough going on trying to fortify the town and rebuild. Some of us actually care that our people are safe.”

  “Yeah,” Rift agreed. “We quit.”

  Rift and Rayne started packing their bags in a huff. Zetta’s eyes were hot in their sockets, a mixture of anger and wanting to cry over her friends’ cruel words. She knew she couldn’t let them leave, though. Not angry like this. If Sienna Dunes was to have a chance, the friends needed to stick together and not be at one another’s throats. She saw so much potential in what they could accomplish. She was slowly getting better with potions. Rift was skilled with redstone contraptions. And Rayne had the best aim and a natural curiosity about using magic to improve how weapons worked.

  As much as Zetta loved Sienna Dunes, she knew it wouldn’t be able to remain caught in the past. The world was changing all around them. Zetta and her friends were changing with it. They needed to get the rest of the town on board, just like her mother and aunt had tried to do so many years ago. Only now, they couldn’t afford to fail.

  “Wait!” Zetta shouted. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any of that. It’s just, I’m on edge. We all are. We want to protect our town more than anything. What if…what if we started small?” She took out her mother’s notebook and flipped through it. “We don’t have to do something like a wither destroyer. Maybe this arrow-slinging contraption would do fine. Or here’s a TNT cannon.”

  Rift stopped packing and turned around. “A TNT cannon?” he asked.

  Rift grabbed the notebook from Zetta, and his eyes went wide. “So much TNT,” he mumbled, flipping from page to page. “Looks complicated. But not impossible.”

  “Do you think you could make it?” Zetta asked, pleased that she’d lured her friend back so easily. Maybe their friendship wasn’t so fragile after all.

  Rift nodded slowly. “I’ll gather the materials and we can test it out here, in the woods.”

  “That’s probably smart. Plus, maybe we can take a shot with the arrow-slinging contraption, too,” Rayne added, hopeful. “We’ve got plenty of hostile mobs as neighbors out here, and we could use a little extra defense.”

  “Yeah, yeah…” Rift muttered, already lost in thought as he scribbled in his own notebook.

  Not soon after, he and Rayne were gone for the evening. Ashton and Zetta were left in the hut, staring at each other.

  “The dragon will be fine,” Zetta said.

  “You don’t know that,” Ashton said, voice angry and cracking around the edges.

  They stared at each other in silence. At some point, Zetta must have dozed off, because soon the sun was rising again, and from its angle in the sky, she knew she’d be late to work, even if she took her last swiftness potion.

  A strange huffing noise was coming from right outside their hut. Ashton woke at it, too, then he sat straight up.

  “The dragon!” he screamed. “It came back!” He got up and ran out the front door. Zetta followed on wobbly legs, and she was still wiping the sleep out of her eyes when she ran right into Ashton.

  “Why’d you stop right in the middle of the—” She shook her head and looked at the dragon before them. It was bigger again. Much, much bigger. The cute puppy dog eyes were gone, replaced with a menacing stare sitting under heavy brows.

  “It molted again,” Ashton said, raising his hand toward the dragon and creeping forward.

  “Ashton, I swear if you take another step—” Zetta started, but it was too late. Her cousin was already patting the dragon’s snout. Its tail thudded against the ground, sending a large tremor that knocked the dispenser off Rift’s shovel launcher. All the shovels tumbled out suddenly, spooking the dragon. It flapped its enormous wings, air gushing past Zetta’s face so hard, she had to close her eyes. By the time she opened them again, the dragon was airborne.

  “That is so cool,” Ashton said, eyes turned up to the sky. “I wonder if it’ll let me—”

  “You will not ride that thing. Promise me that, Ashton. I’m serious. You cannot put yourself in that kind of danger.”

  “Statistically, I’m pretty sure riding on the back of an ender dragon is the safest way to travel. Who’s going to mess with you?”

  Zetta didn’t want to admit it, but the kid had a point. She shook her head. “Who needs to worry about endermen? Nana and Papa are going to poof me themselves when they find out that I’ve got you up on a dragon.”

  “So…you’ll let me ride?” Ashton asked. As if on cue, the dragon dipped down from the treetops and landed gently in front of him. The beast’s chest puffed out, like it was so proud of itself.

  They couldn’t keep the dragon here forever, not with all those endermen lurking about. Zetta was ready to consider moving the dragon closer to home, and being able to fly the dragon would make that a lot easier. She sighed. “Okay, but you have to be super careful. No fancy stunts, and you have to keep both hands on the dragon at all times.”

  “Awesome,” Ashton said, hopping up and down. “Just let me work with the dragon for a bit. I ride the pigs on the farm all the time! How much different could it be?”

  “Right,” Zetta said in a peppy voice, trying to instill some confidence into her cousin, but truth was, she was terrified. Riding a three-ton winged beast through the sky was a whole lot different than riding a hungry pig chasing after a carrot on a fishing pole. If Ashton slipped…

  He wouldn’t slip. Ashton trusted the dragon and the dragon trusted Ashton. In thirty minutes Ashton would probably be riding through the clouds, and Zetta would be laughing at how ridiculous she’d been to worry about such things.

  Zetta watched closely as Ashton climbed up onto the dragon’s back.

  “All right, come on. Take off! Up in the sky with you!” he said.

  The dragon turned its attention to pawing a divot into the dirt.

  “Don’t be shy!” Ashton said, an encouraging lilt in his voice. “You can do it.”

  The dragon huffed.

  “Giddyap!” Ashton scratched his head. “Is that what you say to fly, or is that just horses?”

  “Both hands on the dragon,” Zetta barked.

  Ashton and the dragon cut their attention her way. The dragon’s purple eyes eased into angry slits. If looks could kill…

  Zetta gulped. Maybe they didn’t need her oversight. She needed to check on the animals at Aunt Meryl’s anyway. So Zetta made her way up to the little house, threw feed into all the pens, and tidied up some around the property, all while steering clear of the spooky porch and the haunted soul sand. When she was done, she made sure all the gates and doors were locked up tight, then started back down the mountain to check on her cousin.

  She’d only taken a few strides when she heard flapping in the sky, like someone shaking out bedsheets. She looked up and saw the dragon overhead, Ashton on its neck, both hands thrown up in the sky, having the time of his life.

  She vowed to give that kid a good talking-to about taking unnecessary risks, but before she could even form a single sentence in her head, the dragon swooped down so low that Zetta had to duck to avoid being decapitated by those sharp claws. The dragon landed gracefully behind her.

  “Hop on, Zetta!” Ashton said. “Flying is easier than walking. No low-hanging branches or holes to look out for. Just an endless stretch of sky and no cares in the world!”

  Gravity. Zetta cared about gravity, but she didn’t say that out loud.

  “Okay.” She approached the dragon. It looked at her suspiciously, eyes narrowed. It huffed and jostled away from her when she tried to climb up. “Come on, you can’t possibly still be holding a grudge.”

  Zetta tried to climb up again, but this time the dragon purposefully bumped her.

  “Oh, Dragon, don’t be like that,” Ashton said, patting the base of the dragon’s long neck. It turned back to look at him. �
��She’s sorry. Aren’t you sorry, Zetta?”

  “So sorry,” Zetta muttered. For every single decision she’d made since leaving town to go to her aunt’s house.

  “See, Dragon?” Ashton asked. “Please let her on.”

  The dragon huffed again, refusing to let Zetta climb up. But Zetta wasn’t about to let a dragon with a grudge ruin her day. She could outsmart its little lizard brain. Now that she had the blaze powder she’d dumped out of her brewing stand, she could make more potions. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She ran into her aunt’s brewing room, and got to work on an invisibility potion.

  But as soon as she began pulling the ingredients from her pack, something dawned on her. She also had what she needed to make a healing potion. She took the melon slice Rift had given her and the gold from her mining first rights, and crafted a glistering melon.

  Zetta paid close attention to everything she was doing, and in no time, she held the finished concoctions before her. She drank one of the invisibility potions. Almost immediately, she felt the magic consume her. Her fingers disappeared first, then her hands, arms, shoulders. Body, legs. All she could make out of herself were the tiny particles of magic that drifted off from her skin…

  And her boots. Oops. She didn’t want to leave behind her only armor, but she definitely didn’t want to risk spooking the dragon, so she stored them away in her pack.

  Now, it was like she’d completely vanished, except for the particles that were so faint you wouldn’t notice them unless you knew right where to look. Satisfied and a little proud, Zetta put the other potions in her pack and then ran back outside and whispered to Ashton, “I’m ready.”

  “Where are you?” he asked, looking around.

  “I made an invisibility potion. Am I…totally gone?”

  “I don’t see you. Not a bit of you. Good job!”

  Zetta perked at the encouragement. This time, Ashton distracted the dragon with hard pats while Zetta jumped up right behind him. The dragon seemed a little ill-at-ease, but didn’t buck or flinch when she got on. Success!

  Then all she had to do was hold on for dear life as those giant wings started flapping again. All the animals in the pens bucked and complained, but soon Zetta and Ashton and the dragon were off, and Aunt Meryl’s home started getting smaller and smaller. In no time they were back at their hideout in the woods.

  “Easy as pumpkin pie,” Ashton said. The dragon purred, then plopped onto its back for belly scritches. Ashton complied, now having to crawl up on the dragon’s stomach to do so. Next thing Zetta knew, the two were play-wrestling. Zetta flinched as the dragon’s giant paw pinned Ashton to the ground. The dragon was gentle, but those claws were way too sharp.

  “Rift and Rayne should be back soon,” Zetta said. “Maybe we need to calm the dragon down some.”

  “Not yet,” Ashton said as the dragon let him up. He pulled Meechie the shovel out of his pack and held it in front of the dragon. “Just one more game of tug.” Ashton held the stick side of the shovel and pointed the face to the dragon. The dragon’s maw slipped over it, gently, but Zetta couldn’t help but wince at how close those teeth were to Ashton’s fingers as they tugged back and forth.

  “I think maybe the dragon has outgrown Meechie. It might as well be a toothpick now. It’s bound to break, and I don’t want to be anywhere nearby when that happens.” That dragon loved Meechie with a passion.

  “We’ll be fine,” Ashton said, a new cockiness to his voice that Zetta wasn’t familiar with.

  He flies one mythical dragon, Zetta thought, and all of a sudden, he’s got a big head.

  “You shouldn’t worry so much,” Ashton continued. “Besides, it’s a well-documented fact that rough play is a great way to practice fighting skills. Ocelots do it. Foxes do it. Why not dragons?”

  Zetta shook her head. “What kind of skills?” she asked.

  “Fighting skills. It’s a dragon. Sooner or later, it’s going to be all on its own and it’ll need to protect itself.”

  Zetta nodded. Ashton could teach it to protect itself…or he could teach it to protect their town. She realized that when she’d assessed their team’s skills, she’d forgotten to include someone. Ashton was great with the dragon, and could train it to do just about anything.

  “Hey, Ashton,” Zetta said in a voice as sweet as sugar sucked right from the cane. “Instead of teaching the dragon to be less destructive…do you think you can teach it to be more destructive?”

  Zetta couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of her mouth as she watched Ashton and the dragon wrestle over Meechie, each taking turns being the aggressor.

  “What?” Ashton asked as he gave a huge tug that dislodged the soggy, saliva-covered shovel from the dragon’s mouth.

  “Nothing,” Zetta said quickly. That was a bad idea. A very bad idea. The dragon wasn’t a weapon for them to use against illagers. And it wasn’t a pet. It was just a mistake she’d made.

  A really, really bad mistake.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Zetta had a hard time shaking her idea of using the dragon against the illagers. It was pretty much all she’d thought about during her mining training session yesterday evening. The awful idea had also kept her up all night, and now it was all she could think about on the run to the mountain this morning. She was so overworked and tired and distracted that she ran straight into a cactus. Having a faceful of spines wasn’t the best way to start the day, but she was fully alert now, and the sting was mostly gone by the time she and Ashton reached their hideout in the forest clearing.

  Maybe it wasn’t an awful idea to use the dragon as a weapon. It was big, strong, and intimidating. The illagers would probably get scared just seeing it and turn around without a single arrow being fired. Zetta decided to talk to everyone about it before the twins left, but she didn’t get a chance to utter a single word. As soon as they arrived, Rift was pushing her over to a new contraption that he’d built while she was away.

  “Finally,” Rift said. “What took y’all so long?”

  “Zetta overslept,” Ashton tattled.

  Zetta shot her cousin a stern look. He grinned, then ran off to wrestle with the dragon.

  “Sorry,” Zetta mumbled to Rift. “All this back-and-forth has me worn out. But I’ve got this great idea—”

  “Oh, you look tired,” Rift said, interrupting her. “Why don’t you have a seat and rest up a bit first.” He pointed at a little seat on his new contraption. It was made of slime blocks and pistons and another block Zetta had never seen. It was black, with a little gray face on one side and a blinking red light in the back. Even exhausted and sleep-deprived, Zetta could tell this was a trap.

  “Not gonna happen,” she said, looking at the contraption. “What’s it going to do, catapult me up the mountain?”

  “Something like that.” Rift sighed. “Was I that obvious?”

  “You were salivating like a hungry wolf staring at a skeleton bone,” Zetta said. “What does it do?”

  “I got it from your mom’s notebook. It’s an elevator. You see, the pistons and observers—” As soon as Rift started explaining the technical aspects of his contraptions, Zetta’s mind started to wander. Was this how Rift felt when she was talking to him about potions?

  She glanced over at Ashton, who was waving Meechie in front of the dragon’s nose. The dragon snapped at it, but Ashton pulled it away. The sound of those sharp white teeth clacking together sent a chill down Zetta’s spine. Ashton continued to tease the dragon, running circles around it. At first it was all in good fun, but then the dragon’s usually chipper demeanor seemed to shift suddenly.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Zetta said. “Be nice.”

  Ashton grinned. “All right, Dragon. You ready? You ready? Go get it!” Ashton fake-tossed the shovel into the woods and the dragon sprung after it, sniffing and sniffing
around.

  Zetta shook her head, remembering when she’d done a similar thing. “You really shouldn’t tease the dragon,” Zetta warned, but the dragon was already bounding back toward Ashton.

  The playfulness was completely gone now. The dragon was mad.

  “Throw Meechie,” Zetta said, but before Ashton had a chance, the dragon landed right next to him, nostrils flaring.

  “I’m sorry, Dragon, I—”

  The dragon huffed, but this time a purple cloud slipped from its nostrils. The cloud lingered near the ground, drifting toward Ashton like a slow-rolling fog. Ashton tried to run, but he was surrounded. He screamed as the fog overwhelmed him. A scream like Zetta had never heard. The kid was in serious pain.

  The scream also broke the dragon from its anger, and those dangerous eyes puffed back into those of a concerned pup. It sniffed at the poison, like it was unsure of what it was or if it had even caused it. The dragon huffed again, the hard breath from its nostrils dissipating the purple cloud. Then it whimpered, watching as Ashton squirmed on the ground, struggling to breathe.

  Zetta ran over, trying to rouse Ashton. But it was useless.

  “What’s going on?” Rayne said, suddenly at her side. Rift quickly fetched a bucket of water from the nearby stream.

  “The dragon, I think it poisoned—” Then she remembered the healing potion she’d made and pulled it out of her pack. She put it close to Ashton’s lips and made him drink. The liquid drained down his throat. It smelled sweet and syrupy, with medicinal undertones. Ashton choked on it at first, and Zetta was afraid he’d spit it back up, but the whole bottle went down smoothly after that.

  Ashton stopped writhing and began to look more at peace as the potion worked its magic. Rift dabbed a damp cloth against his forehead. Soon he seemed much better.

  “We have to tell someone,” Rayne said. “This has gotten too big for us to handle.”

  “Agreed,” Zetta said, even though she knew she was going to get into some serious trouble for breaking the egg in the first place. But the dragon had almost killed Ashton, and even if it might seem to be on its best behavior now, she wasn’t willing to risk that it wouldn’t happen again.