“It isn’t the dragon’s fault,” Ashton said. “I shouldn’t have teased it. Please, give Dragon another chance?”
Zetta bit her lip. She couldn’t believe she’d actually considered using the dragon as a weapon. The reality was that it was as hostile as hostile mobs came, and they had no real control over it.
“The dragon did seem really sorry,” Rift said, not helping, as always.
“Imagine what the dragon could learn in another week,” Ashton said, his eyes pleading and his lips pouting. “Please?”
Zetta turned away from him. She knew she couldn’t resist that face. “It’s too dangerous,” she said sternly. “Ashton, why don’t you go play over there. Away from the dragon. The twins and I need to talk.”
Ashton sulked off, sat down next to the campfire, and pulled out his notebook.
“Okay, what are we going to do?” said Zetta.
“We’ve got to tell the mayor,” Rayne said.
“And what is she going to do with a three-ton beast?” Rift asked. “I think the dragon deserves another chance. I mean, that poison…Imagine if we taught the dragon how to use it on illagers…”
Zetta shook her head. “The dragon isn’t a weapon,” she spat out like she hadn’t had the same exact idea. But seeing Ashton hurting like that, almost losing him, had changed her. “We’ve got my mother’s notebook. We’ve got our brains. That’ll be enough. I’m sorry, Rift, but the dragon has to—”
“Ahhhhh!” came Ashton’s screams. Zetta sprung to her feet, scared that the dragon had poisoned him again, but instead, Ashton was caught on one of the pistons of Rift’s new contraption. “Help me. I’m stuck.”
But before Rift could come to his rescue, Ashton kicked the lever on the machine, and the contraption started gyrating and clicking and rising into the air. Ashton was dragged along with it. He managed to climb up onto one of the blocks and unstick himself, but now he was high up enough that a jump would cause considerable damage.
“Water!” Rift yelled, dumping the water bucket on the ground. “It’ll break his fall.”
Zetta looked down at the small, barely-there puddle with a skeptical brow. “Was this part of your prank, too? This is too dangerous, Rift. What were you thinking?” She was yelling at her friend. She didn’t mean to, but this was life or death.
“Just jump!” Rift called up to Ashton. “It’s safe.”
“I’m too scared,” Ashton said, his voice sounding more and more distant.
Zetta looked over at the dragon. It was cowering, head tucked under a bush, the rest of it clearly visible. “Dragon!” she said, no-nonsense. The dragon turned its head to her.
“You are going to fly me up there so I can save Ashton. I’m not taking no for an answer.” The dragon seemed to get the gist of what she was saying, and Zetta climbed up onto its back. She didn’t have time to be scared this time. The dragon’s wings flapped and its weight shifted, and then the world dropped from under her. She was flying. She held on as the dragon drove straight up toward the clouds.
It wasn’t long before she heard Ashton’s screaming. Then she saw him, clinging to the slime block contraption for dear life. The dragon swooped, dipped, then rose, matching Ashton’s ascent. The dragon eased up some, until Ashton hopped onto its back with little more than an “Oof.”
The poor kid still looked terrified, though. He went limp and passed out. The dragon set Ashton and Zetta back down, safe and sound. Rift looked on in amazement. Rayne took a few timid steps toward the dragon, closer than they’d ever dared to get to the beast.
“You did good,” Rayne muttered, patting the dragon on the snout.
The dragon had broken everyone’s trust, but with that brave maneuver, it was hard not to forgive it. Still, they could never forget the power it held. And the hidden dangers.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Oh, all right,” Zetta said. “We’ll put the dragon on probation. But one more incident and it’s gone for good, got it?”
Ashton ran over to the sulking dragon and rustled its ears. “Did you hear that, Dragon? You’re staying with us!” The dragon perked, cocking its head to one side like it was trying to figure out what Ashton was saying. Then it licked Ashton’s face, its tongue more like a small, moist blanket. Ashton smiled through the glaze of saliva. “We’re going to have to teach you not to do that,” he said.
Zetta laughed to herself. Deep inside, she was glad their little team was staying intact. “One thing, though,” she said. “I think we should move the dragon closer to town. This running back and forth has been draining on all of us.”
Everyone agreed. Zetta would still have to come back to check on her aunt’s place, but she could leave the animals enough water and food for a few days and they’d be fine. Then Zetta could shift her focus to making poison potions for the arrow tips.
The twins started disassembling Rift’s contraption, opting to run back to town instead of riding on the dragon. They extinguished the campfire, packed up their crafting table and furnaces, and tore down the little wooden shack. Zetta planned to reuse the wood to craft arrows. She knew they’d agreed not to bring resources back with them, but it would take months to scour the desert for enough dead bushes to supply her with all the sticks she’d need. After an hour, their little clearing looked almost exactly how they’d found it.
The dragon didn’t balk at Zetta’s presence on its back this time. They took off once more, and soon the mountain started getting farther and farther away, until it was just a bump on the horizon. The welcome sight of sand below them calmed Zetta. She watched as Ashton leaned this way and that, the dragon turning slightly at each movement. They truly had an amazing bond. Ashton leaned forward and the dragon started to dip. The ground crept up on them gradually, the town still so far off in the distance that no one would spot a giant flying mob in the sky, but not so far that they couldn’t get back and forth by foot in less than thirty minutes.
Without potions.
Ashton angled them once more to a cave set into a large hill. Perfect spot to keep a dragon hidden. As the pads of the dragon’s paws kissed the earth, a flood of relief filled Zetta from head to toe. They’d made it with no problems.
Zetta leaned against a rock and rested while Ashton and the dragon played hide-and-seek. Ashton would hide behind a cactus or over a hill or in a cave, and then the dragon would sniff him out. It was pretty cute. Then they’d wrestle, roughhousing like one of them hadn’t nearly killed the other just over an hour ago.
Zetta sighed. It was an accident. A once-in-a-lifetime accident.
She placed their crafting table down in a handy spot, converted the cabin logs into wood planks, and then started whittling the planks into sticks for the arrows. How many would they even need? Hundreds? Thousands?
“Whatcha doing?” Ashton asked, trotting up to Zetta with the dragon on his heels. The dragon was seriously interested in the sticks. The pile was growing, and Zetta’s hands were already starting to go numb.
“Making arrows.”
“Cool! Nana and Papa are gonna be prepping a bunch of chickens for the Eve of Hostile Mobs festival. I’ll have a ton of feathers for you.” He reached into his pack. “Here are a couple to get you started.”
“Really?” Zetta asked. “That’d be great.” She smiled, glad the townspeople were still celebrating in spite of all the hardships they’d had since the attack. “I suppose you’re too old for masks this year?” she asked.
“Yeah, probably. But Rift and Rayne said I could help out on their float!”
Zetta grinned a tight grin. She’d helped Rift and Rayne with their family float one year, and never again. Their parents were just so intense. Every little detail had to be perfect. They’d made a giant cave spider that year, and put redstone torches in the eyes so they lit up and everything. They had a creepy taxidermy spider that served as their referen
ce. They’d scaled it up so that it took five people to operate it, one for each pair of legs and one for the head, turning it this way and that, and opening and closing the fang-filled mouth. They’d gotten second place that year, and Zetta went a whole six months hearing about how they’d been robbed and should have gotten the first-place trophy and all the bragging rights that came with it.
Phew. “Yeah, good luck with that,” Zetta mumbled. “Well, we’ll still need flint, so I guess I’ll work on that next. Why don’t you head back? I might be late tonight.”
Ashton gave the dragon a final nuzzle, then took off.
There was still so much for Zetta to do. She took out her stone pickaxe and explored the caves until she found some gravel to mine, gaining a few pieces of flint from them in the process. Slowly, it was all starting to come together. After crafting some arrows, she pulled a healing potion from her pack.
How did making tipped arrows work? Zetta tried dipping the arrowhead into the potion. Nothing. She tried all kinds of combinations on the crafting table, but she could not make the arrows magic.
“I think I’m missing an ingredient,” she said to the dragon, curled up next to her.
The dragon looked at her and huffed. Little flecks of purple poison flared out of its nostrils. Not enough to reach her, but enough to make her nervous. “Stop that. We told you— keep your dragon breath to yourself!”
Then it hit Zetta. Hadn’t her aunt said something about dragon’s breath and potioning? She ran over to the little cloud and carefully collected some in every bottle she had on her. She was ready to experiment further, but she needed to get back home so she could sleep a bit and then do her mining training, like she was a noob.
* * *
—
Despite being sleepy, Zetta tried her hardest in mining class, listening as Milo taught people who were still struggling to figure out the correct way to hold a pickaxe. It was basic-level instruction, but she still learned a few things, and when Milo let them go practice, Zetta ended up discovering two iron veins. She called first rights, scoring herself two more iron ores. Now she had enough for an iron pickaxe. Even Milo was impressed.
After class, Zetta wanted so badly to slip into her bed, but those arrows weren’t going to make themselves. She hurried home, and snuck her brewing stand out of the closet. It still had a tiny bit of blaze powder in it, and after a few tries, Zetta had herself a lingering potion. She packed the stand away where her father had hidden it, hoping he wouldn’t notice she’d been back in there. Then she took off to share the good news with her friends.
She arrived at the cave on the outskirts of town in no time. Rift had set up an arrow contraption using instructions from Zetta’s mother’s notebook. Rayne was training the dragon to dive-bomb armor stands with its snout. It did so with remarkable accuracy. Zetta loved the sound of those giant flapping wings so much. Armor stand after armor stand went flying off, landing in broken pieces. Rayne patted the dragon lovingly on the snout, then gathered the armor stand pieces, recrafted them, and started the process all over.
“Um, you’re not teaching the dragon to fight, are you?” she said to Rayne. “I thought we talked about that.”
“I know, I know,” Rayne said as the dragon nudged them, trying to get Rayne to hurry up with setting the stands up again. Rayne gave the dragon a hip bump, and the dragon retaliated by licking the side of Rayne’s face. “But look how accurate Dragon is. Didn’t you see how easily it took those targets out? I think we should at least consider it.”
Zetta grumbled to herself, though she had to admit, Rayne and the dragon were pretty cute together.
“I’ve got a few arrows for you,” Zetta said, handing a dozen regular arrows over to Rift.
“Awesome,” he said, but he spoke like his mind was far off in diagrams and calculations. “Where’s Ashton?”
“Helping our grandparents with festival stuff. You need any help with anything?” she asked.
“Actually, if you could press this button when I say, that’d be handy.” Rift walked around to the other side of the machine and examined the piles of red dust snaking from block to block. “Okay…now.”
Zetta pressed the button. She watched as the dull red dust lit up bright. There were all sorts of doodads spaced between the dust trails.
Rift yelled “Aha!” and pointed to the spot where the dust stopped lighting up. “Found the problem. Thanks.” He tinkered a bit more, then loaded the arrows into a chest mounted up top. “Ready for a test?”
Zetta nodded.
“Hey, Rayne. Line those targets up like we talked about?” Rift asked as he walked around his arrow-flinging contraption one more time.
Rayne moved the armor stands thirty feet from the contraption, then quickly got out of the way.
“Firing in three. Two. One.” Rift pressed the button, and a little glowstone lamp lit up, but nothing else happened.
“Um—” Zetta started.
“Wait for it,” Rift said, raising a finger to silence her. Then a storm of arrows shot out in rapid succession. Pftt. Pftt. Pftt. Cutting through the air and sinking into the targets. It lasted only seconds, but when the dust settled, every single armor stand was teeming with arrows. No illager could survive that much of an onslaught.
“That was amazing!” Zetta said, jumping up and down.
“Get me about ten times as many arrows, and we might not even need the dragon to defend our town.”
“We’re not using the dragon to defend our town,” Zetta repeated. She was starting to sound like a broken music disc.
“What’s the status on the poison-tipped arrows?” Rayne asked.
“I’m super-close. Maybe today.”
Rayne nodded, trying to read her. “It’s just that you promised us poison-tipped arrows, and—”
“I’ll get them to you soon, okay?” Ugh. “Anyway, why don’t you and Rift head home. I’m sure your parents are wanting to practice for the festival parade or something.”
“You’re sure you can handle the dragon yourself?” Rayne asked. “I can stay if—”
“Yeah, no, it’s fine. I can handle it.” She could use a little alone time after the day she’d had in the mines, all huddled up with nine other miners who could barely swing a pickaxe. She’d nearly taken a shot in the forehead.
She loaded the shovel thrower and watched as the dragon ran back and forth, chasing Meechie and then dropping it into the dropper, only for it to shoot out again. And again. And again.
The contraption firing was a soothing rhythm. Zetta didn’t even notice it lulling her to sleep.
But when she woke, she definitely noticed that the rhythm had stopped, and that the dragon was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Zetta jumped to her feet and started searching frantically for the dragon, checking all the nearby caves. Checking over each sand dune, even checking in the places she logically knew a dragon couldn’t fit. But there was no sign of it, and worse, there weren’t any tracks to go by. The dragon had flown off this time.
Maybe another molting? So soon? Argh. How could she be so careless?
She had to get the others to help. Ashton would be so furious with her. She didn’t want to face him, but if they had a chance of finding the dragon before the situation got too heated, she needed him. She ran as fast as she could to her grandparents’ farm. She was heading to the house, but heard a strange cooing coming from the barn, the same noises Ashton would make when fussing over the chickens. Zetta zagged that way instead, but when she pulled the door latch it was locked. It was never locked.
She heard laughter and gruff noises coming from inside, so she knocked. The laughter stopped, and then she heard shushing.
“Who is it?” came her cousin’s voice.
“Zetta. Do you have company? I’ve got…news.”
The l
ock clicked and the latch opened. When the door slid open, she saw her cousin’s blank face staring back at her. “I think I know what your news is,” he grumbled, then pulled her in and shut the door again.
The chickens all looked panicked and had flown up to the rafters. When Zetta saw a long black tail peeking out from behind a huge stack of hay bales, she understood why.
The dragon had come here.
“Care to explain why there’s a dragon in my barn, cousin?” Ashton asked.
Zetta fumbled for words. “I—uh….must have dozed off for a bit. But I’ve been doing mining training, and prepping arrows, and watching the dragon. It’s just too much.”
“It’s fine,” Ashton said. He must have felt sorry for her, because his accusatory demeanor disappeared and was replaced with one of understanding. “We’re all in this together. Good thing we practiced all that tracking, or who knows where the dragon would have ended up.”
“Did anyone see it?” Zetta asked.
“Papa almost did. We were out in the far fields when I saw a black dot flying at us. I told him the hoes really needed sharpening, so he went off to do that before the dragon arrived. I got it into the barn as fast as I could. But it was close, Zetta. Too close. We have to be more careful.”
Zetta nodded. “I’ve got a couple more invisibility potions on me. If we can get the dragon to drink one, then we can get it back to the cave without worrying over it being seen.”
Ashton shrugged. “We could. But wouldn’t it be better to keep the dragon closer? We’re all worn out. Even running back and forth to the caves is a lot.”
“You’re not suggesting that we keep the dragon here, are you? How are we supposed to keep that thing hidden? It’s not going to be happy cooped up in this barn all day and night.”
Ashton smiled, then picked up a piece of paper from the floor and folded it carefully until it resembled a flower. Then he stuck it on the dragon’s snout. The dragon snuffed, but then seemed to forget about it when Ashton started scratching behind its horn. Zetta spent a long moment confused, but then it dawned on her. The Eve of Hostile Mobs festival was just a few days off. It was the time of year when giant paper flower floats designed to look like hostile mobs were celebrated by the whole town as they were carried through the streets.
The Dragon: An Official Minecraft Novel Page 13
