“Get your pickaxe and be ready to dig,” Hamid said.
Ant’s simple stone axe appeared in his hands. It was all they could craft back at Yurei’s shack after losing their stuff. It would have to do.
A clear path opened in front of them.
“Now!”
Hamid whacked the iron grate until it broke. He raced out into the open with Ant at his heels.
Monsters moved back and forth on either side. Their wandering had created a gap wide enough to run through unseen. But it wouldn’t last for long. Hamid pointed to a spot in the fortress wall. It was regular cobblestone and not impenetrable obsidian.
“Dig there!”
Ant didn’t need any further instructions. In a flash, they were whacking their axes into the stone wall as fast as they could.
They broke through the stone only to find another layer behind it.
“It’s too thick!“ Ant wailed.
“Keep digging!“ Hamid said.
Hamid chanced a look over his shoulder and immediately regretted it.
A wall of green rushed toward them. The empty stares of too many creepers turned Hamid’s pounding heart to stone. Their gap was closing fast, like a wave crashing down on them. But this wave wouldn’t leave them wet.
It would leave them dead.
Chapter 14
Jaina was glad Principal Whiner was in Minecraft.
At school, he had power and authority. Here, in this weirdo version of the game where skeletons talked, he was a noob. Whiner could command the skeleton guards, but he still didn’t know how to play Minecraft. And if there was one thing Jaina liked doing in Minecraft, it was owning noobs. She just had to wait for the right opportunity.
With a pair of skeleton guards at his command, Whiner had led Jaina through a twisting maze of corridors deeper into Slashax’s fortress. With each step more questions filled Jaina’s thoughts. Where were they taking her? Did Ant and Hamid even know she was inside the game? And what about her only friend in this world, Bones?
The little dog had fled when Whiner ambushed them. Jaina couldn’t blame the little guy. He was just a doggie, after all. He deserved to be with his pack and not following some strange kid deep underground.
Ahead of her, Whiner marched wearing that smug look on his face he got when he had busted some kid, usually Ant, stuffing paper towel into the boys’ toilets.
Jaina didn’t understand the old man at all. He ruled their school like an angry army general. He never cracked a smile and always barked at the students. Principal Whiner seemed so mad at everyone and everything all the time. In here, he was different. He seemed almost happy in a twisted kind of way. That scared Jaina even more. In here, he had an army of skeletons obeying his orders. Who knew the damage their principal could do? She needed answers.
Jaina hurried her pace and caught up to Whiner.
“Why do you dislike Minecraft so much?” she said.
“Because you love it so much!” Principal Whiner snapped. “You kids spend so much time staring at computer screens, smacking each other with swords. You should be at home studying and preparing for exams. That’s what we did as children. We never had distractions like Minecraft.”
She heard the hurt in his words, like an angry first grader.
“You’re jealous!” Jaina said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Whiner said.
“You’re just mad because all you had when you were a kid was a few sticks to rub together.”
His eyes narrowed. “You listen here, young lady. When I was a child, we learned the proper way. With pencils and paper, not gadgets and games. I am here to save you from all this blocky madness. That Herobrine fellow has the right idea. If he can use that seed contraption to destroy this game, then I will help him do it.”
“He wants to take over the real world, too!” Jaina said.
Whiner dismissed her with a wave. “He doesn’t stand a chance. The authorities will be alerted and he’ll be arrested before he can summon the first cropper.”
“It’s a creeper, noob,” Jaina said. “And you won’t be smiling when they blow up your office at school!”
They entered a room with a low ceiling and lined with wooden chests. It was a storage room. Chests ran in neat rows from wall to wall.
Jaina slowed her pace, letting the mindless skeletons march ahead. Behind her, Whiner had his back to them as he fumbled with closing the door. Noob.
Jaina saw her chance.
She moved to the nearest chest. The lid creaked open to reveal its contents. Without pausing to let fear take over, Jaina scooped everything she saw into her inventory.
“Stop messing with that,” Whiner called, the door finally closed.
The skeletons rounded on Jaina and pulled her from the chest. Their bony fingers gripped her arms like vices.
“I tripped,” she said.
She held her breath, waiting for Whiner to demand she empty her inventory.
“Clumsy child,” he said and walked past her.
Jaina breathed again and let herself be dragged along by the skeletons.
Whiner hated Minecraft so much, he never played it. He had no idea what just happened. That old noob didn’t realize she had just taken the first step towards escape.
They led her through another set of twisting corridors. Eventually they came to an iron door and ordered her into the small, windowless room on the other side.
The door slammed shut, locking her inside. Everything outside the door fell silent.
She was alone. She could finally inspect her haul.
Lapis lazuli, some string from a cave spider, an iron sword, two pieces of redstone dust and a single redstone torch.
The lapis and string were no good to her in here. The sword was a lucky find and the redstone items held promise.
Jaina paced around the small square room. Five blocks along each, and five blocks tall. Walls made of granite with no windows anywhere. She had no tools to break through the walls. But there was the door. An iron door.
She placed the pieces of redstone on the ground in front of the door. A line of dull red ran from the door two squares into her tiny prison cell.
She waited until there were no sounds of skeletons clattering on the other side.
“Here goes nothing,” she said to the empty cell.
She placed the redstone torch on the ground at the end of the line of redstone dust. The red line burst to life, turning a bright red. Sparks wafted into the air.
The door swung open.
“Noobs,” Jaina whispered.
She slipped out the open door into the narrow stone corridor. She was free — sort of. She was still stuck inside Slashax’s fort. But she wouldn’t be for long.
Jaina hurried down the corridor, hopefully in the direction she had come with Principal Whiner. Maybe if she backtracked, she could find that storeroom again and grab something more useful than string.
Three times she had to jump out of the way to avoid skeleton patrols. The monstrous guards would be terrible ninjas. They didn’t talk as they patrolled but their clattering bones made it easy to hear them coming. Each time she heard that telltale jangle of bones, Jaina headed in the opposite direction. She avoided being caught, but she also got herself even more lost than before.
The clattering of another approaching skeleton patrol sent her stumbling through a door and into a room the size of her school gym. Rail tracks crisscrossed the floor. Minecarts with chests whizzed along the tracks. They traveled in and out of the room from tunnels leading deep underground. Skeletons clattered around the room, unloading the chests of their redstone dust, coal and other materials mined from somewhere below the fortress.
She was in some kind of receiving warehouse. It was just like the one her dad worked in — crowded and busy.
Halfway along the wall on her left side stood a set of double doors. The two doors stood side by side. Jaina hoped they led to the area outside Slashax’s fortress. She had seen a set of doors like these
when Whiner first brought her here.
Jaina scurried to the corner and squished herself into the tiny shadow that offered a meager hiding spot. She had to get through those doors. She thought about running straight for them and dashing to freedom. Unfortunately, the swarm of skeletons hovering around the door would have something to say about that.
She needed a diversion. If Bones were here, the little dog would happily distract the guards. But he wasn’t. Jaina’s heart ached at the thought of her friends, even the non-furry ones.
A deafening boom rang through the warehouse, yanking Jaina from her thoughts. The far wall exploded. Chunks of rock burst from the wall into the warehouse, flattening skeletons like a bunch of bony bowling pins. The monsters rushed to the hole that now appeared in the wall.
“That’ll do,” Jaina said.
She sprang from her hiding spot and raced to the doors. With the mess and confusion on the far side, no one would see her slip through. At least, that’s what she hoped.
Halfway to the exit, she froze.
A battle raged in the newly formed hole in the wall. Through the smoke, she spied two shapes clashing with the skeletons. The ache in Jaina’s heart vanished at the sight.
“Ant! Hamid!”
Chapter 15
Every gamer knows there are times when it’s best just to close your eyes, give up and wait to get stomped into oblivion.
With a herd of creepers closing in, Hamid knew this was one of those times.
So did Ant. Together, the two friends cowered against the stone wall, waiting for their doom.
“Goodbye, old pal. It’s been fun,” Ant said.
“See you later, Ant,” Hamid buried his hands in his face. Not a glorious way to go, but he just wanted this whole weird ride into Minecraft to be over. “Maybe we’ll respawn back in the real world.”
The first creeper hit with a deafening boom.
The monster’s explosion blew a hole in the wall behind them. Hamid and Ant flew through the hole and crashed to the ground in a spray of rock and dust.
Many hearts vanished from the bottom of Hamid’s vision. The remaining pair of hearts pulsed a rapid-fire rhythm, like a nasty cut that throbbed with pain. Hamid slowly got to his feet. They were in a large room inside Slashax’s fortress. At least they accomplished that part of their mission. Beside him, Ant shook off the creeper explosion and struggle to stand.
“We’re alive,” Hamid said.
Ant’s diamond sword appeared in his hand. “Alive and surrounded.”
All around them, bleach-white skulls glared. Another rattling wave of skeletons marched closer, swords out and ready to fight. More creepers slid silently toward them from outside.
This nightmare wasn’t finished with them yet. But Hamid was finished with cowering. They had come so far and survived so many dangers. It was too late to give up. Now it was time to fight.
Hamid drew his sword and faced off against the first wave of skeletons.
“I’ll deal with these boneheads,” he said to Ant. “You knock those creepers into next week.”
Ant stepped into the opening to the monster moat and got to work. With the skill of a major league slugger, he whacked at the creepers. Each swing sent another green time bomb back through the hole in the wall. Hamid’s own blade sliced through an endless wall of bones. The stream of skeletons seemed never-ending. With every enemy he smashed, two more of the clattering creatures appeared.
“There’s too many of them!” he shouted as a third wave moved in to replace a freshly defeated skeleton. His arm ached and his sword felt as heavy as a school bus in his hands. In a few moments, he would be too tired to lift his blade. The skeletons would have them both for lunch.
A familiar voice cut through the chaos. At first, Hamid thought he was dreaming. He heard it again.
“Ant! Hamid!”
At the back of the pack, skeletons crumbled into a pile of bones like trees crushed under an advancing bulldozer. The source of the destruction stepped into the empty space left by the dying monsters.
“Jaina!”
A new wave of energy coursed through Hamid at the sight of his friend. She swung her iron sword in a wide arc, carving a path through the skeletons.
“What are you doing here?” Ant said as he smacked another creeper across the moat.
“Rescuing you two,” Jaina said.
“We’re here to rescue you!” Hamid said.
“Whatever,” she scoffed. “I don’t do that whole damsel in distress thing. You should know that by now.” Her sword sent another skeleton scattering into a hundred pieces. “Ready to finish this?”
With Jaina’s blade added to their own, the three friends turned the tide of the battle. They fought like a well-tuned redstone machine. Their backs to each other, they held their ground and wore their enemies down. Soon they were surrounded by a pile of bones and gunpowder, all that remained of the skeletons and creepers.
“You’re here,” she said, staring at Ant and Hamid as if they might vanish. “You’re really here.”
“And so are you!” Hamid said.
“Best friends reunited. Isn’t that adorable.”
The voice came from the other side of the warehouse. The three friends would have recognized it from the other side of the planet.
“Principal Whiner!” Hamid said. “What are you doing here?”
“Capturing you three brats, obviously.” Whiner’s face could barely contain his grin.
A new wave of skeletons rushed through the doors into the warehouse. Arrows pointed directly at the three friends.
“Drop your weapons and come along like good little children.”
Chapter 16
“If you think we’re giving you a bike ride, you’re totally wrong, dude.”
Ant struggled as the skeletons pushed him onto the blocky seat of the diamond condenser.
“The only thing you will be giving me is the power I deserve,” Slashax snarled. “Now, sit still and do as I say and you might make it back to your world in one piece.”
Hamid didn’t resist when the skeleton shoved him into the seat of the condenser. All his energy was focused on working out how all this happened.
* * *
One minute, he and Ant were cowering, waiting to be blown up by creepers. Then they were battling skeletons with Jaina. Before they could even high-five, they were captured by their school principal and had their diamond swords taken away. Whiner had not only traveled into their game with them, the old fartbag ran the show in here, too. And just like at school, he worked for the bad guys.
Whiner had led the way back to the Portal Chamber. As they marched, he berated Ant over his addiction to videogames, unfinished homework or some other tragedy affecting today’s youth. Ant nodded sagely as Whiner spoke. His friend looked completely absorbed in the words of wisdom from their great and wonderful principal. Hamid knew better. Ant was most likely waiting for the perfect moment to trip the old geezer.
Hamid marched beside Jaina. The skeletons were too busy being mindless undead to pay attention to his hushed conversation with her.
“Why is Whiner helping Slashax and Herobrine?” Hamid said.
She shot a nervous glance to the front of the line.
“Long story,” she said in a low voice. “Whiner hates Minecraft. He wants it destroyed.”
“No surprise there,” Hamid said.
“Not just deleted from the school computers. He wants the game wiped from existence.”
“He’s not alone. Herobrine wants the same thing.” The skeleton guard walking next to Hamid turned its eyeless gaze to them at the mention of Herobrine. Maybe they weren’t as mindless as they seemed. Hamid lowered his voice to a whisper. “Herobrine is trapped on this server. He wants to use the seed generator to escape and cause chaos in the real world.”
“That cage thing with the spinning rock?” Jaina said. She kept her words quiet and her eyes on their skeleton guards.
“You’ve seen it?” Hami
d said. “That spinning rock is a seed. It generates the code behind every Minecraft world. Herobrine wants the seed so he can corrupt the server world codes. If he succeeds, he will be able to move between the game world into the real world.”
“Like we did because of the swords,” Jaina said.
“Exactly. And Herobrine won’t be alone. He will send an army of creepers and zombies into the real world.”
“Using the world’s Minecraft servers as entry points,” Jaina said. “But Slashax has his own plans. He wants the power from our swords so he can defeat Herobrine and be the boss of all Minecraft.”
“We can’t let that happen,” Hamid said, remembering Yurei’s warnings about upsetting the balance of control and chaos. “We have to get our swords back and the Seed Generator away from Slashax.”
“Anything else while we’re at it? Achieve world peace? Stop climate change?” Jaina said. Her wry smile held equal measures of hope and doubt.
They arrived at a set of iron double doors.
“We’re here,” Whiner said. His square face lit up. Hamid had seen that look before. It was the glow of satisfaction that came before dishing out the punishment. “There is someone in here who is very eager to meet you.”
* * *
Hamid sat in the seat beside Ant. A pair of skeleton hands on his shoulders held him in place on the diamond condenser.
The whole thing was shaped like the wheel. Hamid, Ant and Jaina sat at three different points on the outer edge of the machine. In front of each of their seats stood a narrow tube. In the center of the wheel stood a single redstone block. Redstone circuitry ran along the spokes of this very strange wheel.
“They should totally bring this ride to the school fun fair,” Ant said.
Descent Into Overworld: An Unofficial Minecraft Adventure Page 8
