“Any other questions?” Dad asked. The way he was looking at us made us want to say no. He was especially glaring at Yancy, and I knew Yancy felt it. Blue the parrot was the only one oblivious to the intensity, and he was happily chirping away.
“Wait, I think I see it!” Maison exclaimed, pointing a little farther into the distance. “Something is glowing below the water!”
CHAPTER 3
FIRST I SAW THE VAGUE GLOWING, AND AS DAD steered the boat closer, the form of the ocean monument became visible.
“It’s beautiful,” Destiny said, as if she couldn’t believe it.
“It’s dangerous,” Yancy corrected darkly, frowning down at it.
A castle was sprawled on the ocean floor, made of aqua-colored prismarine blocks and decked with the glowing, box-shaped sea lanterns that had first alerted Maison to its location. It was probably as big as the enormous jungle temple we’d found the last crystal shard in, with rooms and rooms and rooms. The ocean monument stood flanked with columns, and I could just barely see some of the sea life floating in and around it.
“All right, kids,” Dad said, turning to us. “You each have two Potions of Night Vision and two Potions of Water Breathing. And that’s all we have, understood?”
We nodded.
“I can’t wait to go pop some guardians with my arrows!” Alex said, one of the potions already halfway to her mouth. Dad put his hand out and stopped her.
“Your arrows won’t work as well underwater,” he said. “You will be at a disadvantage, Alex. We all will, because we can’t move as fast underwater. We didn’t have time to make any Potions of Swiftness.”
“There are enchantments to help you underwater too,” Yancy said, trying to be useful. “I like to use them when I play the game Minecraft.”
Uh-oh. I looked at Dad. Yancy had just done two bad things: he’d questioned Dad’s knowledge, and he’d referred to our world as a game. Sometimes I thought Yancy never learned.
“I don’t do enchantments,” Dad said stiffly, eyeing Yancy.
“I was just saying you could try something new—” Yancy began.
“Who on this boat has been to an ocean monument before?” Dad cut in. “And not just in a game?” He said the word “game” with real disgust.
Everyone got quiet, even Alex.
“I thought so,” Dad said. “Drink your potions, and let’s dive in. The Potion of Water Breathing will let us talk to one another in the water. When it starts to get hard to talk, that’s when you know the potion is almost worn out. Then we’ll take another potion. When it starts getting harder to see, then it’s time for another Potion of Night Vision. If we take them at the same time, they’ll both stop working at about the same time. Any questions?”
What if we don’t have enough potion? I thought. I bit my tongue.
Dad looked at Yancy. Yancy shook his head, looking uncomfortable under Dad’s glare. Behind them, Alex was already chugging both her potions.
“I’m ready, Uncle Steve!” she called out and dove below the surface with a splash. I lifted the two pinkish potions to my mouth, drinking one and then the other. I tried to catch Yancy’s eyes with mine, but he wouldn’t look at me. Dad, Maison, and Destiny all quickly swigged their potions, and Dad jumped in after Alex. Maison was next, followed by Destiny a moment later. Destiny hesitated for the briefest moment before she dove.
Then it was just Yancy and me in the boat. And Blue, except Blue didn’t count.
“Ready, Yancy?” I asked.
Yancy was drinking his potions as if they were medicine that didn’t taste good. He crawled over to the edge of the boat with me and we both looked down. Neither one of us jumped.
“You first,” Yancy said.
“No,” I said. “You first.”
“Why? Are you scared, Stevie?” Yancy asked.
I looked at Yancy. At first I had felt kind of bad for him, but now I was getting annoyed. “I wasn’t the one who yelped when a guardian jumped into the boat,” I reminded him.
“Hey, it jumped on me,” Yancy said. “And I saw your eyes get pretty big too.”
We both looked back down at the water.
“Have you ever been in the ocean on Earth?” I asked.
“Oh, sure, yeah,” Yancy said. “But, like, at the beach. I’ve never been to the deep ocean.”
“How come?” This made me curious. “You sure seem into the ocean.”
Yancy made a face as if he were still tasting bad medicine. “Well, there’s a difference between appreciating the majesty of sea life in the safety of your own home . . . and, like I said, going out into sea life’s territory.”
So he was scared.
“Okay, I know how we’ll decide this,” Yancy said after a moment. “Rock, paper, scissors.”
“What?” I said, confused.
“It’s a game we play on Earth,” Yancy said. “And whoever loses has to jump in first.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, wondering if there was a catch to this. “How do you play?”
“First, we both put our hands behind our backs. Then, on the count of three, we pull them out. We can make a rock hand, which looks like this, a paper hand, which looks like this, or a scissors hand, which looks like this.” He demonstrated. “Rock beats scissors, scissors cuts paper, paper wraps up rock. Got it?”
Before I could answer, he put his hand behind his back. “One-two-three,” he counted quickly, like it was all one word. He whipped his hand back out in front of mine, his hand flat. “Oh, I win!” he said. “Paper wraps around rock!”
Now I was just plain mad. “That’s cheating, Yancy!” I said. “You know I can’t move my hand like that!” I looked down at my own hand, frustrated. All I could do was the “rock” hand. And how could something as flimsy as paper beat rock, anyway? It didn’t make any sense.
“If you don’t like the results, we can do best two out of three,” Yancy offered with an insincere smile.
I was about to tell Yancy what I thought of him and his game, but then another guardian leaped into the boat, landing between us. As it looked at me, it began to sizzle purple, getting ready to strike with its laser.
CHAPTER 4
“JUMP!” I CRIED. WITHOUT ANOTHER ARGUMENT, Yancy and I both dove overboard while Blue flew, squawking, into the air. I knew Blue would be fine on his own, because guardians wouldn’t bother a bird.
Sinking beneath the water was as much like entering a whole new world as going through a portal into a completely different realm. On the surface, the water had seemed smooth and calm, but underneath it was teeming with life and action. Everything turned blue and I could see bubbles rising up from my mouth and going to the surface. Below me was a swarm of pufferfish beside orange and white clownfish, and ahead were a number of squid. As the squid moved, I could see their giant mouths tucked right up into them. I knew squid didn’t attack people, but I was still thinking about being eaten by sea life.
“There you are,” Alex scolded when she saw us. Her voice sounded funny, sort of like someone talking while gargling. “What took so long?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. I heard myself and realized I had the same gargling voice. That must be how people talked underwater when they’d taken the Potion of Water Breathing. “We’re here.”
“I was about to go up and get you,” Dad said, floating a few feet away. He was looking back and forth between Yancy and me. “You can’t take your time like that. Come on, let’s go.”
I had a feeling he wanted to lecture us some more but would wait until we were breathing air again to do it. Oh boy, I had something to look forward to.
“There’s the entrance to the ocean monument,” Dad said, gesturing with his diamond sword. “Kids, follow me. And watch out for guardians. The other fish won’t bother you.”
We all began swimming. Dad, Alex, and I swam like we were walking, only we were underwater. Maison, Destiny, and Yancy all swam differently. They looked more like they were lying down and they were p
ulling themselves forward with big sweeps of their arms while their feet kicked back behind them. Their hair was drifting all around their faces, moving in the currents. I thought it was a pretty weird way to swim, but that was Earth people for you.
None of us was very fast. Alex was looking less excited as she realized how slowly we were making our way toward the monument. That said something, because Alex was always excited for a new adventure.
So far we hadn’t run into any more guardians, but I could definitely see a bunch of them hanging out around the monument entrance, and I knew they weren’t going to just let us slide right in. Thankfully, though, at the moment they were distracted. A giant squid was swimming by overhead, and the guardians were taking turns zapping it with their lasers. The squid disappeared and dropped an ink sac.
The guardians started shooting at another squid that had come their way. They were so cruel! This squid turned and began heading in the other direction, out of the guardians’ range.
“Why do guardians hate squid so much?” Destiny wondered. “When I play Minecraft, they’re always attacking squid.”
“One of the mysteries of the Overworld, I guess,” Alex said.
Mystery was right. When Yancy had said that Earth’s seas were mostly unexplored, it made me realize how much we didn’t know about our own Overworld oceans.
“Do you think the crystal shard is hidden with the gold?” Maison asked. “Every ocean monument has eight blocks of gold tucked away behind dark prismarine.”
“We’ll check there, though that might be too obvious,” Dad said. He was gripping Steve Alexander’s book. On Earth, books got ruined if you took them in water, but our Overworld books were a lot stronger.
Find the glow, and find your treasure. I heard Steve Alexander’s words in my mind. He liked to talk in riddles, so what did that mean? I didn’t think he meant the gold—that would be too obvious, because everyone would want to look for the gold in the monument. It was the same thing with the sea lanterns, because those were also things people would seek out.
So where would a hero genius like Steve Alexander hide a crystal shard? Would we have to mine the whole area to find it under the floor or in the walls? But what about the Mining Fatigue the elder guardians created? Would we run out of potions and have to go back to land and make more? What if the Ender Dragon’s minions saw us leave the area and decided to check out the ocean monument for themselves? But Endermen couldn’t stand water, so I knew they wouldn’t come down here. Maybe that was why Steve Alexander chose to hide the crystal shard here: to keep the Endermen away.
As slowly as we were going, we were gradually getting closer to the columned entrance of the ocean monument. It was several stories high, much bigger than any of the houses Dad had ever made.
“It’s like the lost city of Atlantis,” Maison said in wonder.
I didn’t know what Atlantis meant, but the ocean monument did look like a lost, forgotten part of some past age, buried into the ocean where only the bravest people would dare to go. Judging from Yancy’s book, the Earth ocean was beautiful and fascinating, even if it was scary sometimes. So was the Overworld ocean. As we approached this monument, I had mixed feelings of awe and fear.
That scared feeling grew as the guardians realized there were much more interesting creatures in the water than squids. One by one, they turned their eyes on us.
CHAPTER 5
THE NEXT THING I KNEW WE WERE SURROUNDED, the guardians sizzling purple and getting ready to attack.
“Get behind the columns!” Dad yelled.
We rushed for the shelter of the columns, only to find that they were still too far away and we were too slow. I felt a jolt of electricity hit me from behind. Even with my iron armor on, the shock went through every inch of me. The blue water was now full of yellow and purple beams.
I was still trying to get my bearings when I felt myself get shocked again. There was no way I could make it to the columns if I kept getting attacked like this!
And it was hard to keep track of the others. I saw Maison barely swerve out of the way of a yellow blast. Then she spun back around and hit the fish. Alex struck one guardian with her arrows, but the fish kept coming at her and she had to scurry away. It wasn’t good enough. The guardian blasted Alex and I saw her whole body stiffen as she got hurt.
Yancy, who still had his backpack with him, swung it in front of his body like some sort of shield. When a yellow laser shot at him, I saw the backpack take the brunt of it, though Yancy was still shocked stiff for a second.
There was no way we could get through all this! Even now I could see more guardians swimming over, their fins swishing madly.
“Get behind the columns!” Dad hollered again. I lost sight of him somewhere in the blur of fins, single eyes, and blasting lasers.
I’m trying! I thought. I felt sore all over from those lasers.
A guardian got right in front of me and began to sizzle purple. I let out a startled cry, bubbles rushing from my mouth. My first instinct was to dart away, but I knew I didn’t have time. Then I remembered what Dad had said: swimming at them made them pull back.
So, despite my instincts, I pushed myself toward the guardian. Just like that, the purple lights went away and it became docile. Normally I would never attack a docile mob, because I only believed in self-defense. However, this was self-defense. If I didn’t take it out now while I had the chance, it would get me as soon as I swam away.
When the guardian pulled back, it also let its spikes drop. I struck with my sword, noticing how the water slowed my swing. My diamond sword still hit the guardian and did damage. I hit it two more times, as fast as I could, and the guardian was gone.
Another one was coming at me, sparking up its purple laser. I pushed myself toward it and watched as it pulled back and drew in its spikes. I hit it with my sword several times and made it vanish. I was starting to get the hang of this!
But another one had slipped up from behind me. I didn’t even see it or know it was there; I just felt another horrible shock shoot through me. I nearly dropped my sword.
I was almost to the columns, but I had to spin around to take care of this guardian. Before I finished turning all the way, I felt another shock.
“Argh!” I exclaimed. Everyone was so consumed in fighting the fish that no one could help anybody else. It was terrible, because normally we all fought as a team.
I floated there a moment, trying to regain my strength, while the guardian that had already hit me twice was getting ready for a third attack. They had to rest a few seconds between each laser blast, though unfortunately those few seconds didn’t feel like enough time to recover after being hit. I looked straight into the guardian’s single eye, which wouldn’t leave my face for a second. Give me a great white shark or an anglerfish or a toxic pufferfish any day, I decided—anything but these cruel, unstopping guardians!
Hollering, Dad hurled himself through the water and struck the guardian. I watched in shock. The guardian’s spikes were still out, so I knew Dad had gotten hurt attacking it, but he made the fish disappear. And it was a good thing, too, because it had almost beaten me.
“Dad!” I called out, scared. I could tell from the shaky way he held himself he must have been blasted a few times too. We were all in bad shape.
“Don’t worry about me, Stevie!” Dad called back. “Get behind the columns!”
As much as I wanted to help, I knew the best thing to do right then was listen. I turned back toward the entrance of the ocean monument, pushing myself as fast as I could. If only we had had some Potion of Swiftness to help us move!
I stretched my arm in front of me as though I could reach out and touch a column. Closer, closer! There! My hand touched against the cool, turquoise side of a prismarine column, and I felt its strength and weight.
A guardian was coming at me, going purple. Just as it turned yellow, I pulled myself behind the column. The yellow blast hit the column and not me, and I watched as sun-colored sizzl
es rushed to either side of the column, barely missing my body.
The next second Maison was there too, pulling herself behind the protective shield of the column.
“Are you hurt?” I asked her.
“This is worse than I thought,” she admitted while trying to catch her breath. “I got hit a few times.”
“Me too,” I said. “Where are the others?”
A hand grabbed the edge of the column and Destiny pulled herself around. She also looked pretty shaken up.
“Where are Yancy, Alex, and Dad?” I asked.
They both looked at me with wide, I-have-no-idea eyes.
I peeked around the column. Yancy was trying to make his way over using his backpack for the little protection it gave him. Alex and Dad were in the thick of things, taking out one guardian after another. Dad was doing a better job with his sword than Alex was with her bow and arrows. Even as they took fish out, they were getting hit repeatedly. Especially Dad. How much more could he take?
“We’ve got to help them!” Destiny said.
I started to swim toward them with Maison and Destiny following. It felt bad going back out, but what else could we do? We needed to help the others get to the entrance with us.
“Yancy!” I shouted as we swam near him. He looked at me with frantic eyes. “We have to help Alex and my dad!” I went on.
Yancy looked over his shoulder, terrified. “You mean go back there?” he bleated.
“We don’t have a choice!” I said.
Yancy heaved an enormous sigh and then slowly turned. Just as he did, a guardian came darting out of the depths, purpling. Before I could open my mouth to warn him, the guardian struck Yancy in a fire of yellow light.
“Owww!” Yancy cried. He hadn’t been able to put his backpack at the right angle in time, and so he took on the full force of the blast. These guardians were unlike anything we’d ever faced before.
Clash in the Underwater World Page 2
