That still wasn’t very reassuring, because normal elder guardians were still the most feared creatures in the sea. The elder guardian began to shake violently, as if it wanted to knock me out of its insides—or, as if it was attacking the others. My whole body got flung against the far red wall of its insides. I groaned at the impact.
Before I could recover, the fish jerked again. I stumbled across to the other side of it, hitting the red wall. I slashed with my sword. The wall glowed red for a second, which meant I’d made a good strike. The elder guardian jerked once more and I was hurled across the room.
Regaining my balance, I struck the wall again and again. Three hits was usually enough to take out most mobs. But the wall of the fish’s insides only glowed red for a second and then nothing happened.
I started to feel panic rise up in my throat. Dad was right—this had been too risky of a plan. I’d actually fed myself to this monster!
“Steve Alexander!” I shouted. “What do I do now?”
Silence.
Steve Alexander had told me not to doubt myself, but he had disappeared when I needed him most. Why? Why would he do that to me?
Another voice answered me instead of Steve Alexander. My, what a situation you have yourself in, teased the Ender Dragon, enjoying this way too much. Little Stevie listened to Steve Alexander and wanted to look heroic so badly that he doomed himself and his friends. Oh, how they are suffering trying to free you.
I slashed out with my sword again, as if I could hit the elder guardian and the Ender Dragon at the same time. The elder guardian glowed red from the hit but still didn’t vanish.
Your father was hurt earlier, the Ender Dragon gloated. He’s hurt again now, and he’s your group’s best warrior. What will happen when he falls? You’re stuck in here; you can’t help. Alex’s arrows alone will be no match for the beast, and your poor Earth friends are not trained for ocean fighting.
“It can’t take that many hits to defeat this elder guardian!” I shouted. “You’re wrong!”
Steve Alexander! I was thinking. Come back! Why did you leave?
The elder guardian will defeat the others, the Ender Dragon said. At least their ends will be quick. But you’ll be trapped inside there, left to wait until your potions stop working and you can no longer breathe.
For a second my throat closed up, as if what she was predicting was already coming to pass. Then I shook my head and forced those fears away, shouting, “No!” I hit the elder guardian again with my sword. It was still thrashing around, knocking me to different places in its belly.
Or, the Ender Dragon said casually, as if we were just having a nice chat, I could save you all. I could give you, your father, your cousin, and your friends the ability to continue breathing. I could get you out of that elder guardian and out of the ocean monument. You would only have to do one thing for me.
She paused for the smallest second, letting the intensity build. I already felt myself getting chills, knowing the terrible deal she would offer.
Give me the crystal, she said, and you will live.
CHAPTER 14
FOR A MOMENT, THAT SOUNDED LIKE THE SMARTEST thing to do. Give her the crystal and save all of us? Or stay here and be defeated?
But no. “Never! ” I roared, and hit the elder guardian with all my might. There was an explosion of red light and the belly of the beast fell apart around me. The next thing I knew, I’d fallen back into the water, sputtering and trying to catch my breath.
“Stevie!” Dad said, grabbing me by my shoulders and hauling me up. I looked around. Everyone was there and still safe, though they looked a little worse for wear.
“You’re okay!” I said.
“The crystal!” Alex marveled, her eyes glowing purple in the reflection. “The glow—Stevie, you were right! You were crazy to get eaten, but you were right!”
“I kept hitting the elder guardian, and nothing would happen,” I said. “I thought nothing would stop it.”
“It was a lot of work,” Maison acknowledged. Then she grinned. “That doesn’t mean we couldn’t take care of it.”
“Enough talk,” Dad said. “We have what we need. Let’s get back to the surface.”
Count me in! I quickly slipped the Ender crystal shard into my toolkit to keep it safe. As much as I wanted to read the next part of the book right away to see what our next crystal adventure would be, I knew we had to wait until we’d reached shore and were safer—and able to breathe!
The crystal fell into the bottom of my toolkit, making everything inside the kit glow purple and look enchanted. I let a feeling of peace come over me. Maybe Steve Alexander couldn’t always talk to me. Maybe he’d left me alone at that moment to let me know I could take care of the elder guardian without him. It had been a hard lesson, but I did feel stronger from it. And so glad I hadn’t given in to the Ender Dragon, even when I was the most scared I could be.
Dad was still holding my shoulder and began pulling me with him as he swam. It was as if he thought I’d be extra fragile right then because of what I’d been through.
As we moved forward, I heard another roar. The walls and columns shook around us.
I felt another cold sensation sweep over me. For a second, my vision was filled with two giant eyes, from two different beings. It was two remaining elder guardians.
Just like that, they were gone.
“Mining Fatigue again,” Maison said, shivering.
“That can’t be right,” Yancy objected hotly. “We’re not anywhere near the other elder guardians. They’re in two different parts of the monument.”
In the back of my head, I heard a terrible laughter.
“Oh no,” I said, realizing this mission wasn’t anywhere near done. Elder guardians only flashed like that and gave Mining Fatigue if they were close. So if we weren’t by the wings that had the other two elder guardians, that could only mean one thing.
A second passed. Another. And then two large elder guardians burst into the room, their lasers starting to spit purple as they prepared to attack.
CHAPTER 15
“DODGE!” DAD SHOUTED AS THEIR LIGHTS TURNED yellow and they shot lasers at us. We all lunged out of the way. I felt the heat of one of the lasers as it zipped right past me, lighting up my iron armor in a bright silver color.
Dad reached into his toolkit and pulled out his last sponge. In an instant, it sucked up most of the water in the room.
It was a great move! Now the two large fish were flopping in ankle-deep water. They still had their lasers and were still powerful, but they couldn’t move as fast as they could before. And without all that water around, we could move more quickly!
“Attack them, kids!” Dad said. “Avoid their lasers!”
We dove at the elder guardians, attacking them from the sides. The two fish continued to fight and zap, but even though they were really big, they were nothing compared to that last elder guardian. Their yellow lasers shot at the walls, turning the room gold whenever they powered up.
Alex was going all out with her arrows, now that she could use them more easily. “Oh, this feels much better!” she said, yanking back her bowstring and sending arrows flying.
“How many hits did it take for you guys to get the last one?” I called out above all the laser and fighting noises.
“Too many,” Dad said gruffly. “But these elder guardians are much smaller, and I was so worried about you then that I didn’t think of using the sponge before!”
One of the elder guardians had managed to flop itself on its side and turn so that it was facing me now. It began to power up purple lasers, getting ready to nail me. I jumped out of the way. The laser hit the wall behind where I’d been standing, making it crumble a little.
Even as all this was going on, I was noticing regular guardians coming into the area. They were floating just outside the room where the sponge had no effect and there was still plenty of water. And they were turning purple so they could shoot at us. As I struck an elder gu
ardian with my sword, I felt myself start to get blasted from behind.
I spun and went after the green-and-yellow guardian that had gotten me first. When I jumped right in front of it, it pulled back and its spikes dropped. That gave me a chance to hit it.
“Look out, Stevie!” Maison said.
I ducked. A yellow laser beam hit where my head had been. It was one of the elder guardians again, flipping onto its side.
I saw Alex line her bow with arrows and send them at the elder guardian that was closer to her. It did the trick, and the elder guardian vanished. That left the other one and all the regular guardians that kept sneaking up and shooting us from the edges.
“Concentrate on finishing off the last elder guardian!” Dad told us. “It’s the strongest mob!”
I felt a regular guardian shock me from behind and gritted my teeth. If we took out the big one, that would let us all go after the small ones more easily. I hit the elder guardian above its one angry eye as the others all landed blows on it, striking it as it gleamed purple, preparing to shock us again.
When we all hit it together, the elder guardian vanished.
Then I got zapped from behind again. I immediately turned to the guardian that had done it. I had a few seconds before it would start to charge again, and I knew I had to get to it before it got me.
When I threw myself forward and struck the guardian several times, it disappeared and dropped a pufferfish. So far all the guardians we’d defeated had dropped little prismarine shards, and I knew it was rare that guardians dropped other fish. So I grabbed the pufferfish and looked around me to see what had to be done next. With air in the room and Dad and Alex able to move more freely, they quickly took out most of the floating guardians.
Then there were only two guardians left, and Maison went after one while Alex shot her arrows at the other. Both fish disappeared, dropping more prismarine shards.
“Phew, glad that’s over,” Yancy moaned. We were all panting and trying to catch our breaths while Dad passed healing milk out to us. As I drank, I felt renewed. We had our Ender crystal shard and we had defeated all three of the elder guardians! We could finally get out of this awful place!
Wait a second.
Was it just me, or did it seem a little darker?
I sucked in a choking breath. The very last of our potions were running out!
CHAPTER 16
“DAD!” I CRIED, PANICKED.
“I know,” he said, putting his hands to his forehead. “I feel it too.”
“We’ll just hurry up to the boat,” Alex said quickly.
“There isn’t enough time,” Dad replied. “Even if we leave now and don’t run into any more hostile fish, the surface is too far above us.”
I saw Yancy go skeleton-white. Alex huffed, “That can’t be right! Uncle Steve, what should we do?”
“Here,” I said, thrusting out my hand and holding the pufferfish I’d just gotten. “You still have Nether wart, and we have plenty of water here. Make another Potion of Water Breathing.”
Dad grabbed the pufferfish. “It won’t be enough for all of us.”
But still, he began moving blocks around swiftly to make himself a makeshift brewing stand.
“Um, um, let me think,” Yancy said anxiously. “In the game, there are ways to make little air pockets.”
“We can make all the air pockets we want, but they won’t get us all the way to the surface,” Dad said, hastily making the potion.
“Hold on!” I said. “I know! I saw pufferfish not far from the monument. I could go get them!”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Dad said. “You can only get pufferfish by fishing. We’d have to go back to the boat and make a fishing rod, and that won’t work.”
“On Earth, sometimes people fish with nets,” Yancy said. “Maybe we can make something like that.”
With quick mixing, Dad had turned the pufferfish, Nether wart, and water into a bottle of pink potion. We all looked at it with hungry, desperate eyes.
“Hey, I know,” Yancy said. “My backpack!”
“Your backpack?” Dad said doubtfully, not following.
“If someone goes with me, we can probably steer the pufferfish into my backpack and zip it up,” Yancy explained.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing!” Dad frowned, as if he found this idea offensive. “You catch fish by fishing with a fishing rod!”
“I know Minecraft used to just be a game to me and it’s a real world to you,” Yancy said. “But one thing I learned by playing Minecraft is that there isn’t just one way to do a lot of things. That’s the same way in real life, whether it’s Earth or here.”
I looked at Dad. He was getting harder to see as the whole world gradually got darker. Thank goodness there was still air in this room, or we’d be dealing with that too!
“I think I know how we can do this,” I said. “Yancy and I can split the potion so we’ll be able to breathe a little longer, and we’ll go out and get the pufferfish. I remember where I saw them, and Yancy can help with the backpack.”
“I’ve never split a potion before,” Dad said, mulling this over. “I believe it would still work, but you’d only be able to breathe for half the time the potion would normally last.”
“We have to move quickly, before we can’t see at all,” I said. In the back of my mind, I wondered what I was getting us into. Judging by Yancy’s paler-than-pale face, he was thinking the same thing.
“We’ll come with you,” Maison said.
“Yeah, you can’t go alone,” Alex said, ready to muscle in.
Right then a blast of yellow flew out from behind us and hit Alex in the arm. She cried out, more startled and angry than anything else. Alex turned her furious eyes at the latest guardian to sneak up on us. A few more guardians were behind it.
“Do it, Stevie,” Dad said, eyeing our new attackers. “You and Yancy. If we all go, there won’t be enough air, and I need to stay to keep the guardians at bay here. Leave your crystal with me for protection, but take your sword!”
He was shoving the new Potion of Water Breathing into my hand and going with Alex to take out the guardians that were piling on the attacks again. I set down my toolkit, knowing the crystal was still safely stored at the bottom of it.
I turned to Yancy. It was getting twilight-dark now, which meant I couldn’t really make out the look on his face.
“I should have thought through this before I opened my mouth,” he said, not sounding very pleased. “Going out there is the last thing I want to do!”
Was Yancy backing out on me?
Then I noticed his mouth quirked a little and I thought he might actually be smiling. “Well, let’s face this head on,” he said. “If this won’t get me ready to go into a cage with sharks, nothing will.”
Despite how nervous I was, I felt a smile spreading over my own face. I swigged half the drink and handed the rest to Yancy. The two of us sneaked to the edge of the room and peered out where the water was. I could make out little blobs of yellow, and of orange and black. I knew those colors were the schools of pufferfish and clownfish.
“Are you ready?” I asked Yancy, who was braced at the edge of the monument, ready to jump back into the water.
He hesitated.
“Do you want to rock-paper-scissors it?” Yancy asked.
“Yancy—” I began, frustrated.
“Because I’ll let you win,” he said cheerfully, if a little regretfully, and lunged out. That Yancy! As soon as I realized what he was doing, I leaped out too, going into the darkness of the deep ocean.
CHAPTER 17
I RAN THROUGH THE WATER WHILE YANCY SWAM NEXT to me, kicking his legs and making big swoops with his long arms.
“There could still be guardians,” I said. “Keep your eyes peeled.”
“Yeah, because my sight is so good right now,” he said sarcastically, bubbles rolling out of his mouth.
As things got darker, I understood why Dad thought the Potion of
Night Vision was so important under the sea. Down here it still wasn’t as dark as at the bottom of the Earth ocean, where you needed lights to see. But everything was getting murky and less detailed, so I couldn’t make out particulars anymore. If I hadn’t been able to see and identify the pufferfish earlier thanks to the Potion of Night Vision, I would have just thought those yellow blobs could have been anything. And who knew what other dangers could arise because of how hard it was to see our surroundings? We might not be able to see the guardians until they started to light up to shock us. Or we might not even see them before feeling the bite of their lasers!
“Have you ever gone fishing with a net on Earth?” I asked, hoping he had some experience in this.
“The real question is, have I ever gone fishing, ever?” Yancy said. “And the answer is: no.”
That didn’t sound very assuring.
“I’d never even been in a boat before today,” Yancy went on. “You?”
“I’ve fished from boats,” I said. “But not anything like this.”
A moment of silence hung between us. I thought I’d like the sound of a silent ocean, free of mysterious roars, but this silence was creepy in its own way. It let all the bad thoughts rush in, bigger and more oppressive than any elder guardian.
“Yancy,” I said. “If this doesn’t work, do you have any other ideas? What would you do if you were playing Minecraft and this happened?” He might have a unique perspective that wouldn’t cross Dad’s mind, so I wanted to hear his thoughts.
“What would I do?” Yancy said in a depressed voice. “Shut down the game without saving and start over.”
“Oh, no,” I said. It turned out I didn’t want to hear his thoughts. Was it possible to feel seasick under the water?
“But that’s cheating,” Yancy said. “We’re just going to have to make this work, if you know what I mean. And you were really brave earlier, going after that elder guardian and getting the Ender crystal shard. When I saw that, I thought: wow, if Stevie can do that, I can get over my fears too.”
“But Steve Alexander told me to do that, so I knew it would work!” I insisted. “This is different!”
Clash in the Underwater World Page 5
