Attack on the Overworld

by Danica Davidson

  But that’s when we heard Dad making his way to the tree house. He was holding his diamond sword and also had his tool pouch and a bag full of emeralds he’d mined.

  “Stevie!” he called up to me when he got close. “I’m getting ready to go to the village and trade my emeralds with the blacksmith. I’ll be back before it gets dark. Are you and Maison going to be okay?”

  “We’re fine,” I called down. “We’re just making stone swords.”

  “Are you memorizing your potions?” Dad wanted to know. Sometimes he really had a one-track mind.

  “We will when we’re done in the tree house!” I promised. I didn’t tell him how long we would be in the tree house. I figured I could get a few minutes of studying in before Dad returned.

  “See that you do!” Dad yelled. “Do you remember why we need to memorize potions?”

  I stifled my sigh. Dad asked me that same question every single day. Even though I hadn’t memorized all the potions, I’d memorized the answer to why-are-potions-so-important-Stevie?

  “Because it sometimes takes more than a sword when danger arises,” I rattled off. Dad’s words. Exactly. “Even diamond swords have their pitfalls. If I or someone else is in danger, it is my duty as a citizen of the Overworld to help others. That includes the possibility of using potions.”

  “There you go,” Dad said with a nod. Sometimes I think he just liked hearing himself quoted back. “And why must we always help others?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do,” I said.

  “You’re stealing that line from me,” Maison whispered, since she’d said the same thing to the woman on the video.

  “No, I’m not,” I whispered back. “That’s actually how he words it, too!”

  I think Dad would have lectured me more on the importance of potions, but Maison being there threw him off. He was glad I had a friend, but he didn’t know what to make of Maison. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her or anything. It was more that he still couldn’t quite get his head wrapped around the fact that his son had found a portal to a world even he didn’t know about. Dad liked to think he knew about everything there was to know in these parts.

  Dad was also kind of uneasy about leaving us alone for a few hours, but he had nothing to worry about. It was a clear-skied day, and mobs were only dangerous after dark or if there was enough cloud cover to block out the sunlight.

  “We’ll be fine!” I called. “See you, Dad!”

  “All right,” Dad said gruffly. “You kids take care and I’ll see you in a few hours.” He hefted his diamond sword higher and began walking in the direction of the village.

  “That’s one thing that’s nice about your world,” I said to Maison with a sigh, leaning back. I’d finished my stone sword and Dad was way out of earshot now. I gave him extra, extra time to get out of earshot because I didn’t want him overhearing this.“I wouldn’t have to memorize all the ingredients in a potion because I could just look them up on the computer.”

  “That’s not how it works, Stevie,” Maison said, but that got a little smile from her. “It’s good to know things on your own.”

  “I’ve seen you look up potions online while you’re playing Minecraft,” I said.

  “Yeah, but that’s for playing,” she said. “Minecraft is real life for you.”

  I wanted to make a face, but I couldn’t argue. “I know,” I said. “It’s just hard sometimes with my dad. He wants me to memorize all this stuff like I’m adult. Then he treats me as if I need to be constantly watched and lectured, like a kid who can’t handle things.”

  “We’re not being constantly watched,” Maison point-

  ed out. “He’s going to the village.”

  “That’s because he knows nothing bad is going to happen during the daylight,” I said. “If it were dark, he’d send you home to your world and he’d make me study potions with him again.”

  Maison examined the stone sword she’d made, turning it over in the light. “Maybe we can both study your potions,” she said. “I haven’t memorized them all, either, and it’d be easier when I play Minecraft if I don’t have to look them up every time.”

  “I don’t know …” I said.

  “And it’d be a good surprise for your dad if he found out we’d learned so much,” she went on.

  Memorizing potions sounded like a drag, though I realized it might be the distraction Maison needed. The Maison I knew was smart and fun, not scared and uneasy.

  “All right,” I said, sitting up. “Let’s go.”

  And that’s when everything went black.

  CHAPTER 3

  MAISON GASPED AND WE BOTH JUMPED UP, clutching our stone swords to our bodies. The whole Overworld had turned to night in an instant, no sunset or anything, and all of this was happening hours before it was supposed to. Overhead, a square moon shone down, giving us our only light except for the torches around the tree house.

  “Has this ever happened before?” Maison asked in a worried voice.

  “No,” I said.

  “Maybe it’s a solar eclipse,” she said. “Those happen in our world when the moon is between the earth and the sun and it covers up the sun for a little bit. Do you have eclipses in the Overworld?”

  Quickly my brain rushed through years of knowledge Dad had given me. I unlocked information on mining, farming, reading, fighting mobs, all sorts of stuff. I couldn’t think of anything about eclipses. I didn’t even know the word.

  “I don’t think so,” I said frailly. But I held on to the idea that maybe Maison was right, because I couldn’t think of any other explanation. “How long do solar eclipses last?”

  “Um, I don’t know,” Maison said. “I think it depends …”

  I strained my ears, listening in on the darkness. If zombies were around, I’d hear them moaning in the distance. So far, nothing. But maybe a creeper was underneath, silently waiting for us, ready to blow up. I’d had some bad luck with creepers in the past, so I was especially nervous about them.

  “What should we do?” I asked, my mouth dry.

  “I was going to ask you that!” she said.

  I weighed our options. The best bet was for Dad to come back and tell us what to do, but unless he showed up, that wasn’t a choice. He’d probably reached the village by now. We could wait in the tree house until he came back or until it got light out. Most mobs couldn’t bother us up this high … most mobs.

  We could make a run for it and try to get back to the house. Dad had iron doors to protect us, and torches to keep mobs from spawning nearby. Plus, our cat, Ossie, wouldn’t let any creepers close because creepers were scared of cats. The house would be safer than the tree house … if we could get there.

  The house was just out of sight from the tree house, but right then it felt as if it couldn’t be farther away.

  “I think we should probably wait for my dad,” I said. I pictured Dad reaching the village, seeing night come on, and hurrying back to get us. If he escorted us back to the house it’d still be intimidating, but I wouldn’t be worried that we’d get hurt on our way. Dad was a master mob fighter.

  Maison and I slowly sat down. Both of us were clutching our stone swords pretty tightly and listening to the night.

  “There’s a way you can turn Minecraft to night playing the game,” Maison was musing to herself. “But I don’t see how …”

  We both heard a sound in the distance. And we both froze.

  A person’s voice. No, two! We weren’t hearing zombie moans, so that was a relief. I didn’t recognize the voices, but they didn’t sound worried. They sounded like two people taking a stroll through the dark as if it were no big deal.

  As they got closer, we could make out the voices a little better. Maison and I peered out over the balcony of the tree house, trying to get a good look. Two figures could just barely be seen in the distance, one taller than the other. They weren’t shaped right—not blocky like people should be. But they weren’t Endermen, even though that one fig
ure was kind of tall. Definitely not creepers. Skeletons and other mobs could not talk, anyway.

  One of the voices began to laugh. It was a boy’s voice, but it didn’t sound like a ha-ha-ha laugh, as if something were funny. The other voice, which I could now tell was a girl’s, said something in response, and she definitely wasn’t laughing.

  “Are those villagers?” Maison asked.

  “They can’t be,” I said. “They’re not shaped right.”

  They were shaped more like … but no, that couldn’t be.

  I looked to Maison. In the moonlight, I could see her eyes widen, and she seemed to be having the same thoughts I was.

  “They’re people from your world,” I said.

  She covered her mouth with her hand. “That’s not possible. They couldn’t have found my portal.”

  “Maybe they opened another portal?” I suggested.

  But as the people walked closer and the moonlight brought out their features, there could be no doubt that these were humans from Maison’s world. The girl was toying uneasily with a necklace hanging from her neck, and the boy was taking bigger strides, smiling so that silver rays from the moon caught on his teeth like fangs. They were both dressed in dark clothing as if they wanted to blend in well with the night. The girl looked maybe a little older than Maison and me, but the tall boy looked more like he was a few years older, like seventeen or something.

  They stopped by the tree house and looked up at us.

  “Well, hullo there!” the boy said cheerfully. “Imagine seeing you this fine night!”

  I was already surprised enough to see him, but his good mood surprised me more. Didn’t he realize he was risking his life being out at night without a weapon to defend himself? I called, “Hello! Do you want to come up in the tree house with us? I can tell you’re not from around here, but it gets dangerous at night.”

  The boy laughed as if I’d said something really cute. “Ha-ha, I don’t think it’s really night, now is it?” he teased. “You should come down here and we’ll introduce ourselves. Don’t worry, there are no creepers or anything around. I checked.”

  I looked to Maison, at a loss.

  “They must not understand the danger,” Maison said, squinting. “I don’t know the guy, but the girl seems familiar somehow.”

  I looked back down at them. The girl didn’t ring any bells to me.

  “I think we better go down and explain to them why they should get up in the tree house with us,” I said. “I don’t want to scare them, but it’s really not safe down there.”

  Slowly, cautiously, holding our stone swords at the ready, Maison and I climbed down to meet with the two people. When we had our feet on the ground, I turned to them and said, “Did you find a portal here?”

  “We’ll worry about details later, Stevie,” the boy said with a wave of his hand.

  “Well, for now, we really should get into the tree house for safety,” I said. “I think my dad should be on his way right now, and he’ll take us back to the house where we’ll be safe.” Then I stopped in my tracks. “Wait. How did you know my name? Did one of the village kids tell you?”

  When he smiled this time, I really didn’t like it. “I did just come from the village, but that’s not how I know your name.” He turned to the girl. “Would you like to tell them?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said in a tight voice.

  “All right.” He turned back to us and gave a sweeping bow. “You are Stevie and Maison, I presume?”

  Maison clutched her sword tighter, her whole body tensing.

  “Surprised?” the boy said. “You shouldn’t be. And I think you’ll find our names familiar as well.” He gestured to the girl next to him. “This is DestinyIsChoice123.” And he laid one hand on his chest, his hand pale as a skeleton’s against the dark clothes and moonlight. “And I’m TheVampireDragon555.”

  CHAPTER 4

  I WAS SO SHOCKED ALL THAT CAME OUT OF MY MOUTH was a choking sound. “No,” Maison was saying, shaking her head. “No, that can’t be.”

  “Oh, but it is,” TheVampireDragon555 said. His smile looked more like a sneer now. “I bet you’d like to know how this happened? Well, you can all thank Destiny here.”

  “No, please,” the girl said in a low, pleading voice.

  “Destiny!” Maison said. “That’s how I know you! You’re a seventh grader at my school!”

  Destiny tried to back up into the shadows as if to hide herself. TheVampireDragon555 caught her by the arm and held her in place.

  “Destiny is my cousin,” he said. “And she had a very interesting story about zombies and spiders attacking her school. And of our little Ms. Maison, who supposedly saved the day.”

  I looked at Maison. Her expression had turned from fear to a growing anger, her eyes glaring at him. “That doesn’t explain how you got here,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m getting to that,” TheVampireDragon555 said. He appeared to be relishing every moment. “I knew your whole story about a cousin Stevie had to be made-up. And ‘Cousin Stevie’ and the mobs looked waaaay too much like Minecraft characters to be a coincidence. I had Destiny do some searching. She snuck out paperwork about you from the school office after she faked a sore throat with the nurse. She got your home address.”

  Maison looked outraged. “You have no right to that!”

  Not missing a beat, TheVampireDragon555 went on. “She learned when your baseball practice was. As soon as you were gone, she pretended to be a school friend working on a project with you. She told your mom that she’d left some homework in your bedroom, and could she please retrieve it?”

  “Please, stop,” Destiny said again, frailly.

  “She got on your computer and got all the important numbers, which she passed on to me,” The VampireDragon555 said. “First I thought I’d just have to hack your e-mail and see if you had any information in there. I couldn’t find anything. But hacking e-mails is child’s play. And come to find out, eleven-year-old ‘heroes’ aren’t smart enough to know about having a firewall to protect themselves. I broke into your computer’s database, turned your Minecraft game into a multi-player game, and let myself in.”

  “No,” Maison breathed, realizing.

  “And I found a portal!” TheVampireDragon555 said dramatically, raising his hands toward the dark sky. “It was better than anything I could have dreamed! I found a portal to the Overworld, the real-live Overworld! I’ve been coming in and out of the Overworld for a week now, getting to know the landscape. I found the nearby village and I even tracked down where dear ‘Cousin Stevie’ lives.”

  “You—you—” I couldn’t even get the words out. I didn’t understand all this stuff about hacking or databases, but I understood enough to know that he’d gotten into Maison’s private stuff. And that we were all in very real, immediate danger.

  “What do you want?” Maison demanded.

  “Well, I kind of feel like a kid in a candy store,” TheVampireDragon555 said. “I’ve been griefing people on Minecraft games and trolling people online for years. But this! This is real!”

  I found my voice. “My dad is going to be back any minute from the village,” I said. “He has a diamond sword and he’s not going to stand for any of this.”

  Come on, Dad! I was thinking. I figured he’d had enough time to get here from the village by now. What was taking him so long?

  “Oh, you’re talking about ‘The Steve,’” TheVampireDragon555 said knowingly. “I heard people speaking about him when I was scouting out the village earlier. They say your dad’s the most feared zombie slayer around. Well, I think he’s going to be pretty busy for tonight. Wait, what am I saying, tonight? I mean for eternity!”

  “This isn’t right,” Destiny said, tugging at his arm. “We have to stop this now.”

  “Oh, quit being such a party pooper,” TheVampireDragon555 said, shaking her off his arm. Turning back to us, he explained, “You’re probably wondering why it’s dark out. It’s really simple. I
have control of Maison’s Minecraft game now, and I used coding to turn it to night. And I plan to keep it this way. Forever.”

  “You can’t!” I blurted out. “It’s too dangerous!”

  And then I stopped, realizing how stupid I sounded. He wasn’t afraid because he wanted eternal night with mobs constantly on the prowl.

  “I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I know a lot about codes,” TheVampireDragon555 said. “If you don’t believe me, look behind you.”

  But he didn’t need to say it. I could already hear the moaning of zombies as they approached.

  CHAPTER 5

  MAISON AND I WHIRLED AROUND, OUR SWORDS at the ready. At first there was only the terrible moaning, the sign that zombies were on their way. And then, out of the darkness, ten zombies appeared, arms outstretched, their blank, black eyes fixed on us.

  I charged the closest one, slamming through it with my stone sword, putting all my strength into it. The zombie stumbled back, shook, and moved toward me again, moaning. I flung my sword and hit it against the zombie. Beside me, Maison thrust her stone sword into a zombie, momentarily stalling it. As soon as it shook itself off, it was moving toward her again.

  “With proper coding, it’s really easy to create zombies wherever I want!” TheVampireDragon555 called to us over the sounds of moaning zombies and swinging swords. He was watching us with his arms crossed and a smile on his face. “But you guys really shouldn’t have too much to worry about here. You took on a lot more zombies at the middle school.”

  We had taken on a lot more mobs at Maison’s school, but we’d also had a lot more help from teachers and students. Maison and I stepped close together, swords out, tensing as more mobs approached.

  “Now!” I said. Both Maison and I burst out, hitting the zombies.

  Destiny turned toward TheVampireDragon555. “You have to call off the zombies!” she shouted at him. “I didn’t agree to this!”