Bacca and the Riddle of the Diamond Dragon

by Jerome ASF

  “Seriously, you’re overthinking this,” Bacca said. “I already know what you look like. I just made a perfect picture of you.”

  “No!” Bill insisted again. “That’s not possible!”

  Bacca could tell Bill was now agitated enough to make a mistake.

  “Tell you what,” Bacca said. “I’ll leave the room and go back down the hallway. If I do that, there’s no way I’ll be able to see you. I’ll be out of the room. You can come out and take a look at my portrait. Then I’ll come back in a couple of minutes, and you can tell me if it’s right or not. We’ll never be in the same room together.”

  “Um . . .” Bill said, clearly considering it.

  “Because I’m like ninety-nine percent sure it’s completely right,” Bacca said.

  “No, it’s not!” Bill boomed. “Fine! We’ll do it your way. If that’s what it takes for you to understand that you’re wrong.”

  Bacca smiled. He had him!

  “Okay,” Bacca said. “I’ll leave now so you can come take a look.”

  Exaggerating his footsteps with giant stomps, Bacca walked back to the door.

  “Heading out now,” Bacca said. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

  Bacca went through the doorway, but made certain to leave the door open behind him. He retreated far down the hallway, nearly back to the high-ceilinged clearing where his wool castle still towered. Then Bacca turned around, looked through the doorway, and squinted hard. It all came down to this. Now he would find out if his plan was going to work!

  Peering back into the room with the pool, Bacca focused his eyes on the wall of glass he had built. Normally, anyone looking down the hall into the room would not be able to see the pool. And that was still true. However, Bacca’s glass wall allowed him to see the reflection of the pool, and—he hoped—anybody who might come out of it.

  Bacca cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted. He wasn’t even sure Bill would be able to hear him at this distance, but he gave it a shot.

  “Hello!” Bacca called. “I’m waaaaay at the other end of this tunnel! I’m, like, super far away from you! Come out now and take a look at my painting!”

  Bacca waited and watched. In the reflection in the wall of glass, Bacca scanned the surface of the pool.

  At first, it was motionless except for the ripples cast by the waterfall. Then Bacca saw something! A dark, wet shape began to rise out of the water. It was the top of a head . . . then an entire head! It was dark grey and square, with a bulbous nose and beady red eyes. Its ears were jagged and stuck up like knives. The mouth was very small and almost entirely covered by its nose.

  Then more of the creature emerged, and Bacca was sure of it . . .

  Bill was an iron golem! His skin was made from iron ingots, and he wore green ivy across his torso like a toga. Unlike most iron golems, he had a blemish on his neck—like a wart—made from a single piece of coal. Bill moved slowly and steadily up out of the pool. It was clear his red eyes were unaccustomed to the torchlight.

  Bill looked around carefully for any sign of Bacca. When he was satisfied that he was alone, he walked over to the frame where Bacca’s strange “portrait” rested. Bill shook his head as if to say the artist had got it completely wrong. Then he turned around and plunged back in the pool.

  All this took only a few seconds, but Bacca was thrilled. It had worked! Now he had just what he needed.

  “Okay!” Bacca shouted. “I’m coming back now! I hope you got a good look!”

  Bacca bounded back down the corridor.

  “You were way off,” boomed Bill’s deep, metallic voice. He was already back inside his aquatic cave.

  “My mistake,” Bacca said with a grin. But he was no longer worried. He began breaking apart the first set of blocks he had placed into the large wooden rectangle. Smash! Smash! Soon they were all tiny bits on the floor, and Bacca had a clean canvas to work from.

  Bacca set about creating a perfect portrait of Bill. To get the texture of the golem’s grey face just right, he used stone, quartz, andesite, and blocks of solid iron. Then he harvested more of the green flora that grew around the pool and used it to duplicate the green toga that dappled across Bill’s body. He even found a piece of coal that would replicate the hermit’s wart. As a finishing touch, Bacca took water from the pool and splashed it across his blocky painting. Soon, the golem in Bacca’s painting looked dripping wet—just like Bill.

  With mounting confidence, Bacca crept back over to the pool’s edge.

  “Hello?” he called. “Bill? Are you still there?”

  “What do you want now?” Bill called back. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “I painted a new portrait of you,” Bacca said. “Wanna see it? This time, I think you’ll agree it’s spot-on!”

  “Don’t waste my time,” Bill said. “You’re just bluffing now.”

  “I’m really not,” Bacca said. “If you just give me one more chance, this time I know I’ll win you over.”

  “No,” said Bill. “This conversation is over. Go away!”

  “Bill?” Bacca said. “Hello? Hellooooo?”

  There was no response. Bacca realized this was the silent treatment. The golem had decided to stop responding altogether. Bacca decided it was time for drastic measures.

  “You have grey iron skin,” Bacca said teasingly. “Your eyes are small and red, and your long nose hooks down over your tiny mouth. You wear green strands made out of plant vines. And you have a big wart on your neck made out of a piece of coal.”

  “. . .”

  There was silence, yes, but Bacca could tell it was a tense silence. A meaningful silence. Bill was thinking hard.

  “How do you know that?” Bill’s voice eventually boomed back. “I mean . . . I’m not saying it’s right. But if it was right . . . how do you know? Nobody knows what I look like! How could you possibly have found out?”

  “I have my ways,” Bacca said, glancing over at the wall of glass. “You should come up and see for yourself. I think this second painting really gets it right. Here, I’ll leave the room again. No tricks.”

  Bacca laughed to himself. He was, of course, full of tricks. They were what he was known for. Well, tricks and crafting.

  Bacca retreated down the corridor, but kept one eye on the room behind him. Sure enough, he soon saw a dark grey iron golem rise up out of the water. It looked really annoyed.

  In the reflection created by his glass wall, Bacca watched it walk over to the frame where the new portrait was displayed. Now that Bacca saw them both together, he knew for sure he’d done it. His painting was a perfect match!

  “Oh no,” cried Bill. “It’s like looking into a mirror! It’s me exactly!”

  Bacca bounded back down the hallway.

  “You!” the stone golem cried. “You’re Bacca?”

  “In the flesh,” Bacca said.

  The iron golem collapsed on the floor, as if suddenly overtaken by a deep depression.

  “Now that somebody knows what I look like, there’s no point in staying here,” Bill said. “I’ll have to move. Find an entirely new biome. There’s no point to being a mysterious hermit if there’s a big painting of you that anybody can come see.”

  Bacca started to feel bad for the golem.

  “You don’t have to leave,” Bacca said. “I won’t tell anybody it’s you. I only did this because it was part of the riddle left by the creepers.”

  Bacca explained his quest to regain the dragon orb, and the riddle that he had been trying to solve.

  “Those creeper jerks,” said Bill. “I knew this fortress was headed downhill when they took over. Some people said having a bunch of creepers around would help keep people away. They said it could actually be good for a hermit. Shows what they know.”

  Then the golem put his hand on his chin, as if a thought had occurred to him.

  “There’s a trap door in my cave that leads down to the creeper’s dungeon maze,” Bill said. “I expect they wanted you to
solve the riddle by going there next. That would make sense, because you’d have to be rid of me to get there.”

  “Thanks,” Bacca said, though he didn’t like the sound of a dungeon maze.

  Bill sighed.

  “As for me,” the golem said, “I guess I’ll go live in the ice wastes in the winter biome to the north. It’s got great big blocky cliffs and deep chasms made out of frozen things. I’ll bet it would be pretty easy to not get found up there. Although, that’s what I thought about this place . . . and look how that turned out.”

  “There are some friendly dragons outside,” Bacca told him. “I bet one of them would give you a ride if you liked.”

  “Thanks,” said the iron golem. “I’ll think about it. This is all happening so fast. I’m sad to be leaving my home—but more than that, I’m angry at the creepers. If there’s anything I can ever do to help you get back at those darn creepers, just come north and find me.”

  “Okay,” said Bacca. “I certainly will.”

  When the iron golem had gone, Bacca held his nose and plunged into the glistening pool of water. He swam down to the cave. It was very dark inside—and of course he couldn’t light a torch underwater—but Bacca felt around until he found the trap door that Bill had told him about. Bacca forced it open. The water rushed through. Bacca found himself being carried away on the current. He resisted at first, but eventually let himself go with the flow.

  Bacca wooshed through the trap door and down a series of tubes. It was like being inside a giant water slide. (Bacca had, of course, built many of these in his time.) He was twisted all around by the water, until he could no longer tell which way was up. It was very disorienting!

  Finally, the tube launched Bacca onto a subterranean drainage grate. He rolled away from the stream of flowing water, stood up, and shook himself like a dog. Bacca’s fur was naturally waterproof, but his three-piece suit was going to be wet for hours . . . how annoying!

  Where was he now? Bacca surveyed the scene around him. Beside the grate where the water drained off, Bacca saw a large clearing with a floor of stone blocks. To one side was an arch made of andesite. Into the top of it were etched the words: “DUNGEON MAZE.” Set into the wall next to it was a familiar looking block of mycelium with writing on it.

  “Oh great,” Bacca said. “Here we go again.”

  Yet even as he smoothed his wrinkled, wet suit, he reminded himself that there were things far worse than being a bit wet.

  Bacca lit a torch and peered at the new riddle before him. The stone read:

  The dungeon maze has many inhabitants.

  But only one is the emerald hare.

  The hare is the key to solving the maze.

  (Or maybe it’s vice versa.)

  Bacca looked away from the riddle and stared blankly into the entrance of the dungeon maze.

  “How can it be both a maze and a dungeon?” he said to nobody in particular. “Maybe one man’s maze is another man’s . . . dungeon?” He shook his head in confusion. “I dunno. Whatever.”

  Bacca entered the maze. The walls were red brick and several feet taller than Bacca. The ground beneath him was, improbably, grassy—despite the almost total and complete lack of natural sunlight.

  Generally, Bacca liked mazes. He had built his share of them, usually to amuse his friends. He was always sure to give them plenty of twists, turns, and surprises. You could tell a lot about a crafter based on what they put in their mazes. Bacca wondered if the creepers in The Creep had built this one. If so, he wondered what it would tell him about them.

  As Bacca left the drainage grate behind, he thought that for just a moment, he could hear a noise like a very faint whispering on the wind.

  He paused and sniffed the air. It smelled like many strange things, with just a hint of . . . creeper! It probably meant he was getting closer to the creepers’ lair, or wherever they were keeping the Dragon Orb.

  Excited and encouraged, he headed deeper into the strange, dark maze.

  There was quite a kerfuffle among the creepers. They had hardly been able to contain themselves. Quite a few had worked hard to silence the others. When Bacca finally entered the dungeon maze and passed out of view, they finally allowed themselves to speak.

  “I think he heard us!” one of creepers said in evident alarm.

  “I’m not surprised,” said another. “You were practically screaming.”

  “I was excited,” the first creeper said defensively. “He got to see Bill! Nobody gets to see Bill! And he was an iron golem. Who knew?”

  “I thought you said you’d seen him,” said the second creeper.

  “I did . . .” said the first creeper. “I . . . uhm . . . just forgot.”

  The creepers next turned their collective attention to Bacca’s new task.

  “How’s he going to fare in the dungeon maze?” one of them wondered. “After all, the emerald hare is an entirely different beast. It’s not like Bill at all!”

  The creepers nodded in agreement on this point.

  “I think we made the riddle too easy for this one,” a creeper added. “‘The hare is the key’? It’s so obvious. He’s going to figure it out right away.”

  “Are you kidding?” said another. “I think we made it too hard. This one’s a real head-scratcher. After all, you can’t just build a mirror and see the emerald hare. Or wait . . . can you?”

  “What about the Wizard?” said another. “He still lives in the maze. He might know a thing or two.”

  “Shhh,” said another creeper. “Don’t tell him about the Wizard!”

  “Bacca’s not going to hear us now, is he?” the prior creeper shot back defensively.

  The creepers looked toward the entrance of the dungeon maze. It seemed to all the creepers that they were increasingly unsure of what Bacca would or wouldn’t be able to do. Their world was changing. By inviting a master crafter like Bacca to their server, they had taken an enormous risk that could potentially upset everything. All of them knew it.

  Now all they could do was watch Bacca and wait to see what happened next. . . .

  Chapter Seven

  As he made his way down the twisting corridors of the dungeon maze, Bacca wondered what it would take to catch an emerald rabbit. Did it eat emerald carrots? Bacca calculated the steps it would take to dig up some emeralds and craft them into a carrot shape. It actually wouldn’t be all that difficult, he decided. Not for an experienced crafter like himself. He expected, however, that solving this riddle would not be that easy. These creepers were not to be trusted with obvious answers.

  Bacca arrived at the first junction in the maze having seen no green rabbits to speak of. Both branching hallways looked identical. But while one was silent, the other held the distinct sound of people. More specifically, people chatting. The conversation sounded friendly. Intrigued, Bacca turned down the hallway containing the voices.

  The tunnel took several twists and turns, and the voices became louder with each one. After a few moments, Bacca rounded a corner and their source became clear. It was three villagers—a farmer, a librarian, and a blacksmith. Bacca was confused, but not unhappy to see them. He just thought it was strange that they’d wandered all the way down here.

  “Hello!” Bacca said, trying to sound friendly. “Are you villagers lost?”

  They looked him up and down.

  “Why, no,” said the farmer. “Are you?”

  Touché, thought Bacca, realizing it probably seemed just as odd to the villagers to stumble upon him.

  “I’m here trying to help some dragons find an orb,” Bacca said. “It’s, uh, complicated.”

  “I see,” said the farmer. “We’re villagers. We live here.”

  Bacca couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “What, in the dungeon maze?” Bacca said.

  “Sure,” said the farmer. “There are a bunch of us in here. It has everything we need. There’s even a village.”

  “But isn’t it confusing to live in a m
aze?” Bacca said.

  The villagers shook their heads.

  “If you know where it goes, it’s not a maze, is it?” quipped the librarian. “And we know all the ways around it.”

  “Yes,” said the blacksmith. “It has the advantage of only confusing outsiders, like, um . . . well, like you.”

  “But how do you even exist in a maze?” Bacca said, turning to the farmer. “What do you farm down here?”

  “Why, I farm the moss that grows on the rocks,” the farmer said. “It’s delicious. Fry it up with some butter and a little salt and pepper? There’s nothing better.”

  Bacca was skeptical. He would stick to raw fish, thank you very much.

  “Well anyhow, I’m trying to solve a riddle that says I have to find an emerald hare . . . which is like a rabbit, I guess,” Bacca said. “Does that sound familiar to any of you?”

  The villagers looked at one another.

  “Emerald hare, eh?” said the farmer. “I’ve heard of stranger things. Not much stranger, granted. But maybe one or two stranger things.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t emerald hair, H-A-I-R?” asked the librarian. “I could never pull that off with my color scheme, of course. Maybe if I lived in a green forest instead of a dungeon maze . . .”

  “A rabbit might turn green if it was dead for a while,” added the blacksmith. “Is this emerald hare you’re looking for definitely alive?”

  “I think so,” Bacca said. “But the riddle wasn’t very specific.”

  The villagers thought about what to do.

  “Why don’t you come with us to town?” suggested the farmer. “Someone there might know.”

  “Where is ‘town’?” Bacca asked.

  “Why, in the middle of the maze, of course,” the farmer said. “Just follow us.”

  The villagers turned and began to stride down the twisting corridors. Whenever a junction presented itself, they confidently turned either left or right. It was clear they knew this place like the backs of their hands. They made so many turns that soon Bacca lost track. He realized with mounting anxiety that he would not be able to find his way back to the entrance without help. But that meant there was only one thing he could do, which was to confidently keep pushing forward, deeper into the maze, in search of the emerald hare.