by Cube Kid
Pebble stepped up to the brewing stand.
“I’ll show you how it’s done, kid.”
He whipped out one of his bottles, filled it with water, brewed an Awkward Potion with nether wart, and finally, a Potion of Leaping using a rabbit’s foot.
The brewing stand bubbled away. After Pebble’s potion finished brewing, he held it up triumphantly.
There were a few cheers—and gasps—from some of the younger kids. It might have been the first time they’d ever seen a potion.
“Wow!”
“Cool!”
“It’s so shiny!”
I nudged Stump.
“Hey!” I whispered. “Dust me!”
“Oh. Right.”
Stump slipped me some glowstone dust. Luckily, Pebble kept showing off his potion to the crowd.
“See that? The best bottles in the village! Forget those noobs! Use my bottles or don’t brew anything!!”
All eyes were on him at that point, which allowed me to add some glowstone to my Potion of Leaping without anyone noticing.
Within ten or so seconds, I brewed . . .
. . . a Potion of Leaping II:
for when you absolutely, positively need to bounce around like a slime.
This would allow me to jump higher than Pebble, since he’d only brewed a standard Potion of Leaping.
Yeah, I cheated.
But you know what? That guy deserved it. Besides, when the mobs come knocking on our iron doors again, I highly doubt they’re going to play fair . . .
As soon as I brewed my potion, the crowd grew noisier. They wanted us to chug. Pebble slammed down his potion, then tossed the bottle aside and glared at me.
“Bottoms up, noob.”
I did the same. Immediately after, I felt sick, as if I’d eaten too much ice cream or something.
Pebble jumped up into the air. He jumped maybe half a block higher than normal, landed, and jumped again.
“What’s up, kid?!”
I grinned and said, “About to set a new record, that’s what’s up.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s see it.”
“On three,” I said. “One, two, thr— eeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee . . .” (As I jumped, the word “three” turned into a thin, catlike scream.)
You see, I jumped kinda high. Like, really high . . . Honestly, there were better words than "jump" to describe what I was doing, really. Like “fly.”
I’ll admit it—I was terrified. Terrified and confused.
Why did I leap so high? A Potion of Leaping II should have made me jump one and a half blocks higher . . . not one hundred.
That was when I saw it. The forest.
Of course, it had grown over the past few days. From up here, I could see how massive it really was. Dark oak trees, tall and thick, stretching forever into the horizon.
I thought I saw something moving there. Whatever it was, it was big, but I saw it for only a second—then the clouds blocked my view.
Had I imagined it?
I tore my gaze away.
I didn’t have time to dwell on anything except trying to survive. I realized I had no Feather Falling effect, which was required to survive landing after such a jump.
I glanced around, looking for a nearby pool, a canal. Anything. As luck would have it, the roof on one of our wells had been taken down. Maybe the builders were about to repair it, or maybe some noob had come into the village and taken it. It seemed like a better spot to land than in the middle of some farmer’s crop.
Falling, falling, falling. This is how it feels to be a raindrop.
Falling, falling, falling.
Faster than the prices at my bottle shop.
I’d never been this afraid before.
The kind of terror where time seems to slow down and the color drains from your vision. The whole thing had a dream-like quality. One moment, I’m about to show a punk from school why I’m the number-two student. The next, I’m flying through the clouds, where even bats won’t go . . .
I suppose
these things happen.
First, the good news:
I survived.
Didn’t take a single heart’s worth of damage. On top of that, I got a new record book and still have seventeen emeralds left over. Apparently, after I jumped over eighty blocks up, the rest of our bottles sold out in less than a minute.
I felt whole again, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
How long has it been since I’d last seen this? Eight days? Nine? Well, it felt like forever. I was happy to see that my level had jumped almost as high as I had jumped last night.
On to the bad news. I had just arrived at school, right?
Went to the head teacher, plunked down fifty emeralds for the book, and was on my way to class, right?
Then I noticed some creepy-looking guy following me.
He was trying to act all normal, but come on—how many older guys in black robes and sunglasses do you see walking around a school like mine? I whistled merrily to myself, trying to look innocent. Didn’t help. He kept following me down the hall. I walked faster. So did he, until he caught up.
“A bit windy today,” he said. “The clouds sure are . . . zooming across the sky.”
“Hurrn. That’s interesting. Excuse me.”
I zoomed off down a hallway, through a few doors.
Lost him, I thought. So, what is this? He’s an elder, certainly. Does he want to talk to me about yesterday?
Another one soon approached.
“Good day, Runt. I’ve heard your scores are . . . really up there. Why, yes, why I’d say you’re . . . flying high.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Really. It’s nice of you to say that.”
I turned around to make another run for it, but the first guy was there, blocking my way.
“Come with us,” said the guy without glasses. “Immediately.”
Thirty minutes later, I was on the other side of the village—in a cobblestone building with iron doors and iron bars for windows. This place was not a jail, however. It was like a hangout spot for a bunch of old, cranky guys who called themselves elders. They led me to a small, featureless room and . . . offered me some pumpkin pie.
And so began my wonderful day. I guess soaring through the sky has its downsides. Mostly, these guys wanted to know how I had managed to do it. (Actually, everyone in the village wants to know that, including Steve and Mike.) As if I could tell them.
“I crafted a Potion of Leaping II,” was all I could say.
“Sounds like you crafted a Potion of Leaping One Billion,” the guy with black sunglasses said.
“Look, Runt. My name is Brio, and I simply want to ask you a few questions about yesterday’s . . . incident.”
By “a few questions,” he meant over one thousand questions.
Stuff like,
“So how exactly did you put the glowstone dust into the brewing stand?”
“Which hand did you grab the potion with?”
“Did the glowstone dust have a funny smell?”
“What was the weather like during that exact moment?”
“Can you remember the specific pattern of clouds?”
“Was the sun behind a cloud?”
“Would you like some more pumpkin pie?”
“Were there any chickens around?”
“How about some cookies?”
“Can you show us, precisely, how you crafted the potion? Re-create your exact movements?”
I blinked.
“We’d . . . need a brewing stand for that.”
Brio pointed to the other guy.
“Pretend he’s the brewing stand.”
Right. After they were don
e asking questions, I had one of my own.
“Brio. Yesterday, I thought I saw something walking in that strange forest.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. The thing was huge. Almost as tall as the trees.”
“Probably shadows playing tricks on your eyes,” he said.
“But . . .”
“Or maybe it was a zombie?” He patted me on the head. “Who knows?”
Yeah. He totally brushed me off. It only got worse from there. When Brio finally let me go, he gave me a book. It’s the second schoolbook for this year.
The teachers had handed it out today, but since I wasn’t at school . . .
“Finish it by tonight,” Brio said. “You might find some good tips in there.”
This is cruel and unusual punishment, man, I thought.
After today, I’m never going to drink a potion
again.
Well, Steve went boom today.
I guess he finally saw Urf’s books. The whole front cover with him riding a pig, in a mine cart, on his way to “Noobtown” (of which he is supposedly the mayor) was just too much for him.
So he quit. He’s been wanting to experiment with redstone anyway, he said. The mayor will have him working on that stuff from now on. Of course, Urf was overjoyed. He figured he was going to get his old job back.
Sadly, the head teacher wanted to try someone new.
I say sadly because . . . I’d rather have Urf than this new combat teacher. Drill is his name.
He’s an elder, like Urf. But one hundred times grumpier. The first part of his combat class was sprinting fifteen laps around the field. That wouldn’t have been too bad, but he dug holes all around the edge of the combat field and filled them with water.
Seriously,
this guy is crazy.
It was the most intense combat class I’ve ever had. After running, we had to swing at practice dummies five hundred times. Stump, Max, and I started beating away at the same dummy. Drill rushed over.
“I SAID GROUPS OF TWO!!” he screamed, and glared at me. “YOU!! WITH HER!!” Then he pointed at her. Breeze. She’d chosen a practice dummy near mine, of course—and of course, she was all by herself.
I could tell it was going to be one of those weeks.
“But they’re my friends,” I said.
“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, YOU SQUID-BRAINED POTATO JOCKEY?!”
Potato jockey?! That’s like a chicken jockey, except . . . riding a potato.
I tried to imagine someone riding a pig-size potato and couldn’t. Just couldn’t. The very attempt hurt my brain. Then I got angry.
Who’s he calling a potato jockey?!
“I said, they’re my—”
Let me just make this clear: That was a bad choice of words.
No, let me be more clear: Any choice of words would have been a bad choice of words.
Drill got so angry he couldn’t even speak in full sentences, just single words that sputtered out of his mouth:
“GIVE!! ME!! F-FIFTY!!”
Sigh. After the push-ups, I gave my friends a shrug and joined Breeze.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
Whatever. It could have been worse. I could have gotten paired with one of Pebble’s friends, or that Bumbi kid.
So Breeze and I swung our swords in silence. My arms already felt like anvils from all the push-ups, so I slowed down whenever Drill left our area and sped up when he came back.
Breeze was different. She swung at a steady rate, whether Drill was there or not. In fact, come to think of it, she was one of the few students Drill never shouted at. Even though she never did anything amazing in class, she never drew the anger of the teachers, either. Even this teacher, who freaked out over the tiniest thing.
In other words, Breeze was invisible
—neither good nor bad—
a completely average student.
That was why I’d never really noticed her until she started following me around. I mean, I’ve never seen her use any fancy moves—like that time I landed that huge critical hit and made the dummy’s head fly off and roll on the ground with Steve clapping and telling me good job afterward. (I’m proud of that one. Can you tell?)
Later on, everyone moved to the archery range.
I’ll just be up front: I’m a terrible shot with a bow. Give me a big sword and I’ll show you bigger crits. Give me a bow, however, and you’re endangering your own life, and everyone else’s, including mine. How does someone hit themselves with their own arrows? I don’t know, but I’m sure I could do it.
Here’s some proof:
This was my shot while standing still, with a motionless target, from thirty blocks away.
Basically, if you need someone to hit a fully grown ghast at a range of ten blocks, well, I’m your guy. I’m totally your guy. As long as the ghast isn’t moving. Outside of that, all I can really do with a bow is scare mobs with the whistling noise the arrows make.
Breeze did great, though. At first, anyway. The first five arrows she shot were all dead center. Two were so close, the second arrow split the first in half. That’s something I’ve only seen in storybooks at the library, with some crazy villager dressed all in green.
“Wow.” I glanced at her, at the wool target, then back to her. “You’re amazing.”
“Not really,” she said, shaking her head. Her cheeks were pink. “Just luck.”
Maybe it was just luck.
Because after that, she never managed to hit red again.
So strange.
Maybe I made her nervous.
With ten minutes left until the end of class, we had to do another fifteen laps around the field. It started pouring rain. A few kids complained. A streak of anger flashed across Drill’s face, and his voice boomed like thunder:
“YOU THINK THE MOBS ARE GONNA CARE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS?! MOVE, YOU CREEPER-FACED ENDERBABIES!! MOVE!!”
Nice.
Just think—tomorrow,
I get to do this all over again.
I just woke up in the middle of the night from a crazy dream. I’m going to write down everything I can remember:
In the dream, Steve had built some huge redstone contraption.
“It’s a vending machine,” he said. “We have them back on Earth.”
“And what does it do?” I asked.
“In this case, you drop an emerald into the hopper here, select which potion you want, and the potion comes out of the dispenser there.”
“What kind of potions?”
“Well, they’re not really potions so much as flavored drinks.”
“Flavored drinks?”
“Never mind.”
I studied the strange machine.
“What happens if you put in something besides an emerald?”
“It rejects it. Or eats it, but that only happens sometimes. It’s a work in progress.”
“It can recognize what kind of item you put into it? Is that even possible with redstone?”
For a second, Steve’s eyes had an almost opalescent shimmer.
“With enough hard work, anything is possible, Runt.”
I glanced at the button on the lower right:
Mystery . . .
“What does this button do?”
“Maybe you should find out.”
Hurrrn. I pressed the button. The scene faded. Darkness.
“Please help me,” the wither skeleton said. “I’m stranded on a lava island.”
“Why would I help you? You’re a mob. You’re a noob mob, too.
Wither skeletons are immune to lava, aren’t they? So just swim to shore.”
“But not all of us are bad. Surely you know that. Al
so, I can’t swim. Please build a bridge for me. If you help me, I’ll . . . help you.”
“Help me how?”
“There’s someone you need to meet.”
“Whatever. This is my dream. Go away.”
“Right now, I might be just a part of your dream . . . but we will meet in the future.”
“. . .”
“By the way,” the wither skeleton said, “tell Jello I said, ‘Hi.’”
Darkness. Then I was in an unfamiliar house.
Three kids—two girls and a boy—were sitting at a table.
“Who are you guys?” I asked.
“I’m Skyler,” said one girl.
“Katie,” said the other.
The boy smiled. “Ben.”
The girl named Skyler stood up. “Notch sent us into your dream to give you a message,” she said. She pointed out the window.
“They’ll be here soon.
“You must warn the mayor. He doesn’t realize how much danger the village is really in. No one does.”
I glanced out the window again.
“So . . . the trees are coming for us?”
Ben approached the window, too.
“No, not the trees. Them. Isn’t it obvious?”
“Who?!”
“You aren’t too bright, are you, Runt?”
That came from Katie, who was behind me, now. All three began pointing out the window. “Look again!”
The grass under the trees began rustling. Yet . . . everything else was absolutely still. Not even the clouds moved. There was an eerie feeling. It made me sick to my stomach. Then the whole world shook slightly. There was a horrible roaring sound far in the distance.
