Ash had broken the news to them throughout the day, one at a time. They had decided to have a group meeting to discuss it…and to have their meeting in Minecraft, where they had some privacy. The group also had important work to do.
“Now, who has the wither skeleton skulls?” Ash asked.
“Ha!” said Po. “That’s one way to change the subject.”
“I’ve got the skulls,” Harper said. “I picked them up along with lots of soul sand and other items when we were in the Nether. You never know when soul sand is going to come in handy.”
“We only need three,” said Morgan. “You’ll need to place them in a row on top of the soul sand.”
“But not until we’re ready!” Ash said. “We’re in for a real battle here.”
“It’s a very strange plan,” said Jodi. “Are we really creating a monster that’s going to try to destroy us?”
“Well…yeah,” said Morgan. “When you put it that way, it’s a weird plan.”
“We need to talk to the Librarian,” Ash said. “And I think building a beacon is the best way to get her attention.”
“And to make a beacon, we need a nether star,” said Morgan.
“And the only way to get a nether star is by defeating a wither,” said Ash.
“And a wither is…what, again?” asked Jodi.
Morgan looked sheepish. “It’s a super-hostile, flying undead boss mob with three skeletal heads.”
“Oh, good. I was worried it was going to be something bad,” Jodi replied sarcastically. “Perhaps we should invite it over for dinner.”
“We can handle it,” Ash insisted. “Everybody get your weapons ready. Harper, go ahead.”
Po held his breath. He watched as Harper placed three pitch-black skulls in a row. Then she took a big step back and drew her sword.
Nothing happened.
“It’s not working,” Morgan said.
“Typical!” said Po. “The one time you want to face a hostile mob, it doesn’t happen.”
Ash poked at one of the skulls. Morgan kicked at the soul sand.
Po had a sinking feeling. He still couldn’t change his avatar skin. He hadn’t mentioned it to the others, because it seemed like a minor problem in comparison to everything else they were dealing with. But now he wondered: broken wither, broken skin library. Was it a coincidence?
He pulled an ax from his inventory. He took a swing at a nearby tree.
Again: nothing happened.
Once, when Po had been new to the game, he’d tried to cut his way into a mountain using a wooden pickaxe. It had taken forever to even make a dent. Back then, he hadn’t known that you were supposed to use a stronger tool to cut through stone.
He swung again and again, but if the ax was doing anything, he couldn’t tell. And this was a diamond ax that he was using. It should have cut through pretty much anything. It should certainly have been able to chop through a tree!
He tried several more times to be sure. Still nothing.
“Uh, you guys?” he said. “Am I doing this the right way?”
“That’s strange,” said Harper. She pulled an iron shovel from her own inventory. She tried to use it to dig into the ground, but the shovel was useless. “I don’t understand this.”
“Let me try,” said Jodi. She pulled out a diamond pickaxe and swung it at a rocky hill. The pickaxe bounced off the rock without making a mark.
In the dungeon, Po had seen that pickaxe break through obsidian. Now it couldn’t handle a little bit of basic cobblestone?
Something was very wrong here, Po thought.
“Something is very wrong here,” said Morgan outloud.
“That’s exactly what I was just thinking!” said Po, looking at his friend.
Ash looked stunned. “That energy wave yesterday,” she said. “What if that did something to the game?”
Morgan stared at his beloved fancy diamond sword. “Do you think the Evoker King made it so our weapons and tools don’t work?”
“I think it’s worse than that,” Ash said. Her eyes drifted to the inactive wither with its three silent heads.
“He broke the game,” Po sputtered. “He broke Minecraft!”
And as soon as he’d said the words, he knew they were true.
Harper didn’t like this one bit. It was as if the Evoker King had locked everything in place. “It’s almost like he froze the game,” she said. “I’ve never heard of anything like this!”
“I have. Sort of,” said Morgan.
Harper tried to pick up one of the wither skulls. But now that she’d put it down, it felt glued in place. “I’m all ears,” she said.
“I used to hang out with a guy named Dante,” Morgan said. “He’s actually the one who first showed me Minecraft.”
“I remember him,” said Jodi, taking another useless swing with her pickaxe. “He was nice!”
“Yeah,” said Morgan. “And he was an incredible builder. He liked to re-create famous buildings in Minecraft. He made the Empire State Building, the Shanghai Tower, the Shard…you name it.”
Harper felt a sudden chill. It had to be her imagination, since they didn’t actually get hot or cold here. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that the Evoker King was watching them.
Then the sky rumbled with thunder, and she shuddered. Rain was coming. It wouldn’t hurt them, but it would make everything feel a little creepier.
“Let’s walk while we talk, Morgan,” she suggested. “Our old starter castle is nearby, remember? We can head that way.”
“What about the wither?” asked Po.
Harper shrugged. “It’s not going anywhere.”
“Neither are our beds, unfortunately,” said Ash. Her ax bounced harmlessly off her bed. “They’re stuck, too.”
“We have backup beds at the castle!” said Jodi. “Remember? We each had our own bedroom set up. Mine was very pink.”
“So was mine!” Po said happily.
“It’s as good a plan as any,” said Morgan. “And maybe the Librarian will find us there, since the beacon idea is a bust.”
Morgan pulled the compass they had constructed during an earlier adventure from his inventory. He held it out for everyone to see, but the needle stayed in place.
“It’s useless,” he said.
They all looked automatically to Ash, who had the best sense of direction. At least the sun still seemed to be moving in the sky, so Ash used it to get her bearings. She pointed over Jodi’s head. “It’s that way.”
As they headed in the direction Ash had indicated, Harper said, “Morgan, you were telling us about Dante?”
“Right,” Morgan grumbled as he returned the compass to his inventory. “So one day after school, Dante sent me a message and asked me to sign in to his game so I could see his latest creation. I was expecting something familiar, like the Chrysler Building. But this time, he’d created something totally new! He’d designed his own skyscraper for the first time. It was super tall, with tons of glass and these awesome gargoyles. We were in Creative Mode, so I was able to fly up and see all the details.”
Harper closed her eyes and tried to imagine what sort of structure she’d make if she had time to build anything. Lately, all their game time had involved life-and-death struggles. It would be nice just to build again!
“When I was flying,” Morgan continued, “I noticed that one of the gargoyles didn’t match the others. It had a gravel brick where a cobblestone brick should have been. An easy mistake to make, and just as easy to fix! So I took out my pickaxe and tried to remove the gravel. And guess what?”
“You couldn’t do it,” Harper guessed.
“Right,” said Morgan. “I swung my pickaxe, and nothing happened!”
“Sounds familiar,” Jodi said glumly.
“I aske
d Dante what had happened,” said Morgan. “And he explained that he’d changed the game’s settings so that only he could ‘edit’ blocks. In other words, I couldn’t take anything apart or change anything. Because I was playing on his server, that was something he had control over.”
“But why?” asked Po.
“To protect his creation, of course,” said Jodi. “He had created a great work of art! He didn’t want anyone else coming in and putting TNT on it.”
“Like a museum,” said Harper. “Or my grandma’s house. Look, but don’t touch.”
“Exactly,” said Morgan. “It was just like what’s happening to us now. Which at least gives us a clue as to what the Evoker King is doing. I think the Foundation Stone gives him ownership of the server, so to speak. It gives him the power to decide who can edit blocks. At least we can still place blocks, for now, but that doesn’t leave us with many options.”
“We’re here,” said Ash, and Harper looked past the next hill. There stood their castle—or what was left of it. It had definitely seen better days.
It was raining now, and the gloomy weather made the castle look a little sinister. Haunted. But it would be safer than being out in the open.
She hoped so, anyway. But she still couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched.
“Oh, look!” Jodi cried. “Over there. It’s a horsey!”
Harper looked where Jodi was pointing. There was a horse standing near the entrance of the castle. It raised its head to look at them….
Just then, a bolt of lightning lit up the sky. It illuminated the horse, revealing it to be a hideous skeleton! It was nothing but white bone and black hooves. Harper could see right through its rib cage!
Jodi screamed.
Lighting flashed again. This time it struck the horse. Harper gaped. She had never seen anything struck by lightning! She stepped forward to see if the horse was injured. She wanted to help it if she could—even if it was a monstrous mob!
But the lightning had done worse than hurt it. It had transformed it into a skeletal nightmare!
Sitting atop the horse was a humanoid skeleton. It wore a purple-gray helmet on its head and gripped a bow in its bone-white fist. It turned its sinister, fleshless face their way.
By the time Harper realized she should move, the skeleton rider was already firing arrows in their direction.
“Run!” she cried.
Jodi’s mind was reeling. Ten seconds ago, she had been so happy. She thought there had been a horse! She had immediately started thinking up sweet horse names and trying to remember if anyone had a saddle in their inventory.
Now she and her friends were running for their lives from a skeleton horse and its creepy, arrow-shooting rider. A lot could change in ten seconds!
“I’ve got this,” Morgan said, and he pulled his beloved diamond sword from his inventory. Jodi held her breath as he charged the rider and took a mighty overhead swing….
And his sword bounced harmlessly off the skeleton horseman.
“Oh no,” Jodi said. Being unable to harvest resources was one thing. But if they couldn’t harm hostile mobs, they were in real trouble.
The skeleton horseman took aim at Morgan. At such a close distance, Morgan was an easy target. The arrow struck him, and he fell back, flashing red as he took damage.
“Ouch!” he said. “That…that isn’t fair!”
In the gloom, Jodi saw movement. A figure stepped from a nearby copse of trees. And then another appeared from behind a broken stone pillar. She couldn’t make them out until a sudden bolt of lightning provided a moment of light.
There were three of them now. Of course! she thought. The lightning spawns two additional skeleton horsemen. And now they were all converging on Morgan.
“That’s really not fair!!!” he complained when he saw the two additional adversaries.
Ash had darted forward. She grabbed Morgan by the shoulder and pulled him back. “Worry about what’s fair later!” she said. “Run away and live to complain another day!”
“Up here!” Harper said, and she led the others up what was left of the castle’s central staircase. Jodi waited long enough to make sure Ash and Morgan were coming; then she turned on her heels and ran after Harper.
It was a long staircase, but not long enough. Soon the five of them had come to the stone platform at the very top of the tower. They stood in the open air, rain all around them, and realized they’d arrived at a dead end. The horsemen wouldn’t be far behind.
“What do we do?” Po cried out helplessly. “We can’t hurt it!”
Morgan placed a cobblestone brick on the ground. “Look! We can’t break bricks, but we can still place them,” he said. “We need to put up a barrier. We can build a whole room around ourselves.”
“No, stop!” said Harper. “Think about it. If you build a room around us and we can’t remove it later, then we’ll be stuck. Anything we build now is permanent!”
“What do we do?” Po cried again, more desperate this time.
“Jodi!” said Ash. “Any ideas? Tell me you’ve come up with something.”
Jodi’s eyes went wide. “Me? Why me?”
Ash stepped up to Jodi. Everyone else was panicking, but Ash looked eerily calm. “It’s what you do best, Jodi. You think outside the box.”
Ash’s belief in her made Jodi feel a little calmer. She focused on the problem. Outside the box, she thought. Outside the box…
“That’s it!” Jodi said. “We don’t want to box ourselves in. We want to box the bad guys in. Build a box!”
As she spoke, their skeletal enemies emerged from the staircase, leaping right into the middle of the platform. The riders’ focus was still on Morgan.
“I’ll keep them busy!” Morgan said, running back and forth. His attackers tried to follow with their bows, but Morgan was too quick.
While the skeletons were distracted, Jodi and the others leapt into action. They stacked blocks as quickly as they could, as close to the horses as they dared. By the time the skeletal riders noticed what was happening, the blocks were too high to jump over.
Jodi made a little staircase so that she could reach over the skeletons’ head. She placed a final series of blocks on top—a lid for their box.
She hopped back a few steps to admire their handiwork. It looked like a squat chimney made of a variety of mismatched bricks.
“It isn’t pretty,” Jodi said. “But it got the job done.”
“It sure did!” said Ash, and she gave Jodi a fist bump. “Good thinking, Jodi.”
“I can’t believe I almost trapped us in an inescapable room,” Morgan said. “It’s like I have to learn a whole new set of rules.”
“It’s temporary,” Ash said. “We just have to find the Evoker King and get him to put everything back the way it was.”
“Uh, guys?” said Po. “I think I found him.”
Jodi followed Po’s gaze over the side of the tower. There, in the distance, was a familiar sight: the obsidian words that the Librarian had once built as a warning: Beware the Evoker King!
Now, beside those words, something new had been built. It was a great and menacing tower. Jodi thought it looked like a super-villain’s headquarters.
“I think you’re right, Po,” said Jodi. “That’s just the sort of place he’d make for himself.”
Morgan chuckled darkly. “Dante would love it.”
“Whatever happened to him, anyway?” asked Jodi. “I always liked him.”
Morgan looked bashful, like he didn’t want to answer. He snuck a glance at Ash, and he frowned.
“He moved away,” Morgan said sadly. “And I never spoke to him again.”
The next day, Harper got to school early. At her request, so did Jodi, Morgan, and Po.
Harper was a problem so
lver. After all, she loved math and science, and most of the time, problem solving was what math and science were all about. There was almost always an answer, a solution. You just had to use the right skills to find it.
That was why she was struggling so much with the news that Ash was moving. If there was a solution to this problem, she couldn’t see it. And she wasn’t the only one struggling.
Morgan felt the same way. Their team had overcome every challenge it had faced, and Ash’s problem should be one more challenge they could overcome.
Po was struggling because he normally laughed in the face of danger. But he couldn’t find the humor in this situation.
Jodi seemed to be in denial. She seemed certain that Ash would be in their lives forever.
So, early in the morning, the four of them gathered beneath a great oak tree in the schoolyard. They wanted to discuss their problem. They wanted to solve their problem.
“What has everyone come up with?” Harper asked.
“Okay, get this,” Po said. “We already put on a great play. What if we did it again? What if we put on a play that was so convincing…we got everyone to believe that Ash’s house is haunted?!”
Harper scrunched her eyebrows. “I don’t understand how that would help. Wouldn’t that make her parents want to move even more?”
Po gasped. “And leave the poor ghosts behind? Ghosts are the best! Who wouldn’t want to live in a haunted house?”
Harper raised her hand, and so did everyone but Po.
“Well, I like ghosts…,” he grumbled, crossing his arms.
“I’m thinking about something a little more down-to-earth,” said Morgan. “They can’t move if they’re not able to sell their house. Right?”
Last Block Standing! (Minecraft Woodsword Chronicles #6) Page 2
