by C. B. Lee
It is the other person in the server.
“Whoa,” Tank says, coming up on his left.
With Tank flanking him, Jake approaches the Wizard cautiously. The other avatar doesn’t move, just watches them.
“You couldn’t put ladders up or anything?” Emily says, joining them on the ledge. “What’s up with this guy? He hasn’t said hi back.”
“Let me try,” Tank says.
< TankFarms > do you live in pacific crest?
No answer.
< TankFarms > is this your world? Did you do all the mods?
< RoxXStarRedStone > they’re pretty cool!
< MCExplorerJake > where do all these riddles go to? Where does it start? Where does it end?
The three of them regard the Wizard in a strange standstill, and then finally new words appear.
< TheCrestWizard > This is MY world. You need to leave.
Jake balks at this. “No way, it’s infinitely big, there’s plenty of room for all of us to play.”
“What’s he gonna do, kick us out?” Tank laughs at this, jerking his head at Jake.
Jake, on the receiving end of Tank’s head-nod-jerk thing, finds it…nice. That Tank sees him as an equal, a friend.
< MCExplorerJake > Hey, we haven’t messed up any of your stuff. It’s really cool, the structures we’ve found. All these riddles and maps and stuff, were you planning a scavenger hunt or something for your friends?
< TheCrestWizard > This game isn’t for you.
< RoxStarRedStone > Clearly whoever this was for, they haven’t played it. Whoever you’re waiting for, they’re long gone.
< TheCrestWizard > This game isn’t for you.
< MCExplorerJake > Look, I’ve seen a bunch of versions of this world—you obviously have a backup file. You can create another version of this if you want to so badly. We’ve already started a really cool base and are having a great time exploring.
Jake is in the middle of thinking of another way to explain, without being cheesy, that he has friends now, and he doesn’t want to lose the one nice thing he has here. Maybe Emily and Tank are only hanging out with him because they have to do the community service hours, but as long as they’re having fun, they can keep playing Minecraft, and he won’t have to know if they’re really his friends or not. He wants to express this to the Wizard somehow, why this particular server is so important to him, that he doesn’t want to lose any of his progress he’s made in the game—or with his new friends.
He’s typing his thoughts when several things happen at once.
The Wizard charges at them. Glass clinks at their feet, and multiple potions cover them from head to toe.
“I can’t move!” Tank shouts.
“Attack, attack! How is he so strong!” Emily dodges another potion, backing up and fumbling for her weapons.
Jake watches in shock as his health drops low—the Wizard is only armed with a stick, but all his arrows seem to have no effect on the Wizard at all. He tries to get out of range of the attacks, but he’s still affected by the Potion of Slowness and the Potion of Harming was a heavy blow. He shoots arrow after arrow, but the Wizard just keeps approaching. The staff is replaced by a gleaming diamond sword, and Jake knows he’s done for.
RoxXStarRedStone was slain by TheCrestWizard
TankFarms was slain by TheCrestWizard
MCExplorerJake was slain by TheCrestWizard
Jake leans back and looks at his friends in horror. “What just happened?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EMILY
“We have to be better prepared if we see the Wizard again when we get our stuff,” Emily says, pacing back and forth at the base. “Those were our best weapons and our Potions of Water Breathing!”
She can’t believe that other player just attacked them like that. She’s never had that happen to her in multiplayer, ever. The nerve!
“Let’s brew some potions of our own so we’re prepared for battle,” Jake says.
“Did you get the coordinates for where we were last?” Tank asks.
“Right here.”
Emily leads the way; she’s gone from neutral and uncaring about the Wizard to muttering and preparing like a fiend. She forges armor and weapons, cursing all the while.
The three of them pause to eat the tamales Emily brought from home, and then clean up while discussing what they still need to do to face the Wizard again. Emily notices that the community center is mostly organized now—there isn’t really a need for them to do much else. They could technically just bring the rest of the boxes to Mrs. Jenkins and be done with it.
But she can’t stop now, not when they have a score to settle.
Emily decides not to say anything about the completed cleaning project when they finish lunch and they get right back to their preparations.
“Stupid old man. How’s that poison coming along?”
“I have no idea. Is this right—ahh!”
TankFarms died from poison
Tank grimaces. “I accidentally drank it.”
Finally they finish preparations and, with a few more potions at the ready, set off for the coordinates where they last saw the Wizard.
Emily hacks her way up the mountain, grumbling.
“Should we announce ourselves?” Jake asks.
“Let’s just attack,” Emily grumbles.
There’s a part of Emily that wants to ask what the Wizard knows. She doesn’t want to admit it, but she also wants to know the secret of the mermaids, the underwater village in the mural, and why it all exists. The idea that there’s a huge interlocking puzzle all across this world is an enormous mystery.
She also wants revenge.
At the top of the plateau is a ring of torches. In the center of the ring is a single chest.
“Watch out, it could be booby-trapped,” Emily says. “That’s what I would do.”
They approach cautiously, throwing things to activate any hidden pressure plates, but nothing happens.
Finally Tank goes up to the chest. “There’s nothing here but a piece of paper,” he says. “It’s a note.”
If you want your things
They can be found
Where birds dare not sing
Far beneath the ground
Beyond the fiery mouth of the dragon’s lair.
“Dragon?” Emily frowns. “What is he talking about? You mean he took our things to the End? It’s going to take forever to get there. We barely went to the Nether for the first time.”
“No, it’s another riddle,” Tank. “I mean, it could mean that, but I think the Wizard hid our stuff somewhere underneath what a ‘dragon’s lair’ could look like.”
Jake bounces up and down. “It’s a hunt. He’s starting us on a scavenger hunt. Let’s do it!”
“I want to know where he is so I can give him a taste of his own medicine,” Emily grunts.
Tank sighs. “See, this is why I said we should just focus on our own quest. I just want to work on our farm and do this adventure and find the treasure, but no, you both had to be like, ‘let’s go chase down that mysterious person in gray over there.’ ”
“You can farm anytime,” Jake says, knocking shoulders with him playfully. “This is new and different.”
Emily has to agree. It’s a challenge. “All right, so dragon’s lair. That sounds like a cave.”
“I don’t think it would be on the other side of the world. It should be within walking distance, at least, for this clue,” Jake says. “Let’s split up and look around.”
* * *
—
Emily is the one who finds the lair.
The lava is flowing directly out of the cavern, falling in long rivulets down the cliffside before flowing into a large pool. From here it’s unmistakable that the mountain’
s peak is formed into the shape of a dragon’s head, with the lava flowing from its mouth, looking every inch the fire-breathing terror it is. The cave inside looks almost impossible to get through with all the lava.
“What should we do?” Jake asks. “Try to build up a bridge or something and plug it up so the lava flow stops?”
“Where birds dare not sing far beneath the ground,” Emily muses.
“I don’t think going into this cave is the answer,” Tank says. “What if we start here at the base and just dig down?”
Emily’s already got her pickaxe out, and Jake follows suit. They dig, getting into a rhythm of going downward and creating a stairway into the depths of the earth, just wide enough for a single person.
“Let’s spread out until we find a cavern,” Emily suggests.
They each pick a direction. Emily follows a vein of lapis lazuli ore, collecting the minerals along the way. She’s got a pretty solid path going when she hears the quip quip of a spider nearby. “Hey, monsters in here!”
Emily slams her pickaxe into the rock again, and this time it gives way to an opening. She blasts her way through, and then too quickly the spiders descend upon her.
“Gah!” Emily manages to kill one but she’s outnumbered by spiders, and they’re rapidly gaining on her. “Third level, go right—help! Spiders! I’ve found the cavern but spiders!” She backs up into a corner, eating bread as quick as she can, and then she’s nearly done for—
SPLAT.
Tank barrels through the spider about to chomp down on Emily, wielding his sword high. Jake is right behind him, shooting arrows. Spiders squelch out of existence, disappearing all around her.
“You okay?” Jake asks.
“Thanks,” Emily says. It feels good, knowing they have her back.
“There are mine tracks over here,” Tank says. “Should we follow them?”
Jake adds torches to the walls, lighting the way. “You think we’re right underneath the fiery mouth of the dragon?”
Emily frowns. “Did anyone write down the coordinates? I sure didn’t.”
“Got them here. Looks like we need to go to negative two-ninety-eight.”
She follows Tank, Jake close behind her. Finally at the coordinates of the dragon’s mouth, they come upon a room with a single chest in the center.
“Our stuff!” Jake exclaims.
Emily rushes forward, but as soon as she takes a step, everything goes dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
JAKE
“What just happened? Did I die?” Emily cries out. “I just respawned somewhere weird—oh, hi. Did you both die, too?”
Jake frowns. “I didn’t get a death message. I don’t think we died.”
“I just saw you two disappear, and the next thing I knew I was here,” Tank says. “This isn’t any spawn point I’ve ever set, though. Where are we?”
Where is here, exactly?
Jake takes it all in, walking around to get a sense of where they are. They’ve spawned into the center of what look like ruins. The stone structure is cracked, open to the elements. Piles of rubble are scattered across the floor, columns broken in half as if a great earthquake had split the ancient building and the jungle has since reclaimed it. Everything is covered in trailing vines, lines of green tracing the walls and creeping in from the dark outside. Above them, night and a dark forest rustle through the openings of the building.
Jake stares. It’s clearly designed this way; there’s no passage of time or erosion that takes place here, no earthquakes, no force of nature that could destroy a building like this. Whoever made this structure wanted it to feel ancient.
It does.
Music starts. Lilting, haunting, almost as if on cue.
“How did we get here?” Emily demands. She pauses, and then lets out a high, angry shriek. “Did either of you make it to the chest in time? My inventory is completely empty! Do you guys have any of your stuff?”
Jake’s inventory is empty, too.
“Nooooo, I was carrying so many seeds.” Tank groans.
“My Silk Touch axe! All my enchanted items! My diamond sword! Gah!” Emily punches at a pile of rubble, lashing out in anger.
Nothing happens.
“Whoa. Weird.” Tank does the same to the stone wall next to him. “I can’t break anything! What gives?”
Jake punches at the ground experimentally as well.
You can’t break this here.
You have no effect here.
“How do we get out of here?” Tank runs toward the opening in the wall, but it’s too high up. He jumps, his character bouncing comically as he tries to reach for the next jut of stone, but it’s too far.
With no building materials and no way to affect their immediate surroundings, Jake is at a loss.
“The Wizard,” Emily says. “He’s the one who built this world, right? He’s got the power to do anything. Including teleport players wherever he wants.”
“Why would he bring us here? To mess with us?” Emily asks.
Jake freezes. He thinks about the riddles he’s seen and the glimpse of a mural that promises something. Adventure. Mystery. Fun.
“I think…I think the Wizard just invited us to play.” Jake paces the length of the room. “It’s the beginning of the game. He’s started us over from the beginning.”
* * *
—
The more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense. Like finding their things was a test, and the Wizard decided that instead of blocking them or deleting the game, he wants to let them play. See how they do.
Jake’s chest puffs up with pride. He knows they did well, solving the clue and making it to the hidden chest where their things were. He wonders if anyone else has done this challenge, if they’ve done better. Maybe the Wizard was just bored, and at first was upset but now sees this as an opportunity to try his might as a gamemaster.
He takes a closer look at the room and admires the work that went into this whole setting. This kind of artistry takes not only time but the eye of a master builder, someone who’s had a lifetime to spend in this world.
A crescent moon shines above them, stars wafting slowly across the night sky. In the distance, there’s the tsk tsk of spiders moving about nearby.
Jake shudders. The stone dais he’s standing on is also as intricately built, even with its cracks. They’re standing in the center of a crumbling monolith, built by some strange entity, covered in vines and dust.
Jake’s played so many videogames, but he’s always gone into it knowing what the objectives were, the premise, what he could expect. Here, he’s completely out of his element. He has no idea what will happen next.
It’s terrifying and unnerving, especially since this is the one game he can always rely on to have the same rules, the same construction elements.
But since he’s started playing in this world, the mysteries that have been unfolding—he’s been meeting each challenge and taking it in stride. And it’s been fun, adapting to the new changes, learning more about the mystery as he goes. It’s unexpected, the kind of joy he’s found here in exploring this world with his friends.
The realization shocks him. That he likes change, the newness of it all.
Tank glances at him. “So what do we do now?”
“You’re supposed to spawn here and figure out where to go. We have nothing because it’s the start.”
Emily jumps up and down in frustration. “Or maybe because he knows if I had all my weapons I would totally kick his butt!”
“My farm,” Tank says sadly. “Do you think our base is still there?”
Jake brings up the coordinates and lets out a low whistle. “We’re real far from home.”
He can tell Emily’s doing the same from the way she immediately starts yelling. “Like twenty thousand b
locks away! You know how many in-game days it’ll take to get there, and plus we have nothing! We’re gonna have to fight our way through and camp along the way and—”
Jake’s heart starts to pound with excitement.
“YEARGH!” Emily stomps again.
The raspy sound of heavy stone scraping echoes in the cavern.
Jake whirls around to see a long, dark hallway revealed in the wall. “You activated a pressure plate!”
“Great. Let’s go down the dark hallway that the homicidal Wizard opened for us, after he took all our stuff and dropped us in the middle of nowhere.” Tank stares up at the sky.
“You got a better plan?” Jake steps forward into the dark. Up close, he can see a bit of orange flickering in the distance: a torch. “Looks like there’s a light at the end. Let’s go!”
Jake walks down the hallway, letting the darkness envelop him. He’s never ventured into the sheer unknown like this, unprotected, unarmed, with not even a torch to light the way.
“When I find that Wizard I’m going to completely obliterate him,” Emily mutters. “I’m going to craft a new diamond sword and enchant it with everything I have and then ram—”
“Am I walking into you or something else? Jake, I can’t tell.”
Jake chuckles. Well, he’s never had friends by his side to join him before. Even though he has nothing, he feels more prepared than ever before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TANK
Tank has never really been scared of the dark. First of all, it happens once a day, and you can always turn on your phone or something to light your way. At home, even without the lights it’s easy to see; the complex is always lit, if not by the fluorescent lights in the buildings, then by the ambient spillover from the streets, headlights shining in as cars flock to where they’re going. Even during the day the apartment is always shrouded in grays and shadows; the curtains are always shut so Ma doesn’t have to strain her eyes. At night, when Tank’s helping Mr. Mishra take out the trash or bring in deliveries from the dark alleyway around the corner, it doesn’t bother him at all.
