by C. B. Lee
There’s one room filled with tiles that play haunting, musical notes that fill the air if you press them. Another room is filled with murals of merfolk wielding tridents, and another has chests filled with emeralds and gold.
Emily joins them on the second floor, taking a grateful breath in one of Tank’s air pockets. “What are we looking for? I don’t see anything so far that could be a clue. This could just be another pretty place to explore.”
“What, like a false start?” Tank considers. “I don’t know. I think the riddle definitely pointed us here. We crossed the bridge to the castle, found the entrance to the water elevator.”
“Yeah, but…” Emily trails off. “What if we messed up on the first step? I broke the circuitry and programming when I was trying to figure it out, so Viv was looking at what I made and the whole castle could have been…”
“No, I’m sure you and Viv solved that right. We were meant to go into the castle and find that elevator and go down here. This isn’t like a regular ocean monument. That music room had to be designed by the Wizard, and there were murals of mermaids. This feels right,” Jake says. “Look, this whole time we’ve been looking for this underwater city, right? We’re here, and I know the next clue is part of this monument. Come on guys, trust me.” Jake turns back toward the inside of the chambers. “We haven’t explored the next floor yet and the castle definitely led us here. This is where the next clue is.”
Emily sighs. “Jake, I think you come up with great plans—we couldn’t have done these challenges without you, and going back to the base and preparing was super helpful. But think about this: This whole world, the Wizard has been working on it for ages. And then when he saw we were playing, he picked out the most challenging riddles for us, and he said there were seven, right?”
Tank slowly starts counting off the challenges they’ve done. “Getting out of the first temple, finding the map, the hedge maze, the mineshaft with the never-ending mobs, the redstone door to the castle…There would only be two left.”
“Right? And that elevator, being spit out here into the ocean and finding this monument close by, of course we’re going to think it’s the right direction because it’s underwater. But I think we should go back and rethink the castle. I just think maybe the redstone part of the riddle wasn’t right, and maybe it should have opened up a different secret passageway or something.”
Emily swims away like she’s going to go back to shore. Jake darts in front of her, blocking her path.
“Look, you’re a great player and fighter—you always dive headfirst into danger, and it’s awesome. And you are a rock star at redstone stuff,” Jake says.
“Yeah. You’re just second-guessing yourself,” Tank says. “I think we’re exactly where we need to be.”
“Right now, we need to stick together. We can’t afford to lose anyone, especially if what Tank says about where we are in solving the puzzle is right.” Jake doesn’t say that they’re almost at the end, but it lingers over them in the heavy silence, words unspoken.
“There’s one more floor here, and we can go check out whatever’s there. It won’t hurt to look, and if there’s nothing, we can go back to the castle and look at the redstone to see if there’s another door or something. But I think that part is solved.” Tank swims back inside the hallway, toward the last opening to the top floor.
Emily looks at Tank and then back at Jake. “You’re right. I trust you and your plan,” she says. “And—thanks.” She gives him a soft smile. “I think the both of you are great players, too. I’ve never had this much fun in Minecraft before.”
It feels bittersweet, and Jake doesn’t want this to end, but it’s going to very, very soon, and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do when it’s over.
The three of them go through each and every room, and every time Jake finds nothing his disappointment grows, like a heavy stone weighing him down. Emily doesn’t say I told you so like he expects, though, just keeps pushing forward.
“This is it. This is the treasure chamber,” Emily says. “Gold, usually, in there—” She breaks out a pickaxe and starts hacking at the dark prismarine.
Jake double-checks the hallway to see if there are any more doors or rooms they’ve missed, and this is it. It’s the last one.
He rounds the corner and comes face-to-face with an elder guardian.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
EMILY
Underneath the dark prismarine, gold gleams and Emily grins. Treasure is treasure—it’s not a clue, but it’s certainly nice to have.
“Jake! No!”
She whirls around to see Tank frantically trying to fight off an elder guardian that’s blasting a powerful laser at Jake. This must be the boss—she’s found these one-eyed blobs of doom incredibly annoying and potent, but they’re no match for her. Emily switches her pickaxe for her diamond sword, charging at the guardian. The blasts are powerful, and she sees that Tank and Jake keep hanging back so they can eat and regain health or duck into an air pocket, but Emily has no such fears. She hacks and hacks at the elder guardian, cornering it into a wall and it’s got nowhere to go except to succumb to her power. Finally it’s destroyed, and she hears the familiar ping of experience and picks up the loot.
“Emily, watch out, your air!” Tank calls out, making an air bubble right next to her.
“Thanks,” Emily breathes.
Jake hacks away relentlessly at the dark prismarine. “Why isn’t it working? You were mining it just a second ago! Do you think the Wizard is watching us somehow? Figured to make it harder by making everything unbreakable here, too?”
“The elder guardians,” Emily says, eyeing the debuff on her screen now that she’s been in close range of the guardian. “They have this fatigue effect. It’s going to last a while.”
“Ugh, I forgot about that,” Jake says.
“At least now that we’ve cleared out all the guardians we can just keep looking super closely to see if there’s anything we missed, room by room—ahh!”
“Tank! Are you okay?” Jake calls out.
“Yeah, I thought it was another player at first, but it’s like a statue or something. Come check it out!”
Emily swims into the next room. She’d gone through this one earlier and didn’t think much about it as there wasn’t any treasure, just columns of light and dark prismarine. Tank’s in the corner, staring at what she thought was a column earlier, but now with her Night Vision potion activated, she can see it more clearly in detail: a sculpture of a mermaid wielding a trident.
“Whoa, that is neat,” Jake says, swimming up to it.
The prismarine statue looks as if it’s guarding something, and it is clearly too elaborate to be anything but someone’s personal design embedded in the game.
Jake was right. It has to be a clue.
Emily interacts with the statue as if it’s a door and is rewarded by the sound of stones heaving and churning apart. The entire wall of the chamber slides open in a complicated motion, stacking and restacking as the wall unfolds to reveal a long hallway leading off to new, unknown depths. The hallway is lined with green and blue glass, glowing faintly with the soft blue light of sea lanterns.
“Wow. It’s almost the same decorations as that village,” Jake says in awe.
Emily’s only seen the images of the seaside village Jake found. But being in the here and now and seeing all of this is exhilarating. Where has the Wizard been leading them all this time?
“Let’s go,” Tank says decisively.
They swim out away from the monument, following the blue glow of the lanterns in the dark prismarine hallway. The hallway seems to stretch out to eternity, and in this single path, it’s unclear where they’re going or what they’re passing through outside the narrow corridor, or even how far they’ve come. There is only forward, and Emily presses on.
They set
up ladders as stopping points when they run low on air, taking quick breaks to rest before heading down the long, watery hallway again. Who knows what lies ahead?
The light changes, and ahead the sea lanterns disappear.
“Huh. Windows,” Jake says.
Blue- and green-glass windows now line the hallway, scant light filtering through the watery path, beckoning them on. Outside, the ocean depths await.
“And more statues,” Emily adds.
As they make their way forward, they pass by statues of mermaids alternating with the windows. Emily is sure her eyes are playing tricks on her, since you can’t really see subtle expressions in Minecraft, but she thinks they look wary, each of them gripping their tridents, ready to attack at any moment. An unearthly melody plays as they follow the path, and outside in the deep, shadows move a little too deliberately to be fish.
The pathway disappears into darkness, and not just because it’s beyond the realm of focus. The sea lanterns sporadically lighting the way have disappeared. Emily’s Night Vision is wearing off, throwing everything into shades of dark blue and gray. She can barely see the mermaid statues flanking the pathway, and it’s starting to look like they’re moving.
Wait.
Are they moving?
“What’s that?” Tank gestures at a shadow outside rushing them in the water, speeding from the monument and heading toward wherever the pathway leads.
The shape moves in the distance, coming closer and closer until it’s in focus: a mermaid, covered in scales. She doesn’t seem to notice them as she swims forward with her trident.
“A mermaid! That’s what I’m talking about!” Jake exclaims. “See, we are going in the right direction.”
The mermaid overtakes them, swimming ahead, and another one follows. The music quickens, as if these two mermaids were trying to catch up, late to something.
“Oh no,” Tank groans. “Are they gonna attack us?”
“Get ready,” Emily says, drawing her sword.
“No, no, wait.” Jake swims forward after another breath at one of their ladder stopping points. “They’re all swimming toward something over there. Can you see it?”
Emily tries to peer out the window, but the angle makes it difficult to see anything except the kelp forest and the occasional fish directly outside their walkway. She readies her pickaxe and prepares to be disappointed if this is also unbreakable.
“Wait, look ahead!” Tank says.
Sea lanterns illuminate a set of double doors at the end of the pathway.
Emily swims forward. She braces herself, switching between weapons, ready for anything. When Jake and Tank catch up to her, she pushes through the doors.
The open ocean beckons them, dark and filled with shifting shadows. Something looms in the distance, some sort of structure.
“Another monument?” Jake asks.
“Looks like a wall,” Emily says. “There’s stuff behind it, too.”
Emily drinks another Night Vision potion and the ocean floor becomes as clear as day. Beyond a stretch of sand dotted with rocks and seagrass, kelp drifts slowly as fish swim in calm circles. Mermaids swim erratically, but as they approach, Emily can see many of them carrying blocks of prismarine and stacking them carefully like a wall. The mermaids with tridents swim back and forth, a nervous energy surrounding them, as if they’re waiting for something.
And just beyond the wall, Emily can see it, a vision in sparkling blues and greens and golds, flickering in the soft glitter of secondhand sunlight: the city from the mural. Lights sparkle from blue lanterns hanging outside a myriad of buildings, some small and cozy, some decorated with flags and colors like shops.
Merpeople covered in scales of every color swim through archways between the buildings, flitting in and out, everyone with their own destination and purpose. Temples and monuments loom above the smaller buildings, rising up in tiers around them. Coral and sponges decorate the city, growing in lush multitudes all around them.
It should feel tranquil, but the energy of the merpeople building the wall and those with weapons swimming back and forth make Emily nervous.
“Wow, that’s amazing,” Tank says. “It’s like a whole kingdom of these merpeople just living and doing their own thing. I wonder if they’re like villagers with jobs and we can trade with them.”
“Probably,” Jake says thoughtfully. “But why are they building a wall?”
“Why would anyone build a perimeter wall?” Emily mutters. It feels too easy, just swimming toward the city they’ve been trying to find the whole game. Finding it surely isn’t the challenge. Every riddle has had a challenge: a puzzle of logic, mobs to defeat, a maze to solve. If the ocean monument was the sixth challenge…then there’s still one more. There’s something more just lurking beneath the surface here, and if these merpeople are building something—they’re trying to keep something out.
As they cross the wide expanse of sand between where the pathway ends and the wall surrounding the city begins, something rumbles in the distance.
The sound gets louder, and then a deep, earth-wrenching BOOM reverberates from almost directly underneath them.
“Whoa, what’s going on?” Tank asks.
All the merpeople stop what they’re doing, those stacking stones carefully on the wall now gripping their tridents with fear.
Emily can see the wall more clearly. The massive hole in the center, the cracks in it, the blocks scattered all across the sand.
She rifles quickly through her inventory to see what she has. What would work best? A bow with Piercing? A sword with Unbreaking? Extra Sharpness? What?
Another rumble, louder this time.
Jake and Tank also draw swords. Emily swivels around, trying to locate the source of the sound, but there’s just ocean and the prismarine pathway behind them, and the terrified merpeople trying to protect their kingdom in front of them.
A thunderous cracking noise seems to echo across the ocean floor. It’s coming from below them.
“Get ready!” Emily calls out, brandishing her sword. Whatever happens next is going to be excruciatingly difficult, she can tell.
In the sandy field, a massive trench opens up in the deep to reveal glowing molten magma and streams of lava pulsing from below, turning into obsidian all around the trench. Columns of bubbles rise frantically from the magma, and then something else starts to push through the blocks of obsidian and magma, breaking them as easily as if they were nothing but sand.
The beast emerges and roars. It frees itself from the magma depths and swims forward, and Emily can see it clearly in all its terrifying glory: a massive creature covered in mottled dark green scales, with long fins billowing out behind it like the sails of a sunken ship. It opens its giant gaping maw and a blast of power shoots out, like an elder guardian magnified a thousand times.
The merfolk scatter just like villagers do when attacked, the builders shrieking in terror, their panicked voices rising higher and higher.
Emily’s heart races as the merfolk attack the beast with their tridents, throwing them in swift and decisive arcs. It seems not to matter to the beast, the projectiles nothing more than mere annoyances.
Emily charges forward, because her instinct is calling her to fight, to protect these people, in a story that she never expected to find herself in. “This is it! Let’s go!”
Jake and Tank rise up with her, and they swim headfirst toward the massive creature, the three of them so small against the looming monster.
It’s Jake who shoots the arrow. It moves impossibly slowly and deals practically no damage, but it draws the attention of the beast, which roars at them. The blast is like a shock wave, pulsing through the water with an intensity that immediately drains all of Emily’s health to zero.
RoxXStarRedStone was slain by Leviathan
TankFarms was sla
in by Leviathan
MCExplorerJake was slain by Leviathan
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
TANK
The Leviathan is the worst.
“There’s no way we can defeat this boss,” Tank groans. He’s tired of Jake’s cheerful One more time? It’s all they’ve done the past couple of days, and he’s sick of it. The first time they went back, they felt so ready. They had trekked all the way from the castle to the base to get more supplies and back, and then set up a spawn point in the cave under the castle. But then the Leviathan killed them instantly with its powerful blasts, and they regrouped and tried again. And again.
He’s tired of going through the motions of waking up on the sandy beach, swimming to the ocean monument, the long walk to the mermaid kingdom, and then getting killed by the Leviathan over and over. The sequence where the Leviathan rises out of the deep doesn’t stop being terrifying, especially when there seems to be no way to defeat it. They’ve tried everything, from throwing Potions of Poison to using TNT to fighting the Leviathan with ranged attacks to charging directly at it with swords.
It’s the most powerful boss Tank has ever encountered, and he’s starting to think that it’s hopeless. Nothing they have done has ever made any impact on the monster’s health, and it’s impossible to get close enough to deal damage anyway with those deadly power blasts. This used to be an adventure, part of an epic quest of discovering new things and solving riddles, but being stuck in a loop of getting killed, losing all their items, going back to the base and crafting more, and doing it again is not fun at all.
Jake’s already come up with another plan. “What if we enchanted the arrows—”
“Tridents,” Emily says. “They’re the most effective underwater weapon.”
“There’s no way to craft a trident,” Jake groans. “We have to find some drowned that have them, and that’s random! Let’s just stick to what we have!” He glares at Emily. “If you actually stuck to the plan, I’m sure we could take it! Okay, let’s go over it again. Once we cross the field, that prompts the Leviathan’s entrance. Now, if we split up and get in position—”
