The Dragon: An Official Minecraft Novel, Page 3

  Next, she broke her ingot down into gold nuggets and crafted a golden carrot. It was a bit on the flimsy side, but she hoped it would do. She tossed it into the mix as well. The blue liquid deepened in color ever so slightly, and an odd shimmer spread along the surface.

  “Night vision potion,” Zetta whispered, as if she hoped the twins would settle for this. Rayne seemed interested, but Rift shook his head.

  “We’ve got torches,” Rift said. “What’s next?” His nose was nearly hovering over the brewing stand.

  “Back up a bit,” Zetta warned. “I’m not going to be responsible if the fumes turn your eyelashes into spiders.”

  “Can that happen?” Rift said, backing up quickly and rubbing at his eyes with his fists. He blinked rapidly, as if trying to make sure his lashes hadn’t become arthropods.

  Zetta smiled to herself. “Next ingredient,” she said, aggressively ignoring her friend’s concern. “Fermented spider eye.” It was definitely staring at her. Definitely.

  She shuddered and threw it into the potion. It sparked and fizzled, and when the hue of the liquid turned light purple, Zetta felt she was getting close. She wiped the sweat from her brow.

  Next, the redstone. How much should she use? She tossed in a handful, but nothing happened. The potion just sat there, looking lackluster. If this potion didn’t work, Rift would never let her hear the end of it. Maybe she’d bragged about her potioning skills a little too much. In reality, she knew next to nothing. But Rift was so good at crafting, and Rayne was so good with a bow, and Zetta just wanted to excel at something that wasn’t mining terracotta.

  Might as well go for it, Zetta said to herself, then tossed the rest of the redstone in. She wasn’t sure if she should wait to add the gunpowder or not, but she went ahead and mixed that in, too. Immediately, the potion flashed and spat at her. She jumped back so it wouldn’t land on her skin.

  “Perfectly normal,” she said, managing to keep the terror out of her voice. As the concoction settled, a brilliant silvery sheen shone through the glass. Zetta dared to get close. She could feel the heat radiating from the bottle without even touching it. “We just need to let it simmer for a bit now.” She dusted her hands together, like she was confident in her work and not secretly afraid her whole brewing stand would explode.

  “Food’s done,” Rayne called out, stabbing an arrow into a beautifully roasted rabbit to remove it from the campfire. Juices trickled out and sizzled as they hit the flame.

  Zetta hadn’t realized how famished she was after trekking this far from home. Her stomach finally didn’t feel like it was in knots. She could relax. She took a bite and savored the meat. She loved a good feast. That was one of her favorite things about Sienna Dunes—people were always celebrating something and coming together for elaborate dinners for just about any occasion.

  Rabbit stew was always a hit, as was the mushroom version her dad made, loaded up with two different types of mushrooms. Baked potatoes and fresh veggies made for great fillers, but sometimes they’d get something exotic, like a bright red apple or a melon from places where lush vegetation grew.

  There was a feast for the full moon, and one for the new moon. Birthdays, weddings, and holidays…like Founder’s Day or Miner’s Day or the Eve of Hostile Mobs where all the little kids made masks of ghasts or zombified piglins or creepers and then begged their neighbors for a treat. There was a huge parade and everything, with handheld floats made of paper flowers, as well as games and prizes and fireworks.

  Zetta was much too old for that now, but she’d helped her cousin Ashton with his costume last year, a giant black mask of some kind of mythical dragon that was way too big for his head. He’d needed both his hands to steady it, which meant that Zetta had to tag along with him, holding his treat bag as they walked from house to house. She’d have liked to be able to say she’d avoided the temptation of sneaking treats from his bag when he wasn’t paying attention, but she couldn’t.

  Zetta looked up at the moon. It was down to a sliver now, which meant the Eve of Hostile Mobs was just around the corner. If she was lucky, she could snag some melon and tuck it away to practice a healing potion. Assuming she could get her hands on some more gold, too, to make the melon nice and glistering. She could almost smell the potion brewing now, sweet from the melon, and not a single fermented spider eye to foul the whole thing up…

  …like this potion of invisibility…

  …that she’d forgotten completely about!

  Zetta sat up quickly and wiped the grease from her fingers onto her tunic, then ran back over to the brewing stand. How long had she been fantasizing about food and holidays? Had the potion brewed too long? The silvery luster was completely gone now. The potion looked beyond dull, more gray than purple, and the water had boiled down substantially. This was wrong. All wrong.

  “Smells awful,” Rift said. “Is it ready?”

  “Um, yes?” Zetta said, and when Rift raised a suspicious brow at her uncertainty, she tapped the glass with her fingertip and said, “Definitely ready.” She grabbed one of the glass bottles and instructed her friends to huddle close. What was the worst that could happen? If the spell went horribly wrong, they’d just go milk Ginger the cow and reverse the effects. No harm, no foul, right?

  Zetta raised the bottle up high, but before she could throw it, an arrow whizzed past her ear. Rayne’s head whipped in the direction the arrow had come from, and almost instantly, they had their bow drawn and an arrow notched. Right beyond the hastily made sandstone wall, three scraggly skeletons gathered, staring the friends down.

  The first shot had missed, but when Rift suddenly cried out in pain, Zetta knew the second one hadn’t.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Don’t panic, Zetta said to herself. At least they weren’t dealing with creepers. The friends had a chance to live through this. Not a great chance, but a good one. One of the skeletons brandished a bow that glowed faintly purple. Enchanted. The people of Sienna Dunes frowned upon that sort of magic, too, so she’d never seen one up close. She wished she weren’t seeing one up close right now, either.

  Rift punched his fist against the ground, gritting his teeth in agony. As Zetta leaned down to check on him, an arrow zipped past her, the feathers of the fletching grazing her scalp and shooting right between the two puffs she wore high on her head.

  “Stay down,” Rayne barked out. They notched another arrow and didn’t miss. The shot hit one of the skeletons in the rib cage, knocking it back. But it recovered quickly and started firing again.

  “Potion,” Rift eked out. Voice trembling. He lifted a finger and pointed at the dull, half-evaporated invisibility potion next to Zetta.

  Hiding from mobs was a great idea, and if Rift had had all his health and wasn’t in bad shape, maybe she wouldn’t be afraid of trying it, but what if it just made things worse? “I’m not great at potions!” she blurted out. “I’ve never even made a potion that worked properly. I don’t know what this one will do. We can’t risk it.”

  But Zetta wasn’t out of ideas. She pulled Rift back behind the crafting table, and they crouched there together. Arrows thwacked the wood, over and over. She knew Rift would be mad if the skeletons broke his crafting table. Wood to make another was pretty hard to come by, but he’d probably be even madder if he was dead.

  Zetta felt defeated. She was awful at potions. Awful at fighting. But there was one thing she was decent at, despite not liking it, and it gave her an idea. She pulled her trusty stone pickaxe out of her pack.

  “What are you doing?” Rayne shouted, and sidestepped as an arrow nearly caught them in the shoulder. “If you’re going to fight, use your sword.”

  “I’m not fighting them,” Zetta said. “I’m going to make a distraction.”

  “Hurry, then. I’m running out of arrows.”

  She started digging through the sand with her hands, fast a
s she could. With sand, the risk of cave-ins was always a real threat, but she didn’t have time to worry about that now. She hit sandstone and started slamming her pickaxe down against it. She dug down four more layers, hoping that was deep enough to avoid pockets of sand falling from above. Then she started mining sandstone in the direction where the skeletons were standing.

  With Rayne running out of arrows, Zetta didn’t even have time to leave torches to help her see. She just went by feel, forging forward until she felt she was far enough. Then she dug back toward the surface, stair-stepping and not going straight up, which was the second rule of mining. But for all her troubles, she ended up nearly suffocating on a faceful of sand anyway. She backed up, mined several stacks of sand out of the way, and then was back at it.

  Finally, the night sky appeared above her, filled with starlight and that sliver of a moon. She heard arrows shooting past. When she poked her head up, she saw there were only two skeletons remaining. Slightly better odds. But with Rift incapacitated and Rayne nearly out of arrows, two skeletons was still two skeletons too many.

  Zetta was ready now, her sword drawn again. “Hey!” she yelled. “You stack of bones! Over here!”

  The skeleton with the enchanted bow rattled as it turned. It saw her and made a move. The other followed after shortly. Then Zetta ran. Not too fast, because she didn’t want them to give up and go back after her friends. Not too slowly, because, well, arrows and all that. She zigged, left and right, hoping they wouldn’t hit her. Hoping she wouldn’t run into other hostile mobs. An arrow zinged past her ear.

  She couldn’t keep this sprint up forever, but the skeletons would never grow tired. She noticed that the skeleton with the enchanted bow was still a little ahead of the other. She carefully changed her course until the skeleton in the front was perfectly between Zetta and the skeleton in the back. Then, when the skeleton in the back shot an arrow, it struck the other skeleton’s skull. The skeleton in the front turned, and though it had no eyes or brows, it somehow looked furiously at its mate and fired an arrow in retaliation.

  It was a bloodbath. Or a bonebath, Zetta supposed.

  Arrows flew back and forth between the two mobs, and while they were distracted, Zetta ran back toward her friends. Rayne propped Rift up under the shoulder and they made their way back toward town.

  “I really wish we could have stuck around to see if the skeleton dropped that bow,” Rayne said. “It had to have been enchanted with extra power.”

  “Sure felt like a power enchantment,” Rift muttered. “Uggh.”

  They moved slowly, and the sun was rising before they caught the first sight of the bell tower rising high above Sienna Dunes’ town square. Not a moment later, it started ringing, and this early in the morning, that could mean only one thing.

  Sienna Dunes was in trouble.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The bell continued to clang, each metallic note making Zetta’s heart race faster. Her cousin Ashton—was he okay? She’d thought he’d be safer at home, but now she felt foolish for making that assumption. What about her dad? She’d told him she’d be out hunting with the twins, but she hadn’t mentioned how far they’d go or that they’d stay out this long. He must be worried sick about her, too.

  “Can you walk any faster?” Zetta asked Rift. On a full stomach, he’d healed up steadily and should have been back to full health by now. But he didn’t seem like he was in a hurry to get home.

  “It’s probably just a pillager patrol,” Rift said. “Nothing to get excited about.”

  “Yeah, Captain Zayden will take care of them,” Rayne said, nodding in a reassuring way.

  Zetta tried to calm herself. The twins were right. The mayor had recruited Captain Zayden from the next town over a few years ago to ensure the people of Sienna Dunes stayed safe. He led a group of volunteer fighters who were more than capable of dealing with a few pillagers.

  Still, the friends found themselves walking faster and faster, and by the time they reached the town wall, they were all sprinting.

  The sunrise lit the whole town in a golden haze, like a sandstorm had just torn through, but it was just sandy grit kicked up by everyone rushing to fill in the gaps in the unfinished wall. No one cared about the pattern of yellow, orange, and gold terracotta anymore. They carried cobblestone, sandstone, even blocks as precious as wood, and shoved them into the gaps in the barrier. Zetta even saw people snagging blocks from their own houses to reinforce the wall. It looked like a mosaic now, a patchwork of blocks placed with no rhyme or reason.

  Real fear suddenly gripped Zetta. There was no reason for everyone to be this upset over a few hostile mobs with crossbows and maybe a witch. Something else had to be going on. Something big.

  Captain Zayden barked out orders, looking very official in his dark green uniform with gold pips decorating the collar. Benjamin, the slime shop owner, was his lieutenant when he wasn’t busy hunting slimes in the depths of the cave system out toward the Great Rift or tending to his store. The two of them funneled all townspeople capable of fighting to strategic places around the wall.

  “What’s going on?” Rayne asked Captain Zayden quickly. “How can we help?”

  “Illagers were spotting coming from the east. A lot of them. I’ve never seen a raid this big.” Captain Zayden’s whole body was tense, like he was counting down the seconds until he could draw his sword and be the hero the town was paying him to be. “Help with gaps in the wall, then grab a weapon. This could get interesting.”

  The friends all nodded, then huddled together as Captain Zayden ran off to rally up more fighters.

  “What blocks do you have in your packs?” Rift asked, taking his pack off and digging through the items to find suitable building materials. He tossed out several sandstone blocks.

  “Forget the wall. We need to focus on weapons,” Rayne said. “Give me all your sticks. Zetta, go fetch some chicken feathers from your grandparents’ farm.”

  Zetta didn’t like being bossed around, and besides, a few arrows weren’t going to help much. What this town needed was something to even out the odds. What Sienna Dunes needed was a potioner.

  “I don’t have time to run across town,” Zetta snapped back. “If I can get some potions brewed in time, we can gain the edge. We need to go ask the mayor for some blaze rods out of the vault. Then I can brew up some strength potions.”

  “The mayor isn’t going to agree to that,” Rift said. “And even if she does, have you ever even brewed a strength potion before?”

  Zetta’s hackles rose, and warmth flushed her cheeks. “No, I haven’t. But I’ve got to help out somehow. You can go build the wall if you want. Just don’t come running to me for help when it crumbles.” Zetta swallowed her anger. That had come out meaner than she’d intended. She knew her friends meant well, but she wished they could just believe in her as much as she believed in herself.

  Zetta stormed off toward the town hall. Mayor Maxine was on the steps out front, urging the frantic townspeople who weren’t fighting to come inside and hide in the town vault to stay safe. Zetta was about to ask the mayor about the blaze rods when her father ran up to her, panting.

  “Zetta! There you are, thank goodness.” He shoved a stack of terracotta at her. “Here, the east end of the wall still has a huge gap that needs filling. Get these placed, then come back for more. We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes before the raid arrives.”

  “I can’t, Dad. I’ve—” Zetta bit her tongue. But she needed to tell her dad about the potions. “I’ve been experimenting with potions lately, and I can use some to help with the—”

  “Zetta, we don’t have time for magical nonsense. Focus on the wall. Mayor’s orders.”

  “Your father’s right, Zetta,” Mayor Maxine said in a stern voice. It was so sharp and intimidating, Zetta sometimes wondered if it was the reason the mayor was elected in the first place. N
o one wanted to stand up to her. But Zetta wasn’t deterred. She believed in herself, even if no one else did.

  “I need blaze rods, Mayor Maxine. I’ll grind them down for powder and then make strength potions for the fighters on the front lines!”

  The mayor’s stiff brow slid down her face into a scowl. She didn’t like being challenged.

  “Please, ma’am…” Zetta said. “I know this town doesn’t like using magic, but if you just give it a chance, you’ll see how much of a difference it can make.”

  The mayor’s brow softened ever so slightly, and she exchanged a meaningful glance with Zetta’s father that Zetta couldn’t understand. “You have your orders, Zetta,” the mayor said, then turned away.

  “Magical nonsense,” Zetta said under her breath. Where her father and the mayor saw frivolous wastes of time, Zetta saw an opportunity. But for some reason, they wouldn’t take it.

  Zetta’s father left the stack of sixty-four terracotta blocks at her feet, too disappointed to even look at his daughter. He ran off toward the north wall. Zetta took the terracotta and headed east. The gap in the wall here was indeed large. She started placing blocks, three high, working as fast as her hands would go. Her heart was full of anger, which only made her work faster.

  Harsh trumpeting sounded in the distance. Zetta scrambled up to the top of the wall and squinted through the vast stretch of rolling desert hills where glittering mirages reflected off the hot sand. A gray flag appeared from behind a hill, not five hundred feet from where she was standing. The raid was huge. Eight, nine, ten…she kept counting, higher and higher. Nineteen, twenty…Some of the raiders had axes, others had crossbows, and there were a few witches among them, too.