Minecraft: Mob Squad: Never Say Nether: An Official Minecraft Novel

We’re almost there, almost out of this horrible, soul-sucking sand. I’ve never really thought about dirt or grass or stone before because I didn’t know there were places without them, places where the ground wasn’t solid and dependable and boring. Now I long for the most basic plot of land, for a dull, quiet place where I can see my feet and every step isn’t a battle.

Finally I lurch up onto the red, spongy stone that seems to dominate this place, sword at the ready. We’re back in the same sort of biome we started in, and it feels pleasantly familiar by comparison. I’d like to stop and shake the sand out of my boots, but we don’t know what’s inside this structure up ahead, and I’m currently the only person with the ability to move quickly with a weapon or do more than flail around. Once Jarro and Chug are up, I leave them to cover Lenna and head toward the tall, black wall. I can’t see any doors or any way in, so when everyone is safely out of the sand, I lead them along the edge around to the left. As we near the corner, I’m stunned: The sandy valley has fallen away to show a huge lake of lava surrounded by the spongy red blocks. We’re out of the valley, I guess, and into a new sort of place.

“What is this?” Chug asks.

“I don’t know, but it’s promising. It looks like people made it.”

“Not recently,” he says nervously, and I can tell he’s worried about Tok.

“Just because it’s not a hastily made structure doesn’t mean he’s not here. They’re probably taking shelter anywhere they can, just like we are. Even if you’re here on purpose, it’s not particularly pleasant.” That seems to calm him down, and I keep exploring.

I can’t find a door on the ground level, so I reach into my pocket for some leftover stone and build a staircase up to an opening high up in the side of the looming stone wall.

Up close, the whole place is beginning to look like some ancient remnant that’s fallen to ruin. Towers of lava flow from high overhead, plunging into the glowing orange sea below. Glittering globs of stone hang down from the stone ceiling like chandeliers, and I can begin to see human touches among the crumbling architecture, and—

Well, maybe they’re not human touches, because I can see inside the bastion now. A piglin with a gold sword trots down a narrow hallway as if on some kind of important business. Maybe this is where the piglins live, their form of a village? Still, just as we took shelter in the empty building in the village, maybe Tok’s kidnappers are taking shelter within this bastion remnant. The piglins didn’t bother us last time, so maybe they won’t bother us now.

I look at my friends and hold a finger to my lips before darting in the open doorway. It’s cramped and narrow and dark inside and definitely doesn’t have the familiar architecture of a woodland mansion. There’s no rhyme or reason to its structure, or maybe there once was and it’s fallen into disrepair over time. As my friends follow me, tiptoeing, weapons drawn, my heart speeds up. I wish I understood this place better. I wish it made sense. I wish I knew how to lead them. But it’s twisty and dusty inside, and I have to hunch over to navigate around corners, sidle past peculiar cascades of lava, and wobble down winding, awkward stairs. I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m going, but I have to act like I do or my friends will start to freak out, and then we’ll be in trouble.

Whenever I see a piglin, I hold my breath until we’re past. None of them seem to care that we’re here, thank goodness, and there aren’t that many around, and Chug does a great job of restraining himself instead of trying to befriend every one we pass. I think the hoglin encounter hurt his feelings, and now he’s not as confident. I’m just glad we had that golden apple, or he’d be in big trouble. That was the most hurt he’s ever been, and I’ll never tell him this, but I was scared for him. I’m glad that the piglins seem to clear out as we get deeper inside the structure. It feels empty—almost haunted.

“Where are we going?” Chug whispers.

“I’m trying to get us to the ground floor,” I whisper back. “I think that’s where business is most likely to happen.”

On the next hallway, we find our first open door, and I stop and glance inside. It’s empty except for a chest sitting in the corner. We hurry over and open it as Lenna stands guard at the door. The chest is deliciously full of loot, some of which we’ve never even seen before. I pocket the golden apple right off, exhaling in relief. Chug collects the various ingots of gold and iron and scraps of some mysterious new ore. It might look like he’s being selfish, but I know Chug, and I therefore know that he’s thinking about all the cool things his brother can make out of raw materials.

Jarro looks kind of lost, so I jerk my chin at the chest and ask, “See anything you like?”

He points at the gold boots. “Those look like they might fit, if nobody else wants them.”

I hand him the boots, and he trades them out for his leather boots and grins. “My old boots were made for town, I think. And you probably won’t believe this, but they were full of sand.”

Chug chuckles. “Oh, man, I should’ve taken them then!”

“Too late! You settled for a measly bunch of scrap metal!”

Lenna grabs the disc labeled, oddly, Pigstep, probably to add to the library she and Nan are compiling back home. We’re not sure what the glowing sphere is, and we don’t have a use for the blocks of weird rock, but at this point, we’re going to take everything we can get. Satisfied, we close the chest, and I lead everyone back into the hallway.

It’s a strange structure, and I definitely don’t feel at home here. Whoever built it must have had a fever, or maybe they just closed their eyes and drew the plans without looking. It makes no sense. It’s not comfortable or pretty, and even though it feels like an old building, it doesn’t seem grand or fancy or like a place anyone would want to live. It’s dark, barely lit, and we end up pulling out our torches so we don’t trip and fall down the stairs.

We find a few random gold blocks just sticking out of the walls and ceiling, which I mine—after making sure there are no piglins around to get annoyed about it. With each turn of a spiral staircase, we expect to find the bottom story of the structure, but it’s bigger than it looks. In a regular cavern, mining, I would expect it to get colder the deeper we got, but here, it’s getting warmer.

When our next stairwell spits us out in an open hallway, I see why.

We’re facing a bridge, and under that bridge is lava.

“Whoever designed this place makes bad decisions,” Chug says.

“Not if you like lava. Or cooking over an open flame,” Jarro replies, and Chug chuckles. They’re actually pretty funny when they’re on the same team.

The bridge, at least, seems solid. It’s wide, with decorative edges and gold blocks placed like lanterns. Unlike the hastily built, two-block bridge we crossed earlier on our journey, this one is wide and sturdy and looks older than Nan. I lead my friends across it, waiting for a stone to shift or crumble underfoot, but everything stays in place. A piglin passes us on their way to the other side without so much as a grunt. I think about mining the gold blocks, but we’re out in the open, and I don’t want to make anyone mad.

An even bigger black stone structure awaits us at the end of the bridge, and as we step inside, my jaw drops.

The Nether is huge, much bigger than it has any right to be. And the first part of the bastion was big. But this place…it’s enormous. One giant room, but filled with mismatched, misplaced chunks of stone that make ill-fitting stairs and rooms and hallways. It’s like someone took a big house and just randomly knocked out blocks until it was full of holes. The floor, which is far below us, even lower than when we started out, is mostly lava with black stone blocks placed at intervals that will make them difficult to cross. I reach into my pocket to make sure I still have plenty of loose stone in there. We’re going to need it, because in the center of the floor is an open room full of huge gold blocks and a treasure chest.

“I bet that’s where they keep the good stuff,” Jarro says.

I look to Chug for his pithy addition, but he’s nervously scanning all the parts of the giant room we can see. I know he’s looking for some sign of Tok, for a flash of anything vaguely human, but he’s going to be disappointed. This place is full of piglins and lava, and that’s pretty much it. There might be a few hidden rooms where people could hide, but the vast majority of the structure is visible from where we stand.

“We don’t have time for the treasure,” he says. “We’ve got to keep going and find Tok.”

He’s in that nervous mood where he makes decisions without thinking, and I know I need to talk him down.

“Let’s think about it, bud,” I say. “First of all, if his kidnappers are here, they’re going to be hiding in a room, not out in the open. So we need to search those rooms.” He nods glumly, and I continue. “And we need all the loot we can find. There could be potions, more golden apples, even diamond armor. There are no trees for arrows here. Not many sources of food. We need all the advantages we can get.”

“I know.” His big shoulders slump. “Let’s go raid the dumb chest and steal all the dumb gold.”

“That’s the Chug I know.”

I lead my friends through the open door and choose to take the path along the left wall. It’s an open hallway that makes it all too clear how far down that lava is, but it’s not like there are any better options. I use a spare block to bridge the gap to the next platform, and then we’re passing a piglin as we scurry up the stairs. This place is like something out of a dream where nothing makes sense, and even though I was trying to lead us downward to that pile of treasure, somehow the path I’ve chosen is leading us upward.

“Hey, wait,” Lenna calls.

I stop and look back to where she has a hand against one of the many identical black rock walls.

“I think there might be a room here,” she says. “I noticed it on the way up. See how it pokes out more than it should?”

I pull out my pickaxe and mine the block she’s pointing at. I shouldn’t be surprised that Lenna is right, but I’m definitely pleased. Through the hole I’ve made, I can see a closed chest just waiting for us to pillage it. I mine another block to make a door and step inside. Before I’ve made sense of the room, a furious squeal rends the air as a big shape charges for me. I don’t have time to get my sword, so I lash out with my diamond pickaxe. When my attacker is knocked away, I’m surprised to see that it’s a piglin—but a bigger, meaner, downright brutal version of a piglin.

“How about some gold?” Chug says, throwing an ingot at him, but the piglin brute just shakes his head, squeals again, and runs at me, his golden axe raised.

I dart around him, landing a hit on his back and getting out of the way of Chug’s sword and Lenna’s arrows. Chug takes a swing, and as the furious brute focuses on him, I land another hit. I’m shocked to see Jarro wielding his axe. The space is so crowded that Lenna can’t get a solid shot, so I shout, “We’ve got to take him down close range. Don’t stop!”

The piglin brute lands a hit on Jarro’s arm, which makes Chug’s next strike all the more severe. The small room is a riot of squeals and grunts and the heavy thud of weapons. Finally, with one last thrust of Chug’s sword, our attacker goes down, dropping an enchanted golden axe.

“I think you’ve earned this,” I say, handing it to Jarro. “It looks a lot sharper than your old one.”

His eyes light up—I never really noticed them before, but they’re kind of a honey gold. He gives the axe an experimental swing and puts his old iron axe in his pocket.

With the piglin brute no longer a threat, I head for the chest as Chug hands Jarro a hoglin chop to help him heal from that unlucky axe hit. The loot, again, makes stopping worth it. I take the diamond pickaxe for myself, because I know that if I break my great-great-great-grandmother’s diamond pickaxe, I’ll regret it forever. I offer the chain, string, and iron ingots to Chug, as well as an enchanted book he’ll want to give to Tok. I let Jarro have the golden carrot, and I keep another golden apple. But, possibly best of all, we finally have a weapon we’ve heard of but never seen before. I hold it out to Lenna, and she smiles the biggest smile I’ve ever seen.

“A crossbow!” she crows, cradling it like it’s a kitten.

“And arrows.” I hand her all sixteen, and she shoves them in her pocket, but she’s only got eyes for the crossbow.

We squeeze back out our door and continue down the strange hallway. Whenever there’s a gap in the floor, I place a block so no one will be in danger. Slowly but surely, we get closer and closer to the lava—and that pile of gold blocks. We clear another room, which thankfully doesn’t contain a piglin brute…but also doesn’t contain a chest. There’s no sign of Tok or any other humans. No one in their right mind would leave the kind of loot we’re finding in a chest if they came across it out here. The people we’re following must’ve hurried on to somewhere else.

Finally we’re on the ground floor, and I’m studying the field of lava and the black blocks sunk deep into that shimmering orange sea. There’s a walkway that reaches almost to the gold…but not quite. Luckily, I have plenty of blocks still, and I place enough in the lava to make sure there’s no chance anyone could fall in. I lead the way and stand on the platform over the lava. Sweat drips down my nose and soaks my hair under my helmet.

With shaking, sweaty hands, I open the chest.