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

I can’t believe what Tok just did.

Nobody can.

“Tok, no!” Chug screams, shredding his throat.

As if everyone has forgotten all the weapons in the room, we run to the window. Chug is already sobbing, and I can feel every heartbeat banging in my chest. I’ve known Tok since he was born, and—

Oh.

Oh.

I look down, and he’s standing in the lava.

He’s not on fire, he’s not dying, he’s not screaming.

He’s alive and fine, and he’s laughing.

“Potion of Fire Resistance!” he shouts up at us. “I finally got it to work!”

But we’re so focused on Tok that we’ve neglected the brigands, and cold metal jabs into my kidney.

“Drop your weapons,” the lead brigand says. “We’ve got you surrounded.”

Chug sighs heavily beside me. “At least Tok got out. He and Jarro can head for home.”

I don’t immediately drop my weapon as commanded, and the sword point digs in deeper. My diamond pickaxe clatters on the ground, and Lenna and Chug follow my lead. The brigand roughly grabs my shoulder and spins me around to face him. “Any of you kids good with potions?”

“I’d like to throw a Potion of Harming at your face right now,” Chug growls, and I put a hand on his wrist to remind him not to push these adults too far.

“No,” Lenna says simply.

The lead brigand saunters over to the worktable and slams his fist down. “Little brat took the books, too.” He focuses on us. “Maybe if I dangle the brother out the window he’ll come back?” The other brigands snicker as the leader grabs the back of Chug’s shirt and herds him toward the window. “Wait, where’d he go?”

“Tok’s smart. Probably already long gone.” Chug’s confidence is in full force, but he’s bluffing. He knows as well as I do that Tok is under the ledge with Jarro, waiting for us. After all, that’s what we’d do for him, and even if Tok is as tired and sleep deprived as we are, he’s loyal.

But the brigands don’t know that—they probably don’t even know about the ledge.

“Then to the dungeon we go,” the leader says.

He herds us toward the door, but we’re not bound or otherwise restrained. He made us drop our weapons, but that doesn’t mean we’re without resources. Again, Chug and I lock eyes. He grins, and it’s a grin I know well, a grin that suggests I have no idea what he’s going to do next, but it’s going to be fun and get someone in a load of trouble. I subtly slip my hand into my pocket, trying to guess what he’s up to. When I meet Lenna’s eyes, she gives the tiniest shrug. She’s ready, too, hand in her own pocket.

Suddenly, with a roar of rage, Chug lunges for the worktable and tries to leap over it, aiming for the potions.

He fails.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He lands hard on the far edge of the table, and it tumbles over with him—right into the gleaming row of potion-filled bottles. For a moment, the fully stocked shelf wobbles on its edge, but then it begins to fall. Chug leaps away, barely avoiding having the whole thing land on him.

Glass bottles break, and curious liquids spill out in rivulets of pink and blue and purple. Some might be Potions of Healing or Regeneration, but if these brigands kidnapped Tok to force him to make potions, then it’s likely some of these bottles contain poisons and other concoctions that would mess us up for a long time. The last time Chug and I got poisoned, Nan told us milk was the only antidote. But I haven’t seen milk here in the Nether and I definitely don’t want to figure out how to milk a ghast.

The head brigand, however, is not as fast as Chug. The wave of potions splashes over his legs, and he falls to the ground, writhing.

“Help!” he screeches, and when his minions rush to help him, we all run for the door. I get there first, pull my iron sword out of my pocket, and slide into the hall. I could go left or right, but my instincts tell me right, as that direction leads back toward home.

I take off at a run, sword ready, pounding down the deep red hallway with Chug and Lenna on my heels. We pass several rooms, and I glance in, looking for more windows, but we definitely don’t stop to check for loot. Our only goal is to find a way out of the fortress and back to Jarro and Tok, preferably without the brigands catching up along the way.

The red hallway opens up into a much larger, more open structure, with some welcome pops of black and gray stone. We hurry down some strange, twisted stairs and nearly fall into a pit.

“Ouch?” Chug mutters, and as he stands, a flash of light appears, some strange creature made of spinning fire and smoke. It rushes at him, crackling, and I dart forward and smack it with my sword. A puff of smoke chokes me, and Chug is up and already swinging. Together, we take it down, coughing at the smoke.

“What was that?” Chug splutters.

“A blaze,” Lenna says, as if it’s perfectly obvious. She dropped her bow and arrow when the brigand told her to, but she now has her crossbow in hand and looks ready for anything.

With the blaze gone, we continue down the hall, and I hate to say it, but I’m already lost. We need to get out of this fortress, get back with Tok and Jarro, but it’s a giant labyrinth full of scary new creatures. At each juncture, I dart into empty rooms, hunting for another open window.

“Mal, duck!” Lenna calls as I reenter the hall.

I hit the ground, and an arrow skims over the frizzy hairs coming out of my braid and lodges in—

“What is that?” I ask, my cheek against cold stone as I look up at the creature looming over me.

“Some kind of withered skeleton,” Chug says. He jumps over me and bashes it with his sword. It’s taller than regular skeletons and somehow angrier, and when it manages to get a hit on him, he staggers back with a cry of surprise.

“That hurt!” he shouts before angrily beating it down to dust, leaving behind a chunk of coal.

I leap up and we run on, but Chug is flagging.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Dunno,” he gasps. “But I don’t feel so good.”

We tiptoe across a bridge over sizzling lava, and I turn back and hack away several of the last blocks to stall the brigands before facing Chug and Lenna. Lenna looks fine, her crossbow ready, and Chug should look fine, but he’s…not. I can’t point to anything in particular that’s physically wrong, but he looks like he’s slowly fading away. I know we have to hurry, but now there’s the added pressure to get Chug out of here and back home where someone hopefully has something that can help him.

When we approached this fortress, we went straight to the only window we could see, which suggests that there are no more windows over here. I could start mining the spongy red block, but we could fall out anywhere, right into the lava—and without the benefit of Tok’s Potion of Fire Resistance.

“We have to double back,” I say, feeling like a terrible leader.

“Sounds good.” Chug’s voice is weaker than it should be.

“Are we out of golden apples?” I ask Lenna.

She nods. “We need to hurry.”

I replace the blocks on the bridge and lead my friends back the way we came. We take down two more blazes, and when another withered skeleton appears, I place two blocks on the ground and hide behind them with Chug while Lenna puts her crossbow to good use. As soon as it’s on the ground, we’re running again, expecting at any moment to run into the brigands who must be as anxious to find us as we are to get out.

The fortress is a labyrinth, sure, but I’ve always been good with that sort of thing, and we mostly stuck to big hallways, so we’re soon near Tok’s room again. We slow down. I hear footsteps inside, someone pacing back and forth. Before I can stop and assess the situation, Lenna reaches into her pocket and throws something down the hallway, past Tok’s room. It’s one of those weird iridescent spheres, and it makes a musical clatter when it lands on the stones down the hall. Right on cue, one of the brigands appears in the doorway and automatically looks left, toward the thrown sphere. Much to my surprise, Lenna already has her shovel in hand, and she smacks the brigand on the back, driving him to the ground.

“Whoa,” Chug mutters. “I didn’t know you had it in—”

“Come on,” I say, pulling him into the room. We can compliment Lenna later.

I’m surprised to find Tok’s room empty. The brigands must’ve had Potions of Healing or milk around, as the leader looked like a berry sucked dry, the last time I saw him, but now he must be on the move again. All the more reason to hurry.

“What do we do?” Chug asks.

I rush to the window and look down. Tok and Jarro are on their striders, waiting.

“Let’s go,” I say. Chug motions for me to go first, but I shake my head. “You’re the one who’s hurt. You go first.”

For once, he doesn’t argue. As he levers himself out of the window and onto the little ledge I built earlier, he looks like he might swoon and fall over at any time. I edge out after him to hold him steady. Last time, we easily walked along this bridge. Now we crawl, and it takes everything I have to keep Chug on the right path.

“Stop right there!” someone shouts from within the fortress. I glance back, and Lenna is on the windowsill, one leg on the bridge.

“Jump!” Tok shouts from down below.

“But it’s lava,” Lenna shouts back.

Tok holds out a bottle, shaking it. In his singed pajamas, with his wild hair, he looks like an absolute maniac.

“I have plenty of potions. Whether you land on lava or stone, I can fix you.” He gestures down, and I realize there’s a lot more beach than there used to be. “But land would be better.”

And maybe a normal person would pause, take a breath, think about it. But Lenna is Lenna, so she shrugs and just slowly falls backward out of the window in a weird sort of back flip, crossbow clutched in her hands.

Lenna tumbles through the air, almost in slow motion, and lands with a sick thump on the calico beach Jarro built. I want to hurry Chug along so I can help her, but he’s going desperately slow. I can only watch as Jarro and Chug dismount their striders and go to Lenna, who looks beyond broken, even worse than when Chug fell out of that apple tree last year.

Kneeling over her, Tok pulls a potion out of his pocket and dribbles it in Lenna’s mouth. She splutters and then licks her lips.

“Is that…Floor Potion I detect?” she says.

I’d love to watch the potion take effect and fill Lenna with health, but one of the brigands has appeared in the window—the one Lenna hit with the shovel. He does not look happy.

“We’ve got to hurry, Chug,” I say as the brigand steps out onto my ledge to follow us.

“But I’m so sleepy,” he murmurs. “I could just close my eyes for a little minute—”

“No! We have to keep going.”

“Only for you, Mal. Only for you.”

We’re on the stairs now, and when I glance down to Lenna, she’s already standing up and has her crossbow aimed for the brigand. The frown on her face suggests she doesn’t want to shoot a human being, but she also doesn’t want Chug and me to get caught. Oddly, Tok reaches into his pajama pants pocket and hands her a red-and-white-striped tube.

“Fire at the blocks right under the brigand,” he tells her.

Lenna looks at the tube, then looks at her crossbow. She grins and loads the tube like it’s a regular arrow. With extraordinary calm and care, she aims for the blocks right under the brigand and shoots.

Boom!

It’s as loud as any of Tok’s experiments back home, as loud as a creeper, and the effect is immediate. There’s an explosion of brightly colored sparks, and then the brigand falls into the lava.

We’re at the end of the stairs now, and Tok hurries to help Chug onto his strider.

“Tok, I’m so glad—” Chug begins, tears in his eyes.

But Tok interrupts him. “Save our big reunion for later, bro. We’re in a hurry, and you’re messed up.”

“Mal, come on!” Lenna says as she mounts her strider.

I’m stunned to see her back to full health so quickly, but she’s right. We have to leave, now, instead of waiting around to see if the brigand is badly hurt or if his compatriots are on their way. I climb up onto my strider before realizing…we can’t go anywhere. There’s a block fence around the lava. I leap down, break a block, and scramble back up. Jarro leads us out onto the lava sea, and our poor, shivering striders turn back to their usual robust color and seem happy to run away from the fortress.

As we zoom across the lava, I look back to where the brigand fell. He’s crawling out onto the shore, reaching into his pocket, where I’m sure he’ll find a potion or a golden apple. Two more brigands stand at the window, watching us go.

“To the bridge!” someone shouts.

I wish there was a way to make these striders go faster. The brigands know where we’re going, and they’re not going to stop until they have Tok back.