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

So here’s what you should know: My name is Lenna, I work as the apprentice to the oldest, kookiest person in town because my family is boring and doesn’t understand me, and now I’m overjoyed to be on an adventure again, covered in pig slobber and sweet berry juice. Maybe Mal thought Poppy would use her nose to sniff out the trail of the kidnappers, but I guess we all underestimated the powers of a hungry pig and a trail of delicious berries. We can barely keep up as Thingy darts ahead to his next treat, and Chug is half jubilant and half worried.

“He’s going to get an upset tummy!” he calls back to us.

“So put him on a lead!” Mal calls back.

“Oh, yeah,” he mutters, digging through his impossibly deep pockets. “I keep forgetting about the existence of anything that isn’t Tok or Thingy.” The next time the pig stops for a berry, Chug manages to get the lead on him, and it’s pretty funny, watching big, burly Chug get dragged around by his excited pet.

Even if I would’ve preferred to stop at Nan’s house for provisions, I guess gearing up at the Stack Shack is the next best thing. At least all our pockets are full, and we’re not going out into the Overworld with nothing. We all feel the same urgency—Tok is in trouble, and he has to be at the end of this sweet berry trail.

Now that we’re beyond the town walls, I reach into my own pocket and pull out my bow and arrows—or, to be more accurate, Nan’s bow and the arrows I’ve learned to make myself. It’s hard to believe that just a while ago, I didn’t even know that weapons like this existed, and now I’m the best shot in town. It feels good to hold the bow again, and not just for practice, but for a good reason. Before my friends and I went on our first adventure, I was considered a lazy, loopy daydreamer, the girl who flapped her hands and slept under her bed instead of on top of it. My family wasn’t particularly kind and constantly let me know that I was weird, annoying, and useless by their standards. But traveling the Overworld taught me my own value.

I’m a good shot, a good friend, a tamer of wolves, a fighter of mobs.

And since I’ve become Nan’s apprentice, I’ve become so much more. I’ve studied her books, sung her songs, listened to her stories, learned about cities and ports and secret underwater ruins. I’ve learned to make arrows that fly true. I’ve learned what it feels like to receive praise from someone you respect. And, probably most importantly to my friends, I’ve learned how to replicate Nan’s famous cookie recipe.

But now, I take up my post at the end of our adventuring caravan. That’s where I feel most myself—trailing behind my friends, defending them from the back, and keeping my senses on alert for whatever will come at us next. It’s a dark gray day, the clouds sitting low and the air so thick that it presses against my skin like a wet blanket. Poppy trots by my side, bright-eyed and happy, tongue lolling. I’m always calmer when she’s within reach. She’s been happy enough to follow me around Nan’s cottage and forest and the town, but it’s immediately clear that my wolf has missed traveling, too. Every now and then, she bounds into the grass, scattering rabbits. She keeps missing her quarry—maybe she’s grown a little too tame. But I have full confidence that she’ll soon be catching her own dinner, a wild thing again, happy to be along on the adventure. I know she won’t leave my side, though—we’re a team.

Normally, Mal is the first in line when we’re adventuring, but now she follows Chug, who’s being dragged along by a pig on a lead. I wonder if she’s noticing the same thing I am, that our current path is suspiciously similar to the same one we took the last time we went on a quest. We’re headed for the mountains, and if the berry trail continues on in the same manner, we’ll soon see the beacon our town’s founders erected outside the nearest village. We know our adults have gone there several times, but no one has let a single kid come along, even though we know perfectly well how to trade with the odd denizens there, who don’t speak our language but are clearly intelligent, even if they can only communicate using the word “Hm.”

Thunder rumbles overhead, and the sky goes a shade darker. I look around, but we’re in a grassy area, nowhere close to trees or any kind of building.

“Should we stop and dig a shelter?” I ask.

“No way!” Chug shouts. “Every minute we spend waiting, Tok gets farther away. And if something else comes along and finds the sweet berries before Thingy does, we might never find him.”

Thingy tugs him ahead, and Mal follows. She looks around nervously and reaches into her pocket, pulling out her diamond pickaxe. It’s nice, knowing I’m not the only one who has a funny feeling about this prairie. We haven’t seen any mobs bigger than the rabbits Poppy has failed to catch, but then again, smart animals take cover when a storm is about to strike.

The rain starts hesitantly at first, as if asking a question, then answers itself with a heavy downpour. Thunder booms, and lightning forks down, striking the grasses up ahead.

“Are you sure about not making a shelter?” I shout as water soaks me completely.

“We can’t lose the trail!” Chug shouts back.

Mal looks to me and shrugs, and I shrug back. We both know there’s no way to change Chug’s mind, not when he’s worried about his brother. We’re going to be uncomfortable for a while, and that’s that. I hate the feeling of being wet and cold, but I care about Tok and won’t feel complete until we find him again.

Boom!

This time, the lightning cracks down close enough that I feel the ground quake. Thingy squeals, and Chug stumbles backward, landing on his rump.

There, exactly where the lightning struck, stands something Nan told us about, something so rare that I thought we would never see it.

A skeleton horse.

“Run away!” I scream. “Don’t get any closer, don’t let it see you—”

But it’s too late.

Lightning strikes again, so loud that my eardrums feel like they’re going to burst, and a flash of light reveals not the bone horse I briefly saw, but four skeleton horsemen, armed with bows and arrows and wearing helmets that will make it all the harder to vanquish them.

“What are those things?” Chug shouts from the ground.

Mal darts forward and tugs him to standing. “They’re the reason you’re carrying a sword. Run away, fast, and see if you can get your armor on while Lenna and I hold them off.”

“But Thingy—”

“They want to hurt you, not him!” I shout, because Nan made me memorize everything about this rare mob.

Chug lets go of the pig’s lead and runs behind me with Mal. I nock an arrow and release it, glad that I’ve only improved my bow skills. The hit lands, knocking the skeleton off the horse, and I fire again and again, aiming for the skeletons, which are already shooting back. An arrow glances off my shoulder, and I feel a hot sting and an electrifying jolt of energy. It hurts, and I’m in danger, but…I feel so alive, so awake. The Overworld might seem safe, when you view it from New Cornucopia, but there’s always something new out here that wants to kill you in a whole new way.

Behind me, I hear Chug’s armor clanking as Mal steps beside me and draws a bow of her own. I grin at her, glad she brought it along. We’ve been practicing together in Nan’s forest. Her skills can’t compare to mine, but she’s pretty good at almost everything she tries, which adds up. I take down another skeleton, and Mal promptly shoots the skeletal horse that was underneath it.

“Oops,” she says. “Don’t tell Nan.”

We’ve both heard Nan’s stories of Helga, a beloved skeleton horse she had as a child.

“Okay, ready.” Chug runs up between us, clad in a mishmash of armor—diamond, gold, and iron. When I raise an eyebrow, he shrugs. “You watched me pack it! We sell a little of everything, so I always have something in my pocket. At least my helmet is diamond, right?”

Before I can answer, he charges directly toward a skeleton horseman, howling furiously, and dispatches it with several swings of his diamond sword. I used to worry about Chug’s habit of running headlong into trouble, but it really helps when fighting mobs. If only we were in sync like we used to be—I can’t shoot arrows at something when he’s blocking it. Mal and I focus on the fourth horseman, and again, she shoots the horse while I shoot the rider.

“Ow!” Chug screeches. “It hit me!”

“What did you think it was going to do—offer you a cookie?” Mal shoots back.

“I wish. But I’ll settle for a free helmet.” With a few more jabs and stabs, Chug has destroyed the skeleton and its mount, but the enchanted iron helmet disappears. Chug turns around, holding up a dropped bone. “Well that doesn’t seem fair.”

We’re on high alert now as the rain pounds down, and I have an arrow ready as I spin, looking in every direction. I think there’s one skeleton horseman still up and active, but it’s so dark now and the rain is so heavy that it’s hard to see anything.

Something growls to my left, and I pivot with my arrow drawn, but it’s too close for me to hit. A zombie! I let the arrow fly off into nowhere and stumble back, but it gets in a hit, and my arm hurts so bad I almost drop my bow.

“Chug!” I screech. “Help!”

“Lenna, where are you?” he calls. I hear his sword thudding against bone, but the zombie is still after me, and I trip on something and tumble to the ground. Poppy stands over me, growling, and I toss my bow away and dig through my pocket until I find the axe Nan gave me for chopping firewood. Poppy lunges at the zombie as I struggle up and hack at it, but it doesn’t want to go down. Lightning flashes, and I see Mal and Chug fighting a zombie of their own. Poppy and I finally beat our gruesome attacker, but as I struggle to keep upright, my heel lands on something, and I hear a snap.

My bow.

“We’ve got to get to shelter!” I shout.

“Then come help me protect Mal as she digs!” Chug shouts back.

When the next lightning strike reveals his position, I run over to stand back-to-back with him as Mal hacks into the ground with her diamond pickaxe. It’s sharp and she’s fast, but time seems to slow to a crawl as she digs down and widens a space for us. Poppy growls at an incoming mob, and I hear the twang of an arrow before I feel the hot punch of it in my leg and fall over. Screaming like an angry llama, Chug rushes the skeleton and beats it down with his sword. All I can do is lie on the ground, Poppy protecting me, and hope nothing worse comes.

“It should fit us all,” Mal says.

She waves me over, and I lower myself into a hole hacked into the wet grass. It’s far from the cozy shelters she made on our last adventure, even further from my snug little room in Nan’s cottage, with my comfortable bed and work desk. My feet hit the ground, and I collapse and crawl to the side. There’s barely enough room to stand, but it’s wonderful, escaping the overloud onslaught of the rain and the way it pummels my body like a thousand poking fingers. Water pours in the hole, and then Mal and Chug leap down and huddle on the other side.

“Anybody got a door?” Chug asks.

We all droop a little at that. Tok always made our doors—beautiful, watertight wooden doors that kept out even the most persistent of zombies. I feel a pang of regret that I put Nan off whenever she offered to teach me how to craft—I wanted to learn the lore, practice my shooting, learn how to bake. I thought, why did I need to craft when Nan and Tok and Elder Stu always did that?

“Maybe I can…” Mal sifts through the stone she’s mined and picks up a block. She stares up at the hole in the ceiling—er, ground. “Do we at least have torches?”

Chug digs around in his pocket and pulls out an old torch, which he attaches to the wall. With the space lit up warmly, we can see how small and rough it is. Mal fits the block into the ceiling, and the air goes still and silent. It’s a nice reprieve from the rain, but it’s also…scary. We’re trapped underground now, with no way out until Mal mines that block or digs back up elsewhere.

“I left Thingy out there!” Chug says as distressed realization breaks across his face.

“Poppy, too,” I add, feeling guilty.

“It’s okay,” Mal says, doing that thing where she steps up as our leader. When she gets this way, it’s almost like she’s put on armor made of sunshine, like she has the ability to fix us and make us see the silver lining again. “They’re animals—the mobs don’t care about them. They’ll be fine. And they won’t go far. The storm will be over soon, and then we can go outside and find our trail. If we’d stayed out there, the mobs would’ve swarmed us.”

“But what if Thingy just keeps following the sweet berries?” Chug leaps to his feet. “What if he finds the kidnappers, but he’s so far away that we can’t follow, and then they have Tok and Thingy? What if they eat him?”

“I don’t think they would eat Tok,” I assure him.

“No, Lenna, I know. I mean Thingy.”

I grimace. “Good point.” Even if no one in Cornucopia would ever dream of eating Chug’s pig, Nan tells me pork is delicious, when you’re not so attached to the pig in question.

Chug looks like he wants to break down the ceiling with his bare hands, but Mal puts a hand on his shoulder, and he slides back down the ragged wall to a sitting position. I’m already on the ground, and Mal joins us. I can feel Chug’s sadness filling the little cave like rising water, cold and gray and ready to suck everyone down. There has to be something I can do, but I’m injured and I feel just as terrible as everyone else, especially since my bow is broken. I feel like my main contribution, my main skill, is now completely off the table. Like I’m useless.

I dig through my pockets, wishing I’d brought another bow, but I know full well it’s on my desk back home at Nan’s house. Ah! But I do have something I can offer.

“Here. Eat up.” When I hold out the cookies, Chug and Mal both light up, grinning.

“Good ol’ Nan,” Chug says, happily munching, before hurriedly adding, “Uh, but don’t tell her I called her ol’.”

“Actually, I made these.” I feel a little shy saying it, but it’s true, and the truth is important.

“Whoa, really? Good job, Lenna! They taste just as good as Nan’s!” He clears his throat. “But don’t tell her I said that, either.”

As we eat, I can feel my wounds throbbing just a little bit less. I wish we’d brought along some healing potions, but, well, all of the potions in town were stolen by whoever took Tok, weren’t they? All the ones we carried on our last journey came from Nan or witches or snatching the loot out of chests. When things go wrong, or when we’re in the middle of a fight, we depend on the ability to heal quick. Sure, food can heal us, but slowly. I prefer having the safety net of potions, just in case catastrophe strikes. If we had Tok—

Nope. I’m not going to start thinking things like that.

We need to look on the bright side.

“Maybe the rain has slowed down,” I say, in part because if we stay down here much longer, Chug is going to ask for more cookies, and I’m more aware than ever that we’re going to need them. With just the three of us, we’re so much more vulnerable than when we had Tok. And we never encountered a storm so dark that mobs were able to spawn last time, either. I’d thought this adventure would be easy, but…well, what adventures worth having are?

Mal picks out the block in the ceiling with her pickaxe, opening up a square-shaped hole. A few drops of rain patter down, but the sky is noticeably brighter. Chug collects the torch, stows it in his pocket, and boosts Mal out of the hole so she can clamber out onto the grass. I go up next, and Mal and I pull Chug up behind us. I feel better after my cookie, even if my leg still stings a little. The heavy clouds have moved off, leaving everything glittering with raindrops. Far off, a zombie has caught fire and is moaning as it ambles around like a walking torch.

I hear a yip of joy and see Poppy racing toward me. Much to my surprise, Thingy is by her side. They cavort around us, barking and oinking respectively, and Chug is so happy that it makes me think we can do this—we can navigate this world and find Tok and get back home, even if we are a bit rusty.

“Where’s the next berry, Thingy?” Chug says, looking deep into his pig’s eyes.

“Oink,” Thingy says with an equal level of seriousness.

“Maybe the rain makes it harder to smell things,” Chug says, looking around. “Or maybe there was so much water that it floated the berries away. I can’t even remember which direction we were going.”

“Me neither,” Mal says. “It got so confusing and dark there, and we were fighting, and now I have no idea which way is which.”

But Poppy hasn’t calmed down. She’s pawing at me and yipping excitedly.

“What?” I ask her.

In reply, she bounds away, toward a little hill up ahead. I follow her, and Mal and Chug follow me. As I pass by my broken bow, I grab it and shove it in my pocket. Hopefully, somehow, we’ll be able to fix it later.

As for my wolf, she’s really focused on something, and my heart sings with hope as I think that maybe it’s Tok, maybe he’s escaped his captors and is out here all alone, confused, looking for us. If so, he can have every cookie in my pockets.

Poppy leads me through the grass, and I don’t see any more sweet berries, and I begin to wonder if maybe she’s leading us toward the village, where the scent of cooking meat and fish is always present. I can see the beacon way up ahead, a glowing crystal blue light towering up into the sky. The prairie gives way to a few scattered trees and boulders, and the cows and sheep there assure me that if nothing else, we’ll be able to eat today. Poppy passes by everything that might be food, growing ever more excited.

I hurry around a boulder, and through the underbrush I see a shape that takes a moment to come into focus. It’s a person walking a tree on a lead.

Or—maybe a person attached to a tree by a lead?

“Tok?” I shout, breaking into a run.

Behind me, Chug whoops and runs faster, zooming right past me with Mal by his side. I try to speed up, but that cookie didn’t fully heal me from the damage I took in that fight. When I finally catch up, I can see who it is.

My heart sinks.

It’s not Tok.

It’s Jarro.