Night of the Bats! (Minecraft Woodsword Chronicles #2)

by Nick Eliopulos

  It had been about a week since they’d completed the castle. It was an impressive build, and Jodi was proud of it. They all were.

  But Minecraft wasn’t about sitting still. Once the castle was done, they had started new projects. For Jodi, that meant a sculpture park.

  So far she’d created an obelisk out of cobblestone, an Easter Island–style head out of cobblestone, and a big floating cube…out of cobblestone.

  Cobblestone and dirt were the two materials they had in large supply. And she was iffy on using the dirt.

  Her next project would be a huge staircase that went higher than the castle. But it would be a floating staircase. There would be no way for a person to get on it. They would have to admire it from a distance.

  She started with a base of dirt, which she would clear away later. She had only just begun placing the cobblestone when Morgan and the others approached. “I’ve got an idea,” her brother said. “I think we should go looking for the Evoker King.”

  Jodi turned her cube head in surprise. “You do?” she asked. “I thought we were supposed to beware him.”

  “ ‘Beware’ doesn’t traditionally mean ‘go look for,’ ” Harper agreed.

  “I know what it means,” Morgan said. “If he’s so dangerous…and he’s out there…is waiting for him to find us a good idea?”

  “But that’s why we built the castle,” said Harper. “It’s meant to protect us.”

  “The castle can keep mobs out,” said Morgan. “I’m worried this Evoker King might be something else.”

  Ash narrowed her eyes. “You think the Evoker King is another player, don’t you?”

  “It makes sense,” Morgan said. “Someone at our school took the sixth headset. They must be using it to enter the game, right?”

  Jodi wasn’t sure. “So you think the goggle thief, the obsidian thief, and the Evoker King are all the same person? But why warn us about the Evoker King if they are the Evoker King?”

  “Maybe to mess with us,” Morgan answered. “Or to keep us from wandering into their territory. There’s only one way to find out.”

  “I want to see more of this world, anyway,” said Ash.

  “And we did promise Doc we’d gather more information,” said Harper. “We can’t really do that if we stay in one place.”

  Jodi looked wistfully at the castle and its sculpture park. “But I only just started my masterpiece,” she complained, gesturing at the base she’d built for her floating staircase. She added dramatically, “I was going to call it Don’t Stair into the Sun.”

  Ash smiled. “We’ll set up camp again eventually,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll have a chance to build it.”

  Jodi sighed. “Yeah. The truth is that I could really use some new materials. I haven’t seen any sandstone. And as for wood, it’s all oak here. I’d love to find new stuff.”

  “So it’s agreed?” Morgan said.

  “We should wait for Po to make it unanimous,” said Ash. “But I’m sure he’ll be up for an adventure.”

  Just then, as if summoned, Po came around the corner. Today he looked like a shepherd. “Hey, there you are!” he said. “Basketball practice was canceled because Doc herded all the bats into the gym! They’re sleeping in the rafters. I got here a few minutes ago and couldn’t find anybody.”

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” Harper said. “We’ve taken a vote. We all think we should leave the castle to see what else is out there.”

  “Aw, man,” Po said. “But I just dyed the sheep!”

  “You dyed the sheep?” said Jodi. She laughed. “This I have to see.”

  They followed Po back to the fenced enclosure where Beau and Beep lived. Sure enough, one of them was yellow, and the other was blue.

  “I figured now we can finally tell them apart,” he explained. “Plus, I’m hoping they’ll have a green baby!”

  “That is not how science works,” said Harper.

  “It is here!” Po said happily. “It’s just one more reason I love this place.”

  “Me too,” said Morgan. “And we’re not going to let anyone make us afraid of it. Are we?”

  They all shook their heads. Po contributed a “No way!”

  Jodi grinned. “Okay, big brother. You’re right. It’s time to see what’s out there.” She held up a wooden sword. “Evoker King, beware us!”

  Before Harper learned to make things, she had learned to take them apart.

  It was the best way to see how things worked, after all. By the time she’d graduated from elementary school, Harper had pulled apart a toaster, a vacuum cleaner, two laptops, and an old TV.

  It was done under adult supervision, of course. Not that her parents knew much about electronics. Her mother was a painter, and her father was a sculptor. Mr. Houston’s specialty was turning trash into objects of beauty. He’d needed circuit boards and TV coils for his projects. So Harper had been able to help him, while satisfying her own curiosity about gadgets.

  Knowing this did not make it any easier to take apart her own work now. But materials were scarce, and she needed redstone dust. The quickest way to get it was to dismantle the lever mechanism she’d made for their castle’s front door.

  “Done,” she said, and she held up her newest creation for all to see.

  Morgan recognized it at once. “A compass!” he said. “Good idea, Harper.”

  Jodi, however, was skeptical. “Are you sure we need it?” she asked. “The sun rises in the east and sets in the west here, just like in real life. Couldn’t we use that to navigate?”

  “Ah, but a Minecraft compass is special,” said Harper. “This will always give us the way to the world spawn point.”

  “The what now?” said Jodi.

  “The world spawn point. It’s where we appeared on our first day here,” Morgan explained. “And since we built our castle quite close to that point…”

  “We’ll always be able to find our way back here,” said Harper. “Just in case we want to see your sculptures again. Or our sheep!”

  “Yeah, about the sheep…,” Morgan began.

  “Yes?” Harper prodded.

  “Well, I’ve been wondering…”

  Jodi asked, “Why are you being so sheepish?” Then she laughed at her own joke.

  Morgan wasn’t laughing.

  Finally, he blurted, “Do you think maybe we should eat them?”

  The girls gasped.

  “Eat Beau?” said Jodi.

  “And Beep?” said Harper.

  “We’re going to need food out there,” Morgan said. “That means we’re probably going to have to get meat from animals.” At the girls’ shocked looks, he added, “They’re not even real! They’re just sparkly pixels and a few random bits of computer code.”

  “Mmm…Sounds delicious,” Jodi said sarcastically. She rubbed her belly for effect.

  “Real or not, we’re not eating animals that we’ve named,” Harper said.

  “Or that I gave to you as a gift!” added Jodi. “Beep represents our sibling bond!”

  “Okay, okay,” said Morgan. “I’m sorry I brought it up. But we should bake bread before we leave. And we should gather as many apples as possible while we’re exploring. We’ll need them.”

  “And we’ll need to be smart about who carries what,” said Ash. She and Po were walking toward them. “We’ve just gone through all our chests and discussed what to take…and what to leave behind.”

  “I hate to leave anything behind,” said Po. “But we can only carry so much.”

  “Well, save a slot for this,” Harper said. She held up an iron sword.

  “Ooh,” said Po. “That’s quite an upgrade.”

  “I’m making one for everybody,” said Harper. “I hope we don’t need them. But I’d rather be prepared.”


  * * *

  They headed north, toward the obsidian letters, then turned west toward a range of snowcapped mountains. They decided the mountains would give them a good view. From there, they could decide their next move.

  They were moving steadily uphill, which meant they had to jump frequently. There were no gentle slopes here. The elevation increased whole blocks at a time. Soon they were high enough that patches of snow appeared on the ground.

  Every time their path took them by a low tree, they would swipe at the leaves. They were lucky and found several apples in a matter of minutes.

  That wasn’t all they found.

  “Jodi,” whispered Po. He was trembling with excitement. “Jodi, look. Look.”

  They all looked where Po was pointing. There was an animal in the distance. At first, Harper thought it was a horse. Its neck was too long, though, and its snout too short.

  “It’s a llama!” Jodi squealed. “I want it! I want the llama!”

  “Can we keep it?” Po asked.

  Not quite sure, Harper turned to Morgan. While she’d logged a lot of hours playing Minecraft, she’d always been more interested in building than in taming animals. If there was a way to make the llama a pet, Morgan would know.

  “You have to hang on while it tries to buck you off,” he said. “It’s tricky. And at this elevation, it could be dangerous. If you fall…”

  Jodi bounded after the llama anyway, jumping rapidly up the steep mountain. “I’ll make him love me!” she said. “You’ll see!”

  “I want to dye him,” said Po, leaping after Jodi. “He should be purple!”

  “Don’t go too far,” Harper warned. The sun had dipped low. Even with iron swords, she didn’t like their odds of surviving a night in the open.

  Ash seemed to read her mind. “We should set up a little shelter,” she said. “There’s a cave over there. Let’s see how deep it goes.”

  As always, they were careful to light a torch as soon as they entered the shadowy cave. The cave was about a dozen blocks deep. It would be a perfect spot to set up their beds for the night.

  “I’ll go fetch Jodi and Po,” Ash offered.

  “Okay. Harper, watch my back,” Morgan said. “I see some coal. I’ll gather it for more torches.”

  “Use this,” Harper said. She handed him an iron pickaxe. The blocks of coal fell away quickly before the tool. And on the other side…something green glittered.

  “Oh wow,” Morgan said. “I don’t believe our luck.” He used the pickaxe to break apart the green-streaked gray block, and a gleaming green jewel appeared.

  “Is that an emerald?” Harper asked.

  “Yeah. They’re insanely rare. It’s definitely worth using an inventory slot to keep it.”

  “Hey, guys?” Ash said from the mouth of the cave. “You should come see this.”

  Harper exchanged a look with Morgan. She could tell what he was thinking: Please don’t let Jodi have gotten herself into trouble.

  “I hope the llama didn’t start spitting at them,” he said.

  But the llama had gotten away. Jodi and Po stood silent at the peak of the mountain, looking down at something.

  “Check it out,” Po said.

  Harper peered into the valley beyond the mountain.

  Situated far below was a small collection of houses. There was farmland, too, and small figures moved about on paths lined with wooden fences.

  Harper felt a thrill go through her. “It’s a whole village,” she said. “We’re not alone out here.”

  Po couldn’t stop thinking about the Minecraft village.

  They’d all agreed there wasn’t time to explore it before the sun went down. So they’d logged off for the night and returned to their normal lives. Now it was the following day, and classes were moving painfully slowly.

  Po wanted to know what surprises awaited them in that village.

  There were certainly no surprises on Ms. Minerva’s pop quiz on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When she’d announced it was time for a quiz, the rest of the class groaned—quietly. Although the bats had been confined to the gym and the classroom vents were sealed tight, Ms. Minerva’s students still looked at the vents with distrust. No one wanted to risk setting off another hurricane of bats.

  Po didn’t mind the quiz, though. He loved Shakespeare.

  He sometimes struggled with reading. His mind was always moving in three directions at once. He had trouble focusing on long passages about how butter was made, or poetic descriptions of sunlight reflecting just so off a tin roof.

  But Shakespeare wrote plays. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was mostly dialogue between characters, plus some speeches called monologues. There were cases of mistaken identity, and one character was transformed into a donkey.

  Po loved that stuff. He could imagine himself playing any of those roles. He could imagine giving those speeches and feeling what the characters were feeling.

  He approached gaming the same way. He didn’t just play as himself, as a kid named Po Chen. He imagined himself as a warrior, or a wizard, or a superhero. It’s why he was always trying out new skins in Minecraft. Each one felt like an invitation to be a different person for a little while.

  With basketball canceled until the bats were dealt with, Po wondered if he should try out for the school play. But would the drama kids accept him? Would the rest of the school? Sometimes Po worried that people only liked him because he was so good at basketball. What if he tried acting and he wasn’t any good at it?

  “Pencils down, class,” Ms. Minerva said softly.

  Another small groan rippled through the classroom. Po looked up to be sure, but the air-conditioning vent remained solidly in place.

  The bats were still in the gym, then. Po had another day off from basketball practice. Part of him felt guilty about how glad he was.

  * * *

  While the rest of the school was barely putting up with the bats, Doc Culpepper used them as inspiration for a lesson.

  “A huge part of a scientist’s job is observing,” she told the class. “You’ve all been around these animals. What have you observed about them? Ash?”

  “Well, they fly. Like birds do. But they have fur instead of feathers. They’re obviously mammals.”

  “That’s right,” said Doc, rubbing her hands together. “And like other mammals, they give birth to their live young and nurse them with milk. They don’t lay eggs the way birds do. What else?”

  “They sleep all day,” said Jodi.

  “Lucky!” Po said.

  “Correct,” said Doc. “They’re nocturnal. In other words, they’re active at night and sleep during the day. If you were to wait in the school parking lot until dusk, you’d see the whole colony flying away from the gymnasium. They go out at night to hunt bugs to eat. What else? Morgan?”

  “They’re blind,” he said.

  “Is that something you’ve observed?” asked Doc.

  “Well, no,” Morgan said. “But there’s that saying ‘Blind as a bat.’ ”

  “Scientists have actually disproven that,” explained the teacher. “Bats can see perfectly fine. But many species do use echolocation to navigate and to track down their prey. Does anyone know how echolocation works?”

  Harper raised her hand. “It’s a natural form of sonar,” she said. “Bats make sounds, and based on how the sound echoes back to them, they’re able to perceive details of their environment. Even in complete darkness.”

  “That’s right,” said Doc. “And where do bats live?”

  “At school,” Po said, and most of the class laughed.

  “Fair answer,” said Doc. “But what’s their natural habitat? Where are they supposed to live? Do you know, Po?”

  Po thought about the bats he’d seen in cartoons. “Caves?” he guesse
d.

  “Some bats do live in caves. But there are no caves in the area. So where did our bats come from?”

  Morgan raised his hand. “What about the park? I read that some bats live in trees.”

  “But what are they doing here, then?” asked Po. He’d heard some crazy rumors. Jodi had shared her theory with him that morning. She suggested that Doc Culpepper herself had grown the bats in a hidden basement laboratory. They were all part of Doc’s secret cloning experiments…until they escaped!

  And then there was Po’s theory. About how the bats had somehow traveled to their world from Minecraft. Maybe they’d hatched right out of that sixth headset.

  Digital bats invading the school was an interesting theory. He wasn’t so sure it was the truth, though. And that led him to his question. “Why would bats relocate to our school and live in our gym instead of staying in their natural habitat?” he asked.

  “That is an excellent question for a young scientist to answer,” said Doc “I hope you’ll all do some research in your spare time. But for now, please clear your desks! It’s time for a pop quiz.”

  The whole class groaned loudly. This time, Po groaned with them.

  Doc cackled gleefully to herself. For once, Po thought maybe there was some truth to Jodi’s mad scientist theory after all.