Rise of the Wither, Book 1: New Danger

by Mark Mulle

Shulshm. “I want to be able to just relax with her, you know? Be honest and tell her how I really feel without worrying she’s gonna bite my head off.”

  “Mmhmm,” said Shulshm.

  “Ever since the Obsidian Cube, we’ve been…I don’t know. It’s like there’s a wall between us. I just want to clear that away, but she won’t let me. I don’t get it.”

  “There’s some coal.”

  As they dug out the ore, they suddenly broke through into the side of a cavern. It was pitch black so they couldn’t see how large it was, but Steve had the impression it was of considerable size. He threw a torch down as far as he could into the space and found that it was indeed a large, empty cavern, its twisting walls receding into blackness on either side. Dimly glimpsed passages lead to the right, left, and overhead.

  Caverns like this were fairly common. Steve and Shulshm had discovered a number of them. They were dangerous, since Mobs liked to hide in them, but often worth exploring in spite of the danger, as they frequently had lots and lots of ore sitting in plain view.

  Keeping his torches in hand, but his sword at the ready, Steve ventured forth into the gloom, throwing up light as he went. No Mobs showed themselves so far, but the light glinted off of a vein of iron ore in the wall. Shulshm eagerly set to work on it at once while Steve continued to explore the space. The cave seemed normal, but something about it bothered him. He couldn’t quite say what, but he was nervous and wanted to make extra sure that the place was safe before he joined Shulshm in digging out the ore. When the whole cavern was illuminated without revealing anything out of place, Steve began to light up the passageways, starting with the one leading up. After going a short distance and finding nothing, he returned and tried the passage to his right. This one only went a short way before terminating in a dead end, leaving only the left hand passage.

  The moment he started down this one, Steve knew that it was from here that the ominous feeling came. He proceeded slowly, throwing up torches as he went and keeping his ears pricked for the slightest sound of attack.

  Then he heard it; the unmistakable moaning of zombies. A moment later, they came, three of them out of the darkness. Steve threw down one more torch and drew his sword. He had come a long way since that first night when he had barely survived an encounter with these undead horrors. Now he was clad in full diamond armor and had a keen-edged diamond sword. In only a few swift motions, he cut the three abominations down.

  He kept going, throwing down more torches as he went. More and more zombies loomed out of the darkness and he cut them down as he went. Yet still they kept coming. Steve wondered at that. Except when they form hordes, which was rare, zombies don’t usually travel in large packs, especially not in cramped underground tunnels like this. Groups of five or six were about the maximum. And when they did form groups, they tended to stick together and attack all at once. Steve had fought at least ten or twelve so far, but in a sequence rather than in a bunch. It was as if they were all being dispatched one-by-one from somewhere down the passage.

  Steve took down two more zombies and threw up another torch. To his surprise, the light fell, not on stone, but on cobblestone. That could only mean one thing: a structure. Something built by hand and not naturally generated. And he was quite certain that neither he nor Alex had built this structure.

  Keeping his sword at the ready, Steve placed another torch, giving him a better view. The structure seemed to be built right into the passage wall. It was very simple: just a stretch of cobblestone with an open entryway in the middle.

  A hand landed on Steve’s shoulder. He jumped, whipped around, and only just stopped himself from stabbing Shulshm.

  “Sir…”

  “Don’t do that!” Steve gasped. “You scared the Nether out of me!”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “That’s fine, just get your sword out; there’s something weird going on here.”

  Shulshm drew his iron sword and took up position behind Steve as they approached the entrance.

  The structure turned out to be very small; only about six blocks square and maybe eight high. It was almost completely dark, but in the middle a strange, fiery light was glowing, illuminating nothing around it. The light moved and spun in a strangely hypnotic fashion, and Steve could see vague and distorted shapes inside it.

  He threw up a torch, giving them a better view of the space. The light, they now saw, was contained within a black latticework cage that might have been made of metal, though it was hard to tell.

  Steve moved closer. The light seemed to draw him in. It was moving faster now, spinning and spinning so that he almost felt dizzy from it. The strange shapes were becoming more solid and more distinct, so that he almost thought he recognized them…

  Then, all at once, one of these shapes took on definite form. It reached up out of the cage with two clammy, rotted hands and moaned as it seized Steve about the throat.

  He gasped and flailed at it, but the only thing in his hand was a stack of torches. The newborn zombie barely flinched at the blows. Steve reached for his sword, but before he could draw it, Shulshm stepped around him and hacked at the zombie’s arms. It released Steve and turned to the villager, who backed away, still swinging his sword.

  Steve drew his own sword, just as a second zombie burst from the cage and lunged at him. This one was cut down in moments, but Shulshm was being backed into a corner. He wasn’t a skilled fighter at all, and in his frantic flailings he had lost his grip and tossed the sword across the room. Steve rushed to his friend’s aid and hacked the zombie to the ground just in time.

  “You alright?”

  “More!” Shulshm shouted, pointing.

  Two more zombies had indeed risen from within the eerie light and were coming at them. Steve’s keen-edged diamond sword made short work of them, and before the evil cage could summon any more monsters Steve sprang at it, drew his pick, and smashed the thing into pieces. The hideous light flickered for a moment, then died.

  “What…was that?”

  Steve shook his head, and then looked about the small chamber. Apart from the strange cage, the only things here were two chests stood against the side walls. He went over to one and opened it. Inside was nothing but a pile of string and few seeds. He looked into the other one, and here he found two old, intricate leather saddles, but nothing that might tell him who or what had made such an evil device. He took the saddles and turned to Shulshm.

  “Come on,” he said. “We need to tell the village about this.”

  “A device that creates zombies,” Alex mused after Steve had told her of the encounter. “That’s frightening.”

  They were sitting in what they called their ‘War Room:’ a small area of the palace where they had a table sitting under a map of the whole region (which Alex had made following instructions she’d read in one of Draugr’s books).

  “Obviously someone made the thing,” said Steve. “What with the cobblestone and all. The question is, who.”

  “And why,” Alex added.

  “As far as the why goes, I think the fact that someone’s crafted a device to create zombies is enough to tell us that they don’t mean us well.”

  “Yeah, but that covers a lot of ground,” she pointed out. “If we knew specifically what they were after, we might be able to stop them.”

  “True enough,” he nodded. “I was thinking, could it be someone else has taken Draugr’s place? Like, another skeleton perhaps, whose trying to rebuild his army?”

  Alex considered it.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted. “I guess the idea of anyone replacing Draugr just seemed weird to me. But…I suppose it’s possible. I mean, he must have gotten his position somehow, right? And all those zombies must have come from somewhere.”

  She didn’t look worried. In fact, if Steve hadn’t known better he would have said she looked relieved.

  “Yeah…” he said. “You know, all things considered, you don’t look all that bot
hered by the prospect.”

  “No. It’s a lot better than what I was thinking.”

  Steve was deeply alarmed by the prospect of another Skeleton King, and he knew that Alex had much more reason to fear such an event than he did, so he couldn’t imagine what possibility she considered so much worse that Draugr would seem preferable.

  She seemed to read his mind in the look he gave her.

  “I was thinking he might be back. You know. Herobrine.”

  Steve almost laughed with relief as he comprehended her thinking.

  “This isn’t his style,” he said. “If he were back, he wouldn’t need to make a horde of zombies to fight for him. Besides, even travelling night and day it would take him a long longer than this to get all the way back here from the Far Lands.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You didn’t see the numbers I used on his position,” he said. “He was sent millions of blocks away; deep, deep into the Far Lands. Frankly, I don’t think it’s even possible for him to get out of there at all. It’s a…strange place. I only caught a brief glimpse but even that almost drove me mad.”

  “So, you’re saying the most powerful being in the world is now also insane?”

  He shrugged.

  “Maybe. But if so, it’s a million-to-one he’ll ever get out of there.”

  Alex thought about it, then seemed to brighten considerably.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “I was thinking that if it is another Skeleton