Skeleton Battle

by Winter Morgan

  This book is not authorized or sponsored by Microsoft Corp., Mojang AB, Notch Development AB or Scholastic Inc., or any other person or entity owning or controlling rights in the Minecraft name, trademark, or copyrights.

  Copyright © 2016 by Hollan Publishing, Inc.

  Minecraft® is a registered trademark of Notch Development AB.

  The Minecraft game is copyright © Mojang AB.

  This book is not authorized or sponsored by Microsoft Corp., Mojang AB, Notch Development AB or Scholastic Inc., or any other person or entity owning or controlling rights in the Minecraft name, trademark, or copyrights.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Cover photo by Megan Miller

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-0595-1

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0605-7

  Printed in Canada

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1: Trouble Brewing

  Chapter 2: The New Headmaster

  Chapter 3: Back in the Nether

  Chapter 4: The Attack of the Wither Skeletons

  Chapter 5: The Meeting

  Chapter 6: Friend or Foe

  Chapter 7: Jailbreak

  Chapter 8: The Search

  Chapter 9: Jungle Hunt

  Chapter 10: Hidden in the Mine

  Chapter 11: Captured

  Chapter 12: Help

  Chapter 13: Wait, it’s the Wither

  Chapter 14: What’s Your Talent?

  Chapter 15: Bony Beasts

  Chapter 16: Battle at School

  Chapter 17: Swords and Arrows

  Chapter 18: Good Friends

  Chapter 19: The Talent Show

  Do you like fiction for minecrafters?

  Unofficial Minecrafters Academy series

  Unofficial Minetrapped Adventure series

  Chapter 1

  TROUBLE BREWING

  “You will need a glass bottle for this activity, and you must fill it with water before we begin,” the teacher told the class.

  Lucy looked around the class nervously. She had a bottle, but she didn’t have any water. She needed a cauldron, and she quickly looked through her inventory for iron ingots to craft one with. But she knew she was terribly low on supplies. Lucy checked twice just to be sure, but what she suspected was true: she didn’t have any iron.

  Lucy had spent her school break on a treasure hunt with her friends, Henry and Max, and she had used up a lot of the valuable resources that had been in her inventory when the break began. She hadn’t had time to replace anything—the treasure hunt had taken longer than they expected, and Lucy had rushed back to Minecrafters Academy just in time for the new term to start.

  But now, Lucy didn’t want the teacher to think she wasn’t prepared. She looked around the class, hoping a fellow classmate would see her predicament and help her out, but everyone was busy filling up bottles with water, not paying attention to Lucy.

  “Lucy,” the teacher called out. “Don’t hold up the class. Let me see you fill your bottle with water. Where’s your cauldron?”

  “Um,” Lucy stammered, and her heart raced.

  “Well?” The teacher put her hands on her hips and looked sternly at Lucy.

  Lucy didn’t have a response. She couldn’t meet the teacher’s eyes, so she looked at her glass bottle instead, as though hoping it would fill with water on its own.

  Just then, a voice called out. “Lucy’s cauldron is right here.”

  Lucy turned around and saw Jane standing by a newly-crafted cauldron. With a huge sigh of relief, Lucy nodded her agreement at her teacher and stepped over to the cauldron, filling her bottle with water. She whispered to Jane, “Thanks.”

  “That’s what friends are for.” Jane smiled.

  The teacher said, “Great. Now we can go on. Everyone take out Nether wart from your inventory.”

  Lucy was relieved. Nether wart was one of the few supplies she had a lot of.

  “Now take out blaze powder and add it to the potion,” the teacher instructed the class.

  Lucy was still shaken from almost getting in trouble earlier and, without realizing it, she took a fermented spider eye out of her inventory and added it to the potion instead of blaze powder. Hurrying to catch up with the rest of the class, she brewed the potion. Only when the teacher walked over did Lucy realize her mistake: she had made a potion of weakness instead of a potion of strength.

  While her teacher talked to Jane, Lucy scrambled for supplies, hoping to brew a potion of strength quickly. She found blaze powder in her inventory, but it was too late; the teacher stood by her side.

  Lucy tried to hide her mistake, snatching the potion of weakness away from her teacher’s gaze. But as she grabbed the potion, it splashed on the teacher.

  “You’ve made me weak!” The teacher’s voice was quite low.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lucy kept repeating as she quickly brewed a potion of strength and then splashed it on the teacher.

  The teacher sighed. “It’s okay. We all make mistakes.”

  Lucy was glad the teacher wasn’t angry with her, but she knew this wasn’t her first mistake. This school year had already been a lot more challenging than she had expected. After battling zombies and capturing Isaac, the villainous former headmaster, before the break, she had thought that schoolwork would be easy. But she had been wrong. This past semester, she had been having trouble in her sword-fighting class and her brewing class. Today’s lesson was just on brewing basic potions, and she was still struggling. With each new mistake, Lucy wondered if she was really cut out for Minecrafters Academy.

  Lucy squared her shoulders and thought about what her friend Phoebe had said the night before: “Lucy, you can’t give up. You were the person who saved our school from zombies and exposed Isaac’s plot to take over the Overworld. It’s obvious that you’re smart and talented.”

  Lucy wasn’t used to compliments, and she had blushed at the time. Of course, she’d love a compliment now—anything to boost her confidence after this disaster in brewing class.

  When class ended, Lucy packed up her supplies sadly and walked out of the classroom alone. Phoebe and Jane were waiting for Lucy just outside the classroom door.

  Lucy turned to her friends. “Can you believe what happened in brewing class? I’m awful.”

  Jane shook her head and remarked, “The teacher was right. Everybody makes mistakes. It’s okay.”

  “Thanks for saving me.” Lucy smiled at Jane.

  “No problem. And you’re making a bigger deal out of this than it really is. You just had a hard time in one class. It’s not the end of the world,” Jane reminded her friend.

  Phoebe said, “And remember, you saved us from Isaac. Everyone in school knows that you’re the one who helped stop h
is attack on the Overworld. You’re a hero.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have to do the work, and I’m struggling so much with it,” admitted Lucy.

  “If you know you’re not doing well, then try to figure out what you can change, and do it,” said Jane.

  Phoebe added, “And if you’re having trouble with something, just ask us. We want to help you.”

  Lucy smiled at her friends, feeling better already.

  As the trio reached the dining hall, they ran into Stefan, the school administrator, who was on his way out. “You’re just the people I wanted to see.”

  “Really?” Phoebe asked.

  “Yes. The new headmaster, Victoria, asked me to put together an end-of-year talent show that will showcase all of the new skills the students learned this year at Minecrafters Academy—something to present the school in a positive light after all of last year’s trouble with Isaac. I was hoping the three of you would be interested in helping us organize the show.”

  “That sounds like fun!” Jane grinned excitedly.

  “What do we have to do?” asked Lucy. She didn’t want to have one more thing on her plate when she was already struggling in her classes. And, worse than that, Lucy had never told her friends that she was afraid of performing on stage. Even if this was just an organizing role, what if they expected her to audition to support the show?

  “Well, it’s not going to take place until the end of the term, so we have some time. But right now, we’d love for you to help us with planning. You can organize the auditions and help structure the show. This is the first time we’ve ever done something like this, so we need a lot of help, and your creativity would make a big difference,” Stefan explained.

  Phoebe spoke up for her friends. “We’d love to do it.”

  Lucy still wasn’t so sure, but could she really turn down a request from the school administrator? With a shrug, she said, “Okay. We’ll brainstorm some ideas tonight.”

  “Great!” Stefan exclaimed. “And I’m going to ask a few other students to be involved, as well. I’ll let you know when we have the first meeting so that you can attend.”

  Stefan left, and the trio walked into the dining hall. They grabbed their trays, but just as they were filling them with carrots and chicken, the lights went out.

  “Ouch!” Jane cried out in the dark.

  “What happened?” Lucy asked, alarmed.

  “An arrow just hit my arm!”

  With a frightening rattle, a gang of skeletons marched through the entrance of the dining hall.

  “Not again,” Lucy groaned.

  Chapter 2

  THE NEW HEADMASTER

  “I need a sword!” Phoebe cried out, looking frantically at the skeletons.

  Lucy looked through her inventory and found her spare sword. It wasn’t a powerful diamond sword like the one she fought with, but at least she had something left after her treasure hunt—and she hoped it would do. She handed it to Phoebe. “I’m sorry, but I only have a wooden sword.”

  “That’s better than nothing! Thanks!” Phoebe started to battle the skeletons.

  Lucy sprinted toward two skeletons that had Jane cornered. With a blow from her diamond sword, she defeated one of them. Jane battled the other until it was destroyed.

  “We make a great team,” Jane said with a smile.

  “The fight’s not over yet,” Lucy said as six new skeletons shot arrows at them. Jane’s response was cut off as an arrow pierced her leg.

  Just in time, Phoebe ran over to her friends and splashed a potion of invisibility on all three of them. “We need to find the skeleton spawner,” she said. “Let’s take the stairs to the basement.”

  The gang dashed out of the dining hall and made their way to the school’s basement. Lucy’s heart was beating fast. The school was under attack again. Could Isaac be behind this disaster, too?

  As the friends neared the bottom of the steps to the basement, the potion wore off. Phoebe led the group, but when she reached the bottom of the stairs, she let out a shrill cry. “Oh no!”

  The basement was flooded with lava. As the girls watched, stunned, it rose higher and higher.

  “We have to get out of here,” Lucy cried.

  The trio raced up the stairs. “Look out!” Jane warned them. A horde of skeletons armed with bows and arrows stood in front of them.

  Lucy gasped. With the skeletons ahead and the lava behind, they were trapped. They were running low on energy, and with the spawner still working, the skeleton army had grown massive.

  Lucy clutched her diamond sword. She took a deep breath and readied herself for a fatal fight. She leapt at a skeleton and destroyed it, but as she turned to face another, the lights turned back on.

  “We’re safe!” Jane cheered.

  Stefan and Victoria raced down the stairs to greet the trio. Victoria asked, “Are you guys alright?”

  “It’s not over,” Phoebe told Stefan and the new headmaster. “The basement is flooded with lava. I’m afraid it might flood the school.”

  “I bet it’s the work of griefers,” Victoria called out. “We have to stop them!”

  “You’re right, but we need to remove the lava as soon as possible.” Stefan looked at Victoria. “If we don’t, this entire building will be destroyed.”

  Victoria agreed. “Make an announcement. We need every student to get a bucket and help us remove the lava.”

  Stefan nodded and went to assemble the students. In the meantime, the trio of friends began to carefully remove buckets of lava with Victoria.

  Lucy was glad to be working with Victoria to save the academy. Lucy had helped find the new headmaster after the attacks last year, and she liked her—but after seeing how well Isaac had hidden his plans to destroy the Overworld, how could Lucy ever really be sure anyone was trustworthy? Well, she did trust her two roommates. They had proven themselves to be loyal friends.

  “Do you think Isaac staged this attack?” Lucy wondered aloud.

  Victoria responded, “I’m not sure, but once this lava is removed, we’ll go to the jail and question him.”

  Lucy nodded. She knew Victoria had led one of the battles against Isaac’s zombie invasion, sacrificing a lot to keep her desert village safe. She had given up valuable resources to craft multiple golems around the town, and she had built a large shelter where her neighbors could live after their homes were destroyed by the nightly TNT attacks. And now, seeing her work just as hard to defend Minecrafters Academy, Lucy had to believe that Victoria was a good person.

  Slowly, the rest of the students joined them, and everyone worked together to empty the school of lava. When the basement was finally dry, Victoria turned to Lucy. “Ready to question Isaac?”

  Ever since his attack on the school and the Overworld, the old headmaster, Isaac, had been imprisoned in a jail in the center of campus. “What a nice surprise,” Isaac said sarcastically when they opened the door to his cell. “Lucy and the new headmaster.”

  “Believe us, we are equally excited to see you,” replied Victoria.

  Lucy blurted out, “Are you behind these new attacks?”

  “What attacks?” Isaac asked.

  “Don’t act like you weren’t watching from the window. We know you were excited to see our school in danger again,” Lucy said angrily.

  Victoria took a calmer approach. “I don’t know if you’re behind this attack, but if you were, I know you wouldn’t tell us. It doesn’t matter. We will find out who is doing this, and whoever it is will meet a very sad demise.”

  Isaac said, “I promise you, I have nothing to do with these attacks. But I do love watching a good show. So while you battle the skeletons, I get a ringside seat.”

  “It’s not entertainment,” Victoria said. “This is real life, and our students are in danger.”

  “It’s all the same to me from inside this cell,” Isaac said with a shrug.

  Victoria looked over at Lucy, who was tense and angry. “Don’t worry. We
’ll get to the bottom of this. Isaac is just a pest. He can’t do anything to hurt us.”

  Isaac crossed his arms and said, “Just because I’m in prison, doesn’t mean I don’t have power.”

  Victoria shrugged. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

  As Lucy and Victoria left the cell and locked the door, they could hear Isaac pacing behind it.

  When they were out of earshot, Lucy asked, “Do you think he’s behind this attack?”

  “Possibly,” Victoria replied. “Whoever’s behind it, we will have to be prepared at all times. It’s awful that you have to go through this again.”

  “I know, but we will get through it.” Lucy smiled at Victoria, and they walked back to the main building together.

  Chapter 3

  BACK IN THE NETHER

  The sun was shining and students were on their way to their classes. Lucy realized with a start that visiting Isaac had made her late. She excused herself and dashed toward the building that housed her classroom.

  Lucy was the last person to enter the class, and as she walked in, the teacher, Eitan, noticed. “We have to be on time, Lucy,” he reprimanded.

  Lucy wanted to explain that she had been late because she was helping Victoria get to the bottom of this sudden skeleton attack, but instead she just apologized. There was always an excuse when somebody was late, and she didn’t want to be one of those people who threw a series of justifications at the teacher. She had known that the class was scheduled to take another field trip to the Nether, and that it was important for her to be on time.

  Eitan raised an eyebrow, then redirected his attention to the front of the class and announced, “I want to introduce you to a new student.” A girl wearing a red sweater and jeans stood up and walked to the front of the class. “This is Maya. She will tell you a little about herself.”

  Maya flinched. She looked at the floor and spoke quickly, apparently nervous about talking to the class. “I’m Maya. I’m from the desert biome.”

  “Thanks, Maya.” Eitan looked at the class. “As you know, today we are going on a field trip to the Nether. Everyone, get into your groups, and check your inventories for supplies.”