I threw out my sword when it got close. At the same time, Alex sent an arrow flying, Maison slammed her baseball bat into the Enderman, and Destiny struck it with a wooden sword she’d made. The Enderman was so into looking at me that the multiple strikes seemed to take it by surprise. It turned red for an instant, then disappeared before we could hit it again. The next moment it was on the roof of a nearby house, staring down at me with hostile eyes.
For a moment I thought of Alex’s Ender pearl. If we threw it on the roof, we could teleport there. Then again, it would weaken our health, and by the time we got there, the Enderman would most likely be long gone.
Alex shot an arrow onto the roof and the Enderman easily dodged it by teleporting. I saw Alex’s face go white in anger. She was a perfect shot and not used to her enemies being able to dodge so thoroughly.
“Stay still, you blasted Enderman!” she shouted.
“I can’t take it anymore,” Yancy said. “I need to see what’s going on.”
He pulled off his Jack o’ Lantern. As soon as he did it, his eyes widened, because there was the Enderman in front of him, inches away.
Yancy had been so into the idea of his Jack o’ Lantern keeping him safe that he didn’t have any weapons at the ready. In a split second he yanked off his backpack and swung it out. The Enderman was there, then gone. It was back on the roof. It was behind us, making us all whirl around. It got behind us again, and we whirled again. And then it was right next to me, reaching for me again, its purple eyes towering over me, its whole body closing in around me like a black cloud.
CHAPTER 10
I slashed out with my sword! at the same moment, Maison hit the Enderman with her baseball bat, Alex struck it with an arrow, Destiny nailed it with her wooden sword, and Yancy used his backpack. It might have been a weird combination of weapons, but it worked: the Enderman vanished for real this time, dropping a green Ender pearl.
“Ooh, two Ender pearls in one day!” Alex gloated, picking it up and tossing it in her hand. Ender pearls were a rare find.
“It dropped something else,” Maison said. “Huh … what is that?”
It was another purple shard, like the one I’d found earlier! What were the odds of that? Then I realized something and dug my hand through my toolkit. No, it wasn’t another purple shard. It was the same one as earlier, and it must have slipped out of my toolkit when I did my final lunge and slashed at the Enderman.
“That’s mine,” I said, a little embarrassed. “I found it earlier.”
“That is awesome,” Yancy said. “It’s the color of an Ender crystal.”
Maison reached down to pick it up. She examined it in her palm, then let out a cry and dropped it as if it had burned her.
“Maison, are you all right?” I exclaimed.
Maison didn’t say anything at first. She was gripping her hand close and staring, wild-eyed, at the purple shard.
“Let me see your hand,” Destiny said. When Maison opened her hand, it looked normal—no burns or anything. But Maison’s eyes were still the same.
“It … it talked,” Maison said.
“It talked?” we all repeated. None of us had heard anything. And there weren’t any other people around this part of the village, so it’s not like she could have overheard someone nearby.
“It was a woman’s voice,” Maison said, looking as if she were in a stunned trance. “Not like any voice I’ve heard, though. It was gravelly, and … I don’t know … just really scary.”
We all looked around. The area was totally empty.
“Let me see that,” Yancy said. He picked up the purple shard hesitantly, as if he expected it to bite him. Then, when nothing happened, he began tossing it back and forth in his hands the way I’d seen Maison do with a baseball. “It doesn’t hurt to hold.”
“No,” Maison said. “The crystal doesn’t hurt. The voice did. It felt evil.”
We all looked around again.
“Maybe she heard an Enderman?” Destiny suggested.
“Endermen don’t talk,” Yancy said.
“Stranger things have happened, especially since the portal to Earth was first opened,” Alex said dryly. In the past we’d had to fight a talking Wither, and that hadn’t been normal, either.
“But we already defeated the Enderman,” Destiny said. “How could it talk after it was gone?”
I was staring hard at Maison. “I heard that voice too,” I said. “I was all alone in a tunnel and I heard it and there was no one around. What did it say to you?”
Maison took a long gulp. “It said, ‘Get me out of this prison. I’m ready to rule again.’”
CHAPTER 11
“The crystal!” destiny said. “maybe someone is trapped in the crystal!”
We all took turns looking deep inside the crystal and turning it this way and that. Nothing. I didn’t think there was anything in the crystal, to be honest. I felt more like the crystal was connected to something.
I thought about what my friends and I had heard when we touched the crystal. Find the shards and put them together! Only then will I be free! Get me out of this prison. I’m ready to rule again.
“Do you think the crystal talked?” Yancy said.
“Crystals can’t talk,” Alex said. “Besides, how come none of us can hear it?” She took the crystal from Yancy and held it, then put it up to her ear like a seashell from Earth. “I don’t hear a thing.”
Maison was rubbing her arms as if she were very, very cold.
“I know I heard something!” she said. “It was like the voice was in my mind!”
I stood up straighter and nodded. That was the perfect way of saying it! It had been this very threatening, malicious voice … and it had been in my head without me thinking it. Somehow the crystal was letting us hear someone who wasn’t there!
I got all excited that I had figured it out, then I realized how crazy that sounded. That couldn’t be right, could it?
“Let’s go talk to my dad and Aunt Alexandra,” I said. “Maybe they know something about this.”
Yancy tossed the purple crystal up in the air and caught it. “Okay,” he said. “But where did you find this exactly, Stevie? Spill the beans.”
“What?” I said, confused. “I don’t have any beans.” That was some kind of food they had on Earth, and it’s not like this was a good time to eat with so much danger around.
“He means tell him everything,” Destiny said.
Uh-oh. That was the last thing I wanted to do. Yancy handed me the purple crystal back and looked at me expectantly.
I would have given anything for a distraction. Unfortunately, I got the worst kind of one. I blinked, and then there were three Endermen circling us.
CHAPTER 12
They weren’t just coming in closer for their prey—they were coming in closer for me! Their purple eyes saw only me. Their arms were lifted to grab only me.
I struck out with my sword when they got right up next to me. They vanished, but I knew better than to think they’d been defeated. Then, like the Enderman in the tunnel earlier, all three of them were directly behind me, breathing down my neck.
As I rolled into a dodge, the others all rushed toward the Endermen. It was like a bad game, because all the Endermen did was disappear and show up again. How could you defeat a whole group of them when they had skills like that? Did we all have to make ourselves Jack o’ Lanterns or something? That would take some time, and the Endermen might get us in the meanwhile!
“Stop them!” Alex said. “They want Stevie.”
“No!” Maison said. “They want the crystal!”
The crystal? I tucked it back into my toolkit and rose back up with my sword.
“Whatever they want, we have to stop them!” Yancy was hitting at them with his backpack and trying to put his Jack o’ Lantern back on at the same time. He couldn’t do both, so he was stuck defending himself. The Endermen began swirling around us like a tornado, here one second, gone the next, reappearing w
ith outstretched arms.
One Enderman was shorter than the others, like the size of an Overworld man. That didn’t make it much less threatening, though. It seemed like the most aggressive one, getting inches from me again and again. It opened its mouth in a terrible hiss right in front of my face, its angry purple eyes bearing down on me. I attempted to hit it with my sword. No luck! It was gone and then back again, right by my side.
Then a fourth Enderman showed up on top of one of the houses. It stood there a moment as if it were watching the scene. Then its eyes landed on me and a strange, fierce hunger came over its expression.
“There’s another one!” I shouted. It wasn’t a moment too soon. The Enderman teleported from the roof and down into the street in front of us, knocking right into Alex, who was facing the other way. Alex cried out and dropped her arrows.
“Alex!” I ran over to her. I wanted to help, but I ended up running right into the thick of things. There was still the Enderman right next to her, and as soon as I was at Alex’s side, the other three surrounded me like a fence, trapping me in the middle and keeping everyone else out.
“Stevie!” I heard the others call. Between the huge bodies of the Endermen I saw Maison frantically swinging her baseball bat and Alex shooting her arrows. They hit the Endermen, but the Endermen didn’t even flinch when they turned red. Four pairs of long black arms reached toward me. One of them grabbed me by the middle and began to carry me away, knocking the diamond sword out of my hand.
CHAPTER 13
The enderman’s arms were over my stomach like a vice. Instead of carrying a block, like Endermen are known to do, it was carrying me! It turned in the direction that led out of the village, and then it teleported with me.
For a moment there was nothing. The whole world blurred until all I saw was a variety of colors, smashed together like a painting. Blurry green for the grass mixed with shady brown from the trees. Some silver gray for clouds thrown in. It didn’t feel as if there was any air.
Then everything came back to normal. I realized the Enderman had teleported us straight out of the village to the fields nearby. When I looked behind us, I could see Maison and the others, but they were all small in the distance like dolls. They were shouting and running toward me.
The Enderman seemed to sense this, because then it teleported again. The world went blurry and I couldn’t breathe. Then it was like being underwater and looking at the surface, with all the colors moving and shimmering and making no real sense. A moment later we returned to reality and I saw we were even farther from the village. My friends were still all running toward me as fast as they could, and they looked even farther away than before!
I tried to struggle out of the Enderman’s grip, but it was too strong! I’d lost my sword, though I still had my toolkit on me. Something in there would have to protect me, or I was done for!
My hand went into the toolkit and closed around something I’d momentarily forgotten. The crystal! I yanked it out so I could see it, watching as it glowed especially bright, as if it had a little sun in it.
The Enderman teleported again. When I lost my chance to breathe for a third time, I realized I didn’t have a choice here. I had to do something! As soon as we teleported back into existence, I took a huge gasp of air to fill my lungs. And then I hit one of the Enderman’s arms with the crystal, using all my strength.
There was an explosion of purple light. I fell out of the Enderman’s hands and rolled to the ground. The Enderman let out a noise that sounded almost human. I heard the heavy sound of it collapsing to the ground behind me.
Shaken, gasping for breath, I rolled over to see what had happened. My eyes widened. At first I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
Someone was kneeling in the exact same spot the Enderman had been, touching his face as though he couldn’t believe it.
“No way,” I whispered.
“Stevie,” the man moaned. “Thank you, thank you. Can you ever forgive me?”
It was the missing blacksmith!
CHAPTER 14
“Where did the enderman go?” i exclaimed.
“Don’t you understand?” the blacksmith said. “I was the Enderman!”
Maison and the others all came racing up to us, completely out of breath.
“He—he changed!” Alex wheezed. “There was an—Enderman—then a light—then a man!”
“When I opened my shop this morning, there were two Endermen there, going through my things,” the blacksmith said. “They closed in on me, and they turned me into … into …”
“They turned you into an Enderman?” I said. “Wait, does that mean …?”
“The missing villagers!” Maison said, getting it.
The blacksmith nodded grimly. “Yes,” he said. “All of the missing villagers have been turned into Endermen too. It’s like how zombies can create zombie villagers.”
“So Endermen can create villager Endermen?” Yancy said. “I’ve never heard of that, and I’m a big Minecraft buff.”
“Minecraft?” the blacksmith repeated, confused.
“On Earth, they call our world Minecraft,” I explained to him.
The blacksmith shook his head. “There is some dark magic going on. What’s happening now isn’t normal. When I turned into an Enderman, it clouded my thoughts. I just knew I had to attack, and I had to find … to find …” He seemed to be having a hard time getting the words out.
“To find what?” I asked.
“That crystal!” he said, pointing toward it. “There was a voice in my head that kept telling me to find that crystal and bring it back to her, no matter what.”
“Her?” I repeated.
Maison had the same chilled look she had earlier when she touched the crystal. “I think Stevie and I heard the same voice when we touched the crystal,” she said. “Did it sound very angry and evil?”
“Yes!” the blacksmith said. “That’s a good way to describe it, but once I was an Enderman, there was no way I could resist that voice. I had to obey it. There was still a part of me—the real me—left, but it got to be less and less as time went on. I’m convinced that if you hadn’t changed me back, I would have turned fully into an Enderman. Forever.” He shivered and looked haunted by his own thoughts.
“Do you have any idea whose voice it is?” I demanded. I was feeling haunted too. What would that be like, to become an Enderman and lose yourself? It was scary enough being in the clutches of an Enderman!
“No,” the blacksmith said. “But she is very old and very powerful. She has been in hiding for thousands of years, and she needs the crystal to get back. The Endermen are her servants and she’s using them to make more servants by making more Endermen.”
“We have to tell my mom and Uncle Steve about this,” Alex said. “Can the crystal be used to turn other villagers human again?”
With shaky hands the blacksmith reached out as if he wanted to hold the crystal. I gave it to him. He marveled at it in his hand.
“There is definitely magic in this crystal,” he said. “Some sort of very ancient, very strong enchantment.”
Enchantment? I knew in the Overworld you could enchant different objects, but that was way beyond anything I could do. Even Dad didn’t go much for enchantments.
“Maybe the Endermen want it because they don’t want us to be able to turn the villagers back,” Destiny said.
“I think that’s part of it, but I think it goes much deeper than that.” The blacksmith handed the crystal back to me and massaged his temples. “I’m forgetting what I knew and felt as an Enderman. It’s fading like a dream and I feel more human. I’m scared I’m forgetting information that would be helpful to you.”
“Tell us everything you remember,” Maison said comfortingly, putting a hand on his shoulder. “And we’ll head back into the village to tell everyone your story and what we know now.”
“And guard that crystal,” Yancy said, eyeing it.
I nodded and swallowed. We turned to
ward the direction of the village—but’s that’s when we realized there would be no easy passage for us. The other three Endermen we fought earlier were coming toward us, ready to continue the battle.
CHAPTER 15
“Are they villagers too?” i asked. i had a sudden, terrible thought. What if the Endermen I’d defeated earlier had been villagers? It was too late to change them back now!
“No,” the blacksmith said. He rose to his feet and stared the Endermen down. “The ones who were human are still as tall as humans. These are all real Endermen.”
That was a relief. However, that also meant we had a lot of villagers to save, and we needed to get into the village as fast as possible to tell the others. Even if I hadn’t defeated any villager-Endermen, what if someone else had?
“Where’s my sword?” I cried, remembering I didn’t have it. And the others weren’t holding it, so it must still be back in the village.
“We left it!” Alex said. “Saving you was more important!”
I understood why they had ignored the sword and come after me. It didn’t do me much good now, though! That diamond sword was my best weapon. Then the blacksmith said, “Use the crystal, Stevie. It has more than one use.”
An Enderman teleported so that it was right in front of me, and I struck it with the crystal. It was a direct hit, but the Enderman still disappeared and showed up safely a few blocks away.
“It didn’t do anything!” I said.
“Try again!” the blacksmith said.
What if he was wrong? If the crystal didn’t work, we might lose any chance we had of fighting back.
The second of the three Endermen zeroed in on me and I hit it with the crystal. Same result. It got hit and then reappeared a moment later, just fine. Even with a special crystal, fighting Endermen was so aggravating!
The first Enderman was back in front of me. I brought back my arm and hit it with the crystal as hard as I could. The Enderman turned bright red and was gone for good.
Adventure Against the Endermen Page 3