“Aren’t wolves supposed to be able to track people?” he asked with a scolding glance toward Sharp. Sharp just whimpered, and Trish shrugged.
“What’s that?” Trish said, squinting into the distance.
Patrick followed her line of sight and smiled. Rotting flesh! Normally that wouldn’t make him smile. It would make him feel sick, if anything. But today that rotten flesh meant a zombie had been killed, and that meant they were likely on the right track.
He gulped, realizing what else it meant—zombies were already out.
A groan from behind him confirmed his worry, and he spun just as the zombie was almost on him. He reached for his sword, only too late remembering he didn’t have one.
The zombie was close, too close. Patrick reached back to punch, but another zombie grabbed his arm and tried to bite!
He closed his eyes, knowing it was over.
Chapter 3: Trish
“Agh!” Trish yelled as she swiped at the zombie with her sword. The blow knocked it back and away from almost biting Patrick. That was good enough for now.
The second zombie was almost on Patrick. For this one, Trish didn’t have time to lift her sword. Her leg acted on reflex and she kicked the thing in the groin.
It stumbled back, but not in the way living boys did when that sort of thing happened. Sharp leaped up and tackled it to the ground, but the zombie threw the wolf off and stood, going straight for Patrick.
“The sword!” Patrick shouted, and she only hesitated for a moment before heaving it over.
He snatched it out of the air and spun, taking down the first zombie and then the second. With a heavy breath, he held the sword out for her to take back.
“No, you keep it,” she said. “You killed the zombies, after all.”
“But you saved me,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get another.”
She took the sword and smiled, then had a thought. “I could craft you one, I mean, pretty quick.”
“Yeah?” he looked around, hopeful at first, but then skeptical. “Where we gonna find a crafting table out here?”
“I could make that too. We’re talking thirty seconds here, tops.”
“Okay,” he said with a smile. “While you do that, I’ll see if I can find any more signs of our little friend.”
“Stay close?” she said, her voice breaking in a way that angered her off. She didn’t want to seem afraid in front of this guy.
“Yeah, where I can see you,” he said with a wink.
She glanced around at the darkness, then found the closest tree. A few minutes of chopping and she had the wood blocks to make planks, and then she put them together to make her crafting table. Whenever a crafting table was nearby, she felt at ease.
But then she remembered the monsters that could walk up to them at any minute, so she grabbed some more wood and used it with some coal, which she was glad to have, to make torches. She stuck the torches around the crafting table in a small circle. Okay, that would at least warn her if they were coming, even if it didn’t keep them back.
Next were the swords…She’d need four blocks of stone and two sticks if she was going to make a new sword for herself, and more to make one for Patrick. She picked up one of the torches and saw, by a small pond not far off, some stone in the ground. Great!
When she was almost there, an arrow landed inches from her feet, and she looked up to see a skeleton putting another arrow in its bow. Sharp growled, warning the skeleton to stay back.
“I got it!” Patrick shouted, and he came out of the darkness with the sword swinging. The blade made contact and sent the skeleton flying in the air like a toy.
Trish laughed. This could be fun, if her life wasn’t constantly in danger. But if she really learned how to use a sword, she’d have nothing to fear. With a note to herself to ask Patrick to teach her how to fight sometime, she knelt down and began mining the stone.
Before long, they each had a new sword and were carrying torches, searching the waterfalls in the direction they’d first seen the rotten flesh.
Sharp barked, and they both turned to see what he’d spotted.
“There, in the water!” Trish said, pointing to zombie flesh being carried away by the water.
“That could only mean…” Patrick looked from her to the waterfall, then ran off toward it. “Good job, Sharp!”
She was going to have to talk to him about always running off like that. It was getting very tiring. With a sigh of frustration, she followed Sharp to run after him. But Patrick disappeared behind the waterfall!
“Patrick?” she hissed, not wanting the stranger to hear her if he was nearby. “Where’d you go?”
“Here,” he said, his head poking out from behind the water.
There was a small area between the rocks and the water where they could duck in, which led to a cave.
He held out a hand and helped her across. Sharp whimpered, but after some coaxing made the leap with ease.
The firelight of the torches flickered across the inside of the waterfall in a way that made it look like the fire was dancing across the stone walls. The cave continued on into darkness that seemed to never end, a stench like old rotting apples coming from deep within.
“There could be all kinds of monsters back there,” Trish said, knowing they had no choice. She took a breath and stepped forward. “Let’s kick their butts.”
Chapter 4: Patrick
Patrick was surprised that Trish had taken the lead like this, but there she was, torch in one hand, sword in the other, making her way into the cave with her wolf at her side. It was like she’d been born to search out dark caves.
Not to mention the fact that she’d just saved his life. She’d been resourceful before, back against Carmine, and again against Captain Selna in Gwen’s tree hideout. But this? Standing up against two zombies like that?! Patrick had to admit, his respect for her was growing fast.
And maybe the wolf wasn’t so bad.
“What is it?” she asked with a glance back. “You’re looking at me all weird.”
“No, I don’t think so.” He pushed on ahead of her, blushing.
“Do I have something on me?” she asked, spinning and brushing her shoulders, looking for anything odd.
“Nothing like that,” he said, exasperated. “Can we just keep moving?”
She stopped and stared at him with a tilt of her head. “You’re weird.”
“Can’t say you’re the first to tell me that.” He smiled and shook off the embarrassment. “It’s just, you were really something back there.”
“Thanks.” She beamed, then pointed farther down the cave with her sword. “Honestly, though, I’m pretty darn scared. Maybe we could walk side by side?”
He laughed and agreed to it. So they continued on, both ready for whatever would come their way. The wolf walked between them, hair standing on end, ready to pounce.
The cave became a series of tunnels that wound down with patches of diamond at some points, lava at others.
A grunt came from ahead. Zombies? Patrick and Trish crept forward, slowly, then came to a small ledge where they could look down. They saw the man from earlier. He was wearing black robes and, as they watched, he put on a black, cloth mask. Only his eyes were visible, like a ninja. He glanced around but didn’t look up. With a dash, he disappeared down one of the main tunnels.
“We’ve got him now,” Patrick whispered.
Trish held out her fist, and Patrick looked at it.
“I see your fist,” he said. “But what’re you doing?”
“You’re supposed to bump it,” she said, lifting his fist to hit it lightly against her own. “It’s like a high-five, you know? We do it all the time in my village.”
“A high-what?” he said, getting more annoyed and anxious every second that they weren’t following the ninja guy.
“Forget it.”
He did, and he lowered himself over the ledge, then helped her down. It all looked different down here.
“Which tunnel did the ninja go down?” Trish asked.
“Third or fourth from the left,” he said. “What do you think, Sharp?”
Sharp sniffed at both, but then sat back on his haunches and scratched behind his left ear.
“You weren’t paying attention?” Trish asked.
“I think I saw where he went, but I can’t be sure.” He walked up to each and shone his torch in, but all he saw were more descending tunnels. For a minute he wanted to punch himself in the face, but then he had an idea. “Put out your torch.”
“What? No way!”
“Can you…just, please?”
She glared at him for a moment but then did so. As he’d expected, a dim glow was visible in one of the tunnels.
“There we go,” he said, and he started down the tunnel, lighting his torch again. “You can light yours too.”
“Great, but I’m out of coal,” she said.
He fumbled around and found he only had two more. That wasn’t good. He tossed one to her and kept moving. They’d have to be careful with their torches from here on.
The tunnel led them into a huge cavern where the ninja was moving slowly and carefully across the floor. Patrick stared in confusion, but then he saw why—not only was the ground covered in pressure plates, but the walls were lined with cave spiders. One wrong move and they’d be all over you. His free hand instantly went to his medallion, fingers caressing the smooth medal as he focused on taking deep breaths.
The thought of entering that room sent a shiver up his spine, but he had no choice.
“Okay, on my lead,” he said.
“Why you?” she asked.
“Trust me, I was a pirate, so I’ve set up my share of trap rooms for our treasure.”
“Somehow the words ‘I was a pirate’ and ‘trust me’ don’t seem to go so well in the same sentence.”
“And sometimes your comments annoy me,” he said. He was happy to see she had nothing witty to say to that. He checked and the ninja was exiting the chamber through a door on the far side, so he and Trish began their move through the chamber.
Every step felt like it could be their last. Patrick knew how dangerous these rooms could be, and knew that the smallest misstep could open up a dispenser of arrows, bring the ceiling down on them, or any number of other horrors.
He noticed Trish wasn’t being quiet enough. The cave spiders were moving, seeming restless, sensing them.
“Keep it down,” he whispered.
“Me?” she whispered back. “You walk like an iron golem!”
“I what?” he hissed, a bit too loudly—one of the cave spiders spun on him, and then chaos broke out.
Cave spiders were everywhere, swarming into the room from crevices previously unseen. They were coming at him and Trish, a wave of blackness with red glowing eyes everywhere.
Sharp launched himself at the spiders, teeth gnashing as he did his best to fight them off.
Patrick punched the first spider right in the face, then stabbed the next. He spun to see Trish holding her own, but saw her step dangerously close to a pressure plate.
“Watch out!” he shouted.
She overcorrected and avoided it, but a cave spider took out her feet while she was unbalanced, and her head whacked the floor—right on a pressure plate!
Time seemed to freeze as Patrick and Trish stared at each other in panic, waiting to see what the pressure plate would do. A loud roar sounded and then fire burst into the room in spurts that lit the cave spiders so that they skittered around in balls of fire. They soon caught their friends on fire, and then they were all on fire. Patrick kicked a spider into the path of the flames, protecting himself. The only reason Trish was safe was that she had fallen, so was beneath the fire as it shot over her.
But now they were just as likely to catch fire as the cave spiders. Trish leaped up and said, “Come on!” and they darted between blazing cave spiders as they sprinted for the door.
Sharp was running around in circles, his tail on fire, and Patrick had to grab him to blow it out. In the moment’s hesitation, more spiders leaped into their path. Trish kicked one so that it triggered arrow dispensers and the others were hit. They fell so that Patrick and Trish simply had to leap over them.
The last one remaining turned on them, but Patrick paused long enough to spin and strike it down.
He turned to see Trish at the doorway, and then jumped—landing close enough, but with the ominous click of a pressure plate.
Oh no, he thought as the ceiling above him opened up and water gushed into the room. It pushed all the cave spiders back toward a grinder, set up to destroy them and collect their loot.
Luckily for Patrick, Trish reached out and grabbed his hand. With Sharp’s help, she pulled him up and into the doorway. A glance back showed them that the room was now empty of cave spiders, the glistening rock floor the only sign that anything had even happened in there.
“Let’s not do that again,” Trish said.
“Agreed.”
They continued down the tunnel, which eventually led to a large door. Patrick tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. All this way, only to reach a dead end. Their journey stopped because of a locked door. Patrick wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
Chapter 5: Trish
Trish waited to see how Patrick would get them through, but to her surprise, he just stared at the door, a look of hopelessness on his large face. After what seemed like forever, he took a step back and slumped down against a stone pillar.
Wait a minute, Trish thought, looking at the pillar. She leaned in closer to get a better look at what appeared to be the image of three ender pearls carved into the stone. She turned and saw two more pillars, one with one ender pearl carved, the other with four.
“The password,” Trish said, excitedly.
“I wish,” Patrick said, his face in his hands as if he were about to cry.
Whatever, she wasn’t going to let him bring her down. She approached the door, searching for any sort of place to use numbers, and then she saw it—a spinney dial thing. She moved it according to the numbers on the pillars, if you were to look down at them from above and go clockwise. Four, one, three.
Click.
The door opened inward, and Trish turned to Patrick, hands on her hips, beaming.
“You. Are. Amazing.” He stood and hugged her. “Seriously, amazing.”
“Yeah, well…” She shrugged. “Save it for when we make it out of here alive.”
“You got it open,” Patrick said, gesturing for her to go first, “so, after you.”
She gave him a little bow, then started to step through the door, but Sharp trotted ahead of her and caused her to stumble. She blushed with a glance back to Patrick. He laughed and they went through. What she saw on the other side made her freeze, mouth hanging open in awe.
This had to be the largest underground cavern she’d ever seen. Torches lit the walls of the cavern, but glow stone was speckled across the bottom. Someone had even used glow stones to create patterns in the walls—large patterns. Trish couldn’t quite figure out what they were supposed to be, but one formed a bit of a square with a zigzagged line through it, another a spiral, and a third a crisscross pattern. She imagined there was one below them too, but couldn’t make it out from where they stood.
Most impressive of all, however, was the upside down pyramid in the very center of the cavern. The “top” of the pyramid, or bottom in this case, nearly connected with the ground, a ladder between the two.
And there he was—the ninja! They saw him for a split-second before he’d vanished.
“Where’d he go now?” she asked, exasperated.
“There must be a way into that…pyramid?” Patrick said. “Can you call it a pyramid if it’s upside down?”
“Let’s go with yes.”
She leaned forward, seeing that there were steps built down to the bottom. She would have thought this place would’ve been crawling with cave spiders and other
monsters, but apparently there were enough torches to keep that from happening.
“Let’s get in there,” Patrick said. He was about to run on ahead, but paused and smiled. “Together?”
She nodded. “Together.”
They ran down the stairs, Sharp leading the way. With each step, Trish felt the surge of excitement rushing over her. This had to be it, they were so close!
When they were almost to the ladder, another figure leaped down from a staircase on the far side of the chamber. The newcomer sprinted at them, two steel swords flashing in the torchlight.
Patrick took a stance next to Trish, and together they held out their stone swords, ready for the attack. Trish sure wished she’d had time to make better swords and replenish her supply of arrows.
The newcomer skidded to a stop, swords raised, a look of fury on her face, and that’s when Trish recognized her.
“Veera?” Trish said.
“Veera,” Patrick repeated with a hint of annoyance in his voice.
“Wait, you two know each other?” Trish asked, glancing between the two of them. Meanwhile, Veera kept her swords raised, eyes dancing between Trish and Patrick.
“Let’s just say our paths have crossed,” Patrick said. “Back in my pirate days.”
“Double-crossed,” Veera finally spoke up.
“Excuse me?” Patrick said. “You chose another’s side. That wasn’t my choice for you.”
“Only until I realized what a scumbag Carmine was, but by then you were gone.”
“Wait, Carmine?” Patrick said, exchanging a look with Trish.
“That was his name. So?”
“It’s just…” Patrick glared. “That’s beside the point. Was I was supposed to wait around and see who changed their mind first?”
“You weren’t supposed to abandon us!”
The two glared at each other, neither giving in. Finally, Trish cleared her throat.
“Um, you two…” Trish pointed up to the ladder. “Shouldn’t we get moving.”
“Your friend has a point,” Veera said to Patrick, and then finally lowered her swords. “If you’re with her, maybe we can work together.”
Blade of the Sea Book 3: A Children's Survival Unofficial Minecraft Adventure Book Page 2