“What’re you doing here?” he asked.
“Saving you,” she said, then coughed up water and sat up to look at the oncoming ninjas. “Though now that I think about it, I’m not sure this was the best plan.”
Veera landed with a splash beside them, and Aziz turned to pull her out. When he saw who it was, he looked back and forth between Veera and Trish, his eyes narrowing.
“Now I know something’s up,” he said. He patted Sharp on the head. “It’s good to see at least one of you.”
“No time for that,” Veera said, pointing at the ninjas who were almost on them.
But even as she spoke, it was already too late—the ninjas had them surrounded. There had to be a couple hundred of them. Trish felt her heart sink. They were done for. At least she’d had the fun experience of jumping down a waterfall, seeing as it would be the last thing she did in this life.
Chapter 12: Patrick
Patrick was wheezing with exhaustion by the time he made it through the maze and past the monsters. He’d discovered which direction to take when more explosions sounded, though that had led him to a life or death fight through a horde of monsters and ninjas.
Instead of trying to fight, he had plowed through them. He swept the monsters aside when necessary and, at one point, kicked a creeper through a large group of them to clear his way with its explosion.
He’d seen the girls from a distance and gone after them, but then had to double back when he realized some of the ninjas had broken off from the fight with the monsters to follow him.
Finding a good hiding spot, he’d stayed still until they gave up and went back to join their group, and then he’d made it to a lower ledge of the cliff just in time to see Trish already falling.
At first, it’d looked like Veera pushed her, and Patrick was stunned. But then Veera had jumped too, and Patrick saw Aziz below.
Now he watched in horror as ninjas surrounded Aziz and the girls. He couldn’t just stand here and watch them be defeated. He had to do something, but what?
He crept forward, debating his move. Soon he was next to the temple, looking down at the ninjas. He could just make out Aziz’s face.
The guy was smiling!
It didn’t add up. Could it be…?
“It’s a trap!” Patrick called out, and everyone spun to look up at him. “Aziz is with them, it’s a trap, run!”
Trish looked completely torn between joy at seeing him and confusion from what he was saying. Patrick took the moment to run and jump, sliding down one of the pillars to join his friends.
“Tell them it’s not true,” Patrick said to Aziz.
The smile was gone from Aziz’s face.
“Is it?” Trish asked.
Aziz was still glaring at Patrick when he said, “Yes.”
Trish gasped, taking a step away from him, but Veera and Sharp were still looking around confused.
“Then why aren’t they attacking?” Veera said.
“Precisely because they’re with me,” Aziz said. “And so are you.”
“But they were attacking us a few moments ago!” Trish protested.
Aziz turned to her and his expression softened. “Yes, because you were intruders. I didn’t know you were here, but I did know pirates were in the vicinity. I had reports of a pirate ship and people asking about me in town.”
“That was us,” Trish said, sheepishly. “But there are pirates above.”
One of the ninjas stepped forward and said, “I can confirm that. We have two clans fighting off their monsters in the Maze of Malnar as we speak.”
Aziz sighed. “My ninjas will hold them off. You two and the wolf are safe with me.”
“Us two…?” Trish asked.
Aziz turned back to Patrick, his eyes full of spite. “This one doesn’t belong here. See he’s thrown out with the trash.”
The ninja who’d stepped forward moved toward Patrick, pulling out his diamond sword.
Patrick took a step back, confused.
“Wait!” Trish said, stepping between the two. “Aziz, this is my friend!”
“Is that so?” Aziz looked at Patrick. “So, what, you befriended her too, only to stab her in the back like you did everyone else?”
“Aziz, the pirate days were done for me,” Patrick said, leaving his sword in its sheath, hands up. “It was nothing personal.”
“Nothing personal?” Aziz scoffed. “After everything we did for you. Our captain! We loved you, man. And the power I gave you…only to see it thrown aside.”
“Power? What’re you talking about?”
“The medallion,” Aziz said. “You probably tossed it into the sea like I heard you did with the rest of the treasure.”
“That treasure wasn’t ours to keep.”
“I gave you that medallion!” Aziz shouted. “It wasn’t yours to throw out!”
Patrick held his gaze, both glaring. Finally, Patrick reached under his armor and pulled out the smooth metal disc that hung from a thin rope around his neck.
“You mean this one?” Patrick asked.
Aziz gasped. “But, why…?”
“It was the last thing you gave me, my only memory of you and the others. I’d never part with it.”
The hardness on Aziz’s face melted and, for a moment, Patrick wondered if Aziz was going to cry
“Anyone mind telling me what’s going on here?” Veera asked, looking as confused as Trish did with her mouth hanging open.
“Patrick wears the Amulet of Amaran,” Aziz said with a warm, victorious smile, “making him the Blade of the Sea.”
Everyone was now staring at Patrick, and he let the medallion drop to clang against his armor. No, this couldn’t be right. He was off in his village, minding his own business, how…?
“You’re mistaken,” Patrick said. “It’s you.”
“It was me,” Aziz said. “But I gave the medallion to you, thinking you were the best person to handle the responsibility. Only, before I could explain it all to you, you’d left. Gone for good they said, and I heard you’d abandoned all worldly possessions. Naturally, I’d assumed you’d done the same with the Amulet of Amaran too, and I figured we were all doomed. But here you are.”
“So what the pirates were after all along…It was right here, dangling from my neck.”
“It appears so.”
“Wow,” Veera said. Then her eyes brightened. “Oh, that explains why the map pointed to Patrick!”
“The what?” Patrick said, once again lost.
“This one,” Trish said. She pulled out a map and showed it to him. Sure enough, a small dot showed them right where they were.
“Wait a minute,” he said, pointing to the dot on the map. “You had this the whole time and knew it was pointing to me? And you didn’t say anything?”
“I wasn’t quite sure about you,” Trish said. With a meek shrug, she added, “Now I am, though. I hope that counts for something.”
He felt so betrayed, so alone. She hadn’t trusted him all this time, and Aziz thought he’d thrown off some great power and betrayed them all.
“I…I’m sorry you all thought that about me,” he said. “But right now we have bigger concerns, don’t we? PB&J is still after us. Well, after me, I guess. We have to make sure they don’t get this.” He tucked the medallion back under his armor.
“He’s right, Sir,” the head ninja said to Aziz. “We still have the monsters and the pirates to deal with.”
“Yes, just—”
A Ka-BOOM sounded and rock, glow stone, and gold flew down from above, hitting a few of the ninjas.
Low grunts of monsters came from the direction of the explosion, followed by a cheer from pirates. The monsters were storming in, and behind them and from other tunnels came a line of pirates.
“Looks like you’re too late,” Captain Selna said, standing at the highest point so that her voice boomed through the chamber. “Give me the medallion.”
Chapter 13: Trish
Trish stumbled
back, overwhelmed at the sight of all those monsters advancing on them, the rough and ready pirates on the ledges beyond, just as scary.
This couldn’t be happening. First, she had been sure they were going to die in the maze, then above ground, then she’d nearly sacrificed herself to save Aziz, who she barely knew, and now this! She was getting pissed.
“Come down here and take the medallion then!” she yelled back at Selna. “If you dare!”
Everyone turned to her in shock. Normally she would have blushed, maybe stepped back and stayed quiet, but not now. She was done being like that.
“Come on everyone,” she said. “We can take ‘em!”
After a moment of silence, the ninjas cheered. As one, they ran right for the monsters, weapons at the ready.
“Wow, that was something!” Patrick said, coming up to her. “You sure about this?”
“It’s not like we have anywhere to run, anyway,” she said. “So yeah, let’s take on these jerks.”
He smiled and pulled out a gold sword. Likewise, she drew her diamond sword, and then they charged, Veera, Aziz, and Sharp at their sides.
It was chaos. Pure insanity. Zombies charging, skeletons shooting, and creepers exploding. Pirates shot arrows down from above, not caring who they hit, but the ninjas were fast, dodging blows and arrows, and causing a real dent in the monsters.
It wasn’t over yet though. More and more monsters kept coming, filtering in through the passages that led into the massive chamber.
Trish did her part, slicing through a zombie one moment, and the next stomping on a humongous spider and using it to bounce into the air to avoid a creeper explosion. She turned to see a skeleton shooting an arrow at Patrick’s back, but she pushed him out of the way so it barely dinged the side of his armor and did no damage.
“Thanks!” he said.
Aziz slid between them, striking a zombie’s legs out from under it, just as Veera leaped into the air and brought down her two swords into a spider and then spun to take down two creepers before they got close enough to explode.
Five zombies broke through the ninja line and reached for Aziz, but Trish struck the first one in the chest while her friends moved in to finish the rest. She looked up, triumphant, only to see ten more zombies following. The ninjas were scattered, the line broken, and now pirates were yelling war cries and joining in the fight.
“We have to fall back,” Aziz said, a look of disbelief in his wide eyes.
“To where?” Trish asked.
“Bonefeather Temple,” he said, motioning to the spectacular temple behind him. “It’s our only hope.
Everyone ran while Aziz shouted for the ninjas to regroup.
A hand grabbed Trish’s leg and she tripped. A wounded zombie had her, pulling her toward its open mouth with rotting teeth.
“Help!” she screamed, reaching for her sword that had fallen just out of reach.
Aziz stepped up and stomped on the zombie’s arm so that the hand let her free.
“That makes us even,” he said with a charming smile, then helped her up. They ran to the temple, together, as arrows landed all around them.
At the entrance, Aziz hit a couple of switches, then waited as the doors opened. The ninjas and Trish’s group dashed in as fast as they could.
Trish glanced back, realizing there wasn’t going to be time.
“We have to hurry!” she said.
“I got this,” Aziz said. He stepped over to the other side of the entrance and hit another button that revealed a switch. When he pulled this, a groaning sounded from all over the chamber.
Trish strained her eyes, trying to see if that was what she thought. Dispensers?
Swish-swish-swish. Arrows were flying through the chamber, striking down monsters one after another.
“Why didn’t you do that earlier?” Trish asked in amazement.
“Last resort,” he said as he ushered her inside. “Plus, the ninjas like a good fight.”
The doors closed behind them, and they dashed up to the next level where they could see out through small slits in the blocks. More switches lined the wall here.
“See,” Aziz said, “it’s not enough to stop them.”
Sure enough, the arrows were already starting to slow, and the monsters kept coming. The pirates had stopped at the edge of the chamber, smart enough to wait and see what Aziz threw at them next.
Aziz was happy to oblige.
“They’re standing in a fun place for this,” he said, pulling a switch.
At the top of the waterfalls, blocks moved and the waterfalls changed directions so that they poured onto the pirates, sweeping them into the main area with the monsters.
The ninjas cheered as the monsters turned on the pirates.
“That’ll keep them occupied for a while,” Patrick said. “But what’s the plan?”
“First of all, you don’t get to talk to me about any plan,” Aziz said with a scowl. But then he looked to Veera and Trish, his charming smile back. “We wait them out, then attack.”
“Don’t you have any more tricks there?” Trish asked, reaching for one of the levers.
“No!” Aziz said, grabbing her hand and then slowly guiding it away from the lever. “Some of those are only for a very last-last resort, if you get my drift.”
She stared at him, not following.
“He means like a self-destruction option,” Veera whispered in Trish’s ear.
“Oh, sorry.” Trish put her hands at her side, eyeing the lever with fright.
“Let’s get to the center of the temple,” Aziz said. “We can eat and regroup, get our energy back until they break through.”
They all followed, but Trish heard a click. When she looked back, the lever was pulled.
“Um, Aziz…” she said. “I swear, I didn’t do that.”
Aziz looked over and the smile vanished from his face the instant he saw the lever. “RUN!” he said, and didn’t wait to see if anyone was following as he sprinted up the stairs.
Trish followed, leaping two stairs at a time, and it was like a stampede of ninjas trying to get out of there.
A hissing sounded, then a click, as Aziz opened a secret passage that led down steps, and he threw himself down them like a slide. The others followed, the sounds growing louder behind them. When the last person came through the stairway, Aziz threw the lever that shut the doors, just as the explosions sounded—
BOOM! KA-BOOM! KA-KA-KAA-BOOM!
The room shook, bits of stone and gold falling around the group as they huddled in a small room lit by torches.
They waited for the vibrations and the booming to stop, and then Aziz stepped forward and turned to face them, eyes narrowed.
“Someone here pulled that lever,” he said. “Which means, one of you is a traitor.”
His eyes fell on Patrick and lingered there. Trish felt her heart clench at the idea that Patrick could have done such a thing—surely he didn’t do it, right? But with the history between these two, even she had to wonder.
Chapter 14: Patrick
Patrick couldn’t believe this. He’d been fighting right alongside the rest of them, keeping them alive, and now they wanted to blame him! Even Trish was looking at him suspiciously. His only comfort was that Sharp stood by his side and rubbed his head against Patrick’s leg.
“Wow,” Patrick said, stroking the wolf’s fur. “At least I still have one friend here.”
“So you didn’t…?” Trish asked hesitantly.
Patrick just stared, having no idea how to answer that without losing his cool.
“None of my ninjas would’ve,” Aziz said. “So that leaves one of you.”
“Well I wouldn’t doubt Trish for a second,” Patrick said, taking a bit of pleasure in the guilt that showed through her smile. He still couldn’t understand how she could’ve possibly doubted him, even if just for a minute. “And I’d normally say the same about Veera, but she did show up here rather mysteriously…”
“Whoa, wh
oa!” Veera backed up, hands held where everyone could see them. “If I wanted you all dead, you think I’d be standing here right now? Trish, how many chances would I have had to take you down?”
“I trust Veera,” Trish said.
Patrick nodded, almost regretting he’d suggested it. Aziz’s eyes moved to the wolf.
“Hey, we know Sharp’s innocent,” Patrick said.
“Don’t even think about looking at my wolf like that,” Trish said as she knelt beside Sharp and patted her head. “How dare you?”
“You didn’t get so defensive when he suspected me,” Patrick said, but Trish rolled her eyes and turned back to glare at Aziz.
“Right…” Aziz began pacing in front of his ninjas. “Leaving my ninjas.”
The ninjas started shuffling nervously.
Suddenly a BOOM sounded, and the ceiling shook.
“Over here!” a voice called from above. “Think I found something.”
“We don’t have long,” Aziz said with a glance at the door. “They’ll figure out where we hid, and then it’s us versus them, one final hurrah. But if there’s a traitor in our midst, we better know now.” He stared long and hard at the ninjas, then said, “Take off your masks.”
A collective gasp rose out from the ninjas. Three of them stepped forward and did so, and Patrick saw that one of them was the man they’d followed to get here.
Aziz cleared his throat and waited for the others.
“But, Sir, they never,” one of the unmasked ninjas protested.
“Do it!”
The protesting ninja stepped back while the other ninjas began to oblige. To Trish’s horror, what was underneath was not a regular person, but a zombie-pigman! More like, almost zombie-pigman, with human characteristics, but a nose and ears that resembled a pig and the touch of green in patches that showed zombie trying to take over. The zombie-pigman looked away in shame.
“The rest of you,” Aziz said, his expression sorrowful but determined.
One by one, the ninjas removed their masks to reveal a bunch of zombie-pigmen.
Blade of the Sea Book 3: A Children's Survival Unofficial Minecraft Adventure Book Page 5