by Jerome ASF
Copyright © 2015 by Jerome Aceti
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Brian Peterson
Cover artwork by Josh Bruce (www.inkbyte.net)
Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-0398-8
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0399-5
Printed in Canada
Chapter One
The zombie took a step forward.
Bacca smiled and waited. So did the crowd of spectators sitting in the amphitheater around him.
The zombie took another step across the raised platform. Then another. Then another still.
In his hand, Bacca held his most prized possession in the entire Overworld—a glistening diamond axe named “Betty.” It shimmered in the light of the moon above, and felt perfectly balanced in Bacca’s hands . . . almost like it was a part of him. Betty had seen Bacca through many adventures, and proved itself worthy of every challenge. If a finer weapon existed anywhere, Bacca did not know of it.
Bacca carefully took aim at the zombie. The watching crowd could no longer contain their excitement.
“What’s he going to do to the zombie?” someone asked expectantly. “Can you see?”
“I wonder what he’s waiting for?” asked another.
“Is that Betty?” asked a third. “Ooh, it’s all . . . sparkly, like!”
The crowd didn’t know exactly what they were there to see, but that was part of the appeal. With Bacca in charge, they knew that, whatever it was, it was going to be something good.
In addition to being talented with an axe, Bacca was the most celebrated crafter in the entire Minecraft universe. He was always constructing staggering, inventive environments that bordered on the unbelievable. Glistening skyscrapers. Endless labyrinths. Treetop canopies that seemed to extend forever into the sky. And Bacca always built these things with his friends in mind. People from servers all over the Overworld came to marvel at his creations. He also had a devilish sense of fun. Some of his creations were pranks or tricks. You never knew precisely what you were going to get with Bacca. That was part of what made him such a showman.
The zombie on the platform took another drunken, staggering step toward Bacca. Betty gleamed brightly in the moonlight. And then descended.
Striking at precisely the right moment, Bacca skillfully knocked the zombie off the side of the platform, down a chute he had created out of blocks of wooden planks. The zombie tumbled back and forth comically along the chute until it was spat out into an alley . . . leading to a triangle of carefully crafted iron pins. The zombie collided against them and made a satisfying sound. The iron pins toppled over. The crowd began to cheer.
“Zombie bowling!” said someone. “Well, that’s a new one. I like it!”
“I wondered what those pins were for,” said another. “In retrospect, I suppose it should have been obvious.”
“Looks like he bowled a strike to me,” said a third.
Bacca gazed on in satisfaction as the crowd around him expressed their pleasure in his latest Minecraft construction. Coming up with new ways to be creative never got old for him. The possibilities of Minecraft seemed endless. It was merely up to Bacca to discover them.
Later, after the crowd had left, Bacca strode alone through the empty amphitheater with his girlfriend, LadyBacc, and wondered what his next creation might be. How would he top himself? What would he do next?
“Zombie bowling was a hit,” said LadyBacc enthusiastically. “I totally knew it would be.”
“I guess,” said Bacca sheepishly. “I always feel pressure to do better. I don’t want to let the audience down. Know what I mean?”
“Do better?” she replied skeptically. “For a guy who looks like a hairy bear wearing a three piece suit, I think you’ve done very well for yourself.”
“You’re just saying that because you look like a hairy bear in a dress,” he pointed out.
“I’m being serious,” said LadyBacc. “Think about it. You’ve got millions of fans who come to watch the things that you create. You’re one of the most famous crafters in all of Minecraft—maybe the most famous.”
“Yeah,” said Bacca. “I suppose so. It’s just important to me that I give people a good show.”
“I think you worry too much,” LadyBacc said with a laugh. “Everything you build always ends up being awesome. I’m sure you’ll come up with something great for your next crafting project. You always do.”
“I guess you’re right,” Bacca said. “Thanks for the encouragement.”
“No problem!”
They agreed to meet up later in the week, but for the moment, Bacca was tired from all the day’s exciting events, and decided to retire for the evening.
To his castle.
Perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking a beautiful placid sea, the castle had ten towers reaching gloriously into the skies above. On top of the highest tower was a spire, and on the spire was a flag with a giant “B.” The three moats surrounding the castle contained flowing lava, water, and then lava again for good measure. Bacca easily bounded over them as he traced the familiar path back to his front door. (Any zombies or skeletons that came his way would not be so lucky.)
Hopping through his front hallway, he first made for the castle’s kitchen.
Bacca’s kitchen was unlike typical ones, in that it generally resembled a large aquarium. As the familiar blue glow came into view, Bacca’s stomach started growling. He took a moment to enjoy the appetizing sight of the salmon, clownfish, and pufferfish that all bobbed in front of him in the enormous glass tank.
It would be an understatement to say that Bacca’s favorite food was raw fish. It was more like his only food. Bacca had a hard time understanding why somebody would eat anything else. Maybe the appeal of raw fish had something to do with Bacca’s hairy, animal-like appearance. Maybe it was because it was the closest thing you could get to sushi in Minecraft. Or maybe it was just because it tasted totally delicious.
Bacca took out his favorite fishing pole from a rack on the wall and dangled his line into the enormous tank. His rod was enchanted with Lure, Luck of the Sea, and Unbreaking. Probably this was why the fish came right to him . . . but Bacca liked to think that it was also because of his excellent fishing skills.
When he had made a good-sized pile of fish beside him, Bacca put away the rod and began to dig in. Bacca ate with his hands, enjoying the feel of the slippery fish in his claws and relishing ripping each one open with his teeth. So delicious! Again,
he wondered why anybody would eat anything else!
After finishing the final fish, Bacca burped loudly, and headed up to his bedroom for some well-earned rest. On the way, he passed through the castle hallways overflowing with chests full of souvenirs from his many adventures. Some he had crafted himself, and others he had found, but each piece was designed to remind him of one of his awesome escapades throughout the Overworld.
Bacca climbed a sandstone staircase to the highest tower in his castle and finally arrived in the bedroom. He had a four-poster bed decorated with dark prismarine and gold. Bacca couldn’t wait to jump in. Bed was the place that his best crafting ideas usually came to him. What new creation would he dream up for tomorrow? Bacca was excited to find out!
Bacca took a running start and prepared to bound into bed . . . but a strange, sudden sound made him hesitate. It was a flapping, like giant wings cutting through the atmosphere. The noise was distant, but getting louder with each moment.
There was a single window set into the wall of Bacca’s bedroom. He hurried over and took a look at the landscape outside. Something very large rushed past the window. It was enormous, shiny, and moving very fast.
“What in the Overworld was that?” Bacca wondered out loud. But inside he already knew.
Dragon!
Being a master crafter, Bacca was no stranger to dragons. In fact, one of Bacca’s favorite games to play was “Dragon Escape” in which he and his friends lured an Ender Dragon into a biome they had created. Then they tried to evade it as it chased them around a complicated parkour course. It was great fun!
But dragons almost never showed up unannounced like this. What was this one doing here, at Bacca’s castle, in the middle of the night?
The dragon made another circle around Bacca’s bedroom tower. Bacca watched it go by. Just to make sure, he looked for the telltale wings, long tail, and giant teeth. Yep. There they were. Definitely a dragon.
But something was strange in the way its bright, crystal skin caught the light. Almost like it was . . . like it was . . .
Bacca did not have time to complete the thought.
Without warning, the dragon began to descend through the top of Bacca’s bedroom! The stone bricks it touched either exploded or melted away. The dragon knew what it was doing, digging down to find Bacca’s position. When Bacca’s roof was completely destroyed, the dragon hovered above him in midair.
The best way to kill a dragon was with a bow and arrows, but Bacca was an axe-guy. Besides, his bow was in a chest somewhere downstairs. Bacca considered his options. It would be easy to head down the winding staircase and outrun the dragon, but then it might follow him—and wreck his awesome castle that he’d so painstakingly crafted.
Before Bacca could arrive at a firm decision, the enormous dragon did something he’d never seen a dragon do before. It spoke.
“Hello,” it said in a voice as deep as an ocean trench. “Are you Bacca?”
Bacca was surprised, but only for a second.
“What’s this about?” Bacca replied coolly. “You just smashed up my roof. You got blocks everywhere. And what if it rains tonight? Seriously. Not cool.”
“Sorry,” the dragon said sheepishly. “I wouldn’t normally do something like this.”
“That’s exactly what you would normally do,” Bacca replied skeptically. “You’re a dragon.”
“I guess so,” the dragon said. “But I’m only here because it’s an emergency.”
“Oh yeah?” said Bacca. “What kind of emergency?”
The dragon hesitated.
“Also,” Bacca added, “am I crazy, or are you made of diamonds?”
“Yes,” the dragon said. “I am.”
It was true. The dragon’s entire body—from its wings, to its claws, to its tail—sparkled in a way reserved for the most precious of all substances in the Minecraft universe. The entirety of the great beast was made from diamonds. Bacca had never seen anything like it.
“Whoa . . . cool!” said Bacca.
“Thank you . . . I think,” the dragon replied bashfully.
“Well, I don’t want to be rude,” Bacca said, “but as dragons go, you don’t seem very confident. Especially not for a dragon made out of diamonds.”
“It’s been a hard couple of weeks,” the dragon replied sadly. “Some bad stuff has happened. Well, one bad thing. One really, really bad thing. Imagine how bad something would have to be to make a diamond dragon lose its confidence. It’s that bad.”
“That does sound bad,” Bacca admitted. “But why are you bothering me about it?”
The dragon stopped hovering and perched on what was left of Bacca’s bedroom wall.
“I come from somewhere far away—an entirely different server plane,” it said. “It’s a plane that most inhabitants of Minecraft don’t know about. The creatures there are very different. For example, we have an emerald dragon and an ice dragon and even a pumpkin dragon.”
Bacca thought that a dragon made out of pumpkins would be particularly fun to carve up in a fight, but he decided to keep that thought to himself.
“What do I call you?” Bacca asked.
“Dragons don’t have names in the conventional sense,” his visitor replied. “You may call me the Diamond Dragon, if you wish.”
“Nice,” Bacca said. “My axe is made out of diamonds. But I call her ‘Betty.’”
“Anyhow, I’m here because the dragons of my server plane need your help,” the dragon continued. “Two weeks ago, a sacred and powerful object was stolen from us, called the Dragon Orb. From it, the power and wisdom of all dragons radiates. Without it, the many dragons on my plane are lost and weakened. Our powers are draining away.”
“That’s lousy,” Bacca said. “Do you know who took it?”
“Yes, we do,” the dragon said.
“Oh,” Bacca replied cheerily. “Then, problem solved, right? You’re a bunch of dragons. You can disintegrate anything! Who’s going to stand in your way if you want your Dragon Orb-thingy back?”
The dragon shook its enormous head—which was bigger than all of Bacca—to indicate that it was more complicated.
“The Dragon Orb was stolen by a clan of hostile creepers who call themselves The Creep,” the dragon explained. “They’re bright purple and they live in a magic fortress at the edge of the server. Without the Dragon Orb, we are powerless to penetrate their fortress. There is normally a door inside, but they have placed a magical barrier in front of it.”
“That isn’t very nice of them,” Bacca said.
The Diamond Dragon continued: “We don’t know why they stole our Dragon Orb—or what they plan to do with it—but when they took it, they left something behind. It’s a riddle. We think.”
“A riddle?” Bacca asked.
The enormous dragon nodded.
“We all knew immediately when the Dragon Orb was taken,” the dragon said. “We could feel it. And when we looked where it should have been, we found a mycelium block with writing on it in a crooked, creeper hand. It said: ‘To open the lock, bring us the key.’”
“What does that mean?” Bacca asked.
“We . . . erm . . . were kind of hoping you could figure that out,” said the Diamond Dragon.
“What?” answered Bacca. “I’m a crafter, not a . . . riddle-solver-guy.”
The dragon looked at Bacca seriously.
“I think that crafting is the only way to solve this riddle . . . and the other riddles that I fear may lie beyond,” it said seriously. “Dragons cannot craft. We can only destroy. And the loss of the Dragon Orb has diminished our powers to do even that.”
“I see,” Bacca said, considering the situation.
“Come with me to our server plane,” begged the dragon. “Let me show you the strange barrier that The Creep has created. It may be that solving this riddle is the challenge you have been preparing your whole life for, through all that crafting . . . without even knowing it.”
Bacca thought carefully. A ne
w challenge was always tempting. But this sounded like a big project, and possibly a dangerous one. Something told him he needed to proceed carefully.
“What do I get if I do this?” Bacca asked, raising a hairy eyebrow.
The dragon smiled. Bacca had never seen a dragon smile. It was kind of terrifying.
“You mentioned a diamond axe just now . . .” the dragon said confidently. “What if I told you that there was a crafting material on my server plane that was even more powerful, even stronger than diamond? And that you could craft things out of it?”
“I’d say I’d like to see that for myself,” Bacca said.
“Well then,” the Diamond Dragon said. “What are we waiting for? Jump onto my back, and I’ll take you to my plane. If you can solve the creepers’ riddles and get back the Orb, then this entirely new crafting material will be yours!”
Again, Bacca considered carefully. He already had so much. A castle full of the finest things that could be crafted (well, the castle was minus a roof, now, but that could be fixed easily). Legions of fans waiting anxiously for his next creation. All the yummy raw fish you could eat.
But a talking dragon—a talking dragon in trouble, no less—was something new and exciting. And the promise of a new crafting material? It was too much to turn down.
“I’ll do it!” Bacca cried, and leapt up onto the dragon’s back.
Bacca braced himself as he landed, expecting to take damage or even to be flung into space. (As he flew through the air toward the dragon, it occurred to Bacca that this could all be some sort of prank designed by one of his enemies, just to make him jump onto a dragon and disintegrate.)
But no.
Thump.
Bacca landed soundly on the dragon’s back. He did not disintegrate or take damage. It was surprisingly comfortable for being made out of something as hard as diamonds.
“Ooh, it’s nice up here,” Bacca said. “I could just take a nap while you do all the flying.”
“I advise holding on instead,” the dragon said, and began beating its enormous wings.
The dragon rose high into the sky and Bacca rose with it. They flew out over the giant glistening ocean on the other side of Bacca’s castle. The Overworld flew by below. Bacca could smell the sea—and, he thought, all the yummy raw fish—and feel the wind in his fur. His three-piece suit ruffled dramatically in the breeze. It was very exciting!