The Phantom Virus

by Mark Cheverton

  They moved through the minecart network until they reached the next village, then switched to a new track and headed to the north. In five minutes, they reached Stonecutter’s village. When they emerged from the tunnel, Gameknight could instantly feel the tension and fear among the NPCs of this village. It looked as if all of the villagers were inside the crafting chamber, which almost never happened. By the looks on their faces, they were afraid to go back up to the surface.

  W hat had made them so scared? Gameknight thought, and then the word “bones” popped into his mind.

  “Are you being attacked by skeletons?” the User-that-is-not-a-user asked the crowd. The villagers shook their heads, fear and panic filling their square eyes.

  Gameknight looked at Crafter, confused.

  “I think we need to go up and see what’s happening,” Crafter suggested.

  “I think you’re right,” Gameknight replied.

  Once all of his friends arrived, Gameknight led them up the steps and out of the crafting chamber. Moving quickly through the tunnels, they made their way to the watchtower that stood guard over the village. But as soon as they entered, their ears were assaulted by what sounded like a terrible storm raging outside.

  Gameknight moved to the window and peered out. He could tell by the gray-green grass that they were in the savannah; bent and twisted acacia trees were visible on the hills that surrounded the community. The landscape on those hills looked peaceful enough, with no monsters in sight, but within the village, it was a different matter. Everywhere inside the fortified wall of the village, it was snowing … which was impossible. It never snowed in the savannah. This was the desert. But nevertheless, Gameknight could see the ground was blanketed in snow. Except, as he looked closer, he saw something wasn’t quite right. The ‘snow’ he saw wasn’t floating down like fluffy snowflakes; it was plummeting to the ground at high speed.

  “Is it hail?” Stitcher asked as she peered through the window.

  “I don’t think so. Look at the shape,” Hunter replied. “Some of them look like snowballs, but others look sorta like sticks.”

  “They look like icicles falling from the sky,” Digger said as he looked through the barred opening in the door.

  Reaching into his inventory, Digger pulled out his big pickaxe as well as a second pick. With a tool in each hand, the big NPC looked ready for battle. The image of him with his two picks reminded Gameknight of something he’d seen on the Internet; something about an update to Minecraft.

  “We have to go outside and see what it is,” Crafter said.

  “Hold on a minute. I need to do an experiment,” Gameknight said.

  “This isn’t the right time to be messing around,” Hunter said suspiciously.

  Gameknight looked at her and smiled, then pulled out a crafting bench and placed it on the ground. Pulling out three blocks of red wool, three planks, and an ingot of iron, he quickly placed them in the arrangement he’d seen on someone’s snapshot video. The pieces instantly transformed into one large rectangular object.

  “What is that?” Stitcher asked.

  Gameknight picked it up and held it in his left hand.

  “It’s a shield,” he explained. “A new update to the game. It must have been finally added. I can use it to go out there and protect myself from all the hail and icicles.”

  “Good idea,” Crafter replied as he pulled out a piece of armor from his own inventory.

  Gameknight opened the door and stepped out into the deluge, the shield held over his head. As he moved through the village, it felt as if someone were hammering with a thousand tiny hammers on the metal that sheltered him. Each delivered a small thump, but together, the ferocity of blows made it difficult to keep the shield held high.

  “Gameknight, look,” Crafter said off to his right.

  The User-that-is-not-a-user turned to his friend. Crafter was crouched down, holding an iron chestplate over his head with one hand and pointing to the ground with the other. Gameknight999 knelt beside him. He was shocked when he realized what was falling from the sky … bones! Thousands of bones, mixed with snowballs, were falling all across this village.

  “How can this be?” Gameknight asked Crafter.

  But before the young NPC could respond, Hunter’s voice sliced through the storm.

  “SIGN!”

  She was standing near the crops, next to a post planted in the ground, right in the middle of what used to be a field of wheat. As he reached her side, Gameknight saw that all the crops were destroyed. The falling bones had crushed the life out of the plants, and the snowballs had frozen the savannah soil solid. Moving behind Hunter, he looked down at the sign.

  “What does it say?” boomed Digger.

  Gameknight sighed as he read the message out loud.

  “The sign says, ‘THIS IS YOUR FUTURE.’ It’s signed by Herobrine again,” Gameknight said.

  Digger pulled out his pickaxe and shattered the sign in frustration, then immediately began building a cobblestone structure over the fields so the wheat and melons could be replanted.

  “How could Herobrine be doing this?” Stitcher asked as she moved near. “We destroyed him. I’m sure of it.”

  Gameknight shook almost imperceptibly as he thought about Herobrine still being alive. But that’s impossible, he thought. It’s just some prank.

  “At least this is relatively harmless,” Gameknight said, unable to come up with an explanation.

  “Harmless? Hardly,” Herder said, a look of anger in his eyes. “Look at the crops! They're destroyed. No one will ever be able to live here again.”

  “Sure, but at least no one was hurt,” Gameknight said. “The villagers can build new homes and form a new community. They'll be all right.”

  “But will Minecraft be all right?” Herder asked, a stern look on his square face. “Minecraft must always be in balance. If we mine too much iron or coal or gold, we throw the natural mechanisms of the land out of balance. Every villager would know not to do that; it would be irresponsible and foolish. After all, why would someone knowingly use up all the resources of a land, leaving it bare? This is the same thing. Minecraft must be kept in balance, and all these bones and snowballs tip that balance in a dangerous direction.”

  “I don’t think these bones and snowballs are going to hurt anything. They’re a bit of an inconvenience, but that’s all,” Gameknight replied.

  “You don’t understand,” Herder replied, his voice edged with anger. “Things like this never seem like a big deal at first because when they first start, they’re small. People accept them because they’re not very significant. It seems like small steps, but if you take enough small steps, you can go great distances. This feels like the first of many small steps, and if we don’t try to figure out what’s happening here, soon it may be far too late to stop it.”

  “Wisdom from the Wolfman,” Crafter said, patting the boy on the back.

  The lanky boy smiled then looked at his friend, Gameknight999. But the User-that-is-not-a-user was not smiling. He was looking at the rainstorm of bones bouncing off a hastily-built roof of cobblestone to protect the crops, scowling.

  “What is going on here?” he said to himself, knowing deep down that his friend, Herder, could be right. “This feels wrong, very wrong. Sure, everything so far has been a harmless prank … but how long will they stay harmless? And what’s going to happen next?”

  CHAPTER 4

  SENDING A MESSAGE

  The spider queen hung high up on the wall of the massive cavern, peering down on all the shadowy blocks spread out across the platform below. There were hundreds of the strange orange-checkered cubes, all of them connected to some kind of red powder. As a spider, Shaivalak had no idea what all of it did, but knew it was somehow an important part of Herobrine’s plan for revenge against Gameknight999 and the NPCs of the Overworld.

  Herobrine had escaped from Minecraft with the User-that-is-not-a-user; she’d seen it in the Nether during the Last Battle. She
assumed the Maker was causing great suffering in the physical world, so why did he need revenge here in Minecraft? It didn’t make much sense to her, but she knew it didn’t matter. Her job was the follow the Maker’s last commands before he escaped, and she would do that to the best of her abilities.

  Releasing her grip on the block of web, she slowly crawled down the wall to the cobblestone platform that sat in the middle of the giant cave. At the edges of the platform was a bridge that led onto the cobblestone plane, and a second bridge that led to the platform filled with the strange orange blocks. On either side of the narrow, block-wide bridge, there was nothing but a long, long drop to the bottom.

  Gripping the cave wall with the sharp points of her curved claws, the spider queen climbed down below the cobblestone plane that had been built here by the Maker. At the bottom of the cavern, she could see a single redstone torch illuminating a small section of the wall; this was her destination.

  Echoes of her claws scraping across the cold stone walls reverberated throughout the silent chamber as she descended. All of the skeletons had been sent away to patrol the upper passages of the cave, leaving Shaivalak alone. That was fine; right now, she only wanted to look at Herobrine’s last instructions again. Continuing her descent, she moved down the wall of the cavern as easily as a person would walk on the ground. But it was at least forty blocks from the bridge down to the bottom of the cavern; a fall from that height would be fatal.

  When Shaivalak reached the bottom, she scurried toward the redstone torch. Around it sat a series of signs, all of which had been placed there by Herobrine. How or when he’d built this place, she didn’t know—maybe during the assault on the Source, or perhaps after her predecessor, Shaikulud, had been destroyed by that cowardly Gameknight999.

  She approached the signs and read them all again. They outlined how to defend the cavern by sending the spiders out into the Overworld to watch for the User-that-is-not-a-user, while the skeleton king and his minions would guard the cavern’s tunnels and passages. But the most important sign was the one directly under the redstone torch. It told how to start the timer on the device that sat in shadows high overhead: a command block system.

  Shaivalak had done that, and could see the timer display on the wall of the cavern slowly ticking down. It currently read 92 … a long way from zero.

  The sign next to it had only three words, but the spider instantly knew its meaning. It read in big, bold letters: “MAKE HIM SUFFER!”

  Her eyes glowing with evil intent, Shaivalak climbed back up the wall to the cobblestone platform. Crawling around the edge, she moved to a cluster of spiderweb blocks and sat on the soft filaments. Reaching out with her mind, she felt for the strange, ethereal threads that connected her to all her spiders, sisters and brothers alike. She wanted to send the brothers, who were all cave spiders, out after Gameknight999 and his companions. Those foolish NPCs never thought to have milk with them, the only antidote to a cave spider’s poison, but the brothers were all busy caring for the next batch of spider eggs in the hatchery. No, this would have to be a job for the sisters. Reaching out to her spider minions, she sent instructions of her own that would bring them all to action.

  Find the Usssser-that-issss-not-a-usssser, Shaivalak commanded. The Maker commandssss that he must be made to ssssuffer. Sssseek him out and punissssh him for his crimessss againsssst the sssspider nation. Do not return without hissss diamond blade.

  She knew the small groups of spiders would search the Overworld until he was found. They would throw themselves at him and try to destroy him, even though they might find themselves outnumbered. But the instructions were not to destroy him; the Maker’s message was clear. The loss of fifty spiders was not important; more would be hatched soon, and those younglings would soon be ready for battle and could replace those that were killed.

  All that mattered was that Gameknight999 suffered, and Shaivalak knew her spiders were up for that task.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE SISTERS ATTACK

  Gameknight999 placed the cobblestone blocks across the makeshift roof as quickly as he could; he knew Hunter’s arm was likely getting tired. She was holding an iron chestplate over his head while he put the stone blocks down, creating new cover that would span the width of the village. The white bones and snowballs bounced off the iron shield and landed a block away. The force of their impact stung if you didn’t hold something over your head, but didn’t really do any damage; it was only a nuisance. The only real victims were the village’s crops, and they’d been the first to get a new protective cover.

  The bone storm had not let up once since their arrival to the savannah village. They still didn’t know how Herobrine had managed to cause this to happen, and his tricks were slowly turning from just peculiar to unsettling.

  This was his fourth prank, after the pigs, the cows, and the slime balls. Crafter pointed out that the pranks were increasing in severity, which meant that there could be more coming that might actually be dangerous, or even deadly. But how could they help to build up their defenses against a prank that they didn’t know the slightest thing about? They’d decided there wasn’t anything that could be done immediately that would make them much safer. As a result, it was agreed the first priority was to help this village so that its NPCs could survive.

  It had been Herder’s idea to put a roof over the entire village. The job was something doable, a confidence booster for the group, plus all the villagers could contribute something by either placing the individual stones or holding an iron umbrella as armor over the builders while they worked. Focusing on what they could do rather than what they couldn’t instantly buoyed the villagers’ spirits. The NPCs eagerly gathered stacks of cobblestone and went to work. Operating in pairs, they quickly covered the area around the watchtower, creating stone coverings twelve blocks off the ground that were slowly spreading outward and protecting more of the village with every passing minute.

  As the stone roof grew larger, they could fit more pairs of workers on the perimeter, and the roof grew at a faster rate. By noontime, it spanned half the village.

  “Come on, faster,” Hunter complained. “My arm is getting tired.”

  “You want to switch?” Gameknight offered. “I’d happily let you lean over all day and lift blocks of stone.”

  “As attractive as you make that sound, I’m thinkin’ no,” Hunter replied with a smile. “What we need to do is—”

  A voice cut through the clattering noise.

  Gameknight glanced up at the watchtower. Stitcher stood up under the new cobblestone roof, staring out into the desert. It looked as if she were pointing at something, but it was difficult to see through the downpour of white debris.

  “We better find out what’s going on,” Hunter said. she dropped the iron shield she’d been holding over Gameknight’s head and ran for the watchtower.

  Gameknight’s diamond helmet started to ring as the bones bounced off the blue crystalline coating and fell around his feet. The snowballs froze his cheeks. Not wanting to stand around waiting to hear what happened, he followed Hunter, careful not to trip or slip on any of the snowballs piling up on the newly-constructed roof. There was a recently-cut doorway into the side of the watchtower, and Gameknight ducked inside, feeling better out of the relentless weather.

  Removing his helmet, Gameknight ran up the steps to the top level of the watchtower. There, he found Hunter and Stitcher both peering out into the white storm at the landscape before them. Gameknight stood next to the younger sister.

  “What did you see?” he asked.

  “I thought I saw something moving across the savannah,” Stitcher said. “I don’t think it was horses or cows or anything like that; the shape was … wrong.”

  “Then what was it?” Hunter asked.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Stitcher replied. She sounded frustrated. “It was there for a second, then it was gone. Now I can’t see anything through these bones.”

  Gameknight put a han
d on her shoulder. She looked up at him and gave him a worried smile, her brown eyes filled with apprehension.

  “Stitcher, what do you think it was?” Gameknight asked.

  “Well … they looked like shadows, but they were round, sorta,” she said.

  “Spiders,” Hunter growled.

  “Maybe,” Gameknight said. “Where did you see them?”

  “Over by the river that cuts through the desert,” Stitcher said. “That river is in a shallow valley that’s maybe four or five blocks deep. The spiders could be running along the banks of that river and we wouldn’t be able to see them until they were right on us.”

  “What do you think we should do?” Hunter asked.

  “Well, I think we need to know what’s out there,” Gameknight mused. “But there’s no way we can use the horses in this storm without them panicking. We’ll have to go on foot.”

  “Right,” Hunter agreed. “Then let’s get going. We can’t afford to let the—”

  “SPIDERS!” someone shouted through the clattering storm.

  Gameknight spun around and saw a large group of spiders scaling the walls of the village behind them. The monsters hesitated for just a moment as they first entered the bone-and-snow storm, as if they didn’t really want to, but were being forced to attack.

  “Everyone, get off the roof and meet down on the ground!” Gameknight shouted. “Stitcher, seal up the stairways that lead to the ground after everyone is safely down. Let’s not make it easy for them to get to us. Use your bows to keep the monsters back.”

  Not waiting to hear a response, he sprinted down the cobblestone stairs that led to the ground. Terrified villagers greeted him, all of them looking like they wanted to just run away out into the desert.

  “No, you can’t run. This is your home!” Gameknight cried before anyone spoke. “I know you’re scared, but we have to work together, and quickly. Now, everyone pull out some cobblestone. We have about two minutes to build some defenses before the monsters figure out where we are. Build a wall around the watchtower, quickly.”