by Max Brooks
“SWORD!” I shouted to Moo, the sheep, and anyone and anything that would listen. “I GOTTA MAKE A SWORD!”
I hit the stairs at light speed. “Please, world, let me make a sword,” I prayed, picking through endless stones.
The gray wall fell away, revealing dim orange spots. I couldn’t wait to get upstairs; I had to know right then. Sweating as my new furnace turned the little hollowed-out chamber into a sauna, I cursed this world for not letting me cross my fingers.
I didn’t need to. It worked! Just one stick under two iron ingots gave me a weapon of lethal beauty.
“You are safety,” I told the sword, “for you are strength.”
And yes, if you’re wondering, this world will let you make both a stone and wood sword if you want. And yes, I’m not exactly pleased with myself for not thinking of it sooner. But let’s just remember the rule about not dwelling on past mistakes, shall we, and focus on the accomplishments of the present.
“You need to be named,” I told the double-edged blade. “Isn’t that what the little guy in that story did after he killed the giant spider, or when that king pulled his sword from the stone? That’s kinda what I did, plus a few extra crafting steps. He had Excalibur, whatever that means, and I have…”
I kicked around a bunch of awesome names: Slayer, Stormbrewer, and Fire of the Eternal Flame. What I settled on didn’t sound as cool, but better exemplified what this weapon meant to me.
“Since your job is to protect me,” I said, “you will forever be known as Protector.”
And with a few theatrical slices, I added, “And just wait till the nightscum up top taste your wrath.”
“Squeak.”
I froze, wondering if I’d just heard my own boots.
“Squeak.”
No, not me. This was something else, something close, something that had to be right behind the rocks.
“We got company,” I told Protector, and switching it for my iron pickaxe, tried to trace the source of the noise.
Remember how I said a while back that sounds on the island have the annoying habit of coming from all directions? Well, it’s no different underground. The first tunnel I made must have been in the completely wrong direction, because a minute or so in, I heard the squeaking sounds fading. Turning around, I only tunneled a little way before the stone block in front of me suddenly vanished. And I don’t mean cut out or disintegrated. I mean it literally poofed away like a dead mob!
In its place was a small, gray, prickly creature that looked like a crab and a porcupine had a child. “Well, hi there,” I said, stepping up to what I thought was a perfectly harmless critter. “It’s nice to meet—OW!” I jumped back as little teeth stabbed through the leather of my boot.
“Why, you little…” I began, but let out an undignified “yeee!” on the second bite.
“Get outta here!” I squealed, backing up the stairs. It wouldn’t leave me alone, snapping and nipping and doing its best to tick me off.
“I’m warning you!” I said between yips and yelps. “Seriously! Don’t make me have to—”
The next bite was its last, as one good sword swipe made for one dead “crabupine.”
“Sorry you didn’t have a more heroic debut,” I told Protector. “But we now know the source of the noise.”
And then, on cue, came another squeak.
“Or not,” I said, realizing that the little toe biter had backup. Sword raised, I stepped cautiously back into the crabupine’s tunnel. This time I didn’t even need the pickaxe as two more stones puffed into a pair of gnashers. “Well,” I said, slicing them into dust, “at least now I know to make some iron shoes for—”
“Squeak.”
Seriously, I thought, wondering how many more annoying crabupines lay in wait.
“Squeak,” came the sound, closer than ever.
“Wait a minute,” I said, taking a moment to listen. The sound I’d been hearing all this time was close, but not exactly like a crabupine’s crackling SNAP. This was more of a squeak like you’d hear from a mouse or a rat.
“Great,” I said sarcastically, “now I get to have my toes nibbled by vermin.”
Pickaxe in hand and sword in belt, I bashed away at the stone wall in front of me, and gasped when a block fell away into pitch black. Hot, moist air whooshed through the opening, along with a small, brown, winged creature.
Bat! I thought, and drew Protector. Didn’t bats suck your blood? Would it go for my neck or my eyes? The answer was neither, as the birdlike rodent flew right past me and up the staircase to the surface.
“You better be the last thing I find down here!” I called after it, grateful that I didn’t hear any more squeaks.
I cleared out the tunnel’s second stone, making an entrance tall enough to walk through. Before taking one more step, however, I made sure to place a torch on the floor in front of me. Its flickering light barely touched the walls and ceiling of a truly massive cave.
I could see several collections of coal, redstone, and, to my great joy, iron, all embedded in the nearby walls. “Jackpot!” I shouted, rushing past the circle of light. More torches revealed more iron, more coal, more…
CLICK.
I froze.
CLICKETY-CLACK.
Bones? No, can’t be. Not down here.
An arrow whistled out of the darkness, striking me in the shoulder. I spun, more from the impact than the actual wound, as the iron shirt had stopped it from going too far in. To my utter shock, I saw a skeleton archer clattering into the glow.
“How’d you get down here?” I asked, raising Protector. “Can you spawn underground as well!?”
My enemy answered with another arrow, this one hitting my ironclad chest. I winced, charging forward with Protector poised to strike. Two arrows, yes two, met me halfway. The first came from the skeleton in front of me, the second from the darkness behind it.
Wha…where…
Stunned but not deterred, I tried another frontal assault. A pair of projectiles knocked me back. Now I could see the second skeleton, clacking out of the shadows to plant a well-placed arrow in my chest.
“You’re”—I paused as another volley punctured my shirt—“you’re not even s’posed to be down here!”
Still reeling from surprise and disbelief, I hesitated just long enough for another twin shot to kick me back. Looking like a pin cushion, I now saw that my present strategy could only get me killed. Even at my quickest run, I’d never get close enough to hit them, and my armor and hyper-healing would only hold for so long. I’d never outlast the bombardment.
“All right then!” I shouted, turning and running for the exit. “You come to me!”
Zig-zagging through the endless barrage, I pranced back into the safety of the tunnel. The boneys were clicking just a few steps behind.
Good, I thought, hiding off to the side of the entrance.
Earlier I’d learned about the value of thinking under pressure. Now I had my first chance to practice it. Distance, I realized, was the ally of the bow and the enemy of the sword. Cramped quarters, however, might just even the odds.
As the first fleshless face clacked into view, I slammed my blade right into it. The skeleton pivoted toward me, shooting point-blank into my leg. I hissed as the arrow lanced deep into my unarmored thigh. “Now you die!”
A final slash and the sniper puffed away. Before the smoke cleared, the second thoughtless bonehead took its place. This time I learned enough to keep to the corner of the chamber, just close enough to strike, but obscured enough to prevent a clean shot.
“Eat this, Boneboy!” I growled, as my blade sent the second skeleton to meet his partner. I slumped against the rear stone wall and reached frantically into my belt for some fish. The one I’d brought along as a snack was enough to close most of my wounds and dissolve the forest of arrows growing out of my chest. As they vanished one by one, I saw that the holes they’d made in my armor remained.
“Gotta learn to fix those,” I said, s
eeing that Protector had also taken a few scratches.
Looking down at my feet, I saw that the skeletons had left me several war trophies. I picked up another bow, two more arrows, and two dry, bleached leg bones. As I examined them in my left hand, the image of white powder appeared in my right.
Okay, now, if you already know what bone meal is for then give yourself a pat on the back. Oh, that’s right, this world won’t let you, just like it wouldn’t let me pull an arrow out of mine. At that point, however, I couldn’t care more about ground-up dead skeletons than the danger of more live ones underground.
“How do they do it?” I shouted, bursting through the door of my observation room. “How do mobs spawn in caves?”
“Moo,” replied the munching cow, as if to say, “They just do.”
“I thought it was safe down there,” I complained, pacing angrily in front of her. “The whole point was to get stuff to protect me from the mobs up here!”
Moo snorted tersely.
I sighed. “I guess you’re right. It’s still totally worth it because whatever I find to protect me up here will also protect me down there.” I took off my iron shirt, examining the cheese grater holes. “It’s just hard to accept that there’s gonna be challenges everywhere I go.”
Moo snorted again.
“Good point. The sooner I accept it, the easier it’ll be to prepare for it.” I slid my battered armor back on, and pulled out my battle-tested sword. “Great risks come with great rewards.”
“I have to change,” I told Moo. “Now that I know mining includes monsters, I have to change the Planning and Preparing part of my Five P’s.”
“Moo,” said the cow with what could be a sarcastic “ya think?”
“I need a new plan for fighting; maybe a lot of it down there,” I continued, “which means preparing a lot more food for hyper-healing.” I glanced around at the forest, imagining what it would look like after dark. “It also means getting back to my nighttime studies of the mobs just to make sure that I’m not missing any details about their behavior. Which also means”—my eyes fell to my sword—“experimenting with all the resources I have, just to make sure I’m not missing any other weapons.”
Swapping my sword out for the skeleton bone in my belt, I said, “Who knows what I can get from this.” What I ended up getting was a blast from my frustrating past. Even worse this time because I couldn’t blame my failures on hunger or sleep deprivation.
“What’s the point!?” I griped to Moo, holding up the worthless white pile. “If I can’t eat it or burn it or make it into something useful, why would this world let me gather it?”
In a rage, I threw a pinch of it onto the ground, and jumped back in shock as the flat green surface beneath me suddenly blossomed into tall grass and flowers.
I looked down at the remaining two pinches.
“Baa,” said Flint, finishing my thought.
“Plant food.” I punched up the tall grass for their seeds. “That’s what this stuff is used for!”
Who knew plants needed to eat?
“Cluckcluckcluck!” I turned to see that the two chickens had shown up. “Can I help you?” I asked with mock formality. “Splashing in the lagoon suddenly not as exciting as—”
“Cluckcluckcluck,” they interrupted, their eyes focused on what was in my hand.
“The seeds?” I asked, suddenly remembering a similar encounter. Hadn’t the other chickens, the one’s that the creeper blew up, been staring at me the last time I’d had seeds in my hand? Hadn’t I been wondering about that right before the explosion?
“This is what you want,” I said, holding out my hand. “Isn’t it?”
Two sharp pecks and two of the four seeds were gone. And if you’ve never seen this happen, trust me when I tell you that I did not make this next part up. Little red hearts, like the type you’d see in some old-timey cartoon, began rising from the two fowl. “You seeing this, too?” I asked Moo.
The lovestruck cluckers walked over to each other, stood eye to eye, then parted as a tiny white chick popped into existence between them.
“So that’s where babies come from!” I exclaimed. “At least in this world.”
I tried repeating the same process, but the parents ignored my offering. “Got it,” I said, “You’re full. And besides, I could use extra bread.”
Running over to the garden, I planted the seeds in a new row opposite my irrigation trench. Then, reaching for the last two pinches of bone meal, I spread them out on a pair of nearly mature stalks. Instantly the target squares ripened. “This is getting better and better,” I said, without realizing how much better that day was about to get.
Harvesting the wheat gave me four—that’s right, four—packets of new seeds. “Awesome!” I cried, replanting them then rushing back to tell my friends.
“Guys!” I called, waving the golden grain. “Sometimes you get extra seeds! I can expand the garden without having to find more.”
“Moo!” cried Moo, strangely matching my enthusiasm. Completely out of character, she and the sheep began stampeding toward me.
“Whoa, what’s the matter?” I asked, looking over their heads to make sure nothing was chasing them. At the same time, I switched out the wheat in my hand for my sword.
The animals stopped. The sheep even looked away. Then I got it.
“You want this,” I said, holding up the wheat and recapturing their undivided attention. “Just like the chickens, you can also…uh…well…you know.”
Feeling suddenly awkward, and wondering if my square cheeks were blushing, I held out the bushels to Flint and Cloud. Hearts flew, eyes met, and then the island had another resident.
“Happy Birthday!” I said to the adorable, rainy day–colored lamb. “Welcome to our tiny, crazy island, little Rainy.” Turning to Moo, I was about to make some joke about having more mouths to feed. I stopped, however, when I saw her turn away.
Maybe she’d just lost interest, now that the wheat was gone. I hoped that was it. I hoped she wasn’t thinking about the cow partner she’d lost, or the baby calf she’d never have.
“I’ll bring you some more tomorrow,” I told her, noticing the darkening sky. “Promise.”
You’re the only one of your kind, I thought sadly, walking back to the hill, just like me. So if we’re alone together, doesn’t it mean we’re not really alone?
I shouldn’t have tried to study the monsters that night. Remembering Moo’s loss, as well as the first chickens, had dredged up all the buried trauma of the creeper attack. I should have gone right to bed, cleared my head, and started fresh the following night. But then again, reliving the attack was what led me to my next discovery.
It happened halfway through the night. I couldn’t stop replaying the nightmare. I tried to focus on the mobs spawning right in front of me, on the real creepers gliding silently past my window. They all faded behind the flashbacks. I couldn’t shake the roar of the blast, the pain of my wounds, the grisly images of meat and cowhide and…
Suddenly I was fully present, blinking the memories away. I ran down the tunnel to the bunker, over to the storage chest. There it was: the feather. I’d forgotten all about it, along with the chip of flint.
Don’t beat up on yourself, I thought, taking them back to the observation room. You found them at different times, and with so many different things to keep track of. I placed them on the crafting table, with a single stick in between. Now you’re free to focus on fighting, and look at the deadly result.
“Look!” I hollered to the window, holding up four new arrows. “Ya see these!?” Whether the mobs did or didn’t, they’d sure feel them soon enough. “Now you’ll get what you’ve been giving,” I said to a nearby skeleton, “along with all the rest of you!”
To punctuate the point, a spider skittered past my window. “You’ll never get as close,” I told it, “as your brother did when I only had one arrow.” I waved the multiple missiles at it. “And more important, I now know how to ma
ke them! And as long as I can get sticks from trees and flint from gravel and feathers from…”
I paused, lost in a new idea. Seeds make more chickens, I thought, and the garden makes me extra seeds.
“Moo!” called the approaching cow, apparently sensing my scheme.
“That’s right,” I replied. “Breeding free chickens for their feathers!” Moo just looked at me blankly. “What I mean by ‘free,’ ” I clarified, “is that everything I make, like tools and weapons, takes a lot of effort and time and gathered resources like wood and stone and iron. But this chicken farming idea, all it takes are bonus garden seeds I would have gotten anyway. That’s why they’re free. Free feathers and”—I moved past the knot in my stomach at the revelation—“free food! I’m gonna need a heck of a lot of extra food if I’m gonna be fighting my way through that cave. And besides,” I said, my mouth now watering involuntarily, “roasted chicken tastes good!”
“Frrph,” snorted Moo, dampening my euphoric mood.
“No, it’s not the same as eating you,” I replied defensively, “or them.” I motioned at the sheep family behind her. “I know you guys. We’re friends. But those birds, they’re just…just…I can’t even tell them apart. Can you?”
Moo tried the silent treatment.
“I need this!” I pressed, refusing to be cowed by a cow. “I need all the help I can get if I’m gonna get enough iron and coal.” Arguing with Moo had brought up an idea from the lower recesses of my mind. It was a theory I’d been mulling over for some time, and now felt confident enough to express.
“See that,” I asked, pointing to the torch tree. “Since lighting it up, not one monster, not one, has spawned anywhere near it, which means that mobs can’t spawn in torchlight, which means that if I can get enough coal to make enough torches to light the entire island, my quest for security is done.”
I took a lump of coal from my belt. “Which means that I’m gonna need tons of this stuff, which means a lot of mining in that monster-infested cave.” I waved the lump at the distant chickens. “Which means I need tons of free feathers and food.”
“Moo,” condemned the superior mammal.