by C. B. Lee
“Show her the clue, Jake,” Tank says, jerking his head impatiently.
“Sure,” Jake says. “Oh man, we should show you the base and all the other cool stuff we found sometime.”
“I bet Thanh has a farm, huh!” She giggles. “Has he found all the different flower biomes yet in this world?”
“Shush,” Tank says.
“Aw yeah, he loves decorating. Our base looks amazing. Check out this hedge maze and flower field,” Emily says proudly, her lips quirking up in a smile.
“Our last clue Tank totally solved in no time,” Jake said.
“Aw, nice. It’s good to see you having fun in a server with friends, Tank.” Viv beams at him.
Tank folds his arms together, embarrassed but pleased. He jerks his head back toward the screen to remind them to stay on track.
“This is pretty intense.” She looks at the screenshots of the clues they’ve solved so far. “So each clue leads you to the next?”
“Yeah. There have been different challenges, like solving a riddle or finding the next clue in a shipwreck or a book hidden inside a cavern filled with mobs. It’s like the Wizard wanted the game to take you all over the world, chasing down this impossible treasure. None of the clues are the same. Sometimes the riddle is a poem, or it points you toward specific coordinates.” Jake flips through his phone, showing her each of the clues.
“All right, so where are you stuck?”
Tank hangs back behind Vivian’s chair. Emily walks her to the edge of the cliff. The obsidian bridge stretches out behind the impossible barrier, the redstone circuitry in front of the door laid bare in the dirt.
“Whoa.” Viv paces back and forth in front of the exposed circuitry as Emily walks with her, pointing it out.
“Here, look at this,” Emily says. “All I’ve been able to figure out is that when it works, standing on the pressure plate here should open a hidden door in that wall to the bridge, but I can’t figure out how.”
“There’s redstone dust and a bunch of supplies in the chest here,” Tank says, pointing at Viv’s screen. “Do you need anything else? Crafting table is here.”
“No, no, I just want to see.” Vivian examines the circuitry, Tank’s avatar zipping all over the area so quickly it makes Tank dizzy. It’s disorienting, watching three different screens from behind with too many perspectives looking at the same thing. He tries to concentrate on Viv’s, but she’s going too fast, so he settles on watching Jake’s screen and focusing on the bridge and the landscape behind them. Emily and Jake at least aren’t moving as erratically as they’re talking, and he can barely follow that conversation as it is.
Emily and Viv are hunched over the lines of redstone and repeaters in the ground. “Okay, so this repeater here—”
“Tried that. What about this over here?”
“That doesn’t go to anything, it’s a decoy. Let’s see. The whole thing is wired to this pressure plate somehow—Jake, can you stand over there and be ready to hop on it for the test when I say go?”
“Yeah.” Jake follows her direction, bouncing over to the pressure plate.
Tank taps the back of Viv’s chair, watching her do her magic. Her face is scrunched up in concentration as she studies the wire work, walking back and forth and checking in with Emily about the placement, what she’s tried and hasn’t tried. Emily follows her to the crafting table as she deftly builds another one alongside it.
“Can you make me—three repeaters? And five bits of wire—no, I got three here.”
“Two bits of wire, done!” Emily says quickly.
“Do you get redstone at all?” Tank nudges Jake.
“Tried to build a trapdoor once, seemed more trouble than it was worth,” Jake says. “I just like building in general.” He grins at Tank, patting the empty seat beside him. “What do you think, Tank? See anything with your eagle eyes?”
“My what?” Tank sits down next to Jake.
“You know, since you’ve got the bird’s eye view.” Jake tilts his head, watching Emily and Viv laugh as they try another solution. “Your sister is pretty cool.”
“I know,” Tank says, accepting what’s about to come. “You know, if you want to do the rest of the puzzle and stuff with her, I don’t mind.”
“What do you mean? You don’t want to play with us anymore?” Jake blinks at him in confusion.
“No, I mean, if you’d rather play with Viv. You know, instead of me,” Tank says quietly.
Emily turns around. “We started this together, Tank. We’re gonna finish this together.”
“I—” Tank doesn’t know what to say.
“I mean, if you really don’t want to play anymore, you don’t have to. But is that true?”
Jake nods. “There isn’t a limited inventory for people, you know. We don’t have only so many spots for friends.”
Emily looks quickly at Jake and then back at her feet.
“You’re so weird, Thanh-anh,” Viv says, rolling her eyes. “I like meeting new people, but you know I have no patience for riddles or RPGs. Even if I did, this is your thing, not mine.” She smiles up at him, as if it’s so simple.
“Oh.” Maybe it is. Maybe Tank’s been making this complicated all along.
Emily and Jake both nod in understanding.
“I also have my own server filled with friends. I’m glad you found this crew, though, they seem awesome.” She cracks her knuckles together. “Anyway, I think I figured this out!” She stands on the pressure plate, and then a set of hidden double doors in the center of the wall slide open, revealing the bridge. “There you go!”
Jake whoops in celebration. “Thank you so much!”
Viv scoots back on her chair, stands, and gives Tank a jaunty little salute. “It was nice to meet you two. Have fun storming the castle!”
Tank sits down in the chair between his two friends and looks forward at the open pathway between them. He feels Jake clap him on the shoulder before turning back to his own computer.
They’re ready.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
JAKE
There’s nothing standing between them and the castle now. Jake reevaluates his inventory, but with the looming spires and towers ahead, he has no idea what to be prepared for. He thought of all the time they spent on the base, gathering the supplies they’d need for breathing underwater, and he wonders if they’re even going to need it. If there’s going to be something new he hadn’t thought of. It definitely feels like they’ve been tested, thrown all over the world into deserts and plains, and now, this castle of dark volcanic glass oozing with lava and red-hot intent. The mountaintop they’re all on is so tall there’s no way they can see what’s beyond it. This clue could be anything from defeating all the monsters inside the castle and getting past it to finding a new set of coordinates.
“Okay, it’s a narrow bridge, so be careful, you should set a spawn point here just in case.” Jake sets down his bed on a spot, leaving room for Tank and Emily to do the same. “We should do this again on the other side—”
“YEEEARRRRGH!” Emily shouts, running full speed ahead across the bridge.
Tank laughs as he follows, keeping up a quick pace. “Come on, Jake.”
“It would suck to die here—there would be no way to get our stuff back! Come on, you should be more careful!” Jake picks up his bed and sighs. He follows them across the bridge, moving slowly and taking care to stay on the path. Lava bubbles far beneath him, and the bridge seems to stretch out for hundreds of blocks.
“It would suck to grow old waiting for you to get here!” Emily laughs, her avatar bouncing up and down on the other side.
“Whatever,” Jake grumbles.
He finally joins them in front of a massive obsidian door, glinting ominously, reaching up toward the sky. The castle is all points: spires and towers and sm
oky dark glass revealing nothing of the contents.
“I hope there isn’t another puzzle for this door,” Jake says.
“Say things like that and there will be,” Tank mutters. “That’s how it usually works, right?”
“Nope. It opens automatically. Pretty cool setup, actually. Double doors. Watch this.” Emily steps toward the door. It creaks open with a heavy clunk, revealing a set of polished blackstone doors that swivel and disappear into the walls. Jake walks into the cavernous hallway with his friends, getting more and more nervous. Is there a sleeping dragon? What sort of riddle is this?
All the doors shut behind them with a heavy finality.
Jake pulls out his sword. It appears that they are alone in a grand hall, although Jake has his suspicions. After the mobs that attacked them in the hedge maze, he has to be ready for anything.
Their footsteps echo on the blackstone floor as they step inside. High above, lanterns flicker with bright blue soul fire, casting a soft light. A secondary faint blue light is emanating from somewhere else, but Jake can’t figure out its origin.
“All right. What’s next? Clearly getting into the castle was part of the riddle.” Emily slaps a torch on the wall. The fire looks strange and unnatural in this cold and dark stone place.
“Somewhere in this castle is the next clue,” Tank says. “Do you think it’s another maze? I don’t see any corridors, just this room. What do you think ‘go high to go low’ means?”
“It could be literal; it could be a metaphor. Let’s explore,” Jake says. “Remember the hidden painting before? Let’s check all the walls and the floors, just in case.”
Jake nods at them to split up; they take a few moments to search the large room. The walls and floors are unbreakable, as Jake suspected, but they seem to be just that: walls and floors. No pressure plates, no hidden passages, just the endless dark blackstone stretching onward.
No, there’s something more here.
Jake approaches the other end of the room, where a raised stone dais has been built. A single throne stands proudly in the center, a column of blue glass rising up in the wall behind it.
Wait, that’s not a solid block—
It’s water. Behind glass panes. Jake can see a faint drift of bubbles moving downward. But going where?
He looks up. The column of water stretches toward the ceiling, but it seems to stop about halfway up the wall.
“Couldn’t find anything,” Emily says. “No monsters, either.”
“Nothing on the other end,” Tank says.
“Look at this water column. You think it leads to a passageway?” Jake tries to see if there’s another floor high above them, but he can see only darkness looming ahead.
“Ooh, maybe,” Emily says. “From the outside, this place just looked super tall. There might be a huge basement or something we haven’t explored under. And we have no idea what’s behind the castle, too. It could be anything.”
“What if this is it?” Jake asks. “We go high so we can go low to wherever the water is going.”
Jake jumps and throws a block of dirt underneath him, moving higher and higher, the rest of the throne room falling out of focus as he inches up alongside the water column. Emily’s already ahead of him, her own column of dirt rapidly growing as she rises up.
“There’s an opening here!” There isn’t any light, but where the water column ends is a single clear block amidst the stone, and it looks wide enough to squeeze into.
Emily takes a flying leap from her dirt column, landing squarely in the space. She places a torch on the wall, and now Jake can see it clearly: a small alcove in the castle wall, with a single block of water leading into the unknown.
“Nice work, Jake. I don’t think I would have seen this, it just looked like more of the wall to me,” Tank says. “Did you run out of dirt?” He stacks a block from Jake’s dirt tower into the air, building a clear path to the alcove.
“Thanks.” The three of them stare at the water; there’s no way of knowing what awaits them on the other side. Jake takes a deep breath. “All right, let’s go.”
* * *
—
The roar of rushing water surrounds him as he plummets headfirst into the column. They speed down, down, down, past the glass wall that peeks out to the throne room, a brief blip of blue light, and then it’s just darkness.
“How far down are we going?” Jake wonders.
Tank hums next to him. “It could be anywhere. I mean, we could be going toward another one of the Wizard’s Nether portals—”
“The Nether portal at the end of the maze clue was a shortcut,” Emily says. “I’m sure of it.”
“This water tunnel here is part of the riddle,” Jake says. “We solved it, see? We went high and now we’re going low. Just sit tight and let’s see where this leads.”
“Doesn’t water move super fast? We must be almost hitting the bedrock—”
FLOMP.
There must have been a hole for the water to splash into, but wherever they are is dry. And dark.
“There’s a wall here,” Tank says.
Emily laughs. “Over here, this is open—whoa!”
Jake sets a torch on the nearest surface, and their surroundings come flickering into view: They’re standing in a cave of some sort, mossy stone lining the walls, sand beneath them, with the water elevator spilling in from above. There’s only a sliver of sand, the rest of the irregularly shaped cave is filled with water.
“Guess the only way out is under. Think this leads out to the ocean?” Emily lets out an impressed whistle. “Must have taken forever to terraform that mountain so we couldn’t see the ocean behind it.” She starts swimming, disappearing into the dark.
Jake tosses a potion at Tank, grateful that the time spent planning and brewing potions is going to pay off. “Night Vision, we’re probably going to need it. Emily! Wait up!”
Jake gulps down the potion and wades into the water after her, Tank by his side. They swim away from the shoreline, Jake’s heart pounding as he goes.
With the Night Vision, the watery depths suddenly become clear as day. Jake can see drifting forests of kelp and in the distance, the shadow of a pyramid in the water.
“Watch out for the guardians,” Emily says, swimming directly toward it. “They’re the worst.”
“I wish we knew we were going to an ocean monument for this clue,” Jake grumbles.
“Come on,” Emily says. “We’ve got great armor and those extra Respiration enchantments on our helmets, and you brought the Night Vision potions.”
Jake’s never taken on an ocean monument without extensive preparation. Emily’s confidence impresses him, but he wishes he had even more potions or a different set of armor. He has boots with Depth Strider and an even better helmet with Respiration enchantments, but he supposes what he has on him now will have to do. If they die they’ll respawn in front of the castle, so he guesses they could go back to the base and prepare more if they need to.
“There’s usually like three of them around these ocean monuments—there! Aack! Laser beams!”
A shot of energy blasts through the water right toward them.
“AAAH!” Tank careens out of the way, but knocks right into Jake as another blast fires directly at him.
Jake takes immediate damage and groans, backing up. No, no, no. He wishes he had his best bow with infinite arrows right now, this is the worst!
The guardians move with a threatening purpose. One darts forward, its gaping open maw groaning with an endless hunger. Its single eye stares relentlessly, and the beast’s scales are the same faint green-blue color of the monument below.
Jake fires his bow at it and watches his arrow barely creep forward, unflinchingly slow in the water before it drops to the ocean floor, useless.
“Quick! In here!” T
ank swims down to the bottom of the monument, disappearing behind pillars stretching out to the sands.
“Take that! And that!” Emily shrieks. “Yes, give me all the loot! Come at me!”
“This place is so cool,” Tank says, rounding a corner. “Aren’t these prismarine blocks pretty? I’d love to take some home—”
“Not now, Tank!” Jake whispers, even though he knows the guardians can’t hear them. “Great, great, we’re running out of air and I can’t remember the last place I set a spawn point; if I die it’s gonna take forever to get back here—”
“No worries,” Tank says, slapping something on the wall. It’s not a torch, which would have been useless underwater anyway, but a ladder.
Jake watches as a pocket of air forms around the ladder and Tank ducks in and out of it quickly. “Viv always brought ladders with her, but I didn’t realize why,” Tank says, chuckling a little. “This was a good idea, building all of these beforehand,” Tank says.
“Yeah, it’s great. Now we can take our time and defeat all these monsters.”
“I’ve got a whole stack of these. We can keep placing them as we explore. I’ll just keep them on the left so we know what areas we’ve gone through already.”
“Good thing you brought them, too,” Jake says, glad to be with Tank.
“I got two of the guardians outside,” Emily announces. “The last one is probably gonna be the boss one. Are you all inside?”
“Bottom floor,” Tank says. “Let’s search all around.”
The inside of the monument is filled with empty chambers built with the ancient blue-green prismarine. Pillars and columns and watery halls open up to more rooms, stone standing strong as water drifts around the support columns of the monument. Jake and Tank swim between the rooms, collecting sponges and looking for—Jake isn’t quite sure what they’re looking for. Inscriptions on the walls? Another clue? The clues have gotten so drastically different that he isn’t sure anymore.