Minecraft: Mob Squad: Never Say Nether: An Official Minecraft

When Mal opens the chest, I’m floored. This has got to be the grandmother of all loot chests, and I can’t believe our luck. There’s a diamond sword, a diamond chest plate, and diamond leggings, enough diamond to be rich back home. There are several ingots of gold and iron, plus an ingot of some metal I’ve never seen before—and I grew up in a mine. There are two iridescent spheres like the one in the first chest that are warm to the touch and look a little like fancy slimeballs, plus blocks of peculiar stone. Mal gives Chug the diamond sword and chest plate, which means I get his gold one. Chug carries the ingots, and Mal keeps the stone. I get to carry the spheres, and I like how they glow from deep in my pocket. There’s not really anything for Jarro here, but he doesn’t seem like he needs anything.

That’s the thing about travel—it teaches you about yourself. When we began our first journey, I didn’t know what was important to me, really, or what I was passionate about. Now I know that the things I care about the most are my friends, bows and arrows, and collecting exciting new things to show to Nan and display in our library. She’s going to be so excited about everything we’ve found here. I wish I could stop and sketch everything I see along the way, but we have to find Tok first. Maybe once he’s safely home, we can come back here together and really spend our time exploring.

Then again, the adults haven’t let us venture out at all. Sure, they cut a door in the wall around Cornucopia, but then they told us not to go outside, or at least not past New Cornucopia. And because we’re good kids, we obeyed them.

Until now.

This time, we had no choice. And each time we break their rules and venture out into the bigger world, the harder it is to go back to being compliant.

What are they going to do—lock us up again?

We know how to get out. We can mine holes in their wall, tunnel under it, build a staircase over it. The more we know, the harder it is to contain us.

I yawn, my jaw cracking, and Mal looks at me, concerned.

“Sleepy?” she asks.

I nod. “I think it’s been two days since we slept.”

“No time for sleep.” Chug yawns, too. “We have to find Tok.”

“But if we get too sleepy, we fall into lava or get surprised by another piglin brute,” Mal argues. “Tok’s captors have to sleep, too. No one can stay awake forever. They’ll get clumsy, too.”

Chug exhales sadly. “Fine. But just a catnap.”

Mal mines all the gold around the chest while we keep watch, then leads us back to the nearest room. It’s not big, but it’s definitely cozy. We don’t have wood for a door like Tok used to make, so she just fits two blocks of stone in the open space—after Chug hangs torches on every wall.

“I still wish we had a fourth bed,” Mal says as I pull a bed out of my pocket and—

Boom!

I’m flung backward by the force of the bed—exploding?

My back hits the wall, and I slump down to sitting, staring at the flaming planks that are all that remain of my bed. My ears are ringing, and I think my face got singed. My head jerks up as I remember that my friends were nearby for the explosion, but they all hurry to stand over me looking decently unexploded. Their voices sound far away as their hands worriedly pat me. I’m glad none of them are hurt.

“Eat,” Chug says, loudly, handing me a hoglin chop.

I start eating, because I don’t like this feeling. I need all my senses. Unable to hear, I feel like anything could sneak up on me at any moment, or one of my friends might need me and I wouldn’t hear them calling. I choke the chop down and reach into my pocket for the very last cookie, which I’ve been saving for desperate times.

“A cookie? No fair!” Chug moans, and I’m so happy that I can hear him again, even if he’s whiny.

“She’s the one who baked them,” Mal points out, patting at one of the puffs of my hair. “And she’s still kinda smoking.”

I hand Chug a little chunk of my cookie. Even if he’s not wounded, his feelings will be if I don’t share.

Once I’ve eaten enough, I try to stand…and can’t. My ears are ringing, and everything hurts. The hand that held the cookie has fallen to my side, useless. Gentle wisps of smoke rise from my shirt, and I can’t do anything about it.

Mal holds out one of our two golden apples, and I shake my head feebly. I don’t want to waste it on me, but…I don’t think regular food can fix this fast enough. We need to be at full health when we find Tok. Plus, we’re running out of food. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing left but hoglin chops and a few potatoes. She holds out the apple, and I bite it, and the golden flesh explodes with flavor in my mouth. It’s like eating a sweetened sunbeam. I want to keep eating this apple forever, want to feel it pouring health into me like I’m a bottle that needed filling.

When it’s all gone, my ears stop ringing and I’m able to stand.Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“So no beds, then,” I say.

Mal shakes her head sadly. “I’m worried about what will happen if we try to sleep here. The Nether is so bizarre. I guess we can sit down for a few minutes to rest our bodies, but we have to keep one another from falling asleep.

We each pick a wall and sit down, but no one attempts to close their eyes. I realize how very hard it is to rest when you’re scared of going to sleep and every twitch makes your armor clank and press into some tender part of your body.

My eyes go unfocused, and the world gets blurry. It’s like I’m drifting in and out of the mist in my own mind, which feels as topsy-turvy as the building we’re in. I called it a bastion remnant in my book. Naming things, as it turns out, is a new pleasure. When I tamed Poppy, I had to name her immediately before Chug called her something stupid, but I’ll admit the first thing that came to mind was perfect for her. Now I can’t imagine calling her anything else. Maybe naming things, like archery and baking, is a new skill, one I never would have discovered if I hadn’t set foot outside the wall.

After a while, because time makes no sense here, with no sun or moon, Mal sighs heavily and stands.

“Does anyone feel more rested?”

We all shake our heads. Everyone looks exhausted and frazzled.

“Lenna, are you all healed up?”

I stand and test my body, which responds as it should. “Yeah. You guys don’t sound like you’re talking underwater anymore, and I’m pretty sure I’m not still on fire.”

Jarro stands, too. “I can’t believe you guys like this.”

“The Nether?” Mal asks.

“No, just…leaving home. This place is exhausting. And scary.”

“It’s not usually like this,” I tell him. “The Nether is new for us, too. Everything made a lot more sense when we were just in the Overworld.”

“Except the brigands,” Chug reminds us.

“And the illagers,” I add.

“But the more we experience, the more we learn, and the more we can deal with,” Mal argues. “If I could rewind time to that day Lenna first saw a vex and had the option to ignore it instead of doing something about it, I would still do everything exactly as we did. Yeah, it’s a little scary and dangerous. But it’s also interesting and fun and exciting.”

“And we’ve all found new skills, new things we’re good at,” I say. “I wasn’t good at anything before.”

Jarro hunches over. “When do I get to find new skills?”

Chug smacks him on the back. “Bud, you already found a bunch! Remember when you, I don’t know, tamed horses?”

“Yeah, but that’s not really useful back home.”

“Not yet it isn’t. But if you bring horses home with you, it’ll change things. You could start a horse farm outside the wall. Be the only source of horses. Anyone who wants to travel will be happy to trade with you.”

Jarro’s face lights up. I’ve never seen him look like this before—hopeful, happy. He always looks mean or angry back home. It suits him, this hopefulness.

“I guess I thought I’d have to live with my mom forever, but…I don’t have to.”

“It feels good, escaping the people who don’t believe in you,” I say.

The small room is getting way too full of emotion, and Chug has apparently reached his limit, as he clears his throat and points at the blocks Mal fitted into the open doorway. “So are we ready to get back on the lava-filled, murderous road?”

He gives each of us a hoglin chop as we leave. Mal leads us back through the bastion, over the bridge and down the torturous stairs until we’re standing on the spongy red blocks, looking out over the lava sea. It was so cramped and dark inside that it actually feels good to be in the bigger cavern, surrounded by looming red blocks, towering rivulets of steaming lava, and mysteriously haunting pillars of stone. Strange two-legged creatures stride by occasionally, walking right on top of the lava like it’s the most normal thing in the world, but they don’t pay us the least bit of attention, so we all just ignore them, too. Chug has learned his lesson about looking new creatures in the eye or approaching them with overtures of friendship. I long to sketch these peculiar striders in my book, but I’m also afraid I’ll drop it in the boiling magma, plus I have to struggle to keep up at this pace. It’s tough going, thanks to the lava sea that interrupts all the walking paths, and Mal has to keep placing random stone blocks out of her pocket.

“You guys, I’m almost out of blocks,” she says, looking utterly stretched to her limit.

Jarro points to the walls. “So just mine some of whatever that is and use it.”

Mal’s eyes boggle, and I understand why she’s shocked. Jarro, our enemy, has just said something kind of genius that none of us thought of. It’s as weird as a cow walking on its hind legs. She nods and hurries to the nearest wall. Thanks to her diamond pickaxe, she soon has pockets stuffed with the spongy burgundy stone and is able to bridge us across a narrow bit of sea so we can stand in the crimson forest on the opposite shore.

“I don’t get it,” she says, shielding her eyes with her hand. “If Tok’s kidnappers came this way, how’d they get across? They left a bridge behind earlier, but not now? I’m worried we’re not on the right track.”

Chug is frowning at this possibility. “But it feels right. He’s got to be this way. If they’d bridged anywhere, we would’ve seen it.”

Ah, but they’ve forgotten something. They keep seeing this place like the Overworld. Like all the major business happens on the ground. I look up and grin.

“We were just looking in the wrong place.” I point up and up and up, where a red-block bridge is suspended in the air, linking the walls of the cavern and the rock formations hanging from the ceiling.

“We’ve got to get up there,” Chug says, hands in fists like he’s just going to start climbing.

“No!” Jarro yelps before clearing his throat. “I mean, there are other options.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Jarro’s right.” We all turn to Mal. “If we can see their bridges, we can follow them down here. Less chance of falling. And if we run out of blocks or land, then we can tower up and use their bridges. If we stay down here, they’re less likely to notice us.”

And that’s how we continue. Mal builds bridges over the lava, mines more blocks, builds more bridges. We follow the zigging, zagging red lines crisscrossing the ceiling overhead. While we’re in the crimson forest, we know well enough that we have to take down the hoglins before they take us down, and we’re also becoming increasingly aware that these wild pig-monsters are the only source of food down here…and we’re running out. I hit each hoglin with several arrows, Mal finishes them off, Chug collects the chops, I collect the arrows. He still can’t bring himself to hurt anything that looks even vaguely like Thingy, and that’s okay. The nice thing about having friends is that you can lean on them when there’s something you can’t do, and when they’re in a tight spot, you get to return the favor.

But then the crimson forest opens up to another sweeping lava sea, and this one seems to go on as far as we can see with no shores or islands, just lava from vertical red wall to vertical red wall with an occasional creature striding across it. The sea goes on for so long that it seems to dissolve into solid shadow, somewhere far away. I look up at the bridge, and it’s so high that it feels impossible that we might ever reach it—or not fall off it, once we were up there.

“Please don’t make me go up there,” Jarro says quietly. “I’m just…really scared of heights, okay?” He looks sharply at Chug as if waiting for cruel words, but none come.

“Yeah, I’m not a big fan, either,” Chug admits. “I’ll do it for Tok, but I doubt anything else could make me willing to risk it. There’s got to be another way.”

Mal has purple rings under her eyes, and her braid is coming undone, and her red hair stands out around her face in a frizzy halo. I’ve never seen her this unnerved, this unsure, but as she looks up at the bridge, she scrunches her eyes shut and pulls herself together. It makes me want to cry, but I think I’m too tired and hot and dried out to make tears in the middle of a lava sea.

“There’s no other way,” she says firmly. “Come on. You can do it. We can all do it.”

She and I take out our pickaxes and mine as much netherrack as we can carry. Her diamond pickaxe is far more effective than my iron one, but I’d rather toil away doing something useful than pace around looking nervous like Chug and Jarro. Once we’re completely out of room in our pockets, Mal starts building a steep, narrow staircase. It’s not elegant or well made, but it seems sturdy enough. As she steps up to the next level, Chug follows her, and I’m waiting for Jarro to go next, but he won’t.

“You can do it,” I repeat. “It’s not that high.”

He shoots me a furious glare. “I didn’t think you were the kind of person who would lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. Since it feels like we’re underground, it doesn’t feel that high for me. And I like being underground, so I’m not worried. And we still have a golden apple. This is the only way forward, so we might as well get started.”

“No way, Lenna. No one can make me. I’ve done everything you guys have asked, even when it made no sense, and we’ve gotten this far, but I’m not going to climb up this rickety staircase and fall to my death for you.”

I look up. Mal and Chug are doing fine. It just doesn’t seem that bad to me. “Well, we’re going to keep going, so if you can’t, I guess you can wait for us here. You can go back to that room and block yourself in. But Tok needs us, so we’re going.”

“Fine,” he barks. “You know, I thought you guys were different. I was finally starting to think of you as friends. But if you’ll leave me behind, you’re not worth my time.”

“We’re not leaving you behind,” I try to explain. “We have to keep going so we won’t leave Tok behind. From our point of view, you’re the one who’s not being a very good friend.”

“Tok’s not my friend!”

“But he could be. We just have to find him first. And Chug is your friend, and you’re letting him down.”

Jarro looks up to where Chug is standing on the step behind Mal. Chug sees him looking and gives a big, exaggerated wave that makes Jarro shudder and then sag. “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I can’t.”

“Lenna! I need your stone!” Mal calls.

I reach into my pocket and pull out a hoglin chop. “Then good luck, Jarro. Be careful. Remember to eat. I hope we’ll see you soon.”

I start climbing and I don’t look back.