Descent Into Overworld: An Unofficial Minecraft Adventure (3 page)

Bamboo clattered again, this time from behind him. Hamid spun around. Cold dread oozed from the shadows near the door, like someone suddenly turned on the air conditioning.

Blood-red eyes stared out from the darkness.

Hamid tried to run. His brain screamed. His legs quivered. But his feet remained still. Fear rooted him to the ground.

The eyes moved out from the shadows to reveal a grinning face made of bone. With each step, the skeleton clattered like bamboo knocking together. It tilted its square head to one side and reached out a long, fleshless arm.

“Give them to me,” the skeleton hissed. “The four must be mine!”

Somewhere in Hamid’s terrified mind, a connection was made. He suddenly knew where he had heard the noise before. This creature standing in front of him, in the middle of the Story Time carpet was real, but it wasn’t from reality.

It was from Minecraft.

Hamid raced for the library door. The skeleton was faster.

With one great leap, it flew across the Story Time carpet and blocked the door. It landed with a clatter Hamid had heard a million times during his dungeon delves at home. And home was where this thing in front of him belonged. Home on his computer. In his server. A cartoon of pixels and programming, not a fully formed monster standing in front of the librarian’s book return cart. There was no doubt about it. From the square skull and blocky rib cage, this was a Minecraft skeleton. And it was in his school library. If this was one of Ant’s jokes, that guy was banned from their server for all eternity.

The skeleton reached out its bony hand again.

“Give it to me. The four must be made one!”

Hamid had no words. All he had was fear. This skeleton, which looked very real to him, was going to turn him into a pile of floating inventory items.

Hamid’s heart was a rock in the pit of his stomach. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. He raised his foam sword before him. Foam versus bone. No competition there, but it was all he had.

The library doors swung open. Jaina’s voice cut through the dark.

“Hamid! You in here?”

He’d never been so glad to see his friends. Jaina stood in the doorway, Ant at her side.

“Watch out for —!”

“Me!” The skeleton stood to its full height, towering over the three friends.

Jaina fell back, her eyes as big as ender pearls. Ant stood in shocked silence. For once.

Hamid saw his chance for escape.

“Run!” he shouted as he charged past the skeleton and through the doors.

Ant and Jaina were right behind him. Unfortunately, so was Mr. Big and Bony.

“Give them to me!” the skeleton wailed. The rattle of bones echoed along the lockers lining the hallway.

“Where did you find your friend?” Ant asked when he had caught up with Hamid. Ant had always been a faster runner. And more sarcastic.

“He found me!” Hamid said.

“He better unfind us, quick!” Jaina said.

The three friends rounded another corner, bringing them near the front of the school. Hamid slid to a stop outside Ms. Thalwick’s music room.

“In here!” he said.

“What are we going to do? Teach it how to play the ukulele?” Ant said.

“He’s right,” Jaina said. “We’ll be trapped in there.”

Ant jumped up and down on the spot, like he always did when he got frustrated with a boring math lesson. “We have to do something!”

The music door exploded in a shower of paint and wood chips. A thick arrow shaft stuck out from the middle door. At the far end of the hallway, the skeleton pulled back on its bow, another arrow notched and ready to fly.

“This way!” Jaina said. She ran down the hall before Ant or Hamid could argue.

Another arrow thudded into the door between the boys, missing them by a hair.

“Wait for us!” Ant shouted and took off after Jaina. Hamid was only a step behind.

The front doors to the school appeared at the end of the corridor. They were close to escaping. Only a few more steps and he would be outside and free to run all the way home and hide under his bed and never play Minecraft again.

But Jaina didn’t run outside. She pushed open the door to the Main Office and disappeared inside.

“She’s got the right idea,” Ant said. He ran down the hallway to catch up to her. “It’s raining.”

“Thanks for the weather report,” Hamid snapped. “I’m more worried about becoming a skeleton pincushion than getting my hair wet.”

An arrow thunked into the floor beside him, cracking the tiles like a broken mirror. Mr. K was not going to be happy about that.

“Dude, have you ever played Minecraft before?” Ant opened the door to the office. “The sun is behind the clouds. We run outside in the rain and Bony the Wonder Archer will just chase us. At least there’s a door and a phone in here!”

Ant pulled Hamid into the office and slammed the door shut. His friend had a point. The time for dealing with things on their own was long gone. It was time to call for back-up. The police, the fire department, the parent council, anyone.

The room was empty. Mrs. Vernon, the school office assistant, had gone for the day. Jaina stood at her desk. She mashed the buttons on the phone like it was a game of whack-a-mole.

“How do you get an outside line on this thing?”

Another arrow smashed through the window on the office door. The missile flew across the office and thunked into Mrs. Vernon’s phone. Sparks erupted from the number pad. A thin trail of black smoke wafted into the air, announcing the machine’s demise.

The skeleton appeared at the doorway, glaring at them through the broken glass. Its red eyes burned deep into Hamid’s own bones. It raised its bow, arrow notched and ready to fly.

There was nowhere to run.

Hamid dug his feet into the ground and raised his foam sword in front of him. Ant stood beside him, his sword raised.

“This is it, old buddy,” he said. “We’ll go down like heroes.”

Jaina joined them.

“Yeah, if anyone believes us.” She held up her foam sword to face the skeleton. “Come and get us, you old bag of bones!”

Principal Whiner’s door swung open. He stormed out of his office, face red with rage. In his hand he held the foam diamond sword he had taken from Ant only a few hours earlier.

“What is the meaning of this?” he said. “What are you brats doing in my offi —”

His words froze in his throat. Maybe it was the broken window and shattered glass sprayed across the floor. Maybe it was the sight of three children, clearly up to no good long after they should be at home. It could have even been the sight of a blocky skeleton the size of an NBA basketball player outside the office door. Each of these things would be enough to send any principal into early retirement.

The skeleton’s red eyes flamed brighter at the sight of Principal Whiner. It dropped its bow and pointed a long bony finger at them.

“The Four!” the skeleton hissed. “Together as they should be.”

Hamid’s foam sword was suddenly very warm, like he had just pulled it out of a fire. Blue light burst from each of the blades.

The light quickly filled the office. Hamid couldn’t see the skeleton anymore. Then he couldn’t see his friends anymore. In the time it takes to sneeze, the whole world turned a bright, diamond blue.

And then it all went black.

* * *

A pig snorted in Hamid’s brain. A sheep bleated near his toes. His head felt like it was stuffed with two-month-old homework. Flashes of pixelated diamonds bounced across his brain. He rolled over on his side and reached for his blanket. Today was totally a stay-in-bed kind of day. This was all Ant’s fault. Maybe it was too much pizza last night or too long helping his friend build his latest Minecraft masterpiece. Either way, Ant was to blame and Hamid was staying in bed.

His hand fumbled around in search of his blanket. It landed on something warm and fuzzy.

“Baaaa.”

Hamid cracked open one eye to see two eyes staring back at him.

He bolted straight up, his eyes wide open and struggling to focus.

Sunshine and green. That’s all Hamid saw. And a sheep nuzzling at his shirt.

He jumped to his feet. He wasn’t dreaming.

“Get out of here!” Hamid said, shaking his fist at the sheep.

The startled sheep trotted away. It stared back at him like a puppy left in the rain.

Hamid stopped mid-shake. His hand wasn’t there. His arm just ended in a flat square. It was like it had been sliced off in an accident.

“Don’t scare them away. We’ll need their wool later to make beds.”

Ant walked out of a patch of trees not far away.

At least, it sort of looked like Ant. He was handless, too, just like Hamid. His whole body looked like it was made of cereal boxes. Even his head, which was one large cube with Ant’s dumb grin plastered on the front.

Ant wriggled his body like his underwear was creeping up on him. From somewhere in his chest, a brown cube appeared and thunked on the ground.

Along the side of the cube hung saws, hammers and a few tools Hamid didn’t recognize. But he did recognize the box.

“A crafting table,” he said.

Ant’s dumb grin doubled in size.

“Yep. And we better get busy with it.” He turned his cube-head to the hills in the distance. “The sun’s getting low. It’ll be night soon. And you know what happens at night.”

Hamid’s brain felt broken. But strangely, it all made perfect sense. He turned to face his best friend and saw only a blocky character from a world he knew all too well.

“You mean …” he couldn’t say it out loud. It couldn’t be true.

“That’s right,” Ant said. “We’re inside Minecraft.”

Jaina dropped the last block into place. It landed with a squelch that both satisfied her and made her worry. Dirt. Not the best building material, but it would have to do.

She hopped down from the makeshift dirt-block staircase and turned to face her first build.

A dirt house. Well, more like a shelter than a house. No windows, no door and not even a bed inside. The sun was almost behind the hills. This simple hut was way better than hiding in a hole all night.

Jaina knew what happened at night. She didn’t know how she got here or why she was suddenly a blocky version of herself, but she did know what happens in Minecraft when the sun disappears.

A low moan came from the edges of the growing darkness, as if in answer to her own thoughts.

“Better get a move on,” she said to herself. Her shelter was built, but Jaina still had much to do. In the distance stood a small group of trees. “Time to get punching.”

Punching wood was better than thinking at that moment. Her head had been a dense soup of questions since she woke up in the middle of this field a little while ago.

The first strange thing she noticed when she woke was her hands. She didn’t have any. Her arms ended in stumps, but she could still hold her only possession: a diamond sword. When she noticed the rest of the block-shaped landscape with its cubed trees, staircase pattern hills and square sun setting in the distance, Jaina knew she was inside Minecraft.

Why she was here or how it was even possible were other ingredients filling the soup in her brain. She vowed to answer those questions later. For now, with the sun going down and darkness on its way, Jaina knew what she had to do. Every Minecrafter knows when the sun goes away, the monsters come out to play.

Jaina got to the trees with about half a sun left peaking over the distant hills. If she hurried she would make it.

Ant and Hamid would have done things differently. Those two were monster hunters. They would have run for the trees right away. They would have punched wood, crafted weapons and prepared themselves for a night of zombie smashing. That wasn’t Jaina’s style.

She looked with scorn at the hearts and drumsticks running along the bottom of her vision.

“Survival mode,” she scoffed. Jaina took out her frustration on the nearest tree.

She was a builder, a creator and a redstone master. Not some gamified, macho king-of-the-hill survival type.

Wood blocks floated in the air and landed in her inventory with a pop, pop, pop.

She grunted at her simple achievement. If survival was the name of the game around here, she could play that too.

Jaina punched another tree.

She was definitely not enjoying this. Sure, being totally inside her favorite game was kind of cool. But there were too many unknowns for her to really enjoy it. How did she get here? How would she get home? Were Ant and Hamid in here, too?

Thoughts of home and her friends rolled in and out of her brain with each punch and each block collected. Her little sister would be waiting for her at home about now. Her mom would get home from work and wonder where she was. Jaina’s heart grew heavy at the thought of her mom and sister worrying about her. She had to get out of here and back to her family.

The shadows in the trees were long now. Barely a sliver of the sun peeked over the hills.

She headed back to her windowless little dirt shack. Her mind focused on finding a way to get in touch with Ant and Hamid. If they were outside of Minecraft, maybe they could help her get back. If getting back was even possible. That thought sent a chill through her blocky body.

A wolf howled in the distance, snapping Jaina out of her thoughts.

The sun had dropped behind the hill. The trees were now dark. The little forest no longer held the promise of wood. Now it was a place of the roaming undead, moaning and bones clattering.

Jaina walked faster to the little shack. She would be safe inside. She could put all this wood to good use. Maybe even get some light, if she could dig up some cobblestone for a furnace.

A shadow rolled in front of her little dirt building. Jaina froze, not daring to move.

The shadow moved like it was on roller skates, silent and smooth. It walked around the back of the building then turned quickly, returning to the front, its silent gaze looking for a way into the shack. Before she could hide, the stranger spun its long green body around and stared straight at her.