Down into the Nether Read online

  This book is not authorized or sponsored by Microsoft Corporation, Mojang AB, Notch Development AB, or Scholastic Corporation, or any other person or entity owning or controlling rights in the Minecraft name, trademark, or copyrights.

  Copyright © 2016 by Danica Davidson

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Cover artwork by Lordwhitebear

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1220-1

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1221-8

  Printed in Canada

  CHAPTER 1

  WE HAD TO HURRY, OR ELSE THE MONSTERS would get us.

  There were five of us kids running across the Overworld, trying to get to safety before the sunset. As soon as it got dark, monsters—better known as mobs—would spawn and search for their prey.

  “Do you think we can make it to the portal before dark?” cried my best friend Maison.

  With any other portal in the Overworld, we could just stop and build it. But this was a special portal we were going to, because it was the only one that led us to Maison’s world, Earth.

  “If we hurry,” I said, hoping I was right.

  Yancy and Destiny, who were beside us, were also from Maison’s world. The last person in our group was my cousin, Alex. Alex, like me, had been born and raised in the Overworld, and she’d only recently learned that other worlds existed.

  It hardly seemed real, but just last night the five of us had all worked together to fight Herobrine. Everyone in the Overworld knew about Herobrine, though they thought he was just an old ghost story for kids. We knew better. Nightmares about Herobrine and music discs with prophecies had taught me that Herobrine was real and that all he wanted was to ruin lives and destroy worlds.

  When we fought Herobrine at his temple lair on top of a mountain, he disappeared. Did he disappear because we had defeated him, or was he hiding and would come back to attack us later? That’s what we didn’t know. And because of that, we were terrified!

  At least I got Ossie back, I thought, pulling my cat close. Herobrine had stolen her, the way he stole other people’s most prized possessions, and we’d saved her on the mountaintop.

  “There’s the portal!” I said.

  The last rays of light were creeping down the horizon as we caught sight of the house the special portal was kept in. I pushed open the door and we all crammed into the little house. The portal sat right before us, glowing red, green, and blue in the middle.

  “Phew,” Yancy said, huffing and puffing. He put his hands on his knees. “After all that fighting and traveling, I am going to sleep well tonight.”

  “We can rest tonight, but we need to get back together tomorrow,” Alex said, in her usual take-charge manner. “If Herobrine is still out there, we have to plan and be ready for him.”

  “Do you want to come to our world with us?” Destiny asked, concerned. “It might be safer there.”

  It was a nice offer, but there was no way Alex and I could go to the other world right then. We needed to get back to my home and try to find my dad, because he’d been brainwashed by Herobrine. He had falsely believed that my friends and I were the ones causing all the damage that Herobrine actually caused. Like the other people in the Overworld, Dad had suddenly turned mean and suspicious, because that’s how Herobrine changed people. If Herobrine was really defeated, hopefully Dad would be okay now.

  Alex grinned and shifted the bow and arrows she had on her shoulder. “Oh, don’t worry about Stevie and me,” she said. “I know it’s getting dark out, but I’m not scared of any mobs.”

  I didn’t feel as confident as Alex at all. I looked down at the diamond sword I held in my hand. I’d only recently started to get good at fighting mobs, and I still made plenty of mistakes.

  “Then just be extra careful,” Destiny said, and gave Alex and me a quick hug good-bye.

  Maison took my hand in hers and looked at me with a serious expression. “It’s going to be okay, Stevie,” she said. “I’m sure your dad will be waiting for you back at the house and he’s just fine. And if Herobrine is still out there, you know we’ll find a way to take care of him. We’re your friends, and we’ll get through this together.”

  I took a look at the others around me. A few months ago, I never would have guessed that I, Stevie, an average eleven-year-old boy in the Overworld, would find a portal to a new world and make all these new friends. There was Maison, who was smart and brave and my best friend, even though we were from different worlds. There was Destiny, who was a little shy sometimes, but who always tried to do the right thing. There was Alex, who loved adventure as much as the next person loved a good mushroom stew, and who I was finally getting to really know. And there was Yancy, who … who …

  “Toodles,” Yancy said in a singsong voice, waving his weird fingers at us. I still had a hard time taking fingers seriously, even though all the people in the other world had them. I still thought that fingers looked like little squid tentacles attached to hands.

  “Yeah, see you,” I said, not very enthusiastically. I still felt uneasy about Yancy.

  He was the whole reason Herobrine existed.

  Yancy used to be what you’d call a “cyberbully.” Because Maison’s computer acted as a portal to the Overworld, he’d hacked her computer and tried to have a zombie takeover. His cousin Destiny helped Maison and me stop him in the end, and afterward he went into therapy and said he was a new, better person now. Which I had a hard time believing.

  Back in his cyberbullying days, he had put a mod of Herobrine into the game. That mod gained consciousness and became the Herobrine we were fighting. Yancy kept pointing out he’d just put Herobrine in the game as a joke, and he hadn’t meant for Herobrine to gain consciousness and become an evil monster bent on destruction.

  But there was another reason why I was scared of Yancy.

  Remember those music discs that told prophecies about Herobrine?

  One of those prophecies said that Herobrine wouldn’t be easy to defeat. That he’d keep coming back.

  Another of those prophecies said that the five of us were destined to fight him. However, the music discs also warned that one of us would betray the rest and put our whole mission in jeopardy. And I knew in my heart I could trust Maison, Alex, and Destiny.

  I didn’t know if I could trust Yancy.

  CHAPTER 2

  AS ALEX AND I WATCHED, THE REST OF THE group jumped through the portal, vanishing to the other side. I felt a ton of relief knowing that Maison and Destiny were safe now, plus I was glad to have Yancy out of my hair. He was seventeen, and sometimes he tried to act like we should listen to everything he said because he was the oldest person in our group. So at worst he was a traitor and at best I thought he was still pretty annoyin
g.

  One deed was done, but there was still something else pressing on me. “Now let’s get home so I can check on my dad,” I said.

  Alex nodded in agreement and creaked open the door, letting us peer out. The Overworld landscape had turned dark with freshly spawned zombies and skeletons skulking. In the light of the square moon I could see that the skeletons were all holding arrows.

  “Oooh,” Alex said. She looked so determined she might as well have been rubbing her hands together. “This looks like a challenge.”

  Would it be terrible to admit I was eleven years old but I still didn’t like the dark?

  “I’m ready,” I said, because I didn’t want Alex to think I was a big baby.

  The two of us charged out into the night, Ossie beside us. We headed for my house. We didn’t go out of our way to attack mobs, but if any crossed our path and attacked us, I hit back at them with my diamond sword and Alex got them with her arrows. And let’s just say a lot of them crossed our paths.

  “Is it true that in Maison’s world there are no zombies or hostile skeletons?” Alex asked, drawing back her bowstring and hitting a skeleton.

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking people in Maison’s world were super lucky because they didn’t have to deal with this every night. A zombie lurched up on me from the side, moaning, its green skin rotten and smelling bad. My cat Ossie jumped on it with a hiss, her claws out, and I stabbed the zombie with my sword. Just like that, the zombie was gone.

  More zombies came moaning and appearing out of the shadows, but they were far enough away that Alex, Ossie, and I ran ahead instead of attacking them.

  “Look out!” I said. A skeleton appeared overhead, arrow at the ready, aiming for me. My first thought was to duck out of the way, but before I could move, Alex’s arrow hit the skeleton straight on. The skeleton jolted. Alex hit it again and the skeleton was gone as if it’d never been there to begin with.

  “Thanks, Alex,” I said.

  “No problem,” she said. “I get lots of practice slaying mobs when I go exploring—Zombie!”

  I hit the zombie to my left. I’d been able to hear that zombie’s moaning from way off. I was just waiting for it to get into my reach.

  When my home came into sight, Ossie’s ears drew back and she began to hiss. Something was moving around the house. A lot of something.

  “No,” Alex whispered, stopping beside me. “It can’t be….”

  In the shadows by the torch lights, I could see a swarm of zombies and skeletons all standing around the house as if they were guarding something. The torches brought out the moon-white bones of the skeletons and the deep green of the zombies. I could see a white sign propped against the door that said, DID YOU THINK YOU COULD DEFEAT ME THAT EASILY?

  CHAPTER 3

  “WHAT DO WE DO?” I YELPED. I DIDN’T KNOW what was panicking me more right then: the mocking sign that Herobrine had obviously left, proving he was still alive, or the fact we probably wouldn’t be able to even make it to the house. There was no way the two of us could take out this many mobs!

  “You take zombies, I’ll take skeletons!” Alex called out as a group of zombies lurched toward me. I was lifting my diamond sword in a flash, hitting back at all of them. The skeletons didn’t bother coming close to us, because all they had to do was raise their bows and in seconds we were being rained on by arrows. I had to dodge the arrows while Alex took the skeletons out.

  Then I thought of something really obvious.

  “Dad!” I shouted, hoping he’d come bursting out of the house and help us. Dad was the best mob fighter around, and he’d bulldoze through these mobs. There was no way Herobrine could have brainwashed Dad so much he wouldn’t help his own son survive a mob attack.

  Alex heard me shouting, and she began to shout for him, too. “Uncle Steve!” she yelled. “Stevie and I need your help!”

  But Dad didn’t open the door. It was as if he wasn’t even home.

  No way! I thought. Dad always stayed indoors when it got dark out. Even if he couldn’t hear Alex and me shouting, he had to be able to hear all the zombies and skeletons.

  “Run!” Alex yelled. I looked over and saw she’d taken out all the skeletons that had guarded the door. That opened up a lot of space, though we still had to get around the zombies. There was still a ways to go before we’d make it to the door.

  I stabbed at a zombie and then dove forward. Another zombie swiped at me, knocking me off my feet. I hit the ground, groaning on impact. Zombies jumped over me, only to find themselves quickly full of Alex’s arrows. Alex leapt beside me and grabbed my hand. Zombies staggered just behind our feet, moaning. We ran as quickly as possible.

  “Stevie!” Alex cried, shoving me forward. A zombie struck her. She didn’t fall down, but she crashed into me, which sent me tumbling and almost losing my grip on the sword. With zombies swiping at us, we slashed and hit back until we reached the house. I hit the button to open the door and Alex, Ossie, and I dashed in, the zombies at our heels.

  I used my sword to knock back all the zombies trying to rush in. Come on, come on! I silently yelled at the door.

  The door finally shut, closing us off from the mobs.

  Outside we could hear the zombies crying out and scratching against the house, trying to find a way to get in. Dad had built the house solidly, but their deep moans and scratches lurked behind the door.

  Alex and I collapsed on the wooden floor. We were both badly hurt. I called out again for Dad. My voice just echoed in the empty house. He definitely wasn’t here.

  Alex saw the panicked look on my face and said quickly, “It’s okay, Stevie. He’s probably out looking for you. We need to get something to eat now so we can feel better.”

  “But Herobrine is still out there somewhere,” I said, turning to Alex, my eyes wide. “You saw that sign in front of the house. No one other than Herobrine would leave that.”

  “It could be someone else playing a cruel joke,” Alex said. I could tell she knew this explanation was a stretch. Herobrine had left us cruel, taunting signs like that before.

  We dragged ourselves into the kitchen for food and milk. It would bring back our strength. I also gave Ossie some fish. As we ate, we felt our health improve, and then I started to feel a little less panicky. Alex was probably right—Dad was out looking for me, and he was just fine. My dad was famous in this area for being the best mob fighter around, which earned him the nickname “The Steve.” Someone as famous as Dad should be safe outdoors at night. I hoped.

  “Those mobs … might have been a little more than a challenge,” Alex said as we began to feel better. I could tell she was embarrassed that we hadn’t been able to take all the mobs out.

  “My dad says, ‘Sometimes your only option isn’t a pleasant one.’” Unfortunately, that got me thinking about my dad again. And I began to worry.

  Alex and I both ended up sleeping in my bedroom because it made us feel safer. Ossie curled up at the foot of the bed and lay down, purring. After being in Herobrine’s clutches, she must have been extra happy to be home.

  Before lying down, I sat on the edge of the bed, holding one of the music discs. The musical discs usually talk all the time, saying prophecies that only the five of us—Alex, Maison, Destiny, Yancy, and me—could hear. But now the disc was silent. I kept staring at the disc and holding it, willing it to give us some clue of where Dad was.

  Nothing. All I could hear was the moan of zombies just outside our door.

  I fell asleep almost immediately after lying down, still all sore and aching from the zombie attack. And then I started to dream.

  In the dream Maison and I were both in her world. We were building stuff with logs from her fireplace and having a good time. It felt like when Maison and I had first met. Back then I didn’t really have any friends in the Overworld, and kids at Maison’s school had been bullying her something terrible. So when we first became friends, it felt like we didn’t have anyone else in the world. I felt so lucky I had fou
nd that strange portal and discovered Maison’s world and Maison.

  In the dream, Maison said she was hungry and so we both peered inside her refrigerator, which is where people in her world kept all their food. Maison had introduced me to all sorts of things they ate there, like cheeseburgers and cinnamon toast and grilled cheese sandwiches.

  I knew exactly how Dad and I harvested or made all of our food, but that wasn’t the case for a lot of people in Maison’s world. As far as Maison was concerned, food magically appeared after her mom used little green things called money to buy the food from the store.

  There was a package in the fridge that was reddish but also had some white in it. The color reminded me of the shade of rocks found in the Nether called Netherrack. I’d only been to the Nether a few times with Dad, but that underground, fiery world sure did leave a scary impression on me. It definitely wasn’t a place I’d go to for fun.

  “Whoa, you have food made from Netherrack?” I said, impressed.

  Maison rolled her eyes, though she was smiling. Sometimes our worlds were so different we got cultural things all mixed up. “That’s raw beef, Stevie,” she said. “That’s the stuff we use to make cheeseburgers. The color just looks similar.”

  We started to laugh at the confusion.

  “But how does this become cheeseburgers?” I asked. “Do you use a crafting table?”

  She started to tell me something about a stove, and then suddenly stopped and became very quiet.

  The room felt as if the temperature had plummeted. And I could feel a presence with us. An evil presence.

  “No,” Maison said, sensing it too.

  Suddenly Herobrine loomed overhead. His eyes had no pupils and he stared at us from the deep depths of those white pools. None of the ghost stories I’d heard as a kid prepared me for how spooky it was to look into those cruel, vacant eyes.

  Maison was frozen beside me. When I tried to draw my diamond sword, I realized I was frozen, too.

  “Good evening, Stevie,” Herobrine said, in a voice that was so harsh and so soft at the same time. A whisper dripping with poison.