The Armies of Herobrine Read online

  CHAPTER 15

  I WAS IN A ROOM FILLED WITH NOISES—SLASHING swords and moaning zombies and the thunder of battle. But now my whole body tensed as I heard a very specific noise, a very specific creepy music. It wasn’t any old creepy music, either. It was the music from my nightmares about Herobrine. The sound was coming from my toolkit.

  The music disc!

  I yanked the music disc out so fast that I almost dropped it in my clumsy hands. Lilac had her microphone out and was talking into the camera, but Yancy, Maison, Destiny, and Alex all heard the music disc. We stepped out of the way of the camera, trying to get to a quieter corner of the room.

  “The stage is set.

  The world turns in the favor of the tyrant.

  It will take the work of all to defeat him.

  Through teamwork and by conquering fears

  the five can become more.

  Everything needed to defeat him

  is already with you.”

  And that was it. The music disc went silent again.

  I had gotten so excited to hear it speak again, and now I was mad. This prophecy didn’t tell us anything! All the prophecies were doing at this point was saying Herobrine could be defeated, and we had to work together, blah, blah, blah, and that the five of us were the key to defeating him. But couldn’t the music disc give us some real clues? If we had everything we needed to defeat him, what were those things?

  “It’s a riddle!” Alex said angrily. “Earth and the Overworld don’t have time for riddles.”

  “We already have what we need?” Maison looked down at her bat. “How can we have everything we need? When we attacked Herobrine with our weapons before, all it did was make him disappear. We need to do something different this time.”

  “He was weakened when I shot him with arrows,” Alex said. “But I wasn’t able to bring him down.”

  “He was distracted,” Yancy said. “Just like he’s distracted now. We have to use his arrogance against him.”

  “So, we distract him and then all five of us attack?” Alex wondered.

  “But what is this ‘work of all’ and ‘five can become more’?” Destiny asked, her eyes very serious as she thought.

  Alex looked over her shoulder at the movie screen. “I can see where he is, but I have no idea how to get there. I wonder when Yancy’s newscast will air where he is.”

  “Wait!” Destiny said so loudly we all jumped. When we looked back at her, I saw her eyes were glowing as if she was lit up by an incredible idea.

  “What is it?” I asked breathlessly.

  “I know what we have,” Destiny said. “Technology. We have to defeat him using it. And we have to do it fast, before he realizes what’s going on.”

  My heart was pounding. “But what kind of technology?” I demanded. Destiny and Yancy were both great at tech, Maison was pretty good, and Alex and I were pretty clueless since we hadn’t grown up around it.

  “Yancy!” Destiny said, turning toward him quickly. “Does your Minecraft game still work on your phone?”

  “Uh …” Yancy looked at her expressionlessly for a second, then checked his phone. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Herobrine stole into this world using your Minecraft game on your cell phone,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if we know exactly where he is. He can be found in the game. Give everyone in the world your IP address so they can get into your game with you. A multiplayer attack! Tell them to go after Herobrine! That will raise the five—us—to as many people as there are on the Earth. And we have everything we need to defeat him right here!” She pointed to our weapons and Yancy’s phone.

  “Of course!” Maison said. “He can knock off a few attacks, but if we really can reach people at a global level, we can get millions of people online to attack him at the same time.”

  “It’s the best chance we’ve got,” Yancy said. “Great thinking, Destiny! Even if it doesn’t defeat him, it’s got to weaken his health. If we get him distracted and weakened …”

  I realized I was breathing heavily, from both excitement and fear. Yancy threw himself right in front of Lilac and the camera. “What is it?” she asked, seeing from his face that he needed to say something big.

  “I might know how to beat Herobrine and make all the portals disappear,” Yancy said.

  That got Lilac’s full attention. Yancy explained the plan and gave his IP address, and within a minute his newscast was starting to show up on some of the cities on the movie screen. Wherever it did show up, I saw people snatching out their phones, tablets, and computers. Kids were showing their parents how to play Minecraft.

  “It’s a worldwide manhunt!” Maison marveled.

  We’re coming for you, I thought angrily, watching Herobrine on the screen. We’ll find you soon.

  While I was thinking this, Herobrine was still gloating and laughing at the Earth people being attacked by zombies. Then Herobrine stopped laughing. He jerked as if some invisible thing had hurt him. He stumbled, holding his leg where Alex had shot him earlier.

  For the first time, that terrible smile left his face. He was no longer gloating.

  And Yancy’s original newscast must have been playing somewhere nearby Herobrine, because abruptly the zombies stopped attacking the people, and instead began to turn on the soldiers.

  “Stop!” Herobrine howled. “Zombies, attack the people!”

  The zombies stopped and looked confused. Who was more powerful, Herobrine or Yancy? Most of the zombies began to attack the people again, though a few continued to go after the soldiers. Up close and personal, Herobrine’s power over the zombies was stronger than Yancy’s. But maybe the fact that some zombies still followed Yancy’s directions was a sign that Herobrine was growing weaker?

  For a moment I thought Herobrine might have looked afraid, though as quickly as I saw it, the fear was gone from his face. Instead, his expression became consumed with rage.

  He emitted a hideous, animal-like roar of fury, the kind of roar that sent chills all over my body. Then he turned to the portal behind him and leapt through it.

  I scanned all the scenes on the big movie screen, trying to see if Herobrine would reappear. He didn’t, but there were so many more cities under attack that he wasn’t showing us. Was he in one of those cities? Had he escaped back to the Overworld?

  “Where is he?” I yelped.

  A moment later, I got my answer. Herobrine stormed out of the portal onstage, his face twitching, his teeth bared like fangs. The red lights were swirling all over him. The temperature plummeted at his very presence, and his white eyes sought out our group.

  “Stevie,” he said, his voice a monster’s growl. “This is all your doing!”

  “It’s all of us!” Alex said bravely. “We have the whole world fighting against you!”

  Herobrine’s form gave a little tremor. “Oh, you think you’ve won,” he said in a sickening voice. “But the battle is far from over.”

  “Are you getting this?” Lilac called to her cameraman.

  “You’re acting fearless, but I can see the attacks are weakening your health!” Yancy said. “Surrender now and turn things back to how they were before.”

  “You’re all fools!” Herobrine spat out. “You think some puny attacks will weaken me enough to stop me? Besides, I still have the upper hand.”

  He reached back into the portal and wrenched out a man from the Overworld. The force of Herobrine’s might was still so strong that the man fell weakly forward on his stomach. He lay there a moment, coughing. Herobrine grabbed the man by the back of his head and forced his face up, so we could all see who it was. Even though the man’s eyes were clamped shut, I would recognize him from anywhere.

  “Dad!” I cried.

  “I still have your father, Stevie!” Herobrine shouted. “He’s worth more to you than some measly world, isn’t he? I’ll tell you what: I return your father if you call off the attacks on me. If you don’t …” He paused to let the horror sink in. “Then your father
is mine forever.”

  “You can’t do this!” I tried to run forward, even though I didn’t know what I was going to do. I wanted to grab Dad and protect him. Before I could get far, Yancy’s hand flew out and he seized me by my sleeve.

  “Don’t do it, Stevie!” Yancy hissed in a whisper. “He’s lying! He’s never going to release your dad to us, and if we call off the attacks, we’re all doomed!”

  I froze. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to do.

  Herobrine watched me grimly, waiting for my answer. “Fine,” he said after a moment. “Then you’ll just have to come find me.”

  He snatched Dad up and jumped through the portal, both of them vanishing off into another world.

  CHAPTER 16

  “DAD!” I CRIED, RUNNING TOWARD THE STAGE. “Dad, come back!”

  As if my dad had a choice.

  “We have to go through that portal!” Alex said. I realized the others were running beside me, not trying to stop me now.

  “But we can’t leave everyone here!” Destiny said. “There are still people attacking the students!”

  Ms. Reid was standing near the stage, and she stepped in front of me before I could reach it. I came to a screeching halt right before her. What was she thinking? I had to get through that portal!

  “Stevie!” she said. “Run, go after your father!” I saw she held a wooden sword in her hand, and she held it high. “I’ll watch over everyone here and keep them safe.”

  “Thank you,” I stammered, feeling a sudden rush of gratitude. It was all such a blur. The battle here was mostly over, and with Ms. Reid acting like a general and arming the students with wooden swords, I had faith they would be okay.

  “No need to thank me,” Ms. Reid said. “Go fight that villain!”

  The five of us rushed to the portal, leaping through almost at once. When we fell out on the other side, I realized right away where we were. The portal had taken us to the temple high atop a mountain where we had fought Herobrine before. The mountain was surrounded by forests, but as I looked, all the trees had lost their leaves as far as my eyes could see. It was a sign of Herobrine’s presence, all those skeletal trees reaching up to the sky, their branches out as if begging for help.

  “Oh no!” I said.

  Herobrine was nowhere in sight.

  Neither was my dad.

  But over the mountain, and across the forests, there were portals. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, with mist rising up from their bottoms, all of them channels to more worlds, more destinations.

  Herobrine could have jumped into any one of these with Dad.

  How were we ever going to find them?

  CHAPTER 17

  “SHOULD WE SPLIT UP?” MAISON ASKED TENSELY.

  “If we split up, we could get lost,” Alex said.

  That wasn’t the only thing worrying me. Down the mountain and in the forest, I could see lots of soldiers from the Overworld. They looked as if they’d been pushed back through the portals from wherever they’d been on Earth. And they were fighting a bunch of weird-looking people. The people looked kind of like Overworld people with square bodies, but a lot of them were shaped like cartoon and comic book characters from Maison’s world. They also all had normal eyes instead of Herobrine-blank eyes. I didn’t understand.

  “Those must be the players jumping onto Yancy’s IP to help us out!” Destiny said. “They all have different Minecraft skins!”

  I realized she had to be right. The weird-looking people weren’t trying to hurt the Overworld armies, but they were protecting the portals and making sure the armies didn’t go back through them to Earth. I didn’t see any soldiers or Minecraft players up the mountain, so we kept our attention on what was right in front of us.

  “If I were to guess,” Yancy said, “I think Herobrine would have gone into a portal someplace where the zombies haven’t driven the Overworld soldiers back. So it’d probably be through a portal with no one around it.”

  That made sense, but it still didn’t help much. Even by eliminating the portals with soldiers near them, there were still hundreds of portals without soldiers.

  “Should we try one?” Alex said, gesturing to the closest portal to us.

  We didn’t know what else to do, and standing there wasn’t giving us any more clues. When we went through the portal, we arrived in a big Earth city full of skyscrapers. I’d seen pictures of skyscrapers like that, though I’d never seen them in real life. They towered darkly overhead.

  “Zombies!” I said.

  Zombies and Overworld soldiers were still attacking the people here. People were running for cover and yelling at one another in a language I didn’t know. But then one of the skyscrapers lit up on the side, and Yancy’s face appeared.

  “The newscast is just reaching here!” I said.

  As the Yancy on screen talked, I saw writing scrolling underneath his face.

  “It’s subtitled!” Maison said. “They really are making sure everyone can understand. This is great!”

  I didn’t know what subtitles meant, but the people here responded to the footage and began to fight back. The zombies also turned against the Overworld soldiers.

  “I don’t see Herobrine here,” I said. “And it looks like the tide is turning in this battle.”

  We jumped back through the portal. Going into the next portal, we saw almost the same thing. The newscast was reaching the people and helping them defend themselves.

  When we were back in the Overworld, I exclaimed, “This isn’t working! We can’t just keep jumping back through portals!”

  Even as I said that, I didn’t know what else I could suggest. But if we kept going through portal after portal, that might give Herobrine enough time to hurt Dad and find new ways to fight.

  “Stevie?” I heard a frail voice call.

  My heart started thumping even harder in my chest. “Dad?” I called back. His voice sounded so weak and unlike him, but I knew it was him! “Dad! Where are you?”

  We all looked around, and then I saw him. He was on a ledge a little lower on the mountain, though still very close to the top. It was a small ledge, with no portal on it, and Dad was lying with his face away from us. If he rolled just a little, he’d fall off.

  “Dad!” I cried, and began running down to the ledge. Herobrine was nowhere to be seen, as if he’d wounded Dad and just dumped him there to suffer.

  How hurt is he? I wondered desperately. Dad wasn’t the kind to lie there and cry out for help. He was strong. “Dad, Dad, I’m coming!”

  “Stevie, wait!” Yancy called from behind.

  I didn’t wait. I threw myself down on the ledge, my feet hitting the ground hard. Dad still didn’t turn to see me. He must have been really hurt.

  “Dad,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, trying to turn him my way and help him up.

  As soon as Dad started to turn, I saw his eyes were still shut and he held his diamond sword in his hand. The sword had been hidden from my sight because of how he’d been lying there. As he moved, he raised his sword, casting a shadow over me.

  His eyes popped open.

  They were the same blank, white eyes as Herobrine’s.

  With a roar, Dad lunged at me.

  CHAPTER 18

  I JUST BARELY DODGED DAD’S SWORD BLOW, AND HIS blade hit the side of the mountain, sticking there. He ripped the sword out of the stone and turned back toward me.

  “Stevie!” Maison cried. She skidded down the mountain and landed on the ledge, the others right behind her. They all crowded around me like a shield as Dad loomed, stalking closer to us. If we backed up only a few inches, we’d fall off the ledge to the ground far below.

  There was a terrible laughing overhead.

  Herobrine stood on one ledge just above us, bellowing with laughter. “You fools!” he shouted hoarsely. “Of course he’s still working for me! I only had him play sick and weak to trick you!”

  Dad lunged toward us with his sword. I threw my swor
d out to halt him and the others tried to push him back with their weapons without hurting him.

  “I told you before, Stevie, that I chose your father to be second-in-command of my armies!” Herobrine continued. “He is powerless against me and will do whatever I ask. I had him leading zombies and Overworld armies just as I had Alexandra doing, but I didn’t let you see because I had a feeling I could pull this trick on you. Oh, the look on your face when you realized!”

  Now Herobrine shouted to Dad, “Steve!”

  Like an obedient toy, Dad stopped and waited for his command.

  “Finish them off,” Herobrine said, crossing his arms. “All five of them. This time, I’m sticking around to make sure the job is finished.”

  Dad struck out at us with a sword again while Herobrine watched from his perch, as entertained as someone watching TV in Maison’s world.

  “It’s still five against one,” Alex said, yanking up her bow. “We can still stop him.” But a moment later, she cried out in shock. An arrow had flown out of nowhere, taking Alex’s out before she could send it flying.

  Where had that arrow come from? I pushed back at Dad’s sword and got a glimpse above. Aunt Alexandra was now next to Herobrine on his ledge, her bow still raised.

  “Mom!” Alex yelped.

  “You’re not the only one who knows archery, little girl,” Aunt Alexandra hissed. She shot another arrow, this time straight at Alex. Alex dove to the ground to save herself and almost got trampled by Dad’s big feet.

  With a graceful gesture, Aunt Alexandra vaulted down to join us on our ledge. As soon as she landed, she lifted her bow again. Maison ran at her, hitting the bow back with her bat, momentarily stalling Aunt Alexandra.

  Alex jumped back up to her feet, spitfire mad. “Herobrine!” she thundered. “Get down here and fight us yourself!”

  “Why?” Herobrine asked. “I’m rather enjoying this family get-together.”

  “You’re acting tough, but you don’t fool us!” Alex went on. “If you were strong enough, you’d be down here fighting, too. You’re having other people do your work for you because you’ve been weakened by all the attacks on the Minecraft game!”