Battle with the Wither Page 2

  “Yes,” the middle head replied with a snakelike hiss. “We saw you and a redheaded girl running, not long after Herobrine created us. Herobrine said …” The Wither dipped lower as if to share a secret. I automatically jumped back. “That there was a boy with a portal, a portal to a world unlike the Overworld or the Nether,” it went on. “And Herobrine said he was going to steal this portal and destroy this boy.”

  “But Herobrine also said that if anything happened to him,” the right head said, “we were created to complete his mission of destruction.”

  “We felt it when Herobrine was defeated in the End,” the left head said. “It was as if a shudder went through the worlds. Then we knew it was our time to shine.”

  Dad pushed the debris out of his way and slowly dragged himself to his feet, holding his side. He was weakened, although not badly hurt.

  “The boy you want isn’t here!” Dad shouted, stumbling forward. “Leave!”

  The next thing I knew, the middle head popped so close to my face that I thought it would take a bite out of me. “Do you know where the boy we’re looking for is?”

  I shook my head.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the middle head said. “He can’t be far. In the meantime, we’re enjoying this Nether portal. Using the power Herobrine gave us, we’ve made this an extra special portal—one that brings the Nether with us wherever we go.”

  “I want the boy!” snarled the right head. “Herobrine let him get away, but we won’t!”

  “We’ll find the boy if you just listen to me,” snapped the left head. “All we need to do is keep up the Nether attack and find that portal so we can send monsters out through it to that other world. Then we just sit back and enjoy—the rest will take care of itself.”

  “The boy you’re looking for is long gone,” Dad said, leaning on his crafting table to support his weight. “So is the portal you’re looking for. Go back to the Nether and leave us in peace!”

  All three Wither heads laughed at him. “I don’t know what’s funnier,” the middle head declared. “The father who acts tough but loses his sword instantly, or the little boy who tries to be heroic and only has a broken sword. Come on, let’s find more fun elsewhere.”

  The Wither lifted itself out of our broken house, whirling, the Nether portal still in its clutches. As it flew away, hurling skulls, more mobs continued to fall out of the portal.

  CHAPTER 5

  I RAN TO DAD’S SIDE. NOW I COULD SEE THAT HE WAS in more pain than I realized, and he’d been trying to hide it from the Wither.

  “Get a Potion of Healing,” Dad gasped, clutching his side, his face streaked with sweat.

  Ossie came out from where she was hiding, thankfully unharmed. Frantic, I ran to Dad’s supply shed—or where Dad’s supply shed used to be. Dad had been collecting materials in that shed for years, since long before I was born, and it had held just about any item you could think of.

  But now everything there had either been destroyed or cast about. I dug through piles of smashed potion bottles until I found two Potions of Healing that were intact.

  “Here, Dad!” I said, running it over to him. He swigged the drink and almost immediately I could see he felt better.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said. “I couldn’t find my diamond sword.”

  However, that wasn’t the worst thing I was feeling sorry about. I couldn’t believe I’d just assumed Dad had broken the portal to the Nether and I’d never looked into it. I should have been more responsible, and now look what had happened! No lecture from Dad could make me feel worse than I already felt, and I think he knew that.

  Dad didn’t say anything for a moment. He was staring intensely at the broken pieces of his diamond sword, glittering in the dark red light. Then he said, “Find what supplies you can from the shed. We have to warn the villagers.”

  My heart skipped a beat. That wasn’t the only thing I thought we had to do. “We also have to go to the Earth portal and warn Maison!” I said.

  Dad gave me a cold look for some reason. “The Wither doesn’t know where the Earth portal is. The villagers are in much more immediate danger.”

  I honestly didn’t know who was in the most danger right then. Even if the Wither didn’t know it, the Earth portal wasn’t far from here. I kept it locked up in an obsidian house that most mobs wouldn’t be able to break through, but a Wither wasn’t like most mobs. I knew the Wither could stumble across the little house and the Earth portal very easily if it kept flying around in this area.

  “But, Dad!” I said. “Maison and the others can help us!”

  “I said no, Stevie!” Dad said, and this time I got quiet. Dad watched me for a long moment, and then began sifting through things himself. He found his diamond pickaxe and dropped it into his toolkit, along with a few other supplies.

  Unsure what to do, I started digging as well. Ossie nudged at something and when I lifted it, there was my diamond sword underneath. I found my tool kit nearby, and I stuck the remaining Potion of Healing into it, in case we needed it later. As I fumbled and put more things into my tool kit, I realized I was still shaking from the attack. Only half my brain was paying attention to what weapons and supplies I dropped in.

  The Wither was after me! It wanted to destroy me! But it had looked in my face and laughed at me, thinking I was some dumb kid and not the “boy with the portal” it was after.

  I guessed I wasn’t much to look at just then. I didn’t have a real weapon, and people had judged me before because I was eleven and they thought I couldn’t do anything. It hurt but, in a way, it was also good that the Wither had thought I was someone else and spared me.

  Dad surveyed the reddish landscape. “I see ghasts, blazes, and magma cubes, but they’re all far off,” he said. He looked at the zombie pigmen wandering through our skeleton of a house, acting as if they owned the place. I could tell Dad wanted to push them out, but zombie pigmen only left you alone if you left them alone. If Dad got aggressive with one, they’d all attack, which was something I’d learned the hard way during my trip through the Nether. To make matters worse, there were hundreds of zombie pigmen around the farmland that could become enemy attackers in an instant.

  “Let’s go,” Dad said. “Bring the cat so she’ll be safe with us.”

  Not knowing what else to do, I picked up Ossie and trotted after Dad.

  “When we get to the village, we’ll get the villagers armed and all go after that Wither together,” Dad was saying, making plans as he ran.

  If the Wither hasn’t already ransacked the village, I thought, but didn’t say it out loud. I wanted so badly to run to the Earth portal and check on Maison to make sure she was safe!

  When we came up to the tree house Maison and I had built, I couldn’t take it anymore. Half the tree house was torn down, and the nearby lake had turned from cool blue water into a cesspool of Nether lava. I looked at the boiling lava, and I looked at my tree house, remembering all the good times I had had, hanging out with Maison there. It was our special place.

  “I need to go tell Maison!” I blurted, and started running in the direction of the portal. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let something happen to her!”

  Dad called my name, but I kept running. I agreed with Dad that we needed to get to the villagers to warn them and have them join us in the fight against the Wither. Still, the villagers had fought mobs before. They had had training. Most people on Earth wouldn’t know what to do with a Wither if it burst in on them, let alone if it brought all these Nether mobs with it. The Earth portal wasn’t far from here, so I could just run over there, get Maison, have her let the others know what was going on in case anything happened, and then she, Dad, and I would run to the village. It wouldn’t be that far out of our way, and it might help save a whole world.

  Dad chased after me. Maybe the Potion of Healing hadn’t made him a hundred percent better since his fall, because he didn’t catch up to me until I was almost at the portal. I felt a rush of relief when I sa
w the obsidian house was still there, all in one piece. That meant the portal was safe. The land here was also reddish and dotted with fires like the Nether, though I didn’t see any Wither-caused destruction.

  Then Dad grabbed me and whirled me around to look at him.

  “Stevie!” he exclaimed right in my face, gripping me by my shoulders. He looked very emotional, which startled me. “I don’t know why you won’t listen to me anymore!”

  “I just want to help Maison and the others,” I said. “They’re my friends.”

  “And I’m your father,” he said. “You’re my son. You act as if you’re part of two different worlds now, but you aren’t. You don’t belong on Earth. You are a citizen of the Overworld. We protect our own first.”

  “We can protect both—” I started to say.

  “You’re not hearing me,” Dad said. “I’m tired of you putting these—these Earth people before us. It’s fine to have friends, and I’m not saying they’re not good people, but you’ve been abandoning who you are to be with them. You’ve been abandoning me. I want to spend a single day with you after all we’ve been through lately, and all you can think about is Maison, Maison, Maison. In any case, your friends aren’t trained to fight mobs, so all they’d do is get in the way.”

  “That’s not true!” I argued. “Maison and Destiny and Yancy have all fought mobs!”

  “They haven’t fought a Wither,” he said. “You saw what it did to our home in a matter of seconds. This is destruction beyond what your friends understand. And normal Withers can’t go through portals, let alone use portals to create this.” He angrily gestured to the land around us. “This is a Herobrine-made Wither, which makes it even more dangerous than any other Wither. I couldn’t believe you earlier, rushing up to it with a block, thinking you could defeat it. You’re lucky I got to you in time. Now stop this nonsense and come with me to the village!”

  Before I could say a word, I heard a terrible cry, and several ghasts shot out of nowhere, their eyes on us.

  CHAPTER 6

  “LOOK OUT!” DAD SAID.

  Ghasts were square-shaped mobs that flew through the sky and spat fireballs. I dove out of the way of the first fireball, missing it by inches. Dad slashed out with his diamond pickaxe, hitting a blast of fire and shooting it right back at the ghast. The fire hit right on target, taking the ghast out immediately.

  I was trying to do the same with my sword, but it took skill and aim. More ghasts flew overhead, raining blast after blast of fire down on us. Dad was successfully hitting the fireballs back at them while all I could do was dodge and try to hit back. There were so many of them!

  And then it got worse. From behind the portal house stepped a whole row of wither skeletons, all of them armed with black swords. Their angry-looking skulls reminded me of the three skull faces on the Wither.

  “Get the skeletons, Stevie!” Dad called, not pausing in his battle against the ghasts. I obeyed, running toward the pack of wither skeletons. Ossie, who had been sitting on my shoulder, jumped down and ran for cover.

  I swung my sword out, hitting two wither skeletons. Two more rose up over me, and I slashed at them, knocking them back but not defeating them. The wither skeletons leapt toward me again as I continued to fling my sword out. If a wither skeleton touched me, it would give me the wither effect, draining me of my strength. As it was, I could barely handle them. The wither skeletons were all over me, bearing down, barely giving me any room to swing my sword. I took one out with a quick stab and knocked another back.

  “Stevie, duck!” Dad shouted.

  I ducked. The fireball that had been aimed for me hit a wither skeleton instead, causing it to vanish. Ducking had saved me from the ghast’s fire, but it also put me into a very awkward position. One of the wither skeleton’s black swords came out and knocked my diamond sword right out of my hand. I lunged for the sword, though I already knew it would be too late. The two remaining skeletons loomed over me, swords at the ready.

  CHAPTER 7

  AT THE LAST MOMENT, ARROWS STRUCK BOTH wither skeletons, one after the other. For a second I lay there, trembling, watching as the arrows hit their mark and the wither skeletons turned red and disappeared.

  And then I saw my cousin Alex just ahead, drawing back her bow. With graceful ease, she sent several more arrows flying, taking out the rest of the ghasts over Dad.

  “Alex!” Dad said in amazement.

  “Looks like I got here just in time, Uncle Steve,” Alex said brightly. I could tell she was really proud of herself. Then again, she had every reason to be.

  “What are you doing here?” Dad asked. What we really owed Alex right then was a thank you, but Dad was already preoccupied with other things. “Where is your mother?”

  Before Alex could answer, I saw that the portal house’s door was open, and that Maison, Destiny, and Yancy were running out of it.

  “You guys are all right!” I exclaimed, hurrying over. “Has Earth been affected like this too?”

  “No!” Maison said. “Yancy and Destiny were over at my place, and then Alex just fell out through the computer screen.” Maison’s computer was where we always came from when we went through the Earth portal.

  “I was out exploring when the whole land turned red,” Alex told Dad. “I wasn’t far from where you and Stevie live, so I ran over there. When I saw your house was destroyed and you were nowhere around, I ran to get Maison to help look for you.”

  “We must have just missed each other,” Dad said.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay,” Maison said breathlessly. “We were so scared when Alex told us what was happening.”

  “Did you see the Wither?” I asked Alex. Ossie came running back to us now that the battle was done, and I picked her up.

  “A Wither is causing this?” Alex said, wide-eyed.

  I quickly filled them in, trying not to notice Dad’s annoyed look. He wasn’t going to tell Maison, Destiny, and Yancy to leave now that they were here, though it was obvious he wasn’t pleased.

  “That Wither we saw in the Nether did this?” Alex cried. “But Withers can’t go through portals!”

  “This one can,” I said bitterly. “Because of Herobrine.”

  “Kids, we don’t have time to stand here and talk,” Dad cut in. “We need to get to the village.”

  No one argued with that, and we all started heading in the direction of the village. I noticed that Maison had brought along her baseball bat, and Yancy and Destiny had grabbed wooden swords for themselves before going through the portal.

  “I wonder why the Wither didn’t believe you were, well, you,” Destiny said, mulling over this.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m more worried about its connection with Herobrine. I knew it was too good to be true that Herobrine was gone!”

  “Herobrine is gone,” Yancy said. “And it doesn’t sound as if this Wither is too bright, even if it can talk. I actually think defeating Withers in the game is pretty fun …” He trailed off when he saw that Dad was glaring at him.

  “Fun?” Dad repeated. “Fun? Come look at the condition our house is in. Look at the condition the Overworld is in! It’s just a game for you, but this is our world. I don’t think you understand that.”

  Yancy clammed up, uncomfortable.

  “We get destruction on Earth too,” Maison said. “There was actually just an earthquake near us that ruined some people’s houses. Yancy, Destiny, and I were all meeting up because we were going to go over there and help rebuild.”

  This caught Dad’s attention. “An earthquake? Is that like a Wither? Does it seek out things to destroy?”

  “Well, no,” Maison said.

  “Do you create it using ingredients like wither skulls and soul sand?” Dad went on. No matter how many times I told Dad about Earth, he still couldn’t fathom it being that different from the Overworld.

  “Earthquakes are about faults and seismic waves,” Yancy said. “It’s science, not magic.”

  �
��We felt the earthquake where we live,” Maison said. “Then we heard on the news that some people lost their houses, and adults were going to go help them rebuild. So we thought we’d join up. None of us lost anything in the earthquake.”

  Dad grunted. I wasn’t really sure what that meant.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of the Wither first,” Yancy said. “Those houses will still be there when we get back. On the other hand …” Then he stopped. I guess he realized it wouldn’t be good for him to continue that sentence, because it was probably something along the lines of, “On the other hand, the Overworld might not be here if we don’t do something now.”

  It was something I believe we were all thinking, and none of us wanted to say. And when we reached the village near my house, we realized just how bad things were.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE VILLAGE HAD BEEN LEVELED. BITS AND parts of houses remained, but whole homes had been knocked to the ground. In the midst of the carnage, people were either trying to put their homes back together, or they were fighting against Nether mobs that had snuck up on them. It was a devastating sight.

  Dad spotted the blacksmith standing near the front of the village, attempting to fix a destroyed house. Dad regularly visited the blacksmith to trade emeralds for supplies, and now he rushed over to his friend.

  “Steve!” the blacksmith exclaimed when he saw Dad. “It’s good to know you’re safe.”

  “Same to you,” Dad said.

  “There’s an enormous Wither on a rampage!” The blacksmith shuddered at the memory. “I’ve never seen a Wither before, and this one was even worse than all the stories and legends I’ve heard about them! It was carrying a Nether portal with it, and all sorts of Nether mobs were falling out.”

  Dad nodded grimly. “That Wither completely destroyed my home.”

  “We’re in the same boat then,” the blacksmith said sadly. “Many people have lost their homes here. But I haven’t even gotten to the strangest part. The Wither spoke! It was smashing our homes to pieces overhead and roaring that it wanted to find ‘the boy with the portal.’”