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

I love crafting. I love brewing. I love books full of new things to learn. But I’ve been here for at least a day now, and I’m exhausted, and no one will give me a bed. I’ve tried to sleep leaning up against the wall, then Rex shouts at me until I go back to brewing. This place feels like a permanent twilight, and it’s unsettling. I’ve made dozens of potions and dozens of weapons, and I’ve made mistakes that blew up in my face and successes that I’d be crowing about all over town, if I was back home. But it’s just me and Rex, and Rex doesn’t care. Rex doesn’t even care if I’m alive or dead—he takes half the food he’s supposed to give me and slowly chews while he reads his stupid book. I’m so desperate for sleep and food that I keep looking at the weird ingredients on the shelf, wondering if any of them are edible.

Probably not. So many of them are based on spider’s eyes.

I’ve just completed a gold sword, just to break up the monotony of making potions—the monotony of making potions! Who am I?!—when Orlok walks in.

“Show me what you’ve made,” he says with no preamble. He stands before my work area, chewing on a piece of meat, and I have to suck some drool back in.

“If I show you, will you feed me?”

He bristles. “I fed you! You were fed.”

My eyes slide to Rex, who’s doing his best to loom innocently against the wall. His mustache is bespeckled with breadcrumbs.

Orlok’s eyes narrow, and he barks, “Rex, go get the boy some food. He’s no good to us if his health gets too low. You know that.”

Rex sneers at me and leaves. It takes effort not to stare at Orlok’s food, but I can sense he’s feeling impatient and jumpy. I think the Nether just does that to people. Since Rex hasn’t slept and won’t let me sleep, there must be something here that prevents rest.

“I’ve got all the potions you asked for—five of each. Except the Potion of Fire Resistance. That one’s tricky.”

Orlok picks up a Potion of Invisibility and holds it up to the nearest torch, inspecting it. I don’t know if he knows potions well enough to be able to distinguish its particular shade of purple from all the other shades of purple, but he grunts and sets it back down.

“Good work. Do you need any more ingredients?”

I look at the shelf. Several of the bowls that once held spider’s eyes and magma creams are empty now, and my blaze rods are running low. “How long do you plan to keep me here? I’m going to need sleep if you don’t want me to blow myself up. I already feel like I’m becoming…” I’m not sure of the right word, and that’s part of the problem. “Unstable.”

He shakes his head, showing no pity. “A bit longer. Got to make it count. Then we’ll head back to the Overworld, get some rest, and come right back here. Until then, just keep your eyes open and hope you don’t accidentally fall asleep, yeah? Not even a catnap.

The word “cat” makes me tear up. I miss Candor and Clarity so much.

“When do I get to go home again?”

Orlok gives a one-shoulder shrug that shows how little he cares about me. “This is your job now. So do your job. You’re one of us.”

At that, I step toward him, my hands in fists. “I’m not one of you! I’m a—a—captive! I’m a child. You kidnapped me. My family will be worried about me. You need to take me home.”

He steps toward me, not cowed by my fury. “You may be a kid in years, but you’re a business owner. You don’t live with your parents. Yeah, that’s right—I did my research. So if you’re going to live an adult’s life, you can get treated like an adult.”

I shake my head, tears burning my eyes. “You once told Krog you weren’t willing to attack a town. I thought that meant you had morals.”

At that, he barks a laugh. “I don’t have morals; I have a code. I don’t want to hurt people, especially people who don’t challenge me, and therefore I’m not hurting you. You’re safe. Protected. Fed. You might be uncomfortable, but we all are. The rest of the crew is out gathering more ingredients. Fighting blazes and magma cubes. For you. Maybe once I’m rich enough to buy my own castle you’ll have earned your freedom. Now, I’ll ask again: What do you need?”

Food. Friendship. Cats. My brother. The blue sky. My mom’s pumpkin pie.

“More nether wart. More blaze rods. More spider’s eyes. And more magma creams. I keep breaking them.”

I slump to sitting right there. It just feels so hopeless. I know I heard the brigands whispering once about how maps and compasses don’t work in the Nether, so it’s not like my friends could find me, even if they managed to figure out how to get here. There’s no helpful beacon, no cartographer’s X that marks this spot. When Orlok gave me another handful of sweet berries, I dropped them to mark our path through the Nether, but maybe something ate them, or maybe they just straight-up melted. Or maybe my friends are still at home, worried. Maybe they never found the berry trail at all.

I’m in another world, in the middle of nowhere, and with every passing moment that I can’t get any sleep, I feel less able to cope with everything that’s happening.

And, yeah, I feel sorry for myself, but I wasn’t lying—potions are tricky, and if they push me too far, I’m going to cause a bigger explosion than I ever did back home. These ingredients are powerful, more powerful than what I was fiddling with back at my shop, and someone is going to get hurt.

Rex returns with a piece of meat for me, and I wolf it down so fast that Orlok makes his minion give me the meat he brought for himself. It’s not chicken or mutton or beef, and considering what I can see of the Nether from my window, I probably don’t want to know what it is.

I’ve stolen a few glances outside, while Rex was deep in his book. I guess they feel it’s safe to leave the window open because, well, there’s nowhere to go except straight downward into an endless sea of lava. There are no bridges, no ladders, few beaches, and those so far away that there’s no way I could jump to them. It’s just the flat, dark red side of this building, the slightly lighter red walls of the enormous cavern we’re in, and the lava. There’s nowhere for me to go. No way to escape. Even if I crafted a pickaxe, and even if I could mine a hole in the floor without three goons running in to stop me, where would I go?

I finish my meat, wipe my mouth, and stumble back to my workstation, where I pull a fresh water bottle off the shelf.

“Good boy,” Orlok says with a grin. “My little potion cow.”

The greedy, knowing way he says it makes the meat rise back up in my throat.

Even if he seems kind or wise sometimes, Orlok, like Krog, is not a good dude.

He leaves, and Rex pulls out his book, and I make Potions of Harming. I saved these potions for last, hoping that they’d be happy enough with the more harmless concoctions. But until someone replenishes my nether wart, I’m kind of stuck. I guess that’s why they brought me here: There’s bound to be more nether wart in the Nether. And also because no one will ever find me.

I finish my potion and place it on the shelf with all the others. They’re so pretty, lined up like this, swirling masterpieces of blue and pink and purple. It’s funny how a few days ago, if someone had promised me I’d have unlimited potion ingredients in a tricked-out workshop, several books on the topic, and all the time in the world to brew, I would have been ecstatic.

But only because I would have been free, and because I would have had Chug with me.

I stumble over to the window, put my elbows on the sill, and cry.