Chapter 3

“Hi. You’ve been on these minecarts before, right? Is the ride awesome?” I asked. I half wanted to help make any possible improvements. Building was my strong suit.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have,” Ivor said. “Actually, I helped build it.”

“Wow,” I gasped, “That must have been awesome!”

“Quite. You would not BELIEVE the adventure that the Nether holds.”

“Yeah. And lava. And fire.”

“That’s the fun part.”

“Well then, that’s-WHOA!” I was cut off as the minecart began to move. My arm slammed against the back of the vehicle due to the sudden motion. Ivor chuckled.

“First time riding a minecart?” He teased. I laughed.

“Actually, one of the first,” I admitted. We had tried to build a minecart track for EnderCon a few years back, but it hadn’t gone well. The powered rails weren’t placed in the...most strategic places. Therefore, the minecart would stop every now and then. That was a year that we hadn’t won. “EnderCon fail, remember?”

“Oh, that one,” Ivor said, a bit of humor in his tone. We all laughed about how badly we had done that year. “Well, when we’re at the base, we won’t have to worry about minecarts. Unless you want to, you know, maybe keep trying to build them.”

“Yeah, probably not.” I looked around the tunnel that we were going down. It was lined with purplish red Nether brick. The tunnel wasn’t exactly small, just not the widest thing in the world. And the torches were pretty far apart, so it looked smaller and darker. “Why did you make it so...dark?” I asked.

“Reasons.”

“That wasn’t vague at all.”

Ivor gave me a look. “I don’t know why, we just did.”

At that moment, the chain of gray minecarts turned a corner. The tunnel looked like it was opening out over a lake of lava. My eyes widened. Up front, I heard a mixed response to this. The adults didn’t say anything. My fellow kids, however, did not. Leah screamed. Jax shouted in alarm. Avery yelled, “Whoa!”

Matt, who was in the minecart directly in front of me, shouted, “What the heck?!”

I was speechless. The first thing that ran through my mind was, That lava would look epic at EnderCon. Then, OH SLIMEBALLS WE’RE GONNA DIIIEEEEE!!! My eyes widened. Just then, a massive Gast flew into view. Its pale face took one look at us and decided we were going to be its next victims. Jesse pulled out his diamond sword, and Dad and I both grabbed our bows. Jax went for his stone sword. Matt did the same, but his weapon was a little bit superior, being iron and all. The gigantic creature opened its red eyes and mouth and shot a fireball at us. Thinking fast, I shot at the projectile. Dad fired at the Gast itself. The tentacled creature was stuck with the barbed arrow, but it wasn’t enough. It sent another blast in our direction. Jesse made a literal leap of faith and hit the fireball back at it. He landed in the minecart that Matt was in. However, Matt wasn’t startled at all. “You okay, Dad?” He asked. Jesse grinned.

“‘Course I am,” He said, “I think the Gast is gonna get a taste of its own medicine right about...Now!” We all turned our heads in the creature’s direction. Sure enough, the fireball had been deflected and hit it square in the face. The Gast fell into a netherrack mound and disappeared. Matt turned around to face me.

“Nice shot,” He said, grinning. I rubbed the back of my head in slight embarrassment.

“It wasn’t really all that great…” I muttered.

“I beg to differ,” Jesse turned around too. “If you hadn’t hit that fireball, we all would have been blown into the lava before anything else happened. Good job!” He turned around, leaving me feeling proud of myself. Ivor was grinning.

“See? Adventure!” He said, and patted me on the back. I couldn’t help but feel a little pride.