“Oh my gosh,” Destiny said. “I think I get it.” She put her hand on the crystal and began sliding it over the page. Wherever the crystal was, the words below it were readable. As soon as the crystal was off the words, they went back to being gibberish.

  “It’s like my glasses,” Destiny said. “My doctor said that before people made glasses, they cut glass stones and moved them over writing to read it better. It’s kind of like that.”

  “Wow,” Yancy said. He still looked shaken from hearing the creepy voice, but this had gotten his attention. “This must have been specially coded so not everyone could read it. What does it say?”

  Destiny pushed the crystal shard back to the beginning of the book. “My name is Steve Alexander,” she began to read. “I write this with my own quill pen so the future people of the Overworld can know the truth.”

  “Steve Alexander!” Alex and I cried out in unison.

  “Keep reading!” I said.

  “I have been called the greatest hero the Overworld has ever seen,” Destiny read, slowly moving the crystal shard over the words, “but I don’t feel that way about myself. I have made terrible mistakes, and the Overworld has suffered because I was foolish and full of myself. When I am done writing this book, I will take up my weapon and battle with the Ender Dragon to trap her in the End. But even if I succeed in sealing her there, she could escape one day. If that day ever comes, Overworld will truly be doomed.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Everyone started talking at once.

  Of course! I thought. The Ender Dragon was imprisoned in the End, and these weird happenings must have been her, trying to get out. The crystal shard looked like an Ender crystal, which I knew could also be found in the End. And Endermen had been working for her to try to get the crystal.

  Then that voice, that awful voice … that must have been the Ender Dragon speaking to me!

  I had seen the Ender Dragon once before. When Maison, Alex, Destiny, Yancy, and I were battling the mob Herobrine, we’d transported him to the End for a final battle. The Ender Dragon had been flying ominously overhead. She hadn’t spoken to us or attacked us then—so why was she doing it now?

  “Okay, okay,” Yancy said. “So we know who we’re dealing with now, but there are still lots of questions. Like, why does the Ender Dragon want this crystal shard?”

  “Destiny, keep reading,” Alex said.

  Destiny nervously licked her lips and bent back over the book. “I will tell about the Ender Dragon’s origins at a later date. First I must tell my story, how I plan to imprison the Ender Dragon, and the backup strategy I’ve come up with in case she ever tries to get out.”

  “Good, good,” Yancy said, stroking his chin. “Go on.”

  “When I was a child,” Destiny read, “the Overworld was a very different place from what it is now. In the present, people are willing to step outside their homes at night. When I was young, no one dared to because it was too dangerous. The Overworld belonged more to the mobs than it did to humans, and the mobs were in a never-ending battle to free the Overworld from humans. They did not want to live in harmony with us.

  “I was a lonely child,” Destiny went on. “The other children learned from their parents how to make houses and wooden swords for protection, but they never tried anything new. Thinking outside the box did not come naturally to them, and I couldn’t understand that. I wanted to experiment and see what was just beyond the horizon. I wanted to solve the many mysteries of the Overworld and make it so humans were no longer afraid of the dark. These were noble ideas, but sometimes I would get into trouble. For instance, when I first tried to tame a wolf, all it did was bite me. The villagers made fun of me and said, ‘What did you expect?’ But when I did succeed in taming a wolf and turned it into a loyal dog, people started to look at me differently.”

  “What, is he going to tell us his life story?” Yancy grumbled. “Get to the Ender Dragon!”

  “I’m with Yancy,” Alex said. “Bor-ing.”

  “He’s probably telling us all this for a reason,” Destiny said. “I didn’t know that’s where dogs came from in the Overworld.”

  To be honest, neither did I. I realized that even though everyone here knew Steve Alexander’s name, there must be a lot of things we didn’t know about him.

  Destiny bent her head down and read, “I experimented with putting together rare obsidian rocks and placing fire in the middle of the circle, making a special portal.”

  Yancy’s eyes widened. “So he discovered the Nether?”

  Destiny nodded and read on. “The portal led me to a fiery world no one had ever seen before. It had many magical things in it that could be used for more creations, but it also had its own monsters. At first people loved that I discovered the Nether because of the new things they could mine and find in it, but then they grew angry with me when the mobs there attacked them. This was not the only world I discovered by making different portals, but I began keeping my discoveries to myself so that I could avoid upsetting people. Most of the portals didn’t do anything, though several times I had luck. And the weapons I created with the things I found in other realms helped people better defend themselves. My creation of a diamond sword was especially popular.

  “I found that people were fickle. They loved me and cursed me at the same time. However, no one could deny that I got things done, and some of my discoveries were very popular, like when I figured out how to harness redstone’s power. It was because of this that I first became well known in the Overworld, and I was asked to take care of the monster problem. So I rode on my beloved steed into battle.”

  “Steed means horse, right?” I said. Steve Alexander used some fancy words.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Maison said.

  “Together, we battled against the mobs,” Destiny read. “While people had sometimes not liked me before, I soon became famous throughout the land for my many victories. I discovered how water kept Endermen away and how iron doors were the best protection. Over time I started to grow bored, because everything was easily solved with a little brain power.

  “This was my downfall: thinking I could handle everything and anything myself. When the Ender Dragon decided to destroy the Overworld, I realized nothing I had done prepared me to fight her.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Yancy said.

  CHAPTER 6

  We fell silent as Destiny continued to read Steve Alexander’s tale.

  “I shudder as I write this,” Destiny read, “because I can feel her dark power in my soul. Before her, the mobs of the land each stayed in their own groups. The armed skeletons all worked together, the zombies helped other zombies, and the Endermen kept to themselves. But the Ender Dragon wanted to become the queen of all mobs. She planned to lead her wicked army of mobs against all the humans of the Overworld and wipe us out once and for all.

  “As her power grew, she was able to change our very world. Night grew longer, giving her mobs more time to attack villagers and wreak havoc. She blasted through whole villages for her own entertainment, letting her minions run after the fleeing villagers. Everyone was in a terror.

  “I knew the only way to stop this was to stop the leader, to take out the Ender Dragon herself. No weapons or person in the Overworld was strong enough to defeat her, so I searched realms like the Nether, trying to find something. It was in my desperation that I discovered the End, a desolate place where Endermen spawned. I thought it would be the perfect prison. But I needed new tools and enchantments to trap the Ender Dragon there.

  “One day, while I was down in the Nether, I discovered blocks I’d never seen before, and I wondered if they had any special properties. After several attempts, something changed. The middle of a portal I made began to glow green, blue, and red. It seemed to beckon me. I had no idea what lay beyond it, but still I plunged into the portal and came out into a strange world. A world called Earth.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Destiny had to stop reading because everyone was talking again.

  “He did find Earth!” Alex was practically hyperventilating. “That must be why we found the image of that Earth woman in the wall!”

  “There’s still more,” Destiny told us, and we all fell silent again to listen.

  She read, “You can imagine my shock when I first saw this ugly land.”

  “Hey,” Yancy and Maison said, insulted.

  But Destiny kept going. “In all of the other realms I’d visited, creatures maintained their normal, blocky shape. Here, however, people were shaped differently, and so were animals. The land came in all different shapes as opposed to being normal blocks. For a while I stood there staring in stunned disgust at this new land. And that’s when the woman attacked me.

  “She had a long stick that she used as a weapon, and she struck out at me, yelling to get away from her home. I dodged the long stick and fell back. I held up my hands, shouting that I wasn’t from here and I didn’t mean her any harm. The woman huffed and put her stick down, waiting impatiently for me to explain myself. That was the first time I realized this was another human, because I recognized the expressions on her face, even if her body was shaped all wrong. Apparently I looked as strange to her as she did to me, and she thought I was some sort of monster because of how I appeared.

  “I explained that I did come from another world, but I was not a monster. This made the woman look even more suspicious. She pointed her stick at me and asked why I had come.

  “I said I was in desperate need because a dragon was destroying my world. She sighed and said her world did not have to deal with dragons, but they had other issues. It turned out she was one of the leaders in her community, and they had been suffering from a famine and had nothing to eat. I told her that food was no issue, and I could bring her food from my land. She said that if I did, she would help me in my quest to defeat the dragon.

  “She called herself Maya, and I introduced myself as Steve Alexander. As it turned out, that surprise meeting would be helpful to both of our people, and the woman and I would become close friends.

  “After her people had feasted on the first food I presented and had what they needed to eat and drink, Maya asked to learn more about the dragon. Together we experimented with the tools available to us from the Overworld, the Nether, and Earth.

  “After many attempts, Maya and I came up with something together. We created a specially enchanted Ender crystal. There are two kinds of Ender crystal I know of: the kind in the End, which I believe the Ender Dragon can use to keep her health up. I’ve accepted the fact that she can use the Ender crystal for her own purposes in the End—so long as she remains imprisoned. But this Ender crystal was different, because of the enchantments used. It is the most powerful weapon I have ever created—far more powerful than a thousand diamond swords or a world full of redstone.

  “Maya has offered to help me take up arms in the upcoming battle with the Ender Dragon. But I would feel too guilty letting her risk her life for my world. I told her I had other ideas. In case the Ender Dragon ever tries to escape in the future, I have asked Maya to break up the crystal as soon as the battle is over. She is to hide the shards in different places. We are enchanting this book together, so it can help lead a worthy person to those shards, but they will have great difficulty finding all the pieces. The more shards that are found, the more pages of this book will be revealed. I have asked Maya to bury the first shard of the crystal near my home, in hopes my descendants will find them if they are needed.

  “It is our hope that this crystal will never be needed again. But if the Ender Dragon ever grows strong enough to escape the End, these crystal pieces must all be found and put together to recreate my ultimate weapon.

  “I feel it is too dangerous for most of the people of the Overworld to know about Maya, Earth, and the Ender crystal weapon. If and when I trap the Ender Dragon in the End, I have asked Maya to do more than take care of this book and the crystal. For her safety and for her world, I have asked her to destroy the portal I made to Earth. Earth isn’t as ugly as I originally believed, and I have to admit my heart cracks at the thought that I might never see my best friend again. But it must be done.

  “Anyone who reads this, beware. You have stumbled upon greater magic and evil than you have ever known. I cannot stress enough how much the enchanted Ender crystal is a double-edged sword. I hope to use it to save our world, but it can do much more. Not only can it be used by bad humans for bad gains, but it can also be used by the Ender Dragon herself. She will want all the crystals too, not only to keep the one weapon that can possibly defeat her in her clutches, but also to help her in her quest to destroy the Overworld.

  “Soon I must prepare to fight. I know the Ender Dragon is expecting a world-shattering battle, and she has already vowed revenge on me and on my descendants. And so I will say goodbye to Maya, to my wife, and to my young son, Steve. If I don’t make it out of this, I love you all.”

  CHAPTER 8

  My heartbeat was pounding in my ears, and I didn’t think I was the only one feeling that way. “What does it say next?” I blurted.

  “It shows a map,” Destiny said, moving the crystal shard over the pages. “After that, it’s all gibberish again.”

  “Let me see.” Alex shoved her way in, taking the crystal shard from Destiny. Sure enough, all the words that came after this were gibberish, even with the crystal placed directly over them.

  “Maybe we have to find the next crystal before we can read more,” Maison said. “Is that what it meant when it said ‘The more shards that are found, the more pages of this book will be revealed’?”

  “But how do we find the next shard?” Yancy asked.

  “It must be the map,” I said. Alex was so busy running the crystal over the gibberish that I thought she’d forgotten about the map. Then again, who could blame her? All of our heads were probably whirring from all the information we’d taken in. I knew my brain was jumping from thought to thought. Steve Alexander really was my ancestor! There’d been a portal to Earth way back in the past! And … and …

  And the Ender Dragon was our new enemy. She’d vowed revenge on Steve Alexander and his descendants, which meant she would go after Alex and me especially.

  I quickly took the crystal back and put it over the space that had revealed a map. Landmarks appeared, tinted faintly purple from the crystal.

  “I know where this is!” I exclaimed.

  Alex looked closely at the map, and she recognized it too.

  “It’s a map to Herobrine’s temple,” she said. “We have to get that next crystal shard!”

  CHAPTER 9

  The five of us had been to herobrine’s temple before. It wasn’t really Herobrine’s temple, but we called it that because we’d faced off against Herobrine there. It was a temple on a mountain surrounded by a dark forest, and it had been there for so long that no one knew who’d originally created it or why. These days the temple was partly in ruins because it had been abandoned for so long.

  Alex wanted to leave right away, but I said, “We have to wait for my dad to get back.”

  “Stevie, really?” Alex said. “We’re the Overworld Heroes. We need to take care of this right away!”

  Alex’s mom, my Aunt Alexandra, was the mayor of a nearby village, and she had recently dubbed Alex, Maison, Destiny, Yancy, and me the Overworld Heroes task force. Aunt Alexandra was supposed to call on us whenever something bad or fishy happened in the Overworld. “Bad” and “fishy” definitely described this whole situation, but Aunt Alexandra hadn’t given us any orders yet. Of course, she couldn’t give us orders if we couldn’t tell her what was going on—but Dad had told me not to leave the house, and he was a stickler for rules. It was hard to be part of a task force as an eleven-year-old.

  “I agree with Alex,” Yancy said. “Those Endermen before were really aggressive trying to find the first crystal shard. They’re definitely hunting for the other shards. Maybe we can get them all before the Ender Dragon’s mobs do.”

  “Or maybe the Ender Dragon’s mobs are already there,” I said, “and it’d be better to wait until my dad gets back.”

  “We could compromise,” Maison said. “Let’s leave your dad a note, saying this is an emergency and telling him where we’re going. He can follow after he gets home and reads it. Besides, it takes more than half a day to walk to that temple from here. If we leave now, we can make it before nightfall. If we wait for your dad, we might have to wait until tomorrow.”

  Alex waved the book in front of my face. “This is way more dangerous than we ever thought,” she said. “Did you hear what Destiny read? The Ender Dragon wants those same crystal shards, and what if she gets them before us?”

  “Bye-bye, Overworld,” Yancy said bluntly.

  I still didn’t think Dad would be very pleased. But he would probably prefer that we save the Overworld rather than let it get destroyed. And Maison was right that our mission would be a lot safer in the day, though there was still the threat of Endermen, who could be out in the light.

  I also thought of Steve Alexander and tried to think of what he would do. He’d said he was foolish and full of himself, but I couldn’t believe that. He wouldn’t be our greatest hero if that was true, and he wouldn’t have trapped the Ender Dragon. If the rest of the Overworld looked up to him, he had to be a good person for me to follow in the footsteps of. And if danger reared its head, I doubted Steve Alexander waited and asked his dad what to do.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s pack some supplies and I’ll write my dad a note. We’ll leave the first crystal shard here.” Since Endermen could sense the crystal shard if they got close enough, we might accidentally attract mobs if we carried the crystal with us. And since we knew the way to the temple, we could leave the book behind, too.

  While the others rushed to gather food for our health and weapons for self-defense, I wrote Dad a note. Then I had a really, truly terrible thought: When the Ender Dragon promised to go after Steve Alexander’s descendants, my first thought had been Alex and me. We were the youngest generation. But we weren’t the only living descendants. If Alex and I were in danger, so were Dad and Aunt Alexandra. Was it dangerous for Dad to be out all by himself right now?