Sean Wolfe - Quest for Justice

Mr A charged the trio. Stan was glad for an excuse to fight. He was getting heated. As Mr A’s sword was about to come down on Stan’s head, Stan raised his own sword in a parry. Both swords broke at once; the wooden blade shattered just as Charlie’s had, and the golden blade bent back in on itself and fell off the hilt. Furious that his sword had broken, Mr A flew at Stan with his fist. Stan raised his arms to guard against the blow when, at the same time, Kat sliced Mr A’s leg on one side and Charlie punched his head on the other. The Griefer went tumbling head over heels and slammed hard onto the ground. He immediately got back up, but he held his torso with his hand, his face in a grimace.

“Fine! You win. But don’t think for a minute that this is over. I will find you again, and when I do, you are worse than dead! Now, good luck getting out of this !” Mr A whipped out a bow and fired an arrow. He wasn’t aiming for the players, but at something in the woods. Stan, Charlie and Kat watched the arrow fly as Mr A sprinted into the woods on the other side of the path.

They heard a pained yelping noise as the arrow connected with its target, and a moment later, a white beast with glowing red eyes jumped out of the woods. It was a wolf, provoked by Mr A’s arrow, that set its sights on the nearest target: Stan.

Stan was unarmed. It was all he could do to try to outrun the wolf, but it was swift as it ran, faster than the Creeper, faster than Stan could sprint. The wolf pounced on him, pinning him to the ground. The beast growled, its evil red eyes glowing, and was about to tear into Stan’s throat when there was a whistling noise from behind it. The animal’s head whipped around.

Kat was standing near Stan and the wolf, holding out the bone that she had just snatched from Charlie’s inventory. The boys watched in awe as the wolf’s eyes stopped glowing red, becoming a sad, black colour. The wolf cocked its head slightly to the left, paused, and walked slowly towards Kat. It came to a stop in front of her, and she gave the wolf the bone.

The wolf wasn’t on the attack any more. It sat down in front of Kat with its tongue out and its tail wagging. Kat grabbed a red collar from her inventory and fastened it around the wolf’s neck. The wolf had been tamed by the bone.

“That’s twice I’ve saved your life now,” Kat said smugly to Stan as she petted her new dog on the head. “I think I’m going to call him Rex.”

“Oh, imagine that, a dog named Rex. How creative,” mumbled Charlie under his breath, but Kat didn’t hear.

“Stan, could you look up dogs in that book of yours? I want to know how to take care of this little guy.”

Stan obliged, mouth still hanging open at the way she had tamed the wolf. He opened his book and flipped through the pages of animals and monsters, but he didn’t find anything about dogs.

“Try wolf,” she suggested.

He looked up wolves, and there was a page on them.

WOLF

A wolf is a neutral mob found in forest regions. It usually travels in packs. A wolf is usually not harmful towards a player, but if attacked a wolf will become hostile and attack with similar speed and jumping ability to that of a Spider. When a wolf is attacked, all other wolves in its pack will also join in attacking the wolf’s attacker. A wolf can be tamed by feeding it bones dropped by Skeletons. A tamed wolf can be made to sit still or to follow the player around. When a player attacks or is attacked by a mob, the player’s wolves will join the player’s attack. A wolf’s health is indicated by the angle of its tail. The lower the tail droops, the lower the animal’s health is. The wolf can be healed by feeding it any kind of meat. It will not contract food poisoning from rotten flesh or raw chicken as a player might.

Kat glanced at Rex’s tail. Though it was still wagging, it was drooping almost to the ground.

“Looks like he took a lot of damage from that arrow, and he must’ve been separated from his pack. Poor little guy,” said Kat with a look of pity on her face. Stan looked at her, baffled, as he rubbed at the scratches Rex’s paws had left on his neck.

“Charlie, let me see that rotten flesh you have.”

Charlie extracted the meat from his inventory. He handed it to Kat, and Rex started eating it out of her hand. Instantly, his tail shot up.

“Well, looks like we’ve got a dog!” she said to Stan and Charlie.

“Wait,” said Stan. “What do you mean, we ? I thought you were ditching us as soon as you got that sword of yours.”

“Are you kidding?” she said with a grin. “If it weren’t for me, you would be torn to pieces by Rex here,” she said, gesturing to Stan, “and both of you would be lying in pieces around that mine thanks to that Creeper. Without me, you two would both die, and let’s face it, that would just be a lot of tedious paperwork for the ops of this server. Now come on,” she chirped, blind and deaf to Stan’s and Charlie’s indignant faces and stammers of protest. “Let’s get to that village. I need a sword!”

And they continued down the path, munching on Charlie’s apples, the boys still fuming, the girl still laughing. By the time the sun had started to sink in the sky, two towers came into sight, and the three players heard someone yell.

“New players! New players incoming! Welcome to the Adorian Village, new players!”

The Adorian Village was unlike anything Stan had seen in Minecraft. The only man-made objects that he had seen up to that point were signs, chests and torches. In this village, everything appeared to be made of manufactured blocks.

The buildings were mainly made out of three materials; there were wooden planks stacked on top of each other, glass panes in the windows and stone that wasn’t as natural as the stone in the mine but rather put together in chunks, like a cobblestone street. Torches were everywhere, and the road was paved with gravel.

As the three players entered the village through a tall wooden gate between the two watchtowers, they saw a player walking towards them. He had brown hair, and he was wearing a red jacket over a white shirt with blue jeans. As he met the players, he introduced himself as Jayden10, and told the players to come with him to meet the mayor of the town. He then walked down the gravel street towards a large brick building; Stan, Charlie and Kat followed.

Going down the street, Stan saw players everywhere in the village. One player appeared to be exchanging two apples with another player for a piece of flint and a metal ring. Through a large window, Stan saw a whole group of players sitting around tables that had tools dangling from them. One of these players gave a final strike with a hammer to the object on his table and held it up for examination; it was a shiny metal pickaxe. To the right of the brick building was a large wooden building with a vast expanse of land behind it that held multiple types of animals as well as fields of wheat, pumpkins and watermelons. Stan had never before seen anything in Minecraft like what these players were doing. He was getting excited. The players appeared to be friendly – they waved to Stan and one of them even yelled “Nice dog!” to Kat.

“Here we are,” said Jayden, gesturing to the immense brick building, “Town Hall. Our mayor, Adoria, lives here. She is the founder of this village, and one of the highest-level people here. Come inside. She likes to meet all new arrivals.” And he walked inside.

The three players exchanged quick glances with one another and then went in after Jayden, leaving Rex sitting outside.

Stan was impressed. The corridor that they were in had a red carpet, and it was lined with electric lamp blocks that surely would have been on if the sun hadn’t been streaming in through a magnificent glass roof. The parts of the wall not covered by lamps had different paintings. A small one had a sunrise on it, a wide one – Charlie jumped when he saw it – had a Creeper’s face, and one painting depicting a game of Donkey Kong took up a whole wall. All of these paintings were heavily pixilated.