Minecraft: Castle Redstone

CHAPTER 1

Ow! That hurts!

Sorry, sire. I ll be more careful. It s just these arrows are a little tricky to get out. Just lie still for a minute longer. Just one more.

Pal took firm hold of the last arrow. How had they gotten so many right on target? Three straight into Sir Rajah s backside? Good thing there was a lot of padding there or else he could have been badly hurt. He gave it a gentle twist . . . You re being very brave.

Of course I am! Brave is my middle name! It ll take a lot more than a . . . ow!

Pal held the final arrow up. There! All done!

He tossed it onto the fire and rummaged around in his backpack. We re running low on food. We need to head into town and buy some more.

Faith poked the flames to get more life out of them. With what? We haven t gathered any treasure in weeks. All we ve been doing is running away, like we did tonight.

There were more of those skeletons than we could handle! snapped Sir Rajah as he tried to pull up his pants. And we did not run away. We carried out a tactical retreat! It s not the same thing at all. He scoffed. Anyway, you wouldn t understand such military terms.

I understand that if we d done what I suggested, hid among the trees, we wouldn t have gotten surrounded, replied Faith, sullenly.

Rajah scoffed. Hide? Like cowards? That s not the way of heroes. True heroes face their enemies, stout in heart and sword in hand. Where is my sword?

Pal picked up the diamond blade. Here you go, sire. Be careful with it. Heartbreaker s looking a bit . . . crooked.

Nonsense! This is still the greatest weapon in the realm! Sir Rajah waved it in a big figure eight. Those skeletons wouldn t stand a chance now. I d chop them up, reduce them to nothing but piles of bone dust!

Of course you would. They just caught us unawares. They basically cheated. No skeleton mob could stand against the great Sir Rajah and the mighty Heartbreaker, sword of heroes!

That s right!

A lifelong gamer, Sarwat Chadda decided to embrace his passion for over-the-top, wild adventure stories by trading in a stable twenty-year career in engineering for a highly unstable, brand-new one as a writer. That resulted in his first novel, Devil’s Kiss, back in 2009.

Since then he has been published in a dozen languages, writing comic books, TV shows, and novels, such as the award-winning Indian mythology–inspired Ash Mistry series, the epic high fantasy Shadow Magic trilogy (as Joshua Khan), and City of the Plague God for Rick Riordan Presents.

While he’s traveled far and wide in places that include Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, he’s most at home in London, where he lives with his wife, two more-or-less grown-up daughters, and an aloof cat. And, yes, he still runs his Dungeons & Dragons game every Wednesday.