I stood at the entrance to the main vault, the Champion’s Crown warm on my head, and took the deepest breath I’d ever taken in my entire life. Three victories were glowing inside that crown already — Baron Blaze, Wither Wanda, the Ender Earl — and each one had taught me something. But this felt different. Because Captain Cactus wasn’t angry the way the others had been angry. He was sad the way that comes out sideways and ends up looking like stolen crafting supplies and misplaced sandstone slabs.
“Ready?” Biscuit whispered beside me. She had her backpack clasped shut, her lucky button right on top where she could reach it. She’d been carrying that button since Chapter Five without ever once using it sensibly, but tonight I noticed her fingers weren’t even hovering over it nervously. She looked calm. Decided.
I nodded. “I have a plan,” I said.
Biscuit’s jaw dropped so far it nearly hit the sandstone floor. “You have — I’m writing this down —”
“Biscuit.”
“Right. Yes. Let’s go.”
We found Captain Cactus in the deepest room of the fortress, surrounded by shelves of stolen materials organized with terrifying neatness. Iron ingots sorted by size. Wool blocks arranged by color. Every crafting ingredient from every biome, labeled and stacked and completely, utterly useless just sitting there. He had his back to us, straightening a row of amethyst shards that were already perfectly straight.
“Quadrant Seven is still unacceptable,” he was muttering to himself.
“Captain Cactus,” I said.
He spun around. His golden crown wobbled. His spines puffed up like a startled cat. His tattered tan cape swirled dramatically and then got stuck under one of his oversized boots, and he had to do an awkward little shuffle to free it, which honestly made me feel much better about all the times I’d tripped over absolutely nothing.
“You again,” he growled. “The clumsy one and the one who smells things.”
“That’s us,” Biscuit agreed cheerfully.
He raised both hands, and I saw the little cactus needles at his fingertips starting to glow. I’d seen what those needles did — sticky vines, tangled feet, general inconvenience — and I really didn’t want to spend the next hour attached to a wall.
So I did the only thing I could think of.
I started singing.
It wasn’t a good song. I want to be completely honest about that. It was something I made up on the spot, which is never a great sign, and it went like this: “The desert’s got the prettiest sand, the orangest sky, the most excellent land, but nobody comes because nobody knows, how beautiful the Crystal Oasis glooows —”
Captain Cactus froze.
His needles stopped glowing. His crooked crown tilted sideways. His mouth opened and then closed and then opened again.
“That’s — that’s about the desert,” he said. He sounded like he couldn’t quite believe it.
“It’s about YOUR desert,” I said, and I meant it. Because I’d been walking through it for three chapters now, and it really was extraordinary. Sand dunes that changed color at sunset. Crystal formations that caught light like scattered diamonds. Even Grumbleton, moving his trail markers around out of sheer boredom, was proof that the desert had personality.
“Nobody ever sings about the desert,” Captain Cactus said quietly. One of his spines drooped. Then another. “They sing about forests. About oceans. About mountains. Nobody ever comes here. Nobody ever wants to come here.”
“That’s because you stole all their crafting materials,” Biscuit pointed out, because Biscuit is always going to be Biscuit.
“I thought if I took everything, they’d have to come looking,” he admitted, and he looked so genuinely embarrassed that I almost felt bad for him. Almost. He had also tangled up several villages’ worth of resources and blocked the underground rivers feeding the Crystal Oasis, so I kept my sympathy at a medium level.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, stepping forward carefully — I only tripped slightly on a loose sandstone block — “if you open the fortress as an actual destination, people will come. Real travelers. They’ll want to see the Crystal Oasis. They’ll want to explore the desert. But not if they’re worried about being stuck to a wall with cactus vines.”
Captain Cactus looked at his shelves. He looked at his crooked crown. He looked at me.
“You’d really sing more songs about it?” he asked.
“I’ll sing a different verse every single time someone asks about the desert,” I promised.
Biscuit made a sound that might have been a quiet groan, but she was smiling.
What happened next was the most efficient thing I had ever witnessed. Captain Cactus called his Sand Minions — all of them, an absolute avalanche of blocky little creatures — and directed them with the same terrifying precision he’d used to steal everything, now applied entirely to returning everything. Iron ingots flew back toward forge-villages. Wool sorted itself into caravans. And deep beneath the fortress, with a tremendous gurgling rush that I felt through my boots, Captain Cactus opened the ancient sandstone gates blocking the underground rivers.
The Crystal Oasis bloomed.
We heard it before we saw it — a sound like a hundred fountains waking up at once. We ran out of the fortress and there it was, shimmering at the desert’s heart: water, real water, threading out through the sand in bright blue veins, and rainbow-colored cacti glowing in the late afternoon sun, and the air smelling like something cool and green and alive.
Biscuit stood very still. Then she reached into her backpack, found her Lucky Button, and clicked it once — on purpose, deliberately, with full intention — right as a rogue Sand Minion came tumbling toward our ankles. It bounced harmlessly away, confused. Biscuit put the button back.
“I’ve been saving that,” she said simply.
The Champion’s Crown blazed so brightly I had to squint. Four victories now. Four glowing points of light. One more and it would reach its full legend glow, and I could feel that — really feel it — like a warm thing sitting just at the edge of tomorrow.
Captain Cactus straightened his golden crown carefully and looked out at the travelers already appearing on the dune-tops, drawn by the sound of returning water. His spines settled flat. For the first time since we’d met him, he looked comfortable in his own sandy skin.
A small Sand Minion trotted up and presented him with a hand-painted sign that read: WELCOME TO THE DESERT FORTRESS — VISITORS ENCOURAGED. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH QUADRANT SEVEN.
“That’s fair,” I said.
He almost smiled. It was more of a very controlled tightening of his blocky green face, but I was counting it.
Biscuit produced a trophy from her backpack — she’d been carrying it for three days, absolutely certain we’d need it — and handed it to me. It was small and golden and shaped like a musical note, and it read: THE SURPRISINGLY TUNEFUL TROPHY FOR SINGING PROBLEMS INTO SOLUTIONS.
“You knew,” I said.
“I had seventeen plans,” she said. “Plan Four was always the song.”
I looked at the trophy. I looked at the flowing oasis. I looked at Captain Cactus, who was now very seriously directing his minions to arrange welcome torches in neat rows along the fortress entrance, because some things about a person never fully change — and that’s actually fine.
I opened my mouth and sang one more verse about the desert, right there at the edge of the Crystal Oasis, and somewhere in the dunes, a llama made a noise that I was fairly certain was applause.