“Hey, bro,” the farmer said, and he tipped his straw hat as the teacher and three students entered through the gate. “Ya three gonna help an old farmer with his work today? Dose Mooshrooms are giving me quite a hard time, and I could use da extra hands.”
“You’ll get your help, Steve,” replied Jayden. “We have axe fighting to do first.”
Stan’s stomach did another flip as he thought of the pressure surrounding his mastery of the axe, which Jayden pulled out of a chest in the enclosure.
“The key,” said Jayden, holding up the axe and demonstrating proper form, “is to let the axe guide you. It knows what to do. You are not the master of the axe. You are simply its modest guide.”
“Oh, brother,” grumbled Kat under her breath. Jayden proceeded to explain the basic mechanics of axe fighting, which Stan understood surprisingly well.
“To help you appreciate the art, each of you must pass a challenge.” He called out, “Yo, Steve! Toss me four pumpkins, stat!”
Crazy Steve may have been old, but he was strong. He picked up four pumpkins growing in the field and tossed them all to Jayden in two throws. Jayden put three of the pumpkins in the chest and then pulled out something Stan had never seen before. It appeared to be a large block made out of snow. Jayden took out another. He put one snow block down towards the back of the empty lot, and put the other on top of it. He turned to Stan, Charlie and Kat.
“Your goal in this exercise is to get across this red line.” He gestured to line of red dust behind the pile of snow that Stan hadn’t noticed before. “You also must kill the enemy that I am about to create.”
The three new players all started talking at once.
“What do you mean, create?”
“Why isn’t the snow melting?”
“Are you going to make a Creeper or something?”
“How does that work?”
“Why isn’t the snow melting?”
“How are we supposed to survive without armour?”
“This honestly can’t be safe!”
“Why isn’t the snow melting?!”
Jayden waited for the questions to die down before he continued. “I’ll demonstrate, and all your questions will be answered. Charlie, could you come here, please?”
Looking scared stiff, and with good reason, Charlie walked over to the tall pile of snow. Jayden tossed him a pumpkin and said, “Now, Charlie, when I say go, put that pumpkin on top of the snow pile. Got it?” Charlie nodded, looking confused. Stan shared his puzzlement. He had no idea what Jayden was about to do.
Jayden stood at the opposite end of the enclosure from the red line and pile of snow and pulled an iron axe out of the trunk. He stood with the axe at his side, got in a fighting stance, and said, “Ready, Charlie? And … GO!”
Charlie placed the pumpkin on the snow pile, and immediately fell backwards screaming, a look of horror and amazement on his face. The pile of snow with the pumpkin had turned into some type of animated snowman. Sticks had sprouted out of its sides, and it was hurling snowballs that it seemed to procure from nowhere rapid-fire at Jayden, who was running towards the snowman. Jayden was agile – not one of the snowballs hit him as he charged the snowy beast.
Then, as Jayden reached the snowman, he jumped in the air and did a sort of midair twirl, just dodging one of the snowballs, and his axe sliced through the bottom chunk of the snowman. Another twirl saw the middle section cleaved in two, and with another jumping spin the axe sliced clear through the pumpkin head. The snowman was seriously damaged, not throwing snowballs any more, and seemed to be struggling just to stay upright. Jayden was ruthless, though, and with one last jump into the air he delivered an almighty blow with the axe straight down on the snowman’s head. The entire pile of pumpkin and snow fell to two sides, snowballs rained onto the ground, and the pumpkin burst apart and split into nothing but seeds and a few pieces of orange flesh.
Completely ignoring the gaping mouths of his three students, Jayden wiped the snow and pumpkin guts off his axe and calmly walked across the red line.
Stan, Charlie, and Kat exploded into cheers. None of them was entirely sure what they had just seen, but it was certainly spectacular. “That was amazing!” Stan yelled.
“Yeah, it was! And what exactly was that thing you just killed?” asked Kat.
“Oh, that was just a Snow Golem,” explained Jayden. “They use snowballs to keep away monsters and unwanted guests. So, which of you wants to try first?”
The smile fell from Stan’s face. He had forgotten that he would have to do what Jayden had just done. Jayden made it look so easy! What if I just end up looking like an idiot? Stan thought.
“I’ll take the bullet,” Charlie said meekly, stepping forwards. The others looked surprised, even Jayden, though he still tossed Charlie the axe. Charlie never volunteered to go first.
“Well, snowballs don’t hurt, do they?” said Charlie, taking his stance as Jayden readied the Golem. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
Famous last words, thought Stan.
And he turned out to be right, as Charlie’s trial was a bona fide disaster. The second Jayden yelled go, Charlie dashed forwards, but he instantly fell back on his butt, still grabbing the handle of the axe – he had clearly underestimated its weight. With Charlie on the ground, the Snow Golem had a clear shot at Charlie with the snowballs. Each snowball knocked Charlie into the air a little, but he was so bad at dodging them that he was actually blasted into the air by the rapid-fire stream of snow. It was only a hoe thrown spear-style by Crazy Steve, which impaled itself in the Golem’s face, that stopped Charlie from being lifted to a fatal height. Still, Charlie was pretty badly hurt when he fell back down, and a disgruntled Jayden had to pull out another golden apple to fix Charlie’s leg.
Kat’s trial was almost as bad. She decided to throw the axe with all her considerable strength towards the Golem’s head. It would have worked had her aim been better. The flying axe ended up hitting and killing a cow in the adjacent field. From there, it was all Kat could do to keep from being lifted into the air as Charlie had. She was better at dodging than him, but she had no weapons, and she only dodged about half the rapid-fire snowballs. Jayden had to pull out a bow and arrows from the chest and fire three shots into the Snow Golem’s pumpkin head to put an end to it.
Finally, Stan took the axe. He dropped into a fighting stance with a nervous pit in his stomach. He hoped he wouldn’t just drop the axe like Charlie, or do something else to make himself look stupid. Jayden put the pumpkin head in place, the Snow Golem became animated, and Stan took off.
The first thing he noticed was that the axe wasn’t as heavy as he had thought. It felt rather light in his hand as he ran with it trailing behind him. The second thing he noticed was how easy it was to dodge the snowballs – he simply knew when to duck and weave around them, and in no time, Stan had reached the Snow Golem. What happened next was so incredible that even Jayden didn’t believe his eyes.
As he neared the Snow Golem, Stan had a brilliant idea. Instead of trying to copy what Jayden had done and doing a triple spin, Stan launched himself forwards into the air and spun with all his might, axe stretched in front of him. He slammed into the Snow Golem with such speed and such incredible revolution that the Golem was cut into dust as if it was in a blender set to liquefy.
Stan landed with one hand and two feet on the ground, well past the red line, breathing hard, his axe held in the remaining hand, and there was no evidence that there had ever been an enemy there. Nobody could even see any pieces of the pumpkin. The only evidence of the snow was the light dust hanging in the air, creating a rainbow in the light from the square sun.
There was an absolute explosion