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“Parrot, is it worth it?” Wifies asked, looking his friend straight in the eye. Parrot stood in hesitation, unsure of how to respond. Wifies understood the struggle, but it wasn’t his decision to make. Spoke had made the scavenger hunt for Parrot specifically, not the random friend that was himself.
“It–it’s fine,” Wifies stuttered, his voice wavering. “It’s fine to not know it. I just need you to tell me, is it worth–is it really worth it?” He swallowed hard. Wifies was terrified of the chunk ban, but Parrot was his best friend–no, his only friend on the server. He knew how much this secret meant to Parrot. He would give anything, even himself, to allow his friend the opportunity that he wanted.
“I mean,” Parrot started, looking down and shuffling his feet. “I think you know what I’m going to say”
Wifies took a slow deep breath. Without ever moving his eyes from Parrot’s, he reached to his own belt and grabbed the spyglass. His friend looked back up and made eye contact. Wifies’ fingers traced the copper rings along the lens as he reached out and placed it in Parrot’s feathered hand, folding it to ensure a strong grip.
“It’s all yours.”
Wifies dropped his hands to his sides as he stepped backward, toward the chunk ban. Keeping his eyes locked on Parrot’s, he shuffled his feet until he felt the point where the rough obsidian transitioned to the red wool. He took one long inhale, then stepped fully across the line.
Silence.
Everything was gone.
Falling.
There was no up or down.
Thought.
He didn’t have any.
Slowly, aimlessly, he reached out. There was no wind. An eerie sensation, nothing moving against his arm as he waved it back and forth. Were his eyes even open? He didn’t know. Either way, all he saw was darkness. Did he exist? He wasn’t really sure of anything.
Why was he here?
He wondered for a moment, floating in the void. He was Wifies. He was from a strange world, where he’d given himself up so that a friend could have what he wanted.
A friend? His first cohesive thought. Yes, Parrot.
As soon as he recalled the name, a string of memories flowed through him. Then he felt something strange. He felt emotions, but they weren’t his own. Somehow he knew they belonged to Parrot.
Wifies gasped. It was strange, trying to breathe when there was no air. But his friend’s emotions, they kept him connected to the world, the unstable universe he had come from. Suspended alone in that strange void, he really wasn’t far from home.
He leaned into the feelings that radiated through the nothingness, trying to understand what they meant.
Excitement. That one made sense. Wifies knew how eager Parrot was to learn about the secret. Spoke was probably leading him to it.
He felt a sense of numbing loss roll over him. Oh no, Parrot, He thought. I’m not really gone. Don’t miss me! Wifies curled into a ball. Tears began to well in his eyes. He could no longer tell which feelings were his own. He missed his friend. He wanted to set his feet on solid ground, to hear sound again, to see light.
There was no time in that void between worlds, but he felt like it had been too long. Wifies tried to take slow deep breaths as an attempt to calm down, but he forgot there was no air to inhale. This panicked him even more. Instead, he started counting. Eventually, he was able to think again. He reached out for the link between him and Parrot, certain that without it, he would lose his sanity.
The emotions were still the same as before, but their stability was comforting. Then something changed. Wifies’ entire being felt imbued by confusion, then disbelief.
What was happening? He longed to be able to see. Did Parrot not believe the secret? No, he could tell that wasn’t the case. Was the secret fake?
Wifies’ heart swelled in anger as he realized what had happened. There was no secret at all. Very soon, Parrot must have understood the same, because even more emotions layered atop his own. He felt rage, numbness, and a fire of hatred hotter than he’d ever felt before.
He remembered back at the ice parkour, Wifies and Parrot had first wondered why the scavenger hunt had been designed for two people. But he understood it now. Spoke had built it that way, specifically so that Parrot would lose whoever he chose to be his ally. So that Parrot would lose his closest friend.
A seething fury flowed through Wifies’ blood for that maniacal villain of a player.
Parrot’s emotions shifted once more, so he cleared his other thoughts, in order to pay close attention. What he felt scared him.
A reckless courage; fearlessness fueled by hatred. Parrot was fighting Spoke.
No, Wifies whispered into the void. Don’t get yourself killed! Please Parrot, not for this.
Eventually he realized that his friend wasn’t fighting alone. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he could sense that Zam and several of his men were battling alongside Parrot, determined to rid the server of Spoke.
It was strange to feel the fight without being there, participating in combat. Wifies felt the pain of each cut and bruise, the healing rush every time Parrot ate a golden apple. He wasn’t sure how long the fight actually went on for, but he could tell that no one was really winning. At one point he sensed a cautious fear, from which he could only guess that the attack had moved near the chunk ban.
Then it all stopped.
For a moment, Wifies felt nothing.
But then he saw something.
To his left, there was a brief flash of color. He turned toward it, and found himself staring into the glowing eyes of Spoke. And then he was gone, drifting further away into the void until there was nothing left to see.
Wifies thought for a moment about what this meant. Spoke was chunk banned too. Had he stepped in of his own will, or did one of the others force him past the boundary? Judging from the hesitation of surprise from Parrot, the first was the case.
Victory! Wifies thought. They did it, they got rid of Spoke! He spun around and opened his arms wide in joy. He continued to celebrate, until the faint echo of laughter reached through the void. Wifies stopped and squinted in an attempt to see where it was coming from, but still he only saw darkness. The evil cackle grew louder and louder, to the point where it overwhelmed even his own thoughts. Wifies’ entire being was gripped by the maniacal glee.
“You haven’t won,” resonated Spoke’s voice through the darkness. “You’re still banned, still separated from your little bird friend!”
Wifies tried to reach out through his link with Parrot, but he didn’t have the strength to overcome the cage of barraging laughter. So he did the only thing he knew he could, took refuge in his own mind.
Curled into a tight ball, Wifies sifted through his memories–or, at least the ones he still had. His quest with Parrot he was able to recall with vivid detail still. He listed all of the challenges from most recent, back to the beginning of their adventure.
The final puzzles were he had competed against his friend underground, with the cold obsidian walls looming overhead.
The escape rooms, both the small ones and the massive mesa puzzle. He could remember the deep growls of the warden, and the determination that Parrot had shown when faced with the challenges.
Before that had been the underwater palace and graveyard. Wifies recalled the strange sensation of the water breathing potions that allowed him to breathe and speak under the surface.
Next in his mind he included the fight for the clue, when Zam and his goons had taken the disc and turtle egg from himself and Parrot. Combat had felt foreign to Wifies. Sure, he knew how to melee, but it felt strange. Maybe it was the pain he hadn’t been used to. Even with golden apples and netherite, the blows would bruise him through the armor, and occasionally the skillful strike of an enemy’s sword would edge its way past the plates of fireproof metal and cut into his flesh.
Parrot had taken the brunt of that fight, even popping a totem. Once the two had gotten away, Wifies had to help tend to his remaining injuries.
Even earlier had been the obsidian maze where Zam had got ahold of the egg and disc in the first place. The endless halls of obsidian had seemed to close in around them as they searched and wandered the labyrinth.
Of course there was the ice parkour before that. Wifies remembered the feeling of terror and dread every time he began to slip on the icy surfaces, fearing falling to the ground, hundreds of feet below.
The second challenge had been finding the lighthouse, with its staircase all the way to bedrock. They’d had to fly through the void to find the next clue. The void below bedrock still had air to breathe, still knew the warmth of the world, unlike where he was now, trapped between worlds.
And of course then while they had been trying to figure out the lighthouse, Wemmbu and Zam had found them. Wifies had been pretty sure it was going to turn into a fight, regardless of what he did, but he still wondered if it was his fault by throwing down the invisibility potion. He also felt bad for not fighting as much. Parrot had been really injured in that battle, and Wifies had mostly just watched. But they’d both gotten out alive, so he was glad for that.
The first challenge had been the underground city. It was that place that had given Parrot a reason to invite Wifies. Together, they had stood on the pressure plates to open the doors to the city, together they had found the second clue.
Wifies wondered why Parrot had chosen him. He could have chosen anyone, but somehow…
He was lucky. If not for this scavenger hunt, he wouldn’t be himself.
What? he asked himself. What do I mean I wouldn’t be myself?
All of a sudden, he was scared. Wifies realized that he couldn’t remember anything before the scavenger hunt. He knew that people came from other worlds, traveling between them with ease. Yet he couldn’t remember any besides the one he was in. He’d heard people talk about their past experiences in other worlds, for example Lifesteal, a brutal place that left all the members scarred for eternity. But he had no such memories.
Was he human? Should he even be allowed to exist?
No, the Void whispered to him.
Wifies shivered as the cold voice reached out for him with tendrils of frigid darkness. The claws of Void closed around his mind, his memory of color, of light.
No, it hissed again. You belong to me, child of Void. You don’t deserve anything but this nothingness. This is where you belong.
He wanted to fight back, but he had no energy, no strength to. So he gave up, releasing himself to the grasp of Void herself. Shuddering, Wifies’ mind darkened as he dropped into unconsciousness. As the last slivers of his awareness slipped away, he heard one string of Parrot's mind. A promise.
I will get you out of the chunk ban. No matter what it takes.
One day you will be free again.