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“Wait—Jamato, what do you mean you’re not going to help me?”
Through the fog and monotonous hiss of machinery, Spoke’s voice was barely a drop in the relentless chaos whirlwind of the chunk splicer. Making his way toward him, Jamato pulled up his cloak and tiptoed gingerly through the circuits, regarding with dead eyes the flashing redstone lamps and intermittent movements of the splicer.
Then he shook his head and looked right up at the man before him.
“This has to stop, Spoke.”
Spoke placed down a piston and waved his arms. “W-what do you mean? Is this like, because of what happened in the End? Jamato, I’m so sorry, he, that Wemmbu jerk, just snuck up on me! I- I don’t know what’s his deal, honestly, but he’s a big weirdo.” Then Spoke took a careful step back, rubbing his stinging, teary eyes. All that smoke was starting to bother him. Deep down, he knew Jamato wasn’t talking about the wasted heaps of shulkers lost to the reset dragon fight. And he pushed down that doubt, pushed it down with the salty lump in his throat. And he listened.
“These exploits—we’re breaking the very fabric of this server, the game itself. Don’t you see that it’s all wrong?” Jamato approached him, worry evident in his lanky demeanor.
Spoke strode toward him and placed a confident hand on his shoulder. “Me, and you, together. We could rule this server, be literal Gods! Imagine what we could do for everybody—protect them, enforce our laws.”
“Again with this God talk?” Jamato scoffed. He spun around and turned his back to Spoke, leaving him with an outstretched arm and wounded expression. “Y-you’re delusional. Do you know that?”
“Jamato, please. We’ve come so far—what do you want me to do, destroy everything? All the glitched armor, the mobs, the builds. That’s hours of work down the goddamn drain! You can’t just—”
“Spoke, you and I are no longer working together. It’s over.”
Hssss—
The grinding gears cried over them.
“You can’t just—”
Hssss…
All those insomniac nights they had spent, perched atop mounds of research and evidence, searching for an answer to the server’s potential. It had felt special, new, like some great power had fallen into their hands and illuminated the secluded universe around them. All that emptiness, they would fill it with the stuff of their minds.
“I said it’s over. It’s done. We’re done, Spoke!”
There was a bitter, nauseating smell in the air. A stench of powdered redstone dust and slime and old ashes. It swarmed the two as they stood opposite each other, tangling their insignificance in its dripping tendrils.
“Jamato…” Spoke’s tone grew shaky, quiet, almost indiscernible among the hum of mechanical parts spread in a labyrinthine web of tendrils under the glass floor.
Jamato sighed, “You can keep doing what you’re doing. Just—I’m not a part of this…of your obsession with playing God anymore.” And under his breath, he swallowed, “Understand, I- I used to admire you.”
Spoke’s fists clenched “I can’t do this without your help…without you—because you’re my friend! We’re still friends, right?”
“Don’t push it. I’m leaving now.” Jamato straightened his shoulders, stood taller. The bifurcating mazes of the splicer’s reflection mapped new worlds along the bloody engravings on his mask. Spoke hadn’t seen the face hiding under it in ages…not since they started working on the exploits.
And he would never see it again.
“Wait, please, Jamato.”
“I’m sorry. I hope we meet again in another life—one where you’ve finally come to your senses.” And Jamato walked out of the door. Let it slam shut behind him—the explosion of noise shattering the dulcet illusion. Before the clicks of his footsteps faded away, his voice rang out, lucid. “Goodbye, Spoke.”
So he left.
Left the contraption on, left Spoke standing at the center of it all—in a forest of commotion, a run-on sentence. Mid-word, mid-breath, mid-fall. It was all suddenly too cold. His armor felt so heavy, a thousand excruciating tons crushing his chest. He had lost his best friend, the one who hoisted him through ugly times. That wise friend. That kind friend.
But spoke hadn’t understood. Perhaps Jamato was truly stupid for passing up such an opportunity. Minecraft was meant to be corrupted eventually—all those rules created just to be broken. Who would turn down such a sweet offer?
A horn sounded soberly in the distance.
Spoke closed his eyes.
He found himself in the frigid, windless End, with the tip of his Netherite blade pressing into Wemmbu’s throat. Spoke had him suspended in checkmate. Wemmbu panted, breathless from the electric chase. His arms were poised, yet his sword was far beyond his reach. He was truly powerless.
Spoke clutched the hilt—then swung.
Metal sliced through immobile air. He flinched as a piece of Wemmbu’s purple hair floated to the speckled End stone ground and Wemmbu showed a slow, sardonic smile.
Examining the crudely cut ends between his bony fingers, he laughed “Oh my sweet, sweet Spokey boy. What are you hiding in those shulkers? What’s so important that you’re going out of your way…to, eh, smite me?”
Wemmbu didn’t understand what Spoke had in store—the exploits he allotted hours to weaponize—and he had just intruded upon Jamato’s plan. Nothing he tried mattered, because everything he did would lead him to ruin. The dragon roared in the distance, and Spoke remembered that he had a job to finish.
He edged toward the lithe man, raising the sword until Wemmbu was forced to crane his neck and press his back right to the obsidian.
“Wemmbu, I could kill you right now.”
“But but but—you won’t! Did I get that right? Did I?” His dark eyes were gleaming with childish vigor, but with the spine-chilling shine of a cold-blooded killer’s. “You won’t kill me because I mean a little too much to you. Do I remind you of—”
With an earsplitting bang, Wemmbu’s totem exploded in a burst of gold and green.
Spoke glared at him, pulling his bloody sword out from between Wemmbu’s ribs. “Say that again…and you’re not getting out of here with your life. I’ll pop every one of your totems, and then I’ll have the personal luxury of culling your hideous grin from this server.”
“Oh, oh, super scary. Wow.” Leisurely glancing down to see the wound already healing, Wemmbu feigned half-hearted applause and rolled his eyes. It was just as if he wasn’t clean in the middle of a fight. He yawned, “but don’t you have a dragon to slay?”
A curdling blast of dragon’s breath grazed Spoke’s back. He hissed and jumped away from the pain. That poison, he hadn’t felt it in ages.
“Don’t you have any last words?” Spoke snapped.
“What are you doing in there, eh, Spokey?”
“It’s none of your business. And even if you knew, it wouldn’t make any sense to your little brain, trust me,” Spoke spat.
Wemmbu’s smile dropped. He tilted his head, rubbing his palm against the burnished gold of his tiara. Then groaned as he flicked stray hair from his forehead. “Oh, why can’t you trust me? Why why why why why?” he sang. But all the savage playfulness had been sapped from his tone. Perhaps he knew that he was now cornered. “Say it right to my face. Come on! Say it. You know that when you had that little conversation with JamatoP, I was there, right? I heard you talking. Tell me what you’re doing.”
Spoke’s blood ran cold. “No.”
Wemmbu raised his eyebrow, a cheshire smirk again overcoming his expression. “No?”
“It can’t be. We were alone! I swear, Wemmbu, we were alone. You’re lying!”
“So you admit it.” Wemmbu cooed. “What- what will they think when they find out about what happened? How long do you think you’ll have until the admins ban you, and maybe Jamato too? Heh. Hahahaaaa—”
Spoke ran. He said nothing. He ran. The slap of Wemmbu’s Netherite boots against the stone rang from behind him. He was out of his mind! As Spoke tried to flee, a fiery arrow whizzed by his shoulder—a touch of warmth gracing the subzero atmosphere. Now Wemmbu was at his heels, swiping his sword against Spoke’s back, truly out for his life.
He had to go, he had to tell Jamato what happened.
At the edge of the island, with the teetering, sublime expanse of the void before him, Spoke switched to his elytra, prayed that Wemmbu wouldn’t catch up, and leaped over the edge. As he flew, he noticed Wemmbu glaring down at him with a ravenous flame in his eyes. He could have followed any time, but he stood still, tapping his foot until Spoke was out of sight.
Spoke had to get away to the outer islands. The nothingness seemed so intimately familiar, as if he was a part of it.
Once his enemy was gone, the dragon would be no trouble.