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One week. It’s been exactly seven days since Wifies last heard from Hummer. Wifies refreshed his email once again, hoping there would be something, anything indicating that Hummer was still out there. Even though the Leviathan didn’t save him, he should’ve been fine. He should’ve been waiting for him back at his ship, arms outstretched, screen glowing brighter than the sun in the horizon.
Instead there was nothing.
No Hummer.
No book.
Not a single sign he’d returned to his world at all.
Wifies refreshed his email again, and waited with baited breath for any message. There was one from Arronax, which was titled “About Your Video,” and another from Parameterization, which just said ‘GIVE ME BACK MY REDSTONE!’ Neither of them were Hummer. He deleted both without even opening them.
He shouldn’t have died. Wifies wasn’t going to argue it was just Minecraft anymore, but he should’ve lived. Wifies’ lungs had been completely filled with water twice before, but that just resulted in a respawn, or a ban from the server. Whatever happened to Hummer was completely different. People didn’t just vanish like that. Wifies had investigated enough mysteries to recognise that something more was afoot.
Wifies opened up his footage again. He missed something. He had to have missed something, there was no way he had just disappeared with absolutely no sign of what could’ve possibly happened. He skipped to the part where they were standing in the submarine together. He hovered his mouse pointer over the volume button, and clicked.
“You have to believe in the Leviathan,” Hummer insisted.
Wifies watched their argument again. He listened to how Hummer’s voice strained as he shouted. He watched the hurt spread over his face. He watched them leap out into the sea where Hummer spent his final moments. He heard the damage cease as Hummer died. He saw his items float up into the water.
And there was the water breathing potion.
Wifies assumed he threw it away. But there it was, floating up with the rest of his items. With his lifeless corpse. Was that really it? The Leviathan rejected him for a mistake. Hummer believed far more than Wifies did, and he was cast aside for a mistake. Hummer devoted his life to the Leviathan. He was the entire reason Wifies was ever even let in, why he didn’t give up in the first place.
Wifies logged back onto that server and pulled himself off of the sand. Sand clung to every part of his body, but Wifies didn’t bother trying to remove it. The ocean was just ahead of the beach he was standing on, and the shimmering waves beckoned to him. Not because he wanted to find the Leviathan anymore. As he ran, his boots kicked up sand behind him. The sand deepened and deepened as he approached the shoreline, but Wifies didn’t slow down. He pulled himself through the sand, until he could feel the cold water of the ocean. A chill ran through his finger, as he made contact with it.
Wifies reached further, and the chill spread through his arm, then his torso, then his legs. He sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes, before his head was enveloped in the water. Water spilled into his ears as Wifies entered the ocean. After a couple seconds Wifies opened his eyes. His vision was surrounded in a haze, and he could only make out the vague shape of the world around him. Seaweed covered absolutely everything, towering up towards the surface. He could see the faint light of the sun, fragmented through the water, though it was slowly slipping out of his sight. Wifies didn’t bother to reach for the sky, or swim back up. He just watched as he fell further and further into the depths.
The air in his lungs was close to being entirely nonexistent. His clothes were entirely soaked through at that point, but it wasn’t like he planned on returning to that server again. He would be losing absolutely nothing. Everyone on the server seemed to hate him anyway, so he didn’t care. He had no intention of speaking to Parameterization again.
His lungs ached, as water began leaking into him. His nose began filling with the salty smell of the sea, and Wifies was powerless as his last bit of air escaped him as bubbles. There was barely any time left for him. When he peeked through the ocean’s shield of waves, blocking him off from the sky, he couldn’t pinpoint the exact location of the sun anymore. The light still came through in every direction, but it could be coming from anywhere.
His heart tried to keep him alive, but his body had been all but completely filled with the sea. If he was going to see anything, he needed to believe he would. He had mere seconds left before the ocean would consume him once more, claiming his corpse as part of it. He had to believe in Hummer.
As his vision blurred, he felt something brush against his hand. Slowly, he turned to look at where his hand had touched. His eyes barely registered anything through the blur anymore, but he saw the brilliant light even through the haze.
White. Yellow. Cyan. Green. Purple. Red. The light hovered beside him, and Wifies reached for it.
Hummer, he failed to say. His throat croaked, as he tried to communicate anything at all to him. The only thing that left his mouth was bubbles. The ocean took his words and sealed them away in the bubbles, which floated uselessly towards the surface. They would never reach him up there.
The light continued shining at him, and Wifies smiled, despite the circumstances. He was real. He was alive. Wifies wanted to shout his name, to ask him if he was alright, to tell him everything he’d seen. His flooded vocal chords did nothing to aid in his plea.
The light of the screen called to him, and Wifies managed to grab onto something. He pulled the light closer so it was shining right in front of his face. The light drowned out the remnants of the sunlight, and Wifies was transfixed by its mesmerising glow.
He smiled and hugged the man close to him, as his vision blurred the rest of his surroundings. He couldn’t say anything, and neither could Hummer, but somehow it was enough just to see him one last time. He’d drowned for him before. The slowing of his heart and the aching in his chest didn’t bother him as much anymore. It didn’t matter if he was drowning if he could hold him again, as short as their time together was. If he was real in his arms, he’d see him again. Wifies believed in Hummer.
Wifies smiled as the light dimmed, and his vision faded to black.