Everything was bright. Herobrine kept telling himself that it wasn’t permanent, that his eyes would be back to normal in a few days, but he couldn’t believe his own words. He also couldn’t believe what had come over him when he looked in that mirror. Seeing that monster staring back at him had ignited more memories. Memories of his other side.

He hadn’t been able to control his actions. He blamed it on shock, but it was more than that. Herobrine wasn’t able to resist the darkness that lay within. As much as he didn’t want to accept it, the darkness was a part of him.

Herobrine stopped for a moment. He looked down at his hands, still crackling with the lightning he had used to kill the witch.

“I’m a monster,” he whispered.

~o~O~o~

When Steve regained his vision, Khet was standing over him, shaking him violently. “Quit with the dreaming! He’s getting away!”

“What?” Steve said, struggling to his feet. “Herobrine? What’s wrong?”

“I saw him,” Khet said in a panicked voice. “Everything’s wrong.”

“Explain!” Steve urged.

“There’s no time,” Khet said quickly. “We’ve got to chase him!”

“Which way did he go?”

Khet hesitated. “I… don’t know.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Good job, Khet. What’re we going to do now?”

Khet shrugged. “Go in a random direction and hope we can find him?”

“It’s getting dark…”

“He’s not going to stop. If we want to have a remote chance of catching him, we can’t rest.”

“Well, I guess there isn’t anything else we can do.”

“Then lead the way.”

~o~O~o~

Herobrine didn’t care which way he was going. As long as it wasn’t home, he was happy. He couldn’t let what was left of the village see him like this. In the distance he could make out the hazy outline of a desert. That was the best place for him to go; a place where nobody lived, and nobody would see him.

Suddenly, he heard voices. He paused to listen to them. Somehow, they didn’t sound human. They sounded… hissy.

“Woah, what happened to him?” one said. Herobrine knew they were talking about him, and tensed up.

“Who’s there?” he cried into the darkness.

“It’s almost like he can understand us!” the other voice joked.

“I can understand you!” Herobrine called, slightly irritated. Did these people think he was an idiot? “Show yourselves!”

“Wait. You can really understand us?” the first voice said slowly. Herobrine jumped. Behind a nearby tree, two creepers looked at him, interested. “Sorry. We would come closer, but if we did, we’d blow up.”

“Blow up?” Herobrine said, surprised. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

The creepers shook their heads sadly. “It wasn’t always like this. But after people started attacking us, we had to find a way to defend ourselves. I can’t tell you much, but what I can tell you is that a certain creeper found some TNT. And with a little bit of help, we managed to take some inspiration from that deadly TNT, and change our bodies to be like it.”

“Okay…” Herobrine said, struggling to take this in. “Why would people attack you?”

“They’re not people anymore,” one of them said. “They kill without mercy. It’s like they’re being… controlled.”

“Notch,” Herobrine said fearfully.

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing… anyway, how can I understand you? You’re mobs.”

The creepers shrugged. “Don’t ask us. How would we know?”

“Sorry, but I think I’ll be on my way,” Herobrine said hastily, and ran away.

“Damn, forgot to ask what’s with those weird eyes of his,” Herobrine heard a creeper’s voice say. However, there wasn’t time to go back and explain. The witch had promised him boundless power with that potion she had given him, and even if it led to his eyes being changed forever, he had to honour his original aim: to defeat Notch.

~o~O~o~

“How long have we been walking?” Khet complained.

“You were so eager about it before,” Steve pointed out.

“That was before.”

“Hey, that place looks promising. Wait… is that…?”

“The mushroom biome!” Khet and Steve said together, cheering excitedly. Khet seemingly forgot about his exhaustion, and was the first to reach the grey grass of the legendary place.

“I can’t believe it. We’ve finally found it,” Khet said happily. “This place is beautiful.”

“We need to get going,” Steve said urgently, getting over his initial enthusiasm.

“But…”

“Fine. You can stay.”

Khet gasped. “I can’t just let you run off on your own!”

“You let Herobrine do it. Why not me?” Khet fell quiet. “Exactly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a brother to find.”

“Good luck, Steve.”

“Thanks. Enjoy your life here.”

A mooshroom rubbed its muzzle against Khet’s leg, and he stroked it lovingly. “I will.”

~o~O~o~

It took many days before Herobrine finally saw one. Another human, climbing a jungle tree and reaching for some cocoa beans. The oddly robotic movements told him that this human was being controlled by someone. This was his chance.

“Hey!” he called. The person ignored him. Herobrine felt himself grow angry.

“Listen to me!” he shouted, and zapped the person with a bolt of lightning without thinking. The person fell off the tree, and just before they hit the ground, they twisted around and saw Herobrine. The blank look in their eyes quickly faded as whoever was controlling them let them have a few moments of their own time as they lived their final moments. They scrabbled backwards as their code disintegrated. “A demon!” they screeched, and Herobrine jumped.

“No, I just want to–”

“Get away from me!”

“I want to help you!” However, Herobrine found himself talking to air. The code was gone. “Don’t be dishearted,” he told himself. “I’m sure other people will understand.”

~o~O~o~

“Notch! There’s another report of a Herobrine sighting!”

“This is the third time! I thought you deleted the file!”

“Actually, I couldn’t…”

“All right, that’s it. I’ve had enough. I’m sorting this out myself.”

Notch opened up the folder where he had sorted every little aspect of his world into different files. He hadn’t needed to do much work – after all, once he had imported the information about Minecraftia into his computer, the game could be played straight away.

It didn’t take long for him to locate the file ‘herobrine.jar’. Without hesitation, he reached for the ‘delete’ button.

“No! There’s no telling what’ll happen!” Jakob cried, but Notch wasn’t listening. He pressed the button.

“I need to get rid of it. So I’ll get rid of it like this. How else would you do it?”

“Edit the file carefully first.”

“There’s no time for that! He needs to go!”

“He?”

A dim flicker of a memory flashed inside Notch’s head, but it faded before it rose to light. He noticed another menu: ‘Are you sure you want to delete this file?’ This time, Jakob didn’t interrupt Notch when he immediately clicked ‘yes’.

“Run the game one last time, just to make sure it’s okay.”

Wordlessly Notch opened Minecraft. There was nothing wrong at all; the game played normally, except this time, Herobrine was gone for good.

~o~O~o~

The sun was just rising when Steve finally saw him. Herobrine was attempting to talk to someone. He got angrier and angrier, and when the person finally turned around, Herobrine didn’t hesitate to strike them down with lightning. Herobrine almost seemed to relish the poor soul’s dying screams. Steve went to hide behind a tree, scared, but Herobrine heard him moving.

“Who’s there?” he called. Steve didn’t budge an inch. “I’m sorry, did I stutter? I said, who’s there?”

Steve cowered in terror. He had just seen Herobrine’s glowing white eyes, and he could understand why Khet had been so reluctant to chase after him. Even though Steve hadn’t seen him like that before, he had seen the effects of an angry Herobrine.

“I see you behind that tree,” Herobrine said coldly. Steve didn’t even breathe.

“Here’s Briney!” Herobrine yelled, and Steve screamed as his brother appeared in front of him and pinned him to the tree. Steve closed his eyes in terror, unable to look into those unnatural eyes. “Any last wor–”

Steve opened his eyes again, just in time to see the last shreds of Herobrine’s code vanish.

~o~O~o~

The void holds him again, cradling him in its soft nothingness. At once, he knows what has happened. His brother is the cause of all this. His spawn brother. They have both grown too powerful, yet both fighting against each other. Eventually, one has to lose.

In this world, he cannot cry.

He hopes for a light – a wonderful, spiralling pinprick of hope that will show him that it isn’t all desolate. However, no light comes. The silence is deafening, the bland fog blinding.

Yet he knows he has made a difference. There must be at least one person who understood his mission. One person who would tell his tale to others, one person who would ask Notch to stop this madness and bring him back to life.

For now, all he can do is hope – and wait.