Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Of all the things Avery expected he’d be doing today, it wasn’t dragging a body back home.

He couldn’t exactly tell the person to walk. They were unconscious! It would first be stupid, then pretty insensitive second. If I were unconscious, I would appreciate getting carried onto a very soft bed. And here he was. Offering that kindness to a stranger who looks like they could beat the cod out of him if they woke up.

Avery gulps, maybe this is another bad idea that would leave him with half a heart. The first bad idea was years ago when he decided to dig straight up and got a mouthful of gravel in the process, but he’s learned to be more careful since then! And this– this was different, right? He was helping someone! Maybe if this… knight person… woke up, they’d recognize the kindness. Surely.

(Honestly? Avery is very aware that he doesn’t owe this person anything. But everyone wants a friend.)

He pushes open the door to his house and drags the body onto the floor. The metal armor makes this thud against the planks and Avery winces. Sorry, Mysterious Knight! He’ll apologize when they wake up. If they ever will. Avery steps around the knight, then sits down, head turning to the side. His dry heaving would probably be heard around the house if there was anyone else there. 

“I hope you…” Avery lets out an arid laugh. He needs to drink something. “Hope you like the place, Mysterious Knight. I know it’s not much, but…”

“Well.” He smiles then finally looks back. “It’s home.”

Avery looks at the clock. He sighs out in relief, then briefly considers what would’ve happened if he didn’t find whoever this person was before dark. The amount of monsters here… yeesh. Avery scratches the back of his head. He’ll drag this person up to the bedroom, then come back down to eat before checking on the furnaces and going to sleep on the couch. Perfect night plan.

“Anyways…” Avery drags the body by hooking below the shoulders and walking backwards. The armor pinches him in some parts, heck, the knight was taller than him so you can imagine how difficult this is, but if you have a goal then nothing keeps you. “You haven’t seen it all yet. It’s– I spent a lot of time decorating, y’know? I even rotate the flowers around here from time to time! Just so it doesn’t get old.”

It’s difficult getting the knight up the stairs, but he manages anyway. Jeez. If only he could take off this armor and not get embarrassed about it. What if the knight had nothing under there, right? I’m not a creep! He shakes his head. Avery grunts with effort, finally getting to the second floor, before putting the knight down again. Bah!

He doesn’t bother picking the knight up anymore. Instead, opts to dragging the knight by the legs. He swings the bedroom door open, then pulls the knight onto the bed torso-first. Legs next, then finally pushes the knight into a position that’s comfortable. Avery doubles over and coughs between labored breaths.

“Why did you have to be so heavy…?” Avery barely whines out. “Gold armor isn’t even good…”

He puts the blanket on the knight, then opens the window. There’s rarely any phantoms out here, so Avery gets the privilege of being able to keep the windows open to let the fresh, cold air in. (Still, there’s metal grates outside to make sure nothing gets in anyway.) Hopefully the knight likes it too. Who doesn’t like being under a blanket in a cold room, right?

…

What now?

Avery can’t seem to go do whatever it is an Avery does at night. Not after this visitor. 

I need to eat, Avery swallows harshly. He’s hungry. But he doesn’t want to leave the room, either. Avery grabs a chair and puts it in front of the bed. Sits on it.

“Mysterious Knight…?” 

Avery mumbles, barely above a whisper.

“Gosh, what am I doing?” Avery puts his face in his hands. “Can’t even hear me right now. You’re like in those… those comas. How did you even get all the way out there?”

Avery looks at the knight through his fingers. The knight is unmoving. Almost dead if it weren’t the slow, erratic rise and fall of their neck between the helmet and the armor covered by the scarf. The knight, of course, doesn’t respond. They’re sound asleep. Avery huffs. 

“Well, at least I found you before the monsters could. Not my fault whoever came before me somehow broke the difficulty system. Do you know how… well, hard it is on hard mode? Alone?”

The knight responds with nothing. Avery rants on. “It’s lonely! And terrifying! And then you hear these sounds coming from the walls and the floor and– aw, jeez. Now I just sound insane. But I’m not insane, believe me! If only you heard the stuff I do every–”

Avery suddenly goes silent, and he sighs. “I… I guess I’m not helping my case by talking to you. Ha.”

He looks at the side, and his eyes catch onto the nightstand. The lantern is lit. One of the drawers is slightly ajar. There’s a book in there.

And he remembers that he’s hungry. 

Avery finally gets up and puts the chair back under the desk in his room. He closes the door behind him.

Avery doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t to get woken up by the sound of his room getting trashed.

Panicked, he runs up the stairs and to his bedroom. It’s locked. He starts banging on the wood, regrets not carving a window into it, then tries the knob again. “Hello!?” He shouts with worry. “Please, open the door! Are you okay?”

The rampage stops only when the sound of something shattering comes from his bedroom. A bead of sweat runs down Avery’s head, but he knocks again. “Hello!?” 

Click. The door unlocks. Avery opens it.

Then finds himself on the floor, pinned down by his guest and one arm blocking his neck from getting stabbed into by a sharp piece of glass. His head hit the floor with a dull sound. There’s blood that drips down on his face– not his, it comes from the knight's hand holding the broken window. Avery whimpers. Half-dazed but full-terrified.

“Wait–” He chokes out. “Please–”

The knight’s eyes widen, a strange ceramic white against the pitch black under the shadow of the helmet, and the struggle stops. Avery feels the pressure loosen and manages to point the glass shard away, but the knight’s grip on it stays tight as ever. A slicing noise is heard when the glass cuts deeper into the knight’s hand.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Sir! Or Ma’am!”

Avery shakes his head. “I don’t know! Please get… off of me…”

The glass shard is released and falls beside Avery’s head, stabbing into the wood it’s so sharp. The knight finally lets off but keeps Avery on the floor. They clutch at their wrist and squint in pain.

“Are you okay?” Avery asks, and the knight looks back down at him. He can’t tell if that’s a glare. The knight turns away.

“Ookay…” Avery retracts. He backs away, then gets up. The knight watches him the entire time which is… weird. But Avery gets it. They’re strangers! He just needs to introduce himself! “I’m AveryTheMayo. You?”

Mentally slaps himself for it. Yeah, just start with the pleasantries right after this person jumps you, why not? 

But the knight doesn’t react negatively to it. That’s… good. Avery outstretches a hand, and the knight flinches, but doesn’t go into an attack stance. Double good. Avery tries to ask it again. “Your name?”

“ ████████. ”

“I–” Avery laughs nervously. “What?”

The knight glares at him. Wrong question, Avery. The knight tries to shake Avery’s hand, but pulls away when the wounds come into contact with Avery’s skin. The sound that comes out when they cry out is inhuman.

“Oh, gosh, uh–” Avery blinks. “Listen, we should really clean that up. I have running water in the farm, but there should be water for it downstairs. Do you need help?”

The knight doesn’t even look at him. They go straight down and turn a perfect left, like they knew exactly where the water was. And they did. The kitchen is to the left.

Okay, Avery thinks. Weird, but hasn’t done anything that isn’t friend material so far.

He trails after the knight, and he finds them hunched over the sink with the said bucket reserve. The knight tilts the bucket over their right hand, and water spills over it in a trembling stream. Avery slowly walks over, letting the knight notice his presence before getting close, then holds the bucket’s rim. 

The knight looks at Avery, lets go of the other end. The bucket stays tilted with Avery holding it. The knight watches the water before properly cleaning their hand.

“It looks bad… Did you break my window for that, or something?” Avery nervously smiles. The running water gradually thins, and the knight adjusts Avery’s hand to tilt it lower. The contact makes him flinch. Avery mumbles. “Sorry.”

The knight shakes their head, then gives Avery a thumbs up before cleaning again. Avery hands the knight an apologetic look anyway. His eyes drift to the knight’s injured hands, they were wearing gloves, but they took them off and set them on the counter to clean. Avery gets a good look at the knight’s hands. They were bruised. The glass couldn't have done that.

“So, Sir. Knight…” Avery cautiously starts. “Sir, right?”

The knight nods.

“How did you get all the way out there?”

The knight stops, then looks at Avery. 

The knight pushes Avery’s hand down and the bucket stops flowing water. He looks back down and shakes his hands to dry. Puts the gloves back on.

“Sorry. Was that a sensitive question?” Avery flusters. “I was just curious. I mean, I just saw you in that mine entrance one day! I found this weird book there a while ago. It– it was written in blood. And I never went back in for ore, but I still visit from time to time to see if…”

The knight is staring intently, and Avery loses momentum. “...They leave anything else.”

For a moment, no one moves. Avery stares, and the knight stares back. The way the light ends when it hits the knight’s face is eerie, but strangely familiar. 

Avery catches himself staring for too long, and he tears his eyes away. “It’s stupid, I know, but I haven’t seen anyone in a good while, so I guess I was just hoping for… someone? I could talk to? And they– sounded nice. Warning me.”

“Hello?” Slightly irritated, Avery looks back. The knight’s just been staring. Avery looks closer, only to realize the knight hasn’t been staring at him. It was somewhere behind him. Avery feels a chill run up his spine and he turns around. 

There’s nothing. 

“You jerk!” Avery shoves the knight back. The knight staggers back and looks at the floor, breathing heavily. Avery regrets it quick. He watches as the knight looks at him like a kicked dog, before walking to the living area like the knight had his metaphorical tail between his legs. Now Avery feels like the jerk. “Wait–”

He groans, then runs a hand over his face. It can’t be this hard to make friends, right? Quick, Avery. Think! What’s the… what’s the fastest way to a person’s heart again? Through his stomach. Avery blinks. Yeah. Food. Maybe he can fix this with food–

Avery opens the closest smoker and looks for the steak that looks the most appetizing. There isn’t much variation between the slabs of meat, but the one with the nicest coloration gets fished out and put on a plate. He grabs a small carving knife, then a fork—knights probably eat fancy, right? Avery used to just use his hands and his teeth, what does he know about fine dining out here?—then pours a glass of milk from the cold storage under the floor boards.

It looks presentable enough. He’ll… he’ll be forgiven.

Avery reappears in the living room, holding the plate and the glass of milk. The knight’s head snaps to him. He sets the food on the table in front of the couch and backs off. Like the knight was some kind of wild animal who wouldn’t trust anything within ten feet of a human. Probably is. The knight looks at the food with… distrust. Is that distrust? It can’t be! Avery’s breath trembles. I’ve been nothing but nice! 

The knight takes the carving knife and puts it somewhere in his armor. Looks at Avery.

Declines the food. Avery’s stomach drops.

“What do… w… what?” Avery croaks out. “Are you really that mad at me?”

The knight frantically shakes his head. Avery is trying really hard not to start sobbing about the fact that the first person he sees in years probably hates him. The knight looks at the food. How could he have messed up so fast? He really is going insane out here, isn’t he? No, no. He’ll just have to find another way of trying to apologize. Maybe new flowers. Yellow ones. He has to–

The knight picks up the fork.

Avery looks intently, using one hand to wipe away the salt pricking at the sides of his eyes. The knight looks up. Uses the fork to cut into the meat and start eating. 

Avery’s breathing finally stabilizes again. The knight makes a humming noise. 

“Okay.” Avery whispers. “Ok.”

Does anyone have a gosh darn map for this?

Chapter Text

Avery watches the knight eat a little more. The knight, in turn, glances up every now and then to see if Avery is still watching. He’s like a cat, Avery thinks to himself. It’s kind of weird.

But the knight doesn’t seem mad. He’s eating the food! That’s forgiveness enough in his book. 

“I hope you like it,” Avery says, tilting his head. His voice sounds too loud in the quiet. “And if you’re still hungry, I’ve got more. The farm makes more food than I can finish anyway. I guess everything I do around here was meant for two, and… uh…” He trails off, the words fumbling over his tongue. “You can see that there isn’t really two around here, is there?”

The knight turns, pausing mid-chew, and gives a small, slow nod. A quarter of the food is gone, which is cool. Avery didn’t think the coolest thing to happen for a while would be to watch someone else eat, but he’s still proud about that. Again, it’s really lonely out here.

He considers asking the knight to stay. Shakes away the thought. That would– hah. That would be absurd! The knight probably had somewhere else to be. Somewhere that’s way cooler and more fun than whatever this place is. Another thought comes: why don’t you ask to go with him instead, Avery?

It’s more absurd than the last, honestly. And thinking about the last one in the first place was stupid. Where the hell would the knight sleep? Avery was all for hospitality, but he is not going to give up his bed for this guy!

Speaking of the bed: the bedroom. Did the knight… actually wreck the place? Avery turns heel and goes towards the stairs. He briefly sees the knight flinch at the sudden motion, but he’ll uh– apologize. Later. 

Note to self, Avery thinks, don’t move too quickly around the guy. 

He grabs the railing and climbs the stairs two at a time, stopping short when he sees the glass shard lying on the landing. It’s cloudy with dried blood. Avery crouches, pinching the shard by the flat edges, and tosses it into the trash bin beside the wall. There’s more where that blood came from… a vague circle dictated by dried drops of it. That’s gonna be a pain to get off the wood. Avery goes into the bedroom.

“Well,” he mutters. “What else did I expect?”

Almost everything had been overturned. The closet was leaning against the wall like a wounded beast, drawers hanging open. A leg had been ripped clean off the desk. The table lay sideways, one corner cracked. The window was shattered.

If he managed to rip a leg off a table, Avery thought, maybe I shouldn’t ever make him mad.

He could imagine it playing out like this: the knight woke up in a panic, throwing the sheets off of the bed. Avery kneels down and folds up the cloth. Then the knight threw open the drawers to check if anything’s there. Would he have…? Avery walks over to the drawers and checks if the book was still there. Untouched. Oh, well. Would’ve made for a terrible weapon.

Then the table leg… hm. It’s off the table and in front of the window. Which was shattered. Did he try to run off through there? The knight was probably stopped by the metal grills outside. That’s kind of funny, the grills are good at keeping things in as they were at keeping things out. Guess learning how to forge paid off.

Avery turns—and nearly jumps when he finds the knight standing in the doorway.

Alright. That’s… not creepy at all. Just silently watching. Totally normal.

“Hey there,” Avery says, trying to sound casual, but his voice comes out softer than intended. He walks toward the doorway and gestures vaguely, somewhere between a wave and a shooing motion. “Excuse me. I need to get the broom.”

The knight doesn’t move. Instead, he shakes his head once, slow and deliberate. Avery pauses mid-step, blinking. The knight hesitates, then starts to move his hands. Small gestures at first, uncertain, as though trying to form a language out of air.

Avery just stares, mouth slightly open, trying to make sense of it. “Uh… what?”

The knight stops, exhales sharply through the helmet’s vents, and brings a gloved hand up to his face in visible exasperation. Then he points at Avery. Then at the bed.

The first thing that could possibly mean flashes across Avery’s mind, but surely that’s not it. “You want me to… sit there?” He asks slowly. “Because I can do that later. I should really sweep this up first, you know? Since you, uh…” he gestures toward the shattered window, “…kind of broke that?”

The knight doesn’t react beyond repeating the same motion: point, bed, firm tilt of the head. A command, not a request. Avery sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Fine, fine, whatever you say, Capt. Silent Treatment.” He trudges toward the bed, muttering under his breath. “If I die sitting here, that’s on you.”

He sits. The mattress creaks under his weight. Avery looks up, expecting the knight to start playing charades again.

But he’s gone. “What the…” Avery blinks. “What was even the point of that—”

Something moves in the corner of his eye. The knight reappears through the doorway, this time holding something long and familiar in one hand, and something squat in the other. Avery blinks again. The broom. And the dustpan. Wordlessly, the knight steps forward, lowers himself onto one knee, and starts sweeping the floor. Pushing the shards of glass into a small, neat pile.

“Oh.” Avery wonders how he even knew where to find the stuff in his house, it wasn’t like the broom and the dustpan were somewhere easy to find. Still. “You were telling me to just sit down. So you could clean.”

The knight looks at him and nods, before going back to sweeping.

“Why do you never talk?”

Avery blurts out, then covers his face with his hands.

“Oh, cod… That… I didn’t know where that one came from…” The knight gives him a thumbs up anyway. He’s so forgiving, Avery thinks. He can’t help but start counting the hours before the guy gets genuinely mad. Especially since he’s been messing up all the time.

He watches the knight clean, the steady rhythm of bristles against wood. Maybe this is his way of apologizing for wrecking everything earlier. It’s nice, seeing someone else care for the space, even just for a moment.

“It’s fine, you know?”

Avery says after a pause. The knight stops sweeping, glancing back at him.

“If you were trying to… make up for the mess,” Avery went on, fidgeting with his hands. “I don’t mind. I’d only get mad if you messed with the book or something. And you didn’t.”

He smiled awkwardly. “So yeah. We’re good.”

The knight tilted his head slightly but went back to work.

Avery looks to the side. “Oh– oh. Wow. I’m not used to this. Someone listening, I mean. I’ve always wanted someone to be listening. Or someone to talk back to.” Avery looks at the knight again, waving frantically. “Not that I mind you not talking back! You being here is cool already! But– I guess the only other time someone’s talked back in a while was… the book….”

“And it sucks a little. Because I don’t know what it means. I can read the words but,” Avery errs, scratching the back of his neck and looking to the side again. “It’s gibberish. I mean, outsmart it? Outsmart what, you know? It gave me the creeps for the first few days, then I just chalked it up to some joke. That probably isn’t even blood, probably like… sheep blood, or something. I wish I met whoever wrote this. They really got me. Ha.”

Avery looks back when something moves in his peripheral, and the knight is standing over him again. “Whuh.”

The knight looks at the drawer, then takes out the book. Avery notices that the knight is holding out the carving knife now. That’s not for me, isn’t it? Avery shakily exhales. 

He flips to a blank page, then slices the tip of his gloved finger with the carving knife. A low, pained noise slips through the helmet, and Avery winces for him.

“Hey–!” 

The knight begins to write with the bleeding finger. The handwriting isn’t a perfect match, but the weight on the letters are an obvious trademark and there isn’t anyone else in a million block radius that writes with their own blood. Avery waits for the knight to finish, and the knight presents it to him.

“I have a quill, you know?” Avery mutters before reading the text. “What is…”

[D3rLord3.]

“What’s that? Is that– is that you?” Avery’s eyes widen, and he looks at the knight. The knight nods.

“D3rLord3. D3r… D3rLor…” Avery tries to say it out loud. It’s a mouthful. “Can I just call you Derry?”

The knight, D3rLord3, apparently, looks at him for a very long time.

Then shakes his head ‘no’.

“Are you serious?” Avery grumbles. “What, you don’t call me AveryTheMayo in your head, do you? I’m probably like– Avery to you! I can’t keep saying D3rLord3, D3rLord3, D3rLo–”

Avery is quickly silenced by a quick, shallow knock to the head with the hilt of the carving knife. “Ow!”

D3rLord3 makes a low, rumbling noise and turns his back. He kneels back down and picks up the dustpan to take it to the trash.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I hurt your feelings, my lord?” Avery flares, putting a hand on his chest. “I’m so sorry, Your Majesty! My liege!"

D3rLord3 turns back to Avery briefly and makes the cutthroat gesture. Avery laughs. “Okay, okay. I’ll quit. I’m sorry.” D3rLord3 visibly sighs, shoulders drooping as he leaves the bedroom for the trash. Avery picks the book back up again. Back to seriousness.

Wait.

If he wrote this, then– Avery looks at the door, then back at the book. Then he knows what this means! Avery gets up and goes to the desk before quickly being reminded that one of its legs were missing, and the surface was currently an unusable slope. His quills were on the floor. Avery picks one up, then picks up a tub of ink. He chases after D3rLord3 and…

…stops.

D3rLord3 is standing in the corridor, stiff as a board. He’s holding the dustpan in one hand and the broom in the other. His back is turned. He’s staring straight at the window.

“You sure do have your episodes, huh?” Avery mirthlessly laughs, just to take the edge off. “There’s nothing out there. Nothing I can… see, at least.”

Is there? Avery squints at the window. It’s just the morning sky and the field outside his house. Maybe it’s just really far out, but whatever it is, D3rLord3 can’t seem to stop staring. Maybe there’s a pretty girl out there, Avery giggles to himself. He would be staring, too. Avery gets closer to the window, closer to D3rLord3–

And D3rLord3 jerks, rapidly turning around and making the anticipative motion of chucking the dustpan full of glass. Avery braces with both his arms. He hesitantly peeks out again. Heavy breaths. The adrenaline is there with nothing to go through. No glass was thrown. D3rLord3’s eyes are blown wide, frantic. D3rlord3 looks between Avery and the dustpan in his hand. His shoulders rise and fall with this haunted rhythm.

Then the broom and dustpan clatters to the floor. D3rLord3’s knees hit the wood next.

“Hey—hey!” Avery rushes forward, catching him as D3rLord3’s weight collapses down. “What’s gotten into you!?” D3rLord3’s helmet rests on his knees and Avery can feel him shaking. One part of him wants to pull away—it’s danger! This is danger! He nearly threw glass at you!!

“It’s okay… it’s–” 

Avery swallows, chokes out a cough. “It’s okay.”

He braces himself under D3rLord3’s weight, struggling to keep him upright. It felt like trying to hold up a falling pillar. He adjusts until D3rLord3’s helmet rested against his shoulder. D3rLord3’s breathing comes out hot and uneven, almost panting.

Avery rummages around until he finds D3rLord3’s hand. He squeezes it. “C’mon. In, out, in, out…”

This isn’t working, Avery realizes. Avery bit his lip, thinking fast. He doubts D3rLord3 can even hear him right now. Avery winces and hopes the hand he found was the right one. 

It’s a hard maneuver without being able to see, the helmet blocks his vision entirely, but Avery manages to get D3rLord3’s hand flat against something stiffly enough for his fingers to inch across it. When Avery feels D3rLord3’s fingers against his own, he starts digging into them one by one…

He finds it. The healing cut.

D3rLord3 jerked violently, a raw, scraping sound tearing from his throat. It was horrible, like the sound of stone breaking. “Come back,” Avery whispered. “Come on, come back.”

Another pained noise. Then another. The knight’s hand flailed before finally gripping back. Desperate.

Avery exhaled shakily. “I’m sorry,” he whispered again and again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

He says it like a mantra, and keeps saying it until D3rLord3 feels like he’ll have calmed down enough to stop. Avery is trying to keep it together because, holy carp, this is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. Avery keeps squeezing D3rLord3’s hand.

D3rLord3 squeezes back.

“Are you…” Avery gulps. “Are you okay?”

The helmet shifts under him. It’s not a nod.

“Okay.” Avery exhales. “We’ll stay here until you are.”

Chapter Text

“I always thought it was funny how this made the same sound as butchering meat.”

D3rLord3, hunched over the soil, looks up and nods once. He turns back to the soil, bringing down the hoe and pulling it apart.

“Are you nodding because you’re listening,” Avery teases, “or because you actually agree with me?”

Another glance, unreadable. Avery snorts. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“Listen. Here.” Avery leaves his row and joins the one D3rLord3 was working on.

He lifts the hoe, then drives it into the ground. Shhhk.

D3rLord3 blinks. Avery looks at him again. “I’ve… always wanted to show someone that. I need help with the carcasses later so you can hear it for yourself.”

Avery goes back to his side of the field, feeling those eyes on him. It’s not the first time, it probably won’t be the last, but somehow it feels different today. He’s gotten used to being watched, the way D3rLord3 seems to observe everything like he’s cataloguing the world for the first time. Still, Avery thinks he’ll miss it when the guy finally leaves.

He hasn’t asked when that’ll be. He doesn’t really want to.

“Do you… uh,” Avery hesitantly starts. Do you have somewhere to be? Oh, no. That sounds too harsh. D3rLord3 is looking at him. 

He pussies out at the last second.

“Do you like flowers?”

D3rLord3 stares at him, like he asked one of the most stupid questions of all time, and he did.

But D3rLord3, mercifully, nods anyway. He goes back to farming.

“I thought you would.” Avery keeps going and doubles down before another silence starts. “Since you… well, since you knew that planting in alternates would make them grow faster, I thought you kept flowers, or something.”

Avery pauses. “You don’t happen to have a favorite, do you?”

D3rLord3 turns his head again. The words don’t come out, though. That’s okay. Avery keeps going. “I really like azaleas. They’re the flowers on my shirt, actually.” He likes flowers too, Avery. He would know that. “But— But you definitely already knew that, didn’t you? Ha…”

“Ha…” The laughter turns pitiful, but D3rLord3 slowly nods for him anyway. Of course he knew that. 

D3rLord3’s full focus is back on the field again as soon as he finishes talking. Avery can’t help but feel something draw lines in his throat seeing it. 

Against his will, it comes out. Like it always does. 

“I appreciate you a lot. It’s nice having you here.”

D3rLord3 stops breaking soil.

“It’s just…” Avery tests the words on his tongue, how they’ll feel leaving his mouth. “You always look so sure of what you’re doing. When you told me to sit down. When you— when you put me on the floor and almost killed me. When you were about to throw the glass at me because maybe you thought it was someone else.”

Avery lets out a bitter laugh. “You always put your whole body into it. Like you’ve already thought things over a million times. And I think it’s nice. Having you around. So I— I really have to ask you—“

Avery chokes.

“What your favorite flower is. Because I think that tells something about a person.”

D3rLord3 makes a small gesture for him to keep guessing, then resumes working. Avery smiles, grateful for the out. “Do you like blue flowers?” Avery tries.

D3rLord3 shakes his head.

“Pink?” No. “Purple?” Still no. “Yellow?”

D3rLord3 doesn’t answer that one.

“Uhm.” Avery stammers. “How about red?”

D3rLord3 nods.

What flowers are red? Avery thinks. Roses? No, that would be pretty cliché. A knight likes roses? Fork found in kitchen! Even then, D3rLord3 was in no way a normal person. He’s like… a golem. Is that weird? He’s as conversational as one, at least. “You like poppies, huh?”

D3rLord3 gives him a strange look, then nods. 

“Knew it.” Avery grins. “You know, a lot of poppies grow around here. You could take some when… when you leave.” Avery turns back to look at what he’s doing. “Just in case there isn’t any where you’re going, y’know?”

“It doesn’t even have to be a sentimental thing, either! I heard they used to use poppies to keep themselves from getting sick in the past. It's practical. You’re a practical guy, right?” Avery giggles to himself. There isn’t even a joke to be laughing at. Anything to keep the nerves off at this point. “Oh… jeez. The past. Now that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms I don’t think you wanna be hearing about.”

“I wish I just knew the future sometimes.” Avery trails off. “Cause then I’d be able to stop bad things from happening in the first place. It would be cool.”

D3rLord3 shakes his head.

No.

“Okay, then.”

Avery cracks a smile. “I guess I’ll trust you on that.”

D3rLord3 guides Avery’s hand over the pork leg. Avery gulps. The butcher knife is unfamiliar in his grip—Avery usually uses a sword for this, but D3rLord3 insists that cutting would be more efficient this way—and now the lack of experience in that area is being remedied by practical application.

Avery’s hand with the knife in it is lifted up, and the blade guillotines the pork leg with one swift motion. A chop is placed to the side, and D3rLord3 positions Avery’s hand again.

“Y-you know, when I said you were going to help me with the carcasses, I didn’t think it would be you puppeteering a butcher knife into my skillset.” Avery quips. Yelps when the butcher knife falls down again. “Watch it!”

A low, noise comes from the helmet behind him. Avery tries again, tightens the grip on the butcher knife. I can do it myself now, darn it! He wriggles his hand, and D3rLord3 lets go. Avery lifts the knife—

And brings it back down. The cut is terrible and uneven, opposite of the ones with D3rLord3’s assistance. Avery groans. He can feel the bastard grin on D3rLord3’s face even if he couldn’t see it.

“Listen, the stuff I fed you wasn’t half-bad, right?” Avery turns around and argues. “And I cut it up. The reason I’m— flopping so bad here is because I’m not used to it! Give me a sword!”

D3rLord3 rolls his eyes.

“I know my way around a sword, alright?” Avery huffs. “I bet I can put you on the ground in a few seconds if I had one.” D3rLord3’s eyes dart to him in interest. Avery notices. “What?”

D3rLord3 slow-blinks at him, like a lizard. Is he thinking? Avery awkwardly gives him a half-smile. Is that what he looks like when he thinks? 

Then D3rLord3 nods.

It’s Avery’s turn to blink now. “I was bluffing!”

D3rLord3 shakes his head, then laughs. It hits Avery right in the chest, lodges somewhere under his ribs. He knows he’s going to remember that laugh for a while. Avery tries to reiterate. “No, seriously. Me? Taking you on?”

D3rLord3 pushes himself off the counter, then pulls out two knives—no, one kitchen knife, and one dagger—from the knife holder. Avery vaguely remembers putting a dagger in there a few years ago as a joke. How the heck did D3rLord3 know it was there—?

Avery cuts off the thought when the dagger is thrown in his direction, and he catches it. He tosses it once, fidgeting with it in his hand before noticing that D3rLord3 is already taking up position on the other side of the kitchen. So that’s how it is, Avery smirks. He’s not as good with a dagger as he is a sword, but it’s close enough.

There isn’t any time to complain about having no armor in a medieval knife-fight when D3rLord3 charges at him, and Avery barely strafes to the side. The adrenaline is kicking in. Avery finds himself missing SkyWars until he has to parry another slash, and finally he gets his head back in the game. He shifts into offense, forcing D3rLord3 back step by step until D3rLord3’s back hits the counter. Avery presses forward, their blades sparking as they meet one last time.

Then, with a quick flick of his wrist, he knocks the kitchen knife clean out of D3rLord3’s hand.

It clatters to the floor. The dagger stops inches from D3rLord3’s neck. Avery exhales, grinning like an idiot. Holy… Avery gulps, he lowers the dagger. I’ve still got it. D3rLord3 looks down at him, fully pushing the dagger away, then cocking an eyebrow. Avery could almost swear D3rLord3 is smiling. Almost. Does he even have a mouth…? I mean, he ate the food–

D3rLord3 picks the knife up from the floor, then sheathes it back onto the rack. Avery’s attention is brought back to the pork leg and the butcher knife. Avery groans.

“No brownie points for winning?” Avery mutters. He walks beside D3rLord3 and catches another eyeroll. “Okay, but you owe me something, at least. Like…”

The book, Avery remembers. He looks at the staircase, then back to D3rLord3. “The thing you wrote.  About turning left. You haven’t really said anything about that, you know? Not like you really say anything I guess, but an explanation would be nice.”

D3rLord3 looks at him, then makes a writing gesture.

“Yeah– of course.” Avery nods with enthusiasm. “I’ll go get the book and quill when we clean up, okay? And, uh…” Avery looks at the butcher knife. “I guess I’ll give this another shot.”

If he’s leaving today or tomorrow, Avery thinks, then I might as well learn as much as I can. Avery looks at D3rLord3. Knowledge stays with you, doesn't it? He remembers someone saying that, back when he was still active in PvP.

He finds that he doesn’t really care who said it as long as he can believe it's enough.

“So there’s something down there,” Avery says, “and you think it’s trying to get out?”

D3rLord3 nods, writing in the notebook again.

“Okay…” Avery tilts his head, as if it would be pieced together better if he looked at it from a 45-degree angle. “I’m gonna be honest, you kinda lost me again when you talked about sealing up the cave.”

It earns him a withering stare. Avery frantically waves his hands. “I did follow the whole it’s-dangerous-down-there thing and how you didn’t even try to get to the final chamber, but— aren’t you… a little curious? We can take one look and then seal it up!”

D3rLord3 gestures sharply: drop it.

Alright, then. 

“I… think I have a lot of cobblestone left from when I dug out the basement, but I don’t think that covers even half of the cave entrance. That place was huge.” Avery rests his chin onto his palm. “Unless you want to… like… blow it up. Make it cave in on itself. Which would be way more fun, honestly.” D3rLord3 actually considers it, before shaking his head. Scribbles down something about being too aggressive and loud.

“Oh, so you’re worried about angering it?” Avery grins. “What, it’s gonna get mad about TNT? It’ll be dead!”

Nothing.

Avery deflates. “Yeah… I– I guess you know more about this thing than I do. Just… tell me what to do, okay? I’ll see what I can help with.”

A beat. “Just… a small question, though.”

Avery gulps, he looks at D3rLord3. “What happens after we seal up the cave?” D3rLord3 begins to write, but mid-sentence, Avery interrupts again. “I don’t mean what happens. I meant with… with our situation.”

Avery averts his eyes. “I guess I’ve been wanting to ask that. Since this morning. It’s the afternoon now and I’ve had a little time to think about it and I figured that it’s nice having you around. It’s the– yes, I tried to ask it when I asked the flower question. Stop smiling–”

…

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Avery looks back at the book, then at D3rLord3. “All this thinking is making me hungry. Let’s go get lunch.”

Don’t get too attached, Avery, he gently reminds himself. Don’t get too attached.

Chapter Text

It’s night now. D3rLord3 is somewhere on the second floor, doing… something. Avery isn’t very sure what, but Avery didn’t follow him up there when he went hours ago. Avery stayed behind to clean up their plates and give D3rLord3 breathing space at the same time, but half of that was for his own sake. Remind himself that he lives out here alone.

D3rLord3 hasn’t come back down ever since going back there and Avery didn’t want to go up there to him, so Avery just exits the house. He grabs the knob, gently taps thrice on the wooden door, before pushing it open. There’s no reason to tap. Just a habit. But he’s outside now. The wind feels nice on his face. There aren’t any mobs, the place is pretty well lit, and light-wise the torches weren’t needed because the moon did its job well anyway.

Avery slowly breathes in.

He walks farther out, closer to the farm in front of his house. The crops are planted in rows, D3rLord3 taught him that, and he thinks it looks kind of pretty. The difference between his half and D3rLord3’s half is pretty obvious: the messier one is his, and the cleaner one is D3rLord3’s, but it’s no competition. Avery kneels down and pokes at the wet soil. Regrets it a little, because if he was a freshly-planted carrot seed, he would probably appreciate not being poked, but seeds can’t appreciate. They don’t have feelings. Or thoughts. 

Avery tries not to think about it. It honestly just makes him feel lonelier. He lays down on the grass.

And he looks up at the stars.

I should think about keeping flowers, too. Avery thinks. D3rLord3 never really confirmed if he kept flowers, but even if he didn’t, Avery thinks it would be a good idea anyway. Living in the plains means there’s lots of flower patches around, but you never see the rarer ones, like blue orchids or torchflowers. Or azaleas. So having a farm he could tend to would be really nice. Avery sighs. Azaleas are so rare… but he doesn’t know how to care for one. They grow on trees or bushes, of course, but unlike the other flowers, they’re so hard to get on a vase alive.

Maybe D3rLord3 would know how.

Avery shakes away the thought. 

He’s getting too dependent. And D3rLord3 was a practical guy, he– he would laugh at him for asking something so stupid, like how to care for azaleas in a vase.

Avery squints when his view of the sky gets disturbed. It’s D3rLord3. “Speak of the devil, huh?” Avery smiles, and D3rLord3 tilts his head down at him. Avery pats the grass.

D3rLord3 sits down. Avery gestures for him to lay next to him, but D3rLord3 doesn’t. That’s fine. Avery looks back up at the stars.

“That part looks like a triangle.” Avery points.

He hears scribbling beside him. Did D3rLord3 bring the book? That’s… 

Thoughtful is the first word that comes to mind, but it’s common sense to bring the book if D3rLord3 was here to talk to him. 

Is that why? D3rLord3 came out here to talk to him? 

The idea makes a blush creep along Avery’s neck. D3rLord3 presents the book.

“Capricorn?”

D3rLord3 nods.

“That’s like… the zodiac sign, right?” Avery looks back at the set of stars. “I don’t know. I never really got into astrology. Do you do that stuff?”

D3rLord3 shakes his head. Writes in the book again. Pseudoscience? Avery reads it out in his head. Pseudo means fake, right? So it’s like… fake science?

“Oh.” Avery almost sounds disappointed. “I didn’t know they made science in that flavor.”

D3rLord3 laughs again, low and sharp. Avery’s breath hitches. 

He liked making people laugh. Likes. He still does, but there isn’t really anyone to make laugh but himself. And it feels cheap when he does, because he already knows his humor inside-out. It’s not the same thrill as getting other people to laugh in a lobby before a match, or getting your duo to smile at a crude joke while building around a bed.

Or getting someone as enigmatic and unreadable as D3rLord3 to crack. It’s like candy. The way it gets stuck between his teeth, and he has to lick it out of the gaps.

“Anyway.” Avery coughs. “You can have the bed again. I don’t mind.”

D3rLord3 looks at him, then shakes his head. Points at him.

“No. I fall asleep on that thing all days a year and seven days a week, alright?” Avery shrugs. He looks at D3rLord3 with a soft smile. “And I have it all to myself again when you go, so I guess it’s yours until then.”

[Unsafe.]

D3rLord3 blinks. When Avery looks at the word written down, D3rLord3 makes sure to underline it.

Now it’s Avery’s turn to laugh. “There’s nothing out here. Even if there is, what– are you going to stay up and stand by the door while I sleep?”

“We’re going to be lugging around an inventory full of cobblestone tomorrow.” Avery rubs the sides of his eyes. “Just… take the bed. I really don’t mind, I swear.”

For a moment, no one moves. Until D3rLord3 finally points at Avery and Avery can only huff. There is genuinely no compromising with this guy, is there? Avery is mid-thought until he hears shuffling and realizes D3rLord3 is trying to lay down now, too. The armor makes it hard. More shuffling when he tries to get comfortable next to Avery, and Avery realizes D3rLord3 can’t do that unless he takes off the helmet.

Avery makes the take that off gesture. D3rLord3 stares at him.

It clicks. “I won’t look. If that’s what you’re… um…” Avery gulps. “Worried about.”

He looks back at the sky. The helmet does come off, and Avery hears D3rLord3 set it somewhere on the grass. Avery wants to look, so so bad. But he doesn’t. He’s been trusted with that, and he’ll be damned if he destroys whatever trust D3rLord3 had in him. If any.

D3rLord3 makes a quiet, humming noise.

“If we bring the sofa to the bedroom, will you promise to go to sleep then?”

Avery doesn’t know if D3rLord3 nods, he isn’t really allowed to look, but he hears a barely audible huff of acknowledgement. If D3rLord3 heard that and didn’t make disagreement known—and, gosh, is he good at that, Avery thinks—then it’s a yes. “Thank you.” Avery quietly says.

D3rLord3 doesn’t respond.

They actually do end up dragging the sofa up the stairs and into the bedroom. Avery takes the sofa and goes to sleep after turning off the lights, but he hears D3rLord3 get up shortly after and Avery decides it’s not worth fighting the guy over a night’s rest. The next morning shows the bed disheveled, unkept and used (but not for long, Avery knew that), and the sofa pretty much the same but with more pillows.

“D3r…” Avery yawns, getting up and going to the bedroom door. He unlocks it and finds D3rLord3 looming outside, head snapping to him when he opened it. “Did… what?”

“Did you really stand watch over here the whole night?” Avery croaks out. D3rLord3 nods, and Avery lets out a frustrated groan. “Dang it…”

Avery goes down the stairs, and D3rLord3 follows closely after him. He's like a really affectionate cat, Avery thinks. Avery looks back at him from time to time, and D3rLord3 is a distance away every time he does, but then he turns around again and he feels the armor inches from his. “Dude.”

“You’re the one who didn’t get any sleep! Why is it that I’m the one feeling like I got hit by a minecart?” Avery whines, and D3rLord3 only smiles under the helmet. “Oh, shut up. Let me get myself ready. We’ll leave in an hour or two, and I need to get myself together…” Avery yawns again. “I got woken up by a near-death experience yesterday, okay? Shoo!”

D3rLord3 seems satisfied at that, because he walks off into the storage. Maybe he explored a little while I was asleep, Avery thought, head too swimmy for more than a half-baked explanation. “Don’t touch the chest behind the door, okay!?” He makes sure to shout after him. That thing is locked, but who knows with D3rLord3, honestly? There’s some things that he would rather keep private. Avery pours himself a glass of cold water to drink, thinking that’s going to wake him up.

D3rLord3 leaves the storage room with some of the cobblestone in his inventory, and a strange look that Avery thinks only a person who knew what was in the chest would give him.

Avery looks at D3rLord3 for a few seconds, then walks into the storage room. The chest is locked, and Avery swallows hard. What did…? The chest isn’t tampered with like the rest are. Surely D3rLord3 wouldn't have been able to see the contents! Avery feels his mouth start to dry. If D3rLord3 did, he would never be able to live it down.

He decides to just grab cobblestone and hope it’s never brought up.

He’s awake now, at least. Fully awake. Avery loads himself with the rest of the cobble and he meets D3rLord3 back outside, who smiles at him. Nothing ever happened. Okay. Avery briefly thinks about asking if they should have breakfast first, but this should be quick. Four-hundred blocks isn’t that far out, anyway.

He notices D3rLord3 weakening the closer they get. Avery notices a lot of things, even things that other people usually chalk up to just nerves. Avery hasn’t seen him look so unsure before. It scares him.

“We’re almost there.” Avery fills in the silence. He glances back at the floor from time to time, but his eyes are fixed on D3rLord3. “Quick in, quick out, right? Maybe we have enough cobblestone! Now that I think about it, it’s probably smaller than I remember…”

D3rLord3 quickly nods at him, before looking where he’s going again. He wants this cave sealed up that bad…? Avery gives him a pitiful look. D3rLord3 glances at him, and he looks away. D3rLord3 didn’t look like the kind of person who would appreciate pity.

A small depression in the soil appears in the distance. Avery’s eyes widen. “There!”

D3rLord3’s head snaps to it, and he shakes his head. Not as a no, but like he’s trying to ward off something and Avery doesn’t know what it is. Avery gives him a look, are you okay, but D3rLord3 doesn’t answer. He keeps moving towards the cave entrance, and Avery thinks the sooner they finish, the better.

They get to the mouth, and Avery sucks in a breath. This place looks way creepier than it used to look—before D3rLord3 explained how there’s something down here, at least—but nothing’s changed appearance-wise. D3rLord3 hesitates at the first step downwards, and Avery recognizes it. He offers a hand. D3rLord3 swats it away. Avery shrinks a little. He tries to not take it to heart.

Avery finally gets to the bottom and sees the lonely chest.

D3rLord3 watches him open it. “There’s nothing new,” Avery declares. Did he sound too disappointed? D3rLord3 gets to the end of the cave, and starts putting cobblestone on the floor. Well, not disappointed enough to be noticed, at least. Avery goes to the end of the cave.

Then, suddenly, Avery turns around. It’s faint.

But there’s music.

It has a rhythm and a melody. He can hear the notes, but not loud enough to make out what it is.

He tries to turn again, listening for the source but he can’t find it. Is it coming from the walls? Is this what he was warning me about? It sounds… nice. Almost familiar. He wants to be able to hear it, loud and clear.

He just has to know what direction it’s coming from–

“Wh– AH!”

Avery cries out, and he tries to squirm out of D3rLord3’s grip on his face. It hurts. D3rLord3 is forcing him to look at the helmet. “Let– let go of me!”

The voice that comes from the helmet isn’t human. It’s warped, guttural, fragmented like corrupted audio. “███'█ ██████ ██ ██!“ Avery freezes. His blood runs cold. He recognizes the rhythm of words but not the meaning, like hearing someone scream through water. “█████, █ ████ ███ ██ ████ ██ ██!” 

Avery only panics more, trying harder to push D3rLord3 away, but D3rlord3 slams him against the cave wall. The impact knocks the breath out of him. A gloved hand covers his mouth, pressing hard enough to bruise. The taste of iron floods his tongue. Blood. Not his own. It doesn’t make the situation better.

And the music whispering is only getting louder. 

“Please let go of me.” Avery begs, muffled through the glove. “I don’t know what I heard and I don’t know what’s happening to you, but you need to snap out of it or I’ll–!” D3rLord3’s grip only gets firmer, and the helmet turns to look behind him. Avery looks too. There’s nothing. A tear falls down Avery’s cheek. “Plea–”

The carving knife is held to Avery’s throat. It shuts him up.

The music starts to quiet down.

D3rLord3 is shaking. Avery notices when the pressure loosened once he stopped squirming. He tries to speak again, only managing to make a muffled mmmph noise before D3rLord3 starts shushing him. When he shuts up again, the carving knife is lowered. Avery can move now, chooses not to. 

The music is gone.

D3rLord3 lets go of him, and Avery gets back the air he couldn’t get with D3rLord3’s hand over his mouth. D3rLord3 doesn’t look any better. Hand clenching while he gets back air of his own.

Avery looks at him, and D3rLord3 looks away.

It takes a while until either of them start building again, but they finish and fill the cave enough to satisfy. D3rLord3 covers the spot with dirt, but replants a poppy on top of where the cave entrance was. For the sake of remembrance.

And for the first time since the music, Avery talks.

“That was…” Avery isn’t even sure what to say. Avery gulps. “Was that what you meant?”

D3rLord3 looks at him and nods once. He looks like there’s something else he wants to say. “Don’t think about it. Just say it.” 

D3rLord3 looks back at Avery, then stops walking. Avery stops, too. D3rLord3 asks for Avery’s hand, and Avery hesitantly lets him take it.

A stroke. Whatever D3rLord3’s going to say is going to be spelled out.

[I’m sorry.]

“For what?” Avery bitterly laughs. D3rLord3 starts to spell again, but Avery cuts him off. “No, silly. I wasn’t asking you to clarify. It’s just– there’s… there’s nothing for you to be sorry for.”

D3rLord3 looks at him for a long time. Then starts walking again. Honestly, Avery’s just glad it’s over.

They get home again, and D3rLord3 stays outside, looking at the crops. Looks like they did grow pretty quickly this time, Avery muses. That’s useful. If he needs to make a lot of food because he… has guests over, or whatever. They still look nice all organized like that, though. “Hey!” Avery calls out to him. “Get inside! We deserve a break after all that, don’tcha think?!”

But D3rLord3 stays outside, unmoving. Staring at the grown crops.

“Your loss,” Avery mutters, shutting the door and going to the kitchen to check if he had enough ingredients for stew.

They’ll talk about D3rLord3 leaving over lunch. Maybe that’ll soften the fact that he’s going to be alone again.

Chapter Text

Avery remembers when he used to live in the cities.

He wasn’t born there, though. He was born in the wild. One moment, there was only darkness, and the next there was pain: the pain of splitting, of oozing out of something that used to be whole. He remembers the mother slime breaking apart, and the adventurer standing there, breathing hard, armor slick with green, before he lunged and finished the job the conglomeration couldn’t.

He doesn’t remember what that adventurer looked like. Just that they screamed.

Avery knew pain before he knew sight. The world came to him only between what he could consume and what he couldn’t. For a time, that was enough. Until the Great Division—he called it that himself. Dramatic, sure, but no one else was around to name it. 

He was the last slime to survive after bouncing away, barely out of eyeshot, hiding between the cracks of stones wet with dew. The others died one by one, popping into nothing. When the last one fell, the adventurer sat down to rest. To heal. That’s when Avery decided to return. And eat them alive.

If that act was what gave him the spark of humanity, he wouldn’t know. Sometimes he wonders if he swallowed a soul that day. Other times, he just thinks he was just hungry.

The adventurer had been proud, smug, a real self-satisfied hero. Avery, on the other hand… wasn’t that. Prideful maybe, sure, but not self-righteous. Not cruel. The voice that woke inside him after that meal– that voice wasn’t the adventurer’s. He decided early on that he was his own person. A slime-person. And for some reason, he never despawned. But what was a slime-person supposed to do?

Stay a slime forever?

Avery chews on his food as he thinks. That would’ve been boring. Really boring.

His body could mimic a human’s well enough, though not perfectly. No real skin. No bones. Just the approximation of both, a substance that felt somewhere between cornstarch and water. It took effort to hold the shape at first, and even longer to walk without sloshing. But eventually, he got used to it. Strangely, it even flipped. Turning into slime became more tiring than staying in his humanoid form. Like when your mother tells you to stop sitting like a shrimp or you’ll get stuck that way.

Ha. A mother. The closest thing he had to a mother was the lady who led his first and only guild, and she wasn’t anywhere close to a mother except for the natural part of berating knowledge into her kids. She was a good guild master, though. She didn’t discriminate if you were made of diamonds, slime, or anything else like the other top guilds did. If you could hold a sword and you were good at it, she liked you. Avery thinks she’s half of why he made it on the leaderboards. He wasn’t the best, but darn, if he wasn’t one of them. That's why it was such a huge mess when...

He misses them. If he went back into the city, would they still hate him? Or will he get the chance to explain himself?

“I’m going to miss you,” Avery says softly, swallowing the last of his food. “A whole lot.”

Across the table, D3rLord3 looks up from his plate. The fork hovers in front of his helmet, stopping to hear whatever Avery has to say.

“I guess you were a little weird. You, uh–” He doesn’t know how to put it. Scare me. Threatened to hurt me a few times. Did hurt me a few times. “Look haunted, and you can’t control it a little, but I get it. You… never mean it, right? And… even when you do, you mean well.”

D3rLord3 puts down the fork and reaches for the book and quill. Avery follows D3rLord3’s hand with his eyes. 

D3rLord3 reaches the cover and tries to open it. Avery stops him.

“W– wait,” Avery whispers. He looks down at his hand on top of D3rLord3’s, then looks at his eyes. Still barely discernible. Harder here in the kitchen because the light gets dimmer when the afternoon hits, but Avery sees them enough to meet. “Can I finish?” D3rLord3 pulls his hand away, and Avery takes in a shaky breath. 

The floor is his again. But for some reason, words don’t come out for a while. 

He used to be good at words, still is. Avery gulps. He’s just terrible at stringing them together. “You haven’t heard about me, haven’t you?”

Because if you did, Avery thinks, then you probably would’ve run away the second you woke up.

D3rLord3 doesn’t really answer his question, but D3rLord3’s existence and proximity, in his house, were enough to answer Avery. “Yeah. That’s what I thought. I guess you don’t really live in the cities, or something. Because I feel like the news is– well, everywhere. And it was on lots of papers back then. In hindsight, it was cool. Being on the news. TV and radio, all that–” Avery gulps, looks down and puts a hand on his face. “All that jazz.”

“But it sucks when–”

Avery sucks in a breath through his teeth. “It sucks when it’s not true, y’know?”

He hears scribbling over him, and he looks back up to D3rLord3 writing with the quill. He’s about to protest again when D3rLord3 turns the book around.

[Before you say anything else

I’m not leaving yet.]

Avery blinks, then looks at the book again.

“Wh… what?”

[Later. Not over food.] D3rLord3 writes. [You were saying?]

“It’s–”

“It’s nothing.” Avery studies D3rLord3, then picks his fork back up. 

D3rLord3, merciful D3rLord3, lets it go. 

Avery feels light, like he’s in the clouds. What an idiot– he was about to tell D3rLord3 why he should leave. And D3rLord3 stopped him. Because of course he did. D3rLord3 is so nice to him, Avery doesn’t know where it comes from. Someone like D3rLord3 shouldn’t be so nice to him, but he is. 

They both finish their food, and Avery grabs their plates. D3rLord3 intercepts him and takes the plates from his hands before going to the sink. Well, Avery blinks. He’s a little embarrassed about having a guest clean up for him, but the last time he compromised with this guy, they had to bring a sofa to the second floor. Avery walks to the sink, beside D3rLord3. “You really don’t need to do this, y’know?” Avery awkwardly grins. “But thank you.”

He leans his head on D3rLord3’s shoulder, then walks away. Maybe D3rLord3 wouldn’t get the gesture. Doesn’t matter. Humans would wrap their arms around each other, but that always sounded clunky to Avery. The way a slime hugged another slime made more sense. A short or a long tap with the forehead, and how long you stay is how much you mean it. D3rLord3 isn’t a slime. D3rLord3 wouldn’t know that.

Avery goes up the stairs and stops halfway to look back at D3rLord3. The kitchen was still visible from there. D3rLord3 is looking at him.

Avery finally gets to the top landing. My pants are so dusty… Avery thinks. Gotta get out of these clothes.

It’s almost evening. They spent the afternoon at the stables behind Avery’s house, shearing the sheep and D3rLord3 teaching Avery how to get the most out of one shearing, before going back inside when the sun started to set. The sunset was really nice from where Avery built the house. They watched it for a few minutes before it dipped below the horizon, but Avery thinks he spent more time looking at D3rLord3, and D3rLord3 spent more time staring off into the sunless distance to actually enjoy it. 

“So...” 

Avery starts. He’s laying on the bed, legs hanging off but upper body nestled in a bunch of pillows. D3rLord3 sits beside him. “What made you change your mind? About– about leaving?”

[Need to pr

[Need to pr

D3rLord3 writes over it and starts again. Need to pr… event? Prove? Avery thinks of what else could start with pr when D3rLord3 presents the notebook again. [Need to see changes.]

“Changes, huh?” Avery mutters.

[If it worked.]

Avery laughs. “Right. I’d be pretty mad at you if we went through all that trouble and angered something we shouldn’t be angering for nothing. OooooOOooooh, D3rLord3! You just doomed both of us to die~”

D3rLord3 hits Avery’s leg, and Avery gets the message. “Okay, okay. I’m sure it worked, though. What, the monster is going to punch through all those layers of stone? There’s got to be a reason it hasn’t managed to leave, y’know?”

[Have to make sure.]

“Pfft. Okay.” Avery rolls his eyes. “Just tell me that you wanna stay with me for a little longer.” D3rLord3 looks at him. “Kidding! I’m kidding–”

Avery gulps. “Ha. Haa… I’m… just joking.”

Aaaaand he’s spindled up. Avery looks away and twiddles with his fingers. “I… um…” Think, you idiot!! Gaaah. “So how much longer do you have to stay here for?”

Avery feels a hand pat his leg, and he turns back to see the book turned to his direction. “No more than a week, huh?” D3rLord3 nods. A little overkill if you just wanna see if nothing happens, Avery thinks, but he’s not about to complain. Part of him cringes because gosh, how is he going to survive the forever isolation again after getting a taste of having someone to talk to for a week, you know? And he isn’t insane enough to talk to jack ‘o lanterns!

…

D3rLord3 goes back to writing in the book again and turns his back to Avery. Avery… listens. For something.

The music is back.

“O– oh…” Avery subtly flinches when the book turns back to him, something about asking what they’re going to do tomorrow, but Avery can’t think of an answer. He’s too fixated on the music. Should he tell D3rLord3? “We can… um… go fishing. I’ve always wanted to build a pond closer to my house and get fish from the ocean to look at, but I don’t– don’t like water.”

It’s getting louder.

“So I never got around… around to learning…”

D3rLord3 turns around to write again, and Avery glances to the side. He knows where it’s coming from now. It reverberates from the broken glass, the window with the curtain over it. Avery sits up, and D3rLord3 stops writing to look at him.

D3rLord3 makes a questioning noise.

“Window.” 

Avery gulps and looks back at D3rLord3. “There’s music coming from the window.”

Their eyes snap to the window just in time to hear grates pulling apart. A terrible sound of rending metal floods the room and overpowers anything else. Before Avery could react with anything other than a gasp, his vision was filled with red. Strong arms wrap around his body and pull him to the side. Avery nearly falls over before grabbing onto the armor. 

The metallic sound doesn’t stop, and the music gets almost deafening. It sounds like trumpets. It’s– it’s the same noise that plays whenever the competitors are transported to the arena in Sky Wars–

Something screeches from outside, and it joins the horrible cacophony. Avery cries out, hands covering his ears out of instinct, but the sound feels like it’s shaking the floor as he knows it. Avery cries out. Make it stop! Please– Avery starts to feel himself dissolving. His arms start to drip and pool at his elbows, and his head is slowly losing its form. He panics. Stop. Stop–

Everything stops so suddenly.

The red is uncovered from his face, drooping below his head, and he turns around to catch D3rLord3 falling to the floor in a heap. “D3r?” Avery sobs. “D3rLord3? Wake up. Please, wake up–”

Avery hears someone walking behind him. Every instinct screams for him not to turn around.

The presence is warm. It’s like behind him is a very, very large cup of coffee. It smells sweet. Whatever that cup was, it was loaded with creamer and sugar. The last time Avery had coffee was when he lived in the city. 

Whatever was behind him was exactly how he liked it.

“D3r–” Avery hiccups, almost frozen in fear. His hands are cold, clutching onto the armor. “It’s behind me.” Wake up. Please. “It’s…”

A sharp finger draws a line on his neck, tracing upwards. Avery’s breath hitches, and he pitifully exhales open-mouthed. “I…”

I can’t turn around.

It’s so hard. It’s so easy. Don’t turn around, Avery. That’s what D3rLord3 would’ve wanted of him, right? D3rLord3 covered his face. It means one thing, and it’s don’t look. Avery’s done that before. 

The sharp finger pokes into his nape, drawing blood if he were a human, but he was a slime, so it would have just felt uncomfortable at worst. Like a foreign object you needed to expel, numbingly pressed into your skin. Inside your skin. Hooooly. Avery shudders. There’s the desire to push it out with his hands, reach into his neck because he can, and then push it out from there, but he’s frozen in terror already.

Avery gulps, moves forward until the sharpness sheathes out of his neck.

Only for it to drive back inside. His eyes widen, and he chokes. His entire body is shaking.

“W… what…” Avery sobs. “What do you want?!”

He gets an answer almost immediately.

Turn around. His system screams. Every part of him burns and aches for it. Turn around. The finger in his neck sends lightning down his spine, and Avery lurches forward. “NO!” He screams. He braces himself onto D3rLord3’s armor. Don’t do it. You can’t– you can’t do it, Avery! Don’t listen–

You’ll break it.

The thought slams through his mind, unbidden and heavy. His body curls in on itself as if trying to hide from the order echoing in his skull. Avery’s hands go to his head, fingers digging in as he trembles and sobs. When D3rLord3 took off his helmet, he trusted Avery not to look. He trusted him. He doesn’t want you to look now, Avery. Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t—

The foreign sharpness withdraws from Avery’s neck.

The music slowly returns.

Avery hesitantly unnestles his head from D3rLord3’s armor. The music isn’t trumpets anymore. It’s… It’s lobby music. Avery briefly sees himself in the room where a competitor is escorted into after championing the game. He still doesn’t turn around. Not until he’s sure the presence is gone, but…

His legs are shaking, and he breathes out. He tests his periphery. Nothing. He turns around. There’s still nothing. There’s wind blowing through the window, and the metal grates are broken open. It looks like they’ve been torn out by something. Stronger than a phantom, that’s for sure.

In front of him, D3rLord3 wakes with a start.

“D3r?” Avery hesitantly asks. When D3rLord3 starts to cough, he immediately drags him to a sit and hugs him. “D3r! Oh my god–”

Avery backs off a little when D3rLord3 hacks out pitch-black tar onto his own armor, but Avery tries his best to swipe it off. It isn’t sticky, it’s slick. Like… like some kind of oil. Whatever. Avery is just happy that he’s back. D3rLord3 finally looks back at him, dazed. “Don’t exert yourself, c’mon.” Avery softly commands. 

He gets up and offers D3rLord3 a hand. “Get up. Let’s–” Oof. Avery quickly remembers that this guy was heavy. “Let’s go get water, okay? I’ll…”

D3rLord3 looks at Avery, unmoving. 

“D3r. You’re-” Avery hiccups. “You’re scaring me.”

Avery winces when the gloved hands caress his face. “I didn’t turn around. I thought that you wouldn't have wanted me to turn around, so I didn’t turn around–” D3rLord3 walks in front of him.

And the helmet leans down to reach Avery’s head. Avery closes his eyes at the contact.

“I…” 

Now it’s Avery’s turn to cry. He opens his eyes again. D3rLord3 doesn’t even know what he just did, didn’t he? I’m just going to look stupid.

Avery turns around and rubs at his eyes. “Let’s get that tar off of you.” He moves to the door. D3rLord3’s going to follow after him. He knows that much.

…

So.

Blocking it in didn’t work.

Chapter Text

Avery has the bed tonight. They argued about who takes the bed, it’s nature at this point, but D3rLord3 finally manages to convince Avery to take the bed back because it would be a huge waste if D3rLord3 was going to be an insomniac again.

Avery was kind of happy to have the bed to himself, though. The sofa was a one-way trip to back pain.

But if D3rLord3 wasn’t going to be using the sofa either, then they’re going to just have to bring the darned thing back to the first floor. “Uggghhh…” Avery drags a hand over his face. Part in frustration about the sofa, and part in frustration about the fact that he can’t sleep either.

Whatever the heck just happened earlier… you can’t shrug that off. Even as someone as bouncy as Avery can’t be within meters of the horrors of whatcakes and just forget about it! He probably nearly died!

It’s not the same fear of death that he gets when D3rLord3 has one of his episodes and slices at him, too. It’s the kind that gets into your head. You feel it from the point of contact and through all the limbs in your body before all of it collects in the brain to conjure one huge and banged-up nightmare.

Avery shoves his face into the pillow. He can’t sleep. The moment he finally thinks he’s about to doze off, he feels the phantom feeling of a finger on the back of his neck, and it drives him up the wall–

Avery shoots upright with a strangled noise. “D3r?”

No answer. He tries again, softer this time. “D3r…”

The door creaks open. D3rLord3 stands framed by the hallway light, watching. Like a statue at a tomb. Like an idiot guarding one, Avery thought sleepily.

“Can you do that in here, at least?” Avery yawns, his voice muffled by the pillow. “It’s kind of useless if– if I get snatched up by the guy coming in from the window and you’re…” Another yawn swallows the end of the sentence. “Outside.”

D3rLord3 tilts his head slightly, helm glinting faintly in the moonlight.

“Oh,” Avery mutters, rubbing his eyes. “You were trying to watch the whole house, weren’t you?”

He exhaled a tiny, half-delirious laugh. “I feel kinda stupid now. But I do need you in here. I can’t sleep. Not alone. I mean, being scared of not being alone is kind of the reason why I can’t sleep, but—”

He stops himself. D3rLord3 doesn’t move. The window still gapes open, a wound in the wall. D3rLord3 finally steps inside and stations himself in front of it like a sentinel. Avery sighs into his pillow.

“Easier falling asleep when you know the person you’re not alone with is a friend, right? I think. I dunno.”

A low hum comes in response. A sound like agreement or sympathy, or maybe just acknowledgment.

“Yeah…” Avery yawns again, softer this time. “I’m just going to go to sleep.”

Avery readjusts the covers onto himself again. For a brief moment, he thinks about how chilly it would be in armor. He gets comfortable and tries to go to sleep for the nth time.

In the darkness, he hears a short, breathy sound.

Avery blinks blearily into the dark. “Did you just… yawn?”

Armor shuffles around. D3rLord3 just shook his head no, didn’t he? “Use the couch.”

D3rLord3 doesn’t move again. This guy is so unbelievably stubborn! Avery grumbles. “I’m not trying to compromise with you. You have to go to sleep. It’s been– what, two nights? This is your third night here. And you were passed out on the first one!”

Of course, D3rLord3 doesn’t budge. Avery thinks the guy isn’t going to take a rest until he collapses. Up to me now, I guess. Avery gets up, rubs his eyes again, then half-liddedly walks over to D3rLord3. D3rlord3 tilts his head at Avery, questioning, until Avery starts to push.

It’s nothing harsh. Think about a shepherd trying to coax sheep to get inside their pen. Except… D3rLord3 isn’t a sheep, and Avery isn’t this imposing, tall guy with a stick to coax with.

D3rLord3 is much taller and more imposing than him, and he might as well be the sheep right now. Why does he have to be both built like a brick wall and as stubborn as one? But Avery relents. “Just go–”

D3rLord3 side-steps, and Avery falls over with an oof. 

“...Really mature of you.”

He clutches his head while D3rLord3 goes back to the standing position. He looks up at D3rLord3. That’s how you’re going to play it, huh? Avery tries to rummage around in his head for anything that could make D3rLord3 try to get some rest, until he gets a stupid plan. It might even be stupid enough to work. Avery gulps. He doesn’t really have anything else, so.

He sits on the floor, curls his knees to his chest, and rests his head on folded arms. He looks up once, to see if D3rLord3 is looking, and he is. Perfect. He nestles himself back into his legs and hears shuffling above him. 

Then feels a gentle hand tap his head, urging him to get up.

“If you’re not going to go to sleep,” Avery mumbles into his arms, “then I’m staying right here. So I’m not so defenseless.”

He says, lying. Like a liar. Avery feels a lot safer in a bed. Especially under the covers, because nothing bad ever happens when you’re under the covers, right? But D3rLord3 doesn’t need to know that. The message needs to get across.

Avery feels the hand nudge at him more urgently, and Avery quietly acknowledges the attention with a swat at D3rLord3. “I’m only going to get on my bed if I know you’re sleeping on the sofa, alright? So if you’re going to stay–”

Avery feels himself getting picked up by the torso, and he yelps.

What. “Hey!” This was not part of the plan! Avery squirms in D3rLord3’s grip, kicking and twisting as D3rLord3 carries him across the room like he weighs nothing.

The bed looms closer. Avery’s eyes go wide the second he realizes what’s about to happen and he grabs onto the armor fast. They tumble together. The moment Avery feels himself getting dropped, he yanks D3rLord3 down with him. Metal clatters, limbs tangle, and the mattress creaks under their combined weight.

D3rLord3 immediately tries to pry him off, but Avery’s already latched on tight. Determined to win by sheer chaos. He clings like his life depends on it, grinning through the mess. If there’s one thing Avery’s good at, it’s being a slippery little bastard who refuses to let go.

“This wouldn’t be happening– if–” Avery says between heavy breaths. “If you would just try to get some rest for once!”

D3rLord3 stops struggling, and Avery watches the fight leave his body in real time. Avery tentatively loosens his grip. D3rLord3 takes the opportunity to pull away, but it doesn’t matter that much. The covers are messy, and Avery is splayed out, looking at D3rLord3 with exhaustion.

Avery blinks and rubs at his eyes again.

“I heard you yawn, okay? You’re tired. And I know we just had something scary happen, but you need rest, too.”

“If you’re so scared,” Avery offers, laying his arm back on his torso, “I can take up shift tonight. And… and I know how to fight, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

D3rLord3’s helmet is faintly reflected by the moon seeping through the curtain, but Avery still sees him shake his head.

“What is it, then?”

For a moment, no one moves.

Then D3rLord3 sits on the nightstand beside Avery’s bed. 

One leg up and the other on the floor. Avery watches as D3rLord3 puts a hand on the face of his helmet, then lets it slowly slide down. He’s thinking. Avery silently congratulates himself on cataloguing more and more of D3rLord3’s mannerisms. It’s like filling up an index.

D3rLord3 is looking at him again.

“Did you change your mind?” Avery whispers.

His view of D3rLord3 is kind of odd, he has to crane his neck to really look at him, but D3rLord3 nods. “Okay. Good.”

Avery turns around, to the side where he faces the wall. He’s more of a if I don’t see the horrors, I feel safer instead of a I need to see exactly where the horrors might come from to feel safe type of person, so he turns his back to the rest of the bedroom. To D3rLord. He can only hope that D3rLord3 actually goes to sleep instead of taking up post by the window again.

He hears the footsteps get closer to the window, and Avery quietly sighs. He hears him doing… something. Avery isn’t entirely sure. But D3rLord3 walks again. Somewhere farther. Avery hears the couch subtly creak. Slimes don’t dream, but Avery’s heard about them. 

Avery hopes that D3rLord3 gets good dreams tonight.

Avery wakes up to D3rLord3 not being where he left him, as always. Honestly, waking up to an empty couch wasn’t a surprise. Avery scans the bedroom, then realizes D3rLord3 used the broken table leg as a bar to stop the curtains from blowing due to the wind. Either that, or it served as a barricade.

He couldn’t tell if D3rLord3 actually went to sleep or got up shortly after lying down again, but surely the guy went to sleep this time, right? You can’t stay up for three days straight without feeling horrible! But then he goes downstairs to D3rLord3 looking completely fine, so maybe he did go to sleep. Who’s to say with that guy, really…

D3rLord3 is in front of the sink, fleshing leather Avery meant to fix properly later but never actually got around to. Way to start a morning. Avery mentally applauds himself for managing to wrangle D3rLord3 into resting last night with a half-baked plan before walking over to him.

“Hey...” Avery rubs his eyes. “I slept a lot better last night. I guess– it was just the couch that had me so off yesterday. I feel kinda bad about making you sleep on it now, though. Compared to the bed, the couch is– it’s really bad.”

“Did you… actually go to sleep on it, though?”

D3rLord3 looks at him, then nods. He goes back to working on the leather. Avery mumbles, “Okay.”

There’s a hanging question this morning. Last night, they talked about fishing and making an artificial pond. But that was for when D3rLord3 was watching whether or not blocking it in would work.

It didn’t, obviously.

“Did we actually anger some kind of monster?” Avery hesitantly asks. He still hasn’t processed last night, silent the entire time he helped D3rLord3 downstairs to get something to drink after the encounter. He sees D3rLord3 wince. “It… broke through the metal grills. And it has mind-bending powers. Brain pain projection or whatever.”

A small thought comes into his mind, about D3rLord3 leaving because the plan didn’t work. Avery exhales. He wouldn’t do that. “So I was just wondering what else we’re going to do about it, y’know? Cause obviously we can’t just have that thing running around the plains.”

D3rLord3 shakes his head no.

“Whuh.” Avery blinks. “No? No to what?”

D3rLord3 makes the writing gesture again, and Avery quickly retrieves the book from upstairs. After handing it over, D3rLord3 writes something that makes his heart drop.

“You know I can’t do that, right?”

D3rLord3 looks at Avery, then gives him a knowing look, but he doesn’t write anything else. The answer seems final.

“I can’t go into the cities,” Avery says, voice catching. “They’re lenient with non-humans, sure, but they’re–”

Avery lets out a shaky exhale.

“Can you at least tell me why we have to go there?”

[Safety.]

“Aren’t we just going to bring the danger to them?” Avery nervously suggests. “I mean–”

D3rLord3 cuts him off when Avery’s eyes shoot to look at what’s being written on the book.

[They aren’t the target.]

“What?”

D3rLord3 goes back to fleshing.

“You can’t just say that and then then not elaborate.” 

[Why can’t you go back into the cities, then?]

D3rLord3 writes without even looking at the notebook. He’s really on the spot now, huh?

Avery thinks about telling him, but then again, maybe D3rLord3 could find out for himself and hate him less that way.

Or would D3rLord3 hate him more if it didn’t come from Avery himself? It’s not even true! If you told him now, then he’ll understand better instead of finding out through other people who don’t know the whole story, Avery. “I…”

Avery sighs.

He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “I got exiled. For killing someone without respawn.”

D3rLord3 briefly stops carving the fat off the leather, and Avery holds his breath. D3rLord3 seems to be taking it in. Shortly, D3rLord3 gestures for Avery to keep going. “It… It was the end of the match, you know? When the winner gets announced, the fireworks go off, and the signal says everyone has to stop swinging.”

Distantly, there was an Avery standing on a floating island, holding a bow and taking aim from one of the highest towers in the map.

He’s really good with a bow. Everyone who knows about AveryTheMayo knew that he was good with a bow, so the last other person decided that it wasn’t really worth fighting anymore.

Avery was on a sightline and half-dead as all of these matches go, but he was a combat maniac. He’s been half-dead since the first few minutes of the match and he hasn’t gotten hit ever since. Avery took aim. Creeaak. It was a straight shot. A straight shot, and he would win by last man standing–

But he didn’t have to shoot. The fireworks started painting the sky in millions of colors, and the announcer declared a win by forfeit.

Avery was putting down the bow and sighing in relief when the other competitor suddenly collapsed, blood pooling on the floor and a spectral arrow in their skull. He stood on the tower, stunned. Gasps coming from all the spectators in the balconies. The announcer is ordering commands in flashes, declaring foul play and begging for the field medic to come immediately.

Avery clutches his bow. The arrow isn’t his, but his quiver is filled with spectral arrows and the news would jump at anything that would get a rating.

“I didn’t even know that the respawn system turns off as soon as the game ends.” Avery looks at his hands. “Why would it be foul play? I’m– I’m not that kind of person, D3r. People already hated me for being a non-human in the leaderboards, so you can…”

Avery swallows. “You can imagine how bad everyone wanted to believe it. They dogpiled on me so quickly and I don’t want to know what…”

[I don’t think you could have done it.]

“Right!?”

It comes out too loud. Avery clears his throat, trying to calm down. “But that’s not– that’s what they know, D3r! If we go back to the city, they’ll hate me. They’ll chase me out. They’ll chase you out. And I’ll feel horrible if they treat you the way they treated me just because you’re my friend and–”

Avery looks at D3rlord3 and sees the expression that tells him to calm down. So he tries to. Keyword: tries. Avery is very much still upset and panicking and glad that D3rLord3 isn’t shunning him for killing someone outside of respawn, so D3rLord3 picks up the quill again.

[It targets the idle.]

“The idle, huh?” Avery wipes one side of his face with his forearm. “That’s… that’s me.”

Avery bitterly laughs. “So I guess your plan is to go to the city so I don’t get bored. Is that it?”

D3rLord3 nods, and Avery exhales shakily. He looks at D3rLord3 with a question still hanging, and D3rLord3 answers before he can even ask.

“Oh… cod.” Avery groans, covering his face. “Until we fix the problem? How long’s that gonna take? I can’t just move into the city, D3r. You know this.”

[Will be fast. Need us safe.]

Avery wipes away the last of his tears. “Yeah.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

The morning is spent cleaning up and Avery choosing what he wants to bring. The exile wasn’t exactly legal—a lot of speculation went into the charges for murder in civil settings, but it was ambiguous. There wasn’t any footage, just the assumption that it was Avery who shot the arrow, and that made his exile more social than it was official.

But in a world that’s ran by society, you don’t have to be at fault in the eyes of jurisdiction to be alienated. In Avery’s case, the news and editorials screamed about justice that needed to happen to him. Not for him. Sure, there were papers that wrote in his defense, but they were from outlets who were well known to exist for the sole purpose of getting a rise out of its readers. You can imagine how well that helped his case.

“What do you think is going to happen when we get there?” He looks at D3rLord3, and D3rLord3 shrugs. “I just hope I don’t get chased out, or something. If you… oh, man. If you saw me in the first week after the incident. Everyone hated me so much that I couldn’t go anywhere without getting called names.”

Avery hauls up a chest full of items, then plops it down on the bed. He puts some of the stuff in his inventory. “You’d think that other non-humans would be nicer, but… well. I get it. It’s already hard getting respect as a non-human in cities, then a non-human goes rogue on the news?” D3rLord3 winces, picking up stuff in front of him, too. “Yeah. It was really bad.”

“I hope it’s died down now, though.” Avery mutters. 

He closes the chest, then puts it back under the bed. He looks back up and meets D3rLord3’s eyes. “Are we ready?” D3rLord3 nods. They go down the stairs together and Avery closes the doors behind them when they exit the house. Locking shouldn’t be necessary for a short trip, but he does it anyway.

Maybe he lingers at the door for too long, that’s why D3rLord3 has to tap his shoulder and tell him they had to leave.

Chapter Text

“I’m pretty glad you know the directions to the nearest city.”

Avery huffs as they walk, words spilling out between steps. The path isn’t steep, but the air feels heavier with every few meters they pass. “I’ve kinda forgotten how far out I went before finding a place to build on. Pretty far, though. I didn’t... want anyone to find me.”

D3rLord3 nods once, slow. It’s the kind of nod that could mean anything. Avery can’t tell anymore.

“Can you try talking again?”

D3rLord3 looks at Avery, and Avery watches him think of something to say.

“█████.”

“Okay. Still don’t get whatever you’re saying.” Avery sighs in disappointment. “Do you even understand yourself when you try talking?”

D3rLord3 tilts his head, then nods. He looks expectantly at Avery, and Avery gets the hint.

“Well, you sound like you’re actually talking. But I don’t understand what you’re saying. I hear the syllables and the vowels. I can… um, tell when you end a sentence and start a new one… but it’s like you’re blacked over. Multiple people are talking and no one is at the same time, you know?”

D3rLord3 hums. Then knowingly nods his head. “Whuh.” Avery gives him a look. “What were you asking me for, then!?”

D3rLord3 shrugs.

Avery sighs and lets it go.

“I just wonder what your voice sounds like sometimes,” Avery mumbles. “I gave you a voice in my head, actually. I use it whenever I read your writing and I like… think you have this deep voice– but it’s smooth. Like if a painting had a voice, it would be what you have, too.”

“Not that I see paintings a lot. I don’t have one at home, but I remember what paintings used to look like. I used to see the one with mountains a lot. The one with the sunset, you know?” Avery rambled on. “People like putting it everywhere, for some reason. Or– maybe liked, I don’t know. I haven’t been in the city for years, so maybe there’s a new painting everyone hangs up now, but the sunset one really stuck.”

“Do you like sunsets?” Avery looks at D3rLord3.

D3rLord3 looks back at him, too. Nods.

“Yeah. You look like you do.” For someone who likes sunsets, you kinda suck at looking at them, Avery thinks. But then he thinks he would be kind of a hypocrite for thinking that when he kind of stared at D3rLord3 the last time they did watch a sunset together. He’ll just call it quits, then. 

Briefly, Avery thinks about how long it would take for them to find the nearest city. Hopefully it won’t take them until night? While cities are safe at night: well lit, tons of guards everywhere, and somehow people have figured out a way to put an emancipation grill for non-sentients in capitals– they aren’t safe outside.

D3rLord3 writes.

[Thousands of blocks more. How scared were you?]

“Terrified.” Avery blinks. “It’s reasonable, okay? I needed to get really far out.”

[Half of this distance was fine.]

“How was I supposed to know back then? I was scared of people recognizing and then killing me!”

D3rLord3 lets out a small laugh. Avery can’t get mad at him. Even if he wants to. 

“You try getting exiled from society.”

D3rLord3 shakes his head. [Don’t dream of it.]

“Then you would probably have chosen that far out, too.” Avery drones. “Oh, and we’re going to the said place full of people who will recognize and then kill me, by the way. So you can imagine how excited I am about getting there.”

[You look the part.]

“Yeah, totally stoked,” Avery says dryly. “Getting chased back into civilization that hates me by some invisible monster. Why’s it even after me, anyway? You’re the one who’s—” he gestures vaguely at D3rLord3’s armor “—cooler, weirder, way more interesting to hunt!”

D3rLord3 pauses before writing again. [Going down the cave and finding the book made you enticing. And you kept coming back.]

[It called for you, and you reacted.] Avery looks at D3rLord3, then at the book again. [He knows you’re curious now. Wants you.]

“He?”

D3rLord3’s hand hovers lamely with the quill. No response. “Okay, but all I’m hearing is that you kind of doomed me by writing the book and making me curious about the cave I found it in.”

[No. I warned you to stay away. Stupid.]

…

“How far?”

D3rLord3 looks forward.

[Halfway.] 

Avery lets out a shaky laugh. “Didn’t expect that, but sure, halfway’s close enough.”

[We aren’t even close.]

“To me, we are!” Avery throws his hands up. “This is like counting down a minute but in reverse! It’s like time’s double speed.”

[Dramatic.]

“Oh, so you’re allowed to threaten to kill me multiple times in a week but I’m the dramatic one?”

[Ratio fallacy.]

They go back and forth a few more times before settling into a comfortable silence.

Avery thought silence was bad because silence is idleness, but apparently this one isn’t. He’s occupied with being happy. Walking beside D3rLord3 and being alive and worrying about going into the city.

Avery wonders if D3rLord3 is having the same fun he is, but D3rLord3 looks like he’s been here before, so that cuts out the thrill of something new from the table. But is D3rLord3 happy about walking? With him?

Avery looks at D3rLord3, D3rLord3 doesn’t look back. He’s laser-focused again… Avery thinks. He wishes he could do that, too. Part of him wants to creep behind D3rLord3 and scare him out of the trance, but this is nice enough. Looking at him. The way the afternoon reflects off the armor and the huge, unnecessary cape he wears all the time.

D3rLord3 stops, and Avery does too.

“Wh– oh!” Avery looks into the distance and sees an ocean in the distance. He… doesn’t remember crossing an ocean to get here. “Are we going through that?”

D3rLord3 nods while they walk. As soon as they get to the bordering sand, Avery puts down a crafting table and quickly gets to making a boat.

“You’re rowing,” Avery declares. “I’m not good with these things. I don’t really like water.”

The boat materializes, and Avery puts it down on the beach. The sun is kind of starting to set by then. It’s not getting lighter anymore, the sun isn’t visibly overhead, and it’s easy to watch it inch lower and lower. It’s still a good while though. That’s what Avery thinks. I should’ve brought a clock…

But there’s no use crying over, uh. However that saying goes.  “Are we making it to the city before night?” D3rLord3 helps him onto the boat and nods. Good enough.

They set sail in the direction of the sun. It’s like we’re chasing it, Avery thinks. He’s thought about doing that before, but he’s scared of drying up when he gets close. Does the sun do that?

Probably not, but it’s fun to think about.

Avery puts his hand in the water while D3rLord3 rows. The way his fingers cleanly glide through the water is admittedly satisfying. He wonders what swimming feels like for a person, with air inside of them and not just dense slime that makes them sink like a rock. He thinks about how easily D3rLord3 picked him up, then thinks about how strong D3rLord3 would’ve had to be to carry him so easily.

The question stays, of course: what happens if he tries to hurt me? Being a goner would be the first thing that comes to mind, but he did beat D3rLord3 in sparring, once.

…What if he just let Avery win? Out of pity?

No, D3rLord3 couldn’t possibly be worse than him in combat. It’s a thought that Avery absolutely refuses to entertain.

But he doesn’t need to entertain it. Right now, all he has to do is breathe, or whatever slime-imitation he has to breathing. Doesn’t even need to walk—he’s on a boat, and D3rLord3 is rowing for both of them. He thinks about asking to try rowing, but he decides against it. He might drop an oar and that would be a huge problem. And…

He kind of likes just watching.

The sunset, then D3rLord3, rowing them both to somewhere Avery vaguely remembers and does not want to go to, but, well.

They get to the city with the sun minutes before dipping below the horizon completely. They leave the boat when it gets to land.

There’s already a few houses scattered around that body of water they landed on. Fortunately? No one to greet them. They have to walk through a path to get to the city’s gates, and they find themselves at the first checkpoint. There isn’t anyone there to man it, either. It’s all been automated just before Avery left.

He takes his user serial tag out of his inventory…

Inactive Account, please use the button to your right to call on an attendant to escort you to renewal.

“What…” Avery tries it again. “Do you have your user tag on you?”

D3rLord3 shakes his head. ”But you do have one in the system.”

Another no.

“Oh, geez. At least I have a reason to not have one. It’s like you live–” Inactive Account, please– “under a… a rock.”

Avery puts his tag back into his inventory, then sighs. “Okay, we have to go call an attendant now. And then go to the capital to get registered.”

“Auugh. This is useless. It takes months to get a serial validated and they’ll probably just decline me since they’re so strict. You know, I had a friend who accidentally shared a serial tag with a new registrant and they made it his problem for weeks–” Avery cuts himself off when he sees D3rLord3 walking to one of the walls, then feeling around. “What the heck are you doing?”

D3rLord3 makes a follow me gesture and Avery does. Maybe he knows another way in? I mean, this guy is a crazy genius… so… Avery watches as D3rLord3 stops at part of the city wall that was far from the main gates, but rarely visited. “What?”

D3rLord3 pulls out a pickaxe. “Wh– wait!”

The wall is broken into, and D3rLord3 manages to break delicately keep the bricks whole. The moment it gets large enough for a player, he quickly herds Avery into it before entering as well. In the split second Avery saw the wall’s innards, he realizes what whatever insane maneuver D3rLord3 just did completely missed all of the wires that would’ve caused an alarm to go off.

D3rLord3 quickly seals up the wall.

He’s going to give me a heart attack one day, isn’t he? Avery gulps. “Thank you.”

D3rLord3 makes a noise of amusement, before walking off. 

Avery follows quickly after him and keeps his head down. There’s people now, albeit a few. No one hangs around a city’s gates if not picking up relatives who enter the city through there, and even then, people usually prefer the quick transportation offered in the teleportation transits.

(Something else they can’t use, unfortunately. You need a user serial strong enough to be allowed to teleport to certain places, and there’s a quantity limit for the amount of items in your inventory. All thanks to one user who decided to ruin it for everybody.) 

“D3r.” Avery tugs at D3rLord3’s cape, then looks back down when he gets his attention. “They probably have a curfew here. We’re not allowed to just stay outside too late at night or they’ll ask for IDs.”

D3rLord3 nods in acknowledgement, and Avery realizes he’s turning directions to go to the city’s commercial district.

Which is. A lot more people than the main gates.

The city wasn’t exactly what you’d call small, either. Because Avery was part of a guild that made it pretty high in the seasonal ranks, it meant that they moved a lot for matches and other events, and that meant Avery knew exactly what a small and a big city looked like.

This one in particular, he’s visited before. Maybe in a sponsorship event? His guild had lots of those, and he’s always wondered how his guild leader found them. But here Avery is again, and he has about only a quarter of the city’s layout memorized. I should probably stay close to D3rLord3, Avery thinks. He really doesn’t want to get lost.

They enter the streets with the bright lights, and that’s what tells Avery they’re in the downtown areas of the city now.

There’s flashing colors here, loud music there, and the first floors of buildings are closing to avoid the nightlifers setting fire to the floors above them. Yeah. This city isn’t clean at night, either. Avery remembers when he stayed here with more of his guild’s main players and they went out to drink.

And then he found out getting drunk apparently took half of his body weight in alcohol, and he was quickly assigned as the get everyone back to the hotel friend.

Said establishment being a short walk away now. Avery hasn’t been in this hotel before, but it looks nice. Are they even going to be able to afford this? Avery quietly counts how many credits he has when D3rLord3 pushes open the door.

He writes something down, then presents it to the exhausted woman at the reception who then… just hands him a keycard. Huh.

The woman gives Avery a strange look, and D3rLord3 waves her off. Writes something again, using the counter as a platform to put the book on, and the woman doesn’t seem to care anymore after that. She waves them both a nice night, and Avery doesn’t question it. D3rLord3 leads him to the elevator.

“What did you tell her?” Avery asks. 

D3rLord3 presses the button going up. When he turns to reply, he realizes that he accidentally left the book at the reception. Avery mouths go, and D3rLord3 leaves him by the elevator to go back.

The elevator door opens. Someone, very, very familiar, but Avery can’t put a pin on it.

The person looks at him, too. With shock. The guy doesn’t linger, and Avery doesn’t either, but he knows he’s seen that person before. He just…

D3rLord3 materializes beside him again, and chastises him for nearly missing the opened elevator with a look. “Sorry,” Avery mutters.

D3rLord3 sighs and pushes the button to the seventh floor.

Avery follows him through the corridors, and stops when he unlocks a door with the keycard. When he opens it, he pauses a little, and Avery tilts his head. D3rLord3 makes a stay here gesture, and Avery lets D3rLord3 past him. Is there something wrong with the room?

He looks at the plate in front, it’s a two-bed with a balcony and nice amenities. Avery looks inside.

Oh, Avery blinks. There’s only one bed.

It takes a short while, but D3rLord3 reappears from the elevator corridor with an apologetic receptionist in tow. Avery hears the receptionist mention something about the room having to remove one of the beds due to the usual people that book the room specifically requesting it. There’s the sound of writing on the book, and Avery watches as the receptionist apologizes and shakes her head.

D3rLord3 takes the keycard from the receptionist, then gestures for Avery to go inside.

“Okay.” Avery breathes out. “I feel like I should be asking it again: what did you tell her?”

Apparently, D3rLord3 knew about a businessman who came from another major city, but gambling was banned where they lived. The solution was to go to another major city who wouldn’t prosecute them for gambling, and they would usually spend their entire time sat on a table and betting on red from the moment they get there until the moment they leave.

Sometimes, casinos still offer free hotel rooms and other benefits to their patrons, and the patrons avail them anyway despite not bothering to use the hotel rooms at all. The rooms either go to the businessmen’s secretaries or they’re left unused. D3rLord3 knew of a room subjected to that and decided to make the best of it.

Unfortunately, he’d learned this a while ago already, and a few things changed in that while. Like the hotel specifically catering the room to businessmen who do exactly this. The receptionist pointed at Avery assumedly, to mention that it wasn’t a room for two people. D3rLord3 proceeded to tell her to leave it alone when she hadn't even started.

Enter: the single bed.

“And now what are we going to do?”

[Already tried asking for another room or another bed. Fully booked.]

Avery looks at D3rLord3, and D3rLord3 looks back at him.

Avery squints. “I’m not going to sleep if you don’t.”

[It’s yours.]

“You need to sleep.”

D3rLord3’s hand hovers over the book, and he sighs. For Avery, it clicks.

“You didn’t sleep last night, either?”

[Can’t. Take it.]

D3rLord3 underlines the words.

[It’s yours.]

D3rLord3 puts the book down, and walks to the balcony. 

The view is nice from the bed alone. The balcony had curtains that pull over it, and the wall is made out of glass. You could see the whole city from there, even its borders. The good part about the cities being so far away from each other was little to no light pollution, and it meant that you could see the stars.

You look down, there’s pretty lights. You look up and it’s even prettier.

Avery joins D3rLord3 on the balcony. D3rLord3 doesn’t look at him.

“You…” Avery hesitantly starts. “You haven’t been able to sleep?”

D3rLord3 spares him a glance.

Then puts his head in his hands.

“You… um, could’ve told me, y’know? I can stay awake tonight if you want. You take the bed–”

One of D3rLord3’s hands goes to Avery’s hand on the railing and pats it twice. Don’t.

“Is it… not that? Um…” 

Avery rummages around his head for what else it could possibly be. “Lots on your mind?”

D3rLord3 looks at him. Nods.

“Wow. I… I can’t imagine.” Avery mutters. “I hope it’s not because of me.” 

D3rLord3 subtly shakes his head. Avery whispers under his breath. “Okay.”

“Do you want me to leave you alone for a bit?”

D3rLord3 nods.

Avery pulls away his hand, and D3rLord3 stares off into the lights of the city.

There’s shades of yellow and pink and green and Avery thinks it comes off of the armor in a pleasing reflection. There’s disruptions and dents, but it makes it interesting to look at.

And Avery is glad that the dents were on D3rLord3’s armor and not on D3rLord3 himself.

He goes back into the main bedroom and lies down, taking full advantage of the massive bed. This was way softer than what he had at home, but it was too soft. It feels like he’s drowning in the covers. He twists and tries to prop the pillows up in a way that doesn’t make his head sink too far into them, but it doesn’t work. Avery sighs and gives up, draping the comforter over himself so that the air conditioning doesn’t freeze him into a solid while he sleeps.

He only does manage to fall asleep when he hears D3rLord3 enter the side-bathroom and turn on the water. It’s enough.

Chapter Text

Avery blinks once, twice, then finally remembers where he is. This isn’t home. The ceiling’s too white, the air too still, and the bed too soft to belong anywhere near his life. He stares at the thin strip of light leaking through the hotel curtains and lets his brain catch up with itself. 

A hotel. Right. 

A nice one, actually. The kind of place with keycard doors that click too quietly and carpets that smell faintly of bleach. He rolls over and debates staying in bed. The covers are warm, perfectly weighted, like they’re asking him to stay. But then he remembers– right, there’s a reason they’re here.

He drags himself upright, blanket slipping off his shoulders.

D3rLord3 is on the couch, coffee in front of him, and an issue of the news today in his hands. He’s looking at the sports headlines. The sound of rustling paper makes the room feel smaller somehow. Avery squints at the headlines. The top-right corner wears the Sky Wars logo. Avery wonders what the news has to say about it.

“Good morning,” he mutters, voice still scratchy.

D3rLord3 looks back at Avery, then waves.

Avery gets up, stretching to get circulation back into the ends of his limbs before walking over to the side of their room with a heater. He doesn’t like coffee if it isn’t loaded with things that make it taste less like coffee—and he knew that hotels were stingy with their sugar and cream packets—but he thinks the caffeine will help. 

(He considers opening the mini-fridge and seeing if there’s energy drinks there, but he dreads accidentally getting extra charges and notifying the actual owner.) 

Where are the packets, anyway? Before he even asks, D3rLord3 snaps his fingers, then points at the drawer under the counter.

Avery opens it to find twice the amount of cream and sugar.

“You didn’t use yours?” Avery turns to ask, and D3rLord3 responds by tipping his cup to let Avery see the undiluted contents. “Yeah, you look like the kind of person who drinks it plain. Eew.”

D3rLord3 scoffs, and Avery pours himself a cup, then breaks the packets over it. He mixes it with a stirrer. “What’s up with Sky Wars, by the way?”

He puts his own coffee down on the table, then sits a respectful distance from D3rLord3. D3rLord3 opens the book and starts to write. “You know, we should really try something else.” Avery laughs. “Like, what if we used sign language?”

D3rLord3 looks at him, pauses the previous sentence, and then works on a new one. Avery reads it. “Oh, come on. It can’t be that hard to learn, right? I mean, it’s gestures! I’m really good at gestures, I swear–” Avery stuns, looking in confusion as D3rLord3 uses his right hand to sign at him in slow movements. Afterwards, D3rLord3 looks expectantly at him.

“Uh.”

D3rLord3 lets out a short laugh, then goes back to the book.

“Well, you can’t just write on that thing forever!” Avery idly stirs his coffee, then rests his cheek on his hand. “Like, what if you really needed to say something but you don't have ink?” D3rLord3 points at his wrist. At the vein. “No!”

When he finishes writing, Avery peers over to read it. “Does the city even have that?”

D3rLord3 nods.

“Uh… do you think there’s going to be a lot of people there?”

D3rLord3 points at the view from the balcony outside. That’s a yes, then.

Avery exhales slowly. “Right. I’m going to… um. I’m going to see if the hotel room has anything I can cover my face with, alright? Give me a second.”

Avery gets up to check the closet, but D3rLord3 stops him by the arm. D3rLord3 shakes his head.

“You do realize I’ll get eaten alive out there.” Avery protests. “You’re lucky you’ve got that armor thing going for you. People see you and just assume you’re someone important. Me? I’m a walking target. Getting randomly checked by patrols is, like, my top hobby.”

D3rLord3 shakes his head, writes. [I’ll take care of it.]

“I knew you were going to say that.” 

Avery sucks in a breath through his teeth. “You can’t be seen with me, D3r. We’ll literally get kicked out of everywhere.”

[Does it matter?]

“What do you think’s going to happen if I get random-checked and asked for an ID? They aren’t lenient with these things at all.” Avery huffs. “And you know what? I’ll jeopardize any possibility of you getting registered if you ever plan to. It’s that, and being outcasted by society. And it’s going to suck.”

Avery looks at D3rLord3, expecting more of a response. Maybe even agree that it would be stupid coming out with Avery at all.

But then D3rLord3 turns the book around, and it’s an answer Avery didn’t think he’d come to hate.

[I don’t care.]

Avery gulps. “You don’t mean that.”

[I do.]

D3rLord3 writes. [You don’t owe me anything, Avery.]

“It’s not that! I mean– that’s part of it, but that’s not the whole thing, okay?” 

Avery looks down. “I just… I don’t want to be the reason what happened to me happens to you, too.”

[Likewise.]

They look at each other for a brief moment before D3rLord3 is the first to break away. 

[Breakfast?]

“You can’t buy me with food.” Avery huffs. 

[Are we going to the library or the hotel buffet?]

“You can’t trick me with the illusion of free choice, either!”

Avery sees D3rLord3 smile under the helmet before finally giving in. “Fine. We’re going to the library. And I’m just going to face the world out there and hope no one gives me weird looks. Am I getting this right?”

D3rLord3 pats Avery’s back, then gets up, too. And he isn’t even going to bother answering me. Great. Avery watches as D3rLord3 picks up the newspaper and tosses it away. “You still haven’t told me what’s new with Sky Wars, by the way.”

D3rLord3 doesn’t really answer him after that. The new goal was to go to the library. To read a book that’s going to tell him, according to D3rLord3, about half of their current situation.

And D3rLord3 knows the library has this very specific book for some reason, but his memory of the book’s contents was apparently fuzzy? If all of these things were just wild guesses, I’d seriously believe it. 

But then D3rLord3 makes the next miracle happen, and Avery starts thinking about why he ever doubted the guy at all. It’s a tiring existence.

Now they’re out there again. Outside the hotel are a bunch of shops and restaurants Avery hasn’t seen in years. Part of him badly wants to walk D3rLord3 around the place, window shopping the wares, or just walking for the sake of it, but the idea of being noticed or D3rLord3 being noticed with him made his stomach gripe.

…Mornings in the city are very, very different from the nights.

It’s not quieter. It’s a different kind of loud. Nights are filled with music and drunk shouting, but mornings are filled with the hum of engines and the shuffle of people trying to get somewhere. Systems wake up, lights flicker from standby to bright, and every shop sign blinks itself back to relevance. The neon signs still linger, but they look dull now. Covered up by mall banners promising limited-time deals. 

The streets are fuller, busier. Lines in stores. People zipping through sidewalks. The kind of organized chaos that only the ones who actually live here can navigate. Avery keeps his head down. These are their mornings. Their routines. Their normal. He doesn’t belong in it. 

Not anymore.

Avery sees another person in armor, and can’t help but point it out. “He looks a little like you,” Avery whispers.

Not at all, the person’s armor was black, and a pretty defining feature was the glowing, blue eyes. Beside the dark knight was a lady with green eyes and wearing lots of pink, but Avery was sure D3rLord3 knows she wasn’t who he was pointing at.

D3rLord3 scoffs anyway, and Avery gets a look that says not even close. 

“Okay, then. Do you have a map of this place, or something?” Avery asks. D3rLord shakes his head. Huh. Maybe he has been before. That would explain knowing about that breakable part of the wall. Or the general familiarity with the area.

Avery honestly feels stupid for wondering now. It’s the easiest answer and it checks out. Comes the next question, though. “I really can’t come up with a reason why you don’t have a serial. I mean, you know this place, so you probably go here a lot, right?”

D3rLord3 looks at Avery. He shakes his head.

The first door buzzes closed in front of them, and the sound stops them dead in their tracks.

They weren’t even going inside. They were just passing by. Avery locks eyes with the security guard in front of the corporate building and gets a look that makes him feel like he’s something scraped off the bottom of a shoe. Avery feels D3rLord3 put a hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him to keep moving. Ignore it. 

Avery swallows hard, and D3rLord3 starts to walk again when he walks first.

“Um…” Avery looks down, and D3rLord3 squeezes his shoulder. “Yeah, I haven’t been in this part before. I guess I remember crossing the plaza a lot when I went here with my old guild, but we didn’t explore too much if it wasn’t on the way to the venue we were going to.”

D3rLord3 hums in acknowledgement.

It’s like that on the way to the library. Avery trying to look as small as possible, and D3rLord3 leading them to where they needed to go. Avery sees a few people stopping to look in his periphery– the scandal was big and well-known, and even that was an understatement, so he can imagine how surprising it is to see some kind of person who’s disappeared for years suddenly reappearing out of the blue. 

With some terrifying guy who looks like a castle guard, no less. Avery realizes that people letting them pass because they think D3rLord3 was some kind of escort leading a criminal to death row or some punishment in a similar vein wasn’t off the table. Should he be grateful for it?

The library doors push open, and D3rLord3 goes into the section of mythos and classic literature. 

Okay, Avery thinks. For a book supposedly explaining what’s going on, seeing D3rLord3 rush into the fiction section isn’t very promising. D3rLord3 re-emerges holding a gilded book with no title on the cover, before gesturing Avery to the tables and then going to the librarian, leaving him in the middle of the library. 

Avery looks down at the book, then at the chairs. He hopes whatever’s in here isn’t those books that go thee or forthwith, or he’ll get lost one sentence in. Don’t get him wrong, he knows how to read, but classic literature has this amazing ability of making the simplest concepts completely incomprehensible to the average reader. Avery flips after the credentials and the dedication to see a table of contents.

Oh… it’s. It’s some kind of encyclopedia.

He looks to the side and goes to take a seat. In front of him are a duo, a guy with brown hair and goggles on their head, and his friend, a villager wearing a lab coat. That’s rare. Villagers are another rare appearance in cities if not workers, but this one looks way more intelligent than the ones that work in stands. Good for him.

And they look too busy to really notice he’s there, so.

Avery thumbs the side of the book, then realizes there’s a strange fold between the flat pages. He cringes. What kind of person folds books like this? Now, he wasn’t a reader, but this was just awful. He opens it up to a page with a strange drawing. A very, very large entity clad in yellow, but shrouded in darkness that looks way too disproportionate to the lighting the drawing implies.

Avery looks back at D3rLord3. Is this the right one?

There’s something about an ancient city and a play. The entity drawn is supposed to be an artist’s depiction of an entity that doesn’t exactly follow the rules of being an entity at all, because entities are tangible, at least. The drawing is supposed to be a concept conveyed through art. It gets across, Avery thinks. The more he looks at the drawing, the less he understands. But the words are fine.

But honestly, they make as much sense as D3rLord3’s writing did when Avery found it in the cave for the first time.

D3rLord3 returns to Avery’s side after talking to the librarian about… something. Avery looks back at the librarian, an orange feline with green eyes, before looking back at D3rLord3. “That was a pretty long conversation,” Avery says lamely. “I finished one of the parts of the book you handed me.”

Avery points at the part’s title, and D3rLord3 looks at him. [Do you understand?]

“Oh, that– that was actually what I was supposed to read?”

D3rLord3 nods.

“Carcosa, huh…” Avery parrots. “So this guy is following us, and he won’t let us go unless we forget about it, or get uncursed or something.” D3rLord3 nods again. “Well, obviously we can’t just forget about it, so how are we supposed to get uncursed? Do we just have to go to a witch and hope she helps?”

[Carcosa.]

“A place that’s buried underground. For thousands of years now,” Avery deadpans.

D3rLord3 looks back at the librarian, then writes. [You don’t get there by travelling. He sends you there.] And before Avery can even ask. [The King.]

“How the heck are we supposed to do that? I mean, I’m down to do some kind of ritual to summon the guy, but I’m not going to do murder. Murder is completely off the table–”

Avery realizes the guy wearing goggles is looking at him, and he flushes and looks down. D3rLord3 looks at the villager, and the villager in the lab coat nudges the guy to mind his own business.

[No rituals. You need to trick him into sending you to Carcosa, or he’ll just try the same thing he tried in your house.]

“You're asking me to trick some kind of god?” Avery gulps. “I think– I think you’re overestimating me a little.” 

[Let me handle that.]

D3rLord3 sighs.

[You must do something that gives you immense satisfaction. He takes advantage of the mania to lure you into his chamber.] D3rLord3 looks to see if Avery is following, and Avery reciprocates with an unsure expression. [Have you ever heard of a bait and switch?]

Avery nods. D3rLord3 goes back to writing. [He’ll give you euphoria in a slow trickle. You find yourself in the spur of the moment, wanting more. Needing more. He blinds you, and your surroundings morph into his domain, and he tricks you into coming to him. Willingly.]

[We need to make it so that he thinks we’re going down that path, and then search the city when he sends us there.]

Avery stares at the book, then at D3rLord3.

“Wow… I.” He nervously laughs. “Sounds like you’ve been here before, huh?”

[I have. I just didn’t go to the final chamber.]

“So that’s what you meant.” Avery looks at the librarian, then at D3rLord3. “Was that what you guys were talking about?”

D3rLord3 nods. [He used to make content, but quit and pursued writing. I asked him for his thoughts, and he allowed me to make sense of it.]

“Made content and quit…” Avery repeats, then looks back at the librarian. “That’s really familiar.”

Avery hears D3rLord3 snap his fingers. Focus. [Is there anything you do that excites you?]

“I mean, I love doing anything, but,” Avery pauses, thinks about it, then continues, “I guess the only thing that… you know, made me happy was Sky Wars. I’m good at it, and it’s thrilling because you can get hurt, but you don’t, y’know? Because of… um… respawn?”

[Is there anything else?]

No, Avery wants to say. There really isn’t.

He stares down at his hands, rough and fidgeting against the table’s edge. There’s an ache buried deep in his chest when he tries to think of something else that ever gave him that same rush. But nothing comes close.

He didn’t even know what fun was before the first time he held a sword. Back then, the world was survival, nothing more. He was a slime. Killing wasn’t violence! It was maintenance, a way to keep existing. There was no space for joy or thrill, only the instinct to keep moving before something bigger, sharper, or smarter decided to crush you. Then everything changed. Avery slipped inside those walls, learned to gestures that made people human. Learned how to pass. But fighting… fighting never left. It sat in the back of his throat like a cough he couldn’t clear.

He found Sky Wars by accident, joined a tryout match for the sake of it. But the moment the countdown ended, something inside him snapped into place. He could fight. And this time, instead of being hunted for it, people cheered. Someone noticed him early. A guild took him in, honed the instincts he already had. 

Soon, winning became second nature. 

He started craving it: the rush of air as he leapt between islands, the whistle of arrows skimming past his ear, the surge of adrenaline when the final body hit the ground. 

[You can sign up for the next match.]

“I won’t have respawn.” Avery huffs. “We’re not logged into the system, remember? So we’re basically outlaws. If we get killed in Sky Wars, we... don't have anything to fall back on.”

[Duos.]

Looking back, it was a stupid idea. 

Avery looks at D3rLord3, then looks at the island they’re suspended over, waiting for the match timer to start. Cages open in: 10 seconds, Avery quietly mouths the words coming from the announcer’s text.

And it feels even worse now. 

Chapter Text

The world comes to Avery in flashes, but his feet plant firmly on the ground once all twenty-four players are freed. 

The noise hits him first: boots, swords, the clatter of inventory menus, someone already yelling at their teammate, but Avery’s body acts before his brain catches up. He moves out of instinct, heart beating in his ears, flinching at the sight of D3rLord3 behind him and having to remind himself what’s happening in the span of half a second before dashing for the first chest and finding the most familiar arrangement of loot in his life.

Suddenly, it feels like he never left.

“If you find blocks, give them to me,” Avery bluntly says, and D3rLord3 nods. D3rLord3 rushes below the platform, and Avery quickly follows after him after clearing the first platform to open the two chests: Avery finds a diamond sword in his, and D3rLord3 fishes out a bow. Good enough. Avery finds leather armor in his chest, but D3rLord3 tosses him an iron helmet and chestplate.

“You need that more than I do,” Avery says, half scolding, half exasperated as he forces his feet into the pathetic leather boots. “There’s a reason they let you in with gold armor on, you know? You’re supposed to–”

D3rLord3 just looks at him with no reply, and Avery realizes there’s no compromise here either, so he puts on the iron armor and tries not to waste too much time. “We need to control the center. Watch my back.”

Screaming from another island, then a firework. Someone has already fallen.

He stacks up blocks, bridging toward mid. The wind here is stronger, always was, and every step feels like walking on a floor the size of dinner plates. Even a tightrope would be friendlier. At least no one’s trying to kill me there.

An arrow hisses past his ear. Avery barely blinks. One block, then the next, then the next—

Behind him, D3rLord3’s bowstring hums. A player across the void stumbles back, then falls, turned into a flash of colorful gunpowder before being respawned in the spectator’s balcony. Avery reminds himself to praise D3rLord3 for being a good shot.

He flinches when someone breaks through his blind spot, charging straight at him with their sword. The clash rings through his arms, the kind of sound that rattles your teeth if you’re not ready for it. Avery barely is. He shoves them off with his shoulder, expecting a messy grapple, something that’ll drag both of them across the dirt until one slips first.

But something else kicks in. Something he didn’t choose.

His arm moves before he thinks. The blade angles up. Finds the throat like it’s done it a thousand times. Warm blood hits his face in a single burst. Avery freezes. Blinks through the droplets. It drips down to his lips before he can wipe it away, and—

Copper.

The taste settles in his mouth, familiar in a way that makes his jaw lock. Too familiar. Like greeting an old habit you swore you’d outgrown. He breathes in, shallow and shaky.

It tastes good.

His heart is racing. The next death is a blur, and all he remembers is looking for the next person and killing. Sometimes, they don’t see him coming. Sometimes they do, and they desperately try to get away. It all ends with the same thing: fireworks. Along with the announcement of Avery’s tag, claiming another mark on its kill count that’s never folded into irrelevance despite the years.

Part of him thought that it would’ve been wiped and all his records deleted off the face of the Earth, but he feels a stupid sense of pride in seeing the number again. The first quarter of it was racked up when he played for fun, and the rest came when he started to play as a distinguished competitor. AveryTheMayo, the controversial starchild of one of the best guilds in season. He was hated. He was liked. He played alone most of the time. The guild noticed he didn’t do very well in teams due to his explosive nature, but he was too good to be benched. 

Avery vaguely remembers his final match being a duos, too. All of this feels too familiar. 

Honestly, he never liked duos, and the reason he didn’t like them happened then. He moved too fast, almost got his partner killed, but got lucky enough to breathe enough to be considered alive and competing. He remembers giving his partner a bow to protect themselves with, leaving them in a hidden, but raised area for when push came to shove–

He glances at the announcer’s balcony, breathing out of his mouth. The number of spectators in the match isn’t just the eliminated anymore. They’ve gathered the audience of the public.

D3rLord3 has to snap him back into focus. There are only six teams left, and that means they need to survive ten people more. Easy enough, Avery mutters to himself. That was the amount of a solo lobby, and he could clear those with his hands tied behind his back. Another firework announces the death of another person, and their partner follows shortly after. That’s eight.

Avery stops mid-step when he catches a familiar name in the announcements. D3rLord3 tilts his head at him, and Avery desperately tries to find out why it looks like he’s seen it before. 

“Move!” Avery shoves D3rLord3 back, nearly falling on him as they barely dodge the trajectory of an arrow. Avery helps D3rLord3 to his feet, then pulls him to the center of main. “Sorry, I don’t know what–”

“Just– take the apples and the snowballs. It’s late-game. You can control the center, right?” Avery asks, and D3rLord3 gives him a reassuring nod. Two more fireworks pop behind them. “Okay, if you’re outnumbered, don’t risk it. If you don’t see me, don’t risk it either. Make sure no one gets the jump on you–”

Avery shakes his head. There’s no need for me to tell him what he already knows. “Don’t get killed, okay?”

D3rLord3 pulls Avery close, and the helmet leans down to meet Avery’s forehead. Avery goes still.

“Don’t do that.” 

Avery’s breath hitches. “You’re not dying.”

Avery pulls away from him and goes after the final four.

Another firework goes off, and Avery chooses which team to kill first. He spots a team on a sub-island busy refining armor, so he gets the jump and kills the first near the furnace with a fast stab behind the head.

The sword pulls away with a fight, and he has to step on the body before quickly parrying their partner’s sword because the corpse doesn’t disappear into fireworks fast enough. The partner flinches at the loud bang, and Avery takes the opportunity to lunge forward to try and shove the guy off the ledge. There’s a struggle, but an arrow knocks the opponent’s weapon out of trajectory, and Avery kicks them into the void with ease.

Two to go.

Avery gulps. D3rLord3 is fine, but Avery doesn’t know where the final team is. They aren’t after D3rLord3, aren’t they? Avery looks to the middle, when suddenly–

A sudden weight knocks him off his feet. The world flips. He’s pushed to the bottom of the sub-island’s platform, where its own two chests were. D3rLord3 can’t cover him down here. He finds himself pinned under another competitor, and he kicks them off, before being sent into another wrestling match with the added struggle of keeping a sharp blade away from you.

Avery forces his knees into the person’s torso, and he manages to manipulate their positions into one that gives him the advantage. He stomps their wrist and kicks the weapon free.

The throat, he thinks. For the throat.

And he does. It’s even more blood spurting out like a fountain, until the respawn system turns the viscera into fireworks that explode under the platform, blinding Avery and sending him careening back. In half a second, he asks himself where the partner was. In half a second–

The sword gets knocked out of his hands. He gets the answer.

Avery panics, feeling his back hit the wall when the final competitor pushes him into it. His head bounces painfully off the stone despite the iron helmet, and he stares at the fighter, eyes blown wide.

It doesn’t take more than a glance to recognize that face again.

“You…” Avery gasps. He hasn’t been killed. “I– I saw you–”

“You did. Back in the hotel.”

Avery squirms, but the sword only draws closer to his neck. He can explain. There’s reason to believe he can get through to him. “H-hey. We used to be friends before, right? Before…”

“Before you killed that guy. Don’t worry.” The person glowers. “I remember. I remember when you were disgraced, too. Shouldn’t you be dead? All of us assumed you were, at least.”

“I remember when they pried your name off the guild member list, and everyone was so confused, Avery. Because why in all of fuck were we kicking out our best fighter, right? You should have seen them.” The person sneers at him. Avery struggles, trying to push the sword away, but the only thing he gets in return are clean slices to his palms and the sting of the blade cutting where his hands are stopping it. 

“And then the news came, and everyone was so surprised. But not at the same time, you know? Someone like you had the instinct to kill. They forfeited, Avery. And they were shot anyway.”

Avery cries out. “None of you even let me explain myself! It’s not–”

“–true.”

The person finishes for him, and Avery’s eyes widen.

“It’s not true. Right?” The person smiles. “Of course it isn’t.”

“I’m telling the truth, I swear,” Avery begs. “Please, you have to listen to me! Just give us this match, alright?!” The purpose of this is slowly getting lost on him. There’s no satisfaction to this anymore, only fear. Was it the respawn that made it so fun? They were so close. They were so close to–

…

It takes a while for both the thoughts and the words to piece together.

“Why did you do it?” 

“You didn’t deserve the spot, Avery.” The person growls. “It came so naturally to you because it’s in you to be a killer. None of us could come close! I bet you don’t even know my name!”

It’s not my fault you’re so forgettable, Avery thinks. He shoves down the thought he knows will get him killed.

“And… you’re telling me this now–”

“I haven’t seen you anywhere in years. That ID of yours is toast, and I know damn well there’s no respawn on for you.”

The person’s eyes soften. “No one’s here, and I have plausible deniability, Aves. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t lie to me.” Avery grits his teeth. “I know you aren’t.”

“Haven’t changed a bit.”

The player lifts his sword for a final blow.

Only to fall into a heap right at Avery’s feet, like his strings were cut all at once. 

Blood streams out from the arrow lodged clean through his skull, pooling fast and bright before the system can catch up and decide what to do with it. Avery turns his head, slow and disoriented, and finds D3rLord3 on the platform above. Of course it’s him.

D3rLord3 bolts down the stairs just as fireworks begin shooting up across the islands. Avery knows what it means, but the noise feels like it’s coming from underwater. He sways forward. His legs stop trying to argue about whether they want to hold him upright, and he lets himself collapse into D3rLord3’s chestplate.

D3rLord3 steadies him by the shoulders.

“Oh my gosh…” Avery whimpers into the armor, breath trembling. The iron smells like sweat and dust and the faint metallic bite of blood that clung to him earlier. He presses his forehead to D3rLord3’s chest, trying to breathe through the panic still rattling around inside his ribs. The adrenaline won’t drop. His fingers won’t relax. His body won’t catch up to the fact that he isn’t about to die.

D3rLord3 adjusts his grip, holding him up like all of this is familiar. Like Avery isn’t shaking hard enough to feel it in his teeth.

Avery feels D3rLord3 shake a little, something like a muted laugh working its way through the armor. It makes Avery snort before he can stop himself. He pulls in closer with a real hug this time, cheek pressed against metal that’s still warm from the fight. 

The absurdity of it finally hits him, and the laugh that slips out of him is thin and shaky. They actually won. After all of that, they won. The world flickers white, and they’re teleported to the winners’ room. Avery staggers once before he finds his balance again. The room greets them with that little flourish the game always does, and he exhales in a shaky breath.

“I missed this place,” he mutters. It comes out tired. He listens to the music that starts playing around them, the same composition they always use for victories. He used to hear this constantly. Somehow it still sounds good. Somehow, it still feels like it belongs to him.

His gaze slides to the door. He doesn’t open it. He already knows what waits outside. Cameras. Voices. The crowd. The people who thought he was gone and probably wish he stayed gone. His stomach twists at the thought, and he stays exactly where he is.

“I guess it didn’t work,” Avery says, and the laugh that follows is thin enough to break. “I’m sure everyone’s surprised to see me, though.” His voice dips into something bitter. He rubs one hand down his face like he’s trying to wipe the feeling off himself. “Yeah. Really surprised.”

D3rLord3 looks at him, then at the door back to the competition lobby. They’re muffled behind the door, sure, but it’s going to be hell when they leave. How long are they allowed to stay here, exactly?

“Do you think they’re going to lock us up?” Avery gulps. “I mean, what we just did was probably the opposite of trying to stay under wraps. I think I get a better sentence when I tell everyone that– oh, forget it. They won’t believe me, anyway.”

D3rLord3 nods.

“Not helping.”

Avery lets out a long breath. “I guess I’m… disappointed about where I am, but I still… I should tell you I probably wouldn’t have wanted anything else.” He winces at how that sounds and shrugs, like the motion will smooth it out. “Out there was so lonely. I don’t even know how I’ve been scraping by, D3r. I think I was a month or two away from losing it before you found m— well, before I found you.”

He rubs the back of his neck, staring at the floor like it might give him a script. “Wow. Is it terrible if I kinda want you to get sent to jail with me? I feel like I’m actually going to go insane in there. Either that or the monster gets me. I’m bored all the time. I guess I’ll just hope you visit or something. If they let you go. You will visit me, right?”

Avery shifts his weight. “Um… if it turns out neither of us gets sent to jail. Which… could happen. Are we still doing this together or…” He gulps. The question is heavier than it should be. “Or are you going to, you know, leave? Go your own way?”

D3rLord3 shakes his head. “You’re staying?” D3rLord3 nods.

Avery freezes for a second like his brain forgot how to process relief. “Huh,” he mutters. “Okay.”

He wipes the side of his face with his arm, and the smile he tries to hide still pushes through. “Okay.”

Suddenly, the music in the winner’s room feels… wrong.

He doesn’t notice it immediately, but it’s getting more prominent. Avery freezes, head tilting toward the speakers. It’s the same song—same melody, same loop he’s heard a hundred times—but something’s off. A note too flat. A drum beat landing half a second late. It’s small, barely noticeable, but it pulls his attention like a hook.

His stomach knots. “Uh…”

Before he can finish the thought, the floor gives a low, rolling shudder. Not violent, but just enough to send a chill up his spine, like the whole place is sitting on top of something alive. Millions of tiny things crawling under the tiles, shifting the ground in slow waves.

Avery backs into the wall instinctively. D3rLord3 does the same on the other side, bracing himself with a hand on the stone. Their eyes meet for a split second.

Then everything stops.

Avery swallows, easing his hands off the wall like the room might lurch again. He looks at D3rLord3, then at the door. “What happened?” he croaks. The handle sticks when he pulls, like something on the other side doesn’t want them getting out. D3rLord3 steps in, tries it himself, and the door finally gives with a low groan.

The lobby is gone. A whole cave where the city should be.

“Where are we?” Avery asks, but D3rLord3 doesn’t answer. Avery notices the empty space at D3rLord3’s side where the book should be and feels a pit open in his stomach. Great. Fantastic. This is going to be a nightmare.

D3rLord3 starts walking anyway. Down the tunnel. Like this is normal.

“D3r,” Avery calls out again, sharper this time, but D3rLord3 doesn’t slow. “Do you even know where we are?” A nod.

They approach a bend in the cave. Avery can hear something faint from the other side; soft noise, maybe voices, maybe wind, it’s hard to tell. A light spills around the corner. There’s still rock in the way, so neither of them can see much until they round it.

D3rLord3 stops first. Completely still.

Avery jogs up beside him, then the breath leaves his chest.

A chamber sprawls out before them, huge and carved out by something that clearly wasn’t human hands. And there’s a village inside it. An actual village. People walking around in yellow robes. Alive. The houses are carved with patterns Avery doesn’t recognize, everything trimmed in gold hues and little etched symbols and relics tucked into corners. The ceiling arcs impossibly high over them, but they could be kilometers underground for all he knows.

But the center is what makes it click.

A monument towers over everything: a statue with wings, feathers spread wide like it’s guarding the whole place. It sits on top of a massive pedestal larger than some of the buildings, gilded with gold and quartz and beauty that you don’t find anywhere else. “Oh,” he whispers. “We’re in Carcosa.”

What seems to be left of it, at least.

Chapter Text

Something’s off about D3rLord3.

Avery looks between the village and then back at him, but somehow the village isn’t the weird part. It’s D3rLord3. It’s the way the armor goes still, like it’s bracing for something he can’t name. It’s the way the helmet doesn’t do its usual sweep of the area, no little shifts or angles like he’s checking for danger.

It just… stays there. Frozen.

It’s wrong. All of it feels wrong. Avery tries to piece it together, running through every expression D3rLord3 doesn’t technically have but somehow still manages to show. 

And then it hits him.

For the first time, D3rLord3 looks sincerely unsure. That scares him more than anything in the village ever could.

“D3r.” Avery is the one to snap him out of the trance. “Come on, let’s ask around.”

Walking into the village was easier than walking into the city. No one knew about him here, surely, but everyone seemed to leave well enough alone anyway. They take this dirt path, flattened by foot traffic or maybe carts considering the tracks on the floor, and it’s a good enough guide from the outskirts to the busier parts of the place. 

They pass through farms with farmers, houses with inhabitants, and shops with workers. All of them yellow. Every building follows that same accent of gold, wood, and ornamental glass, but some buildings seem to be more specialized. They do look like the average village here, blacksmiths and breweries and all, except everyone wears a yellow color like they’re in a cult. Probably are.

Avery briefly considers the idea of the prophets themselves being a threat. They weren’t attacked as soon as they were seen, though, so he assumes it’s more of a mutual respect kind of thing.

“D3r…?”

Avery looks as D3rLord3 tries to lead them both, but he moves too sluggishly to really overtake Avery’s walking.

How long has it been since the coffee? Three days of no sleep is probably catching up. Does Carcosa have some kind of inn they can stay at?

“I need you to stay up a little longer, please.”

Avery apologetically says. “I was thinking we could try talking to one of them, but they look pretty busy. Do you think they have some kind of town center here?”

D3rLord3 looks at him without a response.

Right. He doesn’t know either. Avery thinks he’ll never get used to that.

Avery decides their best bet for answers would be checking whatever the village has that even vaguely resembles a library. There’s a building with windows, doors open to anyone, and shelves full of books, so… yeah. Library. Or maybe a record hall. A book is a book, and Avery is beyond caring about technicalities right now.

The more they walk, the more obvious it becomes that D3rLord3 is lagging behind.

It isn’t even subtle. He snaps his fingers in front of D3rLord3’s face until D3rLord3 blinks like he’s only just remembered he has a body. Avery grabs him by the forearm before he can drift off course again.

They reach the doors. Inside smells like dust, old wood, and whatever incense they use to make the place seem more magical than it probably is. Avery steps in first, checking the corners out of habit. There’s one person behind a table who stands out from the others. Everyone else is wearing plain yellow robes, but this one has brown accents on the hood and sleeves.

And they’re hunched over a stack of papers, writing with the kind of focus Avery wishes D3rLord3 had right now.

Avery slows down as he approaches. He hates interrupting people who look busy. Feels rude. But he also really wants to get this over with and leave before D3rLord3 dissociates into a bookcase. He clears his throat, hovering awkwardly by the counter. “Excuse me? We need—”

The hooded figure lifts their head, looking at Avery first with mild confusion… until their gaze shifts past him. Their eyes widen at the sight of D3rLord3.

“██’█ █████ ██ ████!”

“What?”

Avery flinches when two robed people suddenly appear at his side and take D3rLord3 away. D3rLord3 fights back at first, and Avery protests, but the distinguished figure puts a hand on Avery’s shoulder and gestures for him to let them be. D3rLord3 eventually gets escorted away by the robes, and Avery’s attention is pulled back to the distinguished figure with gestures.

“████ ██████ ██ ██ ████ █████.” The figure says, unintelligible. “███’█ ████.”

“I don’t…” Avery’s eyes flit between the figure, then in the direction the other robes took D3rlord3 in. They took him out of the library. Where are they taking him?

The figure looks at Avery, tilting their head. “You don’t understand?”

Avery hesitates answering, but nods anyway. Part of him thinks it was a mistake. The figure manifests a piece of paper, then places it on the table. Avery is gestured to look.

A layout of the village is crudely drawn using ink. There’s a center, and the map features notable buildings, houses, farms, and other facilities in detail. On the side of the village is a massive lake, but Avery doesn’t recall ever seeing one. Only the notable buildings have labels. The figure encircles a house. “Your friend.”

“That’s where they’re taking him?” 

The figure nods, then goes back to writing while Avery scans over the map. Avery turns to ask the hooded figure another question, but they pick up after themselves and disappear behind the records room before he can even get a word out.

There are more people scattered around the hall, but they all seem busy enough. And Avery knows that if he tries asking anyone else for help, he’ll have to explain every little thing without D3rLord3 there to fill in the blanks. He decides it’s better to just make sure D3rLord3 is actually okay wherever they took him. They didn’t seem hostile, right?

Avery has no idea what that first hooded figure even said, but they didn’t feel dangerous. Hopefully.

He leaves the library and starts walking. D3rLord3 and the two robed strangers are probably way ahead by now, so Avery doesn’t rush.

He memorizes the village layout as he goes, tracing the paths, marking the buildings in his head, watching the people, just in case any of it ends up being important later.

But this time, something’s changed.

Earlier, he and D3rLord3 were basically background noise. No one looked twice at them. Now, suddenly, Avery is the most interesting thing to ever exist.

Every person in the street turns to stare at him, silently, like he’s some sort of phenomenon. Don’t get him wrong, attention is nice, but not this kind. Not when it crawls up his hypothetical spine and pokes at the part of his brain that makes him want to physically shrink out of existence.

Their gazes aren’t mean. Not at all. But they’re piercing like they’re studying him right back. Only I should be doing that, Avery gulps. He tries to walk with his head down now, but he can still feel the eyes. What did he even do? Does word get around that quickly from just the library? Avery follows the map, trying his best to look at the buildings and the path.

Eventually, he gets to the indicated house. The door is closed, but unlocked. He finds D3rLord3 inside, tucked under silk sheets with his armor and… for once, D3rLord3 looks like he’s sound asleep.

Avery only realizes now that it’s the first time he’s seen D3rLord3 resting.

The place is nice. It’s a little chilly, but there are yellow silk sheets draped over D3rLord3’s body just for that. Avery thinks he’d get knocked out instantly if he went for days without sleeping before getting here.

…

He looks like a corpse like this, Avery blinks. 

The armor isn’t like clothing you could see someone breathing through, so the scene almost feels uncanny. There aren’t any signs of life. But, somehow, Avery knows he’s alive in there. And, right now, he doesn’t have to think about anything at all.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Avery whispers. “I just needed to check on you. I’m going to go out and try to look for answers, alright? So… um.”

He tries to think of anything D3rLord3 might need. The book, maybe—something to write with. But maybe the robed people know how to communicate with him better than Avery does. If anything, the book is more for Avery than for him. That’s fine. The book can wait. He glances at the map again.

A sudden knock snaps him out of his thoughts. Avery turns sharply as the door creaks open, revealing another robed figure. They step inside with a tray: a bowl of water, a folded cloth, and a piece of bread—one portion. For D3rLord3, obviously. The figure pauses, looking to Avery for permission like this is his room, not theirs. Avery swallows and nods.

The robed figure glides to D3rLord3’s side and dips the cloth into the water.

“Is he going to be fine?” Avery hesitantly asks. The person looks at Avery, then puts their fingers on D3rLord3’s neck. They nod. “He’s just sleeping, right?”

“There is no sleep for someone like him,” The person replies in a hoarse voice.

“Okay, ” Avery quietly says. So, he still isn’t sleeping. “What’s he doing?”

“Defragmentation long overdue.”

The person wipes the cloth on the exposed parts of D3rLord3’s neck and makes the motion of taking off the helmet, so Avery respectfully looks away. He has his back turned now. The person snorts. In amusement? Avery isn’t very sure.

“Why are you afraid?”

“He doesn’t want me seeing him,” Avery answers.

“Ah.”

The person hums. “I’m sure he appreciates the courtesy. What a difficult arrangement.”

“Not really.” Avery fidgets with his hands. “He doesn’t take the helmet off around me.”

“And you are not curious?”

“I am.”

“Then why?”

Avery doesn’t really know how to answer that.

And he doesn’t have to. The person continues, soaking the cloth again. “I understand now.”

“What?”

“Are you hungry?”

Well, that question was dodged completely. But Avery is hungry, and he knows that the bread isn’t for him. “A little.”

“They will be glad to help you outside.” The person hums. “Please make yourself at home in our village, Avery.”

Avery freezes at the mention of his name. He looks at the person, then at what he could of D3rLord3 without seeing his face. They have been nothing but nice so far… but he can’t risk letting his guard down. 

There has to be a reason why D3rLord3 didn’t. 

Avery leaves the house. Another person in yellow meets him outside the door and makes a gesture to follow. He hesitates, of course, but the person is patient about it until Avery starts to move after them.

Avery is taken through the main paths and through the back of buildings until they get to some kind of kitchen with what Avery assumes to be the most efficient route. The building isn’t anything remarkable—it’s just a tavern, but it smells really nice inside, and he thinks he can use something to eat.

I guess everyone here likes yellow, Avery thinks. Everyone is wearing at least some size of robes that cover their entire body and cast a shadow on their face, and Avery wonders what he would look like in one of those robes, too. His white undershirt and jacket with flowers stand out a lot, and… well, he’s green. Maybe that’s part of why everyone was staring.

The person guides him to the counter and leaves.

Avery is presented with a loaf of bread and stew by someone behind the counter, and he gladly takes it. He’s pretty thankful that the food they ate here was something he and D3rLord3 could eat, too. The cults Avery knew usually ate rotten flesh or spider eyes. While Avery didn’t actually mind eating those things, he was sure D3rLord3 would.

“Recover soon.” Avery nearly yelps at the sudden voice beside him, but he realizes it was the same robe as the one that was taking care of D3rLord3.

“You–” Avery gulps. “Um. Thank you. But please don’t do that.”

“My apologies.” The robe bows their head down, and Avery returns a reassuring smile. “Is there anything else you need?”

“Nothing right now,” Avery says between bites. “We kind of came here hoping someone could help us with a problem, though. We got cursed, and my friend says you guys could help.”

“We can. I suppose you are referring to His curse?”

Avery nods, and the robe looks away in thought. Avery looks at his food and thinks it’s kind of funny how it tastes almost exactly like how he makes it at home. The robe speaks again. “It’s simple, not to worry. We hope the two of you enjoy tonight’s gathering until then.”

“Sorry,” Avery hums, “but I don’t think I’m up for any more spooky ritual stuff until my friend wakes up and we figure everything out. You guys have fun, though.”

“He will rise before the play starts.”

A play?

Avery remembers the book he read and he desperately looks for another way to say no. “Doubt that. He’s been awake for days, and he just crashed now.”

The robe smiles. Why are they looking at me like that, Avery sweats. He can’t see their face, but he can see the faint outline of a grin, and that’s enough creepy to make him feel discomfort.

“I see. I hope he gets well. But what will you be doing until he does?”

Avery sheepishly laughs. “I was thinking of just going back there and waiting until he wakes up, actually.”

“But wouldn’t it be boring, Avery?”

“I don’t think he’s boring.”

“No. Staring at a cadaver.”

Avery’s voice gets a certain edge to it. “He’s not dying, either.”

“I heard you were given a map,” the robe purrs. “Why don’t you familiarize yourself with our village instead?”

“I’ve already read about this place in the books. Sorry.” Avery politely declines. He doesn’t know how many excuses he has left.

“In the books?”

The robe laughs. “Why, you’re thinking about Carcosa, aren’t you?”

“Is this… is this not Carcosa?”

“What a silly misunderstanding. This isn’t Carcosa. We’re prophets of the Great King, yes, but you speak as if this is all Carcosa is.”

“Where are we?”

Avery feels the robe carefully examining him, and he looks away. He tries to focus on the food.

“The answer will come in due time.”

Their presence withdraws, and Avery only looks up when he’s sure they’re gone.

The tavern feels too big all of a sudden. Too quiet. He stares down at the food again, but the warmth from the bowl doesn’t reach him anymore. It just sits there, and his stomach twists at the thought of taking another bite. He pushes the bowl a little farther away.

They won’t mind him leaving this, right? Probably. Hopefully.

The record hall is the only thing that comes to mind, because it has to. He still needs answers, and the person with the brown-gilded clothes seemed like the only one here who wasn’t… well. Whatever all of this was. If anyone would talk straight, it’d be them. He pulls out the map, but–

The map isn’t the map anymore.

The parchment looks the same, but the lines don’t. The neat little roads he memorized earlier bend in new directions, branching off into corners he’s never seen. The ink looks fresh, like someone just redrew everything while he wasn’t looking.

Did they switch it out without him noticing? While he was eating? While he was talking?

Avery feels his pulse spike. He’s holding the same map, but it’s wrong. He lets out a shaky breath and stands so fast his chair scrapes. He doesn’t even try to hide how rattled he is. He just runs. When he bursts out of the tavern, the air feels colder. He looks at the map, then at the street, then back to the map again. 

The roads outside really did change. 

The whole layout of the village has rearranged itself, like the buildings picked themselves up and decided to move when he wasn’t looking. Every impossible shift in the world matches the new drawing perfectly. The record hall is now all the way across the village. The house where they put D3rLord3 is on the opposite end entirely, like someone intentionally put as much distance between the two as possible.

And the tavern sits right at the third edge, making a neat, perfect little triangle.

He’s back to complete nonexistence as far as the villagers are concerned. No one even spares him a glance as he sprints through the streets, dodging lantern posts and weaving around corners with the map clutched so tightly his knuckles ache. He keeps checking it every few steps. He’s terrified it’ll change again the second he blinks.

The sun must be setting. He can feel it in the way the air cools and the way the village lights flicker on one by one.

The overhead gloom deepens by the second despite the complete absence of a sky. They’re kilometers underground, practically buried alive. It presses time against his shoulders anyway, urging him to move. He reaches the spot where the house should be—

And his breath catches when he’s met instead with the towering facade of the record hall. 

He stares at it, wide-eyed, then fumbles for the map again. The map reflects it perfectly. Of course it does. Of course it would betray him like this. He had been going in the right direction. He knows he had.

A flicker of movement pulls him out of his spiraling thoughts. A figure stands at the steps. The exact prophet he’d been searching for. Not now. Not when everything is collapsing around him. The streets twist in ways they hadn’t before, unfamiliar pathways yawning open to directions that shouldn’t even be possible. 

It should make Avery freeze, but it doesn’t. 

This sort of senselessness has been the shape of his life since forever. Wandering without direction. Existing without momentum. Waiting for one day to look different from the last and watching them all turn into the same shade of nothing. That was all he had ever done until D3rLord3 collapsed into his life and said things that made Avery believe, for once, that there’s a true north for someone like him.

Avery has to get to the house.

He has to wake him up. They have to get out before this place swallows them whole and rewrites the exit, too.

But this time, everyone stares.

The villagers stand motionless in doorways and along balconies, heads turned toward him in perfect unison as he runs past. Their gazes track him like puppets. Even behind the shuttered windows, he can see shadows shift—heads turning, following him, stretching long across the walls as if reaching out to touch him.

He runs faster.

His lungs burn, his legs shake, but he doesn’t slow. He can’t. Their eyes push him forward, corner him, swallow him whole, and the only thing he can think of is the sight of the house finally coming back into view. Avery throws the door open.

D3rLord3 is gone. Avery feels bile rise in his throat.

He sways on unsteady legs, gripping the doorframe as if it could anchor him to sanity. On the floor lies a carving knife, its blade slick with dark, congealed blood. The metal reflects the dim light in a sickly sheen. His stomach lurches further.

Then he notices it. The wall. Jagged letters, smeared in red, spelling out commands that seem almost desperate:

FORGET ME

RUN

He hears footsteps behind him. 

“He rose sometime around the moment you reached the record hall.” The voice says. Avery falls to his knees, one hand over his mouth in horror. His shoulders shake with a cry that wants to tear out of his throat.

“We knew the exact moment he woke up, then came to collect him. And we found him there.” The robe points at the wall. It’s the robe that took care of D3rLord3, the one that met him in the tavern. “Trying to warn you.”

“D3r…” Avery quietly sobs. “No. No, no–”

“He came with us. Willingly.”

The robe walks next to Avery, then puts a gentle hand on his head. “Are you going to do what he says?“

Avery stills.

Then he shoots for the carving knife and drives it into the robe’s face.

Black tar-like blood bursts through the hood, seeping down in thick rivulets over the yellow robes and pooling across the wooden floor. The size of the wound is disproportionate to the amount of blood flowing, but Avery pulls out the knife and stabs it again. And again. And again until he finds himself covered in it. 

He pushes the robe forward, and it sends them both barreling outside of the house, down the steps, and onto the floor. Avery cries out in anguish, and it attracts the attention of everyone else. Every time Avery pulls the knife out of the robe’s face, he sees more yellow cloth forming a neat circle around them, spectating like he’s the most interesting thing in the world. 

His arms grow heavy. Avery cries, losing energy and stabbing the knife into the robe one last time, before collapsing in tears with both of his hands still on the hilt of the knife. His tears flow freely and his legs start to deform into the soil. He feels cold hands wrapping around him in a hug. He sobs into the yellow cloth. 

Barely, he hears speaking.

“Pull him up.” He feels hands over his ears, then his eyes, then his mouth.

After that, nothing else.

Chapter Text

Avery wakes with the horrible, floating feeling of being unanchored. 

It’s almost dizzying. He’s lying on something flat, but it sways ever so slightly. Cold metal cuffs bite into his wrists and ankles, and his senses catch up in ragged pieces until he realizes that he’s suspended. Not metaphorically. Literally hanging in the air.

He hears creaking from chains he can’t see. He can’t see at all. A blindfold presses against his eyes so tightly that blinking doesn’t change a thing.

There’s no glow of light behind the fabric, no vague impression of shapes. Just a thick, weightless dark. He shifts, rolling onto his side, and the platform tilts dangerously. His shoulder thumps against something. Thin and evenly spaced—a cell wall. He feels them with a cautious hand and realizes the cold metal curves around him in every direction. He’s not just suspended.

He’s suspended inside a cage.

“Hello?” Avery calls, voice hoarse.

Nothing answers him at first. Just the faint groan of the chains overhead and the rhythmic pulse of his own breathing, too loud in his ears.

Then he hears it. Curtains being pulled apart.

Avery freezes. The sound is deliberate, like someone drawing the drapes before a performance. Gradually, the cage begins to descend. The chains unwind with a heavy, mechanical clatter, lowering him inch by inch. Avery grips the bars to steady himself as gravity shifts from a faint suggestion to something real again.

The cage stops on the floor with a dull thud.

There’s struggling coming from one side of the room, and Avery hears the sound of metal clinking together. Armor shuffles. D3rLord3. Avery shudders when something is pulled off of his cage, and the cool breeze gets through the bars and onto his body. It feels like it’s freezing.

He can see shadows through the blindfold now, though. There’s lights coming from one side of the room, and they pierce through the cloth enough to let him make out figures through the weaving. He gets himself into a position that sits upright, back on the bars of the cage for support, before calling out again. “D3r?” he tries, voice cracking. “Is– is that you?”

“█████!”

Avery hears the sound of a latch being unclicked, and he backs further into the other end. His pulse quickens. Avery panics, feeling another presence between his legs and backing him into the bars of the cage. He tries to kick, but the restraints tug him short. It caresses his face and–

Avery’s mind goes blank. 

He feels his eyes roll to the back of his head, and the blindfold wets with tears. The fingers on his cheek feel like they’re rooting into his brain with tendrils, and it causes this uneasy string feeling to be pulled taut and uncomfortable.

He coughs. Hard.

A wet, choking sound that forces liquid up his throat. It spills past his lips, and then the fingers withdraw like they’ve taken what they came for.

Air rushes back into his lungs all at once. Avery jerks, every nerve firing at once as he tries to remember how to breathe. The cold returns. The world returns.

But his head feels distant, hollowed out, echoing with something he almost understands but can’t hold onto.

“—e has nothing you want. Please.”

Avery doesn’t recognize the voice at first, but he realizes that it was D3rLord3, speaking understandably for the first time.

“D3r…”

“Avery!”

Avery limps forward, and weakly crawls as close as he can to the voice before being stopped by the bars. 

The prophet inside the cage with him still hasn’t left. Avery feels the prophet crouch close to him again, before feeling something gently gliding across his leg. It’s cold and metallic. Avery winces when it’s pushed into his body—the intrusion resembles a key—before being pulled out again, making him cry out. 

Something clatters onto the wood to his left, and he hears more struggling until the sound breaks free and runs after the thrown item. Another figure enters the cage, then quickly gets to work on the shackles restricting him.

As soon as his hands are freed, Avery takes the blindfold off himself and catches D3rLord3 in the middle of unlocking his legs.

Avery’s voice hitches in his throat. “I thought— I thought they killed you.”

“They won’t.” 

D3rLord3 insists. “He won’t kill me.”

Avery sees the prophet behind D3rLord3, a prophet in yellow he’s never seen before, start pulling something out of their robes. “D3r–!”

D3rLord3 turns around in time.

Then comes face-to-face with a sword. But the sword’s blade isn’t aimed towards him—the prophet was offering the hilt.

Avery feels lines start to draw in his throat. A million interpretations of the gesture run through his head, and none of them are good. D3rLord3 reaches out and takes the sword with a quiet, resigned steadiness that makes Avery’s blood run cold. Avery flinches backward instinctively, pressing himself so hard against the bars that they rattle. D3rLord3 gets up, then examines the sword. 

The prophet leaves the cage.

Avery notices a slice on the glove where D3rLord3’s wrist was, and he realizes where all the blood to write with came from. D3rLord3 exits the cage, too.

And like an image coming into focus, Avery finally notices the audience. They’re on a stage, and there are red curtains pooled on the very edges of the massive rods. It reminds him of a real theater. On one side is the audience with chairs in terraced arrangements, and in the very center is–

The entity in the book, on the cover of the chapter. But instead of an incomprehensible face, it wears a white, porcelain mask.

“You swore to free him.” D3rLord3 demands, standing before the crowd. He throws the sword into the audience, and it disappears into yellow sand before reappearing at his feet. “What is it you want from me now?”

The very large entity lets out a low, guttural sound, tilting its head and its massive crown at an angle that was surely inhuman. 

D3rLord3 snarls. 

“I won’t hurt him. I’d rather you kill me first.” 

Avery hears whispers he can’t understand, but he feels the weight of it. The charge of sadness, frustration, happiness, and anguish that mix together and make an unholy conglomerate of something that feels the opposite of pleasant. Avery puts his hands over his ears, then gets up.

He uses the bars to balance himself as he walks out of the cage. The moment he gets his bearings, he blinks against the bright lights. 

Then he hears D3rLord3 reply. 

“Because I’m the only thing you find entertaining anymore.” Avery’s eyes snap toward him.

D3rLord3 is collecting himself. Shoulders rising, jaw tightening, stance shifting into defiance even though he looks like he could collapse at any second. Avery realizes what D3rLord’s been doing all this time. He’s arguing. He’s actually arguing with something ancient and divine and fundamentally uninterested in their survival. Is he insane? Avery gulps.

But the King pauses, like D3rLord3’s statement was the most convincing thing it’s ever heard. 

Suddenly, the scene turns into one in medieval times. D3rLord3 stands firm. The audience is still there, but Avery watches as the stage rends into a different environment entirely. A castle made of stone.

Avery yelps when a throne manifests underneath him, before sliding itself into place where it’s meant to be in the scene. At the same time, he finds that his clothes have morphed into those that a royal would wear. Only then does D3rLord start to look unsure himself, but D3rLord3 is pulled out of eyeshot by some invisible force, and Avery swallows hard.

On the scene, something knocks on the large, wooden doors.

“Enter.”

Avery stuns, hand shooting to his mouth. The words aren’t his. He doesn’t know where it came from, except for a nagging feeling at the very back of his mind puppeteering him to speak.

D3rLord3 trudges inside, armor seeing better days, before kneeling in front of the throne. Avery gapes. “D3r! Are you–!?”

Suddenly, a bolt of pain lances through his head, and Avery gasps. He whines, squirming in his seat and clutching onto the soft armrests. It’s like someone’s reached into his brain and touched an exposed nerve. D3rLord3 winces for him.

“The script–”

“MAKE IT ST–”

Another shock. Avery’s jaw locks midway through the sentence, and his voice is replaced with a loud cry. An entire paragraph shimmers somewhere behind his eyes like ink curling through hot water. His mouth moves against his will, and the words come, front and center.

“I feared the world h-had swallowed you. Speak, knight.”

Avery holds back tears, voice shaky. “Were you victorious?”

D3rLord3’s eyes widen briefly, as if in apology, before he speaks, too. 

“I return from the blackened shores bearing grim tidings, my prince.”

“You return bearing failure?”

D3rLord3 looks down. “Failure of the mind. Not the failure of the flesh.”

“What do you mean?” Avery’s voice fractures, but the script drags him onward. “I sent you because I knew you were the chosen. They conditioned you, trained you for loyalty!”

“By returning to this home,” D3rLord3’s voice catches. “I seal your fate and doom you to die.”

“Get…”

Avery’s hand moves despite himself. He puts a fist to his mouth. “Get out of my sight.”

It’s the end of the scene. Avery’s heart pounds as the stage begins to reshape itself.

Walls stretch higher, torches ignite for dramatic emphasis, and a stained-glass window unfurls behind him like blooming paper. It looks like a cathedral with rays coloring the floor.

The scenery morphs exactly to suit the next line implanted in their minds. He feels it. Script. The previous scene was about a prince, and his most trusted knight trudging back to the castle after his task to kill the sorceress in the depths of the forest. Though the knight was successful, he doesn’t leave the sorceress’ keep without a curse. Returning home would mean that his allegiance would die. What does this mean for the prince, who he owes his allegiances to?

Now the story bleeds forward into the ballroom of the same castle, long tables standing empty beneath vaulted arches.

The prince, Avery, finds himself seated alone under the fractured glow of stained glass, a figure meant to mourn in silence until the script starts the next line.

“Why do you kneel?” Avery hears himself say. The tremors in his voice aren’t there anymore. “I had told you to leave, knight.”

“My loyalty demands it,” D3rLord3 responds, voice breaking at the edges.

“Loyalty?” Avery barks out a bitter laugh. It comes out suddenly, like not even he expected it. He shudders, looks away from D3rLord3, leaning on a circular table covered in white cloth. 

He feels the words forming again, the way pain forms before a bruise. “You have betrayed me, and now you ask for forgiveness. Let me wallow in my pain.”

D3rLord3 jerks, a tremor of resistance running through him. Avery feels the line tighten inside his skull. It coils like a living thing. “You have brought ruin to my gates, knight,” the script forces him to continue. “I trusted you.”

“Avery, I–” 

D3rLord3 cuts himself off, and the entire set flickers. That wasn’t part of the script. The stained-glass window cracks, and a column warps sideways like melting wax. 

The King doesn’t rise. It simply turns its crowned head a fraction, like a parent watching children struggle to behave. D3rLord3’s voice is yanked back into place.

“I have something to say to you.”

“Stand, then. The night grows long.”

D3rLord3 rises.

The torches flare, and curtains drop from above with a heavy thump, encasing the castle and burning it away. The whole world seamlessly dissolves, then blooms outward into a moonlit garden of stone fountains and hedge walls. Avery’s clothing bleaches into white. Something ceremonial. D3rLord3’s armor becomes polished, ornate, ceremonial, too… and cracked at the wrist. 

The floor is made of cobblestone, now, and they follow a neat path guided by the design of the garden.

Another line forms in Avery’s chest like a bruise. I don’t want to play this game anymore. He bites down. Hard. But electric agony floods his vision white. He stumbles forward a step he didn’t choose.

D3rLord3 tries to catch him, his hand moves without script, and suddenly the world drops ten degrees. The King’s displeasure hums overhead like distant thunder. 

“Walk with me,” Avery says through his teeth.

They get farther into the garden. The lights brighten to a theatrical shimmer. This is where the next scene happens, now. Fireflies manifest around them, helping set the atmosphere. None…

None of these are scenes before a happy ending.

“I feared losing one of my best men to the dark.”

“And I feared you would never absolve me.”

Avery’s throat closes. Because that line wasn’t from the script. The stage ripples.

The King turns its crowned head again. Another line spills out. “You cannot stay.” Avery breathes open-mouthed. “What shall the people think when they discover your fault, knight?”

D3rLord3 flinches. The next line forms behind his teeth, and he fights it visibly, a tremor running down his arms.

“The curse ends when I do, my prince. Exiling me is sparing me. You will die.”

Where is this going?

“No.” Avery gulps. “You have to leave.”

The script screeches to a halt.

The moonlit set begins to peel like rotting paper, and Avery feels shocks through his hypothetical spine. The climax of Act I drops into their minds like a guillotine: the knight kneels, and the prince must kill him to save himself. It’s not just a suggestion. It’s urgency, like the audience fears the play would disappear if they didn’t move fast enough. 

A sword materializes at Avery’s feet. He backs away from it so fast he nearly falls. “No… no, no, no–!”

But he trips on dirt anyway.

Avery falls backwards, elbows preventing his head from having hit the floor.

He puts his hands on himself and realizes that he’s back in his old clothing, hands scrunching up his jacket with flowers and the white shirt beneath it, but his breath catches when his fingers shoot to dig into the grass.

Grass that shouldn’t be here.

He looks up at the sky. The environment has changed without warning, rearranging everything in the span of a blink. He looks forward. There’s wind coming from somewhere north and it’s cold. Not the kind that bites into your shoulder, but the kind you fall asleep to. It’s the wind he remembers living in every day for the last several years of his life. Avery looks forward.

And he sees the mouth of the cave.

A lone poppy stands in front of it, but there’s no obstruction. None of the stone he remembers putting down with him. The stairs are mined exactly how he remembers. Avery swallows hard, then picks up the sword. He stands up, looking into the very first chamber–

And he sees D3rLord3 down there. 

Right where he found him on the floor.

Avery’s heart drops, and his grip on the sword falters. He knows exactly what he’s being told to do. The play isn’t– it wasn’t just a show. It’s instructions. Avery’s lip trembles, and he clutches the sword tighter in his hand. 

He hears it.

The whispers.

The script.

This is how it’s supposed to end, and this is how he gets free. Is that what the prophet meant by the cure being so easy? This is how the curse is broken– by killing it where it started, and there’s nothing keeping Avery from doing so. Avery walks down the chamber.

It only takes one swing.

“I can’t… I can’t take this anymore.”

Avery lets out a trembling breath, one hand on his face, covering his mouth in shame. “I’m not strong like you. I’m– I’m so scared, D3r. I’ve been terrified this entire time.”

”These past few days have been so hard on me, I don’t know how I’m still alive. I feel like I should be dead by now, just… alive by some stroke of luck. Alive because of you and I will never know how to repay you for it and—“

”And it’s miserable.” Avery sobs. “I’m not as strong as you probably think I am. I’m sorry. I’m not strong enough.”

Avery kneels down next to D3rLord3. And he lifts the sword with both hands. Avery reels his hands back–

And he throws it onto the other side of the stage.

“So I’ll make us live through this hell over and over, if it means I don’t have to be alone again.” 

For a very long time, no one moves. 

Until the King stands up and starts to clap.

Avery turns his head to the audience. It starts small, grating against the quietness of the theater, but the rest of the robes stand up one by one, and the first act is destroyed but met with a standing ovation. Avery listlessly stares at the crowd like a broken doll.

D3rLord3 is awake, kneeling in front of Avery with resignation in the castle scene’s clothes, unmoving, too. The King takes off the mask.

And Avery doesn’t have it in him to look away from the nothingness behind it.

The King’s face is endless and non-existent. He can hear D3rLord3’s voice, but it sounds muffled under gasoline. Avery knows nothing else.

In a split second, he experiences eternity and he memorizes it by heart. Eventually, he stops responding at all.

Avery falls to the floor, convulsing and vomiting black tar. His body seizes against the stage, twitching and melting too fast to ground himself. He sees D3rLord3 in front of him, trying to keep him together but the feeling doesn’t stop. The pain lighting his nerves on fire. The understanding making all of his thoughts blank out and go haywire. The knowledge that makes him know the stars by name—

And everything stops all at once.

The images come to him in flashes, and the information is too overwhelming to consider, but he drowns it out with thoughts equally as incomprehensible enough to make it cancel out.

He knows he’s on a bed. He needs to focus, feel the floor and the way the softness of the covers feel in his hands, but there’s nothing for him to feel. His senses are almost gone.

There’s only weight.

“Oh, no. Did I disturb you?”

Avery turns to see the prophet with gilded robes from the library. It wasn’t any traditional library, he realizes now, but a catalog of hymns and prayers. “Exit your quarters at any time, and please do call when assistance is required.” The prophet nods submissively. “I had been tasked to wait on you, and it is my utmost honor.”

“I… I know.”

Avery quietly mumbles. “Thank you.”

“There is no need for that, either.” The prophet waves dismissively. “I’ll leave you to your activities, now. Goodbye, Jester.”

The prophet walks out of the room, and Avery’s eyes are guided to a window with its curtains drawn.

Outside, he sees D3rLord3 in the garden, standing beside the king and being decorated with yellow flowers in the gaps of the armor. He walks to the window, and puts his hand on the glass. He sees his own reflection, with pitch-black eyes and yellow irises reflecting the Eye of Sauron, but he blinks it away. The King looks up at him, wearing the porcelain mask and smiling. D3rLord3 looks, too.

Avery decides he’ll go down there in due time.

For now, he has to wear the new clothing left by the prophet on the foot of the bed.