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Inside those yellow doors was something as simple as a string of words. The twenty-six letters of the English alphabet arranged in a way that could make you insane. D3rlord, in all his curiosity, read those lines, some part of a play written on his computer screen, and he regretted it immediately.
After that, he hated this game. He hated it. He was wrong. He should have been scared of a stupid game. He had to warn Avery… wait, who’s Avery?
D3rlord soon realized reading that text told him things he would never know otherwise. Would his life even ever be the same again? His curiosity had gotten the better of him, and the knowledge he now stored in his mind told the very secrets of the universe. Past, present, future. All the happiness and sadness. Everything.
No. No. No! This was all so overwhelming. He was dazed. Almost insane. D3rlord wished this wasn’t real. He knew every single thing that would become of this minecraft world and himself. There was no way to stop it. He just had to warn Avery. Maybe that wouldn’t work. He didn’t check his mind to see if it would or wouldn’t.
Even the silence was deafening from how much was going on around him. D3rlord ran away, as fast as he could, the only limit being that of the game itself. His mind was overclouded. He just had to get away. Away from that thing.
He ran back to the room he knew Avery would enter. He wrote the book he knew Avery would find. One message, over and over again filled the pages, to emphasize how important it was. Please Avery, do not turn left at those stupid crossroads. Maybe it’s just better if you stop playing on this stupid server of minecraft. He left one final message for Avery, one that he didn’t care whether he was smart enough to decipher. If he couldn’t decipher this, he wouldn’t even get to the crossroads. But he would. That thought was enough to almost make him sick.
After that, D3rlord decided enough was enough. No more playing minecraft, ever again. That is what was going to happen. He was forced to fall into fate that lay in his hands. There was nothing he could do about it. He was going to throw his headphones on the ground. He was going to shut his laptop with almost the force to break it.
And he did all that. He had never been so uncalm, it was weird for him. He threw those godforsaken headphones onto the ground and never looked at them again, although he could still see them in a way. He could see everything, tortured with knowledge he was always supposed to have. Images of what he saw flashed in his mind, that story along with a tall, godly figure that haunted his mind. He could see so much more… He rolled back in his chair, just taking it all in with anger and sadness that was never seen before in D3rlord, no, Derek. He was never going to be D3rlord ever again. He swore on it.
Even after the computer was closed, he still retained that knowledge. Now he knew, this eternal torture would never end. Never. If only he knew beforehand. He didn’t want to know. Derek knew what he had to do. He grabbed his beloved laptop and ran straight out the door of his house without saying a word. He didn’t even stop to look behind. He knew he would return. He knew for sure.
It was incredibly dark outside, as it was almost midnight. Derek turned a corner and aggressively threw the cursed laptop onto the grass, grunting in anger as he did so. He stepped on it a few times even though he knew nothing would happen to it. He knew it would still get to Avery.
He knew that everyone who saw him thought he was mad. …Well, maybe he was a little mad. He’d gone mad from that string of words and sight of the King in Yellow, oh what a horrible name to think of, his mortal mind couldn’t even comprehend.
He knew but to give up and stand in this place. He knew this computer would end up in a storage locker and that poor Avery would soon discover it. He thought of Avery. It was strange, a teenage boy he had never met was someone he knew like a best friend. He really wanted to go to exactly where he is right now, oh God, he knows that too, and warn him about what is coming. But he couldn’t, fate didn’t allow it.
Derek had calmed slightly more to a little bit more of his normal self. Although, he was still insane from the infinite knowledge. He knew what infinity was. He knew that there was literally nothing left to know. He knew it all. He knew it all.
He knew every single person’s secrets that he could barely see walking past the deserted roads. He knew things about himself that not a soul in this whole world knew before. He knew of Avery, that smile, long curly hair, casual dress, that made it feel like he didn’t have a care in the world. It was fate, but he still couldn’t bear to think that an innocent boy would suffer the same fate as him.
Oh, it had to be me, right? All this knowledge, this burden, put on the shoulders of someone whose life was going as fine as him? He would never have to try at anything except to keep sane and follow the fate he hid behind his eyes. Oh, the burden bestowed on no one else but a college student, unknown to anyone else? He knew how Atlas felt in multiple ways, condemned to an eternity of holding the word with his weak arms, only released by the ending of his precious life. Oh, it would have been better just to die. He couldn’t keep living like this for one moment longer.
Derek stared into the distance, seeing more with his mind than he could see with his eyes. He accepted his fate, that the truth resided in him now. This was not something he could control. Oh, insanity lived within those cruel eyes of his.