Chapter Text
“You fool. We will both die.” The King begins to glitch, to cease to exist. Derek did not, for once, know what would happen to him when he said the spell. It was a stupid idea. But, all of the ideas Derek has had in the last couple of weeks have been bad ideas; mainly: turning left. All he knew was that he was saving Avery, his only friend, in a roundabout way.
“You’re slipping. You won’t last in my mind.” Derek taunts The King. He’s playing a dangerous game, but who would expect any less? The King has begun to fade. The yellow of his eyes and the piercing feeling striking Derek in his brain has vanished.
Derek takes a knee, and brings the other down so he’s on both, alone on the platform in nowhere. The pain has stopped. The constant ache in Dereks mind has been defeated, now all he needs is Avery.
“The slime… Where is he?” Derek mutters to himself as he brings his hands down to the cold ground under him and lays down, turning so he’s lying on his back.
The void stares back at him. The black nothingness a comfort from the constant stream of thoughts he’d been suffering for months. The edges of his vision blur with tears, relief or fear, Derek couldn’t tell.
Time is different in The Kings world, but, is it really his world anymore? Now that he’s gone for good? Nonsense, there’s no need to think about him.
After what feels like hours, but couldn’t really be more than ten minutes, Dereks straightens himself out, stands up, and promptly jumps off the platform.
He respawns not in the mine that started it all, but a few hundred blocks away. He doesn’t head toward the mine, though. Instead he exits the world, and with little thought, deletes it. He closes the laptop for the first time in months and looks around at the world. He could cry. He might cry.
The state of his room is something you’d see in a horribly produced reality TV show, but give the man some grace, he’d just been cursed with infinite knowledge.
“I don’t want to think about that place ever again,” Well, unless he can find Avery.
How will he? They never exchanged discords or numbers.
Wait. Derek has all the information in the world. Mostly. Can’t he just metaphorically reach into his brain, type in AveryTheMayo phone number, and have a working number to lead him to his friend? His friend that thinks he’s dead?
Oh, god. Avery thinks that he’s dead.
Derek will have to fix that. Can’t have that, no, they’re supposed to live happily ever after. Get a dog one day, maybe a breed that likes to go on long walks. Avery likes to walk. He likes space and college football and baking and long walks with his headphones and a dog. Okay. Derek needs to text him.
He finds his phone, which is dead, plugs it in, and waits. While he waits, he tries to use his legs again. They are unstable and quite useless as of right now, but they’ll be good as new soon. Derek can suffer through some protein-packed meals if it means he gets his strength back one day. He limps to the bathroom, using the walls as helpers and taking frequent breaks. He brushes his teeth, hair, and runs a warm bath. Grateful for the bathtub, because he can’t stand for very long, Derek washes himself for the first time in months. It feels blissful. The water that runs out of his hair and out of his body is a color he hopes to never see again. Something akin to the color of water when you wash a dog after it’d been playing in mud.
Once he’d finished in the bathroom and made it back to his room, changed and opened a window to let some fresh air in, he collapsed into his desk chair and opens his newly charged phone to almost zero notifications. Oh, yeah, he forgot that since he’d moved to Madison his family had forgotten about him. Damn, he’d probably have to re-take the semester because of the missing work and missed lectures. More money down the drain. Good that his parents have enough of that. No need to worry.
Now, down to business, finding Avery. He searches through the rolodex that is his mind and finds Avery’s phone number. Finally, he’ll get to meet the guy that saved him. Maybe not literally, but Avery was there when he should have left, when he should have ran and never looked back. Derek was pretty sure that was a guy he could get used to having in his life. He puts the number into his messages app, and send the first text, first of hundreds, he hoped.
Derek: it’s me, avery. derek.
Derek: this may sound cryptic, and you may not even believe me, but i assure you, it’s me. derek. or as you better know me, d3rlord3