Chapter Text
Blood dribbles, in a stream fast and quickening, from his nostrils.
Derek's broken gasps fill the room, but the knowledge barely registers—he is faraway from any physicality right now.
No—he is opening his eyes to see reality for the first time.
AND IT HURTS. IT IS
THE SPRINT OF IMPULSE FROM NEURON TO AXON A PLUMING FLARE OF SOLAR POWER, VAPORIZING THE VACUUM WITH PLASMA, HEAT, KINETIC ENERGY THE THUMP OF CARDIAC MUSCLE CONTRACTING, PEDALING THE OXYGEN RIVER IN MACHINE-LIKE EXERTION
RAYS OF ULTRAVIOLET POURING OVER LEAVES IN RADIOACTIVE SPILLAGE A RAT BONE SPLINTERING TO THE 79.3 PSI BITE FORCE OF A CALICO FELIS CATUS THE 43,018 RPM ROTATION OF A STAR SPITTING NEUTRONS INTO VOID THE TENSION OF LARYNGEAL MUSCLES IN AN ANIMAL GRATING
THE CREATION AND COLLISION OF PARTICLE, ANTI-PARTICLE, DEATH AT THE QUANTUM SCALE. MICROTEARS FORMING IN CRICOTHYROID MUSCLE FIBERS THE YAWNING ABYSS OF THE COSMIC PLANES THAT STARE BACK WITH GRAVITY WELLS FOR EYES
MASS CELL LYSING MASSACRED MERCILESS AS METERS OF BLOOD VESSELS BURST
SPLITTING KNIVES. THROUGH HIS HEAD
and it hurts. There are ten thousand trillion shrieking neuric impulses all begging for his attention, each carrying their own overflowing byte of information, every unstoppable thought running into each other. He is primed to burst. His eyes and nose are bleeding, the screaming is oh so loud, and
the merging is unlike any agony he has ever known
not that he knew anything at all before.
THERE ARE THINGS GREATER THAN EVEN KINGS AND GODS AND WORLDS AND INSECTS AND HOMO SAPIENS, COLLOQUIALLY “HUMANS”
THERE ARE STILL RULES TO THIS GAME.
THE KING IN YELLOW WAS A GOD. THE GOD OF YELLOW WAS A KING. WHEN YOU KILL A KING, YOU TAKE HIS CROWN. WHEN YOU TAKE HIS CROWN YOU TAKE HIS THRONE. WHEN YOU TAKE HIS THRONE
WHEN YOU SEE THE STITCHING OF TIME AND UNIVERSE
Goodbye, my friend, he types with shaky fingers, coherent vision far beyond him, only the very human knowledge of touch typing keeping his fingers carrying out the message strike true. Enter key. Or something like that. (I was never really good with endings)
THE GOD DEPOSED IN THIS WORLD STILL PRESIDES IN THE NEXT UNIVERSE OVER
IN THERE THERE IS A MAN OF SLIME WITH A FAMILIAR NAME A FAMILIAR HEART
Somewhere in Alpha Centauri, named far longer ago by aliens as Tie'soo aa Ress (Star Five Trillion Four Thousand Two Hundred And Seven), a star is collapsing in on itself.
The far more important knowledge registers.
“Avery,” Derek gasps, “you're—”
THE SLIME-HUMAN HYBRID IS TURNING HIS HEAD. HIS TORSO. HIS FEET
"No, don't, don't... don't go that way..."
he can't even hear his own whisper anymore, his vocal cords shredded. This Avery, a universe away, certainly can't.
WEIGHT SHIFT RIGHT LEFT FOOT FORWARD WEIGHT SHIFT LEFT RIGHT FOOT FORWARD WEIGHT SHIFT RIGHT
LEFT FOOT FORWARD
There is a universe of cubes. There is a crossroads. There is no book. There is no Derek—no d3rLord3, there. There is a King. There is a whisper, a pull, a command.
LEFT.
HE WILL GO LEFT.
“No,” Derek gasps—thyroarytenoid stinging. It's a weak rasp.
His body is weak. It is dying (MASS CELL DEATH. ORGAN FAILURE. CARDIAC ARREST. HEMORRHAGIC STROKE.) He estimates he has 21.64 seconds left.
They're merging, and his mortality is splintering, cracked easily, an eggshell stomped on, yellow yolk spreading in a puddle of ichor, split from the inside out with the pour of universes’ worth of knowledge.
And in the next universe he sees
VILLAGES AND RUINS AND CLIFFS AND DESERTS AND WORLDS AND HUBS AND ISLANDS IN THE SKY
THEMOSTMAYO (“AVERY C. LAMBERTS”) WALKING PICKAXE IN HAND OF SLIME
LEFT TOWARDS
THE MOUTH OF DEMISE
“No,” Derek repeats. Suddenly desperate.
What use is knowing if it's torture, if it’s not even enough to save Avery—every Avery?
Because the next universe over. The King still lives in the stitching of that cosmos, and Derek isn't there to unravel Him. And entangle himself in Him. And take them down together.
Tears of blood drip onto his computer keyboard. Upload. Hit upload—NOT delete, oh god, oh fuck, upload—skeletal muscles finally hear the beg of impulse from nervous system to spinal cord, twitch and depression his index finger on his damn mouse. Upload complete. He only almost accidentally deleted his recording instead.
Derek's laughing, or maybe sobbing, the King is screaming, a howling reverberating reality itself, its own gravity well, trembling plaster and rattling his frail skeletal structure. Floorboards splinter and age under his feet as he slumps in his chair, getting blood all over his damn nice gamer chair. That was a fucking hundred bucks right down the drain. His fucking life is going down the drain. Fuck—fuck.
16.40 seconds left.
I'm going to die, he thinks somewhere amongst the nexus of agony, of worlds screaming enlightenment, of his body burning away. And that Avery. He is going to die.
He will witness the blazing face of the sun, of the total sum of knowledge, of infinite enlightenment that will scar Avery's retinas and shatter him beyond repair and lead to the world to crumble under the King thereafter
No. NO—
Derek gasps through blinding yellow pain.
He resisted the King in Yellow's command to sleep, to die, to roll over and perish. He took his eyes off the screen even through all this stupid pain long enough to upload his footage. He did this to save Avery and he is going to save Avery, goddamnit
There has to be a way. With everything he knows and everything he's giving and everything he's already given, there has to be a way to warn that Avery, if he can see him he must be able to speak to him to tell him to stop to tell him to turn back, turn back, turn back, turn back, turn back, turn back, turn back
TELL ME HOW
TELL ME HOW.
And just like that he already knows.
It hurts. His brain is fucking breaking, melting into useless ooze between his ears, he can't fucking breathe right anymore, he's going to asphyxiate on the blood in his own lungs. Somewhere the knowledge registers that in his apartment someone is knocking on his door. Screaming his name—“Derek. DEREK!”
We lived in the same apartment building, he thinks, a distorted scream crawling from his mouth that is only half not his own. The King howls in a combusting flesh prison. A yellow firework explodes outside his window. Cyrolite. Sodium nitrate—
Crimson tears, chased by gold, tremble down his cheeks.
and another world reveals itself to Derek, the next-next world, a world where Derek and Avery had a multiplayer world free of gods and ghosts and deadly stories, simply hung out after class at their local community college. Avery is a math major, Derek a CS major, and they share just enough classes that they would've had conversation fodder to talk about, and they would have studied together over long nights and late mornings, and at cafes and libraries and parks—Avery was prone to struggling with feeling dumb, especially in comparison to Derek, who had always been gifted with a mind that leapt easily to insights, and Derek would point out his skill in supporting a thriving YouTube channel on the side which, frankly, Derek would not have been able to cultivate in a thousand years. It was a different kind of strength. And Avery would huff and say it wasn't that hard, certainly not as impressive as Derek made it out to be, would show him. They'd build it together, Avery would have taught Derek Skywars, which was not Derek's strong suit, and Avery would crow over finally finding something that Derek wasn't instantly a god in. A god in. Ha—
It will never happen for his Avery.
His Avery will break the door down 2 minutes and 42.47 seconds after Derek is already dead, and run to his charred corpse, and run quaking fingers through blood-slicked, ichor-stained hair. and scream, continous and cracking, even as his memories shatter, until his Avery is left clutching a body foggy-eyed, until he doesn't even know the name of the corpse he wanted to destroy the world for.
None of it was ever going to happen, from the moment Derek pressed W to trek towards that damned left cave tunnel
AND HE WON’T LET THE NEXT AVERY DO THAT, GODDAMNIT
A DEMIGOD CAN CROSS THE WORLD-LINES
THE KING IS TOO DEEPLY WOUND TO REALITY'S TAPESTRY.
HE CANNOT NOT CROSS ALONGSIDE. HIS MIRROR ALREADY EXISTS THERE IN THE NEXT WORLD
HERE HIS FATE HAS BEEN SEALED
HIS ENDING.
HERE YOUR APOTHEOSIS HAS ALSO BEEN SEALED.
BUT THIS LETS YOU CROSS.
He sees through third eyes in the darkness of the sixth dimension of spacetime, shimmering golden threads
Binding him here, but he could
move them. With the right passage of words
There is a door that is yellow, and is also blue, and is also red, and green, and gold, and every color in the world and every color not in the world
And the King knows the permissions, though He never could have used them, for He was a god of this world and gods are bound to the seat of their power. but Derek still has the lightness of the newly divined, of the soon-to-be-deceased, is not so deeply bound to this universe’s ineffable gravity, can speak the words—
"╎ ᔑᒲ ꖌ╎リ⊣ᓭꖎᔑ||ᒷ∷, ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ꖎ𝙹∷↸ 𝙹⎓ ||ᒷꖎꖎ𝙹∴
↸ᒷᒲᔑリ↸ ᒲ|| ᒷリℸ ̣ ∷|| ℸ ̣ ⍑∷𝙹⚍⊣⍑ ℸ ̣ ⍑ᒷ ↸𝙹𝙹∷∴ᔑ|| 𝙹⎓ ʖᒷℸ ̣ ∴ᒷᒷリᓭ,"
he screams.
NO!
he hears, like a sonic boom, blasting out his eardrums. He feels his skull creaking. Collapsing. Every nerve rattling, the very fabric of reality choking him, bleeding rage and a cosmic sense of being cheated. Outsmarted, Derek thinks, with a weak smirk. And then—