Chapter Text
The endless library’s slumber is broken by the echoes of purposeful footsteps. Calculated. Rhythmic. Not a single hiccup betrays their gait despite the mind-bending layout of the room, if one can call it that. Each footfall stirs clouds of dust that attest to years of abandon. In spite of this, the traveler navigates the twisting compound and reaches the centerpiece lectern in the heart of the library like a well-oiled machine.
He stops, several paces back, raises his wooden axe, and deftly splinters the planks beneath his feet in one fell swing. He makes no sound as he falls into the hidden chamber below it, just a soft grunt as he catches himself. The startled gasp that follows comes not from him, but the other silhouetted presence now revealed within this tiny sanctum.
As the fallen man rises to his feet, brushing away sawdust from his clothing, and grimacing as it clings to his sticky flesh, his gaze drifts to the shellshocked spectator before him. His expression unravels a little as he regards the person he’d been seeking, embers of weariness and affection smoldering in equal parts. In a few decisive strides, he closes the distance until his treasure is within arm’s reach.
Then, as though broken from a spell, the exhumed figure takes several steps backwards until his ochre chestplate grazes the books on the wall behind him. His virid pursuer advances in tandem, undeterred.
“Avery?”
The armor-clad man’s wary voice cuts through the layer of dust and tension in the air. The edge of suspicion to his tone gives his follower pause, and they reach a standstill.
“Are you okay? How did you know I was down here?”
Under the shaded veil of brass and gold, skeptical eyes dart across green, fatigued features for any hint of artifice. His doubt only seems to deepen those lines of wear on his company’s malleable face.
A moment of hesitation passes, and that wandering gaze shifts from wary to speculative. But his subject has had enough of being studied.
Instead of responding, though, the man of slime surrenders to a moment of weakness, and collapses unceremoniously upon the knight. Shifting metal plates collide loudly with leather spines and wooden edges, while fabric and feet shuffle in unison. A grunt of surprise punctuates the whole exchange, and a brass helm peers down at the green head now resting heavy upon his chestpiece.
“Avery!” The man exclaims, bewildered, “What are you—”
“Please, Dere—rlord,” He cuts him off. “We can do questions in a sec, just… Can we stay like this? For a minute?”
Tacky fingers tighten around thick, scarlet drapery like a lifeline, the slightest of tremors traveling into the armor beneath. Despite the survivor’s instincts protesting, a deeper thread of concern for the person he thought he knew down to the atoms overrides the need for immediate answers.
“Um… Sure.”
The knight’s arms, suspended midair, tentatively come to rest upon the back of his ally. It seems to ease some of the tension in the slime’s body as his plated palms smooth out across the patterned textile. Yet as one soul finds peace in this quiet moment of comfort, the other can’t ignore the growing pit of dread for what may lurk in the knowledge he finally lacks.
Their embrace is a velveteen bubble of solace; a silken, imperfect fabrication of heaven, predestined to pop. Gently, the lord peels the clingy stranger from his body. The glassy, unfocused look immediately clouding the man’s eyes is a definite cause for concern. And the time for dodging questions is over.
“Avery, what happened to you?”
·────⠝────·
December 31st, 2025, 11:47 P.M.
Avery’s heart is an anvil, sinking into his toes at the same speed as his character plummets into the void. He barely has the chance to type out “WAIT,” barely can register D3rlord’s stoic farewell in the chatbox, before the platform becomes a pinprick above his head and the void-damage ticks his life away. It all happens far too fast to be any semblance of fair.
Salt stings at the corners of his eyes, and frustration coils hot and alive in his belly. The death screen stares back at him, an uncaring third-party. Decision paralysis only has a grip on him for a matter of seconds, before Avery is clicking the respawn button.
He doesn’t care what the odds are, Avery would be damned if he gave up on his friend now, after all of the cosmic horror nonsense they’ve weathered. There had to be another way. He would find it. There was still time. He would find it.
But Avery’s tireless determination could not change the stark reality that his sprint jumping is just too slow, and D3rlord is just too far. As the blocks of this vast, haunting world begin to disappear and corrupt around him, Avery can feel his chest squeeze with an impending sense of despair. The lag spikes sharply, and his connection to the server cuts.
It’s over, just like that.
No means of contacting D3rlord. No way of saving his friend.
Nothing to salvage from a world that no longer exists.
Avery slams his fists into the desk hard, and the resulting pain is sharp and immediate. It hardly registers amid the rising tide of devastation. His spine crumbles forward into a hunch, elbows a shaking pair of stilts hardly fit for supporting his weight. As the hum of his—Derek’s—old laptop fans begin to wind down, the room is quiet, and the quiet is deafening.
It doesn’t last long.
The gentle patter of wet droplets begin to fall onto his desk. Soft, hiccuping whimpers slowly mount into full-on sobs. The chair creaks in tempo with his trembling frame.
It’s a pathetic sight, really. A 19-year old boy, alone on New Year’s Eve, bawling his eyes out over the fate of an online stranger he barely even knew.
An online stranger who did everything in his power to protect me.
An online stranger who selflessly laid down his life for mine, and countless others.
An online stranger who I will never meet.
Shit.
Avery can’t help himself. As the tears cascade, he analyzes every poor decision, every time-costly mistake. Every stupid, stupid moment of gullibility that led him to this point. They rack up fast, and each one feels like another damnation shackled to Avery’s heart.
He checks the clock through blurry eyes.
11:54 P.M.
His lip tremors at the thought of whether Derek would live to see the new year. Of what state he might be in right now, how much pain he must be enduring without the King’s world to look at. It sends him into another sobbing fit; far weaker, but no less mournful.
Avery has utterly exhausted himself by the time midnight rolls over, and the weight of everything from the past 16 hours has taken its toll. Face pressed into the tear-streaked keyboard, Avery passes out.
·────⠽────·
Sleep is not a respite.
Avery dreams of crimson plateaus, hollow gardens, and endless gateways.
Flashes of gilded armor mark the hopeless pursuit of a ghost, forever just out of reach.
He screams into the void, pleads with it to turn around, to slow down for him, to give him another chance.
The void looks back, slithers its icy tendrils around his conscience and lends an ear.
Is that really what you want?
Avery’s breath catches, and he feels the cold spread through every one of his arteries, veins, capillaries, all at once like a network of mycelium.
Yes. A million times over.
The sticky, endless nothingness grins at Avery, and swallows him whole.
·────⠁────·
Come morning, something is very, very wrong. On a molecular level, there’s a distinct offness that Avery can feel to his very core the moment he gains consciousness. Like his every cell and fiber have been ripped apart and rewoven by some cosmic seamstress.
He doesn’t have the brainpower to put a name to any of this yet, and it’s overruled as his senses start to come online and Avery quickly realizes that he is very much not in the comfort of his cluttered apartment. The cool, rough texture of stone molds into his supine body, and a golden glow penetrates his lids. His eyes peel open.
Avery lies sprawled out on the ground of a massive cave, and before him towers a partitioned doorway of gold.
As the fog of sleep dissipates from his mind and the gears start to turn, Avery can’t quite wrap his head around his bearings, despite the unshakeable familiarity of it all.
He scratches his head, only to feel the slippery(?) surface give as though only semi-solid, to which he recoils harshly, and only then gets a look at his arm and—
Oh.
Oh, Avery must still be dreaming.
There is absolutely no other explanation for why Avery’s arm—crap, his whole body?!—consists of green slime.
There’s no explanation for any of this, frankly. Was he kidnapped?! That still wouldn’t explain the slime. He frantically racks his brain for any clues of how he got here. Last night. New Year’s Eve…
Right.
D3rlord. Derek. The King. Avery passing out in a puddle of his own tears, at his keyboard. In the safety of his damn room. So why is he here?
And where is here?!
He looks around, dreading how achingly familiar the cave’s layout is, in spite of how… unpixelated everything is. After a sufficient amount of panicking, going through the five stages of grief about his circumstances, and trying everything under the sun to wake the hell up, Avery comes very reluctantly to terms with whatever screwed up Minecraft-reality he has wound up in.
Taking a second to ground himself, Avery gazes into the green, semi-translucent surface of his hands and allows himself to feel a little bit stupid about the half-assed skin he’d made years ago that was now one with his flesh. It’s a welcome distraction from the litany of other implications he’s facing down at the moment.
But then something catches his eye that he hadn’t noticed until now—a cold, lightweight presence on his wrist that has been an overlooked constant before this moment. From what Avery can tell, it’s a wristwatch. It’s pitch-black and marked with some weird engravings that he can’t decipher along the strap, but otherwise appears normal. It seems to have just started ticking, minutes prior.
He can’t find a buckle to remove it, though. Tugging on it elicits a sharp jolt of pain, as though the watch is somehow connected to his nonexistent veins. Bizarre. Avery cannot for the life of him remember drawing a watch onto his little slime character, but decides he has spent long enough being distracted by something that probably doesn’t matter. He has bigger fish to fry.
Avery turns his attention to the looming gateway before him. He’d been doing his best to ignore it up until now, but he’s only human. Its radiance is otherworldly, and he feels sick to his stomach admiring its gilded ornamentation. It beckons him in with its gently agape doors, a glittering siren in this cold abyss.
Suddenly, and yet rather belatedly, the thought of what lies beyond them strikes Avery with an idea that nearly sends him blitzing through those curtains of death without a moment’s hesitation.
Because if Avery is here, at the Eden of this whole catastrophe, then…
D3rlord could still be out there.
Alive.
I can still save him.
“I can save him!” Avery vocalizes. His declaration bounces across the expansive walls of the cavern, accenting its sheer magnitude. The sensory feedback should make him feel small and scared, but whatever lump of goo in his chest is acting as a heart is pounding too fervidly for him to even notice.
Avery inhales deeply and glares at the imposing golden doors before him; a tiny green creature puffing itself up for confidence. The doors tower silently in response, ethereal and haunting. Avery will not be intimidated by architecture.
Shutting down any second guesses before they can fully form, Avery steps into the shadows behind the gates. He pauses while waiting for his vision to adjust, and eventually, he’s able to make out a glint within the cover of darkness, which he approaches hand-first. His fingertips catch and press upon the edge of sleek, sharp metal.
The gold block.
Something shifts tangibly in the air with this contact, a subtlety entirely lost on him when he was merely piloting a character in-game. Avery swallows heavily, whether in excitement or dread he couldn’t say.
Turning around, Avery makes his way towards the same opening that he entered from. His hand grazes the cold, varnished ridges of one door as he passes it, and it pulses with an unpleasant current that travels through his body. He recoils with an undignified yelp, a renewed hatred for the King and his magic bullcrap thrumming under his skin.
Bracing himself for… whatever may be on the other side, Avery takes a deep breath and peers around the gates. Though he knew in his heart what to expect, his stomach still drops when he beholds the gargantuan hall of golden doors before him. If he hadn’t felt small and insignificant before, he most certainly does now. The barrier of a screen couldn’t remotely do justice to the staggering reality of scale Avery feels at this moment.
He takes a few steps forward into the clearing, tenderfoot and petrified, but compelled by his innate hunger for progress. After conducting a wide scan of the room and feeling more than a little daunted, Avery anchors himself with one objective.
Behind one of these doors, D3rlord is here. He has to be.
That’s all he can hope to hold on to. Avery won’t even begin to entertain any other possibilities. D3rlord will know what to do. He’ll be here, and he’ll know what to do, and they’ll find a way out together.
I just have to warn him first.
Without letting himself waste another moment, Avery hustles towards the first set of gates.