Work Text:
"What the hell!?"
To say that Avery was confused would be an understatement. He was downright stupefied, and maybe a bit scared.
A trainwreck of a man was currently lying on the floor of the cave the slime had discovered, limp as a puppet whose strings had been cut. There was blood on his person, leaking out of his helmet with gruesome detail. If it weren't for that, Avery's first thought would have been amazement at the sheer size of the dude. He was built like a gladiator, a platonic ideal of chivalrous masculinity. The kind of guy that wouldn't get hurt in a million, billion years.
He was breathing heavily, his chest twitching and jerking, and yet he seemed barely alive.
He definitely wasn't supposed to be here.
The whole cave, with the chest and the doors wasn't meant to be here either, but this? This was big, bigger than he could reasonably expect to handle. He didn't even hear any footsteps or anything, the man just barged through the wall and collapsed!
"What the hell?" Avery asked again, carefully moving towards the man - the knight? Yeah, probably, what with the golden armor. Real noble-like, discounting the aforementioned blood, "How did you get here, knight guy?"
Through the wall would be the obvious answer, but that wasn't it. How did this guy get into his world at all?! It was meant to be for him alone, given that he payed a pretty penny to access it in the first place. Did he get scammed out of singleplayer?
The knightly man did not respond, even as Avery gathered his courage to poke him in the helmet. No response, unsteady breath. His mind played a mean trick on him, making him see an eyeball within the gore. That couldn't be right. He poked his chestplate then. It rose and fell at that same erratic pace, not budging at his provocation at all. The man was either a great actor or greatly unconscious.
Well, that was bad.
Good thing Avery had admin status, huh? He snapped an instant regen into his hand before splashing it near the mangled knight. The chest motion subtly relaxed, so Avery threw him another one. Satisfied with that, he refocused his attention.
With a flick of his wrist, he pulled up the admin console. The world still read as singleplayer and had his name written beside it, but...
Who was D3rlord3?
D3rlord3 was a very stupid man.
Why, many would challenge such an assertion. He was considered a man of great perception, which many people mistook for intelligence. It was easy for him to read a person's expression, the shake of their hands or the twitch of their leg. He struck where people most clearly concealed their weaknesses, holding his head high like a Lord in front of peasants. Still, assuming himself to be the smartest in the room wasn't always his first instinct. He had grace and mercy upon those who wished to pursue him, for many of the blessings he received throughout his life were meant to be shared.
He got too cocky.
What was a knight to a King, if not a vessel? Ah, but it didn't matter now - he came out a coward in the end.
D3rlord3, in all his lordship and glory, had closed his right eye as he entered through that door. Then, alight with an unspeakable agony, he tried to claw the left one out, to get through to his own brain and scrub the scull free of everything. He had torn at his helmet until all he could see was red, and not sickening yellow. He ran blind out the door, not caring where he went, just away, away, away, away.
How had he remained upright? How did his feet carry him through the path back? How did he not mutilate himself despite his efforts? His chest constricted, one foot before the other, sprinting and scratching an itch that refused to give. Stupid, prideful man. Man with half of the universe in his head.
But no, no. That was wrong. Serendipity favored D3rlord3 like it did no one else, he had to believe that. He deliberately didn't reach for the book and quill. Erased it all from his mind, except for the only other person who was going to be there at the end.
Avery. Avery the Mayo, a slime hybrid with a dreadful fashion sense, who would find his bloody book. No, who would easily kill him in a clash of swords. No, who would find his body in the cave at the crossroads. No, who would be murdered by him in confusion. No, who would watch him die in his arms, clinging and desperate. No, who would find him. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. That was it. Of course.
Every possibility was a fracture in the glass of his consciousness, cracking and popping like his head held more joints than his entire body. A web of a trillion different things with different meanings with different outcomes, crumpled paper and rewritten text. He was ink on a page, then a word in a script, then life on a screen, then a death beyond it. He was a man, he was a knight, he was a lord, and he was dead.
Every inhale was a convulsion, every exhale an affront to life itself, every step in the direction of a world that didn't exist. Couldn't exist. Did exist as ink and word and life and death. It was all fake. It was all real. It made him want to rip out his own bone marrow. No. That was wrong, and wrong on purpose too.
Who was he fooling, except for himself? His fist rose a final time as he burrowed into a familiar unfamiliar wall.
He passed out before he could taste the shock on Avery's face and do something stupid, like kiss him.