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He stops and stares up at the gates, dwarfed by the scale of them. Every part of his mind is screaming at him to turn back, to leave, to run as far as he can, to heed the warnings in the journal but he can't look away. He can't pull his eyes from the gilded doors and he knows, instinctively, that whatever it is he's seeking- whatever it is that sought him out, is here, less than fifteen paces in front of him. The compulsion returns, and against every instinct, he steps forward. His body lurches with the strain of the movement, but he knows he's powerless to stop it. His fate was sealed the second he stepped over the threshold for that first gateway, into the mud-brick corridor. He remembers the last moment he feels he could turn back and curses himself for his curiosity. He steps forward.
The room envelops him wholly, greeting him with, writing? It's… a play, scrawled along the walls. His eyes scan over the text, reading faster than he thought he was capable of. Faster than he is capable of. Then he reads it again. And again. And Again. He can feel a presence in the room with him. Still, he reads.
The world unfurls in front of him, split open, and everything all at once tries to cram itself into a container not made to hold that much. His head spins as everything unfolds, expands out into infinity and collapses back in on itself before his eyes, information flashing too fast for him to grasp anything meaningful. It's too loud, it's too much. His hands shake.
Reality splinters, fracturing before him. He's himself. He's a character in a screen, a player avatar in a game. He's sitting at a laptop, Minecraft
[-is a sandbox game published and developed by Mojang Studios-]
open in front of him, lenses cracked and nose bleeding. He's passed out on the keyboard. He's a slime, a creeper, a man again. He kneels before a sword, he pours over books in a towering library, he's a poet, a scholar, a nerd. He's the Prophet. The room spins. Reality splinters again.
He sits in a throne, draped in yellow, crown adorned. He's circled by twin suns over a lake. He's in the clearing, bobbing in the water, filled with a sense of urgency and dread. He's a character in a script, designed for entertainment. He knows this. Somewhere else, he's trapped in a page, being observed. Why aren't you helping him? I know you can see me. Please, help me!!
[he knows
you can't]
[Water is one of only a few common naturally occurring substances which, for some temperature ranges, become less dense as they cool, and the only known naturally occurring substance which does so while liquid-]
[ there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 legal configurations of a 3x3x3 Rubik's cube, all of which solvable-]
[The sneezing velocity of the average human varies from 10 metres per second to 50 metres per second, and the duration of a sneeze varies from 0.06 seconds to 0.3 seconds]
He's being ripped apart at the seams, the fabric of reality itself tearing apart in front of him, swallowing him whole. It's too much
[the universe began 13.8 billion years ago, originating from a single point and-]
Amongst the [the heaviest element produced naturally within nuclear fusion is Iron, all subsequent elements are produced either in-] noise, he tries to find s omet hi ng to hold on to.
He sees the cycle. Suddenly, he knows every single person that has walked down this path before him with intimate detail, details no one should ever know about another person. And in the middle of it all stands the king, or sits? He is everywhere, everything, one hundred feet tall and face to face with d3rlord and long, flowing silken robes, a sickly yellow. He is ten feet tall with a crown piercing the heavens, he has forty arms and no arms and he's all eyes, just watching, but there are no eyes. He is void and matter and antimatter and It's nauseating, impossible to keep up with. The king's gift doesn’t help him. Every piece of information cannot make sense ofwhat he sees. All at once he's breathing too fast, he hasn’t breathed in over a minute, his vision swims again before one stark glimpse of reality- of reality Before, strikes him. The king, twenty feet tall, curled over him, garish yellow robes enveloping him, a cold hand pressed against his cheek, swiping at a tear he doesn’t remember falling. It stares down at him cooly, unfeeling. He wants to throw up. He can't move. He needs something to focus on.
A flash of green. Who's next?
Avery finds the chest. Found? Will find?? Will find. He finds the book he wrote. The book he hasn’t written. In an instant, he knows everything About Avery. He watches Avery grow up, sees him struggle to make friends, sees him smile, laugh, sees him cry. Sees him try not to. Watches as [slime hybrids are often more slime than human, in terms of composition, with their physiology more closely resembling that of a wild slime than person, however they boast a cognitive ability and general structure more reminiscent of-] [socially, slime hybrids have a history of oppression, being one of the more mob-like hybrids. They are often faced with mistrust because of this-]. Avery carries an injured teammate, calling for a medic, their arm draped haphazardly over his shoulder.
[Skywars is a competition where people compete to be the last surviving player in an arena consisting of a chain of sky islands, surrounding a centre island. The winner usually receives a monetary reward, but this can vary-] his throat lurches as he watches a sword stab directly into Avery's abdomen, but the slime only pauses briefly, staring down at the sword before looking back at the offending competitor, playfully uttering "Rude," with a dramatic tilt of his head, before yanking it out of himself and turning it on the person who put it there to begin with. D3r knows the hole in Avery's abdomen has closed before the other player even reaches the elimination zone in the void.
Avery sits by a campfire alone, chewing on a charred fish he caught earlier.
[slime hybrids can consume nutrients by-] He feels Avery's loneliness as if it where his own. He knows Avery better than he knows himself, than Avery knows himself. He doesn’t want to know this much about anyone ever, he feels gross for knowing it all, but the information doesn’t stop.
Left
Left
Left
Left
Left
L ef t
L e ft
He sees it.
Avery,
Follows
the same path.
[ A mudbrick, also called an unfired brick, is an air-dried brick composed of a mixture of mud (containing loam, clay, sand, and water) with a binding material, such as rice husks or straw-]
[Redstone "signal strength" can be an integer between 0 and 15. Most power components provide an output of power level 15, but a few components provide a variable amount-]
He tries to hone in on Avery, blocking out the Incessant Noise of everything else.
He watches as AVERY. Finds
the Mine.
And all of a sudden, Avery is Everything. He's the end, the beginning, the middle, and D3rlord loves him. He knows he can't save him. He knows that it doesn’t matter if Avery turns left or not. All paths lead to the king, but he Has to Try. It's something to hold on to. To ground himself. To fight for. He wrenches his body away from the palace, away from the king, away from the passages on the walls with their horrible, wretched knowledge, and runs, as fast as his failing legs will carry him. The path is different but he doesn’t notice (he does notice, of course he notices. This is not the way he came in. But he knows where it goes.) his pickaxe is gone, he doesn’t know when it disappeared [his pickaxe disappeared exactly three minutes and fifty eight seconds ago]. He doesn’t care. He punches through the wall with his fists. It’s slow and painful but not slow enough to stop him. He has to try. Deep purple blood coats his knuckles but he keeps digging, he can feel the other side
[Rhyolite is an extrusive igneous rock, formed from magma rich in silica that is extruded from a volcanic vent to cool quickly on the surface rather than slowly in the subsurface-]
There's notime for that, he's running out of time. He can feel himself crumpling under the weight of everything. He needs to focus. He needs to try to stop Avery (he knows he can't. He has to try.)
He breaks through the wall, light from the mounted torches filtering over him through the cracks. His desperation grows, the leather of his gloves torn against the jagged edges, the gold of the gauntlet on his right hand dented and distorted as he pounds his fists against the rubble, chipping away at the barrier.
He's through. It's getting so much harder to stay focused. Everything is So Loud , Too Bright. He knows he was going to end up here, where he started, but it's still disorienting, as much as he knew, he also knows this doesn’t make sense. The fabric of the world itself surrounding him has shifted to accommodate the horror this world harbours. It’s not natural. He was always meant to find those doors.
He has a journal, he remembers that.
(Four nametags, one journal, yellow dye, hanging roots, ten kelp, one grass block, a yellow candle, a fern, four yellow glass, magenta glazed terracotta, a minecart, two slimeballs, five yellow glazed terracotta, farmland -how does he have that?- a flowering azalea bush, one ink sac, six quartz slabs, a mangrove propagule, three crafting tables, andesite, a hay bale, vines, a lantern, an ink sac, twelve netherrack, nine orchids, yellow concrete powder, seven pieces of lapis lazuli.)
His hands shake as he tries to clutch the quill, his handwriting bordering on illegible, but he Needs To Try. His consciousness is waning, reality slipping out of his grasp more and more. He can still feel the king, watching him. He knows it can hear him. Knows it can read his warning to Avery, but he has to try anyway. One last ditch attempt.
23-2 29 2, 24 29 10-2 10-3 4, 19 30-4 15, 6 10-2 10-3 10-2
rvn, avery, its, here
The book clatters against the ground, followed by the heavy thud of armour and fabric and flesh finally collapsing. His last th oughts are of a man he loves
, a man he kno ws h e c an't
s a v e .