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Derek had been so sure of his plan. He knew what to do, knew what consequences to expect. One person, or the world. Hardly a difficult decision to make for anyone who wasn't a selfish idiot.
And yet, the yearning for a better alternative wouldn't dissipate, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it. He wanted everyone to survive. He wanted Avery to survive. But, oh, it hurt to imagine everyone else going on with their lives without him. And he didn’t even have to imagine, did he? He knew it, just as he knew so many other things, whether he wanted to or not.
Still, he had to have missed something. Anything. Nothing, the swirling torrents of foreign knowledge told him, you know everything there is to know.
Sitting there in front of his computer, Derek trembled. Had to let go of the mouse for a moment to clench his fist, to take a shaky breath and try to collect as much of his rationality as he could.
There had to be a way.
And yet he continued along the path prescribed for him by the whispers, the cries, the growls in his head. Darkness. Eyes. The king.
He went along with the script, the fingers of his mind dragging at its seams to find one that would give, that would let him see beyond the veil of a future set in stone.
He opened chat, pasted in the spell.
Ah.
His finger hovered over the enter key, just for a second. Then, with a breath of careful, restrained relief, he grabbed the mouse again.
There it was. The idea.
He clicked to the front of the message. Typed.
Perhaps it wouldn't work. Perhaps it would destroy everything. He'd rather it wouldn't work if that was the alternative.
"ENO SA EM EKAW", he'd written, had deleted the related part of the copied text.
He had to hope that this would work. Had to hope that using the trick he'd read a character use in one of the many stories in the library would work on the king as well.
It took too long. Derek's fingers shook as he typed, but he had to try. As willing as he was to sacrifice himself, dying still went against the most primal of his instincts. And, he accepted, also against the part of him that wanted get to know Avery as more than just another innocent person caught up in something too big for anyone to handle on their own.
".NUS DEDORROC RUOP I UOY OT"
Generally speaking, it was a pretty simple way of reversing a spell. Question was if it would actually work. If it would do what he hoped it would.
".ENODNU RAF EROHS DEWODAHS"
The king was getting impatient, but Derek couldn't hear his words anymore. Not over the static in his head, not over the clacking of his keyboard, not over the sound of his teeth chattering in shudders that had nothing to do with low temperature.
".ENO YB ENO .UOY OT SEY"
No going back now. He deleted the rest of the original message, and before he could overthink this, pressed enter.
He felt it like a tugging at his head, like a fist clenching around his heart and pulling. He lost sensation in his fingers first, the rest following not a second later.
The first thing he saw was himself. Well, not exactly himself. He saw his Minecraft self, standing there on the platform he'd seen on his screen just moments ago. D3rlord3 stood motionless, looking up at where Derek knew the eye was. Where he was, inside it.
He couldn't feel his body. Or any body, for that matter. He saw the Minecraft textures as he knew them, and yet they looked strange. Too sharp, too real, like all he needed to do was stretch out a hand and he'd be able to feel them. They were, in that moment, as real as he was.
"What did you do." The king's voice spoke inside his head. Not like it did when he was wearing headphones, no, directly in his head. Or perhaps, Derek noticed, it was him who was in the king's head.
It hadn't been a question, but he found himself answering anyway: "reversed the spell. Rather than bringing you into my body, I got myself into yours."
Or whatever this was. Not an actual body, that was certain. Derek knew he existed somewhere, in the same space as the king, but he could neither feel nor see any limbs. At least, not having a head had made the headaches disappear for now, it seemed. All the noise in his mind was still there, albeit muted, like coming from a neighboring apartment in a building with thin walls.
"You fool!" the king snarled, and as Derek felt something like icicles driving into his mind, he couldn't help but fear that this might be worse than anything else he could have chosen to do.
"You think you have any advantage here? You were already weak in my domain, and now you have just made yourself a part of me!"
Every word was a hit of a blade against his mind, a stab to his consciousness, a gash in his train of thought. He couldn't think, couldn't think, couldn't-
"D3rlord3?"
Avery. His message in the chat felt more like a presence rather than sound. He couldn't hear it, but he couldn't see it either. It had no voice, no letters, just a feeling, a sensation that reminded him more of the sense of touch than the sense of hearing or the sense of sight.
Meanwhile, the king's contentment, his excitement, was a fire burning away just at the corners of what made up the border between him and Derek. He felt it, felt it like it was a part of him and yet wasn't.
"Don’t hurt Avery", he pressed out, startled when Avery looked up at him, at the king, at the both of them.
Perhaps it was his attention. Perhaps it was the king's distraction. Perhaps it had simply taken a moment for Derek to get used to his new state of being.
But when the big eye turned to look down at Avery's Minecraft character, Derek's mind reached out much like the king's had before. He crossed the border between them, his mind aching from the exertion and yet feeling as determined as never before. He focused on only one thought, hoping that his own distraction wouldn't end up dooming Avery.
"Die!", he thought, and it felt like an arrow aimed at the consciousness next to his "Now!", he thought, grunting as he pulled the arrow back with willpower alone.
The king cried out as it hit him, the booming of his voice shaking the platform Avery and his own motionless avatar stood on.
"What's going on?", Avery asked, the emotionless text imbued with feelings of fear and confusion.
"Your friend is an idiot!" the king laughed, though Derek heard in his voice that the arrow hadn't left him unharmed.
"D3rlord3?!"
"Avery, I'm here-..!" his voice sounded no different from the king's. Avery would think it's a trap, wouldn't trust him, would-
"Oh, thank goodness!"
...Derek would have sighed if he didn't have bigger problems at the moment. Or, really, one bigger problem. He could feel the corners of his mind fraying where the fires of the king lapped at them. He had to focus.
"Avery, don't listen to him! We sound alike, but he is not me! I can't explain-"
He saw Avery nod, wished he could smile at the idea of the real Avery sitting somewhere in front of his computer, moving the mouse up and down to convey his agreement.
He felt the kings anger, felt how it tried to surround him, how it tried to suffocate him in the ashes of his roaring flames of wrath. "Avery trusts me", he thought, "he shouldn't trust me so easily, but he does." His thoughts were water against the king's fire, snuffing it out and hiding him behind clouds of steam.
The king's control slipped for just a moment.
Enough time for Derek to push back harder. "Die!", he thought again, and "leave us alone!". "We don't want you in our world!", he thought, "and we don't want you in our game!"
The concentration required to retaliate against the king's consciousness ripped at the walls that held his torrents of knowledge back. Derek would have cried out if the king hadn't gotten ahead of him.
All this time, this Minecraft world had been the barrier between Derek and the knowledge, even as it had remained in his mind the entire time. But now that he himself was in the game, the only thing that had prevented a flood to his and the king's shared existence was... something. Something that was just seconds away from breaking apart completely.
He didn't know how to stop it. He didn't-... but, oh, perhaps-...
Once more he acted on an instinct, on a guess, on hope. He drew back to the furthest crevices of their shared existence, leaving most of it to the king as though he'd given up.
He felt sick at the king's elation, but only for a moment.
The king screamed as the walls broke, and Derek knew he'd been right. The Minecraft world had not only been his refuge from all the knowledge, but, in a way, the king's too. And just as he had suffered whenever he looked away from the screen, so did now the king suffer as wave upon wave of chaotic information washed over him. It hardly mattered if the king had already known about everything before, as the unfiltered, untamed nature of the knowledge was its final trump card.
Derek drew back as far as he could, wishing for limbs with which to protect himself. All he had was the thought of everyone surviving, a thought that felt like a blanket, like a curtain. Hardly enough to actually hold anything back, and yet just enough for him to sense that Avery was once again talking in the chat. It wasn’t anything of importance as far as he could tell. The ramblings of someone desperate to fill an uncomfortable moment with mindless, easy chatter.
It helped, if only for a moment.
He, too, cried out when the blanket was washed away, when his mind was flooded with present, past, and future, his voice overlapping with that of the king in a sound that was wholly unnatural.
Then, silence.
No whispers, cries, screams in his mind. No king. In the empty space he had been forced to share for the last... honestly, he didn't know how long, Derek collected what remained of himself. He felt... normal. More normal than he'd felt in a long while.
"Avery?", he asked in the voice of the king, looking down at the two Minecraft avatars, both motionless for a long, long moment.
"Still here", Avery replied, his avatar looking up at him, at the king, at the eye, "d3rlord3?"
"Yes, it's me." He wanted to scold Avery for trusting him without proof, and at the same time he wanted nothing more than to cry with relief.
"What happened?"
"Later. I need you to do something first."
This time, it took longer for Avery to answer. When he did, Derek could finally sense the wariness he'd been missing just seconds earlier: "is this another trick to get me to leave you alone so you can do something you don't want to explain?"
"No", he wanted to laugh at the irony of Avery’s wariness returning now of all times, "i really do need your help. I need you to go to an address for me." He needed to know just what price he'd ended up paying after all. Was there a chance of returning to his body, or was it already dead and cold?
Derek gave Avery his address, but it took a long time before he finally got an "okay, fine." in reply. A few moments later, Avery’s avatar disappeared as he left the game. Yeah, okay. This was fine.
He had no clue if leaving his body had damaged it in any way. Didn't even know what had left his body. His soul? Did souls even exist? Although, apparently evil, god-like beings existed, so why not souls too?
Speaking of god-like... Derek looked around, looked at the darkness surrounding the platform. It'd been some sort of cathedral earlier. Maybe he could-…
The king's powers came rather easy to him. In fact, using them was nothing compared to bearing the force of all that knowledge before. A thought, and the darkness gave way to the building that had been there before.
...well, if there was no getting out of here again, he could probably get used to this. Fortified by his curiosity, he explored the powers the king had unwillingly left him.
To say that Avery was confused was putting it lightly. He’d just witnessed… what, exactly? A stranger-maybe-friend melting together with some sort of evil eye that could have come out of a horror or fantasy novel? Had that been the king? Was he dead now? He didn’t know. Decided that he didn’t have to, not right now.
He’d written down the address that the voice, d3rlord3, had told him about. It wasn’t very far away. A five minute walk, maybe, if he hurried there. He didn’t wait for his laptop to shut down, leaving it there on his desk as he rushed to put on shoes and a jacket. He walked past various groups of people, all outside to celebrate the beginning of a new year. Or the end of the old one, if they were more of the pessimistic sort.
Avery barely had any interest in the brilliant fireworks overhead, only paid them any mind at all when he felt one might set off a little too close to him. Fortunately, nobody held him up. Not that he knew any of those people, but one could never know what other people thought or wanted.
D3rlord3. Derek. He didn’t know the guy, and yet he was apparently on his way over to the place where he lived. Would Avery have to break in? Did any other people live there, or was there maybe a spare key somewhere under a flower pot? He shivered despite the jacket, nervousness almost causing him to slow down before he took a deep breath and steeled his nerves. As long as he didn’t have to solve any more puzzles today, he’d be fine with whatever was ahead of him.
Arriving at the correct address, a nice looking apartment complex, he could at least put aside the roommate idea: the name tag under the doorbell only read Derek’s name. Ringing the doorbell was more of an instinct, really. He almost facepalmed when his brain caught up with his hand, the only thing stopping him being the fact that it wouldn’t help him in the slightest.
The door was locked, and there were no flower pots around. Which was just great, really, as those were the only ideas he’d had up until now. Crossing his arms, he took a step back to look at the door in a way that hopefully didn’t make him look like a burglar. Where could a key be hidden? Surely Derek would have told him if the hiding spot was very hard to find, right?
Finally, Avery’s eyes focused on the top of the door. Specifically, something reflective lying on top of it. He breathed a sigh of relief when he reached up, finding the key he’d been looking for. It was secured to the door frame with a nail that went through the hole for the key chain, so all he needed to do was pull it up over it.
He felt much less like a burglar when he used the key to open the door, entering the apartment.
Fortunately, he at least didn’t need to worry about not finding his way, as it was immediately noticeable that only one room had some light on in it. It was a bedroom with a well-equipped gaming setup in one corner. The only light came from the PC, illuminating the man who sat on the chair in front of it. Although it was really more of a lying-on-the-desk than a sitting-on-the-chair kind of position.
Stepping closer, Avery almost expected the guy – Derek – to suddenly sit up, like a jump-scare in a horror movie. But he didn’t move, even once Avery stood right next to him. On the screen, Minecraft was running, showing Avery the same scene he’d seen back at home, only from a different perspective. The weird eye was still there, although he could swear that its colors were a bit warmer now. Most noticeably though, the surroundings had changed. Some sort of building had replaced the intimidating void from before.
He gulped as he looked down at the keyboard. The finger’s of Derek’s left hand still sat on top of the WAD keys, the index finger of his right hand resting on top of the enter key. He needed to tell Derek that he was here now, so he’d have to move the… other Derek. The real Derek? The real-world Derek? All options felt wrong in one way or another.
Taking a deep breath, Avery turned towards… Derek’s body? No, no, no, that was even worse. Avery turned towards… Derek. There was a deep frown on his forehead, dark bags under his eyes, but other than that, he looked like he was just asleep. Avery didn’t dare check for a pulse or a breath, silently reaching out for his shoulders to push him back into the chair, away from the PC. He was still warm against Avery’s hands, that had to count for something, right?
For a long moment, he simply looked at Derek. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but somehow it was strange to look at the person he knew to be d3rlord3 and not see any armor. He couldn’t say he was disappointed, though, to at last see the actual face of the guy who’d been so helpful and kind to him.
With the keyboard free now, he opened the chat to type.
“Derek Im back”
Derek’s non-existent breath hitched when he finally heard from Avery again. Not necessarily because of the long wait, not even because he was simply happy about it (which he was). No, it was because of how strange it felt. Of course, everything felt strange when, after an entire life of having a normal human body, you suddenly didn’t have one, but this felt even stranger still. Like an itch at the back of his throat, a sensation of words he said and yet not said.
“Okay, good”, he said, voice sounding embarrassingly relieved even to him, “how’s my body?”
It took a long, long moment. Which could mean anything, really. Maybe Avery didn’t know how to check for a pulse. Maybe he was trying to measure it first, to give additional info. Maybe he was just slow when typing on a different keyboard that he wasn’t used to. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe he really was dead. Maybe that could be fine if at least Avery could return to this world every now and then. The king was dead, that was the important part. And, unlike the original plan, Derek himself was still… even if not alive, then at least existing.
But then: “breathing. I think the heartbeat is slow but idk. It’s there at least.”
Again, an ache in his consciousness, in what would have been his throat. Was he somehow connected to his account?
“Can you move around a little?”, he asked Avery, “In Minecraft, I mean?”
He didn’t get a response, but he didn’t need one. He saw his own avatar moving around in front of him, and he felt somewhat like a marionette, like it was actually him who was moving around like this, running a circle, jumping, crouching, hitting empty space in front of him.
“Okay, stop”, he murmured, not wanting to deal with this sensation while trying to come up with something.
Avery stopped. A moment later typed in chat: “U okay? Your breathing went weird for a sec there”
Clues, clues, clues. He was connected to his Minecraft avatar. His real-world body still reacted to him. Clearly the spell didn’t cut him off completely. Because it wasn’t meant to be used to transfer a human’s consciousness?
“I think I’m fine. But, Avery, you gotta listen to me, okay? Cause I’ll tell you what happened, and then I need your opinion.”
Nothing, then: “okay. tell me”
And so he did.
Derek told Avery everything. The original plan, then the one he ended up going with. He told him about the king, about the strange sensations of having only his consciousness right now. He did go on a small tangent about the kings powers, how he had experimented around to see what remained of them and what didn’t. And then, of course, he told Avery about his theory. How, possibly, he might be able to return. What might happen if it didn’t go as expected.
Avery was silent throughout it all. Didn’t move, didn’t write. He nodded in the end, following the little gesture up with another long moment of nothing.
“Avery?” Derek didn’t like how quiet his voice, the king’s voice sounded. He’d have liked it more if it were his own.
“Still here”, came the immediate response, “just… processing.”
Relief flooded him. Sweet, warm relief, “That’s alright. Take your time.”
“I don’t think I’d mind”, Avery finally responded, his words seeming soft even as Derek couldn’t know that for sure, “if it went wrong like that. I’d rather you’re in my head with me than trapped in a video game forever.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“Yeah. Just tell me what to say”
Okay. This was it, then. Slowly, Derek gave him the words he needed to type out, repeating them again and again to make sure Avery wrote them down correctly.
“And then..”, he whispered, tense now that everything was set up, now that the only options were failure or success, “just… take my hand to make me send it. And hopefully that’ll do the trick.”
He didn’t even sense it when the message went through. One moment he was in the game, the next, his head felt like it wanted to kill him. But… not like before. He knew this kind of headache even better.
“Water-”, he rasped, throat parched, dryer than a desert and coarse as sandpaper. His eyes were closed, and he decided quickly that it would be for the best to keep it that way, at least for now.
He hadn’t noticed the hand on his until he suddenly felt the coolness of its absence as Avery turned to find him something to drink. He heard footsteps, the tap running in the kitchen next door, footsteps again. “Here”, a voice just as soft as he’d subconsciously expected, a cool glass against his lips. Derek emptied it quickly, and he didn’t even have to say anything for Avery to run off again to refill it. He couldn't quite suppress his smile at that. Yeah, somehow it really fit that he would take care of a Minecraft garden for hours on end.
After the second glass, Derek felt kind of guilty. He tried to hold Avery back from refilling it yet again, but all he got out of it was the back of a hand against his forehead and a concerned murmur of “I don’t think you’re burning up, but you do look pale. You should probably eat something as well. I’ll go see if there’s anything in your fridge, okay? You just stay here.”
And, that was… That was nice. Derek couldn’t possibly say no to him when he spoke like that. So he nodded, wincing at the stiffness of his neck. He’d been sitting in this chair for way too long.
It took longer for Avery to return this time, but once Derek emptied the third glass, much slower now that he didn’t feel like he’d dehydrate any time soon, a slice of buttered bread was held up to his lips. Just bread and butter, nothing more, and yet eating something had never felt that nice before.
“Thanks”, he whispered once he was done. There was still an unhealthy rasp to his voice, but at least it didn’t hurt anymore.
“No problem.” A small pause, then: “is something wrong with your eyes?”
He couldn’t help but smile in response to the genuine concern in the other’s voice, “just a bit bright. Makes the headache worse.”
“Ah.”
There was a pat to his shoulder as Avery took a step away from him, just far enough away to turn off the computer screen, “better?”
He blinked open his eyes for just a moment, and although his head still hurt like hell, it was much better now that the only light came from the hallway behind him, “yeah. Thanks. Again.”
“No problem. Again.” Avery turned towards him then, leaning with his hips against the desk behind him, and this time, Derek smiled at him just because he wanted to.
He had to hold back quite a few more “thank you”s after that. For helping him get up, for using his phone’s flashlight rather than the overhead light of his bedroom, for offering a shoulder to lean on when his legs shook under him. He meant all of them, yeah, but Avery had started scowling at him after the tenth time or so. So he replaced them with smiles, at least until the corners of his mouth started aching from it. Then he just looked at him and hoped that the message was clear enough. Avery’s eye-rolling each time told him that, yep, goal achieved.
Avery brought him to his bed, and he was out as soon as his head hit his pillow.
Derek woke up once that night, sweaty and out of breath, with a pulse as though he’d just ran a marathon. The remains of his nightmare clung to the edges of his consciousness, but then he noticed Avery sitting next to him, a steadying presence even as he did nothing but touch his shoulder. Derek breathed, long and deep, then nodded.
Avery didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. Derek could easily imagine his “I’m here” after how often he’d already said it today. And now that he was physically next to him, there was no reason not to trust that he’d still be here tomorrow. And, perhaps if he was lucky, also on the day after tomorrow. And the day after that. And so on.
Falling asleep again was easy then. Although this time, it took him just long enough to feel the mattress dip down with another weight next to his. Good for him. It was already bad enough that Derek felt sore all over from being trapped in an uncomfortable position for too long.
Avery was still there the next morning, sleeping comfortably, and in that moment of bleary-eyed awakening, Derek knew that he could take this as a good sign for the new year.