Chapter Text

Avery’s POV

Flowers. They’re everywhere. Blue, yellow, red, gold. They burn behind my eyelids every single time I close them. I can still hear them blowing in the wind. But as I reach out to touch his hand, everything just goes black.

"AVERY!"

My eyes dragged open. No jolt. No sudden panic. Just the heavy, miserable return of consciousness. Slept in again. Of course I did. That is all my body can manage now. Sleep, wake, repeat. My head throbbed with a dull, hollow ache. It felt too heavy for my neck, yet completely empty inside. My gelatinous green skin felt thick, cold, and entirely numb.

I forced myself up. It wasn’t a movement; it was a negotiation with my own weight. Moving toward the door felt like wading through freezing, waist-deep mud. I pulled it open. Great. The village elder. Exactly the drain on my remaining battery that I didn't need.

"Do... you need something?" I muttered.

The words fell out of my mouth like lead weights. I couldn’t even find the spinal strength to stand up straight.

“Yes, yes! There is something urgent! Come quickly!” The Elder barked, panicked in a way that felt exhausting to watch.

“I’ll be right out… just let me get dressed,” I sighed, staring down at myself. My slime was dull, hanging loosely under baggy shorts and a stained shirt. I couldn't remember the last time I had the energy to wash them. Everything required effort I simply didn't possess.

As I pulled the fabric over my heavy limbs, the thoughts drifted back to four months ago. Derek. He was just… gone. Dead? Captured? I didn't know. The King, the last stance , the chaos, it all felt like a movie I watched a lifetime ago. I couldn't even summon the energy to feel angry at the King anymore. I was just empty.

Derek was my only friend. The only person who looked at a green puddle of a guy and saw someone worth helping. When he pushed me off, he took the last bit of my momentum with him. Without him, there was no point. I was just moving because my heart refused to stop beating.

Lost in the fog, I blinked, realized I had already opened the door, and stepped outside. My mind couldn't even hold onto its own misery for too long before short-circuiting.

It was sickeningly beautiful. Birds singing. Flowers are blooming. Spring. The world was moving on, vibrant and alive, completely indifferent to the fact that I was dragging a corpse of a soul through it. The sunlight hit my face. It felt warm. My head still really hurts.

As I closed my eyes against the glare, the flowers flooded back. And with them came Derek. I saw him perfectly. That polished golden armor, the crimson cape catching the light, and the golden helmet that always cast a shadow over his amber eyes. He looked like a hero. I looked like a complete mess.

Thud.

My shoulder bounced off a wall of rusted iron. I hadn't even noticed I was walking blindly. I looked up and saw the Iron Golem.

“H-hey… um… big guy. Umm…..”

The giant always intimidated me. He loomed too large, moved too loudly, and required too much effort to look up at. But beneath the creaking metal, he had a soft heart. Slowly, his massive iron fingers extended, holding out a single, vibrant red poppy. I never knew what he meant by it. Was it a greeting? A symbol of mourning? I didn't have the brainpower to figure it out. I just took the flower, let my hand drop to my side, and kept dragging my feet toward the town square...

The Village Elder was waiting by the stone well, practically vibrating with anxiety.

“Avery, my boy… you… you need to see this.”

He held out a heavy iron compass. I stared at the needle. It wasn't spinning toward the center of the world like a normal lodestone. It was locked, pointing rigidly toward the southeast.

“Oh…?” My voice was a flat rasp. “Do you want me to check it out?”

“Yes! It fell straight from the sky, right out of the sun! And look, it has this code etched into the back.”

He turned it over. Scratched roughly into the metal were the letters: Dyhub.. frph ilqg ph.

“Huh… a cipher, no doubt,” I murmured.

Every instinct in my body screamed at me to drop the compass, walk back to my hut, and pull the blankets over my head. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to walk southeast. I didn't want to solve a puzzle. But the Elder was looking at me with those pathetic, pleading eyes. I couldn't really deny him. I didn't even have the energy to argue.

“I’ll go check it out,” I lied to myself, just wanting the conversation to end.

dragged my feet back to the hut. The air felt heavier now, thick and unbreathable, as if the sky itself was trying to push me into the dirt. But what was done was done. I couldn't go back on my word. I didn't have the energy to deal with the guilt if I stayed.

I grabbed my canvas bag. Every item I dropped inside felt twice its actual weight. Food. Some blank notes. A rusty sword and a wooden shield I hoped I wouldn't have to lift. My trusty fishing rod, the only thing that didn't feel like a chore. Finally, I stuffed my sleeping bag into the top, swung the strap over my shoulder, and headed out the door.

I glanced down at the compass. The needle remained locked, pointing unyieldingly southeast. Taking a slow breath, I stepped past the village boundary and into the unknown.

The woods were suffocatingly bright, yet damp and wrapped in a thick, clinging mist. A sharp chill hung in the air, biting at my skin. As my feet mindlessly followed the needle, I forced my sluggish brain to stare at the scratched letters on the back of the casing.

Dyhub.. frph ilqg ph.

“...Ugh… I hate puzzles…” I groaned into the empty forest. “Why does everything in my life have to do with puzzles?”

I tried shifting the letters forward. I tried reversing them. I tried matching them to landmarks. Nothing worked. My brain felt like cold porridge; it couldn't hold onto the patterns long enough to make sense of them. The fog in my head was worse than the fog in the trees.

I was so entirely engrossed in the frustration of the metal casing that the ground simply vanished beneath my next step.

My foot met empty air. A massive, jagged ravine yawned open right under my toes. For a terrifying fraction of a second, my center of gravity tipped forward over the edge. Instinct took over. My body flailed, my heels dug into the wet mud, and I threw my weight violently backward.

I hit the damp earth hard, my breath knocking clear out of my lungs.

“DAMNIT…” I gasped, staring up at the misty canopy, my heart hammering against my ribs for the first time in months.

“WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THIS!!!?”

The scream tore out of my throat, raw and agonizing, echoing hollowly down into the dark abyss of the ravine. The dam broke. Every single drop of grief, exhaustion, and terror that I had bottled up for four months came rushing out at once. I collapsed into the damp moss, trembling, as heavy tears finally spilled over.

“...Please… I need someone.. Anyone…” I choked out, my voice cracking into a pathetic whisper.

I curled into a ball on the cold dirt, clutching my knees to my chest.

“Derek… please give me an answer… wherever you are… please…” My body heaved with quiet sobs. “I need… more of your guidance… I can’t keep moving forward.. Not without you… I didn’t… know you for very long…”

The words tasted bitter. We hadn't known each other a lifetime, but he was the only one who mattered. The forest offered no answer. Only the dripping of wet leaves and the distant, mocking whistle of the wind.

Eventually, the tears ran dry, leaving my eyes burning and my chest hollow. The sky was darkening, bleeding into a bruised purple. The chill in the air was sharpening.

I should… start setting up camp for the night…

I stared blankly at the dirt. If only I could… be with Derek…

He saved me from the King. The cosmic horror of it all flooded back, making my stomach turn. The… King in Yellow… That… bastard… 

The King in Yellow is the sole reason why I don’t have anyone left. Every bit of peace I had was ripped away by that cosmic horror, leaving me with nothing but a hollow chest and an endless, exhausting road.

I kept cursing the bastard's name under my breath as I struggled to spark a small fire for the night. The flickering orange flame was the only source of warmth in this entire cold, damp forest, a tiny oasis against the creeping mist. But even comfort is a danger to something like me. I carefully backed away from the radiating heat, settling into the damp shadows. 

Slimes can melt from too much heat, losing their cohesion entirely. Conversely, we can become dangerously liquefied from too much water. If I lose my consistency, I lose my mind and my life, dissolving into a mindless puddle. Us slimes can actually die from that. I always have to play this agonizing balancing act. Staying out of the pouring rain, avoiding the harsh sun, and keeping a strict distance from the very fire kept me alive.

I skewered some potatoes and a piece of steak, holding them just close enough to the embers to cook. The rich smell of charred meat and hot starch filled the air. Yum… great. Eating gave my sluggish body a tiny, much-needed spark of life. It was the first real substance I'd had all day, warming me from the inside out.

Sitting back on my bedroll, I pulled out my damp notebook to map out what I needed to do next. But I couldn’t help it—my eyes drifted right back to the scratches on the iron casing of the compass. The mystery was a weight on my mind. I had to try decoding the cipher once more, if only to prove to myself that I was still capable of thinking.

I wrote out the letters and shifted them once. Bwfsz.. dpnf gjoe nf. Still gibberish. My throbbed with a dull ache.

I sighed, rubbing my gelatinous temples, and shifted them a second time. Cxgta.. eqog hkpf og. Still complete nonsense. I almost threw the notebook into the dirt in frustration.

I forced myself to calm down, taking a deep, shaky breath, and shifted the letters once more—a third time. My eyes widened. The breath caught entirely in my throat, and the dull ache in my head vanished, replaced by an electric jolt of pure adrenaline.

Avery… Come find me.