Chapter Text
Step.
(If he takes another step, the subtle vibration as his foot impacts the ground will send small rocks clattering down from a cavern ceiling far below. One of these rocks will split on a stalagmite, and a piece of that rock will fall into an underground lake, where—)
Step.
(If he steps again, a different vibration will cause a single drop of water to fall earlier than anticipated. It will splash into an underground river, and—)
Step.
(Another step, and the pebbles locking a mound of gravel in place will give way, sending little pieces of grit and sand on top of a nest of silverfish, which—)
Step.
(—and the entrances of tunnels will seal, until there is only one path—)
“Stop,” he croaks out, knowing it is useless, knowing that the being watching him is refusing to interfere on purpose. “I—I can’t—”
A breath, and his world trembles. Another, and his vision swims with flashes of scenes that aren’t happening and visions tainted in yellow. A pained gasp, and the wind echoes through the chambers, lifting a distant butterfly’s wings—
He claws at rubble and stone, hands feral in their movements. Humans aren’t meant to be able to break rock bare-handed, but he finds himself doing it anyway, ripping at it until the stone wears right through his gauntlets, until his fingers are raw and bloody.
(Is he still human, after what he saw? Is it human to know everything about everything?)
He blinks, and thousands of timelines coalesce and blur in a second. Even more unravel completely into impossibility. He forces the shattered remnants of his mind to focus, and just briefly, he sees himself in a distant future, leading a player—
(Avery. Slime hybrid. Predominantly a Skywars player, but sometimes enjoys—)
—to the yellow doors. Both of them are facing away from his present self, but he knows he is speaking, even if he can’t hear the words. Avery smiles, steps towards the doors, and—
Stop! He stretches forward, desperately trying to pull back a future that isn’t real, won’t be real—and his hand slams against a chest. His chest of ores.
(One day, Avery will discover this world and this mine. He will be confused as to what this place is, and he will explore the tunnels. D3rLord3 will find him, and—)
He yanks the book and quill from his inventory, stabbing the feather into the ink sac and scrawling out his message.
Whatever you do at the crossroads, don’t turn left.
His hand moves only partially of his own accord, scratching out words in such a flurry that he can barely register them himself. He writes until his hand suddenly cramps—which shouldn’t happen, because he’s running on adrenaline, which numbs pain and dulls sensation, and his heart is still pounding out of his chest, which should be providing plenty of oxygen-rich blood to his muscles, preventing his muscles from tiring early—
Footsteps echo behind him. A breeze from nowhere whooshes gently past his ear. Feathers brush against his face. Phantom fingers dig into his shoulder.
Rvn Avery, it’s here.
He slams the book into the chest right as his body seizes. His mind screams, desperately, futilely, move, move, move—
But he can’t.
He feels the presence loom. In his peripheral vision, he sees rivulets of yellow trickling in, the walls no longer able to hold back a ceaseless flood. He keeps his eyes on a single droplet of yellow, even as the others coalesce into an endlessly shifting form, even as the King finally makes Its presence known. At least if he throws all his focus onto maintaining that single droplet in his view, the clamouring of knowledge in his mind is muffled.
He shudders, not of his own volition. His line of sight breaks.
(Electrons emitted by nuclear fuel rods will often exceed the local speed of light in water. These electrons must therefore slow down, which requires them to radiate away energy. The wave equations describing this phenomena are similar to those describing supersonic objects traveling through a media; just as wavefronts collect and cause a "sonic boom", electrons cause a "photonic boom" of light. In the case of electrons and light, the absence of any "carrier" of the electromagnetic field means that the electron itself interacts with the field, whose local speed of light is lower than the electrons' velocity. As a result, only charged particles can radiate away their energy through this mechanism—)
He collapses. His eyes squeeze shut, mouth opening in a scream—is he screaming?
(He is not. There is no sound except for a pained, raspy cry, and his bloodied nails scratching against stone.)
He thinks his head is cracking open. He thinks it might already have. The King does not need to speak to exert Its influence, but he can hear the echo anyway, the words branded into his mind.
(My dear knight.)
“Get…out of my head,” he manages, pushing himself up on trembling arms, vision blurring through the pain. “I’m—I’m not…doing…anything for you.”
Amusement, he senses. Intrigue. He sees the mirage of a clawed hand reach for him—don’t look at the King, don’t look don’t look—
His head is tilted up, ever so slightly. He keeps his eyes shut, even as information in the darkness haunts his mind.
(The continuum hypothesis states that there is no set whose cardinality, or size, is strictly between that of the integers and the real numbers. In other words, in the realm of infinity, a set is either countable, where every member of the set can theoretically be identified and labeled, or uncountable. There is nothing in between. An element can either be identified or not, so—)
(—where do you think your knowledge lies?)
“In between,” he wheezes, because even as he rebels against a choice, his mind is already providing an answer. “The continuum hypothesis is independent of the ZF axioms, and it can’t be proven true nor false.”
Delight. Approval. And perhaps most unsettling of all, adoration. (You understand.)
“Not like I have a choice.”
(The axiom of choice forms the basis—)
(You have seen the universe and lived to speak its tale.)
“I didn’t want to.”
(But it was fated to be. In every world, every story, you and I were destined to meet.)
Its laughter sounds like little bells, bouncing off the walls of the cave—faint, echoing, just enough to remind him that he isn’t the one in control here.
(Is it not poetic?)
“Is that all this is to you?” he snarls out, wrenching himself back. He wants to glare, but he knows better than to look at the King directly. Instead, he keeps his eyes on the ground. “A story? An act? A game?”
The King’s laughter comes as windchimes this time, tinkling lightly in a breeze. In a rustle of movement, it is standing in front of him, and he flinches a beat too late, as faint trails of yellow wraps faintly around his wrist in a mimicry of a grab. It tugs lightly, the intention obvious.
He yanks it free. “And if I don’t want to come?”
The temperature in the cave drops. The pressure of the air increases, and somehow he can feel it, even though air shouldn’t be able to pressurize this much so suddenly—the highest ever recorded barometric pressure was 1,084.8 hectopascals in—and it almost feels as if there’s a hand in his chest, curling around his lungs, squeezing ever so gently. A reminder. A warning.
(The stage has been set. It would be quite rude to refuse the role.)
“I never signed up for it in the first place!”
The King sighs with a whoosh of wind. As if D3rLord3 is a particularly difficult child. As if Its presence in itself isn’t throwing his entire body into panicked adrenaline, trying to find an escape where there is none.
A hand—is it a hand? Clawed maybe-fingers that twist and bend unnaturally, that make his head spin if he stares too hard. It peels the remnants of his gauntlets off his bruised, bloody hands, flicking broken scraps of metal into nonexistence. Yellow weaves over red injuries, skin knitting itself back together in lines of gold.
(Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. It treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to hide—)
“I’m not your toy,” he bites out. If that’s the fate that awaits him, he’d be better off dead.
…Which is a thought.
He has no weapons or tools anymore, no sword and no pickaxe. But he has his hands and raw strength. The King doesn’t react as he slowly removes his hand from Its grasp, although he can sense…the unnerving amusement still lingering. Tentatively, his fingers curl into a fist. His hand trembles, ever so slightly, but foolish determination got him this far—it can carry him to his end—
He watches, almost in slow motion, as his own fist swings towards his head. He can see every healed line of yellow, stark against his skin. He can see each sharp edge of his knucklebones—solid, firm, embracing.
He can see the way his arm bends unnaturally for a split second, before lancing pain arches through the limb, his fist dropping before it makes contact.
(That action is ill-advised.)
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” he growls, lifting his other hand. “I—”
He’s forced to bite back a cry as his other arm breaks just as quickly.
(I am not telling you what to do.) The King hasn’t moved. (I am warning you. Death will not be your escape.)
“Oh yeah? Try me.”
The King wants him alive, for…some reason he doesn’t know. But he’s aware that if the King wanted him dead, he would already be gone. He’s not stupid enough to believe that he can overpower the embodiment of madness. There was a reason for the abandoned village, the book with the warning he ignored. The King could kill him at any time, but It hasn’t…yet.
At least, until It draws Its hand back and plunges it into his chest.
He screams. He thrashes. But the King’s hand is steady, distorting through bone and flesh, curling around his heart, each caress sending agony through his entire being. Another hand grabs his head, fingers phasing directly through his helmet, through his head, through his skull, and into his brain, abruptly ceasing his struggling, but not the pain. His mouth moves soundlessly against yellow robes, incoherent pleas for mercy, as he feels the hand in his chest suddenly squeeze and yank—
A new, strangled noise is forced out of his throat, body recoiling from the King just enough for his blurry vision to register his own heart, beating gently in the King’s palm, and he shouldn’t be breathing he shouldn’t be alive but somehow his lungs are gasping for breath and he tastes copper on his tongue and everything hurts and hurts and stop, please, stop stop STOP—
(Watch.) The King says, demands, and his eyes are helplessly forced up, watching his heart beat in the King’s hand. Claws dig into the pounding organ, and somehow he can feel it, even though it’s no longer in his chest, even though he shouldn’t be alive—
Kill me, he mouths silently, desperately. Just kill me.
(I told you. You cannot flee through death.)
The King crushes his heart.
Agony rips through him, fierce and blinding, collapsing onto the closest anchor—the King. It’s disgusting and repulsive, and he thinks he might be dry heaving—there must be blood, there must be so much blood everywhere, but all he sees is yellow. A hand strokes his back through his armor, horribly gentle, playing with the cape draped around his shoulders in a facsimile of comfort.
(We will have to do something with this.) It murmurs. (As beautiful as you are wreathed in yellow…red will do well to emphasize it.)
He thinks he might be sobbing—not from fear, but the sheer exertion of trying to scream. Every breath is a gasp for air, and every movement he makes sends shockwaves of excruciating pain through his entire body. His fists clench onto the King’s robes as feathers—wings?—wrap around him, shielding him from the cavern walls splattered in yellow. Hands steady his trembling, curling around the nape of his neck, pressing him close.
(That’s enough. I have no use for broken tools.)
「Aww. But I was having so much fun!」
「Fine. All for a good story, right?」
If he was more aware, he would protest, but relief overpowers it, as the pain slowly starts to ebb, receding like barbed wire being pulled out of his skin. He whimpers, but the King pulls him into Its arms and moves, whispers layering into white noise in his ears. They’re more gliding than walking, the only real indication of motion being a soft wind brushing past him. He tries to move, flee the grasp, but his body aches horribly the moment he even tries to twitch a finger. Everything is a blur of yellow.
Oblivion comes faster than he thinks.