Chapter Text
“Avery, what's in your inventory?”
Suddenly he woke up back in bed, not at the gate this time. Avery would go running back to the mine, ‘come on Avery! He needs you to move!’ He thought to himself running as fast as he could, he could feel his lungs burning as he ran. His body wanted him to slow down but he had no time to do that. He needed to save D3rlord from the king… no he refused to recognize that thing as a king…
He finally saw the mine in the distance and quickly he turned into it and sprinted down the stairs, he made it down half way before he slipped and fell down the stairs and hit the ground hard.
Everything stinged and burned but he quickly pulled himself up off the floor and would realize the stone had repatched itself. He had no tools, but that wasn’t gonna stop him from getting to D3rlord… He started to hit the stone with his first, his skin would slightly slide against the stone as he was partly slime, but he kept hitting and hitting it trying to break through. But, when he broke through to where the cave should be… there was nothing… he try breaking further but there was still nothing… Avery’s body finally was catching up to his brain as his knees suddenly grew too weak to stand and his body would start to shake from pain as his knuckles were bleeding. Avery couldn’t hear anything but his heart pounding in his ear.
It was all suddenly too much and Avery broke, he started to cry or well he realized he had been crying as everything became blurry all he could think about was D3rlord… No, all he could think about was Derek,,, How Derek gave himself for Avery, his heart felt so heavy and he hurt so much, he had so badly wished to have saved Derek at least once…
Guilt consumed Avery as he laid there on the cold stone floor, his thoughts making his head spin with ‘what if’ and ‘should haves’ but all those thoughts were too late. ‘Why did you have to be so selfless Derek?...’ Avery thought to himself as he kept crying for the friend he lost, the friend he had only just gotten the real name of, the friend he didn’t even know the face of. Avery had known so little of Derek but he meant so much to Avery.
After a while Avery pulled himself up into a sitting position and he saw it, the chest. The chest that started this journey to find a friend who so badly wanted to protect him.
He slowly gets up and would go over to the chest to look in it once more where the book Derek had left Avery had once laid. He heaved the chest open and looked inside, among the mined materials there sat a folded piece of paper, he slowly picked it up and opened it.
It was a letter from Derek… A final goodbye to his friend. Avery would hold that letter to his chest and let out this sick cry of pain and sadness he felt more tears roll down his face.
It would be a while till Avery would pull himself back together, enough to get him back onto his feet and enough to get him out of those cursed mines. As he reached the top of the stairs he saw it was raining. It was almost as if nature was also grieving the loss in life with Avery. It had been. Avery would put Derek’s letter inside his Hawaiian shirt so as not to let the rain take the last thing he had from Derek.
Avery would make the somber slow walk from the mines to his house. It would take him an hour as he had no hurry to him and it was already difficult to find strength in his legs to keep moving and not let them buckle.
Once he got back Avery would slowly make his way inside. He didn’t care for the mess he made as he walked in with his muddy shoes on. He just kicked them off and would place the letter on his dining table. He goes to his bathroom and strips down to nothing and just falls into the shower and turns it on. Cold water would hit Avery, he shiver but then relaxed as he felt the water warm up against his skin, he then just melts onto the floor of his shower he just sits on the floor and lets the water hit him washing the dirty, grim, sweat, and blood all just wash off him. His knuckles would hurt from them being basically ripped open wounds. ‘Probably gonna scar…’ he thought as he just stayed there. He stayed there for hours slowly washing himself off, when he finally pulled himself up and out of the shower he was dizzy. He was barely able to catch himself on the wall. The crying, the bleeding, and the steam from the hot water probably made him light headed. He grabs himself a towel and dries himself off before wrapping it around himself, he makes his way out of the bathroom and goes and gets pj pants on with a hoodie. He then would grab what little medical stuff he had and disinfect his hands and wrap them the best he could, which wasn’t that great. ’I really am useless…’ he thinks his mind then drifts back to Derek. Thoughts would then start to consume him ‘what honestly would have I even done against that thing…I was useless… All I had done was get in the way and couldn’t help or save Derek…” He felt like he was gonna cry again but he didn’t feel he had anything left in him to even cry.
He lay his head on the table and looked over at the folded letter that laid there. He would lift his head and re-read it, over and over again and again. The words at the end would replay in his head over and over as he read it “Whatever you do at the crossroads. Keep going forward.” Avery would sit with these words and just think about it, but honestly he wasn’t thinking much as his stomach growled loudly he was starving but he also felt so numb and so tired. He slowly got up and went to his kitchen space and looked at what he had to snack on. He didn’t want much, he felt if he ate too much he just throw it all up, he didn’t want that. He would make himself a snack.
On the other hand in a dark void there on his knees was Derek, He held his head in pain, he screamed so much from it that he thought his vocal cords would give out on him. His mind felt it wanted to blow up from the sheer pain of all this knowledge. He thought he would have been dead by now. Why wasn’t he dead? He soon heard a laugh, his head would be tilted up to look at the King, why wasn’t he gone?
“Oh look how far you have fallen little knight, I guess taking me on has been even a challenge you can’t handle. Stuck here in the same void I am forever trapped in. I hope you think your sacrifice was worth this forever torment…” He said to him, he smiled as he let go of the knight letting them fall further into the void and torment of infinite knowledge.
Derek as he fell deeper into the dark void with his mind so overwhelm, the only thoughts he could string together was of Avery and his hope that Avery was okay, he didn’t care that is mind felt like it was gonna blow up or that his body felt so ice cold all that mattered to him was the boy he wanted to protect… He knew Avery was gonna do great things even if he wasn’t there to see it. He closed his eyes as he fell deeper into this sea of nothing.