Chapter Text
It listens, it watches,…it knows everything, even your deepest secrets.
All he could do was run. Run away from it.
He bolted to the direction of the right part of the crossroads. He sprinted and jumped over the many large rocks that littered the floor. Soon he tripped on one of the bigger rocks creating a gash on his leg. He groaned as he hurriedly pushed himself back up and continued running ignoring the lingering pain in his leg. As he managed to get to the end of right side of the crossroads he was met with a dead end. He desperately punched at the stone with his fists, slowly but surely mining his way out of the forsakened place with his hands. He took the ink sac from his inventory and shoved it into his mouth to bite down on as the stone bit away at his knuckles making them spew a dark crimson. Each punch left a dark red streak along the walls but he continued. Punch after punch he slowly but surely made his way back to the mine that started it all.
Eventually he made it out. He spat out the ink sac and panted from rapidly punching at the hard stone looking down at his knuckles. They were horribly mangled from punching at the stone, but that didn't concern him at this moment. Then he glanced down at the state of his leg, it was oozing with blood, he grimaced at the sight but ignored it. He had significantly more important things to do at this moment than care for the current state of his leg. Quickly he blocked off the way he came, he hurriedly searched through his pockets finally finding a book he’s been holding onto for a while that somehow he hasn’t ditched just yet.
He began smudging the blood from his right knuckle into words with his left hand, not caring if he misspelled anything, all he cared that the message came across clearly. “Don’t turn left at the crossroads, don’t turn left at the crossroads, don’t turn left at the crossroads,” he continually mumbled to himself as he wrote it down repeatedly in the book, the blood dripping slowly down the pages almost poetically. He looked at the book once more before finally adding, “Run Avery it’s here.” He had encoded it the last bit in hopes that Avery would understand it and the thing wouldn’t. Though he doubted that Avery would understand the complexity of it.
He closed the book, shoving it into the chest unceremoniously. Then he closed his eye for a moment, his head hurt terribly like tons of bricks had been smashed into and then were shoved inside. He opened his eye again, the world was blurry from the migraine that had formed as he began to exit the mine. His blood seeped down from his leg creating a small trail behind him. He swayed as he began to run far far away, hoping that he could get away from it.
It was useless.
Each step sent a sharp pain through his leg due to his negligence of the injured limb. Each step left a trail of blood on the grassy land. Soon he collapsed onto his knees panting, his whole body burning with pain. He didn’t make it far from the place. He could still see it if he turned his head around to face it. But he didn’t want to look back at the place that led him to it.
His efforts on escaping were futile, but what did he expect? It will always be futile, it follows, it will follow him till the end of time, he can’t escape, he knows this. His head continued to hurt as if it was going to explode. All he hoped was that innocent Avery would find the book and heed his warnings. Even better, that he doesn’t find it at all and he stays naïve to it all and never falls victim to the damned crossroads. He slowly slid down to lie down on the cool grassy hillside, he closed his eye once again, this time falling unconscious from exhaustion and blood loss. But little did he know something or someone had already found him.
←☆→
Avery had found the mine a couple hours after Derlorde had been there, of course he did, who wouldn’t? It was in the slap bang middle of the forest he was chopping down for his house renovations. At most he was surprised he didn’t find it sooner. He looked around at the slightly messy area. Dirt blocks were placed along a wall messily like someone was in a rush to close something off.
Then he looked at the chest in the middle of the room, he walked over, oblivious to the blood stains that covered it. He saw a bunch of ores, absolute win for him! Free stuff! Then he noticed the book amongst the ores, being the curious slime he took it out to read it. He opened the book, his face contorting to one of slight discomfort as he saw the contents were written in somewhat fresh blood. The writing was smudged all along the pages. The handwriting was almost shaky as well as rushed. Avery looked down at the pages confused, for a bunch of pages it said something about ‘don’t turn left at the crossroads’ or whatever. It didn’t make sense really in the first place to the slime.
He put the book down before shoving some of the ores into his pockets because, who didn’t want free diamonds? After every valuable was shoved into his short pockets he noticed the trail of crimson that led out of the mine that he had somehow missed when entering. God he was so oblivious… He picked up the book he had left on the floor a couple minutes ago, just in case he might need it.
The curious slime followed the trail of nearly dry blood. It had led him outside to some grassy hills. Strange. Then the blood stopped, Avery was about to turn back to continue his work deforesting the forest. When he noticed something shining in the light. On inspection further he found the source of the bloody trail, a knight dressed in gold armor unconscious bleeding on the side of the hill. Avery gawped at the sight, he was sure he was the only person that lived here for miles, even if someone else did live here he was definitely sure that a knight wouldn’t be living around in this area. As soon as he snapped out of his shock he realized that the other man was probably bleeding out on the hill right then and there.
He removed the armor that adorned the knight's left leg then he took off his Hawaiian shirt tying it around his leg. He grimaced at the sight, it already looked infected though, Avery didn’t know how long this guy had been lying there on the bank for. He just assumed not long enough to die from his wounds being infected or blood loss. As soon he finished tying it tightly to attempt to stop it from bleeding he contemplated what to do with the man. He couldn’t just leave him here, he’d probably die of infection or something like that. So the slime decided to take the knight to where he lived.
Avery attempted to pick up the man failing miserably due to the armor's weight, he didn’t want to be rude and remove it either so the slime resorted to dragging the unconscious man to where his house was. Which had been unfortunately very far away. Though once they got to the house Avery dumped the man onto the floor before going to craft a spare bed for him and to collect some actual medical supplies. Once again he dragged the man over to his storage room, the only room with space to put a bed. Avery placed down the bed and hauled the man onto before beginning to tend to his wounds.
The injuries on his knuckles were easy to bandage, though they looked pretty screwed up he just threw some disinfectant and put some bandages boom, fixed. The one on the knight's leg was much more tricky. Instead of being careless the slime had to actually pay attention to what he was doing. Making sure the disinfectant didn’t go too deep within the wound while still cleaning it decently, the slime wrapped the bandages around the knight's leg carefully but tightly. It was good he had experience treating wounds from his many skyblock tournaments. Once finished he stared at the man. He didn’t exactly know why he helped, he just felt compelled to. The slime hoped that the man would wake up soon and that he could get an explanation sooner rather then later. But right now he’ll have to wait.