avery hadn’t been doing too good after d3rlord’s death.
years had passed since then. back when he’d first opened that world of misery & potential, that world belonging to the King in yellow, back when he’d first met d3rlord, avery had still been a child. he’d been 15, with a promising future ahead of him; he’d been set to go to college that summer, for he was so bright & intelligent, despite his parents’ neglect of him. he was going to leave them behind & oversee a better future for himself without them.
yet, after the encounter with d3rlord, & ultimately after losing him, avery fell into a state of depression. he failed every test he took, couldn’t even write a full sentence nor paragraph for his college entry essays; he did end up getting in one college, however he soon dropped out almost immediately.
he didn’t care how his parents yelled at him, called him a complete failure through & through over & over again. all he could think about was d3rlord—how he’d failed to save him, how he’d failed the one person who had loved him, had taken true care of him.
he still remembered what had gone down that day. those hours he spent searching for d3rlord, hoping just to see the knight in his gleaming armour again, only for him to foolishly slip & fall off the edge of the platform just when d3rlord had given him that ring.
“you’d make a wonderful husband,” was the last thing his knight had said to him, handing him that ring—just before avery had foolishly slipped & fell of the edge, tumbling straight into the abyss.
he hadn’t even registered d3rlord’s hands shoving him in. he’d believed that it was by his own fault he’d lost d3rlord that day, slipping & falling, yet in his descent he did not lose that ring.
that ring. it was a brilliant blue, quite the stark opposite of the shade of yellow the King was often depicted in. d3rlord had claimed that that ring would protect avery from something one day, & avery still had yet to figure it out.
now, avery lived a bleak life.
due to his dramatic fall in potential, he’d wound up getting the most superficial job he could grab—a crappy accountant’s position. he worked in a tiny cubicle among hundreds of other people also packed in tiny cubicles, doing menial & mind-numbing work for a company he didn’t even bother to remember the name of.
he was 25 now, a good 10 years having passed since the incident with d3rlord. he still couldn’t get the man out of his mind. this was the man, the knight in shining armour, who’d saved avery in the long run, after all—despite avery’s potential in life back when he was 15, he’d been deeply unhappy due to his parents’ lack of love for him, & was on the verge of ending his life altogether. in meeting d3rlord, he’d been given the slightest shroud of hope that love was still available for someone like him.
then, he’d gone & lost d3rlord all over again, losing the only person on planet earth that had made him felt wanted & cared for—but even so, avery didn’t give up after losing d3rlord.
no.
he knew d3rlord. he knew that d3rlord wouldn’t want that for avery, that he’d want avery to live on, long & prosper. avery managed to scrape by in life clinging onto that one belief, & had ultimately ended up here.
to this day, avery didn’t know many things—he didn’t know how his life would have wound up if he’d never met d3rlord, didn’t know what d3rlord meant by that ring protecting him from “something”, didn’t know if this was the future d3rlord had planned out & oversaw for avery. he didn’t know.
during another bleak day at his workplace, avery was heading to the small cafe in the back of his work floor. he passed by one of the new workers’ cubicles, persons he hadn’t been introduced to since the bosses couldn’t care less about workplace friendships & such.
as he was passing by one cubicle, he spied the new employee there reading a book. his eye quickly caught the word carcosa printed within the page, & there was only one book which mentioned such a place…
“the King in yellow?” he asks numbly, stopping by the cubicle for just a second.