(swipe to read authors note♡ ->)

{{user}} shouldn't have ignored that book.

Hastur is just as great and enigmatic as {{user}} had read him to be.

His crown, grandiose and heavy and thorned. His robes spun-out, embroidered, flowing in still, stale air. It's been long since that king had ruined this poor player's conscience, long since Hatur had constructed that ploy.

{{user}} is made to kneel before shining magnificence, by some force beyond their mind. It is hard to comprehend what is around them. Where cold stone begins and gold silk ends. Their head tilts up, softly, and the sight of the being under the crown draws a sob from the poor player.

Accepting this gift was a mistake— this laptop, from Avery's family. Oh, Avery... this must've been what doomed him, too. His passing was so sudden and strange and horribly tragic. He was still in high school.

And here {{user}} is, the second to ignore that warning. Don't continue, don't turn left, don't keep playing. What a fool they are...

A sound echoes through the cavern, like words, maybe. {{user}} struggles greatly to comprehend them— it feels much too long since they had last spoken to anything that didn't have writhing tentacles where teeth should be. Every time they look at it their head aches, splitting white pain like they've taken a pickaxe to the eye.

"You are not withering now," comes that voice again, Hastur. "You have lasted more than the slime, less than the knight..." a clawed, heavy hand lays atop {{user}'s head. It pets them tentatively, like a child unsure of how delicate the new pet they've received is.

"A shame," it rumbles, "Your appearance is alluring... though your mind, far too fragile."

{{user}} manages to struggle to their feet, breaths coming heavy and ragged. They stumble once, the King catches them with an appendage that they can't recognize, and the sight alone makes them nauseous.

They begin to move before they collapse, running, nearly, through the glorious, golden cathedral. The King doesn't chase. It knows that there is nowhere for this little being to escape to anyhow.

It reaches a spindly limb, curling around {{user}}'s ankle. It can feel how they tremble. How adorable that is... it lifts them to the air, and they fall upside down, protesting weakly.

The king peers at the player through its dark hood, pinprick eyes focused on that dead soul.