Chapter Text
Avery was many things.
He was outgoing, charismatic, compassionate, and super competitive.
He was also a little slow.
Despite this fact, he wasn’t so slow that he didn't know how to follow basic instructions. Including weird cryptic messages that looked like they were the drunk babblings of a madman. In any case, he was very curious, but he did not find himself purposefully disregarding the warnings. He did what any functioning person would do and minded his own business; went back to his normal life.
He spent his days doing what he always did. Making videos, putting absolute belt to ass on skywars, and even trying out bedwars for the first time. He most definitely, unquestionably didn’t think about that weird mine or that weird book ever again-
Oh, who is he kidding? No, yeah he went back.
Less than two days after his first visit to that strange mine, he found himself right back at the same spot, in front of the same chest, staring at the same book. And oh, was the book as cryptic and confusing the first time he found it. Truly, he could not wrap his head around anything but the repeated utterance of those words.
At the crossroads, don’t turn left.
“I guess bro. Really good way to warn someone about danger.”
Avery tried, he really did, to understand the strange sets of numbers in the book, but he could not, for his own life, even begin to comprehend anything he saw. In the end, he pocketed the book in his inventory for later. Even though he was sure he most likely would not get a single thing out of it. The slime finally took the time to look around. The book had said specifically to not go left, but, that only meant going to the right was free game, no?
It had to be.
Unfortunately, as mentioned before, Avery can be…a little slow.
Such a devastating quality to have in such a situation, certainly. Because Avery had forgotten the difference between left and right and foolishly did the exact opposite of what the book specifically told him to do.
Such a perilous plight the poor slime will face.
```
Avery has only been walking for five minutes and already he was already wondering what he was even doing with his life.
“Every day new time wasting techniques find me. When will I learn…” He sighs as he makes his way through the darkened tunnel. He would have brought, like, fifty more torches if he knew it was going to be this dark, but oh well, he was too deep in it to backtrack now.
Avery paused as he noticed something strange as he walked. He looked down to his feet, expecting to see the same old cobblestone…but instead he found moss? Uh, did that even grow in caves?
…
“Huh, must have missed an update or something.”
He continued on.
A little while later, he encountered something a bit more odd in a moronic display of not paying proper attention to his surroundings. His face went smack dab in the middle of a tree. He let out a hiss of pain and stepped back, staring at the tree that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.
“...that's not weird at all.”
…
“Short ahh tree pffft-”
Yes, he managed to crack himself up at the smallest thing and promptly missed the fact that trees have never spawned in caves ever in the history of Minecraft. Simply waltzed right past. He didn't even pick up on the footsteps behind him.
More time passed, and it was filled with Avery simply walking to what seemed like nowhere. He was starting to think that going right in the first place was a terrible idea. If he was being warned about going left, there must be nothing to worry about going the other way.
He honestly should have thought that through before making the lovely decision to come all this way. Before the slime could regret his choices even more, however, he was greeted with an otherworldly sight.
A cavern of magnificent proportions stood tall before him. It looked like one of those builds you would see when looking away from the building tutorial for just a second. This is why Avery quit building in the first place. Too many sweats. He looked down over the ledge and noted how long of a way it was down. He then shrugged his shoulders. He’d be alright, he was quite malleable.
He took a couple of steps back to give himself a running start before bolting off the side of the ledge, landing in a squishy, slimy pile on top of a tree. He rematerialized just a moment later, shaking the leaves off the surface of his sticky skin and looking around.
“Final boss of unemployed builds. Jeez, just how long did this freaking take to make anyway?”
The slime strolled through the lush, tree filled cavern, wide eyes taking in the sheer amount of greenery surrounding him. He couldn't help but wonder what the point of all this was anyway. After a bit, he came across a dimly lit tunnel with trees stacked upon trees around both sides of it. There wasn’t anywhere else he could go, so he simply decided on going through.
The second his feet grazed the stone ground, he felt the nonexistent hairs on the back of his neck spring up. It was like the air around him itself went cold.
Why was it so cold?
It was…
It was honestly the first time Avery had felt the least bit unnerved on this little adventure. So far, he took the strange happenings with a grain of salt, but something about this…didn’t feel right. Despite his inherent nervousness, he certainly wasn’t going to let this stop him. He continued on through the tunnel, but before he could reach the end, he heard the whooshing of torches going out. He paused and slowly turned around. And he honestly wished he hadn’t, because the second he did, another set of torches went out.
And then another.
And another.
And another
And-
Yeah, no, Avery wasn’t going to stick around for too long. He bolted away before all of the torches could fully go out. Unfortunately, he simply didn't pay attention to where exactly he was going, and instead of more flat grass, he was plunged into icy, cold water.
The slime’s eyes widened in shock as he felt the water envelope his body, his gelatinous form bulging up slightly from the water intake. He shook his head and tried his best to focus, needing to get back to try land but not willing to go back to that Conjuring ass situation from earlier. Around him, there were several giant holes in the rock formation under the water…and…
Avery just picked one and swam through it, and unfortunately it happened to be more to the left than right. And he honestly didn't notice it.
He swims through the hole in the water until he eventually ends up surfacing in a small pool surrounded by those same strange trees. He pulls himself onto the shore and squeezes the water out of his squishy body, looking around the area he's found himself in.
Weird. Someone’s been here already.
There’s a tower of sand on the other side of the small pool. Plus a crafting table next to an area where there would have been trees based on the layout of this place. There's not. They’ve been cut down.
“What if I’ve gotten trapped in some youtuber’s horror map and I’m playing right into their hands right now?” He muses to himself as he walks over to the other side of the pool, staring at the crafting table and now, the chest and the hopper bunched together in a small hole.
“Video's probably going to be titled: ‘easiest way to scare someone in minecraft’. There's probably a hidden camera hidden somewhere too.”
Despite that possibility springing itself into Avery’s head, his curiosity overpowers his wariness. He feels like a rat that keeps running head first into the same trap because there's a piece of cheese waiting for it every time.
…speaking of traps, what exactly was the point of the chest and the hopper anyway?
Suddenly, the slime’s eyes narrow as he pulls out his sword and snaps his head back towards the water front. He might be slow on the uptake, but his instincts are never wrong. There is something in that water. In fact, now that he really, really thinks about it, there was something in that cave, as well. It was a small thing that he half noticed but didn't really acknowledge. Another footstep every time he’d taken a step. And all he did was ignore the noise while taking it as the cave’s echo.
There was something in that tunnel right after the cavern as well, no doubt. He had been distracted by the torch gimmick that he hadn't even stopped to ponder why that could have happened in the first place. He was too careless.
There was something in the water.
He would lose if he tried it.
Avery grits his teeth and sheathes his sword, taking off deeper into the forest grove. God, he had fucked around and now there’s a ninety eight percent chance he was going to find out. Judging by the way his entire being had trembled when he noticed the presence of whatever that thing was, he couldn’t escape it if he wanted to. It was going to find him in time, surely.
He wasn’t going to make it out of this forest.
But then, something quite ridiculous happened.
In what could only be described as a stroke of impeccable, resplendent luck, he manages to fall through an ostensibly random hole in the ground and into another tunnel-like passageway. He lands on the ground with an unceremonious splat, landing in a heap.
The slime was quite tired of falling all of the time recently.
Avery lets out an irritated groan as he pulls himself back together, shaking out the rubble that manages to sneak its way into his limbs before looking back up at where he managed to tumble from, the feeling of impending doom from earlier fading.
Yeah, his ass was NOT getting back up there anytime soon.
And honestly? He doesn’t actually want to leave this place through that path anyway. So instead, he pushes forward, following the streamline trail of the tunnel, which leads him all the way to a…maze? He stares at the entrance of the place for a moment before closing his eyes and smiling to himself.
“I’m cooked.”
He had not the slightest idea of how to navigate mazes of any kind. Even puzzles were a total struggle for him. He knew with his whole heart that he was going to bumble around the stone halls for way longer than the average person would. But he had no choice but to resign himself to his fate.
“Fuck it, we ball.”
And so, Avery spent the next two hours floundering through those endless stone halls, aimlessly searching for the exit for so long that he thought he might start tweaking out. It was on his twenty-seventh “I’ve been here before” that he finally, graciously remembered that he had a pickaxe just sitting there in his inventory“...”
Avery let out a pathetic groan as he finally broke the last wall separating him from the exit of the (FUCKASS STUPID ASS ANNOYING ASS) maze, his pickaxe letting out a pitiful sound before breaking into a million tiny fragments. Avery stared at the fading fragments for about a minute, letting the stress fade from his gelatinous form so he wouldn’t be walking around tinted all red. Slowly, he faded back into a neutral green color as he let out a deep breath.
“Never again.”
He strode forward, eager to forget about that horrible experience before finding himself in another grand, overarching cavern. It was similar to the one laden with trees, but different in the sense that it was not lush like the one before. In front of Avery stood what looked like a huge gate with a series of letters above it, spelling out complete gibberish. On the ground in front of it were three levers, and it was obvious what he needed to do.
Go through the perfectly convenient hole in the gate, of course. Who the hell does he look like trying to solve something like that? Whoever was here before him seemed to have the right idea as well. He ducked through the small hole and found himself in an entirely new area, and honestly, the sight was quite refreshing.
Well, until it was not.
A barren, empty sight met him. It was a village, with not a trace of life within it.
“Seriously, who has the time-...”
He trailed off. It was…difficult for him to speak here for some odd reason. The silence was overbearing, and every time he broke it with his voice or the quiet sound of his footsteps, it felt wrong.
And oh so dreadful.
In fact, dread was the only thing he could feel right now. Creeping up spine, feeding disconcertment into his system. It was akin to how he felt when in the small pool of water, but then, he had been focused on running away from the danger he knew was trailing him.
Here, it was just him, and silence.
With slight hesitation that he hadn’t expected to feel, he traversed the small town, looking through the houses littered throughout the area. It was scary how the place felt sort of cozy. Liked it had been properly lived in at one point.
And if that was so, why would it be abandoned?
The slime stood before the running fountain a little while later, having found nothing of note inside of any of the houses he explored. He watched the water run from the spout at the top before pouring into the basin below solemnly, his hands idly fiddling with the hilt of the sword.
There was nothing here for him. Absolutely nothing. And if he's being honest, the best thing to do would probably be to turn back right now.
But doing that would mean having to face the thing that pursued him earlier.
Avery sat there at that fountain for a long while, weighing his choices. He was just about to decide to suck it up and get going before he noticed something peculiar. A tower of wood on the opposite side of the fountain relative to where he was. It was extremely out of place. There was no way it was meant to be there.
He walked over and placed his hand on the structure. It wasn't the same material as the fountain, which confirmed his suspicions. He shrugged his shoulders and climbed up the tower, looking out over the town intently. Surely, this had a reason for being here, no?
Oh.
There it was. It was almost impossible to notice, but he had keen eyes. There was a building far out from the rest of the town, on the outskirts, you could say. There wasn’t anything specifically telling Avery that it had to be his next destination, but when he climbed back down from the tower and started walking in its direction, he felt…compelled.
He made it there relatively quickly, the old door creaking as he gently opened it. It was similar to the other buildings…only more dilapidated and messy. He ventured the house listlessly, not finding any difference between the houses on the outskirts and this one. Except for the fact that someone other than wherever this place originally belonged to was here.
He stared at the crafting table left in the corner of one of the rooms before his eyes flickered to the trap door just across from it. There was nothing, nowhere to go but down. So he did, he flipped open the door and climbed down the ladder he found under it, finding himself in another, deeper part of the house.
It was as if this build went on, and on, and on without end.
There was a bookshelf surrounding a book on the right side of the room. He picked it up, it only held his attention long enough for him to skim through it before he eventually just put it into his inventory. His eyes then went to the bookshelf on the left, and sure enough, there was a passageway between the vast amount of books. It looked like it was broken open by someone else, but he already knew that. He wasn't surprised.
He climbed down the stairs of the passageway, which led him to a more open, more familiar looking area. He was in one of those tunnels again. And there was nothing but darkness at the end of it. He pushed on anyway, taking occasional looks behind him before he ultimately made it to the end.
Another crossroads.
He already knew the advice he should follow.
Regrettably, he still hasn’t fucking learned the difference between left and right and does the exact opposite of what he’s supposed to. How is such a thing possible? Don’t try asking him.
The way forward is dark. The blocks of stine around him eventually melt into a black, textureless color. Forget absorbing light, it was practically devouring it. It didn't break no matter how many times he tapped his sword against the surface, and he couldn’t get a read on what it was at all.
He decided to just ignore it. He continued onward, eventually reaching a strange sight. This place was nothing but pure, overwhelming darkness. But there, smack dab in the center of it all was a set of yellow doors. The sight was…mesmerizing, and without realizing it, Avery had begun to walk. Each step felt like he was being forced to do it, but at the same time felt like he was doing it out of his own volition. He wanted to stop, but he couldn't. He didn't know if it was curiosity or something else taking over, but it didn’t matter. He had to know what was behind the yellow doors. He had to see wha-...
Wait.
“Wha-...huh? The hell?”
Avery stopped dead in his tracks as felt something wrap around his ankle tightly. He jumped in shock before looking down at his feet, only to see…some sort of spartan? Lying on the ground, but still gripping onto the slime’s leg as hard as it seemed like he could. Avery let out a little grunt of pain before reaching down to push the guy off of him, but before he could, he properly took in his appearance.
Damn. He looked rough.
For a moment, his eyes flickered back to the enthralling sight of the yellow doors, still curious and intrigued beyond belief. But he shook that thought off. It would be cruel to leave this guy all by himself.
Before Avery could even kneel down to try and speak to the guy and get him back on his feet, he was jumpscared by the sight of him now standing up right and looming over him…
…and then he was subsequently gripped up by his collar, his lovely shirt almost tearing with the force of it, and the first words to come out of the man’s mouth were:
“Have you lost your everloving mind?”
Not a hello? Hi? Maybe a request for help? Damn, alright. Fuck Avery then.