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He stands at the ready in the empty stone hall, gaze fixed straight ahead. His armor of gold weighs heavy on him, holding him strictly in place, keeping his vision limited to the barest slits.
He's been called, then. For a lesson, a lecture, a story, a gift. All kind words papering over the truth laying just under the surface.
(A correction. A reminder. Nothing quite so crude as punishment. But he is mortal, and there is so much for him to learn and understand.)
He blinks, rapidly. Shakes his head a tiny bit to clear it.
His King does not/cannot/will not deign to speak to him in words. Instead, it simply reaches into his mind, almost gentle, and ebon claws or deft tendrils pluck the thoughts he should have to the surface, pulled from the roaring storm held safely just beyond his limits.
He would have died, if not for the King's aid, his mind overwhelmed and burnt out. The reward for his choice to return to willing service is simple - the maelstrom of raw knowing is held at bay, kept to a controllable drip instead of a flood of brilliant gold.
The cost, of course, is the King's hand always in his thoughts, choosing what he will and will not know.
But it is a cost he always would have paid.
He feels something. An edge of laughter, taken from a woman in a park years ago. He is so kind to ensure that the audience is all caught up before the lesson begins.
The thought makes him frown. An audience?
Golden silk crosses his narrow range of vision. Gentle claws rest against his chin, unbearably cold. He tries to flinch, to pull away, but –
No. That isn't how this story goes. He knows what his place is, by this time. He holds himself still, even as nausea rises in the back of his throat.
(This story?)
The questions make those black claw tips press in closer, sharp enough that a drop of blood wells up.
Does he need the answer spelled out to him?
He's clever, isn't he?
Clever, puzzle solver, protagonist, hero. Always the first one to lead the way to the solution. Always the one to press on, regardless of dangers, of warnings, of every sign he's wrong.
(Hamartia. A fatal flaw, an inevitable downfall. A single error. A mistake.)
He does not need to be led to the lesson. He will walk himself there, and he will make that final turn.
And even dulled and stifled by the King’s presence, by the fear that glimpse of gold silk induces, he already is. The King in Yellow is a collection of short stories, taking terms and ideas from older stories still. There have been many takes on the central figure since then, ranging from the Cthulhu mythos to the SCP Foundation, a hundred authors all circling that dreadful golden core. Stories framed around plays, books, games, fiction within fiction.
An adaptation, a retelling–
A story.
Something in him goes cold and still.
Another laugh dragged to the surface, an audience jeering at a performer. He's so clever. So quick. So brilliant.
The way a hero should be.
“No,” he protests, aloud. Wanting to hear his own voice, to know himself. “I’m here, I'm–”
The pointed fingers dig in a little more, silencing him.
He is asked his name.
He goes still.
“...you… control what I know,” he says finally, lamely. “You could…”
But the King isn't, and he knows it.
d3rLord3. The name he had chosen for himself, in a game - or a noble title granted to him before he set out for his own world - or something to be made into a joke and then its source ignored - or - or - or - or. A hundred variants, but in the end, it is the only name that is his.
Because it is the name he wore when he saw the King.
There are a hundred stories written for him. In some, he logs off, and closes the laptop, and Avery follows the trail he left behind. In some, he escapes the mines bleeding and broken, and he is nursed back to health. In some, he stays in the King's halls until the end of his days. There are endings after endings after endings.
In one, unwritten, shining brighter than the others, where he was first found or sculpted or shown or designed–
Well. That is not for him to know, today.
What matters is not his name. What matters is not his self. What matters is not if he'll wake to a messy apartment with the rent coming due, or a rustic bed with a slime looking at him worriedly. What matters is not if he'll wake at all.
What matters is much more simple.
In every story, in every world, in every retelling, in every reality -
He will make his way to the doors, and he will see what is beyond them.
A tragic hero is written for their downfall. The error is embedded in them from the first word written on the page. They are an illustrative reminder, an example. They exist so they may rise and they exist so they may bring about their own fall.
(In a tone taken from a laughing conversation between lovers:
He was made so that he would find the King, again and again, in world after world.
Is that not romantic?)
That gets a ragged, broken laugh from him. He lifts armored hands to his helmet, trying to block out the narrow view of yellow. “So, what, then? Am I meant to go mad over the revelation I'm not real? I feel like I already hit that point a long time ago.”
Another laugh, cut straight from a laugh track this time. The voices of the long dead.
This was only an example, that's all. A facet of the tale that was potentially interesting.
A variant to be told, like any other.
He is now the one who is permitted to know. Isn't he lucky?
This time, when he laughs, it breaks into a sob just as quickly.
The hand slides under the edge of his helmet, caresses his cheek. Almost gentle.
“What happens to me now?” he asks dully, leaning into the touch just to experience it. “When I wake up?”
The King just smiles with the ghosts of a thousand faces, and runs a finger across his cheek.
“Thought so,” he mumbles, and closes his eyes.
He waits to wake again, and knows he never will.