Chapter Text
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The cold wind hit you mercilessly as the large stone doors slammed shut against your back. It was… snowing?
All things considered, things had not been going your way today. Early this morning, your father had come into the kitchen smelling of whisky and cheap perfume. Which would be startling, you thought, if it didn’t happen two or three times a week. That’s just how your family was. Your mother was gone - ran off shortly after you could talk. Your father was permanently drunk and had a bad habit of fucking anything that looked his way. Luckily he stayed strictly within his age range, which left you safe. Not to say you were never hurt; he liked to throw things after the first few shots or so. Twenty two years passed in this way. This morning was no different, except this time you’d decided you had had enough. One curse filled rant and several broken plates later, you had run away from home and found yourself at the base of Mt Ebbot. After that, you’d promptly gotten lost in the woods, and fallen down a fucked up sort of rabbit hole that Alice could only dream of.
Oh, but it didn’t end there - not even close.
Once you had woken up, you found yourself face to face with… a talking flower? That took the cake. Made it even more bewildering when it promptly tried to kill you. Vines had wrapped their way around your legs, and while you were being held nice and still (not for lack of trying), a spray of sharp-tipped thorns flew at you. Hundreds of tiny cuts stung on your arms and legs. Luckily you had recalled the presence of your pocket knife, which you cut yourself free with and proceeded to wield at the angry weed. At knifepoint, he had told you that you’d fallen into the Underground, where the monster race had been imprisoned for centuries. While most of them had started out friendly at one point or another, ages of entrapment had made everyone a little… on edge when it came to the subject of Humans.
That seemed to be the mantra of this strange new world - Kill or Be Killed. So far every creature you’d come across had been nothing but hostile and dangerous.
Which put you where you currently stood, after facing off against a matronly, but slightly off kilter goat monster whom you had managed to escape. She had seemed alright at first, but after talk of all the other humans she had cared for and “lost”... well, you decided not to take any chances. She’d cut you off at the exit, spitting warnings of death and destruction, with a few fireballs peppered in. You now sported several burns, and your jacket had taken the brunt of the damage. It did nothing to stop the bitter winds now.
The trees were tightly packed on either side of you, their bark a dark blue from growing underground, and barren from the endless winter. It made the path ahead the obvious choice. The snow was clear and untouched, a good sign. A sense of stillness pervaded the area, filling you with uneasiness.
The snow crunched softly underfoot as you started forward. Something deep in your chest surged bravely.
‘There should be a way out somewhere up ahead.’ you tried to convince yourself.
‘There just has to be’. You pretended the next shiver that worked its way up your spine was from the cold.
You managed not to encounter anyone else for a while after that. Good news since it meant a reprieve from the monsters; Bad news since that also meant a lack of other humans around.
What you wouldn’t give for a snowboarder to speed by and pick you up; bring you to a lodge and tell you everything up until now had been a cold induced hallucination. Maybe this was one of those fancy themed parks with convincing costumes, and the next person you encountered would rip off their head and laugh. You would welcome a fever dream even, brought on by falling unconscious in the forest. Anything to explain away the existence of monsters and danger and your seemingly inescapable fate of freezing to death underneath a mountain. That was if nothing killed you first.
If you ignored the events that had gotten you here, you might almost describe your walk along the snowy path as ‘peaceful’.
You heard your next encounter before you saw them.
At first you thought you were hearing things - and the low shaky breathing in discordance with your own was some trick of the ice and stone. But as you got closer, it got louder; more… desperate? You were certain you could place the sound with some past experience, but it escaped you.
You crossed a bridge, glancing nervously up at the spiked gate erected across it, resembling a set of bars. It was a tight fit, but you managed to squeeze through.
The breathing got louder, and you thought you could recognize a curse muttered underneath. The owner was male - maybe a human?! You half jogged the last couple of steps, spurned on with the prospect of freedom.
As soon as you stepped into the next clearing, a flash of black and red caught your attention, stark against the white of the snow. Set off to one side of the area was a small wooden sentry station. Hunched over it was at first glance a humanoid figure, dressed in a black hooded jacket with red accents. His head rested on the windowsill of the opening, an elbow propping the rest of him up while he struggled with something behind the half wall.
Stepping closer, you felt your face flush.
‘oh.’
‘Oh.’
That’s where you could place that sound. Now that you were halfway across the clearing, two things made themselves painfully obvious.
One: the owner of the sentry station was not, by any means, human. You hadn’t been a great student back in high school, but you recognized the basic anatomy of a skeleton when you saw one, and you were fairly sure that they weren’t supposed to move without flesh.
Two: this particular skeleton before you was very much alive, breathing, and
undeniably,
unmistakably,
jerking off.
Eyes wide, you found yourself frozen in place, staring in shock in such a lewd display is broad daylight. Not only that, but the fact that this guy was definitely not human.
‘Shit. He’s a monster.’
Recalling the violent reactions of all the monsters you’d met until now, you took an unsteady step back, ready to pivot and run for your life.
SNAP!
The skeletons head shot up at the sound of the stick breaking underfoot, and you found yourself under a piercing red gaze.
You were correct in your assumption that the monster in front of you was, for the most part, a close copy of a human skeleton. His head was a slightly off white skull, eyes deep set sockets empty except for a pinprick of red in the right. In the place of his nose was a triangular crevice, and his mouth seemed to be set in a permanent grimace.
A low growl echoed from behind his clenched teeth; a murderous glint reflected in his eye.
You’d been caught.