Dropping another thinger from an UT rp. Not Sans this time, but a character introduction + first interaction that I had a lot of time to work on and am very satisfied with.
Under The Spotlight For One Last Pas De Deux
There was something beautiful about the wilderness. It was a certain thrill, a certain danger, that never existed quite the same way in the place he called home. Of course, "home", the town that was quickly growing into a full blown city as the years passed, hadn't very well been his home for very long. It was the sixth home he'd had in his short life, and the fifth that he could actually remember. It was one of two that he actually liked, yet "like" wasn't enough to keep him walking down the same street, to the building he'd passed so many times in his day to day life. To the interview that, if everything went well, would set him down the path he'd follow for the rest of his life.
Safety. Security. Predictability. A life's plan, laid before him.
But it was dull.
Dull, unlike the dirt and stones that ground against the neat, black shoes he'd put on that morning. Bits of dirt and mud and probably things a little less pleasant speckled the sides of those shoes and the bottom edge of his jeans.
"Now you're grown," his music sang through his earbud, and Kier sang right along with it. "So grown!"
"Now, I must say more than ever"
"Come on, Eileen!"
The white wire hung down from his ears, crossed over his chest and the strap of his bag, and wrapped under his arm and around his side to where his phone sat snug in his back pocket. Even on the mountain and in the shade of the trees, it was too warm for long sleeves and his vest.
He'd wanted to make a good impression.
"Toora loora," he sang to himself, to the bushes, to the fresh and vibrant air that stung his nose ever so slightly with each breath. "Toora loo rye ay—" The trees were quickly becoming more and more sparse, light that had only been peeking through the canopy now overtaking the area. "—We can sing just like our fathers—" He was alone here, where people were afraid to go. Here, on the mountain that had taken them.
The mountain that would take him.
"Come on, Eileen!"
Pebbles became stones, which gave way to rocks, and finally, the steep planes the mountain was known for. Narrow paths, dark crevices, and sharp drops that could take any wayward hiker by surprise.
"Oh, I swear."
And there, there was just the sort of place he'd been looking for.
"What he means—"
A gaping chasm, the dark maw of the mountain itself, laid bare among the cracks and caves. Laid waiting, for someone like him.
"At this moment—"
The ground crumbled at the edges as he approached, crumbled just at the toes of his once tidy shoes with their perfectly knotted laces.
"—You mean everything—"
A single step, and there was nothing but darkness.
Darkness, the whistle of air, and finally, finally pain.
There were flowers. Blood. A sharp pain in his chest, and a rattle in his throat when he tried to breathe. He couldn't. There was no air, no light, no warmth, no hope, all of this and the one thing he'd wanted wasn't there to greet him, foolish as he'd been to dream otherwise. That very morning, he'd been about to start his life, to start creating the legacy that would follow him. He hadn't felt anything then. Not excitement. Not regret. Not apprehension.
Nothing like the burning ice that had overtaken his body.
❤ Continue
xDo Not
"—I don't need you to worry for me, 'cause I'm alright—"
Pain.
"—I don't want you to tell me it's time to come home—"
The scent of flowers... and something older.
"—I don't care what you say anymore—"
Something rotten.
"—this is my life—"
Kier shifted in the bed of flowers, enough to bring a hand to his face. The movement tugged at his chest and his shoulder, sending a wave of pain through his ribs and down his spine. The cord of his earbuds was tangled around his arm, his music playing not from them, but the phone that had been flung from his pocket and into the flowerbed.
"—Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone—"
Kier opened his eyes, and at first all he saw was yellow. Small blurs that swayed with each breath he took. He turned his head just enough to see the shapes with his better eye, but even that was enough movement to make him hiss in pain.
"—I never said you had to offer me a second chance," his music sang as he reached up, carefully, to brush his fingertips over the back of his neck. There, where his hair had fallen away and exposed him, was reddened skin and pin prick blisters. The light streaming down from above and allowing him to see at all was more than enough to tell him what had happened. Or, what had happened to his skin, at least.
"I never said I was a victim of circumstance."
Slowly, Kier sat up. The flowers he had landed on were flattened, wilted, dying. But farther, towards the edges of where the sunlight could reach, were others that were bright and in bloom. Delicate, golden plants that seemed to tremble with his every movement. He found his phone among them and shut it off.
Without it, the cavern was silent.
He sniffed, then wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Dark gloves came away with a darker spot of red smeared across the fabric. More had stained the flowers where he'd laid. What had caught his attention, however, wasn't the blood or the throbbing pain he felt in each of his joints, with every movement, with every breath and blink. What caught his attention were towering pillars covered in vines, and a path before him.
Gathering up his bag, Kier stood on shaking legs and made his way into the Ruins.
With each step he took, the corridor darkened, darkened until mere shadows had overtaken any features that the stone walls once held. His steps echoed against the black, steps that had him gravitating closer and closer to the walls until he walked with his fingertips against the hard, cold rock. The path twisted, and there ahead of him stood a massive doorway, the strangely purple-toned features thrown into sharp relief by the light filling the room just past it. Light that hadn't spilled out into the corridor he'd followed.
Kier paused, there in that dark hall, mismatched eyes stuck on the doorway. Stuck on the unnatural way the light was held back from him, as if caught in a bubble that had yet to pop. His gaze followed those tall, oddly colored columns to the arch that connected them both, adorned with an emblem of simple shapes and... wings? Too many details were lost to the shadows for him to be certain. He took a breath that burned in his lungs and pressed forward.
Distantly, there was the scrape of metal.
Creeeak...
Click.
That rich, warm purple wasn't kept to only the door. Each and every last brick that made up the room was the same. Though he turned to look all around, there was nothing to suggest where the light was coming from. It was like the room was just... lit. As if there didn't need to be a window, or a lamp, or any such thing. And yet, there were shadows still, beneath fiery red leaves that were scattered across the floor, fluttering just under delicate leaves of ivy, and stretched between the steps that curved up towards another door. The smell of decay was far less noticeable here than it had been among the flowers, and under the smell of foliage that did remain was something older.
Creeeak...
Like a stone overturned after too many years trapped in the dirt. Like a book that had spent too long left upon the shelf. Like the dust that clung to the ceiling fan's blades after a long, long winter.
Click.
This wasn't the sort of place Kier should have been. It was like a temple for some religion he'd never heard of before, let alone followed.
Creeeak...
Holy ground that he tainted with his mere existence.
Click.
An existence he shouldn't have in the first place. Not after the fall he'd taken. Not after that pain. Not after the cold that had crept oh so slowly through each of his fingers, each of his arms, and, perhaps, would have crept through his legs just the same, if he'd been able to feel them at all.
Steps against stone.
He could still feel that cold. The throbbing throughout his skull. The wet, and the warmth that he could only feel against his face. The pressure inside his chest, the drowning, the flutter of his heart. And when that flutter had stopped...
Movement, beyond the stairs and through the door above.
Kier looked up from that place he'd been standing in awe, in horror, in emotions he could never even begin to express. From his place between two wide, curving staircases and before a pile of leaves as warm as the very sunset itself.
He looked up and watched as the inhuman figure emerged from the shadowed doorway.
Watched as piercing eyes met his own from high above.
It was a being more beast than man. Tall, far taller than he, even if he had been standing beside it. Horns, sharp and curved like hooks, sprouted from its... from his head. No, there was no doubting that the creature before him now was male. Though the features of his face were almost delicate, the shoulders were wide, strong, and the chest well defined. This, Kier was certain, was what artists had imagined when they'd painted ancient stories. When they brought to life creatures born from gods and myths. When they described terrible, beautiful things like the great horned centaurs of Cyprus.
The myth before him trembled, but not in anything he could remotely call fear. Not with that expression.
Not with those cold, unwavering eyes.
It was... anticipation, perhaps.
Intensity.
Judgment.
And Kier, Kier couldn't bring himself to move. Not so long as that gaze was on him. Not while frost crept into the room, turning everything as cold as those eyes. As cold as the mottled fur that covered every inch of the myth-beast's skin. Soft greys at his front which, whether a trick of the light or not, seemed almost lavender in color. Inky black covered his hair, his tail, and splashed across his legs and hindquarters. And bringing the two together, a cool slate that was far too easy to miss amongst the rest of his coloration.
There was silence and the fog of his breath in front of his face.
Then, a pressure, a pain, worse than the instant he'd met the ground and flattened the flowers. Something alive, something writhing inside of his chest that pulsed, that pressed, that burst from his very body when he'd never known it to exist in the first place.
When it left, an emptiness remained. And where that emptiness laid, crying out for what had been taken from him, the cold crept in. Cold crept in between the cracks of his ribs — ribs that had been shattered, that had pierced the very organs that struggled to keep him alive — and turned to ice, breaking them apart all over again. An agony that had the human collapsing to his knees under the weight of it, under the gaze of mythos itself.
But no bones broke. No blood spilled from him, and his heart beat all the same. He wasn't dead. He hadn't died, not even when everything he knew told him he should have. And now, now he opened eyes he hadn't realized he'd shut to see what had been ripped from him.
A light. No... a heart, floated just in front of him, glowing a brilliant blue. Blue like the petals of hyacinth. Like sweet blueberries.
Like the sea.
Not just blue, however. It was mottled with dark patches, and specks that were nearly black. It... whatever it was, it was lovely. Just like the creature before him, swimming in his sapphire light.
The creature that he stared up at once more.
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