A What a nice little town you've found yourself in.
It's a cluster of cozy wooden cabins on the edge of a wide, slow river. There's snow on the ground and frosting every roof and windowsill. Christmas lights are strung up frequently to light a place that has never known sunlight. There's even a brightly decorated tree in the center of town. The town's inhabitants - a variety of shapes, sizes, and creatures - go about their business, smiling and calling out greetings to one another and to you. A bear in a button-down shirt counts presents beneath the tree. A rabbit in a rather nice blouse and skirt walks a smaller rabbit on a leash.
And a skeleton, who seems to all but materialize at your side. Sans is grinning happily, his usual hoodie zipped up all the way with the hood pulled up and over his skull - probably just because of the cold.
"c'mon, pal! i'm supposed to be the only lazybones around here." He takes your hand and tries to lead you onwards. "we've been waiting on you. don't got all the time in the world, after all."
B The cave is lit by glowing gemstones scattered across the ceiling, a soft light coming up from the patches of tall grass, and the reflected shine off the water that covers the rest. Tall blue flowers are scattered here and there in the water and on the solid islands. Each of them makes a whispering sound that might individually be recognizable as a sentence, repeated over and over again without end. All together they make an indistinct sort of murmur that blends with the sound of water.
I am weak I let them down I am useless It's my fault I can't do it I let him die...
It might be a beautiful sort of place, if one plagued by an aura of lingering sadness in the air, if not for the demons prowling about. In reality, in life, they were good and friendly monsters - teenagers who liked to hang out in the woods, a shy singer who never got the chance to start taking lessons again, a robot who's shields weren't strong enough. Now, they're twisted and shambling things. Some of them seem to be melted and twisted together into new and nightmarish forms, some have just been made jagged and sharp and hateful by rage and pain.
And as they pace through the grass and water, they all call out with ragged, rasping, whispering voices:
"Saaaaaaaaaans..."
Sans is huddled in an overhang of rock, just a few feet away from you. His eyesockets are wide and dark with terror, and he's desperately trying not to shake too hard to give himself away. It's only a matter of time. It always is.
C You're standing behind a control panel, alongside a taller skeleton in a labcoat. Sans - also wearing a labcoat - is visible through the wide window looking out into the room beyond. He's been securely strapped down to what looks like an operating table, so that he's facing up towards a grim-looking machine. The tubes extend upwards, into the ceiling. The prongs of the machine's beak are pointing down at Sans, right between his eyesockets. Despite this, Sans appears calm, even drumming the fingers of his hand on the table as he waits.
The taller skeleton addresses you without looking over. There's something strange about his voice, a static sort of undertone, but the words are understandable enough. "Double-check the temporal elasticity for me, if you would be so kind. And I think I left the reports from our last three tests on the table back there."
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Date: 2016-03-17 05:46 am (UTC)What a nice little town you've found yourself in.
It's a cluster of cozy wooden cabins on the edge of a wide, slow river. There's snow on the ground and frosting every roof and windowsill. Christmas lights are strung up frequently to light a place that has never known sunlight. There's even a brightly decorated tree in the center of town. The town's inhabitants - a variety of shapes, sizes, and creatures - go about their business, smiling and calling out greetings to one another and to you. A bear in a button-down shirt counts presents beneath the tree. A rabbit in a rather nice blouse and skirt walks a smaller rabbit on a leash.
And a skeleton, who seems to all but materialize at your side. Sans is grinning happily, his usual hoodie zipped up all the way with the hood pulled up and over his skull - probably just because of the cold.
"c'mon, pal! i'm supposed to be the only lazybones around here." He takes your hand and tries to lead you onwards. "we've been waiting on you. don't got all the time in the world, after all."
B
The cave is lit by glowing gemstones scattered across the ceiling, a soft light coming up from the patches of tall grass, and the reflected shine off the water that covers the rest. Tall blue flowers are scattered here and there in the water and on the solid islands. Each of them makes a whispering sound that might individually be recognizable as a sentence, repeated over and over again without end. All together they make an indistinct sort of murmur that blends with the sound of water.
I am weak I let them down I am useless It's my fault I can't do it I let him die...
It might be a beautiful sort of place, if one plagued by an aura of lingering sadness in the air, if not for the demons prowling about. In reality, in life, they were good and friendly monsters - teenagers who liked to hang out in the woods, a shy singer who never got the chance to start taking lessons again, a robot who's shields weren't strong enough. Now, they're twisted and shambling things. Some of them seem to be melted and twisted together into new and nightmarish forms, some have just been made jagged and sharp and hateful by rage and pain.
And as they pace through the grass and water, they all call out with ragged, rasping, whispering voices:
"Saaaaaaaaaans..."
Sans is huddled in an overhang of rock, just a few feet away from you. His eyesockets are wide and dark with terror, and he's desperately trying not to shake too hard to give himself away. It's only a matter of time. It always is.
C
You're standing behind a control panel, alongside a taller skeleton in a labcoat. Sans - also wearing a labcoat - is visible through the wide window looking out into the room beyond. He's been securely strapped down to what looks like an operating table, so that he's facing up towards a grim-looking machine. The tubes extend upwards, into the ceiling. The prongs of the machine's beak are pointing down at Sans, right between his eyesockets. Despite this, Sans appears calm, even drumming the fingers of his hand on the table as he waits.
The taller skeleton addresses you without looking over. There's something strange about his voice, a static sort of undertone, but the words are understandable enough. "Double-check the temporal elasticity for me, if you would be so kind. And I think I left the reports from our last three tests on the table back there."