"Boy!" Berdly said loudly, so loud that everyone would hear, but still softly enough that they would know he was just talking to Noelle. "They sure are taking their time fetching that chalk! I knew it was a bad idea to rely on those lazy, dim-witted -"
"Y-yeah," Alphys said, immediately striking Berdly silent for he knew the proper respect to show to authority and the value that could be gained from maintaining good relations with it. "Can you go, uh, check up on them, Berdly?"
"Naturally! You entrusted the right person, for once!"
Berdly walked through the classroom, and passed through the door with a flourish. The entire class sighed in admiration as he left.
As he walked to the supply closet, he theorized about the way the nincompoops could have managed to mess up this task. Possibly they locked themselves inside, or maybe they never even managed to find the supply closet! A stellar specimen like himself would never be able to comprehend the intellectual flailing of the feeble-minded.
Wallowing in his superiority, he entered the supply closet and promptly fell face-forward into the abyss.
When he came to, he found himself in a highly irregular place. Everything around him was gray, and dusty. A deep mist made it impossible to see very far.
For some reason, he was now wearing the stylish outfit of an archer, complete with bow and arrows. He quite liked this clothing, but it let him deduce that he hadn't merely fallen into a deep underground cave system. It was more likely that he was currently asleep and dreaming.
To ascertain whether that was indeed the case he applied his well-practiced lucid dreaming skills by pinching himself.
"Ow!"
That hurt. Not a simple dream, then.
A clearly visible trail of footsteps led through the dust. It seemed that he wasn't the first one to end up here.
It was his duty as a good citizen to follow the trail in case whoever created it was lost and needed help.
An uneventful trek through the peculiar landscape brought him to the edge of a cliff. The trails - there had been two for a while now - went over the edge, all the way down. It appeared that the people who made them (no points for guessing who those two could be!) had lost their footing. He scoffed. He would not make that mistake.
His watch had vanished, but he estimated it took him several hours to reach the bottom, safe and sound.
He didn't find the corpses he half-expected. Had they survived after all?
There was only one way to go forward. He followed it, and soon found the first traces of actual civilization. An entire town, lit by an eerie blue light. But without people. Were they asleep? Was it already nighttime?
Everywhere was locked, even the buildings marked as shops.
Finally, he found someone applying new paint to a door. He wore green robes and an apron, presumably against the paint, though it was barely splattered. Only the outlines of his face were visible in the shadow beneath his hat. He didn't notice Berdly's approach until he was very close, at which point he jerked up.
"Hello there!" he said. "Did you come in through the gate?" He did a double take. "Oh! Are you another Lightner?"
"A what?"
"You are! How did you come here? Did Kris and Susie send you?"
"Them? Send ME?" The thought would be funny if it weren't insulting. "I came here to look for them."
"You did? But they already left!"
"They did?" Berdly paused. "What's going on here anyway?"
"Let's go to the castle. It'll be easier to explain there."
He started walking, and Berdly followed him.
"My name is Ralsei, by the way. What's yours?"
Berdly was suspicious of the story Ralsei told him about Kris and Susie. Legendary heroes? Those two? He would almost think they were some other duo that happened to have the same names. Either that, or the whole thing was made up.
But ignoring the identities of the heroes or the veracity of the tale, the whole thing was fascinating. A Dark World that reflected the mundane world, filled with strange creatures and earth-shattering plots - that was right up his alley. The tale as Ralsei told it captivated him like a really good book, and he told him as much when he was finished.
"Do you like books?" Ralsei asked.
"Do I like them? I'll have you know I'm Hometown's foremost volunteer assistant librarian!"
Ralsei's face lit up. "Really? That's great! Do you have a lot of books?"
"Well, we're just a small library, so we have around ten thousand."
"Ten thousand?" He gasped. "I only have thirty!"
Berdly prided himself on being tough as nails, but that elicited his sympathy. "Do you read them a lot?"
"I do, but I've just about memorized most of them by now. I can't imagine what it's like to have that many…"
"Can you show me?"
His "library" was just a single bookcase.
His collection was somewhat eclectic. Among its constituents were a recipe book (for pastry), a manual for an outdated piece of office software (Berdly asked, and Ralsei didn't own a computer), a sudoku book, one book detailing the history and legends of the Dark World, and a few thrillers and romance novels and such.
Ralsei was inordinately proud of it. Berdly couldn't bring himself to deflate that.
There was a couch along the wall, clearly a favorite reading spot.
Berdly took the history book and Ralsei took a worn paperback, and they sat down to read.
After a while, Ralsei started to lean against him, perhaps because he was used to lying down. Berdly found himself absentmindedly stroking his fur.
This was fine.