I honestly really do like how this one turned out! There is some violence so warning about that (it's not that bad though.) I wrote this for jasperislush I hope you like it!
"Hey, Skulduggery," Valkyrie said. The skeleton looked up at his partner. Her shiny black hair framed her pale face that was full of worry. "You never told me what happened when you were trapped in the Faceless One's dimension."
"And what about it?" he asked her.
"Well, what happened?" He sighed and looked outside. They were in her bedroom and her family was out for the weekend. Outside it was pouring like the first night he had met the girl. They had no case and nothing to talk about.
"It's a gruesome story, Valkyrie, you know that," he told her hanging is head. He heard her get up from her chair and walk over to the bed. She crawled on and sat next to him. He looked up at her and she put her hand on his.
"Sometimes talking to people helps, Skullduggery, you know that." He sighed again and started telling her the story.
When I first landed from the portal, I felt dazed. I didn't know what happened, but as the dizziness dissipated, I realized I was in the middle of a town. Everything was carved from stone- all the houses, doors, and the ground. There were things that looked like people but with purple skin walking around rushing into their houses. I slowly stood up and a young boy looked at me. He stared speaking in a tongue I didn't know. I cocked my head to let him know I didn't understand.
The boy looked around frantically and grasped my hand, pulling me along with him into one of the many houses. We got in and climbed some steps up to another small house. He led me inside and pointed to a seat and said something else. I hesitated, but sat down and the boy smiled. He nodded and walked off into another room. Even inside everything was made of sun-bleached stones.
I suddenly heard terrified screams. I ran to the carved out window in the house and saw The Faceless Ones attacking some of the purple people. Before I could do anything, the purple people exploded, their guts and bodies spreading all over turning the white stone to bright red. I felt someone pull on my back and when I turned around, the little boy was there with who must have been his mother. "There were more of you weren't there?" I asked them. The mother tilted her head and pulled me away from the window.
She gestured to the chair and I sat down again, my body shaking. The little boy brought over a dish of sand and started drawing. He was quite a remarkable artist for a boy of his age. He drew the Faceless Ones and people. He pointed to the Faceless Ones and said, "Detchra." I under stood that this was their word for the Faceless Ones. I nodded and pointed to it.
"Detchra?" I repeated. The boy nodded. I pointed to it. "Faceless One," I told him. He tried to repeat it, but failed. Eventually, he got it.
Then he pointed to the people. "Mantara." His people's name.
"Mantara." I had never heard of the Mantaras before, but I felt sorry for them. Slowly, the boy started to draw again. He told me a story using the sand and words of his people. I got bits and pieces of it, enough to know what was going on. The Faceless Ones had come to that world three hundred years before I had. From my understanding there used to be millions of people living in this city, but when the evil gods came, they slowly started tearing apart the world and attacking the people of the city causing most of the people to die in pain an agony. This wasn't the first dimension that this had happened in, it happened in hundreds maybe millions more. At this fact, I felt guilty that we-the people in our world-never knew this was going on. Then I realized even if we did know, there would be no way to stop it.
Eventually, the Faceless Ones got trapped in the little boy's world. They couldn't move on when they got bored of these people. The boy told me that most of his friends had been killed in the worst ways possible. It was always happening at the same time- when their close sun was in the middle of their red sky. Most people stayed inside, but if they weren't inside at the time, the Faceless One would choose them as their pray for that day.
Over time, the boy and his mother taught me of their people and their culture. I learned to speak some of their language and they learned to speak some of mine. I grew fond of the boy whose name was Acktacha, which meant strength and his mother Gratchena that meant peace to the red sky. I learned that my name meant little pink penguin in their world. He told me stories of his father and his friends, his school days, and the nights before the Faceless Ones came.
One day, Acktacha was showing me around an old school building. His mother had died, but not by the Faceless Ones. She died by a illness. We forgot that one day a month the sun rose faster for some odd reason. I had taught the boy how to play tag. Then, the Faceless Ones joined us. Right in front of me, they swirled around Acktacha. One at a time they would dive into him through his ears, mouth, and nose. In, out, in, out, in, and out again. I was forced to watch as this young boy was slowly driven to insanity and then skinned, but still kept alive. His blood stained the white floor; slowly the monsters ripped him apart muscle by muscle bone by bone until there was nothing left but a pile of his remains.
I looked at Ackatacha's remains, realizing that he was the last of his people. Then The Faceless Ones took to torturing me. The pain was excruciating. They had tortured me, and then left me. My bones scattered all over the city. The first day I had found all my bones and I ran trying to find a place where they couldn't find me. After about three weeks of me being tortured and repairing my self the hallucinations started. They started with my wife and son. I re-watched their death over and over again. The sight of Surpine's dagger splitting them both open with multiple gashes that bleed and bleed and bleed showed up almost every night for a week. Then the images turned into their deaths being Ghastly and Valkyrie's deaths.
Then the hallucinations turned sillier and more of a musical that never ended. I imagined Ghastly as a clown that was singing Randy Newman's "You've Got A Friend In Me." I also had Tanith and China singing "What Is This Feeling" from the Broadway Musical "Wicked." They were both in risqué outfits-which honestly fits them both quite well and were acting very inappropriate. Then they started making me sad again. I had Valkyrie looking very sad and singing the Beatles "I Want To Hold Your Hand" in a very beautiful but sorrow filled way.
Every day the Faceless Ones would hunt me down with their creatures and tear me apart. I thought that they would eventual get tired of it, but I was wrong. I knew I would never get out of his dimension so I faced my fears.
I walked down the streets of the ghost city, the blood covered walls and grounds reminding me of every scream, every person I couldn't save. I was useless, insane, and desperate. As I walked, the hallucinations came with me. I imagined Valkyrie walking beside me, her hand in mine, Ghastly was on my other side smiling at me. Tanith was next to him, swinging her sward around with no care in the world. China was next to Valkyrie looking as stunning as usual and acting as flirtatious as normal. Even if they were just hallucinations, I felt stronger. I felt like we could do anything.
Just like in our world.
Soon, the Gods found me and tortured me again. I wasn't spread all over for once. I guess they felt how I was done with this little game of ours. I picked myself up and walked back to my cave. I set up the barrier that I've made and sat in the middle of the room. The Valkyrie hallucination came to me again. She made me rest my head on her lap. She caressed my skull gently and I held her hand. God, how I wanted her back. She opened her mouth and started singing a sweet lullaby. Her voice was angelic and sweet.
"Go to sleep, Skulduggery, I'll be here soon," she whispered to me. After that, I went into my meditative state. I woke up to the Faceless Ones yet again.
And on and on it went the twisted little game of ours. All I wanted to do was curl up and die again, but something kept me from it. Valkyrie Cain, my partner and best friend. She needed me I needed her. I realized that neither of us could truly survive without the other one. We were the only two people in the world who could keep the other sane. I had saved her multiple times. What if she couldn't protect her self with out me? What if she needed me to save her again?
And then, she saved me.
The skeleton detective sat there on his partner's bed shaking like crazy. She put her hands around his waist and her head on his shoulder. "And by saving you, I saved my self," she whispered. The screams of the people were echoing in Skulduggery's head again, but with Valkyrie by his side, he knew he could survive it. He managed to stop shaking and put his arms around the teenage girl around his best friend Valkyrie Cain.