"Brother, don't-!"
Sans immediately dropped the knife, looking down to his visibly shaking hands.
Why was he shaking? Why couldn't he stop? How did he get that knife? What was he doing with it?
And most importantly… why was he approaching his brother with it?
The loud clattering sound that was heard as the metal hit the cold tile floor echoed in Sans' ears, but it didn't deter him from his shocked state.
Papyrus stood there, lowering his hands from a defensive position, and breathed a sigh of relief as he looked over his wide-eyed brother. He knew something was off with him, but that was to be addressed at a different time. For right now, it was clear that he needed The Great Papyrus' support.
Kneeling down quietly, Papyrus slowly picked up the semi-large knife, and carefully rose back up again to place it on a nearby counter - out of sight, and out of the way.
Sans brought his hands to his face, letting the small bones of his fingers rest just inside the sockets of his eyes - his eyes devoid of any pupils, and it was just the solid blackness of the lack of them that consumed him.
"Brother… it's going to be alright. Whatever is bothering you, you can tell me."
Papyrus assured, as he turned from the counter and to Sans again, opening his arms and kneeling down to hug his smaller skeleton sibling.
Sans said nothing, he just merely stood there, trembling within Papyrus' embrace.
Why?
Why this?
He didn't know what had come over him, he had become so desperate for something in that moment, but he didn't even know for what.
His brother's embrace was comforting, but it wasn't enough to snap him out of the dark abyss his mind had plunged into.
He slowly removed his hands from his eye sockets, and slowly began to hug Papyrus back, gripping onto the vast amount of red fabric that was his tattered, battle-worn scarf.
He closed his eyes.
It was soft. He could at least feel that.
It, almost felt like…
He sat up in bed.
Bedsheets.
"Wh-... What the hell..?"
He looked down, at his mess of a bed.
His various blankets were strewn everywhere - a sign of yet another sleepless night of tossing and turning.
Sighing, Sans blinked a few times, resting one hand on the sheets and bringing the other to his head.
"It was just a dream…"
He assured himself quietly, but it felt all too real to him nonetheless…
Getting up, he adjusted the clothes he had slept in, consisting of his normal everyday attire.
He had been too tired to change, again.
Quickly stepping into his sneakers, his socks nearly halfway off of his feet, he made no effort to tie the laces as he exited his dull, messy room.
"Brother? Is that you?"
"Yeah, I'm comin' Paps."
Sans stepped down the stairs, keeping his head forward to scan the living room for his sibling's all too familiar voice. There, stepping out of the kitchen, was Papyrus, engaging in his normal everyday morning routine. He smiled that big perma-grin of his as he watched him descend the rest of the stairs.
"Ah, Sans! You're just in time for breakfast! You're usually not up so early, I'm surprised!"
Reaching the last step, Sans looked up at his taller partner, with a half smile, and made eye contact; his sunken in sockets contrasting heavily with Papyrus' lively looking ones.
"Heh… just couldn't wait for breakfast this morning, I suppose."
He shrugged, letting out a small, inaudible sigh.
Papyrus raised a brow.
"Sans… are you not feeling well? You haven't made one of your awful puns yet, which is very strange for you. Usually you would have said something by now."
"Eh, just can't think of anything right now. I'll be sure to get back to you on that, bro."
He looked away, his eyes drooping into a sullen expression.
Before Papyrus could say anything in response, he noticed that Sans was staring behind him - into the kitchen.
His pupils disappeared.
He had seen the knives.
Papyrus' facial expression contorted into one of worry, as he didn't know what had seemingly frightened Sans, or why it had. He didn't at all like seeing him this way.
"...Hey, uh, Paps, change of plans. I'm goin' to work early today."
Sans said, turning around abruptly, pulling his gray hood up to hide his face, and disappearing all in one motion.
Papyrus choked back words, as Sans had teleported away from sight, not even taking any time to say goodbye. After a moment, he closed his jaw, turning around to look into the kitchen, his sight glossing over the knives placed into a holding block on the counter.
"...I'm worried for you, brother."
Papyrus admitted quietly to himself, before picking up right back where he left off in his morning regimen.
--
The small-statured monster pushed open one of the heavy doors into Grillby's, some monsters absent as Sans observed.
Understandably so, as it was still somewhat early in the morning, he thought to himself.
His footsteps sounded against the floorboards, in slow, dragging footsteps, before approaching the main counter where the fire elemental running the place was standing.
"Heya Grillbz."
Sans greeted, hoisting himself up onto the small stool, taking a seat and immediately hunkering over the bar, removing his hood and letting the fabric sink to sit around his shoulders, where it usually lay.
"...You're early."
Grillby spoke softly, observing his regular customer after a long pause.
"Couldn't sleep."
Sans dismissed.
"I'll take the usual."
The bartender nodded slightly, reaching under the counter for a bottle of ketchup he had already set in place, just waiting for Sans.
He set it on the counter, his glasses gleaming slightly in the artificial light of the restaurant.
"Thanks. I really need it this morning."
Sans admitted with a tired tone, taking the bottle as Grillby pushed it towards him lightly.
Grillby spoke again.
"I can't suppose you've been having those nightmares again?"
The exhausted skeleton went quiet.
"...I had another one last night, Grillbz."
The bartender looked over Sans, noting his visible lack of energy - which was even more noticeable than usual. Setting a white dish cloth and a wine glass that he had been cleaning aside, he leaned over, setting his arms on the counter before him, listening.
"What was it about this time."
Sans' pupils shrunk into nothingness once more, removing the white glow from his eyes.
"...Paps."
Grillby's face somehow seemed to show concern upon hearing this, despite having a lack of one.
"...I won't ask for details. I know how much your brother means to you - but I'm sorry to hear that, Sans."
Grillby replied calmly, but solemnly.
The whole restaurant seemed to be eerily silent. In fact, it had been ever since Sans had walked in, despite there being people in it. Sans seemed to guess that they weren't very talkative in the morning, he supposed. It was as if the whole establishment knew, even though their conversation hadn't been loud at all. In fact, Grillby was usually a very soft-spoken individual, yet Sans could hear him clear as day, as there weren't any sidebar conversations taking place at the time to distract him from concentrating on listening to the bartender in front of him.
Sans lifted the bottle filled with the red condiment to his teeth, saying; "Yeah, I am too." before he took a drink, his pupils returning back shortly after doing so.
Grillby watched him intently, a question burning in his mind.
"...Do you think your nightmares have anything to do with the disappearances as of late? ...I don't blame you if they have had an impact on you, too. Everyone in Snowdin is terrified."
Sans nearly choked on his drink. He coughed a few times, bringing a balled fist up to his mouth as he did so.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be so bold with my statement. I was just curious-"
"What disappearances??" Sans cut him off as soon as he had gotten done with his coughing fit, leaning in more towards Grillby, now suddenly desperate for answers.
Grillby looked at him in confusion.
"...I thought you would've been one of the first to notice, Sans. I'm surprised at you."
"Grillbz."
Sans prodded, demanding answers.
Grillby sighed, a fair bit amount of hazy smoke exiting his mouth upon doing so. He picked up his cleaning cloth and began to wipe down another dish, this being a whiskey glass.
"...Look around my establishment, Sans. It's not hard to see that some of my regulars are gone."
"...well, yeah, but…"
Sans brought a hand up to his mouth in thought, staring intently down at the wood-top counter, studying the patterns of the wood.
Grillby waited for an answer, but didn't get one in response as Sans couldn't speak up to protest.
"...It's gotta be the human. It has to be…"
The hollow skeleton concluded to himself, clenching his other hand resting on the counter slowly to form a fist subconsciously.
Sans rose from his seat, leaving the hardly-touched ketchup bottle.
He tossed a few spare gold pieces onto the counter, much to Grillby's surprise, as Sans never paid his tab.
"Thanks for the drink, bud. I'll be sure to come back later to get some more," Sans paused, looking towards the door as he pulled his hood back up, stopping after a few steps forward to finish his sentence as he looked to the side.
"...I'll sure as hell be needing it."
--
The hooded skeleton paced through the snow, his laces dragging behind him as he did so.
"Why would the human be taking out more… lesser known monsters first, while trying to make an effort not to be seen? It just doesn't make any sense… Surely someone would have seen them by now and the whole town would have known soon enough."
Sans pondered, shadows covering his face as he looked down while crossing the long, rickety wooden bridge that connected two steep, jagged cliffs.
"...And wouldn't Toriel have told me about someone coming through the Ruins by now?"
He stopped directly in the middle of the bridge, suddenly getting the urge to look over the side of the wooden panels beneath his feet, which he did so.
He nearly lost his balance.
Bodies.
God, they were everywhere… everyone he knew, saw, and had come to grow accustomed to had been mercilessly thrown over the bridge to their deaths… Their limbs mangled, twisting in unnatural positions, entwining with each other's.
He took a step back, catching himself on the parallel rope just behind him, his heart nearly jumping through his ribcage at the sudden scare at him falling backwards and ending up like the rest of them.
He clenched his eyes shut, not believing what he saw.
He had seen many things over the course of all the different resets, but this… this was something entirely different and new to him.
The thought that the human could somehow do this, or wanted to, didn't even occur to him.
Taking a shaky and hesitant breath, he reopened his eyes, daring to take another peek over the bridge and to the sharp rocks below.
...They were gone.
All of the horrific mangled corpses of his friends were gone.
He choked out, as if to protest, but couldn't find the strength to say anything. Only to scream internally. So many thoughts were racing through his mind, he couldn't comprehend all of them at once.
Not being able to take his sight off of the stones below, and how he had seen in detail how limbs were almost embracing the sharp edges of the rocks themselves, any body part that could be ripped into was- he almost lost his grip and nearly fainted.
Instead, with what little strength he had remaining of the encounter, he quickly teleported just a few feet away to the other end of the bridge, collapsing to his knees.
Sinking into the snow, he felt the sensation of tears welling into his deep-set eye sockets, his small white pupils shaking back and forth rapidly in fear.
The realization hit him that he was losing it.
What little sanity he still had ahold of was slowly slipping away from him, and there was nothing he could do about it.
After so many times, so many runs, so many endings that he had seen and had been just as easily taken away from him - after he had been through all of the emotions and feelings on the spectrum, he was finally beginning to lose his sense of sanity and his sense of self.
And that, was horrifying.
He had cursed the same damned human millions of times, both verbally and mentally for this. They were the source of the problem. That two-faced backstabbing son of a bitch was gonna get it.
...One of these times.
One of these times, Sans was finally going to kill them, and they would stop coming back to ruin his life and torment him for as long as they already had been.
...Right?
--
Author's Note:
Hey gang! I hope you all enjoyed the first chapter of the story. Now I will admit, I didn't know much about Dusttale to begin with, but I thought it was a really neat idea and it inspired me to make my own rendition of it. So if I don't get some things right, just keep that in mind. The credit for the idea goes to it's proper owners, I just own the story. Anyways, I hope y'all stick around for the next chapter! I'll be sure to work on it as soon as possible.
Also, if you can guys, be sure to leave a review so I can improve and to boost my motivation and confidence. Thanks! -M
P.S.
I seem to be having trouble editing my story. I'm doing it on the app, so I'm not sure if that's the problem, but If you've read the chapter you may have gotten confused as to where the time skips are, or where the story takes place in a different setting. No matter what I try, it doesn't work when I try to separate those parts. I've tried dashes, spaces, periods, you name it. So if someone could help me out and leave a comment or something I will be forever grateful and I'll be sure to fix that asap. Thank you! -M
Update:
Thank you so much to Wingah for helping me solve my previous issue! Thanks to your kind review, the different scenes in the story are now separated, and much easier to make out. Thanks again! -M