This power, to take the soul of a human, has no counter. Indeed, a human cannot take a monster's soul. When a monster dies, its soul vanishes, shattering into uncertainty, and an incredible power would be needed to take the soul of a living monster...
...But there is a single exception. There exists a unique species of monster, a "Boss Monster," whose soul is strong enough to persist after death, if only for a few moments. A human could potentially harness the power of this soul, but this has never happened. And now...
...It never will.
Cheerful.
After eluding Onionsan, I was greeted by the same musty, repetitive caverns of Waterfall, which only aggravated me more now that I had witnessed its true colors. Specifically sky blue, it had quite the affinity for sky blue, a color I had never imagined myself missing before that moment. 'Guess anything could seem beautiful after staring at washed out grays & blues for hours on end. Like a flower refusing to bloom, Waterfall felt completely content staying shriveled up and keeping its real beauty hidden.
Somewhere between boring corridor number four and ugly hallway number ten, I picked up on a sound I hadn't heard in a long time. It seemed distant and faint, even harder to pick out beneath the trickling of water, but I knew I hadn't heard wrong.
The movement of air. Wind. The pure, undiluted sound of something outside. It was enough to make my heart start bounding up and down like a dog trapped in a cage for days, finally allowed to run free. I discarded any scrap of patience I had left. Eagerly rushing down the hallways, I remembered the feeling of running on the streets of Ebott, the wind blasting through my hair, some of the only times I could forget about how crummy the city really was. The only reason I didn't fade into full flash-back mode was fear of running head-first into Sans again. Or, even worse, Undyne.
Later I wished I had simply taken off, because I would've ignored the light drops of water beginning to pour from the cracked ceiling, and subsequently the little statue tucked against the wall.
I slowed down enough to get a good look at the sculpture, although there wasn't much to look at. The crude shape it managed to hold vaguely resembled a little monster with horns poking out of its head. Its arms were curved inward and its hands were cupped, as if it were trying to hold on to something. The statue could have been decades old for all I knew; the stone was either completely smoothed over and worn down from the water constantly running over it, like some kind of abandoned dam, or rugged and cracked. Every inch of it was soaked through, resulting in a washed-out muddy color that wasn't exactly easy on the eyes.
But the design of the statue wasn't what stopped me, despite the drops of water pestering me to keep moving. It was the way those same water droplets streaked and rolled down the rock face so...gracefully, as if they were tears, that dragged me to a halt.
Staring at the lonely statue, at the cracked and misshapen pieces scattered at its feet that had given up and fallen off, triggered that same reflexive feeling I had gotten when listening to that snowman's story all that time ago in Snowdin. It started off as a simple knot in my stomach, slowly growing and festering until it corrupted every part of my being, like a disease. A lump the size of a rock formed in my throat, and I found myself unable to think, speak, or breathe properly. It showed no signs of fading, not unless I did...something.
But what? And why does it matter so much to me?
Something clambered to my right, jolting me to full attention. My first thought shot to Undyne, but she wouldn't be so clumsy as to alert me to her presence right away. As I'd expected, it turned out to be nothing but a false alarm. Just a garbage can that had been carelessly knocked over around the nearest corner, and its contents had spilled from wall to wall. Instead of trash, the can had held a bunch of dusty umbrellas that appeared nearly as ancient as the cave itself.
"Nice," I said to myself, feeling my throat muscles relax back to their normal state. Although I didn't typically mind rain, I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity for a free umbrella, either. Bending over to pick one up for myself, my gaze couldn't help but drift back to the statue. My eyes once again glazed over the forgotten stone, rounded earth, missing chunks that were now rubble sitting at its feet, and its tightly clasped hands, seeming strong as metal gauntlets despite the passing of time...but with one small hole through the center, too perfectly rounded to be a mistake, or a result of being left alone for an eternity.
Without a single sound aside from the scraping of plastic against rock, I slipped a second umbrella through the hole and popped open the top. The thin fabric barely expanded enough to cover the whole statue, but it was enough to halt the majority of the droplets from setting foot on it. I stood there for a minute, watching the rock begin to dry, and subsequently the flow of tears come to a halt. My hand, still resting on the hilt of the umbrella, began to slide over the rough edges of the statue, feeling a strange sense of...warmth beating from somewhere inside. God dammit, this place really is driving me insane...
...Something clicked...?
...Music.
A few notes fluttered out from beneath the surface of the statue, and more followed in it's current, until an entire melody sounded off of every wall. The song playing was nothing more than a series of high and low notes, coursing up and down like the tides of the ocean, but managed to sound both somber and serene at the same time. My mind had switched off so that I might listen more closely without any distractions. Eventually the notes swam and pooled together in my head, and I imagined once again the beauty Waterfall often refused to show, the warmth of and of another place I couldn't quite describe, but felt somehow familiar...
"I've heard this somewhere before," I decided at last, without the slightest idea where the thought had originated from. I searched for any deeply rooted memory of the song, possibly from my seemingly ancient childhood, and found none. But I couldn't shake the feeling this wasn't just a little coincidence, that I hadn't simply mistaken it for another song. "Where is it even coming from, anyway? This thing doesn't exactly have any built-in speakers..."
Through the cracks in the stone, I could make out the simple shape of a box resting on the inside of the sculpture, wearing it like a suit of armor. A music box, I realized. I tried to think of any time in my life where I had interacted with, or even seen a music box in real life, but for the second time came up with nothing. No matter how hard I tried, those unattainable distant memories slipped through my fingertips like shadows, if they even existed at all. With every second that passed by as I failed to make any sort of connection to the statue, with each road that lead to nowhere, the song grew less calming and more...chilling, as if the notes themselves were crawling along my spine.
When I could no longer tell the difference between the drops of rain and beads of sweat rolling down my face, and my stomach felt as if I had swallowed one of the chunks of rock sitting at the statue's base, I tore myself away from the scene and opened my own umbrella. The memory was soon shoved down to the depths of my thoughts, along with a seemingly infinite whirlpool of shit I couldn't keep track of anymore.
The cracks in the ceiling began to widen, and the droplets of water became a downpour quicker than I could blink. I weaved my way around the shallow puddles that had collected at my feet, focusing on the annoying pitter-patter of the raindrops against the ground to distract myself from...just about everything else in existence. Though it didn't help to block out a certain sharp voice that cut my ears like glass.
"Yo, you have an umbrella! Awesome!" Monster Kid, without thinking even once, threw himself from whatever little nook he was hiding from the rain in and snuggled right beside me under the umbrella. When he noticed the dirty look I was giving him, his smile quickly faded. "What's up? You look kinda pissed."
"...It's nothing," I said after a while, continuing forward while stomaching the urge to toss his skinny ass back in the flurries of rain. It was easy to forget that the only reason he'd decided to buddy up with me at all was his own lack of arms to carry an umbrella himself. Besides, his patronizing eagerness and alacrity served as a great distraction from...yeah, just about everything else in the universe. "Guess I'm just a little on edge. Ya know, the thought of running into Undyne again has me all...excited."
"Oh! Yeah, me too!" Monster Kid agreed, once again buying my apparently very convincing act. God damn, if only normal people were this easy to fool...
We walked in silence for only a few moments before the path turned, and Monster Kid decided to open his mouth again. "Man, Undyne is sooooooo cool."
"What tipped you off first? The badass armor, or the fact that she can conjure laser spears at will?" I offered.
He snickered. "Both. Plus, she beats up the bad guys, and never loses!" He looked me dead in the eyes, with an uncannily innocent glean, before continuing, "If I were a human, I would wet the bed every night knowing she was gonna beat me up!" And then he released a laugh deeper than the hole I had fallen into to get here in the first place, as if he really were just casually hanging out with a friend, and not actively supporting my death directly in front of my face.
"Yeah..." I waited until he was no longer staring at me to let out a long, slow shudder. Little twerp doesn't know any better, I reminded myself, but I was already sick of repeating that same mentality over and over again to hide from the grim reality of the situation. If he found out I was a human, there wasn't a shred of doubt in my mind he'd run off screaming at the top of his lungs for Undyne to come save him, tripping over his own feet every step of the way.
"Dude, seriously, you feeling okay? You look ready to barf."
All over your face, preferably. "I'm fine, it's just...allergies."
"Oh. You're not used to Waterfall yet? Where do you live, anyway? I can't remember seeing you around Snowdin until just yesterday."
"I'm from the capital," I answered instantaneously, as if the lie had come second-nature to me. Sans had recommended I spout that at anyone who cared enough to ask, and unlike most of what he told me, it was sound advice. "And that's all I need to tell you, small-fry, so don't bother prying."
"Bu-" He tried to argue, but my death-glares were getting so perfectly malevolent, they shut him up before he could get so much as a word in. My success briefly put a smirk back up on my face, even though putting the small-fry down didn't feel as gratifying as it should have.
Small Fry...guess it has a better ring to it than Monster Kid.
After being silenced, Small Fry stayed quiet for another minute of two, starting to trail behind a little bit. His lips were pulled into a tight frown that I was sure tons of repressed questions were attempting to tear open, and the droplets splashing onto his head didn't seem to perk him up in the slightest. Seeing the half-pint looking all depressed was somehow even worse than having him chew my ear to bloody pieces.
After I had decided the silence had gotten far too thick, and that asking about his arms would probably piss him off even more, I called behind me, "Getting kinda bored over here. Got any good stories, Small Fry?"
"...Small Fry..." I heard him grumble name under his breath, as if placing a curse on it, but he didn't hesitate to catch up to me. "Yeah, I got some."
Without thinking, I playfully elbowed him in the shoulder. "Well, lets hear one. C'mon, I don't have all day. Cave won't go on forever and all that crap."
It really can't go on forever, right?
Can it?
"Okay, so this one time, we had a school project where we had to take care of a flower," Small Fry began, excitement already beginning to flood his voice once again. "The king – we had to call him 'Mr. Dreemur' – volunteered to donate his own flowers."
"Right. So, remember when I asked for a good story?" I asked, cracking a mischievous grin.
"I'm getting to the good part, just hold on!" Small Fry shouted. As his temper began to rise, the distant sound of rushing air seemed intensify as well. "So, the king ended up coming to school and teaching the class about responsibility and..."
I raised an eyebrow. "And what?"
A small smile spread across his face like butter on toast. "...No, you're right. This story blows chunks."
The shift in tone was enough to make me laugh, and soon Small Fry joined in. The two of us stood there giggling like the school friends he obviously wished we could be, and for a moment, we almost were. I couldn't remember the last time I had shared a laugh with someone this close to my age, and although the feeling was brief and near alien to me, it felt...relieving, at least for a moment.
"Yo, can you imagine how COOL it would be be if Undyne came to school!?" Small Fry gasped in between laughs. "She could beat up all the teachers!"
"Now there's an idea," I agreed. A few hideously wrinkled faces in desperate need of some rearranging came to mind. Granted, the image of Undyne busting down the door to my classroom and tackling my teacher under the desk proved to be more terrifying than entertaining, at least as long as my life remained on the line.
"Seriously though, Undyne would never beat up the teachers..." Small Fry insisted, his laughter beginning to die out as well. Either that, or the steadily rising wind was drowning him out. "She's way too cool to ever hurt an innocent person!"
I started to respond, but stopped myself for two reasons. The first: I was still in the process of kissing Undyne's ass to keep Small Fry happy. And the second: the cave walls had begun to shrink away around us, and we were braving the brunt of a wind storm.
It had happened so suddenly, but just like that, we were out. Out of the rain, out of the confines of Waterfall, out against the open night sky - or at least, the illusion of one. My eyes lit up under the endless numbers of gemstones pulsing with light in the distance, but immediately threatened to slam back shut against the howling wind. The two of us might as well have been caught in the middle of a tornado on top of a skyscraper, the sound was so muting.
"Where are we?" I screamed at the kid, uselessly flailing my arms around to deflect the air currents. I finally remembered to close my umbrella after a good five seconds of stupidity.
"Still in Waterfall, man!" Small Fry cried, choosing to take the lead. He wasn't fortunate enough to have anything to shield himself with. "We can get back in the cave up ahead!"
Yeah, fantastic. Out of the caves for a solid two seconds and we're already cowering back in...
We had to tread carefully, as the path was narrow and the cliffs on either side of us were steep and very painful-looking. After a minute of shuffling forward in the most awkward way possible, one foot in front of the other scouting for rocks to trip over, the wind began to die down enough for me to lower my arms from my face. Small Fry had stopped pressing on just in front of me, eyes fixated on something off the beaten path.
Far off in the distance, barely in view, faded and drenched in shadows like a specter, perched a massive castle. Although the details of the structure were hard to pick out from so far away, that didn't stop the image from pushing an intimidating sense of dread on my shoulders. Multiple towers grew out from every visible point on the base of the castle, reaching up endlessly towards the roof of the cavern, as if trying to claw their way out of the pit they inhabited. The way it leaned over the chasm between us, looking out for intruders, watching for any hint of movement, only served to intensify the foreboding nature of the place.
That must be where he lives. The king of monsters...honestly was expecting something a bit bigger, but I guess it gets the job done. 'Strike fear into the hearts of our enemies' and all that jazz.
The Fry and I stared at the castle, entranced, until the storm began to pick up once again. "We've gotta keep moving," I urged, tugging Small Fry away from the scene. Even as I pulled him, his feet stayed rooted to the spot, and eyes glued to the castle, totally sucked into its presence. The way the light fell over his face made his expression difficult to read. It was time to change tactics. "Hey, I think I just saw Undyne giving out autographs up ahead!"
Such an unbelievably stupid and childish claim was perfect for getting a reaction out of Small Fry. "Wh-where!?" he cried. Even as the words left his mouth, he seemed to realize the lie. While I dragged him towards Waterfall's re-entrance by the...stub, he added, "C'mon dude, that's low!"
"Not...really..."
We ducked back into the cave, relieved to see the flow of water had been stemmed in that particular section. Another basket sat practically bulging with umbrellas, which I didn't hesitate to toss mine into. It only served as added baggage, and would probably be negligible help in any serious fight as a weapon, even compared to the toy knife I had kept since the start of my journey. I figured hacking at Undyne's helmet with an umbrella might buy me an extra second to catch my breath before she drove a spear through my spine.
With that small victory, however, came a greater inconvenience. I uttered a curse under my breath and rushed forward to find any other way around it, but it was no use. The path was blocked by a wall more than double my height.
No. I took a few steps back, got another running start, and tried to leap and climb my way up the wall, but it was no use. My fingers slid uselessly off the cracked surface, a full foot away from the top of the ledge.
"Yo, no way! The path's blocked!" Small Fry cried, moving to catch up with me.
"Gee, thanks for the ingenious observation," I spat, kicking at the wall in frustration. When it refused to budge, I kicked it again, harder this time. Surely if I hit it hard enough, it would soften up and move out of my way eventually, right? Dammit, I didn't come all this way to be walled in with that psycho killer and her number one fan...
I imagined doubling back to find another route, playing right into Undyne's clutches. Surely she was waiting on the way back, hiding behind every rock, under the cover of every shadow, ready to lash out...
"Dude, don't worry about it," he tried to reassure me. "I'm pretty sure I know another we can go, but we gotta go back a little bit..."
"I don't have time," I fired back, forgetting my charade for a split second.
"Really? I wanna see Undyne too, but she's not really going anywhere, is she?"
Crap. I bit my lip, searching for the right words. "Some things are a bit more important than stalking your heroes, Small Fry."
Just as I said it, I knew that I had given away my lie, the one I had been spouting practically since I had first met the kid in Snowdin. I tried to search his facial expression for any hint of realization, his eyes widening or narrowing, something along those lines. But neither of those happened. Instead, Small Fry marched right up to the wall, holding himself up higher than I had seen him before, and said, "Here, climb on my shoulders."
After a moment of waiting for him to cut the heroics, I frowned. "Wait, seriously?"
He nodded vigorously, almost banging his head on the rock. "Yeah! Whatever you need to do, it's probably more important than tracking down Undyne, anyway. Now come on, holding my shoulders like this is getting kinda hard..."
Is he just gonna gloss over the fact that I lied straight to his face multiple times? I certainly wasn't about to bring it up to him. Without hesitating any longer, I prepared myself once again for the climb.
"You ready? I'm not exactly light as a feather, and you're not exactly a bodybuilder."
He turned to face away from me and braced himself. "Ready!"
On his signal, I bounded up to the poor kid and threw my arms around his shoulder, heaving myself until I had one foot planted on each side. Even though I was nearly twice his size, Small Fry managed to hold his form decently well, like a twig holding up a sack of potatoes. He shook and squirmed every second I was on him, threatening to snap, so I threw my arms up above my head as quickly as possible. This time, the entire palm of my hand made it up over the surface of the ledge, and I managed to get a hold on it. A moment later and Monster Kid was alleviated of the stress, and I had pulled myself up.
"Still in one piece down there?" I called, climbing to my feet. To my surprise, Small Fry was standing perfectly upright once again, as if the transaction hadn't phased him at all. Tougher than he looks...
"No sweat!" he confirmed, and as much as I refused to believe it, he really didn't seem like he was bluffing. Neither his posture nor his voice had wavered in the slightest. Way tougher than he looks...
"Good luck with whatever you gotta do!" Just like that, he was turning to head back the way we had come.
"Where are you going?!"
"Don't worry about me! I always find a way to keep moving forward!" Stopping to face me once again, he puffed out his chest and bellowed, "No gap is too wide, no distance is too far, and no wall is too high to hold me back!" Even though it sounded like something he picked up off of a cheesy superhero show, he said it with so much confidence, so much passion, he convinced me of it instantly. With just that one simple phrase, I became one hundred percent sure I hadn't seen the last of the little guy.
I smiled. "Except for this wall, right?"
"That's besides the point!" he yelled back, catching himself as he tripped.
"That is literally the foundation of the point."
"I'll see ya later!"
I waited until the very last speck of his tail had disappeared from view before whispering "thanks" under my breath.
Small Fry (the name no longer sounded appropriate for him, but I couldn't come up with anything better at the time) and I had split up, but my spirits oddly didn't plummet as I had expected them to. Despite being on my own again, Small Fry's gesture had reminded me that the odds weren't quite one against one thousand. They were about...four or five against a thousand, give or take a few from either side. It wasn't much, but the thought kept me sane at the very least.
Keeping in theme with the rest of the Underground, however, I bumped into something perfectly capable of destroying my good-mood-only moments. This time, however, my own mood was the last thing on my mind.
This revelation was infinitely more important than just one person.
In the now extremely dim light, so faint I could barely make out the words, hung two more plaques.
The humans, afraid of our power, declared war on us.
Without warning, they mercilessly began slaughtering our kind.
In the end, it could hardly be called a war.
United, the humans were far too powerful, and us monsters, far too weak.
Not a single Soul was taken, not a drop of blood was spilled, and yet countless monsters were reduced to nothing more than piles of dust...
It was a massacre.
Although the faded text hardly tried to paint a vivid picture of the slaughter, it was as though the memories were burned into my mind. Images of a barren wasteland, scorched desert earth littered with thick layers of dust, the corpses of monsters speared and gutted by the humans, forcefully replaced the tired walls of Waterfall. Only my refusal to slip away again forced them off me. My lip trembled, so I clamped my mouth shut. My hands shook, so I shoved them into my pockets. But there was no defense against my blood pumping, threatening to burst from every vain like a dam up against too much water.
No wonder they...she...wants me dead so badly. It makes so much sense now. It makes too much sense now, and I wish it didn't.
What I thought was a simple revenge story turned out to be so much more complicated than that. It wasn't just revenge for a loss, but a criminal injustice, and one I almost wanted to see righted myself, a sort of "serves those bastards right!" mentality. But even if monsters made it back to the surface, how could they conquer the human race now? I hadn't seen a weapon greater than even a spear in all my time in the Underground, against the limitless modern armies of humans. If anything, they would only get themselves slaughtered for a second time.
Only one more reason to escape this place with my life, as if I were begging any more.
To make matters worse, my days of traveling over sketchy bridges seemingly weren't over yet. The one I found myself at was at least wider than the previous, and at a glance appeared more stable. 'Problem was, everything else surrounding the bridge was swallowed in an inky black abyss, save for another identical bridge running a short ways below me. Any tiny remnants of light present in Waterfall had burned out and died, leaving me unable to see anything but vague shapes and outlines, aside from the path a few feet in front of me.
I took a deep breath, but it didn't help shake the feeling biting at my neck that something was about to go horribly wrong. The thought of Undyne nipping at my heels was the only thing that kept me from heading back to find Small Fry and the alternate path he was positive existed.
It's just an oversized plank of wood, I thought, placing my foot on the first board in front of me. See? Holds up perfectly.
A lack of any and all sound or movement accompanied me as I made the trek across, with no idea where the bridge would end. The room felt so empty and...dead, I couldn't even begin to guess. For all I knew, it was being sucked endlessly into the void, and never came out the other side.
Then why the hell would there be a bridge here? I tried to keep thinking rationally, but that never seemed to accomplish anything in the Underground.
There was absolutely nothing going on around me to judge time by, aside from my now rhythmic steps across the boardwalk. As far as I was concerned, I had been walking since the beginning of time. All I could do was curl and uncurl my gloved hand, waiting in vain for something to change.
As the thought crossed my mind, I knew I wouldn't have to wait much longer.
I didn't stop when I first caught a glimpse of it, a small blue circle forming along the bridge with no reason for existing at all. My first instinct was to keep moving, until another appeared behind me, and then more, covering my retreat path like a blockade. Then I switched to my second instinct: I started sprinting as fast as I could.
Dammit, it's h-
"CRAAAAACK!" The wood exploded as spears erupted from every circle, and the entire section of the bridge I had left behind collapsed. I hadn't seen it fall, but the screech made as the last of the boards pulled loose was indication enough. I caught a glimpse of my pursuer on the bridge below me, again completely out of my reach, her one silver eye staring me down through the dark.
Undyne's attacks only intensified as I ran, obliterating more and more trunks of the bridge. They came fast, giving me very little time to weave my way through them before they shot up and split me in two. Dodging was only made harder by the reoccurring awful design of the boardwalk; it spiraled and twisted like the previous, this time adding multiple pathways that lead nowhere to further confuse me, and falling off this time held much higher consequences than splashing around in a little water. All the while, Undyne's heavy footsteps pounded below and behind me, metal against wood, a constant reminder of the monster chasing me.
It wasn't long until I began to slip up, a combination of my panic getting the best of me and the near labyrinth-esque design of my only escape path being the cause. Dead-ends were scattered everywhere, and quickly heading back the way you've came when there are jagged gaps left in your wake proved near impossible. I lost count of the number of times I jumped an empty space that used to be solid, landed with only one foot on solid wood, only to have another spear pop up directly and front of me and nearly knock me off the platform.
Another god damn dead end, I thought, feeling ready to empty what little contents of my stomach were left after running for so long. But I couldn't stop, the spears were coming so quickly now, and I had a gut feeling I was nearing the end. Probably just a desperate plea to keep myself moving, but it got the job done. My fingers were covered in splinters and my legs in scratches, but they felt pitiful at the thought of a spear sticking through the center of my chest, like some kind of voodoo doll.
My heart leapt when I found it, the bridge extending into a huge open block, completely removing Undyne from view. This has to be it.
The spears came in larger, more random patterns, but with so much room to avoid them, they barely posed a threat. With a new burst of energy, I darted between every safe spot so quickly you would've sworn I had been doing it my whole life.
The bridge eventually narrowed again, but by that point, Undyne attacked so infrequently I knew I must have lost her. It was just a straight shot forward to the end, and I'd be home free on solid ground.
That was, until reality slapped the idea straight out of my head and presented me with another drop-off into oblivion. I slid to a halt, too bewildered to react at first.
No no no, no, it's fine, I'll just go back. There's got to be another way...
...I spun around at the clanking, feeling my entire body go numb, the life sucked out through a straw. Undyne emerged from the darkness, marching forward until her entire set of armor came into view. It seeing dirtier than before and covered in grime, as if she'd been searching for me forever, scouring every place imaginable. Against the backdrop of nothingness, though, she appeared as soul-crushingly intimidating as ever, with a vice-grip on the spear in her right hand.
"C-C-C'mon then," I sputtered, barely able to move my lips. I wondered if she could see me shaking from where she stood, only a few meters away.
She didn't move, didn't even acknowledge my existence, just stood there staring me down for the longest time. Had she hesitated, or did she simply want to savor the kill?
When her hand rears back to throw, I'll charge her. But how could I do that when my legs refused to move? Anticipating the attack alone was enough to make my teeth chatter, but I didn't dare to make the first move.
A big mistake.
Undyne blinked, and a line of spears rained from above. I flinched, preparing to jump out of the way with nowhere to go, but they weren't aiming for me. Before I could blink, they cut through the wood between the stoic knight and I like paper.
For a moment, the whole world shuddered in anticipation. Or at least, that's what it felt like as the bridge beneath my feet began to give way.
I was too shocked to react at first, until the whole chunk I was on began to tip over like a ship sinking on the ocean. By the time I realized exactly what was going on, it was too late. My feet slid out from under me before I even had the chance to make it to safety.
"N-N-No, please!" I cried, viciously clawing at the wood, a primal urge forcing me to find something to cling too.
But there was nothing.
My screams were lost to the overwhelming silence of the world around me, as everything slipped into the endless void.