Closer To Something Else
"The woman under the hill? You mean the firekeeper. What about her?"
"What do you mean 'what about her?' Has Karkat not told you the deplorable state she's in? Cut tendons, blinded, lips sown shut?"
"And very powerful anti-magic runes, yes, we've been over it. He actually transcribed some of the runes with a soapstone for me and I've been mulling over them ever since…"
"You ended that last sentence with an ellipses, implying you had something to add. But it's been several minutes and you've yet to write anything. Hello? Are you still there?"
"…but that's right before he decided to stop talking to me. And, incidentally, right before I could ask him for a favor, to give him something to do whilst I preformed my proscribed mulling. Also, perhaps, as a way of apologizing for locking me up in this room…"
"More ellipses I see. I can't tell if I'm just supposed to wait you out or inquire as to what the favor was. I feel i should warn that irregardless I intend to ignore that jab about the imaginary wrongs you seem to think we've done you."
"You are supposed to ask about the favor."
"Oh. What was the favor?"
"I was going to ask him to cross the bridge we're currently under and check something out for me."
~)
When Sollux stumbled across Eridan down in the earthen tunnels beneath the lower city, he almost gutted the arrogant prick by accident.
Well, maybe not entirely by accident. Maybe he would have recognized the garish purple hair and ostentatious-though-tattered decorative cloak in time to stop his dagger from inflicting a mortal wound and sending the egomaniac ex-princeling back to whatever bonfire he crawled down there from. And maybe he'd have kept the blade moving anyway. But a familiar mass of black hair bouncing along behind Eridan, carefully trying to navigate a damn spear through the confined tunnels, drove all thoughts of his childhood tormentor from Sollux's mind. Instead he shoved past the sanctimonious prick, pushing him and his disgusted expression up against the side of the tunnel and squeezing past at the same time a shrill voice screamed out loud enough to wake the dead.
"Sollux!"
A massive toothy grin stretched across Feferi's face as she dropped her spear to the ground and half ran half stumbled towards Sollux, enveloping his thin frame in a bone crushing hug. Sollux's relief abated only slightly when he realized the pressure of Feferi's arms around his chest was literally crushing his ribs, preventing him from breathing. It took several seconds of him rapidly tapping Feferi's bicep with one trapped hand before she realized what she was doing and released him with an embarrassed grimace.
"Sorry!" she said, rubbing one thin arm and watching with a glint in her eyes as Sollux tried to catch his breath. "I guess I don't know my own strength anymore."
She followed with a near hysterical giggle as she feinted a punch towards Sollux's shoulder, who nearly threw himself up against the wall to avoid it. He couldn't help but smile too, tension that had been plaguing him ever since he found himself lost and alone in the massive tunnel network evaporating out of body at the sound of her voice and the gleam of her crinkling fuchsia eyes.
All the tension returned however when he heard Eridan speak up from behind him, that nasally voice and affected upper class intonation serving to ground his mind back in the here and now.
"That's putting it mildly, Fef. She absolutely slaughtered hundreds of Hollows to get us down here."
Sollux felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder as the voice continued, now speaking directly to him.
"She's turned into quite the little warrior, our Fef. Guess we didn't need to bring you along after all."
Solluxs hand curled into a fist, reacting to the condescension practically dripping from the puffed up Undead royals voice. Feferi ignored the sudden charged atmosphere permeating the cramped space however, thanking Eridan for the compliment while correcting him on the kill count.
"It was more like a few dozen." She told Sollux.
Before he could respond Eridan spoke up again. "You're being too modest."
She just grinned in response.
Sollux took the brief moment afforded by their exchange to compose himself, filing away his pent up anger towards Eridan and shrugging his hand from his shoulder before totally ignoring the Undead prince to talk to Feferi."
"How did you get down here?" He asked. "Tell me the exits not too far back the way you came."
He tried to keep the desperation out of his voice but didn't think he succeeded, because she grimaced when she answered, "sorry. It was an exit but Eridan, I mean we…"
"I blocked it off." Eridan interrupted. "Tore though some of the support beams to cave in that section."
This time Sollux turned to face him, finally acknowledging his presence. "And why the fuck would you do that, Eridan?"
To his credit Eridan held himself straight under Solluxs bare toothed grimace, or as straight as he could beneath the low ceiling. He couldn't stop memories of the lowborn trash's tendency towards fits of violence from rising to the surface of his mind as he responded, though.
"We were being chased by a horde!" Eridan said indignantly. "They would have overrun us if I hadn't done something."
"That's right." Said Feferi, not letting on whether or not she noticed the brief shock of fear jolting up Eridan's spine or the mercurial rage bubbling up out of nowhere in Sollux. "These tunnels would be jam packed with hollows by now if it wasn't for Eridan's quick thinking!"
Sollux breathed deep, hurriedly grasping hold of his temper before it could bubble over and biting down on his tongue. Eridan took the opportunity to steer things away from volatile reunions and back to practical matters.
"For the love of the Allfather, tell us the exit's not far back the way you came."
"No."
"Then…are we trapped down here?"
"There was a side path I didn't take. We can try that, I guess."
Sollux made no move to lead the way however, continuing to stare down Eridan, who returned a withering glare despite blanching at the prospect of being trapped underground. Feferi, of course, had patience for none of that.
She pushed them aside with her deceptive strength and took up her spear, pointing its tip back the way Sollux had come.
"Then let's get the fuck outta here already!"
~)~)
Time was difficult to measure in the tunnels. None of them needed sleep, so the closest things they had to reference points were the two lengthy breaks needed by Eridan and the shorter one requested by Feferi. Sollux felt certain he'd been underground much longer than a day, but had no way to tell for sure. The tunnel just stretched on and on, on a slight decline, and no matter how far the trio walked when they stopped it felt as though they hadn't gone anywhere at all.
The hopelessness of the situation was compounded by the fact that Eridan and Feferi had rested at a bonfire located at a nexus of tunnels not far from where they'd entered, just like Sollux, meaning not even death could free them from the endless maze stretching out into the mountain below the city. Sollux intended to give it three or four more Eridan-bitching rest stops before he suggested they all turn around and make for one of the crossroad bonfires and try a different path.
Two Eridan-bitching breaks later, they found a room.
It was as tall and wide as a small house, with a trodden footpath leading from the entrance to an exit on the other side; on either side of the footpath, gravestones extended all the way to the wall.
"What the fuck is this?" hesitated Eridan as he inched forward cautiously, scanning what parts of the room he could make out by the light of the small lantern at his waist and clutching the grip of his drawn rapier. Feferi followed after him wide eyed, kneeling before the first stone she came to and wiping away untold years of grime and dirt in an attempt to the read the scrawl etched across the markers face. It was a fruitless effort though, the language being utterly unrecognizable. She thought the markings were beautiful, and briefly wished for something to write them down on. Thinking that Sollux may have something in his pack she turned to look at him, but any request died in her throat when she saw him standing at the entrance way with amber eyes so dilated they looked black and with a vein popping out beneath his forehead. She noticed he was shaking slightly, little jolts running up through his shoulders.
From the moment Sollux laid eyes on the room, he'd been hearing voices. Whispers in a dead language bypassed his ears to crawl directly into his skull; he felt as though years of screams were trying to break out of his eye sockets. His own scream was stifled in his throat by the soul-numbing terror settling in his stomach, a kind of fear he'd never experienced before in his life. He felt like prey, and every gravestone had a predatory gaze behind it. The voices rose to a crescendo, and he felt blood run down his nose as he became aware of something watching him out of the far corner.
"Sollux?" Feferi's voice was laced with concern, with drew Eridan's attention.
He turned and saw Feferi approaching a bleeding Sollux, who stood stock still as though someone had a sword to his back. "The fuck's wrong with him?" He asked, though as he did his attention was immediately diverted to the far left corner of the room, where he swore he thought he saw something moving.
"Feferi?" He asked hesitantly, moving closer to the pair once he convinced himself it had been nothing. "What's wrong with…Gah!" Eridan exclaimed as he fell, he rapier slipping from his grasp as he collided ground. Feferi looked back towards him at the sound, and screamed.
Eridan looked down at his leg and saw the sneering face of a half risen skeleton gazing back at him with empty eye sockets, its hand holding Eridan's ankle in a vice.
~)~)~)
Their footsteps beat a staccato rhythm across the tightly packed dirt floor as Eridan, Sollux, and Feferi retreated back down the tunnels. Behind them in the dark rang out the incessant clack of bones turning on joints of nails and leather straps as the horde of skeletons pursued them, their six armed leader directing them from the rear. Only Sollux had actually seen the necromancer emerge from the shadows, Feferi and Eridan had been busy combating the first skeleton to arise, and it's mere presence paralyzed him with a burst of white light that went off like fire on oil inside his skull and a thousand voices screaming their last screams.
Feferi and Eridan realized that they could use their piercing weapons to cut the straps that served as the skeletons joints, and had almost defeated the first one when the soil atop every grave in the room began to shift and stir. Seeing that they were outnumbered both fled, Feferi stopping to shake and yell at Sollux until he was far enough out of his stupor to flee with them. All at once the voices lessened, and united in telling him to flee. He obeyed, running ahead of both Feferi and Sollux as the sped aimlessly back down the tunnel.
Until the ground opened up above them and massive skeletal hands reached out of the gloom, grabbing all three of them mid-sprint, lifting them up off the ground and pulling them off into the walls in different directions. Sollux heard only the barest hint of Eridan's scream before he was consumed by soil.
Sollux struggled, to no avail. The massive digits seemed to reach out of the dirt itself, and they pulled him through soft loam at great speed. He couldn't see. He couldn't breathe. His hand twitched towards the knife at his belt. Every second brought him further from Feferi and closer to something else, and all he could think to do was inflict some sort of fatal wound on himself so that he'd reincarnate at a bonfire.
The knife was out of reach, and seconds later he blacked out.
He awoke with his upper half sticking out of the dirt in a graveyard, overlooking what seemed to be the entirety of the city whose bowels he'd been crawling around in for the past three months. He had about ten seconds to enjoy the view before he felt the tip of a rapier press against his neck, and stared across its length to the one-eyed, grinning woman holding it.