I awoke to the purest white and the bitterest cold.

It couldn't have been long. I certainly didn't feel well rested, and I'd have frozen to death if I had been exposed to the elements like this for even the length of a decently long nap. Not that I've ever been much of a napper. I pushed myself up to my knees with some effort and shook the sleep out of my head and the snow out of my… hair…

Snow?

I blinked several times as I looked at the sea of white beneath me. It was white, it was cold, it was powdery and damp. It was, by all accounting, snow. And… didn't I see trees before my fall? Was that it? Had I escaped already? How far had I walked in that feverish daze? Had I somehow found my way through the twisting caverns up to the mountaintop, all the way out of the underground into the great outdoors? Or… perhaps that door the goat had been guarding had led directly outside, and the danger it had warned of was nothing more than a scarecrow to keep me locked away. I looked from side to side. Nothing but an endless wall of grey trunks, shooting ever upwards. What it said was a lie. I dared to hope.

A whisper in my head told me that hope was the first step on the road to disappointment.

I turned my gaze to where the sky should be. An inky blackness filled my vision, dotted with a sea of not-quite stars. I wasn't out. I was still deep beneath the earth, in a place colder than the grave. How was any of this possible? Snow and trees underground, so far removed from the sky. None of it made sense. Was any of this… even real?

When was the last time I had slept? Not a brief fainting spell, genuine rest? I tried to remember. My head hurt. My eyes swam. I swallowed down a mouthful of warm saliva. If even part of this was a hallucination, then I couldn't trust my own senses. If I couldn't trust my own senses, what could I trust?

I picked myself up off the ground and got to my feet. It was pointless to sit here, feeling sorry for myself. If my senses failed me, I'd just have to keep moving forward on intuition alone. And so I did. What else could I have done?

I looked myself over for injuries as I walked. There were burns all over my right arm, and a great deal of my clothing was singed at best. I crunched up another couple of those candies and felt their healing effects rush over my body and clothing. But my arm… so much of it was seared away. The candies had dealt with the worst of it, but there were still patches of cauterized flesh; as if it wasn't sure how to heal it, or if it even should. It still tingled as I regarded it; as if the infernal heat were bubbling under the surface still, waiting only for my slightest attention to ignite once more.

The wounds that damned goat gave me won't easily heal, it seems. How fucking poetic. I should have cut her open the first time she turned her back to me. Oh well, live and learn.

A path had been set through the woods, the snow cleared away from it. I walked along it, the trees too dense to easily squeeze through. I shivered in the cold. Had I known I was going to be trudging through a winter wonderland, I'd have packed a heavy coat. More fool me, evidently.

Something was following me.

I could feel it, following far behind me. It probably thought it was being subtle. It was not.

I continued at a steady pace, trying to lull whatever it was into a false sense of security by not giving off any hint that I'd noticed it. I knew it was behind me, but not where, or what. If I could break line of sight, I could wait in ambush; otherwise, I'd just have to wait for it to start making its move, and that's when I'd strike. This wasn't the first time I'd been the fox to something else's hound.

A great crack sounds out behind me. A massive branch in the middle of the path that I had clambered over had been crushed into pieces. Why? Perhaps it was meant to lure me over to investigate the sound? That, or maybe it wanted me to panic. Wolves hunt that way, although they don't usually give up the element of surprise to do so.

Soon, the path led me to a wooden bridge over a pitch-black pit. I could feel its pace pick up. Its footsteps grew louder. It was making its move. Excellent.

Closer. Not far now.

Closer. I stood at the bridge, pretending to be examining the bridge's structural integrity.

Closer. I was only half pretending now; this bridge did not look safe. How was it even held up?

Closer. I crossed my arms as I bent over to examine the support beams, my hand just a few inches from where my knife was sheathed.

Closer. Just a few paces now.

Now.

I burst into motion, drawing my knife, and whirling around into a lunging strike in one fluid movement. A clean strike, right into the center of mass, quicker than comprehension. Fox kills hound.

And yet, as I struck, the pursuer seemed to… shift backward. Almost as if space itself stretched where I had lunged. Or as if he'd never been there, to begin with… and maybe he wasn't. I pulled back the knife and stepped forward to close the distance, and the creature raised its arms in surrender.

I got a good look at its features at last; It was a pale white creature, short and squat, wearing a blue jacket and a pair of large, very baggy shorts. Its face was a rictus grin like a skull, and indeed all its features carried the texture of bone. All except those strange white dots in its inky black eye sockets, staring out at me. On its feet were what appeared to be a pair of slippers. From what little of its chest area wasn't covered by a white shirt, I could just make out the upper part of an exposed spine.

This was a dead thing walking. A parody of life. Disgusting.

"Woah there, kiddo," a deep, yet high pitched voice emanating from its motionless jaw spoke. "That's quite a way to greet a new pal. A bit quick on the draw, aren't you?"

I stared back at this… creature. Its voice sounded vaguely jovial. What was its game? Was it trying to seem friendly so it could stab me in the back? Then why did it play out that whole song and dance with the stalking and the smashed branch? Maybe it was backpedaling now that its initial attack failed…

"Pardon me for being jumpy, Mr. unholy abomination," I replied, thinking it best to stall by continuing the conversation until I could ken his intentions. "You'll forgive me for it, given how recent the last attempted murder of my good self has been. Not to mention your little stalking act."

He gave me a slightly embarrassed chuckle. "Yeah, that was… a setup to a joke," He returned. Had he any facial expressions, or indeed a face, I might imagine he'd look a bit sheepish.

"A joke," I repeated, my voice flat.

"I was gonna scare you a little, then creep up on you all ominous and menacing. Then I'd tell you to shake my hand, and, well…" He trailed off as he held up one hand, squeezing his finger bones into the palm. A sound like a wet fart came out, followed by a high pitched wheezing. "The old whoopee cushion in the hand trick. It's ALWAYS funny."

I continued to stare at him. "Well, when it actually works, at least," He continued. I raised one eyebrow. "Gee, tough crowd," he said, sounding more deflated than the whoopee cushion. He muttered something I couldn't make out, and his cheery demeanor reinflated just as quickly. "OK, that's fine. Everyone's got their own sense of humor." He continued, and then his left eye socket closed shut in some strange approximation of a wink.

I had no idea how the bone that made up his skull managed to shift like that. His mannerisms were jovial, but what might have been disarming in a normal person only served to unnerve when transposed onto this… thing. An unhappy imitation, aping that which would charm were it original, and all the more displeasing for it.

"What… who are you, exactly?" I ask the creature.

"I'm Sans" he replied. "Sans the skeleton," he continued, as if that made things any clearer.

"Well, Sans, I'd say it's nice to meet you, but mama didn't raise a liar," I told him. "My name…" I continued, then… hesitated. "Nevermind. What are you doing around here, anyway? I doubt you're here just to play a mediocre joke on some random kid you probably didn't even know existed until a minute ago."

"Actually, I kinda am," he retorted. "I'm supposed to be on watch for humans right now, but… y'know… I don't really care about capturing anybody. Now my brother, Papyrus… he's a human hunting fanatic."

"Is that right? A regular ol' Abraham Van Helsing, is he?" I said. I could see what his game here was. He's bigging up his brother as some kind of fanatic to make himself seem more genial by comparison, all the better to win my trust and drive the knife into my back. Not a bad strategy.

"Hey, actually, I think that's him over there," he continued, and I had to fight the urge to spin around in panic. Exposing my back to him was probably just what he wanted, if not to attack me then for some unpleasant prank.

"I have an idea," he said.

"Never a good sign," I replied.

"Shut up," he explained. "Go through that gate thingy behind you."

I glanced over my shoulder. I glanced back at the skeleton creature. I glanced behind me again. "What gate?" I asked him. He began to laugh, to my increasing befuddlement.

"I told him he was making the bars too wide," Sans said through the chuckles. I turned again, looking the area behind me up and down. Oh, you've gotta be shitting me.

"That's supposed to be a gate, is it?" I said incredulously. "I thought that was just some kind of support structure for the bridge! How…" I brought a hand up to my face and began to rub my eyes in disbelief. Sans just continued to laugh, and we strode across the little bridge over an inky void. In just a few steps, we had come out into a small clearing.

"Quick, behind that conveniently-shaped lamp," Sans said. I glanced over to where he was looking.

…Not for the first time since I had awoken, I began to question whether I actually had. The snow, the trees, the "gate", the skeleton with his strange warping, the goddamn lamp shaped exactly like me right down to my hairstyle… I could easily believe that my unconscious mind could fabricate events like this. It wouldn't be the first time I'd gone on some surreal adventure in my dreams. It wouldn't even be the first time I'd doubted my reality in a dream.

Was this all just a false awakening? It was becoming more and more plausible with every minute.

Someone else was talking. Another skeleton. A taller one, much taller, dressed in something that resembled armor which covered only parts of his body, leaving most of his legs and arms exposed and accentuating its lower spine. It'd stopped talking by the time I'd taken in its figure, turning around smartly and leaving without another word.

"That worked out, huh?" Sans said behind me, as I shook myself out of my daze. Even if I was dreaming, there was no reason not to keep moving forward. Worst case scenario, none of this mattered, and I'd forget most of it in the morning. That might almost have been preferable, even. So I pushed forward.

As I started to exit the clearing, Sans called out to me once again. "Well, I'll be straightforward with you," He began.

"That'd be a first," I replied, and meant it. I could hardly remember the last time that'd happened, not that I expected him to put his money where his mouth is. Or, well, his mouth where his mouth is.

"Shut up," He explained, and continued, a little hesitantly. "My brother'd really like to see a human… so, you know, it'd really help me out… if you kept pretending to be one." And without another word, he turned his back to me and strode away.

I stared at him as he left, trying to parse what he said. It felt like every other sentence out of him was purpose built to bewilder me. Pretending to be a… was he? No, surely not. Then again…

Making up my mind at last, I called out to him as he walked off into the distance. "Pretending?" I shouted. "Is this because I didn't like your crummy jokes? Oh you petty mother-"