Having finally had enough of shouting at the retreating figure, I turned around to continue down the path. And then… I stopped.

Why was I just continuing blindly down the path? Who knew what would be that way, who knew what sort of traps or what have you were waiting for me? I must have become so used to the confines of the corridors before, I had forgotten for a moment that I was no longer so confined. Who knew what sort of hell awaited me, further into the deep? What further demons might haunt my every step?

And besides that… it'd be nice to be among trees again. I'd grown up in the forests. It wasn't home, but it was… familiar.

I stepped off the path, and vanished into the woods. Hell and its demons can wait a bit longer.

Stalking those woods, sticks and snow crunching under my feet, was… exhilarating. After so long trapped within those lifeless corridors, monsters oozing out of every pore with no escape, it was a balm for the soul to be here, surrounded by wilderness. I could run any way I pleased, search for excellent sticks, climb a tree and behold the landscape flowing around me.

But there was an undeniable element of the surreal to it all. So much of it was so familiar; the feel of the branches in my hands; the thrill of hoisting my body up the branches to reach the heights; the smell of bark; the way my feet found purchase amidst the wild and broken up landscape even easier than they'd ever done on flat and level ground. And yet…

Where were the birds?

Where were the rabbits, the deer, the bears, the hogs, the… the wild things, that formed the white noise that permeates the wild places. Even when they can't be seen, their presence is there, an inextricable part of the atmosphere of the wilderness.

But here?

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

The forest- no, the collection of trees was almost deafeningly silent, only the faint sounds of flowing water echoing throughout. Not even the sound of wind rustling through branches could be heard, for what wind was there to disturb them? It was as if someone had created the general idea of a forest, but forgot to add any of the details. Tantalizingly close to the familiar that remained just out of reach.

I was a fool to hope it'd be any different. This place could offer only the most anemic of solace. It was a far cry from the lifeless halls I'd trudged through, at the very least, but that only made it all the more infuriating. I felt a burning hatred welling up within me at this cheap imitation, this mockery of that which I held dear. For a moment, I felt like burning this whole place to the ground. The hatred swelled into something almost painful.

…No, it was painful. An intense, burning pain… I looked down at my side. My hand is burning. The flames are spreading, all across my arm, licking strands of my hair. My flesh is melting off the bone! I need to put the fire out!

My arm plunged into the cold embrace of the snow beneath. At once, the sensations ceased. I held my arm there for a long moment, terrified to see what had become of it, until I finally mustered up the nerve to pull it out in one vicious movement.

My arm, It was… completely intact. Not a single new scar or injury had appeared, besides a long but shallow scratch from scraping across a buried stick in the snow. Even that burning pain failed to linger, vanishing all at once the instant the limb had touched the snow.

Like it was never even there.

A tremor went down my arm for a moment. I glanced again at the wilderness around me. It… wasn't the forests I'd grown up amidst, no. But it wasn't as bad as I'd made it out to be. Just… different. I could get used to this place. I'm good at that. It might not be everything I'd hoped, but it was something. There was greenery, beneath the snow. Branches above my head. Trees, all around me. And…

My train of thought was interrupted by the sounds of branches being pushed aside, and snow crunching underfoot. I turned to see… honestly, I can't really describe it. All feathers and scales but no wings, with a bizarre shape across its head like a stretched out pentagram, and several large teeth that shifted around the inside of a beak.

So this place did have wildlife of its own, of a sort. And here I was, hoping for a nice relaxing stroll the woods. But thinking I could go two steps down here without running into something that wants to eat me alive and spit out my bones was a silly idea to begin with.

That's a lie, I didn't really think that. I can ill afford to be that naïve. So why am I here, wandering this forest? Did I seek them out intentionally? Or am I simply stubborn beyond sense, not letting near certainty of failure dissuade me?

I slipped my knife out of its sheathe as the creature menacingly approached. Hopefully, in the wide open expanse of this underground taiga, these creatures would be few and far between, and I could return to my calming woodland walk with little further interruption.

Hope… what did I really hope for?

Hope was, as ever, the first step on the road to disappointment, I mused, as I clung to the branch beneath me, waiting to pounce. Another little group of creatures prowled ahead, slowly nearing the tree whose leaves now concealed me. Another of those strange toothy-beaked beasts, this one with something over its eyes that looked kinda like a pair of sunglasses; a stunted little creature with a jagged spike on its head; a grotesque thing vaguely in the shape of a flying saucer, which seemed to be the leader by how it whipped the others into a frenzy. These three… species(?) had had hounded me throughout the forest, sometimes separate, sometimes in trios like these. Always hostile on sight.

Were they mere beasts? Or perhaps… patrols? That skeleton mentioned being on watch for humans. Of his brother outright hunting them with an eager zeal. Were these the attack dogs of this… ASGORE? How many other humans had they murdered? How many other children? Were there any even left alive down here?

All fine questions, for another time. For now, all I had to do was wait another… five. Four. Three-

I leapt off the branch in a flurry of movement, cleaving through the head of the saucerman and rending it to dust in a single blow. Without wasting a second, I turned toward the beaky and slashed into its face. The spiky came at me on the right, but I backhanded it away and continued to carve into the beaky. Soon, it was dead, having barely even gotten an attack or two off with the constant pressure on it. I turned around to see what the spiky was up to, but… it was already dust. Was it really as fragile as that, to be taken out with a single backhand?

There's no snow around where it landed. Just damp earth. Steam is rising. Steam isn't rising.

A moment later, once I was sure no reinforcements were nearby, I collapsed into the snow bank, exhausted like I'd rarely been before. These bozos really were relentless, weren't they? No matter where I scurried off to, they hounded me. If it weren't for these candies healing my wounds between each battle… no, I'd have found a way to make it through alive regardless. That's who I am. That's the promise I made.

I dragged my arm across my brow, wiping off a heavy sheen of sweat that had accumulated, and pocketed the glittering treasures laying within the dusty remains. These patrols were inflating my coin pouch very nicely; when I got out of here, I'd be a rich man. For these coins to be so commonplace, gold must not be in scarce supply. Had they unearthed some large veins of gold ore? Or maybe their strange magics included some form of alchemy. Something worth investigating, were I not in a life-threatening situation. Oh well.

In any case, it was probably time to move on. It was nice being around trees again, but it wasn't the same as being truly among the great outdoors. Besides, the locals didn't seem like they'd leave me alone anytime soon. I'd have to start moving forward. But in this expanse of forest, where even was forward? It was hard to make out any landmarks, even from the treetops, but… I had noticed a path up a cliff face in one direction. If I wanted to get out of these caves, going up was a good start, and as I always say: when in doubt, get high.

I trekked onward, and upward.

Soon, I came upon a little structure next to a road, a stand of some kind. Was this the same road I had left? Had I gotten so lost in the woods, only to come right back to the same place? Life could be fickle like that. I could see a figure through the foliage, standing at the stand. An enemy? I unsheathed my knife as I approached, but held my hands behind my back, as if I had them clasped together.

As I left the concealment of the trees, the figure (a canine-esque figure, I could see now) started upright, looking at me with a bushwhacked look on its face. Except… it wasn't looking at me. Its eyes were looking in my direction, but they were shifting aimlessly, seeming to slide right over my form. It was like it couldn't see me at all. It mumbled something under its breath, and drew a pair of swords. It paced around, seeming to grow more and more panicked by the second, as I just stood there, watching it.

There was a rustling in the bushes. Its eyes snapped to them in an instant, watching it intently until the rustling had long since stilled. I got it now. Its vision was based on movement. If that was the case, then… I carefully shifted one of my hands behind my back, reaching into my coin bag and teasing out a single gleaming bit of gold. Then, without shifting the visible part of my arm, I twisted my hand and tossed the coin as hard as I could at the nearest tree to my left.

Two halves of the coin dropped to the ground. The dog creature's rightmost blade was buried a quarter of the way into the tree. A singular stroke flashed out, and the dog-thing's head joined the halved coin, before disappearing into dust with the rest of its body. I let out a breath I'd been holding since it had first noticed me, and picked up the two halves of the coin. Maybe I'd keep these, after I sold the rest; as a trophy, or somesuch. Looking back on the creature I'd fought, I realized that perhaps I had been too hasty in what I'd labeled the earlier patrols. Clearly, these were the true "attack dogs" of ASGORE.

As I moved on past the guard post, I noticed a couple bone-shaped items, one half burned. The material they were made of… it didn't look like regular bone, but it wasn't any material I was familiar with, and I couldn't assume anything down here. Was there another fire wielding monster around here, incinerating creatures down to their bones? My cauterized hand ached at the thought.

I moved forward, regardless. There was a sign in the middle of an ice-patch up ahead that I carefully walked across, not wanting to slip on my bottom, or worse: my neck.

North: Ice

South: Ice

West: Ice

East: Snowdin Town

(… and ice.)

Alright then. What a useful sign. I risked my neck for this? Well, at least now I know there's a town nearby. Snowdin… "snowed in town"? What an awful pun. But the idea of finding genuine civilization down here was an appealing one. Of course, perhaps it was inhabited by more of these monsters, maybe even the source of these patrols. but on the other hand… mayhap it's the cause of them, instead. After all, why would there be human hunting fanatics if there weren't humans to hunt?

It was a moot point, however, given that this road seems to be heading east already, and it was my only real lead on a way out of this damnable hole. So Snowdin ho it is, then. Hopefully there'd be somewhere I could get myself a good mug of hot cocoa, because I was freezing my eyebrows off out here.

So I pushed on east, along the road, and what do I see in the very next clearing, blocking my path, with nothing but impassable cliffs to either side? That's right, it's Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, the walking mockeries of all that is vibrant and vital In the world: the skelebros. Oh for Pete's sake. I had gone so far into the wilderness to avoid travelling the same path as these two, but Mann Tracht, Gott Lacht.

"You're so lazy!" said the taller one (what was his name again? Paper? Paprika? Helvetica? Something like that) to its brother, failing to notice me as I strode out into the clearing. "You were napping all night!." I slowly scanned the clearing, searching for any signs of it having prepared the grounds in some way.

"I think that's called… sleeping," retorted the shorter one (Sam? Sands? Sines?). Ah yes: there was a large area between us that was cleared of all but the hardest layer of snow. Possibly just them making a nice flat arena to fight me in (I wouldn't blame them; what I would give for snowshoes right now), but maybe…

"Excuses, excuses!" the fanatic replied. I pulled my stick off of my pack, and began poking around at the flat area. It seemed by all accounts to just be a thin layer of packed ice over hard earth. If there was a trap, it wasn't going to be found by poking at it with a stick, which ruled out quite a lot.

The sound of my stick poking away at the ground finally seemed to get the attention of the skeletons. "Oh-ho!" said the tall one, its tone shifting from peevish to dramatic. "The human arrives! In order to stop you… my brother and I have created some puzzles!"

Oh sweet hay-zeus, not more terrible puzzles! I could stand traps, but not this mind numbing rubbish. Oh, taff it, I should just go for him while he monologues, and hope they haven't activated it yet for dramatic effect.

I stride forward across the clearing, stick in one hand clattering against the ground ahead of me, knife in the other. The skeleton's clearly prepared speech (about an invisible… something or other) trailed off as I approached, unhindered. Evidently, my gamble had paid off. Was that… sweat? How did it…

"Hmmm… you must be having culture shock," it continued. "You see, where I come from it's a loving tradition. To suffer through horrible puzzles for no reason."

Okay, so they knew the puzzles were horrible, then. So why… ah, right. Tradition! That most excellent of excuses to not bother thinking. What rot.

"So, uh, just walk back there, and…" it said, as I kept moving toward it, heedless of the nonsense it was spewing. It gave a long suffering sigh, and turned to the shorter one. "Why couldn't we get a human that likes puzzles?"

"Excuse you," I retorted. "I happen to quite like puzzles. And if I ever saw anything in this wretched hole that was worthy of that nomenclature, I'd be happy to play along!"

"And how would you know if my puzzles are so lacking, hmmm?" it replied. "You didn't even let me finish introducing it!"

"Alright, then, let me have it!" I exclaimed, throwing my arms out in a melodramatic gesture. "Tell me, oh wondrous puzzlemaster, what is your oh so great and terrible design? Explain your puzzle!"

"Thank you!" it said with no small amount of exasperation in its voice, before clearing its non-existent throat and continuing in its dramatic tone from before. "For you see, this is the invisible... Electricity Maze!" It pulled out an orb from… somewhere. "When you touch the walls of this maze, this orb will administer a hearty zap! Sound like fun?"

I stared at the skeleton for a long while, wearing an expression of abject disbelief. "THAT'S your grand puzzle?" I replied, once I regained control of my jaw. "Flailing through an invisible field of cattle prods? That's not a puzzle, that's just a snuff film! Where is the mental challenge? Where is the artistry? Where is the artful deception of your intuition? For pity's sake, the average newspaper has better puzzles than that!"

"Fine then!" it shouted in consternation. "If you hold my puzzle-making skills in such contempt, prepare yourself for a gauntlet of tricks, a parade of traps, a veritable armada of the most puzzling puzzles to ever puzzle you!" And with that, he turned around and marched off.

What a bozo.