Grillby x Reader: Burn the Witch

Part 4

The mage wasn't sure what she would find outside of the ruins, but as a cold, crisp breeze slammed the door behind her. The ground before her was heavily laid with snow, with a path cutting through the mounds of snow. Surrounding her, were trees taller than she could ever hope to see the tops of, shrouded in darkness. She suddenly understood the depth of the situation ahead of her. She sighed, a puff of steam escaping past her lips, and began to trudge forward. The forest was quiet, eerily so. The only sound around were her quiet breaths and the crunching of snow beneath her feet. Despite wearing thick robes, every rogue breeze seemed to tear right through her.

After about a half a mile (a little under a kilometer) of walking, she heard the crunching of snow coming from somewhere in the dense forest. She stilled. The sound had vanished. Perhaps it was her imagination. She continued down the path, albeit faster than before. The sound of her own footsteps was drowned out by the beating in her ears. She pulled at her cloak, trying to hide her face in her hood. It was cold, far too cold, and the further in she went, it only seemed to get colder, the breeze only becoming more unbearable. Another quarter mile (less than half a kilometer) later a shadow caught her eye from the forest. She stilled once more. All motion in the forest seemed to stop.

Perhaps she wasn't as alone as she thought.

The tips of her fingers stung, the beginnings of frostbite setting in. She curled and uncurled her fingers slowly, waiting for even the slightest hint of movement. Her eyes darted around anxiously, waiting. Despite the ever-cold wind, she began to sweat.

Suddenly, the sound of a snapping branch echoed in the cavern. She ran. She ran off the path and into the thick brush of the forest. Branches tugged and scratched at her, her feet sunk into the snow but she ran still. She ran until she saw, just ahead of her on the path she was once on, two tall, regal looking monsters. She stopped dead in her tracks and hid herself behind a giant pine tree. For a moment, she forgot how to breathe. She watched as they slowly made their way toward her, never seeming to notice her.

One was a tall bird-like monster with ocean blues feathers and a prominent beak. He wore what she assumed was the uniform of the Royal Monster Army, polished silver armor with the Monster Kingdom's insignia, the Deltarune, engraved into it, and a dark blue cape that fluttered behind him. In his wing, he held a scimitar, a weapon made of a long wooden pole and a curved blade at the end. As he walked, he stabbed the scimitar into the shallow snow with each step, using his weapon as a another would use a walking stick.

His companion was a tall, slender, skeleton monster. He didn't wear any military uniform that she could see; instead, he wore a beige turtleneck and dress pants, with a black peacoat over it. He had no weapons, but held a long white coat and clipboard. Despite not seeming intimidating upon first glance, the skeleton was far more frightening the longer she observed him. He was a head taller than the bird monster and far more imposing, walking as if he were born in the military. His skull was perfectly smooth, lacking any sort of definition a human skull would have. His mouth opened without any sort of jaw and stretched and moved as if his bone were skin. One of his eye sockets was permanently half closed in a crescent shape and both held a void-like darkness within them with a single pinprick of light in each. As he approached, she noticed two cracks in his skull: one running from his eye down to his mouth, the other running from his half-closed eye up and over the top of his skull.

Only a human could make such a thorough cut into bone. The mage thought. She could only imagine the pain he must have went through.

The skeleton reached into his coat pocket and searched for a while, before taking out a pack of cigarettes. As he brought the pack up to take one into his mouth, she noticed a perfectly circular hole in the middle of his palm, showing a flash of the cigarette brand through his hand. He flipped the pack open and took a cigarette into his mouth. He stowed the box back in his pocket and searched for a bit, not seeming to find what he was looking for. He sighed, the cigarette still clenched between what could only be described of as teeth. The bird monster chuckled when he heard his companion's discontent.