It was dark.
It was dark and yet, for some reason, she could see.
Her eyes were closed, but even so, images flashed in front of her. A spacious room filled with darkness, not a cheap, shabby darkness filled with dust and emptiness. This was a lavish, ornate darkness.
Faint gleams, silken rustlings of an invisible, richly clothed crowd, standing with bated breath-- cut together with glimpses of a dark, eerie forest.
Spoked wheels rumbled across the ground-- hitting a small bump, she felt herself jerk and sway.
She could feel the sensation of movement- was she in a car? No, there was-- were those hoofsteps?
She wasn't fully conscious, just barely at the edge, and no matter how she struggled, she couldn't seem to wake up.
Her body felt heavy, but her head was floating....
Now it was the room again. Something lit up in the center-- a tiered fountain, glowing an eerie green, with a shape hovering above it.
There was the clack of a footstep, and a voice spoke.
"Ah-- my dear, esteemed benefactor," it said. It was a masculine voice, not particularly deep-pitched, but smooth and articulate, with a note of dramatic pride.
"My proud, beautiful flower of evil..."
Another step forward.
"You are truly the fairest one of all."
Is it talking to me...?
She shifted, with a soft moan-- her limbs felt like lead. She couldn't even roll over...
Lying on her back, her hands were clasped at her stomach, almost like she was Sleeping...
Sleeping....
O-Or maybe Snow...
What was she just trying to remember? The names of-- of...
Why couldn't she think of them now? Were they people she knew?
They felt familiar, like friends she'd had when she was really young, but the more she tried to recall them, the less she could grasp.
One more step, and the shape above the fountain grew clearer-- it looked like an oval window with an ornate frame, looking out into a sea of bright green fire.
"O magic mirror, thy wisdom I entreat," the voice implored, like an actor delivering a grand soliloquy. "Reveal unto me the visage I seek..."
More rumblings of the wheels, and the familiar huff and snort of a horse.
A horse...
When was the last time she'd even seen a horse in person?
Was this a carriage or a stagecoach or something? Why was she in it?
She tried to move again, but still couldn't do more than shift weakly.
Her mind was still fuzzy and indistinct, but the panic was starting to rise-- this wasn't normal; this was wrong.
She was draped in some kind of thick, heavy fabric-- brocade, or silk? Whatever it was, it definitely wasn't her bedding, or any clothes she'd wear to lie down in any position.
For some goddamn reason, she couldn't think of any possible explanations for what was going on-- there were possible explanations, but she just wasn't lucid enough to grasp any of them...
"You, whose image the Dark Mirror did beckon forth," the voice intoned solemnly, echoing in her head like the boom in her chest during a fireworks show.
"If your heart wills it, take the hand of the one reflected in the mirror."
Just as it said, a hand unfurled from the mirror-- oh, I guess it's a mirror, not a window- reaching out towards her palm-up, as if asking to accompany her in a dance.
She hesitated, then-- she wasn't sure why, it wasn't like she could move anyway-- tried to reach back, cautiously.
To her surprise, it worked. She grasped the hand, which was slim and long, and oddly cool to the touch, and it folded around her own.
"Was it you who called for me?" A new voice asked, still masculine and genteel, but a bit deeper, and also somehow younger, than the first voice.
Uhh-- I dunno, her thoughts replied, head still drifting slowly like she'd fallen asleep while inhaling dentist gas directly into her lungs.
I don't really know what's going on, but-- I guess if that's what's happening here, then... Could you lend me a hand?
...No pun intended.
The new voice chuckled.
"Very well," it replied, and she could feel herself being pulled forward. "Let us commence."
There was a strange feeling, like she was passing through a vertical wall of water, and she shuddered as her entire consciousness seemed to ripple.
Suddenly, she was running through darkness, clutching the same hand as her throat burned like this had been going on for quite some time.
She couldn't see the person in front of her clearly-- they seemed to be tall, thin and very fast. She couldn't even hear their footsteps.
Her own, sure, she heard them-- or more accurately, felt them, colliding with the ground or floor, or whatever was under them.
"Oya, oya-- do try to keep up," her companion said, a note of amusement in their voice.
She wanted to snap something back, but still couldn't-- whether it was her lack of breath or something else stopping her voice, she couldn't tell.
Still trying to push out a retort, she accelerated again-- not really running now, but being pulled along, feet only occasionally making contact with the ground, in a startling but oddly exhilarating rush of speed.
At the same time, the visions of the dark room still flashed in her mind.
The mirror reflected a series of images, and the first voice continued to speak.
"As flame reduces even the stars to ash--"
A smoldering ember blazed into a red-hot flame.
"As ice seals away even time itself--"
A shard of glittering ice, purer than a diamond, rotated slowly.
"As great trees swallow even the sky..."
A ripple of verdant green, like the leaves of a great forest dancing in a powerful wind.
"Fear not the power of darkness."
The mirror fell pitch-black. It wasn't just the black of a switched-off screen. It was more like the darkness of a cave-- a yawning void, waiting patiently, but eagerly, for her to make the slightest misstep and tumble into it forever.
"Now-- demonstrate to me your power."
Looking ahead, she caught a glimpse of a white-toothed smile, with just a hint of what looked like fangs.
"Don't let go, now," her companion warned jokingly.
She couldn't even if she wanted to-- her hand didn't hurt or anything, but the grip they had on it was as unyielding as steel.
The next moment, it was gone.
She skidded to a halt, almost falling over-- stumbling back, she flailed her arms, looking up at the... thing... that loomed over her.
It was a monster.
Huge and snarling, it towered over her, much larger than any non-aquatic mammal had any right to be. Its head looked like a cat's-- maybe a lion or cougar, and its body was similar... To a certain extent.
Its legs weren't right, though, more reptilian than feline, and its coarse gray fur was patchy, sticking out from between huge scales.
As if all that wasn't already bad enough-- it had a wreath of blue flames encircling its head like a mane, spilling out from between its jagged teeth as it growled. A pair of leathery wings unfurled from its back. A snakelike tail, complete with head, hissed at her from over its shoulder, and undulating tentacles grew from its neck.
All these disjointed parts were jammed together in a bizarre, haphazard mess of a creature that made her mind, still spinning in half-consciousness and not sure if any of this was even real, almost give up completely.
"You gotta be fucking kidding me," she muttered, the first words she'd been able to speak this whole time.
With a thunderous growl, the monster stepped forward, and she was only able to take a half-step back before her knees locked up.
God damn her so-called 'fight-or-flight response'-- she just had to be one of the idiots who chose the 'freeze' option!
Unable to move or even breathe now, she looked up into its face, muzzle crisscrossed with scars like an ancient, feral predator.
Was she totally losing it, or did its eyes-- the same piercing blue as the flames-- hold a hint of... Of sadness, way down in the back? Some kind of endless longing or melancholy?
Even as the instinct of 'stay very still and it might not see you' took over every nerve in her body, her heart gave a sympathetic twang.
...Great. Now she was feeling sorry for the thing that was about to KILL her!
It growled once more, this time growing into a roar.
As it opened its mouth, the ravenous blue flame gathered in the back of its throat into a blinding pinpoint, and she squeezed her eyes shut, turning her face away.
The light engulfed her, burning her skin and almost blinding her even through her eyelids-- then, with a sudden jerk, she realized she was lying down again, back in the same position.
Had she even moved at all?
She still couldn't move now, though-- her limbs were even heavier than before, like she was turning slowly into lead.
"To me. To them. To yourself," the voice from the mirror room stated somberly. "The hour grows long, and time is scarce."
In her mind's eye, she was running again, clutching the hand of her indistinct companion, even though her body was still unable to move.
"Keep steady your grip, no matter what may come. And welcome...."
That sensation of walking through a wall of water again, this time accompanied by a feeling of rushing upwards, like she was caught in a UFO's tractor beam.
"...To the Villain's World."
_______________________________________
Here it is. The first thing I've written in, like... I can't even remember, and it's dumb self-insert fanfic of the sexy little Deviantart-style gijinka Disney villain app. The muses are truly fickle, it seems.
Alas.
Quick note-- I'm writing this all in the mobile app, so if you're seeing this on desktop and the formatting is weird, it's because of that. TBH, I don't really want to fix it if it is, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Fun fact: I actually selected Floyd as my starter character, but I think Tsunotaro here fits a little more, thematically. Also, I wasn't 100% sure how to write Fishboi in that situation, so. Lol.
I'm banging these out in my Notes app and retyping them here as a kind of very rudimentary editing. I'm not really looking to spend too much energy on this, this is just something I'll be doing on my phone just because.
Just to recap from the description, this is a retelling/elaboration/(re?)imagining of the events of TWST, written with myself as the player character.
There won't be shipping, especially not with myself-- I'm actually 💫♠️💅😻🧜♀️🧚♀️👭💫 (rough translation: An asexual spectrum lesbian), and most of these bitches are underage, while the version of myself I'll be using is 19 (I'm older than that IRL, but 19 is the oldest I think Crowley would accept the minimal amount of responsibility he has for the MC for), so there'll really be none of that here.
If I mess up egregiously on characterizing any of your faves, again I apologize, but once again I am kind of stupid. I cannot have an in-depth understanding of every single one of their inner machinations. If the vibes are roughly right, I'm satisfied.
Also-- I'm mostly thinking of Riddle, Sebek, Azul and Idia here, but I like them... But, like, not in the 'poor little meow meow' sad edit sense. (No shade to any of y'all who like to do that, it's just not my thing.)
It's kinda hard to explain, but I think they're funny.
They have very bulliable energy. I wanna affectionately bully them. I think seeing them, mainly Riddle and Sebek, getting into arguments/Shenanigans, is funny.
Sorry that I use so many goddamn words. I don't know when my writing style turned into '18th century author who gets paid by the word', but it did.
Enjoy.
Or don't. I'm not the boss of you; I'm just doing this to get all this stuff out of my brain.