Chapter Text
The snow was colder than it was few hours back, but not in a natural way. It was the kind of cold that came from absence—no warmth, no presence, no life. Just empty houses, frozen streets, and silence thick enough to press on his bones.
He found an open patch just past Grillby's, where the snow was soft and untouched. This spot would do.
He raised his hand, fingers outstretched. Nothing happened.
He tried squinting, focusing, mimicking the diagrams in the book he'd spent hours memorizing. Still nothing.
"Okay," he muttered, "step one: believe you can do it. Step two: Gaslight yourself into thinking that helps." He pointed forward and tried again.
A small flicker of blue light buzzed near his fingers. It blinked out before he could react.
He didn't stop. Day after day— He honestly couldn't tell the time, he just based it on the crystal lamps going on or off at certain hours—he practiced.
Forming shapes in the snow. Concentrating until his sockets buzzed. Willing energy into his fingertips. Sometimes he felt it twitch.
Sometimes nothing at all.
Other times, something wrong happened.
Once, while channeling through his slightly more glitched arm, a jagged red bone erupted and shattered a tree way behind what he was aiming at. His vision flickered red for a bit. He stopped for a break after that.
Another few days later, he sat on the roof of the Librarby for a little break, legs dangling. No wind. No birds. No sounds. Just the buzz of "LIBRABY" sign blinking gently under him.
He tilted his head up.
"Stars Dammit, I'm bored as hell."
He'd said that a few times now. "Thank the stars," or "Scared the stars outta me." when he blew something on accident.
But there weren't any here. No sky. Just a dark cave roof stretching over his head with crystals to fake them. And yet, the phrase kept slipping out of his mouth like it was built more into him more then the puns he kept thinking about. Like a muscle memory of a limb that wasn't there anymore.
He clenched his jaw and hopped down the roof. Bones appearing under his feet to cushion his fall.
He could now proudly say to anyone that his progress wasn't just some sparks anymore—he was doing actual magic now.
He could conjure three types of bones. Now What each did, he was still trying to figure out himself, But they seem to be based on color coordination.
He walked into the clearing again—his makeshift training ground just past Grillby's. It had become his unofficial Testing grounds for weeks now.
Hand raised, focus narrowed, he inhaled.
With a flick of his wrist, a line of sharp, Blue glowing bone, burst from the ground and hovered in the air in a basic formation.
"...Tch. still can't get them as high as I hoped." He flicked his glitchier hand to de-spawn them. "Still not fast enough either."
He tried again. This time with both hands. He realized magic materialized faster and easier with more body casting. The structure was tighter this time, brighter too.
He stood there, staring at them. Letting them hover midair. It was a lot easier once he let his body do most of the work.
Like instinct, or muscle memories, if that can even be said for him since he was a skeleton.
He slowly looked at his hands. "I've must have been incredibly good at magic for my instincts to be this good."
Whoever he used to be—he had known magic well enough that his body and magic remembered what to do even after whatever happened to the old him.
Sleep came rarely to him nowadays. And It wasn't the fact he kept forcing himself to stay awake to keep training.
No it felt like sleep had became much more...optional to him rather then it being an actual need like it used to be.
Or at least that's what it felt like to him.
Weeks passed—he stopped counting them. He didn't feel tired. Not like he remembered tiredness should feel, anyway. His joints didn't ache. His bones didn't sag. He never yawned once.
A few weeks back, just out of curiosity, he decided to lie down and try.
That's when the static came.
He didn't fall into the non-awareness of dreams he was expecting. He was just not perceiving anything while still being aware, no images or sensations.
Just an endless gray static that surrounded him and the constant buzzing. Like he was in a broken Tv.
He woke up a few hours later, feeling the same as he was when he laid down. No Fuzziness. No rest. Just that invisible pressure slightly removing itself from where it was in the back of his skull.
He didn't sleep often anymore after that, unless he really needed too.
Didn't see the point of it any more.
A few days back—maybe more like a week ago or so—he'd tried something reckless.
Every time he pushed his magic further then what it took to form bones, he kept feeling a strange tingling in his skull. He could feel something wanted to form out of his magic. Something big.
The next second, a jagged shape of white-blue light had started to appear, a second later, half of a skull of some kind appeared with its jaw unhinging appeared around the light, the light in its jaw growing by the second.
He didn't know what it was. Still didn't, since It lasted a second before freezing in place.
Then exploded in a burst of blinding light and noise.
He should've taken the hit full force, he was too close to it and he wasn't fast enough to get out of its range—his reaction was purely instinctual. He jumped.
But when he landed... he was Thirty feet away..
His vision had blurred, twisted, and blinked—just like when his sockets buzzed when he focused too much magic out of himself too quickly. And suddenly he was outside of the clearing, a giant hole where the skull was.
Teleportation. He could Teleport.
He hadn't tried to summon that skull thing again though. Not yet.
He found a general store a day after the incident.
The sign over the door simply read:
[SNOWDIN SHOP - OWNER: NULL]
Inside the store, it was dusty but mostly untouched. Shelves were still stocked.
He took a couple of items like some black gloves to cover his hands that went all the way to his elbows, some longer pants since he didn't want to keep wearing the same shorts all the time. Not that he didn't clean them, but—he just felt like he would've been nagged at for looking like a wreck.(Hold on he was the only one he-
He also found some snacks....that healed him for some reason?
[MONSTER CANDY - RECOVERY HP ITEM]
[Asset-FOOD ITEM]
It honestly soo good he grabbed every box and stuffed them all into his inner pockets.
He also found what seemed like an outpost and sentry shack, tagged as:[OUTFITTERS POST - TEMPORARILY CLOSED (??? DAYS AGO)]
Inside was some boxes of pile of cloths, belts, utility pouches. and some stuff most royal guards carry. All labeled.
There were also some boots—a bit bigger then the slippers he was wearing, but they were a lot more sturdy. He took those too, mostly because they looked cool.
He realized that sooner or later, he would be carrying too much on his person.
His arms full of some cloths, his scarf weighed him down, his jacket pockets overflowing.
'Man... would be nice if I could just—store all this somewhere, hold on wasn't there another book that said something about monsters having an inventory?'
The moment the thought clicked, so did something in him.
INVENTORY reactivated
A small, flickering square appeared in his face, causing him to nearly trip over a few rocks he was walking over.
Faint. Cyan-lined. Showing a black screen with blinking text: [Inventory: 1% full]
He blinked. Looked down. And thought of everything on him going into it.
All the stuff he had on him shimmered—and vanished with a soft PING.
But when he imagined his old slippers back into his hands—they reappeared instantly.
He tested it with books, food, spare cloth, hell even a table.
All gone in a flash. All came back when he thought about them,
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Thus began the skeletons Criminal arc.