Chapter Text
A dark fog permeates the air. Beneath it, there's a sea of small black pebbles. The land is flat and featureless, the fog empty and devoid of life. That is, it's mostly empty. The pebbles shine and reflect a single point of bright, brilliant light. Said light is currently at the end of a wand, and Rose Lalonde is holding it high up in the air.
She's been wandering the featureless place for what feels like hours. She has no idea how much time has actually passed, only that it's imperative that she keep moving. So move she does. The pebbles crunch underfoot and the light like a tiny sun illuminates a small section of the fog around her. All she can smell is dust, all she can taste is ashen fog, all she can hear is the sound of tiny stones sliding against each other, and all she can see is the empty land around her. It almost makes her want to give up her endless wandering.
Almost. Rose thinks back to when she first arrived, sprawled on the stones. She remembers the game and the message that came after, welcoming to her starting tier and the tier she would supposedly support. She's on the Prosperse tier, though what that means, she doesn’t know. Then there was that strange message for the tier she's supposed to be supporting. A 501 error about something not implemented yet. It sounded ominous. It still does
It's made even more ominous by the fact that nobody else has been around since then. At first she called out and hoped that someone was close enough to hear her, but there was no response. Then she checked in with her powers - which still thankfully worked - and came to the conclusion that moving was the best idea. Every time she checked afterwards it still remained as the thing she should do, so here she is hours later and still wandering. Her feet are starting to tire and she has switched her arms too many times to count to keep holding her light aloft. The addition of the light is purely common sense. Her voice might tire, but the light would keep shining as a beacon that would hopefully call her friends. Or at least anyone else.
She keeps walking, one foot after another, and is carried along by a determination to find out what's happening and why she's in this place. If she can only find some other source of life, even if it's as small as an insect. In fact, she's quite honestly looking for something that small, which is why she misses the way the fog seems to reflect her light back at her. It didn't do that before, at least, not to the degree it is now. The reflection becomes brighter as she walks until it finally catches her eye.
It's quickly made apparent that it in’t a reflection at all. It's its own silently pulsing light, though the pulses were too minuscule to notice before. Rose hesitates but lowers her wand and stops providing it with light. Now with the darkness surrounding her, she can easily see the red and blue light before her. It isn’t long before she can make out a slight shape in the fog, short but wiry with psionic energy arcing between four horns.
“Hello,” she calls, and hopes that the person before her is who she thinks it was, “nice day for a walk.”
The person snorts slightly and keeps walking forward. He's more easily visible now and easily identifiable as Sollux Captor, only without the double eye patches he wore when she last saw him. In their place sre a pair of red and blue shades to match the colors of his eyes. “‘Nice’?”
She shrugs. “I heard it’s important to stay positive.”
The troll stops in front of her. His psionics make some of Rose’s hair stand on end. “Says the human.”
She raises an eyebrow and crosses her arms. “I’d love to dig into that comment, I really would. It’s such a shame that literally anything else is more important right now.”
Sollux smirks and shakes his head. “You can’t deny that every human says that.”
“I can. However, I called out the importance of anything else in an attempt to discuss the topics we should be discussing.”
His expression suddenly grows more serious. “Yeah. Did you get the same message I did?”
“Something about being on the Prosperse tier and supporting another tier, though I was presented with a 501 error before I could find out what that other tier was.”
“I got the same thing. Something’s gone wrong.”
“I think you’re right,” says Rose. She glances around at the still featureless landscape around them. “It makes me wonder if this where our supposed tier should be or if it is just a waiting place for when the error is fixed.”
Sollux tilts his head slightly and looks around with her. “Could be either way. But it’s kind of shitty that we and whoever else that might be here were spaced so far apart from each other.”
A thought occurs to Rose. “Do you think that’s on purpose?”
The troll’s eyes narrows slightly in thought. “It has to be,” he muses. “All of us are powerful gods. What better way to bring us down than by splitting us into groups and trying to make sure the groups can’t even meet their own members?”
“I suppose winning the game and not being thrown into another deathly scenario is too much to ask for. Though it would make it much easier if all of us were god tier, not just the humans and one troll.”
Sollux smirks. “Make that two trolls.”
“Two?” she asks. That's interesting. “Did you find a way to go god tier while you were roaming the dream bubbles?”
“No,” he says. “Something even better. I woke up here already god tiered.”
Rose blinks in surprise. “Really? How do you know? You don’t have a god tier outfit on.”
He shrugs and glances around at the fog again. “I might not, but I’m still god tier. I’ve been feeling Doom ever since I woke up and I’ve practiced doing some things while I was looking for people.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Well-” the troll starts, but he suddenly cuts himself off. He's staring at a specific point in the fog, but when Rose follows his gaze, she can't see anything.
“Sollux?”
“We should move,” he says, with an urgency that has her worried. “I don’t think we want to be totally doomed just yet.”
Rose frowns and closes her eyes. A glowing line appears on her forehead, and it opens up into a third eye made of light. The sun-like pupil shines brightest of all as she examines the the most fortunate path ahead of her. Here she can only see actions that should be taken, not their results. Currently only one action is free of the mist that's been clouding her vision since she woke: move.
She opens her real eyes again. Her third eye closes and fades. “You’re right.”
Sollux shakes his head and starts off in the opposite direction of whatever he was staring at before. “Of course I am.”
She follows behind him. She would normally leave the conversation there and let them travel in silence, but something nags her. “How do you know this is the right direction to go in?”
“It’s the one farthest away from our doom. What, do you want to head straight towards it?”
“No, but I can’t help but notice that there are many other options than heading straight away from it.”
The troll side-eyes her. “Do your powers know where to go?”
“They didn’t show me that much. I’m speaking from my own intuition.”
Sollux shakes his head but something disturbs the fog before he can say anything. Both troll and human stop and stare as it moves and becomes slightly uneven in places. It's startling to see a difference in the previously uniform sheet of translucent grey. Then they feel the slight breeze that's agitating the fog and glance at each other. Compared to the stillness beforehand, it's obvious that the breeze isn’t a natural function of the land.
A thought comes to Rose’s mind and she smirks slightly. “I think that might just be John.”
Sollux looks towards where the breeze is coming from - slightly to the left of where they were heading before - and nods. “Looks like we know where we’re going now.”
“We certainly do,” she says as she starts towards it. “Let’s hope it doesn’t take another few hours to find him.”
The troll groans in agreement and follows after her. Red and blue energy still arcs between his horns to light the way. Slowly, step by step, their light recedes into the fog and the land they left behind became dark again. Much later, a darkened serpentine shape moves through the fog. Its long claws dig deep into the endless black pebbles as it pulls itself forward. It stops momentarily where the two gods found each other and it lifts its head - a massive horse skull - to examine something no one else can see. A cloud of ash and dust rises from underneath the skull and, for a moment, its deep green eyes practically shine. Then it turns itself towards where the gods carried on and drags itself forward, inch by inch, to follow them.