Chapter Text
The air was stale as a cold construct glided along the ground. No noise anywhere, no noise other than the softest of breezes.
Sonorous always tried to listen to the wind when he walked, but he always found himself listening for other things anyway, for his own safety. Being made of condensed ice and snow wasn't exactly the best. While his body temperature naturally regulated itself, high temperatures could greatly injure him, or worse.
He wishes he were made of something better. . .
Born to be the weakest, forever living a life of avoidance, hiding, hoping nothing sees you first. How cruel is that? It felt like a terrible joke. He was the butt of the joke for many due to this. Not only weak in the sense of his body, but also weak in how he acted.
Sonorous was clumsy, something he didn't want to admit. Noisy is what they'd call him. Any construct he meets usually doesn't stay around him for long. It's a shocker he's still alive due to these debuffs to himself.
Noisy. . . Weak. . . Noisy. . . Weak-
Hey, what's that?
Sonorous stopped mid-step, his purple eye peeking open for a better look. It was a structure in the distance, metal and decrepit. It stood silently among the trees. Honestly, it was impossible to tell what it was supposed to be at first glance.
He got closer.
It looked like a. . . Shelter? But not one built by any construct Sonorous had ever seen before. The structure was incomplete, with exposed metal beams reaching toward the sky and unfinished walls that left the inside vulnerable to the elements. Large sections of the building were nothing more than empty frames, as if whoever built it had simply stopped halfway through.
The materials were strange.
Heavy structures that seemed designed to withstand something far greater than the quiet forest surrounding it. Yet despite its size, the building looked fragile.
Every movement of the wind caused something inside to shift. Loose wires tapped against metal walls, and broken panels creaked. Empty halls carried echoes of sounds that no longer had anyone to make them.
Despite himself, his own curiosity got the better of him as he slowly made his way inside. This proved a bit difficult given the structure's low ceilings, even more evidence that this place was not meant to house the average construct. Inside, the unfinished shelter told the story of an interrupted construction. Equipment was left behind, supplies sat untouched, and strange machines rested where they had been abandoned, covered in dust.
The deeper Sonorous walked, the quieter it became.
Why it was like this was clear to him. This place was so silent and empty because someone made it so.
The remains of its creators were scattered throughout the halls, their bodies left where they had fallen. Some rested beside unfinished workstations while others were collapsed near entrances, as if they had been trying to escape. Whatever this place was meant to be, it never became that.
He'd seen many fallen and dead wildlife to know the stages of rot, and these creatures had been here for a while. He couldn't tell what they were exactly, but he could tell they were much smaller than him, the perfect size for this shelter. Even if he couldn't tell what they were or- or how they were here- he couldn't help but feel intense empathy. This place was built to keep them safe, wasn't it?
But it never became that, did it?
As Sonorous continued to roam the halls, stepping over rotten corpses surrounded by insects and other lifeforms, he. . . Heard something. He walked towards the noise, through doorways that creaked and gave with his weight- and then he saw it.
A bright, pulsating light.
He had no idea how to comprehend it. It seemed to be held up by a metal square frame. It didn't look real, honestly. . . Sonorous didn't know what it was he was looking at before he came to an epiphany. Maybe this was how these creatures got here? They're nothing he's ever seen before, and this thing is also nothing he's ever seen before!
How fascinating?
Sonorous feels a brief moment of admiration for these creatures before remembering every single one of them around him is very, very dead. Right. . . He wonders what their world looks like. It's not like he has much going on here, so. . .
He reaches his hand out slowly, closing his amethyst eye. He can feel the light sore by the surface of his body; it's warm but not enough to melt. He pushes himself forward. . .
And Sonorous is gone from FableHaven.
Sonorous falls to the hard ground with a thump. Ouch, but fair enough.
He softly sighed as he rubbed his face, looking around. He briefly thought nothing had happened as he saw the same things. Corpses, ruined building, and evidence of disaster- but no, something was different. What exactly was different? Even with how abandoned this place was, it was not quiet.
Sonorous froze as he kept hearing tiny things.
A distant dripping noise echoed somewhere overhead, and the wind hissed through cracks in the walls. Something metallic rattled far away, the noise travelling through the building's skeleton before fading into the distance. There was a faint buzzing coming from somewhere he couldn't identify.
The sounds overlapped one another, creating a strange tapestry of noise that seemed to come from every direction at once. Sonorous felt an instinctual panic. Tiny things like these, even if they were quiet, were bound to attract something, right? He needed the noise to stop or he'll-
Wait, he's not in FableHaven. . . he doesn't need to. . .
Sonorous found himself wanting to listen closer. Slowly, Sonorous rose to his feet. His head turned this way and that as he tried to isolate each sound. The dripping water from a crack in the ceiling. The wind blowing gently, both rattling any loose parts of the building and what he thought were plants outside.
There was so much.
It was overwhelming.
It was fascinating.
Carefully, he continued through the building.
Unlike the shelter back in FableHaven, this one seemed older, much older, likely having been built much later than the initial one. The walls were stained, and sections of the ceiling had collapsed entirely. Plants clung to the foundations, thriving in a place full of death.
The air felt different too, though he wasn't sure how. Eh, he decided not to dwell on that for long as he continued moving forward, wanting to listen more. And soon, he found the doorway, broken in, to the outside. The moment Sonorous stepped through it, he stopped again. The forest stretched endlessly before him, and it was even noisier than inside.
He heard birds calling to one another from the canopy overhead, and leaves rustled constantly in the wind. Insects buzzed through the undergrowth, and somewhere far away, water rushed over stone.
Sonorous just stood there.
Listening.
Back home, one sound could cause your death. One sound determined the safety of your family. One sound.
But here? Here, there seemed to be hundreds of sounds, thousands, if not more. All on top of each other. Every tree seemed to have its own voice. Every patch of grass concealed some tiny creature moving beneath it.
The entire forest was alive with sound. For several minutes, Sonorous did absolutely nothing, just listening. This place. . . It was beautiful.
He started to wander without direction, drifting through the forest while stopping every few minutes to investigate some new sound. Once, he spent nearly an hour crouched beside a stream simply listening to the water tumble over rocks. Another time, he followed the chirping of insects only to discover creatures no larger than his thumb hiding among the leaves.
The world felt impossibly large.
Time passed without him noticing until he realized the sky was different and the sounds had changed. Some of them disappeared, like the little pitter patter of little furry animals in the grass. But new noises emerged, like the racket of tiny bugs in the tall grass.
Still, Sonorous wandered. Still, he listened.
The days went on like this. This entire forest could entertain Sonorous for his entire life if he chose to stay, but a new sound appeared. It wasn't an animal or nature doing what nature does; it was different.
Thump. Tap. Tap.
His eye narrowed.
That was deliberate. Someone was making that sound like the birds in the trees.
Thump.
Then he heard it.
A voice.
A voice humming a tune. It was unlike anything any animal had done here, and he knew it was special because he'd heard other constructs make a noise like this. Maybe it was a construct. Maybe it was an alive version of the creators of the portal.
And, before he even realized what he was doing, he was already following the sound deeper into the trees.