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Krampus, in general, has always been a go-with-the-flow person: He followed rules loosely at best or outright broke them at worst, never cared to have a to-do list or a planner, and loved getting drunk. Overall, he judged himself, he was a spontaneous and impulsive person.
…That didn't mean he was enjoying this situation, though.
He was currently lying face-down on a carpeted floor. His head pounded and his horns ached. The buzzing of electricity filled his ears and muddled his thoughts. It was like having a bad hangover, except for the fact that he didn't remember drinking before he got here somehow.
It was in times like these that he was glad he didn't have to stay stuck with mortal disadvantages. Headaches and dizziness, cleared up with just one thought. Truly the best thing about being a god.
He stood up and looked around as he smoothened his suit. All that greeted him were bare, yellow walls with faded wallpaper, the rough carpet he was laying on a moment ago, and the fluorescent lighting making those damn buzzing sounds. The air was musty and stale, and Krampus would by lying if he denied feeling uncomfortable in this place.
His face seemed cool, for some reason. He rubbed his cheek and found it to be slightly wet.
"Oh, shit, that's disgusting," he said out loud, lashing his tail. He wiped the moisture off with his sleeves. Was it because of the carpet? "Fuck," he cursed again. "My face is dirty now." He definitely needs to wash his face when he got back.
Speaking of going back, he realized that he didn't know where the hell he was.
He racked his brain as he fiddled with the lapel of his suit. Nothing out of the ordinary, really—he was kind of just doing his own thing, chatting idly with Wisdom, then he… fell? Into the floor?
Maybe he really was drunk. He groaned out loud in frustration, hands raised to cover his face before realizing that maybe dirtying his hands—and face—even more wasn't the best idea.
Krampus lowered his arms and cleared his throat. "Hello?" he called out. "Is anyone here?"
The lights continued buzzing. One of them winked off and on, and that was the best response Krampus got.
Strangely, teleporting or trying to use Fast Move didn't work. Krampus couldn't get out by normal means, so whatever it is that he would do he would have to do it through walking. So much for convenience.
But anyways, it didn't seem like anything useful would come out of just standing around and waiting to be found by the others, so Krampus picked a random direction (limited to two, actually—he was in a long hallway) and started walking.
He wasn't suited for long, arduous tasks like this. What are the chances that he would find a bottle of wine in here? It would be much better if he got drunk and punched the wall in or something interesting, rather than wandering aimlessly. If he was still human, he would have given in to his boredom.
There were three things he learned about this place the further he explored. First of all, he was in what seemed like a giant maze. The hallway he was dropped into soon gave way to a bunch of open corridors and more hallways, and no matter which choice he tool it always seemed to lead to even more walkways.
The second thing was that this wasn't reality.
Now that was a strange sentence that Krampus never thought he would form in all his years of living, but it was the only way he could describe it. He would pass a corridor, then change his mind and retrace his steps only to find a completely different area instead. It was like he couldn't… walk backwards? Krampus wasn't sure if that made sense, even though it was his own thoughts.
Other times, he would walk for minutes only to realize he was stuck in the same place. Somehow. Like all those steps were for nothing and he had hallucinated them.
Really, he might be on hallucinogenic drugs instead of alcohol. He wasn't sure where he would have procured them from, exactly, but his memories were as organized as a wet cardboard box.
He faintly recalled Wisdom talking about strange structures that didn't bend to the regular rules of physics. If he was here, he would probably know what this phenomenon would be called. But he isn't, so Krampus is just stuck here wandering around like an idiot.
He couldn't help but scratch the back of his neck in embarrassment.
The third fact he realized, although it only popped into his mind much later than the other two, was that this place was huge.
Krampus wasn't the type of guy who was able to keep track of time all that well—he practically had time blindness, on the contrary—but even someone like him knew what a long time would feel like. And he had been walking for what felt like goddamn hours, and there was nothing in this godforsaken place but yellow walls and fluorescent lights making those fucking buzzing noises that Krampus swore would have driven him mad if he was a regular human.
Splash. He looked down to see one of his shoes stepping right in the middle of a fat, murky puddle.
"Fuck!" he almost screamed out loud, tail straightening with a jolt. He instantly retracted his foot to try to shake the liquid off. None of it got into his socks, luckily, but his shoe was definitely dirty now.
A passing thought brought the idea of just snapping his fingers to magically clean his shoe, but Krampus wasn't sure if that was how god-like powers worked.
So there he was, face and a shoe down, standing there and still lost in this giant maze.
Krampus didn't know if he wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation or risk getting his pants dirty to sit down and go to sleep, pretending this was all a dream.
…Can gods dream?
Krampus, right now, has absolutely zero enthusiasm in him.
It took around a few more steps (few meaning ten thousand) for Krampus to start seeing something different.
What seemed like an endless sea of yellow started to break down the further he walked: wallpapers crumbling off to reveal concrete underneath, parts of the carpet ripped up, and even a few electrical outlets that scarcely littered the walls and floor. At the first sight of color that wasn't yellow. Krampus had almost jumped for joy. That musty yellow color has probably been seared into his mind by now, and it was almost a miracle that he hadn't gone mad.
Then everything transformed fully. What used to be yellow walls and carpets turned into what looks to be a warehouse or a parking garage. The area was far less cramped; the walls were mainly set on all four sides like a regular room, with uniform concrete pillars holding up the ceiling. The same kind of fluorescent lights were there, with the same annoying buzzing sound—but due to the far more expanded space and walls the sound wasn't as loud as before.
Krampus continued walking. "Hello?" he called out, but to no response yet again. Once in a while, he would pause to rest and call out if there happened to be anyone else that was stuck here, but he had never gotten any responses. Maybe it was because the place was so vast that people were all over the place and it was almost impossible to find each other, or that there weren't that many people here in the first place.
He could be in here alone, for all he knew.
Well damn, that was unusually pessimistic. He's usually more of an optimistic person, but that won't really help in this scenario, he thought to himself dryly.
Now for the most boring part: walking again.
This space seemed to be more lenient on what kinds of things were found here, compared to those yellow rooms before. Once in a while, Krampus would find wooden crates neatly boxed on the floor. The first time he saw one, he grew curious and went to see what was inside.
Almond Water, the label said on one of the bottles he had found.
Krampus had heard of almond milk before, but not almond water. Strange. He had opened the bottle and sniffed it. It smelled like almonds.
Well, the label wasn't wrong. Krampus had stared at the label, then proceeded to chug everything down.
"Hmm." He licked his lips after finishing the last few drops. It tasted like almonds, of course, but also had a hint of vanilla and something else, sort of similar to flowers. It tasted sweet.
Krampus took out another bottle and drank the whole thing. "This is surprisingly good," he declared to himself out loud. "Maybe I can bring this back somehow when I finally find the exit."
For a crate big enough for him to fit into, there was way fewer resources inside than Krampus had expected. There were only three more bottles of almond water left, as well as two cans of what he assumed to be preserved food. He reached down to look at the label.
"Tomato soup," he read aloud. Interesting.
He would have probably taken the cans if it weren't for the fact that he didn't really need to eat to survive anymore. Tomato soup sounded nice, don't get him wrong, but he wasn't blind enough to not understand the possibilities of contamination and the food actually being toxic.
But then again, those weren't really a problem either. Krampus would just get an annoying stomachache at most.
…Maybe he should be more cautious, actually. Krampus hated stomachaches.
He set down the cans of soup back into the crate and took a third bottle of almond water, but didn't immediately drink it. Krampus was going to save it for later. How generous.
And with that, he continued his long-lasting journey. Footsteps tapped against smooth concrete as he turned away from the crate and continued walking forward.
"So," Nebula started, "when are you going to tell him?"
A gloved hand tapped on the wooden table. "Hm," someone else said thoughtfully. "Depends. Krampus is doing a lot better than I thought he would, to be truthful."
"Were your expectations that low?"
"Of course not. He's competent when he sets his mind to it." The tapping stopped, hand reaching forward to swipe at a hovering screen. "I didn't think he would just walk aimlessly for that long without at least trying to break the walls in or trying to find a bottle of wine."
Nebula didn't respond to that directly. "He can't stay in there forever. Just take enough time to finish up your little experiment, then get him out."
"I know," the other replied. "It's not like I can get a mortal to test it for safety reasons, as much as I'm curious about the psychological effects."
"You're strangely insensitive to all of this."
"You're one to talk, Nebula." A pause. "If even Krampus couldn't break free from non-Euclidian structures, who knows how mortal minds would process it."
"I would prefer it if you don't find out." Nebula looks at his own screen, displaying a view of Krampus in the middle of the warehouse-like structure. "How many so-called levels of this did you make in total?"
"Only nine." The tapping resumed. "I won't design any more."
"Thanks. With how large you made these liminal spaces, Wisdom, I'm surprised there hasn't been any major errors yet."
Wisdom's great dodecahedron-shaped head swiveled. "I prepared safety measures. Krampus will be fine."