This is me moving my AU story from the Fandom to here, nothing has changed. You can treat it as a recap though!
Chapter I
We open on a human laying on the ground, which had once been a garden of wildflowers, but it had been mostly destroyed by their fall, the rest were covered in blood. The human weakly wondered how they had survived such a huge fall, but it was all that they could wonder as they felt like everything was broken, and they were on the verge of losing consciousness. Suddenly a blurry figure stood before them, taking up most of their vision.
“The leaves are beautiful this time of year, all crimson and orange… are you having a nice fall, Human?” There was an audible groan from the human lying on the ground, but it was hard to tell if it was from the pain of falling really far, or from the pain of hearing such a terrible pun. “Heh, anyway, it looks like nobody had the nerve to jump in right after to try to save ya, and you’re the first to fall down here. Hmm, what to do… Oh right! You can stay with my ahem friend Turi. She’s super freaking great with children and is always lots of fun to be around. Turi’ll be overjoyed to have a child to take care of again, since her other one…” (Uncomfortable silence) "We don’t talk about them. Anyway, I almost forgot to ask you your name, so can you tell me it before you black out?”
Due to the intense pain that resulted from falling so far having subsided a little bit, the human was able to answer without groaning this time. “m-m-my… name… is…Per…se…pho…ne…” Persephone’s voice was nearly inaudible, as they were still wracked with pain and barely conscious.
To Persephone, the blurry figure’s constantly huge grin somehow looked like it widened, but it could’ve been a hallucination. “Persephone, huh? That’s a beautiful name, now let’s go meet my friend, Howza ‘bout that?” Persephone gave a weak thumbs up because they were too tired and agonized to do much else, and then promptly lost consciousness. The figure noticed this and said “Yeah, kind of expected as much after what you just went through. Now upsy-daisy (they pick up Persephone’s unconscious body with both hands), Let’s go kid, let’s go meet your new friends.”
Chapter II
Finally regaining consciousness, Persephone slowly opened their eyes. Where were they? They then proceeded to look around, noticing that they were covered head to toe in a number of extremely thick layers of bandages and casts. They started to form a complaint about the sheer excessiveness of the amount of bandages and casts… before they remembered the height of the fall that caused the injuries the bandages and casts were covering, and suddenly the amount of bandaging seemed a little bit more reasonable. Persephone looked around a bit more and noticed they also had a breathing mask, an IV, and heart monitor hooked up to them, which slowly beeping out their pulse.
It was after they noticed the heart monitor that Persephone sensed that they weren’t alone anymore in their recovery room, there was now a skeleton in the corner that looked very much alive (Persephone wondered if it was correct to say that they were alive or not). The skeleton then somehow spoke without lips or a tongue, saying “So you’re still alive and kicking, huh? Based on the force of your impact, I thought you were a goner even though I used my powers to slow your descent at the last second. Then again, you probably wouldn’t be alive and instead would be a giant mess if I wasn’t there to save ya.”
Persephone internally questioned her sanity before saying “Are you real? You’re just a… dream skeleton, right?”
The skeleton looked slightly annoyed for a second before standing up and delivering a slightly indignated flick to Persephone’s bandaged forehead, saying “Betcha your ‘dream skeletons’ that you made up don’t do that.”
As if they were waiting right outside of view, a tall goat-humanoid with big horns curled like cinnamon rolls came into view, a deep scowl on their face “SERIF! Don’t. Hurt. The child! You should know better than anyone else how injured they already are!”
The skeleton rolled their… pupils before saying “Sorry, Turi, won’t happen again, the human will be able to recover in peace from now on”
“And don’t call me Turi, Persephone needs to know my full name” Turi snapped, they then turned their attention to Persephone, their face changing drastically from the scowl to a bright smile. “Hello Persephone, love your name by the way, my name is Turiel, I am the Empress of the Underground. And that disrespectful bonehead is Serif, the guardian of the ruins that you so graciously decided to crash land into.”
Persephone started to question their sanity again before finally, through a feat of immense strength of will, accepted this situation as real. This meant that they were able to hold normal conversations with the surrounding humanoid lifeforms, and they immediately took advantage of this ability by saying “When will I get better?”
Turiel’s smile changed into a prideful one, and she said “Well normally it would take upwards of four and a half months, b`ut because I’m here, it’ll take only 1 month, you are now free to praise me, young one.” Turiel then struck a flashy pose, which made Persephone mildly uncomfortable.
Persephone then gave Serif a look and said “You said this ‘friend’ was great with children, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I just told ya that so you’d be more open to coming with me, but it’s not like you had much of a choice anyway… Welp, Cya, wouldn’t wanna be ya!” Serif then proceeded to disappear into thin air, probably teleporting back to his post.
“You may still praise me for my altruism, Persephone!” Turiel declared, somehow not having moved a single inch from her flashy pose. Persephone sighed internally, this was going to be a long recovery.
Chapter III
After a full month of being healed and having to praise Turiel while dealing with her tremendously flashy poses, Persephone was finally able to burst from their bed-bound cocoon of casts and bandages, and thus finally was able to see the outside (outside of a castle in an extremely large cave, that is). Turiel was out today, probably posing in front of the general populace, and Serif was at their post near the flowerbed that Persephone had destroyed for at least the next 2 days. Now Persephone could finally do the thing that they had wanted to do from the second day that they were trapped in that godforsaken bed: explore a dangerous place that their caretaker should’ve warned them about but didn’t nonetheless!
After slipping past the (sleeping) guards, escaping the castle and walking past the biggest machine that they had ever seen, Persephone walked into an elevator and surveyed the buttons. All of the stone buttons clearly looked extremely well used, the labeling worn fading… except for one of them “How ominous, perfect!” Persephone thought while pressing the button, clearly not caring for their own safety. As the elevator started to near their destination (it wasn’t exactly an elevator because it could move horizontally) the elevator slowed down way too much, and it started making grinding noises while moving at a snail’s pace before finally grinding to a halt. The doors only opened a few inches, but since they were always on the skinny side, Persephone was able to force their way through the tiny gap.
Persephone was so focused on squeezing through the tiny gap in the elevator doors that they didn’t pay attention to the environment around them. So after clearing the final part of her body from the elevator, Persephone took a moment to survey their surroundings, and what they saw gave them a chill down their spine. Everything was dark, so Persephone could only see about 15-20 feet, and there were webs. The walls were webs, the ceiling was webs, everything was just webs and more webs. Even the floor that Persephone was somehow standing on was made out of webs. A shiver of anticipation shot through Persephone, and they gripped the scalpel that they had swiped from the recovery room in the castle. After a moment of mental preparation, Persephone descended into the webbed domain with a hop, skip, and a jump.
After a while of trekking through the webs, Persephone encountered both the first and last thing she wanted to meet: A spider. In a normal situation, Persephone could’ve simply stooped down, slashed the spider with the scalpel, and continued on their merry way. Unfortunately, that scenario was impossible because the spider in question was 6 feet tall, making the aforementioned strategy quite unlikely to happen. Sneaking past the giant spider was also not an option, because while Persephone had been weighing their options, the spider noticed Persephone and turned toward them, looking very not friendly. Persephone panicked, if that spider got a hold of them, they were done for. So they ran towards the spider at full speed, sliding under their torso and abdomen, narrowly avoiding the spider’s deadly fangs while using the momentum to deliver a vicious slash along the spider’s fleshy underside. After getting up, Persephone ran as fast as they could while hoping to lose the spider, and after a while it seemed like they had finally lost it! But at a crossroads another spider came from the right side, much to Persephone’s horror, forcing them to go along the left path. And at every corner, more and more of the big spiders joined the chase, forcing Persephone to sharply change directions over and over.
After a few minutes, things were looking very bleak for Persephone: There were 9 spiders chasing them, and Persephone was at the final limits of their stamina, and the adrenaline rush that had gotten them this far was starting to dissipate, and Persephone was already starting to feel tired and her head hurt. As Persephone was nearing the very end of her stamina, they noticed a massive pit in the ground, “I don’t care if there’s a chance for this to horribly backfire, It’s my only chance!” Persephone thought and ran harder. But then, as if fate itself wanted Persephone dead, another spider appeared. Sighing angrily, Persephone used the very last of their strength to jump onto the spider and stab it with the scalpel. The force of Persephone’s assault combined with heavy damage to the spider’s brain caused it to stumble backwards, falling into the pit and taking Persephone with it. Persephone smiled weakly, thinking that it was funny that they ended up falling into a huge pit again, and lost consciousness.
Thump
“Oh yes… You’ll do quite nicely”
Chapter IV
Persephone woke up with a start and immediately noticed two things (sans the fact that they were alive): First, they were hopelessly stuck to a web-wall by extremely thick webbing, which covered everything but their head and part of their neck. And secondly, there was a very scary looking spider-humanoid staring right at them, just inches away from them. “Oh, you’re awake, how unfortunate. Now I have to explain the complicated situation that you’re in.”
It took Persephone a moment to recover before they said “Wh-who are you?”
The creature coughed and said “Oh right, I forgot my manners. My name is Atrea, and I am the queen of this domain, and also your very new forever friend.” Atrea did a very graceful bow before returning her gaze to Persephone.
“Friends don’t tie each other up, so why are you calling me your friend?” Persephone said with a healthy dose of vitriol.
Atrea paused a moment before saying “Well, you aren’t my friend right now. But once the eggs that I laid inside of you have finished incubating and hatch, they will release a bunch of ultra-tiny spiders into your body that will rapidly alter your very DNA, and you’ll quickly transform, becoming almost exactly like me, then we’ll be forever friends, maybe even sisters!”
Atrea made a heart with two of her appendages, and Persephone tried to struggle against the bindings in an attempt to escape, but they wouldn’t budge, denying them even a millimeter of wiggle room. Atrea somehow noticed Persephone’s vain attempts at struggling, and her face completely darkened. “You IDIOT, so you’re trying to escape? Don’t even think about it, those webs are way too strong for you, I made sure of that. And even if after I tell you this, you try to escape again, I’ll know. In fact, why don’t I just set an example right now so you don’t try again.” Atrea reached into Persephone’s bindings and tore a chunk of flesh out of Persephone’s arm, which elicited a cry of pain from Persephone. Atrea then removed her now bloody appendage from the binding webs and devoured the chunk of flesh, savoring every bite. When she had finished her gruesome meal, Atrea looked back to Persephone with soulless eyes and spoke slowly with her bloodspattered mouth, saying “I guess you hadn’t realized this up until now, but in this hellish world, it’s eat or be eaten. You don’t even have the faintest idea of what happened before you came here, do you?”
Atrea turned around and started to walk away, but froze dead in her tracks. Persephone craned their head to the side to see what made Atrea freeze, and what Persephone saw chilled them to their very soul. It was hard to even begin to describe what was there, but it was a giant chimera-like fusion of so many things in so many wrong ways. The entire thing looked, for lack of a better word, wrong. Wrong in the most fundamental way possible, and when it spoke using a number of its multiple mouths, the voice was the deepest pitch that Persephone could possibly imagine. “Oh, so you both have finally noticed me? Took you long enough. Atrea, hand over the human, or I shall kill you and take them by force.” Atrea turned ghost white for a second before regaining her composure.
What Atrea did next surprised Persephone: She used the scalpel she had stolen from Persephone (who in turn, had stolen it from the castle) to cut through the webs like they were butter, and used some of the cut webbing to create a bandage for Persephone’s torn arm, and handed Persephone back their scalpel, all the while not turning around. Atrea then yelled “AS IF! I’LL NEVER LET YOU FINISH WHAT YOU STARTED!” Atrea caught Persephone’s eye and nodded, and Persephone gave a determined nod back, wanting to eradicate the greater of the two evils first, at least. Persephone and Atrea turned their attention back to the giant thing in front of them, yelled a spirited battle cry in unison, and charged.
“How unfortunate that we have to do this the hard way, but I was going to kill you anyway, so it really doesn’t matter.” The thing assumed a ready pose, the fight was on.
The thing shot out some giant writhing tentacles at Persephone and Atrea, which were promptly dodged and counterattacked. While dodging attacks, Persephone took a moment to assess the damage that Atrea had done to their arm, and they discovered that they couldn’t move it. “Well that’s fine, seeing as I’m actually ambidextrous, it doesn’t matter anyway.” Persephone thought while dodging some sort of energy projectile. Persephone looked over to see how Atrea was doing pretty good herself, she had ripped off a large portion of the limbs and tied together many others, which was definitely more than could be said for Persephone, who had only managed to land a few scratches. “You’re weak, child. You don’t possess the strength to fight me, as you haven’t killed as much as you should have. Even though Atrea is here, what hope do you have of beating me?”
The thing was gloating, which infuriated Persephone, so she retaliated with “Well, as the old saying goes: The bigger they are, the harder they f-BATHUMP
Chapter V
A searing pain of an intensity that Persephone had never known existed tore through their entire body. Persephone let out a strangled cry of pain as they dropped to their hands and knees and threw up a large amount of blood, which immediately alerted Atrea. In response, Atrea quickly used a gigantic amount of webbing from the walls and floor to restrain it for the time being. Atrea rushed over to Persephone, clearly excited for what was about to happen. Persephone felt like they were about to be torn apart from the inside. After throwing up more blood, Persephone let out a long scream of pain as not one, but two sets of arms burst out from their body. While Persephone was still having the absolute worst moment of their life, Atrea was practically jumping for joy. “You’re doing great, sis! Keep up the good work.” Meanwhile, the thing was starting to work its way out of the web-prison that Atrea had created, which worried Atrea significantly, and her tone changed for the worse. “Come on, come on, come on! The thing is almost out! And if it gets out while you’re still transforming, we’re both done for because I used almost all of my webbing for the prison!” Persephone, still in a state of extreme agony, prayed for the rapid transformations to end, if only to end the suffering.
After a moment of transformations that seemed like an eternity to Persephone, the pain subsided at last. Now back to glowing with happiness, Atrea held up a mirror, which showed Persephone what she now looked like. Persephone barely recognized herself! She had 6 arms (for a total of 8 appendages, including legs), Her skin had been bleached white, she had significantly longer hair and her teeth were now fanged and pointed, but most shockingly of all, she had six new tiny eyes on her head. Persephone didn’t know what to think, but she didn’t have to think about it as there was a new problem. RRRRRRIIIIIIIPPPP! The thing was out. “So you thought that you could contain me until reinforcements arrived? How pathetic. Oh? I see you’ve changed, human. But would it still be right to call you a human? Who knows.” Just then, a bunch of spiders descended from the gigantic hole in the ceiling to attack the monstrosity.
While it was dealing with the spider minions, Persephone and Atrea frantically searched for enough weapons for Persephone’s new arms. They came across a spider that had been knocked out by the monstrosity while the spider was trying to stall it. “This’ll have to do, my minions’ legs are super sharp, so you’ll have no trouble dealing damage with them, but those stubby talons look hard to wield.” Atrea said while carelessly ripping off the necessary amount of talons and handing them to Persephone, who still had her scalpel. “I guess minions are fair game to her for mistreatment, huh?” Persephone took the talons, thanked Atrea, and turned towards it. The remaining spiders retreated back up through the hole, their job done.
The thing immediately started rambling pompously again. “Ahh, so you finally face me? Now that you’ve grown significantly stronger through that little transformation, I don’t have to hold back. And since Atrea is most definitely exhausted from containing me in her prison for so long, this fight will be just you… and…me. Now capturing you should be a piece of cake, don’t you think?” The thing was clearly full of itself. Persephone smiled, now she could do some real damage.
Persephone dashed forward at full speed, wanting to sever as many limbs as possible as fast as possible. Sliding under three limbs as they shot towards her, she unleashed a barrage of slices, which cut the attacking limbs to ribbons. Persephone’s smile widened, she had gotten some blood splashed on her from the cut appendages, but that didn’t matter; she had done damage. Her smile grew even wider after she jumped back to her feet and realized she was in close proximity to the monstrosity.
She noticed there were more attacks coming, so she started to parry them while taunting it. “Like I was saying earlier, you freak of nature. The bigger they are, (more parrying) the harder they fall, so don’t go thinking that you’re invincible.” After delivering a fair amount of counterattacks,
Persephone had severed almost all of the limbs. Persephone was ready to finish the job, when the monstrosity said “Fine, I can see fighting more would be a waste of time, so as part of a tactical retreat, I bid you all a beautiful day.” Then the monstrosity’s entire body slowly turned black, and melted into nothingness.
Persephone sighed angrily, she was so close to finishing off that thing, but she regained her composure. “I need to focus on the here and now.” She looked over to Atrea, who was somehow almost done knitting a sweater with what Persephone was certain was the last of her silk. “Why in the world are you knitting?” Persephone asked, confused.
Atrea sighed, looking at Persephone after she finished the sweater. ”Well, your clothes look… utterly ruined to say the least, so I decided to make you some new ones, try them on please. Persephone didn’t take a single step towards the clothes. “Oh right, I’ll turn around for you.” Atrea turned around, and Persephone dashed towards the clothes, intending to put them on as soon as possible.
When she was done changing, Persephone realized that the pullover was two sizes too big and looked back to Atrea, who was now propped up against the wall, clearly exhausted. “Why are you tired now? You were on your feet a moment ago” Persephone asked.
Atrea took a moment before saying “The initial adrenaline rush… that I’d gotten at the start of the fight is gone, now everything hurts and my senses are all over the place…” Silence ensued that was almost long enough to feel uncomfortable, but Atrea spoke before then. “We need to warn everyone else about the…thing…that we…encountered.”
Persephone noticed the slight pauses in Atrea’s speech. So she said “How will you get to the elevator if you’re barely able to stand?”
Atrea smiled mischievously and replied with “Why, you’ll carry me, of course.”
Persephone didn’t like this option. “Why don’t you just tell one of your spider minions to carry you instead?”
Atrea stroked her chin in mock-thought. “I could…but I like the thought of being carried by you better. Besides, you owe me a favor. Because if I weren’t here, you’d be in the clutches of the monstrosity that we decidedly beat.”
Persephone wanted to continue arguing by pointing out that Atrea was the one that ripped out a chunk of her arm, but she knew that Atrea had her beat and further argument was useless. Persephone sighed angrily and grumbled, but she approached Atrea and hoisted her up nonetheless.
Even though Persephone had complied with Atrea’s demand, apparently it wasn’t enough, because Atrea said “No, you’re doing it wrong. You have to carry me on your back.” Persephone grumbled again before dropping Atrea, which elicited an annoyed “ow” from Atrea, before squatting down to let her on to her back. Atrea crawled on, Persephone stood up and started walking back.