the best nightmare you've had in a while | bad sanses x reader

Chapter 1

The cold is really starting to get to you. You wrap your soaked cape tighter around yourself with hopes to keep your body heat as you limp almost blindly through the dark forest. The rain is coming down in thick ropes, drenching your clothes and making your escape from the village and your, now, past life all that harder.

Your past life... You recall one more time with an expression of deep hatred carved into your face.

-

Your family was a wealthy distant relative of whoever was ruling at the time, so they were proportionally popular amongst your townspeople. Your father was the residential tax collector and your mother was the one with relations and rich connections, so of course, they had to train you in both of the arts of scamming poor people of their money and sucking up to other 'sophisticated' socialites.

You just couldn't take it there anymore! Every time they suggested new things for you to learn and practice, a thrum of violent anger would flush throughout your body with the want to sock someone in the face. Not to mention how they faced you with such sweetness so fake even a child could tell.

And your other family members, nary any help either, talking with your parents about you as if you were not there. Discussing your future for you as if you were not your own person. Talking of you so highly that guilt riddled itself into your very bones, knowing all too well that you were not, and never will be, who they imagined.

Even your uncle, a man who you once looked up to as a beacon of hope and new beginnings, had his image soiled by his own, disgusting, hands. Nobody believed you when you had reached out finally.

You were sick of your parents' insistence on bringing forth new suitors for you to wed to continue your wealthy bloodline. You were sick of people approaching you in the streets pretending to want to be your friend, but with their true intent being to use you for your money. You were sick of everyone's high expectations that you couldn't even reach if you somehow stretched to be twice the person you were.

You felt as if you were just a mere tool for your parents to offer to a wealthy family, simply just leverage in their societal standings.

Every day, the same. Lessons on etiquette and manners, dragging on for what seemed like hours. Standing and looking pretty for visitors and different suitors went on for days, and you were sure that if you were told to fix your attitude and your clothes so that they were perfectly perfect one more time, you'd lose it.

So you left.

You gathered your essential belongings and left. It was hard to leave your parents' manor what with all the guards stationed around the grounds, but you'd lived there your whole life. You knew all the spots that are somehow left untouched by the watchful eye of the guard.

You were so desperate to leave your small town and move somewhere so you could finally be yourself, free from expectations and those stupid, stupid rules. Free to be who you were meant to be, what you were destined to be. Someone great. Someone powerful.

You had stepped out through your large stained glass doors and onto your balcony- clutching your large sack of clothes, books, food, and other such items. You peered over the railing, trying to estimate the height between the ground and your balcony, then dropped. You somehow reassured yourself beforehand that the fall wasn't really going to be all that bad, and that you were subconsciously blowing it out of proportion.

Oh, how wrong you were. You were sure that if it weren't for the surprisingly soft bed of golden flowers underneath your balcony you would have been running away into the woods with more than a sprained ankle and aching bones.

-

You huff out in annoyance and wipe the sweat off your face, forcing yourself back to the present.

You groan and run a hand down your mud-stained face as you remember leaving your sack behind as you made haste away from your parents' mansion. Curses!

All these damned trees look the same; bathed in moonlight and rain- their roots lumping out of the ground amongst the foliage that you constantly snagged your feet on. You'd fallen over so many times that your clothes had been completely covered in mud and leaves, and you could even feel it squelching between your toes.

As you squint your eyes and look around, you catch sight of a warm light shining through the rain to your left. Hope fills your chest and you fasten your pace toward it.

As it turns out, the light is emanating from an oil lamp attached to an old stone archway. Intricate swirls and foreign symbols are carved delicately into the weathered stone. Moss and vines have overrun most of the base and sides.

You sigh and lean your back against the inside of the arch.

At least it's some form of cover, you reassure yourself.

Your head hits the smooth surface of the arch, but you immediately scramble sideways as something in the stone makes a clicking noise that you only just hear over the heavy rain.

You look up at the gigantic archway in awe as the etches and carvings in the old stone shine with a bright cyan, a thick black substance leaks from the tops of the arch, sliding down the sides, each thick string sticking to each other. You can't help but think of texture like molasses as it drips off a spoon.

As more and more of the viscous substance droops down and fills the arch, a bright blue glow shines from where the stone meets the black goop.

Curiosity festers in your chest. Your instincts are telling you to run, leave, get out! But you want to touch it, to see what it is.

As you inch closer, you feel something heavy in the air surrounding the archway. It's like with every step you take closer, something gently draws the gravity in towards the black substance. You reach your hand out towards it, but stop inches away from the ever-moving surface of the substance.

Should you be doing this? Surely, this is an act of the very witchcraft that your mother had read in those perturbing stories?

At the thought of your mother, your body is filled with a sense of rebellion, completely overpowering your previous anxieties.

A faint hum, almost overpowered by the heavy rain pelting down onto your outstretched limb, resonates through your arm.

It sends cold shivers down your spine and makes the hairs on every inch of your body stand straight. You hesitate for a moment but reach your fingers into the substance.

Much to your delight, it sends a numb thrum down your arm, much akin to the pins and needles you get after sitting on your leg for too long. Its texture is much more like water than what you were expecting depending on its appearance. You hum gleefully and flip your hand over, reaching in further and watching the substance form a small puddle in your hand.

You snap out of your childish fascination as a pale, bony hand grips your wrist and yanks you into the archway violently.

You yelp and lose your footing.

Time seems to slow as your face grows closer and closer to touching the goop.

You hold your breath and wrench your eyes shut, praying that nothing bad happens to you.